Although I haven’t been able to find anybody who agrees with me on this, I think I’ve been a very good boy this year and therefore I expect to be receiving a lot of loot at Christmas.  Now, some of you may wonder (and not just idly, I hope), what does somebody like me want for Christmas?  I’ve got a great family, health, lots of money, and tremendous co-workers and friends.  What could I possibly want or need? Well I’ll tell you:

• “Terminator Spam Filters” that not only filter off Viagra ads, get-rich-quick schemes, penny stock offers, can’t miss diet plans, and the porn that I don’t want, but also offer a “nuke-out” option where electronic spam-seeking missile-bots seek out and destroy the ultimate sources of such spam.

• 100 Mbps to every small-to-medium business and large business branch office, for $400/month, and multi-gigabit to large sites for around $1,200/month.

• 10 Gbps short haul (< 500m) optical transceivers for < $100/unit.

• A self-administering PC.

• No more start-ups developing what is essentially a feature, trying to turn it into a product to rationalize the creation of a new company.

• Tools to help troubleshoot complex distributed application delivery environments, or alternatively, the return of the concept of an application running completely on a single physical server.

• More VC partnerships consisting of six or fewer partners, all of whom have been involved in several high tech start-up companies themselves (at least one successful and one unsuccessful), supplemented by a couple of great analysts, investing about $200-400M.  No MBAs required.

• No more talk about Web Services being the “next big thing” and instead recognition of it as just the next step in the natural evolution of software architecture and standards – important but not all-consuming in its impact.

• 802.11 hot spots everywhere I happen to be with my PC.

• An automatic declaration of an “oil slick day off” for all businesses and schools the day after the first rain of the fall in Silicon Valley, so that one doesn’t have to play “dodge the spinning cars.” 

• Never to hear the term “crunch down” again.

• The ability to listen to Phillies games on the radio while cutting the back lawn of my Silicon Valley home (batteries included).

• A technical press that understands the time lines associated with the development of complex technology, so that they are not continually hyping the ascendancy of something they just started hearing about, and then subsequently announcing its demise, long before the technology is ready for prime time.

• A truly universal remote that can’t be misplaced.

• CSCO stock @ $44.73 within two years.

• Peace, health, and happiness for you and yours.

If I can just get the last item, I won’t complain about not getting any of the others.

(volume 5, number 11)