Silicon Bush - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Lawsen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2011, 09:10:45 am
content: Does Australia has a place where all the electronics and research businesses, workshops, and laboratory settled in like San Jose, California, U.S.A.? We have Silicon Valleys everywhere from Hong Kong to Haifa , Israel, silicon wabi. Does Australia has Silicon Bush? Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. has Silicon Forest, where Hewlett-Packard used to have their portable computer division there making all the famous HP-10C, HP-11C, HP-12C, HP-15C, and HP-16C and Portable One computers and Reverse Polish Notation calculators. Tektronix has Howard Vollum Park in Beaverton, Oregon, U.S.A. Silicon Bush is not in Dave Jone's garage. Hewlett-Packard, Packard's daughter, Julie Packard, lives in Soquel, California, never taken an interest in electronics or electrical engineering. She spent the family's wealth in financing the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I think Silicon Valley in San Jose is history, because so much design is outsourced to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and China. The future of Silicon Valley and the California Patio Lifestyle and the American Dream are uncertain. We have 18.5% unemployment in Stockton and 9 to 10% in California. Stockton California is in serious financial woes. It is a residential city to the Bay with the ACE train that takes some workers every morning 94 miles to San Jose to work those labor engineering and technician jobs. It is not geology. It is a commuter train. It is not that prosperous for the universities around the Bay as their research money are reduced and America's financial situation is debt. A foreclosed house in Stockton is around (lower this morning, a house was for sale for $68,900.00 USD along EL Dorado Street), $80,000.00 USD for a house in need of repairs and landscape to $250,000.00 USD for a large, well cared one. A house in my neighborhood is around $108,000.00 USD. Maybe one an Australian could move up here and commute 100 miles to work in the Bay regions. We mismanaged our money in real estate, insurance, and loans and we will never be able to regain those, though the DOW went back as Japan woes lessen. San Jose needs something new to invent. Fremont lost most of their economy when GM went bankrupt and Toyota closed the Tacoma and Corolla factory, abandoned. There are no more cars being made in California anymore. Wait, we have the Tesla sports lithium ion battery powered sports car for $100,000.00 USD made in San Carlos, California. I only seen one driving down Interstate 280 between Cupertino to Palo Alto the last time I visited there for work and friend. I never been inside a Tesla Lithium ion electric car. Much of manufacturing has been outsourced to China, just the labor rate is so low. Stockton, Elk Grove, and Sacramento region used to part of Silicon Valley East during the dot com era. My G4-1.25 GHz Mac Pro was final assembly at Apple Computers Elk Grove, California factory. That closed as it is cheaper to make Macs in China and Taiwan. Stockton is near many farms, famous for asparagus, cherries, walnuts, and tomatoes. Lodi is famous for wine and grapes. Modesto has the highest house foreclosures. Much of Silicon Valley East disappeared. San Jose is still the main office to many famous electronics brands like Nano Solar, Atmel, Agilent and Coherent in Santa Clara, and Apple in Cupertino with their I products. Yes, I am focused on hardware. I love to repair my Sony stereo and de solder my amplifier chip off and re solder a new one. I found working in the research place as an under graduate, before geology school in the basement microwave spectrometer Bruker Electron Spin with copper selenium compounds as exotic super conducts under the Acrivos (retired) research group overwhelming. The math is hard and wiring is challenging. I want to work in the Nano Solar printed solar cell sorting assembly line. I do not want more school, that costs too much.Is there a Silicon Bush, Australia?Lawsen

author: the_raptor
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2011, 10:36:33 am
content: I don't think Australia has ever had a large enough electronics industry to require such a thing. We were an agricultural economy that is now a mining economy. We have never been a manufaturing based economy (we were among the first to start taking Japanese electronics serisouly because it was a lot cheaper than UK/US electronics and there was little to no local competition)."High tech" just doesn't have the local cachet that lead to things like Silicon Valley in the US. Most "regional pride" is still based on the (historical) predominant agricultural export of the region (mine is prawns and sugar cane).I also suspect this is also because so much of Australia's R&D has been in public universities and government organisations like theCSIRO, where Americas was mostly through private industry.

