More about the sad case of a salesperson running a technical company: Backfire.
The most important shortage in the world is the shortage of leaders. Technical companies suffer more because few people who want to be leaders are technically knowledgeable.
Even before Fiorina, HPs reputation began dying a sad, slow, ugly death, dragging with it millions of customers who depended on the past.
Look at many of the posts to this story. People are buying old HP printers because the new ones are poorly made.
"Use something that will mosturise the rubber, soft and supple is key here."
True, soft and supple is what you want. How do you achieve that? Can you recommend a product?
Isopropyl alcohol degrades rubber. In this case, that works. The alcohol takes off the hard outer glaze, leaving the softer rubber underneath bare. The alcohol is only there for a minute, and then evaporates. It is not there long enough to penetrate the entire roller.
In my experience, alcohol works well enough that the printer is replaced because of better technology before any problems with the rollers occur.
In really bad cases, it may be useful to achieve more "grab" by buffing the rubber with emery paper.
Carly Fiorina is living proof of the John Sculley law that a non-technical manager cannot successfully manage a technical company. It's like horses who do arithmetic, it may look like it works, but underneath it is just a series of tricks.
Power supply tests typically have major shortcomings. They test only a few power supplies, usually the ones that are most heavily advertised, and therefore are the most expensive.
The power supplies in the review are available in the UK, and are from only 12 manufacturers. Most of them are so shockingly expensive that there would never be a case in which it was sensible to buy them.
How about a 300 Watt Power supply from a recognized manufacturer for $18.00 delivered in the U.S.? Need 600 Watts? Use two.
One thing you absolutely require: Dual fans. Two fans prevent uncooled areas in the power supply. Also, if one fan slows down, the other may keep the P.S. from failing.
I've had serious problems with Powweb technical support. They seem to be VERY immature.
Actually, that is superficially correct.
on
State of the Union
·
· Score: 1
Actually, that is superficially correct. The women in Brazil use the same general language (after translating from Portuguese) as the women in the United States. But the actual severity of the symptoms is far greater in the United States.
A better indicator of the effects of social breakdown in the United States would be one about which everyone could agree. For example, people in the United States are the most obese in the history of the world, with the exception of some small island nations in which people subsist on coconut.
Why do people eat when they are not hungry? Because they are unhappy. The U.S. government has killed more than 3,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. It is not possible to participate in killing other people and remain happy. Every citizen who makes no effective protest is participating.
How much thinking did you put in your reply?
on
State of the Union
·
· Score: 1
Just Some Guy, I've been investigating this for over 30 years. My guess is that you thought about it for less than 30 seconds.
Here's a test. If you are close to some women in the U.S., really close, ask them if they feel anger. When I do that they say yes. That's what counts.
As I said, men in the U.S. generally lack the social skills to know what their women are thinking and feeling. So the fact that you don't know they are angry is typical. (Women in the U.S. suffer from very serious depression at twice the rate of men. Those facts are connected.)
Then try the same experiment with women in Brazil or Italy, for example. They will give very, very different answers.
Conflict of Interest: Two men, whose family and business associates
and friends have extensive investments in global oil businesses, are president
and vice-president of the entire U.S. government.
Using dishonest means, these men convinced U.S. taxpayers to pay for
killing people in Iraq. What has been accomplished there? The killing under
Saddam was less than the killing under George Bush.
One thing that has been accomplished, however, is that the profit from
oil contracts involving Iraq has been shifted from Saddam to U.S. companies.
This was accomplished while minimizing the support for U.S. troops.
Visual Aid: Iraq Body Count Visual Aid. Many people can't look at this without
becoming so overloaded that they become irrational.
The U.S. government is now far more in debt than ever before: Debt Clock. If you are a U.S.
citizen, you are expected to pay. Those who want corruption in the U.S.
government want the government to borrow. The corrupters find ways to
transfer the money to their pockets.
The U.S. government has fought 24 wars
since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so richpeople
can profit.
How to understand U.S. violence: For reasons beyond the scope
of this comment, the mental illness called anger has been increasing in women
in the United States. In general, men in the United States lack the social
skills necessary to deal with this anger, so they do not provide a
counter-balancing force. It is the general increase in anger and the general
breakdown of U.S. society that has caused many people in the U.S. to look for
outlets for their anger. Anger is easily re-directed by leaders with simplistic
rationalizations that are presented as logical, and doing so has been
quite profitable.
It is a characteristic of angry people that they don't think clearly.
Another characteristic is that they look for ways to avoid knowing they are
angry. Many people in the U.S. believe that they are superior people who
should be allowed to kill because that is the only way of improving the world.
