OT: The Truth About DARPA
Le Chaud Lapin
I am on the downslope of disillusionment regarding the truth of US-
Government-funded research. I could pick any from a broad array of
such insitutions and tell you of utterly-perplexing interactions I
have had with them, but I decided to focus on DARPA, since, as we
know, they were the original financial supporters of the Internet, it
is claimed, and I do research with Internet protocols.
I am beginning to think, no matter how truthful the claim of support
is, it was probably more luck than anything. Bob Kahn et al probably
squeeze out a solution by the Grace of God, and others beyond him had
to fight massive intransigence and political battles to help IPv4
survive. I say this after experiences over the last 5.5 months
interacting with them and other US agencies. They claim to want
breakthrough technology that is "high-impact", "revolutionary",
"moderate-to-high risk". And they spend enormous amounts of money
supposedly funding such research each year. They issue solicitations
on the the SBIR/STTR programs. They have Broad Agency Announcements.
They accept unsolicitied proposals. They employ Ph.d's whose bio's
indicate deep experience in their respective areas of governance. And
they have those cool demos on the Military Channel.
Looking at all this, you would think that, if they had been searching
for the solution to X for 15 years, and someone came to them and
offered tangile proof of S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, they would be
enthralled.
NOT!!!!
It is a bit hard to explain the experience, in mere words, so I have
created this fictitious dialogue which is similar to the kind I have
had.
Researcher: "Hello?"
DARPA: "Hi, yes, I am here."
Researcher: "Hi, I was told to contact you regarding research I have
been doing for 15 years. I am aware of your SBIR/STTR, BAA's,
etc...but I am contacting you directly to preempt problems that might
occur if I follow those paths."
DARPA: "Ok, I am listening."
Researcher: "I noticed that much of your research involves getting
away from steam engines. For example, you have 7 outstanding
solicitations on alternative to steam alone, not to mention 11 others
on reducing rust ."
DARPA: "Yes, that's true."
Researcher: "What if I told you that I had a machine that not only
solved that rust problem you have with the steam, etc., but also
validated your current push toward petrol-based fuel, in an engine
that actually runs. I call it an internal combustion engine."
DARPA: "Uh...not sure what you mean. This is a research organization,
you do realize?"
Researcher: "Yes, I know. I do research in engines, the same kind you
do and write about each year. Now I know that you have spent $ 225US
million in this area already, and...uh...you do not yet have what it
is you want. I would like to have the opportunity to give you those
things, plus a few extra, like something I call a fuel injector. Then
there are oxygen sensors, overhead-cam, etc."
DARPA: "Overhead what? You realize..we are are under a a federal
mandate to do fundamental research only?"
Researcher: "Yes."
DARPA: "We do research in advanced engine systems."
Researcher: "Yes."
DARPA: "And my group does research, in particular, in non-steam
engines that should provide advanced capabilities in the next 15-20
years for the warfighter..."
Researcher: "Yes, I know."
DARPA: "So how can I help you?"
Researcher: "Well, I would like to demonstrate to you solutions to
some of the problems you have."
DARPA: "Have you seen our web site? Why don't you go and read our
solicitations...they are located at WWW-DOT..."
Researcher: "Yes, yes, I have read them, all of them, several times
each."
(Researcher pauses for a moment, goes to web page of Program Manager
he is talking to, reads his bio, discovers that PM did Ph.D on
governors in steam engine. Presumes that if research can speak
intelligently about governors for 2-3 minutes, that will break the
current impasse and mental disconnect)
Researcher: "I was just reading your bio. I see you did your Ph.D. on
governors. Was that challenging?"
DARPA:: "Yes, quite challenging."
Researcher: "You must have had problems achieving correct control loop
with the analog components you had."
(dialogue continues, Researcher eventually convinces PM of merit of
electronic control of feedback, etc, and that Researcher is at least
experienced with fundamentals of feedback.)
Researcher: "So you can see that, if you had not only that, but other
fixes, including a fuel that can actually be extracted from petrol
which I call 'gasoline', that could be of some benefit to your
research efforts."
DARPA: "Look, it's obivous that you have a lot of interest in this
area, but I am not sure you have reached the right organization. We do
fundamental research here. Maybe you could sell your product to a
steam engine company. We actually have a few of them on contract now.
We also have SBIR, STTR, and unsolicited proposals. Have you tried
SBIR?"
Researcher: "Well, not yet. I noticed that your SBIR solicitations
focus on a relatively small problem, like an improved ventilator, or
wood pulverizers, etc. There does not seem to be anything for an
entire engine. My worry is that..if I were to write about an entire
engine, there might be a bit of conceptual disconnect with the PM
managing the solicitation...as the program managers are expecting
proposals for narrowly focused problems.."
DARPA: "Well, I don't know what to tell you. These are the programs
we have available. If you had something that addressed and immediate
need of ours, then perhaps there would be something I could do, but
nothing you have said so far has convinced me of that."
Researcher: "Allow me to approach this from a different angle, if you
will. I am reading here, this article in Big Bad Important Defense
Industry Magazine. There is a Navy Admiral claiming that the greatest
advance in military technology would be a not-yet-explored type of
engine, perhaps running on fuel that 'derives from oil', and that
$5.6US billion is being allocated over next 10 years to DARPA to
pursue this technology. So I guess I am saying that, I can help you
achieve that, if you will allow me a chance."
DARPA: (impatiently) "What is it exactly that you want?"
Researcher: "I would like the opportunity to demonstrate to you, the
vision in that article realized, in a rough form, rough because I do
not have the luxury to get all the components perfect, but certainly
enough to move forward to a more thorough review. It actually
runs..burns fuel..I even have something called a catalytic converter
for reducing emissions. I would like whoever is interested in seeing
it done, whether that be you, or one of your colleagues, to allow me
15 minutes to show you, via over the Internet." (of course, Internet
would not be ready yet..but you get the idea).
DARPA: "We *DON'T DO DEMOS! We do research!!!!"
So this has been my experience, more or less, with the US Federal
governement regarding funded research. :))
Yours might be different. Contradictions and concurrences welcome.
Note of course, that what I offered DARPA was not so advanced as I
imply using the analogy above, but certainly enough to warrant a look,
IMO.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
amdx
> DARPA: "We *DON'T DO DEMOS! We do research!!!!"
>
> So this has been my experience, more or less, with the US Federal
> governement regarding funded research. :))
>
> Yours might be different. Contradictions and concurrences welcome.
>
> Note of course, that what I offered DARPA was not so advanced as I
> imply using the analogy above, but certainly enough to warrant a look,
> IMO.
>
> -Le Chaud Lapin-
I can sympathize with you.
I have friend that always worked to solve a problem and found
that many organizations are set up to get funding, spend all the money
while doing just enough -Research- to get the second tier funding.
Then repeat.
Ya, "We *DON'T DO DEMOS! We do research!!!!"
Mike
Rune Allnor
> DARPA: "We *DON'T DO DEMOS! We do research!!!!"
>
> So this has been my experience, more or less, with the US Federal
> governement regarding funded research. :))
>
> Yours might be different. Contradictions and concurrences welcome.
>
> Note of course, that what I offered DARPA was not so advanced as I
> imply using the analogy above, but certainly enough to warrant a look,
> IMO.
Haven't worked with that particular institution, but my experiences
are much the same.
Now, it's important to realize that 'research' means that one
does *not* know what one is doing. If you do, it's not research.
Just trace back to some of the greatest researchers in hitory:
- Newton did not know what the outcome of his investigations
would be, that anecdotal day he got hit by an apple.
- Einstein did not know what the outcome of his inquiries
would be, that day he walked along the canals, watchig
waves coming off barges.
Unfortunately, there are only so many Newtons and Einsteins,
who push the envelope on behalf of mankind, in this world.
And there are only so many places the envelope can be pushed
at any given time.
So if we relax the expectation just a *tiny* bit; that one
should not push *Mankind's* envelope, but rather the *personal*
envelope, then 'research' is a far less daunting task. But
again, if you have already skilled people onboard, research
is still not easy: Individual researchers need to keep up
with state-of-the-art. Expensive. Takes time.
However, having stepped down from Mankind level of ambitions,
it's an obvious corollary that if one hires people who have
no skills at all, then 'research' is fast, easy, and can be
done within schedules and inside budgets: 'Researchers' only
have to read standard textbooks. And write mediocre papers in
obscure journals.
In the end: The goal of the research institutions is to
find and hire the people who knows the least about what
they are supposed to be doing. That's true 'research'.
Oh well.
Rune
Tim Wescott
> Hi All,
>
> I am on the downslope of disillusionment regarding the truth of US-
> Government-funded research. I could pick any from a broad array of such
> insitutions and tell you of utterly-perplexing interactions I have had
> with them, but I decided to focus on DARPA, since, as we know, they were
> the original financial supporters of the Internet, it is claimed, and I
> do research with Internet protocols.
>
-- snip -->
> -Le Chaud Lapin-
Because any government program is, perforce, run by bureaucrats, and
bureaucrats (a) never get fired for saying "no", and (b) often get fired
for saying "yes".
The advantage (and I think it's there, and I think it's worth it) to
government-sponsored research isn't what they say it is, but it is none
the less manifold: it provides a pool of frustrated talent ready to jump
ship to productive private projects, it provides a pool of mediocre
researchers to teach university classes, it occasionally actually results
in some real advance that would never happen ever with funding from the
steam-engine companies, it indirectly funds companies like The Math Works
and efforts like open-source development, and more.
But as you so admirably point out, it doesn't meet it's _stated_ goal.
Phil Hobbs
DARPA is actually a pretty good outfit. I've worked on DARPA projects
at various times over the years, and the following have always been true:
(1) The program managers are good technical people who Get It.
(2) The goals are insanely ambitious, but some reasonable fraction of
them actually get met.
I've never had an engineering manager who was able to get the same level
of commitment out of his people that DARPA gets from its grantees.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Le Chaud Lapin
> On 28 Jun, 23:47, Le Chaud Lapin <jaibudu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > DARPA: "We *DON'T DO DEMOS! We do research!!!!"
>
> find and hire the people who knows the least about what
> they are supposed to be doing. That's true 'research'.
Nice analysis!
It reminds me of the type of projects where program managers get
frustrated because someone is hoping to do research in a fundamental
field of science, and the Senators are angry because the scientist
cannot pend down the exact instant and exact cost, +/- $50,000, of the
cost of the research.
Manage those monkeys!
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Jerry Avins
You prayed in the wrong pew. If you have a credible idea for research
and experiment, talk to DARPA. If you have a solution, seek venture capital.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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Le Chaud Lapin
<pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> Tim Wescott wrote:
> > On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:47:59 -0700, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> > But as you so admirably point out, it doesn't meet it's _stated_ goal.
>
> DARPA is actually a pretty good outfit. I've worked on DARPA projects
> at various times over the years, and the following have always been true:
>
> (1) The program managers are good technical people who Get It.
> (2) The goals are insanely ambitious, but some reasonable fraction of
> them actually get met.
Well, I have to disagree here, not so much with #1, but definitely #2.
The fraction in my field is horrifically small.
I work in computer networking. After an embarrassingly long time
thinking in this space, I know where all the pieces of the puzzle are,
if not exactly how they should all be shaped. DARPA has already spent
$11US billion of a $37US billion program trying to solve problems in
this area:
http://jpeojtrs.mil/,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06955.pdf
...most of which are solvable by a team of less than 10 people, IMO.
They are over budget $2.3 billion.
Yes, they get it. They get the problem. But that does not mean they
get the solution. In my experience, if you call up a DARPA PM, who has
been trying to find a way to purify water for past 25 years, and
declare to him that you have a machine called a distiller, that is far
beyond the cloth-sieve method, and will get rid of ~all~ the sediment,
as well as other impurities, he will ~not~ jump for joy and say, "Oh
my God, we've spent $250 million already trying to do this....your
claims sound a bit outrageous, but it's ovbious from our conversation
that have deep insight into this space....do you have a demo we can
see...?"
Instead, he will say something like...
"Well...it's June, and I already have several contractors working on
the water purification problem, and distillers is not a part of the
solution, and if you can show us how your new technology can make the
holes of the purifying cloth significantly smaller, reducing the
average particle side of the sediment that permeates the cloth, I
might have something for you. Also, if your stuff is really that good,
I would strongly suggest a prime contractor, who will take your work,
see how it fits into our existing programs, and feed it back to us.
They have to sign N.D.A's, so you don't have to worry about the big,
massive, $15 billion-dollar-company eating you alive and stealing your
distiller, even though it is a problem everyone in the purified water
space has been seeking and wanting for more than a decade. Otherwise,
I have nothing to offer you."
> I've never had an engineering manager who was able to get the same level
> of commitment out of his people that DARPA gets from its grantees.
Depends on the predisposition of the engineers.
I think one should make a distinction between people who are prone to
think versus those who are prone to do. Thinkers think. Doers do. More
or less. So, for example, at my last Fortune 500 employer, there was
not one person in my entire group of 60 who was prone to think, the
kind of thinking where you would be put in a room with a stack of
blank paper and pens and told to come out with the answer or else.
Most people seem to abhor that situation. They are uncomfortable with
the idea that there is no crank to turn, no buttons to push, that the
path to the solution is entirely unspecified and indefinite, that the
solution, *if* it is found, will essentially have been synthesized out
of thin air. So it's no surprise that they must be motivated to be
creative.
By contrast, there are other people who would grab the pen and paper
with great satisfaction, and ask to be left alone an extra hour per
workday, so as to do a good job and generate a good solution.
Ironically, the uncertainty and risk of failure that causes such most
discomfort in the first group is a major part of what provides
satisfaction for the 2nd group.
So big difference in these two types.
The problem with DARPA is that they have managed to institutionalize
creativity. They profess to support the second kind of person, but in
reality, they give all the money to the first kind, and because it is
so rare to encounter the first kind, they have no mechanism, no
office, no procedure, to accommodate them. It is also an unfortunate
fact of human nature that, when the solution is finally found, s/he
who found it is well-regarded, so the first kind group, through nature
process, endeavor to create an environment where it appears that the
soulution is not coming from the second group, but from the first
group, or at the very least, that the second group could not have
possibly been successful without the first group. The victim is the
thing itself...the solution. It is delayed, sometimes by decades,
because the problem solver must struggle through a minefield of all
that is destestable of human nature.
The reason it appears that what I am writing is wrong (because, after
all, we do have missiles and lasers), has to do with the sheer amount
of money available.
If, in a group of 1000 "researchers", there are 17 of the second kind
and 983 of the first kind, and DARPA spends $1US billion on the
problem, that would mean that 17 of those would still get their $1US
million each, more than sufficient to produce the result if left
unfettered [which is not the case, but...]. Then, DARPA gets the
result, the academy sees the result, the industry sees the result, the
public sees the result, Congress sees the result, and everyone
presumes the program must be effective, because it produces results.
