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Robert Baer wrote:
> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>> On Jul 9, 8:54 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>>> Joerg wrote:
>>>>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>>>>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>>>>>> My small company will likely do this the old-fashioned way:
>>>>>>> bootstrapping.  We have a consumer product to get us started. The
>>>>>>> revenue will not be large, but it will be a start. This method is
>>>>>>> treacherous also, but at least, after our products are exposed, 
>>>>>>> there
>>>>>>> will be a clear point of attribution, which can be valuable in 
>>>>>>> itself
>>>>>>> for the next venture if things go sour with this one.
>>>>>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>>>>>>   Bingo!
>>>>>>   Develop other consumer products as the more there are, the greater
>>>>>> the possible income and Moses (profit).
>>>>>>   They do not even have to be directly related to your idea; what you
>>>>>> need is $$ to fund that idea.
>>>>>>   If i was rich like i used to be, i would give you $100K to start
>>>>>> with; the catch being 10 percent of gross sales over a 10 year
>>>>>> period; keep the initial amount (by which time the initial amount
>>>>>> would be pocket lint).
>>>>> Only 10%? That's pretty generous of you.
>>>>   Think about how LARGE the market is; ten percent is a very large
>>>> amount of money; at a few megabucks payback, i would tear up the 
>>>> contract.
>>> IF the whole plan pans out, and that's usually a big "if". I have heard
>>> from Japanese VCs that on average one out of ten make it. The other nine
>>> just burn through an awful lot of cash and then fizzle.
>>
>> This gets back to the whole random-vs-deterministic debate, and is
>> rooted in a kind of class struggle among investors and entrepreneurs.
>>
>> People who are inept at choosing the right horses would have you
>> beleive that winning is random. People who are adept at choosing the
>> right horses would have you believe that winning is deterministic. In
>> between is a spectrum of ability to choose the right horses.
>>

Basically correct. However, if you are really working on the cutting 
edge for example in medical the determinism coefficient is miniscule. 
You simply can't know if a certain procedure will work. Nobody can. Else 
one of the big pharmaceutical or devices corporations would already have 
put it onto the shelves at Long's Drugs.


>> I had the conversation with a VC in New York City this past January
>> who had invested $5US million in a company doing IPTV. The company was
>> stuggling badly, near bankruptcy, and I had learned of it through one
>> of my ex-students who introduced them to me for a consulting project
>> that they wanted completed. It was difficult trying to figure out what
>> they wanted, because the person in charge of the project could barely
>> tell me what he wanted. He was polite, professionally, but
>> frighteningly ignorant. It took about 12 emails back and forth to
>> realize that the reasson I was having so much trouble understanding
>> him was because he did not understand himself. When I finally realized
>> what the other all goal was, It took all of 5 minutes of poking around
>> to realize that:
>>
>> 1. With the exception of my ex-student and another engineer, the
>> technical depth within the company was too low for them to be doing
>> what it was they are doing [data compression - they had stolen a
>> compressor from another company, essentially].
>> 2. someone in company had grossly distorted the truth about capability
>> of product (flat out lied in fact) to customers.
>> 3. The VC who invested the $5 million didn't have a clue.


That is a classical mistake. I will never understand this but VCs and 
corporations are willing to spend six figures per case on legal counsel 
but they balk at retaining a few engineering consultants for less money 
to check things over. Naturally, that leads to tons of failed 
investments. The worst one I've witnessed: I wrote a proposal to a 
struggling VC-funded firm about how I and a FPGA/CPLD engineer could 
help them pull through. This is because I saw quite clearly where they 
were heading down the wrong path and how we could fix things. They 
pondered it and then turned us down. Subsequently the whole business 
went belly-up. And I knew it would :-(


>> 4. The CTO of the company had recently spent 35 months in Federal
>> prison for burning down his own computer store. He was convicted on
>> certain evidence:
>>
>> a. being seeing on camera running from the store holding a gas can a
>> few seconds before the store went up in flames
>> b. reeking of gasoline at the hospital where he was treated for 2nd
>> degree burns over his body (he didn't run fast enough)
>> c. his own employee's testimony that, the day before the fire,
>> employee was told to "get anything of value you own out of the store
>> by midnight tonight."
>>

Oh man, they didn't even do a criminal background check before investing 
big money? Now that's pretty daft. What would that have cost? $100? $200?


