idea to combine retail and the Internet

I think when people go to a store such as Rite Aid or CVS---what used to be called a drugstore but I can't even think what it would be called now, convenience store does not seem correct---they should be able to order items within a certain range of categories from the Internet.

The person making the order would have to identify himself or herself by name and show the driver's license to verify identity. However, the person would not be legally responsible for picking up the ordered item once it came and, if he or she did not buy it---the person would not be responsible for paying for the item.

Rather, the store would notify the person by e-mail that the item had arrived, hold it for one week, and then put it up for general sale. Anyone who feel to pick up an item however, or failed to pick up a certain number of items, say maybe three, would lose their ability to order new items.

There are number of purposes contained in this idea. one is an easier and less expensive way to order from the Internet, since a company like Rite Aid would be able to set up some bundled, lower-cost method of shipping. Even more important, however, would be the idea of Rite Aid getting new ideas for products to stock.

In fact, the whole idea of the store would change and become more flexible. In fact, this store would be halfway into the Internet.

A related idea of mine is that each store of this type should list every item they have on the Internet, along with their current price. It seems to be this would be something they could attain for software alone with no hours contributed from people working in the stores. I say this because stores like Rite Aid, due to their computerized cash registers, pretty much know everything that is in each store and have this information in their company servers. Of course, such information would be accompanied by a disclaimer that the information did not constitute a guarantee that a particular item would be in the store and an acknowledgment that errors could happen. However, I believe errors would be extremely rare.

This system would be particularly useful for people without cars for whom it can really be difficult to throttle round from one store to another looking for a particular item.

The idea

some references on entrepreneurship.

angels; how to snag one to invest in your company; http://www.naturalentrepreneur.com/articles/20040630-01.html

entrepreneurs of expositions (like conventions) http://www.expoweb.com/For_Profit_Shows/April2322200524156PM.htm

drug entrepreneurs; small and aggressive and creative; http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/successstories/20070209-whalen.html
Small Drug Firms Eye Castoffs of Larger Rivals
By JEANNE WHALEN
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.--February 09, 2007

Sony's Diffuse Strategy

I have always been a fan of Sony, buying their electronic products and appreciating their quality---as well as appreciating the amazing story of the company---how it arose from the ashes of post-World War II Japan, starting with little more than a few educated, ingenious workers.

So the long, slow decline of the company has been painful for me to watch. It started for me when I bought a Sony device---either a very small entertainment system or a very large boom box depending on how you look at it---that turned out to be crap. Since then, I have followed their stumbling course on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Their decline has multiple causes. The arrogant dismissal of LCD and plasma TVs because the Trinitron has a better picture. (The Trinitron still has a better picture, but finally, Sony has acknowledged that it doesn't matter, they were wrong, and they are scrambling to try to catch up in LCD TV production. They have teamed up with Samsung to build an expensive new factory---probably just at the point when the best profits from LCD TVs are gone and they are turning into a commodity. Ironically, plasma and LCD TV picture quality is not equal to CRT picture quality, but people want giant screens and a giant CRT screen would have a box behind it that filled up your whole living room. This is because CRT pictures are made by shooting all the electrons out of a "gun"---a single point origin, and the box must encompass this cone, which requires a certain depth per amount of screen area.)

But for me, the central mistake of Sony is their purchase of, and continued ownership of---Time Warner. I think Time may now be sold, which would make it just Warner. In addition, I'll confess I don't know all the details of Sony's ownership of media companies.

What I object to is the basic idea of Sony owning media companies. It stems from them not knowing who they are anymore. They are the tinkerers, they are the builders of great electronic gizmos. This is their business and an attempt to add movies to this is bound to fail. The purchase came about, some of you will recall, in the go-go 90s. There was a theory at that time that hardware didn't matter anymore---only software. When applied to consumer electronics, that meant all the stuff Sony made didn't matter, so Sony went out and bought Warner Brothers said they could own the "content"---which 90's gurus assured everyone was the only source of future profit.

