I worked for Sun for 7 years, some of that time at VP level, so I got to know Scott, and work with/for him. He taught me an important lesson: never, ever, give up. There were at least two occasions when I was sent out to fight "hopeless" battles for Sun against the arrayed masses of competition. He pushed hard to not give up in the face of impossible odds, and we won.
He never gives up.
It's very easy to armchair quarterback what Sun and Scott have been doing this past decade or so. Whenever I find myself wondering why my SUNW shares aren't worth a tenth of what I paid for them, I'm tempted to think of how I could run the company better than Scott. And then I realize that my puny mind can't come up with anything. The company generates cash, employs a lot of people and satisfies a lot of customers. Scott's never been afraid to remake the company (I lived through the transition from technical workstations to commercial servers and that was quite something), but there's only so much that you can do.
I have no clue what's going on inside the company now but, of one thing I'm sure: if Scott does step aside, it's because he thinks that it's the best thing for the company. He's given everything to it for over 20 years, and could easily have taken the "go lie on a beach" path years and years ago.
You make good points. My argument is that the Kirtas scanner is cheaper, because it's at least twice as fast as a human operator, and becaus one operator can run several machines at once. When I spent time with the company, I was impressed at just how gently it handled pages: it fans a page out using gentle puffs of air, and lifts pages using a large-area (dry) sponge. But, you're right: if a book is really fragile, or on the point of disintegration, a manual approach is better.
It seems a pity to use such a manual method. This...
http://www.kirtas-tech.com/
is designed to scan books, especially old and fragile books, automatically. It handles the pages even more gently than a trained person. It's not cheap, but is does around 1,000 pages per hour, and the operator just loads books in and takes them out when they're done.
I looked at the company a couple of years ago (I'm a VC) and get regular updates from them. A LOT of libraries are using them now.
Indeed, all pilots train to deal with dead stick situations. However, it's not always possible to have a predictable outcome in the event of engine failures (e.g. you're flying at night, or in instrument conditions). If there's an airframe failure, which is admittedly rare, but possible, a parachute might be your only chance of survival.
In the case that started this topic, the aircraft suffered an airframe failure when an aileron attach point gave way shortly after maintenance in that area. The aircraft would have become uncontrollable very quickly.
Adobe DOES sell a cheaper version of Photoshop: Photoshop Elements. Sure, it doesn't have all of the functionality of Photoshop, but it has much of it. I bought a copy for $99.99 at Fry's last week, and there's a $30 upgrade/competitive rebate.
I'm sure that Adobe's pricing is very carefully managed to maximize long-term revenue across its product lines. If they thought that they'd get more than twice the revenue (or gross margin, to be more accurate) by halving the price, my guess is that they'd do it.
The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe was a BBC series show in the mid-to-late 70s. I vaguely remember watching it, then. It was in classic BBC drama style, i.e. made for about $5/episode, but somehow pulled it off anyway because of the strength of the story. Kindof like Doctor Who. The religious overtones of the novels seemed somewhat toned down for the TV series; I remember reading the Narnia series after seeing the TV show, and being struck by how thinly-veiled an allegory it was.
This (noise-cancelling) technology transformed flying in general aviation aircraft a few years ago. An unpressurized single-engine aircraft can be very noisy, with a big fan a few feet in front of the pilot's face pulling the 'plane along. Sound insulation material is heavy, which you don't want in today's load-challenged GA aircraft. I use cheap ($300) automatic noise reduction (ANR) headsets when flying, and the difference is amazing when you turn them on. This technology works much better at low frequencies than high, and the tiring low-frequency rumble of a big piston engine just goes away.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed with a company called Ejasent (formerly Apera) that had a modified Solaris kernel which allowed them to freeze processes, and then thaw them very quickly (low milliseconds). Their goal was to build an edge server network allowing very quick bring up of common apps (like "start Oracle and look for this book") for browser-based clients.
I met with them again a couple of months ago, and they seem to have made a lot of progress, and the technology is now sanctioned by Sun.
http://www.ejasent.com
Late last year, my company realized that mail from our server to AOL addresses was disappearing into a black hole. A lot of research revealed that our IP address was in a range that AOL was blocking, because a spammer had used address(es) in that range. No amount of cajoling was ever successful in them lifting the ban on our address (which definitly doesn't spam). Our Chairman is a former AOL VP, and even he couldn't get past the AOL blockade.
In the end, we moved from @Work to a different T-1 provider, and the problem went away.
