Category Archives: Avram’s Past

Avram's Past / broadband / Government / Intel / Old Media / Technology

Avram’s Congressional Testimony on HDTV 1998

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The House Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection convened a 2 1/2 hour meeting to discuss HDTV standards and deployment issues on April 24, 1998. I was invited to give testimony. The panel was made up of a large group of executives representing the consumer electronics, the television broadcast and the cable industries. In addition there were two representatives from the computer industry, Bob Stearns from Compaq and me, from Intel. The chair was Billy Tamzin, a republican who later went on to make a fortune as a lobbyist. The ranking member from the democrats was Ed Markey (now running for the Senate in MA). Stearns and I had a couple of objectives. While most of the panel saw a TV, we saw a Monitor. We understood that with that if we could achieve high resolution and progressive scan, the HDTV set of the future could serve as a monitor for computers. Just like the CD and DVD, the consumer industry do the R&D and and manufacturing of important and innovative products which the computer industry would “highjack” for its own use. Everyone one on the panel had their own agenda and often it was a secret agenda. Continue reading →

about business / Avram's Past / Technology / The Post PC Period

Drinks with Finis Conner leads to contemplating the future history of rotating storage devices

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1980 – The world’s first gigabyte-capacity disk drive, the IBM 3380, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000( $113 thousand in present day terms [13]), 2.52 GB 1980 – ST-506 first 5¼ inch drive released with capacity of 5 megabytes, cost $1500 Last week, I was contacted by Finis … Continue reading →

Avram's Past

One of my mentors has passed-Mort Ruderman a real Mensch.

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There were five men that played a major role in my professional development. I just learned that one of them passed on last year, Mort Ruderman. I worked for four of these men but not for Mort. Mort was a friend who played a major role in my professional development over a fifteen year span. I suspect that everyone that has some significant professional success can point to a few people that made that success possible. I know that I would not have achieved the things I achieved if it was not for these five men. Continue reading →

Avram's Past / broadband

My 1993 Performance Review at Intel (a piece of my history but also a piece of the history of the Internet)

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I happened to be cleaning up some old files and came across  a number of my performance reviews at Intel.  I am posting a summary of one, written in 1993, which dealt with my job performance almost twenty years ago. This was the beginning of the most important period of my career.  It was also … Continue reading →

Avram's Past / Finance

If you have an early stage company and need to raise money, please do not call me.

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I get many requests from early stage companies to give them advice. It is kind of strange since I have been retired (rewired) for about then years. I always try to be responsive and polite. But it is not working out for me. I am spending too much time and getting too little out of it. So the purpose of this post is to reposition myself. Continue reading →