Category: Technology

Microsoft’s VX-6000 LifeCam Really Stinks

  Microsoft’s VX-6000 LifeCam.  Source of image:  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/gallery/hardware/WC6_Angle_Silver_lg.jpg

 

I posted this to Amazon.com, late on Thurs., Nov. 30, 2006:

I have spent a frustrating afternoon and evening trying to install the VX-6000 on a fully updated MS XP pro system. The install took forever, because every couple of minutes the install program couldn’t find a needed file (if they need it, why not put it on the install CD?). So I had to browse my system and point them to where the file was (why couldn’t they design the install program to search for the file instead of making me do it?). Finally I got a successful install, and then I was informed there was an updated version, and I needed to install that. So I went through the whole time-consuming process all over again, including the schtick about searching for the location of several files. Finally it again said I had installed the program successfully. So I rebooted my PC, and clicked on the Microsoft LifeCam icon. After cranking for awhile I get "initialization error". I try rebooting again—same error. So I type in "initialization error" in the search bar of the "help" section, and I get back "no topics found." So they sell me an expensive camera, run me ragged installing it, send me a repeated error message, and provide me no clue on what to do about it. (I guess now that Bill Gates is saving the world through philanthropy, nobody’s left minding the shop?)

 

The final comment is probably a bit too snide or harsh.  Microsoft has always had the deserved reputation of letting some products out the door before they are ready.  E.g., the first couple of versions of Windows paled in comparison to the graphical-user-interface operating system that Apple was offering at the time.  And the CD that accompanied Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead would not work on what was then Microsoft’s premier operating system:  Windows NT.

Maybe these kind of glitches result from a conscious operating strategy that gives employees a lot of freedom to make their own decisions.  The upside can be speedy decisions, and creativity.  The downside can be glitches such as the VX-6000 LifeCam.  Taking the broad, professorial view, maybe overall, the upside justifies the downside.  Tom Peters endorses companies accepting this trade-off rather than adopting layered, rule-bound, slow, bureaucratic decision-making.  (See his:  Re-imagine!)

(But did I mention that the VX-6000 LifeCam really stinks?) 

 

The reference to the Peters book is:

Peters, Tom. Re-Imagine! London: DK, 2003.

 

Gerstner’s Insights on Business

 Source of book image:  http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0060523794.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1122531345_.jpg

 

Gerstner is known for turning around IBM, when many business experts thought it was headed down the tubes.  His book is useful as a report on what happened at IBM during his time as CEO, and also has some more broadly applicable observations.  I’ll mention a few of these in this and a few other postings in the next couple of weeks. 

It is interesting how many successful and important business leaders and experts have spent some time associated with the McKinsey consulting group, where Gerstner started his career.  One major McKinsey figure, Richard Foster, is a strong advocate and elaborator of Schumpeter’s process of creative destruction. 

I wonder if perhaps some of the success of McKinsey is due to the firm’s embracing and applying Schumpeter’s ideas?

Those who oppose creative destruction emphasize the destructive effect that the process has on some workers.  In fact the effects on labor are seen by many (e.g., Thomas Friedman) who are otherwise sympathetic, to be the major drawback of the process.  As a result some of them (e.g., Thomas Friedman) propose paternalistic ‘safety net’ labor policies.

We usually think of government as the main implementer of such policies, but among firms, IBM’s labor policies were among the most paternalistic.  This is usually viewed as one of the positives about IBM.  But one of Gerstner’s insights is to suggest that some of those in the IBM work force were hurt by IBM’s paternalistic policies:

(p. 186)  . . . I came to feel that the real problem was not that employees felt they were entitled.  They had just become accustomed to immunity from things like recessions, price wars, and technology changes.  And for the most part, they didn’t even realize that this self-contained, insulated system also worked against them.  I was shocked, for instance, to discover the pay disparities—particularly in very important technical and sales professions—of IBM comployess when comapred to the competition and the industry in general.  Our best people weren’t getting what they deserved.

Maybe I should mention that I don’t endorse everything in the book.  For example, Gerstner seems to think that a desire to "win" is crucial to success in business.  But I think the analogy between business and competitive sports is usually taken too far.  Can’t one also succeed in business from a desire to innovate and to improve the world?

