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Ocean waters are becoming warmer and more acidic, threatening to harm coral reefs. But in the Rock Islands of Paulau in the western Pacific, scientists have found corals that can survive these conditions. (Lux Tonnerre, Creative Commons)
With WHOI's research vessel Atlantis anchored in Discovery Bay off Jamaica, a team of WHOI scientists is towed on a small boat to a blue hole in shallower waters. They use long pipes to core into sediments that settled to the bottom of the blue hole. The sediments contain forensic clues that the scientists use to reveal past patterns of hurricane and ocean temperatures, which can help us predict and prepare for hurricane activity in the future. (Richard Sullivan, WHOI)
In July 1946, the U.S. military detonated a nuclear weapon 90 feet under water near Bikini Atoll. A geyser of radioactive water fell back into the lagoon, contaminating many nearby target ships. It was the second of 67 nuclear weapons tests inflicted on the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.
When (from left) WHOI biologist Jesús Pineda, pilot Eli Temime, and WHOI researcher Victoria Starczak descended on Hannibal Seamount in the submersible Nadir, they were astonished to see a huge swarming throng of crabs on the seafloor. (Hanu Singh, Yogeh Girdhar, Jeff Anderson, WHOI)
(Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Sometimes mooring deployments continue into the night. After a long and challenging deployment, Donohue waits for the countdown to cut the safety strap and release the anchor, the final component of a mooring to hit the water. (Photo by Jared Schwartz, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
In addition to blue sharks like the one shown here, Camrin Braun also tags and tracks mako sharks, tiger sharks, and sometimes even great white sharks through his work with the nonprofit organization OCEARCH. The information he receives from satellite tags allows him to understand how these different species behave in the open ocean. (Nuno Sá)
Camrin Braun, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, and colleagues will spend hours working to find the right size and species of shark to tag. When they do catch a shark, they only have a few minutes to apply the tags. (Tane Sinclair-Taylor, http://tanesinclair-taylor.com)
For years, the movement of sharks in the deep ocean has been a mystery to scientists. Now with satellite tagging technology, biologists can track the positions of these animals and determine how best the sharks can be protected, both from overfishing and from climate change. (Nuno Sá)
Fungal colonies grow on dishes inoculated with rock samples from deep within Earth's ocean crust. WHOI microbiologist Ginny Edgcomb and guest investigator Gaetan Burgaud are exploring what life forms may be living there. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Scientists think that American eels spawn somewhere in the southwest corner of the Sargasso Sea, which is surrounded by circulating ocean currents. The eels migrate as tiny larvae to fresh waters along the coast, where they spend their adult lives. Where the adults spawn and how the larvae migrate to the coast both remain mysteries. (Illustration by Eric S. Taylor, WHOI Graphic Services)
Dononhue changes the rigging of a subsurface float that was just pulled out of the water at the Global Argentine Basin Array in the South Atlantic Ocean. Research cruises to remote locations such as this one can often last a month or more. (Photo by Diane Suhm, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Meghan Donohue (left) prepares to deploy an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler, or ADCP, from the deck of the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer in the South Atlantic Ocean. The ADCP, which uses sound to measure currents, is one of many scientific instruments on this mooring, which extends from a surface buoy down more than three miles to the ocean floor. (Photo by Diane Suhm, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
R/V Neil Armstrong sails into San Francisco Harbor at the conclusion of the first leg of its inaugural voyage in late 2015. (Image by Bay Aerial, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
This Alvin dive "cover"—an envelope commemorating Alvin's 110th dive—bears Alvin logos, dates, and location, and the signatures of Alvin's first pilots, Bill Rainnie and Marvin McCamis. This and other Alvin dive covers and postal artifacts are featured in an exhibit, "Alvin at 50: The Little Sub that Could," from Oct. 3 to Nov. 2, 2014. at the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History in Weston, Mass. (Photo courtesy of Ed Hayes)
Tom DeCarlo, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, is investigating how changing ocean conditions, including lower pH levels and an increase in nutrients, will affect the health of vital coral reefs. (Pat Lohmann, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
The 2014 expedition to the Antikythera shipwreck marks the experimental debut of a new robotic diving apparatus for use in marine archaeology—the Exosuit. (Photo by Luis Lamar ©WHOI - Return to Antikythera, 2014)
(Thomas Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Engineer Jonathan Howland and colleagues in the WHOI Deep Submergence Laboratory developed software programs to automate many driving functions in the upgraded Alvin. The software sends commands to the sub's seven orange thrusters. (Thomas Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
(Dann Blackwood, U.S. Geologoical Survey, Woods Hole)
A newly hatched squid, only 0.1 inches long. (Photo by Max Kaplan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Whale sharks, the largest known fish species, open their large mouths to graze on microscopic marine plants and animals. They are often accompanied by smaller fish that are perhaps seeking protection or dining on scraps. (Nuno Sá)
Rocky formations like these, called stromatolites, dominated coastal areas billions of years ago. Now they exist in only a few locations. The ones pictured here are near Shark Bay, Australia. (Photo by Virginia Edgcomb, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
WHOI scientist Amy Apprill thinks that coral reefs, like human beings, are "superorganisms" that depend on communities of microbes living within and around them for their survival. (Louis Lamar and Maryann Morin, Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory at WHOI)
Pilots of the remotely operated vehicle Jason used the views from several cameras to maneuver the vehicle and use its manipulator arms to gather sediment samples from the seafloor in and around Deep Hypersaline Anoxic Basins (DHABs) in the Mediterranean. (Photo by Cherie Winner, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Minerals from hydrothermal vent fluids precipitate to build up hundreds of delicate spires at the base of a tall hydrothermal vent at Lost City. An arm of the remotely operated vehicle Hercules is sampling for gases in the foreground. The two tiny dots (right), which were generated by a laser on the vehicle, are four inches apart and help give scientists a sense of scale. (Photo courtesy of University of Washington, IFE, URI-IAO, NOAA)
With more than 4,000 recordings of pilot whales like these, researchers seized the idea of plugging into the power of crowd-sourcing, leading to the creation of Whale FM (http://whale.fm/), a website that asks people "to help us understand what whales are saying." (Photo by Frants Jensen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, under National Marine Fisheries Service Permit #14241.)
Researchers aboard the sailboat Iolaire watch a close group of killer whales in the Tysfjord, in northern Norway. The researchers, including MIT/WHOI graduate student Ari Shapiro, were there to study the whales'unusual behavior when feeding on schools of herring. (Photo by Jesper Jensen)
Manatees have round heads, squinty eyes, and bodies up to 13 feet in length. Despite their lumbering appearance, they are graceful swimmers—and to many, a vanishing symbol of wild Florida. Researchers hope digital tags, or D-tags, will provide insights into their behavior that could prevent more vessel strikes. (Photo by Tom Hurst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
The deep-sea robot ABE (Autonomous Benthic Explorer) created this map of the active underwater Brothers Volcano. (See fly-through movies below.) This view looks from the south into the crater at the summit of the volcano, the site of recent eruptions and ongoing hydrothermal venting. The caldera has two volcanic cones, the smooth one in the left foreground rises about 350 meters (1,150 feet) above the caldera floor to a depth of about 1,100 meters (3,600 feet) below sea surface. A smaller cone to the right, which is probably older but still has an intense hydrothermal system at its summit. (Image courtesy of New Zealand American Submarine Ring of Fire 2007 Exploration, NOAA Vents Program, NOAA-OE.)
