You're describing a classic business blunder: Wasting time and money re-inventing the wheel, instead of focusing on the product/service at the core of the business.
Do you want to live like a 22-year old again? In a tiny apartment with a roommate or two and an old beat-up car in the parking garage? Having to borrow from family to buy any big-ticket items? With no health insurance? Being on the bottom rung of pretty much everything? Only without as much energy, naive optimism, or potential for growth?
If it means having more fun? Hell yeah, I do! I've done it once already. I'd do it again. Life is short. You only get one shot. You better do what you want to do right NOW.
Well, here's hoping that they paid attention to that tremendous amount of user feedback. That's pretty impressive. Now, if only Yahoo would pay attention to their users, and fix their badly implemented new version, or at least not force users to switch.
The risks of F/OSS are real, but are shared by commercial software.
Not really. It's very unlikely that a commercial company making a profit off of selling software is going to suddenly decide to stop developing that software. With OSS, that could happen for no particular reason. Money is at least a very consistent motivator. Altruism is the exact opposite.
Instead of cinematics, how about they spend some time on the actual gameplay, graphics, and sound, all of which seem like they come out of 1996? I don't understand the obsession with Halo. I got Halo 2 for the XBox, played it for a few hours, and returned it to the store. Halo has got to be one of the worst FPS's I've ever played. I don't think that improved cinematics is going to help at all.
Well, this is certainly a nice Slashvertisement, but I fail to see what Zimbra has to do with Exchange. The both do email, which is nice, but anybody who thinks that people use Exchange exclusively for email has no idea what they're talking about. You might as well say that GNUCash is a Quickbooks killer. But, I do hope that Slashdot was at least paid well for this ridiculous plug.
Novell is going to own the most popular Linux distribution in a few years. That's not too shabby of a deal. I fail to see what you're failing to see about this deal. Novel/SUSE becomes the only version of Linux that MS officially supports to work with Windows, SUSE becomes the most popular distribution used in commercial settings by a large margin, and Novell laughs all the way to the bank.
Will do. Please loan me $10,000 to replace my current PC's with Macs, and please be on call for us 24/7 to administer our shiny new Linux server. Oh yeah... and I'll need about $200,000 to develop our primary business app that doesn't have any Linux equivalents.
they eventually want to make people think they (or novell by partnership) are the only ligitimate linux distributors and all others are unofficial/unsupported.
Well, actually the ARE the only distribution that will be officially supported by MS to work with Windows. If Linux ever takes off in a big way, then I would bet a large amount of money that Novell/MS is going to be the industry standard for Linux for that reason, alone.
Don't you think that a large company should be able to accommodate more than one personality type among its managers?
No, not necessarily, especially at the top levels. Every company is run differently, and personality can be very, very important in some companies, and especially important at the top levels of large companies. People have to work very closely together, and make lots of decisions together, many based on gut feelings, so yes, I think that personality is quite important when you're talking about business leadership. A quiet, meek VP at MS is going to be about as successful (in doing his job) as a loud, party-throwing VP is going to be at a Christian book company: not very.
Every corporation has a culture. That's real. Maybe the top brass have a certain kind of people that they hire, or a certain kind of mentality that they promote, and this is part of it. I know that if somebody comes to me with an idea, if they're not excited about it, neither am I. That's not unusual.
Somehow, I doubt that any good CEO is going to be impressed by a Powerpoint presentation, itself. It's the content that they're interested in, not the color of the clip-art. You could also hand them a sheet of paper explaining whatever it is you're trying to explain, as well. A good CEO isn't an idiot that's going to be swayed by pretty pictures.
OK, so I read the article, and I still can't figure out why people are going to need servers in their homes. What's wrong with PC's today? I wasn't aware that there were any major problems that a home server could fix.
Well, you haven't proved anything. If anything, I'd guess that Media Player was the hog, not Aero. But, since you switched both at the same time, you'll never know.
Whatever inherent problems there may be in software security, the vast majority of Windows users - let's call a spade a spade - work in an environment that is so utterly flawed that there is a quantum difference between the security issues they face and the vastly more limited security issues they could be facing, if only the manufacturers would cease to treat security as a cost centre external to their core business.
Well, you can either call the work environments flawed, or the computer systems themselves flawed. The computers are supposed to help facilitate us getting things done. If they can't do that in a way that fits in with how we work, then they're not all that useful, now are they? My computers work for my business. My business doesn't exist to support my computers.
To me, eBay is on par with MySpace and other such blights on the Net that have made it the commercial cesspool that it is today. eBay is one of those places that I just block straight away in all of my hosts file, I dislike it so much.
Slashdot Mirror
You're describing a classic business blunder: Wasting time and money re-inventing the wheel, instead of focusing on the product/service at the core of the business.
I already have a DVD player, a stereo system and a computer. Why would I want to buy a PS or Xbox?
So you don't have to have a stand-alone DVD player, stereo, and computer.
remember your bank account, your kids' college fund, your retirement fund, swallow hard, and knuckle under
Yeah, because Google is just barely scraping by.
