[HN Gopher] The Cannae Problem
___________________________________________________________________
The Cannae Problem
Author : flobosg
Score : 112 points
Date : 2025-05-02 13:11 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.joanwestenberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.joanwestenberg.com)
| roenxi wrote:
| > Rome's eventual strategy--the Fabian strategy of delay,
| harassment, and avoiding direct confrontation--wasn't intuitive
| to Romans. It felt wrong.
|
| My understanding of the story is Fabius was running the Roman
| strategy before Cannae and had identified all the lessons of that
| battle in advance. It was clear that in a pitched battle Hannibal
| was going to do extremely well. It is a fascinating historical
| example about how being right is not enough in politics, but
| Fabius got a unique opportunity to demonstrate that he told them
| so. It was clearly foreseeable and foreseen, so the entire
| problem the Romans had was that their leadership operating
| foolishly.
| hueyp wrote:
| Yes, he was appointed dictator before the consulship of varro /
| paullus, but his strategy proved unpopular. It makes sense:
| identity is hard and slow to change, and the romans had a
| strong identity around aggressiveness.
|
| That said, in the defence of romans, they were also open to
| learning and integrating others ideas into their own. Scipio
| africanus absolutely learned from hannibal, and was able to
| layer aggressiveness, deception, and delay into his strategy.
| Every metaphor is imperfect, and cannae is absolutely an
| example of being blind / stubborn, but my quibble with the OP
| would be that romans didn't _really_ change their aggressive
| identity in the long term, and that identify continued to serve
| them well for 100's of years after hannibal.
| Attrecomet wrote:
| We could adapt the comparison and imagine Kodak realizing the
| digital business just enough to adapt a bit, but never shift
| their focus: Just enable digital photography to make the
| business case for any newcomer unviable, so they'll run out
| of money before they start to turn a profit, but not innovate
| enough to create the digital photography age we have today --
| it would stay a niche market, for people for whom traditional
| film really wouldn't work, just like it was in the years
| leading up to the shift.
|
| And then let's strain the comparison, when even overcoming a
| genius general like Hannibal is no longer enough, and you
| shift from a strategy of "who cares how many losses it takes,
| Rome has more men" to the crisis of the third century, and
| barbarian coalitions coalescing into what would become the
| huge tribes and proto-states of the Migration Period, when
| that strategy wasn't even viable for any day-to-day conflict,
| given the severe military manpower constraints Rome faced,
| and destroying your enemy in an attritional battle made way
| for hurting them just enough that they were amenable to a
| tolerable negotiated settlement. One could imagine the
| widespread adoption of smartphones as the point where the
| original market strategy of ignoring digital photography as
| much as economically feasible would end, and the digital
| photography era would finally start.
| zahlman wrote:
| Or we could take the real example of Philip Morris
| successfully adapting to the declining popularity of (and
| increasing legislation against) cigarette smoking and the
| approach they've taken to cannabis (in places where it's
| legal).
| sevensor wrote:
| Yeah, this was bad generalship, albeit on a much bigger scale
| than the Republic was used to. The Romans were no strangers
| to military disasters, but they were unusually resilient. The
| conquest of Italy was far from a sure thing, and it included
| numerous thrashings by the volscians, aequians, sabines,
| veiians, et al.
| soco wrote:
| I would say science and why not also democracy are having their
| Cannae moment right now. And it's painful to watch...
| ogogmad wrote:
| #NotAllDemocracies
|
| More broadly, I think that Americans have been too arrogant and
| have been prone to thinking that the only part of the world
| which matters stops at their own borders.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| In support of "democracy", some States tried to prevent Trump
| from being on the 2024 ballot--that is, to prevent the demos
| from selecting who they wanted.
|
| There are several similar stories from Europe where the
| putatively democratically elected leaders are working to save
| the demos from itself.