Adult bay scallops use their adductor muscle to open and close their shells rapidly ... and swim. No other type of bivalve is able to swim. Scallops swim to escape predators. Tentacles around the shell opening help filter water through the opening to catch particles for food. Many silvery eyes line the outer edges and help the scallop sense light and movement. (Public domain)
The seafloor sediments are full of fossilized microscopic shells whose chemistry can reveal ocean temperatures that existed tens of thousands of years ago. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Another new species discovered on the Tasman Fracture expedition was this "waffle cone" sponge, 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) wide and 6.5 feet (200 centimeters) tall. (Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory, WHOI/Jess Adkins, Caltech)
This newly discovered species of soft coral, called a gorgon's head coral, was found using the remotely operated vehicle Jason during a December 2008-January 2009 expedition off Tasmania, Australia. (Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory, WHOI/Jess Adkins, Caltech)
Images captured by the remotely operated vehicle Jason revealed several previously unknown species during a recent expedition to the Tasman Fracture, south of Australia, including this translucent, 1.6 foot (half-meter) tall carnivorous sea squirt. It traps prey in its funnel-shaped head. (Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory, WHOI/Jess Adkins, Caltech)
(Moira Brown, New England Aquarium)
In 2007, WHOI geologist Liviu Giosan and his colleagues drilled a 42-meter-deep core through sediments that have piled up since the early Danube delta began forming before 10,000 years ago.
Kelly Rakow Sutherland untangles tethers attached to her fellow divers during a blue-water dive. The tether system is used to ensure that divers don't become disoriented or drift away when exploring the featureless—and seemingly bottomless—environment. Rakow is using blue-water diving and an underwater video camera to study the movement and feeding of barrel-shaped, gelatinous organisms called salps off the Pacific coast of Panama at the Liquid Jungle Lab. (Photo by Andrew Gray, UC Santa Cruz)
Scientists and crew aboard the research vessel Knorr faced winds ranging from 60 to 100 knots and 30- to 40-foot tall waves on an expedition to the Irminger Sea in October 2007. (Photo by Kjetil V?ge, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
The WHOI undersea vehicle Sentry collected sonar data to create this map of the undersea asphalt mound called Il Duomo, the largest of seven similar domes in the Santa Barbara Channel. It covers twice the area of a football field and rises 30 meters, or six stories, above the seafloor. The scale at right is in meters below the sea surface. (ABE/Sentry Group, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Cameras on the remotely operated underwater vehicle Jason took images of a seafloor site about 7 miles from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. Scientists found deep-sea corals covered with brown, flocculent material. (Photo courtesy of Lophelia II (NOAA/BOEMRE) and Tim Shank, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
After a six-month dry season in coastal Panama, the first rains bring masses of bright red land crabs boiling out of their burrows in the forest and migrating to the shore. There, females lay fertilized eggs in the water. WHOI student Joanna Gyory discovered previously unknown parts of this species's life cycle. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Gyory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
The manipulator arm of a robotic vehicle (upper right) moves the IGT sampler toward the jet of hot oil and gas shooting out of the broken Deepwater Horizon wellhead. When the sampler's snorkel reached an area of peak temperature, WHOI research associate Sean Sylva, sitting in a control room on a ship nearly a mile above, activated the snorkel to draw in a sample. (With permission of U.S. Coast Guard and Rich Camilli, WHOI)
Deep-sea corals flourish in the dark depths of the Gulf of Mexico, providing the foundation for lush communities of other animals, including brittle stars, anemones, crabs, and fish. (Photo courtesy of Lophelia II (NOAA/BOEMRE) and Tim Shank, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Transparent tubular animals, salps produce a feeding net of mucus that hangs inside their bodies. As they swim, they catch food particles on the net. (Photo by Larry Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Researcher Aran Mooney sets a squid into a tank where its neural response to sounds will be measured. The squid has been anesthetized and fitted with an electrode that will detect signals sent to the brain by nerves connected to sensory organs called statocysts. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Scientists use a long pole to attach temporary recording devices called "D-tags" to the backs of right whales. The tags record the whales' calls and the background noise around them, as well as the animals' movements. (Photo by Doug Nowacek)
Albatrosses exploit a phenomenon called dynamic soaring. They ascend from an essentially windless trough of a wave into an area with strong winds blowing above the wave. Crossing the boundary gives the birds a burst of kinetic energy that they use to climb to heights of 10 to 15 meters. (Photo by Phil Richardson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
From the deck of the research vessel Endeavor,Ben Van Mooy (right) and others survey the scene near the burning Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in June, 2010. Van Mooy was a member of a team of WHOI scientists who went to the Gulf to study aspects of the oil spill, including how fast it was flowing out of the ruptured wellhead and whether it was flowing in a deep plume of hydrocarbons. Van Mooy's experiments focused on whether microbes were eating oil in the surface slick and in the deep plume, and whether their activities were lowering oxygen levels enough to endanger fish and other marine life. (Photo by Dan Torres, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Diatoms like this one, Amphiprora sp., are one of several major types of marine phytoplankton. These microorganisms that live near the ocean surface and convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon via photosynthesis. They produce much of the oxygen we breathe and are the base of the marine food chain. They also play an important role in drawing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the ocean. (Photo by Dawn Moran, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
In 1969, WHOI biologists Howard Sanders (left) and George Hampson mobilized a concerted study of the impacts of an oil spill off West Falmouth, Mass., on marine organisms. (Courtesy of WHOI Archives)
This is a chromatogram of oil that leaked from the Macondo well during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Each peak represents one of thousands of individual chemical compounds in the oil. The taller the peak, the more of that particular compound is in the oil. (Courtesy of Bob Nelson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
A bowhead whales surfaces and blows in the Bering Sea. Studying their song is a way to learn where their still unknown breeding grounds are so that these critical areas can be protected. (Photo by Carter Esch, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Getting samples from a dead whale isn't pretty and certainly not fragrant. (James Lucey)
A thin section cut from a shark vertebra shows distinct alternating light and dark layers of tissue, laid down sequentially over a shark's lifetime. Similar to tree rings, the layers may preserve a chemical record of environmental conditions the shark was exposed to and reveal its habits and habitats. (Li Ling Hamady, MIT/WHOI Joint Program)
Basking sharks, the world's second-largest fish, have become endangered. To devise effective strategies to protect the sharks, scientists are striving to gain basic knowledge about where they live, mate and give birth. (Greg Skomal, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries)
The aft end of Titanic's keel is deeply embedded in thick, clay-like sediment 12,000 feet below the surface of the North Atlantic. The port propeller is also visible in this view. (©2012 RMS Titanic, Inc. Produced by AIVL, WHOI)
Photomosiacs of Titanic from 2012 and 1987 show that the bow of Titanic has remained relatively intact compared with the stern. The top mosaic consists of approximately 1,500 high-resolution still images shot in 2010, revealing structural changes that have occurred to the bow section since the last effort to mosaic the wreck. The bottom image was the first complete image of Titanic on the seafloor and is made up of 100 images pieced together from the 53,000 taken by a towed camera sled. It took approximately 700 hours to make. (©2012 RMS Titanic, Inc. Produced by AIVL, WHOI)
U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers and polar bear sentinels from the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy stand by as scientists take samples of sea ice and underlying seawater properties during NASA's 2011 ICESCAPE cruise in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. To their surprise, scientists discovered a bloom of phytoplankton in presumably dark regions beneath the ice. The scientists concluded that the tourquoise pools of water atop melting ice in summer act like transient skylights and magnifying lenses focusing sunlight into water beneath the ice. (Sam Laney, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Louie Wurch extracts RNA from Aureococcus anophagefferens in Sonya Dyhrman's Phytoplankton and Marine Biogeochemistry Laboratory at WHOI. A research team including Wurch found that the harmful algal bloom species has a unique gene complement that allows it to outcompete other marine phytoplankton and thrive in ecosystems that have been changed by human activities. (Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
WHOI marine chemist Matt Charette collects samples of groundwater flowing into Pamet Harbor in Truro on Cape Cod. He spent his childhood summers in Truro, which fostered his interests in the outdoors and coastal ocean. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
WHOI's deep-diving vehicle Jason captured this image of shrimp massed around a hydrothermal vent at the Piccard hydrothermal vent site, 3.1 miles deep in the Caribbean. (Photo courtesy of Chris German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
At Mid-Cayman Rise vent sites, scientists found three species of shrimp, two of them new to science. Females of one species were full of orange eggs, a clue to their reproductive timing. (Photo by Julia DeMarines, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
A team of researchers led by WHOI scientist Sébastien Bertrand took sediment samples from fjords in Chilean Patagonia to investigate how and why Gualas Glacier has been retreating. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Claudia Silva)


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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
SAP's Shai Agassi calls it quits
SAP confirmed today that its product and technology executive Shai Agassi is quitting the company to "commit himself to his personal agenda of environmental policy and alternative energy sources and other issues."
