Wow. He asked for hard data, and you responded by comparing a (theoretical) inexperienced windows user with a (theoretical) experienced unix user. What a great response that was.
So if a worm/virus/trojan/whatnot ran rm -rf $HOME on you, you would just... "start compiling from source"? Gee, I didn't know I could get all my personal files back that way! Thanks for telling me! No more backups for me, I'll just recreate all my e-mail archives by "compiling from source" if I ever have a hard disk crash!
Quality -- The older peel-off style color photos had much higher quality than the current style. Why they stopped making those is a mystery. The current stuff is just so bad that people only use it as a last resort.
Hourly developing -- A while back, Kodak poured a lot of R&D into making the materials and equipment for one hour photo processing affordable, so now you can get your photos developed in an hour on just about any street corner. Every drugstore, grocery store, camera shop, etc. has on-the-spot photo developing now.
Like you said, if Polaroid had just done a few market studies or customer surveys, they would have figured some of this out, but they had too much of a head-in-the-sand mentality to do so.
Yes. And the same thing goes for compilers. People in Linux land actually seem to think gcc is the best or at least one of the best compilers available, but frankly, it's crap. I've seen applications get as much as a 60% speed boost simply by being recompiled with a commercial compiler instead of gcc. Gcc takes too long to compile, produces huge binaries, and can't do much optimization save for ultra-simple, textbook examples.
No doubt there are people out there who work on commercial compilers and sit around and laugh at gcc the way that HP-UX kernel engineer you talked about does.
Free software is good stuff for some things, but this idea that some people have about it being superior to everything in the commerical world is laughable.
Layoffs hurt morale. A company that takes a survey and makes a decision not to lay people based on the feedback will have much higher employee satisfaction than a company which wets its pants and fires half its employees at the first sign of trouble.
As another poster has already pointed out, that particular move by HP instilled a sense of loyalty in the employees that would have been impossible to create otherwise. Most of HP's top-notch employees stuck it out, even through the pay cut, because the appreciated that they worked at a company that took care of its own. You can see that sense of loyalty today. Why else do you think people are complaining so much about Fiornia's tactics? This isn't just-another-company, it's HP!
At the time, I was very, very proud to say I worked for them. I bragged about the fact that I was employed by a company that had, in the 1970s, decided to give everyone an across-the-board pay cut rather than go through the ordeal of layoffs. And I should point out, that decision was made based on a survey taken of the employees by upper management. Hey Carly -- what was that you said about HP "not being a democray"? Yeah, right. You don't even know your company's own history!
Today, I am no longer with HP. But if I were, I'm sure I would no longer be proud to say I worked for them. You are absolutely right, Fiorina is nothing but a golden-parachuter. She doesn't give a damn about running a solid company with long term prospects, which is the way HP has always been run. She's just like every other CEO these days. She just wants to get those big, fat bonuses, even if she has to destroy the company to do it! HP is just another line on her resume as far as she's concerned. Hell, the American economy was much worse in the 1970s than it is now, and HP decided not to lay anyone off. These days, Fiorina is laying people off left and right! And does she have any sort of long term strategy for the company? No! HP is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, darting from quarter to quarter with no eye toward the future.
I'd sell all my HP stock, but it's pretty much already worthless anyway, thanks to Carly Fiorina. Ugh.
PA-RISC is/was a great chip. The PA-8000 series was especially impressive. I'm sad to see this happen. Teaming up with Intel was probably the worst mistake HP has ever made.
Yeah, but I'd rather rely on getting physical media than trying to download 600-700 MB. Unless you've got a super fast connection, it's quicker to just go to the store. Sneakernet has higher bandwidth.
If people buy into this, it will be because they figure out a way around the protection, thus getting a high-quality copy they can keep for $5. Otherwise, I don't think it's going to take off.
Perhaps some of you would like to try to justify your Naderism now, eh?
Nader would have stuck to the breakup order. It's the fault of everyone who didn't vote for him.
And spare me the crap about how Gore would have stuck to the breakup order, too. He's just as big a corporate whore as Bush. MS would have started giving money to the DNC and kept on giving, until one day... *poof!* Gore has a sudden change of heart. Bush was a little cheaper and easier, that's all.
Before everybody gets all worked up about it, I think it's safe to say that a Democratic president would have done the same thing eventually. In recent years, MS has started contributing heavily to both parties, thus they can get pretty much whatever they want, no matter who is in the White House.
Gallium arsenide chips have been around for a long time, but as the article says, they are limited to niche applications due to cost. Still, there was one company which actually shipped a mainframe built on GaAs chips -- Convex. It's actually kind of hard to find info on them these days (they were swallowed up by HP in the mid 90s), but this EE Times article has a bit of info.
Seems people aren't that dumb after all to automatically prefer somthing just because it's "digital".
Oh yes they are. And computer types are usually the worst about it.
