This is another area where I feel Sun needs to get a clue. It's very difficult to make money with systems software when the best people in the business are giving it away. You need to put your value way high up the stack, and keep moving.
My point was that Windows on the Itanic was thought by many in the mid-90's to be the future of workstations - thus making Sun irrelevant.
Yes. But we can take that even farther. There's a well-known story about HP buying Microsoft's assurance, in 1995, that MS would soon bring out an enterprise quality NT for servers as well as workstations. That may now have happened, but sure didn't in the decade they said it would. HP chose not to invest in its Unix lines at that point, and let Sun run away with their scientific workstation market, their server market, and so on. This was a direct cause of HP's pre-merger financial woes.
I would propose as the cardinal sin of the computer industry: protecting your own higher-priced or older products from your own newer, lower-priced products. This was a primary contributor to DEC's demise. When the VAX 750 came out, it really could have been as fast as a 780. For a while there was an aftermarket kit to un-cripple it so that it would indeed have performance close to a 780. But having a much cheaper machine of similar performance available would have hurt those high-margin 780 sales, and worse, would make the people who had just caused their companies to buy big-ticket 780's to look stupid or even lose their jobs.
But nobody made Sun protect DEC's lines. So, Sun won. Sun seems to have forgotten that lesson.
If anyone's demise is fed by Itanic, it would be Intel's and HP's. Itanium failure is driven by price-performance. Intel is going to have to make a higher performance version, and then sell it at a loss for a few years as well as aggressively court motherboard manufacturers to make affordable Itanium systems, if they want to get market share.
Sun is stuck in making a transition from high-margin products to low-margin ones. Their workstations had 70% margins in their heyday. Linux and MS Windows have eaten that market - 5 years later than people outside of Sun thought it would happen, but it happened. But Sun can't make the transition to low-margin products without damaging the remainder of their high-margin ones, and they can't accept that. So, expect them to behave as if their low-margin products are directed at the high-margin products of other companies while simultaneously attempting to protect their own high-margin products from their own low-margin ones. The result is that they will exhibit a sort of corporate multiple-personality disorder, something evident with Sun for several years.
If power lines were balanced the way your wire was, there might be less of a problem. It might be even less if you twisted that ladder line, too. But to expect power line to be balanced that well, it's just impossible. The pole, wire, and transformer plant is not very much like your ladder line.
Optical fiber is wonderful for this, because properly done there is no interference, at least unless someone tries to go from fiber to wire at some point. But it is not properly referred to as BPL at all. It is fiber on poles. All the same, putting fiber in wires is a good idea, splicing it is expensive but probably pays off.
He got a $10 Million severance package. There are a lot of places that I'd leave for that much:-)
Most people behind technical innovations that make billions for their employers don't get even 100K bonus. I think the inventor of the LED made a few hundred. In this case the fellow brokered the adoption of a single format across all players in both the media and computer industry, which is a big deal for a manager, although he did not invent the technology.
Notice that this is mesh compression. It is a way to compress an irregular and aperiodic surface. If you want a compact 3D model the first thing to try is using simpler geometry.
In technical terms, Open Source licensing gives you a "power of circumvention" to route around damage or bad policy. In this case, we had really credible people like Jim Gettys leading the exodus. Everybody knowledgable takes Jim's word where X is concerned.
I have achieved those other things that you value as well, and too believe that they are part of being grown up. And I am not saying that I will never take a job again. But I submit that there is something to be said for being in that "buck stops here" position as part of one's development.
Can you go through the re-entry that they feather SS1 for without shredding the chute?
It would be OK if you could, except for the fact that it is extremely cold and there is nothing to breathe. You'd at least need air, probably a thermal suit as well.
I was at Wright Patterson AFB the other day, in the Presidential hangar (part of the Air Force Museum, so named because they have all of the old Air Force One aircraft). They have an X-15 there and some other astounding stuff. Don't miss if you get to Dayton. The X-15 there had a window cover on one side to protect the window from being abraded during "re-entry". They would open that side if the other side became too cloudy to look through. SS1 doesn't have any caps over its windows.
It has not been clear to me that there is a bail-out capability. There is no pressure suit, and the deisgn is that there would not be a pressure suit. They are really bulky and need a lot of support - cooling, etc. The ship is double-hulled and a rather small pressure vessel. If it loses pressure, the pilot is probably dead for other reasons.
One person has done balloon jumps from 110K feet in preparation for early manned space flight. A famous astronaut commented that he would not have wanted to try this. From the SS1 this would be worse than bailing out from a jet under power - which generally only is accomplished with powered ejection systems. All of these things add the weight that SS1 is designed to avoid.
The flight controller display blanked out (blue-screened for all I know) during the last flight. It will be interesting to see what is in the cockpit for this attempt. I suspect at least a backup artificial horizon. There's already a commercial GPS there. What else would be necessary?
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Bruce
Yes. But we can take that even farther. There's a well-known story about HP buying Microsoft's assurance, in 1995, that MS would soon bring out an enterprise quality NT for servers as well as workstations. That may now have happened, but sure didn't in the decade they said it would. HP chose not to invest in its Unix lines at that point, and let Sun run away with their scientific workstation market, their server market, and so on. This was a direct cause of HP's pre-merger financial woes.
Bruce
I don't care what people say, 36 bits is here to stay!
But nobody made Sun protect DEC's lines. So, Sun won. Sun seems to have forgotten that lesson.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
I've disabled ACs over there. So, we don't have to snuff the pesky things :-)
Bruce
Oh darn. I've always wanted to kill an anonymous coward, and I don't have any mod points right now. Someone, please do it for me!
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Most people behind technical innovations that make billions for their employers don't get even 100K bonus. I think the inventor of the LED made a few hundred. In this case the fellow brokered the adoption of a single format across all players in both the media and computer industry, which is a big deal for a manager, although he did not invent the technology.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
My experience at HP was eye-opening in this regard, Sun is even worse.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I think he was talking about Stewart's King Lear :-)
It would be OK if you could, except for the fact that it is extremely cold and there is nothing to breathe. You'd at least need air, probably a thermal suit as well.
Bruce
Bruce
One person has done balloon jumps from 110K feet in preparation for early manned space flight. A famous astronaut commented that he would not have wanted to try this. From the SS1 this would be worse than bailing out from a jet under power - which generally only is accomplished with powered ejection systems. All of these things add the weight that SS1 is designed to avoid.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Hi Chris!
Regarding happiness, I think that most people live the way they want to live. But some of them don't realize that.
Bruce