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JimPinto.com - Connections for Growth & Success™
No. 123 : 24 June 2003
Keeping an eye on technology futures.
Business commentary - no hidden agendas.
New attitudes, no platitudes.
Contents:
Click on any item to jump directly to that item
JimPinto.com format comments
Many, many people like the new web-format - the colors and
the hotlinked contents which allows jumping back and forth
between the items.
But some (several hundred people) preferred the simple-text
version because the could not immediately browse on the web
for a variety of reasons - some read on a PDA, some receive
it on their laptops and read when they travel. Honeywell
people complained that the company blocks their web-access,
and so they can only read JimPinto.com eNews via email.
So, with this issue of eNews, we'll satisfy BOTH types
of subscribers! If you prefer web-access, you are already here!
Or, if you prefer the text version, you can continue to
receive it by email.
The only problem that remains is that this complete-text email
is longer than just a summary (which some people prefer). And
a longer email is more likely to be rejected by spam filters.
Whatodo...?
Almost 3 years ago, when CEO Jack Welch was still around, GE made
a bid to buy Honeywell. Most analysts felt that GE wanted Honeywell
because of its avionics, aerospace and plastics businesses. Many
(including me) thought there was no real interest in Honeywell IS
(Industry Solutions) which GE would probably divest to someone like
Siemens or Schneider.
But then the GE/Honeywell deal was thwarted by the European
Commission, and Jack Welch retired, leaving GE In the hands of
CEO Jeffrey Immelt. Following Welch's departure, it seems that GE
has become more interested in industrial acquisitions, as part of
its growth strategy.
GE routinely makes 100 or more acquisitions a year, mostly by GE
Capital which recently acquired Heller Financial for $5.3b. But
this is still far smaller than the $43b GE wanted to spend on
Honeywell.
It seems that someone has come up with the strategy that GE can
generate industrial business leadership (Jack Welch's famous
directive - be No. 1 or No. 2 in a business) more effectively through
steadily acquiring a bunch of smaller pieces, rather than a larger
lump like Honeywell.
This past week's acquisition of relatively tiny Mountain Systems
by GE-Fanuc signals the latest in a series of small (for $130b GE)
acquisitions. The list includes:
VMIC (Aug. 2001); Praxis (Oct. 2001); General Eastern Instruments,
Kaye Instruments and Thermometrics from UK-based Spirent UK - formerly
Bowthorpe (Nov. 2001); Interlogix (Dec. 2001); BentleyNevada (Jan. 2002);
EuroDiesel (June 2002); Druck (July 2002); Novasensor (Aug. 2002),
Panametrics (Aug. 2002); Ion Track (Oct. 2002); Intellution (Oct. 2002);
Info Graphics Systems (Nov. 2002); Osmonics (Dec. 2002); RAMiX (Mar. 2003);
SI Pressure Instruments (June 2003); Monitoring Automation Systems (June 2003);
Mountain Systems (June 2003).
All these companies have been acquired since mid-2001 (a few months
after the Honeywell deal was squashed). None of them are much beyond
$100m in annual revenue, most much smaller. The latest, Mountain
Systems is only about $10m - though it fits well with Intellution,
which GE-Fanuc acquired recently from Emerson (Mountain developed
the Historian module for Intellution's Fix).
Pinto Prognostications:
This is the third or fourth time GE has attempted an entry into
the industrial business sector - and they made serious mistakes
(and losses) each time.
After Jack Welch left, whoever is responsible for strategy is making
a bad mistake. They do not seem to recognize that "industrial" is not
just one market, but a vast, fragmented conglomeration of vertical
segments, each with special needs and demands.
In each of the acquisitions mentioned, GE entered the bidding as the
500-pound gorilla and clearly overpaid - in some cases almost twice
the nearest bidder. GE expects to generate leadership through good
management and revenue consolidation. Instead, they damage the market
and cause problems for customers, employees and competitors.
Jack Welch understood this problem well.
Right now, he is probably having a fit....
GE Fact sheet - Acquisition Profiles
Former Panametrics owners sue GE after acquisition
Honeywell for sale - GE buys (Oct. 2000)
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Pervasive wireless sensor networks
Smart, networked sensors will soon be all around us, collectively
processing vast amounts of previously unrecorded data to help run
factories, optimize farming, monitor the weather and even watch
for earthquakes.
Sensors are already everywhere. But most sensors used today are dumb
- they lack the intelligence to analyze or act on their measurements,
simply reporting for remote processing.
New developments are bringing wireless sensors that talk with each
other, forming intelligent networks spread over wide areas. Together,
the sensors network process information into an overall analysis.
