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What Fruits Will Reduced R&D Bear For The U.S.?
lucabrasi999 writes "Here's an interesting
commentary from Mike Tarsala at CBS.Marketwatch.com regarding R&D spending by U.S. companies as it compares to overseas firms. It compares today's US tech firms to the Big Three Automakers of the 70's, while saying the overseas tech firms are similar to the Toyotas and Hondas of the 70's. In other words, US Tech firms are about to be taught a lesson in global capitalism. I think Mike is 100% correct. What do you think?"
And it's because the economy is in the crapper, not in spite of it.
If the economy was similar to what it was a few years ago, then sure, R&D dollars would be up a lot.
Am I the only one that sees this correlation?
Sent from your iPad.
GM only has the cadillac.. and you shouldn't have to go top end to get an innovative machine.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Stem cell research.
Our puritanical (read: Conservative) stance not shared by other countries like India and the UK will definitely put us behind in this area.
Of course they will..
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Private companies then exploit this and make money.
Also, due to the efficiency of the US capital market and the enormous US home market new technology is rapidly developed in the US but perfected elsewhere. But the same speed to start things also drives an outlook that is only quarterly at most US firms which kills quality after a while.
The perfect example is the car industry. The US just got big and for a long time the only US car innovations are the cupholder and the SUV. ABS, fuel injection, constant 4WD multiple valves and other improvements do not come from Detroit. Another is large jets.
Why should computing be any different ?
He draws some interesting parallels, but it would be nice to have some numbers to back up his statements. It is easy to talk doom and gloom, and everyone is quick to jump on that bandwagon, but lets see some hard data.
He may be right though, but would that be so bad? I am an American, and I love America, but I would like to see a world where there there is a little more balance of economic power. Would that be so bad for the average American?
I whole-heartedly disagree. We need more R+D effort...that way, I can get a raise!
I have a friend who is my economic guru and we talk about this quite a bit. Yes, because there is an administration that is not focused on the economy, everyone is holding on to their money. Thusly, no R&D. We've actually made the car comparison a quite a few times.
Another thing we talk about though, is the fact that as other countries 'catch up' technologically to us, there will be less and less reason for companies not to outsource all their tech needs. This already happens to a great extent in the manfacturing industry and China. For tech, we see a lot of farming out to India, especially since they're are lot of competent English speakers there.
How can U.S. firms compete with this? I don't think they can and ultimately, another industry will move more and more off shore. This doesn't mean, however, that the U.S. will not find other markets.
I think that if there are more and more highly skilled people in other countries around the world that can do the same tech work our skilled workers do here, then the next place is space. Unfortunately, we're not jumping on that and now we have a European agency headed to the moon and China talking about mining it. Welcome to the future of the transnats. Like hi-tech, the U.S. has the opportunity to drive this one for a while. The question is will they?
the west invented the car -- asia enhanced it. again, the computer revolution was invented in the west and asia will enhance it. now our nascent industries are nano-tech and bio-tech. many years from now asia will 'enhance it'
this tidbit:
"Instead of sending future tech wealth abroad, we need to open our doors to more top foreign scientists. We're sending H-1B visa holders home with pink slips and a basket of skills they learned from U.S. companies. We should be giving the brightest of them research fellowships working for the Department Homeland Security."
Gimme a break - there are plenty of highly qualified American citizens. Why exactly should we entrust national security to people who are not part of the shared American destiny? An H1-B is BY DEFINITION temporary. Personally, I think part of the solution here is to reduce the number of H1-B holders, not put them in charge of the candy store...
It says to me the US has learned nothing from the British. Get too content with being the global big dog and the next thing you know you're not number 1 anymore. Considering how many people india has, and how education is playing a bigger role each year, they could replace the US.
What get's me is US greed is handing them the spot too.
I see this as more a case of America going through growing pains.
As a sort-of new nation - lets say 'teen-ager', America is full of innovations and also full of free-market idealism - the American worker has a big say about thier working environment.