Somewhere, buried in all this, is some poor bastard of a scientist,
who is 100% certain that the spacecraft will explode if the O-rings
are not fixed, but the other 983 tag-alongs refute him, until it
actually explodes, at which point the whole process repeats itself.
If there is any doubt that this is how it is, I suggest the following
experiment, which I just did 1 hour ago with a different US Gov
organization:
Find a problem that DARPA has been trying to solve for 10+ years and
has spent at least $100US million trying to solve. Call the PM of the
program and claim that you have most of the solution worked out.
Watch what happens.
The PM will not have a technical conversation with you about the
problems in the slightest. Instead, he will say something like, "We
have large contractors working on that. I will put you int touch with
a couple of them so you get in bed with one of them. It is the only
reasonable way you will get any money from us in a relatively short
period of time." (within a few months).
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Jerry Avins
Look: if you have a good idea, ask DARPA to help you instantiate it. If
you have a good method, develop it commercially. DARPA doesn't do demos,
startup venture capitalists do.
Phil Hobbs
> On Jun 29, 12:31 pm, Phil Hobbs
> <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>> Tim Wescott wrote:
>>> On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:47:59 -0700, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>>> But as you so admirably point out, it doesn't meet it's _stated_ goal.
>> DARPA is actually a pretty good outfit. I've worked on DARPA projects
>> at various times over the years, and the following have always been true:
>>
>> (1) The program managers are good technical people who Get It.
>> (2) The goals are insanely ambitious, but some reasonable fraction of
>> them actually get met.
>
> Well, I have to disagree here, not so much with #1, but definitely #2.
> The fraction in my field is horrifically small.
<snip>
What programs have you worked on, and what were the actual problems?
You have lots of metaphors but not a lot of details.
Joerg
Most other countries on this planet don't have anything that comes even
close to DARPA but they wish they had.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Le Chaud Lapin
<pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> > On Jun 29, 12:31 pm, Phil Hobbs
> > <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> >> Tim Wescott wrote:
> >>> On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:47:59 -0700, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> >>> But as you so admirably point out, it doesn't meet it's _stated_ goal.
> >> DARPA is actually a pretty good outfit. I've worked on DARPA projects
> >> at various times over the years, and the following have always been true:
>
> >> (1) The program managers are good technical people who Get It.
> >> (2) The goals are insanely ambitious, but some reasonable fraction of
> >> them actually get met.
>
> > Well, I have to disagree here, not so much with #1, but definitely #2.
> > The fraction in my field is horrifically small.
>
> <snip>
>
> What programs have you worked on, and what were the actual problems?
> You have lots of metaphors but not a lot of details.
I have yet to work on any actual DARPA programs. I never get past the
front gate, although, in all fairness, they have their unsolicited
proposals program, which would be ideal in theory, if not for the 2+
year delay and large risk of rejection. Based on my experiences so
far, I have no doubt that I would be rejected.
As far as the actual problem, broadly, it's computer networking. I
have been thinking about computer networks/distributed systems for so
long now, I think I know what the issues are and where all the pieces
should go. This includes problems of security, mobility, naming,
numbering, addressing, large-scale multicast, access control, auto-
configuration, etc. There is an issue with performance of modular
reduction in signing operation of asymmetric crypto that I have no
generalized solution for, but neither does anyone else (that I know
of). As for the rest, I think I would do OK under scrutiny by a panel
of experts.
With respect to DARPA, the number of programs they have funded and
will fund relative to computer networking is simply huge.
Here are a few at DARPA's Strategic Technology Office:
http://www.darpa.mil/STO/strategic/index.html
Here is another with DARPA's Information Processing Techniques
Office :
http://www.darpa.mil/IPTO/programs/qnt/qnt.asp
Ironically, Bob Kahn both worked at IPTO in younger years, and later
became its director:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kahn
One might ask, "What does it mean to solve the 'computer networking
problem'?"
IMO, it would be partially solved if one:
Created a system, whereby a 1 million nodes communicate, each
containing multiple network adapters of various kinds and speed,
990,000 of which are mobile, using a mismatch of independent signing/
veiling of data, where 500,000 of which received multicast stream from
one laptop computer over continuously topilogically-optimal paths,
itself mobile, supplying voice and video, using links that are owned
by political adversary, where there is access control to various
resource in the network that 60-year-old with moderate computer
literacy can configure, understand, and be certain of its correctness;
and took 20-year-old college student 1 month to write using a free
compiler downloaded off the Internet.
This is what US Department of Defense would like but does not have. It
is also what pretty much everyone in the field of computer networking
wants, but puts together with patchwork on an ad-hoc basis.
I asked NSF if I made a proposal for a clean-slate stack that would
provide solutions to the problems above (the modular reduction issue
not withstanding), and whether my proposal would be rejected. After
some back-and-forth, I was told, "NSF does not 'buy' the clean slate
protocol stack effort.", so yes, I would be rejected. However, there
is another application which I offered, which cannot possibily exist
without a clean-slate protocol stack, which, strangely, they expressed
interest in, not seeing the necessity of one to have the other.
In any case, a search on Google seems to indicate that they do,
indeed, like the idea of clean-slate:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=NSF+clean-slate
...to the tune of $300US million in one case:
http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/march06/harsha.html
Of course, some of the $300 million would be used for new networking
hardware from Cisco and friends, but NSF still plans to fund basic
research.
So NSF likes clean slate protoocl stacks, just not from a USENET nut
who thinks he might have some insight.
Finally, for those of you with DSP background, you might find the
following amusing. Back in 1997, the Joint Tactical Radio System
program was created by DoD to basically eliminate incompatibility
between DoD's various 30+ radios:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System
It turned out to be a disaster. It's 2009, and they stil do not have
it. DoD actually threatened Boeing with a stop work order back in 2005
because U.S. Senate and even DoD's own people were getting tired of
playing games:
http://integrator.hanscom.af.mil/2008/April/04172008/04172008-15.htm
One of the reasons it has been a disaster is that someone got the idea
that if you used software defined radios, all the various radio
systems will work together in "harmony". Of course this is false.
Saying "work together" is meaningless. There is a big difference
between using SDR to get sloppy voice from one walkie-talkie mic to
another walkie-talkie speaker, and a full-blown packetized network
with inter-adapter frames guarded by low BER and CRC's. It took about
3-4 years for this to sink in the minds of the generals at toop, and
be generally accepted. After it became accepted, everyone was in a
really bad mood, and decided to start over, but September 11th came.
Now we have two wars, and DoD was forced to shell out $11 billion
total until 2006 to use, yet again, old radios, and enormous
unexpected costs [they thought they would be using networked radios by
now]. The Government Accountability Office has been saying for years
that DoD is getting duped by the contractors who manufacture the
radios, but DoD won't listen. Also, somoeone or some group of people
has convinced DoD that COTS components are bad because the security is
"weaker" if you use Wi-Fi versus military frequencies. The highest
frequency they are allowed is < 2GHz, btw.
At present, DoD/DARPA/NRL/AFRL/etc. have no better solutions to the
security, mobility, etc. problems than anyone else. A lot of people
are really angry that we are 12 years into the program, and the most
that they have is a semi-stable repository of code for SDR's. But the
grand vision of interoperability using network-centric
technology...they are no where near that.
So that's my beef at this point. I am waiting to see whether DoD will
allow a demonstration of my technology or relegate me to the kook pot.
So far, NSF has repeatedly reminded me that they only do advanced,
fundamental research, implying that I have no idea what that is bases
on my conversations with them.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Le Chaud Lapin
> Look: if you have a good idea, ask DARPA to help you instantiate it. If
> you have a good method, develop it commercially. DARPA doesn't do demos,
> startup venture capitalists do.
About a month ago, I asked a PM if one of their active contractors had
made the same claims I was making about computer networking, and
wanted opportunity for a demo to prove it, would they get it, and he
said,
"Most likely, yes."
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Phil Hobbs
In other words, they'd believe them but not you.
Robert Baer
then write it up as research..even if you have worn that road out to a
frazzle and built an automated self-guiding highway nearby.
Talk only about the things they know and do; say you need $200K for
research assistants to just compile past research and $2,000,000 to do
what they "want" namely rut the road deeper.
Then spend some on those research assistants to CYA and the rest on
what *you* need; sell the result to that Navy Admiral.
Learn how to lie, like those in Congress etc.
John Larkin
<jaibu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I am on the downslope of disillusionment regarding the truth of US-
>Government-funded research.
DARPA has done some very useful promotion of compound semiconductors.
John
Richard Owlett
> Hi All,
>
> I am on the downslope of disillusionment regarding the truth of US-
> Government-funded research. I could pick any from a broad array of
> such insitutions and tell you of utterly-perplexing interactions I
> have had with them, but I decided to focus on DARPA,
Did you chose "wrong" agency?
since, as we
> know, they were the original financial supporters of the Internet, it
> is claimed, and I do research with Internet protocols.
>
Did you chose "wrong" agency because you selected on "wrong" criterium
[choice of singular *INTENTIONAL*]
Elsewhere in thread OP wrote:
> I work in computer networking. After an embarrassingly long time
> thinking in this space, I know where all the pieces of the puzzle are,
> if not exactly how they should all be shaped.
and
> ... it would be partially solved if one:
> Created a system, whereby ...
> This is what US Department of Defense would like but does not have.
Are you trying too much a shotgun loaded with buckshot approach, hoping...?
Is there a *PARTICULAR* command within army, navy, air force, marines
that your proposed solution could be deemed "mission critical"?
Would your approach expedite mission of CIA, FBI ... ?
Would your approach affect costs of a government agency so that GAO
would be contact point?
Would your approach benefit civilian agencies such as NOAA, NASA, NIH?
These are paths that might have LOCAL ("all politics are local") impact.
Le Chaud Lapin
> Well, if you want money to improve, develop and/or build your gadget
> then write it up as research..even if you have worn that road out to a
> frazzle and built an automated self-guiding highway nearby.
> Talk only about the things they know and do; say you need $200K for
> research assistants to just compile past research and $2,000,000 to do
> what they "want" namely rut the road deeper.
> Then spend some on those research assistants to CYA and the rest on
> what *you* need; sell the result to that Navy Admiral.
> Learn how to lie, like those in Congress etc.
:)) Thanks for the laugh.
I was recently told by someone who signs the checks in another part of
DoD that DoD can occasionally become victims of their own contractors.
The contractors know how to play the game well, and even though it is
likely that the contractor will not produce, the choices are limited
because the contractor will cry foul, and if contractor is really
important to DoD...
-Le Chaud Lapin-
stanp
> On Jun 29, 12:31 pm, Phil Hobbs
>
> <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> > Tim Wescott wrote:
> > > On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:47:59 -0700, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> > > But as you so admirably point out, it doesn't meet it's _stated_ goal.
>
> > DARPA is actually a pretty good outfit. I've worked on DARPA projects
> > at various times over the years, and the following have always been true:
>
> > (1) The program managers are good technical people who Get It.
> > (2) The goals are insanely ambitious, but some reasonable fraction of
> > them actually get met.
>
> Well, I have to disagree here, not so much with #1, but definitely #2.
> The fraction in my field is horrifically small.
>
> I work in computer networking. After an embarrassingly long time
> thinking in this space, I know where all the pieces of the puzzle are,
> if not exactly how they should all be shaped. DARPA has already spent
> $11US billion of a $37US billion program trying to solve problems in
> this area:
>
I don't think that DARPA doesn't run the JTRS program office. I'm
almost certain that the PEO is managed out of OSD.
Le Chaud Lapin
> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > I am on the downslope of disillusionment regarding the truth of US-
> > Government-funded research. I could pick any from a broad array of
> > such insitutions and tell you of utterly-perplexing interactions I
> > have had with them, but I decided to focus on DARPA,
>
> Did you chose "wrong" agency?
I have contacted several major ones (DARPA, NSF, Army, Navy, Air
Force, NIST, few national labs, etc.)
> since, as we
>
> > know, they were the original financial supporters of the Internet, it
> > is claimed, and I do research with Internet protocols.
>
> Did you chose "wrong" agency because you selected on "wrong" criterium
> [choice of singular *INTENTIONAL*]
>
> Elsewhere in thread OP wrote:
> > I work in computer networking. After an embarrassingly long time
> > thinking in this space, I know where all the pieces of the puzzle are,
> > if not exactly how they should all be shaped.
>
> and
>
> > ... it would be partially solved if one:
> > Created a system, whereby ...
> > This is what US Department of Defense would like but does not have.
>
> Are you trying too much a shotgun loaded with buckshot approach, hoping...?
Not intentionally. I never expected to engage the US Government. I was
expecting to follow the commercial path only, and if something came
later with DoD, fine. If not, fine. But the synergy was too great to
ignore.
The problems that DoD are trying to solve, as well as many other
government agencies, are actually the same 10 problems, roughly,
recycyled, just like building an internal combustion engine in age of
steam engine would involve solving the same N problems, recycled,
whatever N is. As big a challenge it seems to "normalized TCP/IP",
it's really not (the mod reduction performance issue notwithstanding).
A full-blown engine, network protocol stack in this case, that
addresses these 10 major networking problems simultaneously, might be
roughly 1MB of compiled C++ code on a typical Windows box. This
excludes a configuration GUI.
The reason that so much research money is being wasted is, IMO,
precisely because no one has taken a wholistic approach. Typically
they will attack mobility, or mulitcast, or security, or access
control, or routing, or some other issue individually, and
incrementally. They strive for backward compatibility when backward
compatibility is entirely inappropriate. IMO, it is far easier to step
back and survey the entire field at once. After all, we at lesat know
the answer to the question of whether there will be more than 10,000
computers in the world. The answer is YES! We also know a lot of other
things now. We have massively poweful tools at our disposal, like
compiler toolchains that can handle a million lines of code and not
miss a step. We have UNICODE, good ciphers, fast data structures, real
multi-threading, lightning fast network adapters, storage space, etc.
We have a lot to work with to get it right.
> Is there a *PARTICULAR* command within army, navy, air force, marines
> that your proposed solution could be deemed "mission critical"?
Yes, there are several on the DARPA STO page:
http://www.darpa.mil/STO/strategic/index.html
Then there is Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS):
...where I could help above the link layer. They have other issues
below link layer.
NIST has an entire department working on Public Key Infrastructures
which I think I could help with:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/crypto_apps_infra/pki/index.html
NSF is trying to give $300 million to http://www.geni.net not to find
the solution but to build a new "mini-lab-Internet-thingy" to find the
solution, which is a bit weird, if you think about it, because it
implies that the existing Internet is not good enough as a lab. I
strongly disagree. With the exception of multicast, and maybe a few
miscellaneous problems with RF-assisted fast hand-over during
mobility, there is no reason to spend even $1 million on new hardware.
