Product Champion, Steve Jobs

So just what did Steve Jobs do for Apple?  Youngest son claims, noisily, that Jobs was not an inventor. Which is probably true, even in the early days, the key technology of the Apple II was the Mostek 6502 processor that powered it.  This clever and low cost chip was designed by Chuck Peddle, originally of Motorola and later of Mostek.  So what did Jobs do?
   Jobs saw a market for a low cost home computer.  The Apple I was so primitive as to lack case work, the product was just a bare PC board with a QWERTY keyboard.   The smash hit Apple II computer was the Apple I PC board inclosed a molded plastic case.   Jobs got this product to market, and it managed to beat out the competitors, Radio Shack and Commodore, and a few others that I no longer remember. 
   After the Apple II, Jobs went on to do Lisa, an advanced computer that didn't sell well, the Macintosh which sold very well, in fact is still on the market.  Then he did the Ipod, the Iphone, and the Ipad.  Each of these products were new, nothing like them on the market, they all sold like hotcakes.  What Jobs did was define the product, giving it features that people would pay for.  He understood the technology and the products took the technology as far as it could go, but not so far as to become unbuildable.  And he pushed the product development thru to a successful product.  
   New product development is tricky.  There are innumerable hurdles the product jump, any of which will bring the product to an untimely end.  It takes firm upper management support to keep the product moving ahead towards market.  Jobs supplied that support.  It also takes real judgement and feel for the market to determine what product will be a winner and which will be a loser.  Jobs got this delicate balance right most of the time.  Lisa was the only Steve Jobs product that didn't really work out.  All the others did, which is a remarkable record. 
   So, here's to a remarkable product champion.  We need more of them. 

Seven Year Car Loans, On used cars?

I'm beginning to read those "buy a car from us" flyers since my poor old Mercury is rusting out.  Today's was offering mostly econo boxes for $12K and pickup trucks for $20K.  And offering seven year car loans.  Damn, that loan will last longer than the car. 
   Used to be three years was standard and four years was considered flaky.   Times are a changing.  Not sure I like this particular change.  It means the car prices are so high that people can't afford 'em unless they stretch the payments out over seven years.

No, we were not hacked

So says United Airlines, New York Stock Exchange, and the Wall St Journal.  All had their computer systems crash this morning.  United stopped flying, NYSE stopped trading, dunno what happened at the Journal.
  Noo, this was not malicious hackers.
  You can believe as much of that as you like.  

Words of the Weasel Part 44

Heard on National Progessive Radio this morning.  "sufferers from substance abuse disorder"   We used to call 'em druggies. 

The Economist is Late: And Clueless

The Economist is supposed to get here on Fridays.  Didn't get here until today, Tuesday.  Cover story is about Greece.  "Europe's Future is Greeces Hands".   Real title" "We don't have a clue.  They went to press before Sunday's Greek referendum but they reported some Friday poll results hinting that the Greeks might vote yes.  Well, now it's Tuesday and we know the Greeks voted a big NO. 
   They go on to speculate that the big NO means Greece will leave/get kicked out of the Euro zone and this will bring the whole Euro zone down.  They don't say how or why.
   What might happen, is countries that need to do a little money printing to meet payroll, might bail out of the euro.  Right now the Euro is a hard currency, they don't let countries print Euro's to cover budget deficits.  The only thing a Euro zone government can do to cover budget deficits is to borrow on the Euro wide money market.  But when a country does a Greece the market stops lending to them.  Greece is demonstrating what happens when the lenders cut you off.  The banks close, the store shelves go empty, merchants stop accepting credit cards, tourists stop coming, and the economy grinds to a halt throwing everybody out of work.
   Some of the other soft countries may decide to ditch the Euro and run their own currencies.  

The Law and the Supremes

Social glue underlying Western civilization is a belief that Law exists, a body of rules to point to righteous action, and to forbid sinful action.  And the law is the same for every citizen and cannot be changed to benefit the wealthy, the powerful, and the well connected.  Except for a few criminals, people obey the law because they believe in it.  Courts and judges exist to fit the law to the specific  case before them, and to clarify vague passages. 
   In America, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall in the famous case of Marbury vs Madison, decided that he and his court had the right to cancel Congressional laws if they contradicted the Constitution.  We let Marshall get away with this arrogation of power,  judicial review is NOT in the Constitution. 
   This session of the Supremes has seen the concept of judicial review expanded to the creation of nationwide gay marriage, and the rewriting of Obamacare to make it more palatable.  Nowhere in the Constitution does the word marriage even appear.  Changing the plain wording of a law is a new one.  Clearly the Supremes have demonstrated that the Law is merely what they (5 of them) say it is.  This is a big step down from Moses bringing stone tablets down from Sinai, just a few unelected lawyers can now engrave anything they like on the stone tablets.
    As voters, we ought to be looking for a president who will appoint better justices than the flakes we have now.
    The other thing we ought to do, is insist that all Supreme court rulings be unanimous.  Right now we have 5 to 4 decisions, where four of the nine top lawyers in the country write dissenting opinions calling their colleagues kooks.  We would have fewer outrageous decisions if we required all nine justices put their names to them. 
    We should also remember those disastrous Supreme Court decisions.  Dred Scott triggered the Civil War.  Plessy vs Ferguson was a disgrace that dishonored Jefferson's words "All men are created equal".   The Supremes have done some good over the years, but they have also done some bad.  To see them arrogating yet more power to themselves is scary.  

US foreign policy: No More Failed States

Most of the world's land is divided into countries. which maintain order, suppress piracy, terrorism, banditry, drug running and the operations of serious criminals.  In some places the country has failed and then really bad people set up shop and do crime.
  For example, Afghanistan.  The Russians invaded in the last 1970's which screwed the place up badly.  With US support the mujahdin fighters finally drove the Russians out in the later 1980's.  After this astounding victory, things fell apart.  The victorious mujahadin split into factions and were unable to form a government.  We Americans, now that the Russians had been bloodied, went home.  Washington lacked the stones to straighten the place out.  Civil order disintegrated, Islamic terrorists, the Taliban, took over most of the land, and Osama Bin Ladin cut a deal with the Taliban that allowed him the set up shop in the Afghan backwoods.  From this secure base, Bin Ladin planned and executed 9/11.
   Moral of the story, when the country becomes a failed state, a wild land, bad guys move in and do bad.  The East African pirates operate out of Somalia, a failed state.  ISIS operates out of the ruins of Syria and Iraq.  Conclusion: we cannot allow failed states to fester.  We have to do some thing to straighten them out before we loose more skyscrapers full of people.