It sometimes amazes me how far the computer technology has come since I first got involved with it in 1978. My first real job paid $14k a year and I got to work on 16bit micro-controllers. Not CPUs. We didn't sell computer systems back then because the biggest customer base was industrial. There was a huge phobia against computerization of ... well, almost anything.
What distresses me now is how little the business of computers has evolved since the early 80s. Micro-controllers powered the beginning of the PC revolution and finally graduated to being full fledged CPUs in the years since. What the companies lacked then as now was a presence in Washington. The government was driven by people that wanted something *neat* on their resumes. Intel was sued for dumping memory chips by several Japanese companies.
The thought process (and I use the term loosely) was that an American company couldn't make the parts for less then the Japanese companies so any memory that was priced less then their was being dumped. Dumping in this context is nothing more then sell at a loss. During this period I was making more money and had actually moved up to salaried positions (a dubious gain).
The story at the time was they figured out how much Intel needed to charge with a 50% yield and thus they had to be dumping. No one ran the equation in the other direction and solve for yield assuming that all the other variables were true. Simple put in the cost per chip and a few taps on the HP calculator then Intel's very secrect yield numbers were there for all to see. Hint: > 50%.
But it was important to be agressiving protecting the markets and some lawyer collective insisted on solving yet another technical problem in the courts. The end results have no meaning today.
The current technology business climate is distressing though.
A hack lawyer in the current Justice Department is chasing google because, in the words of the comedian turned politician Al Franken, google is just too big. The reality is it would be *neat* to have we wacked google for Microsoft (truth, justice and the American way) and their CV will look so much better. Their book will sell better and they will have several speeches a year to detail their diligence.
What distresses me now is how little the business of computers has evolved since the early 80s. Micro-controllers powered the beginning of the PC revolution and finally graduated to being full fledged CPUs in the years since. What the companies lacked then as now was a presence in Washington. The government was driven by people that wanted something *neat* on their resumes. Intel was sued for dumping memory chips by several Japanese companies.
The thought process (and I use the term loosely) was that an American company couldn't make the parts for less then the Japanese companies so any memory that was priced less then their was being dumped. Dumping in this context is nothing more then sell at a loss. During this period I was making more money and had actually moved up to salaried positions (a dubious gain).
The story at the time was they figured out how much Intel needed to charge with a 50% yield and thus they had to be dumping. No one ran the equation in the other direction and solve for yield assuming that all the other variables were true. Simple put in the cost per chip and a few taps on the HP calculator then Intel's very secrect yield numbers were there for all to see. Hint: > 50%.
But it was important to be agressiving protecting the markets and some lawyer collective insisted on solving yet another technical problem in the courts. The end results have no meaning today.
The current technology business climate is distressing though.
A hack lawyer in the current Justice Department is chasing google because, in the words of the comedian turned politician Al Franken, google is just too big. The reality is it would be *neat* to have we wacked google for Microsoft (truth, justice and the American way) and their CV will look so much better. Their book will sell better and they will have several speeches a year to detail their diligence.