Also, if you look at the vision of GENI, the fallacy of approach will
reveal itself - they are proposing to build a shared experimental
facility that allows simultaneous experimentation by dispersed and
disjoint groups of researchers, which of course requires some type of
security and access control. So their position is circuitous - they
are claiming they need the facility, to solve a group of problems, the
solution of which will more or less be required to create the
facility:
There is the Military Network Protocol for DARPA:
http://www.darpa.mil/STO/Solicitations/sn09-04/index.html
Essentially, what they want is to be able to give preference to the
"fat pipe" entering/exiting a military based based on rank, so that
lieutenant doing video chat or whatever would be booted by a colonel
needing that pipe. This problem is best solved by first solving the
identity problem. These guys actually said that the solution does not
necessarily have to be compatible with TCP/IP, so you would think that
my clean-slate stack would intrigue them. Not so.
> Would your approach expedite mission of CIA, FBI ... ?
Yes, Homeland Security too, I believe.
> Would your approach affect costs of a government agency so that GAO
> would be contact point?
I talked to GAO several times. They generally in agreement that JTRS,
in particular, is a massive exercise in waste (several US billion).
They seemed powerless to do anything about it beyond writing
(objective) papers, one of which caused Senate appropriations
committee to insist on a gross overhaul of its management.
> Would your approach benefit civilian agencies such as NOAA, NASA, NIH?
NOAA and NASA yes, not sure about NIH, although if NIH is trying to
solve the "personal medical records" problem, that gets back to the
identity problem, and maybe file system problem, so in that case yes.
> These are paths that might have LOCAL ("all politics are local") impact.
I think the relevance is there. But you would be suprised at the
nature of the conversations I have with program managers supposedly
looking for solutions to these problems.
I was told yesterday by a DARPA funding rep that my apprehension about
letting an existing DoD contractor at as an intermediary between me
and DoD is warranted despite what DARPA PM's say about the contractor
being "good guys". Her exact words were, "...at least you're not
naive."
A program manager at DARPA also once said, "Beware of contrators on
the West Coast. Some of them are hawkish."
An Air Force rep said yesterday,
"Yes, you're right. There is no facility in the entire US government,
where if someone had a truly revoltionary breakthrough, you'd be able
to demonstrate it without going through these issues. I talked to a
gentleman earlier who I think has deep insight into an extreme form of
computing, but I have no way to help him. What we really need is an
organization where people who have demonstrable work to be able to
prove it, without interference by bureaucracy or especially by prime
contractors, maybe something like an internal brain bench that does
nothing but evaluate new ideas all day. We have too many rules,
really."
So, OTOH, everyone seems to know the game, yet simultaneously
encourage it, which, in all fairness, I believe is necessary given
that the system has been fouled by self-interests (large prime
contractors who ride on the innovation of little people, for
example).
The ultimate victim is the end-result itself and massive amounts of
taxpayer money.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Le Chaud Lapin
> > The PM will not have a technical conversation with you about the
> > problems in the slightest. Instead, he will say something like, "We
> > have large contractors working on that. I will put you int touch with
> > a couple of them so you get in bed with one of them. It is the only
> > reasonable way you will get any money from us in a relatively short
> > period of time." (within a few months).
>
> > -Le Chaud Lapin-
>
> I don't think that DARPA doesn't run the JTRS program office. I'm
Right, DARPA does not manage JTRS. I only mix the two because I have
been talking to both, and at times, each has said I should contact the
other "if I really have something to offer."
Also, I *could* be wrong, but based on what JTRS has done so far:
There is a lot of technical meat lacking. They seem to have some
software defnined radio modules, but they are a long way away from
fully-networked radios that ride on a generalized model of mobility
for the military. I remember reading somewhere that they are counting
on a boost from DARPA by way of TTNT
http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Programs/ttnt/ttnt.asp
... to help them out, but I looked at TTNT demo announcement:
http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Programs/ttnt/docs/TTNT_Demo.pdf
This announcement looks good, but that was in 2005, and it is now
2009, and frankly, I know what's involved in "real" mobility, an
aircraft moving, connecting to whatever radio ground-based access
point is available, etc...and unless I am hugely mistaken, they have a
lot of work to do. And I don't mean eliminate the 5-second delay it
takes for a new node to enter their ad-hoc networks. A generalized
solution to the mobility problem actually requires a generalized
solution to the security problem as prerequite, which, AFAIK, they do
not yet have.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Paul Hovnanian P.E.
> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> Researcher: "I noticed that much of your research involves getting
>> away from steam engines. For example, you have 7 outstanding
>> solicitations on alternative to steam alone, not to mention 11 others
>> on reducing rust ."
>>
>> DARPA: "Yes, that's true."
>>
>> Researcher: "What if I told you that I had a machine that not only
>> solved that rust problem you have with the steam, etc., but also
>> validated your current push toward petrol-based fuel, in an engine
>> that actually runs. I call it an internal combustion engine."
>>
>> DARPA: "Uh...not sure what you mean. This is a research organization,
>> you do realize?"
[snip]
>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
> Well, if you want money to improve, develop and/or build your gadget
> then write it up as research..even if you have worn that road out to a
> frazzle and built an automated self-guiding highway nearby.
> Talk only about the things they know and do; say you need $200K for
> research assistants to just compile past research and $2,000,000 to do
> what they "want" namely rut the road deeper.
> Then spend some on those research assistants to CYA and the rest on
> what *you* need; sell the result to that Navy Admiral.
> Learn how to lie, like those in Congress etc.
The downside to this approach is that your 'research' will now be encumbered
by DARPA and other Federal regulations (think ITAR). Where you might have
been able to sell your petrol engine worldwide, including a version
designed to meet DARPA specific requirements, if you take their money that
may no longer be the case.
Better to sell your product to the world. Then, when the Pentagon wonders
why Russian, French, Chinese and al Quaida armored vehicles seem to be much
more maneuverable and efficient than the steam-powered Abrams tank, the CIA
will provide them with the intelligence on your products. No doubt, your
technology will be stolen and handed to US defense contractors, who will
produce a militarized version of your petrol engine (i.e. more $$$$). But
at least, you'll have the rest of the world market to yourself.
Until the US contractor lobbies Congress, gets you shut down and takes over
your marketing channels to your foreign customers. So you'd better move
your R&D off shore before they figure out what you're up to.
--
Paul Hovnanian pa...@hovnanian.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Have gnu, will travel.
John Nagle
> DARPA is actually a pretty good outfit. I've worked on DARPA projects
> at various times over the years, and the following have always been true:
>
> (1) The program managers are good technical people who Get It.
> (2) The goals are insanely ambitious, but some reasonable fraction of
> them actually get met.
>
> I've never had an engineering manager who was able to get the same level
> of commitment out of his people that DARPA gets from its grantees.
>
> Cheers
>
> Phil Hobbs
DARPA does get many good results, some of which are well known, and
many of which aren't. I've dealt with DARPA a few times over the years,
and I've been very impressed with their people.
The original poster, I gather, has some idea involving networking.
DARPA doesn't do much network R&D any more; that's a mature technology
and the private sector is funding the necessary work. If his idea
is that great, he needs to get a patent and look for venture capital.
(Although, weirdly, if you have something that really works and
want to sell it to the Government, it's better to have a trade secret
rather than a patent. The reverse is true in the private sector.
See 28 USC 1498.)
John Nagle
illywhacker
Here's the juice: you sound and write like a crank (read John Baez's
crackpot index http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html). You are
talking about engineering, but the style is the same as those who
'prove' relativity is inconsistent, etc. etc.
DARPA program managers probably get contacted by such people once a
week. They do not believe you because you are probably wrong. You have
not even said what you have developed. It is quite possible to say
this without endangering your intellectual and industrial property.
They would believe a contractor who made the same claims because those
claims would probably be right, simply because a contractor who made
false claims would no longer be a contractor.
Of course you have managed to stir up the exceitable gaggle of
"university of life self-made men" that inhabit this list, but do not
let that encourage you.
illywhacker;
Rune Allnor
> They would believe a contractor who made the same claims because those
> claims would probably be right,
This is proposition is flawed. Let's take the case of
Some Universally Acclaimed High Esteem Institution (SUAHEI).
SUHAEI has historically obtained a reputation for occasionally
producing spectacular results - although the last such
spectacular result was achieved a couple of decades ago.
Now, there is a general impression in the public that SUAHEI
employees are better than 'the crowd'. Supposing this is true:
When did any particular individual achieve this extraordinary
competence? Before they got employed by SUAHEI? After?
Unless somebody can answer this particular question,
there is no basis to your argument.
Take the case of smart antennas. Parametric beamformers
like MUSIC and ESPRIT were discussed for years in the late
'90s (and maybe longer). Major playes like Siemens and the
telecomm operators were involved in sponosring and developing
these ideas.
If just *one* of the people involved had actually studied
the basics of MUSIC, like I suggested in this post
http://groups.google.no/group/comp.dsp/msg/0474383f4844f2d2?hl=no
the obvious conclusion - that these methods are far too
fragile to be used in comm systems - would have been
drawn within hours. As it were, maybe a decade worth of
research was more or less wasted on trivialities.
Of course, the argument agians this is that "Major
players like Siemens doesn't make such blunders". Maybe not.
But the *people* at Siemens do.
> simply because a contractor who made
> false claims would no longer be a contractor.
This would be true in a *commercial* world. Nevertheless,
I once saw a system based on - once again - MUSIC, developed
for a commercial application in a demanding environment.
The idea was based on a statement by somebody influential,
that 'MUSIC is best!' Of course, this guy had long left the
company and the remaining staff had never challenged the
statement. The company had spent years developing a
working prototype for this device.
The problem was that when they deployed it (it was to
be towed behind a ship at sea), the device did not even
find the sound of ship that towed it. At this point, these
people asked me for opinions, and I quickly found a couple
of discrepancies between the assumptions behind the model
and the actual situation. The most important was that
MUSIC treats all sources as point sources, whereas the
ship was so close it had to be treated as a distributed
source.
It's a trivial mistake that would have been discovered
during a 5-minute pro&con brainstorm. But this company
was a major player in the business, so everybody got
caught by your very argument: "Players *that* big just
don't make such basic blunders."
Again, *people* do.
As for the world of R&D - corporate R&D included - does
not work the same way the commercial world does.
In the commercial world, failure to produce a result is
reason to terminate a contract, and indeed, possibly fatal
to the contractor's business.
In the R&D world, however, failure to deliver a result
is, as often as not, the deciding argument _in_favour_
of extending the contract: there is always some next
detail to investigate.
You only need to *avoid* asking the decisive questions,
and you have a chain of projects lined up for years to
come.
Rune
illywhacker
You appear to have ignored the word 'probably' throughout my post.
illywhacker;
Rune Allnor
> On Jul 3, 12:48 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 3 Jul, 12:01, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > They would believe a contractor who made the same claims because those
> > > claims would probably be right,
> > You only need to *avoid* asking the decisive questions,
> > and you have a chain of projects lined up for years to
> > come.
>
> > Rune
>
> You appear to have ignored the word 'probably' throughout my post.
No. You made the mistake of thinking it made a difference
to a fundamentally flawed argument.
Rune
illywhacker
>
> - Show quoted text -
Let's see:
1) you do not address the main point I am making, which is that the OP
sounds like a crank;
2) you make many assertions that are not backed up by any evidence;
3) you roll out some tired and ludicrous 'working man's' cliches about
research, again without evidence;
4) you talk of an well-regarded 'institute' that has not produced
anything useful for ten years;
5) you introduce an anecdote that might or might not be true but which
in any case is only a single example not a systemic failure;
6) you seem to think that an argument that is false remains false when
its conclusion becomes probabilistic (which is mathematically
untrue);
7) like several other posters, you have a conspiracy theory of the
functioning of the R&D community;
What next? Can you achieve cold fusion like the OP?
illywhacker;
Rune Allnor
> On Jul 3, 2:04 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 3 Jul, 13:21, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 3, 12:48 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
> > > > On 3 Jul, 12:01, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > They would believe a contractor who made the same claims because those
> > > > > claims would probably be right,
> > ...
> > > > You only need to *avoid* asking the decisive questions,
> > > > and you have a chain of projects lined up for years to
> > > > come.
>
> > > > Rune
>
> > > You appear to have ignored the word 'probably' throughout my post.
>
> > No. You made the mistake of thinking it made a difference
> > to a fundamentally flawed argument.
>
> > Rune- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> Let's see:
>
> 1) you do not address the main point I am making, which is that the OP
> sounds like a crank;
That's a subjective opinion of yours.
> 2) you make many assertions that are not backed up by any evidence;
Assertion: Parametric sum-of-sines methods (MUSIC, ESPRIT, etc)
are not useful for real-life work.
Evidence 1: Check out the published literature on ESPRIT, and
check what applications are discussed, the affiliations of
authors and sponsoring institutions.
Evidence 2: The trivial demo I linked to.
Conclusion: Any antenna processing based on MUSIC or ESPRIT
will catastrophically fail when the system load (number of
users) exceed some threshold that depends on the physics
of the antenna.
> 3) you roll out some tired and ludicrous 'working man's' cliches about
> research, again without evidence;
Which ones?
> 4) you talk of an well-regarded 'institute' that has not produced
> anything useful for ten years;
Which one?
> 5) you introduce an anecdote that might or might not be true but which
> in any case is only a single example not a systemic failure;
For obvious reasons, I can't disclose details about who,
where and when. Whether you believe the story, make sure
you believe and understand the reason why this particular
system failed.
> 6) you seem to think that an argument that is false remains false when
> its conclusion becomes probabilistic (which is mathematically
> untrue);
There are storues about people surviving free falls from
30000ft. I still prefer not to do the jump at all, and if
I have to, to use a parchute.
> 7) like several other posters, you have a conspiracy theory of the
> functioning of the R&D community;
No conspiracies. Observations.
> What next? Can you achieve cold fusion like the OP?
Where did the OP mention cold fusion?
Rune
Phil Hobbs
Riiggghhhttt. I'm sure you have specific examples of programs in mind?
With details?
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Rune Allnor
wrote:
> Rune Allnor wrote:
> > In the R&D world, however, failure to deliver a result
> > is, as often as not, the deciding argument _in_favour_
> > of extending the contract: there is always some next
> > detail to investigate.
>
> > You only need to *avoid* asking the decisive questions,
> > and you have a chain of projects lined up for years to
> > come.
>
> > Rune
>
> Riiggghhhttt. I'm sure you have specific examples of programs in mind?
> With details?
Of course.
Rewind the clock to the mid '70s, the midst of the
cold war. There were 'sound sources' in mid ocean
that somebody had a great interst in locating,
identifying and tracking. There were acoustic systems
in place to achieve those goals, but these systems were
hampered by certain limitations, so the 'watchmen' could
not quite get all the information about the sources that
they would like to have.
In the late '70s somebody suggested to exploit the
interaction between the sound emanated from the sources.
Hinich: Maximum likelihood estimation of a radiating source
in a waveguide
Journ. Ac. Soc. Am. vol 66 nr 2, august 1979, 480.
Bucker: Use of calculated sound fields and matched-field
detection to locate sound sources in shallow waters
Journ. Ac. Soc. Am. vol 59 no 2, p 368, February 1976
The ideas (known as "Source Localization by Matched Field
Processing", MFP) looked elegant, at first glance, but the
computational tools needed to investigate the ideas were
not available at the time.
