... but it can be one hell of a business tool, too. I've met people I'd never meet otherwise and gotten projects I'd never have heard about simply by starting up conversations on LinkedIn.
If you're a cubicle rat, then yeah, I guess the whole FOAF thing seems a little too much like high school dating logistics. But if you translate introductions into opportunities and know how to write a compelling message, then some of these social networks are godsends.
511 is a national mandate, but the states (usually the state Departments of Transportation) have been left to figure it out and implement it. This means the service offerings (to say nothing of the quality) vary a *lot* from state to state.
It also means that, worst-case, you have road-centric DOT people looking at what they can do quick, simple and without a lot of hassle. That's why you see a lot of 511 weather and weigh-station info, but less of the useful-to-real-commuters data.
OK, maybe this isn't helpful at all, but it's meant to be.
First things first: You don't want to develop a site; you want to develop a business model that doesn't cost a fortune to set up and has some vague, distant hope of making you money. Lesson 1: A community site is a tool, not a means to an end, unless you're in the religion, politics or *nix-is-better-than-windows evangelical categories.
OK, so a site's a tool. Next thing to consider: Why do you want to pay all the people you mention? You brought up hosing (OK, you'll likely have to pay for that), but also artistic and web-design help, as well as DB management. There are scores of portal-style, slashdot-style and blog-style software packages out there -- go play with 'em a little. Most of 'em have a range of skins/themes you can download that might not be perfect, but they're a start. And do you REALLY want to build a custom app before you even figure out if your community is going to take off? Lesson 2: Quit overthinking -- if you're building a community site, then get something out there and put your energy into promoting it. If there's a market for it, the community will tell you how to make the site perfect because (repeat after me) you'll ask them every chance you get.
The greatest horror a new site -- or any new business -- faces is usually cash flow. Do you have enough money to pay the hosting bills? How long, in your worst nightmare, will it take the site to start making money? (Hint: Take that number, double it, and go up by one order of magnitude.) What are the quick ways to make money from the user base, what are ways to get additional money from users who have been around a while and what are the ways you can get long-term, sustainable income from the site? If you don't have multiple ideas for each category, you are going to hit a cash-flow problem. Lesson 3: Your great ideas are just that -- great ideas. But the thing is, great ideas are a dime a dozen; great execution is what makes people money. Have an execution plan.
This probably sounds discouraging, but it's meant to be just the opposite -- if you can do a little up-front planning, can resist the (very common) urge to overfret the technical details and over-buy from vendors/consultants, and can know in advance how you plan to convert eyeballs to money, then you'll likely see some success. These things are basic; it's just shocking how few people follow the basics.
Disclaimer: I get paid to offer advice like this.
I can second this -- Kansas City is somewhat amazing in that you can have a very rural existence (not suburban, but rural -- farms everywhere, towns with populations in the 2,500-and-under bracket, no sprawl), and yet you're only 30 miles away from the urban core.
I live 38 miles from downtown KC, and although I work at home now (PR/marketing with a graphic-designer spouse), I commuted into the city for a few years.
Kansas City has more lane-miles of highway per capita than any other metro area in the nation; they think they have traffic during rush hour, but if you've lived anywhere else in the country with real traffic, you'll see immediately that's not true. Door-to-door commute for me was 45 minutes, surrounded by cornfields, cow pastures and almost no other traffic. Very cool.
The other thing about rural communities that haven't gentrified is the housing is cheap. I bought a 100-year-old, painted-lady Victorian for $146k, and it's fully restored. Amazing.
The downside: Selling your home if you live in a small town can take forever. There are gorgeous homes all over town here (Plattsburg, Mo., pop. 2,395), and some of them have been on the market for a year or more. They're not going down in value; they just move slowly.
Finally, check early and often on DSL or T1 (if you need that kind of pipe) availability. We didn't buy the house we're in now for a year because there was no DSL in town... the day we went to go make an offer on another house -- boom! -- DSL finally made it here.
There are so many hurdles to starting a business that worrying about whether you can tell your employee to "shut the fsck up and get back to work" without having to hear about it over dinner that night. Having said that, look around in your community: In other cultures (Indian, east Asian, etc.) it's very, very common for a single family or multiple families to band together and make a business work. Some suggestions:
Employees, not partners. Unless you need the equity, it's a lot easier to get out of employment arrangements that go south than out of partnerships.
