What Qualifies to be Called a Breakthrough?

Lee Gomes in his Wall Street Journal commentary, Some "Breakthroughs" Deserve That Title—
But Definitely Not All, raised the point that the word breakthrough has been too widely adopted in press-release headlines by high-tech companies. We're experiencing "breakthrough inflation," he wrote. Interesting comment.Gomes concluded that Sun's DTrace, which I mentioned in a previous blog as being the winner of The Wall Street Journal's 2006 Technology Innovation Awards, belongs to the breakthrough category of supremely useful products. Wonderful for DTrace! The developers, a team of engineers headed by Bryan Cantrill, deserve a bow.