Novell bought WordPerfect for $1.1 billion, then sold it less than a year later for $150 million.
I'm not sure the numbers are exact, but they are close. Buying WordPerfect without a plan about what to do with it was the single most awesomely bad business decision I've ever seen.
You said, "NetWare in unequalled. I hate the way you administer it, (it's intentionally obtuse to encourage CNE certification),..."
Back when Novell had 85% of the file server market, it seemed to me that Novell's adversarial behavior toward its customers (the administrators) would eventually kill the company. That was a prediction that came true faster than I imagined.
HP should have thought more clearly about this. What is the cost to HP of Timothy of Slashdot calling HP software "crappy"? It is difficult to imagine that it is less than the cost of continuing development.
What you said makes sense. IBMs solution is useful when deploying 20,000 desktop PCs for a bank. They know that employees will only be writing short letters, for example. They want to avoid creativity. They want to avoid security risk. They want to make changes quickly.
IBM bought Lotus Notes and Domino, AFTER they were the most important. People use WebSphere because they want IBM support, I think, rather than because it is good software. ViaVoice is horrible compared to Natually Speaking, or at least was when I tested it.
I should have said that IBM has not been successful with PC software. IBM does okay with its mainframe OSs. IBM does, in effect, have its own distribution of Linux. You and I don't download it because we don't have an IBM mainframe.
It AMAZES and depresses me how bad most companies are at marketing, especially technically knowledgeable companies. So, it's wonderful to see Google being run so well.
That's how I read the Opera web pages, that 7.10 for Windows has been released. But Opera 7.10 under Windows is very buggy, so it must be a beta, also.
7.10 beta does NOT have HTML enabled email composition. I just tried it. There is an option to use another email client, but it does not work, presumably because this is the beta version.
Opera 7.10 beta is fast, but I don't see any compelling reason to prefer it over Mozilla. Anyone care to give a reason?
From the parent comment: "If there was an award for software distributed
that never got used, nobody would ever beat IBM."
Exactly. Remember TopView? It was a way of running multiple programs under
DOS. That was the beginning, I guess, of the present software incompetence of
IBM. Their failures seem to be a political problem with management.
IBM killed SmartSuite so efficiently! One month they bought it, and the next
month it was dead! Awesome!
I remember news reports saying that IBM had lost $1,000,000,000 on OS/2. They
gave it a name that means "deform so much as to make unusable": Warp. There
were later reports that IBM lost $2 billion on OS/2. It was a better OS than
Windows at the time, but IBM wouldn't support it with drivers. I guess IBM
management took a hard look at OS/2, and decided losing $1 billion wasn't
enough.
Recently, there were those stupid-looking spacemen selling IBM web software.
IBM Linux is one of IBM's few software successes. I suppose that's because IBM
management is not able to ruin it.
I agree with the comment above the parent to this one: "The bloat of any
even semi-featureful office suite, combined with the horrible, piggish
slowness and ugliness of a Java app."
Didn't anyone in IBM management notice that Java does not have good GUI
support?
Opera still does not have HTML-enabled email. When writing instructions, for example, it is nice to have bold and italic.
Of course, you pay more for an HTML-capable email client. The additional cost for Mozilla is -39.00 dollars U.S. Don't you just love those negative additional amounts?
About Promise RAID controllers: When running a mirror, or a spanned mirror, what is the sychronization software for? The controller should be writing the same data to both hard drives. Promise tech support has never been able to answer this.
The readme file says this:
"- SYNCHRONIZATION
This is a maintenance operation for Mirrored (RAID1) arrays. It
will compare data on drives for differences. If there are
differences it will automatically copy data from the first disk to
the second disk in the array. This needs to be performed
periodically to maintain data integrity."
Also, have you ever had problems with the array falling apart when there is no hardware failure?
Isn't the reason Microsoft wants a common language runtime because it makes it easy to de-compile the programs from other companies, and therefore to compete without paying those companies anything?
Worry about bugs that cause problems elsewhere.
on
HD DVD Coming Very Soon
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Microsoft spying on you may not be the biggest issue. It is best to wait until all the bugs have been found before you install Microsoft software. As Steve Jobs said, "Microsoft eventually gets it right."
Sometimes people confuse themselves by thinking of Microsoft as a software
company that is abusive. It can be more clear to think of Microsoft as an
abuse company that sells software.
Judging from some of the things I've seen, there must be executives at
Microsoft who every day energetically think of more ways to put the customer's
back against the wall.
I've spent more than 20 years studying things of this nature, and I think
what's happening at Microsoft is a general social breakdown. Usually in
situations of this sort, things get worse and worse until something breaks.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone below answered part of my question: Four Licensing Schemes/Three versions, #5751897
But have companies really waited this long to install Office 2000's SP3? Microsoft says SP3 fixes some of the crashiness of Office 2000.
Can someone explain this? Office 2000 is on Service Pack 3, since "21-Oct-2002". It doesn't have activation. Office XP is on SP2.
Is there a difference in Office 2000 SP3 if it was updated with SR1 instead of SR1a? If so, why not just re-install and use SR1?
"7. WordPerfect, they owned it, they blew it."
Novell bought WordPerfect for $1.1 billion, then sold it less than a year later for $150 million.
I'm not sure the numbers are exact, but they are close. Buying WordPerfect without a plan about what to do with it was the single most awesomely bad business decision I've ever seen.
"Novell's offering their small business starter pack for free..."
The link says, "All you pay for is the services of your Novell partner: They'll set your network up for you without disrupting your business."