Throughout the '80s these computational tools were developed,
and around 1986-87 one started to do the first field tests
of MFP to see if the tricks worked.
The strategy of MFP was to first measure the oceanographic
parameters, store them, and then use this information to
extract the desired parameters about the source, from the
measured data. Like using knowledge about the system
function to estimate the excitation, from processed data.
The method did not work as one had hoped for, and in 1989
a paper was published where numerical simulations were done
to establish how sensitive the method was to oceanographic
variability:
Hamson and Heitmeyer: Environmental and system effects on
source localization in shallow water by the
mathced-field processing of a vertical array
Journ. Ac. Soc. Am. vol 86 no 5, p 1950,
November 1989
The conclusions from this paper was essentially that
the MFP method
1) Was thrown off by variation in just about any parameter
of the ocean or measurement set-up that could possibly
vary
2) Every single parameter had to be known to at least
3, often 4, significant digits.
So up to, and including, the publicasion of the Hamson &
Heitmeyer, MFP was a 'science; in the usual sense of the
word.
However, the cold war was still going strong, and the
'sources' in question were as big nuisances as ever.
So no one wanted to pull the plug on MFP.
In 1991, the "Great Idea" of MFP arrives in the paper
Collins and Kuperman: Focalization: Environmental focusing and
source localization
Journ. Ac. Soc. Am, vol 90 nr 3, September 1991, p 1410
Here, the authors suggest that one estimate *both* the
oceanography (= system function) *and* the source parameters
(= excitation) from one set of measured data.
In essence, the problem statement is:
Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
The contents of the paper is essentially a simulation study:
1) The authors formulate a geometric scenario
2) The authors simulate corresponding measured data
3) The authors 'switch hats', to use the simulated data
to estimate soure parameters
4) The authors set up a simulator (the same as was used
to generate the data?) to search for the source
parameters
5) The authors keep an eye of the progress of the simulation
6) The authors terminate the simulation when the results
match 'sufficiently well'
So basically, the authors show that if one use a simulator
that at least is similar to the simulator that generated
the data to replicate the 'reference' data, and this
simulator 'happens' to guess at parameters close to the
original parameters, the data are similar.
To spoon-feed: The decisive question no one have asked,
is whether this method of finding *both* the excitation
*and* the sytem function from one observation, holds.
To me it is pretty obvious that it doesn't.
Incredibly, this paper was not only published, but it
also recieved wide-spread attention. The last time
I checked (around 2002), it was cited over 80 times,
according to the Science Citation Index.
I could go on, and mention that the paper
Soares, Siderius and Jesus: "Source localization in a
time-varying ocean waveguide", Journ. Ac. Soc. Am.,
V 112 no 5, p 1879, 2002
reports a field experiment where one measured oceanographic
variability in as real-time as practically possible, and
that one of the conclusions in the paper was that MFP just
did not work if one used oceanography data older than about
one hour.
Nevertheless, the authors stated that "MFP is robust".
But I think this is enough, for now.
Rune
illywhacker
>
> In essence, the problem statement is:
>
> Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
>
>
> To spoon-feed: The decisive question no one have asked,
> is whether this method of finding *both* the excitation
> *and* the sytem function from one observation, holds.
> To me it is pretty obvious that it doesn't.
I have no idea whether MFP does or does not work, but I do know that
you understand very little about estimation. Given prior models of x
and y, i.e. a probability distribution, x and y can be estimated
subject to the condition x + y = 1, and the uncertainties in these
estimates calculated. Maximum likelihood assumes minimal prior
knowledge and produces maximal uncertainty, and is usually a stupid
choice in the presence of significant prior knowledge, as in the case
of oceanography.
illywhacker;
Rune Allnor
> On Jul 3, 4:18 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
>
>
> > In essence, the problem statement is:
>
> > Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
>
> <snip>
>
> > To spoon-feed: The decisive question no one have asked,
> > is whether this method of finding *both* the excitation
> > *and* the sytem function from one observation, holds.
> > To me it is pretty obvious that it doesn't.
>
> I have no idea whether MFP does or does not work, but I do know that
> you understand very little about estimation. Given prior models of x
> and y, i.e. a probability distribution, x and y can be estimated
> subject to the condition x + y = 1, and the uncertainties in these
> estimates calculated.
That might be true, formally. The problem is that
1) One has no idea if there is a source of interst
present at all.
2) One has no idea where it might be.
3) One has no information about the source characteritsics
4) One has only gross knowledge about the oceanography
(data are known to within 2, maybe 3, significant digits;
oceanography is continuously changing.)
5) There are almost certainly sounds form 'uninteresting'
sources present when the measurements are made.
All in all, MFP is a waste of time.
Rune
Jerry Avins
RCA's superconducting memory program in the early '60s.
Le Chaud Lapin
> On Jul 1, 7:23 pm, Le Chaud Lapin <jaibudu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's the juice: you sound and write like a crank (read John Baez's
> talking about engineering, but the style is the same as those who
> 'prove' relativity is inconsistent, etc. etc.
Unlike relativity, the things that I proposed can be demonstrated with
a prototype. I have a demonstration with Air Force Research Laboratory
this Monday, in fact, but under unfavorable terms.
Also, if the situation were reversed, me being the Program Manager
with Ph.D. in computer science purporting to fund "order-of-magnitude
improvements" in computer networking, and some random person made the
claim I made, it would take me about 60 seconds to see if that person
should advance past the crank gate. If the person passes, for example,
by answering a few questions about fundamental concepts of computer
networking, then another 5 minutes might be allowed, then 15 minutes,
then a full hour.
One could start with basic questions, like "poles are here in 4th-
order system...please characterize zero-input-response...", "what
stochastic model pertains to inter-packet delay by system with queues
as you describe them...what is expected load at root of federated
hierarchy if request distribution is as such...etc...what is your
access control model...I am in China, using wireless link from
laptop...explain to me in detail all the security attacks that could
happen on path between my laptop and NSA in US...what recent
development in India eliminates need for 'very probably' clause in
determination of primality using Miller-Rabin.." Eventually the point
would come where the PM either thinks the claimant is a crank, or
think the claimant has not yet said anything ridiculous.
I think this is reasonable. It is easy and low risk. It takes less
time to rout a person's mind in this manner than it does to
regurgitate things that can be easily read on DARPA's web site, like
how to respond to their solicitations, how to use the SBIR search
tool, how to visit the federal gov's BizOpps site, how to apply for a
Dun & Bradstreet business ID, etc.
And since we are on this subject, in the history of my interaction
with these PM's, only one of them got to the part that matters. She
stated the usual "You do realize what you're saying is a bit hard to
swallow...", I said, "yes...we can get pass that by a way of your
choosing...", then we had back and forth where she challenged me to
explain my approach to the mobility problem. After it was over, she
said "If I were you, I would keep trying with the other PM, sometimes
it takes a while..." The "other PM", on the other hand, as well as his
boss, his colleagues...I might as well been talking to the admin
assistant...it was as if they were trying to avoid, completely,
getting to the part that matters.
Just two days ago, someone from Air Force was doing the..."we've been
doing this for years, the likelihood that you have...yada..thing..."
so I said, "Well then, since you're that deep..there is probably some
old problem that you have had lying around for last 2-3 years, one
with which you are intimately familiar, that you could tell me about,
that if I answered, would at least convince you that we should
continue. If I answer poorly, I will never bother you again. But if I
answer favorably, then I would like a clear path for funding that does
not involve being fed head-first to one of your prime contrators. What
problem do you offer?"
He paused, refused to give me a problem, then asked me to set up a
demo for him and his colleagues.
This sounds promising, but the problem with these demos are one-way.
The entire meeting is spent where one person is repeatedly saying,
"there is nothing remarkable about what you're doing, while the other
is repeatedly saying "...back up a bit...tell me more about these 64-
bits..." or "..what dynamic programming technique are you using to
reduce load in your distributed Dikjstra" "...say again how you ensure
topological optimality?..." Of course it will happen that something I
say is not new at all, since everyone else is at least thinking about
it, and they will say, "...that's not new, someone over at Y.A.D.A.
has started research on that..." One guy, one who spent most of the
hour trying to learn as much as he could, said, "Ok, this is
interesting work, but let's face it, if I had the opportunity to write
a clean-slate stack, where I could start over completely from scratch,
of course I would be able to solve these problems too."
At the end, the answer is always the same: "You have nothing
remarkable, but we would be interested if you wold simply take the
names of these three existing contractors, whom we are currently
funding, and give your stuff to them, and try to work out a deal where
they give you some of the money we are giving them. Maybe in a few
years, you too, can engage us, but right now, all of our resources are
pre-allocated to them. Sorry, this is the way it works, unless you
want to wait 2-3 years for the other process, which is not guaranteed,
and which you are obviously reluctant to do."
> DARPA program managers probably get contacted by such people once a
> week. They do not believe you because you are probably wrong. You have
> not even said what you have developed. It is quite possible to say
> this without endangering your intellectual and industrial property.
I thought it was evident from what I wrote. It's a clean slate
protocol stack as well a couple of miscellaneous things that depend
upon the stack:
Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>> I asked NSF if I made a proposal for a clean-slate stack that would
>> provide solutions to the problems above (the modular reduction issue
>> not withstanding), and whether my proposal would be rejected. After
>> some back-and-forth, I was told, "NSF does not 'buy' the clean slate
>> protocol stack effort.", so yes, I would be rejected. However, there
>> is another application which I offered, which cannot possibily exist
>> without a clean-slate protocol stack, which, strangely, they expressed
>> interest in, not seeing the necessity of one to have the other.
> They would believe a contractor who made the same claims because those
> claims would probably be right, simply because a contractor who made
> false claims would no longer be a contractor.
That's not what I am seeing. Both the largest contractors on the
military research I referenced were issued partial stop-work orders in
2005 because it became painfully evident to all watching that the end
result was no where near in sight:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6712/is_2005_May_6/ai_n29184748/
But a few months later, both were back in the game. A US Gov official
recently remarked that they would like to get away from such
contractors from time to time and go with small entities who actually
have breakthrough results, but it's hard, because the primes know how
to work the system.
> Of course you have managed to stir up the exceitable gaggle of
> "university of life self-made men" that inhabit this list, but do not
> let that encourage you.
On the contrary, I have watched their writings over the years, and I
see no reason to disregard what they say.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
illywhacker
> On 3 Jul, 17:56, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jul 3, 4:18 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
> > > In essence, the problem statement is:
>
> > > Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
>
> > <snip>
>
> > > To spoon-feed: The decisive question no one have asked,
> > > is whether this method of finding *both* the excitation
> > > *and* the sytem function from one observation, holds.
> > > To me it is pretty obvious that it doesn't.
>
> > I have no idea whether MFP does or does not work, but I do know that
> > you understand very little about estimation. Given prior models of x
> > and y, i.e. a probability distribution, x and y can be estimated
> > subject to the condition x + y = 1, and the uncertainties in these
> > estimates calculated.
>
> That might be true, formally. The problem is that
>
> 1) One has no idea if there is a source of interst
> present at all.
> 2) One has no idea where it might be.
Almost certainly false. Depth is constrained at least.
> 3) One has no information about the source characteritsics
None?! Could the source be a supernova under the sea?
> 4) One has only gross knowledge about the oceanography
> (data are known to within 2, maybe 3, significant digits;
> oceanography is continuously changing.)
> 5) There are almost certainly sounds form 'uninteresting'
> sources present when the measurements are made.
> All in all, MFP is a waste of time.
That may be so, but MFP does not make use of prior knowledge: it is
maximum likelihood, as you said.
illywhacker;
Rune Allnor
> On Jul 3, 6:08 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 3 Jul, 17:56, illywhacker <illywac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 3, 4:18 pm, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
> > > > In essence, the problem statement is:
>
> > > > Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
>
> > > <snip>
>
> > > > To spoon-feed: The decisive question no one have asked,
> > > > is whether this method of finding *both* the excitation
> > > > *and* the sytem function from one observation, holds.
> > > > To me it is pretty obvious that it doesn't.
>
> > > I have no idea whether MFP does or does not work, but I do know that
> > > you understand very little about estimation. Given prior models of x
> > > and y, i.e. a probability distribution, x and y can be estimated
> > > subject to the condition x + y = 1, and the uncertainties in these
> > > estimates calculated.
>
> > That might be true, formally. The problem is that
>
> > 1) One has no idea if there is a source of interst
> > present at all.
> > 2) One has no idea where it might be.
>
> Almost certainly false. Depth is constrained at least.
Bathymetry isn't. There could be an unknown mound
or through at the sea floor. Or the geological
characteristics of the sea floor might change.
If that happens, you're screwed.
And of course, the simulators can only handle so
many effects. If there are some effect present that
the simulator can't handle, you're screwed.
Oceanography is dynamic on a scale far beyond what
you would imagine. There are all kinds of wave
phenomena travelling on the internal boundaries,
like thermoclines. These are not well understood
or studied, mostly because people can't see them.
I've seen ROV navigation data that indicated the
pilot flew the thing as if he was drunk. On-line
video from the sea floor prooved that the guy flew
as he was supposed to. The nav system used acoustic
links from the surface vessel to the ROV, and were
almost certainly screwed up by acoustic propagation
paths being screwed up by some sort of internal
wave in the water column.
> > 3) One has no information about the source characteritsics
>
> None?! Could the source be a supernova under the sea?
Well, sources *have* been known to have similar
characteristics. In practice, the decision tree
goes something like
Q1) Is there a source present?
If 'yes':
Q2) Are the characteristica consistent with
A) One of many sources of interest?
B) One of many sources not of interest?
If 'A':
Q3) What are the parameters of interest
for the source?
The hard question is Q2. Without going into detail, there
are only so many characteristica to look for, and only
a small subset decide the outcome of Q2. Even if one
can decide Q2, you are basically screwed if there are
other sources present with similar characteristica as
the source of interest.
Rune
Jerry Avins
...
> On the contrary, I have watched their writings over the years, and I
> see no reason to disregard what they say.
When a discovery is new, people say, "It isn't true."
When it becomes demonstrably true, they say, "It isn't useful."
Later, when its utility is evident, they say, "So what? It's old."
a paraphrase of William James
Phil Hobbs
All sorts of people say stupid things in scientific papers. So what?
We were talking about DARPA programs.
Nice try.
Cheers
Phil hobbs
Phil Hobbs
Lots of stupid things get done. Done some myself. Was that a DARPA
program?
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Albert Manfredi
> The conclusions from this paper was essentially that
> the MFP method
>
> 1) Was thrown off by variation in just about any parameter
> of the ocean or measurement set-up that could possibly
> vary
> 2) Every single parameter had to be known to at least
> 3, often 4, significant digits.
Just out of curiosity, why not set off one or more distant explosions,
at known locations, to obtain the current conditions? Sort of getting
the impulse response of the transmission line, at that time?
> However, the cold war was still going strong, and the
> 'sources' in question were as big nuisances as ever.
