tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post8573244717006285680..comments2024-03-18T21:52:45.757-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: More on the War Against Professionalism in GovernmentDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-3460256089107953212007-10-16T16:52:00.000-07:002007-10-16T16:52:00.000-07:00I worry very much that the emasculating of the cur...I worry very much that the emasculating of the current officer corps reflects the simultaneous steeplejacking of the Air Force Academy, and the Pentagon as a whole... and I see Heinlein's vision in "If This Goes On-" rapidly coming to fruition.DrGaellonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06494901709464910726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-70028929321086703072007-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:002007-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:00re: RandomSequence and Bill Gates success.One thin...re: RandomSequence and Bill Gates success.<BR/><BR/>One thing to remember is that Bill Gates' Mother was on the national BoD of United Way, along with the IBM VP in charge of their nascent PC division. When she heard they were looking for an operating system, she suggested they contact her son. Now, give IBM their due, they did try to get in touch with CP/M authors but they blew off the meeting. <BR/><BR/>IBM contacted MicroSoft (manufacturers of BASIC interpreters and other software apps) and they said they could have an OS for IBM post haste. They did their deal with the writers of QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System-$25,000 I believe), filed down the rough edges and then they cut one of the best licensing deals eveh. <BR/><BR/>Gates was also instrumental in the idea of <A HREF="http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_01/gatesletter.html" REL="nofollow">licensing software and prosecuting others</A> for distribution of software at the Homebrew Computer Club.<BR/><BR/>Having a billionaire father patent attorney might have influenced this.JuhnDonnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06795417373366495092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-45729717051165644962007-02-17T08:19:00.000-08:002007-02-17T08:19:00.000-08:00Here's how the procurement system works...A office...Here's how the procurement system works...<BR/><BR/>A officer is assigned in the Pentagon to a project. He'll be on the project for a normal tour of duty, about 3 years. If the project is cancelled during this time, it becomes his fault. Never mind if the project doesn't work, it's his fault if it's cancelled. Even if it's cancelled by Congress, it's his fault. So, he tries real hard to not have it cancelled.<BR/>Also, he'll write a series of memos that will point out all the flaws in the project and hide them in his files. IF the project fails after he leaves, he'll use these as 'proof' that it wasn't his fault, he pointed out the flaws...<BR/>If successful (Project uncancelled), at the end of his three years he'll move on and some other officer will take over. At the end of the officer's career, the manufacturer (if happy with the officer) will make him a job offer. Remember, a military man's carreer ends after 20-30 years... for a officer, that means he's between 42 and 52 years of age, plenty young enough to start a 2nd carreer as a member of a company selling stuff to the military!<BR/><BR/>(This system predates Bush. It goes back to Eisenhower.)<BR/><BR/>So, yes, the Pentagon exists to make sure defense contractors get paid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-71176078316357243052007-02-17T07:59:00.000-08:002007-02-17T07:59:00.000-08:00"It seems strange to me that the DoD would be so h..."It seems strange to me that the DoD would be so hung up on ballastic missile defense when it is quickly becoming apparent that *theater* missile defense is much more important."<BR/><BR/>But theater missile defense is a mostly solved problem. Therefore it can't feed thousands of contractors the way ballistic defense does.<BR/><BR/>With the troop supply problems in Iraq and the procurement priorities, I'm beginning to wonder if the Pentagon and the troops in the field really belong to the same Armed Forces anymore. The main purpose of the Pentagon at this point seems to be more to fund defense contractors than to support the troops. A lot of the Pentagon is now worse than unnecessary; some procurement is now better done by field quartermasters ordering off a secure network than by paper-pushers. If field people had more of a say in weapons development, I suspect a lot of these problems would evaporate.Catfish 'n Codhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07727883524069548484noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-59548301751940069012007-02-16T14:50:00.000-08:002007-02-16T14:50:00.000-08:00Here is the actual memo that Anonymous refers to:E...Here is the actual memo that Anonymous refers to:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/ChisumPageTwo.html" REL="nofollow">Evolution, the Big Bang theory, and heliocentrism are a Jewish conspiracy.