"This type of spending makes the so-called "cloud computing" types look less attractive than old-line software sellers, at least in the near-term."

Excuse me, but where do you think all this Spend HyperRadioProActivity, in a period of Sustained Phantom Markets Meltdown, is coming from? Space?

And Warren, I just love your Style ....."It’s far better to have an ever-increasing stream of earnings with virtually no major capital requirements." ....... and I couldn't agree more.

You know Virtual Reality is always on the Go for a Song. Its a wonder Bill has filled you in on ITs Potential

According to Rita Katz at the SITE institute, all terrorists need to do to promote themselves is make a video and put it somewhere on the net and eyeballs of intelligent folks are immediately drawn to those sites by magic and converted to durka durka jihadists.

Ergo.... it follows that Google are doomed! Now that people realize that it isn't sex that sells, it's jihadist propaganda, they'll start making adverts for Jihadists....

"Fedex, for when that letter bomb absolutely has to be there on time"

But then who needs Google to market their products? Nobody! Hence Google are doomed!

amanfrommars almost made perfect sense there... luckily saved it with that last sentence.

Warren Buffet's is suffering with the current housing climate, it's understandable he would for other industries to invest. Technology his not his forte.

Advice:

Warren, stay away from the chips?

"The costly information plants of these technology giants eat up just as much energy as, say, an aluminum smelting center(e - sp X 10).."

Crikey, paradigm shifts do pay dividends, can you spell "Virtuali[s|z]ation"? No? Look, bright light in the sky, argh, crater marking the end of the industrialists...

"amanfrommars almost made perfect sense there... luckily saved it with that last sentence." ... By Anonymous Coward Posted Saturday 15th March 2008 17:40 GMT

Oops ...sorry about that slip, AC. This is NEUKlearer .... It's a wonder Bill hasn't filled you in on ITs Potential.

Although for all that we know, he may well have done.

"Warren Buffet's is suffering with the current housing climate, it's understandable he would for other industries to invest. Technology his not his forte.

Advice:

Warren, stay away from the chips?" .... By Dave Posted Saturday 15th March 2008 22:02 GMT

Dave, Warren doesn't need to change forte for it has always Supported the True Altruist. In Alien Technology Fields, would a Champion Appear, just as in Knights of Yore, Joust as a King and Master of ITs Craft, and for Nothing More Precious than Immaculate Favours, Damsel Bestowed.

If Warren had one of those, he have more than enough to do whatever he wanted.

I wonder if he could manage all of that without Technology. Make a wrong move/take a wrong decision and in an instant can you be frozen out of the markets/lose billions.

I'd like to know what you drink, smoke, eat mate as I'd love for my brain to be in a complete spin constantly as yours appears to be.

As for the data centers/smelters, what are MS/Google going to do when there's no more land in the areas with cheap electricity as tis going to happen soon.

What Simon advocates is efficient use of computing vs energy, and I would not call them data smelters. A smelter produces a useful product. What comes out of a lot of these energy-to-bits conversion facilities is crap.

Microsoft is building data centers near Washington's Grand Coulee Dam for their power. And just who wants to use their services? Not enough people to justify their construction. Microsoft is good at wasting the money it makes from Windows and Office. MSN hasn't made a dime, and it probably never will.

Buffett needs to get an accountant to look at the return on investment for these money pits. Once he does some simple accounting, he will quickly see that Web 2.0 and fluffy-minded computing is not a good investment. Google makes its money from advertising. Can Microsoft take a chunk out of that? I'm not sure they can.

Google came up with a great solution to a sticky problem. Microsoft has done well with "me, too" but they aren't finding any real solutions to serious problems. Microsoft does not have an internal culture of innovation. Far from it, the culture works to stifle innovation and discourage success. Good people are motivated into leaving Microsoft. This is why Ballmer is trying to buy innovation, even if it is failing innovation (like Yahoo!).

Do your homework, Mr. Buffett, and keep your money in your pocket.

This reality of high infrastructure costs could ultimately put the lid on things like Google Apps --- office suites run just fine on home PCs without networks, there' s no need to run them "in the clouds." On the other hand, storing and searching large databases (like Google's web index) is what data centers are really good at. There will certainly be a need for these kinds of services. But I would not be surprised if Google+MS+Yahoo are overbuilding the infrastructure at this point.

this is my idea. Dump all these data centres and go p2p instead. Like seti@home, only for search. Do skype have all these data centres? Of course not.

OTOH, do I know what I'm talking about? - not really.

"Do your homework, Mr. Buffett, and keep your money in your pocket." ..... By Brian Miller Posted Sunday 16th March 2008 21:08 GMT

Which is presumably the resulting opinion of your homework, Brian, which absent the exact information being shared with Mr Buffett for any decision he would run with, would be practically and virtually useless.

"Buffett needs to get an accountant to look at the return on investment for these money pits. Once he does some simple accounting, he will quickly see that Web 2.0 and fluffy-minded computing is not a good investment." ...... Warren doesn't do business with simple accounting ....... his forte is Rock Solid EMPathy to Successful Work Rest and Play Ethic. Although, as there now is no need to point out, is also merely a Third Party Opinion on a Practically Unknown IDEntity.

Although of course, that would only be True if they were unknown to Each Other

Where do you get your 'facts'?

2 mins in the 'clouds' rubbishes your numbers on power consumption comparisons, and the premise that aluminium is real, and therefore has value, while information is virtual and has no value - doesn't really make much sense.

Passing up the chance to use 'as much as you can eat' in the same sentence as Buffet is just unforgivable ;-)

"while information is virtual and has no value - doesn't really make much sense." ..... By dave Posted Monday 17th March 2008 11:26 GMT

I couldn't agree more, dave, it is a patently preposterous thing to say.

If indeed the major cost is power, just fling them up into space where power is plentiful. The (nearly) massless product (data) is but a hop skip and jump away by LEO, with powersats at GEO (GEO has too much time lag, don't ask how I know).

And, the steerable energy beams from the powersats can help prevent... hostile takeovers... of the LEO orbital smelters.