That is, if you don't mind the Chinese government asking you why you saw fit to use google.com instead of google.cn. "Oh, and about those other sites you visited . .."
Of course, being behind the "Great (Fire)Wall of China", can they even get to google.com anymore?
of PCI tuner cards (e.g., ATI All-in-wonder TV) that have already been sold and installed in PC's? Do I need to stage the destruction of my PC to keep the blackshirts from coming for me in the dead of night?
Schwartz replaces McNealy: A tough comedy act to follow?
April 25, 2006
News that Sun co-founder and long-serving CEO, Scott McNealy is stepping aside, heaps a load of pressure on incoming CEO Jonathan Schwartz - he will have to get working on his anti-Microsoft gags quick-sharp.
Aside from Sun's strategy and his execution of it, McNealy's tenure as CEO will be remembered for his constant Microsoft sniping. Anyone who saw him speak knows he always had a quiver of anti-Microsoft jokes up his sleeve. "I don't want my kids growing up in a world of control-alt-delete," was one of my favourites, or, "The bear is pretty strong in the computer business... but we are outrunning the other hikers."
As we reported in our full coverage of McNealy's decision to hand over to Schwartz here, McNealy said that, "When you start a company, you always wonder who you are going to hand it off to. You can't run it forever."
"I wasn't going to hand it off when we were growing too fast," he continued, "I wasn't going to hand if off after the bubble burst. The time is right to do it now. All the demand indicators are strong. For 22 years, I have been running this joint, and I have had a lot of fun with it." He certainly has.
McNealy has been a constant source of amusement in what might otherwise have been a far less interesting sector. He, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, have taken it upon themselves to poke constant fun at Microsoft, and in so doing have helped in their own ways to ensure that consumers have retained that little bit of cynicism about the world's most powerful software company.
In his capacity as CEO McNealy was bright, witty, straight talking, and often with us hacks, more than a little belligerent. Perhaps that's unsurprising - McNealy once said in an interview with CBR that if he had not ended up running an IT company, he would have chosen instead to pass his time thwacking pucks and heads on an ice rink instead. I hear ice hockey is something of a contact sport. At times McNealy got pretty close to turning being a tech firm CEO into a contact sport, too.
I remember one press roundtable in London a couple of years ago, where a journalist from the Financial Times found himself on the wrong end of McNealy's ire. When the journalist asked a question about comments that Sun's channel had made to him about the soundness of Sun's business model, McNealy retorted sharply: "I'm not going to comment on made-up quotes."
Though the journalist insisted the quotes came straight from Sun's own resellers, McNealy snapped, "Like I say, I will not comment on made-up quotes." As us press began to leave the room McNealy again accosted the FT journalist, saying he was furious with his paper's editor for stories that had apparently said that McNealy's remuneration had been the cause of a board-room argument. "We haven't even discussed that - it's just been made up," McNealy said furiously.
Anyway like I say if you want the low-down on McNealy's departure and his replacement, Jonathan Schwartz, simply visit our coverage of the news here. I chose instead to assemble a few of the best Scott McNealy quotes from over the years. I warn you though - he could never have given up his day job to become a comedian. Ice hockey, perhaps.
A selection of the best Scott McNealy quotes:
"When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I consider that a compliment."
"The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it."
"Shut down some of the bullshit the government is spending money on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock. Then put all their intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone! Then we could just bronze Gates, turn him into a statue and stick him in front of the Commerce Department."
"Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system
Awww, c'mon . . . it's so simple, even I get it!
on
Why Game Movies Stink
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· Score: 1
I think all here would agree, Hollywood hasn't always been the most imaginative, innovative part o' the globe. Hellfire, when they fall to making things like "The Brady Bunch Reunion", "Return to Gilligan's Island", multiple Star Trek spinoffs (although these were surprising good, IMHO) - that's a blatant admission that they don't care about providing quality for pay, only about providing exposed film for pay.
Can't find a new story to tell? Retell the old stories; for our younger viewers, slap on the hackneyed motto "It's new to you!"
