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PayPal founder appears to have lost it
Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, appears to have gone off the deep end.
In a blog posting for the libertarian Cato Institute Thiel espoused some views which have sent Silicon Valley tongues wagging.
In an extended posting he said that he was increasingly becoming convinced that democracy and freedom were incompatible, that the 1920s were the last time Americans were free in a libertarian sense and, most startlingly, appears to come out against the right of women to vote.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron," he wrote.
One has to wonder what Meg Whitman, former head of eBay and candidate for the governership of California, thinks of all this.
In the future, if men wanted to be free, they would either have to head online, go to outer space or to floating cities on the planet's oceans. We shall see.
RSA: Nearly over
By Thursday there is a zombie-like quality about some of the delegates at RSA 2009.
The conference is the biggest computer security show in the world and contains the best and the brightest in the industry. But you get the feeling that we've all had to absorb too much information in too short a time frame.
If there is a benefit to the economic downturn then it's that the liggers have gone from RSA. The people who are here have had to justify the expense and lost work time to their bosses. But I can't help feeling that in most cases they have got their money's worth.
The US airforce famously set up the Top Gun school, although Hollywood has rather misrepresented the place. I was lucky enough to interview a former head of the Top Gun school a few years ago (call sign 'Llama) and got the skinny on the real purpose of this place - and this has so much relevance to RSA.
The purpose of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor (SFTI) program, nicknamed Top Gun, isn't so much to teach flying skills to pilots, although that's part of it. Instead the main purpose of the school is to train fighter pilots to go back to their bases and teach others of the tactics they have learned.
RSA is very much like this. Thousands of security professionals head into the Moscone Center each day and face a brutal schedule of brain dumps about the latest security methodology. Their job now is to go home, sleep for a few days to recuperate and then pass that knowledge on to as many people as possible.
MySpace chief executive steps down
MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe will step down from his position at the social networking firm and become a strategic advisor to the company.
No exact date was given for DeWolfe's departure, although News Corporation's chief digital office, Jonathan Miller, said it was to be "in the near future". News Corporation bought MySpace for $580m (£332.85m) in 2005.
Miller said DeWolfe was stepping down by "mutual agreement".
No reason was given for the decision but reports of a management restructure at MySpace have been circulating for a long time. While MySpace now boasts 130 million users worldwide, its main rival Facebook is beating the site by around 80 million.
Miller confirmed the new management structure will be shortly announced. He also added he was in talks with MySpace president, Tom Anderson, about him "assuming a new role in the organisation".
RSA Day One
View from the Valley on Oracle/Sun deal
Oracle's announcement that it has sorted out a deal to buy Sun has sent tongues wagging in Silicon Valley.
The speed of the deal caught many by surprise. Steve Ballmer said he was "very surprised" by the announcement, but then again he's up to his neck in trying to buy Yahoo at the moment.
The deal may have been helped by the close friendship between Sun's founder Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison, and offering an extra $400m over IBM's reported bid price was also a strong factor in the deal.
But the devil is in the details. One of the major sticking points in the IBM negotiations was the willingness of Big Blue to defend the deal against anti-competitive regulations. If the IBM deal had failed Sun's stock would have tanked, just as Yahoo's did after the Microsoft merger fell through.
No-one yet knows, or certainly isn't telling, if Oracle promised to stand up and be counted if the regulators come calling. There are strong doubts that this is the case and one rumour currently doing the rounds is that Oracle will head off any regulator interest by selling off Sun's hardware business.
This makes some sense if you're Oracle. After all, it's a software business through and through. Ellison is not a hardware person and it's possible that Oracle scouts are already making calls to see if anyone wants, and has the cash, to buy up Sun's hardware arm.
However, the more we hear this the less likely it sounds. At a time when virtualisation is just beginning to have an impact on server sales the asking price for the hardware side would be low, and the major competition would all run into regulation problems of their own.
Instead our guess is that Oracle is planning to keep the hardware arm and become a one stop shop for server sales. This would mean Oracle could use the deal as an opportunity to shake up Sun's hardware arm and make it profitable.
In contrast to Sun's cuddly and laid back corporate atmosphere Oracle's management are ruthless cost cutters who are expert at trimming fat. These people could find excess flab on Calista Flockhart and if anyone can turn Sun's hardware into a cash cow it's them.
But the key prize for Oracle is the software, especially Java. Java is already key to Oracle's middleware, and Ellison has acknowledged as such. It also gives Oracle a part in the embedded device market that could prove useful in the future
The deal also gives Oracle control of MySQL. This may cause it some problems with the regulators but there's no reason why the MySQL can't run concurrently with Oracle's Database 11g; they'll just address different markets.
