You mean IBM is not making money because people don't want what IBM has to sell?
Gee, sparky, that's almost exactly (bit not completely) not what I was talking about -- maybe read the post you're responding to next time.
I didn't say a goddamn thing about the validity of centralized systems over decentralized, although it's clear from your post that you've never seen a well-implemented centralized system. We can talk about that some other time, and should because your all-or-nothing position on it is, frankly, shockingly closed minded.
IBM has a good idea -- they've come to the fairly valid conclusion that a lot of companies aren't IT companies, that the things they do well are make car parts or provide health care, and that IT is seperate from that. They see that these companies are sick of hiring expensive, half-competent people to run these systems.
So, instead of just selling big iron, IBM is focusing on selling the whole damned thing -- you want an email system, we got one for you. You want a Java development environment, they can set you up with WSAD and Clearcase to keep track of your versions. They might not be (and often are not) the *best* systems, but if you can get 'em rolling right away and keep them stable, they'll beat out a three-month-to-set-up-longer-to-debug anything any day of the week.
The problem, again, is that a substantial portion of their people on the ground are still fixated on the Old IBM Way, selling big iron and AIX where a Linux system with a big disk array would do (and, in fact, be a supported configuration). This brings in money in the short run, because you sold a fairly expensive machine, but in the long run this damages IBM's attempt to provide effective full-out solutions for their business customers by making them seem more costly and less effective than an in-house department might be.
Wow. It sounds liks he is advising Microsoft to (among other things) embrace the open source software movement.
To my reading, that sounds more like a side effect of the arguement he's making, that the golden age of consisting soley on delivering closed consumer-end software packages is wrapping up (no pun intended).
I think what he's suggesting, and what I've been telling people for a while, is that to remain successful in its traditional markets (as opposed to entertainment, 24 hour news, etc), MS will have to migrate into a services-related role. IBM is doing, or trying to do, something like this for its business clients (although IMO they're being symied by pushback from ground-level people who can't get with the program). If MS could do this for the normal desktop user, allow them to use MS to do the hard stuff with their computers and use online resources to work, they'd have found a whole new area of potential to expoit.
The real questions are (a) will MS recognize this shift sooner than later, and (b) will they be able to refocus themselves into a mindset very different from the one which has made them a very successful company up until this point (as I mentioned, I notice that IBM is having serious problems with this -- even if the management of a company sees the shift, there's the obsticle of the ground-level know-it-alls who want to keep doing things the way they used to).
MS might be able to avoid problems with this given the necessarily lower level of direct customer interaction -- they can't send consultants to all of our homes -- but it's still a big change. They got a lot of press for "embracing the internet" back in '94 or '95, but really they just bought some new products. Their existing line is still struggling, as the author of the article noted, to utilize the potential offered them.
why not release the source online, rather than using snail mail and floppies?
Obviously, they're trying to create a high level of hassle to get the code. They assume people won't want to go through the PITA that mailing a floppy represents.
I propose we kick their ass at this game. Here's the procedure:
Everyone reading this, go grab a 3.5" floppy from your old disk box or the supply room or whatever. Mail it to the address below along with a note requesting a copy of their GPL'ed source code:
The Managing Director
Castle Technology Ltd
Ore Trading Estate
Woodbridge Road
Framlingham
Suffolk
IP13 9LL
Let's see how they like making 50,000 copies onto floppies...
What about that episode where they used a Roast of Homer by the Springfield Friar's Club as an excuse to have a clip show? It was *horrible*! How can *any* completely new episode be worse than a clip show?
How, Marge? How?
Besides, there were some real stinkers in the first season while they were still trying to find their voice and before the show went Homer-centric (in a fair world, Homer-centric should be a word).
...I am traveling backwards and forwards in time, or Slashdot is messed up.
If it's that first one, I wish I'd paid more attention in history class, or at least could remember my phone # back in Wisconsin so I could call myself to unload that RedHat stock back when it was above $100....
As it sits, over 50% of my money goes away in taxes right now
You seriously need a new accountant.
JFK got away with going to X by Y because we were trying to beat the commies there. That, in the particular time and place, warrented nearly unlimited funding and risk-taking. It wasn't just national will to get to the moon and see something different -- it was about getting to the moon and seeing something different first. And yes, we did get a lot of cool inventions and innovations out of the space race, but it was at a pretty considerable cost.
Since then, NASA's been lucky to get funding to endlessly circle the globe; there's no opponent, you see, and no real overriding fiscal incentive for anyone in particular. The only way the space program is ever going to pick up again is if (a) we get into another space race (the Chinese, maybe?) or (b) we find a really good reason to go out and get what's out there, and by "good" I mean "lucrative".
That said, I've never seen a man walk on the moon. I don't know if I'll ever see a man walk on Mars. I feel like the middle child of American history, like I'm coming along only after all the cool stuff has been done already but before we move to the next thing, and I would like to see that change.
