Amazon’s new graphical cloud helps make desktops obsolete

g2_gpu_model_4Amazon Web Services quietly released on Tuesday a pair of new instances on its EC2 cloud computing service. Not just new instances but a whole new type of instance aimed at 2D and 3D graphical computing. For the first time from AWS in a generally available instance, developers and users will have access to virtual machines with GPUs. It’s like putting a PC in the cloud. More properly it is like putting your PC in the cloud. I think this has great disruptive potential. And that means we’ll see similar services coming soon from other cloud providers.

Autodesk must think it has potential, too, because they’ll be offering several applications on the new platform, […]

How Big Data is destroying the U.S. healthcare system

denied-stampOne thing I find ironic in the current controversy over problems with the healthcare.gov insurance sign-up web site is that the people complaining don’t really mean what they are saying. Not only do they have have little to no context for their arguments, they don’t even want the improvements they are demanding. This is not to say nothing is wrong with the site, but few big web projects have perfectly smooth launches. From all the bitching and moaning in the press you’d think this experience is a rarity. But as those who regularly read this column know, more than half of big IT projects don’t work at all. So I’m not surprised that […]

Privacy is dead and here’s how

privacy-do-not-disturb

My friend Dave Taht, who battles bufferbloat for us all, pointed me today to a document from the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association. It’s the WISPA CALEA Compliance Guide, which details most of the rules that wireless ISPs are required to follow by CALEA — the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994. These rules, variants of which apply to all telcos and to ISPs of all kinds (not just wireless), say what those companies are required to do to comply with the law. More directly, it specifies how they can be required to intercept customer communications and relay that content to law enforcement agencies.

Read it if you have a moment. The document, which is […]

Mainframe2 runs super-powerful Windows apps in the cloud

Screen Shot 2013-10-15 at 10.50.39 PMMy friend Nikola Bozinovic (say that three times fast) is a very sharp software developer originally from Serbia who has, over the years, worked for most of the usual suspect American software companies. He is also the guy who restored from a grotty old VHS tape my film Steve Jobs — The Lost Interview. And as of this week he’s the CEO of Mainframe2 (now called Frame — Bob) , an exciting startup strutting its stuff at the DEMO conference in Santa Clara. Mainframe2 claims it can put almost any Windows application into the cloud, making apps usable from any device that can run a web browser supporting html5. […]

Breaking Moore’s Law

642px-Moores_law_(1970-2011)No law is more powerful or important in Silicon Valley than Moore’s Law — the simple idea that transistor density is continually increasing which means computing power goes up just as costs and energy consumption go down. It’s a clever idea we rightly attribute to Gordon Moore. The power lies in the Law’s predictability. There’s no other trillion dollar business where you can look down the road and have a pretty clear idea what you’ll get. Moore’s Law lets us take chances on the future and generally get away with them. But what happens when you break Moore’s Law? That’s what I have been thinking about lately. That’s when destinies change.

There may have been many […]