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December 3, 2006

Delusions with Intel, Motorola and DVB

There are few spectacles more enthralling than the electronics industry going through one of its periodic fits of mass delusion.

It’s enthralling because the electronics industry is full the clever people. The researchers win Nobel Prizes; the entrepreneurs are distinguished scientists; even the marketers have PhDs.

How can people of this quality regularly and collectively get it so wrong?

The most persistent delusion is that people want videophones. The first public demonstration of a videophone was at the Montreal World Fair in 1967. Since then it has been touted at regular intervals as the next great consumer product.

But it never has been. People obviously don’t want other people to see them when they’re on the phone. But periodically the electronics industry thinks that they should.

Continue reading "Delusions with Intel, Motorola and DVB" »

December 11, 2006

Fox, CBS, NBC, Viacom combine to crack nut

News Corp's Fox TV and movie studios are apparently talking to the GE subsidiary NBC Universal,the movie studio and TV company CBS, and the entertainemnt giant Viacom about putting their multi-hundred-billion dollar muscle behind a home movie-clip hosting site.

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December 20, 2006

IDMs vs Foundries at nano scale processing

When the world moved from micro to nano, one of the myths which arose was that IDMs would win out over foundries.

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January 11, 2007

Las Vegas, Futility, and Imagination

Imagination is what grabs you about Las Vegas, the imagination which went into the building of the major hotels.

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January 19, 2007

Shanks' Pony and the LVCC

When it's quicker to walk and the weather's warm and dry, why do American prefer to take a taxi or a bus?

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January 22, 2007

Snobbish, vacuous pillocks

Stopping off for a bit of sun on the way back from CES I notice that a lot of the chaps have their swimming trunks on inside out.

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February 14, 2007

Embedded or boring?


Now I know what embedded means. It means boring. How can the world’s most creative and technologically dynamic industry produce an event so mind-numbingly boring as Embedded World?

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February 22, 2007

Semiconductor consolidation is for the birds.

There's a curious idea going around that the semiconductor industry is a mature industry ripe for consolidation.

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February 23, 2007

UK electronics industry led from the Cayman Islands

Shades of Lord Gnome lecturing the UK from Villa Bourgainvillea in the South of France.

Last week something called the Electronics Leadership Council issued a report called 'Shaping the Future of UK Electronics'.

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February 27, 2007

Gates vs Samueli


Gates or Samueli? When it comes to home networking, you have to make a big choice.

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June 13, 2007

Macho Is As Macho Does

How is it that people who spend most of their time in offices get to be so macho in their work?

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June 21, 2007

Home Automation Is Baloney

The home automation people seem to have missed what is absolutely obvious to everyone who lives in a home: that every piece of kit in it has a different plug, socket, and wireless interface.

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July 12, 2007

Do Engineers Want Status Or Money? Or Both?

For something like 30 years the status of engineers has been something that has been periodically bewailed.

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July 27, 2007

Time's Up For Masochism

Sitting with a glass of fizzy water over a one course lunch the other day I reflected that, in years to come, historians will look back on our age and call it The Age of Masochism.

Continue reading "Time's Up For Masochism" »

February 5, 2008

Koreans, Roy Lichtenstein, and the Sheep Effect

Fashion is a funny thing. Apparently the Koreans have gone all woozy about the comic-strip type art of Roy Lichtentstein.

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February 15, 2008

This Was The Future . . . . . . Almost

“As long ago as 1960, I listened to a well-respected engineer confidently forecast that 150-watt HF power transistors at prices comparable to valves of equivalent dissipation were but two years or so distant”, wrote Pat Hawker in the October 25th 1972 edition of Electronics Weekly.

Continue reading "This Was The Future . . . . . . Almost" »

August 22, 2008

Bright Guys Don't Join Intel

It took me back to the 80s hearing Intel chairman Craig Barrett bemoaning US educational standards earlier this week.

 

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September 10, 2008

Is Home Automation A Myth?

Will home automation ever happen? Sharp was saying yesterday at its Innovation Forum in Munich that Zigbeee-enabled sensors are the means by which this could happen.

