Prediction #2 — And then there were only 3.5 VPC Cloud players. Cloud computing will continue to grow in 2019 with the key term being not Public Cloud, Private Cloud or Hybrid Cloud — which are all so 2018 — but Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Virtual Private Cloud is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) invention but all the AWS competitors seem to be embracing the idea.
What has developed is that the VPC solution based on Open Source using Linux will change the Internet-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloudscape to VPC-only during 2019.
Gartner has certainly embraced it. Here’s a 2018 Magic Quadrant chart showing how Gartner sees the segment shaping-up. The first thing to notice here is the small number of competitors. A similar chart from 2017 listed at least a dozen. So what happened? They pulled-out of the Gartner analysis. It’s not that these companies are out of business, but they appear to have ceded the segment to these six.
For those unfamiliar with Gartner’s Magic Quadrant concept, the winners are always in the upper right box, which in this case is to say that Gartner views IBM, Oracle, and Alibaba as cloud losers.
For IBM and Oracle I’d say this is true and I’ll explain more about that in Prediction #3, but in the case of Alibaba I think Gartner has it wrong. BABA may well have what’s right now an uncompetitive cloud offering, but as the only Chinese company in the chart they will not be allowed to fail. Political pressures are so high that Alibaba will push forward with its cloud offering no matter how much it costs or how little it earns.
The winners would appear to be AWS, Microsoft and Google, but notice that strange position for Google. Remember this was months ago before Google Cloud got new management, but the company still remains ambivalent about being a cloud vendor, no matter what it says.
Google’s largest cloud customer will always be Google and that will inevitably lead to poorer service for outside customers. That’s why I think of Google Cloud as half of a player.
Feel free to prove me wrong by delighting customers, Google.
For Amazon, their margins will decrease, but the competitive advantage of being the biggest innovator who started first will continue to be large. AWS is the CSCO of Cloud.
For Microsoft, the issue is what about MS Server with its own hypervisor? That was to battle VMware. But VMware does not have a VPC offering to knock out. My guess is Dell does not have the capital after the buy-out of DELL and EMC and is ceding the segment.
For Google, I don’t see the marketing effort to help clients migrate. Lots of handholding is needed that IBM and Microsoft are happy to provide. Google does not understand customers whose IQs are sub-200. As such, Google doesn’t have (and likely won’t) have a history of winning outside of search advertising.
For IBM, their VPC roll-out is coming in the next month or two, but it’s more marketing than an actual product. Big Blue simply has no capital to build out a unique offering.
And Oracle? Well the new head of Google Cloud came from Oracle, where not enough was happening.
For 2019, then, AWS will continue its cloud domination. Taking a longer look out several years (I’m getting out of this racket, remember?) the VPC market will settle into #1 AWS, #2 Alibaba (because they own China), and #3 Microsoft. All the others will eventually disappear. Remember you read it first here.
Prediction #3 — The Department of Justice and/or the Federal Trade Commission will try to make Amazon spin-off AWS.
There’s not much explaining required here. AWS IS moving toward having cloud monopoly power, if they aren’t there already. Worse still, the larger customers of AWS (those not operating on a credit card) generally hate Amazon because of its ruthless business behavior. They are sharks and proudly so. I explained this awhile back and got a very stern phone call from Seattle, but as you know I don’t give two hoots about such things and simply explained that customers don’t like being bullied. Amazon sounded surprised.
As LBJ said of his habit of lifting his beagles up by their ears: “A yelp is not a sound of pain, it is a sound of joy.”
If Trump is still running the show in Washington, DC when all this comes down, of course he hates Jeff Bezos and can think of nothing better than forcing Amazon into a break-up. Ironically I think El Presidente will be surprised when the combined market caps of Amazon and AWS go up substantially, making Jeff Bezos even richer.
Lots of pressure will come to bear in this case from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, who are all suffering from a very specific database problem competing with AWS. Each of these companies sells their own database (DB2, SQL Server, and Oracle, respectively) that they’ve rolled into their cloud services. AWS’s RDB, in contrast, is based on MySQL and costs Amazon almost nothing to support, giving the biggest cloud player a clear pricing advantage. Now it’s easy to argue that these companies could do the same as AWS and that they’ve shot themselves in the foot, but don’t expect their lawyers to see it that way.
So 2019 will probably see a federal anti-trust case against AWS that I believe in the longer run WILL result in divestment, though that will be years down the road.
I don’t believe the narrative Cringely is trying to sell. What Cringely misses is almost all of the rest of the world. Imperialism and the surveillance is encouraging EU and other places to diversify away from the US. Any “winners” in the US are simply bigger fish in a shrinking pond.
Jeff Bezos divorce more likely is a bigger reason for rearrangement of shares and different classes of shares. This will happen quickly. Amazon and AWS arenot liable under USlaw (and cringely as an American should know this) simply for marketdominant. Under US law it is only abuse of monopoly which is legally different from EU law which acknowledges size is a market distortion. My this logic Microsoft will be hit and hit again by the EU as will other US based providers.