I remember reading at that time (can't specify the year, sorry, but obviously more toward the beginning of the 90s and the end of the 90s) that Cisco was irrelevant company because they only supplied the physical means for the Internet and that didn't matter---only for software and the "content". I remember when I read that I thought, "that's wrong," but I didn't take the next logical leap to realize "Cisco stock must thereby be undervalued and I should buy it." Had I taken that next logical leap, I would now be an extremely wealthy man---had I had any money to buy the stock in the first place.

So Sony went out and bought Warner Brothers, like a million other similar dumb moves in the 90s. But all that BS has been discredited for a long time now, so why hasn't Sony sold Warner Bros. long ago?

These various threads came together in the train wreck of the release of PlayStation 3. They still make the best video games I told myself, the true believer clinging to his faith. I noted the PlayStation 2---which was how many years old?---was still outselling the relatively new Xbox 360 on a month-to-month basis. Okay, that is just competing against Microsoft---not a real company. Everything they make outside of their desktop software fails, from their mobile phone operating systems, to the software they built for one of the Baby Bells to help the deliver TV, etc. They are in fact a utility, not accompany---they cannot compete.

But still, PlayStation has been a great product, everyone agrees. Not that I play video games.

So what did Sony do? They put a Blu-Ray DVD player into each PlayStation 3. This ended up delaying the release of PlayStation 3 quite a while---maybe a year---because they had trouble moving into mass production of the new Blu-Ray technology. The delay gave Nintendo the chance to come up with their innovative new Wii and released at the same time as PlayStation 3. Another case perhaps of Sony, the former king of innovation, being out-innovated. The Blu- Ray story itself looks like a Sony replay. Sony came up with the best videotape machine technology, I think it was called BetaMax. But the other technology ended it up winning and becoming the standard somehow. I have a feeling the same thing will happen with high-definition DVDs players.

But the real key to this whole screw-up is the linkage to Time Warner. That is why the Blu-Ray had to be in the PlayStation 3. Because controlling the dominant DVD player technology, will help boost their distribution of movies---or so they imagine. So they tie the whole company into one long string---and it's sink or swim for everyone at the same time. Except that such an unwieldy strategy almost guarantees the sink outcome---with a delayed, expensive, unprofitable PS3.

It reminds me of Wal-Mart's current floundering---once again stemming from not knowing who you are. Wal-Mart has been having trouble expanding in recent years. This has come about because they are one of the most successful companies in the history of the world and they have almost completely filled up their niche---which is selling retail commodities of every imaginable type at the lowest possible price in America outside the major cities.

Having achieved this singular success, all they had to do was maintain what they had. Shareholders of stock could have been rewarded with dividends---eliminating the need for constant expansion. Instead, Wal-Mart has embarked on two major strategies---international expansion and becoming the next Target. International expansion has failed because there are quintessentially an American company. Becoming the next Target has failed as well. Why is this? Run the historical tape. Target came onto the scene after Wal-Mart was already there (as I understand it). They knew they could never out Wal-Mart Wal-Mart. So, they created their own similar, but somewhat different specialty. It is called Target. They do it extremely well, and like most specialties, it is not easily learned. Target happens to make somewhat more money per square foot because they sell slightly higher-end items. So some accountant at Wal-Mart decided if they just do what Target does, they will boost Wal-Mart's income by X. amount. How sad.

Watching the once great elephant flounder.

ceramic armor

Ever wonder how tank armor and armor tests worn by soldiers can be made of ceramic---even though when you drop your ceramic cup in the kitchen it shatters? Guess what? Ceramic tank armor also shatters when it is hit by a projectile. The shattering absorbs the shock and protects the tank underneath. Ceramic tank armor is in the form of plates that are attached to the outside of the tank. When one is hit, a new plate is simply attached in its place.