The individual can have some kind of say.
When compared to the east, with cultures that have been around for thousands of years, there's a very different work ethic where the individual is unimportant. So much so that bosses will take lunch with the lowest staff.
The free-maket idealism coupled with the individuals say costs american companies more.
The eastern work ethic coupled with the unimportance of the individual creates a very efficient working environment.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Um, HELLO, if someone is getting a pink slip doesn't that imply some sort of deficiency? This entire article hinges on "Foreign Students == Good"! Why is the author's solution for us to go over to India and China to grab talent when foreign companies are coming to the US? Isn't that playing into their hands? This part makes no sense.
But the improved R&D money thing is fine. Sure. But what has gotten the HPs and IBMs? Answer: undercut by Dell. If that is not a "lesson in global capitalism" I don't know what is. And as far as I know the Big Companies that DO have the money to do R&D... *gasp* do it.
What this author doesn't seem to realize is that many US firms are coming to grips with cost undercutting. Maybe proprietary HW meant something back in 1990 but not any more. So companies cut those groups and buy the same whitebox stock from Taiwan. The author seems to think that this is just some Anti-R&D attitude, when all it is is the proper reaction to a market reality
What is music when you despise all sound?
Patent litigation. Developing patents then sueing people for using them is going to be the next real business. Forget innovating, we can sue people and get quicker rests at much higher profit margins!
Someone will then patent a "patent trial" and then put an end to it all. (And not a good thing either - it'll be the end of innovation in America)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This same line of discussion has come up here many times before. One comment I have seen frequently runs along the lines of: "Well, buddy, don't be a pussy. It's all competition, and if you're good enough you'll still have a job".
Well, guess what, guys? Unless you're a genius - and I suspect most of us aren't (in fact, I'd suspect most of us are slightly above average to being very good at what we do, but we're not mostly very good) - we're going to lose our jobs. Because a decent Indian programmer making $5K a year looks a hell of a lot better than a great American programmer making $50K a year.
We have a window of less than ten years, I think, in which to react to the possible destruction of American IT. Because humans elsewhere are just as smart. Only thing is, they get paid like shit.
You think you can compete because you're better? Dream away, my son.
With that as an example, I think that it's a little shortsighted to look at dollars to dollars and say that the US is coming up short. Maybe it is, but the article doesn't provide the evidence. A better measure of the balance of R&D budgeting is more qualitative than quantitative. What is coming out of R&D? Are we developing products and ideas that have any kind of a chance at hitting the market and actually making a profit? Don't jeer at the search for profitability...where do you think the R&D bucks come from?
I can only speak from my experience at the high tech company where I work, but R&D expenditures are a significant amount of total revenues. Perhaps other companies have different views, but for us, even in a tough time, R&D is the lifeblood of what we do. It's just that when money is as tight as it is now, the spending becomes much more focused.
Using Huawei Technologies as an example of the threat to American tech dominance is certainly a red herring. If Tarsala counts blatent copying of product and documentation as a positive result of R&D spending, then his perception of R&D is simply wrong. Honda didn't copy the CVCC from Ford or General Motors...they created it on their own.
-h-
I thought the whole deal about patents was that there were supposed to encourage companies to invest in research because they could expect a payoff. And didn't I read somewhere recently that patent applications are up?
So which is it? Is real innovation down because of a screwed up patent system? Or because of a lack of money? Or just hubris on the part of US companies that think they know the one true way for everything?
Personally I do believe innovation is suffering right now. And I don't think the patent system is helping. Instead companies are pumping out patents on everything old under the sun while few are spending money on something truly new.
Why? The reality of innovation is that new things are almost always built on old foundations. When those foundations might have 2,000 different patents the incentive to try new combinations of things is reduced because you don't want the hassle of infringement. Or at least it seems that way to me. Your mileage may vary...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Probably not enormous, mutant, cybernetically-enhanced mega-fruit that dominate the landscape and roam the earth as the megafauna of a new age.
