Senator Leahy Hands Republicans A Gift

Senator Leahy Hands Republicans A Gift By Giving Them Credit For Delaying Vote On PIPA/SOPA

Mike Masnick
Tue, Jan 24th 2012
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/04252717523/senator-leahy-hands-republicans-gift-giving-them-credit-delaying-vote-pipasopa.shtml

from the do-these-people-have-no-clue? dept

We've noted how intellectual property issues are historically non-partisan. Sometimes, that's good, because it means that debates on the issues don't fall into typical brain dead partisan arguments. Sometimes, it's bad, in that it basically means both Republicans and Democrats are generally really bad on IP issues... happy to give industries greater and greater monopoly rights for no good reason. However, we noted an interesting thing happening on the way to the collapse of PIPA and SOPA: the Republicans were first to come together as a party and decide to speak out against these bills, recognizing the groundswell of public interest. That resulted in Republican leadership coming out against the bills, and Republican Presidential candidates all rejecting the approach in the bill. The Democrats, who have traditionally been considered more "internet friendly," simply couldn't bring themselves to go against Hollywood and unions -- two regular allies.

However, as many more net savvy Democrats have explained, this appears to be a major miscalculation on the part of Democratic party leadership -- potentially losing an entire younger generation of voters to the Republicans. Already, mutliple strategists have been suggesting that the Republican Party use this as a chance to cozy up with Silicon Valley, despite its typically "blue" leanings (though, generally with a strong libertarian bent). It certainly appears that the Republicans are ready to do just that. House majority leader, Eric Cantor recently tweeted about meeting with Sergey Brin.

The Democratic leadership, however, still doesn't seem to recognize the importance of the tech community and the wider internet. Rather than learning anything from what happened last week, PIPA sponsor Senator Leahy is actually trying to blame the Republicans for killing PIPA. It's (yet again) an amazingly tone deaf response. It's as if he's pushing the internet and the tech community right into the Republicans' arms. Perhaps he's making a bet that those constituencies don't matter as much as Hollywood... but that seems like a pretty risky bet to make.

Senate will vote next month on Protect IP copyright bill

Declan McCullagh
December 19, 2011
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57345187-281/senate-will-vote-next-month-on-protect-ip-copyright-bill

The U.S. Senate will debate a controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bill as soon as senators return in January.

A vote on the Protect IP Act, a close cousin of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, will be held January 24, thanks to a last-minute push by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the weekend.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who calls Protect IP "a bipartisan piece of legislation which is extremely important."

"This is a bipartisan piece of legislation which is extremely important," Reid said Saturday. "I repeat, it is bipartisan. I hope we can have a productive couple of days, pass this bill, and move on to other matters."

Both Protect IP and SOPA have earned the enmity of Silicon Valley companies, Internet engineers, venture capitalists, civil libertarians, and a growing number of Internet users because of the methods they use to make suspected piratical Web sites virtually disappear from the Internet. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, author of the treatise American Constitutional Law, says this approach violates the First Amendment.

On Saturday, as the Senate was preparing to adjourn until 2012, Reid proposed that the initial debate on Protect IP would take place at 2:15 p.m. ET on January 24, one day after senators return from the holidays.

"I am pleased the majority leader has filed a motion to proceed to the Protect IP Act," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Protect IP's author, said afterward. "The costs of online infringement are American jobs, harm to America's economy, and very real threats to consumers' safety. The answer cannot simply be to do nothing."

In the House of Representatives, allies of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Association of America also are moving with dispatch. Even though the House is likely not to be in session then, SOPA author Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) has scheduled a vote on the legislation and related amendments for Wednesday, just in case.

"From our perspective we don't understand the rush, especially when these are dramatic policy changes with regard to the Internet," Markham Erickson, head of NetCoalition, whose members include Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo, and Google, told CNET today. "We think they ought to be handled in a very thoughtful and careful way."

One explanation for the rush to vote is that a groundswell of opposition among Internet users has become better organized and higher-profile in the last month--meaning that if SOPA and Protect IP supporters move quickly, they may be able to send one version of the legislation or another to President Obama for his signature.

Nearly 90,000 Tumblr users telephoned Congress to register their disagreement, and another 10,000 did using Engine Advocacy's Web site. More than 1 million people have signed a petition posted by the Avaaz.org advocacy group; over 700,000 people chose to "like" the AmericanCensorship.org anti-SOPA site.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a foe of Protect IP, has threatened to filibuster it on the Senate floor. "I will be working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle over the next month to explain the basis for this widespread concern, and I intend to follow through on a commitment that I made more than a year ago, to filibuster this bill when the Senate returns in January," he said over the weekend.

Reid's motion to end debate, which would require a three-fifths supermajority of 60 senators to invoke a procedure called "cloture," is a preemptive strike against Wyden's promised filibuster.

Invoking cloture would impose a 30-hour limit on the motion to end debate. There would then be a second 30-hour period on the bill itself, and a third 30-hour period if supporters want to amend Protect IP from the version approved by a committee in May.