So now they're taking their cues from another industry, in this event the videogame industry. Hmmm . . . doesn't matter whether they make a movie about Donkey Kong or King Kong . . . either way, they're revisiting old ground (the reverse applies to game producers, BTW). Problem is, as humans we want to experience something new - at least, that's why I plunk down my hard-earned to see a movie or play a game. I want experiences that I haven't had before, not a rehash of rescuing Princess Toadstool or "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!".
Face it . . . I'm not gonna cop to a crime just because the judiciary has granted me immunity. First off, immunity != anonymity and I don't want my employer/associates/neighbors to know all my crimes. Second, I don't want to be sued in civil court for damages arising out of criminal activities I'm going to get away with. Third, I really don't need to see the look of surprise on the prosecutor's face as he realizes that there's more going on than he knew (but knows now and will happily check out to see if I missed anything).
Put it another way . . . as a kid, if your parents said something like "is there anything else I should know about (whatever you got caught doing wrong)" - how many of us immediately said to ourselves "Oh, yes . . . I can unburden myself of all this guilt and get away easy for all the bad stuff I've done"?
Nuh uh . . . I'll confess when you've got photos, video, my fingerprints and DNA, and three witnesses, at least one of which must be either a small innocent child or a nun. Otherwise, it's a filthy lie and I'll deny it in court!
(Federal prosecutor): "Ms. Stewart, you've been granted immunity in these proceedings so that you can inform on your associates without fear of being prosecuted for whatever you've done. Please tell us all your illegal activities."
Look, I learned real young - don't cop to anything until you know what the other guy has on you. Never.
In effect, the fed has found a really neat way around that pesky fifth amendment. Just offer you immunity - even if you don't admit all of your crimes (and who would?), you may let slip evidence which will let them come get you, all the while screaming "Your fifth amendment rights were not abridged! You incriminated yourself!"
Why, I remember having to memorize the IP addresses of sites which I wanted to go back to - and they had to be entered in binary! Seriously, you kids and your name services and your bookmarks and your heliotropes and your aeroplanes . . . all this technology is getting to be too much.
Anybody here ever heard of the Grand Coulee Dam?
on
Tilting At Windmills
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Y'know, it's actually impossible for us in the USA to repeat that kind of engineering feat - not that we lack the technology, the skill, the resources . . . just the willingness to acknowledge that TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, R. Heinlein), that if we want our lifestyle and our standard of living, something's gotta give. Somewhere there has to be a refinery, or a power plant, or a wind-farm, or a hydroelectric dam.
Nowadays, there's no way to legally replicate such marvellous accomplishments as our fathers bequeathed to us. No more Hoover Dams, no more offshore drilling, no more drilling in the wilderness. Mind you, I hold nature worthy of preservation but I also hold technology worthy of furtherance. There must be a balancing point somewhere; we seem to have missed it.
You ever think that our grandparents are only dieing of old age because their progeny is embarassing them? Just sayin', is all.
. e. Finally, ebay should stop spamming its own users with "deals" and credit card offers.
Oh, good . . . I was worrying that the e-mail I responded to with my credit card and social security numbers might have been a phishing scam. Good to see that it may have really been from E-Bay after all.
Q: How do you tell a genuine E-Bay e-mail from a phishing scam?
I actually was willing to drive an hour to shop at Wal-Mart; there was nothing even remotely like it in the major cities.
I actually was willing to learn to type "http://www.google.com" instead of "http://www.altavista.com" to search on Google; even from the outset, no other search engine came close to their level of quality (read: good search results).
Nowadays, Wal-Mart routinely grinds competition unto the dust. Woe betide the small businessman whose future neighbor is a Wal-Mart Supercenter. They're big, monopolistic, anti-competitive, predatory . . . all of the wonderfully evil traits which characterize success in our free enterpise system. This makes them fairly well hated, the price of success.
Nowadays, Google is percieved as the ultimate digital destructor - crushing internet opposition wherever it rises, brutally redefining markets and networking in that fashion most likely to lead to their own growth and the demise of competing technologies.
Either you love free enterprise or you hate it - either way, I wouldn't trust it!