Take LCDs vs. CRTs for example. These days, most LCDs are hooked up using DVI connectors. Since the path from the video card to the display in such cases is all-digital, there are people who simply cannot fathom that there could ever be anything wrong with it. However, despite the fact that CRTs receive an analog signal, they typically have much better color accuracy than LCDs. This is a measurable, repeatable result. Get yourself a color meter and try it yourself. Even medium-priced CRTs will give you better results than the newest and most expensive LCDs on the market today.
But try telling that to people who are automatically in love with all things "digital". They are incapable of understanding that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. DVI may be sending 100% accurate data to the display, but that does no good if LCDs are so inaccurate they never give you the right color no matter what number you feed them. LCDs are shit for color accuracy, but because they're "digital", people refuse to believe it.
So yes, people are dumb enough to buy into things just because they are billed as "digital". And I'm constantly amazed at how many technically literate people fall for that crap without ever bothering to get the facts.
I've made submissions on these "call for public comments" things before, and they always get ignored. I jump through all the hoops, use PDF, format everything just the way they want... and after I send my comments it's like they went down a black hole.
Ever since I read that quote from the head of the U.S. Copyright office which said something like, "any time a big corporation said they wanted something, we gave it to them", I've understood that public comments are for show only. They do not listen to what people want, only companies. Sorry, I can't remember the exact quote, but it really was that blatant.
Have no illusions. THe copyright office is a lapdog of the MPAA and RIAA. Public comments don't mean shit, even if you do manage to get them through.
Re:Democracy vs. Corporate control
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Taming the Web
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Yes, and look how long the Romans lasted with just bread and circuses! No doubt they would have loved to have gotten their hands on something like cable TV. I don't think there is any end in sight. The corporate-owned governments of the world will stay in power until something like genetic engineering or nanotech comes along and radically changes the face of society.
Re:Siggraph 2001 notes
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SIGGRAPH 2001
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I remember when I visited the show in 1997 that the whole upper floor was full. The lower floor was the "startup park.
I remember that, too. I haven't been back since -- I'm really surprised to hear that the show has actually gotten smaller.
On the other hand, it's probably like Comdex. Companies realized what a big, wasteful circus the whole thing was, and decided to stop pouring so much money into it. They can still do their announcements and show off their products without having a big booth at SIGGRAPH.
Ah yes, thank you. I wonder how/why things like this get turned in to urban legends? Perhaps someone modernized the story, but never intended for people to take it seriously (which of course, some did).
I had absolutely no interest in Macs until OS X, and the reason I switched was because it acts just like a *nix. I can pull up bash, run emacs, grep, sed, awk, etc.
But you can do that for free on just about any hardware. Why switch just to get the same thing you already have?
Naturally, little things like Quicktime, games, and DVD support sweetened the deal.:)
Ahh, see? If it hadn't been for that you would have had no reason to pay the extra money for a Mac over a standard x86 box + Linux/FreeBSD/Whatever. You just confirmed what Siracusa was getting at. The things that the Mac does just-like-everybody-else aren't reason enough to buy it. It's the extra things that only the Mac does that make it worth it.
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Wow. He asked for hard data, and you responded by comparing a (theoretical) inexperienced windows user with a (theoretical) experienced unix user. What a great response that was.
So if a worm/virus/trojan/whatnot ran rm -rf $HOME on you, you would just ... "start compiling from source"? Gee, I didn't know I could get all my personal files back that way! Thanks for telling me! No more backups for me, I'll just recreate all my e-mail archives by "compiling from source" if I ever have a hard disk crash!
- Quality -- The older peel-off style color photos had much higher quality than the current style. Why they stopped making those is a mystery. The current stuff is just so bad that people only use it as a last resort.
- Hourly developing -- A while back, Kodak poured a lot of R&D into making the materials and equipment for one hour photo processing affordable, so now you can get your photos developed in an hour on just about any street corner. Every drugstore, grocery store, camera shop, etc. has on-the-spot photo developing now.
Like you said, if Polaroid had just done a few market studies or customer surveys, they would have figured some of this out, but they had too much of a head-in-the-sand mentality to do so.From Dusk till Dawn ... Spy Kids. ... thumb-thumbs.
Vampire sluts
Same guy.
Really.
No doubt there are people out there who work on commercial compilers and sit around and laugh at gcc the way that HP-UX kernel engineer you talked about does.
Free software is good stuff for some things, but this idea that some people have about it being superior to everything in the commerical world is laughable.
As another poster has already pointed out, that particular move by HP instilled a sense of loyalty in the employees that would have been impossible to create otherwise. Most of HP's top-notch employees stuck it out, even through the pay cut, because the appreciated that they worked at a company that took care of its own. You can see that sense of loyalty today. Why else do you think people are complaining so much about Fiornia's tactics? This isn't just-another-company, it's HP!
At the time, I was very, very proud to say I worked for them. I bragged about the fact that I was employed by a company that had, in the 1970s, decided to give everyone an across-the-board pay cut rather than go through the ordeal of layoffs. And I should point out, that decision was made based on a survey taken of the employees by upper management. Hey Carly -- what was that you said about HP "not being a democray"? Yeah, right. You don't even know your company's own history!