>> Anyhow, I was introduced to this VC for potential investment. As
>> mentioned, he understood very little about IPTV, let alone network
>> protocol stacks. It was obvious that I would get no traction with him,
>> so I asked him about the IPTV company, and the the word he used to
>> describe the investment was "problematic". It took the opportunity to
>> poke him a bit, to try to figure out what goes through the mind of a
>> VC when he writes a check for $5 million for an ex-asonists who claims
>> to have technology that, if it existed, would violate several
>> fundamental laws of information theory, not to mention was just plain
>> dumb to any engineer worth his salt in the field.
>>
>> The VC starts up with the, "well...you can never tell with these
>> things...it's all random......the technology looked good...the guy
>> could sell snow to Eskimos!!!"
>>
>> I disagreed and asked him if he understood the technology, and he got
>> angry and that was the end of that.
>>
>> The point is that it's not entirely random. Just ask Andy Bechtolsheim
>> about his $100,000US investment in Google and other investments:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim
>>
>> It is more random for some VC's than others. Having worked for a few
>> startups, I can tell that most ideas, IMO, are mediocre at best (copy
>> cat, limited market, etc.).
>>

The ones I was actively involved in as engineer all took off. So far ...

But I also never participate in anything I do not believe in.


>> Products like the Rubik's Cube, OTHO, were so compelling...not only
>> was the marketing initially bad, it was non-existent, and the product
>> still fared well.
>>
>> In summary, better products typically do better.
>>
>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>   Seems that VC deserved to lose!
>   Most definitely, better products will do better in the marketplace - 
> but that liar and thief gave one proof that good salesmanship can turn a 
> sow's ear into silk..
>   Now the prime question is: is there such a thing as an honest and 
> honorable salesman?
>   If so, hire him - yesterday!


Actually yes, there are, but in an area most people do not know: 
Christian businesses. For example I have retirement money tied up in an 
organization called Church Extension Fund. No hard selling going on, 
just plain old-fashioned financial advice. FDIC protected? Nope. Does 
that bother me? Nope.

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

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Joerg wrote:
> Robert Baer wrote:
>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>>> On Jul 9, 8:54 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>>>> Joerg wrote:
>>>>>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>>>>>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>>>>>> My small company will likely do this the old-fashioned way:
>>>>>>>> bootstrapping.  We have a consumer product to get us started. The
>>>>>>>> revenue will not be large, but it will be a start. This method is
>>>>>>>> treacherous also, but at least, after our products are exposed, 
>>>>>>>> there
>>>>>>>> will be a clear point of attribution, which can be valuable in 
>>>>>>>> itself
>>>>>>>> for the next venture if things go sour with this one.
>>>>>>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>>>>>>>   Bingo!
>>>>>>>   Develop other consumer products as the more there are, the greater
>>>>>>> the possible income and Moses (profit).
>>>>>>>   They do not even have to be directly related to your idea; what 
>>>>>>> you
>>>>>>> need is $$ to fund that idea.
>>>>>>>   If i was rich like i used to be, i would give you $100K to start
>>>>>>> with; the catch being 10 percent of gross sales over a 10 year
>>>>>>> period; keep the initial amount (by which time the initial amount
>>>>>>> would be pocket lint).
>>>>>> Only 10%? That's pretty generous of you.
>>>>>   Think about how LARGE the market is; ten percent is a very large
>>>>> amount of money; at a few megabucks payback, i would tear up the 
>>>>> contract.
>>>> IF the whole plan pans out, and that's usually a big "if". I have heard
>>>> from Japanese VCs that on average one out of ten make it. The other 
>>>> nine
>>>> just burn through an awful lot of cash and then fizzle.
>>>
>>> This gets back to the whole random-vs-deterministic debate, and is
>>> rooted in a kind of class struggle among investors and entrepreneurs.
>>>
>>> People who are inept at choosing the right horses would have you
>>> beleive that winning is random. People who are adept at choosing the
>>> right horses would have you believe that winning is deterministic. In
>>> between is a spectrum of ability to choose the right horses.
>>>
> 
> Basically correct. However, if you are really working on the cutting 
> edge for example in medical the determinism coefficient is miniscule. 
> You simply can't know if a certain procedure will work. Nobody can. Else 
> one of the big pharmaceutical or devices corporations would already have 
> put it onto the shelves at Long's Drugs.
> 
> 
>>> I had the conversation with a VC in New York City this past January
>>> who had invested $5US million in a company doing IPTV. The company was
>>> stuggling badly, near bankruptcy, and I had learned of it through one
>>> of my ex-students who introduced them to me for a consulting project
>>> that they wanted completed. It was difficult trying to figure out what
>>> they wanted, because the person in charge of the project could barely
>>> tell me what he wanted. He was polite, professionally, but
>>> frighteningly ignorant. It took about 12 emails back and forth to
>>> realize that the reasson I was having so much trouble understanding
>>> him was because he did not understand himself. When I finally realized
>>> what the other all goal was, It took all of 5 minutes of poking around
>>> to realize that:
>>>
>>> 1. With the exception of my ex-student and another engineer, the
>>> technical depth within the company was too low for them to be doing
>>> what it was they are doing [data compression - they had stolen a
>>> compressor from another company, essentially].
>>> 2. someone in company had grossly distorted the truth about capability
>>> of product (flat out lied in fact) to customers.
>>> 3. The VC who invested the $5 million didn't have a clue.
> 
> 
> That is a classical mistake. I will never understand this but VCs and 
> corporations are willing to spend six figures per case on legal counsel 
> but they balk at retaining a few engineering consultants for less money 
> to check things over. Naturally, that leads to tons of failed 
> investments. The worst one I've witnessed: I wrote a proposal to a 
> struggling VC-funded firm about how I and a FPGA/CPLD engineer could 
> help them pull through. This is because I saw quite clearly where they 
> were heading down the wrong path and how we could fix things. They 
> pondered it and then turned us down. Subsequently the whole business 
> went belly-up. And I knew it would :-(
* Next time, short as much of the stock as you possibly can!