Ceramic armored vests are made of some material (probably largely Kevlar) with sewn-in pockets, each containing one ceramic plate. If a bullet impacts one of the plates, it shatters into pieces which are contained in the pocket. The soldier simply pours the pieces out and inserts a new plate. Cool, huh?

just read an article starting on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, "Big Dealer to Detroit: Fakes How You make Cars,"

In the Fort Lauderdale dealership of a huge national company called AutoNation Inc., that sells 4% of the cars sold in the U. S., the manager of the store, Mr. Devan, "recently pulled up data on Expedition sales on his computer. Although Ford offers about a dozen versions---two in four-wheel drive, long and short wheelbase---Mr. Devan says just three types account for 75% of the sales in all of South Florida. 'those are the ones I'll order,' he said, touching a finger to his display screen. 'Anything else, I'll pretty much stay away from'"

When I read something like this, it reminds me off the feature-crazy engineers I once worked with in Silicon Valley. This makes it sound like Ford (and other US automakers) have been taken over by the engineers.

Scientists and engineers are incorporating principles of flight utilized by birds to create better unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs). Animal flight is highly unsteady and complex compared to mechanical flight. The more complicated articulation of the living wing also makes this type of flight more essentially three-dimensional than conventional flying machines. So far, the main use of UAVs has been by the US military, the NASA is also co founding recent research on the subject at the University of Florida (UF). The current generation of UAVs has been spectacularly useful in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq---taking the Army brass by surprise and causing production to be quickly ramped up as combat infantry on the ground makes evermore requests for UAV support. However, the current generation of UAVs is designed to fly high above the ground.

The UF research is designed to create UAVs that will be more maneuverable than the current generation, allowing them to fly close to the ground and, for example, bring special sensors close in to investigate a particular individual building suspected of harboring the manufacture of chemical or biological weapons. The new generation of UAVs would be designed to be able to fly down a street with buildings on both sides, turn a corner, fly between two buildings, etc.

As Rick Lind, a UF assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who heads the project explained, this will require the ability to do sharp turns, spins, and dives. To accomplish this, the new UAVs will have wings similar to those of a seagull---able to undergo drastic changes of shape during flight.

This idea came from mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral student Mujahid Abdulrahim. He was impressed with the way seagulls could hover, dive, and then quickly climb to regain their altitude again. Photographs by Abdulrahim showed the gulls’ wings flexing both their shoulder and elbow joints to alter their flight patterns.

He incorporated structures analogous to a gull’s elbow and shoulder into the latest UAV prototype. With the UAV wings in a position analogous to a gulls’ wings with the elbows down, the UAV becomes less stable but highly maneuverable. With the “mechanical elbows” straight, the UAV glides very well. With the UAV wings in a position analogous to a gull’s wings with the elbows up, it is very easy to control and can be utilized to land the craft in a relatively small area. The motors in the UAV can move the wings from the down position to the up position (during flight) in 12 seconds. Abdulrahim says this is fast enough to make the craft maneuverable in a city landscape.

The UAV can complete three 360° rolls in one second---three times as many as an F-16. No human piloted plane would ever be designed with the ability to do three 360° rolls in one second because that would kill the pilot. In general, jet fighter design has been bumping up against the fairly immovable constraint of what the human body can withstand. This is one of the main reasons that when the U. S. Air Force announced that it was going to develop the F-35, it also said that this would be the last human-piloted jet fighter.

For awhile, there was understandable resistance against UAVs in the Air Force. Being in charge of employees enhances the power of bureaucrats, and in the air force, pilots are very prestigious employees. Being in charge of a bunch of flying machines will not seem to have the same importance. But the stellar performance of UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan has caused any potential remaining resistance inside the Air Force to crumble.

Recently, the Air Force tried to retrofit the current state-of-the-art American fighter, the F-22 to perform ground reconnaissance in Iraq using sensors. However, the Predator UAV, costing about 5% as much as an F-22, ended up doing the job better. To be fair, the F-22 was never designed for ground sensor mission. Still, the incident is telling in a way. Grown sensor missions are mainly what we need---at least right now.

And even more promising model for UAVs the seagulls may be bats. Because bat wings are so flexible and highly articulated, bats have more lift, less drag, and greater maneuverability than birds. In contrast to man-made machines, bats fly very slowly, have highly compliant aerodynamic surfaces, and are very unsteady.

