His article has nothign to do with the traditional understanding of what a "bubble" is, espeically when referring to the tech 'bubble' of the late 90's.
No, the error lies in the/geeks who mistakenly think that.bubble is the ur-bubble, the one and only true model for all bubbles.
Dvorak talks about a "CD-ROM bubble." Now, I've been around for a while, and I thought I would remember any major deflation of a market such as what happened in the dot-com bubble, but what the hell is he talking about?
Back in the late 80's-early 90's CD-ROM's were going to revolutionize the world. Bookstores would shrink to mere kiosks. Want a Sears catalog? Just drop Sears and a cashier would hand you a CD. Software stores would also shrink to mere kiosks - software would burned onto a CD while-you-wait. (True radicals thought that all the above would be replaced by CD vending machines - some folks even tried!) CD-RW would replace hard drives - ending backup woes forever... Software would run from CD - ending the need for hard drives! Etc... Etc...
But early CD drives were painfully slow and painfully expensive - while hard drives continued to drop in price/meg (Gig drives were not yet common) and increase in speed and capacity.
Ditto pad computing, I must have missed all the hype about that.
Musta worked pretty hard to do so, or have been living in Outer Mongolia from about 1989 to 1992. Pad Computing was the Next Big Thing along about then. After the sucess of Window 3.0/3.1, that was going to be Microsoft and Apple's next big battle ground - but Microsoft bowed out to go with OS/2 and Apple was late-to-market with the flawed Newton. Pad computing slid into being the niche it was today - the portable computing market was instead dominated by the PC compatible laptop, with the ThinkPad and PowerBook leading the way.
Just because you somehow missed the bubble doesn't mean they didn't happen. (Not to mention that like most other IT bubbles, they largely happened in the IT industry - they didn't reach out and effect the general public the way that the Internet bubble did.)
Of course it does matter, since only monopolies can make basic research profitable.
That would be filed under 'assumption', not 'fact'. Especially considering that a) Ma Bell was in a lot of businesses where they weren't a monopoly, b) even in telephony they were only an effective monopoly not a full monopoly, and c) being a monopoly doesn't mean much when you can't charge what you want to.
Any other company investing in non-patentable research might as well just hand over the cash to their competitors which would steal the discoveries in any case.
That would be filed under 'bullshit'. Like every other clueless moron you miss the fact that basic research doesn't lead to profitable products/technologies. Applied research, built on that basic research leads to profitable products/technologies. Ma Bell gave away a great deal of basic research - and still made a great of money at it because they excelled at applied research.
And... When your 'facts' are shown to false, you resort to sputter and tinfoil hat rantings - but you even get those wrong. This has nothing to do with 9/11. ITAR predates 9/11 by decades. ITAR paranoia, storm trooper tactics, and general invasivness goes back decades.
Here's a clue for you, when you don't know what you are talking about: Shut the fuck up.
American Dad does the same thing with pop culture references but has a lot fewer fans.
American Dad has popularity problems simply because it's so poorly done. Wrapping a derivative (and repetitive) sitcom drama in broad political stereotypes results in a show that appeals only to particularly dim (and small) subset of the American viewing audience.
I never really understood as to why Futurama never really took off to the mainstream as Simpsons did.
Reading through the comments I see all the usual tinfoil hat arguments being dragged out. ("You had to be smart", "Poor scheduling", "No marketing", etc...) But for me, it came down to one very simple reason....
Futurma simply wasn't very funny.
Even though I hit the checklists (familiar with sci-fi, etc...) right down the line, I found it faintly repellent. I couldn't identify with the characters and the writing was flat at best. (They consistently tried to make up for the latter by hitting the viewer repeatedly about the head and shoulders - the cartoon equivalent of a pie-in-the-face.)
Japan is different than America - there, even though they share the same name, the affiliation is much looser than you might think. Thus the core product of the Mitsubishi brand is Mitsubishi brand itself - and each of the affiliated companies has it's *own* core competency.
There's really no surprise here... if a lab doesn't spin off something valuable or at least has something big in the pipes that could be marketable in a a few years - cut your losses and shut them down.