Agassi was the architect of SAP's Netweaver strategy, its service-oriented architecture. He was also slated to become co-CEO with Leo Apotheker, who is currently president of SAP's Customer Solutions and Operations group.
At the same time, SAP announced that Apotheker will assume the new role of Deputy CEO immediately, putting him in line to succeed the current CEO, Henning Kagermann.
What does it mean? It's hard to tell. There's not a hint anywhere that there was any problem between SAP and Agassi. Agassi, who is an Israeli, was one of the few non-German's among SAP's top executives. By all accounts, he was a major force to push SAP from its stodgy image in client-server systems to its current Internet architecture. His influence will no doubt be missed, although SAP's statement indicates he will remain as a consultant to the firm.
If anyone has more insight on Agassi's departure, I'd love to hear it.
Update, 8:30 p.m. Curt Monash has a "contrarian view" on Agassi's departure. He says that "SAP may do better getting out from underneath Shai's overarching decision-making." He writes:[SAP's technical strategy] has been heavily developed and refined on Shai's watch, with major contributions from lots of other folks. The issue isn't vision any more. What SAP needs to do better is execute on the vision.For a different viewpoint, read Sramana Mitra's take on the news. She thinks it reflects a conflict in style between SAP headquarters in Germany and Agassi's powerbase in California. Agassi needed to get the CEO job to change things, and when that was deferred, he couldn't see staying around.
SAP is doing plenty of things well enough to mine its massive installed base. But preserving and increasing the size of the base? For that, vision needs to be turned into more substance. And of senior SAP execs I've talked with and listened to — in Shai's case mainly the latter — Shai wasn't necessarily at the top of the substance list. Indeed, he's the only one who routinely left me shaking my head about a gap between rhetoric and actual technological fact.
Update, Mar. 29: Josh Greenbaum, as usual, has good insights, including a review of the SAP executives that will need to fill the role Agassi has played.
Related posts
Oracle/SAP lawsuit: view from Rimini Street
SAP license sales grow, but short of targetby Frank Scavo, 3/28/2007 05:53:00 PM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Oracle/SAP lawsuit: view from Rimini Street
Yesterday, I spoke with Seth Ravin, CEO of Rimini Street, about Oracle's civil suit against SAP and its TomorrowNow (TN) unit for theft of intellectual property. Rimini Street, like TN, is a third-party maintenance and support service provider for Oracle's JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel products.
Ravin is in a unique position to offer a perspective on Oracle's suit against SAP/TN. Not only does his firm provide nearly identical services as TN but Ravin himself was co-founder of TN's third-party maintenance services for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. He was also TN's president until retiring to pursue other ventures shortly after SAP acquired TN in 2005.
Some of Ravin's observations match those I've already written in my first post and second post concerning this lawsuit. For example, Ravin emphasized that Oracle's lawsuit is not about TN offering third party support. Nowhere does Oracle object to SAP's offering third-party support for Oracle's products. Larry Ellison in fact has spoken of the third-party support model as "capitalism," and Oracle itself offers support for SAP's products through its partnership with Systime, as I noted previously.
He also observed that Oracle's security on its customer support website, by Oracle's own admission, allows anyone with a user ID to download any and all materials on the site, even those that Oracle is claiming in the lawsuit were outside of a particular customer's license rights. Oracle also does not appear to immediately disable user IDs and access to Oracle's customer portal upon expiration of a customer's support contract. Such poor information security practices and lack of access controls might be a defense for SAP in this lawsuit.
But Ravin also had some new insights into the lawsuit.
A question of intent
First, he believes that it is unlikely that SAP as an organization has any conspiracy to steal Oracle's intellectual property. Stealing Oracle's IP would have no business value to SAP and opening the door to such a lawsuit is certainly not in SAP's best interests. Furthermore, if SAP did want to steal Oracle's trade secrets, it certainly would not be likely do so from their own offices, traceable through IP addresses on its own network. If this were truly a case of corporate espionage, SAP would have done a better job of covering their tracks. I find this to be a convincing argument.
That leaves the most likely explanation -- if there really is an issue -- as that of errors by one or more employees getting confused and mixing up client logins when processing multiple download requests from Oracle's customer portal for new clients. Ravin notes that Oracle customers have the right to download support materials up to the expiration date of their Oracle maintenance agreement. When a customer plans to terminate maintenance, Ravin thinks that TN -- as the customer's contractor -- likely offers to download all the support material for which they have the rights to. At this point, Ravin believes the TN consultant should write those materials to a CD-ROM or other appropriate storage device and hand them over to a customer.
Picking up on Ravin's theory, I can picture at least two scenarios. First, imagine a TN consultant who has several Oracle customers that have signed up for TN's services and plan to terminate Oracle maintenance agreements. Perhaps the consultant simply forgets to log out with one ID and accidentally uses one client's authorized ID to process another client's authorized download. Perhaps logins get mixed up or are not managed well to ensure that they are never used again after a client's Oracle maintenance contract expires. Since Oracle's site looks the same regardless of the login ID and since Oracle does not seem to immediately turn off access rights after maintenance contracts expire, there is plenty of opportunity for innocent human error.
Or, perhaps the consultant downloads all the material he needs for all his current clients using one login ID and then splits up the material for each customer according to what materials the customer has rights to. From the consultant's perspective, he's just trying to save time logging in and out of Oracle's support site, but from Oracle's perspective, monitoring these activities, it looks suspicious.
Without having seen Oracle's evidence in this case, there are several scenarios such as those I've outlined above that might explain the situation. There would be no intent on SAP's part, or even the consultant's part, to steal Oracle's trade secrets, but merely human error in carrying out legitimate activities on behalf of customers.
All about SAP
Ravin points out that while Oracle has every right to protect its intellectual property, if this involved any party other than SAP, Oracle would have followed the traditional process of notifying the party of the inappropriate downloading and seeking to resolve the issue. If the inappropriate activities were then to continue, a cease-and-desist letter might be called for. And certainly, Oracle would have cut off the offending user IDs from further access.
