I've been reading a fair amount lately about companies that invest in another company with a depressed stock price and then try to make changes in the company to bring the stock price up. Nothing wrong with this.
However, I've noticed that sometimes these investor companies are invested for quite a long while before they make an aggressive move on the management. Sometimes, it seems, that a significant part of the downturn has occurred after the investor company got in. What if the investor company surreptitiously did things on purpose to cause the stock price to go down? Then they could greatly increase their holdings, having excellent insight into the "problem" (being as they caused it themselves). Then they could solve the problem and benefit from the rebound in the stock price.
Illegal, but people might be getting away with it.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Participatory Music Site
This idea is pretty far out. Increasingly, people are using the Internet to find rock groups they enjoy listening to. The Internet is then further utilized to allow these musical groups to have tours that garner them just enough money to support themselves on a low level.
In addition, the software for creating music is becoming increasingly sophisticated and powerful in terms of its effects but also increasingly easy to use. What if there was a way for users to not only find music they like on the Internet but add their own input to the music, changing it into something that fit their tastes better?
Once the user had made changes to a particular song, the web site could remember those changes and always apply them to the song when that user played it. Users could listen to each other's versions in a My Space-like community. The types of changes the user made in one song could be automatically applied to another song created by the same musical group, to make it something the user more wanted to listen to.
These types of changes could certainly be done with lyrics. There could be collaborative software for lyrics similar to Lotus Notes.
Eventually, some changes could percolate up into the groups own versions of songs. The data thus gathered could also cause the group to present songs differently in different venues, depending on the feedback of people from that geographical area.
Perhaps the process could advance to the point where a group of online users would not need to start with a musical group at all, but could create their own music according to their own taste. Obviously, the creation process would be much aided by software trying to fashion a desirable song. Perhaps people could start with templates of traditional songs not protected by copyrights. Once a desirable song had been created that was enjoyed by enough people in a particular part of the country, a group of actual musicians could learn the song and go perform it there for them.
In addition, the software for creating music is becoming increasingly sophisticated and powerful in terms of its effects but also increasingly easy to use. What if there was a way for users to not only find music they like on the Internet but add their own input to the music, changing it into something that fit their tastes better?
Once the user had made changes to a particular song, the web site could remember those changes and always apply them to the song when that user played it. Users could listen to each other's versions in a My Space-like community. The types of changes the user made in one song could be automatically applied to another song created by the same musical group, to make it something the user more wanted to listen to.
These types of changes could certainly be done with lyrics. There could be collaborative software for lyrics similar to Lotus Notes.
Eventually, some changes could percolate up into the groups own versions of songs. The data thus gathered could also cause the group to present songs differently in different venues, depending on the feedback of people from that geographical area.
Perhaps the process could advance to the point where a group of online users would not need to start with a musical group at all, but could create their own music according to their own taste. Obviously, the creation process would be much aided by software trying to fashion a desirable song. Perhaps people could start with templates of traditional songs not protected by copyrights. Once a desirable song had been created that was enjoyed by enough people in a particular part of the country, a group of actual musicians could learn the song and go perform it there for them.
Making TV Advertising Like the Internet
The Internet is rapidly gaining popularity as an advertising medium because ads are individually targeted to users. So Google, for example, can take into account a person's searching history when they present an ad for him or her to look at (at least, this is how I interpret the situation.)
TV on the other hand is "mass media" which is to say everyone watching a TV program sees the same ad. This could change, but it would require some modification of the technical system through which TV is currently delivered. I believe however, that these technical problems have already been solved in the pursuit of other product ideas that ended up not working (the various schemes that provided for viewer input. Do they have this on American Idol?)
For example, the cable company could build a profile of a viewer based on his or her viewing habits and then provide different ads to different people on that basis. Alternately, the cable company could link to "cookie" data accumulated by the person's Internet surfing. Presumably, this would have to be voluntarily done by people on an individual basis. It seems that some might do it nonetheless, however, in order to be able to see ads related to things they actually wanted, which would be more enjoyable (presuming they will have to see some kind of ads).
