What evidence do you have that Bill Gates is intelligent? I'm serious. What evidence?
His father is a lawyer. Bill Gates did what lawyers do. He was extremely hostile toward the opposition. Because most people were so ignorant about technology, Microsoft was able to dominate. In my opinion, the dominance of Microsoft was due to the hostility, not to the quality of Microsoft's products.
"Whenever we locked horns, I'd have to raise my intensity and my blood pressure to meet Bill's, and it was taking a toll. Some people can vent their anger, take a breath, and let it go, but I wasn't one of them. My sinking morale sapped my enthusiasm for my work, which in turn could precipitate Bill's next attack."
More specifically, Intel has a TERRIBLE reputation in 2 areas:
1) Announcing something when it is far from finished.
2) Producing "consumer" items no one wants.
In 2012, I was visiting an Intel web page. A pop-up asked me to take a survey. I said yes. I mentioned several management problems at Intel. I said that the problems at Intel started at the top. For example, the then CEO, Paul Otellini had paid $6 billion for McAfee. I said that, in my opinion, McAfee software was worse than useless, that McAfee had no connection with Intel's business, and that the $6 billion was entirely wasted. (Last week I mentioned McAfee anti-virus software to a programmer acquaintance who works for a bank. He said McAfee anti-malware software is worse than the malware it is supposed to protect against.)
I'm not saying I had any influence, but 3 months later it was announced that Otellini would no longer be CEO of Intel.
This is my understanding from talking with friends and acquaintances who work at Intel: The processor and chipset division is managed quite well. Apparently Intel top management doesn't mess with that, maybe because they don't understand anything about it.
Non-technical people can't manage technological companies! To manage Intel well, it is necessary to have technology in your heart and be fascinated with the details. And, at the same time, it is necessary to have the social ability to manage a large company.
Several years ago I called an Intel support person and showed him a huge mistake in the description of an Intel product. He said something like, "We are re-doing the web site. We will fix that soon." A year later, I talked to the same man. He didn't remember me, but I remembered him, and had written his name. I mentioned the same error. He gave the same excuse again.
Another experience: Several years ago I wanted to buy Intel motherboards. It took 2 hours to become a member of some online Intel group and find the exact model number.
Remember Intel Bunny People dolls? Apparently someone at Intel thought that processor and motherboard buyers would be motivated by a cute doll.
It is my understanding that Intel's incompetence continues. It surprises me, but my own personal opinion is that I would be a far better manager than what Intel has now. One of the biggest problems in the entire world is the rarity of good management.
It seems to me that the entire purpose of any secret government agency is to benefit the secret government agency.
Michael Moore is a self-taught movie maker. His movie about U.S. government corruption in secret agencies, Fahrenheit 9/11, made $222,446,882. It's not like extreme U.S. government corruption is unknown.
There is a HUGE conflict of interest, and the U.S. government seems to have no influential methods of dealing with conflicts of interest. If there is security, people who work for the NSA are less likely to be promoted, and may lose their jobs. That is a powerful reason for NSA employees and management, and other secret U.S. government agencies, to create more insecurity. Since they work entirely in secret, no one can stop them.
U.S. government policies allow many secret agencies. I find it odd that news stories assume that, other than doing things that almost no citizens want, the secret agencies are otherwise well-managed. Numerous examples show that they aren't. For example, Edward Snowden, an employee of an NSA sub-contractor, was able to walk away with all the data.
To me, it is also odd that news stories assume that the NSA works to improve security of the U.S. and U.S. citizens. For example, the book House of Bush, House of Saud explains that the Bush and Cheney families worked for the Saudis, who paid them billions for their help. The U.S. taxpayer paid for the arms, military presence, and violence that supposedly was free security for the Saudi government, but actually was, as Saudi acquaintances I met in a gym said long before the 9/11 attack, Saudi government oppression of the Saudi people.
Why does the NSA record phone calls? Is it because learning about some of those calls makes money for someone in control? Investment information, perhaps?