>
> So no one wanted to pull the plug on MFP.
But underwater, fixed, acoustic sensor systems were nevertheless used
with some measure of success. So it's not like nothing worked.
> In essence, the problem statement is:
>
> Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
That can be a valid technique, though. Not quite as you state, but you
can solve for x given some guesses at valid y values, and then throw
out x values that make no sense.
In any event, this is an example of not seeing the forest for all the
trees. It is certainly likely that DARPA is contacted several times a
week by whack jobs. Much more likely than it is that contractors used
by DARPA are completely incomptetent.
At the same time, I have thought for a long time that Internet
Protocols were not conceived for the types of scenarios MANET wants to
examine, and that starting with a clean slate, in this case, might not
be such a bad idea. I surmise this to be what M. Le Lapin Chaud is
referring to.
Matter of fact, MANET seems like the sort of thing initially conceived
by those who wanted to solve a problem using the wrong tool (IP in
this case). My question, back then, why did they pick IP? Just because
it's popular?
Bert
Le Chaud Lapin
> On Jul 3, 10:18 am, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
> In any event, this is an example of not seeing the forest for all the
> trees. It is certainly likely that DARPA is contacted several times a
> week by whack jobs. Much more likely than it is that contractors used
> by DARPA are completely incomptetent.
One contractor who is supposed to be helping DARPA solve networking
problems told me during one of our round-tables that "too be honest,
we don't spend to much time above the link-layer", which was a bit
suprising, given that the problems of the contract could not possibly
be solved without the network layer.
After some frustration, I suggested we stop talking about my work and
instead focus on a particular extant problem they had. A manager at
the contractor said one problem was efficiency. The protocols
developed by themselves and the other contractors were destroying the
already limited bandwidth of the radios, and that if I could find a
way to reduce the bandwith, everyone would be ecstatic.
Sounded like classic opportunity to remove redundancy, if there were
any. It took me 20 minutes of going back and forth, asking them if
there was any redundancy. They did not know. Nor would they
characterize the link or say anything about the data. It was not
classified, so I could not see why they were holding back. Finally I
simply said, "Look, if there is redundancy, then you have a chance. If
not, you don't." I detected faint possibility that manager was
expecting hoping for some secret sauce that could always compress the
data, so I told him that if he had that in his head, he needed to get
it out. His long pause was not very reassuring.
> At the same time, I have thought for a long time that Internet
> Protocols were not conceived for the types of scenarios MANET wants to
> examine, and that starting with a clean slate, in this case, might not
> be such a bad idea. I surmise this to be what M. Le Lapin Chaud is
> referring to.
Yes. MANETS require a generalized model of addressing, topology, and
routing. Mobile networking is actually a dengerate problem of the
generalized problem of topological dislocation.
The contractor told me that DARPA/Air Force/etc. want true mobility,
with the missiles, etc. They are trying to use IP right now, banging
their heads. I told them that the solution required a reassessment, a
rethinking of what is actually happening. When I explained to them the
solution, they said, "That's great...but we need to do it using the
software that we already wrote." I said, "Well...maybe you guys could
work on that and tell me what you find." They want it both ways.
> Matter of fact, MANET seems like the sort of thing initially conceived
> by those who wanted to solve a problem using the wrong tool (IP in
> this case). My question, back then, why did they pick IP? Just because
> it's popular?
Ugly-Baby Syndrome. There are a bunch of graybeards who regard IP as
"good enough" no matter how bad it gets. Some actually regard duct-
taping as a kind of art.
It's only in last few years that it is no longer heresy to mention
"clean slate protocol stack" in the network research community. In
fact, eventually, there will be scores, if not hundreds, of such
projects all over the world. But the Internet will not tolerate a
plethora of clean-slate protocols, not at the fundamental level at
least. A few, perhaps, but not a lot. One will eventually rise to
challenge IPv4. And it's not IPv6. It will be something that people
will actually want to put on their computers.
So consider the situation brought on by the stubborness of the "good
enough" crowd. For 20 years they goofed around tweaking here, patching
there, writing papers about this and that...never considering the
possibility that, as with any novel technology, the first iteration of
it is at the "one-tau" or "two-tau" mark along the exponential curve
toward a maximum of "five-tau". Billions of dollars have been spent
in tweak mode, heads and minds buried deep in the bowels of TCP/IP,
twiddling "two-tau" mindset and expectations, when we now have the
machinery, both in CPU power, and link rate, for fully "five-tau"
scenarious [modular reduction problem notwithstanding].
And now, after 2005, it finally becomes ok to extract one's head and
ask not how it is, but how it should be. But what about those 20
years of tweaking IPv4? They are gone. Some groups predict that it
will be another 15 years before they know the answer to the question:
"How should things be?"
Meanwhile, for lack of a coherent, generalized module for network
protocol stacks, killer-apps that would make use of it have appeared
in fits and starts. The Internet did not have security, so SSL was
created as a duct-tape solution. No mobility? AT&T cobbled something
together anyway. Multicast? A company called Limelight, in my opinion,
is heading 100km/h toward its grave trying to make a business that
would be unnecessary if we had true multicast. The naming system is
fundamentally flawed, so many companies have sprung up to fill in the
holes. The addressing system is flawed, where MIT once had more IP
addresses than entire country of India. But we have NAT and DCHP,
which forces every distributed P2P application developer to device NAT
busters and identification systems.
The pent-up demand for solutions to these problems [naming, numbering,
addressing, mobility, security, routing, multicast, auto-
configuration, access-control, etc.] is so huge, if someone were to
provide them, in a coherent, monolithic form that is based on a sound
theoretical principles, with a mechanism by which it can be introduced
alongside TCP/IP without disturbing TCP/IP, the world would embrace
it.
For all we know, there might be several clean-slate protocols running
over the Internet right now, providing advanced applications, of which
the general public is not yet aware.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Rune Allnor
wrote:
> Rune Allnor wrote:
> > On 3 Jul, 15:42, Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net>
> > wrote:
> >> Rune Allnor wrote:
>
> >>> In the R&D world, however, failure to deliver a result
> >>> is, as often as not, the deciding argument _in_favour_
> >>> of extending the contract: there is always some next
> >>> detail to investigate.
> >>> You only need to *avoid* asking the decisive questions,
> >>> and you have a chain of projects lined up for years to
> >>> come.
> >>> Rune
> >> Riiggghhhttt. I'm sure you have specific examples of programs in mind?
> >> With details?
>
> > Of course.
> > But I think this is enough, for now.
>
> > Rune
>
> All sorts of people say stupid things in scientific papers. So what?
These guys rely on projects for income. They might formally
be emploied by universities or other institutions, but they
need to bring in external money.
IN fact, the candidate's ability to bring in external projects
is a decisive factor in University hiring policy. No one cares
if professors know their fields.
> We were talking about DARPA programs.
These guys are close enough to DARPA. In the paper
Jesus: Broadband matched-field processing of tranisent signals
in
shallow water
Journ. Ac. Soc. Am. vol 93 no 4, p 1841, April 1993
the author (and yes, it's the same Jesus who wrote about
the experiment)comments (p 1841) that "in all the ... literature
[reviewed by him], there is no evidence of stable source localization
results and, in general, only occasional agreement was found between
the measured and the predicted sound field; in most cases only a few
(and sometimes only one) [result] was shown for each [experiment]".
One doesn't get much closer to "Hey guys, what the heck is going on?"
in the scientific literature.
I don't know what happened after that statement was made, but I
know the guy relied on external projects for income, and he was
still working in the area ten years after he made that statement.
At which time he signed on to that "MFP is robust" in the paper
where the data show the exact oposite.
Your guess is as good as mine wrt what might have coerced him
into that kind of position.
Rune
Rune Allnor
> On Jul 3, 10:18 am, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
> > The conclusions from this paper was essentially that
> > the MFP method
>
> > 1) Was thrown off by variation in just about any parameter
> > of the ocean or measurement set-up that could possibly
> > vary
> > 2) Every single parameter had to be known to at least
> > 3, often 4, significant digits.
>
> Just out of curiosity, why not set off one or more distant explosions,
> at known locations, to obtain the current conditions? Sort of getting
> the impulse response of the transmission line, at that time?
Well, it can be done and is, to some extent, done.
But there are all sorts of problems with it:
1) Somebody need to do to a specific place at a
specific time to set off the charge
2) Explosives make a mess, both literally and
politically
3) The results of such a measurement are invalid
in a matter of hours. With a 100m nominal depth,
2m tides means that the depth alone varies with
2% during a tide cycle. One tide cycle takes about
12 hrs to complete. And depths is one of those
parameters one needs to know with more than 3
significant digits. Add some waves or swell, and
you are lost.
But the decider is usually that one doesn't want to
let anybody know one is out there, watching.
> > However, the cold war was still going strong, and the
> > 'sources' in question were as big nuisances as ever.
>
> > So no one wanted to pull the plug on MFP.
>
> But underwater, fixed, acoustic sensor systems were nevertheless used
> with some measure of success. So it's not like nothing worked.
These systems work, but not as well as the operators
want them to. The exact details of how these things
work are the subject of myth and superstition; suffice
it to say that Tom Clancy got just about every single
non-HW detail wrong in both "The Hunt for Red October"
and "Red Storm Rising."
> > In essence, the problem statement is:
>
> > Given x + y = 1, find x and y.
>
> That can be a valid technique, though. Not quite as you state, but you
> can solve for x given some guesses at valid y values, and then throw
> out x values that make no sense.
The problem is that users have no way of knowing what
values of x or y make no sense. The next time you are
by the beach, try and make sense of the waters you see:
- Depth (remember: >3 significant digits!)
- Bathymetry ( = underwater terrain)
- Salinity / tempertature layering
- Sediments suspended in the water
- Bubbles mized into the water by wave action
- Geological composition of sea floor
- Geological composition of deep sea floor layers
- Repeat the above for lines-of sight along different
bearings, to work out geographical variations of
the parameters
- Repeat the above at different times, to work out
temporal variations of the parameters
There are only so many factors you can even guess
at, with any sense of comfort. But all of the factors
above (plus several times as many more) influence the
characteristics of the recorded sound. Which in turn
means that you need to know these factors in order
to work out how they influenced the recorded signal,
before you can use the data to extract the desired
information about the source.
So you have no baseline to evaluate which environmental
parameters 'make no sense', meaning you are totally lost.
Rune
Rune Allnor
> One contractor who is supposed to [...] and that if I
> could find [...], everyone would be ecstatic.
I used to think like that. It backfired every single time,
for one reason and one reson alone: The people who are
*supposed* to know and achieve things (and usually well
paid for it), but don't, don't like to be shown or
reminded about the fact that they might not be up to
scratch at their jobs.
The Norwegian author Ibsen has written somewhere that
"If one exposes an average person's 'livsløgn' (lie in
life), one also robs him for happiness." (My translation.)
Which means that somebody who realizes their shortcomings
first time in a meeting with you, are in for a serious
blow at the personal level.
People who might not be so surprised by the same insight,
are likely not be too enthusiastic about meeting you
in the first place.
> Sounded like classic opportunity [...]
Not if you are dealing with average people. It would take
an extraordinary person to react as you would like him to,
just after you have exposed his shortcomings.
Rune
illywhacker
Good grief. This is classic egomania. Two egomaniacs, each supporting
the other's syndrome. Very unhealthy indeed. Rather distasteful to
read too, but somehow the horror and the humour of it make it
difficult to stop.
illywhacker;
JosephKK
That is, unfortunately, a close approximation to the truth about
research and research funding.
Jerry Avins
> Jerry Avins wrote:
>> Phil Hobbs wrote:
...
>>> Riiggghhhttt. I'm sure you have specific examples of programs in
>>> mind? With details?
>>
>> RCA's superconducting memory program in the early '60s.
>>
>> Jerry
>
> Lots of stupid things get done. Done some myself.
It didn't seem stupid at the time.
> Was that a DARPA program?
No.
illywhacker
That is, unfortuantely, an unsubstantiated assertion. Here's another:
no one in research avoids answering important questions in order to
get more funding. I have rarely heard a more stupid suggestion.
illywhacker;
Le Chaud Lapin
Certainly many researchers have followed a path they know will
ultimately dead-end because of some inevitable, detracting fact, but
will remain silent so as not to shoot themselves in the foot.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Le Chaud Lapin
<pcdhSpamMeSensel...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> > On Jun 29, 2:57 pm, Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> wrote:
> >> Look: if you have a good idea, ask DARPA to help you instantiate it. If
> >> you have a good method, develop it commercially. DARPA doesn't do demos,
> >> startup venture capitalists do.
>
> > About a month ago, I asked a PM if one of their active contractors had
> > made the same claims I was making about computer networking, and
> > wanted opportunity for a demo to prove it, would they get it, and he
> > said,
>
> > "Most likely, yes."
>
> > -Le Chaud Lapin-
>
> In other words, they'd believe them but not you.
Or at least they would give a demo to them.
In all fairness, they allowed me a demo yesterday, which is my 3rd so
far, for DOD, this time for the Army Research Lab. I have come full
circle through all the DoD agencies, and I think this is what is going
on:
Despite claims to the contrary, DOD and other government agencies are
not prepared for system solutions to grand challenges, or claims
thereof, by small entities.
To continue with my ICE analogy, they might be prepared for more
efficient governors, better rust-proof materials, safer boilers, etc.
They are also aware of future trends like engines that run on
explosive fuels, so they field many overlapping, redundant (wasteful)
projects in such areas.
But if someone appears from obscurity with a 75%+ functional ICE, that
not only validates their suspicions of the superiority of liquid fuel
over coal, but also adds a few small-but-necessary features that they
did not anticipate, they are not prepared. With more than $80US
billion to spend annually, they are not prepared in the slightest.
My frustration with them is that they know this to be the case, that
they have no programs in place for revolutionary ideas. They make a
great pretense however - their sites are plastered with words like
"advanced", "revolutionary", "high-impact", "grand", "high-risk".
Instead of simply admitting this, the program managers, as happened
yesterday, lead the inventor on, asking for white papers, etc, while
delaying to answer a critical question, which, if 'NO', would likely
cause the inventor to break communication.
"Is there anything more than your current funding programs which are:
1. Get in bed with one of your existing large prime integrators
(Boeing, General Dynamics, etc.)?
2. Run my system-oriented new technology through our incrementally-
oriented solicitation program?
"
There answer from the various DOD unts have been remarkably similar:
"Yes, we do have other means of funding than the 2-3 year cycle, but
we need to see what you have first."
I suspect that this is not true. They have nothing else, as each time,
I show them a bit, more than enough IMO, to make their determination.
To continue with the ICE analogy, I show them the engine running,
throttle, the 4-stroke cycle, ignition by spark plugs including
mention of need for precision in gap width, exhaust, need for
catalytic converter, valves, serpentine belt, water pump, cooler, etc.
It's enough that anyone else who has spent last 5-7 years of his life
trying to make an engine that runs on an exploding liquid would
recognize immediately the essential elements simply by virtue of
prolonged familiarity and universal wont of a solution.
