Warning: Troll Alert!! I'm sure I'll get modded down for this but...
I would think that the latest spate of HiFi speaker wires would be right up there. The key difference between dowsing rods and these cables, is that once in a while dowsing rods seem to work. The multi-hundred dollar cables, time and time again in double-blind tests, have been shown to perform more poorly than the cheap utility speaker wire. And yet, there's a whole industry out there that argues (and markets) to the contrary.
Changing times call for changing business model
on
Re-Inventing Hotwheels
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Lego is a great example of adapting to the changing world. For example, a few years back when they were all the rage, my son had upwards of 20 bionicle Lego sets. These are the kits that let you build robot-like guys with ball-and-socket joints and interchangeable arms/legs/heads/weapons.
These are a long ways from the red and blue square blocks that Lego made when I was a kid, yet the idea was the same: give a kid a kit that they can primarily build the picture on the box with, but the ability to adapt a few kits into something all together different. My son built everything from hover-crafts to star-wars droids to ultra-mega-bionicle-man.
Not to crack on Mattel, but the core hotwheels concept is die-cast metal cars that resemble the real things. The only "innovation" that I see them coming up with is the new H3 with pimp spinners, a lift kit, and gold trim. Unless they come up with something like Lego has with the shift away from their legacy product and into a new Internet age toy, Mattel will be doomed to a niche of kids who really dig cars (arguably a shrinking demographic...)
Maybe this is a troll... but I'll bite. In general, the "old-timers" at HP were associated with the Test and Measurement division, which was spun-off to Agilent. You could argue that because, at the time, HP was one of the few tech companies with a pension & retirement plan, that there were a few hangers-on just riding it out till age 59 1/2. That always happens at companies as old as HP.
BUT... my thesis was that the Enterprise Systems Group was the most damaged, and in that batch there may have been some folks with two decades experience, but these employees were the treasure troves of engineering knowledge and experience. I'm talking about the guys who had forgotten more about computer architecture & design than most post-grads have learned today.
Your post smacks of cynicism and bitterness, but realize that in nearly every measurable catagory (stock price, market share, profitibility, etc.) HP is worse off now than it was before Carly came onboard. You're free to chalk that up to anything you like -- I choose to attribute it to vastly inferior leadership and the forcing out of HP's most valuable assets. Their top-level engineers.
Both the Enterprise Server Group at HP, responsible for HP9000 servers, and the DEC Alpha team, were completely decimated by Carly. I spent 7 years at HP, sadly 4 of which Fiorina was in charge. I have never seen such a mass exodus of top-level engineers leave a company. People with 20+ years (often more) IT and computer engineering experience, folks who had technology patents and some of the most novel thinking around computing, OS design, and engineering.
Now, the HP9000 servers are 3rd tier behind IBM and remarkably Sun (which regained marketshare and scrapped their way back into relevance soley because Carly fucked up HP's UNIX system strategy).
The only thing she did right was recognize the Imaging group as a cash cow and not screw with that. But that was because of total fear of the institutional investors backlashing and sending her packing (with her $MM golden parachute) sooner.
No, Forbes, you're wrong. Carly was the WORST thing that could have happened to HP, next to the Compaq acquisition itself. HP should have bought out the DEC division from Compaq and left the low-margin, low-cost PC business altoghether.
So am I going to save $50 on the next cell phone that I buy because my handset manufacturer didn't have to pay a licensing fee for the phone's operating system? Highly doubtful.
Am I going to have better features and/or functionality because linux is running instead of Microsoft phone OS? Again, highly doubtful. Maybe it'll be a little easier to be extensible or perhaps more flexibly upgraded but really, on a cell phone is this a big deal?
From what I can gather, the only ones who really benefit from linux on the handsets are shareholders of the manufacturers themselves, as they'll be able to save $x on y phones every year, thus adding to their bottom line.
Meh, this is a nonissue. The headline should have been, "Cellular Companies Look For Ways To Save Money".
Really, shouldn't the industry concentrate on properly implementing to the existing spec's before they bother with new & improved features?? I currently have an HDTV Panasonic plasma panel, a Denon receiver and a SciAtl set-top-box all tied together with HDMI, and I cannot get a signal because HDMI does not properly authenticate for the very reason HDMI was created -- to legally broadcast copy protected signals.