> 
> 
>>> 4. The CTO of the company had recently spent 35 months in Federal
>>> prison for burning down his own computer store. He was convicted on
>>> certain evidence:
>>>
>>> a. being seeing on camera running from the store holding a gas can a
>>> few seconds before the store went up in flames
>>> b. reeking of gasoline at the hospital where he was treated for 2nd
>>> degree burns over his body (he didn't run fast enough)
>>> c. his own employee's testimony that, the day before the fire,
>>> employee was told to "get anything of value you own out of the store
>>> by midnight tonight."
>>>
> 
> Oh man, they didn't even do a criminal background check before investing 
> big money? Now that's pretty daft. What would that have cost? $100? $200?
> 
> 
>>> Anyhow, I was introduced to this VC for potential investment. As
>>> mentioned, he understood very little about IPTV, let alone network
>>> protocol stacks. It was obvious that I would get no traction with him,
>>> so I asked him about the IPTV company, and the the word he used to
>>> describe the investment was "problematic". It took the opportunity to
>>> poke him a bit, to try to figure out what goes through the mind of a
>>> VC when he writes a check for $5 million for an ex-asonists who claims
>>> to have technology that, if it existed, would violate several
>>> fundamental laws of information theory, not to mention was just plain
>>> dumb to any engineer worth his salt in the field.
>>>
>>> The VC starts up with the, "well...you can never tell with these
>>> things...it's all random......the technology looked good...the guy
>>> could sell snow to Eskimos!!!"
>>>
>>> I disagreed and asked him if he understood the technology, and he got
>>> angry and that was the end of that.
>>>
>>> The point is that it's not entirely random. Just ask Andy Bechtolsheim
>>> about his $100,000US investment in Google and other investments:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim
>>>
>>> It is more random for some VC's than others. Having worked for a few
>>> startups, I can tell that most ideas, IMO, are mediocre at best (copy
>>> cat, limited market, etc.).
>>>
> 
> The ones I was actively involved in as engineer all took off. So far ...
> 
> But I also never participate in anything I do not believe in.
> 
> 
>>> Products like the Rubik's Cube, OTHO, were so compelling...not only
>>> was the marketing initially bad, it was non-existent, and the product
>>> still fared well.
>>>
>>> In summary, better products typically do better.
>>>
>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>>   Seems that VC deserved to lose!
>>   Most definitely, better products will do better in the marketplace - 
>> but that liar and thief gave one proof that good salesmanship can turn 
>> a sow's ear into silk..
>>   Now the prime question is: is there such a thing as an honest and 
>> honorable salesman?
>>   If so, hire him - yesterday!
> 
> 
> Actually yes, there are, but in an area most people do not know: 
> Christian businesses. For example I have retirement money tied up in an 
> organization called Church Extension Fund. No hard selling going on, 
> just plain old-fashioned financial advice. FDIC protected? Nope. Does 
> that bother me? Nope.
> 

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Robert Baer wrote:
> Joerg wrote:
>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

[...]