Indeed, wireless sensor networks are one of the first real-world
examples of "pervasive" computing - small, smart, cheap sensing and
computing devices that will permeate the environment.
Many people (including me) think that this technology can become as
important as the Internet. Just as the Internet allows access to
digital information anywhere, sensor networks will provide remote
interaction with the physical world. Accurate weather prediction
will be revolutionized through widespread wireless sensors. Within
the next few years, distributed sensing and computing will be
everywhere - homes, offices, factories, automobiles, shopping
centers, super-markets, farms, forests, rivers and lakes.
MIT Tech Review - Casting the Wireless Sensor Net
Sensor Networks Reading List
Pervasive Computing Reading List
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Spam wars escalate - can email be saved?
When I send out 6,500 emails to the JimPinto.com eNews list,
I get some rejections (maybe 20 or 30): "Blocked by spam filter"
with a list of "suspect" words, mostly harmless, some amusing,
and it's even curious that they could be "suspect".
I'm not sure how to contact the "blocked" people on my list.
In some cases, my follow-up message has gone through, and they
have responded that the "blame" rests on their IT people, with
a request to forward the email to a private email address.
Of course, for these people, access via the webpage would be
the best alternative.
More than 13 billion unwanted e-mail messages swamp the Internet
every day, worldwide. This time-wasting junk is a $10b annual
drag on worker productivity in the US alone. In a perverse analogy
to Moore's Law, the number of spam messages is doubling roughly
every 18 months. It has risen from 8% of all e-mail in 2000 to more
than 40% by the end of 2002, and is now more than 50%. Conceivably,
spam could soon represent 90 percent of all e-mail soon.
Here are examples of just 2 spammers : One operates 20 computers
in an abandoned schoolhouse, has a dozen shell companies, rents
equipment and Web hosting services using aliases and then hacks
into e-mail accounts. Another spammer has had fraud convictions,
and has been through personal bankruptcy, with a jail stint; he
rents mailing lists and has set up servers in his basement.
Pitching mortgages, vacations, and online pharmacies and casinos
on behalf of others, he makes thousands of dollars per week in
sales commissions. His basement operation spews tens of thousands
of messages per hour, relayed through servers in Dallas, TX.,
Canada, China, Russia, and India.
The proliferation of junk e-mail is threatening to overwhelm the
Internet. Software companies are rushing to build defenses. But
some of the new technologies do more harm than good, blocking good,
desired emails along with spam.
In order to attack spam, we need to be clear about the things that
make spam unacceptable. Just because spam is accompanied by some
obvious traits does not make those relevant to controlling the
problem. We could make every e-mail host identify itself, and we
would still have spam. We could require that message content be
signed, and we would still have masses of spam. Many of these
"cures" will not stop spam, but they will reduce or eliminate
e-mail's usefulness. Whatodo...?
MIT Tech Review - Spam Wars
Can E-Mail Be Saved?
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Scott Adams' Dilbert wisdom
Are YOU among the 695,000 members of DNRC (Dogbert's New Ruling
Class)? If you read the free Dilbert Newsletter, you are. Scott
Adams (the originator of this popular cartoon strip) thinks that
you're probably more "attractive, generous and intelligent" than
others who don't.
You've seen the Dilbert comic-strip - apart from being published
in almost every US newspaper, Omega Engineering (the world leader
in catalog sales of industrial sensors and instrumentation) uses
it very effectively in their advertising.
Dilbert is an engineer (of course) and is the brunt of a lot of
"Induhvidual" confusion along with his "Cow-orkers". Here are
some samples of Dilbert wisdom in these true (sent in by DNRC)
quotes from Induhvidual bosses and Cow-orkers, extracted from
Dilbert Newsletter 48.0, June 2003 :
Quotes From Induhviduals:
"Deep down, she's shallow."
"He's as slow as malaria."
"He exhumes confidence."
"I describe false symptoms to my doctor to keep him on his toes."
"Is everyone else in the world a moron, or is it just me?"
"I slept like a banshee."
"They're throwing us a blind herring."
"That's putting the chicken before the cart.
"We're going to be doing some manual automation."
"I'd like to be a fish on the wall at that meeting."
"I've been thinking about giving that some thought."
"You have to shoot where the fish are barking."
"It goes in one ear and down his back like a duck's water!"
"You've buttered your bread, now lay in it."
"He's not the brightest cookie in the lamp."
"I'm sure he was drunk, he was driving erotically."
Induhvidual Tales:
Junk mail item: "You too can have Perfect Skin - Free Sample."