 

The reference on the book is: 

Gerstner, Louis V., Jr.  Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change.  New York:  HarperCollins, 2002.

(Note:  in the quote, the ellipsis was added, but the italics was in the original.)

 

Closing the Alleged ‘Digital Divide’

 One version of the laptops produced by One Laptop Per Child for roughly $100 a piece.  Source of image:  http://www.laptop.org/OLPC_files/nigeria.jpg

 

Simply giving each child a laptop, won’t much improve their standard of living.  (See Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth.)  But maybe a few of the children will obtain access to information about what is possible in the outside world, and maybe that will lead them to fight for more freedom?

But at least, if they remain poor, it will not be possible to lay the blame on some sort of ‘digital divide.’  Lay the blame, instead on government economic planning. 

Note the aside buried in the article:  ‘competitive advantage’ economist Michael Porter is telling the Libyans how to develop a "national economic plan"??  (Say it ain’t so, Michael!)

 

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 10 — The government of Libya reached an agreement on Tuesday with One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit United States group developing an inexpensive, educational laptop computer, with the goal of supplying machines to all 1.2 million Libyan schoolchildren by June 2008.

The project, which is intended to supply computers broadly to children in developing nations, was conceived in 2005 by a computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Negroponte.  His goal is to design a wireless-connected laptop that will cost about $100 after the machines go into mass production next year.

. . .

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, suggested that the next generation of cellphones might be a better way to reach across the so-called digital divide.

Mr. Negroponte said Microsoft refused to sell its Windows software to the project at a price that would make it possible to include in his system.  As a result, his laptops will come with the freely available Linux operating system, which is becoming increasingly popular in the developing world.

The idea of a laptop for every schoolchild grew out of Mr. Negroponte’s experience in giving children Internet-connected laptops in rural Cambodia.  He said the first English word out of the mouths of the Cambodian students was “Google.”

Discussions between the One Laptop project and the Libyan government began as part of work being done by the Monitor Group, an international consulting firm co-founded by the economist Michael E. Porter.  It is now helping the Libyans develop a national economic plan.

. . .  

The first test models will be distributed to the five participating countries companies at the end of this November, according to Mr. Negroponte, and mass production is planned for June or July of 2007.

The computers come with a wireless connection, a built-in video camera, an eight-hour battery and a hand crank for recharging batteries.  They will initially be priced below $150, and the price is expected to decline when they are manufactured in large numbers.

 

For the full story, see:

JOHN MARKOFF.  "U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren."  The New York Times  (Weds., October 11, 2006):  A14.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

  MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte.  Source of image:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

“Man in White Suit” Science Fiction, Now Nearly Science Fact

PART of what sold James Tirey on a change in attire was the coffee spilled on his legs during a rough flight.  ”It stayed sticky until it dried,” he said, ”about mid-Atlantic.”

To avoid such incidents, he bought a new pair of pants with an invisible, high-tech surface suited to the exigencies of business travel.  These pants look and feel like most others, but the ingenious finish on the fabric is different:  it is made of tiny, nanosized particles that repel water, ketchup, honey, blood, vinaigrette and a thousand other potential indignities.  With such a surface, he said, ”if coffee is spilled on you, it just beads up” or runs off.  The pants can be wiped with a paper napkin — even the skimpy cocktail kind handed out on airplanes — leaving the material dry and unscathed.

Mr. Tirey, who lives in northern Virginia, bought his pants, called the Steel Pant, at Beyond, a Eugene, Ore., company that makes and sells outerwear for men and women at BeyondFleece.com.  The material is manufactured by the Swiss company Schoeller Textil, which makes both the weave and the nanofinish, called NanoSphere.  On the Beyond Web site, the pants cost $119, the nanocoating an additional $15.  ”It was definitely worth the money,” Mr. Tirey said of the purchase.

 

For the full story, see: 

ANNE EISENBERG.  "NOVELTIES; The Chemist’s Find: A Way to Shrug Off Spills." The New York Times , Section 3(Sun., August 27, 2006):  5. 

Technology Liberates the Paralyzed

  Paralyzed from a stabbing, Matthew Nagle can move computer cursor by means of a sensor implanted in his brain.  Source of image:  online version of NYT article cited below.

