Month: June 2006

DynCorp becomes a “real” business

~ Matt Armstrong

DynCorp, one of the many private military companies, is now being covered by analysts. Analysts Initiate Coverage on DynCorp, in my inbox via the WepsTrade list, brings DynCorp into the real business world of reviews in the financial press. We can look forward to such gems as Credit Suisse’s Robert Springarn bullish attitude toward DynCorp because of a "unique investment opportunity." Springarn gave DynCorp an "Outperform" rating.

Peter Barry of Bear Stearns is more pragmatic, noting the "highly unpredictable" market sector DynCorp operates in. Barry also noted DynCorp "won more than 80 percent of the aggregate value of the contracts on which it has bid — an extraordinary success rate". The investment risks that caused Barry to give only a "Peer Perform" include the real ""politically charged, often clandestine" environments DynCorp operates in, something perhaps others are too enthusiastic to notice.

DynCorp is on a roll. Earlier in June, Moody’s upgraded DynCorp "citing a consistently improving performance and benefits from the company’s recently completed initial public offering."

Things look good for DynCorp and the industry. Wait until the reality sets in.

News of Google’s Expansion

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

John Markoff and Saul Hansell write in the New York Times today about a massive computing complex Google is building in Washington state. Oddly, Markoff and Hansell miss the big picture and instead focus on Google as a "search engine":

Google is known to the world as a search engine, but in many ways it is foremost an effort to build a network of supercomputers, using the latest academic research, that can process more data — faster and cheaper — than its rivals.

The need to slice milliseconds off query results is only part of what Google seeks. The authors only, while google-eyed at the power of the distributed computing network that by their words is greater than the NSA’s computing power (an interesting comparison to be made), hint at other services by way of the a quote, "Google is like a Borg", and the comment on the culture of secrecy in Google derived from not discussing revenue sources.

Google does so much more than return results, as I’ve written about in the past. It is unfortunate this front page, below the fold, NYT story misses this. Google is probably happy they did.

Gap Post

~ Matt Armstrong

Reading a post saying there are no posts is almost like somebody answering the door saying "there’s no one here." I noticed that what is now an old post saying I’ll be on holiday for a couple (few) weeks never changed from DRAFT to PUBLISH status.

Blogging will be sparse as more holiday time and working on the house (we’re selling and our offer on a new house was accepted… lots going on) take priority…