Then, I ask them, "What are these other methods of funding that I do
not know about..." and they simply ignore my question, responding
instead by asking for "more detailed technical information". One
evalutor actually said that, even though he saw it working, I could be
doing it with smoke and mirrors. He is the one who is closest to
demanding source code, and this statement, I believe, was precursor to
his demand.
The clever ones move slowly, asking first for a white paper, then move
on to asking for diagrams. They all seem to know better than to ask
for source code, which actually makes me suspicious, because they tell
me over and over how they are 100% obligated by law not to
misappropriate outside work, even though I was never concerned about
theft from DOD itself, and was not suspicious of them, but of the
other contractors (my competition), so asking for source code should
not be an issue, if it is really not an issue, but they make it an
issue.
So at this point, ARL is refusing to tell me what other methods they
have for funding, but do want more technical documents.
They told me, "They are my customer, so I have to continue to convince
them of merit of my work", even though it is patently obvious to
anyone doing research in computer networking what it is I am offering.
The demo I gave is quite visual, and the paper documents that I have
sent them is more than sufficient to tell me the small bit that I want
to know.
In any case, I should not be surprise, I recently came across the
following passage in which Thomas Edison, of all people, was
frustrated out of his wits by the Naval Research Labatory, which he
helped found during WWII:
"Edison: Inventing the Century", Neil Baldwin, 1995, p. 346:
"He loved the clutter, camaraderie, and rituals of sea life. But while
the salt air seemed to invigorate him, by the end of the war, Edison's
official rhetoric had become riddled with criticism of the
impenetrable myopia and frustrating red tape that ultimately prevented
any of his four dozen ideas from being implemented by the navy beyond
the prototype stage."
If not for the billions of dollars of public money wasted by the
various government "research" agencies, this system we created in the
name of "advancing science and engineering" would be comical.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
fatalist
>
> - Show quoted text -
Forget about DARPA, dude, and all other government agencies for that
matter...
Those agencies exist for the sole purpose of spending taxpayer's money
(and maintaining executive lifestyle of their top folks)
Take computer speech recognition, for example
For all the money spent by DARPA over the last 3-4 decades and
associated hoopla we still don't have it.
They claim to be interested in pursuing new revolutionary approaches
but when they are presented with something new and clearly practical
they will turn their back on you.
Meanwhile everybody and his brother in the field knows that the
current dominant approach to computer speech recognition (fixed frame-
based signal feature extraction based on MFCC followed by HMM modeling
and search) is doomed
Go figure...
If you can patent what you have and don't mind spending next 20 years
in courts then go ahead and patent it (might take 5-6 years and 30+K
to get a patent in the current environment)
If not then you are probably screwed cause there is no way you can
sell you stuff and keep it trade secret from your competition
Sorry to dissappoint you, next time choose you field of endeavour
carefully
Albert Manfredi
> Despite claims to the contrary, DOD and other government agencies are
> not prepared for system solutions to grand challenges, or claims
> thereof, by small entities.
Of course, and that should not be surprising. Again, who knows how
many whack jobs they get each week, claiming to have solved cold
fusion. It is only natural NOT to throw money left and right, at one-
man operations, from their point of view. A demo is certainly not
enough to validate whatever claims you've made, if this is truly a
momentous discovery of grand scale.
I have to agree with their recommendations to you. Join up with one of
their contractors. You'll have to sell your idea to them first, of
course, which is not easy either. But at least, you'll be dealing with
people who know the obstacle course and can probably anticipate all
the dead ends, and also you have some chance of having your ideas
vetted by people who might just know something about the subject
matter. Not the managers, that would be surprising to me. But
hopefully real engineers and scientists.
The other option is academia, which is no easier.
You need something to give your claims credibility. You know,
gravitas. Going just on your own word, and the supposed expertise of
the few individuals sitting around the table that you've spoken with,
in my view, is a non-starter.
Either that, or patent the idea yourself.
Bert
Joerg
The other option is proposals to private enterprise, to corporations.
This is kind of the equivalent of a cold call in sales, except that you
are putting a whole lot more unpaid work into it than a sales guy,
easily a week, and it's in writing. There is no obligation on the part
of the recipient to respond right now, or at all. No pressure. When I
started doing that people scoffed and laughed. Until one of those
proposals hit bulls eye. Big time.
Just don't spill all the beans when writing proposals ;-)
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Le Chaud Lapin
> Albert Manfredi wrote:
> > Of course, and that should not be surprising. Again, who knows how
> > many whack jobs they get each week, claiming to have solved cold
> > fusion. It is only natural NOT to throw money left and right, at one-
> > man operations, from their point of view. A demo is certainly not
> > enough to validate whatever claims you've made, if this is truly a
> > momentous discovery of grand scale.
True, but I was not asking them for money, at least not yet.
I was asking them if if all their program had to offer was an
interposition of a prime integrator who would have every incentive to
act rapaciously against my work if I had what I said I had. And again,
there are plenty of people in DOD who said that this is true. In fact,
one said that, even within DOD, one has to be careful, as it has
historically been routine for DOD PM's to violate principles of
intellectual property without realizing they were doing so. For
example, a DOD PM would sign NDA with small contractor, then
subsequently discuss the IP with another big contractor, despite the
NDA, mostly out of ignorance. I was told by a DOD rep that in the last
2-3 years, DOD has hired outside legal consultants to train DOD PM's
across the entire organization so that they understand clearly the
importance of discretion and that proprietary information really does
mean proprietary.
> > I have to agree with their recommendations to you. Join up with
one of
> > their contractors. You'll have to sell your idea to them first, of
> > course, which is not easy either. But at least, you'll be dealing with
> > people who know the obstacle course and can probably anticipate all
> > the dead ends, and also you have some chance of having your ideas
> > vetted by people who might just know something about the subject
> > matter. Not the managers, that would be surprising to me. But
> > hopefully real engineers and scientists.
Yes, I guess...although it could easily go the other way. If I were
trying to sell new type of sock for the battlefield, this might be a
good idea, but we're talking about computer networking here. The
stakes are enormous, and no large contractor is going to sit back and
let us take credit for solving problems that they have been trying to
solve for last decade or so. The world simply does not work that way.
They would likely prolong the engagement as long as possible, neither
rejecting nor accepting our offer, creating "cooperative" type
relationships so as to blur the distinction between what we have done
and what they have done, until it no longer becomes clear to external
observers who did what, and we, not having a contract, are in a state
of desperation. This is straight from Pimping 101.
> > The other option is academia, which is no easier.
Definitely agree. I consider myself fortunate to have not followed
this path. Watching from the outside, it seems somewhat treacherous.
The same set of problems present themselves as in industry, but after
getting pimped, you get no money. At least in industry, there might be
a small morsel of equity retained.
> > You need something to give your claims credibility. You know,
> > gravitas. Going just on your own word, and the supposed expertise of
> > the few individuals sitting around the table that you've spoken with,
> > in my view, is a non-starter.
>
> > Either that, or patent the idea yourself.
This is the approach I actually decided upon 7 months ago. I only went
to DoD just in case my prejudice toward government funded research
turned out to be incorrect. It turns out that, IMO, the truth is far
worse than any perception that I had before.
> The other option is proposals to private enterprise, to corporations.
> This is kind of the equivalent of a cold call in sales, except that you
> are putting a whole lot more unpaid work into it than a sales guy,
> easily a week, and it's in writing. There is no obligation on the part
> of the recipient to respond right now, or at all. No pressure. When I
> started doing that people scoffed and laughed. Until one of those
> proposals hit bulls eye. Big time.
Hmmm..sounded like you broke through. I read somewhere that Cisco gave
more than 60 pitches before getting a bite.
I've tried the VC route, only to validate what I suspected, that there
would be no engagement. I tried perhaps 12 firms total. It has been a
bit of a dance. They are always polite in their responses, but I am
sure that, even though they do not say so, they simply do not believe
it.
A massive VC firm said:
"We do believe the importance of the software as you describe it. We
simply do not believe the solution will be deployed at once. It will
happen incrementally"
Another said:
"Your (video) product sounds intriguing, but it seems to be too
similar to current investment."
Another sent me an email with the word 'test' in it, thinking that my
proposal was a joke. After I contacted them to say that it was not, I
was chided for having the audacity to think that I had what
"researchers have been trying to find for decades." They demanded to
have the actual application so that they could run it themselves,
without an NDA of course.
An intermediary tried to set up a meeting with a large company who is
actively soliciting our type of product, as well as an aggressive,
tech-savvy VC, and were particularly stressed when the VC asked to see
me directly, without them acting as intermediary. When thet called me
back to give me update...I said to them, "Let me guess...the VC got
excited not by the thing you were trying to sell him, but by the thing
that made possible the thing you are trying to sell him, and asked to
see me and my team directly, and you're worried that I will cut you
from any deal made, since it is clear to all of us, including him,
where the IP actually lies..." Suprisingly, they agreed that this was
their sentiment, and thought that their take of 20% would be
sufficient. Usually, there is a counter-argument built upon various
types of organic fertilizer when you call a negotiator's bluff.
> Just don't spill all the beans when writing proposals ;-)
True. This is an art. The recipient of proposal could easily enter a
state of perpetual ignorance, demanding more and more explication as
time passing, neither closing a deal, or terminating discussions. The
more radical and/or valuable the product being offered, the more
likely the recipient is to play this game while simultaneously
endeavoring to keep competition ignorant, unless the provider is
already established, or has been known to disengage when the
fertilizer starts. In my experience, the vast majority of negotiators
will still try such crude tactics.
My small company will likely do this the old-fashioned way:
bootstrapping. We have a consumer product to get us started. The
revenue will not be large, but it will be a start. This method is
treacherous also, but at least, after our products are exposed, there
will be a clear point of attribution, which can be valuable in itself
for the next venture if things go sour with this one.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Robert Baer
Develop other consumer products as the more there are, the greater
the possible income and Moses (profit).
They do not even have to be directly related to your idea; what you
need is $$ to fund that idea.
If i was rich like i used to be, i would give you $100K to start
with; the catch being 10 percent of gross sales over a 10 year period;
keep the initial amount (by which time the initial amount would be
pocket lint).
fatalist
>
> - Show quoted text -
Great idea, dude !
Selling cookies on the street to fund big idea development
Might as well sell crack - it would leave him with more time to
actually work on the idea
I suggest marrying into rich family - that's what Bell did and he did
well
BTW, the OP was talking about redesigning internet from scratch, no
more and no less
Now he talks about some "consumer products"
WTF ?
JosephKK
Don't complain to me. I saw the post, properly quoted it, and
commented that it matches much of what i have seen. If you want to
complain about the original content go see the poster i replied to and
do not pester me. If you want to complain that i have seen many very
similar things in the real world, cry away because i will ignore you
after this: Do not bother telling me that i have not seen what i have
seen, i will not listen.
Le Chaud Lapin
I think for my situation that would be a very reasonable offer.
From others, the greed has been incredible. It's also surprisingly
irrational. Apparently, being wealthy is not enough. Getting a great
deal is not enough. Some investors want more. They want leave their
mark(s) on the world, and they no qualms about taking someone else's
rabbit foot and making it their own, if doing so will bring them what
they seek. One investor wanted "my total subordination and rights to
my brain for the forseeable future." Of course, that's not how
agreement was written, but that's what it essentially said.
> Great idea, dude !
>
> Selling cookies on the street to fund big idea development
Well, at this point, the thing I wold be selling could not be sold
unless the big idea were mostly completed, which is the case.
> Might as well sell crack - it would leave him with more time to
> actually work on the idea
> I suggest marrying into rich family - that's what Bell did and he did
> well
I think Mina Edison [second wife], while not funding Edison, at least
kept some order in his finances. Drexel-Burnham repeatedly used Edison
in the most rapacious way. I guess he didn't care.
> BTW, the OP was talking about redesigning internet from scratch, no
> more and no less
> Now he talks about some "consumer products"
> WTF ?
I gave a demo of one of those consumer products to Army Research
Laboratory yesterday.
There are many consumer products that can be made with a rewrite of
TCP/IP. This is why so many people are now on the clean-slate
bandwagon. They have developed a taste of such product while realizing
their infeasibility because the protocol stack is so broken.
Note that redoing the Interent is redoing the stack, which, if you
think about it, is not *that* big of a deal. It's just software, and
not very much of it anyway. Except for some unfinished business at
the link-layer for wireless devices that would greatly assist with
fast-handover for the mobility problem, the hardware we have is good
enough. This is why I think it is a waste to give hundreds of
millions of dollars to these "clean slate" groups popping up
everywhere. They don't need any new hardware, just a good C++
compiler, the best of which, IMO, is now free.
Things that new stack might help with:
0. 100,000 channels per TV set
1. Simulcast to 100,000,000 people from a laptop computer.
2. No user-names/passwords necessaryy on web sites.
3. Truly global file system
4. Truly global printing system
5. Networked home where every device is connected.
6. Distributed monitoring.
7. Battlefield comms...secured, mobile, multicasted
8. Medical records
9. Ad-hoc location-sensitive advertising
10. Zero-spam email.
11. PIN-less payment..other types of distributed payment
(micropayment)
12. Reliable electronic voting
13. X-Windows-like Microsoft Windows killer (or eroder)
.... (continue this list...117 last time I did a comprehensive count)
Unfortunately, it is often hard to see why a new protocol stack would
facilitate (greatly) these applications.
This why we made 4 consumer application prototypes in parallel with
the stack, so if DARPA, DOD, NSF, etc..did not see the necessity of
the stack, they would at least see the utility of one of the
applications, and hopefully work backward from that application toward
the stack. In the case of NSF, it worked, sort of - they want the
application, but not the stack, even though we have told them
repeatedly that the application's very existence derives from the
stack, which should be plainly obvious to them from looking at this
particular application (and having Ph.D's in computer science), but
apparently is not.
Except for multicast, if they attempt to recreate the application as
we have demonstrated it, they will encounter all kinds of problems;
and after each of these problems have been solved in turn, correctly
(not using NAT busters, SSL, username/passwords everywhere, etc.),
they will have the application, and a new protocol stack, in hand,
whether they wanted it or not.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
fatalist
Too much vested interest, dude
Corporations like Cisco and Mshit will never let this happen, unless
of course they can take all the credit and money too, leaving you with
nothing
It is their policy towards little guys
Somebody formulated it like this:
"When dealing with big companies there is no free lunch unless you are
that lunch"
And what's the use of new protocol if it's not backward compatible and
not adopted as universal standard ?
You can build your little pet project, a working demo, but who cares ?
I don't think redesigning TCP/IP and restructuring Internet as a
consequence is a proper project for small company to try out today
But good luck anyway and let us all know how it goes...
Joerg
> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
>> On Jul 7, 7:13 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[...]
Le Chaud Lapin (never seen that movie ...): I can't see your posts
because of a googlemail block so I can only respond after some else
does, like Robert in this case. Sorry, got no choice here until Google
cleans up their act, meaning all the spam.
