Dana Blankenhorn

Tomorrow's News Today: Google Chromebook #Fail

When I traveled to China in 2009 I had an HP Netbook with me.

It was a failure. It only had 2 Gigabytes of internal storage, which within a few months wasn't even enough to run Windows (which updates constantly). I bought a 32 Gbyte stick for it, but as that wasn't the primary drive Windows never recognized its full capacity.

Now Google has, through Samsung and Acer, introduced Chromebooks that solve all those problems.  And they, too, have Fail written all over them. 

The problem is not the operating system, or the dependence on online updating. (Ostatic seems to have a problem with that). The hardware itself is first-rate, with 32 Gigabytes of chip memory inside the box and a Linux that won't swallow it all, leaving plenty of room for applications.

The problem is the basic design.

The Big Opportunity in Home Servers

A lot of people are writing today that Apple has killed the home PC  with its iCloud and iOS announcements.

They haven't. The PC has been dieing for years. As a client.

But as a server? Not so much.

I know that the long-term talk about “media servers”  has proven to be a dead end. I'm talking about an opportunity that has existed for nearly a decade, which I first began labeling “the world of always-on.”

I'm talking of single-chip, specialty devices that can provide automation, security, inventory and medical services to our aging population.

• Devices placed in-line with lights, kitchen appliances, and any other system which uses energy, which can monitor the conditions of those devices, turning them on-and-off in response to a program.

• Single-chip cameras that can be turned on remotely, or via a program, to provide constant security.

• RFID chips placed on goods and even foodstuffs that can monitor the inventory and location of what you got.

• Medical devices that can monitor and report on health without outside intervention.

What Should Microsoft Do Now?

For some reason – maybe it's the fact that Microsoft now sells at the P/E of a medium-sized bank – the company is getting all sorts of advice.

Some of the dumbest advice comes from ReadWriteWeb, which thinks Microsoft Needs to Open Source Something Big But What?

Wrong question. Open source is not some magic elixir. It's a specific tool with a specific purpose. When you want collaboration you offer up the code. In the mid-2000s, this meant code you just wanted to shove over the side. More recently it's been important projects you needed others to commit to in order for them to succeed.

After the Carrier Death Spiral, Google

A “carrier death spiral” is what some are calling AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. (Others disagree.)

The merger raises the spectre of a renewed monopoly (as though the former SBC hadn't moved decisively in that direction years ago). The deal will take a year to clear although AT&T officials insist they have the stroke with the bureaucracy to get it done.

And they do. That's the problem.

I can't tell you how many trillions of dollars American consumers have paid over the last decades, over and above their real value, for wired and wireless bits, thanks to monopolistic practices we foresaw in the mid-1990s, tried to deal with, and then saw politics unravel.

The whole idea of the government, from the beginning, was to separate the infrastructure from the service. Thanks to a compliant Bush Administration, and Clinton appointees who were outmaneuvered, the Bell operating companies overthrew that deal. This led to the merger mania which now sees us with only three “choices” – AT&T, Verizon and Comcast – for most people just two of the three, and for others just one.

The Unstoppable Power of Communication

The most powerful force in the world is communication.

This medium brings more of it within reach of more people than any medium has before. (Pictured, the capital of Rwanda.)

When George W. Bush was in Africa this week reporters were astounded by the number of people there who supported Barack Obama, who seemed to know all about him.

And why not? Africa is filled with Internet cafes. Africans don't have to listen hopefully for a word from the BBC anymore. They can pick up The New York Times.

Recently I mentioned the idea that Obama should go to Kenya and try to sort out the growing crisis there. Turns out he's been there, via radio. He made a statement and took questions at the end of last month. This has not yet had an impact, as the struggle has morphed into a tribe-on-tribe war over land. But he was there, and could be again, at any time.

It's not just politics where this medium is making enormous change. It's in every facet of life. The turnaround in Rwanda is being driven as much by information as anything else. The use of sympathy to reach markets, and the opening of an online stock exchange,  is enabling capital to reach all of East Africa. Trouble in Kenya can now quickly move capital to Rwanda and vice versa. Rapid capital flows can create a gigantic incentive to make peace.

This Week's Clue: Liberate Moore's Law

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 48 of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of December 3.

Enjoy.

---

When this newsletter launched in 1997 it was called A Clue...to Internet Commerce.

As Internet Commerce became commerce, and as the process of doing business online became standardized, I began looking at other areas to cover and settled upon Moore's Law.