Beware: When you give both your name and birthdate, you uniquely identify yourself.
Recommendation: Decide on a fake birthdate and use it like you would a password. Use different birthdates for different purposes. NEVER give a true birthdate.
I would never trust a marketing-crazed company like Amazon with anything unnecessary. Marketing people are usually the ones who are not too smart anyway. They seem to fall into a kind of mental illness in which, as time goes on, they justify to themselves more and more adversarial behavior.
Dreamhost seems to allow more than one domain, however, the plans say about "Unique IP Address": No No No Yes. You have to pay $80 a month to get a unique IP address.
Dreamhost has survived Slashdotting probably only in the trivial sense. The server that serves their web pages is different from the server that servers their customer's web pages.
I don't have hours to write about Word 2000 quirks!!! If anyone has a serious request, send me a purchase order.
Here are two Microsoft Word quirks:
Squirrelly headers and footers: Sometimes headers and footers move around when they shouldn't.
Problem with Word trashing its own file? Use OO for repair. Word 2000 sometimes trashes its own files. You do an additional save after saving maybe 30 times previously and it says something like "invalid file format". This is particularly likely to happen after you have been working on a document for hours. Solution: Open the file in OO. Save the file in.DOC format. Then, if you haven't learned the lesson, open the file in Microsoft Word again.
To make Acrobat 7 load faster, disable some of the plug-ins. I did that manually (and I can't find the instructions I used). However, try the free Acrobat reader tweaker from AcroPDF.
I use GoDaddy, but only because I can't find anything better. Every GoDaddy web page is so cluttered with ads for things of dubious value that I believe that they cannot be trusted. They seem to try to take advantage of the ignorance of people who are new to domains and web hosting.
Why aren't there more "do no harm" companies like Google?
Recommendation: Stay away from DotEarth.com. They've had amazingly serious problems for a long time, such as not forwarding email, and their technical support gives no explanation.
I will check and see how Dreamhost compares with Powweb. Powweb accounts are $7.77/month and allow "2 Gigs Disk Space (Raid Storage) and 5 Gigs/Day Data Transfer/Bandwidth (per day, not month)."
One reason people insist on having Microsoft Office is that they feel that having a less expensive office package means that they are lower on the company social scale.
There seem to be two ways that people relate to computers inside companies. One way is that the person talks about the computer they use as "mine". That kind of person admires every good quality they see. That kind of person takes support for their self-esteem from the computer they use, and maybe from the car they drive, and so on.
The other kind of person focuses on the job to be done, and not on the social value of the tools. That kind of person, I think, would find Open Office much nicer to use than Microsoft Office, because Open Office is simply better software.
Every Microsoft software package I've used has had the infamous Microsoft quirky low quality, from Microsoft Basic and Microsoft LogiCalc, that ran under the CP/M operating system, until now. Microsoft seems to calculate very closely how much abuse customers are willing to take, and the company always skates close to the edge. Abuse seems to be a way of life at Microsoft, as it is with so many individual people.
In contrast, Open Office is written by people who want to do a good job.
When you choose a software package, you are choosing business partners. That's because so much staff time is invested in becoming comfortable with software and in using it. Unless there is a compelling reason, it is sensible not to value the things that Microsoft Office can do that OO cannot do so highly. (There are many areas where OO is better than Microsoft Office.) It is sensible to value highly your company's association with the kinder and gentler and more idealistic people in the Open Office development team.
The last version of Microsoft Word I used was in Office 2000. I got tired of it because it is so quirky with layout.
Open Office is a bit quirky, too, and they are different quirks. Many times people forget the many, many hours they spent learning to avoid the Office 2000 quirks. They want Open Office to be perfect, and they have forgotten how imperfect Microsoft Word is.
If you test Open Office, be sure you test the latest version, 1.1.4. Version 2.0 will be available in April or May of this year.
It's understandable that people who have invested hours in learning Microsoft Word don't want to invest hours again. They just want to get the job done. On the other hand, it would be crazy for the Open Office developers to implement the hundreds of ways Microsoft Office is quirky.
Generally, when you send documents outside your company, you should send PDF files. That guards against accidental changes. To do this in Open Office, just click the PDF icon in the toolbar. To do this in Microsoft Word, install an extra-cost package.
I installed Open Office for a staff member of a customer's company. She had been using a computer with Microsoft Word before. She didn't notice that anything had changed.
Probably a lot of us on Slashdot are very sensitive to GUI design, but many people aren't.
Slashdot Mirror
More about the sad case of a salesperson running a technical company: Backfire.
The most important shortage in the world is the shortage of leaders. Technical companies suffer more because few people who want to be leaders are technically knowledgeable.
