July 2002 – Page 3 – Richard Bennett

Nationwide WiFi

— Reiter’s Wireless Data Web Log reports on the Big Story du jour: The New York Times today reports that a group of large telecommunications and computing companies is discussing the possibilities of creating a nationwide 802.11 network. The group includes Intel, IBM, AT&T Wireless, Verizon It won’t be long until essentially all laptops will … Continue reading “Nationwide WiFi”

— Reiter’s Wireless Data Web Log reports on the Big Story du jour:

The New York Times today reports that a group of large telecommunications and computing companies is discussing the possibilities of creating a nationwide 802.11 network. The group includes Intel, IBM, AT&T Wireless, Verizon

It won’t be long until essentially all laptops will ship with WiFi built-in, which bodes ill for the smaller chip companies. Nation-wide networks are coming as well, and there will be more than one. So what’s Warren Buffett doing about all of this? Read Letters from Exile and you’ll see.

He’s back

— KEN LAYNE is back on the web: OK, the site looks good enough for me. The news-blogging will start once I’ve had 50 hours of sleep. Good night. Thanks to those who helped him make bail.

— KEN LAYNE is back on the web:

OK, the site looks good enough for me. The news-blogging will start once I’ve had 50 hours of sleep. Good night.

Thanks to those who helped him make bail.

Stock options

— The Indepundit believes limiting stock options is necessary to restoring investor faith in the markets, so let me amplify on remarks below. He’s right that creative accounting is partially to blame for investor worries about the market, but other factors are investment banker/stock broker conflicts of interest and lax investigative reporting by the business … Continue reading “Stock options”

— The Indepundit believes limiting stock options is necessary to restoring investor faith in the markets, so let me amplify on remarks below.

He’s right that creative accounting is partially to blame for investor worries about the market, but other factors are investment banker/stock broker conflicts of interest and lax investigative reporting by the business press, especially the tech press. Investors realize that the market is an insider’s game, and cosmetic changes in accounting regulations aren’t going to repair that fundamentally sound perception.

Stock options are tangential to all of this. Executive stock options are necessary since Congress enacted tax codes that require all executive compensation above $1M/yr to be double-taxed, once by the exec and again by the company, since they’re forbidden from writing it off as a business expense.

Stock options for tech workers are an essential element of compensation for engineers taking the risk of joining startups, and startups are key to the tech leadership the US enjoys over other countries. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Stock options survive Senate

— The Washington Post reports that stock options survived efforts by Democrat Carl Levin and the emotionally disturbed sometime Republican John McCain to severely restrict or eliminate them as part of the Sarbanes accounting fraud bill: Stock options were a major topic of the debate in the final afternoon of action on the bill. Sen. … Continue reading “Stock options survive Senate”

Stock options were a major topic of the debate in the final afternoon of action on the bill. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) described stock options as “stealth compensation” that serves as a “driving force behind the deceptive accounting practices that have bedeviled this nation.”

Levin proposed that the Financial Accounting Standards Board, an industry group that writes accounting rules, be directed to study how to properly account for stock options and act on its findings within a year.

But Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) objected to Levin’s proposal, saying it was akin to ordering “a fair trial and then a hanging,” meaning that it was aimed at requiring companies to record stock options as expenses. He said it should be considered at another time in connection with other proposals dealing with stock options. Under rules in effect as the debate ended, a single senator could block a vote on any amendment, and Gramm’s objection effectively killed Levin’s proposal.

Silicon Valley voters would be wise to note who’s trying to kill stock options, and who saved them, at least for now.

More on H1B

Engineers’ jobless rate targeted The IEEE-USA suggests that increased use of H-1B workers and outsourcing engineers jobs overseas, along with the use of temp workers, are causing the rising unemployment for engineers. While the jobless rate for all engineers rose to 4 percent in the second quarter from 3.6 percent in the first quarter this … Continue reading “More on H1B”

Engineers’ jobless rate targeted

The IEEE-USA suggests that increased use of H-1B workers and outsourcing engineers jobs overseas, along with the use of temp workers, are causing the rising unemployment for engineers. While the jobless rate for all engineers rose to 4 percent in the second quarter from 3.6 percent in the first quarter this year, the rate for computer scientists, which includes systems analysts, surged to 5.3 percent from 4.8 percent, the IEEE-USA reported.