The US will dominate nobody. US big tech are not two acres of sovereign territory they can park off somebody else’s beach.
The biggestthreat to the US would be Russia creating a safe and secure internet ruled by human rights as governed by the European Court of HUman Rights. The US couldn’t compete.
P.S.The UK says it wants its computer industry back.
Of course most of Mark’s efforts would be in the lower left of the lower left quadrant.
Prediction #3 — The Department of Justice and/or the Federal Trade Commission will try to make Amazon spin-off AWS.
Nope.
The attorneys for MacKenzie Bezos beat DoJ and FTC to the punch and AWS is spun off to MacKenzie after a very friendly and favorable contract between Amazon and AWS for hosting Amazon is written as part of the dissolution settlement.
‘As LBJ said of his habit of lifting his beagles up by their ears: “A yelp is not a sound of pain, it is a sound of joy.”’
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It all makes sense now. Crookely thinks all the complaints about the Mineservers (both from backers and from readers who have to put up with the backers) are “sounds of joy.”
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I’d try to advise him otherwise, but I’m starting to wonder if he might be too far gone to understand.
Shezz Roger, stop being a cry baby already, give it a rest and move on
ja, comrade. in russia internet surf you
There’s also pivotal cloud foundry, java spring cloud, dockers, kubernetes. Red hat also has a version openshift. These can work with different clouds. Pivotal was part of vm ware. Red hat joined ibm. Oracle has java while pivotal is into spring. Oracle and dell have worked together. Someone could buy dockers.
Since neither Amazon or Microsoft are well liked nor Oracle, Dell, IBM or Google the idea of a cloud native option is appealing. Amazon has a problem in they got so big but it’s not silver or gold or water. It’s digital and we know that just keeps growing. Alibaba could match them but so can lots of people in ten years.
Do you have any data to back up your false claims on Google? Or do you just like to steal from other writers.
Microsoft desperately wants to compete with their crosstown rival, but I’m not sure they know how. Azure is getting better, but it still trails. My view is from the government contracting side, as a user of clouds. Amazon effectively owns the high side. MS wants to be there, but has the problem that Azure wants to talk to the mothership constantly, and you can’t do that from the high side. Being dependent on H1B and other visa holders is a big red flag on the high side. As a programmer with a TS and a poly I’m getting contacted by Amazon and Amazon contractors weekly, and hardly ever by MicroSoft. Everyone in government contracting is complaining about the high cost of AWS. MicroSoft has a real opening here, if they can take advantage of it. I’m not sure they know how to.
I remember back in the early 2000’s MS came out with Windows Phone, and there were several devices that ran it. An actual handheld computer that was also a cell phone! Networked over the cell system! Touch screens! Easy to program for, using tools and languages that every Windows developer knew and used! And zero marketing, so when Apple came out with the iPhone Apple ended up owning that space. Because as good as Microsoft’s developer support was (and they’re the best in the business at that) their marketing to the public was awful. Really, Microsoft could easily have owned smartphones the way Apple did.
I think Bob is right about Google. G has a very bad habit of creating interesting and useful products and then seeing the squirrel. They also have a bad reputation about trying to leverage your data with their advertising and data mining. My company is trying to leverage Google Cloud with Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Ugh.
Alibaba is going to be huge in cloud, as Bob says simply because they are the de facto cloud for the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Liberation Army, but no Western company with any interest in retaining their proprietary information would dare to use them. Load all of your data warehouse behind the Great Firewall of China. Riiiiggghhhttt….
On a somewhat similar note, Russia building a ‘safe and secure’ internet? Their only motivation is to keep the U.S. and the West from hacking into their military, government and oligarchy systems, but I repeat myself.
As far as DellEMC’s VMware, they seem to be concentrating on the onprem private clouds, and encouraging the ecosystem to create innovative tools to seamlessly blend onprem with the big Cloud guys. It seems to be a workable strategy. Their tools can’t scale to the extent AWS and Azure need them to, so they’ve created their own. Ever evolving, but getting ever better. Expensive? Everything is relative. Inexpensive compared to rusting iron in your basement, and far more timely. You just have to utilize the above mentioned third party tools (like CloudBolt, for example), to turn stuff off automatically when you don’t need it. The next big push in cloud will be just in time utilization, in order to constrain costs.
I am a long time reader and would love to comment in depth but I am also a cloud specialist at Dell EMC who isn’t in marketing and PR and therefore can’t speak for the company and have to be circumspect about what I say in relation to the company online. I am surprised though that both Bob in his analysis said nothing about VMWare Cloud on AWS or AWS Outposts.
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BABA may well have what’s right now an uncompetitive cloud offering, but as the only Chinese company in the chart they will not be allowed to fail.