NSA = No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that anything complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer may have intentional defects or surveillance methods.
NSA = No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that anything complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer may have intentional defects or surveillance methods.
U.S. government policies allow many secret agencies. I find it odd that news stories assume that, other than doing things that almost no citizens want, the secret agencies are otherwise well-managed. For example, in the case of Edward Snowden, someone who worked for a sub-contractor was able to walk away with all the data.
To me, it is also odd that news stories assume that the NSA works to improve security of the U.S. and U.S. citizens. For example, the book House of Bush, House of Saud explains that the Bush and Cheney families worked for the Saudis, who paid them billions for their help. The U.S. taxpayer paid for the arms, military presence, and violence that supposedly was free security for the Saudi government, but actually was, as Saudi acquaintances I met in a gym said long before the 9/11 attack, Saudi government oppression of the Saudi people.
There is a HUGE conflict of interest, and the U.S. government seems to have no influential methods of dealing with conflicts of interest. If there is security, people who work for the NSA are less likely to be promoted, and may lose their jobs. That is a powerful reason for NSA employees and management to create more insecurity. Since they work entirely in secret, no one can stop them.
Michael Moore is a self-taught movie maker. His movie about U.S. government corruption in secret agencies, Fahrenheit 9/11,
made $222,446,882. It's not like U.S. government corruption is a secret.
The New York Times article Slashdot mentioned, Tim Cook, Making Apple His Own, is an example of the collapse of the New York Times.
The authors are WRITERS (Heavenly horn sounds). The first 4 paragraphs are examples of their intent to tell stories like novelists, avoiding writing boring stuff like news. And, of course, WRITERS don't care about messy things like technology, even if they write about technology companies.
It's okay to put in some facts to give novels a feeling of realism: "And the [Apple] stock price fell nearly in half from its 2012 peak to the middle of 2013" Then: "To shore up shareholder faith, Mr. Cook split the stock, increased the dividend and engineered a $90 billion buyback -- steps that helped shares rebound almost entirely." The price of stock goes up when someone buys a lot of it.
But novelists have problems. Sometimes facts are more weird than any novelist would invent: "rap star Dr. Dre... will join Apple." The Wall Street Journal's novelists say Apple is "Tapping Tastemakers to Regain Music Mojo". Apple will sell "high-end headphones", under the Beats name. What could go wrong?
Mr. Cook is not much like Steve Jobs. He supports brand confusion: "Mr. Cook is trying to broaden Apple's brand, too, taking to Twitter and other public venues to express support for environmentalism and gay rights (and for Auburn University football)."
There are big hopes for the Apple iWatch "... according to people involved in the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to press." Steve Jobs fired people who announced products early because announcing early creates brand confusion.
The whole point of being a novelist is to avoid unpleasant realities. It's like being a drugee, but without the drugs. Don't get involved with messy issues. Quoting: "Jonathan Ive, the head of design at Apple... says Mr. Cook has not neglected the company's central mission: innovation. 'Honestly, I don't think anything's changed,' he said."
Mr. Cook wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in support of proposed federal legislation protecting gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
Nothing has changed?
Another quote: "Last July, a federal judge ruled that Apple had illegally conspired with publishers to try to raise prices in the e-books market; Apple is appealing."
And this: "Apple has also started building apps for Android systems".
Novelists like to live in their fantasy worlds. They don't want to think about messy news like the beginning of a gay, rap-singing, law-breaking, watch-making Apple that makes software for Google.
The real story? Apple and the New York Times are both spiralling downwards, in my opinion.
The problem in Firefox is not sensible memory usage. The problem is that the memory-hogging bug is associated with instability in Firefox. It's a serious defect, unplanned use of memory.
The memory-hogging bug has been there for more than 8 years. The fact that it is not fixed indicates something about the management of Mozilla Foundation.
Mate would be fine. The problem is that it's Mah-teh in Portuguese and another pronunciation in Spanish. So, it doesn't matter where you are from, it's confusing. In 3 languages.
