[MACSPECTRUM]

Chinese Seek to Buy Seagate

this can't be good for users of hard drives, like us....


Chinese Seek to Buy a U.S. Maker of Disk Drives
By JOHN MARKOFF
American government officials have national security
concerns about a Chinese company's interest in acquiring
Seagate Technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/business/worldbusiness/25drive.html?th&emc=th

“Seagate would be extremely sensitive,” said an industry executive who participates in classified government advisory groups. “I do not think anyone in the U.S. wants the Chinese to have access to the controller chips for a disk drive. One never knows what the Chinese could do to instrument the drive.”

 

[Max]

Why not?

 

[MacDoc]

As long as current management and research stays in place no problem - look at Lenovo,
Seagate was a huge turn around going from horrid reliability to best in the industry then the rest caught up a bit so now sitting above average still.

That WD beat them to the vertical storage to market is perhaps significant as Seagate was priding itself on leading the pack.

Maybe the sense of commodity is driving them to seek a manufacturing partner.

or.....swallowing Maxtor was a huge mistake which I CAN believe.

Storage I think is about to take another major jump in a variety of fronts.
160 gig iPod anyone.

 

[K_OS]

well it's either they buy Seagate altogether or they take a couple of hard drives back to China and copy them.

Laterz

 

[madhatress]

Storage I think is about to take another major jump in a variety of fronts.
160 gig iPod anyone.

That's enough music to last about 2 years !

 

[Gerbill]

I thought all electronic stuff was made in China these days anyway, so what's the problem?

 

[MACSPECTRUM]

I thought all electronic stuff was made in China these days anyway, so what's the problem?

bought any toys made in China lately?
tptptptp

 

[HowEver]

bought any toys made in China lately?
tptptptp

Only Apple stuff.

 

[Max]

Still waiting for a cogent reply from Spec as to why we should be fretting. Instead we're getting the angry red tongue-ball and a topic deflection to suspect toys made in China. Well, that clears it all up, I'm sure.

 

[MACSPECTRUM]

Still waiting for a cogent reply from Spec as to why we should be fretting. Instead we're getting the angry red tongue-ball and a topic deflection to suspect toys made in China. Well, that clears it all up, I'm sure.

I guess you didn't read nor comprehend the article.

 

[Max]

No, I'm looking for your take, not the article's take. Even a small pithy comment will do, really! Still waiting. You aren't by chance named Godot, are you?

 

[MACSPECTRUM]

No, I'm looking for your take, not the article's take. Even a small pithy comment will do, really! Still waiting. You aren't by chance named Godot, are you?

we all know that in China quality is "job 1" - NOT

 

[martman]

we all know that in China quality is "job 1" - NOT

Where was your Mac made?

 

[Max]

Hmmmm... not very pithy, I'm afraid.

I don't know... I understand the general unease about China outpacing the world on any number of fronts (in ways both impressive and disquieting), but in this case the technological genie is already out of the bottle and has been for some time. You can't contain this technology, doling it out to preferred customers and no one else. What they don't get, they'll copy - the Chinese have proved this time and time again.

Nor do I consider Chinese quality control to be automatically several rungs lower than North American QC. It all depends on what goods we're talking about. There's not much left that we ourselves make on this continent, for that matter. If we're going to get concerned about the Chinese acquiring a hard drive company we better be prepared to get all uppity about where in the world we are importing any number of goods - our food, our electronic gadgets, our cars, our clothing... the list goes on.

As for the implied security threat, we already have lots on our plate in that regard. Singling out the Chinese seems like just more propaganda meant to stir up some nationalistic sentiment.

 

[MACSPECTRUM]

Where was your Mac made?

been to walmart lately?

 

[Macfury]

Max: If you were wearing the tinfoil hat, you'd get it too...

 

[Max]

sigh

It's in for repair, actually. I was starting to get interference signals... they were emanating from the world headquarters of The Common Sense Brigade.

 

[Macfury]

If the Chinese weren't so darned inscrutable we might all be able to rest, but...

 

[Max]

Well, if they do buy Seagate, I hope they don't screw it up. Right now they are the best drives out there... that's the skinny I'm hearing from my more tech-minded Mac friends, anyhow. Just bought a 500 gigger of theirs to throw in one of my LaCie externals when it's original drive finally pooched early last week.

I just don't want to have to start fretting in my bed every night in the lonesome wee hours, asking myself, over and over, "what are the Chinese doing with the hard drives right now?"

 

[Macfury]

Well this is it Max. It isn't so much what the Chinese will do to our hard drives over the long run, but what they're doing at this specific moment that gets me worried. I couldn't eat every item on my breakfast plate this morning thinking about it.