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✂ snip ✂
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#2 Alibaba (because they own China)
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I would re-word the second part. Alibaba owns the China market, yes, but as the previous statement points out, China owns Alibaba financially. They will subsidize the company and spare no expense, to make sure they cannot fail.
I remember years ago when you described chip fab manufacturing plants in various countries, back when AMD was more of a player. If I recall correctly, you said the chip fab plants in Korea, Japan, China, etc were considered crown jewels of those countries, and so those countries’ governments would subsidize the heck out of them, to make sure they stayed solvent. Therefore AMD not only had to compete in the theoretically more level playing field with Intel, they had to compete in a playing field tilted heavily to the subsidized players, while never getting subsidies themselves.
If we make an analogy, IBM and Oracle are in AMD’s position here. Alibaba will be subsidized and kept artificially competitive in that way. Amazon will be the leader, Google will be confused, and Microsoft will be happy for their (earned) seat at the table. Europe will be pissed they don’t have a player, and might even try to invent one out of whole cloth (subsidies included), before finally realizing they just can’t compete with the above.
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Maybe I am just getting old but this Virtual Private Cloud just seems to me a buzz phrase? I mean a lot of companies want to move their computing infrastructure to the cloud, with some elements that are for public access but probably a whole lot more for internal use. This is the way things are now on premise, maybe a outward facing web server but most activity happening behind the firewall.
you beat them to the punch by 1 day
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/politics/elizabeth-warren-amazon-google-facebook/
Ugh, I’ve just noticed a user named “Sinasohn” keeps updating Bobs Wikipedia entry with Mineserver crap.
Roger, seriously, give it up already, find something else to fill your time
Wow…
I knew cringely was getting out of touch but I didn’t realize it was this bad. As someone working in the industry, the buzz of GCP is undeniable. They know how to do cloud, are growing fast and investing a lot of $$ in paying resellers to migrate customers to their service. The product performance is more consistent and better priced.
IBM have tried to roll out multiple public cloud type solutions previously without much success. Any new offerings are likely going to be container based solutions leveraging the OpenShift product acquired with RedHat.
As other commentators have noted Dells position with VMware is much stronger than Cringely realizes. Yes they currently have a pricing problem but they will resolve that soon enough.
As for AWS RDB being based on MYSQL that’s just fake news. Firstly the service is called RDS not RDB and supports multiple RDBMS platforms including Oracle, SQL, PostgreSQL, AWS Aurora, MariaDB and yes, MYSQL…
You should have quit while you were ahead Bob. You used to be legit, now you’re just full of shit.
Wikipedia, Roger? Really? That’s absurd. You won’t win people over with juvenile vandalism.
Howard? Vandalism, really? That’s absurd. You can’t change the simple facts with insults.
What a prediction! I think Cringely has made these two predictions upon in-depth analyzing and then we should take them into consideration. Actually for any types of write up, research and analyzing of data is so much important. I am also a writer and you will find me on https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/leadership/. As many people take an important decision depending on such types of prediction, so there is no alternative to honest research on the topic.
Pretty sure that RDB is based on PostgreSQL not MySQL. Both better choices in my experience than the competition but especially PostgreSQL, only marginally harder to get set up than a stock MySQL/MariaDB and that’s mostly because you are forced to do the things you should do when setting up MySQL anyways but so much easier than SQL Server or Oracle and much better performance in my use cases.
@Howard I’m confused, are you upset because it’s @Roger who is doing the posting (you’ve already shown your disgust for the man) or because someone is taking the time to update a Wikipedia article with facts that don’t jive with your vision of Bob?
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Nothing @Roger said was incorrect nor opinion. He simply stated facts and quoted and cited every point. If you don’t like facts, then what is it you’re looking for, a fluff piece? That isn’t what Wikipedia is for. Additionally, he placed the majority under the “Controversies” header which is, by definition, a “disagreement, typically when prolonged, public, and heated;” This doesn’t make it untrue, it just means it’s possibly going to get your blood boiling and may spark debate, so clearly he put it under the right section…
I don’t listen to anything Cringely says anymore. I find the American habit of blowing your own trumpet gets a bit too much and we know how the tech bubble and property debt bubbles ended with the rest of the none US world paying the bill.
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What is interesting is how the market responded to the Airbus A380. America played a game of bluff and double bluff very well if you consider “winning” and putting EU workers out of jobs is important. Today I read the Chinese are grounding all Boing 737 Max aircraft after an accident while America has not. It has also been reported that GCHQ have advised government not to install Huwawei on critical infrastructure but that Huwawei equipment is okay for general and consumer use. Germany very carefully reminded the world after their own spying scandal that American equipment was riddled with NSA backdoors.