</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-87324032437944614632007-02-16T14:04:00.000-08:002007-02-16T14:04:00.000-08:00Anonymous:We face not just a war against professio...Anonymous:<EM><BR/>We face not just a war against professionalism, but a war against rationality itself:<BR/><BR/>http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/16/114553/289<BR/></EM><BR/><BR/>I think you mistake differing principles with rationality. The flat-earthers are rational alright -- they just start from the first principle: The Bible is innerant. Any empirical data that supports that fact is therefore admissible, any that disputes that is, a priori, inadmissable. Not irrational, just insane --- two different things.<BR/><BR/>An example from anthropology: The Kukuli (I believe, going from memory) of the New Guinea highlands believed that there was no such thing as a natural death. Now, they weren't irrational or blind. They saw folks die all the time, often with no visible external cause. Did that cause them to rethink their position? No, it was a first principle. What they did instead was posit that there were witches <EM>magically</EM> killing those who appeared to succumb to natural death. Perfectly rational, but ultimately wrong and ungeneralizable, system of belief.<BR/><BR/>This is important when debating those folks. You have to know where to attack them -- and it can't be on their rationality, but the very basis of their system.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63377016919351697432007-02-16T12:12:00.000-08:002007-02-16T12:12:00.000-08:00We face not just a war against professionalism, bu...We face not just a war against professionalism, but a war against rationality itself:<BR/><BR/>http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/16/114553/289Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64763399592487462812007-02-16T11:44:00.000-08:002007-02-16T11:44:00.000-08:00feudalsocialite:My only thoughts on globalization ...feudalsocialite:<BR/><EM>My only thoughts on globalization ... is to note that eventually the European Community had to come to grips with its own version of an imbalanced labor market. In the 80's they decided that opening borders to the free flow of capital had to succeeded by demanding uniform labor, safety and environmental regulations. I don't see why we can't start this beginning with NAFTA. We could give Mexico a decade to comply.</EM><BR/><BR/>Two points: 1) The other side of uniform standards across the EU is subsidized infrastructure. The EU basically pulled Spain and Greece from the early twentieth century to the late twentieth century in a few decades via a massive infusion of subsidies. If we are going to have a common market with Mexico under the current system, it seems fairly obvious that we would have to pull their infrastructure up to our level. Otherwise the economic gradients are going to inevitably lead to a leveling down of the living standards of a chunk of our population, while inducing mass migration and social instability.<BR/><BR/>2) I ask again, why did the stagnation in wages occur in the anglophonic world, specifically the US and Britain, and not in equivalent continental societies (and I believe Canada)? Britain actually gained in some respects from the oil crisis with the development of North Sea oil reserves. I can only suggest that it has more to due with <EM>our adaptive</EM> responses, than the external stimuli.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-2178690828278283222007-02-16T11:37:00.000-08:002007-02-16T11:37:00.000-08:00Begin rant...What do we need to destroy targets fr...Begin rant...<BR/><BR/>What do we need to destroy targets from the air...<BR/><BR/>A plane big enough to carry a laser guided bomb, and a guy on the ground with a laser designator, and a radio so the the two can communicate.<BR/>Stealth? The current enemy doesn't have radar. Anti-aircraft missiles? Fly high enough, and the shoulder fired missiles the enemy has can't reach you. Give me a aviation machine shop, and I can rig any comercial aircraft that can carry 1,000lbs of cargo to do the job in Iraq that the Air Farce says they need a billion dollar B-2 Stealth bomber for.<BR/><BR/>I've seen it time and again... the military decides they need some fancy toy to do a certain mission, and when the mission goes away, the toy doesn't. And the Poor, Bloody Infantry (PBI) ends up trying to make the toy do the mission they have.<BR/>end rant mode<BR/><BR/>I like the idea of the 'land warrior' system you describe. Sounds like just the thing for a PBI to do his job better. Except... can some guy sitting in a office in, say, Washington D.C. moniter this by sattelite and give 'suggestions'? Just asking.