Yes you are right I was confused, I thought it was the Taiwan earthquake that caused RAM prices to spike (and it did), but this was earlier. I think the previous RAM spike might have come from the Windows 95 release. A Google search on Japanese earthquakes only displays the one from last year. One chatroom mentions the '93 earthquake.
FWIW, no matter how you cut it California is still an expensive place to do business. All the automation in the world couldn't save that factory. Not for what they were making. Now it's about specialization, automation (in the short term) is still more expensive than millions of chinese factory workers.
FWIW, no matter how you cut it California is still an expensive place to do business. All the automation in the world couldn't save that factory. Not for what they were making. Now it's about specialization, automation (in the short term) is still more expensive than millions of chinese factory workers.