"Drinking your own koolaid" definitely has to be on the list. People are, for whatever reason, often unable to see their own failings and mistakes, choosing instead to blame other factors or others around them. When presented with incontrovertible evidence, they'll start equivocating, blaming the messenger, or will simply refuse to accept the fact for any number of reasons.

I'd also say that "fear of risk" is on the list. Successful big gambles look incredibly obvious in hindsight, but failed gambles can also get you fired. As the old saying went in the 80's, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". In the 90's, it was "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". For entertainment in particular, though, being too cautious can end up resulting in lukewarm products, which is nearly as bad as horrible products. Lukewarm or boring is fine for most business products. It's a killer in the entertainment industry.

You should totally write a book. You'll make millions!

It seems like a lot of people in upper management get so caught up in trying to figure out how to extract money for their customers rather than intently focusing on a product that people will willingly part with their money to obtain. Lenovo is a great recent example. Contrast that with Apple, who's customers often display an incredible amount of brand loyalty, despite the premium price of their products.

Not too surprisingly, the top leadership of Sega Japan was largely made up of old men who probably didn't actually play videogames themselves. I don't see how you can make good decisions for a game development company if you don't play videogames yourself, or at the very least, if you don't really listen to people within your company that do. It's pretty obvious that didn't happen enough.

Thanks for the interesting articles Sarah. I was familiar with many of the more commonly known facts, as I watch a lot of war documentaries, but I still learned quite a few things as well.

I suspect we largely agree on the generalities, but I'd have said "yes". Sega is on life support, but not quite dead. Atari has died, was buried, resurrected like a zombie, and is in the process of dying a second time. Both companies made bad decision after bad decision, causing the collapse of their companies. Sega seems to be following in Atari's footsteps quite handily, the only difference being that Atari had a nice head start on them.

I always wonder what it is about businesses that seem unable to do just about anything to turn themselves around versus more successful ones. Simply the guy at the helm? The corporate culture? A too-entrenched bureaucracy? How does a single company make bad decision after bad decision so persistently?

The article talks about how a brand like Atari can survive in a new home, but what's the point of that? It can be resurrected and slapped onto new products, but unless those new products actually reflect what made the brand successful in the first place, it will eventually wither and die again, just like before. It's a recipe for a short term fix and subsequent fall. If anything, a "new branding" simply indicates a company's lack of confidence in their ability to make their own name a recognized and successful brand.

Yep. I've also heard that there's essentially zero difference between a pesticide factory and one that produces chemical weapons. This was one of the problems the inspectors in Iraq had. Not sure of the veracity of that info, but given the historic link between pesticides and military chemical weapons, it doesn't sound all that far fetched.

I'm not usually one to celebrate lawsuits. And you're right, there's not a lot of individual damage per computer. Rather, I'm perfectly fine with a modest payout per users that punishes Lenovo for this, both monetarily and with bad press. This sort of behavior absolutely has to stop, and I'm willing to enrich a few lawyers to make it happen. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good, I suppose.

Maybe this will wake people up to the fact that we seriously need some stronger consumer privacy laws. I'm also typically one who prefers to let markets manage themselves until it's clear that government actually needs to step in. I'm afraid we're at that point, because it's abundantly clear that too many companies are willing to go to just about any lengths to extract personal data from people in unscrupulous ways (as well as the government itself, ironically, but we'll tackle that issue separately).

So, yeah, it is actually a BFD. In fact, not every business customer uses their own system image - especially smaller business. And just because a personal user chooses specific services like Google whom they may trust, it does not give another company the right to make those decisions on their behalf. Many of those customers may well have chosen to avoid such services for that very reason. That choice was taken away from them, and instead, the computer they paid for was made less secure by that adware which was forced on them unknowingly. Fine, it's a first world problem, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

I'm sure the government is well aware of that necessity. The NSA has been carefully monitoring the situation for some time now.

Have you seen Particle Fever? It's possible to make a movie about technically complex topics that's also accessible to a wider audience. Human drama is probably the most important element in any successful movie, but you can also surround that drama with technical information. People become more receptive to it that way, rather than eyes glazing over.

I don't believe I declared that humans are the "apex of creation", nor even declared them to the most successful, depending on how you define that. I was just pointing out some advantages of our physiology that's led to our current evolutionary success - meaning we've survived so far as a species. Of course, past success does not guarantee future performance.