It amazes me how self-defeating open source software developers can be in naming their efforts. Mint Mate (mah-teh?) uses a foreign word with more than one foreign pronunciation, and a different pronunciation and meaning in English. The name discourages new users.
Microsoft has been, in my opinion, extremely abusive. See my article, Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest. Part of the story: Steve Ballmer was fired after being called the "worst CEO". Firing a CEO with no technical knowledge did not fix the problems. Microsoft has been collapsing.
"... why WPP is so successful - it makes a fortune running FUD campaigns against a target for a client with one subsidiary then gets another to sell a counter campaign to the target of the original FUD campaign."
"... running an arms race where you're selling to both sides of the battle with thinly veiled pretenses of independence of subsidiaries of the parent company, but it's not ethical, and it's not new."
Maybe that is the explanation I was hoping to find. It certainly seems that we must look deeper than just the article. Something is wrong.
Something is wrong, somewhere, IMO. This Slashdot story is apparently about a PR release by Millward Brown, which is owned by Kantar Group, which is owned by WPP. Notice that the WPP web site is badly coded. It doesn't adjust for font size choices in browser configuration. The web site has, to my eyes, an ugly, cheap look.
Maybe this Slashdot story is about a PR release paid for by Google? Or Millward Brown is trying to advertise itself? Apparently "brand value" doesn't say much that is logical about how a company is managed, but just means that you should respect a company because a company is getting a lot of attention.
Google did the entire world a HUGELY nice thing with Google Search. For the first time, humans were able to find the world's information.
Remember the abusive Hotmail? Gmail is far better than any other email service, in my opinion.
In the beginning, Google was not so adversarial to customers. In the beginning, Google was the best at what it did.
I've thought about and studied the phenomenon of companies slowly degrading for decades. Hewlett-Packard was already going downhill in the 1970s; the company was making data acquisition hardware that had an obviously unfinished design.
Fairchild Semiconductor was, at one time, the best manufacturer of transistors. The company began selling power transistors with epoxy casing. The epoxy degraded the transistors. It seemed that Fairchild never recovered.
Tektronix was a great company at one time; everybody in the tech world was impressed with Tektronix oscilloscopes. I suppose the good managers decided to move to other efforts. One problem was that Tektronix was not prepared for lower-cost competitors.
More recently, Adobe seems to me to be on a long downhill slide; the PDF file formats were a gift to the world. Now Adobe seems to me to be becoming more and more aggressive toward its customers.
Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank seems to me to be becoming tired of being CEO and making huge management mistakes for which there have been multi-billion dollar fines.
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting. Except for the misspelled words, very well written. I'm interested in any links you have concerning those subjects.
What evidence do you have that Bill Gates is intelligent? I'm serious. What evidence?
His father is a lawyer. Bill Gates did what lawyers do. He was extremely hostile toward the opposition. Because most people were so ignorant about technology, Microsoft was able to dominate. In my opinion, the dominance of Microsoft was due to the hostility, not to the quality of Microsoft's products.
Read the book, Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft, by Paul Allen (PDF file). Paul Allen quit Microsoft because he did not want to be around Bill Gates' anger. For example, see this quote from page 157:
"Whenever we locked horns, I'd have to raise my intensity and my blood pressure to meet Bill's, and it was taking a toll. Some people can vent their anger, take a breath, and let it go, but I wasn't one of them. My sinking morale sapped my enthusiasm for my work, which in turn could precipitate Bill's next attack."
More specifically, Intel has a TERRIBLE reputation in 2 areas:
1) Announcing something when it is far from finished.
2) Producing "consumer" items no one wants.
Examples:
2001: Intel closing consumer electronics unit
2011: Intel drops smart TV to focus on smartphones, tablets and thin laptops
Some experiences:
In 2012, I was visiting an Intel web page. A pop-up asked me to take a survey. I said yes. I mentioned several management problems at Intel. I said that the problems at Intel started at the top. For example, the then CEO, Paul Otellini had paid $6 billion for McAfee. I said that, in my opinion, McAfee software was worse than useless, that McAfee had no connection with Intel's business, and that the $6 billion was entirely wasted. (Last week I mentioned McAfee anti-virus software to a programmer acquaintance who works for a bank. He said McAfee anti-malware software is worse than the malware it is supposed to protect against.)