>>
>>>> I had the conversation with a VC in New York City this past January
>>>> who had invested $5US million in a company doing IPTV. The company was
>>>> stuggling badly, near bankruptcy, and I had learned of it through one
>>>> of my ex-students who introduced them to me for a consulting project
>>>> that they wanted completed. It was difficult trying to figure out what
>>>> they wanted, because the person in charge of the project could barely
>>>> tell me what he wanted. He was polite, professionally, but
>>>> frighteningly ignorant. It took about 12 emails back and forth to
>>>> realize that the reasson I was having so much trouble understanding
>>>> him was because he did not understand himself. When I finally realized
>>>> what the other all goal was, It took all of 5 minutes of poking around
>>>> to realize that:
>>>>
>>>> 1. With the exception of my ex-student and another engineer, the
>>>> technical depth within the company was too low for them to be doing
>>>> what it was they are doing [data compression - they had stolen a
>>>> compressor from another company, essentially].
>>>> 2. someone in company had grossly distorted the truth about capability
>>>> of product (flat out lied in fact) to customers.
>>>> 3. The VC who invested the $5 million didn't have a clue.
>>
>>
>> That is a classical mistake. I will never understand this but VCs and 
>> corporations are willing to spend six figures per case on legal 
>> counsel but they balk at retaining a few engineering consultants for 
>> less money to check things over. Naturally, that leads to tons of 
>> failed investments. The worst one I've witnessed: I wrote a proposal 
>> to a struggling VC-funded firm about how I and a FPGA/CPLD engineer 
>> could help them pull through. This is because I saw quite clearly 
>> where they were heading down the wrong path and how we could fix 
>> things. They pondered it and then turned us down. Subsequently the 
>> whole business went belly-up. And I knew it would :-(
> * Next time, short as much of the stock as you possibly can!
> 

No stocks. This was 100% VC- and government-owned (because they also 
plowed funding into it via grants). All up in smoke now :-(