Do you want to live like a 22-year old again? In a tiny apartment with a roommate or two and an old beat-up car in the parking garage? Having to borrow from family to buy any big-ticket items? With no health insurance? Being on the bottom rung of pretty much everything? Only without as much energy, naive optimism, or potential for growth?
If it means having more fun? Hell yeah, I do! I've done it once already. I'd do it again. Life is short. You only get one shot. You better do what you want to do right NOW.
Well, here's hoping that they paid attention to that tremendous amount of user feedback. That's pretty impressive. Now, if only Yahoo would pay attention to their users, and fix their badly implemented new version, or at least not force users to switch.
The risks of F/OSS are real, but are shared by commercial software.
Not really. It's very unlikely that a commercial company making a profit off of selling software is going to suddenly decide to stop developing that software. With OSS, that could happen for no particular reason. Money is at least a very consistent motivator. Altruism is the exact opposite.
Instead of cinematics, how about they spend some time on the actual gameplay, graphics, and sound, all of which seem like they come out of 1996? I don't understand the obsession with Halo. I got Halo 2 for the XBox, played it for a few hours, and returned it to the store. Halo has got to be one of the worst FPS's I've ever played. I don't think that improved cinematics is going to help at all.
Well, Haliburton is in the process of doing that for other reasons. It's apparently possible.
Well, this is certainly a nice Slashvertisement, but I fail to see what Zimbra has to do with Exchange. The both do email, which is nice, but anybody who thinks that people use Exchange exclusively for email has no idea what they're talking about. You might as well say that GNUCash is a Quickbooks killer. But, I do hope that Slashdot was at least paid well for this ridiculous plug.
Novell is going to own the most popular Linux distribution in a few years. That's not too shabby of a deal. I fail to see what you're failing to see about this deal. Novel/SUSE becomes the only version of Linux that MS officially supports to work with Windows, SUSE becomes the most popular distribution used in commercial settings by a large margin, and Novell laughs all the way to the bank.
WHY DON'T YOU TRY IT AND FIND OUT?
Will do. Please loan me $10,000 to replace my current PC's with Macs, and please be on call for us 24/7 to administer our shiny new Linux server. Oh yeah... and I'll need about $200,000 to develop our primary business app that doesn't have any Linux equivalents.
they eventually want to make people think they (or novell by partnership) are the only ligitimate linux distributors and all others are unofficial/unsupported.
Well, actually the ARE the only distribution that will be officially supported by MS to work with Windows. If Linux ever takes off in a big way, then I would bet a large amount of money that Novell/MS is going to be the industry standard for Linux for that reason, alone.
In a society without copyright, what's the incentive to create anything?
Don't you think that a large company should be able to accommodate more than one personality type among its managers?
No, not necessarily, especially at the top levels. Every company is run differently, and personality can be very, very important in some companies, and especially important at the top levels of large companies. People have to work very closely together, and make lots of decisions together, many based on gut feelings, so yes, I think that personality is quite important when you're talking about business leadership. A quiet, meek VP at MS is going to be about as successful (in doing his job) as a loud, party-throwing VP is going to be at a Christian book company: not very.
MS's implementation won't necessitate a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science to use it.
It sounds like you were the wrong personality type for the company(ies?) you worked at.
Every corporation has a culture. That's real. Maybe the top brass have a certain kind of people that they hire, or a certain kind of mentality that they promote, and this is part of it. I know that if somebody comes to me with an idea, if they're not excited about it, neither am I. That's not unusual.
Somehow, I doubt that any good CEO is going to be impressed by a Powerpoint presentation, itself. It's the content that they're interested in, not the color of the clip-art. You could also hand them a sheet of paper explaining whatever it is you're trying to explain, as well. A good CEO isn't an idiot that's going to be swayed by pretty pictures.
OK, so I read the article, and I still can't figure out why people are going to need servers in their homes. What's wrong with PC's today? I wasn't aware that there were any major problems that a home server could fix.
What's wrong with real books and pencils?
So, exactly how much would you sell your human dignity for?
Cool. I've always hated Windows Media Player with a passion that I reserve for ex-wives and other things of that magnitude.
Well, you haven't proved anything. If anything, I'd guess that Media Player was the hog, not Aero. But, since you switched both at the same time, you'll never know.
Whatever inherent problems there may be in software security, the vast majority of Windows users - let's call a spade a spade - work in an environment that is so utterly flawed that there is a quantum difference between the security issues they face and the vastly more limited security issues they could be facing, if only the manufacturers would cease to treat security as a cost centre external to their core business.
Well, you can either call the work environments flawed, or the computer systems themselves flawed. The computers are supposed to help facilitate us getting things done. If they can't do that in a way that fits in with how we work, then they're not all that useful, now are they? My computers work for my business. My business doesn't exist to support my computers.
To me, eBay is on par with MySpace and other such blights on the Net that have made it the commercial cesspool that it is today. eBay is one of those places that I just block straight away in all of my hosts file, I dislike it so much.