PCWorld (and every other IDG service) ran this Robert McMillan article yesterday, “VMware Security Chief Leaves to Run OpenDNS,” announcing Nand Mulchandani as the new CEO. David Ulevitch, the founder, takes on the CTO role…which he pretty much filled already. I’m curious to see how the company continues to evolve.

After Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace stumbles slightly. The 2006 re-imagination of Bond employed Daniel Craig to remove the camp and some of the set pieces from the franchise. Quantum of Solace continues the new attitude and Craig, marvelous choices that don’t save the weaker story. Maybe the 24-like step of starting this movie just minutes after the end of Casino Royale emboldened the new-to-the-franchise director to believe he could skimp on the plot? I’m being harsh, but I’m a Bond fan (like so many) and react poorly to being disappointed.

The juxtaposition of Bond’s actions and his surroundings bothered me in Quantum of Solace. Examples included chasing an infiltrator through Siena during the Palio, and escaping from the opera during the climax of the glitzy staged performance of Tosca. In the past, Bond commonly would get mixed up in different famous locales and events. But it was an immersion, not a back-and-forth jumpcut contrast. I found myself thinking of The Bourne Ultimatum, especially Bourne’s fight in Tangiers. I enjoy the technique in spurts, but it’s exhausting when overdone. Also, who’s borrowing from whom?

Metacritic drops a 58 on the film, meaning “mixed or average reviews.” I’d certainly go with mixed.

And I still don’t get the title.

But the title of this demure black hardcover distinguished itself enough that I plucked it off the shelf and kept it in the pile of things I might read someday. That was several years ago.

Last month, I finally read You Can’t Do Business With Hitler (Google Book Search link). The author, Douglas Miller, spent 15 years as commercial attaché at the American Embassy in Berlin, resigning in 1939. As I turned each page of this June, 1941 propaganda piece, I wondered about its origin and timing. The United States was preparing to enter the war, but wasn’t yet there, officially. According to this review of a different history book, Miller’s book was endorsed by President Roosevelt before Pearl Harbor.

The book made the top ten list for non-fiction in 1941 and was the spark for a series of radio shows produced by the U.S. government. I’m downloading the files now, for a brief curious listen, but you can listen to a sample here. They are “based on the experiences of Douglas Milller,” who was probably thrilled to have his no-bones-about-it title re-used, selling more books and spreading his very clear message far and wide.

The book itself? Very clear, direct language and Miller uses business logic to make his case. There is mention of the moral aspects of Hitler’s methods, and some mild recognition of the atrocities going on. But repeated specific examples of German political intervention in the business arena, to the detriment of all outside nations and firms, are the heart of this blistering attack on Hitler’s system and its effect on American business. There are no hidden agendas in this book. From the preface:

A great deal has been and is being written and spoken about fighting the Nazis or dealing with them. But there is one group in America which has not been adequately brought face to face with the facts. I mean American business men. …I believe that which affects the American business man cannot help but affect every American.

Speaking the language of commerce to sway American opinion. Smart choice.

Interesting to read a non-fiction account which makes no bones about its purpose or bias. America must enter the war, and fight all the way to the finish because the Nazi system isn’t one to allow compromise.

With hindsight, too, You Can’t Do Business With Hitler was both accurate and on the winning side. Douglas Miller went into the OSS, but not sure what happened to him thereafter.

The story moves quickly, at times silently, and your eyes are lulled by familiarity and wrenched by displacement at the same time. England uses a police state to keep its society functioning better than the rest of the world, but it’s all relative. When suicide is government sanctioned, all is not well. I’ve not read the book, which has the same general idea but a different plot. But I thought of author P. D. James as a mystery author; that’s selling her short, clearly.

I understand why this movie was not a box office success. Yet, I’m glad I pulled it from the Netflix pile. 84 from MetaCritic might be high, but it’s in the ballpark.

Lesson learned. This week, we scaled back to $120, and the money flowed like credit in 2005.

If the economy’s decline forces us to switch from cash to something more tangible (carrots?), then this advice may be abstracted as:

Set payment as easy multiple of smallest available denomination.

The author read the first few pages of his new novel, and then sat down in conversation with Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis of The Long Now Foundation. (There’s video.) I enjoyed this part of the event, and then headed home with my signed copy of the book. I finished Anathem a week or so later; these words have been percolating since.

Stephenson participated in some of the early investigations into what it means to think long term. Anathem pulled direct inspiration from Stephenson’s own contributions. Look at these annotated sketches from nearly a decade ago: 1 / 2 / 3. A clock operating on a near-geologic scale organizes the lives of a community. Stephenson builds his book with such a living monument as one foundation of the story.

The scheduled, temporary interaction between insiders and outsiders briefly pictured in 1999 sparks a much larger investigation of different philosophies in the real world…or a world that could be real. Stephenson uses the term “speculative fiction,” which works for me.

In Anathem, different philosophies live separately, until events force them to cooperate to address problems on a scale larger than individuals, individual communities, or even individual worlds. In the build-up, the separation of the “avout” (intellectual monks, after a fashion, running the clocks among other things) from the “extras” (you and me) gives Stephenson a lens to view life just a bit askew. It’s fun, and he plays with language, inventing several dozen almost-familiar words and using them without apology throughout the book.

The story becomes a quest, with a final journey that reminded me (oddly) of the terminal run in Neuromancer, William Gibson’s catalytic first novel. In both cases, the characters must face an odd (even alien) entity in orbit. Neuromancer’s assault is more individual, and coldly corporate. Anathem’s requires a symphony of effort for the concluding sequence, and leaves open the idea of empathy between different philosophies. Was anyone else was struck by these parallels?

I’m using “philosophy” with broad sweeps here. Stephenson includes very specific academic ideas that have been discussed for (literally) millennia. Those themes are mixed with quantum physics and other mind-bending ideas — and most of them feel right at home in this story. (There’s detailed online acknowledgements and references.) I enjoyed the pulling at my brain, but I didn’t always slow down to niggle out the subtleties before flipping the page and looking for more of the human stories which (appropriately) make this a tale worth reading.

If you read Stephenson, you like a mix of thinking with your plot. Cryptonomicon holds up even more strongly over time, and remains my favorite Stephenson novel because the plot “won” over the thinking. But Anathem earns its spot on the (crowded) shelf.

I’d love to see a movie tour of all the places from the film. The Duchess shares a slice of history, and some of that history survives in the places. Metacritic offers a 62. I’d edge higher.

FriendDA is Rands’ take on the same concept. His sub-headline for the post? “Slightly more than a hearty handshake.”

I like his slightly different spelling. (Google does, too.) Rands went so far as to write a FriendDA and register a URL. More geek cred (not that he needed it), but if you need any written document, you’re taking the idea to an illogical extreme. Not that Rands is expecting anyone to sign anything…just looking for a shared understanding of the term.

Via Daring Fireball.