<BR/><BR/>And speaking of priorties...<BR/>The Department of Homeland Security has given grants of money to various cities. National City, CA, is using the money to instal a camera survielance system to watch a street famous for its streetwalkers... I'm not sure if the NCPD thinks that the streetwalkers are a terror threat, or threatened by terrorists.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-16513896536948280842007-02-16T09:47:00.000-08:002007-02-16T09:47:00.000-08:00It seems strange to me that the DoD would be so hu...It seems strange to me that the DoD would be so hung up on ballastic missile defense when it is quickly becoming apparent that *theater* missile defense is much more important. Especially with Navy ships and such that may square off with a Chinese military with rockets like our own.<BR/><BR/>And yes, I agree that military spending priorities re: land v. air are woefully misplaced at the moment. Especially focusing on destroying land targets from the air ... we are already quite good at doing this. It's all the boot work that comes afterwards that can use some extra support.<BR/><BR/>It would be a sad thing if the Army has to lobby Lockheed to buy up some armor production mills just so that the DoD will buy the equipment that is actually needed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-52383303665169380562007-02-16T09:34:00.000-08:002007-02-16T09:34:00.000-08:00Hearkening back a bit...Right now, the Air Force i...Hearkening back a bit...<BR/><BR/><I>Right now, the Air Force is buying the world's greatest fighter plane, the F-22 Raptor... and we're fighting an enemy that has no air force. We're building a anti-ballistic missile defense against a enemy with no ballistic missiles. (OK, it might be useful against other enemies. But priorities!)</I><BR/><BR/>A friend of mine is about to go to Iraq. His unit has been training with the Land Warrior system, which uses a decentralized network to link the soldiers together, for more rapid dissemination of battlefield information. (Imagine being able to give a command to an entire brigade without raising your voice, just as in Heinlein's novel <I>Starship Troopers</I> - and, even better, sending each soldier an image of the tactical map, viewable on a small screen on the helmet...) This technology has had the effect of making their brigade far more effective in combat than they would have been otherwise.<BR/><BR/>The Pentagon has recently announced that while units already training with Land Warrior will deploy with that technology, no new units will use it, and development of the system has been canceled. It's "too expensive."<BR/><BR/>Meanwhile, the AF is <I>still</I> buying F-22s, and the Pentagon is still bent on developing an antiballistic missile shield to defend us from an enemy that no longer exists in any practical sense...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-89552224337133346892007-02-16T09:25:00.000-08:002007-02-16T09:25:00.000-08:00The lastest humbling, STUNNING, photo from Hubble...The lastest humbling, STUNNING, photo from Hubble, "Hubble Illuminates Cluster of Diverse Galaxies"<BR/><BR/>http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire_collection/pr2007008a/Sidereushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14365430916880667866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-28270497253620157722007-02-15T22:46:00.000-08:002007-02-15T22:46:00.000-08:00Desperate to show who's the real Conservative, Joh...Desperate to show who's the <I>real</I> Conservative, <A HREF="http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/12/mccain-creationism/" REL="nofollow">John McCain throws in with Creationists.</A><BR/><BR/>The Discovery Institute, as some may know, is behind the flagrantly anti-modernist "Wedge Strategy."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-91954616105069161932007-02-15T21:42:00.000-08:002007-02-15T21:42:00.000-08:00Just a few points to throw into all this. Labor i...Just a few points to throw into all this. Labor is caught between the double whammy of cynical republico-corporacratic globalization strategy and taxation policy. For the latter, simply put, my investment income is taxed at a lower rate than my wage income. I break no sweat and use less brain power in maintaining a conservative personal investment strategy; certainly it represents my nest-egg for the uncertain future, but, of course, most Americans are not so blessed. On the other hand, I break a modicum of sweat and have to use my noggin on the job, but I'm taxed more for the wage income. One can argue about the intention of the policy all you want, but it appears to devalue my labor, (no it's not very physical but does require a great deal of sitzfleisch). It appears likewise even to my local decent and/or sometimes rational conservative acquaintances. The rise in social-economic inequality is aided and abetted by this tax policy.