The Geek’s Reading List – Week of May 16th 2014
Hello,
I have been part of the technology industry for a third of a century now. For 13 years I was an electronics designer and software developer: I designed early generation PCs, mobile phones (including cell phones) and a number of embedded systems which are still in use today. I then became a sell-side research analyst for the next 20 years, where I was ranked the #1 tech analyst in Canada for six consecutive years, named one of the best in the world, and won a number of awards for stock-picking and estimating.
I started writing the Geek’s Reading List about 10 years ago. In addition to the company specific research notes I was publishing almost every day, it was a weekly list of articles I found interesting – usually provocative, new, and counter-consensus. The sorts of things I wasn’t seeing being written anywhere else.
They were not intended, at the time, to be taken as investment advice, nor should they today. That being said, investors need to understand crucial trends and developments in the industries in which they invest. Therefore, I believe these comments may actually help investors with a longer time horizon. Not to mention they might come in handy for consumers, CEOs, IT managers … or just about anybody, come to think of it. Technology isn’t just a niche area of interest to geeks these days: it impacts almost every part of our economy. I guess, in a way, we are all geeks now. Or at least need to act like it some of the time!
Please feel free to pass this newsletter on. Of course, if you find any articles you think should be included please send them on to me. Or feel free to email me to discuss any of these topics in more depth: the sentence or two I write before each topic is usually only a fraction of my highly opinionated views on the subject!
This edition of the Geeks List, and all back issues, can be found at www.thegeeksreadinglist.com.
Brian Piccioni
“British anti-virus pioneer Dr Alan Solomon is so convinced that AV software no longer works that he gave up using it a “long time ago” and solved his security worries by moving from Windows to Linux, the iconic figure has said in a blog.”
“While Firefox OS remains targeted at first-time smartphone buyers overseas, China’s ZTE said Thursday it will start selling a model in the U.S. via eBay. The ZTE Open C is listed for the “Buy It Now” price of $99.99.”
http://recode.net/2014/05/08/zte-starts-selling-99-firefox-os-phone-in-the-u-s-via-ebay/