But in this case, it appears that Oracle gave no warnings and took no actions to stop the offending behavior. Rather it quietly monitored the activity for several months, building a case, and then springing a lawsuit. Why? Because creating a "giant media fireball" (Ravin's phrase) works in favor of Oracle's PR campaign against SAP.
Ravin says he would be surprised if any of the Oracle materials went through the "firewall" at SAP and reached SAP's development organization. He expects that a much clearer picture will emerge when this case goes to trial, if it gets that far. In the meantime, Oracle makes SAP look bad and it gets to play the part of the victim.
I asked Ravin how the lawsuit was affecting business at Rimini Street. He was reluctant to paint the lawsuit as good for business, but in fact, he says that sales activities have included a windfall of TN prospects and customers, as Oracle customers looking for third-party support do not want to get in the middle of an Oracle versus SAP battle.
It's going to be interesting to see how this case develops.
Update, 5:00 p.m.: Andrew Nelson, CEO of SAP's TomorrowNow, is quoted in the Wall Street Journal. "We believe we've done absolutely nothing wrong, and we're going to defend our position vigorously," Mr. Nelson said. "We believe our model is an appropriate and legal way to do business."
Related posts
SAP subject to criminal charges?
Oracle sues SAP and its TomorrowNow unitby Frank Scavo, 3/27/2007 02:24:00 PM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Saturday, March 24, 2007
SAP subject to criminal charges?
John Pallatto brings up some interesting points in an opinion piece for eWeek on Oracle's lawsuit against SAP alleging theft of Oracle's intellectual property (IP). If Oracle is successful in its civil lawsuit, it probably opens up SAP--and individuals within SAP--to criminal prosecution.
He writes,The next question that comes to mind is whether any of this activity, if it occurred, was done with the knowledge and approval of top SAP executives, or whether it was some mindless rogue operation carried out at SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary in Texas.I did a quick check for cases of criminal IP theft and found this news site on intellectual property cases, which is maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). In addition to cases related to counterfeiting of branded products and software piracy, there are also examples such as these:
If Oracle can prove its civil charges that SAP employees systematically looted intellectual property from the Web site, the next step could be state and federal investigations that could result in indictments.
Unless SAP can come up with some plausible explanation as to why people inside its organization were apparently downloading "vast libraries" of Oracle products, a lot of SAP jobs, reputations and cash could go down the drain. The very existence of the company would conceivably be threatened by this brewing scandal.
These are all criminal cases, which means the defendents could potentially face fines and jail time. There are many, many more examples on the DoJ website. (I should emphasize that the last two cases mentioned above are only indictments, and that the charges have not yet been proven in court.)
- The case of a Duracell employee who plead guilty to downloading trade secrets from his employer's systems and tried to pass them to competitors.
- The case of a three Metadyne employees who allegedly stole their employer's secret process for manufacturing automotive parts and provided it to a Chinese competitor.
- The case of a Netgear engineer who allegedly violated his non-disclosure agreement with Netgear supplier Marvell Semiconductor to download Marvell trade secrets and take them with him when he went to work for Broadcom.
So, Oracle's civil complaint against SAP is serious, and it would appear it could lead to criminal charges.
Pallato also brings up an interesting point regarding Oracle's investigative strategy. He writes,It's clear that rather than block the expired and bogus customer accounts from accessing the Web sites, Oracle chose to quietly monitor and trace the activity to investigate who was doing it and why. The results are this lawsuit.It appears that Oracle has known about SAP's alleged downloading of Oracle materials for some time. But instead of locking the door, it continued to monitor these activities, building its case. If true, SAP has handed Oracle a potent weapon in the form of this lawsuit.
I've also been wondering about the apparent lack of security in Oracle's customer support website. Apparently, anyone with a customer ID could download anything, even materials for which the customer was not licensed--even internal documents that no customer was authorized to receive. If Oracle took such little care to protect its intellectual property, could that be a point that SAP could use in its defense?
Yesterday, SAP responded to Oracle's complaint to say that it would fight the lawsuit. "SAP will not comment other than to make it clear to our customers, prospects, investors, employees and partners that SAP will aggressively defend against the claims made by Oracle in the lawsuit," SAP's Steve Bauer said in a statement.
The discovery phase of this litigation is going to be interesting, potentially even more interesting than the DoJ's failed attempt to block Oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft.
Related posts
Oracle sues SAP and its TomorrowNow unitby Frank Scavo, 3/24/2007 05:20:00 PM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Thursday, March 22, 2007
Oracle sues SAP and its TomorrowNow unit
Today, two days after it announced third quarter blow-out quarterly results, Oracle filed suit against SAP for massive theft of its intellectual property. The complaint targets activities of SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary, which offers third-party support for several of Oracle's products, namely, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, and Siebel.
The allegations
The complaint, filed in U.S. district court in San Francisco, alleges that TomorrowNow (TN) personnel repeatedly accessed Oracle's customer support system, using customer passwords, to download thousands of support documents, bug fixes, and other Oracle property, allowing TN to build its own library of Oracle materials to use in servicing customers that do not have Oracle contracts.
If what Oracle claims is true, it doesn't look good for SAP. It appears that Oracle has been monitoring server logs for its customer support website going back to last November and has come to a number of conclusions:
To be clear, Oracle does not appear to be claiming that it would be illegal for TN to access materials on behalf of and in support of customers' existing Oracle contracts. The complaint is focused on TN allegedly using its customers access to build a library of support software and documentation, saving itself the expense of duplicating Oracle's effort.
- Oracle claims that TN personnel used the login credentials of customers who were ending their Oracle maintenance contracts to download materials related to products those customers hadn't even licensed. (Apparently, Oracle does not check which products the customer has license rights to when providing access to its support site.)
- Oracle claims that TN personnel accessed Oracle materials from TN's offices, which are connected to SAP's worldwide network. The filing doesn't say so, but the question arises--did any of these materials find their way into the rest of SAP's organization? I'm sure Oracle will be asking a lot of questions along this line during discovery.
- Oracle claims that TN used automated methods to search and download entire libraries of material. The number of requests was so many that it is not feasible that a user could actually review the results of each request before going on to the next.
- Oracle claims that TN downloaded materials intended only for Oracle's internal use. (It is not clear why such documents would be accessible through Oracle's customer support site.)
What were they thinking?
Could SAP be this stupid? I've interviewed Andrew Nelson, CEO of TN, in the past, and I always had the impression that they were quite sensitive to potential legal issues. I would have thought that TN would try to be super-clean about how it handled Oracle's property. Of course, Oracle's complaint presents one side of the story. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that Oracle would be making this up.
Certainly, TN can't say they didn't know Oracle was watching them. Two years ago, when SAP acquired TN, I noted that Larry Ellison was threatening legal action. At that time, he said:SAP has every right to provide support for PeopleSoft applications as long as they don't violate our intellectual and contractual property rights. It might make it awkward for them. That's our intellectual property, and they should be cautious.Oracle does not seem to taking aim at any of the customers or former customers that appear to have allowed TN personnel to use their access credentials, although Oracle would probably have a pretty good case, especially if customers knowingly allowed TN to misappropriate passwords. From a public relations standpoint, however, I don't think Oracle wants to be suing customers.