The real problem (as I understand TFA) wasn't that the lab wasn't creating marketable product - but that the lab's director (amazingly!) believed it wasn't really his responsibility to conduct research that would lead a marketable product.
And before anyone brings up Bell Labs... Don't. A great deal of mythology has grown up over the years about the basic research performed there. The fact that the majority of the basic research was intended as a prelude to applied research and eventually technology or products that Ma Bell could use or sell has been obscured by this mythology.
appoint people (meeting certain criteria, 25 years old, HS diploma, US citizen) to every single position based on a lottery system
Yep - that's a precise recipe for making things even worse than they are now. Constant change of that nature is a certain way of cementing the power of the bureaucracy and lobbiest. (Not to mention that amateurs will likely be just as motivated to suck up to as many people as possible.)
Professional politicians suck - but so do amateurs.
The only way to combat the influence of money is to not play into their game -- stop running expensive TV campaigns, and go back to grassroots organizing.
One cannot 'go back' to something that never was really all that common in the first place.
Walking precincts, small get-togethers, political rallies -- the foundations of true democracy. Campaigns (and the major political parties) have become professionalized to a ridiculous extent. It's time to make them amateur again, in the best sense of that word.
Let's just say you have a naive and idealized view of the history of the [democratic] political process in the West.
When I was in the Navy, I operated a largish weapons control system... After we left the shipyards our big 'stuff' problem came down to two: ('Mike' ia a) a pseduonym and b) not me, I swear. I was the responsible for the tools and spent a lot of time getting after 'Mike'.)
Documentation Keep it current, keep it organized keep it available, and dammit Mike, put the pubs @$#%#@ back where they belong when you aren't using them!
Tools Common hand tools in this box, commonly used special tools in that one. Rarely used tools in this other one. And dammit Mike, put the @$#%#@ tools back in the @$#%#@ box and put the @$#%#@ box where it @$#%#@ belongs when you aren't using them!
The main key is less in having lots of stuff than in keeping what you do have organized and available.
With minor work for engine bay space and engine mounts, you can bolt up a brand new Audi TT engine to a '79 Rabbit. I can't even begin to name all the parts that are common between my '98 Jetta and my '86 Jetta. Heck, 10 minutes with the engine blocks and you'll start to see similarities between the 1.8L Gasser and my 1.9 TDI.
It's fascinating that you start out raving how 'common' things are, but when you get down to cases... engine mounts need 'minor' work and engine blocks have 'similarities'. Niether of which are characteristics of systems with any significant degree of commonality. Even your the link you provide to a 500HP Beetle with 'standard' parts discusses the amount of work the conversions require.
Which is nothing at all like the situation the OP discusses. (Though he does overstate the case a little.)
Relative to what? A solid-gold-plated Saturn V maybe - as the Saturn V was anything but cheap.
Relative to the space shuttle or developing a missile system from scratch.
In other words - not cheap at all in any useful sense. (Not to mention the fact that a Saturn V launch isn't noticeably cheaper than a Shuttle launch.)
This is roughly on par with claiming one can learn detailed [IC] chip design theory from one of those posters of the 8088's silicon wafers. I.E. it's bunk.
I wrote and studied plenty of Motorola 6800 assembly code during my undergraduate work. Even though the technology was simple and 20 years out of date, it taught me a hell of a lot that is still useful on my modern workstation.
Apples and polar bears. Writing code is a helluva lot different from studying a low resolution poster. Writing code is a helluva lot different from designing IC's.
Sure, the hard stuff, and the expensive stuff is done - leaving the really hard stuff and the really expensive stuff to be done. Like figuring out how to build it[1], building the infrastructure to do so, then actually building it - and then repeating the process with launch and operations end. The big problem with the learning how to build it is replicating great slabs of vanished 1960's technology. Worse yet, you can't simply 'drop in' the 2007 equivalents - not without going through the difficult and expensive process of designing, building, and integrating said 2007 equivalents.
Direct copy, upgrade, or nearly clean sheet design - all three are difficult and expensive.
[1] The hard part is knowing all the stuff not shown in the drawings. Like figuring out how to build the tank ends - a process that is only incompletely documented. (And that's just _one_ example.)
