Hesh Wiener
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Mad Dog 21/21: ARMs To Fare Well
November 7, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreSteve Jobs was such a captivating promoter of inventions that his products reshaped our thinking, defining or redefining products we once thought we fully understood. At his best, Jobs was almost too good. If Picasso were God all fish would be flounders. But the computer industry, like nature, fosters diversity. Apple‘s smart clients, the iPhone and iPad, are iconic devices built around systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), but they are not the only important applications of this technology. Servers, too, can be made from compact, efficient, and inexpensive SoCs. And they will prove to be exceedingly disruptive.
Two examples that have been
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Mad Dog 21/21: Preoccupy Wall Street
October 17, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIBM has almost always been a darling of Wall Street. It is Big Blue, the bluest of the blue chips. This year IBM shares have risen more than any of the other 29 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average; they currently sell for about 13 times earnings. Hewlett-Packard is also a DJII component. It has significantly higher revenue than IBM. For the past five years it has grown faster, too. It sells a larger number of servers than Big Blue. But its name is mud on Wall Street. HP’s price/earnings ratio is half that of IBM. How come?
Looking
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Mad Dog 21/21: Bier Or Hospice, That Persistent Thirst For Legacy
October 3, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreThere aren’t many places where you can sell old real or virtual machinery for more than new, but it can be done in the computer business. Legacy technology sold at a premium price prevails in IBM’s proprietary i and z lines. Still, just because IBM has worked its magic in the past and even though Big Blue promises to do it again in the immediate future, there really is no assurance of perpetual success. Here are three and a half threats to the status quo: Amazon, Apple, and Google, and Wintel.
In the case of the IBM
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Mad Dog 21/21: Goodbye Kitty
September 19, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreYou may remember the movie Apotheker Now, or perhaps the novel on which it was based, Bartz of Darkness. The story, as you undoubtedly recall, concerns Fulton J. Wintel, sent into the wilderness by the greedy tyrant Leopold 2.0 to bring back whacko Kemeny Kurtz. Wintel finds Kurtz, who soon expires, muttering, “The oracle, the oracle.” The tale portrays the underside of Silicon Valley during the Doofus Era, when companies dexterously developing and exploiting new technologies overwhelmed those that slipped even once, or looked like they might have.
It’s the whacko season. Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo are beset by
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Mad Dog 21/21: How To Downgrade Your Business Partner
August 22, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreAccording to IBM reseller Glasshouse Systems, Big Blue promised it wouldn’t give a rival the 21 percent extra discount Glasshouse was getting in the pending deal with financial services firm SEI. Glasshouse appreciated the incentive and poured extra effort into its sales effort at SEI Investments. Surprise! SEI jilted Glasshouse and signed with rival reseller Mainline. Glasshouse took a beating.
The upshot, Glasshouse pleaded, was that IBM, that double-crosser, ought to make it whole. Stuff and nonsense, said Honorable Anita Brody. The Glasshouse claim fails; IBM prevails. The case is now a model for users
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Mad Dog 21/21: Debit And Taxis
August 8, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read more“You talkin’ to me?” That’s what Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, said, in the 1976 film Taxi Driver, as he practiced drawing his gun. His thin clients included characters played by Jodie Foster and Cybill Shepherd. Today every one of New York’s 13,087 yellow cabs has a thin client that isn’t as pretty as Foster or Shepherd. It is a mobile computer that includes a self-service payment terminal talking to banks in the cloud by cellular radio. Its screen displays videos so awful you wish for Bickle and his gun. And that’s just for starters.
When
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Mad Dog 21/21: Smart Fellers
July 18, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreRemember tongue twisters? You know what you want to express, but it just doesn’t come out right. One smart feller, he felt smart. Two smart fellers, they both felt smart. Three smart fellers, they all felt smart. Tongue twisters remind me of IBM‘s Lotus division. Lotus always had a little trouble getting its message across. That’s how Excel beat 1-2-3 years ago. Now Lotus’s Domino server and Notes client could go the way of 1-2-3 because people armed with mobile clients are hooking up via companies like Google and Amazon, whose cloud allure dwarfs that of IBM.
It’s
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Mad Dog 21/21: In Hack Signo Vinces
June 27, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreWould you want your company to be highlighted in the news like Citibank, the International Monetary Fund, Lockheed Martin, Google, and Sony? Maybe not. Recently, they all became famous when high tech vandals invaded their computer systems. Of course you might think you are safe because you’re True Blue and IBM‘s products and its developers’ skills will protect you. Think again.
In January, hackers were able to trash IBM’s iconic developerWorks site. Maybe it’s time to brush up on security. You might learn something that saves your cookies, including the ones in your browser.
The concepts
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Mad Dog 21/21: Ptolemy And Shorter You
May 16, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreTycho Brahe, a Danish polymath with royal blood, achieved his most impressive astronomical discoveries at a pivotal time in the history of science, the moment when stargazers began to understand that the geocentric model of the solar system, widely characterized as that of Ptolemy, would give way to the heliocentric model of Copernicus and Galileo. Brahe had a remarkable moustache, which ultimately provided clues to his demise, and a midget stationed under his dinner table, but, sadly, not one who resembled Pippa Middleton. Brahe’s cosmology, or Ptolemy’s, has recently enjoyed resurgence; its fresh embodiment lies in
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Mad Dog 21/21: Monkey Business
May 2, 2011 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIt had been a long, difficult day for Tarzan. He was pleased to finally make that last swing into his tree house, where Jane was waiting. “Honey,” he said, securing the vine so it would be ready in the morning, “it’s a jungle out there.” The fictional jungle in which Tarzan lived had its share of two- and four-legged miscreants, but it was a safe haven compared to that digital sewer, the Internet, where IBM is trying to build a trade in security.
IBM dove into the deep end of the security business about five year ago when it bought