I still occasionally like to buy a hard copy newspaper. I would do it more often if not for the physical format of most newspapers, which I find to be a nuisance.
I hate the large sized paper. I hate having to pull it apart and refold it so I can I can read it in the same physical spaces as I read magazines in. I would buy more hard copy newspapers if they were of similar size and format as magazines( please no more plastic coated paper ).
You're making an assumption that pricing decisions were made by engineers at the time.
No I am not. I watched a documentary about those days that included interviews with key people from Apple, IBM, and other tech gurus of the time.
Pricing decisions were not made, that was the problem. Steve Jobs thought that macs would stay in the lead because they were the best ( true, and they still are ). He was wrong.
Had Steve Jobs had the wisdom to listen to others that he has today, we would be cursing him as the tryant of the IT world instead of cursing Bill Gates.
Business people make a lot of stupid and short sighted decisions, but most of them know not to price themselves out of the competition. That is an old rule that existed long before the PC race.
Business Week covers the Google Caste System, 'in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys [..] They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.' At last a company is shouting at the top of it's voice, engineers make the world."
Both extremes are short sighted.
Microsoft has ossified because engineers, creativity, and innovation don't carry enough clout.
On the side, Apple is a second rate power in the I.T. world. They could be dominating the I.T. world like Microsoft now does, if not for the poor business decision they made when they got started of pricing their computers above IBM's crappy PCs. Giving more clout to smart business men at that time could have changed things.
A successful tech company needs to both the businessmen and the engineers sufficently empowered.
It seems Google has learned its lessons from Microsoft. Lets see if they also learn Apple's. More importantly, lets see if they remember both lessons as they expand and get big.
Next time I will, because I will not be using ebay.
Google may also fail if they make the same mistake other online companies make in believing that they don't have to be easily and quickly repsonsive to their customer's needs.
I don't buy the line that most of them make that their business is so huge that there is no way to give that kind of attention.
Citibank is probably just as large ( in size, customers and profits ) if not larger than ebay.
I have used citibank for over 15 years. They have never mistakenly billed me. Not only have they taking care of problems I have had with a speed and responsiveness that was scarey, but they have also anticipaged and solved problems for me.
Good and thorough customer service is not mutually exclusive with profits.
It is just that online companies have yet to be introduced to the concept and have yet to learn how to do it.
I don't mean to be an ass by writing what I am about to write.
I like firefox and I use it work. I find the extension mechanism to be tremendously innovative, useful, and ample justification for the existence of firefox.
Firefox 1.53RC for linux: 8.2 mb
If I recall correctly ( and I could be thinking about windoze versions which ar smaller ) some of the original firefox versions were around 6 mb.
Is firefox on the road to getting fat like mozilla?
The big difference is the amount of stuff Knoppix puts in the menus -- it's overwhelming trying to figure out what app is where. Ubuntu instead has very clean and short menus of the apps you're likely to actually want as a desktop or typical server user.
I have noticed over the years that Gnome has shorter menus then the KDE and much more shorter menus then icewm ( what a mess ).
I am wondering if your experience is the result of Ubuntu or Gnome?
Is Gnome much more polished in Ubuntu then it is in other distros?
There is an old Buddhist saying from the dhammapada that goes something like there is no enemy greater then your own misdirected mind and no greater friend then your own mind properly directed.
Ya, google is a threat that may pull people away from ebay, but ebay is pushing customers away with its incompetence.
My account got labeled as being monetarily delinquent. I wrote to them about it and they admitted that I was right. The problem went away. I kept getting emails telling me that I owed them money. I wrote back to ebay several times, each time being told that I was right and that the problem would be resolved. It never was.
Over the course of a month with emails where the agents did not read what I had to say I got fed up and tried calling them( long distance ). I had to scour the net to find a customer service number and even then nobody could put an end to the problem for me.
A lot of companies that got started as internet businesses seem to have the attitude that they don't have to and will not deal with their customers outside of the web.
At that point I gave up on ebay forever and decided to buy things online from somewhere else.
My story is not uncommon.
If ebay loses business to google it will in part be because of the lousy way they handle their customers.
I have a copy of knoppix installed to hard drive and configured to my liking.
At this point does ubuntu have anything to offer me worth the trouble of switching distros? Am I better off sticking with what I have and simply apt-get updating?
Is the appeal of ubuntu an easily install with a lot of end user oriented precofigurations ( as opposed to customization crazy geek hobbyist )?
Thanks for the information. I went into programming because I actually like doing it. I can't imagine doing anything else 8 hours a day without watching a clock. So, for better or worse I am stuck working with computers for life.
I got into it as an adult a few years before the dotcom boom. I had doors slammed in my face for being a total newb and I got the cynical forecasts about life in the field from tired contractor company owners.