Nope. Not without research dollars. Just plain old boring apples and oranges and crap.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
At only 500 test tubes per turn, we'll have to start stealing techs from the Psilons to keep pace.
What a newb.
I agree with him although I think R&D will be more affected by this country failed education system more than the lower funding. Last night, I spent time with my youngest son who is in 7th grade doing his homework. He has only just now gotten to porportions granted he is not in advanced math but still by the time I was in 7th grade we were doing pre-algebra and that was really review since I had learned a lot of in 5th grade along with others at my grade level (Special elementary school but still).
Even scarier, he is making a C in math and science and he is one of only 4 kids in those classes that is passing. Our education system is very broken in this country and will only get worse if Bush has his way. My son goes to Houston Independent School District home of the finest education system hence why we kicked Rod Paige up to Secretary of Education. After all HISD students pass the state test or conviently transfer to another school or not drop out code even if the principals have to lie.
Rabi Satter
If Honda can do for computers what it did for automobiles, in 10 years my PC will use .01 watts, be completely wireless, measure 4 cubic centimeters, have a holographic display and track my eye movement to move the cursor. (provided I have an X Sesion going. :)
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
"Instead of sending future tech wealth abroad, we need to open our doors to more top foreign scientists. We're sending H-1B visa holders home with pink slips and a basket of skills they learned from U.S. companies. We should be giving the brightest of them research fellowships working for the Department Homeland Security."
The good old USA just doesn't have bright scientists available in this downturn to award research fellowships in the Department of Homeland Security. So, let's bring in H-1B scientists, that will be employed at taxpayer expense. Americans can eat cake.
Research has been getting the axe for the last thirty years anyway. Look at Lucent, the sad remnant of Ma Bell's labs. They have some 3,000 employees who must strugle to support 250,000 pensioned retirees. Tell me what kind of "research" the local Bells have to take it's place, please. IBM? Shuting down, at least in the US. It's pathetic. It's like these companies think they can just fund a few graduate level slaves or wait for hobbiests to come up with ideas to steal.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Totally right, these cheap bastards wouldnt know a pot of gold if it was right in front of them. Seems they are too busy trying to pay their morgages and attempting to recover from investing in corporations like AOL and web-crap that never had any revenues but the name just sounded so cool...
Been spending a few weeks out here in the valley and its a sad, sad scene... you got CEO's borrowing lunch money after finishing their double shift as receptionist for some dude who aint paying him anything more than miniumum wage - and even that check comes late.
Really sad, I'm think i'm moving to Europe where people are friendly, intelligent, and 90% of the population isnt over 250lbs
UK research in this area is conservative as well.
:)
If you want to talk about stem cells, cloning etc.. look at Italy. They'll do anything to give a granny another child
The return on investment for sound R&D has been well established. Of course, there is a world of interpretation in that little qualifier "sound" but the fact remains that R&D investment is critical to continued, sustainable growth - particularly in the tech world. Unfortunately, the narrow-minded focus on the quarters earnings doesn't permit this kind of rationality that could speed economic recovery. It makes about as much sense as refusing to change the oil in your car because you're short on cash, but hey, that's business.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I looked through the article (and some other articles linked in the sidebar) but couldn't find any hard numbers showing that other countries are actually spending more.
Now, while I don't have a large compendium of current statistical data at my disposal, I do have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence gleaned from my position as a manager of international sales, where I spend a lot of time visiting foreign companies talking to their executives. As far as I can tell R&D budgets worldwide are being cut in the last couple of years, especially in Asia where the economy has been hit harder than most other places. Let's face it: in tough times every company looks to increase their short-term profitability, and usually that comes at the expense of programs that don't have an immediate bottom line (say, over the next year) written in black. R&D programs are high on that list. While R&D might spark a product line or reduction in cost, companies won't usually start seeing profits from most successful R&D programs for several years.