I am personally sick of these half-assed industry rollouts where most of the spec is adhered to by vendors, but the rest is blatently ignored, just so they can be first to market with a shiney new badge on their product. There is so much inoperability between HighDef products and home-theatre in general, that you're really playing russian roulette by being the first on your block to try an untested combination of components.
To you vendors out there: GET IT RIGHT first. You know why folks aren't lining up outside their local electronics boutique to get the latest HD gear? They are pretty sure that the stuff isn't going to work and they won't be separated from their hard-earned dough by the latest marketing gimmick.
PS - in case anyone wants to know my "workaround" I actually had to downgrade to connecting my SciAtl box to the Denon via component RGB cables then run HDMI to my panel. I talked with a Denon tech and this was the only workaround due to the stupidity of the *ahhem* engineering *ahhhem* at SciAtl. Maybe the Cisco acquisition will fix that nonsense.
Although I'm not certain how much is truth and how much legend, I understand that a major hotel chain has been seeking the blessing from the top three or four television networks to "DVR" the major primetime shows and offer them to their guests on a pay-per-view basis.
So imagine arriving late to the hotel the night before to your business meeting and being able to watch 24 in your hotel room 8 hours after it ran.
At issue was getting a revenue-sharing agreement setup between the networks and the hotel. Oh, and coming up with a pricepoint that didn't rape the guests.
Although it may someday come to pass, the greedy networks are the barrier to this kind of Hotel DVR system. So it's of no surprise to me that Cablevision is being sued over essentially the same thing that the hotel chain is too afraid to implement on their own.
No games like that for the mac.... but they do have Tetris. And Breakout... and Superbreakout. The confusing thing about PCs is, you like, go to the store, and there are just so many games. I mean, everywhere you look! But on the Mac, there's just six. And you already know which ones are good, 'cause they came out on the PC like five years ago!
Well said! I didn't mean rotten in the sense their products are junk... just that nobody can bring themselves to "pick" them. Okay, now I have to go wash due to excessive bad analogy usage...
Novell's new tagline should be: We're the most rumored acquisition in Nasdaq! Seriously, what major corp hasn't been rumored to buy them? HP from wayyyyy back, IBM before the whole SCO thing, Cisco...
I'm no 'net historian, but in this geek's memory, it sure seems Novell keeps coming out as low-hanging acquisition fruit. But then buyers get up close and realize "Hey, this fruit is rotten!"
Please don't change anything about the way your IT organization does business. We love the way you and your team fail to communicate; the way mindless mandates from on-high drive pointless initatives; the way the latest technology trend shifts focus from project to project like the attention span of a two-year-old.
Especially don't pay any attention to streamlining the use of hardware and software investments that you've already made. You and your team need MORE MORE MORE to get this project wrapped up on time. Have you upgraded to the newest rev of our software? Can't you just taste the new-and-improved speed of our lastest hardware?
In summary, we love the way your IT organization is today, and wouldn't change a single thing.
I can tell you why 'con' is not allowed. It is a device name reserved for legacy DOS stuff. Do this at a command prompt:
1.) copy con test.txt
2.) type random text you want inserted into test.txt HERE
3.) Ctrl-Z
You now have a file with the contents of what you just typed. And now for my next trick, I'll make the DOS cursor a flashing smiley-face! *bows and leaves the stage*
This is exactly what the government is doing. By laying down some set of pointless bureaucratic rules to govern space travel, the government isn't hoping to mandate safe space travel, they are hoping to preempt other countries from making themselves "THE RULES BODY" for Commercial Space Travel.
I can tell you that I almost never bid on an item on eBay unless there's a way for the seller to receive the payment directly via American Express.
Two reasons here: first, the Amex merchant account is a tougher one to get. Not impossible to fool, and certainly not fraud-proof, but I've heard way too many instances of fly-by-night merchant account setups which take MC and Visa that disappear in 30 days. If the seller takes Amex directly, it's probably a legit business.