|
| So #NotAllDemocracies, but more than there should be
| Attrecomet wrote:
| It's not horribly unusual for a system that can be called
| democratic with every right to exclude those that have
| repeatedly stated, and shown in action, that they would not
| actually abide by any result that goes against them. It's
| the paradox of intolerance right there -- it's not those
| defending the rules of democracy that are damaging it.
| dudinax wrote:
| A democracy has to protect itself from coup attempts
| FredPret wrote:
| This is a natural consequence of:
|
| - major oceans on two sides, very similar country on one
| side, and only one border with a truly different country
|
| - 25% of the world's economy
|
| - very easy to travel, work, and do business internally
| across the US
|
| - some cultural and lots of climate diversity inside the US
|
| All of which means you can live a very full and happy life
| without ever leaving the States or even thinking about what
| happens outside of it.
| Qem wrote:
| That is happening in the energy sector. US owes a lot of its
| initial development surge to early oil exploration. But now
| China is making strides in green energy, fleet electrification
| and renewables deployment, while the big oil lobby acts like an
| anchor dragging US behind, hampering advance in those areas.
| hangonhn wrote:
| > The mighty armies of Carthage? Sent packing in the First Punic
| War.
|
| The first Punic War was won by the Romans by beating the mighty
| NAVIES of Carthage at sea. Carthage was historically a sea power.
| And the Romans did it by adopting new ideas and tactics.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Most important wars in the Ancient Mediterranean had a major
| naval component.
|
| It can be argued that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire
| in the 5th century AD was caused, or at least massively
| hastened, by two negative naval events:
|
| a) the Battle of Cartagena (461), where the Roman navy was
| defeated by the Vandals, partly due to some captains being
| corrupt [0]. This prevented Majorian, the last great Western
| emperor, from reconquering North Africa;
|
| and
|
| b) the Battle of Cape Bon (468), again a massive failed effort
| to crush the Vandals [1]
|
| It is somewhat obscure to modern readers, but Vandals were
| probably more dangerous at sea than on land.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cartagena_(461)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Bon_(468)
| hangonhn wrote:
| This is so dang cool!!! No I didn't know that the Vandals
| were more dangerous at sea. Thank you for sharing!!
| johnnyjeans wrote:
| In my view, it was won because the Elder Council underestimated
| the threat. Had they known how the defense of Sicily was going
| to go, they could have easily afforded to hire 50,000 more
| celts and turned them out onto the Italic peninsula to raise
| absolute hell. But hindsight is 20/20.
|
| The Romans bet big and stretched their logistics to the
| absolute limit to march every conscript they could muster down
| to Sicily. The Italic peninsula was completely undefended. If
| word had reached the army (many of whom were gang-pressed
| enemies of the Latins) that their villages were burning, the
| overwhelming majority would have revolted and fled to try and
| make it back to their homes. There would have been no recourse
| for the Romans, they spent literally everything they had
| coercing their army together and getting them down south.
|
| The Canaanites are a resilient kind of people, the Greeks
| created the Phoenix as a metaphor for their civilizational
| tenacity. They can bounce back from anything. But the Elder
| Council made a very grave mistake. After the first Punic war
| they did bounce back, but they never had a chance to stop the
| Roman barbarians ever again. Their imperialism of the other
| Italic tribes had become ingrained, and it allowed them to grow
| too strong for a non-martial culture to castrate. The grave
| danger of underestimation is the most important lesson to take
| away from the Punic wars, imo.
| 2mlWQbCK wrote:
| Do you really need this to explain WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3?
| They, like many others, built their castles on Microsoft's land.
| Isn't it that easy? What could they have done realistically once
| Microsoft decided they wanted to own the market for word
| processors and spreadsheets?
| yonisto wrote:
| At the higher level (CEO) no one thought Windows 3.11 will
| succeed. So much so that even MS thought that OS/2 would do
| better (and it was technically superior). So neither Lotus nor
| WP were willing to invest in a windows version prior to the
| launch. It was not an inevitable outcome.
| toast0 wrote:
| WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 ran on many platforms, including
| Unix (I don't know which flavors).
