Re:Using the right tool for the job
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OpenGL in PHP
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I know this isn't a direct response to your comment -- and I'm not really taking issue with anything you say -- but please don't leave out "documentation" in your list of things that make "all that is necessary to create fast, reusable, and reliable Perl code."
That's really my problem with Perl (and PHP, too, sort of). A skilled developer can write all manner of amazing things with Perl. For themselves. The saying goes, "Write once, read never." That's why I hate Perl, as a guy who is forced to support others' applications.
As a culture, Perl developers glory in obfusication. Wonderful, clever, hooray: until you get the shitty job of finding a bug Perl-er's three year old exercise in l33tness. I'd rather take out my eyeballs with a mellon-baller than deal with uncommented Perl code.
Of course, I'm sure there are a million Perl coders out there who plan for maintainabilty -- and comment their code extensively. But when they don't, it's so much worse for everyone else who's left holding the sack.
Golly. That's a mighty long rebuttal to my quick-and-dirty comment...especially in an older thread, anyway. If I could moderate in the same thread I post in I'd mod you up, just for the effort.
I've also got an MBA, as well and I'm an EE -- does that seriously matter to you?
Well, yeah, to a point. Establishing credentials before a conversation is pretty standard. It may lend credence to your argument -- it implies that you've done basic study in the area you're about to spout off about. In a discussion about heart conditions, it matters a bit when someone says, "Well, I'm a cardiologist, and in my opinion..."
But I'm nitpicking.
In the short run, the copycats will not have moved. They are, after all, still trying to comprehend what they will try to copy (can't copy indiscriminately, there are too many bad ideas out there, too).
That's not the short run I'm talking about. After a disruptive technology upsets the marketplace there are no copycats. As you say, too many competing ideas, no clear model to copy. But again, that's not what I'm talking about in the sentence you referenced. I'm talking about once a dominant design has emerged.
Let's check your examples on that standard. Catipillar? Yep, they got nailed. (They've done a great job in the past few years recovering, but that doesn't change how bad that nice Asian company hurt them.) Xerox? Oh, yeah. HP, sure. Sure, there may be a counter-example. But the historical trend is pretty clear: innovators innovate, do well until someone figures out how to do it cheaper, then scramble as the market shifts in favor of cost-leaders. I mean, hell, this isn't anything outlandish or unaccepted in the business world...I'm not sure why this has provoked your ire.
In addition, corporate inertia (not to say "greed") kicks in, here. Usually for the innovator, margins are high -- they own the marketplace, they can charge accordingly. Later, to compete with the emerging copycats, they must cut into that nice margin -- it's usually the first thing to go. Profits fall, heads roll, etc. Pretty basic stuff.
You assume that the experience curve only benefits quality. Wrong. It also benefits production costs! That means, the first one to launch can also count on developing techniques, processes and scale to keep leading in costs. Will they do it ? Maybe not -- bad management can ruin a company anytime -- but they do have a sustainable advantage.
There is no such thing as a sustainable advantage.
My comment about quality ramping up for the copycats was just that, a comment about quality ramping up for the copycats. It really didn't address the innovators side. You are quite correct that experience can lower costs, too. You miss, however, that that is true for the copycats as well. The innovators generally have higher fixed costs, too -- plant, R & D, as well as a higher debt commitment -- the leveraging it took to innovate in the first place. A copycat that can execute well will usually be able to beat the innovator's price.
Again, this has been shown in the marketplace time and time again.
You are right that disruptive technologies usually come from an unknown -- which is why big pharmaceutical companies tend to buy start-ups as soon as they get near FDA approval. But, hell, again, that wasn't the point I was making. My comment said that between HP and Dell, who is more likely to innovate? More likely HP than Dell. If I ask who's prettier, Jane or Jill, please don't say, "Agnes" and think you've made some sort of piercing observation.
Try to read Christensen's book.
"Try to?" Is your copy written in Esperanto? Good Lord, I own the damned book. It's a good read. But thanks for the condescension. I appreciate you coming down off the Mount to show me the error of my ways.
Disclaimer: I've got an MBA ('m also a programemr).
Dell's quote is this: "The days of engineering-led technology companies are coming to an end."
It looks like the basic opinion on this here at/. has broken down into two camps:
Yep; or
That's stupid and shortsighted.
Fact is, both of those are right. It is shortsighted; but within the short-run time frame -- and the business sphere HP and Dell are operating in right now -- he's exactly right. Hell, HP knows it, too -- that's why they're in trouble and know it.
As the article points out, there are two types of companies: innovators and copycats. In the short run, the copycats will always eat the innovator's lunch. Naturally. They've got lower start-up costs, lower R & D costs, lower overhead all around. Thus, they undercut the innovator's price and outsell them.
This trend is accelerated when quality becomes fairly consistent accross the board. That is, when the copycats are still ramping up, their quality is poor. Thus, in the old days you would hear, "Spend the money for the HP -- brand X is cheap but sucks." You don't usually hear that, anymore, regarding printers. Sucks for HP.
But here's the kicker: when the Next Big Thing comes around, who will it come from? Dell or HP? Yep, HP. Innovators will survive not by getting pulled in to a lowest-price mud-fight -- no, they'll survive by innovating their way out of trouble. In fifteen years, do you think HP or Dell still be here? My money's on HP. Dell's a great commodity company: pretty good boxes, cheap. So was Tandy, and where are they?
It's the same thing with IBM. IBM has been a leader in nearly every single office productivity market they've competed in for, what, like 50 years? Typewriters, word processors, servers, PC's, etc. Big Blue has out-lived nearly every competitor who was at one time undercutting their market. Why? Because they innovated into the next Era -- and the copycats got caught in a mass extinction.