Anybody here remember back in about '96 or so, Bill Gates made a statement to the effect that he "doesn't mind people pirating his software - he just wished he could find a way to make the Chinese pay for their copies"?
A reference, I'm sure, not to the Chinese per se but rather to how numerous they are (probably implying that at that time he'd settle for getting a higher percentage of customers in the paying category).
The only alternatives involved 1) Permitting a system which tacitly encourages abuses of the legal system for profit, or 2) Permitting a system where individual rights are trampled.
I recall reading once that solar energy output varies in a sinusoidal fashion (i.e., our sun is "ringing"). Solar output directly influences global meteorology on our planet - the primary assertion of the article I remember was that while terrestial activity may have an impact on our ecology, the output of the Sun itself is responsible for most of the grand sweeps of weather on our planet.
Example: the "little ice age" (think: dark ages) coincided precisely with the "Maunder minimum" (a period of virtually no sunspot activity which lasted over a century).
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, being behind the "Great (Fire)Wall of China", can they even get to google.com anymore?
[CENSORED]
"That's one doomed space-marine!"
Just askin', is all.
It's only after they excavate the soil and rock from around it that the true shape and size of the pyramid will be apparent!
Okay, next time I'll know better.
Schwartz replaces McNealy: A tough comedy act to follow?
April 25, 2006
News that Sun co-founder and long-serving CEO, Scott McNealy is stepping aside, heaps a load of pressure on incoming CEO Jonathan Schwartz - he will have to get working on his anti-Microsoft gags quick-sharp.
Aside from Sun's strategy and his execution of it, McNealy's tenure as CEO will be remembered for his constant Microsoft sniping. Anyone who saw him speak knows he always had a quiver of anti-Microsoft jokes up his sleeve. "I don't want my kids growing up in a world of control-alt-delete," was one of my favourites, or, "The bear is pretty strong in the computer business ... but we are outrunning the other hikers."
As we reported in our full coverage of McNealy's decision to hand over to Schwartz here, McNealy said that, "When you start a company, you always wonder who you are going to hand it off to. You can't run it forever."
"I wasn't going to hand it off when we were growing too fast," he continued, "I wasn't going to hand if off after the bubble burst. The time is right to do it now. All the demand indicators are strong. For 22 years, I have been running this joint, and I have had a lot of fun with it." He certainly has.
McNealy has been a constant source of amusement in what might otherwise have been a far less interesting sector. He, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, have taken it upon themselves to poke constant fun at Microsoft, and in so doing have helped in their own ways to ensure that consumers have retained that little bit of cynicism about the world's most powerful software company.
In his capacity as CEO McNealy was bright, witty, straight talking, and often with us hacks, more than a little belligerent. Perhaps that's unsurprising - McNealy once said in an interview with CBR that if he had not ended up running an IT company, he would have chosen instead to pass his time thwacking pucks and heads on an ice rink instead. I hear ice hockey is something of a contact sport. At times McNealy got pretty close to turning being a tech firm CEO into a contact sport, too.
I remember one press roundtable in London a couple of years ago, where a journalist from the Financial Times found himself on the wrong end of McNealy's ire. When the journalist asked a question about comments that Sun's channel had made to him about the soundness of Sun's business model, McNealy retorted sharply: "I'm not going to comment on made-up quotes."
Though the journalist insisted the quotes came straight from Sun's own resellers, McNealy snapped, "Like I say, I will not comment on made-up quotes." As us press began to leave the room McNealy again accosted the FT journalist, saying he was furious with his paper's editor for stories that had apparently said that McNealy's remuneration had been the cause of a board-room argument. "We haven't even discussed that - it's just been made up," McNealy said furiously.
Anyway like I say if you want the low-down on McNealy's departure and his replacement, Jonathan Schwartz, simply visit our coverage of the news here. I chose instead to assemble a few of the best Scott McNealy quotes from over the years. I warn you though - he could never have given up his day job to become a comedian. Ice hockey, perhaps.
A selection of the best Scott McNealy quotes:
"When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I consider that a compliment."
"The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it."
