that depends on who's telling the story -- Canon for example, who lost tens of billions of dollars on NeXt -- or Jobs, who sold it to Apple for $400 million (many times his personal investment) and basically got to keep it as well.:-)
Good point. I thought of that right after posting. It was a colossal business failure until he used it as leverage to get back into Apple.
And it wasn't just Canon. Ross Perot also pissed away a lot of money into that particular RDF.
It's kind of ironic that Steve Jobs has much better business sense than the "business" people they put in charge of Apple originally because they didn't think Steve Jobs could really run Apple. Man, has he proven those folks wrong!
From what I've read, I think the "they" that didn't think he could do it was Steve himself. He was probably right. NEXT (I gave up trying to remember their clever misuse of capitalization.) was a colossal business failure despite the technological vision. My theory is that Steve needed a colossal failure to hone the rough edges of his genius and that's why he is so successful as Apple CEO 2.0.
I'm not a fan boy, but you cannot deny that the man has a natural instinct for selling and an ability to see the future, it would (now) seem.
Steve is everything Billg pretends to be, wishes he was and has convinced Wall Street he is.
How come MY MOTHER doesn't get spyware or viruses or whatever when she's running only XP Service Pack 1? Without any AV software? Explain that.
Because she doesn't do much with her computer?
MY MOTHER (why are we screaming) is intelligent but not computer savvy by any stretch of the imagination. She is an office manager for a smallish telecom consulting company that placed their "office" in her home with a small network.
She has to deal with payroll, client billing, managing emailed resumes that come in from the web site, etc.
Their little network (in her house) has been compromised twice in the last 3 years or so. Her personal machine (which is on the company's LAN so it can share the broadband connection running into her home) runs Mac OS X and only receives updates and general maintenance once a year when I make it home at Christmas. It has never been affected when the other (business) machines on the network were compromised. It has on occasion saved the company when she was able to get her work done there while they were cleaning up the mess caused by Code Red or (insert Windows demon of the day here).
Before you start the obvious jokes, my mother is a prude to the point of never having tasted alcohol. Even if she were to participate in nefariousness online, she would surely do it from her personal computer and not the company's.
YOUR MOTHER is apparently not doing anything more complex with her computer than checking her AOL email and browsing knittingideas.com. And still it's only a matter of time.
MY MOTHER, and many others like her, would like to have a computer that's a useful tool for sometimes complex tasks without needing to be a geek.
I've been so wrong headed, it's terrifying. Thank you, sir, for turning my life around. Your shining example of refusing to stand on the shoulders of giants to instead figure everything out yourself has changed my life already.
And you call yourself literate? I guess you are "basically literate," as you put it, but you have no comprehension skills. I said nothing about "refusing to stand on the shoulders of giants to instead figure everything out yourself."
Name five "giants" at your university. Then tell me what you learn there that I can't from a book or the Internet.
Let us strike down the universities, I say! Sinkholes for valuable money that would be better placed lining the pockets of the proletariat! Education for none!
The idea that this sort of thing can be predicted mathematically and with statistics is ignorant on its face.
This is a clear example of someone who has been educated beyond his intelligence.
It's also a clear example of why I didn't waste time in college. I would rather make money than accumulate degrees. Most professors are cowards that can't cut it in "the real world." Their students are often worse because they think they CAN cut it in the real world.
"Given that the IT needs of Microsoft probably rival or surpass almost any other organization, I'd say that probably qualifies their products as at the very least among the best."
I very well could be mistaken, but I rather doubt the accuracy of that statement. I've personally worked inside a couple of Fortune 500 companies that were certainly smaller than MS in market cap and I cannot imagine what MS would be doing that would rival either of them in terms of constant data processing.
One is a large clothing retailer that is grabbing EVERY SINGLE cash register transaction from 10,000+ stores every single night and doing absurdly complex analysis on what items are purchased with what and which promotional displays are causing which other items to sell, etc. They are doing it daily, 360+ days a year.
The other is a massive consumer packaged goods company that is processing millions of transactions from tens of thousands of route sales reps on a daily basis. Again, it is at a micro-granular level and done every single day. That is just the sales side. They are at least as obsessed with analyzing their manufacturing plants and supply chain and they also maintain maintenance and repair data on the largest fleet of corporately owned trucks in the United States, among other IT tasks.
I can't even fathom what kind of data crunching Target and Wal-Mart must be doing. Then there's Fed-Ex, UPS, etc. with the real-time shipment tracking. I would imagine that a moderately sized regional chain of grocery stores is crunching more data on a daily basis than Microsoft.