 

(p. A1)  A paralyzed man with a small sensor implanted in his brain was able to control a computer, a television set and a robot using only his thoughts, scientists reported yesterday.

Those results offer hope that in the future, people with spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s disease or other conditions that impair movement may be able to communicate or better control their world.

“If your brain can do it, we can tap into it,” said John P. Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University who has led development of the system and was the senior author of a report on it being published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.

 

For the full story, see: 

ANDREW POLLACK. "Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor." The New York Times  (Thurs., July 13, 2006):  A1 & A21.

Sprint to Risk Billions on New Infrastructure

WiMaxSprintGraphic.gif  Source of graphic:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

If Sprint bets on WiFi, they’re betting with their money; if the government bets on WiFi, they’re betting with your money.  If Sprint succeeds, thereby benefiting the consumer, at no risk to the consumer, the consumer should not object to their earning huge profits.

Note also, that this is a plausble candidate for a firm trying to follow Clayton Christensen’s advice to try to disrupt itself.  (And see the comment at the end, for someone who hasn’t read Christensen, or doesn’t believe what he has read.)

 

Analysts say building a nationwide WiMax network could cost Sprint between $1 billion and $4 billion, a hefty sum for a company that is already struggling to meet Wall Street’s expectations.  Sprint said it expects to invest $1 billion on the project in 2007 and between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in 2008.

Sprint’s decision carries considerable risks:  Investors have hammered telecom companies that have made large capital investments in new technologies, banking on future markets to emerge.  For example, among other things, Verizon Communications Inc.’s stock has been under fire as the company is rolling out a costly new fiber optic network that it says will position the company to deliver a bundled TV, Internet, and phone service.  Also, WiMax technology is still untested on a large scale.

Sprint is making a huge bet that consumer demand for wireless Internet access and services such as cellphone downloads of music and video will continue to grow in the coming years.  Consumers already can get access to wireless Internet service at Wi-Fi "hotspots" in airports and coffee shops, and some cities, like Anaheim, Calif., are blanketing their terrain with Wi-Fi connections.

. . .

. . . , some analysts and industry experts question why the company is gearing up for such a major capital investment when it is already even or ahead the other top U.S. carriers, Verizon and Cingular Wireless, when it comes to data services. "Why compete against yourself? It doesn’t make a lot of sense at this point," said Mike Thelander, principal analyst at Signals Research Group who predicted several weeks ago that Sprint would choose WiMax.

 

For the full story, see:

AMOL SHARMA and DON CLARK.  "Sprint Bets on New Wireless ‘WiMax’."  Wall Street Journal  (Tues.,  August 8, 2006):  B1-B2.

(Note:  the above passages are from the online version, which was later, and less tentative about Sprint’s intentions, than the print version.) 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

Tech Bubble Caused Much of 1990s Inequality Increase

  Source of graphic:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

It is widely recognized that income inequality increased in the 1990’s, but nobody knows quite why. Despite the lack of hard evidence, there are plenty of theories.

. . .

Two University of Texas researchers, James K. Galbraith and Travis Hale, added an interesting twist to this debate in a paper, “Income Distribution and the Information Technology Bubble” (utip.gov.utexas.edu/abstract.html#UTIP27).

According to Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Hale, much of the increase in income inequality in the late 1990’s resulted from large income changes in just a handful of locations around the country — precisely those areas that were heavily involved in the information technology boom.

. . .

A big advantage of looking at county data is that it is possible to identify counties that contributed the most to the increase in income inequality from 1994 to 2000.  It turns out that the five biggest winners in this period were New York; King County, Wash. (with both Seattle and Redmond); and Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco, Calif., the counties that make up Silicon Valley.  The five biggest losers were Los Angeles; Queens; Honolulu; Broward, Fla.; and Cuyahoga, Ohio.

What do the counties in the first list have in common?  Their economies were all heavily driven by information technology in the late 90’s.  This is true for the rest of the list of winners as well.  Harris, Tex. (home to Houston and Enron); Middlesex, Mass. (home to Harvard and M.I.T.); Fairfield, Conn.; Alameda, Calif.; and Westchester, N.Y., were also among the top 10 income gainers in this period.

The authors point out that half the 80 American companies in the CNET Tech Index are in those top 10 counties.  Furthermore, when income inequality decreased after 2000, the income drop in the high-tech counties contributed most to the decline. 