<BR/><BR/>On recent economic history. In general I know more about pre-modern agrarian economies, so feel free to hammer away at my suggestion. When I glance over at the economic historians, I see a growing consensus that the key date in the change from general post-war prosperity to this new post-industrial period was 1973. Surprise. I don't believe in single causes for complex events any more than most of the perspicacious readers of Dr. B's blog, but 1973 points directly to middle east politics, oil companies, and the other usual suspects. <BR/><BR/>My only thoughts on globalization, (and please, Sgr. Quijote, refrain from terms like "Chinamen" because it undercuts what might be a reasonable argument) is to note that eventually the European Community had to come to grips with its own version of an imbalanced labor market. In the 80's they decided that opening borders to the free flow of capital had to succeeded by demanding uniform labor, safety and environmental regulations. I don't see why we can't start this beginning with NAFTA. We could give Mexico a decade to comply.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, my brother-in-law now works in Windsor, Ontario for a large Indian call-center. The day, my friends, has arrived. India is starting to outsource its jobs to the (North) American midwest. (And some midwesterners speak English almost as well as the Indians).<BR/><BR/>What with the deprofessionalization of our government, the change from military-industrial complex to militry-entertainment complex, the decimation of our educational system (and with it the decline of Enlightenment ideas and values), it's beginning to look like a return to the Ancien Regime. Gotta get me a little of that American Baroque decadence before it's too late.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8928094854767601242007-02-15T18:54:00.000-08:002007-02-15T18:54:00.000-08:00One other big change happened in the Labour Force ...One other big change happened in the Labour Force between the 50's / 60's and now <BR/><BR/>- women entering the workforce in large numbers - <BR/><BR/>this had the duel effect of again increasing the labour supply and increasing a class of labourors who had tradiotionaly been paid less for equivalent work driving down real wages further <BR/><BR/>(this is observation not critisism) <BR/><BR/>from a UK perspective this would have a higher impact on the labour force than imigration (in the 80's and 90's anyway)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-18546196205181268042007-02-15T16:13:00.000-08:002007-02-15T16:13:00.000-08:00Well, I think the biggest shift in labor-capital r...Well, I think the biggest shift in labor-capital ratio was not a steady progress of technology, but a sudden lurch when the world opened up to us via the Internet.<BR/><BR/>http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8617<BR/><BR/>Essentially, the world's labor market doubled nearly overnight (within a couple of decades).<BR/><BR/>However, in the long term, try this on for an interesting experiment. Natural resources are limited. It is my personal belief (although there are many counterexamples to challenge it) that the majority of the population is satiable. Eventually, we will figure out that increasing physical living standards beyond a given point will not make us any happier. (Now, aiming to strike rich to dominate a hierarchy is a different matter)<BR/><BR/>So, between the limited supply of material, and the limited eventual demand for material goods, we have an exponential growth in productivity. There will be three big options: reduce the working hours that define "full time," idle a portion of the labor force either through welfare or starvation, or give one small group a big vacation while flogging everyone else. Now, we have so far taken the "let people work for cheap electronic gadgets" but the novelty may wear off.<BR/><BR/>Just for fun, I would call this a neo-Marxist scenario, where there is no more great need for further capitalization (everyone has what they need), and instead everyone takes a whole butt-load of leisure time.<BR/><BR/>A hard turn in the conversation, but just wanted to play around.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-77773035646675996822007-02-15T16:10:00.000-08:002007-02-15T16:10:00.000-08:00Carl,I checked out your website. I'm trying to dig...Carl,<BR/><BR/>I checked out your website. I'm trying to digest, but EEGADS man -- the colors -- all the colors. I thought I was having a flashback!<BR/><BR/>I'm sure it's great intellectual stuff, but my epilepsy medicine is going to have to kick in first. ;)RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-15128146656320309982007-02-15T15:59:00.000-08:002007-02-15T15:59:00.000-08:00On the issue of the Great Society, I still have to...