Hang on to your hard drives. Nasty winds are blowing out of the Pacific Northwest as Microsoft Corp. faces big new worries with the pending Sept. 15 launch of the Windows Millennium Edition operating system (abbreviated ME and pronounced “me”).
Consumer computer prices likely will be significantly higher come September due to major shortages of hard drives and memory chips. Those looming higher hardware prices threaten to pummel early ME sales as people either buy existing machines with Windows 98 or hold off because the prices suddenly seem too steep.
GIVE A SPAM
I THINK HE LIKES IT
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) stood out from the pack when the House voted 427-1 to require all unsolicited commercial e-mails to include a valid return address.
Interestingly, Paul’s own worries about getting spammed at the office are eased by forcing correspondents to go to a Web page and fill out a form rather than e-mail him directly (www.house.gov/paul/mail/welcome.htm).
Maybe we all should drop him a line and thank him for supporting our right to spam.
THE NUCLEAR ATTACK CODE?
“WILLIE,” WHAT ELSE?
Speaking of computer-savvy Washingtonians, the BBC reports that when President Clinton did that photo op to sign the new U.S. digital signature bill using a computer-encrypted John Hancock, he protected it with his password–Buddy, the name of the first dog.
Buddygate draws attention to a new survey by the credit card cops at Visa, who were horrified to discover (if you’ll pardon the expression) that 67 percent of passwords are no-brainer numbers or names. A majority of Americans PIN’d to the wall by multiple sign-on names and other passwords opt for their birthdays, nicknames or favorite sports teams.
OUTSOURCE EVERYTHING
SHIFTY PARADIGM
When Don Tapscott talks, Wall Street quivers. His 1992 book “Paradigm Shift” was nearly alone in predicting the huge move from room-size IBM mainframe computers to the distributed networks of Microsoft-enabled desktops–the shift that made Bill Gates Janet Reno’s favorite monopolist.
Now Tapscott peels yet another set of scales from our eyes with “Digital Capital” (Harvard Business School Press, $27.50), which argues most eloquently that the real secret to today’s tech boom is the ruthless application by chief executives of outsourcing, in which companies quietly hire each other to do the bulk of their work while concentrating on the one small thing each does well.
Cisco Systems, the global giant of networking hardware, owns only two of the 38 factories that make its products. The rest of the work is outsourced, largely to downsized former competitors using the insider-dealing techniques outlined in the book.