This idea is presented separately from the whole TiVo problem, which is reducing peoples viewing of ads. The fact is, ads are still sold so the idea could still be workable. Presumably, an early stage filter built into the system would be required to remove any porn-related Web surfing cookies for this to work. Some people would still feel uncomfortable about making public certain aspects of their Web surfing. For example, this could apply to politics. People who felt uncomfortable about those things would presumably not opt for the option to link to the cookie data. But the porn thing would need to be dealt with automatically, since this is supposedly the single biggest use of the Web.
TV on the other hand is "mass media" which is to say everyone watching a TV program sees the same ad. This could change, but it would require some modification of the technical system through which TV is currently delivered. I believe however, that these technical problems have already been solved in the pursuit of other product ideas that ended up not working (the various schemes that provided for viewer input. Do they have this on American Idol?)
For example, the cable company could build a profile of a viewer based on his or her viewing habits and then provide different ads to different people on that basis. Alternately, the cable company could link to "cookie" data accumulated by the person's Internet surfing. Presumably, this would have to be voluntarily done by people on an individual basis. It seems that some might do it nonetheless, however, in order to be able to see ads related to things they actually wanted, which would be more enjoyable (presuming they will have to see some kind of ads).
This idea is presented separately from the whole TiVo problem, which is reducing peoples viewing of ads. The fact is, ads are still sold so the idea could still be workable. Presumably, an early stage filter built into the system would be required to remove any porn-related Web surfing cookies for this to work. Some people would still feel uncomfortable about making public certain aspects of their Web surfing. For example, this could apply to politics. People who felt uncomfortable about those things would presumably not opt for the option to link to the cookie data. But the porn thing would need to be dealt with automatically, since this is supposedly the single biggest use of the Web.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Part 2 on the New Economy and Why I Don't Expect a Recession (Quite Rambling)
I was reading in the Wall Street Journal today about how there's a widespread expectation of the financial sector taking a heavy hit. In particular, the number one guy at Bear Stearns just fired the number two guy, their stock has plummeted, and everyone is expecting more bad news there. incorporating their own difficult to believe claims, I sum up Bear Stearns thusly: they made money in June, they made money in July, they will be bankrupt by September.
Reading between the lines however, I take heart that much of the deepest concern seems localized to the financial sector. So far, the overall losses in the stock market have not been large although the volatility has been. There was mention of losses in the consumer sector and of course the housing sector is a disaster; that is what has caused the current problem (Bear Stearns is a Wall Street firm that was especially heavily invested in mortgages.)
However, my optimism remains strong that we will not have a recession at this time. I consider this to be quite striking and notable, if true. No doubt, the complete collapse of the housing sector would have tended to cause a recession in the past. And make no doubt about it, I believe the housing sector will not recover for a decade, maybe three to five decades. I am much more pessimistic about the housing sector than the average analyst, so none of my optimism has to do with expecting "an upturn in the housing market in 2008."
No, the housing market has collapsed, completely and utterly. Now, people must learn that housing prices rise and fall just like the price of every other thing in the world. Is just that the cycle of the housing market prices is much slower than the cycle of prices of practically anything else. Housing prices tend to rise for 50 or 60 years at a time and fall for 50 or 60 years at a time; at least this is the implication of the data for the past one to 120 years (sorry I have no reference).
My optimism, rather is based on the notion that our US economy has become much more segmented in recent years. By this I mean much less integrated. Of course, this is only true in certain ways. In other ways, the economy is no doubt much more integrated.
But the segmentation I refer to focuses on the new ways of packaging debt. Due to these new types of debt packaging, many more players have gotten into the lending market who weren't in it before. Many of these players are smaller players. In some cases they are dumber players and for sure many are losing money and about to lose some more.
This is the result of the collapse of the housing market. However, unlike in the past, when most of the lending was done by the banks, this need not lead to a recession. When most of the lending was done by the banks, that particular segment of our economy would have been getting extremely cautious about now due to some very large losses. This would have caused the recession.
