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101 Dumbest Moments In Business
hhutkin writes "It's that time again. Business 2.0 posted their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. Of course, they lambast Enron, but they also slam Ginger, a laptop computer made for the steering wheel of your car, Steve Ballmer dancing, and some other really dumb stuff from the past year."
because I haven't the foggiest idea who Andrea Thompson is.
18. CNN 1, Fox News 0: On her first day as a newsreader for CNN's Headline News, former NYPD Blue actress Andrea Thompson ingratiates herself to viewers by announcing, "I'm Andrea Thompson, and unless you've been living in a cave, you probably already know that."
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Not sure who wouldn't want to slam Ginger......Oh, you mean we're not talking about Gilligan's Island though....still, come on.
$crew u guyz i'm going....shit i already am home
so get the fuck out!!
1 loyal U.S. Senator...$5,000. 1 trip to Disneyland...$2,000. 1 video tape of a U.S. Senator throwing up on Space Mountain and promising that Disneyland will be sold to China...priceless.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
33. "We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at Windows-terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's less-than-meteoric rise, to ZDNet UK
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Northpoint.net overexpansion?
Billions of dollars gone into banrupty so soon.
Top 100 blunder. hundreds of thousands of paying business customers cut off.
As far as dumbest moments in business go, can anyone top this?
0. Websites will revolutionize the way people do business
1. Houston, We Have a Problem, Part 1: Enron
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Biggest Mistake=Adobe destroys goodwill using FBI henchmen to try (successfully) to imprison a russian programer who wrote his own source code to print and read aloud Acrobat documents.
Adobe using DMCA was sucha big mistake they fired the two principal people involved.
One was a long time insider. She was immediately axed.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Everyone I know HATES adobe and their DMCA mind control though police fascism.
Screw Adobe!!
Anyone else notice the article was co-written by Adam Horowitz? I guess after Hello Nasty there was only one place to go - business journalism!
Biggest famous mistake=Osborne's Interview 60 Minutes.
Mr Osborne is a multimillionaire with his portable computer (pre Compaq competition) and his Osborne 1 is famous, though not too high tech).
60 minutes asks him if he is rich enough and if Osborne 1 is good enough.
Osborne foolishly boasts " THE OSBORNE 1 is NOTHING COMPARED TO HOW GREATE THE OSBORNE TWO WILL BE!!!!!!!"
That boasts puts him out of business the next month practically.
Its is now called the Osborne syndrome.
Apple computer avoids this mistake.
Do you see the mistake?
Not one customer wanted to ever buy an Osborne 1... they all waited for an Osborne 2 that could never ship because the inventory was killing the company in unsold computers with no buyers.
One foolish public boast about new model.
Its one of histories top 100 mistakes, and its a silicon valley top 10 mistake.
If its not in the list then the list is not authoritative complete or correct.
They should consult this slashdot thread and read at "level 0".
people never moderate anymore.
5. Proving the old business school law that says "any idiot can sell a dollar for 80 cents," online-currency company Flooz.com in July launches a special offer whereby American Express platinum cardholders can buy $1,000 of Flooz currency for just $800.
6.A month later, Flooz.com ceases processing transactions. It declares bankruptcy in November, leaving those who bought Flooz currency stuck with worthless e-dollars
Homer: Okay, I'll take $1,000
[Signs inside Itchy & Scratchy land]: "No Itchy & Scratchy bucks accepted here." "We don't take Itchy & Scratchy bucks." "Real cash only."
Homer: D'oh!
c-hack.com |
The best thing about
is that in marketing-speak, this is a totally normal thing to say. Only in plain english do "zero" and "double" have their mathematical meanings.And my reaction to the "Tibet-themed bash" is why couldn't I work for one of those companies, even for a little while? All in all, I'd rather have seriousness and profits, but for a break?
But of course the most relevant to Linux is:
That's exactly why I disabled "Third-party cookies" in my browser.
btw - did it say "Confucius ensues" back there?
--
(if you're still looking for the point, it was back there, in the post. </sig>)
27. Mobile Office Enterprise unveils the Express Desk, which attaches a notebook computer to the steering wheel of a car. For use only while parked, of course.
Guess they havent worked in their car before, thats a neat idea actually. It seems better than sitting sideways to work, which I have to do.
There are others where are more of thier personal view of things than actual stupidity.
14. Following in the footsteps of M.C. Hammer and a talking Chihuahua, Amazon.com CEO and Time magazine 1999 Person of the Year Jeff Bezos becomes a shill for Taco Bell in an ad that touts its chicken quesadilla as a "hot new handheld."
I keep laughing at the hot new handheld, and the other stupidly funny commericals from taco bell. Like the quesadilla is like a powertool, and geek cant understand how to use it. Kinda funny.
43. CNN 2, Fox News 2: Reporting live from Afghanistan, Geraldo Rivera implies that he's packing heat. "We refuse to be crime victims," Rivera says. "We're not the victim types. If they're going to get us, it's going to be in a gunfight."
Beats running around naked with a 20 dollar bill taped to your ass.
64. Fox News 3, CNN 2: During his sojourn in Afghanistan, Geraldo Rivera decries the deplorable living conditions in the town of Taloqan. Standing in front of a crowd of barefoot children, Rivera looks solemnly into the camera and states, "Look at the children. They haven't seen television or anything their whole lives."
They really dont like him do they...
65. Eleven years after McDonald's announces that it has started cooking its fries in "100 percent vegetable oil" -- and one month after a Seattle lawyer files suit on behalf of Hindus and vegetarians who interpreted that to mean that the fries are meat-free -- the fast-food chain concedes that the "natural flavoring" in its fries is, in fact, beef fat.
This was soo funny, as thier frys do taste damn good. Glad im not a vegan.