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I worked for Sun for 7 years, some of that time at VP level, so I got to know Scott, and work with/for him. He taught me an important lesson: never, ever, give up. There were at least two occasions when I was sent out to fight "hopeless" battles for Sun against the arrayed masses of competition. He pushed hard to not give up in the face of impossible odds, and we won.
He never gives up.
It's very easy to armchair quarterback what Sun and Scott have been doing this past decade or so. Whenever I find myself wondering why my SUNW shares aren't worth a tenth of what I paid for them, I'm tempted to think of how I could run the company better than Scott. And then I realize that my puny mind can't come up with anything. The company generates cash, employs a lot of people and satisfies a lot of customers. Scott's never been afraid to remake the company (I lived through the transition from technical workstations to commercial servers and that was quite something), but there's only so much that you can do.
I have no clue what's going on inside the company now but, of one thing I'm sure: if Scott does step aside, it's because he thinks that it's the best thing for the company. He's given everything to it for over 20 years, and could easily have taken the "go lie on a beach" path years and years ago.
You make good points. My argument is that the Kirtas scanner is cheaper, because it's at least twice as fast as a human operator, and becaus one operator can run several machines at once. When I spent time with the company, I was impressed at just how gently it handled pages: it fans a page out using gentle puffs of air, and lifts pages using a large-area (dry) sponge. But, you're right: if a book is really fragile, or on the point of disintegration, a manual approach is better.
It seems a pity to use such a manual method. This... http://www.kirtas-tech.com/ is designed to scan books, especially old and fragile books, automatically. It handles the pages even more gently than a trained person. It's not cheap, but is does around 1,000 pages per hour, and the operator just loads books in and takes them out when they're done. I looked at the company a couple of years ago (I'm a VC) and get regular updates from them. A LOT of libraries are using them now.
Indeed, all pilots train to deal with dead stick situations. However, it's not always possible to have a predictable outcome in the event of engine failures (e.g. you're flying at night, or in instrument conditions). If there's an airframe failure, which is admittedly rare, but possible, a parachute might be your only chance of survival.
In the case that started this topic, the aircraft suffered an airframe failure when an aileron attach point gave way shortly after maintenance in that area. The aircraft would have become uncontrollable very quickly.
Adobe DOES sell a cheaper version of Photoshop: Photoshop Elements. Sure, it doesn't have all of the functionality of Photoshop, but it has much of it. I bought a copy for $99.99 at Fry's last week, and there's a $30 upgrade/competitive rebate. I'm sure that Adobe's pricing is very carefully managed to maximize long-term revenue across its product lines. If they thought that they'd get more than twice the revenue (or gross margin, to be more accurate) by halving the price, my guess is that they'd do it.
The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe was a BBC series show in the mid-to-late 70s. I vaguely remember watching it, then. It was in classic BBC drama style, i.e. made for about $5/episode, but somehow pulled it off anyway because of the strength of the story. Kindof like Doctor Who. The religious overtones of the novels seemed somewhat toned down for the TV series; I remember reading the Narnia series after seeing the TV show, and being struck by how thinly-veiled an allegory it was.
This (noise-cancelling) technology transformed flying in general aviation aircraft a few years ago. An unpressurized single-engine aircraft can be very noisy, with a big fan a few feet in front of the pilot's face pulling the 'plane along. Sound insulation material is heavy, which you don't want in today's load-challenged GA aircraft. I use cheap ($300) automatic noise reduction (ANR) headsets when flying, and the difference is amazing when you turn them on. This technology works much better at low frequencies than high, and the tiring low-frequency rumble of a big piston engine just goes away.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed with a company called Ejasent (formerly Apera) that had a modified Solaris kernel which allowed them to freeze processes, and then thaw them very quickly (low milliseconds). Their goal was to build an edge server network allowing very quick bring up of common apps (like "start Oracle and look for this book") for browser-based clients. I met with them again a couple of months ago, and they seem to have made a lot of progress, and the technology is now sanctioned by Sun. http://www.ejasent.com
Late last year, my company realized that mail from our server to AOL addresses was disappearing into a black hole. A lot of research revealed that our IP address was in a range that AOL was blocking, because a spammer had used address(es) in that range. No amount of cajoling was ever successful in them lifting the ban on our address (which definitly doesn't spam). Our Chairman is a former AOL VP, and even he couldn't get past the AOL blockade. In the end, we moved from @Work to a different T-1 provider, and the problem went away.