Maybe I'm naive, but I seriously doubt that in the kind of business Microsoft is engaged, their data processing needs are anywhere near the 30th percentile.
Now I have to search for a replacement. Any suggestions for a landline 'virtual calling card' service at ~2 cents a min?
I've been using Onesuite for a couple years now. I've not paid much attention to their International rates, but domestic US is 2.9 cents/min. if you access them toll free, and 2.5 cents if you use a local access number. No monthly fees, connection charges, etc. Just straight up per minute charge.
They're not perfect; I sometimes have a problem getting connected on their toll free number. (That's very rare, though. It's probably happened to me a half dozen times in 2+ years of daily use.)
Over all, I've been very happy with them and I would recommend them. If you try them out use my username (digitalcowboy1) as a referral and we each get 20 mins. free.
Ken finished his record-streak with just over $2.5 Million
It was $2,520,700 to be exact.
Your point is probably right in mathematical terms... but... if you think that $20,700 is so trivial as to be referred to as "just over," then please come play poker with me.
I'm afraid I must now mod you down for disagreeing with the standard opinion of the Slashdot group, namely that Slashdot encourages group think and singular opinions.
Oops. I can't post and mod in the same thread. I guess you'll get away with your dissent this time, rapscallion!
I agree this is hardly news. I had the worst IT job ever a few years ago at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. I'm not sure when they got these robots but they had the very thing you and this article describe when I started there in 1997.
I agree with your point but I have to pick one nit.
Doyle Brunson has a Master's degree in Administrative Education. He earned his Bachelor's degree in 1954 and his Master's the following year. (Source is his book -- "Super System.") I really doubt the math was a struggle for him.
Also, he has said that if you think poker is card game, you'll never be good at it. It's a game of people and position that happens to involve cards. (That's a slight paraphrase.)
Oh, and, yes I play a bit as if that wasn't obvious.
You failed to specify, using an instantly made up and barely decipherable acronym, whether:
1) You are a lawyer 2) You are not a lawyer 3) You intend to be a lawyer 4) You are married to a lawyer 5) You know a lawyer 6) You know how to spell lawyer
Without a disclaimer, I'm left to conclude that you MUST BE a lawyer (or, more likely, a high ranking judge) and as such I will be citing your Slashdot post in a case I currently have before the Federal appeals court.
Here's a test for you. Try using the word "niggardly" in a sentence and see how many thin-skinned feebs decide to tar and feather you for being a racist.
I demand an apology! You cannot just go around judging people and discriminating against them based on the thickness of their skin! You insensitive clod!
I have a dream that someday people will be judged not by the thickness of their skin but by the content of their character.
Re:Is this my first ever troll?
on
iPod-Jacked
·
· Score: 1
Yeah. I, for one, believe you. That sounds about right for the rare slashdotter with a girlfriend.
Target sells third party carts for Lexmark. That's where I got mine. They are Data Products brand. I've had very good luck with them. Very high quality and reasonably priced with a 100% guarantee. I believe Wal-Mart also carries them.
Be careful buying on the web. The fear mongering stories the manufacturers tell you can sometimes be true. I had a third party cartridge completely destroy an Epson printer for me a few years back due to really low quality ink.
MapQuest isn't so bad if you click the "Big Map" button over on the right side of a given map, but the setting doesn't seem to be sticky across searches, and it really ought to be a user preference controlled by a cookie...
...Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the "big two"?
I've been using Maps On Us for a few years now as my primary mapping service. Stupid name but I really like the customization options, including the ability to set your default map size anywhere in the range from 250 x 250 up to 800 x 700. You can even choose the resolution anywhere between 30 and 300 pixels/inch.
Say the war of 1812, ask any american, they well basicaly know it was a naval batal that they won.
You, sir or ma'am, are vastly overestimating the average American's knowledge of our country's history.
A far more typical response when asking "any" American about the war of 1812 would be something like a blank stare followed by, "That's the one where Lincoln freed the slaves, right?"
Or perhaps, "Was that the one with Mel Gibson where the guy's head got taken off by a cannonball? That was totally cool!"
So, put out some bait. If you can get the RIAA to force your ISP to take something you own down, then you can sue them for having done that, and they have to pay your attorney's fees!!
They have to pay your attorney's fees, huh?
You've never been in an American court room have you?
I have been. More than once. Most recently today. What goes on there is nothing resembling justice and has very little to do with the law.
It has a lot to do with the mood the go^H^H judge is in that day.
Want some perspective on the "American justice system"? Just try and tell the "whole truth" in a court room sometime. It's not allowed anymore.