Implications for the third-party support industry
The other side to this story is what it means for the nascent third-party support industry. Other providers, such as Rimini Street, are also growing software contract maintenance businesses. Ironically, Oracle itself has a partnership with SYSTIME to provide third-party support for SAP. To some extent, any consulting firm that provides tech support to Oracle's installed customers could be considered a competitor to Oracle in its maintenance business, although few of them offer what could be considered replacements for Oracle support. Oracle has never acted like it feels threatened by the host of small players that offer services to its customers. A thriving support community can be considered a sign of a vibrant ecosystem around a software vendor.
I've been sympathetic to third-party service providers, such as TN and Rimini Street, because I think they serve as a counter-balance to software vendors that might otherwise become greedy with customer support dollars. I would hope that there could be a thriving industry of third-party providers, but clearly they need to do so without misappropriating the intellectual property of others. If Oracle believes that SAP has stolen its intellectual property, Oracle is right to take legal action.
If even a portion of the allegations are true, it would appear Oracle has a strong case against SAP. Oracle is seeking injunctive relief: it is asking the court to order SAP to stop doing what Oracle says it is doing and immediately to return all materials it has allegedly stolen. It is also asking for unspecified punitive damages, restitution of ill-gotten gains, damages, attorneys' fees, and other compensation. The complaint also indicates that Oracle is in the process of filing copyright registration for materials, which if Oracle is successful in its litigation, may entitle it to statutory damages for copyright infringement.
You can read Oracle's complaint on the Wall Street Journal website.
Update, Mar. 23. Some commentators (Motley Fool, InfoWorld), are comparing SAP's alleged actions to Oracle's actions in appropriating Red Hat's Linux distribution for Oracle's own Linux support services, undercutting Red Hat's pricing in the process. Such comparisons miss the point: Red Hat's licenses allow (actually, must allow) redistribution of materials licensed under open source licenses. Oracle's license agreements expressly do not. Oracle is an aggressive competitor, but its actions toward Red Hat do not misappropriate Red Hat's intellectual property.
Related posts
Oracle/SAP lawsuit: view from Rimini Street
SAP subject to criminal charges?
TomorrowNow a threat to Oracle's maintenance business?
Rimini Street expands 3rd party maintenance for Oracle products
Oracle faces threat to Siebel maintenance fees
Ellison threatens SAP regarding PeopleSoft support
SAP to provide maintenance for PeopleSoft products
High software maintenance fees and what to do about themby Frank Scavo, 3/22/2007 01:24:00 PM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Did Oracle just drain its pipeline?
Oracle has just announced quarterly results that exceed Wall Street expectations: a 35% increase in profits, a 27% increase in revenue, and a new license sales jump of 57%, far above the 30% increase that analysts were expecting.
Oracle was under particular pressure to show better results than it did in the previous quarter, when its share price came under pressure as the result of results that, according to the Wall Street Journal, "reflected some sluggishness in North America."
Oracle may have also been eager to contrast its performance with SAP's, which missed its sales goals in the previous quarter.
So, how did Oracle pull off such outstanding results this quarter? I happen to know that Oracle was extremely aggressive in closing last-minute deals at the end of last month, making what appeared to be desperate offers to get prospects to sign before the quarter ended.
At the time, I took this as a sign that Oracle was either going to have a very bad quarter or a very good quarter. Now we know.
The problem, of course, is that this game cannot go on forever. Such a tactic merely pulls in deals from the next quarter, putting even more pressure on the vendor to meet expectations from a pipeline that has been drained of many prospects. Nearly every software vendor plays this game from time to time, but the intensity of the effort in this case surprised me.
So, my guess is that Oracle's results without these last-minute antics would have been more consistent with SAP's, indicating a slowdown in new deals for enterprise software. I just heard today from some concern from another vendor that the level of activity seems to be slowing recently. If so, expect to see disappointment at the end of this quarter.
Update, 4:30 p.m. PDT: Listening to the Oracle's analyst conference call, Oracle co-President Safra Catz sounded gleeful, almost giddy, in her recap of the firm's results. During the Q&A session, however, her tone became somewhat more subdued when asked about pipeline assumptions for Oracle's upcoming fourth quarter. She said,Obviously, pipelines are very big. Bigger than last year in Q4. But we are assuming modestly lower close rates than we had last year. Just...we just are always trying to be cautious. Even though, the truth way, last year's close rates were not outrageously high or anything like that, or one or the other. The reality is the pipelines are very, very big. But pipelines don't tell the whole story. We are just going to have to close an enormous amount of business--in North America, a billion dollars of new license revenue. We are very upbeat. But we have used reasonably conservative close rates.In fact, Oracle's guidance for the upcoming fourth quarter is rather conservative. Catz is predicting new license sales to increase only by 5-15%. She kept justifying this conservative forecast with the explanation that it will be difficult to show year-over-year growth compared to last year's fourth quarter, which was exceptionally strong. But I still think the problem is not with last year's fourth quarter, but with the quarter that just ended, where Oracle drained the pipeline of many deals that would have otherwise closed next quarter.
I could be wrong. Check back in three months to find out.
Related posts
Oracle hustles Hyperion
Rumor mill: Oracle to acquire SAP
SAP license sales grow, but short of targetby Frank Scavo, 3/20/2007 02:35:00 PM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Monday, March 19, 2007
Microsoft's Project Green is dead
Microsoft is now claiming there was never any intention to merge its four ERP products into a single code base.
First a little history. Back in 2003, Microsoft began working on an effort to migrate its four newly acquired ERP products (Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, and Solomon) to Microsoft technology. None of these products were purely Microsoft under-the-covers. For example, Axapta was (and still is) written in its own development environment (MorphX), in its own language (X++ ), using Oracle as its preferred database.
Internally known as Project Green, this effort was aimed at converting the four products to Microsoft technology and converting their program code to a single code base while retaining the best features of each product.
If anyone could afford such a massive undertaking, it would be Microsoft. But Microsoft was not familiar with the enterprise system market and soon found out that its existing ERP customers were not all that keen on Project Green. Most of them were not eager to face a major upgrade/migration to a new product. And competitors used Project Green as a reason not to choose Microsoft, since what Microsoft was selling was going to be replaced by a new product. As Microsoft senior VP Orlando Ayala testified in court, selling ERP was a "humbling experience" for Microsoft.
Early signs of trouble
In addition, it started to look like Project Green was too much to bite off even for Microsoft. In 2004, Doug Burgum admitted that Microsoft was slowing down its work on the project, cutting the developer headcount from 200 to about 70. Some of the delay was attributed to Microsoft's problems with development of Longhorn, its next-generation server OS. Project Green was to built on top of a common services layer known as Microsoft Business Foundation (MBF), which needed capabilities to be provided in Longhorn, so if the delivery date for Longhorn slips, MBF slips, and Project Green slips.
Problems continued in 2005, as Microsoft's ERP unit pushed out its release date for the new version of Axapta and indicated that some products would be going into "maintenance mode." Josh Greenbaum even speculated the Microsoft might sell off its ERP products.
Lowering expectations for Project Green
A few months later, Microsoft began to redefine its goals for Project Green. Instead of rewriting all of its ERP products into a single code base, Microsoft would incorporate new technology and functionality into its existing products in incremental "waves." Microsoft still held out the possibility, however, of merging the four products into one successor product, but it made no commitment.
