This happened when Linens & Things went under. The liquidators stopped taking the ubiquitous "20% off anything" coupons, repriced everything at MSRP, and discounted from there. The first round of discounts, 20%-30% IIRC, weren't competitive with the regular prices at the local Target. But the suckers bought anyway, so by the time the decent discounts kicked in, all the good stuff was gone. The only really good deals were on the fixtures.
I really hope CC doesn't hire the same liquidators, because they did their job very, very well.
"Peopleware: Productive projects and teams", by DeMarco and Lister. Required reading for you and your boss. A nice quick read that starts out, "Somewhere today, a project is failing."
It's all about project management from that qualitative side, not the Gantt-chart quantitative side. What makes a team jell and work well together? How does the environment kill a team (hint: cubicles). How do the PHBs do it?
One-way pagers are still used a lot by people who work in secure buildings. The building's shielding completely blocks (intentionally) any RF in or out, including cell signals. But you can "whitelist" the pager signal from the satellite by installing a repeater on the roof of the building that retransmits into the building.
Everyone's been talking about head movement and motor noise, but what about bearing noise? it's the most irritating (to me) sound disk drives make, and a drive can operate just fine for years after it starts happening. I'd love for a way to get rid of that, even if I'm not trying to completely silence the whole machine.
We old farts never forget the first time seeing a hardcore high-end card reader suck up a four-foot hopper full of cards in less than five seconds, with a noise like ten Shop-Vacs and one Cessna.
Part of what kept Usenet clean in the early days was exactly the opposite: There were no cheap accounts. You had access if you were lucky enough to go to a school, or be employed by a company, or belong to a private group that supported a feed. Those schools/employers/groups would yank your account in a second if they found out you were misusing it, and the net was like a small town--everybody knew everybody.
I wasn't around at the very beginning, but my first exposure was in 1981, and the first death-of-the-net panic I lived through was the creation of the 100th newsgroup.
I once received a large box from HP containing several smaller boxes of stuff. The final one was one of those 9x12x3 boxes other people have mentioned. Inside it was a single sheet of paper that read, in its entirety:
This box intentionally empty.
I was too, but that was back when Scouting was Scouting, before they got taken over by the religious police. Nobody ever made me attest to any religion or belief in God or take the Larry Craig Oath.
I had great experiences in Scouting, but our religion (Unitarian Universalism) is steadfastly opposed to discrimination against gays, accepts atheism, and has been delegitimized by the BSA (i.e., UU's "Religion in Life" award can no longer be displayed on the Scout uniform). I'm very torn regarding whether my son should participate. He's in the YMCA's Adventure Guides now, but he's about to age out.
We almost did substitute HP. I worked in the HP-UX file system group during a time when we were exploring the possibility of adding new file system types to HP-UX. We spent a day with him talking about it. It didn't pan out because in those pre-web-everywhere days, we were skittish about taking third-party code from a small vendor scattered all over the world but on the outskirts of the mainstream FOSS world.
they could get that price down to around $10 pretty easily if they wanted to.
Sure. Get rid of those pesky royalties to those whiny artists and writers and you're almost halfway there.:)
It's really hard to believe that it costs more to produce a CD than it does to produce a DVD </sarcasm>
It doesn't, and it seems backwards that a movie can cost you $10 while its own soundtrack CD costs $16. But music doesn't have the equivalent of a "box office". Royalties from radio airplay don't come close.
The best way I know of to (legally) avoid high CD prices is to buy used CDs. Yes, there are places where Wal-Mart et al are the only places to get CDs, and no place to buy used CDs, but when all else fails, iTunes (and other legal download sources) are wherever the Internet is.
Precisely. Almost all the critical systems in the development lab I manage run FOSS all over the place, and the lab as a whole is rock stable. I'm betting my career on it, and winning that bet. BUT: I'm still not willing to be my (or my father's) life on code written and tested by some guy known only as "Spooge" who people think is from Uzbekistan but nobody's sure, no matter how good he is.
Here too (Central NJ), losing CompUSA leaves only Circuit Shitty and Best Lie. At least I get to hit Fry's when I travel on business a few times a year. Now all we have left are the Market Pro "Computer Shows and Sales" where it's the same few dozen Chinese vendors (screwdriver shop owners in from Brooklyn) selling their sub-commodity SUPER WHIZBANG MAINBOARDs.
That was my reaction too. The 8-track was the pinnacle of the "if it's good for radio stations it must be good for consumers" Bad Idea. At a radio station, carts were disposable, the players were built like iron, and the tapes never sat in a 140F parked car.
In the car, all sorts of cool things happened: 1. The player got gunked up with the lubricant applied to the tape, combined with cigarette (and other) smoke, resulting in the tape getting eaten. 2. The heat in the car (or just age) caused the splice adhesive to fail (remember, an 8-track was a giant loop), resulting in the tape getting eaten even worse at the next track change. 3. The head movement mechanism would jam, making it impossible to change tracks. 4. The lubricant would build up on the capstan and pinch roller, making the tape slip, wrecking the sound.
And of course, almost all pre-recorded 8-tracks had at least one song crossing a track change boundary, so you got a nice ten-second gap where they'd fade it down, click to the next track, and fade back up.
Slashdot Mirror
And Bradlee's and Rickel and Channel.
This happened when Linens & Things went under. The liquidators stopped taking the ubiquitous "20% off anything" coupons, repriced everything at MSRP, and discounted from there. The first round of discounts, 20%-30% IIRC, weren't competitive with the regular prices at the local Target. But the suckers bought anyway, so by the time the decent discounts kicked in, all the good stuff was gone. The only really good deals were on the fixtures.
I really hope CC doesn't hire the same liquidators, because they did their job very, very well.
