Tech Buzz

OPINION

Has Google Crossed Over Into True Evil?

The reason we keep asking about Google and evil is because early in their existence they appeared to create a policy of not being evil. This was most unusual, but since then the invasions of privacy and moves like taking self-driving cars on the road without approval and in early testing seemed to...

Amazon has a big announcement to make on Sept. 6, according to invitations to an upcoming event in Santa Monica the company recently sent. Amazon's announcement will come about a year after the online retailer launched the Kindle Fire. The timing has given rise to speculation that this time Amazon p...

In Silicon Valley where Apple is located, burglaries are up more than 30 percent, largely because police have stopped responding to them. If you are reasonably well off, particularly if you are Asian, and you like nice stuff, the chance you'll get burglarized near Apple's new headquarters is approac...

I was reading James Kendrick's column on Windows 8 tablets over last week, and he is clearly having trouble adapting to what is becoming a tablet world. James and I came from the first age of personal computers. I'm pretty sure he's younger than I am, and I think he is showcasing what will be a prob...

We watch citizens overthrow governments and assume the same thing couldn't happen here. But we have had one big civil war in the U.S., and several states -- including California, where I live -- have been talking about getting out of the U.S. for decades. What appears to keep us together isn't the p...

The details of the recent Colorado massacre are bothering me this week. What bothers me the most is that both political parties seem to take an event like this and use it to further an agenda. The right wants everyone to get armed, and the left wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. The ...

On Facebook's earnings call Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg seemed to deny that the company would be developing its own branded smartphone, presumably an effort to put to rest growing speculation -- mostly attributed to unnamed sources -- about a Facebook phone under development at HTC. Building a smartph...

OPINION

Obama vs. Romney: An MBA's View

I've been watching the battle for the White House with some trepidation, largely because I believe that given how dysfunctional Congress is, even a god would be ineffective as president. I voted for and have largely been disappointed in Obama who has so far repeated most of Jimmy Carter's mistakes....

Forced Employee Ranking, a process that ensures incompetence in companies, has been sourced, as a failure, to Jack Welch -- the guy credited with turning around GE. I began to wonder if much of what he was credited with actually created what now appears to be a cancer in that company, and in Microso...

New details about a possible forthcoming smartphone from Amazon continue to surface. The Internet retailer's testing a smartphone right now and may begin mass production late this year or early in 2013, according to a recent report. The phone could have a screen measuring between four and five inche...

The last time we had a major "social networking" type of effort it was with collaboration, and the poster child for the effort was Lotus Notes. It largely failed -- not because the idea wasn't a good one, but because the company fundamentally didn't understand that the market was being made hostile ...

The iPad is an interesting product. It is basically a light Mac netbook lacking a keyboard but with touch. Had any other company brought this to market, it probably wouldn't have sold. The most successful product in its class that isn't an iPad is the Samsung Galaxy tablet, and it so close to an iPa...

Bowing to fan outrage over the controversial ending of "Mass Effect 3" earlier this year, BioWare is releasing an "extended cut" version of the last game in the space epic trilogy. The game, expected to be made available Tuesday, will answer many of the complaints users had about the original ending...

OPINION

The Death and Rebirth of Microsoft

Last week, Microsoft effectively ended the model that created it. This shouldn't have been a surprise, as the model hasn't been working well for years and, as a result, Microsoft has been getting its butt kicked all over the market by Apple. Well Microsoft apparently has had enough, and it decide...

The United States is battling over proposed United Nations regulations that could place new burdens and restrictions on Internet companies and users. The trouble is rooted in the decision of the UN's International Telecommunication Union to overhaul International Telecommunication Regulations th...

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