75. Unilever subsidiary Lipton approves an ad in which a man standing in line for communion holds a bowl of onion dip, presumably to improve the taste of the body of Christ. Under protest, Lipton withdraws the ad.
hehe
78. After two years of hype, Dean Kamen unveils Ginger, a.k.a. the Segway HT scooter. To understand why this is on our list, kindly refer to the table below.
Anyone who dis's the segway sucks. IMHO
Site gets slashdotted, cant read the rest.
Argh..
Microsoft came in at a disappointing #7 with:
7. Last May, Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that received funding from Microsoft, is caught simulating a "grassroots" campaign to get state attorneys general to drop their antitrust suit against the software giant. One detail that gives the scheme away: Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.
Personally, I can think of many other, much more comical MS events...one of my personal favorites being this...
Anyone else with any votes for stupid MS trick of the year?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
The site seems to be Slashdotted. But do they include themselves? Business 2.0 were the absolute leaders in breathless "new economy" stories, although I haven't read them lately to see if they've calmed down at all.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You'd think people would prepare for this.
--Blair
My God, I hope they had plenty of security personnel on hand to prevent him from getting mobbed by the fans!
Erlang.org: wow
made it to the 3rd page...
It takes a genius to fuck up this bad :)
16. "No one will deny that Sony is a world-class hardware company, and no one would deny that Microsoft is a world-class software company. Nintendo aspires to be neither one of those things." -- Peter Main, a Nintendo marketing executive, to the San Francisco Chronicle
I must away to buy a gamecube right NOW!
:)
Iridium and Globalstar (GSRF) lying to investers about proposed unit cost, unit usability, and per minute charges was the biggest mistake in recent years!!
:
Billions and Billions of dead hardware never profitably used.
For example Globalstar and Iridium said
LIE # 1: The satellite per minute fees would be 3 dolalrs per minute or less to compete with cell phones.... they never reached that price and LIED to investers because it would have succeeded IF the did not overprice the service.
LIE # 2: Their satellite phone would one day cost less than 700 dollars each, no strings attached... they never were.
LIE # 3: The sattelite phones would work if standing outside, even in manhatten streets. It needed a flat open space... not good on broadway or wallstreet.
Ony the CIA and FBI and NRO boaught and used these satellite phones and got the service for free (practically) in the last good year of oreration.
DEFINITELY top 100 business mistake.
PRICE it at 3 dollars a minute or less and PRICE phone at 700 or less and it would have succeeded, as promised to investers... instead lie and double both coasts and wonder why no one wants one.
DUH!!!
Retarded businessmen.
Fox News probably bolstered national morale by sending Geraldo to Afghan! ;-0
And I can't believe Balmer didn't get 2nd after Enron. His little monkey dance was much more embarrasing than any foot burning incident BK went through.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Well if it chases you away I think we can all agree whatever they did wasn't a mistake:)
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
As anyone involved in corporate America can attest, incredibly stupid things happen in business every single day.
Considering this, what is remarkable is that businesses are as successful as they are.
Amazing magic tricks
Not thinking of the consequences of getting posted on /.
Percy Barnevik's $150 million retirement fund payed by ABB at the same time the compay's reporting a $1 billion dollar loss..
It stirred up quite the debate here in Sweden
I used to buy and use 20 and 10 dollar disney dollars.
They were good at lots of places, even malls in disney stores.
They they got hit with huge amounts of theft.
Then Disney stopped wanting to honor or sell 10 and 20s. (50s?)
I could not buy them recently.
Only 1 and 5
I am sad.
I wish I kept a 20.
Why do /. ters hang out at a site where, even with broadband, it's likely the site they want to acess is unavailable?
"One of the injured, a VP for product marketing aptly named Dana Frydman, tries to put a positive spin on having her feet flame-broiled like so much ground chuck. "It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything," she tells the Miami Herald.
The above from the fire walking marketing types is my favourite thus far. Doesn't the response say it all. The glass is half-full, I live in the best of all possible worlds and I love Mary Poppins. Marketing... fundamentalist religions got noth'n on it.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
...and it was made on a mac.
Amazing magic tricks
Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, and Page 5. Good old google!
I know this one's off topic, but check out this J2EE vs. .NET argument. I dig the 3rd message down (the long one). Best rebuttal I've seen yet.
EMUS (GoodNoise:Emusic), MPPP (mp3.com) vaporized after billions of dolalrs of evaluation.
Both thought people wanted to pay to listen to mp3 music at limited resolutions (mp3.com deleted and banned mp3 encoded above a certain bitrate)
mp3.com was sensitive to bandwidth because the LOST TWO CENTS ON EVERY SONG DOWNLOADED!
They could not get 2 cents per song in banner ad., plus the site was fascist.
MP3.coms biggest mistake was their greed.
Sony shut them down last august.
emusic dies for similar reasons.
plus emus was run by morons, whereas mp3.com was run by copyright infringing criminals (they ripped over 10 thousand entire commercial cds and put them on their own private servers and shared the mp3 warez with their techie insiderz on cd roms)
big blunder: dont commit major civil lawsuit crimes if you are public sompany.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Biggest mistake = going supbscription on web news sites
Formerly popular sites tank into oblivion once they go "subscription fees based"
bad business model... and kills a good thing
Actually, the amount of Mac OSX software released in the past year, and scheduled to be released in the coming year, is staggering.
I'm not sure where you get your ideas.
If you like this kind of Dot.Bomb stuff check this site.
Latest Dot Bomb News
The language is bad but the content is good. Updated daily
Ive been thinking about using a pre-caching proxy, or maybe just loading all the pages in cache before I read it. Alot of these sites cant handle a /. hit.
HAHAH!!
#103: VA Linux buys Andover.net.
#104: VA Linux IPO.
Ha ha.
Speaking of which, was Donna Dubinsky's vague conference call statement that Handspring is 'exiting the traditional organizer market' on the list? (Site is slashdotted, so I don't know.)
