Right on target and I couldn't agree more. I can't count how many times I've crossed the border having had to endure the clearly condescending "how are you sir?"; "please exit the vehicle sir"; "what is your business in the U.S. sir?"; "please open the trunk sir"; "you may return to your vehicle sir", "blah, blah, blah, blah" all the time knowing that these untrained armed goons purportedly there to "protect the border" are all really nothing more than sociopathic power freaks.
This is a clear indication of the decline of western society. We all know that it's our god given right to be rude, uncooperative, beligerent and generally unsocial towards "authority" without having to concern ourselves with the consequences of our actions. These guards are probably all redneck dog-beaters anyway that deserve whatever unholy hell Watts' attorney can dish.
We all know the same applies to all social activists, librarians, transit workers and tech support personnel...
One of the other things that many inside HP point to, particularly those former HP'ers now at Agilent Technologies, is that HP effectively shot itself in the creativity foot when it spun-out the Test and Measurment division. Now, if you listen to those with Agilent the culture that Bill and Dave fostered at HP is alive and well at Agilent. So the theory goes that well before Ms. Fiorina arrived HP made a huge blunder by listening to the Wall Street sheep herders who were clamoring for HP to shed itself of this "low-growth, un-sexy" division. What's your impression of Test and Measurement and the effect of its spin-off on HP's legendary culture of creativity and excellence?
I suppose he is implying that either through coercion or force (legal or technological) individuals are going to subsume certain civil liberties to the benefit and/or outright survival of producers of content (usually represented by some corporate legal entity). Does this mean that they will attempt to establish hardware/software standards that will somehow defeat distributed file sharing? Seems a bit overly optimistic, time and again individuals or losely organized groups of them find their way around restrictions on free association and communication.
As many of you might be aware Charlie Rose (on PBS) had a head-to-head interview with Lars and Chuck D. on 5/12/00. Essentially, Lars and Chuck agreed to disagree, however, both were quite "eloquent" in their arguments and I was impressed with Lars' passion for pursuing a public debate. Chuck D. was equally (if not more) impressive in his knowledge of the issues (philosophical and to a lesser degree technical). I can't seem to find a transcript on the internet but if you go to the PBS site you can order the dead-tree version.
This year we in the U.S. are going through our ritualistic revolution in electing a new president , a host of new representatives, and in some states new laws. Not that I've paid religious attention to any of the candidates platforms, but it strikes me that none of the candidates are talking about the patent system.
We've seen candidates talk up their position as Washington reformers (notably McCain) but next to nothing on reforming the patent system. And for all of their talk of plans and accomplishments in fostering technological innovation, encouraging economic growth and free market competition none seem to have a clue as to how the patent system, as it exists, is having a chilling on those same issues. Why?
We the public at large do not see this as a problem until it has a significant impact on our collective pocket-books. With nobody out there in the election process effectively articulating this as an issue that does effect our pocket-books it will remain at the back-end of the electorate's collective consciousness just when it should be an area of focus.
Actually, according to Clarke it was Stanley Kubrick who came up with the name HAL and per his recollection he has no idea why HAL. He seemed to accept that the transposing of IBM to HAL made sense but it wasn't his idea.
I'd have to nominate Dee Hock's book Birth of the Chaordic Age. Long before the open-source mantra became the darling of media and big-business Dee Hock founded Visa International, a great example of how "open-source" organizations can be formed for a greater good. This is and was an organization founded on the principles that each of its 22,000 members had the right to collaborate and contribute to Visa (monetary, infrastructure, operating philosophy, etc.) while at the same time competing intensely with each-other in the marketplace.
His philosophy, as outlined in this book, clearly details why nearly each public and private institution today (command and control structures from the industrial revolution - read "closed-source) is inherrently sick and why chaordic (read open-source) organizations are the answer to the many societal and environmental ills plaguing our world. Chaordic organizations best reflect the models for organized behavior exhibited in nature. This is a truly visionary document that takes the open-source message beyond software and technology and applies it to the world around us.
I'd have to nominate Dee Hock's book Birth of the Chaordic Age. Long before the open-source mantra became the darling of media and big-business Dee Hock founded Visa International, a great example of how "open-source" organizations can be formed for a greater good. This is and was an organization founded on the principles that each of its 22,000 members had the right to collaborate and contribute to Visa (monetary, infrastructure, operating philosophy, etc.) while at the same time competing intensely with each-other in the marketplace. His philosophy, as outlined in this book, clearly details why nearly each public and private institution today (command and control structures from the industrial revolution - read "closed-source) is inherrently sick and why chaordic (read open-source) organizations are the answer to the many societal and environmental ills plaguing our world. Chaordic organizations best reflect the models for organized behavior exhibited in nature.
