During the HurriQuake nail’s six years of development, 14 major hurricanes and tropical storms destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses in the U.S. and inflicted an estimated $166 billion in damages. The U.S. hasn’t had a major earthquake since parts of the Los Angeles area were leveled in the Northridge quake of 1994, but around the world, thousands of people have lost homes and family members as wooden structures collapsed.
Although there are no precise statistics, Sutt’s research indicated that nail failure accounted for a substantial percentage of the destruction in these catastrophes. And when nails fail, it’s for one of three reasons. Either the nail rips its head through the sheathing, its shank pulls out of the frame, or its midsection snaps under the lateral loads that rock a house during high winds and earthquakes. Sutt’s job was to design a nail that resisted all three. “With the first prototypes,” Sutt says, “we proved that a bigger head has substantial advantages in terms of stopping the nail from pulling through the sheathing. But it couldn’t be too big, because it needed to fit into popular nail guns.”
ABC News The Blotter features a quote by former Clinton terrorism czar Richard Clarke:
"It is always the unanticipated system that nobody knew about or realized was important that will become significant," says ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterror and cyber crime chief.
"Traffic lights and switches on train rails are two candidates that could cause an accident," said Clarke, who also said bank vaults will be open an hour later, and travelers might miss connecting flights in Europe if schedules are off by an hour. He does not anticipate accidents involving planes since air traffic controllers will still see the planes.
The upcoming computer glitch is reminiscent of Y2K, but security analysts don't fear the disasters that might have happened if computer systems stopped functioning when the year 1999 changed to 2000. "The difference between this and Y2K is that systems continue to work, they're just an hour off, whereas with Y2K we had reason to believe that systems would stop working," said Clarke.
He is referring to the upcoming change to daylight savings time, which is now scheduled to occur three weeks earlier than previously.
Some of you are guffawing right now, and the rest are wondering why you're reading this. Let me clue you in on the joke.
Richard "If-you-would-only-have-listened-to-me Clarke is apparently unaware that its a new world, where even mundane electronic devices automatically synchronize the time over, network, the internet or satellite. If you travel, have you ever noticed that your cellphone automatically adjusts the time zone for you when you fly from one side of the country to the other?
I can't remember the last time I saw an industrial control system that didn't use a GPS receiver to synchronize all its internal clocks. It must have been sometime back in the 1990s.
I don't know which is more embarrassing--alleged security expert Richard Clarke beclowning himself, or ABC News taking the hook, line and sinker.
The old saw goes, "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?"
Of course it does, but without an ear to hear it, the existence of the tree goes unremarked. So apparently do a lot of vital scientific discoveries made decades, perhaps even centuries before we become aware of them and incorporate them into our technological development.
The science of genetics was delayed by 50 years, as Gregor Mendel's experiments with peas languished in a forgotten document until rediscovered in 1906. Now apparently, we find out that much the same state of affairs occurred with the LED, or light-emitting diode.
While LEDs were reinvented in 1962 by as many as four independent research groups, historical research shows that Henry J. Round, an assistant to Guglielmo Marconi, published a reference to his discovery of LEDs in 1907 in a trade magazine called "Electrical World". Over in Russia, some twenty years later, a more exhaustive study and theoretical basis was produced by Oleg Vladimirovich Losev, who published a series of 16 papers on the phenomenon in several important British, German and Russian journals between 1924 and 1930. Losev died in the siege of Leningrad which was a tragedy beyond his death from starvation--Losev had completed a paper on the transistor; the foundational technology of digital electronics, twenty years before its rediscovery by American scientists.
Losev never had any formal education, or achieved any professional acclaim and success. As the scion of a noble family, he endured persistent discrimination in Bolshevik Russia where he never rose about the position of a technician.
Losev was effectively the victim of the same left-wing ideological impulse that brought us "affirmative action". No royalty or white males need apply. The irony of course is that it is the nation that endures the punishment for racism, class warfare, political correctness and other forms of non-merit based discrimination.
What would the world look like today if the Russians had a social, political and economic climate that would have let Losev's genius flower into practical applications? The entire information age might have happened decades earlier than it did, and with Russia at its center.
