John Robb's Weblog

Question

Henry Blodget uses his analytical skills to find Google's secret sauce. This may be it, but since most sites are still in the dark as to whether a person that arrived actually buys product, Google's ads may be only a rehash of banner advertising (with a twist). If that's true, Google's only real innovation as a business was its ability to sell click-throughs to advertisers as something that is more cost effective than impressions. They succeeded where many before them had failed.

But does it really offer higher rates of purchase for people that arrive on the site?Question. Has anyone actually bought something through a Google ad? Have you even clicked on one (other than to test the system)?

I'm confused about Technorati

As far as I can discern, neither of my weblogs are listed on the Technorati. What's up with that??

Global Guerrilla Air Power

Washington Post. UAVs are cool. I fully expect to see these everywhere quite soon (which strangely coincides with low cost computer power crossing insect level of intelligence). However, as these devices move in the private sector uses (think China) we are likely to see them more effectively used by global guerrillas than the DoD (along with Ultralights). In less than five years, these devices (including high bandwidth wireless streaming video, GPS navigation, and moderate payload capability) will be available for the low hundreds of dollars to anyone in the world. Expect to see them everywhere. In our world, what's expensive military grade hardware today is low cost commercial product in few years.

A soldier wary of what's over the next hill can snap together the nose, tail, body and two wings of the Evolution XTS, all six pounds of it, and find out. Just load a hand-held sling shot and let the airplane fly, for 90 minutes if needed. Guide it by computer and watch real-time video stream in.

PKK Attacks on Turkey's Oil Transportation

The PKK attacked a BOTAS pipeline in southeastern Turkey on Sunday. These attacks supplement Iraqi attacks on the same pipeline infrastructure near Baiji and Kirkuk. Hopefully, this doesn't extend to the BTC.

More on Iraq's Reconstruction

The American Conservative: When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure — corruption.

CIA-gate

I agree with Larry on this. Fitzgerald couldn't prove the crime was committed because of the cover-up. It wasn't that the crime wasn't committed.

Tactical Innovation in Afghanistan

CSM. The US Army is using a variant of the classical (Alexander) bait technique for killing swarmers. Good. It will diminish in effectiveness however.

Decapitation vs. Collateral Damage

Reuters. The US appears to be playing fast and loose with collateral damage in their decapitation strikes. Not smart. This sounds more like a Russian strike than an Israeli. This is dumber when you consider how poorly decapitation works against an open source insurgency.

Reconstruction Woes

The NYTimes details some of the problems found in the Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction (this report describes why we don't see progress on the infrastructure's macro level on any indices).

This is likely par for the course when a huge government bureaucracy and greedy beltway bandits are involved. There is also a serious problem with corruption at the core of the US business culture. It didn't go away magically when we sent Martha Stewart to prison.

The global guerrillas did have an impact on reconstruction too. Here is a choice bit on the role of Halliburton targeting:

Rick Barton, a senior adviser and co-director of the post-conflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the fear among workers had had as much impact on the rebuilding program as the money woes had. "What you have to keep in mind is the chilling effect of that many deaths and that many injuries," Mr. Barton said. "I think the numbers are huge."

Networked Responses

Guardian. A glimmer of hope on the horizon for a bird flu vaccine, from Hungary. Notice that this didn't come for the big industry players.