<I>On the issue of the Great Society, I still have to say it goes beyond that. Between the 80's and today, much of that program has been dismantled; the equivalent has occurred in Britain. But we haven't seen a return to the relative equality of the 50's and 60's.</I><BR/><BR/>And we won't, because the source of the problem is not government but the market.<BR/><BR/><I>I may not be competent to diagnose the disease, but I can affirm that it is deeper than the Great Society, and I am loathe to put it, primarily, at the feet of the left.</I><BR/><BR/>Most people depend on their labor as their primary source of income/wealth, two major trends have been reducing the value of labor over the last thirty years, one is technology (the US produces twice as much steel today as it did in the seventies with a labor force that is half the size) and the other is globalization which has dumped a couple of billion people into the available labor pool, why hire an American to do a low skilled manufacturing job at $10 an hour or a Mexican at $10 a day when you can hire a Chinaman to the same job for $3 a day?<BR/><BR/>Manufacturing is shipped to China, Mexicans jump the border illegally and get low skill jobs in the US driving down low skill wages, and corporations keep trying to up the number of H1B's coming into the US to drive down skilled wages while doing every thing they can to prevent unionization. <BR/><BR/>Supply and Demand,a large supply of labor with a relatively small demand for labor. Until societal norms change to deal with the fact that we have a huge surplus of labor, or until globalization is shut down, the value of labor in industrial countries is going to keep going down and therefor inequality is going to keep going up.Don Quijotehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03355584994080980478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69911028719547584982007-02-15T14:41:00.000-08:002007-02-15T14:41:00.000-08:00RandomSequence: I will agree with you 100% that th...RandomSequence: I will agree with you 100% that the simplistic libertarian program of "any cut in government is a good cut" is a bad programme. I advocate something rather different on my web site and in my Free Liberal editorials.<BR/><BR/>It may well require a new party to break out of the current rut. The reform of the LP is not progressing to my satisfaction. I find far more support for my proposed programme outside the LP than within it.<BR/><BR/>Then again, a new party may be premature. Experiments are ongoing...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-87131360329548668582007-02-15T12:53:00.000-08:002007-02-15T12:53:00.000-08:00Spending on welfare may have continued (don't know...Spending on welfare may have continued (don't know the levels), but the programs themselves have been cut. Yes, Medicare/Medicaid have been extended, but that's a long-term project coming out of the New Deal. PBS increasingly gets its funding from advertisement; just watch the commercials from McDonalds on Sesame Street -- the quality has suffered, and now their trying to convince the babies to jam their mouth full of crap.<BR/><BR/>Chronic deficit spending came not from Great Society per se, but the fantasy of guns and butter -- that we could fight Vietnam and have massive social spending simultaneously.<BR/><BR/>Of course, the fifties weren't utopian, or even very pleasant. There was, however, greater economic equality, at least as far as white folks were concerned; my intuition says that there's a connection there between civil rights, and people's willingness to accept repyramidalization.<BR/><BR/>I agree, we can do better and in both senses -- less govt interference and greater equality. But first, we have to recognize what hasn't worked. And simply removing supports at the bottom has done a great deal of damage.<BR/><BR/>My beef with libertarian critiques is they never seem to scale well. I'd agree, small businesses should be minimally regulated. Short term problems should be left in the hands of short term corrective forces. But long term projects, and large scale projects are different. Finding a local minima is just not sufficient; we can travel down a meta-stable pathway that leads ultimately to terrible results, without some form of organization (not necessarily traditional govt) that has inherent long term interests, and wide vision.<BR/><BR/>I think that at the bottom, the problem is our very success as a country. You can see here, and all over the web, and traditional media, all kinds of innovative solutions coming from the left and right. But none go anywhere --- all we get is is the same old stuff, with different names. On the left, we've get the same public school programs that have not succeeded. On the right, we get even worse --- the failed ideas of the twenties re-warmed.<BR/><BR/>We've become an ossified society, culturally. Not at the surface, but underneath, our success makes us afraid to try anything significantly new particularly at the upper levels where significant decisions are made. And like anything alive, if you don't keep moving, you're going to start to rot.