At the start of this decade Moore's Law was racing along on every front, and it seemed there was no way to stop it. So I wrote in my 2002 book. (That's it to the right. The beard is whiter now, but I still have the suit and it fits.)
 

I was wrong. There was a force that could stop many elements of Moore's Law in their tracks.

Politics.

The Biggest Lie in Technology

It's a lie that makes my blood boil every time I read it. (This cartoon, by Thomas Nast, is over 110 years old.)

The lie is that the U.S. telecommunications market is competitive, even hyper-competitive.

That lie was told again this week, by the Walt Disney Internet Group, when it announced its MVNO, a re-sale agreement with Sprint, would be closing. (The idiot in charge was engaging in some serious ass-covering.)

This followed similar announcements by Amp'D Mobile and by ESPN, another Disney unit. The only successful MVNO in the U.S. is Virgin Mobile, which is trying to go public in order to pay down its bills.

The plain fact is that the U.S. communications market, wired and wireless, phone, cable and Internet, is an oligopoly with very few participants, and that U.S. consumers have either few or no choices.

Return the Spectrum Commons

Some day, when Republicans are truly politically dead, not just wounded as they are now, we need to return to the idea of the Commons. (The picture of Bruce Kushnick to the left is getting a bit old -- send us a new one, Bruce!)

Not Communism, asshole. The Commons. Parks, forests, content, seas, air,  software...and most important, spectrum.

Right now, in Washington, so-called regulators and so-called competitors are doing their little spectrum dance again.

The headline on this Washington Post story is deliberately misleading -- it reads FCC Majority Backs Open-Access Plan for Airwaves. In fact that's just not true at all.

The plan of FCC chair Kevin Martin and two Democratic commissioners is to auction off all the spectrum being abandoned in 2009 by TV stations, and to  require but one-third of it built out so that all devices can use it. Martin resists even the idea of mandated wholesaling, which Google says is a pre-condition for its entry into the bidding.

The Corruption of Technology

Of all the corruptions during this decade, it's the Bush Administration corruption of technology that hit me the hardest.

When I use the word corruption, I am describing a deliberate policy of politicizing the development of technology, tearing at the process of change in order to put control into as few hands as possible, so as to control those hands.

This has been the pattern everywhere. The Bush Administration much prefers monopoly, or oligopoly, to real competition. Once such a goal is achieved, the few at the top can easily be manipulated, bribed, cajoled, or threatened into absolute support of the leadership.

I take the subject of technology personally, and have real-world experience with it. For nearly two decades, prior to this Administration, I watched technology change play itself out in successive waves.  No lead was safe. Those who were Clueless, or became so, went under practically before I could proclaim the word upon them. It was Darwinian, it was brutally competitive. It was also wonderful, and highly profitable. The raw capitalism of the 80s and 90s brought the U.S. economy to the very pinnacle of success, producing nearly a third of the world's products and services by the end of the last decade.

Now those days are gone. What we have instead is nothing less than state-directed corporate welfare. Moore's Law has been overturned by the War On Terror.

Routing Around The Bells

The evils of the Bell monopoly continue to get worse-and-worse.

Yet I remain optimistic. But first, let me vent a little.

So-called "broadband" users are still paying the same price for the same speeds as a decade ago, while the costs of actually moving the bits have fallen by more than a thousand-fold. Koreans consider our "broadband" a joke. And our wireless situation is no better. Every new auction is dominated by the same frequency hoarders, so we still pay $100 or more a month for what's essentially narrow-band wireless service. And nothing has been added to the unlicensed 802.11 spectrum, nor is it likely to be.

With the Bells facing a Congress which has other, more pressing business, and little appetite for more subsidies, it's getting what it wants from the states, where officials are incredibly ignorant. No one seems to understand that the AT&T push into "cable" is just an excuse not to liberate any bandwidth for true broadband Internet service.  Everything gets defined as a "service," with  an added monthly fee whether you use it or not, and nothing gets better, as it should under Moore's Law.

I'm facing nothing but crap from my cellular provider, Sprint. They only sell, they never service. They hid a $10/month "data" charge on my camera phone, they sold me a phone their other stores knew was a piece of crap (Motorola, you can go Chapter 7 now) and I'm paying $160/month for services I was told would cost $90/month, when their junk fees are added in. Trying to change anything in a store is impossible -- you have to go on-hold for an hour to talk with anyone. And this is the only national carrier alternative to the AT&T-Verizon duopoly -- it makes me want to spit.

Yet I remain optimistic. Here's why.