On Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:26:42 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
wrote:

Einstein had no time for that kind of 'thinking', he
directly asserted several times that clarity and simplicity will get you
there better.

Yeah, but simplicity and sometimes clarity usually fail to get
funding. Seen any government money go to the myriad of simple fusion
schemes?
http://www.fusor.net
Nope, even though some of them may actually eventually work. It all
goes to gigantic fizzix experiments which are anything but simple and
to my limited intelligence, not very clear.

If the public had a better understanding of engineering and science, things
like Betamax, apparently better tech than VHS according to most who discuss
this issue, would have won, to the advantage of most people, not just the few
who forced the 'war'.

Beta is often used as the poster child of technology versus cost. Sony
wanted license fees for Beta, while VHS was essentially free. The
public voted with their dollars and VHS won.

Moral: The GUM (Great Unwashed Masses) are cheap.

Incidentally, the same thing sorta happened with the battle between
the RCA all electronic and CBS color wheel schemes for color
television. The FCC almost went with the color wheel scheme because
RCA hadn't really shaken all the bugs out of their system.

Fast forward a half century and we have the same FCC voting on digital
television standards. If technical superiority were the criteria,
COFDM should have won over 8VSB. However, such decisions are not made
on the basis of technical superiority. The public could have been
better educated on the issues, but the decision was made by a
committee of politicians, not the public.

AM stereo and HD radio, versus satellite radio (XM and Sirius) is an
oddity. HD Radio, AM stereo, and DRM should have been the winner,
because they are the cheapest and simplest. Yet, satellite radio is
far more popular. The real difference is that satellite radio started
out with no commericals, and slooooowly infested the programming with
them. People were willing to pay for what they preceived as
commercial free programming. I guess the GUM isn't very well educated
on the the technology, but it's certainly not stupid.

Conflict is bad enough, but the one thing that can most
effectively redeem it is if it is won by whatever was most right, or useful,
or helpful. And if enough people grasp that well beforehand, the conflict
probably wouldn't happen so much.

I presume you've never attended (online or in person) a standards
committee discussion. It's fortunate that the technical debates are
mostly done electronically or at a distance, as I'm fairly sure some
of the proponents of extrememe technologies would settle their
differences in the parking lot.

Maybe I should shut up now, but this has got to be THE slowest day of the
year. And I include most of the last one in this assessment.

Not for me. For some odd reason, I'm getting a series of customer
calls asking for help with various Christmas toys and gadgets. They
apparently have stared at them for a week, given up, and now call me
for help. For example: "I got this iPod thing. How do I make it play
tunes?" I just finished an over the phone Netflix appliance (Roku)
setup. My guess is public understanding of engineering and science
has a very long way to go.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558