Apple got it's dominant position largely through a clever (and cool, and the early) advertising campaign.
Apple got its dominate position by creating a effective and user freindly UI to a useful and stylish bit of hardware. If the underlying UI & Hardware weren't up to the task, the ipod would have fallen flat when the first generation of users didn't like them. I owned a pre-ipod player, it had a painful UI, so despite its slick hardware, I hardly ever used it and bad mouthed it to freinds.
I've gotten so used to "Kubrik's 2001: A Space Oddessy" that on first reading it didn't even register as a name. And since he's only the director, he didn't really have anything to do with the name aside from declining to chnage it in the movie. So I'm surprised he'd deny it. Given his anti-establishment bent, I'd figure he'd embrace it, actually.
Both men have denied, over and over and over again, that HAL was any attempt to spoof IBM
Douglas Adams denied HAL is a spoof of IBM? He is funny
Pendantic nitpicking aside, the key is Clarke faces a lawsuit from IBM for defamation if he admits it was his intention to write about an IBM computer that went nuts, killed astronauts, and potentially scuttled a billion dollar space mission. Remeber when it was written, computers were huge things only governments and big corporations had. While everyone is sure IBM won't sue if he admits it now, 40 yeasr later, he's been denying it so long its probably personal.
Whereas the Society for the Empowerment of Prime Base Mathematics (SEPBM) isn't likely to sue Douglas.
If there's no threatened lawsuit then what exactly are they supposed to be negotiating about?
Anti-trust Lawsuits are a subset of Lawsuits. Just because there are legal issues to be worked out (patents, trademarks, lecensing) does not imply that a breakdown in negotiations will result in an "Anti-trust" lawsuit.
Even pointed out on a techie website as FUD, MS FUD works. Are we all doomed?
OK, but I wish Mr Adams had left some references to 13 in his works so it would make sense.
By my understanding, Mr Adams had absolutely no idea 6*9=42 in base13 math, and had he realized it, would not have chosen 6*9 as the question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Which makes it all the more likely its all a galactic joke by God for having successfully proven he does not exist.
The post I replied to suggested blocking all internet traffic and reopening holes on a user by user and port by port basis. If users are downloading porn at work, you have an HR issue. If users are streaming audio/video against policy, you have an HR issue. If you don't have a policy about streaming either its not an issue for you or it never occured to you to tell you users its a bad thing. Many users are just clueless about the cumlative effect of streaming, since it works fine at home. Suggest they bring in a radio or CD's
with your expert knowledge from the bandwidth-management trenches at MacDonalds
Aw, I didn't know you cared. Rest assured that I know more about the subject than 99% of the IT pros on Slashdot (which really isn't hard), and I'm proud to have knowledge and experience that extends beyond the IT cubicle. Its a pet peeve of mine when folks recommend technical solutions for people management issues (Joey set up a porn screen saver! we must block people from chosing their own screen savers!). It shows a lack of leadership and management ability.
Anyone who quits because they won't be allowed to torrent porn all day does the boss a favor.
And those whiners who quit because they can't get the information they need to do their jobs? The workaholics who used to stay 12 hours because they could be little timmy a birthday toy from Amazon.com in 5 minutes? The companies better off without them too. What the company needs are a bunch of bottom feeders who know they can't get better jobs elsewhere, and so put up with having to clock out to take bathroom breaks.
Managing HR issues through technology is a dead end. If someone is getting their work done with high morale because they spend 30 minutes a day browsing Slashdot and feeling connected, why isn't that better than getting your 8 hours of blood in a low morale, low productivity (the two go together hand in hand) environment. In 3 years of fast food, I never had a problem with cash. No cameras, just happy employees and often an open till. Sales were up 30%. Less than a year after I left, morale had crashed, sales were down, and cash was dissapearing regularly. Management responded by cracking down, lowering morale further, adopting an us vs them philosophy. Problems got worse and not better.
Something that was almost a chicken laid an egg that hatched into a chicken. So, the egg had to have been first.
Dinosaurs laid eggs long before chickens were a twinkle in the eye of that "almost chicken".
Much like the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, you have to know the right question first. "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?". And to answer that, you have to define what a chicken egg is, is it an egg that hatches into a chicken, or is it an egg laid by a chicken? While its generally the same thing, as usual the intresting stuff happens at the boundry, between "almost chicken" and "chicken".