I watch the Daily Show pretty regularly, and the other night John Stewart said that he'd like, for a change, to experience a national emotion that wasn't sadness. I'm with him on that. I just fear that we as a nation are not visionary or daring enough to make it so.
I keep switching stations, and I'm tired of hearing about "6 Americans and 1 Israeli". 7 people were in that shuttle. It's frustrating that the media can't let go of war sensationalism even now, at a time like this.
Just wait for the gulf war -- you won't hear anything about the deaths on the other side. Hell, last time around, we didn't even really hear about the Americans that died, just that it was a "low casualty" war.
Apples and oranges, I guess. I still haven't gotten my head around the idea that we lost another shuttle this morning...
In a related note, I would venture a guess that this is the end of the Bush administration's attempt to revive nuclear tech in space with project prometheus.
If AICN was ever useful, it sold out a long time ago. Now it's just useless cheerleading for movies in an obvious effort to get the "editors" invited to screenings and whatever.
Or am I the only one who remembers the infamous "Meesa love [Jar Jar]" review?
Tom Cruise in Top Gun? Where did they did up this professor? 1986?
Anyhow, I have a really hard time seeing this going anywhere. The problem with any sort of serious home automation or nifty built-in gadgets is that ten years down the line they're either a tangle of useless, unsupported wires and circuit boards from extint companies or laughably outdated (or both). I remember seeing a new item about a guy who sued Bob Vila and "This Old House" for pushing him to install a computer-heavy home control system for everything from the heat to the garage door a few years back -- the company tanked and now he has to rip the malfunctioning POS out and put in new stuff (which is obviously expensive).
So, I'll pass. Besides, the last thing I need is an incentive to get even less daylight.
MandrakeSoft is a business. When it became fashionable to start shilling for "contributions" or "donations" to businesses, I'll never know, but it's a stupid, unrealistic idea which needs to be killed and buried in the unmarked grave it so richly deserves.
For-Profit businesses exist for one reason and one reason only: to make money. If they cannot do this, it's their own fault -- especially if they are expecting people to whom they give away their product to send in "contributions", as you call it.
MandrakeSoft is going the way of the dodo because they haven't successfully created a way to make money. End of story. God willing, they'll be replaced by a business which can do so, but don't expect me to send my hard-earned bucks to save 'em.
I know two women who majored in CS -- one's a good friend and the other one is my sister.
The real problem, IMO, is that there seems to be a couple of guys in any given CS class who seriously cannot handle women, and who one way or the other make life hell for the women in the class.
Some are just plain creeps, some are always trying to upstage them, some seem convinced that women in CS get through just because they're given preferential treatment. My sis used to get comments like "Geez, you're smart for a girl" at least once a semester -- that's a pretty shitty thing to say; if you think it's a compliment, it's not.
Then there are the usual stalker types who get their jollies sending out creepy emails and eyeballing girls in the class -- my friend decided to work rather than go to grad school at Madison because this happened *twice* (on the level of restrining order), fer chrissake.
Granted this is just anecdotal and two people does not a study make. But say what you want about societal pressures on girls not to be scientific or a predisposition against math, what I've seen drive them away is a hostile environment that doesn't seem to exist in most other fields.
What can we do to fix it? I just don't know. When they bothered my sister, the solution was obvious but definately not constructive. My friend used the law to help her (restraining orders and all), but that didn't seem to help in the overall scheme of things either -- who needs that sort of pressure while taking 400-level CS courses?
Anyhow, that's the problem as I see it. I don't have a good solution, but it's something we *must* work on.
Why not have this baby track it's users by sex and approximate weight?
Since the user would get all their drinks from the machine, it could generate a report on what a user's BAC is likely to be (x number of drinks over y amount of time, adjusted to body weight). It could flash this info the the user everytime they buy a drink, so they know if they're going to be over the legal limit for driving or if they're getting close to dangerous levels. Hell, the barmonkey could even cut people off.
"I'm sorry, the Monkey says you've had enough, dude."
1 can of Mountain Dew 2 shots Finlandia vodka splash of triple-sec twist of lime straw for networking
Serve with ice.
Made this up as a joke at an ACM party back in college (we had a "Windows" too, but it was horrible and weak), but the Linux continues to be a favorite of mine.
And, it won't be long before someone figures out a low-tch way to defeat the "gee-whiz" factor, just as happened in Bosnia.
Looking at the thing and seeing no apparent armor added, I would venture a guess that the "low tech" method of defeating this thing would be to pump a couple of rounds into it with an AK-47.
Okay, who else wouldn't want to drive one of these things into a combat zone?