This is a truly visionary document that takes the open-source message beyond software and technology and applies it to the world around us.
It is obvious that as an organization IBM has had a long and storied history of pursuing this kind of research such that it has long been institutionalized within that culture. I can't for the life of me see the same sort of sub-culture seriously being promoted within microsoft.
I took a look at the microsoft Research site research.microsoft.com which just struck me as more of an after-thought than a real effort to "instutionalize" a dynamic and relevant research culture. Of course this is an "outsider looking in" perception of microsoft, but with that same sort of outsiders view of IBM its pretty clear they have always taken this approach.
We (my firm) have made extensive use of published "independent" research in the course of our consulting work to our clients, our "value-added" is in making intelligent interpretations of this information. I've found that more often than not research is used by decision makers to insulate themselves from doing what they are supposed to be doing best . . . making decisions. Many operating managers are risk averse and given the choice between making a difficult/risky decision based on certain research sources/results that may fly in the face of their own flavor of conventional wisdom, they'll opt for a research source or an interpretation of that source that will justify a safe, and more likely lazy, decision.
I won't say that this is true of all decision makers that depend on such research but in my experience this culture of cowardice does exist to a degree because its easier for many of these managers to regurgitate and react to information than to take it in, think critically about it and then make informed (sometimes tough & risky) decisions on it. The research itself varies in quality from vendor to vendor so if the decision maker is taking the latter approach to evaluation and implementation then the research that is of little value gets priced down or out of the market and in the end the analyst loses the necessary credibility to impact how or in what directions their clients will move.
It's not that difficult to develop a very confidential manufacturing relationship with a Taiwan based fab (i.e. TSMC, UMC, Mosel-Vitelic, ASE, Amkor, etc) to manufacture this product, particularly within the past twelve months.
Until recently, when memory prices started gaining ground, these Taiwanese fabs were practically paying companies for their business. I have a client that developed relationships with two fabs in Taiwan to produce their first analog product and the market never had a clue during the entire product development process until the day of the press release.
As you probably know these fabs went through huge capital spending programs to get leading-edge process technology only to be left hanging with much more capacity than they could utilize. As a result people were able to approach them early on and get long-term manufacturing commitments at reasonable cost.
Experience tells me that in order to go this route you have to have someone in your organization that has very strong relationships with the Taiwanese, be they transplants from Taiwan or they have a history of working in that environment. Does anyone know if such people exist at Transmeta?
Very good points. You probably saw the piece written by Robert Cringley a little over a year ago titled Microsoft and Me: How Microsoft Has Already Been Crippled by the Department of Justice. It's an interesting foreshadowing of things to come and gives a little more insight into how that organization views the outside world. Even more interesting is the case he makes on how the outside world now perceives Microsoft as a result of the DoJ case: lots of bark, but not much bite. I'm sure people are going to make some hay of the comparison Cringley makes between Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and Bill Gates, none-the-less its an insightful analogy. The point is that whatever remedies Thomas Penfield Jackson decides to pursue he must somehow address the Microsoft culture itself which seems to have a personality and operating methodology of it's own beyond the persona of Bill Gates.
All in all the events of the past few days (the obvious and not-so-obvious statements pouring out of the wood-work) seem to reinforce the perception that Bill Gates is and has been clearly out of touch with how Microsoft has achieved its position in the marketplace. And as has been said before . . . perception is reality. Where I think Jon Katz misses the point, on an otherwise well-thought-out analysis of "Bill's World", is that the general/investing public has been somewhat blind to this perception/reality. One need only look at Microsoft's stock today, as of 11:46 E.T. it was at 87 5/8 off only about 3 15/16. This tells me that the FoF was, for the most part, no surprise to investors, they had already factored in this "news" well before it was released. However, much like Bill Gates and Company may have viewed reality through their own set of shades, so has the public at large. I think by and large Joe Public "knew" the truth (take a look at the recent CNN opinion polls on Microsoft) but chose to color that perception with another "reality", be it through their own world-view or that of the Microsoft PR apparatus. As far many people's view that this is about the Government taking an active role in regulating the internet or denying Microsoft or anyone else for that matter, the right to compete in a certain manner, they're right. Get used to it, because for better or worse this and any other national or local government is going to weigh in on how we choose to deliver goods and services to this new and somewhat bewildering market: 1) Is it fair and does it serve the public good?