Because you'll never get anywhere if you don't define your terms:)
Yeah, we only have tiny companies here. AOL, PSInet, MCI, Verisign, Network Solutions, UltraDNS, RSA Security, (the list goes on and on, even if some have merged or folded or moved)... it's a real damned backwater. If it weren't for the classic Defense Contractors being saved by their IT groups, I think the whole DC area would go under. I mean, its not like we're the site of one of the original internet's peering point, oh wait, we are.
While I'm not going to argue its easier in Silicon Valley, I said as much when I commented about rich fools pissing away money chasing bad ideas (our crash was much less severe because the business plans were generally more solid). But at the same time were aren't AS strangled by run-away costs of living (a 550 sq ft condo is a mere $325k in hip areas), SV has a bigger tech population, but there's more competition for it, driving up operating expenses.
I'm curious who you (Silicon Valley centrically) defined as the 4 internet Giants?
Isn't this like asking if the Italian Renaissance could have happened anywhere except Italy?
Silicon Valley is full of itself. There are serveral areas that have vibrant Tech communities besides Silicon valley, there's a whole class of nerds that want nothing to do with the fruitcake culture of the west coast. The one thing they have is "cachet", if you're clueless and rich its a hip place to go broke investing in Fedex'ing Iron ore around the world, in other areas you need a more solid plan than "I'm gonna do stuff on the intarweb".
Its more that they don't understand how to implement and secure it properly, and don't want to spend the time or money to do so.
No, its because they understand that it cannot be secured properly. If you think it can, either you don't understand the risks or you have a different definition of acceptable risk than they do. Assuming your clients are stupid because they don't agree with you isn't the key to a successful career
Or maybe they know how to implement it, and aren't willing to spend the resources (time & money) to manage it. Have you tried bringing a estimate of how much more productive you can be if you can work wirelessly from the meeting instead of paying attention to the meeting?
will the buy and hold forever investor make as much money as even 4% bank interest compounded?
The buy and hold investor historically makes 15%, including down years, avraged accross all stocks. The Bank interest investor does not make 4% typically, rates have been as low as 1% or worse as recently as 2 years ago. Just because some hot shot internet startup bank is offering 4% to lure money into their venture doesn't make it a "bankable" number.
People who lost their shirts in the Dot Com crash were buy and holder buyers, they were fools chasing the quick buck. The buy and holders were telling everyone investing in a company with a 600% P/E was crazy, but nobody listened over the roar of the quick buck. These same people are chasing Google and real estate now, knowing its a game of musical chairs but unable to stop.
Basically, Zones is a Direct customer of Dell. Zones "buys" a crapload (technical term) more servers than you do, earning a bigger discount. they can then resell them to you for a small markup and still make money. This can save you a few bucks, but in my experience always complicates thing to the point of silliness and can cost more in the long run.
Now, if you getting them as a true VAR (folks installing Exchange on them for you, etc), that could work out well
Since I can modify Windows to display pornographic materials just by downloading a pornagraphic image or inserting a X rated DVD, it seems clear the MS Windows should carry a M rating as well. They are trying to sneak around this by not submitting Windows for rating by the ESRB, why hasn't anyone called them on this?!?!?
They Russians were testing anti-Satellite weapons in the 80's as I recall, crude but effective in theory. All you need to do is launch a Satellites into an orbit that matches the one you are taking down, and blow yours up. Car bomb in space, in effect. I guess this is why we are suddenly afraid of this, though I suspect the White House is over-estimating the ease of putting a car bomb in space, then matching the orbit of an object flying at thousands of mph. For what? to take out one or two GPS satellites of the 26? Maybe hit a spy satellite that could be quickly replaced with a better one while unmanned drones cover the gaps and the men in black track the organization that paid millions to one of 5 or 6 launch companies capable of putting that car bomb in space?
If they offer it, ISPs charge extra for static IPs. Nobody would pay extra if it wasn't an issue.
They shuffle address so they can charge extra. My ISP refuses DHCP renewals an instead forces my system to update to a new IP address. There's no sane reason to do this except to disrupt attempts to run "servers" without paying for the static IP
You would hope anyone building a system would have done their research and would have known that new chips were coming.
