On Tuesday, January 8, 2002, at 08:19 , speedy2 wrote:
> Strictly speaking, it was not CDMA that was "invented" by more correctly
> the discovery in the use of frequency-hopping techniques for
> transmission.
Frequency hopping was the only thing they were able to build at the time
but the theory of spread spectrum was there. Consequently Qualcomms
patents on CDMA are not about SS but how to build devices that can
practically calculate the codes. Similar with cellular telephony. When
AT&T came up with it in the 50s, it wasn't viable mainly because
database servers hadn't been feasible then.
The point is however, that while there have been breakthroughs in making
things smaller and cheaper and mass produceable, the general principles
have all been made a long time ago.
That doesn't make the achievements in micro electronics any less
applaudable ...
BUT ...
the reality today is mostly small but many evolutionary steps while the
propaganda tells us about revolutionary events, which they are not.
> I don't work for any cell phone companies
but I do ...
> so don't get the idea that I'm
> plugging them,
I don't
> but keep in mind just in the last *10-20 years* there have
> been significant discoveries in the field of digital communications that
> enables us to have what we do.
Not many.
One significant discovery was clearly public key encryption which is
necessary for authentication and privacy. Most of the other significant
things have been in the field of micro electronics so as to make what
could have been build a long time ago smaller and affordable.
> If you want to talk about lack of innovation, look at modern processors.
> They only work "faster" because of improvements in semiconductor
> processes(allowing us to stuff more cache for instance), not "amazing
> new
> design". RISC technqiues were discussed before MIPS came out for
> instance.
> Frankly there haven't been significant break throughs in the area of
> computer architecture and processor design in a long time.
Totally agree.
However, I am not even going as far as to say there is lack of
innovation. It is innovation to make things smaller and improve
production processes to bring cost down. However, it is a different kind
of innovation, it's evolutionary, and in a way it's about following the
very same direction and often this leads to overkill because it is easy
to forget about the big picture.
Sometimes, you have to take a break and reavaluate. Sometimes, it is
necessary to look at alternative directions towards which to start an
evolutionary path.
If for example, we weren't all so obsessed with faster and faster,
bigger and bigger and more and more, the evolutionary path could have by
now been working towards quality, reliability, stability, simplicity.
At some point we should have taken a break and said "Hey, this is fast
enough, we don't really need to go any faster. So let's look at some
other things that are worth while improving and give them higher
priority."
Tandem has been building highly reliable computers since the 70s, DEC
have been building high availability clusters since the 80s. Back then
this was very expensive. Now you would think if customers would be
asking for quality and reliability that many of the innovations that
back then were hi-tech and expensive could have made it into cheap
consumer devices over a 20-30 years period. Yet none of it has. Tandem
is still the only company that makes computers with lockstepped CPU
pairs, even though their patent should have long run out. Clustering is
still considered geek stuff and commercial clustering solutions are far
more expensive than they could be.
You will say, who needs high availability and reliability in a consumer
computer. I'd counter and say, who needs all that speed in a consumer
computer ?
In fact, as computers take over ever more and more aspects of our live,
it is time that we start thinking about how to make them more reliable
instead of faster, simpler instead of more complex.
When the digital hub will eventually control all the consumer devices
and other appliances in our houses, we better have ease of use fault
tolerant systems by then or we will be in trouble.
But probably we will have been brainwashed into completely trouble
forgiving beings and no matter what happens we don't even take notice of
it anymore.
After the nuclear age, we are now heading for the Nintendo age. Game
over -> Start new game.
rgds
bk
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