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Monday,
25 November 2002 8:50 pm
by Reid Watts
The (corrected) results are in. The
popularity winner among the November columns was November
13's column on how the telecommunications industry structure
worked back when it actually worked, followed
by November 11's
column on the need to revitalize Bell Labs and PARC for the
good of the computer industry.
Those two columns received
over 250 visits apiece.
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Friday,
22 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Innovation on Demand.
Webster’s
defines innovation as “a new idea, method, or device”.
Being able to conjure up a new idea, preferably the right
new idea, on demand, would be the next best thing to magic.
We would all want the ability to do that.
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Thursday,
21 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Finally,
some very good news from the telecom sector, news that could
create major new IT markets similar to what the PC did in the
1980’s and Internet did in the 1990’s, with the potential
for major new services and “killer-apps”.
It is news that I have been waiting literally decades
for.
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Wednesday,
20 November 2002 8:00 am
by Reid Watts
“Good-enough
computing” is very dangerous to the health of the IT industry.
The term, presumably coined by an IDC analyst in 2001,
has been used by IDC and others to describe a growing problem in
the computing business: the power of current hardware and
software is now “good enough” for almost all consumer
applications and a
large number of businesses applications.
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Tuesday,
19 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
In
my column on Monday,
I argued that we are in the midst of a trend reversal, from a world
led by the private sector to a world led by the public sector.
Will
government requirements, rather than consumer and business
requirements, once again drive high tech?
Will government funded R&D once again eclipse
commercially funded R&D in electronics, computers,
communications, and software?
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Monday,
18 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
To
make sense of events around us we need models or
theories. Good models help us put current events into the
context of history - when we detect a pattern we
have seen before in history, it helps us figure out what may
happen next. Here
is one model that I have used in the past, and that may be useful in the present circumstances.
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Friday,
15 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Interesting reader responses to my
Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday
columns in which I talked about the current telecommunications
industry structure and asked rhetorically "Why not go back
to the way things were? Wouldn’t the nation be best served by
going back to a regulated monopoly, given what we know
now?" More |
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Thursday,
14 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Perhaps it is time to reconsider convergence.
For 25 years we have spent enormous amounts of effort and money attempting
to bring about the convergence of communications, television and
computing, to no avail. Today the communications industry with
it's products and services are just as separated from the
computer industry with its products and services and the
television industry with its products and services as they were 25
years ago. More |
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Wednesday,
13 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
I
wrote yesterday about how the current telecommunications industry
structure is perfectly set up for self-annihilation, which it is
in the process of carrying out.
On Monday I pointed out how the slow-motion demise of Bell
Labs may already be at the root of the current malaise in the
computer industry. What
can be done to solve these two problems? More |
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Tuesday,
12 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
While
over the last two decades the computer industry was busily
evolving from vertically integrated companies to a network of
specialized players, the telecommunications industry was not.
Today, both the telecommunications carriers and their
equipment vendors are still heavily vertically integrated,
attempting to do as much as possible themselves. More |
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Monday,
11 November 2002 9:00 am
by Reid Watts
What
is needed to return to the environment where demand for MIPS,
storage, and bandwidth grows faster than cost decreases driven
by Moore’s Law? In order to assess this, we need to look at the industry
structure, to see what drove demand in the first place, and
whether those things are still intact.
The industry structure is different for the telecom
industry than for the computer industry.
Let me start with the computer industry.
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Friday,
08 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Why
does deflation have a bad reputation?
The reason is that rapid deflation would bankrupt all
debtors, causing an economic collapse. This
is one explanation of what caused the Great Depression, which is
why deflation is linked in most people's minds with a depression.
But there have been deflationary periods in the US and
elsewhere that were not accompanied by depressions. More |
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Thursday,
07 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Deflation
is hot, at least as the topic du jour.
No less than two articles in yesterday’s Wall Street
Journal were on deflation, one appearing on the front page. Later
in the day there were whispers that deflationary concerns may have
been behind the Fed’s unexpectedly sharp cut in interest
rates. More |
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Wednesday,
06 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
The recent tech-led stock rally
together with Election Day caused my brain to churn away, and before
long a hypothetical explanation emerged.
Purely hypothetical, mind you, recorded here for your
entertainment only. In early October
things were looking bleak indeed for mutual fund managers.
After the worst stock market decline since the 1930’s,
redemptions were running at a record level for the third month in a row.
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Tuesday,
05 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Are we headed into deflation?
If so, what difference does it make? The
probability has increased significantly in the last few months that we
are entering a deflationary period in the US.
Whether it will be mild deflation or severe deflation is what the
debate will soon become.
How long will it last is anyone’s guess, but deflationary
periods in the US in the late 1800’s and 1930s and in Japan and
Switzerland in the 1990’s indicate that they do not dissipate quickly.
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Monday,
04 November 2002 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Things are
tough. The expected recovery in the second half of 2002 did not
materialize. Deflation is well entrenched in Japan, and showing signs of
spreading to other parts of Asia, Europe, and the US. Although interest
rates are at 40 year lows, raising capital has become extremely
difficult if not impossible for many businesses, large and small, young
and old. Capital spending budgets are still being reduced. The consumer
may be close to being tapped out. And war may be around the corner.
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