I'm not saying I had any influence, but 3 months later it was announced that Otellini would no longer be CEO of Intel.
This is my understanding from talking with friends and acquaintances who work at Intel: The processor and chipset division is managed quite well. Apparently Intel top management doesn't mess with that, maybe because they don't understand anything about it.
Non-technical people can't manage technological companies! To manage Intel well, it is necessary to have technology in your heart and be fascinated with the details. And, at the same time, it is necessary to have the social ability to manage a large company.
Several years ago I called an Intel support person and showed him a huge mistake in the description of an Intel product. He said something like, "We are re-doing the web site. We will fix that soon." A year later, I talked to the same man. He didn't remember me, but I remembered him, and had written his name. I mentioned the same error. He gave the same excuse again.
Another experience: Several years ago I wanted to buy Intel motherboards. It took 2 hours to become a member of some online Intel group and find the exact model number.
Remember Intel Bunny People dolls? Apparently someone at Intel thought that processor and motherboard buyers would be motivated by a cute doll.
It is my understanding that Intel's incompetence continues. It surprises me, but my own personal opinion is that I would be a far better manager than what Intel has now. One of the biggest problems in the entire world is the rarity of good management.
It seems to me that the entire purpose of any secret government agency is to benefit the secret government agency.
Michael Moore is a self-taught movie maker. His movie about U.S. government corruption in secret agencies, Fahrenheit 9/11, made $222,446,882. It's not like extreme U.S. government corruption is unknown.
There is a HUGE conflict of interest, and the U.S. government seems to have no influential methods of dealing with conflicts of interest. If there is security, people who work for the NSA are less likely to be promoted, and may lose their jobs. That is a powerful reason for NSA employees and management, and other secret U.S. government agencies, to create more insecurity. Since they work entirely in secret, no one can stop them.
U.S. government policies allow many secret agencies. I find it odd that news stories assume that, other than doing things that almost no citizens want, the secret agencies are otherwise well-managed. Numerous examples show that they aren't. For example, Edward Snowden, an employee of an NSA sub-contractor, was able to walk away with all the data.
To me, it is also odd that news stories assume that the NSA works to improve security of the U.S. and U.S. citizens. For example, the book House of Bush, House of Saud explains that the Bush and Cheney families worked for the Saudis, who paid them billions for their help. The U.S. taxpayer paid for the arms, military presence, and violence that supposedly was free security for the Saudi government, but actually was, as Saudi acquaintances I met in a gym said long before the 9/11 attack, Saudi government oppression of the Saudi people.
Why does the NSA record phone calls? Is it because learning about some of those calls makes money for someone in control? Investment information, perhaps?
The U.S. government's war in Iraq is now being called a "mistake". For example, Hans Blix: Iraq War was a terrible mistake and violation of U.N. charter. It wasn't a "mistake", other articles say, it was deliberate deception. For example, Stop Calling the Iraq War a 'Mistake'.
NSA = No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that anything complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer may have intentional defects or surveillance methods.
A dog may think a drone is a large frisbee.
"In that case, out comes the ISP modem, in goes an aftermarket configurable modem.
That's an option available only to technically-knowledgeable users.
NSA = No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that anything complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer may have intentional defects or surveillance methods.
U.S. government policies allow many secret agencies. I find it odd that news stories assume that, other than doing things that almost no citizens want, the secret agencies are otherwise well-managed. For example, in the case of Edward Snowden, someone who worked for a sub-contractor was able to walk away with all the data.