 

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November 4, 2008

CMOS And EDA? They'll Never Happen, said Ferranti Bosses

Recently,  I met a former Ferranti Semiconductors guy, now CEO of Xintronix, Steve Cliffe.

 

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December 19, 2008

Bad News For The Pope

Thanks to a member of London Welsh RFC for this one:

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Welsh_rugby_team_could_kill_the_Pope&in_article_id=450417&in_page_id=2

Makes you wonder: What should Welsh Catholics be praying for?

January 12, 2009

Buying The Past

Buying the past happens more often than you might think. Especially when bureaucrats are doing the buying. When Japan's government decided to take over the world computer industry in the 1970s, Japan's bureaucrats decided that Japan should build home-grown, vertically integrated, mainframe companies - just as the computer industry was about to go for the PC.

 

 

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January 16, 2009

Nortel: My Part In Its Demise

I gave the kiss of death to Nortel which went into administration this week. I bought shares in the company.

 

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March 3, 2009

The Technology Of The Future

Reports of the death of the gallium arsenide industry have been greatly exaggerated with GaAs ICs just short of being a $4 billion market last year, according to analysts Strategic Analytics. The 2008 market, at $3.9 billion, was 8 per cent up on 2007.

 

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March 23, 2009

God Is An Analogue CEO

Analogue semiconductor companies seem to be much more sensible and in tune with  reality than their digital cousins. The analogue guys look for sustainability, which brings stability to their businesses and their employees, while the digital companies pursue a desperate quest for growth.

 

 

Continue reading "God Is An Analogue CEO" »

July 10, 2009

Sticking To Your Knitting

What a lot of time and money is being wasted duplicating other peoples' products. Microsoft has spent years producing Bing - a sub-standard alternative to Google's search engine, and Google has spent a fortune producing Android - now being dropped all-round as a Netbook OS - and gaining little traction as a Smartphone OS.

 

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September 28, 2009

The G-everyone Conference

With the end of the G-20 conference, with nothing much decided on, it's time for us to face up to an unwelcome fact: whether it's the, G-7, G-8, G-20, Davos, Bilderberg, the UN or any other convocation of powerful people, nothing useful is going to come from it.

 

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October 5, 2009

What Does Fab-Lite Mean?

So what does fab-lite mean? Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons, tried to figure out the answer at his company's International Electronics Forum 2009 (IEF 2009) in Geneva last week.

 

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January 6, 2010

Ten Black Swans For 2010

Thanks to Saxo Bank for this one - its ten 'Black Swan' events for 2010.

 

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January 7, 2010

Is Banking And Engineering Management Interchangeable?

Can bankers and engineers get along together? It was interesting see Frans van Houten, former CEO of NXP, move to the banking group ING.

 

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February 2, 2010

Avoid The Wall Street Devil

At all costs, chip company CEOs should avoid following Wall Street's recommendations on how to run a semiconductor company, it was stated at IFS 2010 in London last week.

 

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January 29, 2010

Portable But Not Pocketable: Why iPad?

Do I want to pay another £30 a month to a network operator?

 

Do I want to carry around a ten inch screen?

 

Do I want to read books on a bright screen?

 

Continue reading "Portable But Not Pocketable: Why iPad?" »

March 4, 2010

The Retail Frisson

Getting caught in a heavy snowstorm while visiting a pub or three, recently, I was surprised to find that my new, snazzy, nautical-style jacket was soaked through in seconds.

 

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March 5, 2010

Is 450mm A Dead Duck?

What can you get for the cost of an Olympic Games? Answer: A transition to 450mm wafers. Both cost between $25 billion and $30 billion. 

 

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March 19, 2010

Intel, Google, Sony In Doomed Attempt To Merge TV and PC.

One of the remarkable things about technology evolution is that the TV and the PC have remained separate products despite many attempts to merge them. So what hope has the latest attempt from Google, Intel, Logitech and Sony to make them interchangeable?

 

Continue reading "Intel, Google, Sony In Doomed Attempt To Merge TV and PC." »

About Delusions

This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Mannerisms in the Delusions category. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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