|
| I don't think people would want to have to boot directly into
| WP to do word processing and into 123 to run spreadsheets,
| especially in the age of multitasking and embedding.
|
| There wasn't some alternate strategy they could have pursued.
| Microsoft developed market power with DOS and Windows, which
| simultaneously means that productivity tools _need_ to be
| offered on that platform or they can 't make sales, and that
| Microsoft has the ability to priviledge its own productivity
| tools.
|
| _Maybe_ you could try to play hardball when Microsoft started
| their productivity tools and convince them to cancel it, but
| that would have been anti-competitive and also needs a lot of
| prescience to predict Microsoft 's future actions.
| hughw wrote:
| But you can't turn that into a business book and speaking
| engagements.
|
| The article strikes me as yet another shallow, masquerading as
| deep, insight you find in the business paperbacks at the
| airport shop.
| yonisto wrote:
| October 7 comes to mind. The Israelis had almost all the data
| about the attack but convinced themselves it will not happen.
| immibis wrote:
| Some say October 7 was allowed to happen because the Israelis
| were running low on casus belli. And look how far they've been
| able to stretch it!
| slashdev wrote:
| That's the cynical take, and it's been said about 9/11 as
| well. I don't think it's actually true in either case - but
| it's impossible to say with 100% certainty.
| dragontamer wrote:
| 9/11 was after an election year.
|
| Oct 7th was during an election after Bibi started to
| directly take power out of Israeli courts.
|
| It makes very little sense for George Bush to try to create
| a problem so far away from reelection.
|
| That being said, it's a bit conspiracy theorist to blame
| Bibi without evidence. But if any evidence came up, the
| timing and overall political environment makes more sense.
| yonisto wrote:
| Israel elections were on November 1st 2022, the next
| elections will take place around November 2026.
| dudinax wrote:
| They had bombs in Hezbollah pagers. At this point I'd
| need to be convinced mossad didn't know about thousands
| of hamas soldiers massed for an attack.
| yonisto wrote:
| Those same 'Some' actually believe that Palestinians were
| expected to be murderers and rapists, and they played their
| role for perfection?? Who would have thought...
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I also thought about October '23 but also October '73. Iron
| Dome made the government (not idf) captive of "conception" and
| the multi billion dollar fence... The whole system was so
| fragile. Also the Yom Kippur war and the Bar-Lev line, same
| belief in powerful defence lines and captive of old concepts.
|
| At least an attack on Hizbollah was out of the box thinking,
| which gives some credit to the establishment.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| So they went from "The strategy can win it" to "The strategy
| cannae win it"?
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| I used to talk about this at IBM, though mostly couched in the
| phrase "we have become an organization optimized for a business
| environment that no longer exists."
|
| And if you came within 50 yards of an ROTC department in the
| 1980s, the staff there would drag you into a discussion of
| Cannae. It was one of the first battles young officers are
| taught. Like religious scripture, you can find _something_ in the
| records to support just about any lesson (though obviously
| military instead of moral.)
|
| It's good to see this tradition persist.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| they probably picked it up on the military boarding school most
| higher ups went to.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| One of the interesting things about the US military is the
| uniformity of training. There's an entire group in the Army
| called TRADOC, or Training and Doctrine Command. The US
| military is sort of slow to adopt new ideas, but once they
| do, TRADOC makes sure everyone gets them pounded into their
| heads. I haven't been in the Marines for close to 35 years,
| but I can still tell you what BAMCIS is an initialism for and
| could probably still call in a fire mission.
|
| Even though leaders who attend boarding schools at West Point
| and Annapolis have a leg up politically, the US military has
| been open to good ideas coming from places other than service
| academies. Modern Maneuver Warfare came from a political
| rando. But he was a political rando with a decent idea and
| access to pentagon staff.
|
| And no one seems to know who came up with the "lazy
| commanders" concept that is so often attributed to Moltke.