Even in my small, agile company an investment in R&D dollars usually won't pay off for at least 1.5-2 years, and that's only because we already have a baseline product to structure our development and marketing around. When we were starting from scratch, it took about 3-4 years of development before we started breaking even on those R&D dollars we put in initially.
fact: government only takes, rarely provides [stimulus to the economy]
The government can, however, stimulate consumption. To do this, it can take money that would otherwise be used for non-consumption purposes and give it to people whose existing cash flows don't meet their needs for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and other basic necessities.
Since consumption drives the economy, there are times when doing the above makes great sense. Yes, that means the government uses the threat of force to take a fraction of the money onwed by one group and gives it to another group. Libertarians hate that.
But, in the end, it is a better system than the old one, where the middle and lower classes joined together and killed the upper class and redistributed its money when things got really bad. This way, everyone gets to live and, by and large, the wealthy even get to stay wealthy.
Its all about population. The US will someday have a larger population than both India and China combined. Both of those countries birth control policies are working. Meanwhile the US population continues to grow. Already we're creaping up on Western Europe and will surpass it in the next 40 years. Not only does the US continue to attract excess immigration, the native US population continues to reproduce at above replacement levels.
The country with the larger population will have the biggest market and thus the strongest economy.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
A number of years ago I when I was in college Lee Iaccoca (CEO of Chrysler at the time) gave a speech. He was asked why Chrysler does their engineering oversees. In a very obtuse way he basically answered "because they are better".
That, of course, really pissed me off. Not because he was wrong - he certainly wasn't. But the reason foriegn automotive engineers were better was his fault! For 20 years US auto makers did very little to push the envelope of auto engineering. They may not of needed to because of the market, but the real damage was that they lost a culture of skilled engineers.
Skilled engineering is not something you can just create on the turn of the dime. Experience means a lot in engineering. (And I don't simply mean the experience of individual people. I mean the experience of a group where there's always some continuity). If the US auto makers kept trying to innovate in the 60's and 70's, they would of had plenty of skilled engineers who would know how to make better cars, (even if the innovations weren't marketable). Instead, they had no engineers available and had to turn to foriegn companies for help.
Whether the same could happen in the IT industry, I don't know. At the moment the industry is still very competitive innovation-wise. So, it's not a matter of US industries sitting on their asses, like they did with cars. It's more a matter of them farming out to the lowest foriegn bidder. The net result could be same, though.
A 6.8% decline != sky falling. In fact, given the maturity of the innovation curve surrounding IP based technologies and given barriers to entry for silicon / software technologies, it may not be enough of a decline.
If you're in IT, think about it. What new technologies are going to be "really hot" over the next 24-48 months? Wireless? Databases? Operating Systems? Other than Security and maybe P2P, I can't think of any. And while Microsoft has sucked with their security offerings, I'd bet that the moment Groove or Ikimbo or whomever picks up steam there'll be a competing (albeit sucky) technology built into Windows.
None of the top index tech companies are going to be threatened by small or large overseas companies any time soon. I think it was Gerstner who said that "If someone else (like Microsoft) appears in the marketplace and threatens us, we'll simply buy them."
To that extent his automaker analogy is self-defeating
1.) Honda, Toyota, et. al, were all rumored to be on the ropes and acquisition targets by US automakers before the recent slump. While that's not likely to happen in the current economy, those Japanese companies aren't exactly shining examples of market longevity.
2.) US automakers bought a startling number of European companies when privatized. To compete in market spaces where they had poor market penetration, Jaguar, Volvo, Saab, Rover, and Lamborghini (I'm sure I'm missing someone) are for the most part more competitive than they were, and in many cases, helping their parent companies better compete in the luxury space.
To me, this just smacks of silly alarmist thinking - like someone needed a topic for the day.
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
And you would be in line for the benefits of Hitler's "research" too? I think not.
