Intergalactic Summit

I'm not sure you're as current with the pricing trends of the items in question as you believe yourself to be.

While the moving average over 20 days is at best a crude tool it works well enough to negate the argument that ARC's exclusive transfer of this tech to State interests is somehow raising the cost of the SMCMs for the benefit of any other party.

Looking at the Forge regional market prices alone one will note that the sell price of the microprocessors has fallen to less than 50% of what it was at its peak in early July. Further to this, the 20-day average price has been stable at approximately 500 thousand ISK for nearly all of August. Speaking from first hand experience and with the benefit of having reviewed the SCC's daily data releases I can state definitively that while ARC's operations were ongoing the average daily price of the microprocessors was 700-800 thousand ISK per unit. Comparatively the current prices - which your argument relies upon - actually represent a significant decrease on what ARC traders paid per unit.

The Forge regional market exhibited the widest daily variation in volumes and pricing points during the ARC operation. Jita's standard 0.01 isk day-trading tactics were consistently overwhelmed by mercantile groups and individuals throwing out far larger margins in order to aggressively outbid competing interests.

The next largest regional markets - those of Domain and Sinq Laison - along with smaller local trade-hubs were far more stable both during the operation and following its conclusion. It would be less than honest to claim that the same market cooling and stabilization of pricing that has occurred in the Forge has also been observed in those markets. However, it would be equally inaccurate to say that prices in these other markets have increased or escalated in any sense. Instead they have remained at the same average price as they were during the month of July while the trade volume has dropped away sharply.

It's this decrease in trade volume of SMCMs that is in fact the common trend seen across all regional markets in the SCC data. I'm hypothesizing that it is lessened demand - in the setting of relative peace following the large scale conflicts of earlier this year - that is principally responsible for the stabilization of the market prices cluster-wide.

Should our current period of peace and prosperity change then those of us who watch the markets might reasonably expect prices to climb as demand shifts to a seller's market but this is irrelevant to the current situation. The slippery slope chaos of capsuleer politics is neither ARC's concern nor within the ability of our cadre of amateur soothsayers to predict.

Jade Constantine would be proud of you, Ayallah.

Anyway, that is a big wall of words coming from someone who claims their entire purpose for the continuous arguing of erroneous points is all just to try and convince ARC to sell the microprocessors on the open market. The bottom line is, even if this intention was genuine, why does it matter to you? You are not in ARC, nor are you an ARC coordinator. You have no say in how ARC conducts its business, and, I'm sure, your opinions on how they should conduct their business have about the same amount of relevance as a fedo on some backwater mining outpost.

Don't be silly. The intention would be to improve the performance of standard fire-control systems in Caldari capitals and supercapitals, or to see how the optimization can best be approximated for subcapital use. The fact that you can't understand how software and logic optimization is not, in fact, a unique and beautiful snowflake that can't be translated to other applications really does speak volumes about why you should leave engineering issues to the Sebiestor.

This assumes that there are no innovations in these microprocessors that are not present in the microprocessors that have been available for years. The very concept that the state of the art has stood still, especially in an environment like the Guardian Angel labs, for that long is patently ridiculous.

Sure, if you're just using a completely unexceptional wrench as your example. Apple and Cucumbers, Ayallah. But I'm really not surprised that you're stuck in predictable, well-worn trains of thought. Not everyone can be crazy enough to see the possibilities.

While you're arguing against the idea that other corporations might seek to remove the bottleneck by producing knockoffs![/i] Do you not even realize you're arguing both sides of this and claiming to be completely consistent?

When demand starts to rise as the most loyal Serpentis agents begin dumping LP into blueprints and the first start to be produced either price is going to rise sharply or those with large stockpiles are going to have to dump their stock.

You'll note that I alluded to this exact point in the last paragraph of my post and summarily dismissed it as irrelevant to the current intentions of ARC's acquisition project.

We cannot and do not seek to predict what events might take place in the future that may or may not influence demand for the microprocessors. Should a hypothetical pilot in a similarly hypothetical null-sec alliance need to pay more than she, he or they are happy to for their new Serpentis capital ships that is their lot to live with and none of our concern.

In Ms. Priano's own words this is simply the jumping off point in trying to start a development project. It may or may not bear fruit and only time will see to that. I can reassure you that your critique of ARC's actions in this respect has been noted and given all the respect and consideration it is due.

Oh, for the love of... You're being idiotic, and continuing to assert that there are no innovations in these microprocessors that have not appeared elsewhere, and there's simply no evidence of that. None. Please, go through all of the hardware and software architecture in these - every single subroutine and every single circuit layout, and demonstrate how every single element has already been done elsewhere, and how absolutely none of it could possibly ever be repurposed. It's a ridiculous proposition on its face. If we accept your premise, then no innovation is ever possible, because the technology we have is all very well understood, so nobody could ever come up with a way to translate those principles into a new application. You can't know - categorically cannot know - what ideas will occur to the engineers studying this technology.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that you lost a chunk in your froth-flecked rage at the idea that someone isn't letting Pandemic Legion buy up all the shinies they can at the lowest cost possible, because you pretty blatantly cut off there in mid-sentence, and then appear to be responding to someone else completely.

Matar and Pator! Ayallah, you seem to have never heard of the term 'reverse engineering'!

Look, the most important part about trying to figure out these microcontrollers ISN'T about figuring out WHAT they do, but HOW they do. To do that, we have to crack the thing open, look through the architecture of these chips and crack their algorithms and see what they all do and how they work together! In engineering, it's not enough to look at just the overall picture, you have to dig into the nitty gritty of it all!

A lot of really sensible stuff.

And Arrendis, claiming now to represent the entire history of engineering is far more arrogant than anything I ever claimed. I claim to know how a microprocessor functions and you argue that I am somehow making a more bold claim than I am stopping the development of human engineering by arguing a specialized part is just a specialized part.