| It's a decidedly American concept that couldn't possibly have
| survived the Prussian Army of the 19th century. (The best
| source I've heard is Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, which is a
| little surprising, but maybe he said it right after WWI.)
|
| But yes... military boarding schools in Maryland and New York
| cast a long shadow over the US armed services.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Annapolis smacks you upside your head whenever you start to
| get an ego about having come from Annapolis, so most of the
| people I know get along fine with ROTC or other sources of
| officers. Generally, the political connections come from
| outside the experience at the academy, most of the folks I
| went there with were just regular people with no political
| connections, and today they are still just regular people.
| The folks who rise to the top like Captains or Admirals all
| have the connections they have from their families or
| elsewhere.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Yup. My dad retired as a bird colonel and went to Baylor,
| then OCS. And I think Colonel Day who lived across the
| street came from a random university in Iowa. But my dad
| had more than 10 air medals, a couple DFCs, multiple-
| award silver star, bronze star w/ V and Colonel Day had
| the most amazing array of ribbons topped with a CMH. So
| another way is to kick ass and get a lot of awards.
| Though I don't know if that gets you into the General
| ranks. I think there's an assumption that Generals have
| to be pretty politically aware and people who rack up the
| medals and awards may be "opinionated." I mean... there's
| a reason John McCain retired as a Captain and not an
| Admiral, despite family connections.
|
| Which is to say... I think you're onto a general rule,
| but like everything else there are exceptions.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Their mental maps of how battles should unfold were so
| ingrained that they couldn't recognize when the territory had
| changed.
|
| This feels like the core aspect of most bad leadership I've
| experienced.
|
| Organizations _can_ turn on a dime, even very large ones, if
| leadership allows themselves to recognize and adapt to the new
| terrain.
|
| The central challenge with this is that the adaptation process is
| painful, often requiring a 1v1 contest to the death with one's
| own ego.
| topkai22 wrote:
| From the title, I thought this article was going to be about how
| Hannibal won an incredible number of victories in the Second
| Punic War, but Carthage still lost the war and had to take
| devasting terms of surrender.
|
| It's about how Rome was defeated at Cannae due their
| overconfidence and inability to adapt, but doesn't examine how
| Rome ended up winning in the end. It is interesting how dependent
| on framing case studies are.
| zahlman wrote:
| >but doesn't examine how Rome ended up winning in the end
|
| There's quite a bit about Fabius' tactics in TFA, actually.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| I don't recall that in The Force Awakens?
| zahlman wrote:
| (In case your confusion behind the joke was serious: "the
| f[ine] article", common HN slang.)
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Fine, foregoing, fucking.
|
| Depends on you!
| jkmcf wrote:
| Rome only recovered because Hannibal didn't march on Rome.
| cwmma wrote:
| Rome recovered because if its literally unmatched in the
| ancient world ability to recruit armies and put orders of
| magnitude more men in the field as a portion of their
| population.
|
| Hannibal never marched on Rome because he knew he could never
| take it. Doing a siege in the area most loyal to Rome would
| have been suicidal for his force.
| csunbird wrote:
| Hannibal was basically in a hostile land, without proper
| logistics support. There was no way that he can stay still
| and lay siege, only way he was able to survive so far was
| his ability to stay mobile and live off the land.
|
| In case of siege, the Romans would not need to fight, they
| could simply wait until his army slowly died from
| attrition.
| vondur wrote:
| I thought that was due to him not having the equipment needed
| to carry out a successful siege. His strategy was to defeat
| the Roman Army in the field and then peel away their allies
| in the peninsula.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| It's also worth noting that some of the Roman commanders were
| simply bad, and Hannibal himself was not without flaws.
|
| The best example of the former is Gaius Flaminius, who was
| defeated by Hannibal at Lake Trasimene. [0] Livy memorably
| describes Flaminius as "not sufficiently fearful of the
| authority of senate and laws, and even of the gods themselves."