There is a lesson here for the North Koreans, Iranians and other would-be super powers: Real power comes from fully realizing the human potential of a nation's citizens, not from nuclear weapons.
The left might also want to pay attention since no cultural and political ideology has done more damage to the prospects of western nations than socialism and its attendant lunacies.
This is mainstream research, not an eccentric theory from a Romanian naturopathy journal. Yamanaka's work has been confirmed by two other teams affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles -- both of them headed by ardent supporters of embryonic stem cell research.
They say that the reprogrammed cells meet all the tests of pluripotent cells -- they form colonies, propagate continuously and form cancerous growths called teratomas, as well as producing chimaeras. "Its unbelievable, just amazing," says Hans Schöler, a German stem cell expert. "For me, it's like Dolly. It's that type of an accomplishment."
What Yamanaka did was to take a mouse skin cell and introduce into it four proteins which trigger the expression of other genes to make it pluripotent. "It's easy. There's no trick, no magic," he says. Now the race is on to apply the technique to human cells. "We are working very hard -- day and night," says Yamanaka.
Even the Australian doyen of therapeutic cloning, Alan Trounson, of Monash University, is enthusiastic. "It would change the way we see things quite dramatically," he says. He plans to start experiments "tomorrow".
Great news right? Not so much.
With an ethical solution looking quite plausible, the pressure will be on scientists to explain why therapeutic cloning deserves to be legalised and funded. Two years ago, Dr Janet D. Rowley, an Australian working in the US who is an implacable foe of the Bush Administration's policy, dismissed ethical solutions like Yamanaka's. "We have extremely limited research dollars, and to use them to study these alternatives is wrong," she declared. "That money should be available for actual research." But now stem cells derived from embryos are starting to look like dead-end "alternatives."
Don't expect supporters of embryonic stem cell research to respond rationally, not in the short term, at least. The other day, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel told the US House of Representatives as he voted to overturn the Bush policy: "It is ironic that every time we vote on this legislation, all of a sudden there is a major scientific discovery that basically says, 'You don't have to do [embryonic] stem cell research.'
There is good reason why Rahm Emmanuel is quoted here--the Democrats have embraced embryonic stem cell research as a political two-fer: A chance to transform the killing of unborn children into a social "good" and an opportunity to characterize opposition to abortion as religiously-motivated superstition. Unfortunately, the Democrats make the same mistake they always do--they try to pick winners according to their ideological inclinations, which of course carries with it the strong implication that they don't give a damn about people suffering from Parkinson's and other diseases that would benefit from a successful therapeutic cloning technology.
Scientists with careers and research funds on the line can't be too happy either. They solved the dearth of private research capital by making a deal with political interests, but ultimately they simply chose the wrong research model. The smart ones are already doing experiments with the new methodology and will go with what works, but some will undoubtedly keep following the embryonic path until they run out of road.
The cat's out of the bag at this point--the media is picking up the story because of the public interest in the progress of therapeutic cloning. Its unlikely that Democrats can engage in the kind of distortion they did during last year's election. The real problem will be for the states that have already passed legislation devoting large chunks of taxpayer money to embryonic stem cell research--how to explain?
There is of course, the embarrassment that political considerations have caused the United States to fall behind in this promising new medical field. When are we going to learn to stop trying to pick winners?
Apparently not anytime soon--have you seen the energy bill?
I've been following Apple since there was an Apple Computer. I used some of the earliest Apple II's while I was in college, bought one of the first Macs, and was a loyal Mac User up through the early nineties when it became a necessity for me to change to Windows (where I have been ever since...) I've seen the company with Steve Jobs, and without it, and "with" is better.
So I'm more than a little dubious about assurances that Jobs can take a six month (or longer) leave and everything will be just fine.
That's not the history, nor is it common experience.
If you want to see the impact a leader has, watch a new one come in to replace the old one. Its simply amazing to consider how the change of one person can have such a dramatic effect on a company. I have found myself working at the same desk but in an entirely different company after only three weeks with a new boss.