Until America and Americans especially those with power and notional influence play fair and true I am afraid everything goes through this strict filter. There is also the fact Cringely stole $30,000 off his own readership and has openly admitted his pension fund is a little weak. Didn’t he claim he was spending from his own pension fund to save the Mineserver project? On what? Why? What happened to his insurance claim? Is there any evidence these Minservers existed? Americans usually yack about and post pictures of everything. We have never seen this from Cringely. We haven’t even seen a picture of the alleged smoking ruin of his house he claimed burned down. No I don’t want to see pictures of Cringely in hospital because this is a distraction and has nothing to do with anything.
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Once trust is gone it can be gone for good.
Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia where those who know about a topic can update it. And should anyone vandalize a page (as happens all to often, unfortunately), there are other users to undo the changes. I’ve undone such changes myself.
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While I am certainly no expert on Mark Stephens in general, I do have some knowledge of his Kickstarter project. I have made about a dozen edits over the last 2.5 years and, other than some typos, they have stood the scrutiny of disinterested Wikipedia editors.
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I have tried to ensure that my updates are unbiased and simply report facts and that all of them are backed up by citations. If you see a problem with any of the updates, please let me know — or feel free to update the page yourself.
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If your contention is that the Mineserver project does not belong on his Wikipedia page, well, there’s a whole talk page to discuss that, if you like. I would, however, argue that it is a significant part of his biography, for better or for worse.
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If I ever have a Wikipedia page of my own, I would expect that it would include my faux pas as well as my accomplishments. I just try to live my life such that my embarrassments are minor. Feel free to create a page about me and include whatever skeletons you can find.
@Trashtalk didn’t say it flat out, but I agree, if Bob’s home truly burned down, why wouldn’t he have a photo of it and have posted it rather than let all of the naysayers have ground to stand on?
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If *MY* house burned down, I 100% would have returned to the scene and taken photos. There is almost no way Bob wouldn’t have done the same. I think it’d be very human to do this, to capture the last piece of your home/memories, even if just a grave of ashes.
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I would say the only way possible this may NOT have happened via normal means would be because where Bob lived was more “wilderness” and if the area around was scorched so roads were impassable that would be a hurdle, but as this person of tech with 3 boys who are all about their gadgets (and probably friends of similar interests), take a day hike, get as close as you can, bust out one of your drones (or borrow one from any number of your/kids’ friends if they “burned in the fire”), and do a fly by and get photos for yourself.
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There are ways to have obtained these photos and put any conspiracies to rest. Bob seems like the kind of person who would go for this if he could, even if just to prove he could, which makes me skeptical all over. What say you, Bob? Care to put this lingering doubt to rest for everyone?
@Fact Checker – Disgust is far too strong a word. Nope, it don’t fit. My main beef is the comment pollution here, along with the fact that it sure looks like a lot of energy spent with zero likelihood of making any difference. Beyond that, I urge massive restraint regarding Wikipedia. Massive. Some places are appropriate for some discussions or airing some grievances, and some places are not. It’ll always be subjective, though.
Now, on to the more important question … how do you create bold text in these comments? I’m, uh, asking for a friend.
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@Roger – I appreciate your defense. Again, I urge restraint. I’ll retreat from my earlier position and allow that your description sounds reasonable. For what it’s worth, it was late when I posted that, and having only seen the mineserver commentary here, I expected the wikipedia edits to be equally over-the-top.
A significant part of his biography … Well, maybe. Then again, by that measure, his work around Three Mile Island as well as his Steve Jobs The Lost Interview deserve some attention too, don’t they?
As to your challenge to the world to create a WP page for you … that’s a ballsy challenge to make. I’m impressed. At any rate, I’ll stay out of WP and let the greater RXC community come to its own conclusions of what’s appropriate.
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@Howard Thank you for being reasonable and making concessions where necessary. The internet could do well to learn from your previous post. We all sometimes say things we later wish we would have reworded, or have missteps, and the bigger people are those who can admit that and move forward with their ego checked at the door. I appreciate your response above.
As for how to bold, italicize, and otherwise, you can just use basic html tags to get your desired goal. Here is a site with many: Basic HTML Tags. I’ve only really messed with B (bold), I (italics), and a (hyperlinks) on this blog, but in theory many/most of them would work. Good luck!
@Chris L – I’m treading on very thin ice here, but … if you want a photo so badly, could you find an up-to-date satellite image?
@Web Nerd – thank you!
@Howard I’m unsure how to know when satellite images were last updated, but if there is a way to know this, I would gladly research this, since I know where his location is/was. I borderline want to request that @Roger take a few hours to drive down there and put this to rest, as he has mentioned living about an hour away from the home in question if memory serves, but as a father myself, I can understand that what little free time you have is precious (opposed to the minutes here or there we can spend on this site), so I could understand him being too busy for that or finding better uses for his time.
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I’ll look up the home in question and see if there is any way to confirm when the satellite image was last updated. You’ve sparked a curiosity in me…
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(I also would like to echo @Web Nerd’s sentiment. Thank you for being able to admit your faults. The world/internet could do to have more people with this characteristic!)
