Which is exactly the corner that Microsoft has backed themselves into now

Good luck with that.

it is all about money.

“Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.”
(Albert Einstein)

Why that? Simply because information is “dead” data while experience is “alive” data (data that makes sense because it is related to real-life situations that the subject HAS HAD to overcome -hence the inner understanding).

And the obvious question is ‘how can we extract, store and transmit this experience’?

We can, if we understand that this is only possible to do it without algorithms: the structure is the information.

If you understand the structure then you know what experience is.

I talk about the drills and “games” of yore as well as TopGun/RedFlag up to and past Americas Army v3. Vets (ie older soldiers) are debriefed and simulations/games are produced so rookies and others “learn” the things not to do or to do in a given scenario?

Just because they tie it into a fancy name and/or use fancy XML is not very innovative.

As for Non Military work Boeing has been doing this _already_ to train aircraft techs – just search google for boeing training using graphic simulation (aka Game).

Until IBM clients begin to realize the immense DRAINing of employee veteran talent and the TOP heavy and willing to cut peoples throats for a investor’s buck of profit attitude of IBM management the slide will continue.

I just remember the quote from Aliens
Ripley: How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant?
Gorman: Thirty eight… _simulated._
Vasquez: How many *combat* drops?
Gorman: Uh, two. Including this one.
Drake: Sh@t.
Hudson: Oh, man…

IBM should just patent how to ram the US patent system into the ground and get it all over with.
Ben Franklin is rolling in his grave. He refused the patent on the Franklin Stove as he knew society would benefit as a whole by not doing so.

Its not that he did so on each one of his inventions but he knew that patents were there to promote Community and not destroy entire neighborhoods which are surround the factory/plant/office as an entire industry gets carted off to the cheapest labor force by Management.

Two things will stop IBM and those like them — eventually.
1) Culture Clash
2) Trust in the Enforcement of Law

1) Its impossible to think how proud IBM USA management is to think that they will not hear the word “NO” eventually from their colony employees. At which time they will have to get US government or another government to put down the strike. This is the modern IBM – East India Company all over again. All cultures tend to not respect “foreign management” for long.

2) I ask you. If somebody outside the USA is entrusted to run my company IT or whatever and he/she sells out my data/passwords to my competitor and destroys my company?

Why yes, I _sue_ IBM USA but the guilty will not likely or never get prosecuted in his country but only fired by IBM Division XYZ. Same if they do a shabby job, don’t deliver on time or the product. So its really impossible for IBM or individuals they employ to be “criminally punished” other than in economic terms in off shoring work.

Indeed the USA is becoming more morally corrupt but as a citizen I hope that if my management/coworkers are caught being bribed, taking kickbacks, etc they go to jail, prison and/or get their assets seized and forfeited as ill gotten gains. If they pollute then my kids in the neighborhood beat up their kids in the neighborhood. I can stand outside their yard and protest at their house. But all this breaks down under off shoring.

This is necessary to society if but to preserve the Trust & reputation of the industry or industry practice. If customers don’t “trust” the enforcement of law between companies who do you think will still be doing business?

TRUST, which is impossible to buy through acquisition or increase because of offshoring, was really once THE hallmark of IBM. They have lost it because of investor greed and mismanagement.

Now if some asks me, “Do I buy IBM or not?” I might say its a marginal company – what they buy is good, what the do with it is mediocre but as a whole I hesitant to trust them to support my business as it were their own business over the long term.

If you want to know where this leads, take a good, long look at the U.S. Government. They make up 90% of my client base, and I can say, with certainty, that they are not paid to “think”. They are told to follow instructions, or they will be “written up,” (my clients tell me all the time why they can’t “do the right thing”, else it goes into their employment record).

There are two ironies in all of this. One, is that IBM is hired to provide the thinking capacity for clients like these. When IBM has reduced its services professionals – by its own insatiable need for cutting costs – to a herd of automatons, its usefulness to clients will collapse, and it will begin a long period of decline. Two, the very principles which lead to a series of repeatable, measurable tasks, (i.e. “lean” and “six sigma”) that can be done by cheap(er) labor requires, first, a thoughtful individual who can facilitate the transformation of data into information and then into insights.

After the implementation of the concepts behind patent, how many of those folks will be left?

Answer: it won’t matter. We’ll be working directly for other clients and firms.