Today , I heard our president talk about Iran. How I wish he would talk about cancer. I am sure more of our soldiers will die from cancer than roadside bombs made in Iran (which clearly is not a good thing either). The last several days I have been trying to help a dear friend of over 30 years. He has advanced prostate cancer. I know there are real threats in the world. Don’t forget, I was born when Hitler was still alive. But why is it easier to fight another human being instead of a disease?
Archive for February, 2007
Cancer
February 15, 2007Our Goverment is selling our bodies, one gene at a time.
February 13, 2007Actually, they are giving it away for a small fee. See Michael Crichton’s op-ed in the New York Times here. It is just an other awful example of how broken our IP laws are.
I finally agree with Steve Job (sort of)
February 9, 2007Those of you, who know me well, will know that I have not been a big fan of Steve Jobs. I first meet Steve at what might have been the first PC Forum’s (Ben Rosen was running it and Ester Dyson was helping him….I remember her then as a young girl in shorts). It was 1981. I was still at Digital and we had just announced our desk top computers (the Professional which I managed, the Rainbow which was lead by Bary James Folsom, and a version of the Decmate word processor lead by Dick Loveland). Ben invited me to speak at this meeting. It was really my first experience with the PC crowd. Attended the speaker’s dinner with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Adam Osborne and many others that we the key early drivers of the PC industry. Then less than three years later, I was the President of Franklin Computer and my company which made a clone of the Apple II was being sued by Apple for copying their O/S. The law suit is very complicated and Franklin never lost it the suite. The company just could not raise money even though it was growing faster than Compaq who at the time was making a clone of the IBM computer. We were a good company really. We addressed markets that were not well served by Apple and we would have been happy to pay Apple a license fee for the operating system. But Jobs would have none of it. So there was no Apple compatible industry and as a result Microsoft won the market for PC software (which worked out great for me personally since I left Franklin and joined Intel). And when the iPod and iTunes came out, I thought “here we go again”. Here is an other closed system that ties the software (in this case the music you buy) with the hardware. And I have and continue to predict that Apple will loss their commanding position in the digital music business if they do not open up their system. As you probably know, Apple has been getting a lot of heat in
Europe for this tie in. So what does Steve do? He blames the music industry saying that because they force Apple to have a DRM system, Apple has to keep their system closed. Does any one believe this was the reason? Stop insulting our intelligence, Steve. He knows that the Music industry will not agree and this way he can continue to blame them. But, Steve is right (am I really saying this?) in asking the music industry to stop with there DRM requirements. They really do nothing to stop illegal copying of music and they just make it hard on those who want to be honest and buy music on line. You can read what Steve has to say here. DRM systems will never work (the HD DVD’s have already been cracked). Any industry that is at war with its customers will loose.
Information Super Highway (Traffic Jam Ahead)
February 3, 2007In the 90s, the Clinton/Gore adminstration spoke of building the Information Supper Highway. That is before we all realized that we had a highway, The Internet. In those days, I was busy building the on and off ramps by developing and investing in residential broadband. There is an interesting speech in 1996 by Reed Hundt the FCC chairman at the time. And he even quotes me as saying “
The greatest obstacle slowing the development of the Internet is the limited bandwidth available on the last mile, or the bike path at the end of the information highway as Avram Miller of Intel refers to it. There are great hopes that the competition stimulated by the telecommunications legislation will help bring down the prices and increase the bandwidth to the home."
Well competition in the USA did not do its job. The last mile is still pretty much a bicycle path. And the highway is anything but a supper highway (you have to go to Korea or Japan to get that). And we are about to go into a pretty big melt down as video moves to the net. It can all be fixed but it will take time and it will take money. And the uncertainties of regulation will slow this down even further. The broadband ISP’s (cable, Telco and BPL) have to invest in all aspects of their networks to provide the quality of bandwidth that we all want. But they can only do this if they get a return. I believe in an open system where any company can reach any consumer. So I would not like to see the broadband ISP making special “bandwidth deals” with content suppliers. I do not want the internet turn into cable TV. But we also need to have the bandwidth and that means you and I will have to pay for this. But why not. We are saving money on phone calls, TV etc. But we are also going to have to be smart about how the net is used. Right now it does resemble a highway which is pretty much empty most of the 24 hours but tied in knots during peak hours. It would be nice if the P2P guys kept that in mind.
You can get a nice bandwidth monitor here.
By the way, these opinions are mind and not necessarily the views of the companies on whose boards I serve.
