Check out this video of a robot that can walk in deep snow, ice, steep hills, etc. If a method to power it for long periods of time can be developed, I could see these things following soldiers around carrying extra ammo, etc. Add some camera's and a weapon mount, and it could be used as an armed scout.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Battle Robots
Noah Schachtman from Wired writes a very interesting story about a Defense Department robot acquisition program that led to some underhanded activity.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
How much does US Airways suck?
This is difficult to quantify, but I can give a subjective account of their degree of suckitude. This happened back in March, but I am still pissed.
I was in New Hampshire with 2 colleagues participating in and leading portions of a fairly large meeting/seminar. This was on Good Friday (who scheduled that?) and I received a message from my travel agent about 3:00 that my 5:00 flight out of Manchester was cancelled.
I called US Air and waited on the phone for 10 minutes, finally got through to a human, and was immediately disconnected. At this point, I was cursing phone ACD systems, but wasn't overly teed-off at US Air. I call back, wait another 10 minutes, and finally get through to someone.
This person's native language clearly wasn't English, and I don't think that you could even say that her 2nd language was English as she couldn't understand anything that I said, and could barely utter a handful of English terms herself.
Every single time I said something, she would say "hold please", put me on hold, and then make me wait anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. After about 4 or 5 times of this crap, she finally told me very clearly that she couldn't help me any further because I had a "paper ticket".
I told her that not only did I not have a paper ticket, that I haven't had a paper ticket in many years and didn't know what the heck she was talking about. Her immediate response was "hold please".
She came back a minute two later and repeated her previous assurance about my alleged paper ticket. I insisted that I indeed did not have a paper ticket, and as a result received the dreaded "hold please".
By this time I was fuming. Fortunately for me, our travel agent had been busy actually trying to help us (actual customer service) and called my colleague back. She said that US Airways had booked us for a return trip the following Tuesday!
She changed the flight to the following day from Boston instead of Manchester, which began another ordeal. That flight also ending up being cancelled as well for mechanical reasons, and we ended up flying to DFW and renting a car.
I arrived home finally at 3:30 AM Easter morning, about a 1 1/2 days late.
This is clearly a business that has lost its way, and needs to be closed or taken over by a more competent organization.
I was in New Hampshire with 2 colleagues participating in and leading portions of a fairly large meeting/seminar. This was on Good Friday (who scheduled that?) and I received a message from my travel agent about 3:00 that my 5:00 flight out of Manchester was cancelled.
I called US Air and waited on the phone for 10 minutes, finally got through to a human, and was immediately disconnected. At this point, I was cursing phone ACD systems, but wasn't overly teed-off at US Air. I call back, wait another 10 minutes, and finally get through to someone.
This person's native language clearly wasn't English, and I don't think that you could even say that her 2nd language was English as she couldn't understand anything that I said, and could barely utter a handful of English terms herself.
Every single time I said something, she would say "hold please", put me on hold, and then make me wait anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. After about 4 or 5 times of this crap, she finally told me very clearly that she couldn't help me any further because I had a "paper ticket".
I told her that not only did I not have a paper ticket, that I haven't had a paper ticket in many years and didn't know what the heck she was talking about. Her immediate response was "hold please".
She came back a minute two later and repeated her previous assurance about my alleged paper ticket. I insisted that I indeed did not have a paper ticket, and as a result received the dreaded "hold please".
By this time I was fuming. Fortunately for me, our travel agent had been busy actually trying to help us (actual customer service) and called my colleague back. She said that US Airways had booked us for a return trip the following Tuesday!
She changed the flight to the following day from Boston instead of Manchester, which began another ordeal. That flight also ending up being cancelled as well for mechanical reasons, and we ended up flying to DFW and renting a car.
I arrived home finally at 3:30 AM Easter morning, about a 1 1/2 days late.
This is clearly a business that has lost its way, and needs to be closed or taken over by a more competent organization.
Government's War on the Internet
Randall Rothenberg writes an interesting piece that is publsished on the Interactive Adverstising Bureau's website as "Governments's War on the Web" and in somewhat different form for a much broader audience at the Huffington Post as "War against the Web".
This is well worth reading, a snippet is below:
"With barely an acknowledgement of the myriad ways in which the Internet has revolutionized economic development, information access, and communications diversity, an increasingly organized coalition of anti-business groups is mobilizing to get the Government to shut it down.
And the scary thing is: They are succeeding. I’ve detailed this “break-the-Web” effort in an article in yesterday’s Huffington Post. I urge you to print it out, circulate it, and oppose the forces that would force you under. (More on that later.)"
This is well worth reading, a snippet is below:
"With barely an acknowledgement of the myriad ways in which the Internet has revolutionized economic development, information access, and communications diversity, an increasingly organized coalition of anti-business groups is mobilizing to get the Government to shut it down.
And the scary thing is: They are succeeding. I’ve detailed this “break-the-Web” effort in an article in yesterday’s Huffington Post. I urge you to print it out, circulate it, and oppose the forces that would force you under. (More on that later.)"
Monday, April 21, 2008
Internet's effect on transaction costs and the size of firms
Below is a snip from a very interesting article in Wikipedia regarding Coase's Theorem, which describes the economic efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities.
The theorem states that when trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights. In practice, obstacles to bargaining or poorly defined property rights can prevent Coasian bargaining.
A key point when applied in the Internet age
The theorem states that when trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights. In practice, obstacles to bargaining or poorly defined property rights can prevent Coasian bargaining.
A key point when applied in the Internet age
This is one of the reasons why, in the past, companies used to grow more and more: it was better to make something in house since the cost of the transaction to buy it was high.
In the internet era, Coase's theorem became even more up to date, but under a slightly different version. The concept is the same, but the way of reading it is the opposite. We could say: "the size of a company will decrease until the cost of doing something inside the company will be lower than doing it outside".
In other words, since in the internet era the cost of the transactions became very small, as a consequence, the size of the companies is decreasing. An example of this phenomenon is the increasing pace of the outsourcing and off-shoring businesses
In the internet era, Coase's theorem became even more up to date, but under a slightly different version. The concept is the same, but the way of reading it is the opposite. We could say: "the size of a company will decrease until the cost of doing something inside the company will be lower than doing it outside".
In other words, since in the internet era the cost of the transactions became very small, as a consequence, the size of the companies is decreasing. An example of this phenomenon is the increasing pace of the outsourcing and off-shoring businesses
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