author: TheWelly888
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2011, 12:14:13 pm
content: I can think of two Australian biomedical engineering firms that exports all over the worlds straight off the top of my head.Cochlear which manufactures cochlear implants that helps profoundly deaf people to hear when acoustic hearing aids no longer work for them.http://www.cochlear.com/auResMed which manufactures life support ventilatorshttp://www.resmed.com/au/index.htmlBoth very good manufacturers.

author: grenert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2011, 02:20:52 pm
content: Stockton (an inland agricultural town, for those of you who don't know) has nothing to do with San Jose. The Valley is probably stronger than it's ever been: Google, Apple, Netflix, Twitter (actually San Francisco), and on. It sounds like you're focused on hardware. Stuff is not made much there, but there is certainly enough technology going on (including hardware design), and with the underlying drivers (Stanford and UC Berkeley) still there, I don't worry about Silicon Valley. Those folks will be sipping wine on the patio for the forseeable future.No, I have nothing to do with Silicon Valley, so no rose-colored glasses here

author: the_raptor
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2011, 03:15:47 pm
content: Quote from: TheWelly888 on March 17, 2011, 12:14:13 pmWhat is your point? America has thousands of firms doing that. Australia has "high tech" companies but no where near the likes of America at the height of its power.Our federal government has been blathering on about smart/knowledge nation crap for years and has done nothing about it. Australian for generations has been content to rest on its laurels and float on the money generated by agricultural/mining exports.

author: TheWelly888
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 18, 2011, 05:18:01 pm
content: Quote from: the_raptor on March 17, 2011, 03:15:47 pmMy point is that Australia's home grown high tech companies can provide seed to grow a bigger high tech industry in a favourable climate ( political, educational and economical ) , if there were none at all then there's no chance of that!Quote from: the_raptor on March 17, 2011, 03:15:47 pmI don't have the answer but I would like to point out that governments cannot actually DO things but only pass laws / tax rates which makes it either possible or impossible for people and the private sector to do things.

author: Lawsen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 18, 2011, 08:28:13 pm
content: Southern states in the U.S.A. have no business taxes or reduced business taxes, if large companies would open their plants in the deep south. That is how they got themselves out of poverty. California's taxes are so high at the moment, that most businesses fled California. California is a welfare state, highest in Section 8 and food credits. I have no interest in self business at all. I am using my mother's house as a warehouse for me, until I can move elsewhere. Yokogawa has a location in Georgia because of Georgia's friendly business environment. Makita drills, PLC Direct (programmable logic controllers) are all in Georgia. Australia could charge less taxes and invite electronics to come, but with competition from China and Philippines. My last geology microscope, an Olympus CX31RBSF came from the Philippines, not Japan for lower labor wages. Most of tech support centers are in India. These once poor countries have a growing middle class, while the U.S.A. has a declining middle class, increasing shopping cart homeless, working homeless, misery, and poverty. Australia is mining, because I have seen some geology jobs advertised there, more than electronics. The most I can do with my electronics certificate is sorting solar panels for minimum wage, if hired and 100 mile (161 km) commute. Imagine doing that 8 hours a day. I am amazed at Dave Jones's enthusiasm for hardware. It caused me to think Australia has a place like Silicon Valley there, too. The response on the blog has been a scarce Australia. San Jose was agricultural about 40 years ago. Electronics made a slow migration into San Jose. Hewlett-Packard was founded in the garage in Palo Alto, California during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One of the founders slept on a bed in bare dirt floor. One of the founder was a rancher with a surveyor theodolite. Their first product was an audio signal generator and they made the entire thing at a wooden garage. Most of their manufacturing now are in Asia and research in Singapore. HP has an office in Palo Alto. HP is a conglomerate of companies. Most of electronics were in the East Coast of the U.S.A. I have my dad's early 1950s Popular Electronics magazine and it has no San Jose based companies. There were cherry orchards in Cupertino, not Apple or Tandem Computers. Tandem was bought out by DEC and Compaq and HP owns them all.Lawsen