>>> The other option is proposals to private enterprise, to corporations.
>>> This is kind of the equivalent of a cold call in sales, except that you
>>> are putting a whole lot more unpaid work into it than a sales guy,
>>> easily a week, and it's in writing. There is no obligation on the part
>>> of the recipient to respond right now, or at all. No pressure. When I
>>> started doing that people scoffed and laughed. Until one of those
>>> proposals hit bulls eye. Big time.
>>
>> Hmmm..sounded like you broke through. I read somewhere that Cisco gave
>> more than 60 pitches before getting a bite.
>>
60? Wow! I didn't need this many. Maybe half a dozen a year, if that.
But they do require a big chunk of unpaid work hours.
>> I've tried the VC route, only to validate what I suspected, that there
>> would be no engagement. I tried perhaps 12 firms total. It has been a
>> bit of a dance. They are always polite in their responses, but I am
>> sure that, even though they do not say so, they simply do not believe
>> it.
>>
Often they do not understand the technology very well. I have spent lots
and lots of time with fund managers. Only after knowing them for a while
did they break the ice. "Hey, could we skulk off and then you could
explain to me how this really works?" ... "Sure". One has got to learn
how to ratchet tech-talk down to a level that bankers can understand.
>> A massive VC firm said:
>>
>> "We do believe the importance of the software as you describe it. We
>> simply do not believe the solution will be deployed at once. It will
>> happen incrementally"
>>
>> Another said:
>>
>> "Your (video) product sounds intriguing, but it seems to be too
>> similar to current investment."
>>
>> Another sent me an email with the word 'test' in it, thinking that my
>> proposal was a joke. After I contacted them to say that it was not, I
>> was chided for having the audacity to think that I had what
>> "researchers have been trying to find for decades." They demanded to
>> have the actual application so that they could run it themselves,
>> without an NDA of course.
>>
ROFL! They must have been really naive.
>> An intermediary tried to set up a meeting with a large company who is
>> actively soliciting our type of product, as well as an aggressive,
>> tech-savvy VC, and were particularly stressed when the VC asked to see
>> me directly, without them acting as intermediary. When thet called me
>> back to give me update...I said to them, "Let me guess...the VC got
>> excited not by the thing you were trying to sell him, but by the thing
>> that made possible the thing you are trying to sell him, and asked to
>> see me and my team directly, and you're worried that I will cut you
>> from any deal made, since it is clear to all of us, including him,
>> where the IP actually lies..." Suprisingly, they agreed that this was
>> their sentiment, and thought that their take of 20% would be
>> sufficient. Usually, there is a counter-argument built upon various
>> types of organic fertilizer when you call a negotiator's bluff.
>>
Amazing. I've never had that happen. But my experience is that ideas are
better lodged with corporations that are familiar with not just the
market but also the technology. They see through any sort of proposed
technology in milliseconds, provided their senior managers are worth
their salt. BTDT, also on the other side of the table, the due diligence
side.
>>> Just don't spill all the beans when writing proposals ;-)
>>
>> True. This is an art. The recipient of proposal could easily enter a
>> state of perpetual ignorance, demanding more and more explication as
>> time passing, neither closing a deal, or terminating discussions. The
>> more radical and/or valuable the product being offered, the more
>> likely the recipient is to play this game while simultaneously
>> endeavoring to keep competition ignorant, unless the provider is
>> already established, or has been known to disengage when the
>> fertilizer starts. In my experience, the vast majority of negotiators
>> will still try such crude tactics.
>>
Not with me. Then I will politely cut them loose in due course.
>> My small company will likely do this the old-fashioned way:
>> bootstrapping. We have a consumer product to get us started. The
>> revenue will not be large, but it will be a start. This method is
>> treacherous also, but at least, after our products are exposed, there
>> will be a clear point of attribution, which can be valuable in itself
>> for the next venture if things go sour with this one.
>>
>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
> Bingo!
> Develop other consumer products as the more there are, the greater the
> possible income and Moses (profit).
> They do not even have to be directly related to your idea; what you
> need is $$ to fund that idea.
> If i was rich like i used to be, i would give you $100K to start with;
> the catch being 10 percent of gross sales over a 10 year period; keep
> the initial amount (by which time the initial amount would be pocket lint).
>
Only 10%? That's pretty generous of you.
Robert Baer
amount of money; at a few megabucks payback, i would tear up the contract.
illywhacker
I was not complaining; I was criticizing. You stated that something
was a close approximation to something else. This is an objective
assertion, not a description of anecdotal evidence. To protect
yourself you are now stating that you meant something other than what
you wrote, and you are getting stroppy. Your evidence for your
assertions necessarily constitutes a very small sample. Were you a
thinking person, you would take this into account, and present your
observations as anecdotal at best. But this is not what you did.
illywhacker;
Joerg
> Joerg wrote:
>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
[...]
>>>> My small company will likely do this the old-fashioned way:
>>>> bootstrapping. We have a consumer product to get us started. The
>>>> revenue will not be large, but it will be a start. This method is
>>>> treacherous also, but at least, after our products are exposed, there
>>>> will be a clear point of attribution, which can be valuable in itself
>>>> for the next venture if things go sour with this one.
>>>>
>>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>>> Bingo!
>>> Develop other consumer products as the more there are, the greater
>>> the possible income and Moses (profit).
>>> They do not even have to be directly related to your idea; what you
>>> need is $$ to fund that idea.
>>> If i was rich like i used to be, i would give you $100K to start
>>> with; the catch being 10 percent of gross sales over a 10 year
>>> period; keep the initial amount (by which time the initial amount
>>> would be pocket lint).
>>>
>>
>> Only 10%? That's pretty generous of you.
>>
> Think about how LARGE the market is; ten percent is a very large
> amount of money; at a few megabucks payback, i would tear up the contract.
IF the whole plan pans out, and that's usually a big "if". I have heard
from Japanese VCs that on average one out of ten make it. The other nine
just burn through an awful lot of cash and then fizzle.
Richard Dobson
..
> IF the whole plan pans out, and that's usually a big "if". I have heard
> from Japanese VCs that on average one out of ten make it. The other nine
> just burn through an awful lot of cash and then fizzle.
>
There is a popular story in the UK, that I am ~assured~ is not made up:
a British civil servant was talking to his US counterpart about their
respective [academic] research funding strategies. The US chap said that
typically around 10% of the allocation converted into successful
products, innovations, etc. The British chap said "Ah yes, interesting;
in the UK we just fund the 10%".
Richard Dobson
Le Chaud Lapin
> Robert Baer wrote:
> > Joerg wrote:
> >> Robert Baer wrote:
> >>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
> >>>> My small company will likely do this the old-fashioned way:
> >>>> bootstrapping. We have a consumer product to get us started. The
> >>>> revenue will not be large, but it will be a start. This method is
> >>>> treacherous also, but at least, after our products are exposed, there
> >>>> will be a clear point of attribution, which can be valuable in itself
> >>>> for the next venture if things go sour with this one.
>
> >>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
> >>> Bingo!
> >>> Develop other consumer products as the more there are, the greater
> >>> the possible income and Moses (profit).
> >>> They do not even have to be directly related to your idea; what you
> >>> need is $$ to fund that idea.
> >>> If i was rich like i used to be, i would give you $100K to start
> >>> with; the catch being 10 percent of gross sales over a 10 year
> >>> period; keep the initial amount (by which time the initial amount
> >>> would be pocket lint).
>
> >> Only 10%? That's pretty generous of you.
>
> > Think about how LARGE the market is; ten percent is a very large
> > amount of money; at a few megabucks payback, i would tear up the contract.
>
> IF the whole plan pans out, and that's usually a big "if". I have heard
> from Japanese VCs that on average one out of ten make it. The other nine
> just burn through an awful lot of cash and then fizzle.
This gets back to the whole random-vs-deterministic debate, and is
rooted in a kind of class struggle among investors and entrepreneurs.
People who are inept at choosing the right horses would have you
beleive that winning is random. People who are adept at choosing the
right horses would have you believe that winning is deterministic. In
between is a spectrum of ability to choose the right horses.
I had the conversation with a VC in New York City this past January
who had invested $5US million in a company doing IPTV. The company was
stuggling badly, near bankruptcy, and I had learned of it through one
of my ex-students who introduced them to me for a consulting project
that they wanted completed. It was difficult trying to figure out what
they wanted, because the person in charge of the project could barely
tell me what he wanted. He was polite, professionally, but
frighteningly ignorant. It took about 12 emails back and forth to
realize that the reasson I was having so much trouble understanding
him was because he did not understand himself. When I finally realized
what the other all goal was, It took all of 5 minutes of poking around
to realize that:
1. With the exception of my ex-student and another engineer, the
technical depth within the company was too low for them to be doing
what it was they are doing [data compression - they had stolen a
compressor from another company, essentially].
2. someone in company had grossly distorted the truth about capability
of product (flat out lied in fact) to customers.
3. The VC who invested the $5 million didn't have a clue.
4. The CTO of the company had recently spent 35 months in Federal
prison for burning down his own computer store. He was convicted on
certain evidence:
a. being seeing on camera running from the store holding a gas can a
few seconds before the store went up in flames
b. reeking of gasoline at the hospital where he was treated for 2nd
degree burns over his body (he didn't run fast enough)
c. his own employee's testimony that, the day before the fire,
employee was told to "get anything of value you own out of the store
by midnight tonight."
Anyhow, I was introduced to this VC for potential investment. As
mentioned, he understood very little about IPTV, let alone network
protocol stacks. It was obvious that I would get no traction with him,
so I asked him about the IPTV company, and the the word he used to
describe the investment was "problematic". It took the opportunity to
poke him a bit, to try to figure out what goes through the mind of a
VC when he writes a check for $5 million for an ex-asonists who claims
to have technology that, if it existed, would violate several
fundamental laws of information theory, not to mention was just plain
dumb to any engineer worth his salt in the field.
The VC starts up with the, "well...you can never tell with these
things...it's all random......the technology looked good...the guy
could sell snow to Eskimos!!!"
I disagreed and asked him if he understood the technology, and he got
angry and that was the end of that.
The point is that it's not entirely random. Just ask Andy Bechtolsheim
about his $100,000US investment in Google and other investments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim
It is more random for some VC's than others. Having worked for a few
startups, I can tell that most ideas, IMO, are mediocre at best (copy
cat, limited market, etc.).
Products like the Rubik's Cube, OTHO, were so compelling...not only
was the marketing initially bad, it was non-existent, and the product
still fared well.
In summary, better products typically do better.
-Le Chaud Lapin-
Joerg
Probably the British have the better crystal balls or maybe they keep
them well polished like their Bentleys and Rolls-Royces :-)
Rune Allnor
wrote:
The Norwegian attitude is that "we are such good friends
with the people behind the 10% that we get their results
for free."
I have heard this 'research by parasittism' be stated
as de facto policy in several institustions. The rationale
is that "we are too small and have too few funds, so we
can't be best. So we make sure we stay close to those who are."
One of my former colleagues told me he had presented himself
as an employee at whatever institution to somebody. "What a
pity - you people used to be good" was the response.
You only have to talk with managers are intermediate
and higher levels to get this attitude confirmed. Maybe
after a few drinks. Don't repeat my mistake - I talked
with these guys only after I signed the contract.
Rune
JosephKK
I do believe that you misunderstood me. Some other poster discussed
one incident, i remarked that matched fairly nicely with a basketful
of my own experiences. Now you complain that i am generalizing from
one incident, which i did not do. I do think you are obfuscating, as
i found no basis disbelieve the evidence of my own several
experiences.
Robert Baer
others?
What was presented was an account by the person that was *directly*
involved...
Robert Baer
businesses* fail within a year or less.
Robert Baer
Robert Baer
Most definitely, better products will do better in the marketplace -
but that liar and thief gave one proof that good salesmanship can turn a
sow's ear into silk..
Now the prime question is: is there such a thing as an honest and
honorable salesman?
If so, hire him - yesterday!
Robert Baer
have seen that in this one case".
He is an ass.
Richard Dobson
..
>> There is a popular story in the UK, that I am ~assured~ is not made
>> up: a British civil servant was talking to his US counterpart about
>> their respective [academic] research funding strategies. The US chap
>> said that typically around 10% of the allocation converted into
>> successful products, innovations, etc. The British chap said "Ah yes,
>> interesting; in the UK we just fund the 10%".
>>
>>
>>
>> Richard Dobson
> Nice joke, but totally impossible (think about it).
Of course it is (but not according to civil servants, it would seem),
but it depicts the situation we all experience here - the more than
slightly iffy (ignorant) attitude of government towards research
generally (especially generic research that may not have an immediately
obvious commercial application but (shock, horror) increases knowledge);
the near impossibility of getting any research funding; but most
particularly the requirement to describe the results of the research at
the application stage. They don't want research (because some of it may
fail), they want product development. It has to be fashionable, and it
has to be understandable by lay people.
I actually got a research officer job for a year (the maximum period
allowed for), through a grant on the AHRC** "speculative scheme" (it
goes in under a colleague's name, to employ me - the only way I can do
it as an "independent"). That is, it was expressly for projects where
the outcome was (relatively) uncertain. The project was classified "A+
priority funding", and they even asked if they could use the application
to train assessors. The project was more successful than anticipated
(our Sliding Phase Vocoder work, including a new frequency-domain
FM-based effect).
So we put in for a follow-up grant for three years, to "do it properly",
work on the HPC aspects to have it run in real time etc, develop a
ConstantQ version, fund a PhD studentship etc. We got a lot of help from
a hardware company in Bristol (some temporary income for me, kit for the
Uni), so there was no question regarding "industry relevance".
The application was rejected as "not a priority area". Some issues of
concern were cited in the rejection letter, namely (I quote verbatim)
"will the source code be made available as text?", followed by "will
there be a readme file?" (we publish all our work open-source - it is
all in Csound already). Now anyone putting in an application for funding
must be prepared for rejection (I have got very used to it); but I would
have hoped for better reasons than that, especially after the previous
pat on the back.
To make such a follow-up project start at the end of the funded year
without a break, we would have had to submit the proposal barely two
months after the start of that project - i.e. well before we would be in
a position to cite previous results, formulate goals, methodologies,
etc. With a turn-around time like that, plus the attrition rate for
applications, it is impossible to form any long-term plans for research
in a department.
So ~sometimes~ a little money is forthcoming, but there is no sense of
the need to follow-up, establish anything medium to long-term. In a way,
they money I did get was wasted, since I have had no means to develop
the work further. It all seems to be on the whim of whoever is
evaluating proposals at the time. If they are scientists but know little
about music and audio we are stuffed; if they are musicians but
understand nothing of computing, we are stuffed again.
So yes, it is a nice joke - gallows humour. A government that only funds
10% of what they should do (given their stated ambitions) is not taking
research (or researchers) seriously.
So I have given up.
</rant>
Richard Dobson
** Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK.
Paul Hovnanian P.E.
And then hand the results over to the United States.