Maybe you treat them nicer than employees, but treat the *paperwork* just the same. Everyone gets an offer letter that spells out salary, benefits, hours, expectations, etc. Everyone gets reviews. Everyone has to document their time. Is it likely someone will sue you? No, but it *is* likely that disagreements will turn nasty if things aren't down on paper.
If you can grow your way into it, have someone outside the family in a management role. Things go better if there's someone unrelated in the middle.
Ask yourself: Do you really need the help? This is true whether you're hiring family or Joe Techie off the street. Employees are a steady expense in a world of uncertain cash flow -- make sure you're stretched *damned* thin before you commit to the expense.
Good luck! Oh, and noodle around my weblog for advice on business development and promoting your business.
I know not everyone can run their own mail server*, but here's what has reduced my inbox spam to about 1 miss out of every 400-500 messages:
I run SpamAssassin and ClamAV on my server and check all inbound mail against a series of RBL lists; and
All mail POP'd into my Outlook (yeah, I gotta use it - no flames!) gets checked using the free-and-excellent SpamBayes.
Works in the bakcground with damn-near zero false positives, and doesn't require Microsoft-pushed e-mail postage, changes in the e-mail RFCs or anything else.
The tools are out there. If you use them, spam isn't nearly as much of an issue as the press makes it out to be.
*Well not everyone in the Real World anyway -- here on/. we all run our own boxes, right?
Adaptation of an earlier post on another thread, but the point is worth repeating.
:::putting on flame-proof suit:::
Microsoft is an enormous innovator and will innovate in some manner to push back the threat of *nix. In fact, they may be one of the greatest innovators in the history of tech companies. They're just not innovating in an altruistic, philanthropic or technical way that most/. readers relate to.
From a business perspective, strategic marketing and business practices can and should be part of the innovation mix. If I'm Microsoft can package technology in such a way that it maximizes uptake, positions it as the de facto standard in the marketplace and raises the cost of entry for competitors, that's massive innovation, as long as you're defining innovation in a way that matters to the company's profitability and the financial success of shareholders -- and that is the only $DIETY Microsoft ultimately has to serve.
Microsoft makes some money when it technologically innovates. It makes one hell of a lot of money when it can innovate through changes in its business practices or (better yet) forcing changes in the business practies of most or all customers and competitors. This is where you'll see Microsoft working hard to combat erosion in its server market.
RMS can rant all he wants. We can wave the banner of free (Speech! Beer!) all we want. We can use the word monopoly all we want.
And Microsoft will still win.
Microsoft will win as long as they understand the whole war and we understand just one battle. The battle we're fighting is technological superiority, lower off-the-shelf cost and (in some cases) the principles of Free Software. Battles matter, but they're not the whole war. The war is market share and mindshare dominance, and "innovation" as simply a name for a whole range of tools that meet that primary business end.
In this war, it sometimes seems that we're using a gun and Microsoft is committed to using its whole arsenal. Can you win with just a gun? Yeah, if you're a good shot and take out a key leader. But the odds favor the person with more weapons.
Microsoft is an enormous innovator. In fact, they may be one of the greatest innovators in the history of tech companies. They're just not innovating in an altruistic, philanthropic way that most/. readers relate to.
From a business perspective, strategic marketing and business practices can and should be part of the innovation mix. If I'm Microsoft can package technology in such a way that it maximizes uptake, positions it as the de facto standard in the marketplace and raises the cost of entry for competitors, that's massive innovation, as long as you're defining innovation in a way that matters to the company's profitability and the financial success of shareholders -- and that is the only $DIETY Microsoft ultimately has to serve.
Microsoft makes some money when it technologically innovates. It makes one hell of a lot of money when it can innovate through changes in its business practices or (better yet) forcing changes in the business practies of most or all customers and competitors.
RMS can rant all he wants. We can wave the banner of free (Speech! Beer!) all we want. We can us the word monopoly all we want.
And Microsoft will still win.
We can refine KDE and Gnome to the point where the UI elegance is blinding. We can roll out the ultimate killer app. We can regularly have desktop uptimes measured in months.
And Microsoft will still win.
Microsoft will win as long as they understand the whole war and we understand just one battle. The battle we're fighting is technological superiority and (in some cases) the principles of Free Software. Battles matter, but they're not the whole war. The war is market share and mindshare dominance, and "innovation" as simply a name for a whole range of tools that meet that primary business end.
... not at your question, but at some of these answers. Damn, what a cynical, pedantic bunch we can be at times!
OK, first things first: You should be commended for wanting to work and (lack of car, funds and details aside) for wanting to pursue an entrepreneurial path.