The issue here is not "should we do R&D or not", it's about who is human. Benefits can be had from all kinds of things, the question is, are they ethical?
Whatever your view on human life and unborn babies, everone has to aknowledge it's a serious issue. Though obviously not as easy to evaluate, it has the same moral weight as if we were debating the "humanness" of all 8-year-olds. Whatever you decide, you're making a serious call.
For me the question is not what but who we're doing research on, and in the case of stem cell research, we've stepped over the line.
-Malloc___________________ I want to be free()!
Unfortunately, R&D in the USA isn't about innovation, but more about getting patents on all the up and comming technologies before they happen. That way you can lock out competitors and squeeze a ton of royalities out of industries that will require all the up and comming technologies. However there are some times where good things happened - IBM wrongly assumed that they would be able to controll all the interfaces on the IBM compatable PC. When they were wrong, it created an economic explosion of companies that creating plug-in cards and periphials.
Because of patnets, researchers working for companies are often forced to be greedy and secretive about things they discover. There is little in depth sharing of knowledge and collaberation until the lawyers and bean counters give the ok. One big side effect of this is that a large amount of innovation in US society has been shifted to the University sector, which has made it extremely important in US society. Unfortunately, now even many Universities are getting greedy with patent controlls killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
However, the really good news is free (as in freedom) software. Never in the history of human existence has there been such a sharing of knowledge, spread of basic tallent, application of standardized orgin, economic colaberation, and the likes. It is having a strong effect of shifting R&D from the university sector back to the private sector. If we lift the monopoly on patents, I think the same thing will happen in other technology areas.
"It compares today's US tech firms to the Big Three Automakers of the 70's, while saying the overseas tech firms are similar to the Toyotas and Hondas of the 70's."
Of course,
- now the Big Three, Toyota, Honda and the rest all own each other
- a sizeable portion of the Hondas made in the world are assembled here
- the economy that spawned all those Toyotas and Hondas has been in the crapper for 15 years
- the economies that tried to 'out-Toyota Toyota' (Korea and the other little tigers) have been in the crapper for 5 years
Maybe their prospects aren't so great after all...
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
R&D helps to increase productivity, and improve services as we all know. But there is no incentive for an organization to invest dollars into the R&D machine.
Spending money to make a better product only works as long as your competition is not also doing the same. Said another way, R&D provodes no clear competitive advantage for companies unless the competition cannot afford to finance R&D spending.
Successful companies(like Microsoft) can afford R&D spending because they have no significant competition in thier dominated market(OS). Concurrently, most of thier R&D money is spent trying to take over other markets.
Programmers, engineers and scientists are (mostly) mercenaries who sell themselves to the highest bidder. This puts the best and brightest into the hands of the monopolists. The capitalistic basis of "fair competition" is becoming more and more scarce as a result.
The increasing efficiency of these organizations is also reducing the pool of independant competing companies. There are very real examples of how individual programs have replaced the function of entire companies. As our economy becomes dominated by fewer, and more powerful companies the competetive gap between companies within the same market segment will become so prohibitive, as to render "free market capitalism" a thing of the past.
The current rash of IP and patent sweeps being declared by established companies will only exacerbate the problem further, ensuring an almost dynastic future for key blue-chip american businesses.
Bottom line, R&D expenditure is a luxury like never before. Only the top companies can afford to make R&D expenditures, and the number of such companies is getting fewer and fewer. Programmers, engineers and scientists trying to sell the merits of research are going to be largely ignored.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I'm not so sure that increased R&D spending due to economic is necessarily a Good Thing (tm). I've been in R&D for years and before the Dot.Bomb money infiltrated our devision our department was small, we worked hard for the progress we made and basically it was fun. When all the money started floating about upper level management started having delusions of grandeur, we got into technologies that were not our core compentices, we made dubious business deals to make devices that didn't really make sense in the market. We hired many programmers and consultants that our existing managers had no idea how to motivate. Suddenly the lab began to resemble the world according to Scot Adams. Now that the bubble burst, our original technology has been sold twice (in three years) and several of the projects I've worked on have been canceled. Most of the dead wood has been pruned away and what reamins are a couple of small groups that will wind up having to move to continue research. Hindsight being 20-20 I don't think we should let ourselves become distracted and concentrated on continuing real development in the areas we were working on to begin with. Bottom line: increased spending is not automaticaly a Good Thing, increased productivity is...
