Last month we were contacted by the late Geoffrey Frost's personal adviser at Motorola; until Frost's death in 2005, Numair Faraz worked under the Motorola's former CMO -- the man widely regarded as the father of the RAZR. Like many (ourselves included), over the years Numair has become increasingly disenfranchised with the company's direction -- enough so that he compelled us to publish his letter to Motorola, its board of directors, and MOT investors everywhere regarding the company's egregious missteps and mismanagement.
---

Dear Greg Brown, and the rest of the executive team at Motorola,

As you may or may not recall, I worked with Geoffrey Frost as a personal adviser during his days as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the company. I was the one quoted in Forbes in 2003 as saying "Motorola's biggest problem is that Samsung kicks ass," and eventually came to spend nearly three years working with Geoffrey during his efforts to revamp the company's mobile lineup, which eventually saw the launch of the RAZR. As I told the company's senior designers at Motorola's 75th anniversary meeting: create something cooler (and more expensive) than anything else out there, and everyone will want it.

After the success of the RAZR, while Geoffrey was tied up every which way in ROKR development, meetings, criscrossing travel, and so on, through his associates I implored the company to beef up their software expertise, and focus on creating socially networked devices (this was in the years before MySpace and Facebook became the juggernauts they are today). Your predecessor, Ed Zander, had little interest in this, and instead insisted on parlaying his relationship with Steve Jobs into the ill-fated ROKR effort in order to prop up Motorola's stock price.

Zander, who seemed to care more about his golf score than running one of America's greatest technology companies, left all of the hard work to Geoffrey; I've always considered it Motorola's dirty little secret that the strategy for their entire profit machine was run by the company's CMO -- not the rest of the company's executives, who are as inept now as they have ever been.

Many close to Geoffrey believed Ed Zander worked him to death, putting the pressure of the fate of the company in his hands. [That was certainly the buzz around the industry at the time. -Ed.] I took his untimely death in 2005 very hard, and knew that the company would head downhill in the aftermath. On a personal note, Lynne, his wife blamed the company for his passing. She committed suicide soon after.

Meanwhile, Ed Zander continued to reap the dividends of Geoffrey's work as the company made billions in profit from overselling the RAZR for years. Instead of channeling that money into the obvious -- further development of groundbreaking consumer devices -- Zander purchased enterprise companies such as Symbol ($3.9b), and engineered billions of dollars in stock buy... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

Motorola insider tells all about the fall of a technology icon ...

neuroscientist Jill Taylor describes her stroke from the perspective of...a neuroscientist. quite fascinating and moving, although it sounds a lot like an acid trip...click below ::

cool...

Jill Taylor @ TED ... (via ZF)

"Passing the Turing test is the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI) and now researchers claim it may be possible using the world's fastest supercomputer (IBM's Blue Gene). This version of the Turing test pits a human conversing with a synthetic character powered by Rascals software crafted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is aiming to pass AI's final exam this fall, by pairing the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world with its new multimedia group which is designing a holodeck, a la Star Trek."

AI Researchers Say 'Rascals' Might Pass Turing Test

When I was young, my father was transferred, and our family moved from western New York State to Raleigh, North Carolina. IBM had relocated a great many northerners, and, together, we made relentless fun of our new neighbors and their poky, backward way of life. Rumors circulated that locals ran stills out of their toolsheds and referred to their house cats as "good eatin'." Our parents coached us never to use the titles ma'am or sir when speaking to a teacher or shopkeeper. Tobacco was acceptable in the form of a cigarette, but should any of us experiment with plug or snuff, we would be automatically disinherited. Mountain Dew was forbidden, and our speech was monitored for the slightest hint of a Raleigh accent. Use the word y'all and, before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of"you all" was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.

We might not have been the wealthiest People in town, but at least we weren't one of them.

Our family remained free from outside influence until 1968, when my mother gave birth to my brother, Paul, a North Carolina native who has since grown to become both my father's best ally and worst nightmare. Here was a child who, by the time he had reached second grade, spoke much like the toothless fishermen casting their nets into Albemarle Sound. This is the thirty-year-old son who now phones his father to say, "Motherfucker, I ain't seen pussy in so long I'd throw stones at it."

Read on... Very Funny !!!

You Can't Kill The Rooster by David Sedaris

CBS is advertising the return of new episodes of nerd-com The Big Bang
Theory as "ALL GNU", Is that the first wink-nod reference to open-source on
tv? Even if not, that is still hardcore nerd territory here.

Yea, I was talking to someone and there is the GNU bison on CBS...

I was lmao...

All Gnu? Damn, that's hardcore nerd! - tvbarn2 | Google Groups

Hahaha :)

David Sedaris: Bend Over and Say "Ah"....

Imagine how i feel.....my name has haunted me all my life and my mum used to punish me by readfing me tomato murdering stories. I used to wake up and see tomatoes looming over my bed........then i realized it was my mum! seriously, this website is the funniest thing i have ever seen!!! TOMATOES!!! yeh cos they have minds of their own, right, and they're out to kill everyone and take over the world!!!! and my mum has a red car (a beetle) which i cant even sit in. im going to go and leek my soul out to my teddy bear now.....urgh leeks. just as bad as tomatoes. and onions. they are all out to rule. watch your back!!!

a n t i t o m a t o

SATURN

ILLUSTRATED CHRONOLOGY
Saturn's First Eleven Years: April 1957 through April 1968

Wow.. I am friends with many of people that worked at AEDC/AAB on this very project... Love to hear the stories.. photos rock...

Saturn's First Eleven Years: April 1957 through April 1968

A University of Tennessee coed had a terrifying encounter when she found a convicted rapist hiding under her bed.

Police charged 31-year-old Jason Paul Tims with aggravated burglary.

Investigators said Tims snuck into the apartment of a UT Martin student, and hid under her bed until she fell asleep.

Then, police said Tims sat with the girl and ignored her commands to leave. Police said she eventually got Tims outside the apartment.

Wednesday morning, Tims was being held without bond.

Monster Under Bed Has New Meaning For College Student

Israeli police are on the lookout for a thief with a super-sized chocolate craving.

The robbers broke into a factory in the northern Israeli city of Haifa late Monday and walked away with nearly 100 tons of chocolate spread.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said such a large heist indicated it may have been an inside job and police were searching the area of any traces of the sweet stuff.

Moshe Veidberg, one of the company's owners, told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot it would require five large trucks to transport the stolen chocolate, which he valued at roughly $415,000.

He said the company's alarm system was deactivated and its surveillance footage stolen as well, leaving the fate of the creamy chocolate a mystery.

Police Searching For 100 Tons Of Stolen Chocolate