The article presents a well thought-out view of the necessary commoditization of the underlying technology infrastructure, both in terms of hardware and software. An interesting analogy is that of the actual manufacture of electronic systems. Historically electronics OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) manufactured the entire system, only purchasing the components required to assemble a complete system. As a result most systems were proprietary in nature until their component suppliers developed standard commodity components that they could leverage in selling across a wide variety of customers. But even then the OEM used proprietary design and manufacturing methodologies. Over the last several years the electronics manufacturing paradigm has taken a radical shift whereby the OEMs are increasingly outsourcing the manufacture of their products to electronic contract manufacturers. This is commonly referred to as the Dell Model. (Do you realize that Dell manufactures practically none of its products, other than final box-build assembly, test and ship? And that for every dollar of net fixed assets Dell produces $35 of revenue versus Hewlett Packard which generates about $9.65 of sales for every dollar of net fixed assets.) The difference is that Dell outsources nearly all of its manufacturing to the likes of Solectron, Jabil, etc. Now electronic contract manufacturers serve a very wide base of OEMs and as a result their component content and the manufacturing processes employed need to be somewhat uniform in order to fit a myriad of projects into the contract manufacturers manufacturing model. The manufacturing process and all the requisite design parameters have been commoditized. The point is that this new manufacturing model allows the OEM to focus on what it does best; R&D, design, marketing, and customer service. Those OEMs that continue to adhere to the proprietary design and manufacturing model run the very real risk of being unable to effectively utilize their own scarce capital resources in the most effective and time sensitive manner, they are saddled with an overhead structure that doesn't allow them to do what should be their core competencies. In the end the electronic contract manufacturer must differentiate itself on service/quality and price and as a result they are forcing their component suppliers to deliver more and more standard components (proprietary components can cause a major hiccup in these large and complex manufacturing processes.) If an OEM finds that its electronic contract manufacturing solution is not meeting its needs in terms of service and price, its switching costs are not nearly as high as if it employed a proprietary model. Remember, electronic contract manufacturers provide essentially the same solution, they can only differentiate themselves in service/quality and price. It is only natural, and now very main-stream, that the same type of thinking be applied to software. Organizations that adhere to proprietary software models cannot effectively use their capital resources to do what they should be doing best. This is why I see the open source model as analgous to the electronic contract manufacturer: 1) It provides a highly specialized service that produces a high quality solution with an open and commodity-like nature that can be leveraged across a very wide customer/user base. 2) It allows customers/users to more wisely use their own scarce capital resources do what they should be doing best and in a much quicker "cycle-time". 3) It tends to minimize the risk associated with the proprietary model in that customers/users are not dependent upon any one flavor of solution, switching costs are minimized. You need only point your senior managers to what has happened in the electronic contract manufacturing sector when arguing for open source solutions. They'll understand the analogy as this sector is now very sexy on Wall-Street and in the board-rooms of corporations seeking to better use their own resources. By the way all of this outsourcing was pioneered by the auto makers, you'd be surprised how little say a Chrysler actually manufactures (don't confuse manufacturing with final assembly.)
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Right on target and I couldn't agree more. I can't count how many times I've crossed the border having had to endure the clearly condescending "how are you sir?"; "please exit the vehicle sir"; "what is your business in the U.S. sir?"; "please open the trunk sir"; "you may return to your vehicle sir", "blah, blah, blah, blah" all the time knowing that these untrained armed goons purportedly there to "protect the border" are all really nothing more than sociopathic power freaks.
This is a clear indication of the decline of western society. We all know that it's our god given right to be rude, uncooperative, beligerent and generally unsocial towards "authority" without having to concern ourselves with the consequences of our actions. These guards are probably all redneck dog-beaters anyway that deserve whatever unholy hell Watts' attorney can dish.
We all know the same applies to all social activists, librarians, transit workers and tech support personnel...
One of the other things that many inside HP point to, particularly those former HP'ers now at Agilent Technologies, is that HP effectively shot itself in the creativity foot when it spun-out the Test and Measurment division. Now, if you listen to those with Agilent the culture that Bill and Dave fostered at HP is alive and well at Agilent. So the theory goes that well before Ms. Fiorina arrived HP made a huge blunder by listening to the Wall Street sheep herders who were clamoring for HP to shed itself of this "low-growth, un-sexy" division. What's your impression of Test and Measurement and the effect of its spin-off on HP's legendary culture of creativity and excellence?