The Chinese space program is going slow because the Chinese are maintaining just enough of a space program to keep themselves on the list of Great Nations. Infrastructure development/construction has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. (And even if it did, they've had more than enough time to do so three times over.)
The more I read the ALSJ the more respect I have for the hardware. The Apollo CM would have survived both shuttle disasters. The Apollo 13 incident resulted in a more mature spacecraft with more redundancy. A similar incident on a shuttle would probably have killed the crew immediately.
It's only a matter of a great deal of luck and extremely hard work by both the astronauts and the folks on the ground that the Apollo 13 accident didn't kill the crew.
Building the system out of small modules meant that the architecture could accommodate expanded modules. Apollo serviced the lunar program, skylab and apollo-soyuz.
Why system was built out of 'modules', they were not 'plug-and-play' in the way that we think of modules today. The CM and SM were extremely tightly integrated. It should also be pointed out that 'modular' systems like the Apollo CSM have some interesting and unique failure modes of their own - like seperating a module too early or seperating a module too late. (Thus Russian Soyuz has suffered both failures.)
That being said, the Saturn V was a relatively cheap way of delivering payload to space.
Relative to what? A solid-gold-plated Saturn V maybe - as the Saturn V was anything but cheap.
There is plenty to be learned from old designs, even if they aren't duplicated. If you've kept up with the news the last few years then you've seen North Korea master nuclear technology, but not the missiles to deliver it. While we seem powerless to stop these countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, we don't need to help them develop the technology to deliver those weapons.
This is roughly on par with claiming one can learn detailed [IC] chip design theory from one of those posters of the 8088's silicon wafers. I.E. it's bunk.
The Discovery Channel special is a couple of years old, TFA isn't. They are starting limited production because they are running out of certain parts and will soon have to start manufacturing said parts - which makes it simple to enter limited production.
Just in case people don't understand how big BC is - it's 357,216 square miles - think California, Nevada and Oregon put together (which total ~366,000 square miles) And while it's population is only 4,352,798, it's still a lot of people.
The BC government plans to cover all that with only 70 locations to turn in materials.
This is one of those cases of "lying with numbers".
It's quite possible to cover the vast majority of the people with so few stations - because most of BC is utterly empty. Of the total population, nearly half live in the Metro Vancouver area - easily covered with 20 or so turn in locations.
This is nothing more than blatant thievery by the BC government and "Encorp", the company administering the whole process.
Considering the misreprestantions you made - I'd consider carefully the glass walls of your own house.
By that measure I could dispute about 90% of the content currently on Wikipedia. But I already made that point in the remainder of my posting - which you don't seem to have bothered to read.
Which, in case you weren't been sarcastic, is exactly how Wikipedia does work. Stuff that isn't common knowledge having to be referenced is the cardinal rule of Wikipedia.
And that's been one of the key problems I've had with the Wikipedia from the beginning... Common knowledge to who? Just because it's not common knowledge J. Random User, doesn't mean it's not common knowledge to a smaller more specialized community.
Heck, I was reading some articles on Pokemon last night (watched the cartoon out of boredom, decided to learn more), and very few statements presented as facts had any references - maybe they are common knowledge to Pokemon fans, but not to me. On the flip side, numerous edits I made to specialized articles that contained material that was common knowledge among folks active in that field were reverted because I couldn't provide a reference. Others were reverted because my reference was an extremely specialized $120 book - which contradicts the material available on the web.
IANAL - but it seems to me they've also effectively taken part in blocking a legal action. AIUI, that can make the University of Kansas liable/responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the error lies in the
Back in the late 80's-early 90's CD-ROM's were going to revolutionize the world. Bookstores would shrink to mere kiosks. Want a Sears catalog? Just drop Sears and a cashier would hand you a CD. Software stores would also shrink to mere kiosks - software would burned onto a CD while-you-wait. (True radicals thought that all the above would be replaced by CD vending machines - some folks even tried!) CD-RW would replace hard drives - ending backup woes forever... Software would run from CD - ending the need for hard drives! Etc... Etc...
But early CD drives were painfully slow and painfully expensive - while hard drives continued to drop in price/meg (Gig drives were not yet common) and increase in speed and capacity.