Complaint in the office: "The hole-punch is out of staples."
"Dear Principal, it is infair and unpossible that I failed english."
Request a subscription to the Dilbert Newsletter
You can email Scott Adams at:
scottadams@aol.com
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Movie "The Hulk" linked to Nanotech
The movie "The Hulk", just released this week, features some of the
work of nuclear physicists at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in
California. Set in San Francisco, the movie is about fictional
Berkeley physicist Bruce Banner, a mild-mannered boffin who gets
bigger, greener and a whole lot meaner after being exposed to gamma
rays from the lab's Gamma Sphere experiment. Carnage follows as he
stomps through the American west tossing cars, tanks and helicopters.
The plot is fiction, from the comic book that became a TV series some
25 years ago (my son Chris was about 4; he'd hide behind a couch, but
wouldn't let us turn it off).
The Gamma Sphere in the movie is real, "the best gamma-ray detector in
the world" according to the real-life head of Berkeley's low-energy
nuclear physics program. It found its way into "The Hulk" after
Hollywood producers saw the machine's website while hunting for some
real-life science to update their story. A portion of the film was
shot at Berkeley's Advanced Light Source, with very realistic
reproduction of the Gamma Sphere.
While the film is not exactly an educational experience, the official
site does link to informative Nanotechnology web sites. Like Michael
Crichton's PREY, fiction is showing that Nanotech is indeed on the
horizon.
Kurzweil - The Hulk vs. Nanobots
Real experiment stars in Hulk movie
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eFeedback
Bob Fritz [rfritz@avtron.com] thinks that the export of manufacturing
jobs is not necessarily bad:
"I have to disagree with the commonly-held "ain't it awful" view
that all our manufacturing jobs are being exported, simply because
it's not true.
"In 1960, Production of Goods represented 47% of the US economy, and
47% in 2003 (Source: US Department of Commerce). So what has happened?
Very simply, we have increased our productivity. It takes fewer
people to produce the same 47% of the GDP.
"This is not bad. It's good. At the time of the Civil War, 50% of us
had to be farmers, and now 2% can feed us all. That was good. The same
thing has happened in Manufacturing. Our standard of living is simply
increasing as the result of productivity, much of which is caused by
automation.
"Bewailing our loss of jobs in manufacturing (or farming) is no more
productive than the Luddites throwing shoes into the weaving machines
in 18th Century England."
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Dave Rapley [davidrapley@qwest.net] was reviewing the reasons for
the Iraqi war, and came up with ideas to solve our fuel problems:
"You don't suppose the Iraqi war could have been just for oil, do you?
I don't mean only Iraqi oil; no, I'm thinking on a lot larger scale.
Consider 5 or 10 years from now in a world where the US had not
stopped Saddam. He now has all the weapons we said he was developing.
He's used these against his neighbors (Saudi Arabia etc.) and now
controls 80% of the MidEast Oil. Where would that leave the West?
How do we know he would do that? Well, I'm glad we don't have to find
out. Maybe Bush and the boys are more far sighted than they've been
given credit for?
"Another thought just came to me. I wonder where we would be if Reagan
had not cancelled Jimmy Carter's Synthetic fuels program? I remember
it well. Oil from coal, oil from rocks, energy from the wind and sun
etc. It was a very optimistic time. Too expensive you say? At least
the money would have been spent here and by now would have reduced
the dollars we send overseas for oil? Not to mention the dollars spent
fighting wars. Would the terrorists be such a threat if they weren't
so well funded? You don't think that some of the oil dollars we send
overseas finds it's way into their fund-raising?
"Now here's a radical idea. Why not really get our economy going by
launching a drive to make us more energy independent by 2015? It could
be another goal like Kennedy's "man on the moon" deadline. It will get
a whole lot of Americans back to work and paying taxes etc. It might
work better than the recent tax break and if we could become even 30
or 40% less dependent. Yeah I know I'm just daydreaming. But wouldn't
it be worth trying?"
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Mandar Phadke from India [mandar_phadke@hotmail.com] wrote:
"I remember the term, "creeping criminality" which you had used during
the first wave of corporate scandals that had hit the headlines last
year. Is there a similar phenomenon amongst corporate employees today,
about loyalty to the company? How about "creeping disloyalty"?
"If employees feel that being loyal to the company may not mean that
the company is loyal to them, then "creeping disloyalty" begins.
This may mean many things to many people; some examples may be not
going all out to win that big order, not negotiating too hard with
suppliers for prices, etc. In the end, the company loses.
"It seems that "creeping disloyalty" can become a real problem.
What's your opinion?"
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