Netflix tests everything. They're very proud that they A/B test interactions, offerings, pricing, everything. It's almost enough to get you to believe that rigorous testing is the key to success.
Except they didn't test the model of renting DVDs by mail for a monthly fee.
And they didn't test the model of having an innovative corporate culture.
And they didn't test the idea of betting the company on a switch to online delivery.
The three biggest assets of the company weren't tested, because they couldn't be.
Sure, go ahead and test what's testable. But the real victories come when you have the guts to launch the untestable.
Phi Beta Iota: If your Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) process is non-existent or replete with flagrant fraud, ignore this Blog Wisdom–both testing and leaps of faith require absolute integrity to be all they can be.
EXTRACT: As in the recent so-called “Twitter Revolutions” in Moldova and Iran, there was clearly lots wrong with Tunisia before Julian Assange ever got hold of the diplomatic cables. Rather, WikiLeaks acted as a catalyst: both a trigger and a tool for political outcry. Which is probably the best compliment one could give the whistle-blower site.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a good time to bring up the Davies J-Curve again. Wikileaks is a precipitant of revolution; the preconditions exist in most places outside the Nordic region and a few other special countries. The preconditions assuredly exist in the USA but in our view, the precipitant is most likely to be some really outrageous US Government action, such as federalizing all state and local police forces and then start trying to confiscate personal weapons. However, if the two party system continues to think that changing its “tone” matters, while it does nothing about the substance of poverty, economy, education, health and so on, then we will see a mix of widespread poverty and apathy with pockets of extreme violence and random attacks on elected officials and perhaps uniformed law enforcement professionals. America is, in our view, very volatile right now. 2011-2012 are not going to be subject to the usual pre-election “damping down.” The situation is now “out of control.” Nothing less than a comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of the larger public will do, if we are to avoid a cascade of socio-economic and ideo-cultural uprisings and individual “random” acts of violence in the next two years.
The Obama administration's $78 billion cut to US defense spending is a mere “pin-prick” to a behemoth military-industrial complex that must drastically shrink for the good of the republic, a former Reagan administration budget director recently told Raw Story.
. . . . . . .
The ‘Ponzi scheme' of ‘artificial prosperity'
Stockman, who described himself as a libertarian during a recent interview with Reason.tv, told Raw Story that the economy got into this mess because of the public and private sectors' addiction to “guns and butter Keynesianism,” an economic policy that amounts to a Ponzi scheme that has ballooned since 1990.
“If we see what's going on carefully, we've reached the final unmasking of the Keynesian illusion, that Keynesianism is really nothing but borrowing, stealing from the future to induce consumption today,” he said. “There are no multipliers. Every one of these programs we've had from ‘cash for clunkers' to housing purchase credits have disappeared as soon as they expired and simple shifted activities in time by a few months.”
Stockman explained that before 1980, it took about $1.50 of new borrowing — public or private — to generate $1 of GDP growth. By the mid-1990s, it was $2.50 or $3 of borrowing for a $1 of GDP growth. By 2007, before the big collapse and meltdown finally came, $7 of public and private debt was added to the national balance sheet in order to get $1 of GDP growth.
“When you get to the point of $7 of borrowing to get $1 of income, you're obviously on an unsustainable path and pretty close to hitting the wall, which more or less we have,” he said.
Phi Beta Iota: Drawing down the military-industrial complex will immediately produce two highly undesireable masses of unrest: pissed off unemployed veterans who own a gun and know how to use it; and pissed off pasty-faced short fat bald white guys with no marketable skills who either own a gun or know where to buy one. We agree that the military budget needs to be cut by $200 billion or more–however, it must be done strategically, with clear-cut plan for both assuring every veteran of a job, with priority to amputees, and for redirecting our energies into homeland development before we spent another dollar on foreign development. We've blown it for nearly three-quarters of a century. This is now about strategic design–do it, or lose what's left of the Republic.
Many people are aware of the growing gap between rich and poor, and the struggles of the American middle class. But few people realize the vast extent of this gap. The monumental wealth held by the top 20% — and even of the top 1% — of Americans beggars description. The existence of this vast resource side by side with the erosion and collapse of human and natural communities — and the increasing vulnerability of both the Earth and humanity's future — should give us pause. Real pause. Pause for reflection.
President Obama's ballyhooed surge of US forces in Afghanistan added 17,000 troops in early 2009 plus an additional 30,000 by 2010, in effect doubling the number of troops in Afghanistan (not to mention the concomitant surge in the camp-follower contractor force). The Taliban may not have doubled its troop strength, but as Tom Vanden Brook reports in the 10 January issue of USA Today, the insurgents have doubled the the total number of casualties inflicted by mines in just the last two years of the nine year war. [See graphic]
China- US: CJCS Admiral Mullen said today that China's high-tech military capabilities, including the radar-evading stealth J-20 fighter, focus on America.
China has every right to develop military capabilities, Mullen said, adding that he cannot understand why many appear to target the United States despite North Korea's being an evolving threat to the region and to the United States. If Pyongyang obtains long-range nuclear missile capabilities, its provocations may become more catastrophic, Mullen stated, adding that China must pressure North Korean leadership to cease development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and expansion of nuclear weapons capability.
Comment: It is difficult to accept at face value that Admiral Mullen does not understand the Chinese obsession with the threat from the United States.
Taking the statement at face value – and not as an act of political manipulation – it implies that the J2 and J5 staffs have failed to brief him about the origins of Chinese national defense strategy since the death of Deng Xiao Ping. If the Chairman's statement is genuine and not posturing, it is astonishing.
Thursday, January 13, 2011 – 6:17 PM