"Shut down some of the bullshit the government is spending money on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock. Then put all their intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone! Then we could just bronze Gates, turn him into a statue and stick him in front of the Commerce Department."
"Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system
(n/t)
Can't find a new story to tell? Retell the old stories; for our younger viewers, slap on the hackneyed motto "It's new to you!"
So now they're taking their cues from another industry, in this event the videogame industry. Hmmm . . . doesn't matter whether they make a movie about Donkey Kong or King Kong . . . either way, they're revisiting old ground (the reverse applies to game producers, BTW). Problem is, as humans we want to experience something new - at least, that's why I plunk down my hard-earned to see a movie or play a game. I want experiences that I haven't had before, not a rehash of rescuing Princess Toadstool or "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!".
"The ending of a sentence with a preposition is a practice up with which I will not put." - Guess who said it?
Put it another way . . . as a kid, if your parents said something like "is there anything else I should know about (whatever you got caught doing wrong)" - how many of us immediately said to ourselves "Oh, yes . . . I can unburden myself of all this guilt and get away easy for all the bad stuff I've done"?
Nuh uh . . . I'll confess when you've got photos, video, my fingerprints and DNA, and three witnesses, at least one of which must be either a small innocent child or a nun. Otherwise, it's a filthy lie and I'll deny it in court!
Look, I learned real young - don't cop to anything until you know what the other guy has on you. Never.
In effect, the fed has found a really neat way around that pesky fifth amendment. Just offer you immunity - even if you don't admit all of your crimes (and who would?), you may let slip evidence which will let them come get you, all the while screaming "Your fifth amendment rights were not abridged! You incriminated yourself!"
Why, I remember having to memorize the IP addresses of sites which I wanted to go back to - and they had to be entered in binary! Seriously, you kids and your name services and your bookmarks and your heliotropes and your aeroplanes . . . all this technology is getting to be too much.
I think the last administrator to touch MOTD set that - it was a really original idea at the time!
Trust me, they're making money somewhere.
Nowadays, there's no way to legally replicate such marvellous accomplishments as our fathers bequeathed to us. No more Hoover Dams, no more offshore drilling, no more drilling in the wilderness. Mind you, I hold nature worthy of preservation but I also hold technology worthy of furtherance. There must be a balancing point somewhere; we seem to have missed it.
You ever think that our grandparents are only dieing of old age because their progeny is embarassing them? Just sayin', is all.
Oh, good . . . I was worrying that the e-mail I responded to with my credit card and social security numbers might have been a phishing scam. Good to see that it may have really been from E-Bay after all.
Q: How do you tell a genuine E-Bay e-mail from a phishing scam?
A: The phishing scam will probably cost less!
I actually was willing to learn to type "http://www.google.com" instead of "http://www.altavista.com" to search on Google; even from the outset, no other search engine came close to their level of quality (read: good search results).
Nowadays, Wal-Mart routinely grinds competition unto the dust. Woe betide the small businessman whose future neighbor is a Wal-Mart Supercenter. They're big, monopolistic, anti-competitive, predatory . . . all of the wonderfully evil traits which characterize success in our free enterpise system. This makes them fairly well hated, the price of success.
Nowadays, Google is percieved as the ultimate digital destructor - crushing internet opposition wherever it rises, brutally redefining markets and networking in that fashion most likely to lead to their own growth and the demise of competing technologies.
Either you love free enterprise or you hate it - either way, I wouldn't trust it!
"Wonderful machine! No off switch!"
Must've saved 'em all of about $0.39 per unit in production, eh?
A reference, I'm sure, not to the Chinese per se but rather to how numerous they are (probably implying that at that time he'd settle for getting a higher percentage of customers in the paying category).
Regardless, looks like he found a way!
Did you even read my post, or are you just the seventy-millionth monkey?
WE NEED A THIRD SOLUTION!
Better watch out with humor that subtle - you might want to try <humor> tags.
Example: the "little ice age" (think: dark ages) coincided precisely with the "Maunder minimum" (a period of virtually no sunspot activity which lasted over a century).
[Comment deleted to prevent offending /.'ers]