Home › Posts tagged purchase

purchase

ebay and buyer’s remorse

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Ouch. The Times Online ran a story on how eBay isn’t all too happy with their multi-billion purchase.

Aaron Kessler, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, the US investment bank, said: “The problem for them has always been trying to get their 200 million users to pay for services. They haven’t really figured out a way to monetise their clients – they haven’t introduced new services such as search engines.”

To be honest I am a bit surprised. When the deal was first announced I had some difficulty understanding the reasons for the purchase, since it didn’t make much sense to me. But then again, if I could figure out such things I’d be a dot-com billionaire jetting around the world in my private jet, rather than a little tech lawyer with a little blog. So, naturally, I assumed the powers that be at eBay did have in mind a grand plan, either to monetize Skype in some really cool way that, perhaps, would also tie into their existing biz and result in some really very cool new business or killer feature, even if the Skype service itself didn’t generate the bucks. Sadly that doesn’t appear to be the case – or at least the case at present.

Perhaps what surprises me most, however, is that they’ve come out publicly to express their regret. I don’t recall many companies (particularly in the tech industry) that have done so. To be honest its also unclear to me why they would say so publicly – at least in the way they’ve done so. Can’t imagine it would really be a heck of a morale booster for the remaining folks at Skype. And surely there’s a way to make such popular technology spin off a little more cash. I remember thinking of a few things that I thought they would probably do (and how much I would expect to pay for them) but which never seemed to happen. For good reason, I imagine.

Anyway, I’m sure they’ll figure out something to do with it, being the resourceful Canadians they are…

Thoughts on Quantum Computing

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Interesting article in Wired News where they interview David Deutsch who they refer to as the Father of Quantum Computing. He has a kind of low key but interesting take on the recent demonstration of a real, live 16 qubit quantum computer by D-Wave, a Canadian company based out of Vancouver.

Low key insofar as he doesn’t seem particularly enthused about the potential of quantum computers, other than perhaps their ability to be used to simulate quantum systems and of course encryption:

Deutsch: It’s not anywhere near as big a revolution as, say, the internet, or the introduction of computers in the first place. The practical application, from a ordinary consumer’s point of view, are just quantitative.

One field that will be revolutionized is cryptography. All, or nearly all, existing cryptographic systems will be rendered insecure, and even retrospectively insecure, in that messages sent today, if somebody keeps them, will be possible to decipher … with a quantum computer as soon as one is built.

Most fields won’t be revolutionized in that way.

Fortunately, the already existing technology of quantum cryptography is not only more secure than any existing classical system, but it’s invulnerable to attack by a quantum computer. Anyone who cares sufficiently much about security ought to be instituting quantum cryptography wherever it’s technically feasible.

Apart from that, as I said, mathematical operations will become easier. Algorithmic search is the most important one, I think. Computers will become a little bit faster, especially in certain applications. Simulating quantum systems will become important because quantum technology will become important generally, in the form of nanotechnology.

(my emphasis). Interesting thought about being retrospectively insecure. Particularly given spy agencies have, in the past, been sufficiently bold to transmit encoded messages on easily accessible shortwave frequencies.

I imagine the spook shops already have their purchase orders in for quantum crypto stuff (or have developed it already internally). Was a bit surprised by the statement above regarding existing technology for quantum computing. I had heard of some demos a while back, but didn’t realize that there are actually several companies offering quantum cryptography products.