:P
She did a great job of alienate Handspring's existing customer base and rendering their inventory unsellable before the Treo was available.
And Handspring's damage control was just as bad as the original statement... lots of "We want to reassure our customers and Springboard developers that we're not discontinuing the Visor, uh, right away. We're still behind the Visor line, but we're dropping our only color model and sticking with OS 3.5."
then at least post the link to the printer-friendly version
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.
Come on, give Microsoft a break. When you think about it, dead people know more about grass roots than any of us; so why shouldn't they be part of a grass roots campaign?
Jesus Christ did you intentionally put a paragraph marker between every single sentence??!
102. Business2.0 puts the "101 Dumbest Moments In Business" article on a webserver that can't stand a slashdotting.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If you like the exposure of stupid business stunts check this site:
Latest Dot Bomb News
Updated daily. I think.
-The only difference between theory and experience is that in theory, you don't need any experience.
Having a link to your article posted on SlashDot
I sig, therefore I was.
And *BSD is dying, right?
If you wanna find out how much of a troll this is, check here.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
Couple of people have mentioned it here, commenting how incredibly dumb someone must be to do something like that..
You should know that the dancing incident took place in the MS 25th anniversary company meeting, which was essentially a *party*. Now, as far as I know, people are *supposed* to do silly things when partying, that's the idea, isn't it? Or do you guys all sit around the table, dead serious, during the birthday of your company? C'mon, get a life.
Btw, most people at MS love steveb and his tricks, it adds lotsa color and fun to everyday life and raises people's morale. So I would say that it was actually a rather useful thing for the company, not dumb.
So, flame me if you want to, but you don't really get to lead a big software company by being dumb, u know?
Targo,
saw the monkey dance with his own eye.
When men used to be men
...but it appears to be slashdotted...
Once again: google is our friend!
Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Well, I know that doesn't look nice, but otherwise it's hard to post due to characters per line restrictions...
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
Weird, I just listened to a Song from MP3.com yesterday.
... functional ... services.
:) A lot. :)
:) )
Oooh yah thats right,
THEY ARE STILL UP AND RUNNING.
Ok so they were bought out by Big Media (RIAA member no less as I recall!) and now pay artists a mere fraction of what they used to and a lot of artists have jumped ship to less
Their REAL mistake was using those 128kbit MP3 encodes to burn CDs with! OUCH!
I never bought another CD from MP3.com after I learned about that little tidbit.
What they SHOULD have done is had the authors upload the WAV files to their servers and then had a script go through and LAME encode the MP3 file using r3mix settings and then kept the original WAV file around to make CDs with.
That would have rocked.
Paying more attention to us Odd Ball fans WOULD *also* have helped.
*COUGH* Medieval genre *COUGH* (and no it isn't goth, or power metal, though a few bands to incorporate items from those styles into their songs. I like it for the Epic Fantasy works that come out of it myself.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Welcome to the life of a web-developer. As a web developer, even if you don't like the tool a user uses to view your site, it is your job to design a site that functions as properly as possible in all possible browsers. Like it or not, since the majority of web users use Internet Explorer, it makes sense to design a site that displays properly in that browser.
Wow, he's got the moves. I bet he draws in truckloads of women with his animal magnetism.
Sure, maybe the flaws you list would have taken them down, but they failed before those problems could be revealed.
Iridiums first line of failure was that they had no infrastructure capable of actually selling the phones! I spent months trying to buy a phone. Only place I found that said they would sell a phone to me was a fly-by-night in Taiwan, but they didnt have a calling plan. I was completely unable to get anyone to nail down how much I had to pay to get service. The closest I could get to price quotes were references in the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to give them my money I really did. There was just plain no way to do it, and no one to talk to about it.
Ever see the Iridium web site? It was bizarre. It actually had a page describing what kind of person might want a Iridium phone; rich Arabian Oil sheiks! They published this fantasy scenario, but no contacts on who actually sold the phones.
What the hell were they thinking?
Um, huh? EMusic is still very much alive, though I can't seem to get the Dan the Automator album to download today.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
google cache
how about adding a feature to slash that will pre-google-slash (cache) any referenced post and then automatically insert the google-cache reference next to the original link? ... anybody ... anybody...
CmdrTaco
Most of the people that cared to moderate, and didn't read too often to be able to moderate, can't anymore.
Taco or one of his "buds" used the thread of death as an excuse to remove several hundred people's moderation privs.
I'd say a lot larger percent of the moderation is done by the editors themselves now. They used to do over 10% of it, but now with a big chunk of the moderating population gone, it's probably a lot higher.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Guess /. didn't make the list this year.
102. "Here at Business 2.0, we're the absolute authorities on how to properly do anything related to new technology." -- Joe Hiperboli, VP of Marketing, just before the Business 2.0 web site was Slashdotted.
Maybe make a deal with Google. Love to see both /. and Google make money.
Help fight continental drift.
Take a look at all of the business mags, and you'll see that they're desperate to put anything in the pages, anything that will get readers and fill space.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
hosting this site on a server that's almost instantly been slashdotted to hell...
I know why Boston Market the restaurant chain failed. Analysts made up all sorts of reasons. But I a loyal customer know the truth.
Something so simple too.
They switched cleaning agents. I was a huge Boston Market fan. One day, I go in, and the place reeks like some kind of urine. I go across town to another store, it too reeks of urine.
Not everyone could smell it; my girlfriend did an investigation and found that most people only noticed it once it was pointed out--chicken smells sort of that way too. However, we routinely saw people leave from the smell, muttering under their breath, but not telling the manager. A handful with 'good smellers' couldn't even enter the door.
My girlfriend tracked down the smell to the cleaning agent they used for the floor..and oddly enough, the trays. She tried to tell employees. They would not listen; they couldn't smell anything..they had acclimated.
