Ben Thompson is generally spot-on in his analysis of industry goings-on. But he missed a lot in The Cost of Developers this week. Here’s what he got right about this acquisition: Developers can be quite expensive (though, $7.5B (in equity) is only ~$265 per user (which is pretty cheap)) Microsoft is betting that a future …
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Category:commentary
but, i got them on sale!
Back in August 2008, I had a one-week “quick start” professional services engagement in Nutley New Jersey. It was a supposed to be a super simple week: install HP Server Automation at BT Global. Another ProServe engineer was onsite to setup HP Network Automation. Life was gonna be easy-peasy – the only deliverable was to …
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what is “plan b” for iot security?
{{Schneier}} has a recent article on security concerns for {{IoT}} (internet of things) devices – IoT Cybersecurity: What’s Plan B? We can try to shop our ideals and demand more security, but companies don’t compete on IoT safety — and we security experts aren’t a large enough market force to make a difference. We need a …
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modularity is great – if you commoditize the right complements
Google bought Android and made great things with it. They also had an interesting audacity to announce an “open, modular” phone that ‘anyone’ could design from, and make components that would play nicely together (like IBM did with their initial ISA architecture releases back in the 80s). (Microsoft then flipped the tables on IBM and …
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kvp is a lousy way to teach
Recently on one of the podcasts I listen to, I heard an offhanded comment made about how history is taught not in patterns but as facts. For example, “On the 18th of April in ’75, hardly a man is now alive, who remembers that famous day and year”. Rarely are the “whys” explained – understandably …
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apple tv – how apple can beat amazon and google
In e99 of Exponent, Ben Thompson makes a compelling case for his idea that {{Amazon Echo}} (Alexa) is an operating system – and that Amazon has beaten Apple (with {{Siri}}) and {{Google Home}} (with Assistant) at the very game they both try to play. And I think he’s onto the start of something (he goes …
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vampires vs zombies
A few years ago I wrote about why I like good vampire and zombie stories. I had an epiphany this week related to that, that I thought you’d all find interesting. If vampires exist, zombies can not exist [long] in the same universe. Why? Because they’d be eliminating the only source of food for the …
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tesla’s solarcity bid isn’t about energy production
Ben Thompson* (temporary paywall) makes an excellent first-order analysis of Elon Musk's bid to acquimerge SolarCity with Tesla. But he, uncharacteristically, stops short of seeing the mid- and long-term reasons for the acquimerge. It's about SpaceX. It's about Mars. It's about the Moon. Musk knows that he needs an incredibly-solid pipeline of technology to get …
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can you disable encryption on a windows server?
This was asked recently on Server Fault. I’m asking if there’s a way to prevent files from being encrypted. I’m referring to some extent to ransomware, but specifically I want the following scenario: Windows File server w/ shares (on the E: drive) I want a way to tell the above server “don’t allow files on …
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on ads
My colleague Sheila wrote a great, short piece on LinkedIn about ads recently. And this is what I commented: I held off for years in installing ad blockers/reducers. But I have finally had to cave – been running Flash in “ask-only” mode for months now, and just added a couple blocker/reducer extensions to Chrome recently …
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meetings
The author of a recent Medium post is so close to right, it’s scary. Gary says the best thing you can do is to cut your meeting length in half. And that is a phenomenal step. One that needs to happen. But one that needs to happen in conjunction with an even more monumental shift. Change the start time …
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dave winer is wrong
Or maybe he’s right. But for the wrong reason. Over on Medium, which is where I saw his post, Dave said: “The problem of requiring HTTPs in less than 140 chars: 1.Few benefits for blog-like sites, and 2. The costs are prohibitive. There’s actually a #3 (sorry) — 3. For sites where the owner is …
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prediction look back
Time to look back at last year’s tech predictions. I did this at the half-way point, so let’s see what has changed since then. {{AIX}} is still kickin’ {{HPUX}} hasn’t died yet 🙁 {{Solaris}} is still being clung-to by {{Oracle}} HP split in half – count this a win {{IBM}} has dropped from 162 to …
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dell buys emc
So I missed predicting anything like this one. If you’ve been under a rock, like apparently I was last week, you’ve missed out on hearing Dell is purchasing EMC. For $67 billion. With a “B”. This seems to be taking lots of people by surprise, but it makes perfect sense: Dell is already a huge supplier of servers into not only …
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plogging?