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Look at the rumors surrounding SCO and the BSD-derived code in Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux that SCO thinks it "owns." A court ordered licensing fee would set back the free and open source software movements, even if replacement code is eventually written. Developing nations do not have these restrictions, and will benefit enormously. Without a change the U.S. will be come less relevant.
Europe traditionally taxes engine displacement, hence all those little-bitty motors. Detroit traditionally didn't have that constraint, and "Detroit Iron", i.e. large displacement V-8 engines is a cheap way to get powerful, smooth-running, long-lasting engines. As far as fuel economy, there is nothing that says that you can't, within limits, gear a large displacement engine really tall to get comparable fuel economy to a much smaller displacement engine. Perhaps the smaller displacement engine weighs less and takes up somewhat less space, allowing for a lighter vehicle, and the reduced mass of the smaller engine may produce faster engine warmups. Also, fewer cylinders can produce some economy gain from friction and heat loss considerations. Also, these highly tuned small displacement engines have much peakier torque curves, so it is not clear how much the high horsepower contributes to having a quick, fun-to-drive car (unless listening to a tiny engine spool up is fun). So, I think the notion of high horsepower per cc is overblown.
That's a far too simplistic analysis.
Myth 1) Population rules all, which is why China (#1 population) and India (#2 population) should have the most powerful economies in the world.
Reality) China's GDP ranks 7th, behind that of the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, and Italy. India's is 12th.
Myth 2) The United States, because of all of those damned immigrants and teenage mothers, is increasing its population at a staggering rate.
Reality) The predicted population ranking in 2015 will still be in order of size: China, India, the United States. The annual population growth rates of these nations between 1995 and 2000 are .90%, 1.69%, and 1.05% respectively. Accurate predictions for, say 2040, are hamstrung by the repeated failures of earlier population forecasts, as this paper delineates.
Larger population does not equal strongest economy. Japan has the 9th largest population and 2nd largest economy. Enormous Russia has the 6th largest population and 15th largest economy.
Population densities, education, economic infrastructure, and a variety of other factors are far more imporant than simple comparisons of size.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Innovation is down because the innovators are too busy freaking out over how they will pay their mortgage. As soon as the general populace is no longer preoccupied by trying to survive, innovation will continue. However, it is a nasty catch-22.
:P
(For reference, please see the Dark Ages and the Renaissance.)
Jason Fisher
How much of current American properity is due to military dominance? If this dominance ceases to matter (or just plain fades) will we continue to be properous?
Consider..
The UK was once the world's economic and military powerhouse.
Its dominance was challenged in the late 19th century by Germany. The practical arts of manufacture and commerce were not valued in British society at the time - not the case in Germany. German advances in chemical engineering and aircraft made it a formidable adversary in WWI.
Growing military importance of aircraft dimished the importance of the British fleet in maintaining world domination - a technical advance passed by this great empire and removed its monopoly on military power.
Despite this, in 1950 UK was still a major exporter of durable goods, a surprising portion of autos and consumer goods were still made there. This soon vanished.
By the 1960's, the premier UK businesses were service oriented - advertising, finance, etc. They had lost all real edge in "goods" manufacture.
Sometime in the 1980's the former world power found its GDP surpassed by former defeated WWII opponent Italy.
Control over an empire may have masked deficiencies in how the UK innovated and marketed innovations. Once the empire dissolved in the 1950's a serious decline began.
Any lessons here?
