Make sure to get enough venture capital, when you start you new hardware store, that you can hire somebody else to take care of customer-support.
Dell didn't have any venture capital when he started. I'm sure the "common wisdom" at the time was that you couldn't compete with IBM or Compaq without lots of capitalization, too.
Maybe you can't become Dell by starting out selling computers out of your trunk while you attend college, that path is fairly worn out, but there may be other similar ideas that will lead to your becoming extremely successful.
True, doing tech support for dummies is expensive, but I'd be willing to pay less for none of that kind of support. Script-reading support has always just gotten in the way with me. Admittedly, I don't know how to sell computers without that kind of support, but maybe someone else does. Maybe sell long distance only to those who will take the risks and sell through mom&pop's that will take the cup holder calls otherwise. This might not work, but maybe there is a formula that will.
Actually the UN backed the AngloFrench move, and raised a resolution against Egypt.
Sources please. There was not a single UN resolution backing the AngloFrench involvement, from what I can tell. All I can find is a resolution calling for the British and the French to withdraw.
Look, International Law is all well and interesting, but the Suez crisis was conducted inside it, and followed correct channels. The Iraq invasion was conducted outside it, but the Kosovo intervention was correct because the regions governing body requested internation invervention, as kuwait did circa 1991.
Boggle. The "regions governing body" in Kosovo was Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had held sovereignty over Kosovo since the formation of modern Yugoslavia under Tito in 1945. Are you just making this stuff up?
Look, I think intervention in Kosovo was a good thing, but it had as much sanction under "International Law" as did the recent Iraq war. When people pull out this complaint about the US being a rogue nation, outside of "International Law", it's just because they don't agree with the current US policy, not because they care a bit about "International Law".
Why the hell does everything have to come back to the current invasion of Iraq anyway?
I was just pointing out how there really are no International Law with any force and that nobody's been following it anyway. But, now, the US is painted as some monster for not following it.
It's just a little much to take actually. This guy is hoping upon hope for that great day when China will give US it's come-uppance. Yeah, China, with it's total disregard for even basic human rights or freedoms. A shining knight that will bring back the world to the sanity of "International Law".
Technically yes, but egypt did not own the land or the canal. When the area was broken down after the British Empire was disbanded, treaties were made with the egyptian leader of that time which guarenteed the fact that the canal was AngloFrench sovereign territory, while physically being located within egypt.
I'm sure this was all adjudicated in the UN so that International Law was sure to be applied correctly.
That is what we are talking about here, remember, Internatinal Law.
What? The UN was actually AGAINST the AngloFrench intervention? Shocking!
It seems that only the US is now held to this "violating International Law" standard. Certainly, it was nowhere to be seen in the Kosovo intervention, even though the coalition that intervened there was much smaller than the one that has now intervened in Iraq.
The reason why France and England invaded Egypt to gain control of the Suez Canal was because they owned it, and had built it.
owned it?
Let me get this straight, the Suez Canal was completely in the sovereign territory of Egypt, right?
I guess the US was totally justified in Panama, then, based on this fact alone. Oh, and the US and Britain built the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so an invasion there would always be justified, right?
I recognize that I'm not everyone, but I kicked Coffee last week and only had mild headaches that were easily managed by hydration and NSAIDS (aspirin, acetominophin). I was a fairly heavy coffee drinker, but probably not as bad as many here, consuming 4-6 strong cups a day.
I gave it up because I thought it was contributing to my IBS after reading an article on self-care for IBS. Stopping the coffee has helped a lot. I still get some caffeine in sodas, but I typically choose non-caffeinated drinks now, and the problems have greatly alleviated.
Look, I know how condescending it can seem to be told that "it's all in your head", but if you admit the possibility that it just might be and apply a positive attitude you might find you'll have an easy time of giving up coffee. Just have some aspirin handy, get plenty of water to drink and try to increase your exercise level and you should do fine.