Later that year, still holding four products in its portfolio, Microsoft took the easy way to convergence. It simply re-branded all its ERP products as "Dynamics." For example, Microsoft Axapta became Dynamics AX, and Great Plains became Dynamics GP. It also announced a reorganization that pushed its ERP unit down one level and demoted its head, Doug Burgum. At the same time, Microsoft appeared to abandon any hope for MBF. Read my post at the time for quite a bit of insider feedback on these developments.
Then, about a year ago, Microsoft indicated that its release date for a converged product would be pushed out yet again.
Attempting to rewrite history
Now, for the latest news. According to Computerworld, Tami Reller, a Microsoft VP of business solutions marketing, is claiming that "there were never formal plans for a big-bang development project to meld the different applications." Furthermore, Microsoft executives are now downplaying "the notion that the software vendor has backtracked from its road map for pulling its four ERP product lines more closely together."
I had long felt that Project Green was not smart from a customer perspective. But it appears now that even the technical migration--which Microsoft should have been good at--was too ambitious. For example, I noticed in a recent Axapta sales presentation that X++ is still around. Instead of converting Axapta to C++, Microsoft has simply embraced X++ in its Visual Studios development tool set. Voila! Axapta is now pure Microsoft technology.
The ironic part is that Microsoft's solutions today are really good products, backed by the deepest pockets in the software business. So, small and mid-size businesses should continue to look at these systems and buy them as they fit their requirements. Perhaps now that Project Green is dead, they can do so without uncertainty about the future of these products.
Related posts
Microsoft pushes out the goal line for business apps convergence
Another false start for Microsoft's business apps
Reorg highlights troubles at Microsoft Business Solutions
Microsoft rebranding its business applications
The Microsoft ERP lock in effect
Microsoft: Project Green to appear in waves
Microsoft fuzzes up the definition of Project Green
Microsoft to put enterprise applications on the auction block?
Is Microsoft dying?
Microsoft eats more humble pie in enterprise software business
Microsoft Longhorn cutbacks threaten Project Green
Microsoft shortens Longhorn
Microsoft slowing down Project Green
Microsoft: selling enterprise software is a "humbling experience"
Yet another update on Project Green
Microsoft Project Green details emerging
Feedback regarding Microsoft's Project Green
Is Microsoft upstaging Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, and Axapta with "Project Green"?by Frank Scavo, 3/19/2007 09:22:00 AM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Impact of daylight savings time change: bigger than Y2K
Back in January, I wrote that the change in U.S. daylight savings time (DST) rules, which took effect last weekend, might be a mini-Y2K. As it turns out, in some ways, it's a bigger deal than Y2K.
According to press reports, errors have been introduced into calendaring systems at many companies as some users have applied DST patches and others have not. It's gotten really confusing for some organizations where meetings are scheduled with participants outside the organization and in different time zones. Many companies have still not gotten their calendars straightened out.
Meeting schedulers, such as Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange, are just the tip of the iceberg, as they are highly visible and errors are annoying. How many other applications that depend on accurate time-of-day, such time and billing systems, are defective today because of the rules change?
Handheld devices are also problematic. My own experience is that it took me nearly two hours to get my Blackberry OS updated and synchronized with my desktop Outlook applications. Multiply that by the number of Blackberry users worldwide and the economic impact just for this one device is significant.
Why weren't we better prepared? I believe that many organizations deliberately underestimated the potential impact of DST rule changes after their experience with Y2K, which many felt was over-hyped. With warnings of the end of civilization, or at least computerized civilization, companies spent millions of dollars preparing for the turn of the century. But when the clock turned at midnight, nothing happened. It was nearly impossible to find reports of computer failure. Many business executives concluded that the whole thing was a hoax by IT vendors and service providers to spend money upgrading systems.
With that backdrop, it's easy to see why the DST rules change wasn't considered a big deal in many organizations. As it turned out, there's probably been more practical impact from the DST change than there was from Y2K. The difference, of course, is that with Y2K the economic impact was largely felt prior to the calendar change. With the DST rules change, there has been more impact after the fact.
eWeek has a good summary of the "nightmare issues" that some organizations are facing with calendaring systems.
If you've heard of other examples of economic impact from the DST rules change, please email me or leave a comment on this post.
Related posts
Mini-Y2K: Change in daylight savings time rulesby Frank Scavo, 3/13/2007 03:37:00 PM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Friday, March 02, 2007
i2 seeks patent license shake-down fees
A Spectator reader called my attention to this news yesterday. i2 Technologies is launching a patent licensing program to make available (for a fee) selected patents that do not apply to the company's supply chain management focus.
In other words, the patent program will NOT affect i2's current lawsuit against SAP, which is over one of i2's patents related to process planning, factory planning, sales negotiation and tracking, manufacturing allocations, and management of available to promise (ATP).
So what's the purpose of i2's patent licensing program? In one word, money. It appears that i2 has been applying for patents for general purpose approaches to system design, apart from its core expertise in supply chain applications. For example, the initial offering in i2's patent licensing program will be an i2 patent (US Patent No. 6,169,992) that relates to "the use of a Web browser utilizing an executable client application in order to enable interactive queries of a remotely located information repository."
i2's press release goes on to comment that the patent is relevant to Internet applications using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML technology (AJAX). AJAX is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. AJAX makes web pages more efficient and responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change."
Of course, i2's investors will cheer i2's move as a potential source of additional revenue. But, in my opinion, this program is another example of software patents going too far. AJAX technology is a hot topic in software development these days, as companies such as Google use it to make web-based applications much more user-friendly and efficient. For example, if you've clicked and dragged on a Google Map, you've seen AJAX in action.
Now, I'm not saying that Google Maps infringes on i2's patent. But I am saying that anyone using AJAX to access a remote database may now need to look at i2's patent claims. At what point do patents such as this one stifle rather than encourage innovation?
For more on the subject generally, see this Wikipedia entry on the software patent debate.
Related posts
SAP: If you can't beat 'em, sue 'emby Frank Scavo, 3/02/2007 08:24:00 AM | permalink | e-mail this!
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Thursday, March 01, 2007
Oracle hustles Hyperion
Oracle is seeking to make an addition to its series of acquisitions in the enterprise software space. The target this time is Hyperion (HYSL), one of the leading vendors of business intelligence software. The deal was announced today.
The parties have agreed to a cash offer of $52 per share, or approximately $3.3 billion. The offer is about 21% above Hyperion's stock price prior to the announcement.
Although this is a big deal, there's really not much risk. Hyperion is already an Oracle partner. In fact, it runs Oracle's E-Business Suite and Siebel systems internally. There is also not a great deal of overlap with Oracle's existing offerings. Business intelligence is a complementary product, and these solutions tend to integrate easily with other products. There is a little overlap with some of Oracle's own reporting products, but not much. When customers want industrial strength performance management tools, or business analytics, they typically go to vendors like Hyperion.
The market for business intelligence products has been one of the brighter spots in enterprise software in the past few years. Because of Sarbanes-Oxley, companies are paying more attention to monitoring business performance, and vendors like Hyperion have responded with more products to analyze trends in the mountains of data produce transactional systems produce. As a result, the market for these products is growing at a compound annual rate of 11% per year, well above the business software market generally.
Another plus for this deal: Hyperion is a Tier I vendor, with 12,000 customers, including 91 of the U.S. largest 100 companies. Many of these companies are also customers of SAP. So, ultimately, this deal could give Oracle another avenue into these sites.
The market also seems to view the deal positively. Oracle's share price is up over 3% a few hours after the deal was announced. The transaction is expected to close in April.