Of course, this is all a very tortured hypothetical. The recent hyper-boom was made possible by the new types of debt-packaging. That means that the new types of debt-packaging actually caused the current problem. This makes sense really. These new players are learning the hard way.
But mainly, what I wanted to say today to add to my previous post on this subject was thoughts about how the Great Depression occurred and what makes a country poor. In the Great Depression, as I understand it, banks stopped lending money and businesses generally could not grow or even continue to operate. This is in a sense, caused by the centralization of capital in banks. Now on the other hand, we have capital being spread out much more. This tends to result in more failures (like the current failure of the housing market) but make each failure less catastrophic.
Another result of the current situation is that it allows people to learn more and learn faster. Yet another result of the current situation is that it gives the smarter and more creative people more of an edge. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that this tends to benefit society by tending to put more resources in areas where there will be greater yield (i.e., someplace new).
Consider the tremendous pressures that so many companies face against raising prices for their customers even though the price of commodities, energy, and other expenses are currently rising rapidly. It seems to me (and I'll admit this could be quite a bit of a stretch) that these kinds of forces may squeeze some capital out of "commodity operations" and thus release some capital for innovative operations.
Commodity operations are operations in which the company does the same thing that other companies do. They hope the prices change in a way that will be favorable to them and they try to do things more efficiently than the other companies. However, is usually difficult to be very profitable in these areas and it seems that lately it is becoming more difficult.
Now look at where the money is flowing. Most obviously, it is flowing to China. How does this fit in with this thesis? It does because in a sense, all operations in China are currently innovative operations. Producing in China is an attempt to take advantage of previously underutilized resources. It is an attempt to seize on an investment opportunity as opposed to simply performing a commodity operation.
How about high-tech? I don't feel overly impressed with what is going on in the high-tech sector at this time. In fact, I feel that this sector was so successful in innovating in the past that it has resulted in innovation being stifled in the present. It seems to me that the idea of innovation in high-tech has become, "let's add video to it," "let's do it wirelessly," "let's increase the capacity/ throughput of the system," etc.
I don't see people doing new things all that much. I'll admit, I may be completely wrong on this one.
Let me give an example. Bluetooth has been an exciting innovation in recent years. it was fairly quickly applied to cell phone headsets because phone company technology has a certain amount of standardization---probably a hangover from the AT&T era.
On the other hand, it took years to see a single audio Bluetooth headset appear, and they still seem to be rare (I may be wrong on that last.) The reason there were no audio Bluetooth headsets for years after there were cell phone Bluetooth headsets is because audio technology is not standardized among companies. It was felt that any audio Bluetooth headset needed to be compatible with the products of all companies and this proved to be very difficult to do, so they simply went years without any products at all. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make products that were only compatible with specific companies as a temporary solution?
I apologize for all the rambling here today. Despite the non-innovativeness of the high-tech sector, I believe there is a lot of innovation in the world today that is creating a lot of wealth and benefiting many people. Admittedly this blog does not have much of an overall point today, but I did make some individual points that I wanted to make.
Reading between the lines however, I take heart that much of the deepest concern seems localized to the financial sector. So far, the overall losses in the stock market have not been large although the volatility has been. There was mention of losses in the consumer sector and of course the housing sector is a disaster; that is what has caused the current problem (Bear Stearns is a Wall Street firm that was especially heavily invested in mortgages.)
However, my optimism remains strong that we will not have a recession at this time. I consider this to be quite striking and notable, if true. No doubt, the complete collapse of the housing sector would have tended to cause a recession in the past. And make no doubt about it, I believe the housing sector will not recover for a decade, maybe three to five decades. I am much more pessimistic about the housing sector than the average analyst, so none of my optimism has to do with expecting "an upturn in the housing market in 2008."
No, the housing market has collapsed, completely and utterly. Now, people must learn that housing prices rise and fall just like the price of every other thing in the world. Is just that the cycle of the housing market prices is much slower than the cycle of prices of practically anything else. Housing prices tend to rise for 50 or 60 years at a time and fall for 50 or 60 years at a time; at least this is the implication of the data for the past one to 120 years (sorry I have no reference).