The US will happily break international law and conventions, invade other countries and kill their citizens, in order to maintain their level of resource consumption.
The US expects other countries to live by rules that it has no intention of following itself.
The US wants to live in a world ruled by force, not law.
Welcome to the world of Realpolitik. Recall that France and England invaded Egypt in the 1956 to gain access to the Suez Canal when it was thought to be in their economic interest.
The main antagonist to this plan? The US forced France and England to back down.
Recall also that NATO, not the UN intervened in Kosovo when the UN proved paralyzed due to Russian intransigence.
There is no international "law" you speak of, not in any serious way, for anyone to observe. Countries have pretty much always worked in their own interests.
In any case, this "plan" to attack the oil-rich nations seems pretty flimsy to me. It sounds like some sabre rattling to me, not a serious plan.
I hope I'm still around in another half century, when China is stronger than the US, so that I can have the satisfaction of seeing these principles come back to bite them.
I'm sure you'd be happier with China as the dominant power, now there's an open society that always acts in accordance with international law.
As a lovely woodpecker who's currently undergoing treatment in a small padded cage for psychological disorders following a close encounter with a huge wind turbine several years ago, I resent that remark.
Love,
Woody.
I knew there was something about that laugh of yours...
Unfortunately, I can't listen to internet radio from work. Sysadmins don't want me to use that bandwidth (or rather, me and the 200 other employees). Can't listen to internet radio from the car either...
Same problem with limitations at work, but I listen to internet radio at work and in the car. I save the MP3 streams and play them on my MP3/CD player at work and in the car.
WFMU is a favorite. Eclectic and 128K MP3 live streams all the time. Miss a good DJs show? Well, they have 2 weeks of 96K MP3 streams available on-line. Some stuff is even worth listening to (interviews, specials) from their massive Real (Mono) archive going back years, too.
I record other stations, also, but I love the 128K goodness of WFMU.
That's absurd, and a complete opposing force to scientific progress. In your rationale, we shouldn't be using airplanes to travel instead of slower land/water-based transportation, because holy shit, if the plane crashes that'd be a catastrophe. And stop using that GPS right now, because it's far more complex than a sextant, map and compass.
I'm not saying that only simpler systems are safer, I'm saying that piling on complicated new requirements and engineering on top of systems to correct for failures can bring about new failures. At some point, we have to recognize that certain ventures are inherently risky, space travel and even air travel being two that come to mind immediately, and accept a certain risk rather than bandaging and patching on quick fixes.
This, is of course, all irrespective of the fact that the tank is not the item being heated here. Liquid Oxygen boils at -183.0C, so they're not interested in heating it. The heaters are for the surrounding areas to prevent the buildup of ice.
I'm reminded of the Apollo I failure. They were certain that just applying lots of extra insulation to all of the wiring would allow them to field a O2 environment in the Apollo spacecraft. They didn't account for all the places that the wiring could become worn.
Similarly, adding a new heating device to fuel tanks filled with explosive material seems like something that needs to be carefully thought out. Are we sure that all of the heating elements and the support systems for the heating won't cause other problems?
Perhaps it's time to recognize that the Shuttle design is inherently flawed in a number of ways. Read what Feynman had to say in What Do You Care what Other People Think?. It's clear that there are deep problems with the Shuttle that can't be addressed with bandaids.
I believe that applying bandaids will lead to a false sense of security and might lead to new types of failures. It could also make future failures more disasterous for the US Space Program.
...that piling on more and more complicated systems to try and correct for other problems just means there is ultimately more things that can go wrong.
People will believe that if the sensors don't show it, it must not be there. The heating systems will complicate and potentially lead to other, new kinds of catastrophic failure (as anticipated by the/. editor Michael's comment on the wisdom of heating a large tank of liquid oxygen).
Regardless of format, this still makes a great low-priced backup device. As backup media goes, it's cheap when you take into account GB/$.
I guess the only thing that really concerns me about buying a very low cost drive is a guarantee that the media would be readable by other drives if this one goes out.