--
Paul Hovnanian pa...@hovnanian.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Have gnu, will travel.
Benj
> That is, unfortuantely, an unsubstantiated assertion. Here's another:
> no one in research avoids answering important questions in order to
> get more funding. I have rarely heard a more stupid suggestion.
Sorry Tallywhacker, it is you demonstrating the stooopidity! Like
most scientists and engineers you haven't the least political clue!
DARPA works like this: It is NOT as everyone supposes an agency
dedicated to furthering research and the improvement of the world or
even of military applications. That is merely a cover and secondary
effect, which if it happens is OK and if it doesn't makes no
difference to the fundamentals of the organization. To think that
it's all about science and development is naive beyond believe.
Here the rule gents: "When a set of logical circumstances comes to an
Illogical conclusion, you can be SURE politics is involved.
DARPA and it's sister orgs all over the world are POLITICAL
organizations. Hence the primary focus is political. Which raises the
questions why would anyone EXPECT such an organization to be strongly
supporting new work simply because it is innovative and will
revolutionize and greatly improve some field of endeavor? Such an
expectation is nonsense.
The true goals of DARPA and places like it are political. They include
things like the bureaucrat "prime directive" [cover your ass!], the
support of your "friends", the crushing of your "enemies", the
distribution of large sums of money to create political control such
as to large numbers of graduate students which acts on the one hand as
a scholarship on the way to graduation keeping them dependent upon the
hand-outs and on the other as a method of keeping them confined to
"safe" research areas where they won't cause you trouble. And
secondarily, funding the students also provides control of their
professors as well through the "publish or perish" policies. The same
rules also apply to companies with new ideas as well. The goal there
is obviously also political which means that the effort has to be made
to force all new ideas through the large corporations so that they can
be controlled.
The political situation DARPA certainly does NOT want is a bunch of
students of tenured professors out doing research on their own, on god
knows what, that might have a major political impact on society or a
bunch of brilliant start-up companies revolutionizing their fields
where the large established "friends" can't keep them under "control".
Control, buster, it's ALL about control!
The reason you are all confused and bitching about how "dumb" DARPA
is, would be because you have totally misunderstood what they do! You
have bought into some totally false song and dance about "supporting
research" and beginning with a false premise you obviously can't make
sense of their behavior.
So let me assure you that if you are a genius with a grand idea that
could revolutionize this or that, the LAST thing DARPA wants to see is
for you to succeed at doing so! I can assure you that IF your idea
actually had serious merit, they would WITHDRAW funding because from a
military standpoint, the optimum place to develop such ideas is in
secret INSIDE the military. DARPA only acts as an idea generator for
the REAL research which will go on elsewhere. [inside the large corps
or govt. labs we called "friends"]
Put it all together and DARPA's seemingly "insane" actions make
perfect sense. The problem is not DARPA. It is quite effective at what
it really intends to do. The problem is Geek-types with ZERO
understanding of how politics work, and even less interest in getting
involved in politics, who only want to use their intelligence and
skills to improve the world. Sorry, such high-toned ideals sound
great, but will get you nowhere in a real world where predatory men
(and women) constantly seek power over others. In short. The problem
is you.
Joerg
Basically correct. However, if you are really working on the cutting
edge for example in medical the determinism coefficient is miniscule.
You simply can't know if a certain procedure will work. Nobody can. Else
one of the big pharmaceutical or devices corporations would already have
put it onto the shelves at Long's Drugs.
>> I had the conversation with a VC in New York City this past January
>> who had invested $5US million in a company doing IPTV. The company was
>> stuggling badly, near bankruptcy, and I had learned of it through one
>> of my ex-students who introduced them to me for a consulting project
>> that they wanted completed. It was difficult trying to figure out what
>> they wanted, because the person in charge of the project could barely
>> tell me what he wanted. He was polite, professionally, but
>> frighteningly ignorant. It took about 12 emails back and forth to
>> realize that the reasson I was having so much trouble understanding
>> him was because he did not understand himself. When I finally realized
>> what the other all goal was, It took all of 5 minutes of poking around
>> to realize that:
>>
>> 1. With the exception of my ex-student and another engineer, the
>> technical depth within the company was too low for them to be doing
>> what it was they are doing [data compression - they had stolen a
>> compressor from another company, essentially].
>> 2. someone in company had grossly distorted the truth about capability
>> of product (flat out lied in fact) to customers.
>> 3. The VC who invested the $5 million didn't have a clue.
That is a classical mistake. I will never understand this but VCs and
corporations are willing to spend six figures per case on legal counsel
but they balk at retaining a few engineering consultants for less money
to check things over. Naturally, that leads to tons of failed
investments. The worst one I've witnessed: I wrote a proposal to a
struggling VC-funded firm about how I and a FPGA/CPLD engineer could
help them pull through. This is because I saw quite clearly where they
were heading down the wrong path and how we could fix things. They
pondered it and then turned us down. Subsequently the whole business
went belly-up. And I knew it would :-(
>> 4. The CTO of the company had recently spent 35 months in Federal
>> prison for burning down his own computer store. He was convicted on
>> certain evidence:
>>
>> a. being seeing on camera running from the store holding a gas can a
>> few seconds before the store went up in flames
>> b. reeking of gasoline at the hospital where he was treated for 2nd
>> degree burns over his body (he didn't run fast enough)
>> c. his own employee's testimony that, the day before the fire,
>> employee was told to "get anything of value you own out of the store
>> by midnight tonight."
>>
Oh man, they didn't even do a criminal background check before investing
big money? Now that's pretty daft. What would that have cost? $100? $200?
>> Anyhow, I was introduced to this VC for potential investment. As
>> mentioned, he understood very little about IPTV, let alone network
>> protocol stacks. It was obvious that I would get no traction with him,
>> so I asked him about the IPTV company, and the the word he used to
>> describe the investment was "problematic". It took the opportunity to
>> poke him a bit, to try to figure out what goes through the mind of a
>> VC when he writes a check for $5 million for an ex-asonists who claims
>> to have technology that, if it existed, would violate several
>> fundamental laws of information theory, not to mention was just plain
>> dumb to any engineer worth his salt in the field.
>>
>> The VC starts up with the, "well...you can never tell with these
>> things...it's all random......the technology looked good...the guy
>> could sell snow to Eskimos!!!"
>>
>> I disagreed and asked him if he understood the technology, and he got
>> angry and that was the end of that.
>>
>> The point is that it's not entirely random. Just ask Andy Bechtolsheim
>> about his $100,000US investment in Google and other investments:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim
>>
>> It is more random for some VC's than others. Having worked for a few
>> startups, I can tell that most ideas, IMO, are mediocre at best (copy
>> cat, limited market, etc.).
>>
The ones I was actively involved in as engineer all took off. So far ...
But I also never participate in anything I do not believe in.
>> Products like the Rubik's Cube, OTHO, were so compelling...not only
>> was the marketing initially bad, it was non-existent, and the product
>> still fared well.
>>
>> In summary, better products typically do better.
>>
>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
> Seems that VC deserved to lose!
> Most definitely, better products will do better in the marketplace -
> but that liar and thief gave one proof that good salesmanship can turn a
> sow's ear into silk..
> Now the prime question is: is there such a thing as an honest and
> honorable salesman?
> If so, hire him - yesterday!
Actually yes, there are, but in an area most people do not know:
Christian businesses. For example I have retirement money tied up in an
organization called Church Extension Fund. No hard selling going on,
just plain old-fashioned financial advice. FDIC protected? Nope. Does
that bother me? Nope.
Robert Baer
Joerg
> Joerg wrote:
>> Robert Baer wrote:
>>> Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
[...]
No stocks. This was 100% VC- and government-owned (because they also
plowed funding into it via grants). All up in smoke now :-(
illywhacker
I quote your post of June 5: "That is, unfortunately, a close
approximation to the truth about
research and research funding."
This is not a claim about your experience. It is a statement about
supposed truth. It was not qualified.
illywhacker;
illywhacker
The ass is the one that does not actually read the posts. JosephKK's
post was not presented as you describe it. He said (I quote his post
of June 5): "That is, unfortunately, a close approximation to the
truth about
research and research funding."
This is not a claim about experience or any particular case. It is a
illywhacker
1) This is not what "anecdotal" means. It means precisely descriptions
of the incidents someone may have seen, with no actual objective study
of the situation.
2) JospehKK presented anecdotal evidence as if it were objective. He
said (I quote his post of June 5): "That is, unfortunately, a close
approximation to the truth about research and research funding."
This is not a claim about experience or any particular case. It is a
illywhacker
Um...this has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, at least not the
one to which you replied. The OP is the one with the revolutionary
idea.
> it doesn't makes no difference
Enough said.
illywhacker;
JosephKK
<illyw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Jul 10, 3:39 am, "JosephKK"<quiettechb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 9 Jul 2009 04:44:34 -0700 (PDT), illywhacker
>>
>>
<snip>
>> >illywhacker;
>>
>> I do believe that you misunderstood me. Some other poster discussed
>> one incident, i remarked that matched fairly nicely with a basketful
>> of my own experiences. Now you complain that i am generalizing from
>> one incident, which i did not do. I do think you are obfuscating, as
>> i found no basis disbelieve the evidence of my own several
>> experiences.
>
>I quote your post of June 5: "That is, unfortunately, a close
>approximation to the truth about
>research and research funding."
>
>This is not a claim about your experience. It is a statement about
>supposed truth. It was not qualified.
>
>illywhacker;
And you have a problem with that why?
Robert Baer
> On Jun 29, 9:33 pm, Phil Hobbs>>> On Jun 29, 2:57 pm, Jerry Avins <j...@ieee.org> wrote:
>>>> Look: if you have a good idea, ask DARPA to help you instantiate it. If
>>>> you have a good method, develop it commercially. DARPA doesn't do demos,
>>>> startup venture capitalists do.
>>> About a month ago, I asked a PM if one of their active contractors had
>>> made the same claims I was making about computer networking, and
>>> wanted opportunity for a demo to prove it, would they get it, and he
>>> said,
>>> "Most likely, yes."
>>> -Le Chaud Lapin-
>> In other words, they'd believe them but not you.
>
> Or at least they would give a demo to them.
>
> In all fairness, they allowed me a demo yesterday, which is my 3rd so
> far, for DOD, this time for the Army Research Lab. I have come full
> circle through all the DoD agencies, and I think this is what is going
> on:
>
> Despite claims to the contrary, DOD and other government agencies are
> not prepared for system solutions to grand challenges, or claims
> thereof, by small entities.
>
> To continue with my ICE analogy, they might be prepared for more
> efficient governors, better rust-proof materials, safer boilers, etc.
> They are also aware of future trends like engines that run on
> explosive fuels, so they field many overlapping, redundant (wasteful)
> projects in such areas.
>
> But if someone appears from obscurity with a 75%+ functional ICE, that
> not only validates their suspicions of the superiority of liquid fuel
> over coal, but also adds a few small-but-necessary features that they
> did not anticipate, they are not prepared. With more than $80US
> billion to spend annually, they are not prepared in the slightest.
>
> My frustration with them is that they know this to be the case, that
> they have no programs in place for revolutionary ideas. They make a
> great pretense however - their sites are plastered with words like
> "advanced", "revolutionary", "high-impact", "grand", "high-risk".
> Instead of simply admitting this, the program managers, as happened
> yesterday, lead the inventor on, asking for white papers, etc, while
> delaying to answer a critical question, which, if 'NO', would likely
> cause the inventor to break communication.
>
> "Is there anything more than your current funding programs which are:
>
> 1. Get in bed with one of your existing large prime integrators
> (Boeing, General Dynamics, etc.)?
> 2. Run my system-oriented new technology through our incrementally-
> oriented solicitation program?
> "
>
> There answer from the various DOD unts have been remarkably similar:
>
> "Yes, we do have other means of funding than the 2-3 year cycle, but
> we need to see what you have first."
>
> I suspect that this is not true. They have nothing else, as each time,
> I show them a bit, more than enough IMO, to make their determination.
> To continue with the ICE analogy, I show them the engine running,
> throttle, the 4-stroke cycle, ignition by spark plugs including
> mention of need for precision in gap width, exhaust, need for
> catalytic converter, valves, serpentine belt, water pump, cooler, etc.
> It's enough that anyone else who has spent last 5-7 years of his life
> trying to make an engine that runs on an exploding liquid would
> recognize immediately the essential elements simply by virtue of
> prolonged familiarity and universal wont of a solution.
>
> Then, I ask them, "What are these other methods of funding that I do
> not know about..." and they simply ignore my question, responding
> instead by asking for "more detailed technical information". One
> evalutor actually said that, even though he saw it working, I could be
> doing it with smoke and mirrors. He is the one who is closest to
> demanding source code, and this statement, I believe, was precursor to
> his demand.
>
> The clever ones move slowly, asking first for a white paper, then move
> on to asking for diagrams. They all seem to know better than to ask
> for source code, which actually makes me suspicious, because they tell
> me over and over how they are 100% obligated by law not to
> misappropriate outside work, even though I was never concerned about
> theft from DOD itself, and was not suspicious of them, but of the
> other contractors (my competition), so asking for source code should
> not be an issue, if it is really not an issue, but they make it an
> issue.
>
> So at this point, ARL is refusing to tell me what other methods they
> have for funding, but do want more technical documents.
>
> They told me, "They are my customer, so I have to continue to convince
> them of merit of my work", even though it is patently obvious to
> anyone doing research in computer networking what it is I am offering.
> The demo I gave is quite visual, and the paper documents that I have
> sent them is more than sufficient to tell me the small bit that I want
> to know.
>
> In any case, I should not be surprise, I recently came across the
> following passage in which Thomas Edison, of all people, was
> frustrated out of his wits by the Naval Research Labatory, which he
> helped found during WWII:
>
> "Edison: Inventing the Century", Neil Baldwin, 1995, p. 346:
>
> "He loved the clutter, camaraderie, and rituals of sea life. But while
> the salt air seemed to invigorate him, by the end of the war, Edison's
> official rhetoric had become riddled with criticism of the
> impenetrable myopia and frustrating red tape that ultimately prevented
> any of his four dozen ideas from being implemented by the navy beyond
> the prototype stage."
>
> If not for the billions of dollars of public money wasted by the
> various government "research" agencies, this system we created in the
> name of "advancing science and engineering" would be comical.
>
> -Le Chaud Lapin-
Be advised of an article in the July 6 issue of Information Week
titled "Feds on the Edge" starts: "Software that learns how to schedule
your day. Supercomputing tricks our PCs will soon borrow. Networks
resilient enough for the rigors of space. These are some of the bright
ideas coming out of different government agencies."
There is a following article "How government's grabbing the cloud".
Information Week's "dig deeper" points to
informationweek.com/alert/fedcto .
Gives you a better idea as to what they think "progress" means...
illywhacker
> On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:44:04 -0700 (PDT), illywhacker
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
Because if it is anecdotal it is misleading to present it as objective
fact without qualification.
illywhacker;