Check out Hyperion's website for more information. There is quite a bit of material there about the Oracle/Hyperion deal.
Update: Computerworld is reporting mixed opinions from Hyperion users on the deal.
Update, Mar. 12: Clint Boulton points out that Hyperion's products are not all complementary to Oracle's. Specifically, Oracle's own financial planning and budgeting applications and the excellent performance management products that it acquired from PeopleSoft. He quotes Keith Gile at Business Objects (a Hyperion competitor), who listened in on an Oracle conference call about the deal:"Basically, their management came on the phone and pretty much threw 'em under the bus and said these things weren't good enough, and therefore, "we went out and bought a pure-play, best-of-breed performance management solution in Hyperion."So, in the view of Gile and Boulton, the addition of Hyperion's products threaten to dilute some of the products Oracle already has in its portfolio.
Related posts
Rumor mill: Oracle to acquire SAP
Oracle does the right thing with open source acquisition
Philly pulls plug on failed Oracle project
Two more business intelligence vendors are hooking up
Vendor consolidation hits business intelligence sectorby Frank Scavo, 3/01/2007 08:39:00 AM | permalink | e-mail this!
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subset: commoncrawl


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(Photos: Cerebral Ballzy, Odd Future, Ninjasonik, Matt & Kim, Japanther, Hard Nips, TV On The Radio, Trash Talk, Black Lips, Talib Kweli, Sleigh Bells, Flying Lotus)
- Odd Future thinking it would be hilarious to stage dive into the photo pit at the Fader Fort. I caught the brunt of it, resulting in a broken lens and a cut up head.
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• Chiddy Bang - Opposite Of Adults
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It's the soup de jour of the Obama administration. Consider the remarks he yesterday at a Chicago fundraiser:
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Some trivia from our Cholistan Rally 2010 participation
Total distance travelled in LC 2160km (home to home, ISB)
Race total distance 226km approx, divided in two halves, of 111km and 115km, with 20min mid break (during which I checked tyres and changed air filter with a new one). Used a new air filter at start of qualifying, which was also used in rally stage 1.
Qualifying total distance 3.7km approx
Total sleep I had in the total trip of 4 days was approx 14 hours.
Total registered participating vehicles were 88
In random draw for qualifying, Desert Devil's turn was 42nd and mine 79th for starting the qualification run.
In qualification I and Desert Devil were 35th and 71st out of 88 cars according to fastest times.
LC qualifying time was 2:44:37, and Pajero 3:00:50
Final race timings and category positions are not known as we left early, so far the result has still not been made available to us anywhere. I have spoken to Qasim Saidhi, he will post it on the pakwheels as soon as he gets it. Qasim unfortunately couldn't complete the rally as he had a roll over
Maximum speed achieved in Qualifying by LC 115km, and 147-148kmph in the rally itself (during stage 1).
Started LC qualifying run on cold tyre pressure of 20psi. For race day had increased to 21psi due to some long straights at high speed. The tyre pressure had increased to 28 at midway 20minute break.
The Pajero was at 19psi cold pressure for both qualifying and race day.
On the way back on M2, finally managed to check the top speed of LC, its engine cuts-out at 190kmph due to a speed limiter.
Both Desert Devil n I had topped our fuel tanks before race and both finished with way less than quarter tank after 226km. Pajero's tank is 60 or 70litres, LC 95litres (main fuel tank).
Despite our best plans, we both did not manage to do any recce of race track before the rally run. So essentially we drove according to what we saw during the race! Some guidance was given by Qasim Saidhi about few dangerous objects/ runs.
LC had an external roll-cage specially built (by Ehsan Kiani, thnx very much) it behaved perfectly, The pajero had a inside roll cage. Roll cages are now requirement for all participants in the rally.
Desert Devil managed to bring his Pajero Home safely despite the fact that he had non-functional tachometer before the race start and also the temperature needle packed up within the first few check points of rally.
We had 11 different check points during the rally, where we had to get stamped our individual rally race cards.
Saw several desert lizards (6-8", with raised heads looking at us) crossing our racing line.
Saw several car body parts scattered on track as well on the way, including side mirror, a coil spring and bumper parts
Also came across a dead donkey, with a part of bumper next to it on track side (obviously some ass driving the vehicle ran into another ass! pardon my language)
This is all what I can think off from the top of my head. Pics n some vdo's hopefully later.
IJC Rally Team Cholistan 2010 experience
Latest Events, tours, camps, rally participation, all goes in here.
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text:
Aside from her arresting Hazel eyes, Rachel Weisz's voice might be her best attribute. Not just its lovely English lilt but how she modulates it. "You could learn me," she tells Ralph Fiennes in her Oscar-winning performance in The Constant Gardener; the deepening of learn makes her offer to be lover, wife, what have you, sound nervy, dirty and earnestly romantic all at once. During lunch at a ramen shop in New York City's East Village the day before her 42nd birthday, Weisz's spoken standouts include naked (the letters a and k themselves sound stripped bare), pernickety (she pushes the n)...
Rolling in The Deep
In her new movie, Rachel Weisz falls in capital-L love
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Arlen Specter, longtime 6-term Republican who switched to the Democratic Party is out. He lost his bid for re-election in yesterday's primary. The emerging pattern is that the people aren't interested in politics as usual and that incumbency may be a heavy liability in the November midterms.
Usually, incumbency offers advantages and even in the bloodletting midterm elections of 1994 and 2006, incumbents were re-elected at a relatively high rate—just not as high as usual. My thinking is that some incumbents will have a harder time than others with the key driver being how ties they are to the establishment.
Sestak was behind the 8-ball in early polls, but I agree with the analysis that ideology didn't drive the turnaround. It was a desire for a fresh face. Here's the ad {"The Switch"} by Joe Sestak that started Arlen Specter's decline in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary::
The ad linked Specter to the establishment.
It will be interesting how the races in California play out. There are two Republican ex-Silicon Valley CEO political outsiders vying for the statehouse and Barbara Boxer's Senate seat. Millionaire Carly Fiorina running for Governor and billionaire Meg Whitman setting her sights on the U.S. Senate, if they get through the primaries, are hoping to give marquee-name Democrats {Boxer and Jerry Brown, respectively} a run for their money. I don't think their messages will get much traction in California this year, but never underestimate the power of a substantial warchest. I'm sure Jerry Brown's sister, Kathleen, still remembers what happens when you run out of money in a campaign, as she did in 1994.
Song:: Green Day-'American Idiot'
Twitterversion:: [blog] Specter loses Senate bid—PA primary. Will incumbents face a "throw the bums out" mandate this fall? #ThickCulture http://url.ie/67xy @Prof_K


text:
24 Kan. App. 2d 418
No. 75,599
STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, v. JOYCE MINCEY, Appellant.
When a defendant participates in an agreement to commit multiple separate statutory crimes, the defendant may be convicted of a count of conspiracy for each separate statutory crime involved. It is irrelevant that there may have been only one broad general agreement to commit the several crimes involved.
Appeal from Dickinson District Court; JAMES C. JOHNSON, judge. Opinion filed October 3, 1997. Affirmed.
Steven R. Zinn, deputy appellate defender, and Jessica R. Kunen, chief appellate defender, for the appellant.
Eric K. Rucker, Dickinson County Attorney, Allen B. Angst, Assistant Dickinson County Attorney, Jim Pringle, Cowley County Attorney, and Carla J. Stovall, attorney general, for the appellee.