Ironic maybe, but not true. I don't know for a fact, but I would guess that very few or no 8-bit processors were involved with sending men to the moon. The 8008, which was the original 8-bit microprocessor, came out in late 1972. I doubt that any of these were used by NASA during the Apollo program, which ended in late 1972.
There might have been some odd 8-bit machine that I don't know about that was used in NASA, but I would expect the bulk of the computing work for the Apollo program was done by Minicomputers and Mainframes which had basic addressable memory sizes of 12 or more bits.
Oh great! Now, we can expect to see SPAM with nothing but a URL in the body which points to the real message with dead people's names in the Subject:
Spammers will start harvesting on-line obits, take all the names in the obit message of family, friends, pall-bearers and check if they have names similar in their databases and use this to try to get under SPAM filters.
Uhh... I need to take some time off, I'm starting to think like some sick spammer.
In the next few days, when anyone describes the Lunar eclipse to you, say "Wow, was the moon full before the eclipse?" I've found that invariably, they'll say "Why yes, it was!"
You can then make them feel kinda dumb by pointing out that the Moon is always full before an eclipse.
So you're saying that because some other country sucks, my right to petition my own government for redress of grievances is somehow diminished?
No, I think the poster was saying that your right to petition for redress of grievance is amplified, not diminished, because it's absent in so much of the world.
"The Road Ahead" appeared in December 1995, just as Gates was unveiling Microsoft's master plan to "embrace and extend" the Internet. Yet the book's first edition, with its clunky accompanying CD-ROM, mentioned the Web a mere seven times in nearly 300 pages. Though later editions tried to correct this gaffe, "The Road Ahead" remains a landmark of bad techno-punditry -- and a time-capsule illustration of just how easily captains of industry can miss a tidal wave that's about to engulf them.
Gates and MS STILL don't "get" the Internet. Now, that they believe they have now finally, once and for all, won the browser war. They can finally drop the pretense that IE will be free now and forever (it's now free when you buy an up-to-date MS operating system even though this is exactly what they claimed would not happen, saying that it would be supported on Unix and Apples forever).
The day Microsoft gets hauled in to court to take responsibility is the day the flood gates are opened on software liability in general. Say goodbye to open source. How do you think Linus or R.M.S. would fair against a volume of lawsuits that wouldn't even make Microsoft flinch?
How can you be held liable when you give it away for free and provide full source to allow the for inspection if the product is suitable for a particular use?
When you make extravagant claims about what a piece of software will do for you in advertising, as Microsoft does, it seems that you are making claims about suitability. When the product is free, disclaimers about suitability for a particular purpose are much more believable.
Besides, what lawyer would seriously advise a client to persue a case against RMS or Linus? No deep pockets there. I could see someone with an Enterprise System running Linux suing an IBM or perhaps HP, but not Linus or RMS. I think you'll find that the likes of IBM are ready and capable of defending such cases.
It didnt because IBM was a hardware company that suddenly was selling software.
Huh?
I think you'll find that IBM was both a hardware and a software company and had been for many many years. Ever hear of The Mythical Man Month? That book refers to the what was then the largest software project ever attempted, back in the 60s and it was IBM that did it.
OS/2 advocates often point the fact that OS/2 being a "better Windows than Windows" strangled the OS/2 application development industry in it's cradle.
Who would write applications for OS/2 when you could just write them for Windows and they would run on OS/2 without problems?
Similarly, who would want to develop drivers for Linux when Linux runs Windows drivers without problems? Devices on Linux would always be subjected to extra layers that may or may not allow access to all of the device features from Linux and might impact performance.
Furthermore, MS could come out with new driver APIs, while still maintaining backward compatibility with the old standards, at any time. The backward compatibility layers that MS would add to support the old drivers could even have a performance disadvantage on Windows, encouraging device manufacturers to come out with only drivers to the new standard. Linux systems would constantly be playing catchup to the latest MS dictated APIs or be forced to use the old standards that might not have the features or performance of the new standards.
