Yes, Dvorak is an idiot. (Read Dvorak's book Dvorak Predicts if any of you still harbor any doubt.) But I also assumed that since he stubbornly insisted on opinions that anyone with an ounce of common sense could tell you were just WRONG, that somebody must be paying him to do so. From his writing, I also assumed that "someone" was probably IBM. (I think Dvorak is still insisting that OS/2 is a better operating system than Windows.)
But the real problem with industry journalists is that they act like the big money-making tech companies are paying their salaries precisely because the big money-making tech companies ARE paying their salaries -- ultimately their paychecks come from advertising dollars; big advertisers almost always get good reviews. (I've worked for tech companies where after a bad review, we budgeted money for big ads for the next time our category was reviewed - and got better reviews. The trade journal even tell you months in advance what their going to be reviewing, so you've got plenty of time to bribe them!)
This is the same sort of conflict of interest that drove the dot-com bubble -- nobody noticed that the analysts that were giving glowing reports on new economy companies were employed by the same firms that were handling those companies IPOs!
Sorry to rant, but the more I understand about how business operates, the more depressed I become...
According to Eleven's press release of September 7, 2000, Robert X. Cringley has been on their payroll for over a year. I have sent email to PBS complaining about this blatant conflict of interest, but have received no response. No, this isn't really a big deal, it just bothers me that 1) PBS HAS become corporate whores. They run what can only be described as commercials for their "Corporate Sponsors" before many programs. This wouldn't bother me except that 2) My tax dollars, taken from me by coercion, are still being used to fund PBS, thus I am being forced to subside this advertising for corporate giants like ADM against my will!
Again, this isn't the worst problem facing the world today, but is is a bit... disillusioning.
Of course Slashdot journalists have their readily apparent biases, but they are much less corporate whores than Robert X. Cringley or John Dvorak, for example.
Hmm... Are you calling Robert X. Cringely, who uses the PBS web site paid for by my tax dollars to promote a Canadian company for which he sits on the board of directors and is paid to promote the company is a "corporate whore"??? Say it isn't so!
I thought microwaves were 2.4 GHz (the resonant frequency of the H20 molecule. That's why that band was still available for RF use... it doesn't penetrate the moisture in the atmosphere, so it's completely useless for radio in the big blue room...
Actually, most Windows applications will still run faster on the 2Ghz P4, since they don't know how to take advantage of SMP. Now for a _server_, the dual MP is a big win. Not sure how many Linux applications see a performance improvement with multiple CPUs...
Excuse me, that should be less radiation, although for all practical purposes the EMR of an LCD can safely be thought of as zero, especially compared to that of a CRT, or even to the power supply of the PC...
I don't want an LCD because it's flat. I want an LCD because it has lower power consumption, no Electromagnetic Radiation, and sharper picture. This is no real improvement on a traditional CRT except for smaller footprint and possibly less weight, and regardless of what they claim, I'm sure it will sell for a premium over an old-fashioned CRT with comparable viewing area.
Actually, Intel DOES write a lot of software, including their own programming languages, C compilers, development systems, and a suprisingly large portion of what ships with Windows, including the Winsock 2 implementation for Win98! In fact, I'm willing to bet that less than 1/3 of what we call "Windows" is actually written by Microsoft, in much the same way that very little of what we call "Linux" was originally written by Linus...
Yes, except that shock resistance decreases and power usage increases with density, which means that 848GByte disk would need to be shock isolated better than a high-end turntable, and need full-time AC power... which sort of defeats the purpose of it being PCMCIA, doesn't it? Also, what's the bandwidth of the PCMCIA slot? Doesn't it take about 10 DAYS to transfer 848GBytes of data through the PCMCIA bus?
Meccano/Erector set requires tools. Lego requires hands. That makes Lego much better suited for younger, less skilled audiences. And yes, I ha an erector set as a child. It was a royal pain to build anything out of, and I don't beleive I learned anything from it except how difficult it is to get the mechanical contraptions you can dream up to actually work.