| Hannibal took advantage of his rashness to lure Flaminius into
| an ambush in which he and his entire army were annihilated.
|
| Furthermore you could argue--and may still do--that Hannibal
| didn't even completely win Cannae, because he failed to attack
| Rome after his victory. His commander of cavalry remarked at
| the time, "You, Hannibal, know how to gain a victory; you do
| not know how to use it." [1] I'm personally inclined to think
| Maharbal was correct, but that's the advantage of hindsight.
|
| These accounts are both based on Livy, who didn't let facts to
| get in the way of a good story.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Trasimene
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae#Aftermath
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Coincidentally, the excellent podcast, Tides of History, is
| currently doing a miniseries on the Punic Wars, and just
| covered why Cannae didn't end the war.
|
| https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-
| history/season/5/?epPage=...
| ithkuil wrote:
| Also, Rome defeated Carthage when Hannibal was no longer a
| player
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| hehe, and here i was thinking it was gonna be some scottish
| variant of the scunthorpe problem.
|
| (cannae = cannot)
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_Scottish...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "It is interesting how dependent on framing case studies are."
|
| She fails to consider specifically that so-called "tech"
| companies also operate via "orthodoxy". There are enormous
| "gaps" in their "mental models and reality". As such, there are
| similarly-sized opportunities for "disruption" and
| "innovation". But as we have seen through documentary evidence,
| sworn testimony, and Hail Mary tactics like deliberately
| destroying evidence and giving false testimony in federal
| court, these companies rely on anti-competitive conduct. This
| is not merely an "inability to adapt", it is an inability to
| compete on the merits. One could argue the ability to
| effortlessly raise capital coupled with the large cash reserves
| of these companies results in a certain "overconfidence".
|
| This is of course not the frame she chooses to adopt.
| DuckConference wrote:
| What the fuck is happening? How is some "what the spanish
| inquisition taught me about SAAS sales" linkedin spam getting
| near the top of the HN feed?
|
| Also the author's knowledge of roman history seems to be to the
| level of a summary of an inaccurate youtube video.
| immibis wrote:
| This is a link aggregator for founders of tech startups funded
| by venture capital - never forget it.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The mention of Blockbuster/Netflix reminds me of a series of
| articles that was posted on HN about a decade ago, but I can't
| find now. The thesis was that the demise of Blockbuster was
| overdetermined, and it was floundering long before Netflix got
| any degree of popularity.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Also, if you know the inside ball on Netflix/Blockbuster then
| you've heard that blockbuster did massively fund a break into
| digital and streaming at a time that conceptually wasn't "too
| late" but Netflix was way ahead of them on classification
| systems and predicting lifetime customer ROI.
|
| Netflix had cutting edge marketing automation teams that
| sabotaged every single dollar and every sales initiative by
| dumping low and _negative_ value consumers (dorm IP addresses,
| etc.) onto every single loss leader marketing initiative
| Blockbuster launched. They had "independent" free signup
| marketing flows for "free stuff" etc, and if they identified
| good clients they would be sent to Netflix, predicted "bad
| customers" they would actively send to blockbuster.
|
| Netflix's "counter marketing" team was extremely successful.
| Indeed is a good example of a company that has had similar
| expertise in their org as well.
|
| Oddly enough the short hand lesson people learn about
| blockbuster is both true and a slight of hand.
| sevensor wrote:
| I think the Sicilian Expedition would have better served the
| point here. Cannae is a disaster, but the Republic bounces back.
| Syracuse was a point of no return for Athens.
| thesurlydev wrote:
| Where has this blog been all my life.
| 1minusp wrote:
| I thought this was about scots/scottish dialects.
| cameldrv wrote:
| I see this with the U.S. military today. If you look at what has
| happened in the last year in Ukraine, the Ukranians are building
| about 250,000 drones a month. I'm not sure the U.S. military
| would prevail against such a force. The U.S. has some very nice
| drones, but in quantities that are hundreds of times less, due to
| extremely expensive military procurement.