(Notice that the lawyers aren't sworn in like the witnesses they call.)
Mark my words, one of these days one of those subpoenas will find a lawmaker's kid on the other end, and the RIAA will run away from that court room as fast as they can.
And mark MY words, no one will EVER hear about it.
This is one of the most fascinating discussions I've seen on/. in a while. I really had no idea that this was part of the "geek culture." I thought it was just me.
If you are interested in the idea of learning how to live off the land or "get off the grid," I would highly recommend this site. There is some political discussion there that some of you might not agree with, but the common theme of the site is living a completely self-sufficient life.
I will shamelessly admit that this next is, in part, whoring to promote a friend's web site, but it's not off-topic and you may just find it interesting:
I have a best friend that has never been a computer geek per se, but is the only person that has ever REALLY seemed to understand me. (I'm more left-brained and got into computers. He's more right-brained and artistic. But we get along so well because we both have at least a mild interest in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING; how it works and how it's done.)
Anyway, he taught himself, from very old books, a lot of practice and trial and error, metal working techniques from the turn of the century that so-called "experts" told him were just myths.
He now makes his living in metal works, with NO formal education or real "training" at all. On the side, he designs and builds functional art with wood and metal. He has some very unique (and all hand-crafted) furniture and stuff for sale on his web site.
(Please check out the site if you're at all intrigued. I admitted I was whoring for traffic, after all. Also, don't critique the site construction: I threw it together in a couple of hours, planning to go back and "do it right" and never got around to the latter.)
He's even been kicking around the idea of building a computer *into* a desk so that the computer is completely invisible and doesn't interfere wth the aesthetics of the room. Probably not an idea so appealing to present company, but a great idea nonetheless, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
that depends on who's telling the story -- Canon for example, who lost tens of billions of dollars on NeXt -- or Jobs, who sold it to Apple for $400 million (many times his personal investment) and basically got to keep it as well. :-)
Good point. I thought of that right after posting. It was a colossal business failure until he used it as leverage to get back into Apple.
And it wasn't just Canon. Ross Perot also pissed away a lot of money into that particular RDF.
It's kind of ironic that Steve Jobs has much better business sense than the "business" people they put in charge of Apple originally because they didn't think Steve Jobs could really run Apple. Man, has he proven those folks wrong!
From what I've read, I think the "they" that didn't think he could do it was Steve himself. He was probably right. NEXT (I gave up trying to remember their clever misuse of capitalization.) was a colossal business failure despite the technological vision. My theory is that Steve needed a colossal failure to hone the rough edges of his genius and that's why he is so successful as Apple CEO 2.0.
I'm not a fan boy, but you cannot deny that the man has a natural instinct for selling and an ability to see the future, it would (now) seem.
Steve is everything Billg pretends to be, wishes he was and has convinced Wall Street he is.
How come MY MOTHER doesn't get spyware or viruses or whatever when she's running only XP Service Pack 1? Without any AV software? Explain that.
Because she doesn't do much with her computer?
MY MOTHER (why are we screaming) is intelligent but not computer savvy by any stretch of the imagination. She is an office manager for a smallish telecom consulting company that placed their "office" in her home with a small network.
She has to deal with payroll, client billing, managing emailed resumes that come in from the web site, etc.
Their little network (in her house) has been compromised twice in the last 3 years or so. Her personal machine (which is on the company's LAN so it can share the broadband connection running into her home) runs Mac OS X and only receives updates and general maintenance once a year when I make it home at Christmas. It has never been affected when the other (business) machines on the network were compromised. It has on occasion saved the company when she was able to get her work done there while they were cleaning up the mess caused by Code Red or (insert Windows demon of the day here).
Before you start the obvious jokes, my mother is a prude to the point of never having tasted alcohol. Even if she were to participate in nefariousness online, she would surely do it from her personal computer and not the company's.
YOUR MOTHER is apparently not doing anything more complex with her computer than checking her AOL email and browsing knittingideas.com. And still it's only a matter of time.
MY MOTHER, and many others like her, would like to have a computer that's a useful tool for sometimes complex tasks without needing to be a geek.
I've been so wrong headed, it's terrifying. Thank you, sir, for turning my life around. Your shining example of refusing to stand on the shoulders of giants to instead figure everything out yourself has changed my life already.
And you call yourself literate? I guess you are "basically literate," as you put it, but you have no comprehension skills. I said nothing about "refusing to stand on the shoulders of giants to instead figure everything out yourself."