It's evolution on a corporate scale, baby. Those that adapt to the changing market, survive. Those that don't, don't. HP and IBM change the marketplace. Dell just hangs on and hopes they don't change it too much.
So Mr. Dell's right, for now, and doomed, eventually.
i used to sell them around the time the blaster worm came out on the side of the streets outside best buy etc for $20 a piece. made a few grand off that.
I read that and nearly spit coffee on my keyboard. OK, let's assume that the parent poster is being 100% honest, that he made "a few grand" selling home-burned CDs outside Best Buy at $20 a pop. That's, conservatively, 100 CDs!
In other words, at least one hundred people were perfectly willing to shell out money -- cash, presumably -- to some random guy in front of a store, then take this guy's CD home and blindly install whatever the hell he'd given them!
Folks, talk all the shit about Microsoft that you want, but there's your security problem! If this guy is on the level, we've just had a prime lesson in the reason why Blaster, et al spread like typhoid.
You know, don't you feel sorry for Microsoft, sometimes -- just a little bit? I mean, imagine you're a Microsoft engineer. You're hard-working. You really do try, given the massive user base you have to support and the cruft of legacy code you're stuck with. Reasonably fast patching for security holes, updates -- hell, they'll send you a damn CD of updates for free!
And then you read something like this. And request an immediate transfer to the Office development group...working with Clippy would seem like a joy.
And for all the linux advocates out there -- especially the zealots, the Stallman's Witnesses -- this is a cautionary tale. If and when linux starts to hit the desktops, you're going have this same problem. If 100 users are willing to take some guy's CDs and install them, no questions asked, they're not going to flinch when he says, "Oh, and it will prompt you for your administrator password. You'll need to enter that in order to make sure the system is scrubbed." Play out your own nightmare scenario, there. Linux is inherently more secure? Really?
Social engineering-based cracking can't be stopped. Not by Windows, not by Linux.
You know, it was pretty good, too. Even the Niven episode.
For those of a later generation, like myself, I remember watching the episodes in the late 80s on -- I think -- Nickelodeon. (In the U.S.)
The art was clean and the characters were drawn like Platonic ideals of themselves. I mean, Kirk was broad shouldered with no paunch! And Uhura, who wasn't exactly ugly in real life, was drawn smokin' hot.
Actually, my pet OS is OS X -- I don't own a Linux box.
That said, the NewsForge article made it very clear that the guys who did this were Linux advocates. Thus, my comment was a suggestion towards furthing their expressed goals. Nice, unobtrusive, potentially effective.
Although, indeed, to speak to your point about why Librarians -- or patrons -- should care about Open Source at all, I would counter that Librarians, as a whole, believe that information should be Free; that access to information should be free and accessible; that information is a social good.
In this pervasive atmosphere of privately acquiring, processing, and selling information, the public library system, a long-standing custodian of the idea and practice, of information as a social good, is tottering. Its function is being redefined and stripped of its social character...
...Many librarians resist this direction and work valiantly, sometimes successfully...
The values of F/OSS are very much in line with this agenda. The promotion of Open Source software should not be an unexpected manifestation of these ideals.
More power to them. When the only free repositories of information in our society become beholden to a Corporation for their infrastructure, their information becomes suspect. Promote away, guys.
I didn't see any indication that they were making it clear to the Library patrons that they were using Linux and not Windows. I think that's a massive lost opportunity.
Seriously. It's great that Linux can seamlessly replace Windows in such a high-traffic environment. It would be even greater if there were signs near the kiosks reading something like:
Our kiosks run Linux, the free alternative to Microsoft Windows. We have made this switch to keep costs down as well as reduce virus problems and computer crashes.
Slowly, but surely, the patrons -- or other librarians, or visiting school teachers -- will notice -- it may not matter then, but later...
For example, six months later, a secretary who has been using the library is switched to Linux at work. Now, instead of freaking out when I.T. Guy he's removing Windows from her/his machine, (s)he thinks, "Oh! They run that at the library. I can do that."
Or better yet, perhaps (s)he, having gotten hit with yet another virus, starts telling her supervisor, "Why don't we switch to Linux? It's free and has fewer viruses, and I know how to use it."
Will it happen fast? No. But floods start with a trickle. HoCo is to be commended for making the switch -- now they should toss in a little marketing, too.
Yes, but this guy's job is to move product, not proselytize. Salespersons are a different breed: a true salesman will be just as happy to sell you a Ford as a roll of toliet paper, commisions and what-not being equal.
This fellow has a proven track record of making the Big Sale in a Tough Market. (Linux to a major municipality is not -- despite what's occasionally heard around here -- a no-brainer.) Based on that alone he's probably able to pick and choose between job offers from the I.T. sector.
Plus, he's clearly very tuned-in to the sales pitches Linux companies are making in Europe, right now. That's valuable intelligence -- no doubt Microsoft or any other O.S. vendor around would like that information. How better to tune your own marketing strategies and materials than bring someone on board who is adept at countering your existing materials!
A smart move, all around, for Microsoft.
Say what you want them, they've always been shrewd.
I browse at +3, so if someone's mentioned this, sorry. But it's clear from the IMDB entry that this is not an adaptation of Asimov's I, Robot, but rather Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Here's what IMDB says:
In the year 2035 a techno-phobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity.
That's good, as far as I'm concerned. Lije Bailey was one of Asimov's better characters, and it's the introduciton of a certain R. Daneel. But the imdb credits also list a "Dr. Susan Calvin" as a character -- she's from I, Robot...hm...