Really, the jokes on the people who by this new socket. I hear that eventually it well be replaced with something even newer! I'm waiting until 2019, when there will be no more computer upgrades (society will collapse July 17th, 2019, ending all new product development short of the flint arrowhead)
Actually, Gates bought the rights to DOS from the Seattle Computing company for $50,000 - granted not a lot of money, but paying for something isn't stealing. He was just smart enough to know the value of what they had.
I would argue that Gates was quite generous in buying "QDOS", he threw enough money at the writer who had little chance of making half of that over the next 10 years with his product. What was valuable was contract with IBM, that Gates already had because Gary Kildall had refused to meet with IBM.
At my old company we used to keep an eye on these guys. If they looked externally they could solve this problem for a fraction of what this program will cost...
It doesn't matter who's idea something is. That has nothing to do with the CEO's function. Also, you don't even need a CEO right away...
The investors want 1 person to be in charge. This avoids a stalemate whenever the two founders disagree, though it doesn't get around the fact that in the end they'll need to listen to the investors. Its just that in general the investors can only be involved occasionally, and they can't waste their time resolving every difference of opionion these two have.
And they want it now, meaning they don't have time to go on a CEO hunt (which could easily take 6 months or more to get a really qualified CEO in place, much less up to speed). And they seem to be making it work for now, so dragging someone else in will dillute their control and risks breaking up agood working relationship. And in the end, he may wish to get back to his techie roots, but if he gives up the reigns now he'll never get them back, he'll spend the rest of his career there bitching about all the "wrong" decisions being made, etc.
Oh, and I do think the person with the vision is definately the better person for CEO. He's going to have to go in front of customers and sell them on his vision, he's going to set the direction of the company, he's going to be driving the company into new markets and deciding which products to go forward with. Above all, the CEO's job is to lead, not manage. From the description his finance freind has been doing the managing while he's been doing the leading.
You're going to have enough on your hands just making sure that your idea gets implemented correctly. Let someone else handle the issues of licensing, stocks, quarterly filings and investor reports. Do what you each do best.
Nonsense. This was his idea, he needs to be the CEO because he has had the strategic vision to see the viability of the product. Make the other guy CFO and have him deal with the Financial matters you mention like a CFO should. A company needs a CEO and a CFO, the CEO will not have time to do the job of the CFO too. Mind you, the CEO will also not have time to do the work of a CTO, and pretty soon he's going to have to throw off that part of his job.
End of the day, the Battery is considered a consumable, much like the brakes on your care. If it wears out, its not covered under warranty. If there is an issue really fast, like 0-8 months, you might get away with calling it a manufacturing defect, but its by the grace of the company.
You should use market cap, not the share price to evaluate growth of a company
Please, this comment shows that you know nothing about finance. Or Math. Market Cap tells you the size of a company. The term "Adjusted" in his numbers means stock splits, etc, have been taken into account, meaning the number of outstanding shares (the multiplier used to determine Market Cap from stock price) is irrellevant. Market Capitalization is derived from the share price. Stock splits (increasing or decreasing the number of available shares) will affect share price, which is why quotes are generally "adjusted" unless one is pulling a scam.
Building a pricier windows box may not be the answer.
Fighting it out with Dell/Lenovo/Walmart at the low end isn't the answer either. One advantage of the dual boot option is that it removes the risk in buying the Mac hardware. Worst case you can always wipe the Mac OS X clean and run it as a very well made Windows system.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple got its dominate position by creating a effective and user freindly UI to a useful and stylish bit of hardware. If the underlying UI & Hardware weren't up to the task, the ipod would have fallen flat when the first generation of users didn't like them. I owned a pre-ipod player, it had a painful UI, so despite its slick hardware, I hardly ever used it and bad mouthed it to freinds.
Anyway, apology is due, I misread. Sorry
Douglas Adams denied HAL is a spoof of IBM? He is funny
Pendantic nitpicking aside, the key is Clarke faces a lawsuit from IBM for defamation if he admits it was his intention to write about an IBM computer that went nuts, killed astronauts, and potentially scuttled a billion dollar space mission. Remeber when it was written, computers were huge things only governments and big corporations had. While everyone is sure IBM won't sue if he admits it now, 40 yeasr later, he's been denying it so long its probably personal.
Whereas the Society for the Empowerment of Prime Base Mathematics (SEPBM) isn't likely to sue Douglas.
Anti-trust Lawsuits are a subset of Lawsuits. Just because there are legal issues to be worked out (patents, trademarks, lecensing) does not imply that a breakdown in negotiations will result in an "Anti-trust" lawsuit.