What, aren't we on Jupiter? Oh, well then, never mind.
You said, "NetWare in unequalled. I hate the way you administer it, (it's intentionally obtuse to encourage CNE certification),
Back when Novell had 85% of the file server market, it seemed to me that Novell's adversarial behavior toward its customers (the administrators) would eventually kill the company. That was a prediction that came true faster than I imagined.
HP should have thought more clearly about this. What is the cost to HP of Timothy of Slashdot calling HP software "crappy"? It is difficult to imagine that it is less than the cost of continuing development.
It amazes me, but the first spreadsheet software, VisiCalc, was 27,520 bytes.
You are off the subject. IBM does great selling support and mainframe hardware.
What you said makes sense. IBMs solution is useful when deploying 20,000 desktop PCs for a bank. They know that employees will only be writing short letters, for example. They want to avoid creativity. They want to avoid security risk. They want to make changes quickly.
IBM bought Lotus Notes and Domino, AFTER they were the most important. People use WebSphere because they want IBM support, I think, rather than because it is good software. ViaVoice is horrible compared to Natually Speaking, or at least was when I tested it.
I should have said that IBM has not been successful with PC software. IBM does okay with its mainframe OSs. IBM does, in effect, have its own distribution of Linux. You and I don't download it because we don't have an IBM mainframe.
It AMAZES and depresses me how bad most companies are at marketing, especially technically knowledgeable companies. So, it's wonderful to see Google being run so well.
That's how I read the Opera web pages, that 7.10 for Windows has been released. But Opera 7.10 under Windows is very buggy, so it must be a beta, also.
7.10 beta does NOT have HTML enabled email composition. I just tried it. There is an option to use another email client, but it does not work, presumably because this is the beta version.
Opera 7.10 beta is fast, but I don't see any compelling reason to prefer it over Mozilla. Anyone care to give a reason?
Great! I will try it now.
But the point is still there. Why buy Opera when Mozilla is free? I have to buy Opera to support customers. But why do others buy Opera?
From the parent comment: "If there was an award for software distributed that never got used, nobody would ever beat IBM."
Exactly. Remember TopView? It was a way of running multiple programs under DOS. That was the beginning, I guess, of the present software incompetence of IBM. Their failures seem to be a political problem with management.
IBM killed SmartSuite so efficiently! One month they bought it, and the next month it was dead! Awesome!
I remember news reports saying that IBM had lost $1,000,000,000 on OS/2. They gave it a name that means "deform so much as to make unusable": Warp. There were later reports that IBM lost $2 billion on OS/2. It was a better OS than Windows at the time, but IBM wouldn't support it with drivers. I guess IBM management took a hard look at OS/2, and decided losing $1 billion wasn't enough.
Recently, there were those stupid-looking spacemen selling IBM web software.
IBM Linux is one of IBM's few software successes. I suppose that's because IBM management is not able to ruin it.
I agree with the comment above the parent to this one: "The bloat of any even semi-featureful office suite, combined with the horrible, piggish slowness and ugliness of a Java app."
Didn't anyone in IBM management notice that Java does not have good GUI support?
Opera still does not have HTML-enabled email. When writing instructions, for example, it is nice to have bold and italic.
Of course, you pay more for an HTML-capable email client. The additional cost for Mozilla is -39.00 dollars U.S. Don't you just love those negative additional amounts?
About Promise RAID controllers: When running a mirror, or a spanned mirror, what is the sychronization software for? The controller should be writing the same data to both hard drives. Promise tech support has never been able to answer this.
The readme file says this:
"- SYNCHRONIZATION
This is a maintenance operation for Mirrored (RAID1) arrays. It will compare data on drives for differences. If there are differences it will automatically copy data from the first disk to the second disk in the array. This needs to be performed periodically to maintain data integrity."
Also, have you ever had problems with the array falling apart when there is no hardware failure?
Could someone help me with this?
Isn't the reason Microsoft wants a common language runtime because it makes it easy to de-compile the programs from other companies, and therefore to compete without paying those companies anything?
Microsoft spying on you may not be the biggest issue. It is best to wait until all the bugs have been found before you install Microsoft software. As Steve Jobs said, "Microsoft eventually gets it right."
23 inch Apple HD Cinema Display
But, Apple doesn't say what the response time is, leading me to guess that it is bad.
Porting Access97 data to PostgreSQL
Lists of Microsoft Abuses:
Overall abuses: Reasons to Avoid Microsoft. (More than 200 in one year!)
Abuses in one product: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.
Sometimes people confuse themselves by thinking of Microsoft as a software company that is abusive. It can be more clear to think of Microsoft as an abuse company that sells software.
Judging from some of the things I've seen, there must be executives at Microsoft who every day energetically think of more ways to put the customer's back against the wall.
I've spent more than 20 years studying things of this nature, and I think what's happening at Microsoft is a general social breakdown. Usually in situations of this sort, things get worse and worse until something breaks.
Other social breakdowns:
The U.S. government: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories
and What should be the Response to Violence?.
Law in the U.S. state of Oregon:
Complicated methods corrupt Oregon government.
and Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash.
I think it is half corporate taxes and half individual contributions. If you are a consultant, you are required to pay both halves.
License agreements are becoming more and more abusive. I decided to jump several steps ahead (short steps) and write the final EULA:
The final license agreement:
- I can do anything I like.
- You have no power.
- You can't say anything bad about me.
- Everything belongs to me.
I knew a 3-year-old who said this. He has since become an adult, which is more than I can say for some executives.