Hubris :: Nemesis
Hype :: Anti-Hype
The whole TMT (Technology/Media/Telecom) "sector" is
getting kicked around badly, it seems, with a lot of stocks
trading at or below book value, even companies that have
been around for many years, not just the dot-coms.
How can this happen? Well, it helps to have lots of
interlocking directorates, an old-boy network of executives
who shrug off each other's failures over sumptuous lunches
and dinners, collectively rationalizing that "nobody could
have known" how bad things would turn.
This is how a stock that used to trade at $40, $60, even
$90, with a current book value of $2, can trade below $1, and
for good reason - you'll never see any liquidation until the
balance has been paid out in bonuses and salaries to the people
who hands currently grip the steering wheels; to managers and
directors whose sense of entitlement just slightly outweighs
their sense of accountability. It only takes a small gap like
that, spread over thousands of busily-networking executives,
to eventually send the whole shoddily-reinforced escarpment
sliding into the drink.
I'd like to see 3G work out, but the industry's current
problems are of its own making. It's been known for years
(from Bill Joy, et al.'s prototypes in Boulder CO) that there's
not much of great consumer interest to do above 19.2K baud
in mobile wireless. So why did everyone try to sell real-time
video-on-demand blah blah blah? Because it wouldn't have
been exciting enough to hear about? Because it wouldn't
have made the money in investor's pockets threaten to
catch fire during the craziest stockmarket run-up in
history?
My advice to you, if you're an engineer, is to go out and
have fun with what there already is to work with, today.
As an engineer, I've never had more fun than when trying
to squeeze a little more performance out of apparently-
underpowered hardware. It's easy to forget that what you've
gotten jaded about in the lab can still make most people
on the street go "ooh!" and "ah!"
So if Daniel's bottom line is
> (and continuing to mourn my poor Ericsson shares...)
Mine is
"Keep optimizing those people-pleasing iAppli for 9600 baud.
You'll be knocking people's socks off if speeds merely double."
-m
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Helmer" <daniel_helmer@hotmail.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 4:41 AM
Subject: (keitai-l) The 3G anti-hype
>
> Today's editorial in Japan Times "Hanging up on 3G" is an example of the
3G
> anti-hype that is becoming increasingly common in mainstream news media
> around the world.
>
> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?ed20010517a1.htm
>
> Editors who know absolutely nothing about telecoms copy each other
> uncritically, ....
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu May 17 12:12:17 2001