My optimism, rather is based on the notion that our US economy has become much more segmented in recent years. By this I mean much less integrated. Of course, this is only true in certain ways. In other ways, the economy is no doubt much more integrated.
But the segmentation I refer to focuses on the new ways of packaging debt. Due to these new types of debt packaging, many more players have gotten into the lending market who weren't in it before. Many of these players are smaller players. In some cases they are dumber players and for sure many are losing money and about to lose some more.
This is the result of the collapse of the housing market. However, unlike in the past, when most of the lending was done by the banks, this need not lead to a recession. When most of the lending was done by the banks, that particular segment of our economy would have been getting extremely cautious about now due to some very large losses. This would have caused the recession.
Of course, this is all a very tortured hypothetical. The recent hyper-boom was made possible by the new types of debt-packaging. That means that the new types of debt-packaging actually caused the current problem. This makes sense really. These new players are learning the hard way.
But mainly, what I wanted to say today to add to my previous post on this subject was thoughts about how the Great Depression occurred and what makes a country poor. In the Great Depression, as I understand it, banks stopped lending money and businesses generally could not grow or even continue to operate. This is in a sense, caused by the centralization of capital in banks. Now on the other hand, we have capital being spread out much more. This tends to result in more failures (like the current failure of the housing market) but make each failure less catastrophic.
Another result of the current situation is that it allows people to learn more and learn faster. Yet another result of the current situation is that it gives the smarter and more creative people more of an edge. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that this tends to benefit society by tending to put more resources in areas where there will be greater yield (i.e., someplace new).
Consider the tremendous pressures that so many companies face against raising prices for their customers even though the price of commodities, energy, and other expenses are currently rising rapidly. It seems to me (and I'll admit this could be quite a bit of a stretch) that these kinds of forces may squeeze some capital out of "commodity operations" and thus release some capital for innovative operations.
Commodity operations are operations in which the company does the same thing that other companies do. They hope the prices change in a way that will be favorable to them and they try to do things more efficiently than the other companies. However, is usually difficult to be very profitable in these areas and it seems that lately it is becoming more difficult.
Now look at where the money is flowing. Most obviously, it is flowing to China. How does this fit in with this thesis? It does because in a sense, all operations in China are currently innovative operations. Producing in China is an attempt to take advantage of previously underutilized resources. It is an attempt to seize on an investment opportunity as opposed to simply performing a commodity operation.
How about high-tech? I don't feel overly impressed with what is going on in the high-tech sector at this time. In fact, I feel that this sector was so successful in innovating in the past that it has resulted in innovation being stifled in the present. It seems to me that the idea of innovation in high-tech has become, "let's add video to it," "let's do it wirelessly," "let's increase the capacity/ throughput of the system," etc.
I don't see people doing new things all that much. I'll admit, I may be completely wrong on this one.
Let me give an example. Bluetooth has been an exciting innovation in recent years. it was fairly quickly applied to cell phone headsets because phone company technology has a certain amount of standardization---probably a hangover from the AT&T era.
On the other hand, it took years to see a single audio Bluetooth headset appear, and they still seem to be rare (I may be wrong on that last.) The reason there were no audio Bluetooth headsets for years after there were cell phone Bluetooth headsets is because audio technology is not standardized among companies. It was felt that any audio Bluetooth headset needed to be compatible with the products of all companies and this proved to be very difficult to do, so they simply went years without any products at all. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make products that were only compatible with specific companies as a temporary solution?
I apologize for all the rambling here today. Despite the non-innovativeness of the high-tech sector, I believe there is a lot of innovation in the world today that is creating a lot of wealth and benefiting many people. Admittedly this blog does not have much of an overall point today, but I did make some individual points that I wanted to make.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Idea to Prevent Bridge Collapses like the Tragic Minnesota I-35 Bridge
Admittedly harebrained. Drill thin holes into the core of the bridge at key points. Insert a strain sensor into the each hole. Each sensor would be connected by wire to the outside of the hole. Each sensor would incorporate a rechargeable battery and RF transmitter circuitry. On the outside of the hole would be an antenna for broadcasting signal and a solar cell for recharging the battery.