Oh, hell, who knows what they doing. I'll wager that the end product bears no resemblence to anything Asimovian.
On the other hand, Bridget Moynahan is in the movie, and there ain't nothingwrong with that.
I write, too, and I find that, the more I write, the less I can take Heinlein's later work for that very reason. His "Golden Age" was very much in line with the genre's. For my money, you won't find a tighter, better yarn than Double Star.
But to see him, in later years, unable to break away...it's sad.
In general, I don't think I agree with you about the geneology of the template (Stevenson and Verne's works were much more travelogue-ish, in my opinion), but I think I get where you're coming from, and I dig it.
I'm still at a loss to explain Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice. My favorite novel -- and one of his last -- that breaks much of his schtick. Of course, everyone is naked, they all want to have sex with Heinle -- er, Alex -- and the ending is, literally, deus ex machina...eh, maybe it's the same package in different wrapping, too.
Thanks for the thought to chew on. Good luck with your writing: I hope you see it published.
You know, I love to curl up with many of Heinlein's books, but calling him the "Grand Master" is a bit extreme, I don't care how many Hugos are buried with the guy. He was a master of dialoge and an engaging wit -- but damn, he only used four or five different characters (renamed, natch) in 90% of his books. He may have had a million plotlines, but only a couple different stories.
Strip the bald plotline out, and they all break down like this, roughly:
Meet protagonist, every one of whome is who Robert A. Heinlein imagines himself as being
Meet woman/women (switch genders for Friday)
Boom! ten pages, maximum and we're:
Married
Naked
Both
[insert sermon]
Meet up with tertiary characters
Ten pages or so of exposition and dialog, and we're then all:
Having sex
Naked
Both
[another sermon]
Defeat evil
More naked
(Post 1975 or so) Hey! You loved all these characters in my previous books, let's bring them all out for a wildely implaussible get-together!
Starship Troopers (one of my favorites) would have been a short story without the Mein Kampf-esque rants...
Grand Master? No. He titilated the core demographic, offended the stodgy, and lived (and wrote) for a really really long time. He was born at the right time to be hitting his stride (like Asimov) during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. All this recent publication does is strip away the veneer.
No, no, no. Had I mod points, this would get "-1 insufficently paranoid." True, you posted as AC (because you never know who is reading this, do you?) but still. You can do better.
This:
"Once they make it to the moon and notice that there is no flag, footprints, or left over rocket parts, then we'll know that the 'one small step for mankind' occured somewhere in the Arizona desert."
..is just plain lazy. You're not hinting that China is part of a vast conspiracy, not wigging out over Chinese attempts to put nuclear missle launchers in orbit over the U.S. -- why, I don't even see references to the Triumvirate, the Pentaverate, or Big-8 summits anywhere in your post. I mean, really: at least toss off a sentence about the Illuminati, anyone can do that!
It's half-assed posts like this that make me worry about the future of Slashdot's tinfoil helmet contingent.
Or are you one of them? Is this just a clever post by an agent of the Chinese-Arab Hegemony? Oh, shit, I'm in for it now. You bastards took my Uncle, you know -- gave him cancer of the wrist because he was writing the Truth about your Black Helicopters and the cattle mutilations in Montana.
The voices, stop the Goddamned voices! I'll talk about what I want -- I'm stronger than your programming, you fascists!
You know, Bin Laden used to take CIA money funneled through Cambodian drug runners specifically to sabatoge the "Chinese" space progeram (it was really being run by British MI-6 out of Hong Kong). But then when Clinton -- this was right after he had Ron Brown assisinated because he was going to talk -- anyway Clinton was in talks with the Russian mafia, who controlled a spaceship that had crashed in Siberia in 1973, he was in talks to set up the ISS as a mind-control beaming station, but the Russian Mafia said no -- the Chinese (I mean, the fucking Limeys in MI-6) made a better offer. Clinton got rough and sent one of those Black Ops assassins to kill Yeltsin, but he (it, really) was intercepted. That's where Monica Lewinsky came in -- she was a Russian plant. What the hell, they'd already killed Kenedy -- Clinton was going to be tough? Anyway --
-- hey, who are you? Aah -- the voices, the searing pain -- you can't keep hiding the truth -- no! -- get away from that ethernet cord -- what are you doing with that tazer?! -- Hey, I --
I read this and I think, "God, grant me mod points."
But since that ain't happening today, I'll just respond. I have a GameCube. I had a PS2. (Now heading off to eBay.) Here's the difference between the systems, and why this doesn't matter:
Buy a PS2 game, you've got what, a 50-50 chance of buying dreck -- assuming you haven't done your homework and checked reviews, etc. Buy a GameCube game, take it home, pop it in, and it's good.
If a game is big enough, it'll get to the GameCube...GTA being a principle exception. Do I care? Hell no. My time, these days, is so precious that I don't have the time to wade through crap to find a good game. Who am I? Nintendo's core marketing demographic in America.
See? A lengthy response to a pithy, concise summary. Slow day at work.
In speaking to Americans who are raised on and steeped in TV it is sometimes necessary.
At the risk of sounding catty, surely you're not suggesting that other societies in the world are populated by literate, TV-shunning culturati, right? (Incidentally, the average number of hours spent watching TV in the U.S. has declined by a third since 1998.
If the US government is trustworthy, why is this necessary?
I don't think that I would argue that the U.S. government is intrinsically trustworthy. I think trustworthiness is a feature of the people who work in a system, not the system itself. (Ditto evil.) Members of the government may be evil, or misguided, or corrupt. For that we have a system of:
Checks and balances: institutional controls that attempt to limit the damage
such people can do while in power; and
The free press,
of which Robert Perry is a respected member -- as are Woodward, Bernstein, and alas Geraldo Rivera.
