IT Flops

1. Artificial intelligence
Era: Late 1950s to presentThe pitch: "Some day we will build a thinking machine. It will be a truly intelligent machine. One that can see and hear and speak. A machine that will be proud of us." -- Thinking Machines Corp., year unknown


2. Computer-aided software engineering (CASE)
Era: Mid-1980s to mid-1990sThe pitch: "The key benefits of CASE are increases in software quality and development productivity. ... The result is better vision and understanding of the business problem and how the system works, and a clearer understanding of the system's design. With their disciplined, highly structured engineering approach and emphasis on rigid design rules, CASE tools verify consistency and completeness at early stages of the development process." -- Douglas Menendez, Internal Auditor  [13], 1991


3. Thin clients
Era: Early 1990s to presentThe pitch: "The financial case is clear: Thin-client computing can save 30 to 70 percent of your IT costs. Centralizing servers and server support staff leads directly to higher utilization levels. Simplified software deployment radically reduces rollout costs. Longer lifetimes of Windows-based terminals reduces capital expenditure. ... All the benefits of centralised servers and support staff are realized as are most of the benefits of powerful PCs on desks, including popular Windows applications." -- Newburn Consulting  [15], March 2002


4. ERP systems
Era: Mid-1990s to presentThe pitch: "Enterprise resource planning systems appear to be a dream come true. ... The latest generation of commercially available software packages promise seamless integration of all information flows -- financial and accounting, human resource, operations, supply chain, and customer information. This provides for a unified view of the business, encompassing all functions and departments by establishing a single enterprise-wide database in which all business transactions are entered, recorded, processed, monitored, and reported." -- Elizabeth and Michael Umble  [17], Baylor University, January 2002


5. B-to-b marketplaces
Era: 1999 to 2002The pitch: "By 2005, 35 percent of the Internet b-to-b trade volume will be conducted via a net market or a consortium of buyers or sellers. ... The value proposition of the Internet is on a grander scale for the b-to-b space; the sheer size of b-to-b trade, coupled with inefficient processes, makes the Internet migration of business strategies very attractive." -- Jupiter Research, June 2000


6. Enterprise social media
Era: NowThe pitch: "[Our enterprise social media product] improves organizational awareness and fosters cross-functional workflows in ways that collaboration and social networking software alone never will .... helps organizations view and engage in the 'big conversation' -- the sum of all discussions, content creation, and planning activities taking place ... increases organizational effectiveness by providing individuals a 360-degree view of conversations and activities across previously isolated information silos ... while also meeting the enterprise security and data portability requirements of the most demanding CIO." --Unnamed enterprise social media vendor, October 2009


I've lost the link to this article.

Royal Families Descended from Queen Victoria

• UK
• Greece
• Norway
• Russia
• Romania
• Spain
• Germany
• Denmark
• Sweden
• Prussia

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is the only reigning monarch in Europe not a descendant of Victoria (Grandmother of Europe) nor King Christian IX of Denmark (Father-in-law of Europe)

When Did WW I End?

Armistice?  Versailles?  Read this from the (UK) Telegraph:

First World War officially ends

The First World War will officially end on Sunday (2010-10-3), 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.

By Allan Hall, Berlin 1:37PM BST 28 Sep 2010

 

The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another. 

Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead. 

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time. 

The bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign. 

Hatred of the settlement agreed at Versailles, which crippled Germany as it tried to shape itself into a democracy following armistice, was of significant importance in propelling the Nazis to power. 

"On Sunday the last bill is due and the First World War finally, financially at least, terminates for Germany," said Bild, the country's biggest selling newspaper. 

Most of the money goes to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds as agreed under the Treaty of Versailles, where Germany was made to sign the 'war guilt' clause, accepting blame for the war. 

France, which had been ravaged by the war, pushed hardest for the steepest possible fiscal punishment for Germany.


The principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, John Maynard Keynes, resigned in June 1919 in protest at the scale of the demands. 

"Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself,' he warned. 

When the Wall Street Crash came in 1929, the Weimar Republic spiralled into debt. Four years later, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. 

War Poems

Abu Muqawama is the pseudonym of a (? former) soldier with an interest in counter-insurgency.  He has collected some war poems for Veterans' Day.  Links to others  More poems in the right sidebar.

Start reading here.

From Papal Indulgences to Carbon Credits Is Global Warming a Sin?

This is a golden oldie from 2007. The author is Alexander Cockburn.

Excerpt: "Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church was a bank whose capital was secured by the infinite mercy of Christ, Mary and the Saints, and so the Pope could sell indulgences, like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in "carbon credits" is in formation. Those whose "carbon footprint" is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others, less virtuous than themselves."

Mark Steyn on Socialized Medicine

The article is here.


Teaser: "Aneurin Bevan, the socialist who created the National Health Service after the Second World War, was once asked to explain how he'd talked the country's doctors into agreeing to become state employees: "I stuffed their mouths with gold," he crowed. Sixty years ago, no amount of gold can persuade Britons to spend their working lives in the country's dirty decrepit hospitals "

Tax Burden "think of the children"

In the next paragraph, I'm gonna send you off to the blog of Greg Makiw, econ prof at Harvard, and the author of the std Econ 101 text that will probably replace Samuelson's.  I want you to know that I don't mean this to have political implications for the election at hand (written in Fall 2008) and Prof Mankiw says he doesn't either.  I think he's acting like a good teacher and using the current intense public focus to motivate us to learn an economic lesson.

 

He imagines he earns an "extra dollar" and computes the additional value he will be able to leave his children.  Economists call this marginal thinking; engineers are likely to call it AC gain;  physicists would call it sensitivity; mathematicians would call it a Taylor series expansion.  He computes the additional value that would flow to his children under three tax regimes: no taxes, current regime and increased taxes.

 

Tax Regime     Additional value to the kids

No taxes        $28

As now          $15

Higher           $1.85

 

I wrote him a note asking him if the calculation wasn't much more general and showed the deadweight burden of taxation on wealth creation.  He wrote back and agreed the calculation was quite general.

 

So go off and read: I Can Afford Higher Taxes. But They’ll Make Me Work Less.