Coop's Scoop: DNS for Dummies and other tales of woe
The axe is going to swing at WorldCom, which may hand out pink slips to more than 10,000 unlucky souls on Monday.
I'm just waiting for the lawsuits to start flying after the sham $17 billion auction of 422 wireless licenses that concluded this week. Remember how this was supposed to be for the benefit of small, so-called "entrepreneurial" outfits? Didn't turn out that way. In fact, many of the big carriers partnered or even wholly owned the bidders. Now that's entrepreneurship!
The dot-com no-show at the Sundance Film Festival will be even that much more in evidence during the SuperBowl. Years from now, we may look back on last year's SuperBowl as the high-water mark of dot-com advertising. What can you say? Times are tough, and people are more tough-minded about where they spend their money. Firing gerbils out of a cannon got a lot of ink during last year's Big Game. But how many of you can remember which company paid for that advertisement?
And though nobody asked me, I just thought I'd let you all in on a little secret: The Giants are going to upset Baltimore by at least 10. So it is written, so it shall be.
The week that was
Early word has it that both Hewlett-Packard and Compaq will be takers when Advanced Micro Devices rolls out a notebook version of its Athlon chip. Intel will doubtless respond, but has anyone noticed AMD's stunning transformation in the last year? Jerry Sanders' minions have totally shucked their former well-earned reputation as the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Management's eliminated the production snafus that always cropped up just as worst moment and has convinced all the important PC makers -- Dell the lone exception -- to sign deals.
Redmond was Pratfall Central this week as Microsoft's duck-and-cover routine came in for scalding criticism. First a technician's mistake screwed up the company's routers and fried outside access to Microsoft Web sites. To make matters worse, Microsoft's architects had apparently set up all the DNS servers on one subnet so that they were accessed through a single router. It took a full day before Microsoft fixed the glitch. But by then, hackers had gotten wind of this soft underbelly and launched a denial-of-service attack.
Speaking of the House that Bill built: Microsoft haters may have had a field day, but truth be told, this isn't the only company guilty of leaving itself vulnerable. Turns out that a study by a Finnish consultancy found that about 38 percent of .com domains have the same DNS configuration problem that brought down Microsoft.
Is it just me, or does Michael Powell's FCC vote on the merger between America Online and Time Warner smack of something unsavory? Yes, he was cleared by the Federal Communications Commission's general counsel, but papa Powell (first name Colin) is nonetheless a former AOL board member. Junior should have recused himself from the vote.
Led by old Compaq hands Gary Stimac and Mike Swavely, server company RLX is planning a server line build around Transmeta's chips. FiberCycle and Amphus are also slated to release Web servers using Transmeta processors. So, might California's energy crunch thus turn into a marketing boon for Transmeta? If they're smart, the brain trust at Transmeta will pound this theme to death in coming weeks.
The sad saga at Excite@Home took a turn for the worse with the announcement of a staggering $5.4 BILLION and the announcement that it was dumping its DSL plans as part of a new strategy to top biting off more than it could chew. Maybe somebody from management will now stand up and be candid about what the rest of the world already knows: This 1999 merger between an Internet broadband provider and a "content company" has been a royal flop.
More jockeying over the future of software standards. After signing off on a settlement with Sun, Microsoft lost little time in going after Java developers. The promise: A suite of software tools to translate Java software to support .Net.
Whatever happened to Novell? Pre-briefings about new products and marketing initiatives supposedly in the pipeline notwithstanding, this once high-flyer is becoming less and less relevant by the month. And I don't say that with any glee.
Last year's ruling by New York federal Judge Lewis Kaplan prohibiting links to the DVD-cracking code DeCSS has triggered a run of filings before an appeals court, arguing that the good judge inadvertently issued an unconstitutional restraint on free speech. It took enough time for these folks to get their act together but the stakes are high. Kaplan issued his dopey ruling in a suit brought by the Motion Picture Association of America against the hacker publication, 2600.
In the news
MS woos Java crowd
Novell looks to avoid death spiral
Who needs a PC? Handheld market doubles
Nothing says free speech like hacking code
Shipping issues nag G4 rollout
Intel to slash prices over 40 percent
ICANN names new prez
Now it's Dell's turn to warn on earnings
Juno uncorks high-speed software subscriptions