My personal experience with this have driven home the absolutely critical nature of "culture". You can go from success to failure as well as the reverse almost instantaneously with just a different outlook and philosophy, which arises out of the dynamic of having a new superior to perform for and please. Unfortunately for me, all my experiences have been bad, but I concede the theoretically possibility of a good outcome.
Steve Job's imprint on the culture of Apple can't be understated, in fact one recent article pointed out that he was breaking all the unwritten rules of the Silicon Valley. Where valley companies are supposed to be open and collaborative, Apple is secretive and proprietary. Where valley companies motivate their employees with perks, Apple prefers terror. You and I both know that this is simply a reflection of Steve Jobs' personality and that's the real problem with his absence. His lieutenants have been marching to his tune for years, but when the sit in the big chair, its their personalities that drive the corporate culture.
I'll just remind you how similar all this "don't worry, be happy" rhetoric is to Jack Welch's succession at GE.
(P)eople familiar with the company say Cook has had a very strong voice on the design and development table because of his responsibility for manufacturing the products. "Steve didn't make up the iPod, iPhone or iTunes all by himself," says Janes. "To get the manufacturing right you have to get the design details right and Tim has been there through the whole development process."
For nervous Apple investors, that should help soothe their worries about the transition.
The ineffable quality of leadership is part of the reason CEOs command such fabulous compensation--shareholders have mistakenly believed that you could simply buy this kind of leadership, but this only emphasizes again how unique Steve Jobs is--quick--how many people have built more than one billion dollar company from the ground up?
Yeah--that many.
Six months is OK. Apple won't implode in six months, especially if they know the boss is coming back, but if this is more serious--and that seems likely considering Jobs' penchant for secrecy, then the ride may be soon over.
..
MARK here. I've just discovered that I can tamper with Mick's post (heh heh) and I'll use it as as a hook to refer to Jobs' fascinating Stanford commencement speech, 2005, when he reflected on his cancer:
I saw Jobs give a NeXT presentation at the Savoy Hotel in London in about 1992 and was blown away. Get well, Steve.
I seem to have a lot of conversations like this in the past few months...
If Obama's proposal becomes law, the hard-hit companies would include tech bellwethers like Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. Each of those companies realized a benefit of more than $1 billion from lower foreign tax rates in their most recent fiscal years - an advantage that could lost if Obama is able to change the rules.
"It would be like an earthquake for high tech," said Carl Guardino, chief executive of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an industry trade association. "On a Richter scale of 1 to 10, this would be a 12."
Collectively, HP, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and Google lowered their tax bills by a combined $7.4 billion in their last fiscal years by taking advantage of lower tax rates outside the United States, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Its notable that all of those companies, or at least their executives, were extremely supportive of Obama's campaign.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner takes to the .sky with a slight delay of about two years as Boeing tried to figure out how to mass-produce a plane using revolutionary new technologies.
Such is life on the leading edge of any technology.
Nevertheless, the real story is how Airbus, after years of gaining on Boeing, blew it all in a colossal, politically-motivated blunder and built another Concorde--i.e. a high-tech albatross. Another example where high-minded social justice got its ass kicked by base capitalism. The A380, billed and celebrated as the largest plane in the world, has racked up 202 orders and delivered 21 planes. They sold four this year--one less than the Boeing 747-8.
By contrast, the 787 has 600 units on order.
With 20% less fuel consumption, the 787 represents an enabling technology of tremendous importance. The ability to fly a smaller number of passengers a much longer distance, portends a restructuring of the entire air traffic control system. Instead of consolidating air traffic to a hub for the long flight overseas, a Dreamliner can simply fly Salt Lake City to London, England direct, non-stop.
Dr. Helen Smith (Reynolds) has blogged about her problems with Comcast on a number of occasions, as have many other bloggers. A reader waxes philosophical.
