Hesh Wiener
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Mad Dog 21/21: Biting The Handout
February 16, 2009 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreAt 7:20 a.m. on February 2, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the Staten Island Zoo to meet Chuck the groundhog. Chuck, formally known as Charles E. Schumer Hogg, according to Bloomberg News, didn’t appreciate Hizonner’s “teasing him with corn-on-the-cob.” The critter bit the mayor’s gloved left index finger hard enough to draw blood. Mr. Bloomberg remained affable, as is his wont, setting an example of good manners for the Federal government, which is going to spend the next few years feeding potential nippers, among them IBM, Google, and Microsoft.
Now, it could well turn
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Google’s Love Affair with IBM’s Offspring
February 9, 2009 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreImagine what would happen if Google and IBM wanted to help you build your Web site. Now suppose the Googlers and IBMers created free site development tools that were aggressively open, capable of running on just about any platform, and able to build Webs that could be used by clients as small as a mobile phone or as large as an engineering workstation. Now imagine that all this has been around a few years and you’ve pretty much missed it, or at least not appreciated it. Maybe it’s time to say “Hello, World” to the Google Web Toolkit and Eclipse.
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Mad Dog 21/21: Shoes for Cheeses
January 12, 2009 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIn 1967, a turbulent America gave birth to the Youth International Party and its pie assassin, Aron Kay. The following year, Yippies led the havoc at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention. They set a high (or low) watermark for protests of American policy that lasted 40 years. But in 2008, in Baghdad, a reporter named Muntazer al-Zaidi became the World’s Most Notorious Hurler of Insults when he lobbed a pair of shoes at President George W. Bush: soles of a new regime. How impolite! Still, the IT establishment might actually gain from some clever irreverence.
Aron Kay’s pie throwing
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Mad Dog 21/21: Potlatch Season
December 8, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreAsk any old Kwakiutl or young Kwakwaka’wakw, as these Native Americans of the Northwest are now called, and you will find that winter was the favored season for a potlatch. A potlatch is a ceremony that includes a variety of rituals, some involving the redistribution of wealth and others the destruction of wealth. It’s a bit like what is going on around the world as governments try to keep us warm and loyal during a severe economic winter. It’s a bit like what liquidators say is going on in the server business, too.
A potlatch was a huge party thrown
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How Big Blue Sees Small You
December 1, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIn September, IBM published its third biennial study of chief executive officer outlooks and attitudes. This study paid particular attention to the midmarket; companies with fewer than 1,000 employees and prime targets for the i platform. IBM found that midmarket CEOs have similar concerns and yearnings as their counterparts in larger organizations, but they expect greater change and often feel an even stronger urge to seek new opportunities. These attitudes are part of a growing trend among organizations of all sizes to envision a future with wide horizons, but this year’s study might have defined a zenith of optimism.
The
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Mad Dog 21/21: Souls of Old Machines
November 17, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIn the world of Jewish mysticism, there is a concept of demonic possession by a creature called a dybbuk. A dybbuk is basically a soul that has somehow broken free of its original body and for one or another reason becomes a spiritual squatter in the body and mind of a living person. IBM is big on this idea, putting the soul of a System i into the body of a System p. It is also doing well with a similar soul transplant that gives a mainframe life on a processor complex that bears some resemblance to a Power
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Mad Dog 21/21: You Can Teleworker, But Who Will Listen?
September 22, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreAs you read this on your display screen, you are a potential (if not actual) teleworker. Maybe you’re in the office, but you could as easily be far away. In principle, people in many jobs could work outside the office, and, with gasoline at a buck a quart, it’s no longer hypothetical. These days, teleworking might be practical not only for employees but also for employers. It is a topic that requires fresh scrutiny, some new technology, and appreciation of its roots, which go back 2,500 years.
The possibility that people whose work is based on using a computer could
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Mad Dog 21/21: Newtonian Economics
August 4, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIsaac Newton’s contributions to science and mathematics were monumental. They elevated English technology to a state of great prominence and helped usher in the Age of Enlightenment. More than three centuries later, every teenager studying science is taught classical mechanics, and Newton’s principles provides food for thought in other disciplines, too. IBM‘s recent financial results, a sunny patch on a graying economic landscape, beg for analysis as well as praise, and Newton’s laws might offer just the metaphorical basis required to examine Big Blue’s blooming.
The top stories in the business press may be dire, but as we previously
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Mad Dog 21/21: iPhone Home
June 16, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreWhat did the extraterrestrial called ET in the eponymous 1982 Spielberg film use to save itself from a cadre of government agents? A phone. Twenty years later, people routinely phone home and everywhere else from anywhere. This hasn’t distracted the technologists caught up in arguments about thin versus thick clients, but now there’s a new Apple iPhone. It might ring loudly enough to be heard above the bickering advocates of various clients. A client as well as a phone, it could shift the focus of the user interface debate from technological means to budgetary goals.
In a sense, Apple helped
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Mad Dog 21/21: Saying No No No
May 19, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreNancy Reagan made quite a point of saying, “Just say no.” Amy Winehouse sang that she said, “No, no, no.” And “No” is what Microsoft seems to be hearing a lot of lately, too. The software giant has heard it from Yahoo, which it tried to acquire, and it heard it from a lot of prospective PC customers, to whom it wants to sell Vista rather than Windows XP. It’s not surprising when Microsoft must fight to reach its goals. But this time its struggle seems a bit different because there’s a cultural change underway in the computer industry.