This is interesting news:

Intel’s cellular phone effort a huge failure

Darrell Dunn, InformationWeek
EE Times
(06/27/2006 6:05 PM EDT)

DALLAS — Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor company, on Tuesday finally owned up to one of the most colossal failures in that industry’s history when it unloaded its communications and applications processor business to Marvell for $600 million.

It’s not surprising that Intel tried to slip that announcement in under the cover of its much splashier Woodcrest server processor extravaganza on Monday. There undoubtedly was a lot of anguish in Santa Clara when Intel finally bit the bullet and dropped its long battle to gain a position as a provider of processors for cellphones.

Intel plowed multi-billions of dollars of investment into the market with a covetous eye towards what is one of the largest volume markets available to processor manufacturers. Research firm Forward Concepts estimates that 830 million cellphones shipped in 2005, and that within two years, more than 1 billion cellphones will ship per year.

Why is it interesting?

I can recall my trepidation when Intel entered the commincations and applications processor business. While TI is the leader in many segments of this diverse market, my company (Freescale Semiconductor) is a major player, and it is never fun to compete with a company that has a lot of cash to plow into R&D.

Apparently, money can’t always buy success, thankfully. An object lesson that end results often do not resemble the initial predictions.

From an article at MSNBC.com on the elimination of the taxes on telephone calls:

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who won approval of the ban in the Senate Finance Committee, said he didn’t want the Internet to fall victim to taxes like the telephone tax enacted for the Spanish-American War.

“That war ended two centuries ago, and Congress is just now getting around to getting rid of the tax,” Wyden said.

Senator Wyden apparently thinks that there were telephones around in 1806 and that the Spanish-American War (you know, the one with Teddy Roosevelt charging San Juan Hill) predated the War of 1812 (the one with Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans). Either that or he thinks it’s the year 2098.

Geez…

Please note, the title intends to refer to “Death of a Salesman” for reasons that will be obvious to any willing to do the research and make the connections.

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Blogworld is all abuzz at the unexpected death of Rob Smith, the Acidman of Gut Rumbles, and it should be no surprise give the wide swath he cut with his take-no-prisoners style against anything or anyone who “chapped his ass” where he often wounded his friends even more than his enemies.  I had a few run-ins with Rob, and I am still uncertain if I had made it to the Austin blog-meet if I would have shaken his hand or punched him in the face upon first meeting.  I suspect he wouldn’t have cared which greeting he got from me, as long as I noticed him.

While he was not involved in my starting Random Fate, Rob did encourage more than one person to start a weblog, and in my early, halcyon days of blogging I read the musings of Acidman every day. Time passed, blogworld evolved, life happened, and eventually I stopped reading Gut Rumbles.  Mere existence has enough drama in it for me that I felt no need to be a spectator to a train-wreck that was entirely preventable, and Rob’s joy at living up to his self-appellation of “Acidman” grew tiresome.  Endless vitriol corrodes the soul, and mine has enough holes eaten out of it already that I decided I cannot and would not suffer any new erosion.  This is not to say I celebrate his passing, for I do not.  Every death diminishes the world in some way, often in fashions unrecognized.

Beyond the sadness associated with any death, in this case there is a greater tragedy.  Rob leaves behind a young son in addition to his adult daughter, a son who had become estranged from Rob because of circumstances related to his divorce.  Now, Rob’s son will never have the opportunity to truly know his father, a loss that I recognize is incredibly deep because I see it through the lens of the recent death of my Dad.  I had the opportunity to truly know my Dad as an adult, and in the last 20 years he and I had a relationship that was more along the lines of a true friendship rather than one of father and son.  Sadly, Rob’s son never had much of a chance to know his father in the past few years, and now the opportunity for him is gone.

It is not on behalf of the dead for whom we need to mourn, it is those left behind.

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