Of course the decision to move into the hardware business would put Oracle in direct competition with companies like HP and IBM. Both companies put a lot of cash Oracle's way and it could prompt retaliation, but on the other hand where else are they going to go? And no-one loves a fight like Larry Ellison.
Mac users to get a Tweetie
Mac users looking for an alternative to clients such as TweetDeck as a way to manage and use popular micro-blogging site Twitter could be interested in a new application set to launch on Monday.
Tweetie for Mac is the latest invention from developer atebits, maker of the popular iPhone client for Twitter, also called Tweetie.
It is set to have a similar look and feel to its iPhone cousin, and could be a welcome addition to the apps on offer to Mac users, being less resource hungry than other applications such as TweetDeck which run on the Adobe Air platform.
The new app has been given a glowing first-look review from TechCrunch. The site was impressed with the easy drag and drop functionality for sending images, and the easy-to-view display of photos from sites like TwitPic - images pop up in windows without the need for opening a new browser.
Tweetie for Mac also uses Global Hotkeys, and the look and feel is very much Mac-like; crisp and clean, with no extraneous text fields or buttons, according to TechCrunch.
The new application is currently lacking the column display of TweetDeck, which many users have rated positively, but it does allow users to open as many search panes as they need.
Atebits is set to launch the new app on Monday with a free ad-supported version and a paid, ad-free version for around $15 (£10).
It's probably too early to say whether it will supplant many of the current apps knocking around for Twitter, but given that it's relatively low in memory and CPU usage, and is very Mac-like in terms of usability, it could have a chance.
Nasa moves on module
Nasa has announced its decision on naming the new module for the International Space Station, and it's not the most popular name among the public.
It's the way of the internet that polls have become increasingly easy to manipulate. First Firefly fans managed to get 'Serenity' voted into the top spot but then a spirited campaign by fans of the comedian Steven Colbert saw his name rise to the top of the list.
Nasa always said that it would have final naming rights and has a policy of not naming things after living people. As such, the new module has been named Tranquillity.
That said, Colbert does get a consolation prize, the new space station treadmill is being called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT."
The case of the clipped cables
On Thursday morning, the San Jose area suffered a short phone service outage. This was later determined to be the work of vandals who snuck into an underground cable facility and cut a pair of fibre-optic lines.
For most places and times, this would be a quick blip in the daily paper or a side note on the local news site. But not in 21st century Silicon Valley. Out here, a loss of phone service is worse than a power outage. ATMs shut down, land lines are rendered inoperable and, worst of all, no text messaging!
Police were called, AT&T technicians went into emergency response mode to fix the cables, and a thorough search ensued. Now, it's getting really serious. AT&T has offered a $100,000 bounty on the head of whoever cut the cables. Seems like a high price to be paid for something that at first glance seems to be the work of bored teenagers, but several factors have investigators believing this was no mere prank.
First, there's the challenge of getting in. Though there's a sign warning of fibre-optic lines in the area, the facility is fairly well concealed. Second, the manhole covering the entrance to the facility is heavy and requires special tools and methods to open. Then, once you get in, the lines themselves are over an inch thick and covered with a thick plastic coating.
This has officials believing that this was an inside job, perhaps the work of a disgruntled employee or a message from the labor union currently engaged in heated talks with AT&T (note: the union has officially denied any knowledge or involvement in the incident by its members.)
Regardless of the motives or who perpetrated the crime, the incident showed just how dependant we have become on high-speed data and telephony systems.
More crime-solving technology
After the earlier post about YouTube being used to catch crooks there comes another heartwarming tale of technology solving crimes.
A sixteen year old was arrested red handed by Peoria police after breaking into a car. He was found after he accidentally pressed a button that autodialled 911 on his phone without realising it. The operator heard the teenager telling his friends about how difficult it was to rip his loot out of the car and called the police.
With the help of the phone company the signal from the call was triangulated and a car dispatched. The teenager was arrested with the stolen goods still in his hands.
One wonders if he should have his phone taken off him, or made to carry one permanently to sap his confidence.
More stupid criminals fall to YouTube
For all the talk of the dangers of user generated content you can't help thinking that there are significant advantages to it as well.
Take the case of an arson attack on a Boys and Girls Club in Maine. Such cases of petty arson are sadly commonplace and are a fact of life. There were probably rebellious teens burning down abandoned huts since the dawn of time.
So naturally the police weren't that hopeful about catching the criminals behind the vandalism. That was, until evidence came from an unlikely source - the vandals themselves.
It seems these teenage tearaways videoed themselves throwing petrol bombs around inside the building, and then decided to stick the footage up on YouTube. The video clearly showed their faces and actions.
So far, so good. But as an added bonus for the police the idiots then included a credits screen which gave the names of everyone involved. All of them have now been charged.
Web 2.0 has many benefits, but cases like this show just how useful it can be, and how clueless some people really are.
Microsoft asks for government bailout
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