Two Brown University professors, Kenneth Breuer, a professor of engineering at who studied mechanical aerodynamics earlier in his career and Sharon Swartz, an associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology, have collaborated to greatly advance the understanding of bat flight. Some of their findings were published in a study titled “Direct Measurements of the Kinematics and Dynamics of Bat Flight."

A bat wing has more than 24 joints---all independent of each other. A thin, flexible membrane encompasses the entire wing. The bones of a bat wing also go through a large degree of deformation during flight. The extremely flexible articulation of the bat’s wing allows a bat to make a 180° turn in less than half the distance of a wingspan. During the 180° turn, the turning rate exceeds 200° per second.

Bat wings are architecturally and mechanically more complex than those of other any other flying animal, resulting in more maneuverable flight with unique kinematics. (Kinematics is the branch of mechanics that studies the motion of a body or a system of bodies without consideration given to its mass or the forces acting on it. This is in contrast to dynamics, the branch of mechanics that is concerned with the effects of forces on the motion of a body or system of bodies, especially of forces that do not originate within the system itself.)

To better understand how the wings of bats function, Breuer and Swartz first set up videos shot from four angles simultaneously. Reflective markers were placed on joints, bones, and the wing membrane. Analysis of the videos helped the researchers understand how complex movements of the wing strokes related to the overall flight speed, body position, and angle of attack of the bats. After taking a series of ordinary videos, the research team injected a fine mist of aerosol particles into the area where the bats would fly. As the bat flew by, a laser imager imaging device captured the position, speed, and direction of the particles in her wake (all the tests bats were female).

The study revealed that unlike birds or insects, bats draw their wings into their bodies during the upstroke and then extend them out during the downstroke. In a sense, they are rowing rather than flying.

Another area of study is the development of a swarming capability for UAVs. A thousand starlings, flying together in a flock, are able to maneuver easily. The path of the group’s flight changes from moment to moment with no central control. Researchers are copying some of their subtle and effective control methods to help large numbers of UAVs flying near each other without collisions. Swarms (of bees for example) are more complex than flocks because they incorporate stigmergy---their form of communication between individuals. This results in even greater coordination.

Flying robots however, are capable of forming a system with much more complex and effective coordination. In a recent BBC Focus Magazine article, Professor Owen Holland talked about such a system he is building, which he describes as a “gridswarm” (the name of the particular gridswarm he is now developing is “Ultraswarm”---a group of miniature robot helicopters linked together computationally to create an indoor flying cluster computer.

“Imagine a large group of small unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles that can fly with the agility of a flock of starlings in a city square at dusk. Imagine linking their onboard computers together across a short range, high-bandwidth wireless network and configuring them to form an enormous distributed parallel computer. Imagine using this huge computational resource to process sensory data gathered by this swarm, and to direct its collective actions. You have now grasped the idea of a flying gridswarm.”

Although the article focuses on civilian applications, the application to military UAVs is obvious and will clearly becoming soon.

"New UAV designed to maneuver in tight spaces;" OE Magazine, the SPIE Magazine of Photonics Technologies and Applications; http://oemagazine.com/newscast/2005/082405_newscast01.html

"Predator Kicks F-22 Ass," Strategy Page http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htecm/articles/20070131.aspx

"Bats in flight reveal unexpected aerodynamics," Physorg.com, (their source: Brown University)

http://www.physorg.com/news88359720.html.

"Direct Measurements of the Kinematics and Dynamics of Bat Flight," by Xiaodong Tian, Jose Iriarte, Kevin Middleton, Ricardo Galvao, Emily Israeli, Abigail Roemer, Allyce Sullivan&, Arnold Song, Sharon Swartz and Kenneth Breuer, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, http://microfluids.engin.brown.edu/Breuer_Papers/Conferences/AIAA-2006-2865-552.pdf.

"UAV; Killer Swarms: The New Generation," by David Hambling, DefenseTech.org, http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002651.html