This is our system. It's not perfect -- is any system? But it strength is that it is organic, and self-correcting. Watergate revealed the problems with campaign financing: the press exposed the corruption, the system attempted legal remedy. Did it work? Sort of. Further attempts were made with McCain/Feingold's legislation of last year, and the press does it's part by exposing campaign corruption when it can.
Again, the American system is not perfect, but it's resiliance lies in it's perfectibility. It can be made more perfect without destroying its basic fabric. And, in fact, the system is better for its people than most. There is neither institutionalized bribery and corruption (e.g. Mexico) nor violent oppression of human rights (e.g. Cambodia).
I'm obliged to point out here that I abhor governement invasion of privacy and the expanded powers of our government granted under the so-called Patriot Act, which should be, in my opinion, repealed. That said:
The problem is that if the government is allowed to monitor you every time you express that conscience then you will be motivated not to express it.
Only if there are consequences for expressing your views. When my government can seceretly arrest me, or hold up my advancement at work, because they know I called Bush a poopyhead in a chatroom, my motivation to speak out is decreased. But fundamentally, if people are listening but unable -- or don't care to -- act against me, who cares?
But if I want to buy a joint in America I go to prison. If I want to but a truckload of weapons to cow my population though, that is OK. What good is that kind of freedom?
Well, freedom is a relative concept.While in
America you have great freedoms, provided that you abide by duely constitued
American laws. Those laws are changable. (And drug laws are, in fact, slowly changing in this country.) In Amsterdam, if I want to buy and smoke three joints and crash my car into a busload of nuns in a THC-induced haze, I am free to do so, but if I want to buy a bolt-action rifle to hunt deer, I can't. If I have a problem with that, I leave Amsterdam. Autre pays, autre mores, eh?
But, as you say, different opinions are wonderful things.
Certainly, prior to 9/11/01 the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil was comitted by an American. Very true. I'm not sure how this relates to the point i.e., the origins of Islamic terrorism but never mind.
The discussion was of Islamic terrorists: mostly, they're a group of (among other things) religious extremists. American terrorists are a different fish entirely, as are Basque seperatists, and (arguably) the IRA. But we weren't talking about them.
(Minor point: spelling American as "Amerikan" is sophomoric: it looks like you pull your ideology verbatim from the liner notes of a Rage Against the Machine album.)
Obviously you and I have different definitions of the word liberal.
I dunno: you never gave me your definition. For the record, here goes. Mr. Webster says:
A political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.
Yep, I qualify. For the several qualifications: I believe in (or strive for) progress; despite my cynical nature I think the mass of humanity are good; individual rights and the protection of civil and political freedoms are central to my political beliefs, evidenced by my membership in the ACLU.
In any event, this is beside the point. I reject the dogmatic idea that anyone who disagrees with me is against me (i.e. is not a liberal). I simply hate muddled-headed thinking, which is what I was responding to in the parent post.
Oh -- about Iran/Iraq. Your statement "the US armed both Iraq and Iran to try to get them to kill each other" isn't even an argument, it's an opinion, and one I would challenge you to back up with fact, policy statements, or something. The American policy of the time -- balancing powers and denying regional hegemony -- is neither peculiar to the U.S. nor is it intrinsically evil. In any event, in a free market society can the seller be responsible for the fact that both parties wanted to buy from them? No.
You'll recall, however, that the American arms sales to Iran started a scandal that rivaled Watergate; that our elected officals punished some of the offenders and implemented controls to attempt to prevent such things from occuring in the future. In short, the system worked. As a liberal and an American, I dig that.
I know this is slashdot, but perhaps next time reason rather than rant.
I need mod-points: (-2, Logical Fallacy) & (-2, Redudant).
Your lines are a common sentiment on the American left right now, but it's a falacious argument. (And as a liberal myself, I hate to see it used.)
The terrorists wouldn't be there in the first place if the policies of the western world were sane. We created terrorism our self through racism, religious oppression and the support of dictatorship in developing countries during the cold war.
Really, this is the post hoc fallacy: just because A happens before B, A doesn't necessarily cause B.
How specifically has American support of dictatorship caused Islamic terrorism? The historical support isn't there. Let's break down the region with a couple significant examples:
Iran: This is your strongest support. Supporting the Shah in Iran ran counter to what Iranian public opinion. In 1979, our boy was kicked out, and Iran is widely thought to sponsor terrorism (or, at least, used to). Please note, though, that the Shah was not rascist or religiously oppressive. He was just our boy. But 9/11 and Iraq have nothing to do with Iran, so that's out.
Egypt: Several of the 9/11 hijackers were Egyptian. Egypt has a domestically unresponsive government. They aren't rascist, they're not religiously oppressive. It's not the best government, but neither does the U.S. sponsor or support Egypt. We're not actually even that crazy about the regime.
Saudi Arabia: Bin Laden's from here, so this should be instructive. The ruling class is unpopular and unresponsive, but not religiously oppressive or rascist -- if they are, it's against non-Muslims. We had nothing to do with the formation of the Saudi monarchy, and we don't do anything to prop it up. (Unless you count buying SUVs, which I do.) Bin Laden's big beef was originally with the Saudi government, not us. It was Saudi Arabia's allowing us to use their territory for the 1991 Iraqi War that pissed him off.
This is getting to be a long-ish post, so I'll get on. Most terrorism comes from a ugly mix of religious extremism, anti-Westernism that is as old as the Crusades (in which surely the U.S. had no part...) and that good old have's vs. have-not's problem that has caused unrest throughout the history of the world. It's not that clear cut. France has very little terrorism, yet traditionally maintained brutal and violently rascist regimes througout Africa and Southeast Asia. Ditto Britian, the Netherlands, etc. It must be more complex: hence the post hoc fallacy.