Like many products, watchguard is running embedded Linux. Like most embedded Linux products, they don't bother to tell you that. Which is understandable, since to the average user it does not matter what the underlying OS is!!! Do you ever wonder who wrote the software in you microwave? No, you just expect it to work, with minimal intervention by you. That's why embedded devices are ideal for the other 50% of people out there who don't care to learn how to install software on a PC. One of the biggest mistakes techies make is the assumption that since computers seem trivial to them, they should be easy for everybody to understand. But let's face it, guys -- 99% of the world doesn't think like you do. Case in point: a friend of mine was talking to a secretary, who was talking about how things tend to go from bad to worse. He remarked, "Well, you can't get around the second law of thermodynamics!" In response, she just stared at him, then turned and walked away. Now, his comment made perfect sense to me, but 99.5% of the people out there would be saying "What the f**k are you talking about!"
From a high of $120 in December of 1999, they are now at $66... I certainly wouldn't call that "basically recovered". Check www.nasdaq.com, stock
symbol MSFT, and ask for a 2 year chart...
From a high of $120 in December of 1999, they are now at $66... I certainly wouldn't call that "recovered 100%". Check www.nasdaq.com, stock symbol MSFT, and ask for a 2 year chart...
Yes, but Linux as a server OS and Linux as an embedded OS is already kicking Microsoft's ass... do desktops really have a future, or will 95% of PCs be replaced by embedded devices (e.g. web pads) ten years from now? Having a lock on the buggy whip industry doesn't do you very much good when everyone is buying cars... look at Novell, for example -- how much good is the fact that they used to control 75% of the NOS market doing them now?
Eventually, yes. Microsoft appears to my naive eyes to be getting stupider by the minute (this brain-drain is to be expected; with stock price dropping, stock options are worthless, and the better employees are jumping ship in droves). Just because they haven't gone out of business yet doesn't mean they're not stupid...
Let's see here... Micrsoft stock plumented from $115 to to $40 during 2000... and that was before the economic slowdown. Seems like somebody must have been doing something stupid somewhere! Think Ballmer's so smart? Any CEO that would announce in public that their companies stock is massively overvalued SHOULD have been dismissed immediately by the board of directors. Only in a situation where his personal friend control most of the stock would he be allowed to stay on. Think Microsoft Bob and the talking paperclip were smart ideas?
Yes, the cost of training users on a new interface is expensive (~$2000/seat). That's why I keep insisting that Microsoft owns the desktop, but Linux will take over the server and embedded markets, where retraining is not an issue. On the desktop, KDE can still win if it keeps a consistent user interface while Microsoft completely changes their interface from one OS release to the next, making it cheaper to retrain employees on KDE once, rather than every time Redmond tries to shove a new OS down thier throats...
Slashdot Mirror
But the real problem with industry journalists is that they act like the big money-making tech companies are paying their salaries precisely because the big money-making tech companies ARE paying their salaries -- ultimately their paychecks come from advertising dollars; big advertisers almost always get good reviews. (I've worked for tech companies where after a bad review, we budgeted money for big ads for the next time our category was reviewed - and got better reviews. The trade journal even tell you months in advance what their going to be reviewing, so you've got plenty of time to bribe them!)
This is the same sort of conflict of interest that drove the dot-com bubble -- nobody noticed that the analysts that were giving glowing reports on new economy companies were employed by the same firms that were handling those companies IPOs!
Sorry to rant, but the more I understand about how business operates, the more depressed I become...
Again, this isn't the worst problem facing the world today, but is is a bit... disillusioning.
Position on Board of Directors for Eleven Engineering he fails to mention anywhere in article
Conflict of interest? Nah...
Of course Slashdot journalists have their readily apparent biases, but they are much less corporate whores than Robert X. Cringley or John Dvorak, for example.
Hmm... Are you calling Robert X. Cringely, who uses the PBS web site paid for by my tax dollars to promote a Canadian company for which he sits on the board of directors and is paid to promote the company is a "corporate whore"??? Say it isn't so!
I thought microwaves were 2.4 GHz (the resonant frequency of the H20 molecule. That's why that band was still available for RF use... it doesn't penetrate the moisture in the atmosphere, so it's completely useless for radio in the big blue room...
Actually, most Windows applications will still run faster on the 2Ghz P4, since they don't know how to take advantage of SMP. Now for a _server_, the dual MP is a big win. Not sure how many Linux applications see a performance improvement with multiple CPUs...
Would that be "Dyslexic Line Service"?
From my experience, I'm beginning to beleive that we all look alike to them anyway...
it is now a crime to look like somebody else who is a criminal!
Cute, but I'd rather have four jumpers, two to each drive, so I can just swap master and slave for dual boot...
