I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBSI, Cringely is the blog of Robert X. Cringely. Copyright 2006 PBS Online.The Five Percent Solution- July 28, 2008 This column is about a new chat system called Talkinator, which I find very exciting, but to do it justice first I have to cover some of the emerging -- but not often recognized -- realities of Web 2.0 that make a Talkinator even possible. Bill Gates used to worry about Microsoft losing its monopoly overnight because of a technical mistake. We all laughed. We laughed because Microsoft had such financial and sales clout and had the executive suite of nearly every customer company so snowed that.http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080728_005308.html Inflection Point- July 18, 2008 Futurists, especially those who claim to have a methodology beyond psychic prediction, tend to rely primarily on Moore's Law for figuring out what technology will be like 5, 10, or 20 years from now. But Moore's Law, which predicts that computing power will drop in cost by 50 percent every 18 months, isn't some absolute speed limit and some measures of technical achievement are actually moving faster than Moore's Law predicts. It's not that they violate the law (if it even IS a law) but that..http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080718_005261.html Acting Squirrelly- July 11, 2008 I have this theory about the behavior of squirrels and how they are like certain large software companies, especially SAP, the giant Enterprise Resource Management vendor headquartered in Germany. But obviously the most interesting part is the squirrels, so let's start there. You are driving down a street in your car and up ahead there is a squirrel at the side of the road eating a nut. You aren't on an intercept course, there is no way you are going to hit that squirrel. So what does the...http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080711_005222.html Independence Day- July 4, 2008 My young and lovely wife, showing what might be overoptimism or maybe artful timing given the economy but more likely just general disappointment with me, has decided to embark on a career in real estate sales. She has taken classes and passed tests, joined one of the very best local firms, and hurled herself into the business of selling historic Charleston homes while they still have some value and the termites haven't finished their work. And along the way, while mastering the Multiple...http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080704_005191.html |