Second reason is that Amex seems to have the absolute best policy for disputing charges. Broken item? Use Amex product insurance. Never received/not as advertised/fradulent seller? Dispute the charge. Here's the thing: Amex is on the buyer's side! They want to keep the buyer as a customer, and they don't want to have to pay the seller if they don't have to!
Sadly, though, eBay is yet another case of Buyer Beware. If I were to go to a flea market or to some sidewalk sale, it'd be Buyer Beware there too. Not to excuse eBay for not doing their part to crack down on bad sellers, but as in life, your first line of defense is to be responsible for yourself.
I've found that the best way is to solve some particular problem. Example: add these four new disks from the JBOD enclosure to your linux system. This teaches about the physical device drivers, device files, volume mgmt, filesystem mgmt, and mounting them upon boot (which touches many important aspects of UNIX).
Working with someone else who can help point you in the right direction and solving a problem by yourself is much much better than a book.
Not to make a history lesson out of this post, but go wiki The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Then research the ARPANET, and find out which country it originated in. Also make sure you find out in which nation universities like MIT, CalTech, Purdue, Stanford, University of Michigan, !insert INTERNET_CONTRIBUTING_UNIVERSITY here! are located.
Then go google Marc Andreessen and find out what he did. While you're at it, google Robert M. Metcalfe and see what he did for networks in general. How about that guy they named Moore's Law after? Pay particular attention to which country these people call home.
After you've done that little bit of background reading, see what you can find about fibreoptic networks, the telecommunications industry and how they made the Internet possible. Weren't those founding telecom companies based in the US?? Go lookup stock tickers for CSCO, SUNW, YAHOO, TWX (formerly AOL), LU, EBAY (ad nauseum). Find out which country they incorporated in first.
Finally, for bonus points, go read up on all that stuff that makes the Internet go. You know all the acronyms -- TCP/IP, DNS, SMTP, HTTP, RIP, and so forth. Make sure you look hard at the UNIX operating system and follow its roots back to when it was owned by AT&T, and focus on which country's people wrote all that software for the operating systems and protocols that make Internet communication possible.
This isn't misguided nationalism or patriotic pride. We built the damn Internet! We innovated technology in the high-tech space which makes what we have today even possible. Ergo, we control most of it. After we got it out of it's infancy and into the public space other countries started to add to what we built and made innovations and inventions of their own. But we laid the groundwork, the foundation, the framework.
So the UN can go back to its oil-for-food scandals, mismanagement of international crisis, and complete ineptitude and incompetence, and we'll get back to building the next great world-changing technologies.
Mod parent up!! -- this might be "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." but the main thing we nerds want is STUFF THAT WORKS.
The best example of the converged device that STILL isn't worth a damn is the all-in-one printer which faxes, scans, copies, and prints... not a one of those does it do well. Oh, and by the way, with phones you have the added problem of low price, battery life, portability, and god forbid, if I lose the damn thing I don't want the be SOL because all the stuff I use (mp3 players, PDA, phone, etc.) is missing.
As usual, the manufacturers have created a solution without a problem. I have yet to hear somone at the gym say "Boy, I'd sure like my music player ring and have all my calendar/contact information as well". These things are a solution looking for a problem
Very nice interface, and certainly less cluttered than maps.yahoo.com or mapquest.
But best of all -- my new subdivision is on the map whereas it's absent on all the other free map services that the pizza guy, furniture stores, and other delivery folks keep trying to use because they've never heard of my street before.
Google's "DO NO EVIL" company value really shows in this excellent service.
Crypto doesn't solve everything... but in this case its capability to create messages which can or cannot be repudiated would solve this flat. This is something that has been missing from our email systems for ages -- and until we can get something reliable in place by which a user can absolutely know that the sender is authentic, we'll continue to suffer from SPAM, scams, forgeries, and these attempts at extorsion.
Slashdot Mirror
Warning: Troll Alert!! I'm sure I'll get modded down for this but...
I would think that the latest spate of HiFi speaker wires would be right up there. The key difference between dowsing rods and these cables, is that once in a while dowsing rods seem to work. The multi-hundred dollar cables, time and time again in double-blind tests, have been shown to perform more poorly than the cheap utility speaker wire. And yet, there's a whole industry out there that argues (and markets) to the contrary.