To me, it is also odd that news stories assume that the NSA works to improve security of the U.S. and U.S. citizens. For example, the book House of Bush, House of Saud explains that the Bush and Cheney families worked for the Saudis, who paid them billions for their help. The U.S. taxpayer paid for the arms, military presence, and violence that supposedly was free security for the Saudi government, but actually was, as Saudi acquaintances I met in a gym said long before the 9/11 attack, Saudi government oppression of the Saudi people.
There is a HUGE conflict of interest, and the U.S. government seems to have no influential methods of dealing with conflicts of interest. If there is security, people who work for the NSA are less likely to be promoted, and may lose their jobs. That is a powerful reason for NSA employees and management to create more insecurity. Since they work entirely in secret, no one can stop them.
Michael Moore is a self-taught movie maker. His movie about U.S. government corruption in secret agencies, Fahrenheit 9/11, made $222,446,882. It's not like U.S. government corruption is a secret.
The U.S. government's war in Iraq is now being called a "mistake". For example, Hans Blix: Iraq War was a terrible mistake and violation of U.N. charter. It wasn't a "mistake", other articles say, it was deliberate deception. For example, Stop Calling the Iraq War a 'Mistake'.
The New York Times article Slashdot mentioned, Tim Cook, Making Apple His Own, is an example of the collapse of the New York Times.
... will join Apple." The Wall Street Journal's novelists say Apple is "Tapping Tastemakers to Regain Music Mojo". Apple will sell "high-end headphones", under the Beats name. What could go wrong?
... says Mr. Cook has not neglected the company's central mission: innovation. 'Honestly, I don't think anything's changed,' he said."
The authors are WRITERS (Heavenly horn sounds). The first 4 paragraphs are examples of their intent to tell stories like novelists, avoiding writing boring stuff like news. And, of course, WRITERS don't care about messy things like technology, even if they write about technology companies.
It's okay to put in some facts to give novels a feeling of realism: "And the [Apple] stock price fell nearly in half from its 2012 peak to the middle of 2013" Then: "To shore up shareholder faith, Mr. Cook split the stock, increased the dividend and engineered a $90 billion buyback -- steps that helped shares rebound almost entirely." The price of stock goes up when someone buys a lot of it.
But novelists have problems. Sometimes facts are more weird than any novelist would invent: "rap star Dr. Dre
Mr. Cook is not much like Steve Jobs. He supports brand confusion: "Mr. Cook is trying to broaden Apple's brand, too, taking to Twitter and other public venues to express support for environmentalism and gay rights (and for Auburn University football)."
There are big hopes for the Apple iWatch "... according to people involved in the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to press." Steve Jobs fired people who announced products early because announcing early creates brand confusion.
The whole point of being a novelist is to avoid unpleasant realities. It's like being a drugee, but without the drugs. Don't get involved with messy issues. Quoting: "Jonathan Ive, the head of design at Apple
Mr. Cook wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in support of proposed federal legislation protecting gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
Nothing has changed?
Another quote: "Last July, a federal judge ruled that Apple had illegally conspired with publishers to try to raise prices in the e-books market; Apple is appealing."
And this: "Apple has also started building apps for Android systems".
Novelists like to live in their fantasy worlds. They don't want to think about messy news like the beginning of a gay, rap-singing, law-breaking, watch-making Apple that makes software for Google.
The real story? Apple and the New York Times are both spiralling downwards, in my opinion.
He's correct:
20 MHz oscilloscope at AliExpress, $61.99 delivered. USB, use a computer for the display.
60 MHz oscilloscope at AliExpress, $308.00 delivered. Complete with display.
The problem in Firefox is not sensible memory usage. The problem is that the memory-hogging bug is associated with instability in Firefox. It's a serious defect, unplanned use of memory.
NSA: Not Safe for Americans.
NSA: No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that nothing complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer is safe.
NSA: Not Sensible for America.
The memory-hogging bug has been there for more than 8 years. The fact that it is not fixed indicates something about the management of Mozilla Foundation.
Pale Moon Windows version
Pale Moon Linux version
Pale Moon has a 64-bit version. The 64-bit Pale Moon uses the Firefox add-ons; there are no problems except with some unusual add-ons.