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-29802086790301799332007-02-15T12:30:00.000-08:002007-02-15T12:30:00.000-08:00Much of the Great Society has been dismantled???? ...Much of the Great Society has been dismantled???? Last I checked we still have food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, anti discrimination laws, environmental regulations, mass transit subsidies, PBS, NPR, Head Start... A few of the Great Society programs have been replaced, but many of those were simply merged into other programs or resurrected under another name.<BR/><BR/>Chronic deficit spending began with the Great Society. Deficit spending is a subsidy to the rich. Also, inflation pushed working class people into higher tax brackets. (Tax adjustment for inflation is a Republican innovation, BTW.)<BR/><BR/>Public schools regressed during this time. I was there. New Math did teach theorem proving to an extent, but did a horrible job of teaching useful arithmetic. I recall going backwards a year in spelling when we "upgraded" to new, colorful, stupid spelling books from the decaying, difficult books left over from the 50s.<BR/><BR/>The growth of regulations did help clean the environment and curb various abuses, but they also added overhead to doing business. High overhead leads to economies of scale. (With simplifications such as specifying requirements vs. design, we could reduce overhead while still getting the benefits of said regulations.)<BR/><BR/>If the 50s were indeed the halcyon days for equality, why not back to them? I bet you'll get a LOT of conservatives allies for that project!<BR/><BR/>(Personally, I think we can do better than the 50s, both in terms of unobtrusive government and equality...)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69177539072712664542007-02-15T10:59:00.000-08:002007-02-15T10:59:00.000-08:00Carl,I've got to disagree. Here go the OS wars. Y...Carl,<BR/><BR/>I've got to disagree. Here go the OS wars. Yes, I agree, MS did first go to commodity hardware --- CP/M could have, but messed up their IBM negotiations. Before IBM started the PC, commodity hardware, as a class, didn't really exists. Every system was basically a custom job, to some degreee or other. But that was an IBM innovation, not an MS innovation. <BR/><BR/>A number of OS existed just around that time that would have been just as useful, CP/M being the first example. If I remember correctly, Gates also had some systems out at the time with cheap, usable components --- but the hardware was not mass produced by a giant. At the end, only one company could get lucky, since IBM didn't see a significant profit from the OS end of things. And standardization was going to propel that company to the stratosphere.<BR/><BR/>Sometimes the market just randomly picks one from a class; you see the same thing in genetics, where it's not always the fittest, but just a random selection of the fit enough, that survive -- drift, founder effect, etc.<BR/><BR/>If you want to call that innovation, well of course you're free. But it doesn't reach my standard. I think the best way you can measure it is with their subsequent performance. They've always, always been behind the curve, and have run significant risk due to that. Apple ate away at them in the 80's, and in the 90's they were unable to penetrate the server market. Netscape almost ate their lunch, as an application platform. A bit of foresight would have lessened risk without costing them unduly --- they've spent most of their history over-capitalized, so a bit of <EM>effective</EM> R&D would have been reasonable.<BR/><BR/>The problem in open source isn't innovation. A whole lotta very cool stuff is developed very early as open source. Developer tools were all innovated in open-source (see Emacs). Pluggable, user-space, file systems. Encrypted mail. I can go on and on. <BR/><BR/>The problem is in marketing. A very focused effort (and a fairly boring job) is required to develop the user interface (by which I mean naive user interface). So that's much slower in open source, only catching up significantly recently. On top of that, actually selling the system quickly to the naive user requires concentrated capital. The advantage in the underpinnings is that that work can be done by diffuse capital, small amounts volunteered intermittently by individuals and corporations, which is its very disadvantage for marketing.<BR/><BR/>This is exactly parallel with the blogosphere. The most innovative media, both good and bad, is the distributed, free information exchange available on the intertubes. But the large corporations have a huge advantage in selling much more predictable ideas as the MSM, because they can afford to advertise during American Idol, and piggy back on prior success. Those who don't have knowledge have huge transition costs to switch to the superior data collection of the web, as opposed to CNN et. al.