Here’s an interesting data point from Apple’s recent 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: The company has budgeted $1.9 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2010. That’s 70 percent more than the $1.1 billion it spent in 2009. What does Apple plan to do with those additional funds?
IBM continues to be one of the econalypse’s success stories. This afternoon, the company beat analyst expectations, posting a third-quarter profit of $3.2 billion, or $2.40 a share, on revenue of $23.6 billion. Net income was $3.2 billion, up 14 percent from year-ago earnings of $2.8 billion.
In the rhetorical battle over net neutrality, Google may have regulatory capitalism with which to bludgeon and batter AT&T, but AT&T has Benedictine nuns, an entire convent of them. In a 13-page letter to the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday, the carrier took issue with Google’s claim that its Google Voice service only blocks calls to adult sex chat lines, asserting that it also blocks calls to small businesses and Benedictine nuns.
The passing of a year hasn’t much changed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s opinion of cloud computing. Remarking on the industry’s sudden fascination with the concept at Oracle OpenWorld last September, Ellison reduced it to a thin sheen of windshield condensation. In conversation with former Sun CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.
If 2008 (or 2007, 06, 05, 04…) was the year April Fools on the Web jumped the shark, then 2009 was the year it was eaten by it. The Web is so overburdened with pranks this year, it may that the best April Fools announcement of all proves to be Palm’s, a company promising to deliver real news and not some over-thought hoax. Google alone has posted no fewer than 12 pranks–and none of them match Pigeon Rank in wit.
The debut of IBM’s Open Cloud Manifesto has proven more pratfall than grand entrance. When the controversial “standards” document–which calls for the cloud, like the Internet itself, to be open–finally went live this morning, it did so without a number of important signatories. Among them, the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum–a group that helped draft the document.
Salesforce.com has seen a fair bit of its value evaporate amid the economy’s downward spiral. But the same cannot be said of its business, which is apparently doing quite well. Posting fourth-quarter earnings today, Salesforce.com reported record revenue of nearly $290 million with annual sales exceeding $1 billion. Pretty damn good for a cloud computing company.
Who said the M&A market is dead? Sun Microsystems said this morning that it has acquired Q-layer, a company that automates cloud computing deployments. Meanwhile, Sun shares have been trading higher for a few days now, inexplicably up about 20 percent vs. Nasdaq, which isn’t doing nearly as well.
“We love everybody,” Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff said recently. “We even love Microsoft…. This is our core strategy, love.” Yes, the SAAS enterprise applications vendor loves everyone, but none more than Google.
If Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman are planning a membership drive for their new Anti-Cloud Computing Coalition, they best not go knocking on Steve Ballmer’s door. Because the Microsoft CEO might not agree with their assessment of the Cloud Computing sobriquet as “complete gibberish,” “idiocy,” “stupidity,” and “worse than stupidity.” At an event in London today, Ballmer said Microsoft will debut its own “cloud operating system” at its Professional Developer Conference at the end of this month.
It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: It’s a marketing hype campaign. Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true. One reason you should not use Web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s Web server, you’re defenseless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.
– Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman joins Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s Cloud Computing Skeptics Support Group
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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