Array president who was widely praised for leading the slumping company’s resurgence in 2004-05 and castigated for overseeing its slide since the second half of 2006.The two-year run of success following the launch of the ultra-thin Razr phone began crumbling last year after sales slowed and the company admitted it had been trading profit margins for global market share by aggressively undercutting pricing.In a little more than a year, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based company has endured the departure of high-level executives, a Carl Icahn-led proxy battle, a 40 percent drop in its stock price and a sharp decline in its global cell-phone market share to 13 percent from over 20 percent. He needed a strong company rebound to assure his standing with directors and shareholders, and progress in the third quarter was only modest.Icahn, the billionaire financier who lost a bid in May for a board seat so he could force some changes, hailed Zander’s resignation as a positive step but said Motorola should be split into four companies in order to get the most out of its potential.I believe that the steps announced today do not even begin to address the major problems at Motorola, he said in a statement.Eric Jackson, a Naples, Fla., management consultant and Motorola shareholder who led an online campaign to fire Zander, applauded the departure.This is a company that is in need of new blood and new direction, he said.The resignation left some observers wary about what it might signal about the turnaround effort in the cell-phone unit, which is bigger than Motorola’s other, more successful divisions: home and networks mobility, its second largest, and enterprise mobility, which sells computing and communications equipment to businesses.While Mr. Zanders departure has been the source of speculation for some time, we had thought that an improvement in mobile devices could possibly grant him a stay,” said Citigroups Jim Suva in a research note.
link
-ne From The AP:Presidential hopeful John Edwards on Monday planned to air a television ad in New Hampshire that blames lobbyists for keeping 47 millions Americans without health insurance.The ad dovetails with his criticism of his chief rivals’ health care plans in recent weeks.
link
-ne
Ole Miss finished a six-game season opening home stand with an impressive 85-77 win over New Mexico Saturday.Dwayne Curtis led the Rebels with 20 points and 10 rebounds, and was one of four Rebels in double figures.“Dwayne Curtis was big, that’s what we need,” Ole Miss head coach Andy Kennedy said. “We need him to play this way, we need him to take the next step and be an all-league caliber player.”Curtis said he needed to lead the Rebels with intensity.“I came out with a lot of intensity, and that’s what we’ve been talking about since last game,” Curtis said, who was 8-for-10 from the floor. “We needed to change our ways this time (after a slow start against Troy), and that exactly what we did.”Ole Miss guards Trevor Gaskins and Eniel Polynice each hit 3-pointers to send the Rebels (6-0) on a 13-4 game opening run. The Lobos (7-1) closed to their closest margin of the game with 8 minutes remaining in the first half at 22-20. The Rebels answered with a 17-1 run, and a 47-30 lead at halftime.The Lobos capitalized on 13 second half turnovers by the Rebel and closed within five points with 14 seconds to play, but Polynice hit four free throws down the stretch to seal the Ole Miss victory.“I didn’t think we played particularly well in the second half,” Kennedy said. “We missed some assignments, couldn’t make a free throw, and we turned it over way too much, for a team that typically doesn’t turn it over too much.”In addition to committing a season-high 21 turnovers, Ole Miss only shot 60-percent (20-33) from the free throw line to allow New Mexico back into the game. The Rebels led by as much as 23 with 11 minutes in the second half.The Lobos leading scorer on the season, J.R. Giddens, was held to nine points. The Lobos were led instead by forward Roman Martinez’s 17 points on a perfect 7-of-7 shooting.Gaskins started in the place of David Huertas at guard, and the freshman responded with 14 points. Freshman Chris Warren added 16 points and five assists.“Initially going into the season I was hopeful I could ease them (Warren and Gaskins) into this, and not out so much responsibility on them,” Kennedy said.“I’m afraid they’re going to have to take the bull by the horn, and lead this team. I think they are capable of doing, but they just need some experience.”New Mexico head coach Steve Alford took note of the play of Warren.The Warren kid does a tremendous job, he is hard to keep in front, and he is just a really hard guy to keep track of,
link
-ne Team runs in basketball are when one team outscores the other by a substantial margin (say 10 or more points) within a relatively short timeframe, often (but not necessarily) shutting out the opponent in the process.I kept a close eye out for notable team runs in the 2004 men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and found at least one of them to occur in 75% of the games (47 out of the 63 games, excluding the play-in game). Examples included: Texas Tech going on a 14-0 run to take control of its first-round game against Charlotte, but then getting eliminated in the second round by St. Joseph’s, who reeled off its own 24-2 run against the Red Raiders.
link
-ne The other day we wrote about the growing battle between John Edwards and Barack Obama over what to do about health care. Well it seems that Hillary, and now Vote for Hillary Online, is on to this game.From Foxnews.com (sorry guys):Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle has written a letter to her counterpart at the Obama campaign, asking the Illinois senator to stop running what she calls a false ad in New Hampshire that claims his health care plan would cover everyone.Your advertisement not only contradicts the judgment of health care experts but public statements by your campaign and your candidate, Solis Doyle wrote, adding, Senator Obama has pledged to put honesty first in this campaign. Clinton’s plan includes an individual mandate that would require every American to obtain health insurance, while Obama’s plan only mandates coverage for children.Clinton’s camp often cites experts who say Obama’s plan would leave out 15 million people of the 47 million who are uninsured and notes that even Obama has called the plan virtually universal.
link
-ne
Most great cities have a quarter. Paris has its Latin quarter. Prague has the Jewish Quarter. Lankhmar has a Thieves Quarter. Birmingham has two quarters, the sparkling Jewellery Quarter and the slightly less sparkling Conference Quarter. No, really. It’s a area dedicated to conferences, which means it has lots of hotel and lots of bars. No I don’t know what bars have to do with conferences either ;)Outside of the Conference Quarter Birmingham is gearing up for Christmas in a big way. The German market is doing a thriving trade in Gluhwein and Stollen. The central shopping area is thronged with people. Every structure is festooneed with lights and tinsel. And the weather is sufficiently chilly to make mulled wine and hot mince-pies seem like very good ideas. Last night we had the UKOUG volunteers’ meeting. Apparently this year is the biggest UKOUG conference yet: 2900 delegates registered, 600 speakers and 450 presentations (up from 350 last year). The conference is scaling out from the ICC and running some sessions in the Birmingham Rep theatre next door. But it’s still relatively compact compared to OOW2K7 - I have already met several colleagues and ex-colleagues without trying, because there are fewer people - and obviously there is a greater preponderance of people from the UK than there was in San Francisco.I have already attended the keynotes from Ian Smith and Tom Kyte. Ian was keen to stress the point that Oracle UK are responding to customer feedback, and in particular the responses to the UKOUG customer survey. He cited as evidence their initiatives for the JD Edwards and PeopleSoft communities, who felt bewildered by the sheer size of the Oracle range. Oracle is now the worlds leading enterprise software vendor”, with the database just being one of its offerings (although it has 47% of the database market, more that #2 and #3 combined). Tom made a similar point. He skated through a list of twenty new or enhanced features out of the 400 in the 11g database release in thirty minutes. He said that when he joined Oracle in 1992 he could have covered the features of their entire product range in the same time. Thats the scale of innovation in Oracle.So the UKOUG conference is going to have to keep growing just to be able to keep up.Labels: Conference, Oracle, UKOUG, UKOUG2007
link
Read the rest of this entry »