But seriously, if Microsoft invested money to fuel SCO's legal rampage, that just shows how desperate they are. Linux is kicking ass, baby.
This doesn't necessarily imply desparation. It could be just a wise business decision, an investment.
Even if you believe that the SCO claims are baseless and will fail in court, it would be a shame to have their FUD campaign ended too soon because SCO could no longer support their expensive lawyers and PR people. If SCO ran out of money, they might be forced to take an unfavorable settlement or just fold by their investors.
How much to Microsoft's bottom line is a few more months or years of SCO FUD worth? Probably way more than $50 Million.
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- Make sure to get enough venture capital, when you start you new hardware store, that you can hire somebody else to take care of customer-support.
Dell didn't have any venture capital when he started. I'm sure the "common wisdom" at the time was that you couldn't compete with IBM or Compaq without lots of capitalization, too.Maybe you can't become Dell by starting out selling computers out of your trunk while you attend college, that path is fairly worn out, but there may be other similar ideas that will lead to your becoming extremely successful.
True, doing tech support for dummies is expensive, but I'd be willing to pay less for none of that kind of support. Script-reading support has always just gotten in the way with me. Admittedly, I don't know how to sell computers without that kind of support, but maybe someone else does. Maybe sell long distance only to those who will take the risks and sell through mom&pop's that will take the cup holder calls otherwise. This might not work, but maybe there is a formula that will.
- Actually the UN backed the AngloFrench move, and raised a resolution against Egypt.
Sources please. There was not a single UN resolution backing the AngloFrench involvement, from what I can tell. All I can find is a resolution calling for the British and the French to withdraw.- Look, International Law is all well and interesting, but the Suez crisis was conducted inside it, and followed correct channels. The Iraq invasion was conducted outside it, but the Kosovo intervention was correct because the regions governing body requested internation invervention, as kuwait did circa 1991.
Boggle. The "regions governing body" in Kosovo was Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had held sovereignty over Kosovo since the formation of modern Yugoslavia under Tito in 1945. Are you just making this stuff up?Look, I think intervention in Kosovo was a good thing, but it had as much sanction under "International Law" as did the recent Iraq war. When people pull out this complaint about the US being a rogue nation, outside of "International Law", it's just because they don't agree with the current US policy, not because they care a bit about "International Law".
- Why the hell does everything have to come back to the current invasion of Iraq anyway?
What did YOU think the original poster was referring to when he said that the US was acting outside of International Law?I was just pointing out how there really are no International Law with any force and that nobody's been following it anyway. But, now, the US is painted as some monster for not following it.
It's just a little much to take actually. This guy is hoping upon hope for that great day when China will give US it's come-uppance. Yeah, China, with it's total disregard for even basic human rights or freedoms. A shining knight that will bring back the world to the sanity of "International Law".
I'm sure this was all adjudicated in the UN so that International Law was sure to be applied correctly.
That is what we are talking about here, remember, Internatinal Law.
What? The UN was actually AGAINST the AngloFrench intervention? Shocking!
It seems that only the US is now held to this "violating International Law" standard. Certainly, it was nowhere to be seen in the Kosovo intervention, even though the coalition that intervened there was much smaller than the one that has now intervened in Iraq.
- The reason why France and England invaded Egypt to gain control of the Suez Canal was because they owned it, and had built it.
owned it?Let me get this straight, the Suez Canal was completely in the sovereign territory of Egypt, right?
I guess the US was totally justified in Panama, then, based on this fact alone. Oh, and the US and Britain built the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so an invasion there would always be justified, right?
A lot of people feed into the problems by anticipating a terrible withdrawal.
I recognize that I'm not everyone, but I kicked Coffee last week and only had mild headaches that were easily managed by hydration and NSAIDS (aspirin, acetominophin). I was a fairly heavy coffee drinker, but probably not as bad as many here, consuming 4-6 strong cups a day.