I suppose he is implying that either through coercion or force (legal or technological) individuals are going to subsume certain civil liberties to the benefit and/or outright survival of producers of content (usually represented by some corporate legal entity). Does this mean that they will attempt to establish hardware/software standards that will somehow defeat distributed file sharing? Seems a bit overly optimistic, time and again individuals or losely organized groups of them find their way around restrictions on free association and communication.
As many of you might be aware Charlie Rose (on PBS) had a head-to-head interview with Lars and Chuck D. on 5/12/00. Essentially, Lars and Chuck agreed to disagree, however, both were quite "eloquent" in their arguments and I was impressed with Lars' passion for pursuing a public debate. Chuck D. was equally (if not more) impressive in his knowledge of the issues (philosophical and to a lesser degree technical). I can't seem to find a transcript on the internet but if you go to the PBS site you can order the dead-tree version.
We've seen candidates talk up their position as Washington reformers (notably McCain) but next to nothing on reforming the patent system. And for all of their talk of plans and accomplishments in fostering technological innovation, encouraging economic growth and free market competition none seem to have a clue as to how the patent system, as it exists, is having a chilling on those same issues. Why?
We the public at large do not see this as a problem until it has a significant impact on our collective pocket-books. With nobody out there in the election process effectively articulating this as an issue that does effect our pocket-books it will remain at the back-end of the electorate's collective consciousness just when it should be an area of focus.
Actually, according to Clarke it was Stanley Kubrick who came up with the name HAL and per his recollection he has no idea why HAL. He seemed to accept that the transposing of IBM to HAL made sense but it wasn't his idea.
His philosophy, as outlined in this book, clearly details why nearly each public and private institution today (command and control structures from the industrial revolution - read "closed-source) is inherrently sick and why chaordic (read open-source) organizations are the answer to the many societal and environmental ills plaguing our world. Chaordic organizations best reflect the models for organized behavior exhibited in nature. This is a truly visionary document that takes the open-source message beyond software and technology and applies it to the world around us.
This is a truly visionary document that takes the open-source message beyond software and technology and applies it to the world around us.
I took a look at the microsoft Research site research.microsoft.com which just struck me as more of an after-thought than a real effort to "instutionalize" a dynamic and relevant research culture. Of course this is an "outsider looking in" perception of microsoft, but with that same sort of outsiders view of IBM its pretty clear they have always taken this approach.
I won't say that this is true of all decision makers that depend on such research but in my experience this culture of cowardice does exist to a degree because its easier for many of these managers to regurgitate and react to information than to take it in, think critically about it and then make informed (sometimes tough & risky) decisions on it. The research itself varies in quality from vendor to vendor so if the decision maker is taking the latter approach to evaluation and implementation then the research that is of little value gets priced down or out of the market and in the end the analyst loses the necessary credibility to impact how or in what directions their clients will move.
Until recently, when memory prices started gaining ground, these Taiwanese fabs were practically paying companies for their business. I have a client that developed relationships with two fabs in Taiwan to produce their first analog product and the market never had a clue during the entire product development process until the day of the press release.
As you probably know these fabs went through huge capital spending programs to get leading-edge process technology only to be left hanging with much more capacity than they could utilize. As a result people were able to approach them early on and get long-term manufacturing commitments at reasonable cost.
Experience tells me that in order to go this route you have to have someone in your organization that has very strong relationships with the Taiwanese, be they transplants from Taiwan or they have a history of working in that environment. Does anyone know if such people exist at Transmeta?
Very good points. You probably saw the piece written by Robert Cringley a little over a year ago titled Microsoft and Me: How Microsoft Has Already Been Crippled by the Department of Justice. It's an interesting foreshadowing of things to come and gives a little more insight into how that organization views the outside world. Even more interesting is the case he makes on how the outside world now perceives Microsoft as a result of the DoJ case: lots of bark, but not much bite. I'm sure people are going to make some hay of the comparison Cringley makes between Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and Bill Gates, none-the-less its an insightful analogy. The point is that whatever remedies Thomas Penfield Jackson decides to pursue he must somehow address the Microsoft culture itself which seems to have a personality and operating methodology of it's own beyond the persona of Bill Gates.