An online dialogue about your goods, services or business practices can be the sharpest of double-edged swords: everyone’s either a critic or an advocate. But mostly a critic. When’s the last time you blogged about how glad you are that your morning soda wasn’t stale, or that your roof didn’t cave in today? After all, we’re more likely to tickle a keyboard in frustration than praise. It’s human nature. And due to the social networking explosion, there’s a lot of human nature out there for your current and prospective clients to see. If William Congreve thought scorned women were bad news, he would have been even more disturbed by what a disgruntled customer can do to a business’ reputation over the Internet.
I'll add something I consider important here--the slams are rarely evoked by simple mistakes. If bloggers are prompted to complain about a particular company, its almost always an egregious situation and most importantly--company policy.
I have, on occasion, screwed up royally with a customer and yet have experienced an almost extraordinary tolerance, even when, in my view, they would have been properly justified to throw me out on my ear. I've only lost one sale because a customer bad-mouthed me, and ironically that criticism was not justified.
The blogstorms, of which Comcast has endured more than any other company I'm aware of, are the result of corporate policy deliberately created to shaft their customers.
The fact that more an more large corporations are adopting these kinds of 19th century robber baron techniques is a function of their success and an anemic customer response. We clearly need more bloggers slamming exploitative businesses.
If you have to lie, lie with numbers. Almost no one catches a 'numbers lie'. Bernie Madoff thrived for years in spite of totally unsupported numbers lies.
On the other hand, what people and companies do speaks volumes--truthful volumes.
I just fixed an HP laserprinter (for friends). In googling the model number, it became very apparent that HP has a huge problem with this model (among many other of their product offerings). Some companies with dozens of these machines have seen a quarter to a third of them go down because of a soldering problem on the electronics. HP's response?
Crickets chirping. For a few hundred, they'll sell you a replacement board with exactly the same fundamental flaw.
[This isn't really relevant to my point, but you can often fix flakey motherboards and other electronics by baking them in the oven at 350 degrees for eight minutes...].
My son's HP laptop has its second dead motherboard in two years.
Sell HP.
Google is yet another example of a company that rose to success on the strength of one product and can't seem to make anything else work. They want to be Black & Decker, but they are fast becoming indistinguishable from Microsoft.
And now, ta-da, comes Google Buzz, announced yesterday, and I swear to God I just want to start screaming. What is it? Apparently it is Gmail on steroids. Basically, Google has copied stuff that people do on Facebook and Twitter and added them to Gmail, so that now my e-mail can become another place where I can network socially with my social network of people I don’t really even know. I can (but won't) share pictures and status updates with people in my Gmail contacts list, and they can (and, sadly, will, unless I can prevent them) start doing the same to me. Google's promo video, complete with the requisite cutesy drawings and happy music and groovy-guy voice-over, was intended to make it all sound perfectly simple but instead had me reaching for the Xanax. Good grief.
...
That is the biggest problem with Buzz—it was invented not for us but for Google. So now, because Google feels threatened, we have yet another thing to learn, which won’t be easy because Google is basically a world where nerd engineers get turned loose in a Montessori preschool, and they have no idea about user interface design and, frankly, they don’t care.


Its the difference between a marketing company and a production company. For all its gee-whiz technology, Google is a car company--looking for ways to leverage its 'parts' inventory across multiple platforms.
Sell Google.
My 83 year old father-in-law needed a new computer. The laptop I gave him a few years ago finally gave up the ghost. In large part due to my wife's experience with her Apple MacBook, he bought an iMac. I set it up for him, which amounted to taking it out of the box, plugging it in and searching for the artfully concealed on/off button.
It is a dazzling machine--so much so that I'm heading over to the Apple store this week to buy one for myself.
Impressive as the product is, I think we were more impressed with the customer service. I strongly urged my father-in-law to buy Apple Care and he did. He had occasion to use it almost immediately as the printer driver didn't appear to be talking to the non-Apple printer. I told him to call Apple, and he described the experience as the most pleasant and effective customer support experience he every had. They fixed his problem in short order.
In my book, if you can help an 83 year old man get his printer going, you are DA BOMB!
Oleg Vladimirovich Losev-->
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner takes to the .sky with a slight delay of about two years as Boeing tried to figure out how to mass-produce a plane using revolutionary new technologies.