I gave it up because I thought it was contributing to my IBS after reading an article on self-care for IBS. Stopping the coffee has helped a lot. I still get some caffeine in sodas, but I typically choose non-caffeinated drinks now, and the problems have greatly alleviated.
Look, I know how condescending it can seem to be told that "it's all in your head", but if you admit the possibility that it just might be and apply a positive attitude you might find you'll have an easy time of giving up coffee. Just have some aspirin handy, get plenty of water to drink and try to increase your exercise level and you should do fine.
- The US will happily break international law and conventions, invade other countries and kill their citizens, in order to maintain their level of resource consumption.
- The US expects other countries to live by rules that it has no intention of following itself.
- The US wants to live in a world ruled by force, not law.
Welcome to the world of Realpolitik. Recall that France and England invaded Egypt in the 1956 to gain access to the Suez Canal when it was thought to be in their economic interest.The main antagonist to this plan? The US forced France and England to back down.
Recall also that NATO, not the UN intervened in Kosovo when the UN proved paralyzed due to Russian intransigence.
There is no international "law" you speak of, not in any serious way, for anyone to observe. Countries have pretty much always worked in their own interests.
In any case, this "plan" to attack the oil-rich nations seems pretty flimsy to me. It sounds like some sabre rattling to me, not a serious plan.
- I hope I'm still around in another half century, when China is stronger than the US, so that I can have the satisfaction of seeing these principles come back to bite them.
I'm sure you'd be happier with China as the dominant power, now there's an open society that always acts in accordance with international law.- As a lovely woodpecker who's currently undergoing treatment in a small padded cage for psychological disorders following a close encounter with a huge wind turbine several years ago, I resent that remark.
Love,
Woody.
I knew there was something about that laugh of yours...- Unfortunately, I can't listen to internet radio from work. Sysadmins don't want me to use that bandwidth (or rather, me and the 200 other employees). Can't listen to internet radio from the car either...
Same problem with limitations at work, but I listen to internet radio at work and in the car. I save the MP3 streams and play them on my MP3/CD player at work and in the car.WFMU is a favorite. Eclectic and 128K MP3 live streams all the time. Miss a good DJs show? Well, they have 2 weeks of 96K MP3 streams available on-line. Some stuff is even worth listening to (interviews, specials) from their massive Real (Mono) archive going back years, too.
I record other stations, also, but I love the 128K goodness of WFMU.
- That's absurd, and a complete opposing force to scientific progress. In your rationale, we shouldn't be using airplanes to travel instead of slower land/water-based transportation, because holy shit, if the plane crashes that'd be a catastrophe. And stop using that GPS right now, because it's far more complex than a sextant, map and compass.
I'm not saying that only simpler systems are safer, I'm saying that piling on complicated new requirements and engineering on top of systems to correct for failures can bring about new failures. At some point, we have to recognize that certain ventures are inherently risky, space travel and even air travel being two that come to mind immediately, and accept a certain risk rather than bandaging and patching on quick fixes.- This, is of course, all irrespective of the fact that the tank is not the item being heated here. Liquid Oxygen boils at -183.0C, so they're not interested in heating it. The heaters are for the surrounding areas to prevent the buildup of ice.
I'm reminded of the Apollo I failure. They were certain that just applying lots of extra insulation to all of the wiring would allow them to field a O2 environment in the Apollo spacecraft. They didn't account for all the places that the wiring could become worn.Similarly, adding a new heating device to fuel tanks filled with explosive material seems like something that needs to be carefully thought out. Are we sure that all of the heating elements and the support systems for the heating won't cause other problems?
Perhaps it's time to recognize that the Shuttle design is inherently flawed in a number of ways. Read what Feynman had to say in What Do You Care what Other People Think?. It's clear that there are deep problems with the Shuttle that can't be addressed with bandaids.
I believe that applying bandaids will lead to a false sense of security and might lead to new types of failures. It could also make future failures more disasterous for the US Space Program.