Obtaining 60 votes to end Wyden's filibuster curb debate, however, may not be that difficult for Hollywood's allies in the Senate: Protect IP already has 41 sponsors. (During last week's House Judiciary hearing, copyright enthusiasts outnumbered critics of the bill by margins of three-to-one or four-to-one.)

A representative for Wyden, who has offered an alternative proposal, told CNET today that her boss is undaunted:

The senator is prepared to require the Senate to take multiple cloture votes and use all time allowed under Senate rules to prevent passage of this misguided bill, even if that means taking a full week of floor time or longer. And he intends to use every minute of that floor time to let colleagues know that there is a lot more to voting for Protect IP than doing a favor for industry lobbyists.

Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

Who Will Be the Next Steve Jobs?

Source: FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/07/next-steve-jobs

1. Mark Pincus
Have you played Farmville? Then you already know the work of Mark Pincus, the CEO and co-founder of a San Francisco start-up called Zynga that has made a killing with Facebook apps. According to an SEC filing, about 232 million people play Zynga games routinely. This past summer, the Wall Street Journal valued the five-year-old company at a hefty $15 billion to $20 billion. Pincus is a social marketing genius with a broad smile, bright ideas and plenty of charisma.

2. Caterina Fake
Fake has a long history of innovation -- her entrepreneurial record in Silicon Valley is legendary. She helped launch the site Flickr.com in 2004, which paved the wave for other Web 2.0 services that allow user contributions, tagging (to make images easier to find) and discussion over content. (The site was sold to Yahoo! in 2005. Her latest project, called Hunch.com, goes a step further, allowing users to share their preferences and create an on-going recommendation system for books, movies, or just about anything you can find on the Web.

3. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg has the same golden aura and visionary outlook of Jobs. The CEO and co-founder of Facebook said during a recent Facebook tech conference that his company stands at “the intersection of technology and social issues,” so he’s prone to make grand statements. His main contribution is building what's become a second Internet of sorts, a safe and mostly secure haven for storing your digital life: photos, conversations, news and more. The company is steadily closing in on 1 billion users on the network -- all of this, and the guy is only 27.

4. Jon Rubenstein
Born a year after Steve Jobs, in 1956, Jon Rubenstein worked at Apple up until 2006. According to Rob Enderle, a consumer analyst, Rubenstein was being groomed to replace Steve Jobs. He even has the same knack for creating a “reality distortion field” at product launches. Rubenstein helped create the original iPod but eventually left Apple for Palm. His efforts to create a new smartphone interface called WebOS fell flat: the company was eventually sold to HP. Still, there’s signs he will rise to prominence from within HP as a tech executive.

5. Marissa Meyer
Named one of the 50 most powerful woman by Fortune Magazine, Marissa Meyer has a bright tech future. A vice president at Google, this well-liked visionary is also the “face” of the company: She's said to have created the basic building blocks for the Google.com and Gmail interfaces. Meyer is well-spoken, chats easily with press and has a upbeat personality.

6. Dean Kamen
The inventor of the Segway, Kamen has the bright spark of the entrepreneur about him. And he's clearly got "that vision thing": When he invents something, it takes a while for people to realize how innovative it is. The Segway is still an uncommon sight on sidewalks, but lately he has worked with science foundations for kids, invented alternative engines and founded a research institute.

7. Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The co-founders of Google have a youthful exuberance about technology and a penchant for inventing products everyone uses. Even the mission statement at Google is far-reaching: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Charles King, an IT analyst at PUND-IT, says the two founders did more than just create a search engine -- they invented (or at least popularized) the idea of using the Web for data processing and storage.

8. Tony Hseih
Here’s a name you might not know, unless you've read his best-selling book about entrepreneurship, "Delivering Happiness." In the book, the founder of Zappos.com -- a shoe retailer now owned by Amazon -- makes a case for pleasing customers by making a company all about customer service. Hseih’s greatest gift is in communicating ideas, something that served Steve Jobs well throughout his career.

9. Michael Dell
A wild card pick, Michael Dell is a successful entrepreneur and visionary who started Dell in 1984. He’s older than Zuckerberg, who was born in 1984, and his contributions in tech have more to do with enterprise computing (the servers that run in a company), IT services (helping a business run efficiently) and direct marketing to consumers. His time may finally come now that HP has pulled out of the PC business.

Great American Garage Entrepreneurs

October 6, 2011
http://www.history.com/news/2011/10/06/great-american-garage-entrepreneurs

Setting up shop in a garage may sound like a cliché, but did you know that a number of thriving American businesses really got their start that way? One of the most famous examples is, of course, Apple Inc., founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, and his friend Steve Wozniak. Find out about their brainchild and other major companies that trace their roots to humble birthplaces.

Apple Inc.
On April Fool’s Day in 1976, 21-year-old Steve Jobs and 25-year-old Steve Wozniak established Apple Computer, later known simply as Apple Inc. Pioneers in the burgeoning world of personal computers, the pair worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Jobs, a college dropout, became one of the great innovators of the digital age, transforming not just his original field but also music, animation and mobile communications. He died at 56 on October 5, 2011, after a long struggle with cancer. Apple’s notable products include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iTunes, the Mac OS X operating system and Final Cut Studio.