 

For the full commentary, see:

HAL R. VARIAN.  "ECONOMIC SCENE; Many Theories on Income Inequality, but One Answer Lies in Just a Few Places."  The New York Times  (Thurs., September 21, 2006):   C3.

Markets, Not Courts, Should Decide Intel Market Share

Intel executives, coming up on a pre-trial conference in a case that could decide their company’s fate, should be looking with envy and admiration at Tiger Woods, and wondering how to make their business more like his.

If golf followed the same path as other businesses, Tiger could expect to face a lawsuit contending that his dominance of professional golf is based on unfair competition.  And in fact,  a few years back Sergio Garcia whined that Tiger got better practice times, favorable treatment around the course, more protection against distracting fans — little things that could, Mr. Garcia intimated, explain Tiger’s edge.  Sportswriters responded swiftly, deriding Mr. Garcia for looking to blame others for his being outcompeted.  They understood that sports contests belong on the field, not in the media or the courts.

The same should be true of business.  Market-based economies thrive on competition.  The competitive economy doesn’t yield an infinite number of equally successful firms producing indistinguishable products, but lets winners and losers emerge from marketplace competition.  The (inevitably) temporary dominance of one product or one firm spurs others to compete harder.  Today, however, many businesses — especially American ones — find it easier to restrain a dominant competitor through the courts than to beat it in the market.

Take the case of Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, the dominant chipmaker for PCs and servers.  AMD for years played the role of Phil Mickelson to Intel Corporation’s Tiger Woods — the talented rival who keeps coming up short in head-to-head competition.  Last year, it decided to model Mr. Garcia rather than Mr. Mickelson, filing an antitrust action against Intel, charging it with a variety of unlawful actions.

. . .

AMD finds fault in Intel’s continued market dominance:  Because Intel has had 80% or more of the x86 chip processor market for many years it must be doing something illegal to keep rivals out.  Yet, George Stigler, among others, long ago debunked the significance of market share as a measure of competition.  Duopoly markets, like the market for large commercial aircraft, can be fiercely competitive.  Ask anyone working at Boeing or Airbus.

Moreover, markets can change rapidly, especially high-tech markets, often in ways unanticipated by antitrust suits.  Witness the changes in computing that caused the government’s antitrust case against IBM to implode.

 

For the full commentary, see: 

RON CASS.  "RULE OF LAW; Tigers by the Tail."  Wall Street Journal  (Sat., September 23, 2006):  A7.

 

“Crystal Fire” Gives Insights on Birth of the Transistor

  Source of book image:  http://www.etedeschi.ndirect.co.uk/homecompbiblio.htm

 

Crystal Fire is a well-written book which highlights many important aspects of the birth of computers.  Not a perfect book—I could have done with a few less details about personal information, like who liked to play bridge and poker, and whose mother was a frustrated artist, and the like.

On the good side, they note how transistors were originally designed to replace vacuum tubes.  The eventual main applications, as memory and processor chips in computers, only came later.  (Another application of Fubini’s Law.)

They have a nice discussion of how American science was applied, versus the pure theory of the Germans.  (E.g., to the Germans, some key phenomena leading to transistors, were dismissed as "dirt effects" (pp. 74 & 78).)  The whole episode is a good example of the claim (see Terence Kealey) that very good science can come out of ‘industrial’ labs. 

They also have a good example of serendipity, in the discussion of the strange chunk of silicon with unusual conductivity properties (circa p. 95).  Reading this episode, it occurred to me that one key enabler of serendipitous discoveries is a scientist or engineer who is carrying around a problem, to which the serendipitous discovery is a solution.  Buddhists need not apply—to carry around problems, you need to be dissatisfied–a milder version of what Tom Peters describes as ‘innovation coming from pissed-off people’  (see his Re-Imagine!)

 

Citation to the book:

Riordan, Michael, and Lillian Hoddeson.  Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, Sloan Technology Series: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

 

Life Is Better, But Could Be Better Still

  November 9, 1952 NYT ad announcing the introduction of the snowblower.  Source of image:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

(p. C1)  When the first snow falls on the North Shore of Chicago this winter, Robert Gordon will take his Toro snow blower out of the garage and think about how lucky he is not to be using a shovel.  Mr. Gordon is 66 years old and evidently quite healthy, but his doctor has told him that he should never clear his driveway with his own hands.  “People can die from shoveling snow,” Mr. Gordon said.  “I bet a lot of lives have been saved by snow blowers.”

