Monday, July 28, 2003|
Gates: Dot-com dreams to come true. Most of the advances promised during the Net boom will happen, the Microsoft chairman tells a research confab--it's just a matter of time. [CNET News.com] 4:46:42 PM  comment
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According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, The Walt Disney Co. is in talks with several U.S. carriers to launch a branded wireless service. Some insiders speculate that the company could become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), leasing network capacity from a larger carrier while marketing wireless service through the Disney brand. The British mega-firm Virgin operates successful MVNO operations in both the U.K. and the U.S., leveraging its brand to sell wireless service to the youth market. MTV is preparing to launch an MVNO in the Nordic region later this year. The Journal report said that Disney is especially interested in offering multimedia content to mobile devices. For more on the Disney rumor: - see today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and this blurb from Reuters
"fiercewireless" |
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Emachines goes wireless. The low-price PC maker aims to increase its competitiveness in the retail market with a wireless notebook. [CNET News.com] 1:22:38 PM comment
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IT asset management: What is it?. Here's an explanation of IT asset management from Ron Nabors, senior vice president at Tangram Enterprise Solutions. [Computerworld Security News] 12:57:59 PM comment
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Unsafe at Any Speed 2003. Cory Doctorow rips the Washington Post a new Ethernet port or two in eviscerating an article full of FUD: Listen, folks, how many people steal children away for any purpose? It's a small and horrible number. How much effort and money do we spend in our lives, those of us with and without children, ensuring that children are safe from this unlikely event that has dire outcomes? Individually, not so much; collectively, quite a bit. Cory Doctorow makes a good case as he tears apart a poorly researched Washington Post article on Wi-Fi security that all of the fear, uncertainty, and dread (FUD) that wireless security consultants are pushing isn't illegitimate, but it's misplaced. Just because someone can hop on your wireless network doesn't make them malevolent, any more than someone listening to your public conversation at a restaurant doesn't mean they're writing down what you say and selling it to the highest bidder. Yes, Wi-Fi makes need to make security better and simpler. And, you know what? They have. The article concludes with vague ideas about future security and mentions WEP, but ignores WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) which is appearing in shipping products and will be mandatory in all Wi-Fi branded gear by the end of the year. WPA fixes WEP's security holes and simplifies the use for home users: WPA can use a simple password instead of hexadecimal digits. The ultimately irony for all this article's overstatements and misdirections: guess which is the only company that ships a wireless gateway that tries to force the user to secure the network and even creates a floppy disk that can be used to configure other machines on the same network? Microsoft. Ah, the rich irony. Microsoft is using Wi-Fi internally more than practically any other company in the world, and they learned to make their dog food taste better and better.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:54:59 PM comment
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We're Not in the End Game Yet. Yadda yadda yadda hype yadda dotcom yadda yadda Wi-Fi: Another sort of tedious mainstream article that looks at the present state of Wi-Fi hot spots and extrapolates that no additional users will ever increase the pool of money, and disregards the piles of evidence I found in a Seattle Times article a few weeks ago that venues are seeing an increase in business. The bottom line in this piece is that it uses two reports to predict the future, and then looks at current numbers to explain why hot spots will fail. The Gartner report covered Europe and I think is ridiculously pessimistic. A hot spot CEO and I were talking the other day and he agreed with a statement I made: how many people have a Wi-Fi adapter in their laptop and don't use it? It begs to be used. Likewise, the scattered expensive hot spot market across Europe discourages high use, even though roaming is somewhat more prevalent than in the US. The reporter also cites John Yunker's report about the future of per-user revenue for hot spots versus other telecommunications' flavors. Yes, the report makes sense, but what the reporter ignores is that in his model there are a substantial number of users. The per-user revenue is driven down in part because the cost of providing service becomes lower and more models of offering service will flourish. I remember all the articles in 1997 timeframe that predicted the dotcom crash -- but for the wrong reason. They assumed that it was a fad and that no one would buy books from Amazon.com. In fact, the problem was basic business management and understanding how to scale to a profit with low margins, a fact that most ecommerce companies didn't understand. But the problem wasn't usage, interest, or (in many cases) actual revenue. No one knows whether any of the current models for Wi-Fi hot spots will pan out. But it's obvious that we're still at the very beginning of the curve: if the crash happens, it will happen big, with 10,000s of hot spots installed worldwide. If success happens, it will be equally large, with tens of millions of monthly subscribers worldwide. But we just won't know for at least three or four years what the end of this story is.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 12:52:10 PM comment
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Signs of Life in Silicon Valley. As the tech industry struggles to recover from recession, area recruiters are seeing a slight upturn in job openings. But the high unemployment rate means firms can still be extraordinarily picky about whom they choose. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] 12:51:10 PM comment
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Iraqis Log On to Voice Chat. With Saddam Hussein's ban on instant messaging lifted, some Iraqis discover voice chat. It's an appealing solution to the nation's lack of long-distance phone service but, it's not without problems. By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News] 12:50:39 PM comment
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© Copyright
2005
Omar Javaid
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Last update: 6/28/05; 12:03:59 AM .
Last update: 6/28/05; 12:03:59 AM .
