I have such a DVD of A.I. and while there is a message stating that it is a sampler, it is very very faint and I noticed it towards the beginning and the end of the movie. So it is not annoying at all.
Got this originally from the Yahoo HP message board. I don't have the original URL...sorry. But the interesting part is Dave's comments about marketshare--emphasis mine--the rationale upper management advocate for the HP/Compaq merger.
In Dave Packard's own words...
by: lowflyn177rg 02/27/02 07:38 pm
Msg: 96336 of 96336
I just received a copy of a speech given in 1974 by Dave Packard to a group of upper management types. This speech is prophetic. (It's also *very* long and I don't have it in electronic form -- so I'll have to type in a few choice morsels.) HP had just announced FY73 earnings, and the picture was not a pleasant one. Old-timers say Bill Hewlett made a PA announcement that singed the hair off their heads.
Dave on Bill: "I suppose each one of you was just as shocked as Bill and I were when we got the figures together and found out that the profits were such that they did not support as high a bonus this year as they did last year, and you know Bill got a little mad about it and I guess he got carried away over the PA..."
Dave then goes on to talk about management objectives, and starts with this one on market share: "...for some reason we've gotten a little bit off the track in the last couple of years. I think last year in particular. For some reason, we've got this talking about one of our objectives is to increase the share of the market, and I want to start right out by telling you that that is not a legitimate management objective of this company, that it leads you to the wrong kind of decisions, and that hereafter if I hear anybody talking about how big their share of the market is or what they're trying to do to increase their share, I'm going to personally see that a black mark gets put in their personnel folder... Anybody can increase the share of the market by giving away their products, and that's exactly what we did in some cases in this company the last couple of years... and I want you to understand that that's one of the reasons in my view that we've made some very bad mistakes in management."
Later in the speech Dave discusses company growth rates, and he quotes an admired biz wiz at the time named Peter Drucker: "He says this about the growth company. He says, 'A business that grows at an exponential rate... would soon gobble up the whole world and all its resources. The growth company is not a sound investment. Such a company sooner or later, and usually sooner, runs into real difficulties. Sooner or later it runs into tremendous losses, has to write off vast sums, and becomes unmanageable. There are few exceptions to the rule that today's growth company is tomorrow's problem.' And, gentlemen, what our job is is to make this company one of those exceptions, and I can assure you that if we continue to do the kinds of things that we did in 1973, what Peter Drucker says about the growth company is exactly what's going to happen to this company of ours."
Dave goes on to say much more, but the theme is that making profits on our products is vastly more important than gaining market share, and runaway growth for growth's sake is a surefire road to disaster. He said if a product wasn't profitable, abandon it rather than going after market share. Here's his words: "...we have a rather significant share of the market in CATV amplifiers, and we'd be just a hell of a lot better off if we hadn't ever touched that business and if our share was zero."
Ya know, CF is very fond of invoking Bill & Dave in her speeches, but always in a way that makes my blood boil because she misquotes or twists their words to support her particular idiocy de jour. If she'd take a lesson or two from them instead, we wouldn't hate her so.
The types of information changed from content to fluff when HP reorganized its websites befitting the Internet bubble. The old HP website wasn't as slick but I could find technical information for old products more easily.
After the merger, HP became #1, but failed to execute trying to integrate Apollo into HP, allowing Sun to overtake the #1 spot. Imagine the difficulty that lies ahead if HP merges with a much bigger company. The deal will probably work in Fantasyland where everything is perfect; but all companies are #1 there, though.
Actually, usage of Perl and the like languages are used by us to do rapid prototyping/proof-of-concept, so I am not putting them down; however, much of the bulk of the processing is done using a "traditional" high-level language. The reason for this is probably due to the skillsets of the current group; but "higher-level" languages are used.
The problem is in most cases the prototype/proof-of-concept is then placed into production and that has drawbacks, with performance implications that are not obvious until sometime in the future and after that developer leaves. "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" applies here, as well as for current code.
The problem with these types of "sweeping" change projects is once your changes are done, there are products/projects that come online that will make your "new" interfaces old and obsolete, and you're back where you've started in the first place.
Doing what you're suggest works in small-to-medium-sized projects. For a large corporation, you will never get that kind of buyin because there are just too many systems to interface. You're not only dealing with technical difficulties but also crossing political boundaries. How will you sell your project to management? Oh, rewrite the entire accounting system and wait for at least 2-3 years before they see any tangible results. It is not going to fly--I guarantee you. Of course, if it's a shop of 10, then it probably work; but not for a large corporation.