Hewlett-Packard
Considered the first American technology business to launch behind a garage door, Hewlett-Packard was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who had scraped together an initial capital investment of $538. At the time, Packard and his new wife Lucile lived in an apartment next door and Hewlett camped out in a shed on the property, located in Palo Alto, California. After developing a range of electronic products, the company entered the computer market in 1966 and is now one of the world’s largest technology corporations. The one-car garage where it all began is a designated California historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Walt Disney Company
In 1923, the Missouri-born cartoonist Walt Disney moved to Los Angeles with his brother Roy to make short films that combined animation and live action. They spent several months producing their first series, the “Alice Comedies,” out of their uncle Robert’s garage before relocating to the back of a realty office and finally to a studio. Now the world’s largest media conglomerate, the Walt Disney Company became a leader in film, television, travel, leisure, music and publishing. In 2006, it acquired Pixar Studios from another veteran of a California garage: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer. Robert Disney’s garage was saved from demolition in 1984 and donated to the Stanley Ranch Museum.

Mattel
When Ruth and Elliot Handler, who had met in an industrial design course, started making picture frames in their California garage, they probably never thought their venture—Mattel—would grow into the world’s biggest toy manufacturer. More or less by accident, they wound up crafting dollhouse furniture and later children’s playthings out of spare wood scraps. In the late 1950s, Ruth determined there was a market for dolls that looked like “grown-ups”; ignoring her husband’s objections, she designed a prototype and named it after their daughter, Barbie. (Ken, named for their son, followed soon after.) Mattel struck gold with the new line, and in 1968 Ruth became the company’s president.

Google
Long after Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer made their unpretentious debuts, another technology powerhouse came screeching out of a Silicon Valley garage. After developing a groundbreaking search engine for a research project, Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki, a friend and future employee. The company, which has since branched out into numerous other areas, now runs the most visited websites on the Internet and boasts locations around the world. In 2006, Google bought Wojcicki’s house—and the garage where its vast empire began.

Yankee Candle Company
In 1969, 17-year-old Michael Kittredge of South Hadley, Massachusetts, couldn’t dig up enough cash to buy his mother a Christmas present. On a whim, he melted down some crayons in his parents’ garage and made her a scented candle. When neighbors began expressing interest, Kittredge, who needed a hobby since his rock band had just broken up, recruited some friends and began churning out candles. By the following year, the booming business had taken over the Kittredge home, so the young entrepreneurs moved into a dilapidated mill. Today, the Yankee Candle Company is the leading U.S. candle manufacturer, with hundreds of retail locations, international distribution and multiple product lines.

California bucks national political trend

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd3991ac-e770-11df-b5b4-00144feab49a.html

California bucks national political trend
Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles
November 3 2010

California lived up to its reputation for bucking national political trends when its voters rejected Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, two former Silicon Valley chief executives who broke campaign spending records, halting Republican gains that had swept across the rest of the US.

Ms Whitman, former chief executive of Ebay, spent more than $140m of her own money and $160m in total on her campaign to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of the most populous state. Yet she lost to Jerry Brown, her Democratic opponent.

Ms Whitman’s record-breaking sum outstripped the $109m spent by Michael Bloomberg in his 2009 campaign to be re-elected mayor of New York. She failed to strike a chord with voters despite blanket television commercials that characterised Mr Brown as a weak-willed union stooge unwilling to take the “tough decisions” needed to put California back on track.

“We’ve come up a little short,” she told supporters in her concession speech. “But certainly not for lack of hard work, determination and a clear vision for making our state better.”

Ms Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, did not spend as much as Ms Whitman yet poured millions of dollars of her own money into her campaign to unseat Barbara Boxer in the Senate race. Yet she was unable to prevent voters backing Ms Boxer in what was an 11th consecutive election win for the Democratic senator.

Ms Fiorina “walks in that far right lane”, Ms Boxer told supporters this week. “And that is not where the majority of Californians walk.”

For Mr Brown, victory is the latest chapter in an extraordinary political career that will return him to a position he has held twice before. Mr Brown, who earned the sobriquet “Governor Moonbeam” for his liberal views, was California’s youngest governor when he was first elected in 1975, following in the footsteps of his father, Edmund “Pat” Brown.

At 74, Mr Brown is now the oldest governor the state has ever had. “I want everyone in California to know we might, and we will, have tough times, but if we all pull together . . . tell it like it is, and level with you, we can meet the challenges ahead,” he told his supporters in an e-mail.

Mr Brown spent only a fraction of the Whitman campaign. But he is a wily campaigner: his ratings surged on last month’s news Ms Whitman had employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper for nine years.

In beating Ms Whitman he seems to have avoided the anti-establishment mood that drove Democrats from office elsewhere in the US.

This may be because of his quirky personality and willingness to speak his mind. When asked during the campaign whether he would devote his attention to the job if elected, he said: “At 74, I’m ready. I now have a wife, I come home at night and I don’t try to close down all the bars in Sacramento like I used to when I was last governor of California.”