@Howard Did some quick Googling since I remember someone researching this years ago, and if you look at this post, you can see that @Gumshoe, @Sleuthing, and @Carmen Sandiego (adorable names btw) all point out research that seems to imply this is the proper location-ish (despite the marker being a little lower)
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Then if you look at the bottom right of the map, it says “Imagery Copyright 2019 Google, Map data Copyright 2019 Google”. So that makes me believe it’s accurate, and from what I can tell, these homes don’t seem scorched/burned down;
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So either this satellite imagery is NOT up to date and I’m misreading the Google label, Bob has a 2nd home (wouldn’t that be nice), or perhaps his home was so riddled with smoke that it was deemed unlivable/would requite a lot of money to make livable, but it didn’t literally burn to the ground. Though he claimed “the mineservers burned down” in the fire, which would imply fire touched down on his home, as I don’t believe they would be susceptible to smoke inhalation, so I imagine that theory/defense is out.
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Those are the conclusions I have settled upon. I welcome Bob or anyone else to enlighten whatever the truth may be…
@Chris L — Last June, I was vacationing with my extended family somewhat north of Crookely’s posted address (in Calistoga which narrowly escaped being burned to the ground). In the midst of this, I had to drive my wife back to the City for a conference. As it was a beautiful summer day, others were watching my kids, and I had a file server full of great music, I decided to take the long way back to Calistoga, passing Crookely’s address.
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The road in question is beautiful and leads to a state (or maybe county? I forget) park. The entire area was completely untouched by the fire.
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Now, just because that’s his posted address, it doesn’t mean that’s where he — or the Mineservers — were. It seems quite likely to me that his listed address is nothing more than a dropbox for snail mail from bill collectors and disgruntled Kickstarter backers. (Which, to be honest, is what I expected.)
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As a tried-and-true city boy, I’ll take just about any excuse for a drive in the country, so I don’t mind it having been a bust. I enjoyed the peace and quiet and the beautiful views.
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In any case, unless you know Crookely’s actual address, you’re not likely to learn much from any satellite imagery.
@Roger Thanks! Appreciate you doing that and sharing.
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Probably outdated now, but just to see this to its conclusion – I did some research and in order to get the exact dates of when the satellite imagery was taken, you need to have the desktop version (doesn’t work in web versions). This desktop version not only lets you know when the image was taken, but you can look at historical images by date (neat!).
*Continued from above while I try to erase and figure out what is being flagged and stopped this block of text*
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I looked at the location in question (as well as the nearby surrounding area) for the time period in question (and adding padding to both ends to observe change) and can confirm it looks untouched.
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Putting this case to rest under the assumption that he must live elsewhere and we don’t [currently] have enough data to come to a solid conclusion. Was a fun trip though! Thanks for joining me, everyone!
Cringely said on this blog he had somewhere else to live now in the city only a couple of topics ago. If his old house has burned down what about the insurance? Where is the proof he claimed? What was the conclusion by the insurance company? Is he keeping the insurance money to spend on a new house in town or rebuilding his own house? If hew as paid insurance money for this whathappened to his claim for Mineservers? Was this paid by the insurance company? How much? Why? He also claimed to have retired then said he was being pressured by his wife into getting a job. He claimed he was now working for a stealth start-up. So he retired now he isn’t and now working for a mysterious company we cannot prove exists while he lives in a house we don’t know where after having to leave a house he claims burned down that nobody can prove exists?
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Cringely said the majority of his income used to come from Japanese companies. I’m guessing they never knew whether what he said was true or not either. If any of Cringelys advice was used in filed financial reports would this be a liability? It’s a horrible question to ask but has Cringely been grooming us for all these years?
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I really need to see proof of the truth.
Sleuthing, Gumshoe, Carmen Sandiego … somehow I feel like I’m back on Reddit. Ha ha!
There’s a different direction to take on this. When the fire hit his house, he posted about it, with a picture (so you remember which post). Given that date and time, where was the fire, and what neighborhoods did it affect? Perhaps you can find a historical satellite photo of a house with an RV nearby, and a small airplane or two, partially built.
Similarly … is there a website, perhaps a state of California entity, where you can provide an address and see whether it was affected by fire?
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One-upmanship includes virtue signaling.
Everything you love will be taken away.
@Howard
He did post a picture of his house. It was the article called “I have no boils” (Yuck, what an article headline.) dated October 13th, 2017. It looks blurry and hyperreal like a cross between a conspiracy theorist video and video game. It has a none specific outline with smoke and strangely coloured lights and an unidentified figure lurking near the house. It’s in hurried shot shaky cam just like all the best found footage they show in the cinemas and obscure UFO blogs. This photo is followed by an article in extra large text and a woo woo note about the Equifax breach. (What a strange thing to mention.) Reading through the comments reveals more than one person had doubts at the time. Myself? I thinking “Meh, Cringely sounds suspiciously like the hero of the story”. This made me wonder if he started the fire himself. I’m not saying he did. It just came after a lot of excuses and evasion and self-pitying which hasn’t ended in spite of his claims to the contrary in this article. The Mineservers and the “done deal” insurance claim came and went as promised to and Cringely upped the ante a couple of article back by using peoples $30,0000 he took of them as a bludgeon.