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

______________________________
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On Jul 10, 10:40=A0am, Robert Baer <robertb...@localnet.com> wrote:
> illywhacker wrote:
> > On Jul 8, 6:31 am, "JosephKK"<quiettechb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:09:12 -0700 (PDT), illywhacker
>
> >> <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Jul 5, 12:48 am, "JosephKK"<quiettechb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Fri, 3 Jul 2009 03:48:38 -0700 (PDT), Rune Allnor
> >>>> <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
> >>>>> On 3 Jul, 12:01, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> They would believe a contractor who made the same claims because t=
hose
> >>>>>> claims would probably be right,
> >>>>> This is proposition is flawed. Let's take the case of
> >>>>> Some Universally Acclaimed High Esteem Institution (SUAHEI).
> >>>>> SUHAEI has historically obtained a reputation for occasionally
> >>>>> producing spectacular results - although the last such
> >>>>> spectacular result was achieved a couple of decades ago.
> >>>>> Now, there is a general impression in the public that SUAHEI
> >>>>> employees are better than 'the crowd'. Supposing this is true:
> >>>>> When did any particular individual achieve this extraordinary
> >>>>> competence? Before they got employed by SUAHEI? After?
> >>>>> Unless somebody can answer this particular question,
> >>>>> there is no basis to your argument.
> >>>>> Take the case of smart antennas. Parametric beamformers
> >>>>> like MUSIC and ESPRIT were discussed for years in the late
> >>>>> '90s (and maybe longer). Major playes like Siemens and the
> >>>>> telecomm operators were involved in sponosring and developing
> >>>>> these ideas.
> >>>>> If just *one* of the people involved had actually studied
> >>>>> the basics of MUSIC, like I suggested in this post
> >>>>>http://groups.google.no/group/comp.dsp/msg/0474383f4844f2d2?hl=3Dno
> >>>>> the obvious conclusion - that these methods are far too
> >>>>> fragile to be used in comm systems - would have been
> >>>>> drawn within hours. As it were, maybe a decade worth of
> >>>>> research was more or less wasted on trivialities.
> >>>>> Of course, the argument agians this is that "Major
> >>>>> players like Siemens doesn't make such blunders". Maybe not.
> >>>>> But the *people* at Siemens do.
> >>>>>> simply because a contractor who made
> >>>>>> false claims would no longer be a contractor.
> >>>>> This would be true in a *commercial* world. Nevertheless,
> >>>>> I once saw a system based on - once again - MUSIC, developed
> >>>>> for a commercial application in a demanding environment.
> >>>>> The idea was based on a statement by somebody influential,
> >>>>> that 'MUSIC is best!' Of course, this guy had long left the
> >>>>> company and the remaining staff had never challenged the
> >>>>> statement. The company had spent years developing a
> >>>>> working prototype for this device.
> >>>>> The problem was that when they deployed it (it was to
> >>>>> be towed behind a ship at sea), the device did not even
> >>>>> find the sound of ship that towed it. At this point, these
> >>>>> people asked me for opinions, and I quickly found a couple
> >>>>> of discrepancies between the assumptions behind the model
> >>>>> and the actual situation. The most important was that
> >>>>> MUSIC treats all sources as point sources, whereas the
> >>>>> ship was so close it had to be treated as a distributed
> >>>>> source.
> >>>>> It's a trivial mistake that would have been discovered
> >>>>> during a 5-minute pro&con brainstorm. But this company
> >>>>> was a major player in the business, so everybody got
> >>>>> caught by your very argument: "Players *that* big just
> >>>>> don't make such basic blunders."
> >>>>> Again, *people* do.
> >>>>> As for the world of R&D - corporate R&D included - does
> >>>>> not work the same way the commercial world does.
> >>>>> In the commercial world, failure to produce a result is
> >>>>> reason to terminate a contract, and indeed, possibly fatal
> >>>>> to the contractor's business.
> >>>>> In the R&D world, however, failure to deliver a result
> >>>>> is, as often as not, the deciding argument _in_favour_
> >>>>> of extending the contract: there is always some next
> >>>>> detail to investigate.
> >>>>> You only need to *avoid* asking the decisive questions,
> >>>>> and you have a chain of projects lined up for years to
> >>>>> come.
> >>>>> Rune
> >>>> That is, unfortunately, a close approximation to the truth about
> >>>> research and research funding.
> >>> That is, unfortuantely, an unsubstantiated assertion. Here's another:
> >>> no one in research avoids answering important questions in order to
> >>> get more funding. I have rarely heard a more stupid suggestion.
> >>> illywhacker;
> >> Don't complain to me. =A0I saw the post, properly quoted it, and
> >> commented that it matches much of what i have seen. =A0If you want to
> >> complain about the original content go see the poster i replied to and
> >> do not pester me. =A0If you want to complain that i have seen many ver=
y
> >> similar things in the real world, cry away because i will ignore you
> >> after this: =A0Do not bother telling me that i have not seen what i ha=
ve
> >> seen, i will not listen.-
>
> > I was not complaining; I was criticizing. You stated that something
> > was a close approximation to something else. This is an objective
> > assertion, not a description of anecdotal evidence. To protect
> > yourself you are now stating that you meant something other than what
> > you wrote, and you are getting stroppy. Your evidence for your
> > assertions necessarily constitutes a very small sample. Were you a
> > thinking person, you would take this into account, and present your
> > observations as anecdotal at best. But this is not what you did.
>
> > illywhacker;
>
> =A0 =A0Hmmm..forgive me, but does not "anecdotal" mean or imply stories f=
rom
> others?
> =A0 =A0What was presented was an account by the person that was *directly=
*
> involved...

1) This is not what "anecdotal" means. It means precisely descriptions
of the incidents someone may have seen, with no actual objective study
of the situation.

2) JospehKK presented anecdotal evidence as if it were objective. He
said (I quote his post of June 5): "That is, unfortunately, a close
approximation to the truth about research and research funding."