Look, it's got some nice bells and whistles, but hand me an RPG or drive this over a mine and all it'll be good for in the future is roasting marshmallows. Wouldn't it make a hell of a lot more sense to mount this sort of electronic warfare gear onto Humvees or (better yet) APCs? Which vehicle would you rather have when even the Somali militia opens up on you, much less anyone with training?
The general quoted in the interview acknowledged that there was no mission in mind for the first generation SmarTruck. Well, that's the mission for this thing? A next-gen friendly casualty generator?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I was user #123 on the Bee, I just left when all the "cool" people did... =)
Anyone still around who remembers Screaming Demon ][ in Madison, WI? Jesus Christ, that was so long ago...
Gee, sparky, that's almost exactly (bit not completely) not what I was talking about -- maybe read the post you're responding to next time. I didn't say a goddamn thing about the validity of centralized systems over decentralized, although it's clear from your post that you've never seen a well-implemented centralized system. We can talk about that some other time, and should because your all-or-nothing position on it is, frankly, shockingly closed minded.
IBM has a good idea -- they've come to the fairly valid conclusion that a lot of companies aren't IT companies, that the things they do well are make car parts or provide health care, and that IT is seperate from that. They see that these companies are sick of hiring expensive, half-competent people to run these systems.
So, instead of just selling big iron, IBM is focusing on selling the whole damned thing -- you want an email system, we got one for you. You want a Java development environment, they can set you up with WSAD and Clearcase to keep track of your versions. They might not be (and often are not) the *best* systems, but if you can get 'em rolling right away and keep them stable, they'll beat out a three-month-to-set-up-longer-to-debug anything any day of the week.
The problem, again, is that a substantial portion of their people on the ground are still fixated on the Old IBM Way, selling big iron and AIX where a Linux system with a big disk array would do (and, in fact, be a supported configuration). This brings in money in the short run, because you sold a fairly expensive machine, but in the long run this damages IBM's attempt to provide effective full-out solutions for their business customers by making them seem more costly and less effective than an in-house department might be.
To my reading, that sounds more like a side effect of the arguement he's making, that the golden age of consisting soley on delivering closed consumer-end software packages is wrapping up (no pun intended).
I think what he's suggesting, and what I've been telling people for a while, is that to remain successful in its traditional markets (as opposed to entertainment, 24 hour news, etc), MS will have to migrate into a services-related role. IBM is doing, or trying to do, something like this for its business clients (although IMO they're being symied by pushback from ground-level people who can't get with the program). If MS could do this for the normal desktop user, allow them to use MS to do the hard stuff with their computers and use online resources to work, they'd have found a whole new area of potential to expoit.
The real questions are (a) will MS recognize this shift sooner than later, and (b) will they be able to refocus themselves into a mindset very different from the one which has made them a very successful company up until this point (as I mentioned, I notice that IBM is having serious problems with this -- even if the management of a company sees the shift, there's the obsticle of the ground-level know-it-alls who want to keep doing things the way they used to).
MS might be able to avoid problems with this given the necessarily lower level of direct customer interaction -- they can't send consultants to all of our homes -- but it's still a big change. They got a lot of press for "embracing the internet" back in '94 or '95, but really they just bought some new products. Their existing line is still struggling, as the author of the article noted, to utilize the potential offered them.
Obviously, they're trying to create a high level of hassle to get the code. They assume people won't want to go through the PITA that mailing a floppy represents.
I propose we kick their ass at this game. Here's the procedure:
Everyone reading this, go grab a 3.5" floppy from your old disk box or the supply room or whatever. Mail it to the address below along with a note requesting a copy of their GPL'ed source code:
The Managing Director
Castle Technology Ltd
Ore Trading Estate
Woodbridge Road
Framlingham
Suffolk
IP13 9LL
Let's see how they like making 50,000 copies onto floppies...
In that sense, it's exactly like driving most Chrysler products.
How, Marge? How?
Besides, there were some real stinkers in the first season while they were still trying to find their voice and before the show went Homer-centric (in a fair world, Homer-centric should be a word).
...I am traveling backwards and forwards in time, or Slashdot is messed up. If it's that first one, I wish I'd paid more attention in history class, or at least could remember my phone # back in Wisconsin so I could call myself to unload that RedHat stock back when it was above $100....
You seriously need a new accountant.
JFK got away with going to X by Y because we were trying to beat the commies there. That, in the particular time and place, warrented nearly unlimited funding and risk-taking. It wasn't just national will to get to the moon and see something different -- it was about getting to the moon and seeing something different first. And yes, we did get a lot of cool inventions and innovations out of the space race, but it was at a pretty considerable cost.
Since then, NASA's been lucky to get funding to endlessly circle the globe; there's no opponent, you see, and no real overriding fiscal incentive for anyone in particular. The only way the space program is ever going to pick up again is if (a) we get into another space race (the Chinese, maybe?) or (b) we find a really good reason to go out and get what's out there, and by "good" I mean "lucrative".