People will believe that if the sensors don't show it, it must not be there. The heating systems will complicate and potentially lead to other, new kinds of catastrophic failure (as anticipated by the /. editor Michael's comment on the wisdom of heating a large tank of liquid oxygen).
This article is must reading, I think.
Good points...
If you agreed with everything said, you would have delegated the posting of this opinion to an assistant.
I guess the only thing that really concerns me about buying a very low cost drive is a guarantee that the media would be readable by other drives if this one goes out.
I bet a lot of nuclear power stations were run with far more primitive computers.
There might have been some odd 8-bit machine that I don't know about that was used in NASA, but I would expect the bulk of the computing work for the Apollo program was done by Minicomputers and Mainframes which had basic addressable memory sizes of 12 or more bits.
Spammers will start harvesting on-line obits, take all the names in the obit message of family, friends, pall-bearers and check if they have names similar in their databases and use this to try to get under SPAM filters.
Uhh... I need to take some time off, I'm starting to think like some sick spammer.
You can then make them feel kinda dumb by pointing out that the Moon is always full before an eclipse.
-
So you're saying that because some other country sucks, my right to petition my own government for redress of grievances is somehow diminished?
No, I think the poster was saying that your right to petition for redress of grievance is amplified, not diminished, because it's absent in so much of the world.Gates and MS STILL don't "get" the Internet. Now, that they believe they have now finally, once and for all, won the browser war. They can finally drop the pretense that IE will be free now and forever (it's now free when you buy an up-to-date MS operating system even though this is exactly what they claimed would not happen, saying that it would be supported on Unix and Apples forever).
Note that SCO hasn't filed anything against Linus or RMS, but have instead filed on IBM.
How can you be held liable when you give it away for free and provide full source to allow the for inspection if the product is suitable for a particular use?
When you make extravagant claims about what a piece of software will do for you in advertising, as Microsoft does, it seems that you are making claims about suitability. When the product is free, disclaimers about suitability for a particular purpose are much more believable.
Besides, what lawyer would seriously advise a client to persue a case against RMS or Linus? No deep pockets there. I could see someone with an Enterprise System running Linux suing an IBM or perhaps HP, but not Linus or RMS. I think you'll find that the likes of IBM are ready and capable of defending such cases.
- It didnt because IBM was a hardware company that suddenly was selling software.
Huh?I think you'll find that IBM was both a hardware and a software company and had been for many many years. Ever hear of The Mythical Man Month? That book refers to the what was then the largest software project ever attempted, back in the 60s and it was IBM that did it.
OS/2 advocates often point the fact that OS/2 being a "better Windows than Windows" strangled the OS/2 application development industry in it's cradle.
Who would write applications for OS/2 when you could just write them for Windows and they would run on OS/2 without problems?
Similarly, who would want to develop drivers for Linux when Linux runs Windows drivers without problems? Devices on Linux would always be subjected to extra layers that may or may not allow access to all of the device features from Linux and might impact performance.
Furthermore, MS could come out with new driver APIs, while still maintaining backward compatibility with the old standards, at any time. The backward compatibility layers that MS would add to support the old drivers could even have a performance disadvantage on Windows, encouraging device manufacturers to come out with only drivers to the new standard. Linux systems would constantly be playing catchup to the latest MS dictated APIs or be forced to use the old standards that might not have the features or performance of the new standards.
- But seriously, if Microsoft invested money to fuel SCO's legal rampage, that just shows how desperate they are. Linux is kicking ass, baby.
This doesn't necessarily imply desparation. It could be just a wise business decision, an investment.Even if you believe that the SCO claims are baseless and will fail in court, it would be a shame to have their FUD campaign ended too soon because SCO could no longer support their expensive lawyers and PR people. If SCO ran out of money, they might be forced to take an unfavorable settlement or just fold by their investors.
How much to Microsoft's bottom line is a few more months or years of SCO FUD worth? Probably way more than $50 Million.