Name five "giants" at your university. Then tell me what you learn there that I can't from a book or the Internet.
Let us strike down the universities, I say! Sinkholes for valuable money that would be better placed lining the pockets of the proletariat! Education for none!
I agree completely.
But then, I also know who the General was at the battle of Yorktown and how to calculate change for my lunch.
Do you?
I say let's stop subsidizing those who would like to make their living by hiding in school for their whole life. Education for all!
The idea that this sort of thing can be predicted mathematically and with statistics is ignorant on its face.
This is a clear example of someone who has been educated beyond his intelligence.
It's also a clear example of why I didn't waste time in college. I would rather make money than accumulate degrees. Most professors are cowards that can't cut it in "the real world." Their students are often worse because they think they CAN cut it in the real world.
Intelligent men educate themselves.
Knowledge is power... Unless you're stupid.
(And, No. I did NOT RTFA because it's ignorance.)
Why is common sense so rare?
"Given that the IT needs of Microsoft probably rival or surpass almost any other organization, I'd say that probably qualifies their products as at the very least among the best."
I very well could be mistaken, but I rather doubt the accuracy of that statement. I've personally worked inside a couple of Fortune 500 companies that were certainly smaller than MS in market cap and I cannot imagine what MS would be doing that would rival either of them in terms of constant data processing.
One is a large clothing retailer that is grabbing EVERY SINGLE cash register transaction from 10,000+ stores every single night and doing absurdly complex analysis on what items are purchased with what and which promotional displays are causing which other items to sell, etc. They are doing it daily, 360+ days a year.
The other is a massive consumer packaged goods company that is processing millions of transactions from tens of thousands of route sales reps on a daily basis. Again, it is at a micro-granular level and done every single day. That is just the sales side. They are at least as obsessed with analyzing their manufacturing plants and supply chain and they also maintain maintenance and repair data on the largest fleet of corporately owned trucks in the United States, among other IT tasks.
I can't even fathom what kind of data crunching Target and Wal-Mart must be doing. Then there's Fed-Ex, UPS, etc. with the real-time shipment tracking. I would imagine that a moderately sized regional chain of grocery stores is crunching more data on a daily basis than Microsoft.
Maybe I'm naive, but I seriously doubt that in the kind of business Microsoft is engaged, their data processing needs are anywhere near the 30th percentile.
Actually, you can just use this link to sign up and get the same referral deal.
I just discovered they offered the referral service that way.
Now I have to search for a replacement. Any suggestions for a landline 'virtual calling card' service at ~2 cents a min?
I've been using Onesuite for a couple years now. I've not paid much attention to their International rates, but domestic US is 2.9 cents/min. if you access them toll free, and 2.5 cents if you use a local access number. No monthly fees, connection charges, etc. Just straight up per minute charge.
They're not perfect; I sometimes have a problem getting connected on their toll free number. (That's very rare, though. It's probably happened to me a half dozen times in 2+ years of daily use.)
Over all, I've been very happy with them and I would recommend them. If you try them out use my username (digitalcowboy1) as a referral and we each get 20 mins. free.
Ken finished his record-streak with just over $2.5 Million
It was $2,520,700 to be exact.
Your point is probably right in mathematical terms... but... if you think that $20,700 is so trivial as to be referred to as "just over," then please come play poker with me.
... if your head receives big hits (eg you do motocross ...
If you're getting big hits in the head a lot riding motocross, you're doing it wrong.
I'm afraid I must now mod you down for disagreeing with the standard opinion of the Slashdot group, namely that Slashdot encourages group think and singular opinions.
Oops. I can't post and mod in the same thread. I guess you'll get away with your dissent this time, rapscallion!
Very interesting inside info.
I agree this is hardly news. I had the worst IT job ever a few years ago at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. I'm not sure when they got these robots but they had the very thing you and this article describe when I started there in 1997.
I agree with your point but I have to pick one nit.
Doyle Brunson has a Master's degree in Administrative Education. He earned his Bachelor's degree in 1954 and his Master's the following year. (Source is his book -- "Super System.") I really doubt the math was a struggle for him.
Also, he has said that if you think poker is card game, you'll never be good at it. It's a game of people and position that happens to involve cards. (That's a slight paraphrase.)
Oh, and, yes I play a bit as if that wasn't obvious.
You failed to specify, using an instantly made up and barely decipherable acronym, whether:
1) You are a lawyer
2) You are not a lawyer
3) You intend to be a lawyer
4) You are married to a lawyer
5) You know a lawyer
6) You know how to spell lawyer
Without a disclaimer, I'm left to conclude that you MUST BE a lawyer (or, more likely, a high ranking judge) and as such I will be citing your Slashdot post in a case I currently have before the Federal appeals court.