Some thoughts...
Don't let the lack of a car get in your way. Become the Young Tech Whizzes Who Have To Have Their Clients Come Pick Them Up. Sound lame? It won't when the local paper or TV station picks it up and you've got lots of calls coming in.
Consider putting both the money and yourself to work -- but on different things.A grand isn't huge, but it's enough to do a little dabbling in the stock market. Do some research, make some picks and then work your investments at night while you work a more boring day job.
If you do go that route, don't turn up your nose at mass-market jobs like McDonald's.The goal when you're a teenager is to learn life skills, make a little money and... that's about it. Laugh if you want, but you'll learn basics of working in an organization by doing a stint at McDonald's that you won't learn simply by going the entrepreneurial route. I'm all for building your own business -- I'm a PR consultant and help start-up endeavors all the time -- but it's the rare entrepreneur who didn't learn some of the ropes as an employee somewhere else.
Related to above: You could always put the money to work in the stock market and then go get a kick-ass internship.
Whatever you do, focus -- and focus hard -- on execution. Contrary to what other posters have said, million-dollar ideas are relatively easy to come by; it's execution that can make even a mediocre business plan highly profitable. Meet your deadlines. Make customers feel special. Feel shy or nervous around strangers and customers? Get over it or learn to hide it. You'll find that only about 5% of the people you ever work with do what they say they will do, and do it when they say they will do it; master this one simple thing, and you will be a standout no matter what your profession.
Dell is utterly visionary and their R&D people are first-rate -- just not at developing products.
The Dell vision has been and continues to be to enter markets just before they reach commoditization and to rapidly scale up market share by undercutting on price.
Think they don't have R&D people? Think again -- they've got hundreds. But those hundreds are busy looking for the next market Dell can enter and dominate (think of how they entered the server market and, more recently, the PDA market).
Just because someone spends their R&D dollars on econometric models and market research rather than trying to invent truly new products doesn't mean they're not innovating. Dell taught an entire generation of successful companies how to analyze, parse, enter and dominate markets.
Tom Murphy has written extensively on this as well, although his site lacks a search engine so you have to rummage around for relevant articles.
Insurance plays a role in this
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
When people aren't responsible for the true cost of their health care, there's little incentive not to investigate every ache and pain, real or imagined.
I'm not saying insurance is a bad thing, but insurance that says "yes, you can have open heart surgery for $5" is going to affect patient behavior, no way around it.
"... the spending is often uncompetitive because of port set-asides or the artifically high costs imposed by doing business with the federal government.
The question isn't whether another Apollo Project-esque endeavor will create jobs -- of course it will.
The question is: Are those the jobs the best way to go about goosing the economy, and is this the way we want to develop them?
Unless President Bush plans to privatize the whole effort, we're talking about jobs paid for with federal contracting funds, and those are some of the most inefficient jobs you can release into the economy.
There's nothing inherently wrong with jobs generated by federal spending -- after all, the government needs to buy stuff just like any company. However (and this is the important part) jobs that grow out of federal spending programs aren't the most efficient way to translate capital into work.. First, the money has to come from somewhere (i.e., taxes). Then, it goes through an inefficient bureaucracy that needs some off the top to perpetuate and grow itself. Then, it goes back into the economy in the form of federal spending, but the spending is often uncompetitive because of pork set-asides or
Bottom line: If you put a few billion dollars into federal spending in the private sector and compared the economic impact with simply leaving the capital in individual and business hands to figure out what their highest and best uses were, you'd see more efficient use of the capital (read: more net benefit) from the latter.
Oh, and although everyone likes the high-tech aspects of the space program, the fact is that there would be many, many old-economy manufacturing jobs created or sustained for every engineer or scientist.
Well, these answers probably aren't technically proficient enough for a real *nix God, but they reflect my real-world observations moving from Linux to FreeBSD about 18 months ago, and living with the OS since then:
The ports system is a godsend. Yes, I know Gentoo and others have similar things, but the FreeBSD ports system is more mature and Just Works. Want one of 10,000 programs installed on your system? Go to the appropriate directory under/usr/ports and type "make install" and you're done. The application -- as well as any dependencies -- are downloaded and built from source.
The layout makes more sense. More of a qualitative feature, I know, but if you compare the filesystem tree to Linux, you find that a lot more things are where you initially expect them to be.
The user community is mature, helpful and, for the most part, no-nonsense. The core FreeBSD e-mail lists are heavily populated by folks who run systems for a living, and who can provide real-world answers without flame wars or a lot of immature foolishness.