I've seen the reality of the field and there is truth in the doom-n-gloom prognostications. I've gotten mentally tough to it. However, it is still nice to come to slashdot once in while and read a positive ray of light every now and then.
My advice to college students: Go out there and get yourself some experience
OK, lemme see if I understand your predicament...you want to hire an entry level admin at subsistence wages, complain you can't find anyone with the qualifications you expect and, apparently, won't hire anyone with fewer qualifications and train them , and then have the gall to tell students to go out and get more experience ?
Am I the only one to see the irony here ?
You go Richard!
This both gave me a good laugh and a shot in the arm of inspiration.
Bravo to you for standing up to such things, especially while the current mis-administration is in force!
Usenet is yesterday's forum medium. Notice how we are having this conversation on slashdot.org instead of comp.blah.blah.moderated
I see content control as the trend for new killer features in Internet software. People get shit they don't want and the love software that helps make it go away. Look at pop-up control and adblocker in Firefox as an example.
In this regard usenet( or good usenet clients ) still has one good thing which belongs to the future: good filtering/killfiles.
With a good usenet client you can make someone you don't like disappear as if they never existed.
The filtering that comes with most web board software, if it has filtering at all, usually sucks.
If a web board is healthy it usually gets a few persistant irritating people and I think most people would love to have the ability to make them diappear, completely, from their view.
I think most admins would like this too. Users would stop bothering them about the content if they could control what they see.
To me, usenet represents the safe, traditionalistic, slow-moving side of the Internet. It's mostly populated by older people who know each other.
Killfiles are the best thing about usenet. If there is someone you don't like, you can make them go away as if they never existed. Filtering, if it exists at all on a particular web board, is fairly under-powered.
I don't agree with you abut "slow-moving side of the Internet". I can download the plain text messages of Usenet and get to the content far faster then I can by clicking links on a web board. No banner ads and no obnoxious cartoon character avatars.
I agree with you about the rest of it. Usenet is yesterday's forum medium( notice how we are having this conversation on a web board instead of on usenet ).
Maybe the poster was so breathless from all the hype that they didn't notice that this HUGE Godzilla-like beast is SMALLER than modern crocodiles. Nile Crocodiles can be 5 meters long, while Saltwater Crocs can be over six meters. Revised headline: Paleontologists discover midget crocodile! -- Anonymous Pedant
Length is one dimension. I wonder if this godzilla crocodile was otherwise bigger than modern crocodiles.
I am a free(dom) software user and fan. However, whenever I hear talk about ___ software being a revolution I always dismiss it as hype. It is not revolution until a piece of software has at least double digit market share.
I am happy to see that in the case of Firefox, that is is NOW, indeed, a revolution.
Slashdot Mirror
I still occasionally like to buy a hard copy newspaper. I would do it more often if not for the physical format of most newspapers, which I find to be a nuisance.
I hate the large sized paper. I hate having to pull it apart and refold it so I can I can read it in the same physical spaces as I read magazines in. I would buy more hard copy newspapers if they were of similar size and format as magazines( please no more plastic coated paper ).
No I am not. I watched a documentary about those days that included interviews with key people from Apple, IBM, and other tech gurus of the time.
Pricing decisions were not made, that was the problem. Steve Jobs thought that macs would stay in the lead because they were the best ( true, and they still are ). He was wrong.
Had Steve Jobs had the wisdom to listen to others that he has today, we would be cursing him as the tryant of the IT world instead of cursing Bill Gates.
Business people make a lot of stupid and short sighted decisions, but most of them know not to price themselves out of the competition. That is an old rule that existed long before the PC race.
Am I the only who dosen't want email or IM alerts?
Both extremes are short sighted.
Microsoft has ossified because engineers, creativity, and innovation don't carry enough clout.
On the side, Apple is a second rate power in the I.T. world. They could be dominating the I.T. world like Microsoft now does, if not for the poor business decision they made when they got started of pricing their computers above IBM's crappy PCs. Giving more clout to smart business men at that time could have changed things.
A successful tech company needs to both the businessmen and the engineers sufficently empowered.
It seems Google has learned its lessons from Microsoft. Lets see if they also learn Apple's. More importantly, lets see if they remember both lessons as they expand and get big.
Next time I will, because I will not be using ebay.
Google may also fail if they make the same mistake other online companies make in believing that they don't have to be easily and quickly repsonsive to their customer's needs.
I don't buy the line that most of them make that their business is so huge that there is no way to give that kind of attention.
Citibank is probably just as large ( in size, customers and profits ) if not larger than ebay.
I have used citibank for over 15 years. They have never mistakenly billed me.
Not only have they taking care of problems I have had with a speed and responsiveness that was scarey, but they have also anticipaged and solved problems for me.