Before LEWIS, P.J., GERNON, J., and CHARLES E. WORDEN, District Judge, assigned.
LEWIS, J.: Defendant was convicted of aiding and abetting attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, aiding and abetting aggravated robbery, and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery. The trial court imposed presumptive sentences on each count and ordered the sentences to run consecutive to one another. Defendant is presently serving a controlling sentence of 206 months. She appeals her convictions on several grounds.
We affirm.
We do not intend to repeat in any detail the extreme violence of the crimes which led to defendant's convictions. Defendant is the mother of Lewis Mincey, who, along with Everett Hayes, inflicted multiple acts of violence on a victim whose only mistake was to invite them into her home to use the telephone. While in the home, Lewis and Everett robbed the victim, raped her, and cut her throat. The victim feigned death, and the perpetrators at one point dropped an 8-pound barbell on her chest to see if she was alive or dead.
Lewis and Everett were both convicted and sentenced for their crimes. Those convictions were upheld by this court in unpublished opinions filed September 13, 1996, and August 23, 1996, respectively.
As we understand the record in this case, defendant was charged with and convicted of the crimes in question based on evidence, highly condensed, that showed the following:
(1) Defendant knew substantially in advance of the crimes that Lewis and Everett were going to rob someone.
(2) Defendant counseled and advised Lewis and Everett to kill their victim if they thought they might be caught.
(3) Defendant loaned Lewis and Everett her van so that they could transport themselves to the scene of the crime.
Defendant raises several issues on appeal.
Defendant argues that her convictions for aiding and abetting are multiplicitous with her conspiracy convictions.
We disagree. The question of multiplicity is a question of law over which this court can exercise unlimited review. See State v. Perry, 16 Kan. App. 2d 150, 151, 823 P.2d 804 (1991). Multiplicity was defined by the Supreme Court in State v. Edwards, 250 Kan. 320, 329, 826 P.2d 1355 (1992), as
|"'the charging of a single offense in several counts of a complaint or information.' The concern with multiplicity is that it creates the potential for multiple punishments for the same offense, which is prohibited by the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and section 10 of the Kansas Bill of Rights. [Citations omitted.]"
The law on the subject is a bit murky due to conflicting Supreme Court decisions. However, we follow the latest decision of State v. Webber, 260 Kan. 263, 918 P.2d 609 (1996), cert. denied 117 S. Ct. 764 (1997). That decision holds, at Syl. ¶ 9: "Multiplicity exists if the State uses a single wrongful act as the basis for multiple charges. Charges are not multiplicitous if each charge requires proof of a fact not required in proving the other." (Emphasis added.)
The Webber court went on to decide the very issue raised in this case at Syl. ¶ 10: "Conspiracy and aiding and abetting another offense are not multiplicitous. Each offense requires proof of [an] element not required by the other: Conspiracy requires an agreement to commit a crime, while aiding and abetting requires actual participation in the act constituting the offense." (Emphasis added.)
"In the trial of a criminal case, multiplicity does not depend upon whether the facts proved at trial are actually used to support conviction of both offenses charged; rather, it turns upon whether the necessary elements of proof of the one crime are included in the other." 260 Kan. 263, Syl. ¶ 11.
State v. Webber controls and requires that we affirm the trial court. It is obvious that proving the conspiracy charge required proof of an agreement to commit a crime and an overt act in furtherance of the agreement. The proof of the aiding and abetting charges required only proof of actual participation in the crime and an overt act towards the perpetration of the crime. In this case, the conspiracy offenses required proof of an element not required by the aiding and abetting offenses.
Under Webber, we hold that defendant's multiplicity argument is without merit.
Defendant also argues that her two conspiracy convictions are multiplicitous because we only have one conspiracy statute in Kansas. Defendant advances from this position to argue there was only one agreement, albeit one to commit several crimes, but because there was only one agreement, she cannot be convicted of two separate counts of conspiracy.
We do not agree.
Conspiracy is defined by K.S.A. 21-3302(a) as follows: "A conspiracy is an agreement with another person to commit a crime or to assist in committing a crime. No person may be convicted of a conspiracy unless an overt act in furtherance of such conspiracy is alleged and proved to have been committed by such person or by a co-conspirator."
There is nothing in the Kansas definition of conspiracy to support the argument advanced by defendant. In addition, defendant acknowledges there are no Kansas cases which follow her theory.
There is no question that conspiracy to commit attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery are two separate crimes. We see nothing in our law that would criminalize the agreement to commit the first crime and forgive all subsequent crimes on which the parties conspire on the basis that they only entered into one agreement to commit several crimes.
Defendant's argument is without support of our law and is without merit. We hold that when a defendant participates in an agreement to commit multiple separate statutory crimes, the defendant may be convicted of a count of conspiracy for each separate statutory crime involved. It is irrelevant that there may have been only one broad general agreement to commit the several crimes involved.
Our standard of review on sufficiency of the evidence is well known:
|"When the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged, the standard of review is whether, after review of all the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, the appellate court is convinced that a rational factfinder could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. [Citations omitted.]" State v. Abel, 261 Kan. 331, 337, 932 P.2d 952 (1997).
We have examined the record in this case and conclude that the evidence is such that a rational factfinder could have found defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is particularly damning to defendant that she advised Lewis and Everett to kill their victim if they thought they were going to be caught. It is further particularly damning that defendant loaned them a vehicle for the specific purpose of transporting them to the scene of the crime.
Defendant argues the evidence at trial was not sufficient to show that she had the intent that the victim be murdered. We disagree. Defendant advised Lewis and Everett to kill any burglary victims if they thought they were going to get caught. We believe that advice to them clearly establishes that defendant intended that any burglary victims be murdered if Lewis and Everett believed they would get caught.
We hold that the evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and aiding and abetting attempted first-degree murder.
The reading of the instructions to the jury was not transcribed. It appears that both counsel waived the transcription of the oral instructions. However, there was an error in one of the aiding and abetting instructions that had been read to the jury. The trial court indicated it would correct the written instruction and then reread it to the jury. Defense counsel objected, saying he did not want the trial court to reread the instruction to the jury because he feared that rereading the instruction would overemphasize it. Defense counsel advised the trial court he would prefer the instruction be retyped and submitted to the jury as corrected without additional comment.
Incredibly, defendant argues on appeal that the trial court committed reversible error by submitting to the jury a written instruction on aiding and abetting aggravated robbery which was different from the version read aloud to the jury.
In our judgment, this is akin to the doctrine of invited error. "A litigant may not invite and lead a trial court into error and then complain of the trial court's action on appeal." State v. Prouse, 244 Kan. 292, 298-99, 767 P.2d 1308 (1989).
Defendant's claim of error in the giving of the instructions to the jury will be reviewed subject to a clearly erroneous standard because there was no contemporaneous objection at the time of trial. See State v. Isley, 262 Kan. 281, Syl. ¶ 4, 936 P.2d 275 (1997). We are unable to find that the instructions were clearly erroneous or even truly examine defendant's claimed error because the record on appeal is inadequate to support the claim of error. See State v. Moncla, 262 Kan. 58, 68, 936 P.2d 727 (1997).
The problem is present because defendant's counsel waived any transcription of the reading of the instructions. We also note that no statement pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 3.04 (1996 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 20) or no agreed statement pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 3.05 (1996 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 21) has been added to the record.
For all the reasons set forth above, defendant's position on this issue is without merit, and we must assume the trial court acted properly in its handling of the instruction issue.