There you go – IEEE has connected the dots. The pattern I’ve seen is like this: company hires American-born engineer to design software architecture, then fires him and gives the implementation work to a low-paid H1B or green-card engineer.

Management-driven slump

— Silicon Valley jobless rate rises Sean Randolph, president of the Bay Area Economic Forum, said investors’ lack of confidence in corporate management could continue to delay the recovery, especially if there are new revelations of wrongdoing or if the federal government doesn’t respond. Firing some more midget managers would improve the job picture, obviously.

— Silicon Valley jobless rate rises

Sean Randolph, president of the Bay Area Economic Forum, said investors’ lack of confidence in corporate management could continue to delay the recovery, especially if there are new revelations of wrongdoing or if the federal government doesn’t respond.

Firing some more midget managers would improve the job picture, obviously.

Next big thing?

— Mercury News | 07/10/2002 | Bad VC market a good time to start a company Wireless technology could be the next launching pad, says Graham Watson, a managing director at Deloitte & Touche Corporate Finance. “It’s been much maligned and suffered badly, but wireless infrastructure is one platform out there that could be a … Continue reading “Next big thing?”

— Mercury News | 07/10/2002 | Bad VC market a good time to start a company

Wireless technology could be the next launching pad, says Graham Watson, a managing director at Deloitte & Touche Corporate Finance.

“It’s been much maligned and suffered badly, but wireless infrastructure is one platform out there that could be a catalyst for a really significant business opportunity,” he says. “Mention wireless or telecom today, and everyone runs a mile. That’s a legacy of the overinvestment from two years ago. But wireless is something that has massive appeal to individuals and corporations. There’s still a huge scope to grow the wireless industry.”

Could be, but VCs are still pumping money into wireless companies whose founders have no track record with PC networking generally; that money’s going nowhere. Instead of trying to build the next Cisco, they should be trying for the next 3Com. Believe me kids, Cisco’s not going away anytime soon.

WiFi Chipsets

— I have some time on my hands, as my last employment opportunity ended a week after I broke my wrist, so I’ve decided to do a little analysis of WiFi chipsets currently shipping or sampling. Analysis of these things, and development of closely-related software, is what I do for a living, so this probably … Continue reading “WiFi Chipsets”

Here’s the list of the chipsets I’m going to look at:

Resonext
Xtreme Spectrum
Envara
Agere (chips only, due to Proxim deal)
Intersil
Texas Instruments
Atheros
Intel
Bermai
Channel Technologies

Please leave a comment if I’ve left out anybody important, excluding flim-flams, snake oil merchants, and vaporware dealers.

Colonialism was good

— PoMo fops love to beat up on colonialism, making it synonymous with oppression and dodging the question of how the Evil West was able to dominate the unwashed masses of the Third World in the first place. Dinesh D’Souza explains the source of western power in Two cheers for colonialism The reason the West … Continue reading “Colonialism was good”

The reason the West became so affluent and dominant in the modern era is that it invented three institutions: science, democracy and capitalism. All these institutions are based on universal impulses and aspirations, but those aspirations were given a unique expression in Western civilization.

He goes on to explain that while colonialism may have been bad for older generations of Indians, those of his generation have benefited from it handily. The unbalanced teaching of the colonial period is one of the major defects of our government run schools. It’s not touchy-feely to talk about how colonialism modernized the primitives, but it’s true.

Perhaps a little colonialism is the solution to Saudi Arabia’s evident load of problems.

Accounting exuberance

— More Than Zero trackbacks Rand’s post on Arthur Andersen, and says my connection of Andersen’s creative accounting with Clinton-era market exuberance is a stretch. Fair enough, the connection is less than obvious, until we look at a couple of things: Clinton’s SEC turned a blind eye to accounting shenanigans, failing to examine Enron’s books for three years running despite obvious irregularities. The booming economy of the Clinton years was at least in part a market-driven phenomenon, and Clinton had as much of a stake as anyone in creating the illusion of a super-robust economy. Aggressive examination of high-fliers would have dampened market enthusiasm, which would have dampened the real economy, which would have been bad for Clinton. One can argue that the Microsoft suit was the proximate cause of the deflation of the tech bubble (which would have happened anyway, but later,) but that happened so late in Clinton’s second term that it didn’t matter to him politically.

The point is that Clinton had more to do with Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, and Global Crossing than Bush did, and you don’t read that quite everywhere.