And I've rewritten programs implemented in a "lower-level" language and have gotten several orders of magnitude in improvement as well. What's your point?
Your mid-sized car dealership is not representative of a corporation that spans across the globe. Heck, even in the U.S. alone, we need data files that need to be sent to Corporate for consolidation for the closing of out books.
Normally, your payroll system isn't written by one guy or even one team, but by many teams across different computer systems. These systems didn't spring up in one day when all the interfaces were laid out with current technology binding them together. No, you need data files of line-item level transactions sent and each one processed. You'd need to account for 401(k)s, stock options, sick leave, and lots of other things you need to do for Uncle Sam.
Closing the books of our accounting systems takes days. I would shutter to think how much time it would take if we rip out most of our systems and replace them with "higher-level" languages.
The requirements for processing a company's payroll is not what is appropriate for these "safe" languages. Would you like your paycheck to be delayed for a day or two? How about a week?
Since when is declaring static arrays allocating and freeing memory?
These "higher-level" languages is nice and all, but when you need to process huge volumes of data with a timelimit you have no choice to use something like C, or even <gasp> COBOL. Something like "using the correct tool for the job."
Re:Replacable fan for my PCPower&Cooling PS fa
on
PC Fan of the Future?
·
· Score: 1
I asked PC Power & Cooling and their recommendation is to replace the fan with their ThermaSense variable speed fan. Runs at 20dBA/25cfm at 25C to 29dBA/39cfm at 35C. US$15.
I've got rid of my 60mm Delta with an 80mm fan and have a system that's bearable. The major source of noise right now is my power supply's fan from PC Power & Cooling (Turbo-Cool 300 ATX). Has anyone replaced their power supply fan?
Despite of what we have been told, even Lithium Ion batteries have "memory." A friend was complaining about how his cell phone's lithium ion battery last such a short time. I asked him to fully charge and don't recharge until it has been fully discharged for 3-5 times and as a result his battery's capacity has increased. I cannot recall what it was but it was at least 75-100% more time when he left his phone on standby.
I don't think custom cases would sell because the x86 PC industry is all about getting the most bang for the buck. Custom cases isn't about that. I get the feeling that people who mod their cases have a lot of time on their hands but will not shell out big bucks for a truly custom case. People can actually get a custom case--just go through the phone book and contract somebody to do it. But are they prepared to pay over $500 (SWAG) or more for the R&D associated with a one-off? Heck, there was a company that did custom compact Macintosh paintjobs but its price tag even turned away Mac fanatics with money to burn.
That's very true. When you call company X to get tech support, do they get your serial #, aka your license, or a copy of your dated receipt before they help you out?
I guess what you're suggesting stems from a different philosophy (Windows/classic Mac OS)--monolithic--than that of UNIX--writing tools that do one thing and do it well, while leveraging other tools on the system that do what they do well.
I really don't care if this system is written using shell scripts, Java, or plain old C. Well, I do prefer just C, but that's my personal preference. I don't want the author to implement his own version of diff, check in, check out, etc. These subsystems are already available. Why reinvent the wheel again? If there are existing source repositories, it would be a pain to convert all the trees into a new proprietary format. RCS has worked well for so long, it would be a shame to throw all the histories away and start anew.
Written properly, the shell, path, and environment dependencies shouldn't be a big problem although I have run into annoyances with environment space limitations under different UNIX OSes. But this particular environment space difference is taken care of by xargs(1).
My largest concern is performance, but since most of the work is done with compiled code, it shouldn't be too bad, however I haven't looked at the source.
It's unfortunate Mozilla chose to write everything from scratch (don't know about the native widgets) for cross-platform. I understand the reason, but it's very frustrating given how buggy the mail editor is. Sometimes, pressing the return key does nothing, so I press it again. I find that Mozilla has added an extra line but the editor doesn't show it. Sometimes, when I reply and selecting something will cause every line to disappear. The good thing about this bug is it happens occassionally and not all the time. This behavior is bad because it's not easily reproduceable.
Let's say Mozilla uses native developer's environment and if so I would say it would be pretty simple to get a good editor under something like Mac OS X. Hell, it'll even support printing to PDFs with no extra work. 'Course it's not as simple as this statement. But I have reservations whenever I click on reply or compose fearing _this_ could be the time when some bug will bite me.