A more intelligent argument points to the U.S.' support of Isreal as the flash-point, but then if Isreal's the problem, why didn't Bin Laden et al slam airliners into buildings in Tel Aviv? Fact: Bin Laden, until post-9/11 made no mention of the Palestinian cause and is said to have cared little about them as a people. But the P.R. possibilites were too great.
It's very difficult to talk about this situation objectively, true, but poorly reasoned -- and historically ignorant -- anti-U.S. screeds do us no credit.
Whoah there, Thunder. You should sit down and use OS X before you pull the trigger.
In OS X, when I select a bit of removable media (CD, mounted disk, etc.) in the Finder, the Trash icon changes to a standard Eject icon. If it's a CD-R(W) that I've written to, the icon changes to a Apple's standard "burn" icon.
When you go to a grocery store, don't buy anything that you don't have to further process before eating. This will quickly eliminate junk food, the major cause of obesity in my opinion.
But then you're losing foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains -- all healthy Good Things. Good intent, but you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, try this:
At the grocery store, stick to the perimeter of the store and avoid the center/aisles. Along the edges of the store are grains, meats, fresh fruits, dairy, fresh vegetables. Inside the aisles lurk junk: frozen desserts, prepared meals, chips, candy, etc.
Avoid the center of the grocery store and you'll avoid 99% of the junk.
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I know this isn't a direct response to your comment -- and I'm not really taking issue with anything you say -- but please don't leave out "documentation" in your list of things that make "all that is necessary to create fast, reusable, and reliable Perl code."
That's really my problem with Perl (and PHP, too, sort of). A skilled developer can write all manner of amazing things with Perl. For themselves. The saying goes, "Write once, read never." That's why I hate Perl, as a guy who is forced to support others' applications.
As a culture, Perl developers glory in obfusication. Wonderful, clever, hooray: until you get the shitty job of finding a bug Perl-er's three year old exercise in l33tness. I'd rather take out my eyeballs with a mellon-baller than deal with uncommented Perl code.
Of course, I'm sure there are a million Perl coders out there who plan for maintainabilty -- and comment their code extensively. But when they don't, it's so much worse for everyone else who's left holding the sack.
Golly. That's a mighty long rebuttal to my quick-and-dirty comment...especially in an older thread, anyway. If I could moderate in the same thread I post in I'd mod you up, just for the effort.
Well, yeah, to a point. Establishing credentials before a conversation is pretty standard. It may lend credence to your argument -- it implies that you've done basic study in the area you're about to spout off about. In a discussion about heart conditions, it matters a bit when someone says, "Well, I'm a cardiologist, and in my opinion..."
But I'm nitpicking.
That's not the short run I'm talking about. After a disruptive technology upsets the marketplace there are no copycats. As you say, too many competing ideas, no clear model to copy. But again, that's not what I'm talking about in the sentence you referenced. I'm talking about once a dominant design has emerged.
Let's check your examples on that standard. Catipillar? Yep, they got nailed. (They've done a great job in the past few years recovering, but that doesn't change how bad that nice Asian company hurt them.) Xerox? Oh, yeah. HP, sure. Sure, there may be a counter-example. But the historical trend is pretty clear: innovators innovate, do well until someone figures out how to do it cheaper, then scramble as the market shifts in favor of cost-leaders. I mean, hell, this isn't anything outlandish or unaccepted in the business world...I'm not sure why this has provoked your ire.
In addition, corporate inertia (not to say "greed") kicks in, here. Usually for the innovator, margins are high -- they own the marketplace, they can charge accordingly. Later, to compete with the emerging copycats, they must cut into that nice margin -- it's usually the first thing to go. Profits fall, heads roll, etc. Pretty basic stuff.
There is no such thing as a sustainable advantage.
My comment about quality ramping up for the copycats was just that, a comment about quality ramping up for the copycats. It really didn't address the innovators side. You are quite correct that experience can lower costs, too. You miss, however, that that is true for the copycats as well. The innovators generally have higher fixed costs, too -- plant, R & D, as well as a higher debt commitment -- the leveraging it took to innovate in the first place. A copycat that can execute well will usually be able to beat the innovator's price.
Again, this has been shown in the marketplace time and time again.
You are right that disruptive technologies usually come from an unknown -- which is why big pharmaceutical companies tend to buy start-ups as soon as they get near FDA approval. But, hell, again, that wasn't the point I was making. My comment said that between HP and Dell, who is more likely to innovate? More likely HP than Dell. If I ask who's prettier, Jane or Jill, please don't say, "Agnes" and think you've made some sort of piercing observation.
"Try to?" Is your copy written in Esperanto? Good Lord, I own the damned book. It's a good read. But thanks for the condescension. I appreciate you coming down off the Mount to show me the error of my ways.
Disclaimer: I've got an MBA ('m also a programemr).
Dell's quote is this: "The days of engineering-led technology companies are coming to an end."
It looks like the basic opinion on this here at /. has broken down into two camps:
Fact is, both of those are right. It is shortsighted; but within the short-run time frame -- and the business sphere HP and Dell are operating in right now -- he's exactly right. Hell, HP knows it, too -- that's why they're in trouble and know it.
As the article points out, there are two types of companies: innovators and copycats. In the short run, the copycats will always eat the innovator's lunch. Naturally. They've got lower start-up costs, lower R & D costs, lower overhead all around. Thus, they undercut the innovator's price and outsell them.