Musta worked pretty hard to do so, or have been living in Outer Mongolia from about 1989 to 1992. Pad Computing was the Next Big Thing along about then. After the sucess of Window 3.0/3.1, that was going to be Microsoft and Apple's next big battle ground - but Microsoft bowed out to go with OS/2 and Apple was late-to-market with the flawed Newton. Pad computing slid into being the niche it was today - the portable computing market was instead dominated by the PC compatible laptop, with the ThinkPad and PowerBook leading the way.
Just because you somehow missed the bubble doesn't mean they didn't happen. (Not to mention that like most other IT bubbles, they largely happened in the IT industry - they didn't reach out and effect the general public the way that the Internet bubble did.)
That would be filed under 'assumption', not 'fact'. Especially considering that a) Ma Bell was in a lot of businesses where they weren't a monopoly, b) even in telephony they were only an effective monopoly not a full monopoly, and c) being a monopoly doesn't mean much when you can't charge what you want to.
That would be filed under 'bullshit'. Like every other clueless moron you miss the fact that basic research doesn't lead to profitable products/technologies. Applied research, built on that basic research leads to profitable products/technologies. Ma Bell gave away a great deal of basic research - and still made a great of money at it because they excelled at applied research.
And... When your 'facts' are shown to false, you resort to sputter and tinfoil hat rantings - but you even get those wrong. This has nothing to do with 9/11. ITAR predates 9/11 by decades. ITAR paranoia, storm trooper tactics, and general invasivness goes back decades.
Here's a clue for you, when you don't know what you are talking about: Shut the fuck up.
Which has precisely nothing to do with anything, besides being wrong. Of course research costs mattered - even Ma Bell's budget was not infinite.
American Dad has popularity problems simply because it's so poorly done. Wrapping a derivative (and repetitive) sitcom drama in broad political stereotypes results in a show that appeals only to particularly dim (and small) subset of the American viewing audience.
Reading through the comments I see all the usual tinfoil hat arguments being dragged out. ("You had to be smart", "Poor scheduling", "No marketing", etc...) But for me, it came down to one very simple reason....
Futurma simply wasn't very funny.
Even though I hit the checklists (familiar with sci-fi, etc...) right down the line, I found it faintly repellent. I couldn't identify with the characters and the writing was flat at best. (They consistently tried to make up for the latter by hitting the viewer repeatedly about the head and shoulders - the cartoon equivalent of a pie-in-the-face.)
Japan is different than America - there, even though they share the same name, the affiliation is much looser than you might think. Thus the core product of the Mitsubishi brand is Mitsubishi brand itself - and each of the affiliated companies has it's *own* core competency.
The real problem (as I understand TFA) wasn't that the lab wasn't creating marketable product - but that the lab's director (amazingly!) believed it wasn't really his responsibility to conduct research that would lead a marketable product.
And before anyone brings up Bell Labs... Don't. A great deal of mythology has grown up over the years about the basic research performed there. The fact that the majority of the basic research was intended as a prelude to applied research and eventually technology or products that Ma Bell could use or sell has been obscured by this mythology.
Yep - that's a precise recipe for making things even worse than they are now. Constant change of that nature is a certain way of cementing the power of the bureaucracy and lobbiest. (Not to mention that amateurs will likely be just as motivated to suck up to as many people as possible.)
Professional politicians suck - but so do amateurs.
One cannot 'go back' to something that never was really all that common in the first place.
Let's just say you have a naive and idealized view of the history of the [democratic] political process in the West.
Keep it current, keep it organized keep it available, and dammit Mike, put the pubs @$#%#@ back where they belong when you aren't using them!
Common hand tools in this box, commonly used special tools in that one. Rarely used tools in this other one. And dammit Mike, put the @$#%#@ tools back in the @$#%#@ box and put the @$#%#@ box where it @$#%#@ belongs when you aren't using them!
The main key is less in having lots of stuff than in keeping what you do have organized and available.
It's fascinating that you start out raving how 'common' things are, but when you get down to cases... engine mounts need 'minor' work and engine blocks have 'similarities'. Niether of which are characteristics of systems with any significant degree of commonality. Even your the link you provide to a 500HP Beetle with 'standard' parts discusses the amount of work the conversions require.
