faster,better,cheaper

there was a advert for a large computer company (msft, ibm..??)that featured a bunch of celebrities giving advice to some geeky little kid. mohammed ali said 'float like a butterfly...etc' someone said 'timing is everything.' the last person said 'faster, better, cheaper'. firstly, i'd like someone to identify this speaker. second, the term 'faster better cheaper'(fbc) refers to a desire to produce a fixed amount of product in shorter time (faster), improve the quality of the product (better), and decrease the cost of production.(cheaper) these three goals cannot be achieved simultaneously. if you try to decreace the cost of producing something, it will always be at the cost of either speed or quality. likewise, better only at the cost of cheaper and or faster. fbc was the motto of nasa for a while. that is until their spacecraft started failing. they made more spacecraft for fewer dollars but the quality went down. please reply if you think you know of a counter example that would disprove the conjecture that fbc is an impossibility.

Dunno - a Google search turns up several copies of a transcript, but they all simply refer to this speaker as 'CEO'.

FBC is possible immediately if the original method was inefficient, or becomes possible with the passage of time as technology improves.

You've never heard of Linux, have you.

Many times throughout history, changes have been made to processes whereby they have not only become faster, better and cheaper - but also safer.

kirok schrieb:

Semiconductors comes to mind. If cars had improved like semiconductors have since the 1950s, a car would cost $100, run on a thimbleful of gas, and be faster than the speed of sound. It would also fit in a matchbox.

Given that, I'd check whether the speaker isn't an Intel CEO - Moore maybe.

Almost all technology is now faster, better, cheaper: audio recordings, air travel, cars, entertainment, videogames, telephony/communications, ....

There are drawbacks that come with these ecomomies of scale: e.g. having millions of cars is much worse than having just a few hundred of them where pollution, health and community structures are concerned.

I note that education and warfare are exceptions to fbc - technology has not made much of an impact.

Cheers

Ah you have heard of it. Unfortunately your source appears to be a Microsoft propaganda article.

Nobody in their right mind would try to claim that Windows is anywhere near as fast as Linux.

And nobody at all not connected with Microsoft would apply the label 'quality' to it.

) e.g. personal computer. sure, they are fbc compared to 10 years ago. ) but at no point in time were benchmarks X up, Y up and Z down ) simultaneosly. for various reasons, every time a better computer is ) produced, it cost more to the consumer and probably cost more to make.

Your claim about personal computers is based on nothing.

And why did you ignore 'semiconductors' as someone stated already ? It is quite obvious that semiconductors clearly fit the bill of 'fbc'.

The rest of your discussion seems to *assume* that your conclusion is true, and then reasons from there. Which is, obviously, nonsense.

SaSW, Willem

kirok schrieb:

I understand that.

Microsoft developed Xenix. Please compare.

Microsoft started devloping OS in 1980 or so. Linus started in 1990 or so. After 12 years, Micorsoft had Windows 3.1. After 8 years, Linux had a stable kernel, xwindows, and window managers that could run rings around 3.1, while at the same time not crashing as often. Faster to market, more features, more stability, cheaper.

It was developed *later* and therefore doesn't have the market share that windows does.

You originally wrote so that's an improvement. (It would be even better if you spelled 'decrease' correctly).

Compared to the 1980s, today's PCs are faster to make because they have far fewer components on the motherboard. They're cheaper to make because they have far fewer components on the motherboard. They are also more reliable because they have far fewer components on the motherboard.

Hint: what you just read is a C O U N T E R E X A M P L E to your thesis.

Actually, the more you make of something, the lower the shipping costs per item.

All incorrect. You can make things faster, better, and cheaper than you are now; you need to find a better way of making them to do so,