Not knowing what we don’t know, do we really care?
Good [pause] morning, how may I help you? I’m having trouble with my computer I see. What kind of trouble are you having? It won’t read the CD. I see. The PC won’t read the ...
Happy to just stay home and play
This week I’ve got a grab bag of random thoughts Management sink How to stop show’ing off As most of you should know by now, Intel has cut back on the IDF conferences. To which ...
Computing with GPUs and Cells
They’re not “Gs,” they’re “Ss” It’s pretty exciting to think of a supercomputer in a chip, but then I guess that all depends on what you’re calling a supercomputer, and I doubt we’d get much ...
AI—is it a lie?
“Maybe we need to know ourselves a little better before we are able to successfully extrapolate how AI would behave—and the risks involved.”—Leo F. Fernandes Blue Boy. Quasi, an animatronic robot designed by grad students ...
A sweat-powered personal companion
Now you can get a mobile phone that’s either made of chocolate, pretty in pink, or tattles on you if you’re lying. Or you can wait a while and get one with no buttons and ...
The sky is falling – again
Once again, during the seasonal second quarter PC sales have slowed. And just as seasonal as this yearly regular slowdown is the panic that grips Wall Street, as they seem to discover, like a pack ...
Where there’s smoke … Jon goes chasing the rumors
Grandma used to tell me, Where’s there’s smoke there’s fire. Grandma was right about most things. Who’s buying who or building what? There’s been a lot of speculation recently about the CPU and GPU companies. ...
Small is beautiful – our market’s characteristics
Not small as in Lilliputian or pygmy, or small as in weak or puny, but, well, tiny, and shrinking all the time. E. F. Schumacher popularized the notion, and the term, in his landmark 1971 ...
On being embarrassed
If you write for a living, expressing your opinion and making forecasts, you can be expected to make a few mistakes. When that happens, it can be embarrassing. In the extreme it can be damaging ...
Help, I’m shrinking . . .
If the markets we serve continue to consolidate I may have to go to work for a living—gack! What company would have me? I’m old, cranky, have an inflated opinion of my worth, and I’m ...
NAB exerts a mysterious pull
Companies need a venue—they are hungry for a place to speak I remember the party we had in 2001, the “Thank god we don’t have to go to Comdex” party. We had it several times ...
Balls for boomers
I went to the doctor the other day, to see about a persistent pain in my right shoulder. I told the doctor that my wife thinks it’s from lifting heavy weights (like suitcases into the ...