I've also submitted bug reports to bugzilla but I would say 99% of the time, they end up as dups and I have tried to find prior bug reports before my submission. The bug reporter has so many sections that it even makes searching for bug report dups a pain-in-the-butt.
I wonder what would happen if the ISP decided that it cannot live up to its terms and just terminated the contract? So in essence, they change the terms and then say something to the effect that "we cannot provide you with unlimited bandwidth anymore. You may sign up with us again under different terms--which are subject to change, by the way--or sign up with another ISP of your choice."
I disagree. Mozilla has been out in "beta" for so long that reaching 1.0 won't matter any more. And if it reaches 1.0, there will be those who say "I ain't gonna run a.0 release and will await the next version." Netscape used to be synomous with Internet time where versions (1.x, 2.x, etc) rolled out very quickly; it's ironic how Mozilla has rolled revisions more often than versions.
Once Mozilla reaches 1.0, what will be next? That's right, 2.0. Stuff that didn't make it into 1.0 will be lumped into 1.x/2.0. Developers will wait for these features, and we're back where we are.
Doesn't matter if it's 1.0. It'll just be another release.
I've been using it regularly since 0.95. I'm actually looking forward to: native widgets on XP/MacOS X; and they finally fixed the bug where where Mozilla/Communicator (since 4.5!) would remove downloaded helper documents when you quit the app.
I'm not a doctor, but my copy of Repetitive Strain Injury by Pascarelli and Quilter describes what this kid has as probably "RSD." RSD is more serious than symptoms such as tingling, numbness, discomfort, and pain mostly related to carpel tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, and so forth.
Once you have RSD, your nerves are damaged; and they either don't heal or heal very, very, very slowly--taking much longer than tendons and ligaments. With soft tissue injuries, it is a prolonged road to recovery in the first place because these tissues are being used all the time. Imagine if the kid has a runny nose, and he has to use his hands to blow/wipe his nose. I have "only" RSI and sometimes, with a lot of hours on the computer, even opening doors is painful to my wrists.
Symptoms of RSI should not be ignored; people who suffer from RSI, including myself, often feel stupid for ignoring the initial warning signs their body sends. Unfortunately, this isn't a case of "no pain, no gain." Even seasoned trainers say "train with your mind, not with your ego." I'm pretty sure this kid no longer feels invincible. What a bad wake-up call.
Slashdot Mirror
I have such a DVD of A.I. and while there is a message stating that it is a sampler, it is very very faint and I noticed it towards the beginning and the end of the movie. So it is not annoying at all.
In Dave Packard's own words...
by: lowflyn177rg 02/27/02 07:38 pm
Msg: 96336 of 96336
I just received a copy of a speech given in 1974 by Dave Packard to a group of upper management types. This speech is prophetic. (It's also *very* long and I don't have it in electronic form -- so I'll have to type in a few choice morsels.) HP had just announced FY73 earnings, and the picture was not a pleasant one. Old-timers say Bill Hewlett made a PA announcement that singed the hair off their heads.
Dave on Bill: "I suppose each one of you was just as shocked as Bill and I were when we got the figures together and found out that the profits were such that they did not support as high a bonus this year as they did last year, and you know Bill got a little mad about it and I guess he got carried away over the PA..."
Dave then goes on to talk about management objectives, and starts with this one on market share: "...for some reason we've gotten a little bit off the track in the last couple of years. I think last year in particular. For some reason, we've got this talking about one of our objectives is to increase the share of the market, and I want to start right out by telling you that that is not a legitimate management objective of this company, that it leads you to the wrong kind of decisions, and that hereafter if I hear anybody talking about how big their share of the market is or what they're trying to do to increase their share, I'm going to personally see that a black mark gets put in their personnel folder... Anybody can increase the share of the market by giving away their products, and that's exactly what we did in some cases in this company the last couple of years... and I want you to understand that that's one of the reasons in my view that we've made some very bad mistakes in management."
Later in the speech Dave discusses company growth rates, and he quotes an admired biz wiz at the time named Peter Drucker: "He says this about the growth company. He says, 'A business that grows at an exponential rate ... would soon gobble up the whole world and all its resources. The growth company is not a sound investment. Such a company sooner or later, and usually sooner, runs into real difficulties. Sooner or later it runs into tremendous losses, has to write off vast sums, and becomes unmanageable. There are few exceptions to the rule that today's growth company is tomorrow's problem.' And, gentlemen, what our job is is to make this company one of those exceptions, and I can assure you that if we continue to do the kinds of things that we did in 1973, what Peter Drucker says about the growth company is exactly what's going to happen to this company of ours."
