Fairfax Columns 2003
Since early 1999 I have written a weekly opinion column for the Tuesday IT section in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, published by John Fairfax. This supplement is now called 'Next'. I also write occasional feature and news pieces.
You can download any of these articles from this website. Note:
- All files are MS Word documents
- They are as I originally wrote them, not as subsequently edited by Fairfax
- There are no headlines - these are added by Fairfax subeditors
Here are the columns for 2003. There are brief synposes of each piece - no full text search available, sorry.
| Date | File | Synopsis | Download |
| 4 Feb 2003 | F030204predict | What some of the analyst groups are predicting for 2003 | download |
| 11 Feb 2003 | F030211bizplan | How modern off-the-shelf IT products make it cheap and easy to start a new business, with reference to GP's biotech venture | download |
| 18 Feb 2003 | F030218prefixes | Problems with decimal (x1000) and binary (x1024) usages of prefixes like kilo, mega, giga etc. | download |
| 25 Feb 2003 | F030225chips | The state of the microchip market, with reference to the evolution of the Intel line and the "chip wars". | download |
| 4 Mar 2003 | F030303acsalston | Lies and stupidity from Senator Richard Alston and others in the Australian government. | download |
| 11 Mar 2003 | F030311prefixes2 | More on decimal and binary usage, including feedback from readers. |
download |
| 18 Mar 2003 | F030318offshore | The inevitability of increased off- shoring, with more and more IT jobs moving to India and China. |
download |
| 25 Mar 2003 | F030325sun | The difficulties facing Sun Microsystems in a commoditised world. | download |
| 1 April 2003 | F030401scounix | SCO's "deeply stupid" attempt to sue IBM for stealing bits of Unix to put in Linux. | download |
| 8 April 2003 | F030408hypecycle | Gartner's hype cycle, how it works, and why it is universally applicable. | download |
| 15 April 2003 | F030415bankrupt | Why Larry Ellison is right when he says that most software companies will be out of business in a few years. | download |
| 22 April 2003 | F030422germany | GP visits Germany and has a brief look at the German computer industry. | download |
| 29 April 2003 | Not published. | ||
| 6 May 2003 | F030506supermodeller | Australian company Econsult and its Supermodeller financial modelling software. | download |
| 13 May 2003 | F030513history | The usefulness of a knowledge of history in helping understand IT trends. | download |
| 20 May 2003 | F030520tedcodd | The death of Ted Codd, father of the relational database. | download |
| 27 May 2003 | F030527browser | The 10th anniversary of the invention of the web browser, and its importance. | download |
| 3 June 2003 | F030603health | IT in the health industry, and the many problems it faces. | download |
| 10 June 2003 | F030610intology | Canberra company Intology and its clever knowledge management technology. |
download |
| 17 June 2003 | F030617jdepsoft | Peoplesoft's acquisition of JD Edwards, and the rationalisation of the software industry. | download |
| 24 June 2003 | F030624scounix2 | Further analysis and comment of the SCO vs IBM battle, and SCO's ridiculous attitude. | download |
| 1 July 2003 | Not published | ||
| 8 July 2003 | F030708nc | Why the NC (network computer) never really took off. | download |
| 15 July 2003 | F030729mssysman | How Microsoft is doing similar things in systems management that the mainframe vendors once did. | download |
| 22 July 2003 | F030722paysnap | Canberra company PaybySnap and its snappy Internet payment system. | download |
| 29 July 2003 | Not published | ||
| 5 Aug 2003 | F030805bimergers | More rationalisation - the spate of M&A activity in the business intelligence market. | download |
| 12 Aug 2003 | F030812outsource | Outsourcing is back - except it is called "sourcing". Gartner's conference on the subject. | download |
| 19 Aug 2003 | F030819architect | The evolution of and rationalisation of computer architectures. | download |
| 26 Aug 2003 | F030826rte | The "real-time enterprise" and the increased pace of change in the world. |
download |
| 2 Sept 2003 | F030902thinclient | The revival and rationale of thin client computing. | download |
| 9 Sept 2003 | F030909pearcey | The Pearcey Foundation day in Melbourne, tracking the early history of the Australian IT industry. | download |
| 16 Sept 2003 | F030916utility | The move to utility computing, and a look at related terms - grid compting, on demand computing, etc. | download |
| 23 Sept 2003 | F030923copyright | How technology is making the concepts of copyright and intellectual property irrelevant. | download |
| 30 Sept 2003 | F030930boring | How many people are saying that the IT industry is boring, and how it is really just they who are bored. | download |
| 7 Oct 2003 | F031001williams | An open letter to new communications minister Darryl Wiliams, and one last shot at the unlamented Richard Alston. | download |
| 14 Oct 2003 | Not published. | ||
| 21 Oct 2003 | F031021skype | Free phone calls over the Net - How Skype has raised the VoIP bar. |
download |
| 28 Oct 2003 | F031028subvert | How open source software is a threat to The American Way, and why some people even think it's communist. | download |
| 4 Nov 2003 | F031104strassman |
IT management guru Paul Strassman and his concept of Knowledge Capital. | download |
| 11 Nov 2003 |
F031111biotech |
GP's move into biotech, and the differences and similarities between biotech and IT. | download |
| 18 Nov 2003 | F031118noble |
Analysts and those who watch them, with reference to Australian ex-analyst and analyst watcher Dave Noble. | download |
| 25 Nov 2003 | F031125wireless | The coming wireless world, and an interview with Intel CTO Chris Thomas. | download |
| 2 Dec 2003 | F031202vendors | The relative revenue figures of the major vendors, how they have changed over time and what this means. | download |
| 9 Dec 2003 | F031209poetry | Computer-generated poetry, and why it will never be better than the real thing. | download |
| 16 Dec 2003 | F031216compiere | How open source software has even found its way into ERP- and what this means. | download |