When a problem developed, a warning signal would be broadcasted. There would also be periodic "I'm OK," broadcasts to show that the system was still functioning. Probably, there would be a number of sensors and one bridge but only one antenna and solar cell array feeding and fed by all the sensors. This would allow the antenna and solar cell array to be in a transparent vandal-proof plastic box.
When a problem developed, a warning signal would be broadcasted. There would also be periodic "I'm OK," broadcasts to show that the system was still functioning. Probably, there would be a number of sensors and one bridge but only one antenna and solar cell array feeding and fed by all the sensors. This would allow the antenna and solar cell array to be in a transparent vandal-proof plastic box.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
I Have Decided that I Believe in the "New Economy"
I have been thinking for a while about the so-called "new economy." Of course, my knowledge of economics is quite limited, just what I've picked up from reading the Wall Street Journal of the years. Nonetheless, I have come to form an opinion on the "new economy," and I have decided I'm for it.
The "new economy," from the perspective of my limited understanding, consists of hedge funds, new ways of packaging debt and investment, and many more leveraged buyouts (LBO's) than in the past. On hedge funds, my understanding is still pretty cloudy. However, I've come to accept the idea that they sometimes serve as a sort of "shock absorber" in the economy.
The new ways of packaging debt and investment have, in large part, led to our current meltdown in the sub-prime housing loan market. This is that of course but it is a probably inevitable result of being in the early part of the learning curve in understanding these new ways of packaging debt and investment.
What is positive is that this sub-prime market meltdown has not resulted in a recession---at least not yet. Apparently, this is because, unlike in the past, banks are not holding the bulk of loans. Therefore, the meltdown in the sub-prime market is not resulting in overall withdrawal of credit from banks. This is a good thing.
Of course, banks are tightening their credit in certain ways this time. Most specifically, they are rapidly and extremely tightening the credit they extend to hedge funds. In part, this is related to the sub-prime market but to be honest, I cannot remember how. But mainly, it is related to the fact that hedge funds have gotten in trouble and banks are more reluctant to lend them money.
At the same time, it must be pointed out that banks are already very committed and vulnerable on large number of loans known as "bridge loans." These are short-term loans that banks give hedge funds and LBO companies. They allow hedge funds and LBO companies to close deals without actually having adequate cash on hand. The deals are closed using the banks money, than the hedge fund and/or LBO company arranges financing.
What is going on now is a bit like musical chairs when the music stops. Unfortunately for the banks, in some cases they are the ones without a chair. The banks are going to be losing some money here and it is making them more cautious in a general way. This is obviously bad news for the economy, reflected in the current stock market. However, it still seems more positive than the previous type of situation where the banks would have been carrying all of the subprime loans and when the sub-prime market fell apart, money would dry up all over the economy, causing a recession.
Because of new ways of packaging loans and investments, businesses are less dependent on banks for financing. This is a good thing. It helps stabilize the economy and allows it to keep a positive track for a longer period of time. On the other hand, the current meltdown in the subprime one market probably would not have occurred without these new ways of packaging loans and investments. Sorry that this is somewhat repetitive, but I was developing another point at the same time I was repeating myself. I lack the time and energy during this period my life to straighten this blog entry out into a well-written piece.
LBO companies are possibly the most positive part of the "new economy." Of course, they are quite negative for many individuals, causing large numbers of layoffs. Nonetheless, I feel that the overall positive for the economy is quite definite. In my mind, LBO's are converting the large-scale economy, which tends to consist of somewhat ossified corporations, into something more resembling the small-scale economy, which tends to consist of aggressive, pennypinching small businesses.
This conversion is uncomfortable to many people who lose their jobs. I was reading the Friday Wall Street Journal about the layoffs that resulted when Blackstone took over a company that was involved in airplane flight reservations. It seemed like they laid off many people in their 50s and 60s with very high paying jobs. Though the article didn't explicitly state this, I drew the implication that they were replacing some of them with younger employees. What the article said was that they were firing some people and then hiring others to adapt to "new technologies."
