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An interesting point: This research is being done in China, not the United States. Whatever happened to basic research being done in the US? Today's PARC laboratory is not in the US, but appears is in China.

This is not a good thing for people who live in the US. America's increasing dependence on outsourcing is destroying the US' capability to be competitive in today's environment.

The Harvard Business Review has an excellent article about how America is destorying its own future.

The Japanese aren't brand-motivated. They are quality-motivated. That's why Japanese cars are boring but last forever.

That's wrong. If you had spoken to a British or American consumer at the time of Japanese automotive boom, you would have found that they are just as quality motivated as the American consumer. And had you spoken to American or British or Italian automotive makers, you would have found some of them wanted quality but were just slightly misinformed as to how they should attain it.

As someone who's taken a course on this, we got the Japanese invention known as The House of Quality pounded into our heads. It's basically a far superior way to "define relationship between customer desires and the firm/product capabilities." The Japanese invented this, I don't know the exact origins (wish I did) but instead of it ended up as some weird business process patent it ended up being used by everyone over there. As a result, their cars didn't leak oil (like the British motorcycles) and they didn't slowly reject every screw that was holding them together. I'm sure the Japanese had many more tools at analyzing the engineering aspects of cars but the fact of the matter is that their engineering and quality control practices just exceeded anything anyone else had (if anyone else had quality control at the time).

Americans look for cool things, which is why American cars are flashy and muscular but also break down constantly and have terribly assembled trim.

This seriously got moderated up? Have you ever been to Tokyo? Have you seen how flashy that city is? Have you ever seen Japanimation, Japanese commercials or game shows? Flashy is all I can think of to describe that.

Your cultural stereotypes humor me. But I think you're suffering from some serious misinformation and anecdotes to which I could provide counter-anecdotes all day long. But both stances are merely an exercise in futility.

They knew, unlike the dopes who lick Steve Jobs' nutsack here in the US, that it was crap the moment they laid hands on it.

Well, if they laid hands on it, they've already purchased it and that's a win for Apple. Or are you saying that the (virtually) same reviews each culture read influenced them differently? The Japanese have more options than we do and they had things that were better than the original iPhones. Those weren't really marketed in America. The iPhone wasn't crap compared to what 90% of Americans were already using. That's the important point, not that American consumers are any stupider or smarter than Japanese consumers.

By that you mean the California voters who voted to deregulate to the system we got?

Except it wasn't deregulated, regulations were shifted. Such as the separation of generation and transmission, then the prices distributors could charge users was capped but generators were allowed to sell electricity for whatever price they could get. Wholesale energy prices in CA increased 500%. It simply was not profitable to sell electricity in CA.

Falcon

Do you know what caused the rolling blackouts in California in 2001? It was not because of lack of generation or transmission capacity, it was all because prices for instate electricity users was capped but wholesale prices increased 500%. Electrical generators were able to sell energy to out of state buyers for more than could be charged to instate buyers.

Falcon

Those blackouts are mostly due to NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitudes for power plants and transmission lines

No, those rolling CA blackouts was because of bad regulations. CA separated ownership of electrical generation from ownership of distribution. At the same tyme the state also capped the charges distributors could charge to electrical consumers, but the generators were not capped. Wholesale electricity costs increased more than 500% but prices were capped for instate customers. A wind farm capable of generating 240 megawatts of electricity sat idle, because it was not profitable to build the transition capabilities.

Quite simply CA's rolling blackouts was not caused by NIMBYs.

Falcon

1) Millions of people could be using something else.

Such as? I mean, billions of people worldwide don't read a newspaper on a daily basis. They just pass along important news orally. Ergo, you argue that newspapers everywhere are worthless, right?

2) "Following" people on Twitter is necessarily superficial compared to other media, which offer the same benefits without the message size limit.