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Yo! Bright boy. It isn't even close to what he wants to pay to oust Sadam, let alone the military budget. Remember he wants Congress to allocate $68B for his little Iraqian adventure, and still needs $32B to bribe Turkey, after that. $1.2B may sound like a lot to you, but compared with most Federal expendatures, it's lost in the noise. So, trust me, Bush is (yet again) no hero in this area.
That is all.
The majority of R&D has been done by the US government, not by corporations.
Wrong. In the US 70% of R&D funding is done by corporations.
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/databrf/sdb99357.htm
An interesting point to the work being outsourced is that eventually they (Chinese,Indians) have an opportunity to explore - "this doesn't have to be this way". At a certain point Honda realised that engines need not be big block Hemis to get power - variable valve technology was the result (V-TEC).
Big companies overlooking innovation is not a new thing. Before M$ there was IBM. Before Ford there was Diamler-Benz. The promise of America is the Wright Brothers. Infact the nation of America is a proof of success that resulted from "country doesn't have to be this way (monarchy, imperialist etc)".
So the question is not R&D budget though education certaily is. But - whether there is a healthy environment for backyard inventors to explore the "this doesn't have to be this way" opportunities. My faith is beginning to shake. Patents are suffocating, monopolies lobbying the congress to maintain status quo is quite discouraging, smart kids are being sent to jail instead of being mentored.
Asia is already a device/mobility haven. It is sad that I hear/read about these marvels as the British used to narrate their experiences of exotic lands. Unfortunately for America, there is no central point where cash an be infused to jumpstart "it". The hope is that USA will find a new frontier while IT/tech sector is commoditized.
What happens when most of the R&D in tech is taking place overseas (and it might be argued that most of the R&D going on right now is taking place outside of the USA) and they have these very strict IP laws in place? The IP laws were put in place to protect American interests (presumably) but what happens when they become a serious stumbling block to the US economy (well, in a more obvious way than it already is). Imagine if BT had been able to enforce their hyperlinking patent and had begun demanding licensing fees of every company in the US?
I think this is an ideal situation to slap congress around to the fact that IP laws need to be changed to a more reasonable framework. Reward the inventor, yes, but granting monopolies isn't going to help society or the economy in the long run.
Not just answers, the correct questions.
I call Goodwin's Law! You lose!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The RIAA is going crazy over MP3 sharers instead of understanding that digital encoding and mp3s are the wave of the future, not to mention the internet is a highly more effective distribution center than anything else out there.
.
Why do you suppose they are fighting the internet as a distribution method? Because it is more efficient than current methods. They don't want better efficiency, because profit is made in the friction of distribution.
Think about the areas of greatest profitability in the market today, and tell me where they are made. Meanwhile, let me say where I think it lies: with distribution. The Wal*Marts, the Amazons, the Sam Goodies of the world make a lot of money through distribution.
Microsoft still refuses to believe in any uses towards Open-source programming . .
The problem with Free/Open Source software is that it removes the friction of distribution. Microsoft has dominated the market by controlling the distribution chain from day one. At every point where another competitor has threatened to enter the distribution chain (say, DR-DOS), they have choked the distribution points (in the case of DR-DOS, by making per-processor licensing deals with each distributor).
The more friction you can create and maintain, the more money you can make. The advantage of a monopoly is that you are the only controller of the distribution chain.
For all information, the internet approaches frictionless distribution. This is what scares the MPAA, and Microsoft, and the broadcast television companies: in the future, they will be unable to extract Ceasar's share from the distribution chain. That is why they are fighting so hard to introduce friction in the form of legislation.
This is also why capitalism is butt-useless for information, as artificial friction must be introduced into the system (in the form of copyright and patent law). These laws worked when capitalism was based more on physical objects (books, records, films), but now that the information has become more important than the distribution method, capitalism in its current form fails miserably.
The technological push you mention as necessary for the American economy is much deeper than simply increasing innovation or R&D. We must embrace the social aspects of this technology as well, and not introduce unnecessary friction into the system resisting the technology.
