January 26

'The government, which is struggling to fill its underused Cyberport facility, yesterday unveiled an $8 million programme to develop (3G) mobile-phone services at the sprawling office complex.'

South China Morning Post

January 28

HAVING TROUBLES GETTING that baby off the bottle, are you, Mr Tsang? Would you like to expand a little on what you mean by 'we have come a long way'?

AND, BECAUSE I just cannot resist it, here we have John Tsang again, writing about his education and career in an opinion piece published on our Insight page yesterday - Think out of the box.

'If I were given the chance to rework my office space, it would probably look very different, with my desk being the centre of activity rather than pushed into a corner. I would probably not have a conference table, as I seldom use it.'

Yes, Sir, I quite understand. Bothersome things, these conferences with the way they push the centre of activity into a corner. Let us have visitors to your office in no doubt as to where their deference and attention should be directed.

AND SPEAKING OF where to direct attention in technology matters, here is one that was published as an In Brief item on page 4 of this business section yesterday - TSMC says SMIC will pay US$175 million to settle dispute.

SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is the chip foundry that started up in a big blaze of publicity in Shanghai in 2000 only to fall afoul very quickly of a lawsuit by TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co), alleging theft of trade secrets.

It was hotly denied, of course, at least initially, but that figure of US$175 million seems a sizeable one and TSMC reserves the right to reinstitute legal proceedings on any breach of the settlement agreement by SMIC. Draw your own conclusions.

'I'm short the dollar. The ol' dollar it's gonna go down. It's a bit scary. We're in uncharted territory when the world's reserve currency has so much outstanding debt.'

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates

AS THIS COMES from a good ol' boy who, as we all know, has written a book called The Road Ahead and is therefore clued into the future, I suppose we must think about these utterances made at a hot air shop in Switzerland at the weekend.

But, Bill, before you go, just a point of clarification, please. For every debtor there has to be a creditor, you know. The outstanding debt in the world's reserve currency is exactly the same as the outstanding credit in it. The world's net outstanding debt in US dollars is zero.

I assume therefore that you are referring to your federal government's debt position, which is indeed large at US$7.6 trillion.

Now you know how it is, Bill. If I were a million dollars in debt, I could be in trouble. If the US government were only a million dollars in debt, however, it would be laughing. Don't you think that debt should be measured relative to the wealth or income of the debtor? Perhaps we may wish to look at US federal debt relative to US gross domestic product. I refer you to the chart.

Well, how interesting, deja vu. The US is not in uncharted territory after all. Federal debt as a percentage of GDP is lower now than it was 10 years ago.

You could still be right about the US dollar, Bill, but, as to your uncharted territory, may I suggest that you do some research for a book called The Road Behind?