So what's wrong with a tool that lets your friend know what you're up to and vice versa? It's a great way to keep your relationship with friends and family members up to date. Everyone is superficial in a social setting. You are being superficial here on Slashdot. People are superficial by nature, and always will be. Twitter doesn't magically change an otherwise deep and thoughtful person into, "OMG hav u seen britney l8ly? lol."

3) Instant knowledge of world events is available in many media, with Twitter again being more superficial than the others.

Oh yes. You must be talking about that other medium that you lets an entire cadre of friends know about something important that happened to you or that you heard about within minutes of it happening just by quickly shooting off a short message from a computer or cell phone. The non-superficial one.

4) No, it's a means by which protesters disseminate information. It worked in Iran because it's new and the government didn't know how to block it as well as other services at first. It has no inherent advantage in this area.

But you're missing the point that it worked. Better than instant messaging could have. Better than email could have. Better than blogs alone could have. That is important and while the Iranian people may not have achieved their goal, the event will probably earn at least a well-deserved footnote in history. How quickly governments can block Twitter has no bearing on its overall worth. If they control the country's communications, they can block any media.

5) Your point is preposterous. It allows for a deeper understanding of how people use Twitter, sure, but that's not valuable.

To say that there's nothing to be learned about human communication by studying it via a brand-new electronic communications medium is what I call preposterous. Since your so forthright with your opinions, I'm sure you won't mind contacting these researchers and telling them that their work is worthless.

6) And an inferior one at that.

Inferior to what? Concrete examples please, no weasling out with "everything" or "other media" like you have in this post. I'm really curious to know what exactly does Twitter's job better than Twitter. Without being, you know, superficial.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/01/asleep_at_the_wheel_of_creativ_1.html
Here is the original, unsummarized version. Sorry 'bout that.

I'd like to bring the idea of venture capital firms into focus for a minute, and I think it may be important to Slashdot.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/04/asleep_at_the_wheel_of_creativ_2.html

It *is* harvard business school, so perhaps a grain of salt is required.

Although others may not agree with me, there is an important point in both the Democrat article linked by the summary and in the link above: Venture Capital is not a systemic risk to the financial system. Why? The articles disagree on that point, but I tend to think they are not doing what they are supposed to, and the reason why they aren't might be worthy of a moment of cogitation (or whatever).

Haque makes the argument that one major reason the downturn has been so bad is that VCs have not done what they are supposed to for the last 15-odd years: Invest in risky technology and bring in the new companies/ideas as the old ones crumble, not try to be completely safe and make a a gazillion dollars! The new technologies, processes, and ideas that are supposed to sweep in and replace the old broken ones (is there anyone to replace GM, Ford, and Chrysler, for instance?) are not here, they're 5-10 years out, such as Tesla Motors. Venture capital is supposed to be the creative force behind our economy (please argue with me here), while the market determines the worth of the product created and ultimately leads to the destruction of companies that do not pass muster.

The reason we had this bubble is because there was no real blockbusters worth investing in. Something had to be mocked up to look like a good investment, not only Real Estate, but things like social networking sites. There was even a recent Slashdot article, I believe, on Facebook's issues. Why are we pouring money into things like this (I'll cover my opinion on that in a moment)?

Haque's argument also states that America was the only really booming economy in the world for the last 100 years because it was the only real venture capital country. I'm not sure I completely agree (it's obviously more complicated than that) but I wonder if the point isn't partly true. By deciding to not take big risks in technology and science, by not funding the education necessary for people to actually take those risks, and by creating a culture where style matters over substance, perhaps the state of Venture Capital firms (and even silicon valley) is a reflection of the mindset that has led to the current economy.

In that regard, I'm not sure any political party should really want to control them. How innovative are they really going to be without visionaries willing to take big risks for their visions?

Yes, I know there are visionary benefactors out there, but if there's a discussion to be had surrounding VCs should we tie it back into innovation since this is Slashdot?

Are there any people here involved marginally with VC (I know I have been recently and have a story for another post) that can give us some perspective?