That said, I've never seen a man walk on the moon. I don't know if I'll ever see a man walk on Mars. I feel like the middle child of American history, like I'm coming along only after all the cool stuff has been done already but before we move to the next thing, and I would like to see that change.
I watch the Daily Show pretty regularly, and the other night John Stewart said that he'd like, for a change, to experience a national emotion that wasn't sadness. I'm with him on that. I just fear that we as a nation are not visionary or daring enough to make it so.
Just wait for the gulf war -- you won't hear anything about the deaths on the other side. Hell, last time around, we didn't even really hear about the Americans that died, just that it was a "low casualty" war.
Apples and oranges, I guess. I still haven't gotten my head around the idea that we lost another shuttle this morning...
In a related note, I would venture a guess that this is the end of the Bush administration's attempt to revive nuclear tech in space with project prometheus.
Oh, No.
Or am I the only one who remembers the infamous "Meesa love [Jar Jar]" review?
I think the additional bling bling the alien's wearing in the gold announcement graphic will require an expansion pack.
Er, that they're planning to stay in business?
Anyhow, I have a really hard time seeing this going anywhere. The problem with any sort of serious home automation or nifty built-in gadgets is that ten years down the line they're either a tangle of useless, unsupported wires and circuit boards from extint companies or laughably outdated (or both). I remember seeing a new item about a guy who sued Bob Vila and "This Old House" for pushing him to install a computer-heavy home control system for everything from the heat to the garage door a few years back -- the company tanked and now he has to rip the malfunctioning POS out and put in new stuff (which is obviously expensive).
So, I'll pass. Besides, the last thing I need is an incentive to get even less daylight.
For-Profit businesses exist for one reason and one reason only: to make money. If they cannot do this, it's their own fault -- especially if they are expecting people to whom they give away their product to send in "contributions", as you call it.
MandrakeSoft is going the way of the dodo because they haven't successfully created a way to make money. End of story. God willing, they'll be replaced by a business which can do so, but don't expect me to send my hard-earned bucks to save 'em.
The real problem, IMO, is that there seems to be a couple of guys in any given CS class who seriously cannot handle women, and who one way or the other make life hell for the women in the class. Some are just plain creeps, some are always trying to upstage them, some seem convinced that women in CS get through just because they're given preferential treatment. My sis used to get comments like "Geez, you're smart for a girl" at least once a semester -- that's a pretty shitty thing to say; if you think it's a compliment, it's not.
Then there are the usual stalker types who get their jollies sending out creepy emails and eyeballing girls in the class -- my friend decided to work rather than go to grad school at Madison because this happened *twice* (on the level of restrining order), fer chrissake.
Granted this is just anecdotal and two people does not a study make. But say what you want about societal pressures on girls not to be scientific or a predisposition against math, what I've seen drive them away is a hostile environment that doesn't seem to exist in most other fields.
What can we do to fix it? I just don't know. When they bothered my sister, the solution was obvious but definately not constructive. My friend used the law to help her (restraining orders and all), but that didn't seem to help in the overall scheme of things either -- who needs that sort of pressure while taking 400-level CS courses?
Anyhow, that's the problem as I see it. I don't have a good solution, but it's something we *must* work on.
Does anyhow know how Mandrake's doing in regards to solving their money woes?
Since the user would get all their drinks from the machine, it could generate a report on what a user's BAC is likely to be (x number of drinks over y amount of time, adjusted to body weight). It could flash this info the the user everytime they buy a drink, so they know if they're going to be over the legal limit for driving or if they're getting close to dangerous levels. Hell, the barmonkey could even cut people off.
"I'm sorry, the Monkey says you've had enough, dude."
1 can of Mountain Dew
2 shots Finlandia vodka
splash of triple-sec
twist of lime
straw for networking
Serve with ice.
Made this up as a joke at an ACM party back in college (we had a "Windows" too, but it was horrible and weak), but the Linux continues to be a favorite of mine.
"You want some more?"
Looking at the thing and seeing no apparent armor added, I would venture a guess that the "low tech" method of defeating this thing would be to pump a couple of rounds into it with an AK-47.
Look, it's got some nice bells and whistles, but hand me an RPG or drive this over a mine and all it'll be good for in the future is roasting marshmallows. Wouldn't it make a hell of a lot more sense to mount this sort of electronic warfare gear onto Humvees or (better yet) APCs? Which vehicle would you rather have when even the Somali militia opens up on you, much less anyone with training?
The general quoted in the interview acknowledged that there was no mission in mind for the first generation SmarTruck. Well, that's the mission for this thing? A next-gen friendly casualty generator?
Wow, that's pretty cool. Now if we could only figure out why and how gravity works, we'd be in business.