| ithkuil wrote:
| It's a lot about resilience to defeat.
|
| Some states can suffer tremendous losses and yet they can
| eventually prevail due to their stronger industrial capability
| in the long run.
|
| That's what allowed the US to defeat the Japanese in WWII.
| Japan had a capable military apparatus at the start of the war
| but they were not able to scale their production at the same
| rate as the much larger US.
|
| The only way for a smaller state to defeat a bigger one is to
| go all in and win quickly.
| pmontra wrote:
| That was not the case for Vietnam vs the USA or for
| Afghanistan vs the Soviet Union. I'm both cases there were
| internal anti war movements, especially in the USA, and (for
| the smallest state) the resolve to outwill the largest one,
| no matter how many years and deaths it would take.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Well of course this logic works only if both belligerants
| go all in.
|
| A defender who feels an existential threat can outpace an
| attacker that is fighting a war far away from home without
| any strong stakes.
| tintor wrote:
| Expensive in peace time.
|
| In war time or emergencies there will be immense pressure to
| cut through inefficiencies.
| Bearstrike wrote:
| This comment is correct as written: The U.S. is under-equipped
| with small UAS.
|
| However, if you're suggesting that that the U.S. is blind to
| the importance of small UAS (given the context of the article),
| that is fortunately not the case.
|
| The U.S. started taking note of the importance of small UAS as
| early as the second Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, where their
| use was prevalent. The continued appearance of small UAS (and
| their increased volume) throughout the war in Ukraine cemented
| the place of small UAS in future combat.
|
| The recognition of how small UAS are changing the game is a big
| reason (but not the only reason) the Army cancelled the FARA
| program. Manned Aviation at the scale it is done in the past is
| not how wars will be won. It isn't going away, but it's
| roles/prevalance is changing.
|
| If you're truly interested, see the DoD memos this week that
| include info about the Army's shift in focus with respect to
| aviation and unmanned systems.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's probably "Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform"
| https://www.defense.gov/news/publications/
|
| I wonder if UAS include small FPV drones. The language of
| those announcements is necessarily vague.
| cameldrv wrote:
| They may recognize that it's an issue, but the problem is
| going to be procurement and manufacturing. Ukraine is
| building FPV drones for about $500 each. A Switchblade 300,
| which is roughly comparable to these, costs $60,000.
|
| At those prices, we will never have the kind of quantities
| that Ukraine and Russia have.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > Roman soldiers fought in a checkerboard formation, with the
| front line engaging the enemy, then cycling to the back to rest
| while the next line moved forward. This rotation system allowed
| Romans to maintain constant pressure while preventing fatigue.
|
| The first thing that comes to mind is StarCraft2 Stalker blink
| micro. They have shields that regenerate over time, so the front
| wave fights until shields are low then fall back to recharge.
|
| The 2nd part is also covered by general SC2 tactics, concave
| fronts increase attacking numbers more than convex defenders'.
| roxolotl wrote:
| One thing that's difficult about this is knowing if accepting a
| differing strategy than orthodoxy will actually be successful.
| Absolutely effort should be put into breaking out of the Cannae
| Problem but it's easy to fall into a reverse trap where simply
| because something is unorthodox it must mean it's the solution to
| the current challenge.
| senderista wrote:
| Coincidentally, this morning I listened to a podcast that tries
| to take a first-person POV on this battle:
|
| https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/episode/5629-expe...
| Thrymr wrote:
| The business side of this is largely a retelling of The
| Innovator's Dilemma: large successful businesses often struggle
| to adapt to nimble challengers that can innovate in ways that are
| structurally very difficult in the larger org.
| frutiger wrote:
| > It's August 2, 216 BCE
|
| Did August exist before Augustus?
| jjmarr wrote:
| If the author said "Sextilis 2, 216 BCE" you wouldn't know it
| was late summer.
|
| And BCE didn't exist before Jesus Christ (AD/BC was invented in
| 525). So the period-accurate translation is "Sextilis 2, the
| year of consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius
| Varro".