Yes, this is pretty brutal stuff. However, it is also the nature of capitalism. Our economy already has numerous features to try to help people in transitional job situations and we will probably need to develop more of these features. In regard to the Blackstone example cited above, I imagine some of the people in their 50s and 60s would be able to retire with reasonable comfort, but some would not. In addition, many younger people were also laid off.
In reading about waves of layoffs in the telecommunications industry in the 90s, I found that most of the people laid off got new jobs pretty quickly. This depends on two things: highly trained people and a healthy economy. This is not to discount the pain and suffering involved in being laid off, even if you find a new job fairly quickly. In addition, some do not get new jobs. Another unpleasant fact is that some of the people who were laid off do not perform as well. However, the article seemed to imply that this reality does not exist. They only referred to people who were laid off who had "good performance records." These records are often nonsense, in my opinion.
On the negative side of LBO companies, they are accelerating the process of turnaround. Laying off people faster, cutting expenses faster... This part seems like a scam. You can cut expenses past the desirable point and not affect profits for a while. Then if you sell it fast enough, you can make a big profit yourself. After it is sold however, the company crashes, goes into a hangover, and money needs to be spent to rebuild it. So part of the phenomenon is just a scam, in my view. However, is really impossible to separate this sort of thing from truly adding value, or a should say it is impossible in a general sense. For some people, it is possible to separate scams from adding value. These are the real investors.
Capitalism is pretty painful, but so is life. The alternative is a European-type system based on "job protection." However, it seems to me that the European system is inevitably sliding and spiraling downward. I will admit that I'm not sure about this last point.
I will close with a statement made by a person from England who had moved to America. This person said that most of all, they were struck by the optimism of this country. I think optimism springs from opportunity, and we still have it.
The "new economy," from the perspective of my limited understanding, consists of hedge funds, new ways of packaging debt and investment, and many more leveraged buyouts (LBO's) than in the past. On hedge funds, my understanding is still pretty cloudy. However, I've come to accept the idea that they sometimes serve as a sort of "shock absorber" in the economy.
The new ways of packaging debt and investment have, in large part, led to our current meltdown in the sub-prime housing loan market. This is that of course but it is a probably inevitable result of being in the early part of the learning curve in understanding these new ways of packaging debt and investment.
What is positive is that this sub-prime market meltdown has not resulted in a recession---at least not yet. Apparently, this is because, unlike in the past, banks are not holding the bulk of loans. Therefore, the meltdown in the sub-prime market is not resulting in overall withdrawal of credit from banks. This is a good thing.
Of course, banks are tightening their credit in certain ways this time. Most specifically, they are rapidly and extremely tightening the credit they extend to hedge funds. In part, this is related to the sub-prime market but to be honest, I cannot remember how. But mainly, it is related to the fact that hedge funds have gotten in trouble and banks are more reluctant to lend them money.
At the same time, it must be pointed out that banks are already very committed and vulnerable on large number of loans known as "bridge loans." These are short-term loans that banks give hedge funds and LBO companies. They allow hedge funds and LBO companies to close deals without actually having adequate cash on hand. The deals are closed using the banks money, than the hedge fund and/or LBO company arranges financing.
What is going on now is a bit like musical chairs when the music stops. Unfortunately for the banks, in some cases they are the ones without a chair. The banks are going to be losing some money here and it is making them more cautious in a general way. This is obviously bad news for the economy, reflected in the current stock market. However, it still seems more positive than the previous type of situation where the banks would have been carrying all of the subprime loans and when the sub-prime market fell apart, money would dry up all over the economy, causing a recession.
Because of new ways of packaging loans and investments, businesses are less dependent on banks for financing. This is a good thing. It helps stabilize the economy and allows it to keep a positive track for a longer period of time. On the other hand, the current meltdown in the subprime one market probably would not have occurred without these new ways of packaging loans and investments. Sorry that this is somewhat repetitive, but I was developing another point at the same time I was repeating myself. I lack the time and energy during this period my life to straighten this blog entry out into a well-written piece.