Carly Fiorina wrong for HP, wrong for California

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/26/EDFT1G2A5C.DTL

Carly Fiorina wrong for HP, wrong for California
Jason Burnett, Eric Gimon
San Francisco Chronicle
October 26, 2010

In her run for the U.S. Senate, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is telling California voters she will bring change to Washington. Should she get elected, we believe she will let them down just as she did the employees and shareholders of HP.

As members of the Hewlett and Packard families, we heard Fiorina make this same promise of change when she took over the pioneering Silicon Valley company our grandfathers started in a Palo Alto garage in 1939.

When Fiorina came to Hewlett-Packard in 1999, the company was still hewing closely to the guiding vision that our grandfathers laid out, which put a premium on integrity, respect for employees and a focus on how the company's work would benefit the broader community. It was known simply as the HP Way.

During her brief tenure at HP, Carly Fiorina broke from these core values - and nearly destroyed a great company.

She ruptured the collaborative relationship between employees and management, which for decades had fostered a talented and loyal workforce. In stark contrast to our grandfathers' track record of avoiding layoffs, Fiorina laid off tens of thousands of employees, shipping many of those jobs overseas.

Rather than the team-oriented approach that had characterized HP since its founding, Fiorina instituted a top-down culture. She got herself on the covers of glossy magazines. Most good CEOs put employees, shareholders and customers ahead of themselves. Fiorina appeared to put herself first. While she asked employees to make sacrifices - including giving up their profit-sharing plan - she took more than $100 million in pay and perks.

She pursued a growth-at-all-costs strategy, which culminated in the merger with Compaq that sparked a divisive fight over the legacy of the HP Way.

What were the results? During her time at HP, shareholders were disappointed by the company's poor stock performance. Employee morale plummeted. Independent management experts and multiple publications have dubbed her one of the worst CEOs of all time. Even Wall Street celebrated when Fiorina was fired, sending HP's stock up. What does it say that HP was worth billions of dollars more with Fiorina gone?

While Fiorina's values were wrong for HP, we believe they would be devastating for California and the nation. On the paramount issue of jobs, she has opposed major jobs bills over the last two years, including efforts to help small businesses.

Fiorina has said she's running on her record at HP. We urge California voters to take a closer look.

She was the wrong choice for HP. She is the wrong choice for the U.S. Senate.

Jason Burnett, founder of Burnett EcoEnergy in Carmel, is the grandson of David Packard. Eric Gimon, a physicist living in Berkeley, is the grandson of Bill Hewlett.

This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Fiorina, Hurd: no practitioners of 'The HP Way'?

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0822209420100808

Fiorina, Hurd: no practitioners of 'The HP Way'?
Sun Aug 8, 2010
* "The HP Way" under siege
* Culture helped shape Silicon Valley
* Deterioration began when outsider Fiorina brought in
Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard would not be amused.

The founders of Hewlett-Packard -- some say Silicon Valley itself -- built their empire on a people-centric management model they christened "The HP Way." But author and veteran tech journalist Michael S. Malone says that mantra has come under siege in past years, culminating in the exit on Friday of CEO Mark Hurd following a sexual harassment inquiry.

Stanford alumni Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in the 1950s outlined the tenets of a corporation that embraced performance bonuses, employee shares, ground-level decision-making, even tuition aid and allowing workers to leave early to get to Little League games. Business 101 today, novel at the time.

Malone said that long-held philosophy came under siege with the arrival of outsider Carly Fiorina -- who was ousted after a reign marked by the unpopular, costly acquisition of Compaq and a lackluster share price. Fiorina has said however she felt the "HP Way" was an excuse not to innovate, an impediment to change in a rapidly evolving tech corporate landscape.

Then Chairwoman Patricia Dunn quit in 2006 after accusations that HP had hired gumshoes to obtain phone records of board members and journalists.

Now Hurd, who HP said falsified expense reports to conceal his relationship with a contractor, has laid further waste to the "Way," said Malone, author of "Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the Word's Greatest Company.

HP's investigation did not find any violation of its sexual harassment policy, but did unearth instances where its code of conduct was violated, the company said.

"At its peak, HP had levels of trust inside the organization that had never been seen before in the corporate world and has never been seen since in a company of that size," he told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

"In a sense this was a double betrayal, he betrayed the corporate culture and ultimately he's now betrayed the dreams of all those HPers who were beginning to believe in the company again," said Malone, who worked public relations for HP from 1975 to 1979.

Malone says the basic philosophy came under fire after Fiorina -- the first outsider to take the CEO role -- was hired, and sought to impose a top-down style while rendering herself a lot less accessible than her predecessors.

Fiorina -- now a strong challenger to incumbent Barbara Boxer for a California Senate seat -- counters that too many at HP were resistant to much-needed restructuring.

"Bill and Dave had once been radicals and pioneers. Now, I'd seen too many instances where a new idea was quickly dismissed with the comment: "We don't do it that way. It's not the HP Way." The HP Way was being used as a shield against change," she said on her website, www.carlyfiorina.com.

WAY'S HEYDAY

"The HP Way" had its heyday in the 1960s, and today is credited with helping grow the corporation from a $538 garage outfit in 1939 into the $125 billion behemoth it is today. www.hpalumni.org/hp_way.htm

There was an emphasis on life outside of work: HP bought up land for recreational activities around the world, and pioneered Friday afternoon beers at the office, for instance.