Very informative and awesome topic you have shared.
You can view the extent of the fires from https://firemap.sdsc.edu/
In the upper right is a layers menu, tick the checkbox for historical fires (and move the slider to make them translucent) which will bring up a year slider in the lower left. Change it to 2017-2017.
You could also look up the Tubbs and the Nuns fires at the Cal Fire site.
https://youtu.be/s68qQb3j9pU
The puzzler I have with AWS is why companies who make products that Amazon sells would basically let Amazon control their servers. If I make widgets, and storefronts such as Amazon sell them, the easiest two ways for a storefront to wield power over me would be to either sell almost all of the products I make or to control a critical company function. Amazon already tries to dominate the former, but if they can’t, they have the latter cornered if I or any other company uses AWS for services.
And assuming that AWS would be a neutral partner is being naive about how Amazon tries to throw their weight around. I used to hear stories about how Walmart would throw their weight around in getting favorable pricing, but Amazon is another level entirely.
Jesus Christ, this is like a post-by-post dramatization of the … I’m not sure what to call this, some variant of the Streisand Effect? By refusing to deal with the Kickstarter shit on the Kickstarter site, Cringely has ensured that people talk about NOTHING but the Kickstarter shit and are now doing some reddit forensics on his life.
@granville I agree. The fact that Bob sees this going on and continues to do nothing feels like a huge “F you” to all of us loyal readers. I personally am starting to take offense to it. If being loyal for all of these years means I amount to nothing in Bob’s eyes, why am I holding him in such high regard myself? It has me second guessing my admiration and continued support of his endeavors, especially considering his lackluster columns as of late…
One rational explanation is that he is about to stop blogging so has no further need for an audience.
“The fact that Bob sees this going on and continues to do nothing feels like a huge “F you” to all of us loyal readers.”
I agree Marshall. Couldn’t have said it better. Post on the kickstarter website please, Bob. This has gone on far too long.
A quick google search brings up several Wikipedia articles, drone and other videos, news articles, etc. The date in question would be October 8th, and as this map shows, thousands of people had their lives turned upside down. I see no reason not to believe our host was among them, and I appreciate his optimism in defiantly declaring his lack of boils.
Some may joke about self arson; I’m confident there’s no truth there because Mary Alyce would subsequently set Bob on fire. Am I joking? Hmm …
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… or, it’s a source of amusement to him. People are far to quick to ascribe to malice what might be explained by more boring options.
“or, it’s a source of amusement to him. People are far to quick to ascribe to malice what might be explained by more boring options.”
@Howard I definitely understand and can find validity in most of what you said, but If Bob finds amusement out of our suffering, people who have read and been loyal to him long before this Minesever nonsense, then I am personally going to attach malice to that and take it personally. We have shown him support for years, why is he excused from returning the favor just to tickle his amusement at our expense?
It’s intuitively obvious to the most casual of observations . . .
Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
A wise man once observed . . .
Nothing is always a good thing to do and always the right thing to say.
“Nothing is always a good thing to do and always the right thing to say.”??
Counter Argument(s):
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Attributed to Edmund Burke
From John Mulaney: “One time I was at the dinner table when I was like six, because I had to be.”
My dad goes, “How was school today?”
Me: “It was good but someone pushed Tyler off the seesaw.”
Dad: “And where were you?”
Me: “I was over on the bench.”
Dad: “And what did you do?”
Me: “Nothing. I was over on the bench.”
Dad: “But you saw what happened?”
Me: “Yeah, ’cause I was over on the bench.”
Dad: “So you saw what happened and you did nothing?”
Me: “Yeah, ’cause I was sitting over on the bench.”
Dad: “Let me ask you this. In Nazi Germany…when people saw what the Nazis were doing and did nothing, were those good people?”
Me: “No, those are bad people. You gotta stop the Nazis.”
Dad: “But you saw what they were doing to Tyler and you did nothing!”
Me: “Because I was over on the bench.”
And then my dad said, “Just explain to me this. How are you better than a Nazi?”
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/20/ad/53/20ad533391f7724d223704cff9ab283b.jpg
Don’t believe those dates at the bottom of any map software. They have nothing to do with the age of the picture you are seeing and everything to do with the date NOW in case you copy the data and try to use it for commercial purposes. It’s a COPYRIGHT date not a CONTENT date. Google, MS, and others, have a variety of ‘versions and dates’ of each map tile. You pay money to get more recent ones and the ones on the web are by definition more dated. Go find anywhere you know construction, destruction, etc. has happened in the last year and you will find inconsistent updates to the timeliness of the image. Data in my area, around Disney World for instance, I KNOW to be over 2 years old on Google Maps.