Which is nothing at all like the situation the OP discusses. (Though he does overstate the case a little.)
Relative to the space shuttle or developing a missile system from scratch.
In other words - not cheap at all in any useful sense. (Not to mention the fact that a Saturn V launch isn't noticeably cheaper than a Shuttle launch.)
I wrote and studied plenty of Motorola 6800 assembly code during my undergraduate work. Even though the technology was simple and 20 years out of date, it taught me a hell of a lot that is still useful on my modern workstation.
Apples and polar bears. Writing code is a helluva lot different from studying a low resolution poster. Writing code is a helluva lot different from designing IC's.
No, the original poster is clueless.
Sure, the hard stuff, and the expensive stuff is done - leaving the really hard stuff and the really expensive stuff to be done. Like figuring out how to build it[1], building the infrastructure to do so, then actually building it - and then repeating the process with launch and operations end. The big problem with the learning how to build it is replicating great slabs of vanished 1960's technology. Worse yet, you can't simply 'drop in' the 2007 equivalents - not without going through the difficult and expensive process of designing, building, and integrating said 2007 equivalents.
Direct copy, upgrade, or nearly clean sheet design - all three are difficult and expensive.
[1] The hard part is knowing all the stuff not shown in the drawings. Like figuring out how to build the tank ends - a process that is only incompletely documented. (And that's just _one_ example.)
The Chinese space program is going slow because the Chinese are maintaining just enough of a space program to keep themselves on the list of Great Nations. Infrastructure development/construction has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. (And even if it did, they've had more than enough time to do so three times over.)
It's only a matter of a great deal of luck and extremely hard work by both the astronauts and the folks on the ground that the Apollo 13 accident didn't kill the crew.
Why system was built out of 'modules', they were not 'plug-and-play' in the way that we think of modules today. The CM and SM were extremely tightly integrated. It should also be pointed out that 'modular' systems like the Apollo CSM have some interesting and unique failure modes of their own - like seperating a module too early or seperating a module too late. (Thus Russian Soyuz has suffered both failures.)
Relative to what? A solid-gold-plated Saturn V maybe - as the Saturn V was anything but cheap.
This is roughly on par with claiming one can learn detailed [IC] chip design theory from one of those posters of the 8088's silicon wafers. I.E. it's bunk.
Because it's the price of being honest and honorable. If you can be otherwise, and look yourself in the mirror, that's fine. That's your choice.
Just don't try and pretend that two wrongs make a right. If you are going to be a thief, at least have the balls to admit it.
The Discovery Channel special is a couple of years old, TFA isn't. They are starting limited production because they are running out of certain parts and will soon have to start manufacturing said parts - which makes it simple to enter limited production.
This is one of those cases of "lying with numbers".
It's quite possible to cover the vast majority of the people with so few stations - because most of BC is utterly empty. Of the total population, nearly half live in the Metro Vancouver area - easily covered with 20 or so turn in locations.
Considering the misreprestantions you made - I'd consider carefully the glass walls of your own house.
By that measure I could dispute about 90% of the content currently on Wikipedia. But I already made that point in the remainder of my posting - which you don't seem to have bothered to read.
And that's been one of the key problems I've had with the Wikipedia from the beginning... Common knowledge to who ? Just because it's not common knowledge J. Random User, doesn't mean it's not common knowledge to a smaller more specialized community.
Heck, I was reading some articles on Pokemon last night (watched the cartoon out of boredom, decided to learn more), and very few statements presented as facts had any references - maybe they are common knowledge to Pokemon fans, but not to me. On the flip side, numerous edits I made to specialized articles that contained material that was common knowledge among folks active in that field were reverted because I couldn't provide a reference. Others were reverted because my reference was an extremely specialized $120 book - which contradicts the material available on the web.
Got a cite for that claim of 'standard' procedure? Or are you just blowing smoke and being insulting to make yourself feel superior?
IANAL - but it seems to me they've also effectively taken part in blocking a legal action. AIUI, that can make the University of Kansas liable/responsible.