{{Wired Magazine}} recently had an article on the rise of “plogging“. By their definition, “plogging” is “PLatform blOGGING” – or {{blogging}} as part of a network/site/service (DZone, LinkedIn, Medium, Facebook, etc) instead of running your own blog somewhere (WordPress.com, Blogger, self-hosted WordPress, etc). This seems to be a modern representation of what newspapers, magazines, etc …
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“like” problems: social ‘voting’ is a bad idea
The news story making the rounds about {{Facebook}} the past few days indicates they’re working on a kind of “dislike” button. The problem with the Facebook “like” button is the same problem {{Google}} has with Google+ and their “+1” button: it doesn’t tell you anything meaningful. Voting on Reddit doesn’t really convey much meaning, either. Stack …
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half year update: how are my predictions so far?
Back in Feb, I published a list of tech-related predictions for 2015. How’m I doing? Let’s see ones that have happened (or are very close to have happened): Itanium OEL’d HP spinning-off business units – sorta, they’re splitting in half IBM is losing value … but not as much as I predicted (yet) cloud is …
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automation is a multiplier
Multipliers. They’re ubiquitous – from ratchet wrenches to fertilizer, blocks-and-tackle to calculators, humans rely on multipliers all the time. Multipliers are amazing things because they allow an individual to “do more with less” – a single person can build a coral castle with nothing more complex than simple machines. Or move 70 people at 70 miles …
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vision for lexington
Over the past 5 years, I have witnessed some of the growth Lexington KY has started to undergo. From a population in the city proper of about 260,000 in 2000 to 295,000 in 2010 to an estimated 315,000 in 2015, While there seems to be something of a plan/vision for the downtown area, the majority of …
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what level of abstraction is appropriate?
Every day we all work at multiple levels of abstraction. Perhaps this XKCD comic sums it up best: But unless you’re weird and think about these kinds of things (like I do), you probably just run through your life happily interacting at whatever level seems most appropriate at the time. Most drivers, for example, don’t …
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the loss of the shared social experience
On a recent trip I met up with an old friend and his wife for dinner. As conversation progressed, I mentioned my wife and I have been watching M*A*S*H on Netflix. Waxing nostalgic for a moment, he told me that his parents let him stay up to watch the series finale in 1983. And then …
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please reply at top
There is a constant war over top-repliers, bottom-repliers, and inline-repliers. If you’re replying to an email, reply at the top. Unless there is some overarching need to reply inline (hint – it is very very rare). Bottom-replying makes me have to reread all the crap that has been left from previous messages before I get to what you …
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seems i’m not the only one who thinks apple could make cars
Dallas News ran a story recently on Apple being positioned to be a car maker. Their reasoning: Cash (~$180B) It’s “ultimately” mobile They have “car guys” already Strong retail network They’re already global I think it more likely they’d buy an existing manufacturer, and then Apple-ify them – but the arguments are strong that an …
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my tech predictions for 2015
I put these up as a comment on Cringely.com – but they deserve sharing here, too. In no particular order: – {{AIX}} EoL’d – {{HP-UX}} retired – {{Itanium}} EoL’d (perhaps on an accelerated schedule) – Solaris truly open-sourced / abandoned by {{Oracle}} in favor of OEL – HP spins-off more business units – IBM loses …
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fix ibm – hire me as your ceo
Robert Cringely has written myriad times on IBM. His most recent post was titled, “How to fix IBM”. His solution is simple and easy: “Go back to customers being a corporate priority.” But IBM, as it stands today, will never get there. And all the “leadership” they’ve brought in over the years has only compounded their …
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