This trend is accelerated when quality becomes fairly consistent accross the board. That is, when the copycats are still ramping up, their quality is poor. Thus, in the old days you would hear, "Spend the money for the HP -- brand X is cheap but sucks." You don't usually hear that, anymore, regarding printers. Sucks for HP.
But here's the kicker: when the Next Big Thing comes around, who will it come from? Dell or HP? Yep, HP. Innovators will survive not by getting pulled in to a lowest-price mud-fight -- no, they'll survive by innovating their way out of trouble. In fifteen years, do you think HP or Dell still be here? My money's on HP. Dell's a great commodity company: pretty good boxes, cheap. So was Tandy, and where are they?
It's the same thing with IBM. IBM has been a leader in nearly every single office productivity market they've competed in for, what, like 50 years? Typewriters, word processors, servers, PC's, etc. Big Blue has out-lived nearly every competitor who was at one time undercutting their market. Why? Because they innovated into the next Era -- and the copycats got caught in a mass extinction.
It's evolution on a corporate scale, baby. Those that adapt to the changing market, survive. Those that don't, don't. HP and IBM change the marketplace. Dell just hangs on and hopes they don't change it too much.
So Mr. Dell's right, for now, and doomed, eventually.
Quoth the parent:
I read that and nearly spit coffee on my keyboard. OK, let's assume that the parent poster is being 100% honest, that he made "a few grand" selling home-burned CDs outside Best Buy at $20 a pop. That's, conservatively, 100 CDs!
In other words, at least one hundred people were perfectly willing to shell out money -- cash, presumably -- to some random guy in front of a store, then take this guy's CD home and blindly install whatever the hell he'd given them!
Folks, talk all the shit about Microsoft that you want, but there's your security problem! If this guy is on the level, we've just had a prime lesson in the reason why Blaster, et al spread like typhoid.
You know, don't you feel sorry for Microsoft, sometimes -- just a little bit? I mean, imagine you're a Microsoft engineer. You're hard-working. You really do try, given the massive user base you have to support and the cruft of legacy code you're stuck with. Reasonably fast patching for security holes, updates -- hell, they'll send you a damn CD of updates for free!
And then you read something like this. And request an immediate transfer to the Office development group...working with Clippy would seem like a joy.
And for all the linux advocates out there -- especially the zealots, the Stallman's Witnesses -- this is a cautionary tale. If and when linux starts to hit the desktops, you're going have this same problem. If 100 users are willing to take some guy's CDs and install them, no questions asked, they're not going to flinch when he says, "Oh, and it will prompt you for your administrator password. You'll need to enter that in order to make sure the system is scrubbed." Play out your own nightmare scenario, there. Linux is inherently more secure? Really?
Social engineering-based cracking can't be stopped. Not by Windows, not by Linux.
You know, it was pretty good, too. Even the Niven episode.
For those of a later generation, like myself, I remember watching the episodes in the late 80s on -- I think -- Nickelodeon. (In the U.S.)
The art was clean and the characters were drawn like Platonic ideals of themselves. I mean, Kirk was broad shouldered with no paunch! And Uhura, who wasn't exactly ugly in real life, was drawn smokin' hot.
I feel dirty for remembering that.
Actually, my pet OS is OS X -- I don't own a Linux box.
That said, the NewsForge article made it very clear that the guys who did this were Linux advocates. Thus, my comment was a suggestion towards furthing their expressed goals. Nice, unobtrusive, potentially effective.
Although, indeed, to speak to your point about why Librarians -- or patrons -- should care about Open Source at all, I would counter that Librarians, as a whole, believe that information should be Free; that access to information should be free and accessible; that information is a social good.
To quote from Libr.org:
The values of F/OSS are very much in line with this agenda. The promotion of Open Source software should not be an unexpected manifestation of these ideals.
More power to them. When the only free repositories of information in our society become beholden to a Corporation for their infrastructure, their information becomes suspect. Promote away, guys.
I didn't see any indication that they were making it clear to the Library patrons that they were using Linux and not Windows. I think that's a massive lost opportunity.
Seriously. It's great that Linux can seamlessly replace Windows in such a high-traffic environment. It would be even greater if there were signs near the kiosks reading something like:
Our kiosks run Linux, the free alternative to Microsoft Windows. We have made this switch to keep costs down as well as reduce virus problems and computer crashes.
Slowly, but surely, the patrons -- or other librarians, or visiting school teachers -- will notice -- it may not matter then, but later...
For example, six months later, a secretary who has been using the library is switched to Linux at work. Now, instead of freaking out when I.T. Guy he's removing Windows from her/his machine, (s)he thinks, "Oh! They run that at the library. I can do that."
Or better yet, perhaps (s)he, having gotten hit with yet another virus, starts telling her supervisor, "Why don't we switch to Linux? It's free and has fewer viruses, and I know how to use it."
Will it happen fast? No. But floods start with a trickle. HoCo is to be commended for making the switch -- now they should toss in a little marketing, too.
Yes, but this guy's job is to move product, not proselytize. Salespersons are a different breed: a true salesman will be just as happy to sell you a Ford as a roll of toliet paper, commisions and what-not being equal.
This fellow has a proven track record of making the Big Sale in a Tough Market. (Linux to a major municipality is not -- despite what's occasionally heard around here -- a no-brainer.) Based on that alone he's probably able to pick and choose between job offers from the I.T. sector.
Plus, he's clearly very tuned-in to the sales pitches Linux companies are making in Europe, right now. That's valuable intelligence -- no doubt Microsoft or any other O.S. vendor around would like that information. How better to tune your own marketing strategies and materials than bring someone on board who is adept at countering your existing materials!