... as in, "returns on investment!" and "returns on the stock price!"
If there's a move to put customer service back onshore at Dell, or other "in-sourcing" trends, it's because the costs are lower, or the higher costs are offset by either good publicity / happier customers.
Mind you, I'm as pro-capitalism as they come, so being driven by the battle cry of "returns!" is a good thing, IMHO.
True... but not in all instances. If you're writing a book with a strong local flavor that would be distributed regionally, the big-box booksellers will talk to you without a distributor.
On the other hand, if you're talking about national distribution, you're not going to get into the biggest channels unless you're working with a major publishing house.
I've heard White-Tailed Deer described as a "weedy" species because they can adapt so readily to a big range of circumstances. I wonder if the weediness carries down to the genetic level and makes intra-cell mucking about (i.e., cloning) more viable?
If you can spare $500-300, pick up an old PC, an installer CD for your favorite Linux or BSD distro and a two-port KVM box.
If your gift recipient is an ubergeek, he/she will appreciate having some test-bed hardware to knock around on; if he/she is new to geekdom, then you've given them a way to explore without trashing their XP box.
You can explore the edge of technology, but you're chasing a chimera. Things change fast, they're going to change faster and future generations will think of astounding things to do with the technologies we're only now beginning to explore.
The technologies of the last 200 years have so far outstripped past human progress that the real action in the coming years/decades/centuries will be the philosophical, moral and political assimilation of technology. We've done an increasintly poor job of it as the pace of advancement has quickened; it'll be interesting to see what (if anything) causes a tipping point after which we'll really explore the full impacts of new technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're a cubicle rat, then yeah, I guess the whole FOAF thing seems a little too much like high school dating logistics. But if you translate introductions into opportunities and know how to write a compelling message, then some of these social networks are godsends.
The world is an amazing and wonderful place.
It also means that, worst-case, you have road-centric DOT people looking at what they can do quick, simple and without a lot of hassle. That's why you see a lot of 511 weather and weigh-station info, but less of the useful-to-real-commuters data.
OK, maybe this isn't helpful at all, but it's meant to be.
First things first: You don't want to develop a site; you want to develop a business model that doesn't cost a fortune to set up and has some vague, distant hope of making you money. Lesson 1: A community site is a tool, not a means to an end, unless you're in the religion, politics or *nix-is-better-than-windows evangelical categories.
OK, so a site's a tool. Next thing to consider: Why do you want to pay all the people you mention? You brought up hosing (OK, you'll likely have to pay for that), but also artistic and web-design help, as well as DB management. There are scores of portal-style, slashdot-style and blog-style software packages out there -- go play with 'em a little. Most of 'em have a range of skins/themes you can download that might not be perfect, but they're a start. And do you REALLY want to build a custom app before you even figure out if your community is going to take off? Lesson 2: Quit overthinking -- if you're building a community site, then get something out there and put your energy into promoting it. If there's a market for it, the community will tell you how to make the site perfect because (repeat after me) you'll ask them every chance you get.The greatest horror a new site -- or any new business -- faces is usually cash flow. Do you have enough money to pay the hosting bills? How long, in your worst nightmare, will it take the site to start making money? (Hint: Take that number, double it, and go up by one order of magnitude.) What are the quick ways to make money from the user base, what are ways to get additional money from users who have been around a while and what are the ways you can get long-term, sustainable income from the site? If you don't have multiple ideas for each category, you are going to hit a cash-flow problem. Lesson 3: Your great ideas are just that -- great ideas. But the thing is, great ideas are a dime a dozen; great execution is what makes people money. Have an execution plan.
This probably sounds discouraging, but it's meant to be just the opposite -- if you can do a little up-front planning, can resist the (very common) urge to overfret the technical details and over-buy from vendors/consultants, and can know in advance how you plan to convert eyeballs to money, then you'll likely see some success. These things are basic; it's just shocking how few people follow the basics. Disclaimer: I get paid to offer advice like this.
Fully 7 out of 7 Bastard Operators From Hell were "just peachy keen" with making users' lives miserable.
.... they might start by posting the video in non-proprietary format!
Googling for "litigious schmuck" now turns up a new entry...
I live 38 miles from downtown KC, and although I work at home now (PR/marketing with a graphic-designer spouse), I commuted into the city for a few years.