Experts like Malone say that approach became a model adopted by many in Silicon Valley -- including crosstown peers like Apple Inc and Cisco -- and helped differentiate the technology giants on the U.S. West Coast from their more strait-laced brethren back east.

Hurd was never an especially fervent admirer of Bill and Dave's tenets. But he restored the reputation for success that had waned under Fiorina, he said.

He was credited for turning around the company and more than doubling its share price during his tenure. Plying a belief in rigid cost discipline, he drastically shed staff -- something largely avoided before Fiorina.

"Outside of Steve Jobs at Apple, it's hard to imagine a CEO that is more important to his company than Mark Hurd to Hewlett-Packard. He did a massive turnaround job," said Motley Fool analyst Rick Munarriz.

But with Hurd's departure, the company has the chance to re-establish the core of the "Way", said Malone, who credited him however with making important changes.

"What Hurd did was he went in and he didn't exactly embody 'The HP Way', but he understood it enough to get people back working again, and he restored that legacy of continuing success. HP is a world-beater company right now.

"'The HP Way' has been pretty battered, there's not many people left there who really have lived it. But the spirit is embedded in the DNA of the company," Malone said. (Editing by Edwin Chan and Diane Craft)

I.B.M. Reportedly Will Buy Rival Sun for $7 Billion

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/technology/business-computing/03blue.html

I.B.M. Reportedly Will Buy Rival Sun for $7 Billion
By ASHLEE VANCE and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Published: April 2, 2009

I.B.M. appears on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, a longtime rival in the computer server and software markets, for nearly $7 billion.

The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement that would turn I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers and related technology.

I.B.M. is offering $9.50 a share, down from a bid of $10 a share, said people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. The new agreement would restrict I.B.M.’s ability to walk away from the deal, these people said.

Even at $9.50 a share, the deal would value Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., at close to $7 billion. It is close to a 100 percent premium based on Sun’s value before rumors of an acquisition spread last month.

Representatives of I.B.M. and Sun declined to comment. People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. I.B.M.’s board has already approved the deal, they said.
I.B.M., based in Armonk, N.Y., has spent weeks poring over Sun’s patents and licensing agreements. Some 100 lawyers have been working in a hotel in Silicon Valley on intellectual property matters.

Although in a slump of nearly a decade, Sun is one of the largest sellers of server computers and is known for systems based on its Sparc chips. It has a vast software portfolio, including the Solaris operating system , the open-source MySQL database and the Java programming language.

“Sun has obviously been a lost child for many years, but they have some great assets,” said Rebecca Runkle, director of technology research at Research Edge, an equities analysis business. She said that Sun and I.B.M.’s cultures would mesh in their commitment to large research and development projects.

Sun’s software assets would fit into I.B.M.’s long-term strategy of chasing higher-profit software and services sales. It could also give I.B.M. more strength in competing against Oracle, which has sold its database software on top of Sun systems for years.

I.B.M.’s acquisition of Sun would disrupt that long partnership with Oracle. I.B.M. could also undercut Oracle by more actively promoting the free MySQL software, which has become the most popular database software with Internet companies.

Hardware inherited from Sun could present antitrust concerns. I.B.M. faces an antitrust complaint from T3 Technologies over its dominance in the mainframe market. By buying Sun, I.B.M. would gain close to total control over robotic tape storage devices used to file data on mainframes.

Sun has a sales and technology partnership with Fujitsu for the sale of Unix servers. If I.B.M. buys Sun, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard will be the combined company’s only major competitors in the Unix market, a possible concern for regulators here and in Europe. Sun faces a patent infringement lawsuit from the storage maker NetApp and has countersued. NetApp has a sales pact with I.B.M.

Silicon Valley executives, including Paul S. Otellini, chief of Intel, have said that Sun has spent months seeking a suitor.

Shares of I.B.M. rose more than 3 percent on Thursday, to $100.82, and Sun’s shares rose more than 2 percent, to $8.21.

Steve Lohr contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 3, 2009, on page B2 of the New York edition.

Test driving the electric Tesla Roadster

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12003362

Test driving the electric Tesla Roadster in Silicon Valley
By Matt Nauman
Mercury News
03/26/2009

What defines a sports car? Until recently, it was design, performance and sound — the deep, throaty rumble of a Corvette's V-8, for example, or the machined purr of a Porsche 911 Turbo.

Then came the electric and electrifying Tesla Roadster. A half-day spent thrashing a Tesla on the curvy ribbons of road above Palo Alto and Woodside was enough to convince me that silence is golden.

And breath-taking. And scary.

The Roadster, in production since mid-2008 and now equipped with a re-engineered transmission, makes a strong statement about the future of driving.

Here's a car that can go very, very fast — 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds with a top speed electronically limited at 125 mph — yet all of its power comes from electricity. For a starting price of $109,000 — the one I tested was about $122,000 with options and delivery charge — you can get a two-seat machine that you can drive nearly 250 miles between charges.

