Hesh Wiener
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Mad Dog 21/21: Is It Good For The Juice?
June 3, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreBoeing is flying 787 Dreamliners to customers again. The airplanes, which each use two large lithium-ion batteries, were grounded in mid-January because their batteries were dangerously overheating. Battery-powered laptops have been known to catch fire and so, too, have mobile phones, but they still use lithium-ion battery technology. So far, there have been no reported fires in the lithium-ion earpiece batteries of Google Glass gadgets. But even if some people had their hair set afire by a failing Glass, potentially combustible lithium-ion-based energy storage will be the portable power source of choice until a superior successor becomes available.
The
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Mad Dog 21/21: Think Or Quit
May 6, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreGinni Rometty has to think or quit. And I don’t expect her to quit. IBM‘s revenue peaked in 2011, the year Rometty became the company’s president, replacing Sam Palmisano. While she wasn’t the boss when Big Blue’s all defining policies were put into place, Rometty had been a top executive since 2009 and an IBM employee since 1991. So, while only recently at the tiller, she could hardly be surprised at the company’s course. It is doubtful, however, that she anticipated the consequences of IBM’s strategic decisions, including her own, or the harshness of the prolonged economic winter.
Now
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Mad Dog 21/21: Smith And Westin
April 15, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read morePrivacy law in the United States really began in 1890 when Louis Brandeis, number one in his graduating class, writing with Samuel Warren in Harvard Law Review, argued that there was a “right to be left alone.” This alienable right had been poorly articulated until Brandeis and Warren brilliantly expressed what their predecessors had not. In the nearly 125 years since, the value placed on personal privacy has waxed and waned. Gibbous only 50 years ago, it became a mere crescent during the past decade, its visible illumination reduced by an improbable combination of terrorism and social media.
By
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Mad Dog 21/21: Server Makers Shift Shape, Stressing Legacy Customers
April 1, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreServer vendors are doing a lot these days, but one thing they are doing less of is making servers. IBM, the biggest, richest, and smartest of the bunch has long since become a services and software supplier; hardware is a diminishing part of its trade. Dell is on a similar path, and trying to extract itself from public ownership to duck the requisite transparency and restrictive rules of conduct. Hewlett-Packard? Oracle? Who can say what’s going on in those madhouses? Still, it is safe to guess change is underway. Where does all this leave customers? No place
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Mad Dog 21/21: Clouds Gather Over The Server Business
March 18, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreAggregate revenue in the server business didn’t grow last year. As we previously reported, based on Gartner data, it might not grow next year either. This is tough but tolerable for vendors with market breadth, but it is punishing for players with a tighter focus. Moreover, in an ironic twist worthy of an O. Henry plot line, the effort by vendors to boost cloud computing have exacerbated matters, draining funds that might otherwise be spent in customers’ glass houses.
This is particularly so in the midrange, which, like Newport, once attracted The Four Hundred but now often
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Mad Dog 21/21: If You Want Cheap Cloud Backup, Raise Your ARM
March 4, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIf you are using a smartphone, tablet or PC, you can back up data to the cloud, 5 gigs or more, for free using Dropbox,Evernote, Google Drive, or Microsoft Skydrive. Want more capacity? It’s cheap. Want to share stuff among your machines or with others? Easy. Security? Pretty good even before you encrypt.
Compare this with IBM’s backup schemes for an IBM i shop. You could write a book about your experience: Fifty Shades of Blue. But do it fast, because disruption may be imminent, and you don’t want to get caught with
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Mad Dog 21/21: The Post Office And Dell, Delivering Less, Hoping For More
February 18, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreBlame spreadsheets and those who worship them. That’s how to explain the Postal Service dropping Saturday mail delivery and Dell going private. In the case of the USPS, the destructive effect of confusing MBAs with education is obvious to everyone except the technocrats in charge. In the case of Dell, the danger of damage is just as apparent, but the hubristic bean-counters leading the retreat from exposure imagine they will reap huge rewards even as others suffer. In both cases, irritated customers will strike back. The instigators of these tragic follies will learn what Pyrrhus learned.
The USPS and Dell
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Mad Dog 21/21: Take Another Bow, William Howard Taft And IBM Mainframes
February 4, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreAs 2012 ended, the brightest spot in IBM’s financial picture came from, of all things, the venerable mainframe. Sales jumped 56 percent as MIPS shipments soared 66 percent. But the picture wasn’t so simple: Only half this capacity could support IBM operating systems; the rest was confined to running Linux or taking a wash for those unfettered z engines. Meanwhile, in Washington, baseball fans were getting an upbeat surprise, too. The Nationals had named William Howard Taft as a mascot, reminding fans of a uniquely large and flatulent president who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
In
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Mad Dog 21/21: Google Evildoers Filched Funds From My Wallet
January 21, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreLate last year, Google said its Wallet mobile payment system had completed its larval stage. Google was going to phase out the special debit card used for the launch. The emerging adult Wallet could hold virtual versions of any debit or credit cards the user chose. These cards were wrapped in security and wired into a robust services framework. Wallet looked like another well executed Google launch.
But that was before the letters started showing up, the ones talking about a lost or stolen MasterCard the Wallet user had never heard of.
The letters came from MetaBank Everywhere Reward Cardholder
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Mad Dog 21/21: Tycho Brahe Had No Nose. How Did He Smell? Terrible
January 7, 2013 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreTycho Brahe, the sixteenth century Danish polymath with a prosthetic nose, believed facts yield advances in science and business. Good at both, Brahe accumulated a fortune and built an observatory while accumulating the astronomical data he bequeathed to his German colleague Johannes Kepler. Decades later, formulating laws of gravitation, England’s Isaac Newton stood on Kepler’s shoulders. The computer industry could sure use a Brahe right now.
It is having difficulty charting a course between the Scylla of technological change and the Charybdis of fickle markets. Consequently, following the traditional leaders, as loyal, trusting customers do, is downright risky.