Peter Coffee

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Thus did George Orwell conclude his cautionary parable of Stalinism, “Animal Farm,” in 1946; thus unfolds the battle for the desktop of the forthcoming Windows XP. […]

In the friction-free Internet marketplace, vendors are under constant pressure to match the lowest price that a buyer can find—with at least one supplier, on any given day, having some short-term reason to offer goods below cost. Customers, meanwhile, find themselves getting no more than they pay for, as thinning profit margins leave no room […]

Interaction data from e-business sites is “a gold mine,” asserted a Braun Consulting senior manager, Jeff Schlitt, at the Corporate and e-Business Portals conference in New Orleans this month. I agree, but only if you accept the entire metaphor. Even if the gold is there, its far from pure—and getting it out isnt easy. There […]

Theres a reason why enterprise storage investments are among the least-soft sectors of IT spending. Its almost impossible for any organization to know too much. Even in industry sectors that dont seem strongly data-driven, its knowledge that creates competitive advantage. The strategic assets of a company such as Exxon Mobil Corp. arent so much the […]

The first of May is a common workers holiday, according to labor scholars, because it was once the most common day for strikes and other labor protests. PeopleSoft management, take note. In 1500s Europe, warm spring weather lowered living costs at the same time that new building projects were likely to get under way. Workers […]

The part of your brain that craves pleasure is easily bored. When people get alternating teaspoons of Kool-Aid and water, their brains go into ho-hum mode; when the Kool-Aid comes in an unpredictable pattern, the nucleus accumbens (which seems to drive addictive behavior) pays attention. Maybe thats why IT spending has slowed: The industry has […]

California Institute of Technology researchers are teaching computers to notice and recognize human faces in scenes, not just in mug-shot poses but in arbitrary orientations. This photo shows corner and circle feature identifications in a hallway display for the project trippingly titled “Viewpoint-Invariant Detection and Learning of Human Heads,” fittingly found while I was taking […]

When I begin a document with Microsoft Word 2000, menus like Edit and Format are mercifully short. Commands that I rarely use dont appear unless I summon them—or briefly wait for the full-length list. But if I dig down to an obscure command, it will be on the short list thereafter: The software smooths the […]

As handheld devices hold more personal data and become the entry points to hosted financial and medical services, users will be increasingly concerned about the personal loyalty of these digital assistants. Authentication must be tied to the user, not to the device, if loss or theft is to be an annoyance, not a catastrophe. Passwords […]

The PC is the least efficient way to access the internet,” National Semiconductor Chairman, President and CEO Brian Halla said in his keynote speech at Comdex earlier this month. Among many PC alternatives on view at National Semis Comdex pavilion was IBMs NetVista I30 thin client, making its first public appearance. The IBM system is […]

When a perfect technology comes along, I may be willing to let it protect me from myself. Until that happens, Ill insist that every black box has to give me a way to look inside. What got me going on this subject were two comments by a software developer during a Spring Comdex panel discussion. […]

Literally penned up in chain-link enclosures, harried teams of hardware hackers labored to produce a working PC from a collection of components during the WinHEC Wars competition at WinHEC last month. As PCs increasingly come to market as sealed-box appliances, the WinHEC Wars, which were held in Anaheim, Calif., reminded IT buyers that the open […]