Me? Starting from Tesla's Menlo Park showroom, which ironically used to be a Chevrolet dealership, I headed for the hills. Sand Hill Road is nearby, a neat juxtaposition as some venture capitalists were early backers of Tesla. The Roadster, painted a shade called electric blue that might be found on a Prada handbag, oozes athletic elegance, not AIG bonus excess.

Then it was onto I-280 before heading to Page Mill Road, Skyline Boulevard and other mountain roads. In all, I spent more than three hours behind the wheel, logging about 100 miles.

When I handed the keys back at the dealership, the range estimator said it had enough juice left for about 80 more miles. But I'm guessing the kind of aggressive driving that the Tesla encourages might have led to small reduction in range.

Using a 220-volt charger that most owners have installed at their homes, it takes about four hours to fully charge Tesla's battery pack. Owners get a small extension cord for quick "fill ups," although it would take about 36 hours to charge from empty to full using a standard household 110-volt outlet.

Built on the chassis of the Lotus Elise, the Tesla Roadster is a small, low-to-the-ground ride. Its rounded front end features hood louvers and jewel-like lights under a large covering. The rear is similarly subtle, with an unobstrusive spoiler and three round lights on each side. Neither the Tesla logo on the hood nor the TESLA in block letters on the trunk lid scream for attention.

Getting inside the Tesla's cabin required a bit of acrobatic skill that I'm surely missing. Think Steve Wozniak on "Dancing With The Stars.'' You step down and into the driver's seat, while sliding under the steering wheel. Getting out is easier, but not much.

Once inside, though, I found a comfortable seating position that fit with the sporty nature of the car. Our tester had Microfiber seats, and on this sunny afternoon, they were a better choice than the standard leather chairs that can make for a hot ride.

The interior design reflects a car that's functional, rather than overly luxurious. Four round air vents. Two gauges easily seen through the three-spoke, leather-wrapped Momo steering wheel. The JVC stereo/navigation system had good sound, but an after-market feel with its tiny buttons. I switched it off, and concentrated on the driving experience.

Between driver and passenger, knobs control temperature and air flow. With the Roadster's top down on this sunny afternoon, I ignored these functions as well. The shifter is remarkably simple — up for reverse, the middle notch for neutral and down for drive.

Spend some time on the Tesla's informative www.teslamotors.com Web site, and the simplicity of electric driving is revealed. While an internal-combustion engine might have 100 moving parts, the Tesla's powertrain has one, its rotor.

Indeed, four components move this machine. The battery pack contains 6,831 lithium-ion cells, which I'm sure are happier here than running some spreadsheet on a laptop. The 115-pound motor is designed to be efficient, making sure 85 to 95 percent of the car's power goes to moving its wheels. The transmission, which was an early bugaboo for Tesla, is now finalized as a single-speed gearbox. Finally, the power electronics module is the big brain in the trunk, managing acceleration, torque, regenerative braking and charging.

For a driver, it all works seamlessly. Put key in ignition, check your mirrors, stomp on what used to be called the gas pedal and drive. There's no clutch pedal, nor any feeling of changing gears. Torque is outlandish, and instantaneous.

Instead of a roaring V-8, you hear mostly road noise — air rushing around you, tires on pavement, an occasional "wow" or "whee" from your passenger. Indeed, the high-pitch whine from the electric powerplant reminds some of a washing-machine on a full spin cycle.

To me, it's a pleasant reminder of driving a car without a gas tank, without a tailpipe, without a need to be smog checked.

Handling was precise and the ride was tight, as you'd expect from a six-figure sports car. I'm not sure the brakes were as muscular as on some other cars on its class.

I was the first newspaper reporter to drive a Tesla back in 2006 when it was a novelty, an electric car that wasn't ready for primetime. Back in a finished version, I quickly appreciated the advancements, including working gauges, door handles and a sound system.

But my first impression didn't change. Fast? Check. Good looking? Check. Silent? Check. An afternoon drive? I'll take it.

Contact Matt Nauman at (408) 920-5701 or at mnauman@mercurynews.com.

Apple the new king of Silicon Valley

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/15/apple.apple

Google pipped - Apple the new king of Silicon Valley as market value overtakes hi-tech rival· Success of iPhone fuels huge surge in share price
· Fall in online advertising hits search engine's profits
Andrew Clark in New York The Guardian, Friday August 15 2008

Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino. Hi-tech rival Google is based only five miles away in Mountain View.
Photograph: Alamy

The sleek, touchscreen iPhone has proved so lucrative for Apple that the electronic gadgets manufacturer has unseated Google to become the most valuable company in America's cradle of technological innovation, Silicon Valley.

Queues outside Apple's stores are commonplace since the phone's launch a year ago as shoppers line up to get their hands on the prized device.

On Wall Street, the phenomenal popularity of the phone has fuelled a 44% surge in Apple's share price in 12 months. By the close of trading on Wednesday, Apple's market value had edged up to $158.8bn - a shade ahead of Google's $157.2bn.