Even pointed out on a techie website as FUD, MS FUD works. Are we all doomed?
By my understanding, Mr Adams had absolutely no idea 6*9=42 in base13 math, and had he realized it, would not have chosen 6*9 as the question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Which makes it all the more likely its all a galactic joke by God for having successfully proven he does not exist.
Hopefully he also addressed the security concern that anyone with a fire extinguisher can get into the server room...
The post I replied to suggested blocking all internet traffic and reopening holes on a user by user and port by port basis. If users are downloading porn at work, you have an HR issue. If users are streaming audio/video against policy, you have an HR issue. If you don't have a policy about streaming either its not an issue for you or it never occured to you to tell you users its a bad thing. Many users are just clueless about the cumlative effect of streaming, since it works fine at home. Suggest they bring in a radio or CD's
with your expert knowledge from the bandwidth-management trenches at MacDonalds
Aw, I didn't know you cared. Rest assured that I know more about the subject than 99% of the IT pros on Slashdot (which really isn't hard), and I'm proud to have knowledge and experience that extends beyond the IT cubicle. Its a pet peeve of mine when folks recommend technical solutions for people management issues (Joey set up a porn screen saver! we must block people from chosing their own screen savers!). It shows a lack of leadership and management ability.
And those whiners who quit because they can't get the information they need to do their jobs? The workaholics who used to stay 12 hours because they could be little timmy a birthday toy from Amazon.com in 5 minutes? The companies better off without them too. What the company needs are a bunch of bottom feeders who know they can't get better jobs elsewhere, and so put up with having to clock out to take bathroom breaks.
Managing HR issues through technology is a dead end. If someone is getting their work done with high morale because they spend 30 minutes a day browsing Slashdot and feeling connected, why isn't that better than getting your 8 hours of blood in a low morale, low productivity (the two go together hand in hand) environment. In 3 years of fast food, I never had a problem with cash. No cameras, just happy employees and often an open till. Sales were up 30%. Less than a year after I left, morale had crashed, sales were down, and cash was dissapearing regularly. Management responded by cracking down, lowering morale further, adopting an us vs them philosophy. Problems got worse and not better.
Dinosaurs laid eggs long before chickens were a twinkle in the eye of that "almost chicken".
Much like the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, you have to know the right question first. "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?". And to answer that, you have to define what a chicken egg is, is it an egg that hatches into a chicken, or is it an egg laid by a chicken? While its generally the same thing, as usual the intresting stuff happens at the boundry, between "almost chicken" and "chicken".
Because you'll never get anywhere if you don't define your terms :)
While I'm not going to argue its easier in Silicon Valley, I said as much when I commented about rich fools pissing away money chasing bad ideas (our crash was much less severe because the business plans were generally more solid). But at the same time were aren't AS strangled by run-away costs of living (a 550 sq ft condo is a mere $325k in hip areas), SV has a bigger tech population, but there's more competition for it, driving up operating expenses.
I'm curious who you (Silicon Valley centrically) defined as the 4 internet Giants?
Silicon Valley is full of itself. There are serveral areas that have vibrant Tech communities besides Silicon valley, there's a whole class of nerds that want nothing to do with the fruitcake culture of the west coast. The one thing they have is "cachet", if you're clueless and rich its a hip place to go broke investing in Fedex'ing Iron ore around the world, in other areas you need a more solid plan than "I'm gonna do stuff on the intarweb".
No, its because they understand that it cannot be secured properly. If you think it can, either you don't understand the risks or you have a different definition of acceptable risk than they do. Assuming your clients are stupid because they don't agree with you isn't the key to a successful career
Or maybe they know how to implement it, and aren't willing to spend the resources (time & money) to manage it. Have you tried bringing a estimate of how much more productive you can be if you can work wirelessly from the meeting instead of paying attention to the meeting?
The buy and hold investor historically makes 15%, including down years, avraged accross all stocks. The Bank interest investor does not make 4% typically, rates have been as low as 1% or worse as recently as 2 years ago. Just because some hot shot internet startup bank is offering 4% to lure money into their venture doesn't make it a "bankable" number.
People who lost their shirts in the Dot Com crash were buy and holder buyers, they were fools chasing the quick buck. The buy and holders were telling everyone investing in a company with a 600% P/E was crazy, but nobody listened over the roar of the quick buck. These same people are chasing Google and real estate now, knowing its a game of musical chairs but unable to stop.