This is not a claim about experience or any particular case. It is a
statement about supposed truth. It was not qualified.

illywhacker;

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On Jul 10, 10:07=A0pm, Benj <bjac...@iwaynet.net> wrote:
> On Jul 6, 3:09=A0pm, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That is, unfortuantely, an unsubstantiated assertion. Here's another:
> > no one in research avoids answering important questions in order to
> > get more funding. I have rarely heard a more stupid suggestion.
>
> Sorry Tallywhacker, it is you demonstrating the stooopidity! =A0Like
> most scientists and engineers you haven't the least political clue!
>
> DARPA works like this: It is NOT as everyone supposes an agency
> dedicated to furthering research and the improvement of the world or
> even of military applications. That is merely a cover and secondary
> effect, which if it happens is OK and if it doesn't makes no
> difference to the fundamentals of the organization. =A0To think that
> it's all about science and development is naive beyond believe.
>
> Here the rule gents: "When a set of logical circumstances comes to an
> Illogical conclusion, you can be SURE politics is involved.
>
> DARPA and it's sister orgs all over the world are POLITICAL
> organizations. Hence the primary focus is political. Which raises the
> questions why would anyone EXPECT such an organization to be strongly
> supporting new work simply because it is innovative and will
> revolutionize and greatly improve some field of endeavor? =A0Such an
> expectation is nonsense.
>
> The true goals of DARPA and places like it are political. They include
> things like the bureaucrat "prime directive" [cover your ass!], the
> support of your "friends", the crushing of your "enemies", the
> distribution of large sums of money to create political control such
> as to large numbers of graduate students which acts on the one hand as
> a scholarship on the way to graduation keeping them dependent upon the
> hand-outs and on the other as a method of keeping them confined to
> "safe" research areas where they won't cause you trouble. =A0And
> secondarily, funding the students also provides control of their
> professors as well through the "publish or perish" policies. The same
> rules also apply to companies with new ideas as well. The goal there
> is obviously also political which means that the effort has to be made
> to force all new ideas through the large corporations so that they can
> be controlled.
>
> The political situation DARPA certainly does NOT want is a bunch of
> students of tenured professors out doing research on their own, on god
> knows what, that might have a major political impact on society or a
> bunch of brilliant start-up companies revolutionizing their fields
> where the large established "friends" can't keep them under "control".
> Control, buster, it's ALL about control!
>
> The reason you are all confused and bitching about how "dumb" DARPA
> is, would be because you have totally misunderstood what they do! You
> have bought into some totally false song and dance about "supporting
> research" and beginning with a false premise you obviously can't make
> sense of their behavior.
>
> So let me assure you that if you are a genius with a grand idea that
> could revolutionize this or that, the LAST thing DARPA wants to see is
> for you to succeed at doing so! =A0I can assure you that IF your idea
> actually had serious merit, they would WITHDRAW funding because from a
> military standpoint, the optimum place to develop such ideas is in
> secret INSIDE the military. DARPA only acts as an idea generator for
> the REAL research which will go on elsewhere. [inside the large corps
> or govt. labs we called "friends"]
>
> Put it all together and DARPA's seemingly "insane" actions make
> perfect sense. The problem is not DARPA. It is quite effective at what
> it really intends to do. The problem is Geek-types with ZERO
> understanding of how politics work, and even less interest in getting
> involved in politics, who only want to use their intelligence and
> skills to improve the world. Sorry, such high-toned ideals sound
> great, but will get you nowhere in a real world where predatory men
> (and women) constantly seek power over others. In short. The problem
> is you.

Um...this has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, at least not the
one to which you replied. The OP is the one with the revolutionary
idea.

> it doesn't makes no difference

Enough said.

illywhacker;

