Letters to the Editor
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Overall, this article pretty favorable to Dems.
The clincher is without Microsoft, this computer I am typing on (and, usually typing too fast with abundant typos) would not be working. Microsoft has the ability to function well in several fundamentally important or what I would call foundational aspects of the Tech World. I will buy a MacBook only because it is compatible with Microsoft's operating system, since all my software is based on Microsoft's operating system. (I actually decided to stick with IBM/Lenovo because I knew it would not have glitches.) The irony is Al Gore is on the Board of Apple. So, it may be that Hillary, i.e., the Microsoft-like Brand, is the most universally appealing and could probably communicate with those that like the Apple brand just as well since she has that base of knowledge and familiarity that transcends just an I-pod or MacBook.
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The Healer
From Amsterdam, the Netherlands: what we need, what we ALL need, is HEALING. We all want to get along in the end. Outside America, as well as inside, most of us are frightened. We need someone who understands that in the very broadest sense, across the very widest board.
It's cool that we might have a female president, if we so chose. Great. But not essential. It's essential we have a president who can HEAL across the widest board. That is someone who can truly relate to being at the bottom end of today's food chain, whether it's in the chaos and violence of the projects inside the U.S., or in the chaos and violence many of us experience directly in countries outside the U.S., or in the chaos and violence many of us see reflected in distant places we feel powerless to do anything about.
That is what Obama represents for us. A healer.
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If Hillary is Microsoft...
...and Barack is Apple, then Hillary is evil. (Martha just adds proof.)
Thanks! You just made my decision a whole lot easier. I'm voting for Linux.
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View From Abroad
I have been traveling for the last 4 weeks around the Mekong region,including Thailand and it is truly amazing how many people here are fully aware of the contest between Hillary and Barak. And how many are truly fascinated that Barak is in serious contention for the WH. Just that fact has already tweaked the idea that they had of us.
I can tell that if Barak is nominated and elected it would go quite a way toward healing some of the damage done by W. and his crew to our reputation here (you should see the number of T-shirts insulting W. on sale in the street!). From friends in the Middle East I get a somewhat similar response.
Still much more work would have to be done to erase 8 years of scorched earth "diplomacy" but at least we would start with a measure of good will! A lot more than we have had for a while...
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I practice international high-technology law, and national image does matter
I have spent almost two decades dealing with investment decision by international companies, negotiating joint ventures and partnerships and indeed getting involved in high stakes litigation. It is true that hard facts can overcome a negative image, but it's tough. The image a country has can have an enormous impact on its economy and inward investment. Let's look at a couple of examples:
Ireland for decades, until the mid-80s projected an image of bucolic poverty, dances at at the cross-roads, pig in the parlour, quaint backwardness. Every effort to get companies to invest in Ireland was burdened by this image. Early efforts sought investment from Irish Americans as an act of charity to the 'oul sod. It was only by a determined effort to change Ireland's image to that of a young, high-tech and sophisticated economy that the image was changed. 25 years ago suggesting building say a semiconductor fab in Ireland would have been greeted with raised eyebrows -- now it is taken as a natural candidate site for such an investment.
France has an image of being a place where workers are lazy, always taking time off, and (less today) that its technology consists of cuisine and couture. However, the truth is that it has a very strong hight-tech sector, pioneering many important technologies and French workers, per hour worked, are significantly more productive than those in many other countries including the US. Nonetheless, in my experience it is common for non-French companies to make initial decisions based on the cliche of the French worker and not the actualite. Similarly, Canada for many years was regarded as a technological wilderness, a country mostly inhabited by lumberjacks and strangely polite people in red-check shirts who said "eh" a lot, even though there are actually some pretty impressive Canadian tech companies. For many years it was hard to get people to take investing in Canada seriously too. I could go on...
In the last 15 years views of the desirability of US companies as business partners have declined markedly - there was an uptick under Clinton, but overall a steady decline. Now some of this can be attributed to the way in which certain household name US companies and one or two as important but less well known have treated their business partners shabbily, based on a view that they can get away with it (more and more tech contracts have a non-US forum selection clause to stay out of US courts.) But what is now happening is that the behavior of the Bush administration, its pig-ignorance, its disdain for both broad legal principles and general ethics, its perceived serial betrayals of friends and partners, its weird religious-style is being ascribed to the US as a whole. And the trouble is that this is not unreasonable ... none of these aspects of Bush were not highly visible to the world outside the US when the US electorate chose to reelect him in 2004.
I won't name the companies whose image problems I just mentioned, but look at their share-price, or what has happened to their management, or their recent legal treatment .. a lot of what has happened can be ascribed to their truly lousy image, public and internal to their industries, and a bit to their being US companies too.