Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: HETE, HP, Regression
The computing equivalent of Area 51? A short while back HP closed its calculator division. Many have thought HP's calculator department was unprofitable. This was not the case. Many have thought they had no innovation. This was not the case. Turns out that management had 4% workforce to kill and they were part of the cut.
This article explains more. It turns out they had designed several Linux based PDA's ready to produce that were killed by management. Sounds interesting? Go check it out.
The biggest expense was the 12 gross of Estes D engines ... Satellite Designer writes: "The topic of low cost satellites having been mooted here recently, I though I'd alert readers to another such project. The HETE-2 satellite recently located a cosmic gamma-ray burst precisely enough that (with a lot of help from friends) an afterglow was detected, identifying its source. HETE-2 cost $26 million, only 1/3 of what a 'small' scientific satellite normally costs.A lot of commercial 'off the shelf' technology went into HETE. Nothing from Radio Shack, but there are quite a few parts from Digi-Key onboard. You can't save money by using cheap parts (but you *can* save money by using easily obtainable parts), and you can't achieve reliability by using expensive parts (but you *can* help reliability by using the parts best suited for your application). The radical thing about HETE's parts selection was that it considered parts in the application context (as one would do in a normal engineering process), rather than restricting selection to a QPL assembled to meet irrelevant requirements.
The real trick to keeping costs down is to do the job with as small a team as possible in the minimum time possible. Rather than employing a large team of specialists, HETE's scientific investigators did much of the engineering and technical work. A small, carefully selected engineering team filled in the knowledge gaps."
Quitting isn't easy, and why bother? dmarsh writes: "This new article from C|Net seems to be a total contradiction to last week's "Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!" thread's article. I guess the important difference being that this one is backed up by an actual survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association."
Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source ;)
but only because I'm moving and the &^%$# phone company isn't offering DSL there yet.
But if people don't need DSL, then dropping back makes sense. After all, it IS money!
I wonder whether (1) this many people signed up for the service during the period, or (2) this many people finally received their hardware/installation. Everybody knows that the pool of broadband installers is vastly outnumbered by the pool of broadband salespeople. No flamebait here, just wondering if the mass sign-up occurred in 2Q or 3Q...
Also, consider the source of the statistics ("Our research shows that our product is 100% safe...")
My broadband provider starting sticking extra fees into my bill earlier this year. It's only $6/month, but it's still lame as hell. I'm revolting by dusting off my ol' 56K USR at home & taking advantage of that T-1 at work. BellSouth can rip off someone else.
this [survey] is backed up by an actual survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
;)
-Slashback
Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source
-Timothy
Well, OK, let's question the source. the National Cable & Telecommmunications Assosciation is "is the principal trade association of the cable television industry in the United States". So basically, they're the RIAA of the cable industry. And they just published a survey that says that consumers are subscribing to broadband in mass quantitites.
Ok, I question the source. This is like Shell Oil publishing a study that concludes that burning gasoline provides valuable fertilizer for wetlands. Why give PR machines free press?
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Many have thought HP's calculator department was unprofitable. This was not the case.
If their calculator division was making money, then why on earth was it chosen to be closed down? They should have chosen something that was loosing them money. If there were no departments loosing money, then they shouldn't have had to cut *any* departments.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
I heard that people aren't flocking like sheep to buy Windows XP, which is good news if it is true.
It might be good news, but not for alternative OSs. It simply means that M$ has saturated the market with their previous versions of Windows, and there aren't any compelling reasons to change. Anybody who was going switch from Win98, just switched to Win2K or ME, and isn't about to run out and buy XP. That said, they ain't buying Linux either.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
You saw Windows XP at Fry's? I'm assuming you mean you saw a demo computer running XP, and not that you merely saw the box sitting on a shelf. By your logic, I could say "I saw Linux at my friend's house and was not impressed. It was nothing but text and stuff."
I shouldn't have to tell you that the interface isn't the OS. If everyone judged Linux by its interface and nothing else (which, unfortunately, is often the case), people would have an absurdly skewed view of Linux. Think about how many different window managers and themes there are for Linux. Just because one of them looks like shit doesn't mean the underlying OS kernel sucks.
The same holds true for Windows. Sure, the interface may be full of goofy alpha blending and unnecessary menu fade-ins and mouse pointer shadows and other things, but when you replace explorer.exe with a third-party shell (or merely disable the extra eye candy via the Control Panel), all that stuff goes away and you're left with what is without a doubt the most stable version of Windows I've ever seen.
I'm not saying any of those technologies are in XP, I don't know, I have it (via MSDN) but have no intention of installing it on any machines, as you say, there simply isn't any real incentive.
Yeah, BUYING. BUYING RedHat. BUYING Mandrake, etc. I would imagine that people switching from Windows are more likely to buy a boxed, supported distro.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Maybe instead of paying a high-price monthly cable fee, you should instead spend it on buying movies rather than stealing them.
Unfortunately, the key word in your subject is "was". The HP company that whose products we loved is no longer around. It's been homogenized, downsized and chipped away by "management teams" like the current one. They have lived up to their titles:they've "managed". The company isn't closed; it has "managed" to survive.
HP was founded by engineers. Engineering is what they knew, and that's how they competed. Today, HP is run by b-schoolers; engineering really isn't their forte. But they know advertising and finance and marketing. So that's what they rely on; that's how they compete. They leave the real innovation to their "partners" (guess who I'm talking about) who promise them success in terms they can understand: market share and intrinsic stock option value. Meanwhile, the company dissolves from the inside into yet another sales staff and yet another brand for the same old Same Old.
The Hewletts and the Packards might stop the Compaq deal, but all the rats together still can't stop their sinking ship from taking them under. It will take great innovation, not great speeches about "innovation". Good luck HP, you're gonna need it.
Subscribe to external news sources - probably put you down $10/mo. Sure, that's ANOTHER $10 a month out of your pocket. But if you're feeling squirley, consider what that costs the provider.
The traffic used to have a set cost as defined by upkeep of the internal network - call it "internal cost". Now the same traffic has that internal cost as well as the cost associated with increased traffic from the upstream provider. Its possible that the cost of this external traffic is less than the cost of providing better usenet service. Its also very possible this same traffic now has considerably higher cost.
In any case - you get better usenet service.