# Think Tank? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 4, 1999, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632 "1999-06-04T13:11:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/1 "1999-06-04T13:11:00Z")
## What the hell is a think tank? You hear about their opinions on the news without any indication of who these people are. Is it a club? Is it a job? Who can join? What does it pay? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/2 "1999-06-04T13:21:00Z")
Do you REALLY think posting the same damn thread four times in a row will get you an answer any faster?! A double post I can understand; servers can play tricks on you sometimes. But four times in a row?? * * * Cave Diem! Carpe Canem! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/3 "1999-06-04T13:23:00Z")
I take that back… I replied to one thread and my reply got spread over two of 'em. Now _I’m_ confused. * * * Cave Diem! Carpe Canem! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/4 "1999-06-04T13:26:00Z")
Sorry. I have no idea how this multiple posting happened. Maybe I’ll just have nine of my fingers removed. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/5 "1999-06-04T14:29:00Z")
Clearly there is a tech problem here. Two threads point to the same page. (/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000999.html) Moderator! Admin! Someone! Help! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/6 "1999-06-04T15:39:00Z")
A think tank is a kind of research organization. The prototypical think tank was the RAND Corporation formed (I think) around the end of WWII. The distinction between a think tank and a normal research team is that a think tank doesn’t produce products or prototypes, it produces ideas. Generally they have a team of experts on whatever topic they are working on who brainstorm ideas, usually with the aid of heavy duty computer simulations. Think tank projects tend to center on forecasting and modeling. * * * .sig file missing — (A)dlib, ®etry, (F)ail? Dennis Matheson — [tanstaafl@earthlink.net](mailto:tanstaafl@earthlink.net) Hike, Dive, Ski, Climb — [home.earthlink.net/~tanstaafl](http://home.earthlink.net/~tanstaafl) ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/7 "1999-06-04T15:53:00Z")
Kinda like the think tank that Xerox put together to assure that they would have a place in the new PC age. Of course the group came up with some wonderfully revolutionary ideas including the GUI/mouse concept and ethernet. The ideas went right over the heads of Xerox execs, in what I would consider the biggest blunder ever in the computer industry. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 1999, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/8 "1999-06-05T05:05:00Z")
Undead dude— What the heck is an ethernet? * * * Alias Incognito ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/9 "1999-06-04T18:19:00Z")
Ethernet is now the standard method to connect computers together in a LAN. It is a network that does not require a master computer to control communication between computers. All of the computers in the network are connected to the same “wire” (usually called the ethernet “bus”), and the computers are required to follow certain rules to assure that the play nice when they talk to each other. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/10 "1999-06-04T18:22:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course the group came up with some wonderfully revolutionary ideas including the GUI/mouse concept and ethernet. The ideas went right over the heads of Xerox execs, in what I would consider the biggest blunder > ever in the computer industry. ## But they didn’t go over Steve Jobs’ head (thank God!). Did anyone see that show on PBS, “Triumph of the Nerds” or something, about the history of the PC industry? What a great show! What was really striking was the fact that the big wigs, like Jobs and Bill Gates, never really came up with any revolutionary ideas of their own. Their brilliance lay in being able to recognize the potential revolutionary ideas of others, and then stealing them. It also seemed to me like the absolute smartest thing that Bill Gates ever did was to NOT grant an exclusive license to IBM for use of Microsoft’s operating system. He gave up some money up front, but he knew that IBM-compatibles were just around the corner and they had to get into that market. That was great foresight! “For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes” - Francis Bacon ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/11 "1999-06-04T18:34:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Did anyone see that show on PBS, “Triumph of the Nerds” or something, about the history of the PC industry? – Mark Mal I saw that. It’s an excellent history of the rise of PCs. Did Gates really specifically refuse exclusivity? Perhaps I missed that. I thought that IBM just didn’t have the foresight to think that anyone could make a clone without violating patents. That blunder might contest Xerox’s blunder for the worst. IBM also did not get any sort of exclusivity restriction from Intel. That combination is what made the clone industry explode. Compaq’s reverse engineering strategy for the IBM BIOS was without a doubt one of the cleverest ideas of that era. I was under the impression that Microsoft was still something of a willing whore to IBM in the early days. After all, they agreed to help work on OS/2 (under exclusivity contracts that time), even while they were working on Windows. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/12 "1999-06-04T20:32:00Z")
Mark Mal writes: \> What was really striking was the fact \> that the big wigs, like Jobs and Bill \> Gates, never really came up with any \> revolutionary ideas of their own. In fact, many of the ideas that Steve Jobs came up with were barriers to the early success of the Macintosh: \ (1) Only support the built-in 9 inch B&W screen (2) Only 128K RAM (3) Small keyboard with no numeric keypad or function keys (4) No expansion ports \ Jobs extended this trend with NeXT when he sanctioned a computer with no floppy disk. Just the ubiquitous [snicker] floptical and ethernet. It might have worked in the high power workstation game… if only Apollo (at the time), Sun, and HP didn’t exist! I’ve seen a number of programs and interviews and think he’s a really sharp guy… he’s just what I call a “tunnel visionary”. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 1999, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-tank/632/13 "1999-06-04T21:56:00Z")
Joe Bob, I owe you an apology. I didn’t look too closely at what was happening on the bulletin board and shoulda blamed whatever moth crawled into the computers at SDH. Keep your fingers, I’ll just have my tongue removed. * * * Cave Diem! Carpe Canem!