Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Recently, the United Nations ruled that tasers are a form of torture. According to the UN’s Committee Against Torture, “The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture.” And given the increasing number of taser disasters and deaths in the US and Canada, it was long due that someone took attention of this.

Now let’s think about this for a second. The moment you give a non-lethal weapon in the hands of someone, they are more likely to use it than a lethal weapon simply because it is non-lethal. And with everything else, you run the risk of abuse — when something is non-lethal, the abuse is likely to be more frequent.

For instance, a cop is less likely to shoot someone who is abusing him or her but a lot more likely to tase someone because he or she knows that the weapon is non-lethal and therefore, can be used a lot more frequently without (deadly) consequence. As a result, we have a lot of people who would otherwise not have used a gun use a taser.

So what does this mean for TASER International? I remember seeing a recent Wallstrip where they talked about how TASER International is trying to get into the regular consumer products industry.

One of the two points that they brought up was the potential for lawsuits when tasers start replacing the pepper-spray. It’s one thing for cops to use them — but it’s quite another when everybody and their brother starts using them. Imagine that frat party, with tasers thrown in for fun. Or imagine kids getting hold of them from their Mom’s handbag.

The other point was of course the NRA — they are perhaps one of the most powerful lobbies in this country, and having tasers replace guns in the home-protection market is probably not in the NRA’s best interests.

A quick look at TASR’s stocks tells us that they are a long way off from their 2004 high of $31.65, trading currently at $13.04. So, this UN ruling is probably not going to help them, either. After all, imagine a consumer product that’s deemed a torture device by the UN.

Of course, for all we know, it may have no bearing whatsoever on how the stock ends — everyone knows that cigarettes cause cancer, but that certainly hasn’t put a serious dent in tobacco sales around the world. Right?

Today, just about everything is being outsourced to external agencies. So why not outsource giving people the pink slip, right?

Apparently, that’s exactly what some people do. In an article titled Meet Rebecca. She’s Here to Fire You, Inc.com talks about the business of firing people.

These people can supposedly handle the paperwork to even performing the actual unpleasant act of talking to an employee. It’s an interesting, albeit dark, read.

I wonder what the statistics are on anti-depressant medications in this profession.

Someone at work today gave me a copy of John Bogle’s article on the need for Democracy in Corporate America.

While I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Mr. Bogle postulates, it most certainly is a rather interesting article. Worth a read.

Paul Kedrosky talks about an interesting NYT article on how hedge funds and private equities seem to change career options for people who might otherwise consider going for an MBA.

The interesting thing about this is the fact that I in fact do know several people who are at those cross-roads.

While being a quant-jock definitely has its advantages in terms of pay and big fat bonuses, it also tends to burn out a lot of people quite fast. On the other hand, all it takes is a few years on the market as a quant and you are set to do whatever you want a wee bit later. But does having that top B-school MBA really help you in those particular areas that you work on, as a quant? That is the more interesting question.

The other thing that came to my mind was this — to what extent does this apply to other areas, besides finance? In IT, going anything above a Solutions Architect (or its equivalent) with just a technology degree is rather hard, in most places. But are there other areas where an MBA does not particularly matter? Say, Biotech?

It would be interesting to see if there are similar patterns in other industries, besides finance.

Forbes/Starmine are out with their list of the top stock brokerage analysts (sell-side) from last year. Also included is their “rare-bird” list of analysts who not only successfully picked stocks but also accurately predicted profits.

For those interested, Forbes has also gives a brief overview of their methodology used for shortlisting and selection.

Among the top pickers, Atlantic Equities’ Chris Hickey and Stanford Group’s Erik Olbeter have software and IT in their portfolio while Wachovia Securities’ Jennifer Fritzsche and Janco Partners’ Donna Jaegar have wireless and telecom in theirs.

Surprisingly, none of the top earnings estimators seem to have software or IT in their portfolio. However, there were two that looked at wireless and telecom — Stifel Nicolaus’ Christopher King and UBS’ John Hodulik.

And oh, I expect the Cydonian to be fully shocked (or pissed - take one) at one of the companies the pickers have listed.

Yes, I am back to having multiple posts in a single blog entry — I figured that this is better than having several dozen smaller entries.

DemoCamp Cincinnati

Thursday evening was DemoCamp Cincinnati, which was quite fun. A bunch of folks showed up and we had a couple of talks, one of them by a new startup called Mercury Grove. They presented their neat product called Collab which was rather interesting. They seem to have some very interesting people working there, and I just found out that they have a blog, too.

Click to see more pictures from DemoCamp Cincinnati

Ubuntu Adventures on a Dell e1405

So, I decided to upgrade my Dell notebook from Dapper to Edgy Eft. I have a Dell e1405, which like all notebooks, has the most obscure devices you can ever find (and ergo, is the hardest to find device drivers for). Now, I could not get a lot of things to work on Dapper, so I figured that Edgy Eft would be better.