Snake Oil indeed.
Mod parent up! Funniest post all week!
Lego is a great example of adapting to the changing world. For example, a few years back when they were all the rage, my son had upwards of 20 bionicle Lego sets. These are the kits that let you build robot-like guys with ball-and-socket joints and interchangeable arms/legs/heads/weapons.
These are a long ways from the red and blue square blocks that Lego made when I was a kid, yet the idea was the same: give a kid a kit that they can primarily build the picture on the box with, but the ability to adapt a few kits into something all together different. My son built everything from hover-crafts to star-wars droids to ultra-mega-bionicle-man.
Not to crack on Mattel, but the core hotwheels concept is die-cast metal cars that resemble the real things. The only "innovation" that I see them coming up with is the new H3 with pimp spinners, a lift kit, and gold trim. Unless they come up with something like Lego has with the shift away from their legacy product and into a new Internet age toy, Mattel will be doomed to a niche of kids who really dig cars (arguably a shrinking demographic...)
Maybe this is a troll... but I'll bite. In general, the "old-timers" at HP were associated with the Test and Measurement division, which was spun-off to Agilent. You could argue that because, at the time, HP was one of the few tech companies with a pension & retirement plan, that there were a few hangers-on just riding it out till age 59 1/2. That always happens at companies as old as HP.
BUT... my thesis was that the Enterprise Systems Group was the most damaged, and in that batch there may have been some folks with two decades experience, but these employees were the treasure troves of engineering knowledge and experience. I'm talking about the guys who had forgotten more about computer architecture & design than most post-grads have learned today.
Your post smacks of cynicism and bitterness, but realize that in nearly every measurable catagory (stock price, market share, profitibility, etc.) HP is worse off now than it was before Carly came onboard. You're free to chalk that up to anything you like -- I choose to attribute it to vastly inferior leadership and the forcing out of HP's most valuable assets. Their top-level engineers.
Both the Enterprise Server Group at HP, responsible for HP9000 servers, and the DEC Alpha team, were completely decimated by Carly. I spent 7 years at HP, sadly 4 of which Fiorina was in charge. I have never seen such a mass exodus of top-level engineers leave a company. People with 20+ years (often more) IT and computer engineering experience, folks who had technology patents and some of the most novel thinking around computing, OS design, and engineering.
Now, the HP9000 servers are 3rd tier behind IBM and remarkably Sun (which regained marketshare and scrapped their way back into relevance soley because Carly fucked up HP's UNIX system strategy).
The only thing she did right was recognize the Imaging group as a cash cow and not screw with that. But that was because of total fear of the institutional investors backlashing and sending her packing (with her $MM golden parachute) sooner.
No, Forbes, you're wrong. Carly was the WORST thing that could have happened to HP, next to the Compaq acquisition itself. HP should have bought out the DEC division from Compaq and left the low-margin, low-cost PC business altoghether.
On Netware, isn't it an ABEND??
No, robots are.
So am I going to save $50 on the next cell phone that I buy because my handset manufacturer didn't have to pay a licensing fee for the phone's operating system? Highly doubtful.
Am I going to have better features and/or functionality because linux is running instead of Microsoft phone OS? Again, highly doubtful. Maybe it'll be a little easier to be extensible or perhaps more flexibly upgraded but really, on a cell phone is this a big deal?
From what I can gather, the only ones who really benefit from linux on the handsets are shareholders of the manufacturers themselves, as they'll be able to save $x on y phones every year, thus adding to their bottom line.
Meh, this is a nonissue. The headline should have been, "Cellular Companies Look For Ways To Save Money".
Really, shouldn't the industry concentrate on properly implementing to the existing spec's before they bother with new & improved features?? I currently have an HDTV Panasonic plasma panel, a Denon receiver and a SciAtl set-top-box all tied together with HDMI, and I cannot get a signal because HDMI does not properly authenticate for the very reason HDMI was created -- to legally broadcast copy protected signals.
I am personally sick of these half-assed industry rollouts where most of the spec is adhered to by vendors, but the rest is blatently ignored, just so they can be first to market with a shiney new badge on their product. There is so much inoperability between HighDef products and home-theatre in general, that you're really playing russian roulette by being the first on your block to try an untested combination of components.
