I have no idea whether IBM senior vice-president Bob Moffat is guilty of insider trading or not, though that’s what he was arrested for yesterday. What I do know is that Moffat’s job since 2005 has been as the architect of IBM’s project called LEAN, which is intended to adjust Big Blue’s global labor force to maximize profitability. I’ve written quite a bit about LEAN, much to the consternation of IBM, characterizing it in large part as a way to replace expensive older American workers with younger and cheaper workers in India and Argentina while cleverly dodging U.S. age discrimination and possibly other civil rights laws. Whatever the legality of LEAN […]
No Joy in Mudville
Apple and the Future of Publishing — Part Two
Last time I wrote about the business and technical context into which Apple would be bringing its long-rumored tablet computer, which many of us now believe will also be some form of e-reader. That column stimulated a lot of lively comments, thanks, but now I have to put up or shut up, giving my thoughts on both the still-secret Apple device and the possible content strategy behind it.
I think we’re all fairly sure at this point that Apple will shortly release such a device and that it will be nominally based on the iPhone or iPod Touch. This is key because of the App Store and iPod ecosystems it will leverage. Anything that runs on […]
Apple and the Future of Publishing – Part One
It’s not that hard to predict what will happen in the future (I will die; Fifi, my son Fallon’s stuffed orca, will eventually need restuffing, etc.) but it is very hard to predict with any accuracy when things will happen. For technologies, I tend to see events happening long before they actually do, which makes me something of a prophet, though a pretty useless one. This may be proved yet again in the coming months as Apple and other companies attempt to take most of the paper out of publishing, something I thought we were about to do 15 years ago, but didn’t.
Back in 1994, I proposed to my […]
Love for Sale
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission this week announced rules for bloggers who take money and various other forms of booty in exchange for reviewing products. Somehow I missed this business of selling one’s soul. But I think it is a good idea to take a moment and be straight with my readers about the limits of my journalistic ethics in this space.
I don’t take money for reviewing products because I don’t review products. Never have, never will. So don’t send me any products, okay?
Publishers send me early copies of a few books per year, generally hoping I’ll either provide a quote for the book jacket or write a positive column about it. I […]
The Cybersecurity Myth
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said this week it will hire up to 1,000 cybersecurity experts over the next three years to help protect U.S. computer networks. This was part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and the announcement was made by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who also said they probably won’t need to hire all 1,000 experts, which is good because I am pretty sure THERE AREN’T ONE THOUSAND CIVILIAN CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS IN THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN’ WORLD!!!!
So I polled six old friends who ARE cybersecurity experts and they kinda-sorta agreed with me. More on this below.
But first I have to marvel that I even know six cybersecurity experts and — even […]