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Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> On Jun 29, 9:33 pm, Phil Hobbs
> <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>>> On Jun 29, 2:57 pm, Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> wrote:
>>>> Look: if you have a good idea, ask DARPA to help you instantiate it. If
>>>> you have a good method, develop it commercially. DARPA doesn't do demos,
>>>> startup venture capitalists do.
>>> About a month ago, I asked a PM if one of their active contractors had
>>> made the same claims I was making about computer networking, and
>>> wanted opportunity for a demo to prove it, would they get it, and he
>>> said,
>>> "Most likely, yes."
>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>> In other words, they'd believe them but not you.
> 
> Or at least they would give a demo to them.
> 
> In all fairness, they allowed me a demo yesterday, which is my 3rd so
> far, for DOD, this time for the Army Research Lab. I have come full
> circle through all the DoD agencies, and I think this is what is going
> on:
> 
> Despite claims to the contrary, DOD and other government agencies are
> not prepared for system solutions to grand challenges, or claims
> thereof, by small entities.
> 
> To continue with my ICE analogy, they might be prepared for more
> efficient governors, better rust-proof materials, safer boilers, etc.
> They are also aware of future trends like engines that run on
> explosive fuels, so they field many overlapping, redundant (wasteful)
> projects in such areas.
> 
> But if someone appears from obscurity with a 75%+ functional ICE, that
> not only validates their suspicions of the superiority of liquid fuel
> over coal, but also adds a few small-but-necessary features that they
> did not anticipate, they are not prepared. With more than $80US
> billion to spend annually, they are not prepared in the slightest.
> 
> My frustration with them is that they know this to be the case, that
> they have no programs in place for revolutionary ideas. They make a
> great pretense however - their sites are plastered with words like
> "advanced", "revolutionary", "high-impact", "grand",
"high-risk".
> Instead of simply admitting this, the program managers, as happened
> yesterday, lead the inventor on, asking for white papers, etc, while
> delaying to answer a critical question, which, if 'NO', would likely
> cause the inventor to break communication.
> 
> "Is there anything more than your current funding programs which are:
> 
> 1. Get in bed with one of your existing large prime integrators
> (Boeing, General Dynamics, etc.)?
> 2. Run my system-oriented new technology through our incrementally-
> oriented solicitation program?
> "
> 
> There answer from the various DOD unts have been remarkably similar:
> 
> "Yes, we do have other means of funding than the 2-3 year cycle, but
> we need to see what you have first."
> 
> I suspect that this is not true. They have nothing else, as each time,
> I show them a bit, more than enough IMO, to make their determination.
> To continue with the ICE analogy, I show them the engine running,
> throttle, the 4-stroke cycle, ignition by spark plugs including
> mention of need for precision in gap width, exhaust, need for
> catalytic converter, valves, serpentine belt, water pump, cooler, etc.
> It's enough that anyone else who has spent last 5-7 years of his life
> trying to make an engine that runs on an exploding liquid would
> recognize immediately the essential elements simply by virtue of
> prolonged familiarity and universal wont of a solution.
> 
> Then, I ask them, "What are these other methods of funding that I do
> not know about..." and they simply ignore my question, responding
> instead by asking for "more detailed technical information". One
> evalutor actually said that, even though he saw it working, I could be
> doing it with smoke and mirrors. He is the one who is closest to
> demanding source code, and this statement, I believe, was precursor to
> his demand.
> 
> The clever ones move slowly, asking first for a white paper, then move
> on to asking for diagrams. They all seem to know better than to ask
> for source code, which actually makes me suspicious, because they tell
> me over and over how they are 100% obligated by law not to
> misappropriate outside work, even though I was never concerned about
> theft from DOD itself, and was not suspicious of them, but of the
> other contractors (my competition), so asking for source code should
> not be an issue, if it is really not an issue, but they make it an
> issue.
> 
> So at this point, ARL is refusing to tell me what other methods they
> have for funding, but do want more technical documents.
> 
> They told me, "They are my customer, so I have to continue to convince
> them of merit of my work", even though it is patently obvious to
> anyone doing research in computer networking what it is I am offering.
> The demo I gave is quite visual, and the paper documents that I have
> sent them is more than sufficient to tell me the small bit that I want
> to know.
> 
> In any case, I should not be surprise, I recently came across the
> following passage in which Thomas Edison, of all people, was
> frustrated out of his wits by the Naval Research Labatory, which he
> helped found during WWII:
> 
> "Edison: Inventing the Century", Neil Baldwin, 1995, p. 346:
> 
> "He loved the clutter, camaraderie, and rituals of sea life. But while
> the salt air seemed to invigorate him, by the end of the war, Edison's
> official rhetoric had become riddled with criticism of the
> impenetrable myopia and frustrating red tape that ultimately prevented
> any of his four dozen ideas from being implemented by the navy beyond
> the prototype stage."
> 
> If not for the billions of dollars of public money wasted by the
> various government "research" agencies, this system we created in the
> name of "advancing science and engineering" would be comical.
> 
> -Le Chaud Lapin-
   Be advised of an article in the July 6 issue of Information Week 
titled "Feds on the Edge" starts: "Software that learns how to schedule 
your day. Supercomputing tricks our PCs will soon borrow. Networks 
resilient enough for the rigors of space. These are some of the bright 
ideas coming out of different government agencies."
   There is a following article  "How government's grabbing the cloud".
   Information Week's "dig deeper" points to 
informationweek.com/alert/fedcto .
   Gives you a better idea as to what they think "progress" means...

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