Word: betamaxes
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...hardest truths for any technologist to hear is that success or failure in business is rarely determined by the quality of the technology. Betamax was better than VHS; the Mac operating system is superior to Windows. Even in the transportation business, there is the cautionary tale of Preston Tucker, who in the 1940s designed a "car of the future" packed with such safety innovations as a padded dashboard, disk brakes and safety glass--a car so far ahead of its time that only 51 were ever produced. In fact, the annals of high-tech history contain remarkably few cases...
...Remember Tucker? One of the hardest truths for any technologist to hear is that success or failure in business is rarely determined by the quality of the technology. Betamax was better than VHS; the Mac operating system is superior to Windows. Even in the transportation business, there is the cautionary tale of Preston Tucker, who in the 1940s designed a "car of the future" packed with such safety innovations as a padded dashboard, disk brakes and safety glass--a car so far ahead of its time that only 51 were ever produced. In fact, the annals of high-tech history...
...news. Not all DVD devices will play the discs you record on the Panasonic. In a replay of that old VHS vs. Betamax duel, there are two formats duking it out for DVD supremacy?one backed by a group that includes Panasonic, Hitachi and Samsung, the other backed by Sony, Philips and others. A third format, championed by JVC and Mitsubishi, is about to join the battle. When the dust settles, convergence between your computer and your home theater will be reality. Many potential buyers will wait for a clear winner to emerge...
There's no real solution to this problem, either. Napster was founded on a legal loophole, the premise being that the company would avoid culpability by not hosing music files on its own servers. Its legal argument was based on the 1984 Betamax case, in which movie studios sued Sony because they feared VCR's would lead to piracy. The judge in that case, evincing an understanding of technology more sophisticated than Judge Patel's, ruled in favor of Sony because Sony's customers, not the company itself, were the ones violating copyright. Judge Patel, in contrast, feels that Napster...
Much of that feeling stems from concerns that the thing that got us here--the vaunted New Economy--was looking like a big Sony Betamax that had promised a revolution it could not deliver. The New Economy is supposed to be frictionless, tied as it is to the ultra-productive cyberworld of computers, broadband networks and the Internet, and cosseted by low inflation and low interest rates. But nobody told that to OPEC. Or to Arafat. And if the New Economy is rewinding, what will become of the economic expansion that had already started grinding down after an unprecedented...