Dave goes on to say much more, but the theme is that making profits on our products is vastly more important than gaining market share, and runaway growth for growth's sake is a surefire road to disaster. He said if a product wasn't profitable, abandon it rather than going after market share. Here's his words: "...we have a rather significant share of the market in CATV amplifiers, and we'd be just a hell of a lot better off if we hadn't ever touched that business and if our share was zero."
Ya know, CF is very fond of invoking Bill & Dave in her speeches, but always in a way that makes my blood boil because she misquotes or twists their words to support her particular idiocy de jour. If she'd take a lesson or two from them instead, we wouldn't hate her so.
The types of information changed from content to fluff when HP reorganized its websites befitting the Internet bubble. The old HP website wasn't as slick but I could find technical information for old products more easily.
If this is the case, then it really doesn't matter if Digital reshapes HP if all the core talent have already left for Intel/AMD.
After the merger, HP became #1, but failed to execute trying to integrate Apollo into HP, allowing Sun to overtake the #1 spot. Imagine the difficulty that lies ahead if HP merges with a much bigger company. The deal will probably work in Fantasyland where everything is perfect; but all companies are #1 there, though.
If he's as intelligent as you say he is maybe he's faking it so that it appears he's mentally ill.
The problem is in most cases the prototype/proof-of-concept is then placed into production and that has drawbacks, with performance implications that are not obvious until sometime in the future and after that developer leaves. "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" applies here, as well as for current code.
Doing what you're suggest works in small-to-medium-sized projects. For a large corporation, you will never get that kind of buyin because there are just too many systems to interface. You're not only dealing with technical difficulties but also crossing political boundaries. How will you sell your project to management? Oh, rewrite the entire accounting system and wait for at least 2-3 years before they see any tangible results. It is not going to fly--I guarantee you. Of course, if it's a shop of 10, then it probably work; but not for a large corporation.
And I've rewritten programs implemented in a "lower-level" language and have gotten several orders of magnitude in improvement as well. What's your point?
Normally, your payroll system isn't written by one guy or even one team, but by many teams across different computer systems. These systems didn't spring up in one day when all the interfaces were laid out with current technology binding them together. No, you need data files of line-item level transactions sent and each one processed. You'd need to account for 401(k)s, stock options, sick leave, and lots of other things you need to do for Uncle Sam.
Closing the books of our accounting systems takes days. I would shutter to think how much time it would take if we rip out most of our systems and replace them with "higher-level" languages.
You should have rewatched A New Hope. The name "Palatine" was not uttered at all during that scene.
The requirements for processing a company's payroll is not what is appropriate for these "safe" languages. Would you like your paycheck to be delayed for a day or two? How about a week?
Since when is declaring static arrays allocating and freeing memory? These "higher-level" languages is nice and all, but when you need to process huge volumes of data with a timelimit you have no choice to use something like C, or even <gasp> COBOL. Something like "using the correct tool for the job."
I asked PC Power & Cooling and their recommendation is to replace the fan with their ThermaSense variable speed fan. Runs at 20dBA/25cfm at 25C to 29dBA/39cfm at 35C. US$15.
When did C/C++ got shoved down to low-level language status? When I think low-level, I think assembly/machine language.
I've got rid of my 60mm Delta with an 80mm fan and have a system that's bearable. The major source of noise right now is my power supply's fan from PC Power & Cooling (Turbo-Cool 300 ATX). Has anyone replaced their power supply fan?
The help says view it with pg, but under NT's nslookup, it uses more instead. Clearly copied verbatim from UNIX sources.
Despite of what we have been told, even Lithium Ion batteries have "memory." A friend was complaining about how his cell phone's lithium ion battery last such a short time. I asked him to fully charge and don't recharge until it has been fully discharged for 3-5 times and as a result his battery's capacity has increased. I cannot recall what it was but it was at least 75-100% more time when he left his phone on standby.