Apple's predominance amounts to a shift in the balance of power in the hi-tech world. The company has repeatedly been able to eclipse rivals with its distinctive, easy-to-use designs. The iMac and the iPod continue to be firm favourites among laptop computer buyers and music fans.

Meanwhile, Google's once dazzling star has waned slightly as America's economic slowdown has eaten into online advertising and investors have wondered how the company can produce solid profits from expensive ventures such as the video-sharing website YouTube.

Scott Kessler, an equities analyst specialising in technology at Standard & Poor's in New York, said the twin fortunes of Apple and Google were central to the technological landscape: "These are the two companies most currently identified with the notion of innovation - not just in Silicon Valley or in this country but arguably in the world."

The milestone amounts to a reassertion of success by an older technological generation. Apple was founded by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 making it elderly in comparison to Google which has only existed for 10 years.

Experts say Apple's distinctive skill is its ability to reinvent itself with new products which are typically kept secret until the last possible moment.

"It's one of the few companies that has been able to internally develop a number of blockbuster products and killer applications," said Kessler.

Apple fans tend to attribute a large chunk of the company's success to the personal entrepreneurial instincts of Jobs, who is chief executive and is heavily involved in product development. When Jobs appeared to be gaunt and thinner than usual, Apple's stock briefly slumped last night before the company scotched rumours that he was ill.

While Apple and Google differ widely in their business models, they have a degree of personal overlap. Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, sits on Apple's board as a non-executive director. The companies are based barely five miles apart in a sprawling hi-tech corridor running south of San Francisco. Apple is in the town of Cupertino while Google is in neighbouring Mountain View.

Neither company offered any immediate reaction to the shift in supremacy. Apple did not return calls and a Google spokesman said: "We never comment on our stock price."

However, Apple has had few qualms about boasting of its prowess in the past. When the company's value overtook the computer maker Dell two years ago, Jobs sent out a companywide email reminding staff that Dell's founder had once predicted Apple's imminent demise.

"Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future," wrote Jobs. "Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today."

For Apple, the iPhone has provided an edge in creativity and convenience. When a 3G version of the phone came out last month, Apple sold a million of the handsets in a single weekend.

Google is comfortably the global leader in online searches but has seen slowing growth in "paid clicks" - the number of times users alight on lucrative advertisements. Google says this is because better tailored advertising has led to better quality, but less numerous, clicks.

Google's shares, which topped $700 late last year, have settled back to just over $500 - but the company's founders, Sergey Brin, 34, and Larry Page, 35, remain billionaires who travel the world on a customised Boeing 767.

The pair see conquering space as their next challenge and have put up a $20m prize to anyone who produces a privately financed spacecraft able to land on the moon.

Head-to-head

Apple

· Founded in a bedroom in Los Altos, California, by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976

· Recently settled a long trademark battle with the Beatles' record company Apple Corps, over use of the word "apple" to sell music

· Began as a computer manufacturer and has diversified into iPod media players, iTunes online music sales and, most recently, iPhone touchscreen mobile phones

· Apple's iTunes website has sold more than 5bn songs

· Annual sales of $24bn and profits of $3.5bn

Google

· Established by Stanford University graduates Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998

· Based initially in a garage in Menlo Park, California

· Named after the word googol - which is the number one followed by one hundred zeros

· Has expanded from a powerful internet search engine into online applications such as word processing and spreadsheet tools, and owns the video-sharing website YouTube

· The company slogan is "don't be evil"

· Annual revenue of $16.6bn and profits of $4.2bn

DVD FORMATS

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080220.RBLURAY20/TPStory/?query=Toshiba

DVD FORMATS: HOW SONY'S BLU-RAY TRIUMPHED OVER TOSHIBA'S HD
Stringer makes his mark
Sony's CEO led his company to victory in the high-definition sweepstakes by convincing the major studios to come aboard
BARRIE MCKENNA AND MATT HARTLEY
February 20, 2008

WASHINGTON, TORONTO -- Howard Stringer made history in 2005 for being the first non-Japanese executive to take the helm at Sony Corp. But he may be better remembered as the one who won the high-definition war, erasing the stain on the electronics firm's image ever since it lost the videotape war two decades earlier.

Although celebrated yesterday, the victory was sealed last month when Sony swayed Warner Bros. to back Sony's Blu-ray technology and quit producing movies using Toshiba Corp.'s rival HD DVD format.

What remains a mystery is just how big a push Warner needed to pick sides. Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments.

It was supposed to be the technology equivalent of First World War trench warfare: A prolonged battle to the death between Toshiba and Sony for global domination in high-definition DVDs.

In the end, the denouement was more like Germany's swift 1940 end run of the Maginot line.

Less than two years after its first HD DVD player hit the market, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida raised the white flag, declaring yesterday that it would stop making and selling the devices altogether within a month.

Toshiba's unconditional surrender leaves the spoils to Sony, maker of the rival Blu-ray disc player - a technologically superior format that had the backing of virtually all the major movie studies and retailers.

"We simply had no chance to win," Mr. Nishida acknowledged bluntly.

The final straw, he said, was Warner's decision last month to exclusively release movies in Blu-ray. The decision by Warner, with about 20 per cent of the movie market, put a critical mass of the industry in the Blu-ray camp.