<BR/><BR/>On the issue of the Great Society, I still have to say it goes beyond that. Between the 80's and today, much of that program has been dismantled; the equivalent has occurred in Britain. But we haven't seen a return to the relative equality of the 50's and 60's. I may not be competent to diagnose the disease, but I can affirm that it is deeper than the Great Society, and I am loathe to put it, primarily, at the feet of the left.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-35631969704709493222007-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:002007-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:00Microsoft's big innovation was getting something o...Microsoft's big innovation was getting something out the door cheap, and then refining it incrementally. Also, supporting wide ranges of hardware, something Microsoft did well before DOS.<BR/><BR/>Go back in time a bit, and you will find Sun requiring tens of thousands of dollars for their very cool machines. Apple made expensive inflexible machines that were very difficult to expand. The UNIX world had software that was either cheap or thousands of dollars. Nothing in between.<BR/><BR/>Microsoft focused on that in between, making software that was better (for the typical user) than the free stuff, but cheaper than the software targeted at big corporations and academia.<BR/><BR/>Be Inc. had an OS that had the potential to be competitive, but they ran out of capital. Linux is just an incrementally improved clone of a product developed at Bell Labs in the 70s. The free software model works well for cloning and improving existing products. It has proven less impressive at true innovation. Exception: scripting languages, which are apparently small enough projects originally for one person to manage.<BR/><BR/>There are notable differences in how the Great Society programs were designed vs. the European welfare states.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-45287516081936879182007-02-15T08:27:00.000-08:002007-02-15T08:27:00.000-08:00Carl,You're one track, ain't cha? If stratificatio...Carl,<BR/><BR/>You're one track, ain't cha? If stratification was due to Great Society, you would think that the social democracies in Europe would show an even more pronounced trend toward stratification, but no, the +delta is the US and GB. Just about the time that the right started making strides in both countries after 30 years of being locked out.<BR/><BR/>On the point of Gates, I think it's fairly simple. Warning: I am not a fan of MS. Operating systems are like road standards. Once any OS has gained some critical (unknown) market share, that market share is self-stabilizing, in the same way that once enough people start driving on the right-hand side of the road, that would be self-stabilizing. And that's regardless of the quality of the product, which by the way I think is atrocious. I doubt that issues of capitalization have much to do about it --- not everything need be "economic" in that sense.<BR/><BR/>I can't think of a single "innovation" that MS has brought to the market. But they were there at the right time at the right place, riding the wave of commodity hardware. C'est la vie.RandomSequencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12259854206507818658noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-53908613035224381342007-02-15T08:26:00.000-08:002007-02-15T08:26:00.000-08:00I am thinking of something that works on the order...I am thinking of something that works on the order of millions or tens of millions.<BR/><BR/>Some problems:<BR/><BR/>1. Maintaining accounting/reporting up to full big corporation standards is a huge overhead for the little guys.<BR/>2. It is easy to play evil games (short squeezes, pump and dump, etc.) with small cap stocks.<BR/>3. A startup needs multiple rounds of capital as it proves itself, so a cheap open SPO mechanism is critical.<BR/><BR/>Some ideas:<BR/>1. In return for less reporting requirements, put stronger limits on insiders: caps on salaries, trading etc. until higher standards of reporting are possible.<BR/>2. No margin buying or short selling allowed. Covered options are allowed. (Puts allow one to take a short position without unlimited liability.)<BR/>3. Reporting by electronic means only. <BR/>4. Shareholders get an electronic idea for ongoing stockholder discussions.<BR/>5. Voting for board members by this electronic means.<BR/>6. IPO and SPOs solds as blocks vs. per share price. That is, say 100K shares is put up on the market. Purchasers say how much they want to purchase in terms of dollars. After bidding ends, bidders get shares in proportion to their bids. This way, the company gets more capital, vs. the investment bankers getting higher windfall, should excitment cause a high IPO/SPO surge.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com