A smart move, all around, for Microsoft.
Say what you want them, they've always been shrewd.
Good morning!
You, sir, appear to be qualified for a job as a Slashdot editor! Interested?
Quoth the write-up:
Because that's just what the First Person Shooter genre needed: dumbing down.
I browse at +3, so if someone's mentioned this, sorry. But it's clear from the IMDB entry that this is not an adaptation of Asimov's I, Robot, but rather Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Here's what IMDB says:
That's good, as far as I'm concerned. Lije Bailey was one of Asimov's better characters, and it's the introduciton of a certain R. Daneel. But the imdb credits also list a "Dr. Susan Calvin" as a character -- she's from I, Robot...hm...
Oh, hell, who knows what they doing. I'll wager that the end product bears no resemblence to anything Asimovian.
On the other hand, Bridget Moynahan is in the movie, and there ain't nothing wrong with that.
Indeed.
I write, too, and I find that, the more I write, the less I can take Heinlein's later work for that very reason. His "Golden Age" was very much in line with the genre's. For my money, you won't find a tighter, better yarn than Double Star.
But to see him, in later years, unable to break away...it's sad.
In general, I don't think I agree with you about the geneology of the template (Stevenson and Verne's works were much more travelogue-ish, in my opinion), but I think I get where you're coming from, and I dig it.
I'm still at a loss to explain Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice. My favorite novel -- and one of his last -- that breaks much of his schtick. Of course, everyone is naked, they all want to have sex with Heinle -- er, Alex -- and the ending is, literally, deus ex machina...eh, maybe it's the same package in different wrapping, too.
Thanks for the thought to chew on. Good luck with your writing: I hope you see it published.
You know, I love to curl up with many of Heinlein's books, but calling him the "Grand Master" is a bit extreme, I don't care how many Hugos are buried with the guy. He was a master of dialoge and an engaging wit -- but damn, he only used four or five different characters (renamed, natch) in 90% of his books. He may have had a million plotlines, but only a couple different stories.
Strip the bald plotline out, and they all break down like this, roughly:
Starship Troopers (one of my favorites) would have been a short story without the Mein Kampf-esque rants...
Grand Master? No. He titilated the core demographic, offended the stodgy, and lived (and wrote) for a really really long time. He was born at the right time to be hitting his stride (like Asimov) during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. All this recent publication does is strip away the veneer.
No, no, no. Had I mod points, this would get "-1 insufficently paranoid." True, you posted as AC (because you never know who is reading this, do you?) but still. You can do better.
This:
..is just plain lazy. You're not hinting that China is part of a vast conspiracy, not wigging out over Chinese attempts to put nuclear missle launchers in orbit over the U.S. -- why, I don't even see references to the Triumvirate, the Pentaverate, or Big-8 summits anywhere in your post. I mean, really: at least toss off a sentence about the Illuminati, anyone can do that!
It's half-assed posts like this that make me worry about the future of Slashdot's tinfoil helmet contingent.
Or are you one of them? Is this just a clever post by an agent of the Chinese-Arab Hegemony? Oh, shit, I'm in for it now. You bastards took my Uncle, you know -- gave him cancer of the wrist because he was writing the Truth about your Black Helicopters and the cattle mutilations in Montana.
The voices, stop the Goddamned voices! I'll talk about what I want -- I'm stronger than your programming, you fascists!
You know, Bin Laden used to take CIA money funneled through Cambodian drug runners specifically to sabatoge the "Chinese" space progeram (it was really being run by British MI-6 out of Hong Kong). But then when Clinton -- this was right after he had Ron Brown assisinated because he was going to talk -- anyway Clinton was in talks with the Russian mafia, who controlled a spaceship that had crashed in Siberia in 1973, he was in talks to set up the ISS as a mind-control beaming station, but the Russian Mafia said no -- the Chinese (I mean, the fucking Limeys in MI-6) made a better offer. Clinton got rough and sent one of those Black Ops assassins to kill Yeltsin, but he (it, really) was intercepted. That's where Monica Lewinsky came in -- she was a Russian plant. What the hell, they'd already killed Kenedy -- Clinton was going to be tough? Anyway --
-- hey, who are you? Aah -- the voices, the searing pain -- you can't keep hiding the truth -- no! -- get away from that ethernet cord -- what are you doing with that tazer?! -- Hey, I --
--NO CARRIER--
I read this and I think, "God, grant me mod points."
But since that ain't happening today, I'll just respond. I have a GameCube. I had a PS2. (Now heading off to eBay.) Here's the difference between the systems, and why this doesn't matter:
Buy a PS2 game, you've got what, a 50-50 chance of buying dreck -- assuming you haven't done your homework and checked reviews, etc. Buy a GameCube game, take it home, pop it in, and it's good.
If a game is big enough, it'll get to the GameCube...GTA being a principle exception. Do I care? Hell no. My time, these days, is so precious that I don't have the time to wade through crap to find a good game. Who am I? Nintendo's core marketing demographic in America.
See? A lengthy response to a pithy, concise summary. Slow day at work.
Because the set returned is the null set, silly.
Hm...
Wouldn't just not listing the game on eBay be a better solution?
Or "Baywatch" fans.
Hey! Rational discourse! Cool beans and thanks.
At the risk of sounding catty, surely you're not suggesting that other societies in the world are populated by literate, TV-shunning culturati, right? (Incidentally, the average number of hours spent watching TV in the U.S. has declined by a third since 1998.