Is the really a test of engineering acumen, or more of a test of who has the most money to throw at the problem?
Excuse me, that should be less radiation, although for all practical purposes the EMR of an LCD can safely be thought of as zero, especially compared to that of a CRT, or even to the power supply of the PC...
Try $900 here
For Pete's sake, man, how often do you change your display resolution???
I don't want an LCD because it's flat. I want an LCD because it has lower power consumption, no Electromagnetic Radiation, and sharper picture. This is no real improvement on a traditional CRT except for smaller footprint and possibly less weight, and regardless of what they claim, I'm sure it will sell for a premium over an old-fashioned CRT with comparable viewing area.
Actually, Intel DOES write a lot of software, including their own programming languages, C compilers, development systems, and a suprisingly large portion of what ships with Windows, including the Winsock 2 implementation for Win98! In fact, I'm willing to bet that less than 1/3 of what we call "Windows" is actually written by Microsoft, in much the same way that very little of what we call "Linux" was originally written by Linus...
USB touchpad: $300
Begin to see a reason why this is a bad idea?
Yes, except that shock resistance decreases and power usage increases with density, which means that 848GByte disk would need to be shock isolated better than a high-end turntable, and need full-time AC power... which sort of defeats the purpose of it being PCMCIA, doesn't it? Also, what's the bandwidth of the PCMCIA slot? Doesn't it take about 10 DAYS to transfer 848GBytes of data through the PCMCIA bus?
Meccano/Erector set requires tools. Lego requires hands. That makes Lego much better suited for younger, less skilled audiences. And yes, I ha an erector set as a child. It was a royal pain to build anything out of, and I don't beleive I learned anything from it except how difficult it is to get the mechanical contraptions you can dream up to actually work.
Like many products, watchguard is running embedded Linux. Like most embedded Linux products, they don't bother to tell you that. Which is understandable, since to the average user it does not matter what the underlying OS is!!! Do you ever wonder who wrote the software in you microwave? No, you just expect it to work, with minimal intervention by you. That's why embedded devices are ideal for the other 50% of people out there who don't care to learn how to install software on a PC. One of the biggest mistakes techies make is the assumption that since computers seem trivial to them, they should be easy for everybody to understand. But let's face it, guys -- 99% of the world doesn't think like you do. Case in point: a friend of mine was talking to a secretary, who was talking about how things tend to go from bad to worse. He remarked, "Well, you can't get around the second law of thermodynamics!" In response, she just stared at him, then turned and walked away. Now, his comment made perfect sense to me, but 99.5% of the people out there would be saying "What the f**k are you talking about!"
does this look "recovered" to you?
From a high of $120 in December of 1999, they are now at $66... I certainly wouldn't call that "recovered 100%". Check www.nasdaq.com, stock symbol MSFT, and ask for a 2 year chart...
Yes, but Linux as a server OS and Linux as an embedded OS is already kicking Microsoft's ass... do desktops really have a future, or will 95% of PCs be replaced by embedded devices (e.g. web pads) ten years from now? Having a lock on the buggy whip industry doesn't do you very much good when everyone is buying cars... look at Novell, for example -- how much good is the fact that they used to control 75% of the NOS market doing them now?
Eventually, yes. Microsoft appears to my naive eyes to be getting stupider by the minute (this brain-drain is to be expected; with stock price dropping, stock options are worthless, and the better employees are jumping ship in droves). Just because they haven't gone out of business yet doesn't mean they're not stupid...
Let's see here... Micrsoft stock plumented from $115 to to $40 during 2000... and that was before the economic slowdown. Seems like somebody must have been doing something stupid somewhere! Think Ballmer's so smart? Any CEO that would announce in public that their companies stock is massively overvalued SHOULD have been dismissed immediately by the board of directors. Only in a situation where his personal friend control most of the stock would he be allowed to stay on. Think Microsoft Bob and the talking paperclip were smart ideas?
Yes, the cost of training users on a new interface is expensive (~$2000/seat). That's why I keep insisting that Microsoft owns the desktop, but Linux will take over the server and embedded markets, where retraining is not an issue. On the desktop, KDE can still win if it keeps a consistent user interface while Microsoft completely changes their interface from one OS release to the next, making it cheaper to retrain employees on KDE once, rather than every time Redmond tries to shove a new OS down thier throats...