Hesh Wiener
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Bears’ Turns
April 7, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreYou’re not alone if you’ve become skeptical about the near term prospects for banks that have overpaid for assets. The banks are having trouble selling these assets because they can’t find trusting buyers. With so many people asking hard questions about bankers and financiers, this nosy, impolite attitude is becoming infectious. It is even spreading into other areas, such as information technology. Some customers are subjecting vendors’ claims about value to serious examination, and while this prudence might be practical, it isn’t pretty.
We are not only in a bear market for many kinds of securities, we seem to be
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Plane’s Peeking
March 3, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIn computing, even the industry leaders can get hit with surprises coming from angles they never dreamed of. Sometimes these new ideas substantially change or extend the world of computing. These disruptive developments add new dimensions to information processing. And it’s often very hard for the established leaders to understand what is emerging before their eyes. This is a situation much like the one at the heart of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a short, witty novel about mathematics and Victorian society written by Edwin A. Abbott, a theologian and scholar. Ballmer, Palmisano, and you ought to
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Recovering Lost Prophets
February 18, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIf you ask computer professionals who they thought were the leaders in data storage, chances are you’ll hear names like IBM, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Network Appliances, and Hitachi. If you asked these storage companies, you might get a different list that included some outfits that were largely unknown in the end user world. But end users probably don’t have to worry that they will miss out on some important new vendors. The Storage Establishment is buying up many of the emerging suppliers. This high-profile interest in the new crop of vendors makes all the contenders a
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Motherboarding
January 7, 2008 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreIn 1995, IBM shifted its proprietary midrange systems from CISC to RISC processor technology. Today, the System i is to a considerable extent a variation of the System p–or visa versa, depending on how you want to look at it. Last year, IBM sent a processor guru out to talk about a chip called z6, a sibling of the new Power6 chip that executes mainframe instructions. IBM will soon announce z6 mainframes that share a lot more than just some processor technology with the System p. They could easily be more than 50 percent System p, by weight.
The z6
-
Mad Dog 21/21: It’s Your Gaul
November 19, 2007 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreLike Gaul before Charlemagne, office desktops can be divided in three. One nation uses PCs running a mix of generic and corporate applications. Another nation uses thin, fixed-function clients, even if some of the machines have full-fledged computers inside. The third nation uses PCs, but works with software that shifts most client functionality to a shared terminal support server. For decades, friends and enemies of these nations have made more or less the same old arguments. But now client technology is really different, and so are the end users. Some choices that were right yesterday may be wrong tomorrow.
What
-
Mad Dog 21/21: It’s Your Gaul
November 19, 2007 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreLike Gaul before Charlemagne, office desktops can be divided in three. One nation uses PCs running a mix of generic and corporate applications. Another nation uses thin, fixed-function clients, even if some of the machines have full-fledged computers inside. The third nation uses PCs, but works with software that shifts most client functionality to a shared terminal support server. For decades, friends and enemies of these nations have made more or less the same old arguments. But now client technology is really different, and so are the end users. Some choices that were right yesterday may be wrong tomorrow.
What
-
Mad Dog 21/21: It’s Your Gaul
November 19, 2007 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreLike Gaul before Charlemagne, office desktops can be divided in three. One nation uses PCs running a mix of generic and corporate applications. Another nation uses thin, fixed-function clients, even if some of the machines have full-fledged computers inside. The third nation uses PCs, but works with software that shifts most client functionality to a shared terminal support server. For decades, friends and enemies of these nations have made more or less the same old arguments. But now client technology is really different, and so are the end users. Some choices that were right yesterday may be wrong tomorrow.
What
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Symphony for the Devil
October 22, 2007 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreSymphony is what IBM calls its collection of free (as in free beer) productivity applications based on free (as in free speech) OpenOffice code. IBM has given its OpenOffice distro a recycled brand name and put it to work as a printer’s devil for its Lotus Notes client and Domino collaboration and publishing server. But IBM is giving away ice in the winter. You don’t need IBM to get OpenOffice, and, besides, productivity applications are headed for the Web or, as Sun Microsystems said before the Dot Com Crash wiped the smile off its overbite, the network is the computer.
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Symphony for the Devil
October 22, 2007 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreSymphony is what IBM calls its collection of free (as in free beer) productivity applications based on free (as in free speech) OpenOffice code. IBM has given its OpenOffice distro a recycled brand name and put it to work as a printer’s devil for its Lotus Notes client and Domino collaboration and publishing server. But IBM is giving away ice in the winter. You don’t need IBM to get OpenOffice, and, besides, productivity applications are headed for the Web or, as Sun Microsystems said before the Dot Com Crash wiped the smile off its overbite, the network is the computer.
-
Mad Dog 21/21: Symphony for the Devil
October 22, 2007 Hesh Wiener
… Read moreSymphony is what IBM calls its collection of free (as in free beer) productivity applications based on free (as in free speech) OpenOffice code. IBM has given its OpenOffice distro a recycled brand name and put it to work as a printer’s devil for its Lotus Notes client and Domino collaboration and publishing server. But IBM is giving away ice in the winter. You don’t need IBM to get OpenOffice, and, besides, productivity applications are headed for the Web or, as Sun Microsystems said before the Dot Com Crash wiped the smile off its overbite, the network is the computer.