All in all the events of the past few days (the obvious and not-so-obvious statements pouring out of the wood-work) seem to
reinforce the perception that Bill Gates is and has been clearly out of touch with how Microsoft has achieved its position in the
marketplace. And as has been said before . . . perception is reality. Where I think Jon Katz misses the point, on an otherwise
well-thought-out analysis of "Bill's World", is that the general/investing public has been somewhat blind to this perception/reality.
One need only look at Microsoft's stock today, as of 11:46 E.T. it was at 87 5/8 off only about 3 15/16. This tells me that the FoF
was, for the most part, no surprise to investors, they had already factored in this "news" well before it was released. However,
much like Bill Gates and Company may have viewed reality through their own set of shades, so has the public at large. I think by
and large Joe Public "knew" the truth (take a look at the recent CNN opinion polls on Microsoft) but chose to color that perception
with another "reality", be it through their own world-view or that of the Microsoft PR apparatus. As far many people's view that
this is about the Government taking an active role in regulating the internet or denying Microsoft or anyone else for that matter, the
right to compete in a certain manner, they're right. Get used to it, because for better or worse this and any other national or local
government is going to weigh in on how we choose to deliver goods and services to this new and somewhat bewildering market: 1)
Is it fair and does it serve the public good?
The article presents a well thought-out view of the necessary commoditization of the underlying technology infrastructure, both in terms of hardware and software. An interesting analogy is that of the actual manufacture of electronic systems. Historically electronics OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) manufactured the entire system, only purchasing the components required to assemble a complete system. As a result most systems were proprietary in nature until their component suppliers developed standard commodity components that they could leverage in selling across a wide variety of customers. But even then the OEM used proprietary design and manufacturing methodologies. Over the last several years the electronics manufacturing paradigm has taken a radical shift whereby the OEMs are increasingly outsourcing the manufacture of their products to electronic contract manufacturers. This is commonly referred to as the Dell Model. (Do you realize that Dell manufactures practically none of its products, other than final box-build assembly, test and ship? And that for every dollar of net fixed assets Dell produces $35 of revenue versus Hewlett Packard which generates about $9.65 of sales for every dollar of net fixed assets.) The difference is that Dell outsources nearly all of its manufacturing to the likes of Solectron, Jabil, etc. Now electronic contract manufacturers serve a very wide base of OEMs and as a result their component content and the manufacturing processes employed need to be somewhat uniform in order to fit a myriad of projects into the contract manufacturers manufacturing model. The manufacturing process and all the requisite design parameters have been commoditized. The point is that this new manufacturing model allows the OEM to focus on what it does best; R&D, design, marketing, and customer service. Those OEMs that continue to adhere to the proprietary design and manufacturing model run the very real risk of being unable to effectively utilize their own scarce capital resources in the most effective and time sensitive manner, they are saddled with an overhead structure that doesn't allow them to do what should be their core competencies. In the end the electronic contract manufacturer must differentiate itself on service/quality and price and as a result they are forcing their component suppliers to deliver more and more standard components (proprietary components can cause a major hiccup in these large and complex manufacturing processes.) If an OEM finds that its electronic contract manufacturing solution is not meeting its needs in terms of service and price, its switching costs are not nearly as high as if it employed a proprietary model. Remember, electronic contract manufacturers provide essentially the same solution, they can only differentiate themselves in service/quality and price. It is only natural, and now very main-stream, that the same type of thinking be applied to software. Organizations that adhere to proprietary software models cannot effectively use their capital resources to do what they should be doing best. This is why I see the open source model as analgous to the electronic contract manufacturer: 1) It provides a highly specialized service that produces a high quality solution with an open and commodity-like nature that can be leveraged across a very wide customer/user base. 2) It allows customers/users to more wisely use their own scarce capital resources do what they should be doing best and in a much quicker "cycle-time". 3) It tends to minimize the risk associated with the proprietary model in that customers/users are not dependent upon any one flavor of solution, switching costs are minimized. You need only point your senior managers to what has happened in the electronic contract manufacturing sector when arguing for open source solutions. They'll understand the analogy as this sector is now very sexy on Wall-Street and in the board-rooms of corporations seeking to better use their own resources. By the way all of this outsourcing was pioneered by the auto makers, you'd be surprised how little say a Chrysler actually manufactures (don't confuse manufacturing with final assembly.)