She told the managers. They humored her. But nothing changed. She went to several outlets across town; same story.
About a year and a half later, Boston market shut down its restaurants ostensibly because 'americans were changing their eating habits'..sails climbed, then fell off because 'americans had changed their eating patterns'
As I said, not everyone noticed the smell; but the subconcious is designed to avoid certain odors such as death and human waste.
I am certain the smelly cleaning agent was their real downfall.
The Slashdot Mistake.
t -rich and "Let's Not Offend Anyone" Slashdot.
How about using Javascript to put ads on a page, like our Beloved Slashdot(tm).
All one has to do is look at the source code, see the horrible mangly js code that adds to the download size, and realize that they are willing to alienate nerds like myself over trying to make a buck, or at least pay for their bandwidth, when in fact all they have to do is use nice CSS and fire all their marketing people, their Editors (they have them?) and John Katz. This is not Salon. Or MSN. We don't want to be politically correct. We want to say rude and obnoxious things, and if the advertisers want us to tone the rethoric down, then I say: you don't understand Geeks.
If I want normal, sensitive-up-to-the-collar news commentary, then I'll read up with the BBC and CNN. When I want blood and gore at the bottom of the trenches and sulfur choking my lungs in the technology battlefield, then I don't want some actor who has never even seen source code dressed in a frog-green space suit from the 60s and his adorable used-to-work-as-a-waitress assistant pitching an overpriced database system.
News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters. Can we append "Shop now, we take VISA" to keep up with the Times?
There are websites who make mistakes, because they don't know any better. Then there is Slashdot, where even the notion that Geeks don't like the Establishment will be used as a marketing tool by the aforementioned Establishment for the explicit purpose of providing value to the shareholders.
Personally I would rather see no Slashdot than a corporate-media-million-eyeballs-per-day-let's-ge
"Piter, too, is dead."
Funny you should say that. Some years back, well before Iridium went belly up, I called them to find out what it would cost to use Iridium for command and telemetry to an Antarctic balloon payload we were building. What I got was the runaround, and a general sense that they thought it odd and annoying that somebody actually wanted to use their service.
If its not in the list then the list is not authoritative complete or correct.
You don't seem to understand. "The 101 dumbest moments in business" is a yearly feature business2 does. The list we're ostensably discussing isn't meant to be the dumbest mistakes of all time, it is meant to be made up only of events which occured in the last year..
This would become obvious if you read the article, which considering that business2's servers aren't responding anymore, maybe you haven't. Pity
At least they are still fun to look at - First time I saw an Iridium flare, I thought it was a fighter plane evading enemy missles. FAQ at: http://www.heavens-above.com/iridiumhelp.asp
And now instead of not fulfililng requests it's sending
out a 500 error message (Server Error). Think we've
raped this server pretty good. Too bad I got all
but pages 7,9,10.
Right. It's easy to prepare for a Slashdotting, because the moderators are soooo predictable in which submissions they post.
/. during prime-time.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call it a wise business decision to prepare for a 12 hour long 100-fold increase in web traffic on the off-chance that one of your pages might get posted to
That said, they really should have been able to react more quickly, so that the downtime was minimized.
(Well - I think I sat nicely on the fence there.)
Iridium flares are awesome to watch, really.
Iridium flares are the reflection of the sun off the MMA's, only a few seconds long, but the brightest object in the night sky when it occurs. See http://www.heavens-above.com/iridiumhelp.asp
if you have never seen one.
At least each satellite has three main mission antennas (MMAs), which are flat, highly reflective surfaces, that can reflect the Sun's rays to an observer on the ground when the geometry is correct. The satellite's attitude is controlled so that the long axis remains vertical, with one MMA always pointing forwards. Given this knowledge of the attitude, together with the orbital position of the satellite and the Sun and observer's location, it is possible to calculate the angle between the direction to the observer from the satellite and the line of a perfect reflection of the Sun. This is the so-called "mirror angle" and determines the magnitude of the flare.
A couple of years ago I tried to buy CDPD service off ATT. I could not find the product on their Web site. None of their sales reps knew it existed. I tried asking the VP who launched the product, he could not even connect me to a salesperson.
It is pretty amazing that there are so many companies out there who have the mentality of not releasing their price list except under NDA when they are essentially selling to consumers. Problem with that approach it you start the customer relationship by telling them 'I am going to take you for every penny I can'. Not good, and for that matter not really useful because the only rational purpose behind concealing your prices is in practice if you know you will be giving deep discounts and don't want your customers telling each other what they got.
This is the reason that Priceline is a niche player rather than the future of airlines. We had the priceline principle for retail sales for centuries, it was called haggling. Priceline simply substituted a different method of extracting maximum value from the consumer for an otherwised damaged commodity, the dutch auction.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"Words you never want to hear: 'Garaldo's got a gun!'"
That lists only freeware and shareware mostly.
... ha! almost none.
There is hardly ANY commercial apps and probably even negligible commercial apps that are real utility software and not kiosk tools for children.
OS X commercial apps
Its killing apple.
Sometime in late 2001, some bozo's organising an advertising campaign for Microsoft's XBOX console decided it would be a great idea to graffiti the logo in bright green paint all over publicly funded paving, pathways, garden beds etc in Sydney, Australia. Claimed it was environmentally friendly paint, will wash off with rain. Company charged hundreds of dollars in removal costs for each logo, after the local government found that in many cases it was rather more...permanent, including many instances on newly installed granite paving. Story reported in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, so I suppose theres *plenty* of consumers like me who are spending their money on PS2 instead.
Note the last provider in the traceroute output...
