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"Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

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Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#21

Post by 082349872349872 »

Strategic bombing is a good example of network analysis of national economies. I don't know if anyone was doing this in 1914-1918[1], but an under-appreciated aspect of 1939-1945 is how much it was about nodes and links. Ford-Fulkerson wasn't published until 1956, but someone must've been doing similar analyses to pick allied bombing targets[2]. And linear programming, courtesy Kantorovich, helped save Leningrad during the siege.

(Strategic bombing requires strategic bombers which require airframes, which would explain the some-markets-are-freer-than-others deviation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950... )

[1] apart from the poor fellow who ran railroad operations for the german army, who wrote a whole book afterwards about how it wasn't "too late" to recall the troops and he could've stopped mobilisation before the french border if anyone had actually bothered to give the order. (edit: found a name, Staab https://www.historynet.com/kaisers-question-1914.htm )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World... suggests it wasn't developed to the extent it would be, mid-century.

Incidentally, Kissinger is well worth reading. Many think he's a war criminal. Maybe he himself thinks he's a war criminal. But he does explain his reasonings at length, and his justification for his counsels seems to have been a desire to avoid situations like 1914, where entire empires fell due to a cascade of stupidity. (whether we actually got any tasty omelettes from his broken eggs is, I believe, still an open question)

[2] that some people still carry out these analyses is witnessed by the fact that the US Department of Homeland Security for some reason has been tracking the price (volumes, really) of tea (and other goods) in China.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#22

Post by WalterBright »

ido wrote: post #17
WalterBright wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The machine they created to burn cash was a paragon of government waste, it represented everything that's wrong with that industry and I hated it. Government operations always operate by fairly rigid bureaucratic rules, which can always be gamed like this. Free markets, on the other hand, always have a corrective factor applied - people have to be willing to spend their own money to buy your product.

people have to be willing to spend their own money to buy your product. I would like to introduce you to the depressing world of Enterprise Software. Do you remember the old saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"? Think about its origin & implications, all of which outlived the status IBM had at the time of that saying.

I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so IBM is just another vendor today.

Which is my point.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#23

Post by watwut »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
ido wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have to be willing to spend their own money to buy your product. I would like to introduce you to the depressing world of Enterprise Software. Do you remember the old saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"? Think about its origin & implications, all of which outlived the status IBM had at the time of that saying.

I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so IBM is just another vendor today. Which is my point.

Except that those people did not got punished. Their careers went up just fine. Those people changed jobs to different companies long before any accounting reality happened.

And accounting reality did not happened to companies that were buying IBM, it happened to IBM. That is difference.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#24

Post by noir_lord »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
ido wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have to be willing to spend their own money to buy your product. I would like to introduce you to the depressing world of Enterprise Software. Do you remember the old saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"? Think about its origin & implications, all of which outlived the status IBM had at the time of that saying.

I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so IBM is just another vendor today. Which is my point.

I think there is a meta system at work above whatever economic system you are at least claiming is in practice - humans game systems, if you give them rules they'll bend them up to and beyond the point of actually snapping.

It may be that capitalism works (for a given value of work) because it has more corrective pressure in the absence of other rules - I'd certainly agree with that I think.

That said I think the best (practical) system is social market capitalism, capitalism as a subservient tool to achieve societies as a whole goals which comes with it's own problems (the capitalists have the money and money corrupts) but seems fairer - somewhat like the nordic countries rather than crony capitalism.

Now if I could pick the system I live under and will it into existence, it would be this one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

I miss Iain M Banks like you miss a good friend you haven't seen for years and I never met him.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#25

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
ido wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have to be willing to spend their own money to buy your product. I would like to introduce you to the depressing world of Enterprise Software. Do you remember the old saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"? Think about its origin & implications, all of which outlived the status IBM had at the time of that saying.

I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so IBM is just another vendor today. Which is my point.

Those people were usually "punished" by being promoted. And IBM is just another vendor today because of decades of indescribably poor management.

Today we have the free market glories and hosannas of FAANG instead - until the next set of antitrust actions picks apart their zombie remains.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#26

Post by WalterBright »

watwut wrote: post #23
WalterBright wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so IBM is just another vendor today. Which is my point.

Except that those people did not got punished. Their careers went up just fine. Those people changed jobs to different companies long before any accounting reality happened. And accounting reality did not happened to companies that were buying IBM, it happened to IBM. That is difference.

If a company promotes/hires people who make decisions deleterious to the company's financials, that company will be less profitable and the stock price will be less.

I.e. the market corrects for things.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#27

Post by ido »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
ido wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have to be willing to spend their own money to buy your product. I would like to introduce you to the depressing world of Enterprise Software. Do you remember the old saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"? Think about its origin & implications, all of which outlived the status IBM had at the time of that saying.

I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so IBM is just another vendor today. Which is my point.

Oh those people didn't (all) get punished. And this is still happening all the time - huge companies waste an enormous amount of work & money. They can waste/mismanage for decades before the market punishes them (if at all).

Bureaucratic waste (and sometimes corruption) is absolutely rife at huge companies.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#28

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

themark wrote: post #13

Great post. Promotes narrative that military/gov influence transitioned to risk/venture. Is that really the case?

i think this an example where government intervention came about the right time (but it was unintended as it came as the result of the war).

once electronics got complex the whole development process got more complex and required much more r&d - that added to the costs by an order of magnitude. That was beyond what most private companies could afford at the time - given they were just past the great depression.

Also people probably weren't used to view things as a system, that was a quite different paradigm. I think I read somewhere that thinking in terms of systems was one of the big changes that were the result of the war.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#29

Post by ido »

WalterBright wrote: post #26
watwut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that those people did not got punished. Their careers went up just fine. Those people changed jobs to different companies long before any accounting reality happened. And accounting reality did not happened to companies that were buying IBM, it happened to IBM. That is difference.

If a company promotes/hires people who make decisions deleterious to the company's financials, that company will be less profitable and the stock price will be less. I.e. the market corrects for things.

Eventually, sometimes. After billions have been spent/wasted. Companies the size (and with the cash cows) of Apple/Google/MS/etc can make atrocious decisions for decades before they go down.

Re: "Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008)

#30

Post by watwut »

WalterBright wrote: post #26
watwut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that those people did not got punished. Their careers went up just fine. Those people changed jobs to different companies long before any accounting reality happened. And accounting reality did not happened to companies that were buying IBM, it happened to IBM. That is difference.

If a company promotes/hires people who make decisions deleterious to the company's financials, that company will be less profitable and the stock price will be less. I.e. the market corrects for things.

First, that does not make those people punished. At best it make the company punished.

Second, it does not seem like those companies were punished in any measurable way.

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