Dana Blankenhorn

The Cloud Starts Now

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 26 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One thing tech reporters often ignore, or forget, is that most companies don't live on the bleeding edge.

It's easier to ignore now, with the consumer market dominated by gadgets that anyone can afford, but which can go from latest-and-greatest to obsolete within a year.

The business computing market isn't like that. It's much bigger, and what works tends to keep working until it becomes obsolete.

So I make it a practice to connect, once in a while, with the realities of the business computing market. And I was fortunate that Red Hat invited me to witness their annual Summit in Boston, so I could listen to their customers.

There is no Debt Crisis

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 25 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I hate it when reporters lie.

Maria Bartiromo and Michele Cabruso-Cabrera have been doing this regularly. Lying.

They claim there is a debt crisis.

There isn't.

Talent Has Its Day

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 24 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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A lot of people are very worried about the economy right now.

I am not one of them.

The reason is my personal economy tends to follow what's going on in the wider world. I did great in the late 1990s, horrible in the early 2000s. I grew back later in the decade but then fell off during the Great Recession.

Now, it seems, I'm back on top again. Not because I'm a genius. But because today is a day when talent is in demand.

Last Roadblock to A New World is Removed

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 23 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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In writing about Ipv6 Day, which was Wednesday, reporters struggled to offer a sense of what it means.

We're about to run out of Internet addresses, they said. (Well, there's a workaround, but...) Remaining Ipv4 addresses are rising in price, and we're going to run out of new ones in 2014. (True, but...) Ipv6 is better – more efficient, more secure, inevitable. (As to the last, well, sorta...)

The fact, we've been kicking the can on this for a decade. Ipv6 was actually proposed in 1996, the idea being to expand the address space from four sets of three hexadecimal numbers each – xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx – to eight sets of four – xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx. Instead of having 32 bits – 4.3 billion addresses – you have 128 bits – 3.4 x 10 to the 38^th power addresses. You convert from one to the other by putting zeroes in front of the Ipv4 number.

The Lesson of Pyrolysis

You back a variety of technologies because you can't be certain where the breakthrough will come. You back losers because you don't want to miss the winner.

That's the big lesson of the biofuels business.

As the Department of Energy's Biomass program explains it,  technologies like methanol production from corn or cellulose, and the Fischer-Tropsch process used to convert algae to fuel, had the early advantage. But when scaled and perfected pyrolysis, in which waste is burned in the absence of oxygen, often at relatively low temperatures, will actually work better.

Had you been looking at the field three years ago, you wouldn't have bet on this. Back then it could cost $7.68/gallon to use pyrolysis for fuel. Even today the cost is $4.55/gallon. But savings across the board, most especially in turning the resulting feedstock into stable oil for refining, will drop that to $2.32/gallon in five years, with a final price estimated at $2/gallon.

Why We Don't Talk About It

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 22 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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1972. 1936. 1900. 1864.

That's about where we are on America's macro political calendar. We have a new set of assumptions, about power, about right and wrong, in a death struggle with the assumptions that came before it. This is the election on which the crisis turns.

But we don't talk about it. We can't. We talk past each other instead.

There's nothing unusual about this. Right now we are two separate countries – one “red” and one “blue” – and we live with different belief systems. Only one can survive.

It was like this once before, in my lifetime.