How many times yesterday did you do a web search that led you to a Wikipedia page that then didn’t load because of that site’s SOPA protest? I didn’t notice the effect immediately but once I did I was later able to go back through my browser history and see that I tried and failed to open a total of 13 Wikipedia pages so far. Whether you give a damn about SOPA or public protest, this experience has given me a whole new respect for the role Wikipedia has come to play in my life and probably yours.
As a result I made a small donation to Wikipedia around lunchtime then cursed it the rest of […]
Richard Alley, a geoscience professor at Penn State, drilled into the Antarctic a few years ago removing a half-mile ice core documenting the last Ice Age, which Alley determined had lasted 10,000 years then came to an abrupt end in only three years. That may seem an odd analogy for this week’s Consumer Electronics Show but it’s what came to mind when I saw story after story suggesting CES, too, might be winding down. I think it is. And I further think that maybe the only thing that might yet save CES in some form is Willie Nelson, or maybe Taylor Swift.
When I started this gig in September, 1987 Ronald Reagan was President, there was no commercial Internet, Oprah had been on the air for less than a year, and a fairly powerful PC was an IBM PC AT running at 8 MHz. In September that will have been 25 years and I think 25 years is probably enough.
Steve Ballmer has always been nice to me. I can’t say we have much of a relationship, but the half dozen times I have interviewed him have always gone well and he tries to please, which I appreciate. But (there’s always a but, isn’t there?) Ballmer has failed at Microsoft and I believe 2012 will see him replaced as Redmond’s CEO.