“I try to never avoid embarrassment.” – Robert X. Cringely – February 19th, 2019
The break up of Amazon into smaller companies will make Bezos richer, much like John D. Rockeller got richer after the break up of Standard Oil? You would think Bezos would save the government the trouble and oversee the break up of Amazon himself. You would think the bean counters at Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft would push such plans at their respective companies. Except none of these companies, including Amazon are the behemoths we think they are, in today’s economies, though they do, on appearance exhibit a lot of control concerning their products and services and have a lotta cash on hand.
Yes it’s all bullshit. Posturing and lies and the appearance of control. People have jobs but atwhat cost to society and the real economy?
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There is talk New York will decriminalise sex work. I predicted a few months ago that America would legalise sex work. There are a lot of advantages to this including availability and services and safety among other things. Myself, being an escort, support decriminilisation. However I have caveats. Employers and service providers must respect people rights including dignity and fair wages. There must also be active poverty reduction strategies and avenues for people to express true choice of career and lifestyle. Sex work is legal in the UK although the state makes it difficult and unsafe the situation is still much better than in the US at least for the moment. If Brexit campaigners succeed this is less sure as are workers rights and other freedoms and opportunities people take for granted. I cannot begin to tell you how much strain and stress this causes.
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As long as decision makers keep taking the bribes nothing will change.I know for a fact UK police and others are taking bribes to make the problem of sex trafficking go away and keep everything under the table. There is worse corruption too. I am aware of UK NHS public sector doctors taking bribes and using bullying tactics to funnel women into their private practice for easy cash. Amazon is very honest and acting in good faith.The real abuse and corruption is in secretive state institutions and the corridors of power. I can name UK politicians I know who are taking backhanders to make problems go away including at least one who seized a local government cabinet position to collude with another in big business to obtain financial advantage for their corporation.
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I maintain client confidentiality but in the public interest will disclose that UK based Broadcom executives aree embezzling the company and conspiring to defraud clients. The way this is done is very clever in the way they abuse expense accounts and market domination. It all looks legal on the surface. How do I know this? A client who is a senior executive in Broadcom explained in detail how their scams worked. He didn’t agree with this but couldn’t say anything in work.
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Broadcom acquisitions fall within this strategy because they have a board level agreement to maintain 60% margins at any cost even where this results in commercial harm in the market.
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My client paid for my services out of his own pocket. He wasn’t on the make like some of his colleagues.
Godwin’s Law.
Can you say false equivalency?
I knew that you could.
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
As I tell my son – even a**holes have something to teach you . . . if you can learn to listen.
Thinking about my earlier reply a little bit more. If Mr. & Mrs. Bezos settle their differences, would their property settlement be the first in the nation to require Department of Justice or FTC approval?
Distractions aside, I’m thinking of prediction #3. I look at Amazon and see potentially 8 independent companies.
In an anti-monopoly sense, I feel the Kiva acquisition, and subsequent refusal to sell the robots to anyone else, was the most unfair of Amazon’s activities. Call it vertical integration, but taking the warehouse management robots that were once available to all comers and making them Amazon exclusive, that was the final nail in the coffin to Amazon’s peer competitors.
I can’t say the DoJ would split Amazon into 4 or 6 or 7 companies, but they might threaten to demand something like this, if only to cement their “more reasonable” demand of only AWS.
In the meantime, the media battlespace is still shaking out. If you peruse these headlines, one has to wonder how the powers that be are trying to pre-emptively shape things behind the scenes.
• Ambulances called 600 times to Amazon’s UK warehouses in past 3 years
• Amazon accused of treating UK warehouse staff like robots
• Miscarrying at Work: The Physical
Toll of Pregnancy Discrimination
• Suicidal Workers – 911 Calls From Inside Amazon Warehouses
Prediction #4
There will be a 737 MAX 8 crash in Ethiopia, and Boeing stock will take a hit
Well, now this is interesting. Take a look at those charts again. Cloud providers in 2015, and in in 2018.
Lots of the 2015 players are gone. That’s no surprise. But look – the three tier-2 players from 2018 weren’t even present in 2015, according to the graph anyway. I’m sure Oracle, IBM, and Alibaba had activity in 2015 but they didn’t make the chart, and yet now, they’re among the few remaining players.
My my, isn’t that something.
Here’s another observation … in relationship to each other, Google, Microsoft, and AWS haven’t really moved since 2015. A and M are both far to the right, with A a bit higher up than M. G is down and to the left, and that really hasn’t changed, relative to A and M.
As I described before, I see two tiers of players here, with Google in between the two tiers as they still haven’t decided whether they want to be a small fish in the big pond, or a big fish in a small pond (the former being more of a peer to Amazon and Microsoft, and the latter staying in the 2nd tier with IBM, Oracle, and Alibaba).
