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The April 1, Joke:

A Microsoft Windows programmer was driving his new Lexus through downtown Redmond. He had two passengers in the car. One was an electrical engineer and the other a chemical engineer.

All of a sudden the car stopped dead in its tracks.

The electrical engineer jumped out, saying, "It must be an ignition problem. Open the hood and I will fix it."

The chemical engineer also jumped out, saying, "It probably has something to do with the fuel line, I will fix it."

As the two engineers looked under the hood, all of a sudden the engine-started running, and from behind the wheel, the Windows programmer yelled, "Its OK, I fixed it."

When they got back in the car, they asked him what he did.

"Simple" he said, "I just closed all the windows, and then opened them."

The Question:

Why not use a Linux Programmer for this joke ?

See answer at end of column.

Being There First

It is conventional wisdom that being there first is best. We all know that Lindberg was the first person to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean. For one million dolaros:

Who was the second person? See http://www.ionet.net/~jellenc/eae_intr.html

Richard Branson spent millions of dollars building balloons in a failed effort to be the first person to balloon around the world. Now that it's been done, he stopped trying. For one million dolaros:

Who was first, to balloon around the world? See: http://www.cwplc.com/about/sponsor/CWBalloon/

When we assume that being there firs, will always lead to success, we should think again. This is especially true in our industry and the industries that it supports. The accelerating rate of change of technology means that you could be number one today and obsolete tomorrow.

Iridium Folds

An example of this happened last week when Iridium closed its doors. Iridium was the first global satellite mobile phone system in the world. It was capable of allowing you to talk from anywhere by use of a hand held telephone. Five Billion Dollars was spent building the Iridium system. Sixty-six operational satellites (and eight spares) are presently in orbit. It will cost Iridium $50 million dollars to program each of them to self-destruct. Here is a case where when you go out of business, you have to torch your equipment by having it enter the atmosphere and burn. Nothing left to sell for scrap.

When originally conceived by Motorola engineers in the mid-eighties, it sounded very visionary. Pushing the window of technology in such a way that long distance carriers would be threatened by satellite phones, replacing tethered ones. NOT. Iridium went on line in September 1998 and will close in March 2000, a victim of being there first. Being there first meant an enormous amount of engineering. It also meant that the architecture did not include digital transmission (we were using 386 computers into the late 80s). The Internet, as we know it, did not even exist then. Cellular phones were not available worldwide. By the time Iridium went to press it was just about obsolete. All over the world cell phones exist and can be rented with your car. Hotel rooms offer data ports for computer Internet connections. The number of people actually requiring Iridium's services is now limited to fishing boats, oil drilling platforms, mountain climbers and the like.

ICO Global Communications, another satellite system, filed for bankruptcy right after Iridium did. ICO was purchased by Teledesic, a satellite system, which will offer worldwide communications, digitally, starting in 2004. Maybe.

HDTV

High Definition Television is in danger of facing the same fate as Iridium. While the broadcasters and the computer people argued about standards, technology marched on. Now that HDTV is being introduced, it has to compete with computer monitor technology and already existing high definition sources. Today's monitors and projectors can produce well over 1,000 lines of resolution. DVDs and SVHS signals produce 500 lines of video. If I can watch high quality video signals by using a DVD player, or a satellite feed, on a high quality computer monitor, or better yet an LCD projector, why would I need to pop about $10,000 for an HDTV set just so I can also receive broadcasts directly? Needless to say, HDTV has a tough future ahead.

Over the years, a lot of companies that were first no longer exist.

Alt Aire produced the first personal computer.

Digital Research produced the first operating system (CPM). QDOS (Quick and dirty operating systems) adapted it to 16 bits and then sold it to Microsoft. The rest is history.

Word-Star was the first and also very popular word processor. It was overtaken by Multi-Mate which was overtaken by Word Perfect which was overtaken by Microsoft Word.

Visi-Calc was the first spreadsheet and the killer application for the PC. Lotus replaced it as the standard and then Microsoft Excel has replaced Lotus.

Who's next? Over the next year we will probably see many .com operations fold as they battle for customers and finally run out of money. Just this week it was announced that CD-Now.com, the first website to sell CDs on line, will be bankrupt if it cannot obtain additional financing. DrKoop.com also is facing bankruptcy. Amazon.com lost over 700 million dollars in 1999. How much longer will the first bookseller on the web last?

April starts the quarterly reporting for the Internet bubble stocks. This should be interesting.

Answer:Sorry, but there are no Linux Drivers available for this joke.

Frank Greenhalgh
April 1^st, 2000

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About the Author

Frank Greenhalgh has been working in power supplies and systems for 38 years. He has many impressive accomplishments and patents. Over the years he has made significant contributions to Trio Laboratories where he held the position of Chief Design Engineer and was then promoted to Vice President.

He co-founded CEAG Electric Corporation (now ABB CEAG) and developed the first mainframe power system using the droop paralleling concept. He has written numerous articles and columns, presented papers at the milestone PowerCon convention and consulted for ABB CEAG and other companies. Recently his accomplishments include the development of two Web sites, www.fgl.com with the Power Corner and www.amityville.com. Frank is presently functioning as "Director of Technical Sales" for Toritsu Tsushin Kogoyo Corp.