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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (826424)	12/28/2014 5:44:42 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Recommended By Bill Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1582530

>> I was there. Lots of us were, CJ. >> Private industry didn't take a small and neglected entity and turned it into something huge, they were invited to come in and participate in something that was designed to be something huge. It was the government driving it the whole time. And it worked. It was small but it wasn't neglected, but it simply could not move forward without private enterprise. Which is always the case. Government lacks the profit motive which is what is required to make big projects happen at reasonable cost. The classic example of why government can't take these projects and make the work is healthcare.gov -- a system which should have cost at most tens of millions (even that would be on the high end) and we've spend more than ten times that. Government has always played an important role in IT research -- predominantly because it was funded out of Defense. But there are few instances of government's involvement becoming exclusively important in IT (this is different, e.g., than the NIH role in medical research, where there are many instances of government creating important research that led to major innovation). It is worth mentioning that government's work on the Internet would have been literally impossible without the previous (and subsequent) work from Bell Labs. It would not have been even remotely possible at that time. Were it not for Bell's high speed lines (then, 50kbps) which supported their teletype network and other communications services, there would have been no conception of the Internet. Neither can Kleinrock be credited with it, as packet-switching had already been used elsewhere. A lot of people have different views on this topic, and when one looks at the technology of the day, it is difficult to pinpoint. There is no doubt that Al Gore had nothing, what-the-fuck-soever to do with it and I don't care how many liberal computer scientists you get to say otherwise. Gore is a politician who has shown he doesn't have a scientific bone in his body. You're missing the point, though. Government can't provide the fuel but it cannot provide the kickstart. Because that can only come from private enterprise, as government is not able to function in the realm of profitability, which is what is and always has been required, consistently, for great things to be achieved. The Manhattan Project and Apollo were great moments in time; but the reality is our government cannot do projects like that today. In that connection I would ask you to point to ONE, JUST ONE successful large scale government program in the last 30 years. That's a low bar -- almost anyone should be able to produce one clear cut example that most people agree is a successful program, but you will not find one in our government, I don't believe.