From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 107d55,995c28f68b9dc343 X-Google-Attributes: gid107d55,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,995c28f68b9dc343 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,995c28f68b9dc343 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,995c28f68b9dc343 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,995c28f68b9dc343 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,995c28f68b9dc343 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake) Date: 1997/09/01 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 269477846 References: <5u5m5b$7q6$1@news2.digex.net> <5ue2sn$32g$2@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.java.tech,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-09-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Paul says <> Sure, but who judges what is a better job. The answer is that the only person who can judge is the consumer. The VHS vs Beta example is a good one from this point of view. The tecnical folks at Sony thought that image quality was *the* important technical quality. But they were wrong, and they paid for their mistake. In fact playing time was much more important to the public. Now some techie may say "stupid public, they don't know what is important", but it is such misjudgments by technical people on what is important that leaves quite a trail of business disasters behind. An interesting case is gathering steam now, there is a question of whether the new digital TV transmission capability should be used for HDTV, or more conventional channels. It is beginning to look more and more as though the public and the hence the networks, prefer more conventional channels. Now, no doubt some technical folks will get most upset that as a result the wondrous x by y resolution of HDTV will never see the light of day, but all this shows, if it happens, is that maybe picture quality is not so important as other considerations -- a lesson that tecnical folk *should* have learned from Beta vs VHS, but unfortunately did not (which is why we keep getting this example misquoted as an example where technical superiority did not win out). And, going back to your definition, what does "doing a better job" mean? Who judges this? For example, given two VCR's, one with amazing new features, and the other with solid reliability, which is doing the better job. For me, I would far rather rely on the consumer to make the decision of what features are or are not important and thus constitute the basis of answering this question!