Kansas City has more lane-miles of highway per capita than any other metro area in the nation; they think they have traffic during rush hour, but if you've lived anywhere else in the country with real traffic, you'll see immediately that's not true. Door-to-door commute for me was 45 minutes, surrounded by cornfields, cow pastures and almost no other traffic. Very cool.
The other thing about rural communities that haven't gentrified is the housing is cheap. I bought a 100-year-old, painted-lady Victorian for $146k, and it's fully restored. Amazing.
The downside: Selling your home if you live in a small town can take forever. There are gorgeous homes all over town here (Plattsburg, Mo., pop. 2,395), and some of them have been on the market for a year or more. They're not going down in value; they just move slowly.
Finally, check early and often on DSL or T1 (if you need that kind of pipe) availability. We didn't buy the house we're in now for a year because there was no DSL in town... the day we went to go make an offer on another house -- boom! -- DSL finally made it here.
- Employees, not partners. Unless you need the equity, it's a lot easier to get out of employment arrangements that go south than out of partnerships.
- Maybe you treat them nicer than employees, but treat the *paperwork* just the same. Everyone gets an offer letter that spells out salary, benefits, hours, expectations, etc. Everyone gets reviews. Everyone has to document their time. Is it likely someone will sue you? No, but it *is* likely that disagreements will turn nasty if things aren't down on paper.
- If you can grow your way into it, have someone outside the family in a management role. Things go better if there's someone unrelated in the middle.
- Ask yourself: Do you really need the help? This is true whether you're hiring family or Joe Techie off the street. Employees are a steady expense in a world of uncertain cash flow -- make sure you're stretched *damned* thin before you commit to the expense.
Good luck! Oh, and noodle around my weblog for advice on business development and promoting your business.- I run SpamAssassin and ClamAV on my server and check all inbound mail against a series of RBL lists; and
- All mail POP'd into my Outlook (yeah, I gotta use it - no flames!) gets checked using the free-and-excellent SpamBayes.
Works in the bakcground with damn-near zero false positives, and doesn't require Microsoft-pushed e-mail postage, changes in the e-mail RFCs or anything else.The tools are out there. If you use them, spam isn't nearly as much of an issue as the press makes it out to be.
*Well not everyone in the Real World anyway -- here on /. we all run our own boxes, right?
:::putting on flame-proof suit:::
Microsoft is an enormous innovator and will innovate in some manner to push back the threat of *nix. In fact, they may be one of the greatest innovators in the history of tech companies. They're just not innovating in an altruistic, philanthropic or technical way that most /. readers relate to.
From a business perspective, strategic marketing and business practices can and should be part of the innovation mix. If I'm Microsoft can package technology in such a way that it maximizes uptake, positions it as the de facto standard in the marketplace and raises the cost of entry for competitors, that's massive innovation, as long as you're defining innovation in a way that matters to the company's profitability and the financial success of shareholders -- and that is the only $DIETY Microsoft ultimately has to serve.
Microsoft makes some money when it technologically innovates. It makes one hell of a lot of money when it can innovate through changes in its business practices or (better yet) forcing changes in the business practies of most or all customers and competitors. This is where you'll see Microsoft working hard to combat erosion in its server market.
RMS can rant all he wants. We can wave the banner of free (Speech! Beer!) all we want. We can use the word monopoly all we want.
And Microsoft will still win.
Microsoft will win as long as they understand the whole war and we understand just one battle. The battle we're fighting is technological superiority, lower off-the-shelf cost and (in some cases) the principles of Free Software. Battles matter, but they're not the whole war. The war is market share and mindshare dominance, and "innovation" as simply a name for a whole range of tools that meet that primary business end.
In this war, it sometimes seems that we're using a gun and Microsoft is committed to using its whole arsenal. Can you win with just a gun? Yeah, if you're a good shot and take out a key leader. But the odds favor the person with more weapons.
Microsoft is an enormous innovator. In fact, they may be one of the greatest innovators in the history of tech companies. They're just not innovating in an altruistic, philanthropic way that most /. readers relate to.
From a business perspective, strategic marketing and business practices can and should be part of the innovation mix. If I'm Microsoft can package technology in such a way that it maximizes uptake, positions it as the de facto standard in the marketplace and raises the cost of entry for competitors, that's massive innovation, as long as you're defining innovation in a way that matters to the company's profitability and the financial success of shareholders -- and that is the only $DIETY Microsoft ultimately has to serve.
Microsoft makes some money when it technologically innovates. It makes one hell of a lot of money when it can innovate through changes in its business practices or (better yet) forcing changes in the business practies of most or all customers and competitors.