10 core4-core1-oc48.iad1.above.net (208.185.0.138) 82.402 ms 85.716 ms 83.4 9 ms
11 main2-core4-oc48.iad1.above.net (208.185.0.158) 85.367 ms 327.109 ms 82.685 ms
12 pop2-vie-P2-0.atdn.net (209.249.203.234) 87.067 ms 85.738 ms 85.435 ms
13 bb1-vie-P13-0.atdn.net (66.185.139.129) 78.753 ms 78.747 ms 79.722 ms
14 bb1-dtc-P8-0.atdn.net (66.185.152.221) 79.949 ms 80.554 ms 79.243 ms
15 bb1-mtc-P1-0.atdn.net (66.185.152.178) 80.456 ms 82.519 ms 82.691 ms
16 pop1-mtc-P14-0.atdn.net (66.185.143.202) 82.165 ms 83.027 ms 82.193 ms
17 ptne1-mc1-P0-0.atdn.net (66.185.143.214) 82.165 ms 81.040 ms 82.203 ms
18 ptni5-mc2-P0-0.ptn.aol.com (64.12.32.82) 82.644 ms 82.033 ms 79.985 ms
19 ptni5-mc2-P0-0.ptn.aol.com (64.12.32.82) 82.160 ms !A * *
20 ptni5-mc2-P0-0.ptn.aol.com (64.12.32.82) 81.593 ms !A * 79.995 ms !A
AOL.com? Did slashdot manage to slashdot AOL? Amazing...
Apples MacOS X (chasing away its developers) is a BAD mistake.
:
:
They should had tried to keep System 7.6 (bugless) running on all new macs.
Now they are doomed
Carbon 1.0 never shipped (no SCSI etc)
Apple killed itself with crappy slow OS X
The official Carbon document that was presented to Apple's Board of Directors and eventually to their shareholders and 3rd party developers is entitled
Transitioning to Mac OS X : An Overview of the Carbon Programming Interface
This document is 84 pages long and made a couple promises that Apple may break. These promised were made, as a deceitful lie, in order to get everyone to agree to kill Rhapsody and even to totally Kill Copland (Mac OS 8). This document may play a significant pivotal role in future class action lawsuits against Apple Computer because Carbon 1.0 has still not shipped as of March 2002. Apple made a later comment in Feb 2000 that Carbon 1.0 (renumberred to something unspecified) will eventually ship.
If you read this document, you will see that most of Carbon has been completed but critical elements have never been completed at all!!
One example from page 32
"Carbon supports application-level access to ADB, SCSI, and serial devices. However, other hardware devices won1t be accessible from application-level software in Mac OS X."
Ha!
As you may know the only publicly available versions of carbon STILL LACK SCSI MANAGER 4.3 SUPPORT ENTIRELY!!!!!!!!!! There is no way to ever write or port many critical programs to run under Carbon on Mac OS X! And under Mac OS 9.2 Carbon also lacks these Carbon 1.0 things.
Carbon was presented to Apple's Board of Directors as being defined in this 1998 specification manual and Apple after four years, STILL HAS NOT FINISHED CARBON.
The stock price is ailing partly because of this, and developers are giving up on Mac-O-Sux (Mac OS X) entirely, not only for its slow speed and lack of utilities.
If Apple never finishes Carbon 1.0 and ships it as intended in the distributed document called "Transitioning to Mac OS X : An Overview of the Carbon Programming Interface" then Apple may be in serious jeopardy. So far they keep shipping ever restrictive misnumberred versions of Carbon.
In this case the lies contained in the 84 page "Transitioning to Mac OS X : An Overview of the Carbon Programming Interface" will result in something far more interesting than developer rejection.... it will result in Class Action Lawsuits.
And when they start searching the internet for the keywords [CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT APPLE COMPUTER] this obscure post would crop up on slashdot if they display archived anon posts (they dont currently) and a lawyer will read it and realize.... hey.... Apple made forward looking statements in 1998 to the shareholders? The statements were promises? The promises of Carbon 1.0 were pivotal in killing off Mac OS 9 and its sales support? Carbon was a fraud? Really? Oh my god! We HAVE TO GET A HOLD of this incriminating document entitled "Transitioning to Mac OS X : An Overview of the Carbon Programming Interface" Whre can we get it! This will really make our lawsuit case!
And they will be right. Apple lied to developers and shareholders regarding Carbon 1.0 capabilities.
Goodbyte apple I know 10 Mac developers that recently switched to MS Windows
Almost no COMMERICIAL Mac OS X software has been released in 12 months.
Its all freeware and shareware garbage. Look through entire database yourself if you dont beleive me.
40 thousand commercial programs, or more, shipped for MacOS, and less than a one or two hundred SHRINKWRAPPED programs ever shipped for Mac-O-Sux (Mac OS X) so far.
Apple blew it and this should be on the blunder list.
If slashdot are having difficulty with their ad revenues why don't they offer to send their readers off to sites in return for a cut of the ad revenue?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Anyone who gets stuck on the "scooter" aspect of SEGWAY/GINGER/IT is missing out.
( "H.L. Mencken once said no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. ") ... http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/11/0511topnews.html
To be most succinct:
SEGWAY IS NOT ABOUT A SCOOTER
SEGWAY IS ABOUT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES!
Here's how I see things, take a nice light RECLINING LOVESEAT, stick a couple of wheels on the sides, a kind of cowling to protect your feet (ala those amusement rides that go round and round and round), maybe a weather-bubble, and you have THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION.
Of course a self-stabilizing, self-propelled, semi-/fully-autonomous navigation vehicle can take any number of form factors. With that kind of melange of technologies, the practicality of a 3000 pound chunk of metal (which is that heavy as it must carry a heavy motor to pull all that mass -- _and_ to act as armor against all the other 3000 pound chunks of metal) vs. a
+ LIGHT & CHEAP (not 3klbs of complicated parts -- how light could you build a loveseat?)