I expect Alibaba to continue moving up and to the right, to join the first tier, and disrupt a few things as it arrives. I also expect IBM and Oracle to quietly wish Google would leave the second tier … whether Google moves on to the firs tier, or leaves the competition, both would probably be better for IBM and Oracle than remaining where they are.
(ugh, wups … errant unfinished html tags … an editing option ’round here would be nice.)
Hey guys (most of you),
Maybe you might remember me. I haven’t changed since Bobby chased me around the InfoWorld board room back in the early 90s, I’m not a bit older and still wear those tiny diamond earrings that sparkle when I toss back my pretty blonde hair. I am still a perfect size 4.
What drivel you all write. Why do you repeat the same witless crap over and over? What a bunch of Passive-aggressives. Bernie-Sanders white angry men. You bore me.
Here is Bobby’s burned out house so you can knock off the conspiracy theories and shut the f up. No, the photo is not fake. For God’s sake — Bobby and his beautiful wife and brilliant children barely made it out alive. Would any of you have been so brave? In doubt it,
https://www.cringely.com/2017/10/13/i-have-no-boils/
@Howard: “… or, it’s a source of amusement to him. People are far to quick to ascribe to malice what might be explained by more boring options.”
His kids’ names have been dragged into this too and the vitriol represents much of their existing online footprint as they prepare for university and adult life. If Bob finds this amusing he’s probably an even worse person than anyone has speculated.
@Pammy: It’s always cool to watch the only person on earth who gives a shit about something give a shit about it.
So…is that it?
https://youtu.be/kE186w91YVU ☀️
@Pammy “Thanks for supplying that photo! If only we had known this photo existed over a year ago, our opinion could have been swayed and we would have saved ourselves months of self-torture. You are the hero we all needed, praise be to Yevon and to you for putting an end to all of this!”
– said no one with half a brain.
@granville
Cringely should never have pushed Mineserver and used his children as a front. Cringely was always the controlling force behind the project and used his name and its his name on all the paperwork?
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I’m still suspicious of his hero origin story.
@Pammy — except that it seems pretty clear that the house at 1934 Los Alamos Road did not burn, as seen here: https://imgur.com/a/C1W4RRY
@burningbush – Why do you believe 1934 Los Alamos Road is his house? Absent something official like tax assessor / appraisal district, it’s just some address in the people’s republic of California, to me.
@T if you google Mark Stephens you get this address showing up (random selection, one of many), and it also links him to his wife Mary Alyce and also matches up with where the fires surrounded and Bob has also made mention of living Santa Rosa other places (such as on the kickstarter site itself). It could be as simple as a PO box, but we’ve traced this location and there is a sign saying the house is further up with no indication it’s a PO box, so that leaves three options I can see:
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1.) he moved and it’s an older address
2.) he has more than one house (fancy)
3.) he’s a liar who lies/exaggerates for a living and doesn’t like being called on his bluff?
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I personally am unsure what it is, and don’t like to speculate, though I do find it suspect that he won’t chime in and help put it to rest. He doesn’t need to get us his address or anything, just maybe show a picture of his burned down home (a very normal thing a person would capture, especially a tech nut like Bob. The more he ignores it, the more likely it seems he has something to hide.
@factchecker – didn’t somebody drive near there and say it was pretty ambiguous? Ugh, this feels like doxxing? I don’t like the notion of Bob’s personal info being shared willy nilly. ’tain’t right.
I’m personally happy with citizen journalism if it is handled professionally with an eye on rigorous fact checking and respect for privacy and safety, and publishing when an issue is in the public interest. I’m not in favour of doxxing or anything which puts peoples health or liberty or right to a private life at risk, or publishing anything just to feed nosiness and rubbernecking.
AWS is really the only “platform as a service” game in town. Microsoft is the only game in town if you want Windows OS. Google and Salesforce are a different business. They are “software as a service”. Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Maps, Google Analytics. AWS is “platform as a service”, but the only “software as a service” they have is the Amazon Store (and you have to be a programmer to interact with it in any meaningful way), the rest is all platform stuff (database, object store, programmer stuff). The difference is that non-programmers/non-technical people can use “software as a service”, where platform as a service requires programming experience. Microsoft does both “paas (Azure) and saas (Office 360)”. IBM and Oracle are not really Cloud Companies. They are professional services for hybrid Cloud. They will build an entire solution, if you have $100 million to spend (government and large companies only need apply), and more often than not, they will use AWS before their own cloud stuff. SAP’s biggest implementer is IBM Services. Alibaba is just Chinese Amazon, because the Chinese won’t let Amazon compete there. With government backing, they have plenty of money and momentum, but I suspect they aren’t “software as a service” either, except for their eCommerce Marketplace. There are other “software as a service” companies popping up all over the place ServiceNow. And that should have been one of Bob’s predictions this year, maybe it will be #5. Real SaaS tailored to specific industries with specific EXPERTISE is gaining huge traction in the marketplace, and it is the IT story of the next 10 years, not AI.
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