To you vendors out there: GET IT RIGHT first. You know why folks aren't lining up outside their local electronics boutique to get the latest HD gear? They are pretty sure that the stuff isn't going to work and they won't be separated from their hard-earned dough by the latest marketing gimmick.
PS - in case anyone wants to know my "workaround" I actually had to downgrade to connecting my SciAtl box to the Denon via component RGB cables then run HDMI to my panel. I talked with a Denon tech and this was the only workaround due to the stupidity of the *ahhem* engineering *ahhhem* at SciAtl. Maybe the Cisco acquisition will fix that nonsense.
Although I'm not certain how much is truth and how much legend, I understand that a major hotel chain has been seeking the blessing from the top three or four television networks to "DVR" the major primetime shows and offer them to their guests on a pay-per-view basis.
So imagine arriving late to the hotel the night before to your business meeting and being able to watch 24 in your hotel room 8 hours after it ran.
At issue was getting a revenue-sharing agreement setup between the networks and the hotel. Oh, and coming up with a pricepoint that didn't rape the guests.
Although it may someday come to pass, the greedy networks are the barrier to this kind of Hotel DVR system. So it's of no surprise to me that Cablevision is being sued over essentially the same thing that the hotel chain is too afraid to implement on their own.
No games like that for the mac.... but they do have Tetris. And Breakout... and Superbreakout. The confusing thing about PCs is, you like, go to the store, and there are just so many games. I mean, everywhere you look! But on the Mac, there's just six. And you already know which ones are good, 'cause they came out on the PC like five years ago!
http://files.redvsblue.com/switch/RvB_Switch.movWell said! I didn't mean rotten in the sense their products are junk... just that nobody can bring themselves to "pick" them. Okay, now I have to go wash due to excessive bad analogy usage...
Novell's new tagline should be: We're the most rumored acquisition in Nasdaq! Seriously, what major corp hasn't been rumored to buy them? HP from wayyyyy back, IBM before the whole SCO thing, Cisco...
I'm no 'net historian, but in this geek's memory, it sure seems Novell keeps coming out as low-hanging acquisition fruit. But then buyers get up close and realize "Hey, this fruit is rotten!"
Dear IT Professional:
Please don't change anything about the way your IT organization does business. We love the way you and your team fail to communicate; the way mindless mandates from on-high drive pointless initatives; the way the latest technology trend shifts focus from project to project like the attention span of a two-year-old.
Especially don't pay any attention to streamlining the use of hardware and software investments that you've already made. You and your team need MORE MORE MORE to get this project wrapped up on time. Have you upgraded to the newest rev of our software? Can't you just taste the new-and-improved speed of our lastest hardware?
In summary, we love the way your IT organization is today, and wouldn't change a single thing.
Yours Truly, Your software & hardware vendors
I can tell you why 'con' is not allowed. It is a device name reserved for legacy DOS stuff. Do this at a command prompt:
1.) copy con test.txt
2.) type random text you want inserted into test.txt HERE
3.) Ctrl-Z
You now have a file with the contents of what you just typed. And now for my next trick, I'll make the DOS cursor a flashing smiley-face! *bows and leaves the stage*
This is exactly what the government is doing. By laying down some set of pointless bureaucratic rules to govern space travel, the government isn't hoping to mandate safe space travel, they are hoping to preempt other countries from making themselves "THE RULES BODY" for Commercial Space Travel.
I can tell you that I almost never bid on an item on eBay unless there's a way for the seller to receive the payment directly via American Express.
Two reasons here: first, the Amex merchant account is a tougher one to get. Not impossible to fool, and certainly not fraud-proof, but I've heard way too many instances of fly-by-night merchant account setups which take MC and Visa that disappear in 30 days. If the seller takes Amex directly, it's probably a legit business.
Second reason is that Amex seems to have the absolute best policy for disputing charges. Broken item? Use Amex product insurance. Never received/not as advertised/fradulent seller? Dispute the charge. Here's the thing: Amex is on the buyer's side! They want to keep the buyer as a customer, and they don't want to have to pay the seller if they don't have to!