Good and thorough customer service is not mutually exclusive with profits.
It is just that online companies have yet to be introduced to the concept and have yet to learn how to do it.
I don't mean to be an ass by writing what I am about to write. I like firefox and I use it work. I find the extension mechanism to be tremendously innovative, useful, and ample justification for the existence of firefox. Firefox 1.53RC for linux: 8.2 mb If I recall correctly ( and I could be thinking about windoze versions which ar smaller ) some of the original firefox versions were around 6 mb. Is firefox on the road to getting fat like mozilla?
There is an old Buddhist saying from the dhammapada that goes something like there is no enemy greater then your own misdirected mind and no greater friend then your own mind properly directed.
Ya, google is a threat that may pull people away from ebay, but ebay is pushing customers away with its incompetence.
My account got labeled as being monetarily delinquent. I wrote to them about it and they admitted that I was right. The problem went away. I kept getting emails telling me that I owed them money. I wrote back to ebay several times, each time being told that I was right and that the problem would be resolved. It never was.
Over the course of a month with emails where the agents did not read what I had to say I got fed up and tried calling them( long distance ). I had to scour the net to find a customer service number and even then nobody could put an end to the problem for me.
A lot of companies that got started as internet businesses seem to have the attitude that they don't have to and will not deal with their customers outside of the web.
At that point I gave up on ebay forever and decided to buy things online from somewhere else.
My story is not uncommon.
If ebay loses business to google it will in part be because of the lousy way they handle their customers.
I have a copy of knoppix installed to hard drive and configured to my liking.
At this point does ubuntu have anything to offer me worth the trouble of switching distros? Am I better off sticking with what I have and simply apt-get updating?
Is the appeal of ubuntu an easily install with a lot of end user oriented precofigurations ( as opposed to customization crazy geek hobbyist )?
Ummm.., why not just take your cell phone and step out into an empty portion of the hallway?
Probably cheaper too.
Hey Andy;
Thanks for the information. I went into programming because I actually like doing it. I can't imagine doing anything else 8 hours a day without watching a clock. So, for better or worse I am stuck working with computers for life.
I got into it as an adult a few years before the dotcom boom. I had doors slammed in my face for being a total newb and I got the cynical forecasts about life in the field from tired contractor company owners.
I've seen the reality of the field and there is truth in the doom-n-gloom prognostications. I've gotten mentally tough to it. However, it is still nice to come to slashdot once in while and read a positive ray of light every now and then.
Thanks.
Interns are another source of discount labor for many firms.
I wouldn't take a number of firms offering internships as an indicator that there are many high quality jobs out there.
Hey wow! Thanks for pointing out my typo.
I was thinking of giving up on my signature, but now that I know that people are reading it I feel encouraged.
Thanks for writing!
You go Richard! This both gave me a good laugh and a shot in the arm of inspiration. Bravo to you for standing up to such things, especially while the current mis-administration is in force!
Usenet is yesterday's forum medium. Notice how we are having this conversation on slashdot.org instead of comp.blah.blah.moderated
I see content control as the trend for new killer features in Internet software. People get shit they don't want and the love software that helps make it go away. Look at pop-up control and adblocker in Firefox as an example.
In this regard usenet( or good usenet clients ) still has one good thing which belongs to the future: good filtering/killfiles.
With a good usenet client you can make someone you don't like disappear as if they never existed.
The filtering that comes with most web board software, if it has filtering at all, usually sucks.
If a web board is healthy it usually gets a few persistant irritating people and I think most people would love to have the ability to make them diappear, completely, from their view.
I think most admins would like this too. Users would stop bothering them about the content if they could control what they see.
I don't agree with you abut "slow-moving side of the Internet". I can download the plain text messages of Usenet and get to the content far faster then I can by clicking links on a web board. No banner ads and no obnoxious cartoon character avatars.
I agree with you about the rest of it. Usenet is yesterday's forum medium( notice how we are having this conversation on a web board instead of on usenet ).
Usenet still rocks for technical help.
Is there anything user visible and interesting with this release?
This reminds me of the old Charlton Heston movie Omega Man.
Now that this guy's blood holds the cure for a plauge, I wonder if he is going to go around beating albino marxist hippys?
Length is one dimension. I wonder if this godzilla crocodile was otherwise bigger than modern crocodiles.
New bumper sticker:
"If you can read this, you are not from Kansas"
I've used a variety of linux desktops.
I see this decision not so much as a confirmation of Gnome's quality, but as a confirmation of the criticisms of trolltechs licensing of the QT.
I am a free(dom) software user and fan. However, whenever I hear talk about ___ software being a revolution I always dismiss it as hype. It is not revolution until a piece of software has at least double digit market share.
I am happy to see that in the case of Firefox, that is is NOW, indeed, a revolution.
Steve