The New York Times has an article explaining the business model of the failed insurer AIG that is giving me a new perspective on why I walked out of a bank in New Mexico wondering whether it was worth it
Venture Capital falls off the cliff
Through all the bumps and strains in the broader economy, venture outlays kept up an almost eerily steady pace over the previous 21 months, ranging between $7.3 billion and $8 billion each quarter, from the start of 2007 to the
fault tolerant patent
So I don’t understand the novelty in the methods here over the Glazer patent. The replica supervisors provide interfaces to the replicas that are the same as the interface provided by the operating system. Thus, when one of the replicas
Great software patents: fault tolerance
software patent
The coming bust in venture cap
According to Forbes (thanks to Trevor Loy for the link) The venture capital industry is staring at the most vicious shakeout in its history. Returns are pathetic for most funds, the public offering pipeline on which venture depends for its
the male weirdness of computer science
ELLEN SPERTUS, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? She
Avaya’s bizzare business model
Years ago, we got some equipment from Avaya – not terrible, but not wonderful. A junior tech with no signature authority signed a contract with them that says in big letters on the top “until 2005”. In 2007 we got
Investors and software patents
Talking to possible investors, smart people with a lot of business experience, is a reminder of how critical patents are to innovative small business. Every new idea attracts imitators and worse, and small companies, by definition, do not have the
SCADA system security in the internet era
This Washinton Post article on a SCADA failure at a US nuclear power plant was noted in Slashdot, but not much elsewhere. Specifically, experts worry that vulnerabilities were introduced into the systems that regulate the electrical grid as power companies
Cleantech and history of software
I’m on my way to Linz, Austria to participate in a panel at an event called Cleantech Venture Forum. We’ve spent a lot of the last two years looking at ways to save power in data centers and mini-data centers