Basically, Zones is a Direct customer of Dell. Zones "buys" a crapload (technical term) more servers than you do, earning a bigger discount. they can then resell them to you for a small markup and still make money. This can save you a few bucks, but in my experience always complicates thing to the point of silliness and can cost more in the long run.
Now, if you getting them as a true VAR (folks installing Exchange on them for you, etc), that could work out well
Its a conspiracy I tell you!!
They Russians were testing anti-Satellite weapons in the 80's as I recall, crude but effective in theory. All you need to do is launch a Satellites into an orbit that matches the one you are taking down, and blow yours up. Car bomb in space, in effect. I guess this is why we are suddenly afraid of this, though I suspect the White House is over-estimating the ease of putting a car bomb in space, then matching the orbit of an object flying at thousands of mph. For what? to take out one or two GPS satellites of the 26? Maybe hit a spy satellite that could be quickly replaced with a better one while unmanned drones cover the gaps and the men in black track the organization that paid millions to one of 5 or 6 launch companies capable of putting that car bomb in space?
They shuffle address so they can charge extra. My ISP refuses DHCP renewals an instead forces my system to update to a new IP address. There's no sane reason to do this except to disrupt attempts to run "servers" without paying for the static IP
Really, the jokes on the people who by this new socket. I hear that eventually it well be replaced with something even newer! I'm waiting until 2019, when there will be no more computer upgrades (society will collapse July 17th, 2019, ending all new product development short of the flint arrowhead)
I would argue that Gates was quite generous in buying "QDOS", he threw enough money at the writer who had little chance of making half of that over the next 10 years with his product. What was valuable was contract with IBM, that Gates already had because Gary Kildall had refused to meet with IBM.
At my old company we used to keep an eye on these guys. If they looked externally they could solve this problem for a fraction of what this program will cost...
The investors want 1 person to be in charge. This avoids a stalemate whenever the two founders disagree, though it doesn't get around the fact that in the end they'll need to listen to the investors. Its just that in general the investors can only be involved occasionally, and they can't waste their time resolving every difference of opionion these two have.
And they want it now, meaning they don't have time to go on a CEO hunt (which could easily take 6 months or more to get a really qualified CEO in place, much less up to speed). And they seem to be making it work for now, so dragging someone else in will dillute their control and risks breaking up agood working relationship. And in the end, he may wish to get back to his techie roots, but if he gives up the reigns now he'll never get them back, he'll spend the rest of his career there bitching about all the "wrong" decisions being made, etc.
Oh, and I do think the person with the vision is definately the better person for CEO. He's going to have to go in front of customers and sell them on his vision, he's going to set the direction of the company, he's going to be driving the company into new markets and deciding which products to go forward with. Above all, the CEO's job is to lead, not manage. From the description his finance freind has been doing the managing while he's been doing the leading.
You're going to have enough on your hands just making sure that your idea gets implemented correctly. Let someone else handle the issues of licensing, stocks, quarterly filings and investor reports. Do what you each do best. Nonsense. This was his idea, he needs to be the CEO because he has had the strategic vision to see the viability of the product. Make the other guy CFO and have him deal with the Financial matters you mention like a CFO should. A company needs a CEO and a CFO, the CEO will not have time to do the job of the CFO too. Mind you, the CEO will also not have time to do the work of a CTO, and pretty soon he's going to have to throw off that part of his job.
End of the day, the Battery is considered a consumable, much like the brakes on your care. If it wears out, its not covered under warranty. If there is an issue really fast, like 0-8 months, you might get away with calling it a manufacturing defect, but its by the grace of the company.
Please, this comment shows that you know nothing about finance. Or Math. Market Cap tells you the size of a company. The term "Adjusted" in his numbers means stock splits, etc, have been taken into account, meaning the number of outstanding shares (the multiplier used to determine Market Cap from stock price) is irrellevant. Market Capitalization is derived from the share price. Stock splits (increasing or decreasing the number of available shares) will affect share price, which is why quotes are generally "adjusted" unless one is pulling a scam.
Fighting it out with Dell/Lenovo/Walmart at the low end isn't the answer either. One advantage of the dual boot option is that it removes the risk in buying the Mac hardware. Worst case you can always wipe the Mac OS X clean and run it as a very well made Windows system.