Better late than never…
BBC Radio 4 called this weekend hoping I would be willing to be interviewed in the middle of the night for their celebration of what they were calling “the 50th anniversary of the microchip,” which I came to understand meant the planar process that made possible the first integrated circuit.
But this is the 52nd anniversary. The BBC is running two years late.
I broke it to them gently.
If you are interested in those events of 52 years ago, here is a presentation all about it from the Computer History Museum back in 2009. This is a long video at 1:42 but be sure to look for Gordon Moore’s Powerpoint presentation, which runs about 20 […]

Successful technology startups are usually those that hit the market in a sweet spot — where market conditions create significant demand just as the startup is introducing its product. From the look of the rapidly-consolidating hard drive business, it might appear that I’ve missed the sweet spot with the metal foil disk technology some readers may remember I’ve been working on for several years. Hopefully not. But in any case it is probably time for an update.
I was in Los Angeles last Friday for TV meetings and lost my iPhone 4. It was on my belt and suddenly it wasn’t. Then in one of those deja vu experiences I noticed that I was only steps from an Apple Store, so I went inside to trace my iPhone using the Where is my iPhone? app. But my iPhone was nowhere.
While we’ve gone close to a decade since 9/11 without airliners smashing into skyscrapers, it is hard to see the Department of Homeland Security as an unvarnished success. Under a variety of directors the department has consistently taken a heavy-handed approach to security that upsets travelers on the left and right alike, relies too much on fear-mongering, and is frequently just plain incompetent. Yet these are the folks who are now about to take over cyber-security, too. I think there is a better way.
A few months ago I wrote