| t43562 wrote:
| Symbian's Operating System really was superior. After all it was
| fully multitasking and all operating system calls were
| asynchronous. And it was written in C++ so the inside of the
| operating system was object oriented and easy to understand.
|
| The failure was that Nokia made 20 products at a time where Apple
| made 1.
|
| The effort to support the huge amount of variation was enormous
| and the low spec hardware made the software extremely difficult
| to get working at acceptable performance. So instead of 1 bug
| fixed once you'd have 20 sets of partially different bugs. The
| decision to save money by using low spec hardware also negatively
| affected the way application level software was designed and made
| it extremely effortful.
|
| Building it took days and they insisted on using the RVCT
| compilers which though better than GCC were much slower. If
| they'd had enough RAM on the phone and enough performance to
| start with then it would not have been necessary to cripple
| development like this to eke out performance.
|
| This is all about Nokia's matrix organisation which they created
| to optimise the model that was working for them - lots of phones
| at different price points. Apple made it obvious that this was
| unnecessary. One expensive phone that made people happy was
| better.
|
| There were other aspects to their failure which they did try to
| fix - such as having an app store and addressing user experience
| issues. They just couldn't do it effectively because they
| insisted on building many phone models.
| hinkley wrote:
| I had the fortune of being in one of the launch markets for
| Ricochet, which tried to sell a wireless modem back in the days
| of the Psion 5 and before GPRS was really a thing.
|
| The modem had I found the highest mAh rechargeable batteries so
| I could use the internet in cafes. Never really got it to be a
| daily use device. But that is still one of my favorite keyboard
| designs ever. The double hinge on the clamshell was really
| cool.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't play milsim but I do play Age of Wonders and find the
| oblique order works better.
|
| Hannibal put his strongest units on both flanks. Frederick the
| Great put more units on one flank, and when that broke they
| crushed sideways along that end of the formation. Unzippering the
| entire front line. It also, I suspect, put the opposing general
| in mortal danger sooner, since he now has to retreat when the
| battle is only half over.
|
| Having your strongest on one end means you can't get separated
| into two groups. Unlike a game with an omniscient general you
| risk losing communication with half your army if things go
| poorly.
|
| But it's more common in games, where the general is omniscient
| and fatigue does not exist (so running across the map takes time
| but not energy), to see the lines fall back at a diagonal,
| forcing the enemy to chase down the far end of the formation,
| while it falls back to the center and the center joins the flank.
| By the time the battle is fully joined, the overmatched flank is
| nearly defeated, and the formations can roll up on the enemy's
| center within a turn or two, while the rest stalls for time.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Strengths are weaknesses insofar as they bias you against
| building alternative capabilities. This is true on the personal
| level as well.
|
| As for military red teams, a more relevant example might be from
| Japan in the 1980's: when they did product development, they set
| up distinct groups that had to take different approaches and
| compete for the chance to be the ultimate product.
|
| The difficulty with taking this too far is anxiety,
| undifferentiated fear, splitting focus and attenuating
| priorities. That drains you and makes you ineffective. Players
| too weak to confront you directly sow discord in your ranks. That
| brings us back to questions of loyalty and validating that the
| critical perspective is being adopted in good faith. (Sadly all
| at work today in the US.)
| chasil wrote:
| > Kodak and digital photography: Kodak actually invented the
| first digital camera in 1975. But the company was so committed to
| its film business model that it couldn't adapt its thinking when
| digital technology began to take over.
|
| The opposite of this is "knife the baby" which I first heard in a
| stage production of (I think) _The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve
| Jobs_.
|
| The Macintosh would far supplant the cash cow of the Apple ][
| (Apple 2).
|
| Jobs did it anyway.
|
| This appears to contradict both confirmation bias and groupthink
| (mentioned in the article).
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/theater/reviews/the-agony...
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/microsoft-asked-appl...
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