By other metrics, such as evolutionary diversity, I might choose ants or arachnids. Maybe simple shrimp species that haven't changed much in 200 million years for longevity. For evolved senses and specialty equipment, perhaps sharks (some of whom are also amazingly old too).

Incidentally, the fact that we kill each other is hardly unique to humans, and doesn't seem a detriment to survival. Ants, spiders, and sharks all kill each other as well. The only thing that makes it dangerous as a species is our most advanced weapons. Even then, it's actually debatable whether we could actually exterminate ourselves via nuclear weapons in a worst case scenario. Recent studies suggest that the effects of nuclear winter, while obviously catastrophic to civilization and mass populations, would not actually end all human life.

Well, yeah, I'm not really disagreeing with you regarding that. I'm aware that it's an extremely expensive organ in terms of nutrient consumption. I was just pointing out that intelligence offers more benefits than increased food gathering capabilities.

Interestingly, you talk about the need eat a lot of food. Our human brain actually allows us a richer diet by giving us the intelligence to cook our food. That makes it easier for us to digest meat, which in turn makes us more efficient predators. I've read that some researches believe cooking our food enabled us to eventually evolve smaller guts, which allowed that extra nutrition to go towards enhancing our brains instead.

Food for thought, one might say?

Intelligence can do far more than gather food more effectively. Less intelligent critters are plenty good at that as well. Early proto-humans probably had some other advantages, such as the ability to adapt to changing conditions, or to create tools useful for weapons or defense, all thanks to bigger brains. Intelligence is really the ultimate utility trait, because it allows for better adaptation that might cause other animals to simply die out. Look at how successfully early humans survived all over the globe, in almost every climate, even without dramatic physical alterations - only minor differences, such as eye shape, skin pigmentation, etc.

That being said, the other advantage we have is the evolutionary path that allowed us better use of those big brains, such as the ability to walk upright and opposable thumbs on very dexterous hands. As such, we can more easily shape the world to our advantage through sophisticated tools. Without the proper bodies to manipulate the world around them, intelligence would do a creature far less good. Improved intelligence may have been tried before, but it may not have been worth the increased nutritional demands without the correct body to take advantage of it.

Koch brothers vs George Soros
Rush Limbaugh vs Jon Steward
Ronald Reagan vs Bill Clinton
Tea Party vs Occupy Wall Street
Fox News vs Mainstream Media

Each team has their heroes and villains.

I own several guns already, thanks. No need for the snarky attitude though.

I suppose you're right that those characteristics can be easily modified, as from what I understand, they're largely there because of the hand-finishing / cleanup that guns go through during the manufacturing process. So, it would make sense that they'd rapidly change as well.

As is so often the case, if there's a "simple" idea that hasn't been implemented, there's probably a pretty good reason *why* it hasn't been implemented. I've seen that quite often in so many other fields that I'm actually an expert in, so it was probably overly-presumptuous of me to think I'd not be susceptible to that a field I'm not an expert in either.

No need for such over-complicated and over-engineered solutions.

Each gun already imprints a unique microscopic signature on a bullet and casing. Just submit a scan of a fired bullet and cartridge to a central database for each new firearm sold, where it's linked to the serial number. They're test-fired before use anyhow, so I'll bet the manufacturer could easily add a forensic-type scanner to the manufacturing process, likely completely automated as well. Then we wouldn't have to rely on serial numbers on the gun at all then. Any bullet in good condition could likely be linked with the serial number using that database.

Law enforcement already uses this technique, but can only perform matching tests if the gun or additional fired rounds are found. This wouldn't require any new technology at all, only new procedures.

You're absolutely right that "assembly-line" programmers who largely copy-paste code (or at least patterns) and change a few lines here and there to customize it may be replaced someday, of course, although not nearly as soon as some may imagine. Essentially, that work will be abstracted into a more streamlined solution and will be configured entirely by data - that's always been the trend, but there's always new technology that seems to rapidly replace the old, so the demand for custom solutions currently remains high.

Even so, those of us who are actually inventing new technology or working on very new and different problems all the time are in absolutely no danger of being replaced in the foreseeable future. Maybe that's selfish of me, but... *shrug*