"Peopleware: Productive projects and teams", by DeMarco and Lister. Required reading for you and your boss. A nice quick read that starts out, "Somewhere today, a project is failing."
It's all about project management from that qualitative side, not the Gantt-chart quantitative side. What makes a team jell and work well together? How does the environment kill a team (hint: cubicles). How do the PHBs do it?
Honorable mention: "Quality is Free" by Crosby.
One-way pagers are still used a lot by people who work in secure buildings. The building's shielding completely blocks (intentionally) any RF in or out, including cell signals. But you can "whitelist" the pager signal from the satellite by installing a repeater on the roof of the building that retransmits into the building.
Everyone's been talking about head movement and motor noise, but what about bearing noise? it's the most irritating (to me) sound disk drives make, and a drive can operate just fine for years after it starts happening. I'd love for a way to get rid of that, even if I'm not trying to completely silence the whole machine.
Ahh, to be young...
We old farts never forget the first time seeing a hardcore high-end card reader suck up a four-foot hopper full of cards in less than five seconds, with a noise like ten Shop-Vacs and one Cessna.
Aardman not known in the States? Are you kidding?
Fresh MEAT!
Phased plasma rifle in the 40W range.
Part of what kept Usenet clean in the early days was exactly the opposite: There were no cheap accounts. You had access if you were lucky enough to go to a school, or be employed by a company, or belong to a private group that supported a feed. Those schools/employers/groups would yank your account in a second if they found out you were misusing it, and the net was like a small town--everybody knew everybody.
I wasn't around at the very beginning, but my first exposure was in 1981, and the first death-of-the-net panic I lived through was the creation of the 100th newsgroup.
You have ten tiles. By the overdraw rule, turn over five. OK, ISS go back into the bag.
I once received a large box from HP containing several smaller boxes of stuff. The final one was one of those 9x12x3 boxes other people have mentioned. Inside it was a single sheet of paper that read, in its entirety: This box intentionally empty.
It should be OK if you stay in the chill room.
Anthrax.
I was too, but that was back when Scouting was Scouting, before they got taken over by the religious police. Nobody ever made me attest to any religion or belief in God or take the Larry Craig Oath.
I had great experiences in Scouting, but our religion (Unitarian Universalism) is steadfastly opposed to discrimination against gays, accepts atheism, and has been delegitimized by the BSA (i.e., UU's "Religion in Life" award can no longer be displayed on the Scout uniform). I'm very torn regarding whether my son should participate. He's in the YMCA's Adventure Guides now, but he's about to age out.
It may work. I have a couple Apple ]['s, and some of the 30-year-old floppies still boot.
We almost did substitute HP. I worked in the HP-UX file system group during a time when we were exploring the possibility of adding new file system types to HP-UX. We spent a day with him talking about it. It didn't pan out because in those pre-web-everywhere days, we were skittish about taking third-party code from a small vendor scattered all over the world but on the outskirts of the mainstream FOSS world.
Sure. Get rid of those pesky royalties to those whiny artists and writers and you're almost halfway there. :)
It's really hard to believe that it costs more to produce a CD than it does to produce a DVD
</sarcasm>
It doesn't, and it seems backwards that a movie can cost you $10 while its own soundtrack CD costs $16. But music doesn't have the equivalent of a "box office". Royalties from radio airplay don't come close.
The best way I know of to (legally) avoid high CD prices is to buy used CDs. Yes, there are places where Wal-Mart et al are the only places to get CDs, and no place to buy used CDs, but when all else fails, iTunes (and other legal download sources) are wherever the Internet is.
Are you then liable for life for any bugs that may turn up in anything you ever put your name on?
Just three days before Duke Nukem Forever would actually have been released....
Precisely. Almost all the critical systems in the development lab I manage run FOSS all over the place, and the lab as a whole is rock stable. I'm betting my career on it, and winning that bet. BUT: I'm still not willing to be my (or my father's) life on code written and tested by some guy known only as "Spooge" who people think is from Uzbekistan but nobody's sure, no matter how good he is.
Here too (Central NJ), losing CompUSA leaves only Circuit Shitty and Best Lie. At least I get to hit Fry's when I travel on business a few times a year. Now all we have left are the Market Pro "Computer Shows and Sales" where it's the same few dozen Chinese vendors (screwdriver shop owners in from Brooklyn) selling their sub-commodity SUPER WHIZBANG MAINBOARDs.
And NewEgg.
Thanks for looking that up. My first reaction to this story was, "Yeah, look how well it worked for Chiat/Day."
Offices are just like modern prisons--maximum containment at minimum cost.
True, but mirroring is cheap and easy in desktops, and impossible in laptops. I don't think I've ever seen a laptop that could hold two drives.
If you're stuck with a T-shirt with Darl's picture, don't worry, you'll have a need for it.
The next time you take a dump.
That was my reaction too. The 8-track was the pinnacle of the "if it's good for radio stations it must be good for consumers" Bad Idea. At a radio station, carts were disposable, the players were built like iron, and the tapes never sat in a 140F parked car.
In the car, all sorts of cool things happened: 1. The player got gunked up with the lubricant applied to the tape, combined with cigarette (and other) smoke, resulting in the tape getting eaten. 2. The heat in the car (or just age) caused the splice adhesive to fail (remember, an 8-track was a giant loop), resulting in the tape getting eaten even worse at the next track change. 3. The head movement mechanism would jam, making it impossible to change tracks. 4. The lubricant would build up on the capstan and pinch roller, making the tape slip, wrecking the sound.
And of course, almost all pre-recorded 8-tracks had at least one song crossing a track change boundary, so you got a nice ten-second gap where they'd fade it down, click to the next track, and fade back up.