RMS can rant all he wants. We can wave the banner of free (Speech! Beer!) all we want. We can us the word monopoly all we want.
And Microsoft will still win.
We can refine KDE and Gnome to the point where the UI elegance is blinding. We can roll out the ultimate killer app. We can regularly have desktop uptimes measured in months.
And Microsoft will still win.
Microsoft will win as long as they understand the whole war and we understand just one battle. The battle we're fighting is technological superiority and (in some cases) the principles of Free Software. Battles matter, but they're not the whole war. The war is market share and mindshare dominance, and "innovation" as simply a name for a whole range of tools that meet that primary business end.
OK, first things first: You should be commended for wanting to work and (lack of car, funds and details aside) for wanting to pursue an entrepreneurial path.
Some thoughts...
The Dell vision has been and continues to be to enter markets just before they reach commoditization and to rapidly scale up market share by undercutting on price.
Think they don't have R&D people? Think again -- they've got hundreds. But those hundreds are busy looking for the next market Dell can enter and dominate (think of how they entered the server market and, more recently, the PDA market).
Just because someone spends their R&D dollars on econometric models and market research rather than trying to invent truly new products doesn't mean they're not innovating. Dell taught an entire generation of successful companies how to analyze, parse, enter and dominate markets.
Me on the subject.
Tom Murphy has written extensively on this as well, although his site lacks a search engine so you have to rummage around for relevant articles.
I'm not saying insurance is a bad thing, but insurance that says "yes, you can have open heart surgery for $5" is going to affect patient behavior, no way around it.
The third paragraph should end as follows:
"... the spending is often uncompetitive because of port set-asides or the artifically high costs imposed by doing business with the federal government.
The question is: Are those the jobs the best way to go about goosing the economy, and is this the way we want to develop them?
Unless President Bush plans to privatize the whole effort, we're talking about jobs paid for with federal contracting funds, and those are some of the most inefficient jobs you can release into the economy.
There's nothing inherently wrong with jobs generated by federal spending -- after all, the government needs to buy stuff just like any company. However (and this is the important part) jobs that grow out of federal spending programs aren't the most efficient way to translate capital into work.. First, the money has to come from somewhere (i.e., taxes). Then, it goes through an inefficient bureaucracy that needs some off the top to perpetuate and grow itself. Then, it goes back into the economy in the form of federal spending, but the spending is often uncompetitive because of pork set-asides or
Bottom line: If you put a few billion dollars into federal spending in the private sector and compared the economic impact with simply leaving the capital in individual and business hands to figure out what their highest and best uses were, you'd see more efficient use of the capital (read: more net benefit) from the latter.
Oh, and although everyone likes the high-tech aspects of the space program, the fact is that there would be many, many old-economy manufacturing jobs created or sustained for every engineer or scientist.
- The ports system is a godsend. Yes, I know Gentoo and others have similar things, but the FreeBSD ports system is more mature and Just Works. Want one of 10,000 programs installed on your system? Go to the appropriate directory under
/usr/ports and type "make install" and you're done. The application -- as well as any dependencies -- are downloaded and built from source. - The layout makes more sense. More of a qualitative feature, I know, but if you compare the filesystem tree to Linux, you find that a lot more things are where you initially expect them to be.
- The user community is mature, helpful and, for the most part, no-nonsense. The core FreeBSD e-mail lists are heavily populated by folks who run systems for a living, and who can provide real-world answers without flame wars or a lot of immature foolishness.
Hope this helps!If there's a move to put customer service back onshore at Dell, or other "in-sourcing" trends, it's because the costs are lower, or the higher costs are offset by either good publicity / happier customers.
Mind you, I'm as pro-capitalism as they come, so being driven by the battle cry of "returns!" is a good thing, IMHO.
On the other hand, if you're talking about national distribution, you're not going to get into the biggest channels unless you're working with a major publishing house.
If your gift recipient is an ubergeek, he/she will appreciate having some test-bed hardware to knock around on; if he/she is new to geekdom, then you've given them a way to explore without trashing their XP box.
The technologies of the last 200 years have so far outstripped past human progress that the real action in the coming years/decades/centuries will be the philosophical, moral and political assimilation of technology. We've done an increasintly poor job of it as the pace of advancement has quickened; it'll be interesting to see what (if anything) causes a tipping point after which we'll really explore the full impacts of new technologies.
(Disclaimer: I think Bill Joy is an alarmist.)