I don't think custom cases would sell because the x86 PC industry is all about getting the most bang for the buck. Custom cases isn't about that. I get the feeling that people who mod their cases have a lot of time on their hands but will not shell out big bucks for a truly custom case. People can actually get a custom case--just go through the phone book and contract somebody to do it. But are they prepared to pay over $500 (SWAG) or more for the R&D associated with a one-off? Heck, there was a company that did custom compact Macintosh paintjobs but its price tag even turned away Mac fanatics with money to burn.
That's very true. When you call company X to get tech support, do they get your serial #, aka your license, or a copy of your dated receipt before they help you out?
I guess what you're suggesting stems from a different philosophy (Windows/classic Mac OS)--monolithic--than that of UNIX--writing tools that do one thing and do it well, while leveraging other tools on the system that do what they do well.
I really don't care if this system is written using shell scripts, Java, or plain old C. Well, I do prefer just C, but that's my personal preference. I don't want the author to implement his own version of diff, check in, check out, etc. These subsystems are already available. Why reinvent the wheel again? If there are existing source repositories, it would be a pain to convert all the trees into a new proprietary format. RCS has worked well for so long, it would be a shame to throw all the histories away and start anew.
Written properly, the shell, path, and environment dependencies shouldn't be a big problem although I have run into annoyances with environment space limitations under different UNIX OSes. But this particular environment space difference is taken care of by xargs(1).
My largest concern is performance, but since most of the work is done with compiled code, it shouldn't be too bad, however I haven't looked at the source.
It's unfortunate Mozilla chose to write everything from scratch (don't know about the native widgets) for cross-platform. I understand the reason, but it's very frustrating given how buggy the mail editor is. Sometimes, pressing the return key does nothing, so I press it again. I find that Mozilla has added an extra line but the editor doesn't show it. Sometimes, when I reply and selecting something will cause every line to disappear. The good thing about this bug is it happens occassionally and not all the time. This behavior is bad because it's not easily reproduceable.
Let's say Mozilla uses native developer's environment and if so I would say it would be pretty simple to get a good editor under something like Mac OS X. Hell, it'll even support printing to PDFs with no extra work. 'Course it's not as simple as this statement. But I have reservations whenever I click on reply or compose fearing _this_ could be the time when some bug will bite me.
I've also submitted bug reports to bugzilla but I would say 99% of the time, they end up as dups and I have tried to find prior bug reports before my submission. The bug reporter has so many sections that it even makes searching for bug report dups a pain-in-the-butt.
I wonder what would happen if the ISP decided that it cannot live up to its terms and just terminated the contract? So in essence, they change the terms and then say something to the effect that "we cannot provide you with unlimited bandwidth anymore. You may sign up with us again under different terms--which are subject to change, by the way--or sign up with another ISP of your choice."
I disagree. Mozilla has been out in "beta" for so long that reaching 1.0 won't matter any more. And if it reaches 1.0, there will be those who say "I ain't gonna run a .0 release and will await the next version." Netscape used to be synomous with Internet time where versions (1.x, 2.x, etc) rolled out very quickly; it's ironic how Mozilla has rolled revisions more often than versions.
Once Mozilla reaches 1.0, what will be next? That's right, 2.0. Stuff that didn't make it into 1.0 will be lumped into 1.x/2.0. Developers will wait for these features, and we're back where we are.
Doesn't matter if it's 1.0. It'll just be another release.
I've been using it regularly since 0.95. I'm actually looking forward to: native widgets on XP/MacOS X; and they finally fixed the bug where where Mozilla/Communicator (since 4.5!) would remove downloaded helper documents when you quit the app.
I'm not a doctor, but my copy of Repetitive Strain Injury by Pascarelli and Quilter describes what this kid has as probably "RSD." RSD is more serious than symptoms such as tingling, numbness, discomfort, and pain mostly related to carpel tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, and so forth.
Once you have RSD, your nerves are damaged; and they either don't heal or heal very, very, very slowly--taking much longer than tendons and ligaments. With soft tissue injuries, it is a prolonged road to recovery in the first place because these tissues are being used all the time. Imagine if the kid has a runny nose, and he has to use his hands to blow/wipe his nose. I have "only" RSI and sometimes, with a lot of hours on the computer, even opening doors is painful to my wrists.
Symptoms of RSI should not be ignored; people who suffer from RSI, including myself, often feel stupid for ignoring the initial warning signs their body sends. Unfortunately, this isn't a case of "no pain, no gain." Even seasoned trainers say "train with your mind, not with your ego." I'm pretty sure this kid no longer feels invincible. What a bad wake-up call.