Moms in Tech, Really? Impossible!

The NY Times today featured an article on MomsRising, a “post-feminist” group that’s concerned about discrimination in the workplace against mothers. They’ve got a website, petitions, and all that, and of course are speaking a cross-politics lingo that everybody loves. I wish them luck.

So what’s this got to to with tech? Technology has been the bellwether for this country’s economy, and is the driver for the global economy. The pivotal works I co-authored which pioneered open source operating systems are commonly referenced today throughout Europe, Asia, Central/South America, Africa and the Middle East. Because of globalism, the US-centric dominance of a handful of companies no longer exists. Open source has been key to this.

So how do women fare in technology? Not very well…

FilmLoop and Alexa – When Fake Rankings Kill Companies

There’s much sturm und drang about the nasty setup and selloff of a little company called FilmLoop in the business community this week. While there can be much debated about liquidation preferences, drag-along rights and sharp practices, there is one issue relevant to the datacenter operator – the claim by some VCs that Alexa rankings are a good validator of an Internet company’s audience and future traffic. And now, since we’ve stepped out of money-land and into datacenter-land, let’s examine this assumption a bit more carefully. Is Alexa a good validator of a business, or not?

Strange Friday – Anna Nicole, Jim Gray, Nowak

The last few weeks have had such a bizarre series of news items that I must admit have distracted me. Some of these items involve people I actually know or things I really care about. Others are simply too strange to ignore, especially when they make the front page of the NY Times and every other news organization I read.

Jim Gray, lost at sea! Jim and I have spoken and corresponded about the work I’ve done at InterProphet with SiliconTCP and no drop routing over the years. He’s an old Tandem alum and colleague of William’s (see The Google Test). It’s so startling that I almost believe if I sent an email to him right now telling him I disagree with one of his observations, I’d get an email right back clearly and succintly debating me point-by-point.