+ SELF-DRIVING (the segway really is just about fully autonomous -- its substantionally not much more than a notebook computer with a BIG battery AND wheels!)
+ SUPER-COMFI (three words: SEGWAY BY LA-Z-BOY)
+ V E H I C L E (not *just* a scooter)
... can actually change the face of human transportation.
Wistfully, nowadays whenever I see a 'car' on the road, my mind's eye overlays a segway loveseat, and boy oh boy, is that a much nicer picture...
Now about B2.0's take. For my money, the whole hype/anti-hype cycle of this invention illustrates that news typically doesn't matter (though a nod to our kindly hosts here @/.), but what does matter (to 'them') is inciting people's _prejudice_ (pre-judgement; lack of measured judgement) which gets their attention, which allows them to notice the advertising, which is perhaps the more honest 'matter' for the news.
p.s. the XFL (though a travesty of sport, to be sure) sadly got lynched by the news the same way -- in a horrible twist of fate I ended up defending the probable success of the XFL in showing a friend that, in fact, the will of the public has little effect on the SHIT that is slung our way as "entertainment". FWIW IANAFOPS! (I Am Not A Fan Of Professional Sports)
... http://thefanforce.com/gm/archives/00000003.htm
Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
I predict Mac OS X will go the the way of Bedrock, Taligent Pink, OpenDoc, CyberDog, SOM, Kalieda, Copland (dead Mac OS 8), QuickDraw GX, Powertalk, QuickDraw 3D, Dylan, Hypercard, Newton, HiPort, AROSE, 68K CFM, Gaming Sprockets, etc etc etc..... DEAD AND PATHETIC all because of bugs, greed, and lies.
If they ever shipped these things to developers with HONEST relicensing terms and proper documentation they all would have succeded... if they were not buggy and crashprone as well.
Instead Apple squanderred hundreds of millions of R&D dollars on all of these dead technologies.
Only one Apple technology ever succeded was one thing... the original Mac OS and parts of Quicktime.
Thus Inside Mac volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 are the only useful things Apple ever accomplished under Steve Jobs original control and vision.
Luckilly, it survived along with 40 thousand useful commercial apps all the way to OS 7.6
Now Apple keeps killing off all these apps.
Only a few hundred pre 2001 programs run without crashing under Mac OS X according to Apples online database.
The Mac is dead because they want Mac OS the be killed off like Apple's Bedrock, Taligent Pink OS, OpenDoc, CyberDog, SOM, Kalieda, Copland (dead Mac OS 8), QuickDraw GX, Powertalk, QuickDraw 3D, Dylan, Hypercard, Newton, HiPort, AROSE, 68K CFM, Gaming Sprockets, etc
RIP
The biggest blunders sometimes take two or 3 years to play out!
There is no way to judge a collossal business blunder in such a short timeframe.
Now I know the list is truly not relevent. (if I could access it).
a used car salesman...
MacOS shipped in 1984. Mac OS X shipped in 2001. Lets see, 40K apps in 17 years vs. 200 in 1. How many commercial apps shipped for the Original Mac in 1984? I'm not bothering with the rest of your comment. I feel dumber for reading it.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
SEGWAY is a violation of city sidewalk ordinances
That is why the company is trying to give a few free gingers to the POLICE and a few to the fereral government for Postal Workers.
That way they hope that laws might be changed to take away sidewalks from pedestrians for Segway right of way.
SEGWAY is merely a violation of city sidewalk ordinances
It will never take off even at 2 thousand bucks unless San Francisco changes its laws, and every other city.
hehehehehhehe, I remember seeing a demo of the MS Agent using .NET technology and they had replaced the genies head with Steve Balmer, even used his voice. Had him saying things like "It's spectacular!!" ehheheeh funniest thing at that conference.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
bug report is here for those interested
I refused to go when they started charging surcharge on chicken salad
I also hated how long their metallY incompetent (they hired borderline retards in los angeles area) took to serve up a simple sandwich.
SLOWWWWWW
But the number one reason I stopped going : THE NAME
When it was called Boston Chicken, sales DOUBLED every 10 months.
After they renamed every store from BOSTON CHICKEN to the asinine "Boston Market" the oppositge happened... sales started dropping every year at a fast rate.
The urine stench cleaner was probably icing on the cake.
Some people like the smell of rotting things or acrid things.
And urine is not that bad a smell to some people.
fecal smell is not that welcome with foods, or regurgitated items smells.
However Capranoic Acid (found in belly buttons and under armpits) is found in Thai soups such as the famous Hot and Sour soup.
Capranoic acis is 5 carbons and Butyric Acid if 4 carbons long.
Butyric acid stench (rotten rancid butter) is so foul it is the only thing that is a FELONY to put in or on someones private posessions such as autos. It has its own law in California Penal code.
Urine is fragrant with nitrogenous smells and ammonia and urea smells but is not exaclty a crowd disperser like sulpherous coumpounds are.
Sulpherous items more resemble rotten cabbage gas (Hydrogen Sulphide Gas) and farts and bloated corpses.
Now I think Boston Market could have done much worse than pick that urine smelling floor wipe.
They should have invested in a real diswasher instead of a bartending Bromine dip wash for their trays though.
It looked like everything on there was real recent. At most the CNN/SI thing went back a couple more years.
What about the SNL thing from the 80s?
Hell....fuckedcompany.com is much funner reading!
"77.Houston, We Have a Problem, Part 11: In late January 2002 -- well after the government has instructed Enron to stop shredding accounting documents -- Maureen Castaneda, a recently laid-off Enron employee, reveals that the shredding has continued. The tip-off: In boxing up her belongings, Castaneda finds a stash of shredded paper to use as packing material. Because the paper has been shredded horizontally instead of vertically, Castaneda can see that it consists of accounting documents."
:D
What a bunch of incompetent asses! They can't even shred documents right!