I don't think that I would argue that the U.S. government is intrinsically trustworthy. I think trustworthiness is a feature of the people who work in a system, not the system itself. (Ditto evil.) Members of the government may be evil, or misguided, or corrupt. For that we have a system of:
This is our system. It's not perfect -- is any system? But it strength is that it is organic, and self-correcting. Watergate revealed the problems with campaign financing: the press exposed the corruption, the system attempted legal remedy. Did it work? Sort of. Further attempts were made with McCain/Feingold's legislation of last year, and the press does it's part by exposing campaign corruption when it can.
Again, the American system is not perfect, but it's resiliance lies in it's perfectibility. It can be made more perfect without destroying its basic fabric. And, in fact, the system is better for its people than most. There is neither institutionalized bribery and corruption (e.g. Mexico) nor violent oppression of human rights (e.g. Cambodia).
I'm obliged to point out here that I abhor governement invasion of privacy and the expanded powers of our government granted under the so-called Patriot Act, which should be, in my opinion, repealed. That said:
Only if there are consequences for expressing your views. When my government can seceretly arrest me, or hold up my advancement at work, because they know I called Bush a poopyhead in a chatroom, my motivation to speak out is decreased. But fundamentally, if people are listening but unable -- or don't care to -- act against me, who cares?
Well, freedom is a relative concept.While in America you have great freedoms, provided that you abide by duely constitued American laws. Those laws are changable. (And drug laws are, in fact, slowly changing in this country.) In Amsterdam, if I want to buy and smoke three joints and crash my car into a busload of nuns in a THC-induced haze, I am free to do so, but if I want to buy a bolt-action rifle to hunt deer, I can't. If I have a problem with that, I leave Amsterdam. Autre pays, autre mores, eh?
But, as you say, different opinions are wonderful things.
Hm.
Certainly, prior to 9/11/01 the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil was comitted by an American. Very true. I'm not sure how this relates to the point i.e., the origins of Islamic terrorism but never mind.
The discussion was of Islamic terrorists: mostly, they're a group of (among other things) religious extremists. American terrorists are a different fish entirely, as are Basque seperatists, and (arguably) the IRA. But we weren't talking about them.
(Minor point: spelling American as "Amerikan" is sophomoric: it looks like you pull your ideology verbatim from the liner notes of a Rage Against the Machine album.)
I dunno: you never gave me your definition. For the record, here goes. Mr. Webster says:
Yep, I qualify. For the several qualifications: I believe in (or strive for) progress; despite my cynical nature I think the mass of humanity are good; individual rights and the protection of civil and political freedoms are central to my political beliefs, evidenced by my membership in the ACLU.
In any event, this is beside the point. I reject the dogmatic idea that anyone who disagrees with me is against me (i.e. is not a liberal). I simply hate muddled-headed thinking, which is what I was responding to in the parent post.
Oh -- about Iran/Iraq. Your statement "the US armed both Iraq and Iran to try to get them to kill each other" isn't even an argument, it's an opinion, and one I would challenge you to back up with fact, policy statements, or something. The American policy of the time -- balancing powers and denying regional hegemony -- is neither peculiar to the U.S. nor is it intrinsically evil. In any event, in a free market society can the seller be responsible for the fact that both parties wanted to buy from them? No.
You'll recall, however, that the American arms sales to Iran started a scandal that rivaled Watergate; that our elected officals punished some of the offenders and implemented controls to attempt to prevent such things from occuring in the future. In short, the system worked. As a liberal and an American, I dig that.
I know this is slashdot, but perhaps next time reason rather than rant.
I need mod-points: (-2, Logical Fallacy) & (-2, Redudant).
Your lines are a common sentiment on the American left right now, but it's a falacious argument. (And as a liberal myself, I hate to see it used.)
Really, this is the post hoc fallacy: just because A happens before B, A doesn't necessarily cause B.
How specifically has American support of dictatorship caused Islamic terrorism? The historical support isn't there. Let's break down the region with a couple significant examples:
This is getting to be a long-ish post, so I'll get on. Most terrorism comes from a ugly mix of religious extremism, anti-Westernism that is as old as the Crusades (in which surely the U.S. had no part...) and that good old have's vs. have-not's problem that has caused unrest throughout the history of the world. It's not that clear cut. France has very little terrorism, yet traditionally maintained brutal and violently rascist regimes througout Africa and Southeast Asia. Ditto Britian, the Netherlands, etc. It must be more complex: hence the post hoc fallacy.
A more intelligent argument points to the U.S.' support of Isreal as the flash-point, but then if Isreal's the problem, why didn't Bin Laden et al slam airliners into buildings in Tel Aviv? Fact: Bin Laden, until post-9/11 made no mention of the Palestinian cause and is said to have cared little about them as a people. But the P.R. possibilites were too great.
It's very difficult to talk about this situation objectively, true, but poorly reasoned -- and historically ignorant -- anti-U.S. screeds do us no credit.
No, no. What, you just fall off the turnip waggon?
Real geeks know that less is more:
I don't have an intelligent comment, I just wanted to thank you for using the phrase "waffly techno-bollocks."
Made my Friday.
Whoah there, Thunder. You should sit down and use OS X before you pull the trigger.
In OS X, when I select a bit of removable media (CD, mounted disk, etc.) in the Finder, the Trash icon changes to a standard Eject icon. If it's a CD-R(W) that I've written to, the icon changes to a Apple's standard "burn" icon.
But then you're losing foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains -- all healthy Good Things. Good intent, but you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, try this:
At the grocery store, stick to the perimeter of the store and avoid the center/aisles. Along the edges of the store are grains, meats, fresh fruits, dairy, fresh vegetables. Inside the aisles lurk junk: frozen desserts, prepared meals, chips, candy, etc.
Avoid the center of the grocery store and you'll avoid 99% of the junk.