LBO companies are possibly the most positive part of the "new economy." Of course, they are quite negative for many individuals, causing large numbers of layoffs. Nonetheless, I feel that the overall positive for the economy is quite definite. In my mind, LBO's are converting the large-scale economy, which tends to consist of somewhat ossified corporations, into something more resembling the small-scale economy, which tends to consist of aggressive, pennypinching small businesses.
This conversion is uncomfortable to many people who lose their jobs. I was reading the Friday Wall Street Journal about the layoffs that resulted when Blackstone took over a company that was involved in airplane flight reservations. It seemed like they laid off many people in their 50s and 60s with very high paying jobs. Though the article didn't explicitly state this, I drew the implication that they were replacing some of them with younger employees. What the article said was that they were firing some people and then hiring others to adapt to "new technologies."
Yes, this is pretty brutal stuff. However, it is also the nature of capitalism. Our economy already has numerous features to try to help people in transitional job situations and we will probably need to develop more of these features. In regard to the Blackstone example cited above, I imagine some of the people in their 50s and 60s would be able to retire with reasonable comfort, but some would not. In addition, many younger people were also laid off.
In reading about waves of layoffs in the telecommunications industry in the 90s, I found that most of the people laid off got new jobs pretty quickly. This depends on two things: highly trained people and a healthy economy. This is not to discount the pain and suffering involved in being laid off, even if you find a new job fairly quickly. In addition, some do not get new jobs. Another unpleasant fact is that some of the people who were laid off do not perform as well. However, the article seemed to imply that this reality does not exist. They only referred to people who were laid off who had "good performance records." These records are often nonsense, in my opinion.
On the negative side of LBO companies, they are accelerating the process of turnaround. Laying off people faster, cutting expenses faster... This part seems like a scam. You can cut expenses past the desirable point and not affect profits for a while. Then if you sell it fast enough, you can make a big profit yourself. After it is sold however, the company crashes, goes into a hangover, and money needs to be spent to rebuild it. So part of the phenomenon is just a scam, in my view. However, is really impossible to separate this sort of thing from truly adding value, or a should say it is impossible in a general sense. For some people, it is possible to separate scams from adding value. These are the real investors.
Capitalism is pretty painful, but so is life. The alternative is a European-type system based on "job protection." However, it seems to me that the European system is inevitably sliding and spiraling downward. I will admit that I'm not sure about this last point.
I will close with a statement made by a person from England who had moved to America. This person said that most of all, they were struck by the optimism of this country. I think optimism springs from opportunity, and we still have it.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Some Thoughts on MEMS in the Human Body
definition from:
http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci214093,00.html
"Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) is a technology that combines computers with tiny mechanical devices such as sensors, valves, gears, mirrors, and actuators embedded in semiconductor chips. Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, believes MEMS or what he calls analog computing will be "the foundational technology of the next decade." MEMS is also sometimes called smart matter.
When one considers complex mechanisms like this that are involved in the creation of diseases, one can see the advantage of incorporating MEMS into the body to monitor highly localized processes. Of course, there would need to be some way of knowing where particular pieces of data came from in the body. One way to do this would be to somehow anchor each MEMS into a permanent, known position in the body. Then the doctor would be able to locate the origin of the data from the MEMS's own ID tag which would be included in each piece of data. However, anchoring a MEMS in the body does not sound very easy. Perhaps each MEMS could have a tropism for a particular biochemical environment located at a particular place in the body.
 | | | |
| SearchSMB.com Definitions, | |||
http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci214093,00.html
"Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) is a technology that combines computers with tiny mechanical devices such as sensors, valves, gears, mirrors, and actuators embedded in semiconductor chips. Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, believes MEMS or what he calls analog computing will be "the foundational technology of the next decade." MEMS is also sometimes called smart matter.