With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated.

So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end?

The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.

For more that 20 years, Sony has been "haunted by Betamax" and was fiercely determined not to let history repeat itself, explained Xavier Drèze, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school.

"Sony was much smarter," Prof. Drèze said. "They understood this time they couldn't do it alone. They understood that they needed strategic partnerships with industry players."

The war was over when Sony managed to line up a critical mass of partners - in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and on Main Street.

The tipping point was Warner Bros. But Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. had already done the same - signing exclusive sealed deals with presumably rich royalty arrangements.

"This was heavy hitters in a back room talking about what the royalty structure was going to be and how much money they were willing to put on the table to be exclusive with one camp or the other. That was the determining factor here," concluded Van Baker, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Inc.

Until last month, Warner had been backing both technologies.

Last Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it would sell only Blu-ray DVDs. Officials said "customer feedback" prompted its decision.

Netflix Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Target Corp. had earlier done the same.

"Everyone was tired of the format war, the retailers were tired of it, the consumer electronics vendors were tired of it and they just wanted this thing to get settled," Mr. Baker said.

"Consumers and the industry learned the hard way with Beta and VHS that a prolonged format war was disastrous. There was a lot of motivation to get one or the other to win and the only thing that protracted it was the amount of money flying around."

The groundwork for Sony's stunning victory, however, came months, even years ago. Prof. Drèze said Blu-ray had several things going for it that helped it to build loyalty with consumers and the industry.

Six years ago yesterday - and years before the first Blu-ray disc or player was sold - Sony had lined up most of the other computer and electronics makers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple and Dell.

Sony also owned a major movie studio. So it could push its own technology.

Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection.

Sony also used its PlayStation video game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player, as a sort of "Trojan horse," Prof. Drèze said.

Sony has already sold 10.5 million of its PS3 consoles, compared with roughly one million HD DVD players. PlayStation buyers, he said, unwittingly embraced Blu-ray and undermined HD DVD.

Ultimately, the technology is superior. Blu-ray can hold up to three times more data (200 gigabytes versus 60) and offers higher resolution.

In the end, it could be a pyrrhic victory for Sony. The age of hard copy discs is already giving way to digital downloads, stored and played from PCs, iPods and other portable devices.

"I don't think the heyday of DVD is going to return," said Mr. Baker, the analyst. "For most consumers, digital downloads are going to be very appealing."

How Sony lost Betamax

1 QUALITY OVER

QUANTITY Despite better picture quality, Sony's original Betamax tapes could record only one hour of video, while rival VHS tapes could store double that.

2 SECRET RECIPE

Sony initially failed to license its Betamax technology to a sufficient number of manufacturers, thinking it could go it alone. This led to a situation where VHS players competed against one another for share, driving down prices and making the format more attractive to consumers.

3 BUYING V. RENTING When both systems arrived in the United States in the mid-1970s, VHS machines were less expensive to rent. When consumers began to purchase rather than rent their video players, they tended to go with VHS machines. 4PORN CONUNDRUM Sony refused to license the Betamax technology to adult film companies, who turned to VHS tapes and ended up creating a multibillion-dollar industry.

How Sony won Blu-ray

1 BIGGER IS BETTER

Sony's Blu-ray discs can store upward of 50 gigabytes of data on a single disc, while HD DVDs hold about 30 gigs.

2 PLAYSTATION 3

By including a Blu-ray drive in its next-generation video game console, Sony was able to drive sales of both the PS3 and its new DVD format.

3 SOLID PARTNERSHIPS Not wanting to duplicate the Betamax mistake, Sony took the initiative to license its Blu-ray technology with as many partners as possible. When Blu-ray was first announced in 2002, Sony had already signed up eight partner companies committed to producing players.

4 CONTENT IS KING

By signing exclusive deals with more studios and content providers than Toshiba, Sony was able to squeeze its competitor to the sidelines. Warner's defection to Blu-ray was the fatal blow.

Matt Hartley

Dead technologies

Media formats we have used, loved and discarded for the next best thing

The cassette tape

A Walkman and roller skates, anyone? Tapes were the original portable format and made music pirates of us all. (Can I tape your Fleetwood Mac Rumors?) But they were hated by record companies. The sound quality tended to go tinny after a few dozen plays, and many tapes wound up melting in a car on a sunny day.

Eight tracks

Developed by plane maker Bill Lear, eight-track tapes were large and couldn't be rewound. And because of their high tape speed, didn't sound great. Nevertheless, they were popular in the 1970s, thanks to the auto industry, which installed thousands of eight-track players. When sales slipped, companies eager to pare formats quickly dropped the eight track. Vinyl

Cumbersome to play and easily damaged, albums faded out in the late 1980s. But album covers managed to become a genuine art form and another way to grab music buyers' attention. Lately, albums have a enjoyed a comeback, thanks to collectors, club DJs and scratching (ask your kids).
Compact discs

CDs are dead? They will be soon. Who needs all those plastic cases and discs when you can fill your hard drive and iPod with thousands of songs? Using a credit card, of course. Downloading music for free is wrong, isn't it?