Google's Walk in the PARC

No, Google doesn’t intend to become a national Internet Service Provider, despite its new plan to build a number of optical networks to serve homes and businesses at up to one gigabit-per-second.  The real plan is half Xerox PARC and half Tom Sawyer.

When the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center was organized by Bob Taylor in the early 1970s to revolutionize computer, network, and printing technology, there was a conscious decision to live 10 years in the future. The CSL would build devices that could be expected to make economic sense in 1980, not 1970.  This was a huge leap, because it meant the amount of memory in each […]

By |February 15th, 2010|2010|102 Comments
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The Cringely 2010 (Not in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour

Small companies create jobs in America.

According to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, companies less than five years old generated nearly two-thirds of the new jobs created in the U. S. in 2007. But what’s even more important is that without these startups more jobs would be lost than created, the U. S. economy would permanently shrink and America would eventually lose its superpower status, simple as that.

This is because big companies grow by increasing scale and productivity, which is to say by reducing the number of jobs per unit of sales, while startups grow by inventing cool stuff. See the difference?

The startups that most reliably become giant American […]

By |February 8th, 2010|2010|152 Comments
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Authentication is Secondary

As we’ve all read, Google recently experienced a massive attack on its network, probably from China, and has threatened to leave the Chinese market as a result. I’ve written about that aspect before (Google taking its ball and going home) but this column is about the attack itself and Google’s internal plans for how to deal with future such problems, because of course this will happen again. I’m frankly trying to understand what Google is up to in its response to the Chinese threat — a response that doesn’t make much sense to me given the details of the attack as published.

First reports of the attack blamed a security flaw in an […]

By |February 4th, 2010|2010|67 Comments
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Moonset

Later today the Obama Administration will reportedly announce major changes in the U. S. space program that may amount to the effective end of manned space flight after this decade. As a guy who has been trying to mount his own mission to the Moon I’m not yet sure how I feel about this. Maybe it is a great opportunity, but probably not.

The FY2011 federal proposed budget will be published with the following changes:

— NASA’s Constellation program to replace the Space Shuttle will be cancelled and all hardware development will be stopped including Ares 1, Ares 5 and Orion.

— The Moon is no longer the first stop in the exploration program, replaced […]

By |January 31st, 2010|2010|185 Comments
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iPad, Therefore I Am


JobsPad-300x200It’s the morning after and time for an unjaundiced look at Apple’s just-announced iPad tablet computer thingee. My last post was a series of pre-announcement Tweets from a guy at or near EnGadget and I took some grief from readers for even posting it, but in retrospect I am glad I did because it gives me a lot more to say about the new gizmo.

Were the tweets from a real beta tester? While many readers thought they weren’t, I’m pretty sure they were, primarily based on what many perceived as mistakes. Yes, the price points were off but those things can change hour-by-hour right up to the last minute and I wouldn’t put it past […]

By |January 28th, 2010|2010|324 Comments
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