If so, most of them have been saved in the last few decades.  A Canadian teenager named Arthur Sicard came up with the idea for the snow blower in the late 1800’s, while watching the blades on a piece of farm equipment, but he didn’t sell any until 1927.  For the next 30 years or so, snow blowers were hulking machines typically bought by cities and schools.  Only recently have they become a suburban staple.

Yet the benefits of the snow blower, namely more free time and less health risk, are largely missing from the government’s attempts to determine Americans’ economic well-being.  The same goes for dozens of other inventions, be they air-conditioners, cellphones or medical devices.  The reasons are a little technical — they involve the measurement of inflation — but they’re important to understand, because the implications are so large.

. . .

(p. C10)  In the early 1950’s, Toro began selling mass-market snow blowers, which weighed up to 500 pounds and cost at least $150.  As far as the Bureau of the Labor Statistics was concerned, however, snow blowers did not exist until 1978.  That was the year when the machines began to be counted in the Consumer Price Index, the source of the official inflation rate.  By then, the cheapest model sold for about $100.

In practical terms, this was an enormous price decline compared with the 1950’s, because incomes had risen enormously over this period.  Yet the price index completely missed it and, by doing so, overstated inflation.  It counted the rising cost of cars and groceries but not the falling cost of snow blowers.

. . .

Mr. Gordon, besides being a fan of snow blowers, also happens to be one of the country’s leading macroeconomists.  A decade ago he served on a government-appointed group known as the Boskin Commission.  It argued, as Mr. Gordon still does, that the government exaggerated inflation by more than one percentage point every year.

. . .

. . .  Mr. Gordon’s adjustments show that men actually got a 27 percent raise in this period and women 65 percent.  The gains are not as big as those of the 1950’s and 60’s, but they do sound far more realistic than the official numbers.  Think about it:  we live longer than people did in the 1970’s, we’re healthier while alive, we graduate from college in much greater numbers, we’re surrounded by new gadgets and we live in bigger houses.  Is it really plausible, as some Democrats claim, that the middle class has made only marginal progress?

 

For the full commentary, see: 

DAVID LEONHARDT.  "Economix; Life Is Better; It Isn’t Better. Which Is It?"  The New York Times  (Weds., September 20, 2006):  C1 & C10.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

 PayTwoViewsGraph.gif  Source of graphic:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

“Responsible Biotechnology is Not the Enemy: Starvation Is”

  Source of the book image:   http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781930754904&itm=1

 

 

Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970?  You may be forgiven for not remembering, given some of the prize’s dubious recipients over the years (e.g., Yasser Arafat).  Well, then:  Who has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history?  The answer to both questions is, of course, Norman Borlaug.

Who?  Norman Borlaug, 92, is the father of the "Green Revolution," the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s.  He is now the subject of an admiring biography by Leon Hesser, a former State Department official who first met Mr. Borlaug 40 years ago in Pakistan, where they worked together to boost that country’s grain production.  "The Man Who Fed the World" describes, in a workmanlike way, how a poor Iowa farm boy trained in forestry and plant pathology came to be one of humanity’s greatest benefactors.

. . .

Mr. Borlaug is still tirelessly working to keep hunger at bay.  He remains a consultant to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico and president of a private Japanese foundation working to spread the Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.  He believes that biotechnology will be crucial to boosting world food supplies in the coming decades and decries the underfunding of the world’s network of nonprofit agricultural research centers.

He also laments the unnecessary suspicion with which biotech is treated these days.  "Activists have resisted research," he notes, "and governments have overregulated it."  They both miss the point. "Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy:  starvation is."

 

For the full review, see:

RONALD BAILEY.  "Bookshelf; Going With the Grain."   Wall Street Journal  (Tues., September 5, 2006):  D8. 

 

The reference to the book is:

Hesser, Leon.  The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger (Durban House Publishing: Dallas, 2006) ISBN: 1-930754-90-6; Hardback $24.95