Even before Fiorina, HPs reputation began dying a sad, slow, ugly death, dragging with it millions of customers who depended on the past.
Look at many of the posts to this story. People are buying old HP printers because the new ones are poorly made.
"Use something that will mosturise the rubber, soft and supple is key here."
True, soft and supple is what you want. How do you achieve that? Can you recommend a product?
Isopropyl alcohol degrades rubber. In this case, that works. The alcohol takes off the hard outer glaze, leaving the softer rubber underneath bare. The alcohol is only there for a minute, and then evaporates. It is not there long enough to penetrate the entire roller.
In my experience, alcohol works well enough that the printer is replaced because of better technology before any problems with the rollers occur.
In really bad cases, it may be useful to achieve more "grab" by buffing the rubber with emery paper.
Carly Fiorina is living proof of the John Sculley law that a non-technical manager cannot successfully manage a technical company. It's like horses who do arithmetic, it may look like it works, but underneath it is just a series of tricks.
Power supply tests typically have major shortcomings. They test only a few power supplies, usually the ones that are most heavily advertised, and therefore are the most expensive.
The power supplies in the review are available in the UK, and are from only 12 manufacturers. Most of them are so shockingly expensive that there would never be a case in which it was sensible to buy them.
How about a 300 Watt Power supply from a recognized manufacturer for $18.00 delivered in the U.S.? Need 600 Watts? Use two.
One thing you absolutely require: Dual fans. Two fans prevent uncooled areas in the power supply. Also, if one fan slows down, the other may keep the P.S. from failing.
Oh, great, a cool line from the cell phone anti-marketing department.
Yup, BroadVoice.com is the best.
Don't call it FUD. If you think a man is a liar, call him a liar.
Please don't visit and comment on stories in which you have no interest.
Valuable advice, because I'm looking for a host. However, what was that they said about a unique IP address?
I've had serious problems with Powweb technical support. They seem to be VERY immature.
Actually, that is superficially correct. The women in Brazil use the same general language (after translating from Portuguese) as the women in the United States. But the actual severity of the symptoms is far greater in the United States.
A better indicator of the effects of social breakdown in the United States would be one about which everyone could agree. For example, people in the United States are the most obese in the history of the world, with the exception of some small island nations in which people subsist on coconut.
Why do people eat when they are not hungry? Because they are unhappy. The U.S. government has killed more than 3,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. It is not possible to participate in killing other people and remain happy. Every citizen who makes no effective protest is participating.
Just Some Guy, I've been investigating this for over 30 years. My guess is that you thought about it for less than 30 seconds.
Here's a test. If you are close to some women in the U.S., really close, ask them if they feel anger. When I do that they say yes. That's what counts.
As I said, men in the U.S. generally lack the social skills to know what their women are thinking and feeling. So the fact that you don't know they are angry is typical. (Women in the U.S. suffer from very serious depression at twice the rate of men. Those facts are connected.)
Then try the same experiment with women in Brazil or Italy, for example. They will give very, very different answers.
That comment was my state of the union speech which shows that Bush's views are unacceptably far from reality.
Conflict of Interest: Two men, whose family and business associates and friends have extensive investments in global oil businesses, are president and vice-president of the entire U.S. government.
Using dishonest means, these men convinced U.S. taxpayers to pay for killing people in Iraq. What has been accomplished there? The killing under Saddam was less than the killing under George Bush.
One thing that has been accomplished, however, is that the profit from oil contracts involving Iraq has been shifted from Saddam to U.S. companies. This was accomplished while minimizing the support for U.S. troops.
Visual Aid: Iraq Body Count Visual Aid. Many people can't look at this without becoming so overloaded that they become irrational.
The U.S. government is now far more in debt than ever before: Debt Clock. If you are a U.S. citizen, you are expected to pay. Those who want corruption in the U.S. government want the government to borrow. The corrupters find ways to transfer the money to their pockets.
The U.S. government has fought 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
How to understand U.S. violence: For reasons beyond the scope of this comment, the mental illness called anger has been increasing in women in the United States. In general, men in the United States lack the social skills necessary to deal with this anger, so they do not provide a counter-balancing force. It is the general increase in anger and the general breakdown of U.S. society that has caused many people in the U.S. to look for outlets for their anger. Anger is easily re-directed by leaders with simplistic rationalizations that are presented as logical, and doing so has been quite profitable.
It is a characteristic of angry people that they don't think clearly. Another characteristic is that they look for ways to avoid knowing they are angry. Many people in the U.S. believe that they are superior people who should be allowed to kill because that is the only way of improving the world.
