Rob Fixmer

With the requisite bow to the moral issues posed by illegally downloading MP3-encoded music, I must admit that the sight of record companies sputtering vitriol about Napster and its progeny makes me smile. Last month, the recording industry reported a 5 percent decline in sales last year, the largest such decline since the mid-1980s. Industry […]

Today, when I gaze into my crystal ball to see what issues are likely to dominate technology markets in the next decade, I see the Internet against a blue background—a Big Blue background. Thats ironic if you consider that when IBMs fortunes began to fade in the early 1990s, the company seemed locked in a […]

Among the digerati, some of the leading sources of high anxiety are the perennial predictions that Moores Law is destined for a head-on collision with the laws of physics. Such predictions are bear bait on Wall Street, where the premise of Moores Law—the doubling of computer power every 18 to 24 months—is widely accepted as […]

Youd have a hard time finding a bigger jumble of flawed logic than the Federal Communications Commissions recent attempts to even the playing field for the competition between telephone and cable companies over residential broadband. FCC Chairman Michael Powell is in the unenviable position of having to find a rational way to enforce the Telecommunications […]

When it comes to bad software, you will eat your lemons and like it, Bubba. At least you will if your company has the misfortune of being located in Maryland or Virginia, the only states so far to have enacted UCITA. In case youve missed all the buzz in the past two years, the Uniform […]

Is your IT department excluded from providing strategic input in such areas as marketing, sales, human resources and business development? Are you treated like a third-party service provider who happens to be on the payroll? If so, dash to a headhunter; your companys days are numbered. So says risk expert Emily Freeman, pointing to ITs […]

If you think your job in IT is just a series of distasteful chores, heres another one: Take a lawyer to lunch. It could be the most important hour you spend all year. Thats because risk management experts in the insurance and legal communities are warning that a range of emerging liabilities associated with technology […]

Should government at any level get involved in the deployment and ownership of high-speed data infrastructure? Its a question that will have to be addressed eventually, as several readers pointed out in response to my March 4 article on the future of broadband access in the United States. These days, its extremely unfashionable to suggest […]

Hi, Im Rob, and Im a wireless junkie. IT professionals everywhere should be wary of me and my ilk because the biggest problem with wireless is that it cuts the connectivity leash, and like all flavors of liberty, its highly addictive. I know this from firsthand experience, and I also know the numbers of wireless […]

With universal broadband deployment in the United States stuck in neutral, a growing number of economists, industry leaders and government policy-makers are pushing just about any incentive that might jump-start new network build-outs. But disagreements among the broadband players—coupled with consumer groups impassioned resistance to any solution that further deregulates the telecommunications industry—threaten to perpetuate […]

Maybe you think that unless your company runs an e-commerce Web site, the conduct and policies of consumer ISPs is of no concern. Think again. As high-speed home connectivity expands, your companys productivity and marketing will become increasingly dependent on it—and increasingly vulnerable to policies and performance issues over which you have no control. Consider, […]

Even with detailed directions, Equinixs vast, new operations center is nearly impossible to find. Cleverly hidden in plain sight among warehouses, wholesale outlets and industrial parks in Secaucus, N.J., the building is so devoid of signage that I took its main entrance for a fire exit. But the Internet business exchange inside offers enough capacity […]