MEMS are already used as accelerometers in automobile air-bags. They've replaced a less reliable device at lower cost and show promise of being able to inflate a bag not only on the basis of sensed deceleration but also on the basis of the size of the person they are protecting. Basically, a MEMS device contains micro-circuitry on a tiny silicon chip into which some mechanical device such as a mirror or a sensor has been manufactured. Potentially, such chips can be built in large quantities at low cost, making them cost-effective for many uses.
Among the presently available uses of MEMS or those under study are:
- Global position system sensors that can be included with courier parcels for constant tracking and that can also sense parcel treatment en route
- Sensors built into the fabric of an airplane wing so that it can sense and react to air flow by changing the wing surface resistance; effectively creating a myriad of tiny wing flaps
- Optical switching devices that can switch light signals over different paths at 20-nanosecond switching speeds
- Sensor-driven heating and cooling systems that dramatically improve energy savings
- Building supports with imbedded sensors that can alter the flexibility properties of a material based on atmospheric stress sensing
Saffo distinguishes between sensor-effector type microcomputing (which he calls "MEMS") and micro-devices containing gears, mirrors, valves, and other parts (which he calls "micro-machines")."
My Thoughts:
MEMS devices will probably start being brought into the human body for therapeutic purposes before too long. How will they send data out of the body? MEMS devices could be organized in a network similar to the servers on the Internet. Each device would be capable of short range transmission. The data of the message would be divided into packets like the IP (Internet Protocol) packets. Packets would move randomly through the system until they reached the destination, possibly some kind of data collection device embedded under the skin. Presumably, the data from this device could be read without the direct contact of a port containing bare metal contacts. I presume this for aesthetic reasons---the preference of the patient. Data transfer could be done via RF transmission, possibly utilizing a passive RF circuit similar to those used anti-theft devices and stores. Perhaps data transmission could be done electromagnetically. However, I can't recall reading about data transmission based on this principle---only power transmission.
MEMS devices could be powered by electrical potentials inside the body. I believe devices powered in this way have already been developed, just for demonstration purposes at this point. However, I'm not sure about that, it may have only been speculation. MEMS devices could be composed of very small modules interconnected by biodegradable connectors. That way, the MEMS device would essentially dissolve after a set period of time and be expelled from the body in the urine or feces. I can't imagine that people would want to have this kind of stuff accumulating inside their bodies over time. This leads to an idea for another type of data collection. The MEMS devices could place the data into small capsules designed to be flushed out of the body with the urine. The patient would need to urinate into a receptacle handed over to his or her doctor. There could be redundancy of messages to cover the times when the patient was urinating away from home.The introduced of MEMS devices into the human body seems quite likely to me. Currently, scientific understanding of disease is advancing and many of the specific mechanisms involved with disease are becoming better understood. For example, microphages, cells inside the bodies of animals that are part of the immune system and that are designed to "eat" bacteria and other small living things, have now been shown to sometimes play a key role in the development of cancer. (This example comes from a recent scientific American article.)
The evidence relates to one of the breeds of mice that has been genetically developed to regularly create cancer inside themselves. It was found that destroying the microphages of this mouse prevented it from developing cancer. Precancerous cells were developed as is normal for this mouse, but they could not convert into cancer.
The microphages are normally controlled by chemical signals created by the mouse's body. However, it now appears that some cancer cells have evolved a way to send bogus chemical signals to the microphages and hijack them. The microphages then play key role in converting precancerous cells into cancer. Killing the microphages in the mouse inhibits the final development of the cancer.When one considers complex mechanisms like this that are involved in the creation of diseases, one can see the advantage of incorporating MEMS into the body to monitor highly localized processes. Of course, there would need to be some way of knowing where particular pieces of data came from in the body. One way to do this would be to somehow anchor each MEMS into a permanent, known position in the body. Then the doctor would be able to locate the origin of the data from the MEMS's own ID tag which would be included in each piece of data. However, anchoring a MEMS in the body does not sound very easy. Perhaps each MEMS could have a tropism for a particular biochemical environment located at a particular place in the body.
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