Tech Buzz

Here in Silicon Valley, otherwise known as drama central, we live for conspiracy theories, have vampire CEOs who are rewarded for bleeding their companies dry, and even have executives who have their own fighter planes and are at war with each other. You would think we would have a few good conspira...

At one time, HP was such a nice, quiet company. It was a relatively steady firm known for loyal employees, solid ethics, and products you could trust but not necessarily get excited about (unless you loved calculators and were part of the pocket protector set). While I think excitement is grand, I'm...

Out in the Florida swamps, where men may be swamp things and believe in a jealous divinity, a crackpot pastor decided to commemorate Sept. 11 by the time-honored practice of book burning. In this instance, the book was the Quran. That act of lunacy roiled the nation, arousing criticism from the Whit...

The entire future of a company or industry can hinge on one little deal. The $50,000 IBM paid to license Windows was the foundation for Microsoft and the technology industry for the last couple of decades. Apple's licensing contract with Portal Player to create the iPod was nearly as big -- and ce...

Cloud computing, technology delivered over the Internet, has become a hot area in the last few years. The technology marketplace moves at breakneck speeds, but it is still shocking when innovation almost completely wipes out squabbles like those over open source vs. proprietary software. "In a cloud...

This week, Apple is expected to announce a refresh of several iPod products (including the touch) and possibly the Apple TV. The real drama remains with its higher-profile offerings -- the iPhone and iPad -- and last week, Qualcomm gave a credible look at their compelling future. However, with phone...

Technology is a wonderful thing. It has given us many good things, including the pacemaker, the radio, TV, prosthetic limbs and eyes that help the lame and the blind, instant communications by way of the Internet and mobile phones. Proponents of technology point to all this as evidence that technolo...

A "significant compromise" of U.S. military networks has been acknowledged by the Pentagon two years after the breach was reported in the press. "In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense suffered a significant compromise of its classified military computer networks," Deputy Secretary of Defense Willi...

Consolidation is a common theme in the IT sector, with IBM's purchase of Unica, Dell and HP's pursuit of 3PAR, and Intel's planned acquisition of security specialist McAfee standing as the most recent moves. Do such deals have anything in common? Sometimes. Large IT vendors tend to grow in two way...

I just finished both reading The Big Lie, a fabulous book if you are into board room dynamics and disasters, and doing massive coverage on the HP Mark Hurd scandal. It is, however, a little unnerving to see some of the most powerful people in the world behave worse than six-year-olds. My own manage...