I don't mean we must accept all new technology as good. But "Hurts Profits" != "Bad."
For an interesting take (and a surprising relevence) check out "The Third Wave," by Alvin Toffler. It's an older book, but his predictions have been frustratingly accurate.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I don't think R&D issues are related to the patent system as much as they're related to the education system (or lack thereof)
I believe murder is wrong because I deem "human rights" to be something inherent in "human beings". I'm not going to go into cogito ergo sum and all that; I'm going to assert that sentience is the defining property of a human; it's what differentiates us greatly from the cow, and somewhat less-greatly from the octopus, whale, or chimpanzee.
Adult humans are clearly sentient. Infant humans are probably sentient, or have a very high probability of attaining sentience within a year or two. The (clinically, as opposed to the sense of having an MBA) brain-dead human is not sentient. Agglomerations of developing human cells are not sentient, and only have any potential for sentience with a large investment on the part of the host organism. Spammers are neither human nor sentient.
All cultures have strong taboos governing murder, and most cultures have equally strong taboos governing infanticide. The taboo against "pulling the plug" on the comatose is not universal, nor is the taboo against abortion. (In fact, both of those "taboos" are so non-universal that they are better considered social conventions.) And most of us would be ineligible to serve on a jury in the homicide trial of a man charged with the slaughter of a spammer; how could any user of email bring back a guilty verdict when no crime had been committed?
Dude, have you owned a Honda (or Toyota) in the last 10 years? You can't beat them for reliability without spending double their price for a German car. Which seems to be the point you make in the rest of your post, about bang for your buck. My Honda won't beat your Mercedes in most categories, but you spend DOUBLE to get a 10% better car. Now if I said "Yugo" instead of Honda and "Low price is everything" instead of "I get one hell of a car for the price of an average car", then you would have a point.
But I didn't, so you don't. Instead, you made my point for me.
>>"If you are strapped for cash, you'll go with not only what is cheaper but what gets you the most bang for your buck."
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
GW could not get ANY benefit during the course of his presidency, even if elected for a second term in a straight blood-for-oil trade. It would take over 3 BILLION barrels of oil at $30-35 ber barrel before it would even match the $100B estimate for the cost of the war, and that would only work if we flat out stole the 3B barrels.
Oil companies won't be footing the bill for the invasion of Iraq; American taxpayers will. The cost benefit ratio is actually quite good when you realize that.
I don't think anyone's that the war would be of any benefit to the *United States* itself. It'll be of huge benefit to oil companies who will take very good care of Bush et al when they're no longer in office. They get all the benefit of the invasion and none of the costs.
It probably costs close to a billion dollars a day to have them sit around at home. There's a trillion dollar defense budget each year. Divide by 365. That's several billion dollars per day no matter what they do.
My other first post is car post.
I'm a medical device consultant. My American clients want me to help them commercialize technology they have licensed. Most of it is from Europe and Australia.
My clients in China and India want to beat the EU and USA companies with better tech done cheaper. And they aren't counting on labor costs to get the cost reduction, they are counting on superior smarts.
And now I've got a company based in South Africa that wants to take a technology from Egypt and one from Cuba and develop a new surgical treatment that combines the two. Manufacturing will be in Vietnam. And I'm the only American on the team.
You don't need to read theoretical articles. Next time you download a printer driver, check out where the programming was done. American domination of the globe is a temporary abberation, soon to be remedied in the traditional manner.
"Don't expel your beverage through your nostrils when the really rich demand the impossible. There's a fortune there for
That's $1.2 billion over five years, and that includes $500 million already pledged by Bush to the Freedom Car Initiative (a continuation of the 80mpg car research project started by the Clinton administration 10 yrs ago). A hundred million or two a year is peanuts in the Federal budget. (story here). Fuel cell research will probably need 10 times as much money before it's ready for production.