I sometimes think that the best job in the world would be strategic thinking.
Every time I see a quote from a strategist, it's always five years out and
full of promise. You know the ones I mean. It goes something like this: "By
2005 every wristwatch will have a Pentium 7 processor and 2 GB RAM, with
voice recognition and holographic screen projection." It seems like nice
work, and there's no burden of delivery. It's even better than being the
weatherman.
At a time when Web services is in its infancy, I sometimes feel like I have
just that job. One of the interesting facets of editorial work is setting an
editorial calendar and selecting topics. Doing that for this first year of
Web Services Journal has been akin to looking into my crystal ball and
peering into the fut... (more)
To paraphrase, "I come not to praise the Browser, but to bury it." Because
the cold hard fact of application development is that the browser needs to
die. Immediately. It's already caused more than enough damage. This may seem
to be a harsh statement. After all, the browser was responsible for the
explosion of the Internet. It serves many useful purposes and people do
billions of dollars... (more)
People who know me would generally agree I'm a straightforward guy - I pretty
much just like to move in the direction I've said I was going, rather than
try to move from side to side and finesse something. So when it comes to
technology, I tend to like to go with technology because it makes sense, and
I usually assume that most IT organizations work that way as well.
But when you look at ... (more)
Back before I began my career in computers, I studied physics. One of the
concepts that fascinated me was that of nuclear fusion - bringing two
particles together to form a new, heavier particle and at the same time
producing energy.
In the business world, I find the concept of a merger between two companies
very much akin to the concept of fusion. You have two companies, which are
the ... (more)
There's a biblical story about a walled city called Jericho. In the story,
the walled city was under siege, and the folks who wanted in blew their horns
for seven days and then the walls all fell down.
The Open Group has an initiative based on this story, called Jericho
Security, which is based on the premise of security without walls. This is at
odds with most current concepts of securit... (more)