BlackGriffen
It's good to see someone keeping note of all the dotcom and regular company blunders of the past 3 years. Some of the items on this list I haven't even heard of. I just wish the list had all the names of every single exec involved in some of these ridiculous decisions, so that I don't work for them at some point in the future... when I can find a job. =)
Take a look at
mms://a953.m.akastream.net/7/953/674/t030402_001/
- C/Net's clips of steveb from the deposition (ASF stream; use asfrecorder, or WMP in your case...).
I am baffled at how a business magazine could think the gas price hikes of 9/11 was dumb business. People were panicking and filling their tanks at an incredible rate. There is only so much gas at a station, and when it is gone, it takes a while to replace.
I fully support the increase gas prices of that day as a way to moderate demand. After all, there are a lot of people with huge cars that can hold in excess of 30 gallons. Some of those people were getting gas just to get gas. If the higher prices meant that some of those people put 10 gallons of gas in their tanks instead of 20 gallons, I think the price hikes did their jobs. The fact that I did was able to get gas a few days later was, in my opinion, a validation of the higher gas prices.
Ultimately, the problem is caused by the number of people who can only afford to own the cars they do because of cheap gas and other government subsidies. On the other hand, for those of us with cars within our budgets, gas at $1 or $2 or $3 is just not such a big deal.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
There are so many Altivec optimizations in OS X that it really needs to run on a G4. Yeah, the iBook II will run OS X OK, but it's got a far faster G3 than my 350MHz one.
Tell me where to get on board the next class-action suit against Apple. I feel gypped. Thanks, Steverino.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Well, I know that this is a karma killer, but what the hell. #1 on that list should've been Open Source Companies. It's an oxymoron. A whole slew of businesses trying to sell a product that people can get for free. Talk about stupid business!
I bet the only people you know are stupid pimply-faced crashix^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlinux lusers.
Still doesn't change the outlook.
Penis
Hmm, so what have I been using then. I have both USB and Firewire on the mac I've been using at school. I can use both, and both are serial devices. Strange...
(Isn't his guy a failed talk show host?)
99) Geraldo Rivera informs viewers that he has visited the site of a friendly-fire incident in which three American soldiers were killed. "I said the Lord's Prayer and really choked up," Rivera says. When a critic for the Baltimore Sun later points out that Rivera was, in fact, more than 100 miles away from the site of the incident, Rivera claims he was actually at the site of a different friendly-fire incident, one that has escaped the attention of the military or any other journalistic source. "This cannot stand," Rivera adds. "He has impugned my honor. It is as if he slapped me in the face and challenged me to a duel."
The bankrupcy really helped Iridium - phones are now $1200 and cost $1.50 a minuit, from anywhere to anywhere. They just lauched five replacement satelites, and have a huge DOD contract.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
The only thing that is better for cleaning your ass is a bidet.
Or does anybody think adults shouldn't be clean as babies are?
NaN giving away Blender for free?
"You're just scared like a little white pussy. I'll fuck you till you love me, you faggot!"
You know, I'm almost certain this is a troll, but it's so funny I have to reply. This is funny. Genuinely so! When I read:
The urine stench cleaner was probably icing on the cake.
. . . I laughed so hard I wet myself! Thank you!
Dear Patrick Bateman,
I'd expect that kind of idiot, racist comment from someone who enjoys Whitney Houston, Phil Collins and Huey Lewis & the News.
~Bret Easton Ellis
Those are not SCSI and furthermore application programs written before 2000 do not typically have ability to play with either firewire or USB.
SCSI is what carbon 1.0 promised and never deliverred.
...to coin a phrase ... it just smells like chicken.
"And like that
I guess Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys got a little bored, decided to become a writer.
Yeah, stupid post, but it's what I thought.
Test your IQ (Hint, you have to look really closely, and use your ears too).
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
Stupid link.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
SGI is going under, and it turns down an invitation to provide millions of graphics chips for the gamecube?
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
I'll probably remember her more for her, um, revealing pictures, anyway.
A winner is you!
I liked that IQ test a lot. I could not pass it, but you made me spill my drink dangerously close to my laptop.
A 2 thousnad dollar IQ test....
I laughed my ass off though. A thousand thanks.
I like Adobe. They produce a solid product, and they've never, ever, seemed to be in a position where they were 'muscled over' by Microsoft.
Now, if I was one of those trenchcoat dudes who goes to that Hacker Convention in Las Vegas, I would probably hate Adobe.
I'm not. In fact, I bought about a dozen issues of 2600 magazine back in the old days but when I look back at it, it's pretty lame. Not at all technically intelligent writing. And it's the flagship of all those Adobe haters who go to the Hacker's Convention.
Pretty tedious read. Is there a "most padded story" award?? Many of the items just didn't seem all that dumb. The general background stupidity level of the world makes it hard to tell sometimes. The one about K-Mart being declared "retailer of the year" and declaring bankruptcy the next day was a corker though.
Anybody know a a way to use trading cards as voodoo dolls? ". . . and that's for stealing your recommendations from the tech section of the Bumsteer Daily Braindump . . . " :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
One mistake that has been made, which seems to have slipped past most people's notice is this:
I live in Edinburgh, and would make some fine company a wonderful SysAdmin - yet nobody has given me a job.
Not only would I be great as a Linux/Unix/Windows sysadmin, I'm good with people, cats, and small children and on top of that I'm a competent programmer too!
Come on Edinburghers, give me a job .. please!
This one bugged me:
"No one will deny that Sony is a world-class hardware company, and no one would deny that Microsoft is a world-class software company. Nintendo aspires to be neither one of those things." -- Peter Main, a Nintendo marketing executive, to the San Francisco Chronicle
The quote has been taken out of context. Obviously, he means hardware and software companies as opposed to video game companies.