Today, I am no longer with HP. But if I were, I'm sure I would no longer be proud to say I worked for them. You are absolutely right, Fiorina is nothing but a golden-parachuter. She doesn't give a damn about running a solid company with long term prospects, which is the way HP has always been run. She's just like every other CEO these days. She just wants to get those big, fat bonuses, even if she has to destroy the company to do it! HP is just another line on her resume as far as she's concerned. Hell, the American economy was much worse in the 1970s than it is now, and HP decided not to lay anyone off. These days, Fiorina is laying people off left and right! And does she have any sort of long term strategy for the company? No! HP is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, darting from quarter to quarter with no eye toward the future.
I'd sell all my HP stock, but it's pretty much already worthless anyway, thanks to Carly Fiorina. Ugh.
PA-RISC is/was a great chip. The PA-8000 series was especially impressive. I'm sad to see this happen. Teaming up with Intel was probably the worst mistake HP has ever made.
Yeah, Unix is simple all right. The same way stone age tools are simple.
If people buy into this, it will be because they figure out a way around the protection, thus getting a high-quality copy they can keep for $5. Otherwise, I don't think it's going to take off.
Yes, in Canada, you never have to worry about DMCA-like laws.
Yes, and said countries are still using such systems. Japan's MUSE standard is still in use, and probably will be for a while.
Nader would have stuck to the breakup order. It's the fault of everyone who didn't vote for him.
And spare me the crap about how Gore would have stuck to the breakup order, too. He's just as big a corporate whore as Bush. MS would have started giving money to the DNC and kept on giving, until one day ... *poof!* Gore has a sudden change of heart. Bush was a little cheaper and easier, that's all.
No, but that doesn't mean anything. Gore is such a sellout, they'd have gotten to him sooner or later.
Before everybody gets all worked up about it, I think it's safe to say that a Democratic president would have done the same thing eventually. In recent years, MS has started contributing heavily to both parties, thus they can get pretty much whatever they want, no matter who is in the White House.
Miguel de Icaza claims Fox "seemed to be surprised" by his cost analysis. I'm sure he was. Suprised at how stupid it was.
Ah, I should have said "at least one". But if I recall correctly, Convex was the first, were they not?
Gallium arsenide chips have been around for a long time, but as the article says, they are limited to niche applications due to cost. Still, there was one company which actually shipped a mainframe built on GaAs chips -- Convex. It's actually kind of hard to find info on them these days (they were swallowed up by HP in the mid 90s), but this EE Times article has a bit of info.
Oh yes they are. And computer types are usually the worst about it.
Take LCDs vs. CRTs for example. These days, most LCDs are hooked up using DVI connectors. Since the path from the video card to the display in such cases is all-digital, there are people who simply cannot fathom that there could ever be anything wrong with it. However, despite the fact that CRTs receive an analog signal, they typically have much better color accuracy than LCDs. This is a measurable, repeatable result. Get yourself a color meter and try it yourself. Even medium-priced CRTs will give you better results than the newest and most expensive LCDs on the market today.
But try telling that to people who are automatically in love with all things "digital". They are incapable of understanding that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. DVI may be sending 100% accurate data to the display, but that does no good if LCDs are so inaccurate they never give you the right color no matter what number you feed them. LCDs are shit for color accuracy, but because they're "digital", people refuse to believe it.
So yes, people are dumb enough to buy into things just because they are billed as "digital". And I'm constantly amazed at how many technically literate people fall for that crap without ever bothering to get the facts.
Ever since I read that quote from the head of the U.S. Copyright office which said something like, "any time a big corporation said they wanted something, we gave it to them", I've understood that public comments are for show only. They do not listen to what people want, only companies. Sorry, I can't remember the exact quote, but it really was that blatant.
Have no illusions. THe copyright office is a lapdog of the MPAA and RIAA. Public comments don't mean shit, even if you do manage to get them through.
Yes, and look how long the Romans lasted with just bread and circuses! No doubt they would have loved to have gotten their hands on something like cable TV. I don't think there is any end in sight. The corporate-owned governments of the world will stay in power until something like genetic engineering or nanotech comes along and radically changes the face of society.
Then again, maybe not.
I remember that, too. I haven't been back since -- I'm really surprised to hear that the show has actually gotten smaller.
On the other hand, it's probably like Comdex. Companies realized what a big, wasteful circus the whole thing was, and decided to stop pouring so much money into it. They can still do their announcements and show off their products without having a big booth at SIGGRAPH.
Ah yes, thank you. I wonder how/why things like this get turned in to urban legends? Perhaps someone modernized the story, but never intended for people to take it seriously (which of course, some did).
But you can do that for free on just about any hardware. Why switch just to get the same thing you already have?
Naturally, little things like Quicktime, games, and DVD support sweetened the deal. :)
Ahh, see? If it hadn't been for that you would have had no reason to pay the extra money for a Mac over a standard x86 box + Linux/FreeBSD/Whatever. You just confirmed what Siracusa was getting at. The things that the Mac does just-like-everybody-else aren't reason enough to buy it. It's the extra things that only the Mac does that make it worth it.