Beware: When you give both your name and birthdate, you uniquely identify yourself.
Recommendation: Decide on a fake birthdate and use it like you would a password. Use different birthdates for different purposes. NEVER give a true birthdate.
I would never trust a marketing-crazed company like Amazon with anything unnecessary. Marketing people are usually the ones who are not too smart anyway. They seem to fall into a kind of mental illness in which, as time goes on, they justify to themselves more and more adversarial behavior.
Dreamhost seems to allow more than one domain, however, the plans say about "Unique IP Address": No No No Yes. You have to pay $80 a month to get a unique IP address.
Some of the other companies allow more than one domain on one account. I don't think Powweb does.
Dreamhost has survived Slashdotting probably only in the trivial sense. The server that serves their web pages is different from the server that servers their customer's web pages.
I don't have hours to write about Word 2000 quirks!!! If anyone has a serious request, send me a purchase order.
Here are two Microsoft Word quirks:
Squirrelly headers and footers: Sometimes headers and footers move around when they shouldn't.
Problem with Word trashing its own file? Use OO for repair. Word 2000 sometimes trashes its own files. You do an additional save after saving maybe 30 times previously and it says something like "invalid file format". This is particularly likely to happen after you have been working on a document for hours. Solution: Open the file in OO. Save the file in
To make Acrobat 7 load faster, disable some of the plug-ins. I did that manually (and I can't find the instructions I used). However, try the free Acrobat reader tweaker from AcroPDF.
I use GoDaddy, but only because I can't find anything better. Every GoDaddy web page is so cluttered with ads for things of dubious value that I believe that they cannot be trusted. They seem to try to take advantage of the ignorance of people who are new to domains and web hosting.
Why aren't there more "do no harm" companies like Google?
Recommendation: Stay away from DotEarth.com. They've had amazingly serious problems for a long time, such as not forwarding email, and their technical support gives no explanation.
I will check and see how Dreamhost compares with Powweb. Powweb accounts are $7.77/month and allow "2 Gigs Disk Space (Raid Storage) and 5 Gigs/Day Data Transfer/Bandwidth (per day, not month)."
One reason people insist on having Microsoft Office is that they feel that having a less expensive office package means that they are lower on the company social scale.
There seem to be two ways that people relate to computers inside companies. One way is that the person talks about the computer they use as "mine". That kind of person admires every good quality they see. That kind of person takes support for their self-esteem from the computer they use, and maybe from the car they drive, and so on.
The other kind of person focuses on the job to be done, and not on the social value of the tools. That kind of person, I think, would find Open Office much nicer to use than Microsoft Office, because Open Office is simply better software.
Every Microsoft software package I've used has had the infamous Microsoft quirky low quality, from Microsoft Basic and Microsoft LogiCalc, that ran under the CP/M operating system, until now. Microsoft seems to calculate very closely how much abuse customers are willing to take, and the company always skates close to the edge. Abuse seems to be a way of life at Microsoft, as it is with so many individual people.
In contrast, Open Office is written by people who want to do a good job.
When you choose a software package, you are choosing business partners. That's because so much staff time is invested in becoming comfortable with software and in using it. Unless there is a compelling reason, it is sensible not to value the things that Microsoft Office can do that OO cannot do so highly. (There are many areas where OO is better than Microsoft Office.) It is sensible to value highly your company's association with the kinder and gentler and more idealistic people in the Open Office development team.
The last version of Microsoft Word I used was in Office 2000. I got tired of it because it is so quirky with layout.
Open Office is a bit quirky, too, and they are different quirks. Many times people forget the many, many hours they spent learning to avoid the Office 2000 quirks. They want Open Office to be perfect, and they have forgotten how imperfect Microsoft Word is.
If you test Open Office, be sure you test the latest version, 1.1.4. Version 2.0 will be available in April or May of this year.
It's understandable that people who have invested hours in learning Microsoft Word don't want to invest hours again. They just want to get the job done. On the other hand, it would be crazy for the Open Office developers to implement the hundreds of ways Microsoft Office is quirky.
Generally, when you send documents outside your company, you should send PDF files. That guards against accidental changes. To do this in Open Office, just click the PDF icon in the toolbar. To do this in Microsoft Word, install an extra-cost package.
I installed Open Office for a staff member of a customer's company. She had been using a computer with Microsoft Word before. She didn't notice that anything had changed.
Probably a lot of us on Slashdot are very sensitive to GUI design, but many people aren't.
The book The Irony of Democracy: An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics made the point more than 30 years ago that only a small percentage of Americans actually believe in democratic principles.
Unfortunately, all the Amazon reviews are of very poor quality, other than saying they liked the book.