Did they fix the memory-hogging bug that causes instability? No.
SHA-256:
e95eca399dfe95500c4de569efc4cc77b75e2b66a864d467df37733ec06a0ff2
TrueCrypt Setup 7.1a.exe
Downloaded 02/10/2012 04:19 AM.
Same answer from the CNet.com, FileHippo, and Steve Gibson versions. MD5's also match. Using sha256deep64.exe and md5deep64.exe.
Mate would be fine. The problem is that it's Mah-teh in Portuguese and another pronunciation in Spanish. So, it doesn't matter where you are from, it's confusing. In 3 languages.
Thanks for the explanation.
It amazes me how self-defeating open source software developers can be in naming their efforts. Mint Mate (mah-teh?) uses a foreign word with more than one foreign pronunciation, and a different pronunciation and meaning in English. The name discourages new users.
Microsoft has been, in my opinion, extremely abusive. See my article, Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest. Part of the story: Steve Ballmer was fired after being called the "worst CEO". Firing a CEO with no technical knowledge did not fix the problems. Microsoft has been collapsing.
The comments on this Tom's Guide article are interesting: TrueCrypt Encryption Software Shut Down, May Be Compromised.
What can you expect from someone whose soul has been killed?
"... why WPP is so successful - it makes a fortune running FUD campaigns against a target for a client with one subsidiary then gets another to sell a counter campaign to the target of the original FUD campaign."
"... running an arms race where you're selling to both sides of the battle with thinly veiled pretenses of independence of subsidiaries of the parent company, but it's not ethical, and it's not new."
Maybe that is the explanation I was hoping to find. It certainly seems that we must look deeper than just the article. Something is wrong.
From the report: Brand Value Change: Google +40%
In a huge company, what changes 40% in a year?
Something is wrong, somewhere, IMO. This Slashdot story is apparently about a PR release by Millward Brown, which is owned by Kantar Group, which is owned by WPP. Notice that the WPP web site is badly coded. It doesn't adjust for font size choices in browser configuration. The web site has, to my eyes, an ugly, cheap look.
See this Slashdot story: Google Foresees Ads On Your Refrigerator, Thermostat, and Glasses. Look at the comments. I'm not the only person to think something has become crazy at Google. Here are more: Why I'm Sending Back Google Glass and Apple, Google Agree To Settle Lawsuit Alleging Hiring Conspiracy.
Maybe this Slashdot story is about a PR release paid for by Google? Or Millward Brown is trying to advertise itself? Apparently "brand value" doesn't say much that is logical about how a company is managed, but just means that you should respect a company because a company is getting a lot of attention.
Google did the entire world a HUGELY nice thing with Google Search. For the first time, humans were able to find the world's information.
Remember the abusive Hotmail? Gmail is far better than any other email service, in my opinion.
In the beginning, Google was not so adversarial to customers. In the beginning, Google was the best at what it did.
I've thought about and studied the phenomenon of companies slowly degrading for decades. Hewlett-Packard was already going downhill in the 1970s; the company was making data acquisition hardware that had an obviously unfinished design.
Fairchild Semiconductor was, at one time, the best manufacturer of transistors. The company began selling power transistors with epoxy casing. The epoxy degraded the transistors. It seemed that Fairchild never recovered.
Tektronix was a great company at one time; everybody in the tech world was impressed with Tektronix oscilloscopes. I suppose the good managers decided to move to other efforts. One problem was that Tektronix was not prepared for lower-cost competitors.
More recently, Adobe seems to me to be on a long downhill slide; the PDF file formats were a gift to the world. Now Adobe seems to me to be becoming more and more aggressive toward its customers.
Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank seems to me to be becoming tired of being CEO and making huge management mistakes for which there have been multi-billion dollar fines.
In my opinion, Google seems to be degrading rapidly, along with the other social collapse happening in the U.S., documented in the book, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.
I think those are very sensible issues and questions. That's what we need, thoughtful consideration.