Sadly, though, eBay is yet another case of Buyer Beware. If I were to go to a flea market or to some sidewalk sale, it'd be Buyer Beware there too. Not to excuse eBay for not doing their part to crack down on bad sellers, but as in life, your first line of defense is to be responsible for yourself.
I've found that the best way is to solve some particular problem. Example: add these four new disks from the JBOD enclosure to your linux system. This teaches about the physical device drivers, device files, volume mgmt, filesystem mgmt, and mounting them upon boot (which touches many important aspects of UNIX).
Working with someone else who can help point you in the right direction and solving a problem by yourself is much much better than a book.
Not to make a history lesson out of this post, but go wiki The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Then research the ARPANET, and find out which country it originated in. Also make sure you find out in which nation universities like MIT, CalTech, Purdue, Stanford, University of Michigan, !insert INTERNET_CONTRIBUTING_UNIVERSITY here! are located.
Then go google Marc Andreessen and find out what he did. While you're at it, google Robert M. Metcalfe and see what he did for networks in general. How about that guy they named Moore's Law after? Pay particular attention to which country these people call home.
After you've done that little bit of background reading, see what you can find about fibreoptic networks, the telecommunications industry and how they made the Internet possible. Weren't those founding telecom companies based in the US?? Go lookup stock tickers for CSCO, SUNW, YAHOO, TWX (formerly AOL), LU, EBAY (ad nauseum). Find out which country they incorporated in first.
Finally, for bonus points, go read up on all that stuff that makes the Internet go. You know all the acronyms -- TCP/IP, DNS, SMTP, HTTP, RIP, and so forth. Make sure you look hard at the UNIX operating system and follow its roots back to when it was owned by AT&T, and focus on which country's people wrote all that software for the operating systems and protocols that make Internet communication possible.
This isn't misguided nationalism or patriotic pride. We built the damn Internet! We innovated technology in the high-tech space which makes what we have today even possible. Ergo, we control most of it. After we got it out of it's infancy and into the public space other countries started to add to what we built and made innovations and inventions of their own. But we laid the groundwork, the foundation, the framework.
So the UN can go back to its oil-for-food scandals, mismanagement of international crisis, and complete ineptitude and incompetence, and we'll get back to building the next great world-changing technologies.
Especially easy to spot during this blood test is the anxiety of needles.... http://www.needlephobia.co.uk/
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone post the Gonads and Strife page: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/weeee.php/
A definate canidate for top 20 list IMHO
Mod parent up!! -- this might be "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." but the main thing we nerds want is STUFF THAT WORKS.
The best example of the converged device that STILL isn't worth a damn is the all-in-one printer which faxes, scans, copies, and prints... not a one of those does it do well. Oh, and by the way, with phones you have the added problem of low price, battery life, portability, and god forbid, if I lose the damn thing I don't want the be SOL because all the stuff I use (mp3 players, PDA, phone, etc.) is missing.
As usual, the manufacturers have created a solution without a problem. I have yet to hear somone at the gym say "Boy, I'd sure like my music player ring and have all my calendar/contact information as well". These things are a solution looking for a problem
Very nice interface, and certainly less cluttered than maps.yahoo.com or mapquest.
But best of all -- my new subdivision is on the map whereas it's absent on all the other free map services that the pizza guy, furniture stores, and other delivery folks keep trying to use because they've never heard of my street before.
Google's "DO NO EVIL" company value really shows in this excellent service.
Crypto doesn't solve everything... but in this case its capability to create messages which can or cannot be repudiated would solve this flat. This is something that has been missing from our email systems for ages -- and until we can get something reliable in place by which a user can absolutely know that the sender is authentic, we'll continue to suffer from SPAM, scams, forgeries, and these attempts at extorsion.
Never a better time for email encryption.
...researchers at the famed Max Planck institute in Germany have found other seemingly contradictory particles such as:
the Government Assistance particle
the Military Intelligence particle
the Express Mail particle
and the ever-elusive Flat Breasted particle
The chief scientist of the oxymoron division was quoted as saying, "These particles make about as much sense as screen doors in submarines."