Like it or not, since the majority of web users use Internet Explorer, it makes sense to design a site that displays properly in that browser.
Precisely, maybe Slashdot's arrogant refusal to do anything about this bug should be one of the 101 dumbest business decisions. Who in their right mind will pay per page load if that page could be rendered unreadable?
I use IE at work and don't have a choice about that - saying you should switch browsers is ridiculous. In fact it's just as bad as those lame sites that force you to use IE - I prefer Mozilla and Opera at home and it annoys me if I have to fire up IE to read a site. And it's just as annoying to be using IE and have to fire up another browser to read slashdot.
You've been given one fix involving the lameness filter and came up with some nonsense about preventing people from posting lists of dot files! WTF - how often does that happen? The lameness filter stops anyone from posting code and that doesn't seem to bother you. Then you were given another fix that doesn't use the lameness filter and still you sit on your asses doing sweet FA. Clue to the clueless - this is not a way to run a business.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
from the chicago democratic party!
Well, living in a socialist country I can promise you all that it's WAAAAAy better that businessmen make mistakes, than when politicians make mistakes! That's far, far worse.. And there is no "Linux" to run to when "Microsoft" turns bad unless there is a free-marked keeping politicians in check!
She just left CNN. Perhaps she was embarrassed by this article (or, perhaps, your post)?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
That's right: they (or rather, someone from their advertising agency) chalked "Peace, Love and Linux" all over Chicago and San Francisco. The artist got thirty days' community service, and IBM got fined ten thousand dollars. Here's the story Slashdot ran at the time.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
The list focused on the top 101 business mistakes of last year.
people never moderate anymore.
Yeah, and they never read the articles, either.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
And the 102nd dumbest moment goes to Business 2.0 for trying to capitalize on the Craig Mundie anti-GPL comment controversy by writing a hatchet article which compares the situation to what is going on in the Lego Mindstorms (tm) community.
Another classic - probably less well known to the slashdot audience since it's British and not tech-related is Gerald Ratner. He ran a very successful business called 'Ratners' selling ultra-cheap jewelry, popular with plebs and wannabe social climbers...
He gave a speech during which he jokingly called his products "total crap" (which they were)... Result: massive nationwide press coverage.
You knew I was going to say that.
Or maybe nonstop handheld orgnizer pitches aren't.
This one puts all the others to shame, if you ask me. Unless there's a separate category for downright evil, rather than merely dumb.
This is such a troll that I almost ran into the bridge it hid on.
I won't even go into picking apart your rant. Your lack of power of the English language says it all.
Research your facts before you waste space. Whether Apple is wrong or not, no one is ever in the mood to listen to what seems to be a village idiot, talking much but saying little of factual consequence.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
This article is for things that happened THIS YEAR dumbass!
When you go to their site and they can't serve up a page (due to the
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
do *not* attempt to pull it back through. Seek qualified medical assistance in removal.
hawk
I got's three words for Mr. Ballmer:
How about:
4) Ritalin
Seriously, this guy could be the poster child for ADD.
What is this strange attraction, exhibited by people with far too much money, to Buddhism? One thinks also of Richard Gere and [shudder] Steven Seagal claiming to adhere to Buddhist principles. I find that laughable, considering what I remember about the tenets of Buddhism, especially the bits about extinction of the self, freeing oneself from worldly attachments and cravings, and so forth.
hyacinthus.
It is quit evident that you are the one lacking mental abilities. I understood all the points....
Carbon 1.0 never shipped as promised to Shareholders.
http://www.hereinreality.com/chung.htm
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
>>> 13. Having earned the enmity of the five major record labels as CEO of MP3.com, Michael Robertson takes on Microsoft by launching Lindows, a Linux-based operating system that runs Windows programs. Robertson says he isn't afraid of going up against the world's most notoriously competitive company. "There were five major record labels, and there's only one Microsoft," he says. "That's an 80 percent reduction."
Shouldn't that be "the world's most notoriously ANTI-competetive company"?
thanks you thank you. ;_
I thought I was the only one who noticed it.
I asked about it, but the employies thought I was some loon.
I engoyed boston market, but I stopped going there after I noticed that smell a couple of times.
I didn't think it was urine, but is was annoying just the same.
whew, one more thing that proves i'm not crazy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
see your confused.
Thats Traditional Buddism.
They practice Hollywood "Look at my I'm trendy" Buddism.
Same thing with yoga.
I'm glad I escaped from L.A.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I find it interesting that Adobe is very close to being as much of a monopoly as Microsoft, but almost nobody hates them.
I think it's the quality of their products that makes the difference. They also still include thick manuals printed on nice, creamy paper, which gives their products that undefinable touch of class that makes buyers happy.
I will have ungrudgingly spent more than $1,000 on Adobe products this year without a second thought, while I've given Microsoft precisely zero.
I almost bought Windows XP because I was curious about it, but thanks to the "1984-style" registration, I was just too nausesated to go through with the $99 purchase.
Adobe is a good monopoly. They create great, classy products at prices not too far out of line. Not bad.
Although I will admit their mishandling of that Russian programmer was not good, it's not going to stop me from upgrading my Photoshop to the MacOS X version.
D
Here's the Google cached version of a Dave Barry article lampooning the masochistic Burger King execs.
Serge Tchuruk, Alcatel's president has received a 20% raise of his salary, which makes a decent total of 20 millions Euros, the year Alcatel has scored the worst ever LOSS for a French company (4 billions of loss if I recall correctly).
I think that he will be fired or will leave soon, but not without a diamond parachute severance pay.
Thread of death?
Hmm .. I can't remember when last Photoshop even crashed on me .. literally years ago .. probably still version 4. Really stable stuff.
statement...
"Whenever a person leaves New Zealand for Australia, the average intelligence of both countries rise!"
:-)
You're a literalist.
--Blair