If I lose, expect to be sued.
Fifty men have their members examined by a doctor and their length recorded.
Before I could possibly put a price on this I would need to know if this is a hot, female doctor or not.
Here's a test for you. Try using the word "niggardly" in a sentence and see how many thin-skinned feebs decide to tar and feather you for being a racist.
I demand an apology! You cannot just go around judging people and discriminating against them based on the thickness of their skin! You insensitive clod!
I have a dream that someday people will be judged not by the thickness of their skin but by the content of their character.
Yeah. I, for one, believe you. That sounds about right for the rare slashdotter with a girlfriend.
Target sells third party carts for Lexmark. That's where I got mine. They are Data Products brand. I've had very good luck with them. Very high quality and reasonably priced with a 100% guarantee. I believe Wal-Mart also carries them.
Be careful buying on the web. The fear mongering stories the manufacturers tell you can sometimes be true. I had a third party cartridge completely destroy an Epson printer for me a few years back due to really low quality ink.
MapQuest isn't so bad if you click the "Big Map" button over on the right side of a given map, but the setting doesn't seem to be sticky across searches, and it really ought to be a user preference controlled by a cookie...
...Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the "big two"?
I've been using Maps On Us for a few years now as my primary mapping service. Stupid name but I really like the customization options, including the ability to set your default map size anywhere in the range from 250 x 250 up to 800 x 700. You can even choose the resolution anywhere between 30 and 300 pixels/inch.
Say the war of 1812, ask any american, they well basicaly know it was a naval batal that they won.
You, sir or ma'am, are vastly overestimating the average American's knowledge of our country's history.
A far more typical response when asking "any" American about the war of 1812 would be something like a blank stare followed by, "That's the one where Lincoln freed the slaves, right?"
Or perhaps, "Was that the one with Mel Gibson where the guy's head got taken off by a cannonball? That was totally cool!"
So, put out some bait. If you can get the RIAA to force your ISP to take something you own down, then you can sue them for having done that, and they have to pay your attorney's fees!!
They have to pay your attorney's fees, huh?
You've never been in an American court room have you?
I have been. More than once. Most recently today. What goes on there is nothing resembling justice and has very little to do with the law.
It has a lot to do with the mood the go^H^H judge is in that day.
Want some perspective on the "American justice system"? Just try and tell the "whole truth" in a court room sometime. It's not allowed anymore.
(Notice that the lawyers aren't sworn in like the witnesses they call.)
Mark my words, one of these days one of those subpoenas will find a lawmaker's kid on the other end, and the RIAA will run away from that court room as fast as they can.
And mark MY words, no one will EVER hear about it.
I think we should go with the recommendation of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Mars) and go look at the American flag Neil Armstrong left there in 1969!
After all she is on the House Space Subcommittee. She certainly would know what's most interesting on Mars.
This is one of the most fascinating discussions I've seen on /. in a while. I really had no idea that this was part of the "geek culture." I thought it was just me.
If you are interested in the idea of learning how to live off the land or "get off the grid," I would highly recommend this site. There is some political discussion there that some of you might not agree with, but the common theme of the site is living a completely self-sufficient life.
I will shamelessly admit that this next is, in part, whoring to promote a friend's web site, but it's not off-topic and you may just find it interesting:
I have a best friend that has never been a computer geek per se, but is the only person that has ever REALLY seemed to understand me. (I'm more left-brained and got into computers. He's more right-brained and artistic. But we get along so well because we both have at least a mild interest in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING; how it works and how it's done.)
Anyway, he taught himself, from very old books, a lot of practice and trial and error, metal working techniques from the turn of the century that so-called "experts" told him were just myths.
He now makes his living in metal works, with NO formal education or real "training" at all. On the side, he designs and builds functional art with wood and metal. He has some very unique (and all hand-crafted) furniture and stuff for sale on his web site.
(Please check out the site if you're at all intrigued. I admitted I was whoring for traffic, after all. Also, don't critique the site construction: I threw it together in a couple of hours, planning to go back and "do it right" and never got around to the latter.)
He's even been kicking around the idea of building a computer *into* a desk so that the computer is completely invisible and doesn't interfere wth the aesthetics of the room. Probably not an idea so appealing to present company, but a great idea nonetheless, IMHO.
Steve? Is that you?
(Just kidding. I agree with everything said in the parent post except the peppering of obscenities for no apparent reason.)