Cerf socks it to us

I've always respected Google's Vint Cerf, you can't help to look up to someone who's been so central to the founding of the internet and who is so far ahead of the curve he's devising the protocols for interplanetary communication.

 

But his speech in favour of RFID chips at CeBIT was very disappointing. He referred to the age old problem of missing socks and opined that RFIDing everything would make life so much easier for all concerned.

 

If this is the best argument he can come up with we're severely disappointed. RFID is a huge area of contention and trivialising the debate is beneath My Cerf's undoubted talents.

Conspicuous consumption, or how the sad spend their money

If there's a sign that the IT industry is awash with money it's in the over-priced gizmo category.

 

LakesTake this latest offering from White Lakes, a gold USB memory stick, embossed with diamonds and available to you for the low, low price of around $3,000. If ever there was a monument to naff this is it.

 

As a good geek I applaud buying technology. After all, it's an investment is a form of rationalisation that works very well. But this isn't, it's just pointless consumption for the sake of it.

 

The prices for memory sticks has been dropping faster than the market share for dot matrix printers and the idea that anyone would be remotely impressed by such a device is laughable.

 

While luxury goods firms like Vertu have been doing this for phones at least eh final product will last a few years. Having a gold 2GB memory stick is just going to make the kids laugh at you – I mean, in a few years 2GB is going to make a floppy disc look capacious.

 

Size counts for CeBIT TV

Oh boys and their toys. When it comes to TV screens size it seems counts for more than quality.

 

The battle for big screen kicked off with Samsung showing off its 82 inch LCD screen. Then LG hit back with a 102 inch plasma, only to be pipped at the post by Panasonic who showed off their 103 inch plasma.

 

Somehow I think the owners of many of these systems are going to regret the cost in the coming years. Of the three the Samsung looks the best bet – plasma is notoriously unreliable in the long term.

 

If a station logo is playing constantly for example it burns itself into the screen, showing everyone what channel you prefer. That's fine if you're a BBC nut but less endearing if Playboy is your viewing of choice.

 

There's another factor as well. What does it say about you that you have a screen this big? While new gizmos are all well and good being labelled a couch potato makes these a less than attractive purchase in some ways.

 

Vendors Gear up For Cebit

Vendors gear up for Cebit

Another Solaris 10 disappointment

You might have heard that Sun Microsystems claims that Solaris is the greatest operating system ever (especially relative to Linux), but it also has caused its share of disappointments.

Not only is Solaris not true open source (yes, the CDDL licence is approved by OSI, but that's how far I would say this goes). And now it turns out that she smokes too. What a turn off!

Next thing you'll find vodka bottles hidden behind the software containers and inside the registry.

Cebit in pictures: Monday's hangover

During the weekend CeBIT traditionally gets taken over by consumers and end users, hunting for free T-Shirts, pens and bouncy balls. It's great marketing, but most exhibitors come to CeBIT to do business – and for that you need enterprise users, IT managers and resellers. So today (Monday) the show went back to business…

Right?

Wrong.

Not over at the Siemens Mobile booth, where Ronaldo made an appearance and caused a major (foot-) trafficjam.

Surrounded by small army of bodyguards, a lucky few received an signed football shirt from the Real Madrid player.

I'm not claiming this photo is so great, but unless this lady is holding something similar to Samsung's new 7 megapixel phonecam, you know this picture is going to turn out horribly.

Comdex uses CeBIT to test the waters for a resurfacing

Representatives from MediaLive, the organisation that used to throw the famed (but now defunct) Comdex trade show in Las Vegas in November, are recruiting exhibitors here at CeBIT in Hannover to show up at a new Comdex.

The new show won't be called Comdex however, your Silicon Valley Sleuth found out. The name has too suffered too much damage, the exhibitors were told.

As Las Vegas is the epitome of America's consumerism, Comdex became the symbol of the internet hype and the IT industry's tendency to over-promise and under-deliver. At its peak the show attracted 200,000 visitors. The last time the event took place in 2003 it attracted a mere 40,000 delegates. By then Comdex' parent company Key3Media was forced into bankruptcy, from which it emerged under the MediaLive brand.

The 2004 edition of Comdex was canned, but MediaLive talked about a "postponement", vowing that the show would come back. The company now has decided that there is nothing to "postpone". Seems that all that will be left of the old Comdex is the mailing list and some fade photographs next to the coffee maker in MediaLive's coffee maker.

Sleuthing for the bigger picture

Is this year's CeBIT all about mobile gadgets? Or maybe security took centre stage? If you read some of the news reports out there, either story could be true. But I could just as easily charge that the trade show is about HD TV, flat panel displays or the surge of Egypt as an outsourcing partner.

With the trade fair taking up 27 exhibit halls, the only constant factor at CeBIT is that it's big and that everybody and their grandmother are here. The only constant factor here in Germany is that the weather is awful across every 27 of those halls. Anyone who tries to convince you something else is going on is flat out lying.

Disgruntled IBM workers take it to CeBIT's streets

As CeBIT got to its busiest days around the weekend, IBM workers treated visitors to a different kind of demonstration than the tech demos on the showfloor. On Saturday protesters gathered at the event's north gate to protest against job cuts in two of Big Blue's customer support centres Hannover and Schweinfurt in the southern part of Germany.

Around 500 jobs will be outsourced to German companies as well as China and Hungary, one of the protesters told IDG News.

Another worker blamed a contract IBM won in 2002 with Deutsche Bank. Under the terms of the deal, IBM employed 900 of the bank's IT staff. The company doesn't have enough work for all of them but contractually isn't allowed to fire any the Deutsche Bank employees.

Cebit in pictures: hottest items from the show floor

"You buy our border control system. We have Pakistan government as reference customer!"

If you're blond, it doesn't matter that you don't play the violin that well. Blonds DO have more fun.