We did the TQM thing as a govt contractor about 10 years ago. Good way to burn up half a day for a couple of weeks, was a change of pace if anything. In the end, we bench techs still did things as we did before because we didn't control the procedures anyway. If anybody actually DID want to alter a 'procedure' to improve the quality of our output (in this case 'work' was 90% attention to paperwork to document the 10% actual work done) it would've taken going over heads, pissing folks off, filling out forms 99-TQ/120-X in triplicate, a congressional appropriation, and in general being such a pain to everyone involved that the payoffs didn't warrant the effort.
In short, mgmt procedures just limit my freedom to innovate! See the movie 'Brazil'.
maybe in some small planets - I asked an acquaintance if she'd heard anything about 'Linux' and got the response, 'Isn't that a furnace company?' (Lennox):)) Nowhere near the massive multibillion dollar ad budget overhyping of those other guys. Linux is real, the other guys are the smoke and mirrors that are destined to dissapoint (and don't blame ME! It's THEIR property - YOU bought it, I NEVER recommended buying their licenses!)
true hurricane Floyd story: Hey, I was ready this summer with a 3kw generator and two 120A/h marine deep discharge batteries powering a converted 650W computer UPS that'll keep lights, stereo and vid games (only essentials) going during power outage - when Floyd knocked us out for about 6 hours I had to fire up the generator to make microwave popcorn - oh the horror of it all!
d'ja notice that about every 'y2k plan' involves "going out and buying stuff" - no matter what happens, grocers and retails are cleaning up this season.
was on an Atari ST - running a multitasking extension called 'mint' (multiple windows running ksh & gnu utils, kewl! (but sloooow!)) and a friend from the local U came over with something called 'unix windows' I/think/ it was (a mind is a horrible thing to lose) someting like slirp that I could use to ftp to atari.archive.umich.edu, yessssssss!!!
Sadly, I had to give in and a 486/50 soon replaced the aging ST.
strike "extensions sometimes requires cunning trickery" and sub "extensions."
Missing paragraph - Windows isn't always a dream itself, they've got their share of tech support calls and upgrades that require an expert and cunning trickery to get runnings.
One of my hosed boxes at work has a win95 display properties windows that is 50 screens wide - sure takes a long time to get to the "OK" button, heee.
is the superior intelligence that is required to set it up, gaining esoteric knowledge on the way that puts one in the exclusive club and 'leet class of snobs that can look down our noses at the 'stoopid windoze lusers' that had to pay for it, haha! That is, you meet someone with the badge of honor of having installed Linux and you know this person is someone of depth you can trust, and not another self styled "expurt" poser who just popped in a CD and hit return a bunch of times and tries to claim they actually accomplished something. But that's democritization I guess.
Raw unix isn't for everyone, it's user friendly but picky about it's friends, etc etc.
But seriously, what they'll be talking about after all these IPO's is market penetrataion which means custom tailoring the system to the markets existing level of expertise or a tolerable learning curve to expand the user base. It'll probably be up to the developers paid by RHAT and VA to do all the boring 'user friendly' extensions necessary to make Linux accessible to the average person in the mall; a lot of the developers who 'do it for fun' and share their code get their kicks in other ways, usually pushing the technology in front of them and probably couldn't care less about coding in proactive help and dancing paper clips - it's hard enough just to get release notes typed up! Of course some developers may get a charge just out of eroding the mighty snake god's empire enough to help with the friendifying extensions sometimes requires cunning trickery.
Maybe if Video card mfgrs distribute a linux CD already configured for their card. Or rhat sponsors a hardware testing/certification program so vendors can put a "Linux OK!" sticker on their box and an easy to find rpm just has to be loaded to use it.
going way out on a limb and staking my whole life's reputation - that they pick the assassinated civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for century person - that ought to grab headlines and sell magazines.
ASP - a highly poisonous snake indigenous to Washington state. Once bitten, the victim becomes a mindless zombie completely under the control of the mighty snake god who dwells in the temple of Redmond.
I was going to title this: "Msft solutions are Msft's problems" - but my first voyage into the world of FreeBSD years ago came with instructions to use the Microsoft® undocumented "fdisk/mbr" command - which taught me that those bastards take over the master boot record of you hard disk and don't even tell you about it! Talk about getting your foot in the door to leverage a monopoly...
Ok, they have a desktop monopoly and billions in revenue for R&D - think that maybe NOW they can deliver a quality product for a change??
yeah yeah - with all the 'new media' outlets and the old media scrapping for market share of eyeballs they are really cranking up the bullcrap factor - just like the number of dead in Venezuala, just pick a number bigger than your competing network ("50,000 dead" - now that ought to sell papers and get the ratings back up, jeez) and hang onto your liability disclaimer ("this news report is for entertainment purposes only, we are not responsible for the accuracy of any content, we're just passing on whatever juicy gossip we hear").
I've been making deals over the Internet for about 2 years and maybe I'm just careful but of all the eBay stuff (a Bandai FriskyTom! Gimme gimme!!) and cheapbyte CD's and about 10 books from Book Exchange and deal arranged on mailing lists - maybe *2* have gone wrong: one was an Error 404 on tigerdirect.com last xmas trying to buy a Lego Mindstorm (ok, so just drive the 5 miles to ToysR'us) and once a guys sent me the wrong signal generator - that's IT. I'm actually amazed at the integrity of the people I've delt with considering the opportunity for wire fraud.
Yeah, hows the ol' senate campaign going? Really? Sure, sure, glad we could help out. Look, there's been a little mix up here, and, haha, was wondering if you could do us a little favor this time? Sure, look, I need to get our shipping mgr. in touch with your police chief, What's that Rudi? No, no, no, just a small operation, nothing big, just a single user, uh voter, yeah; What? Oh, yeah, they are a dime a dozen, hehheh. Sure, just talk with my shipping dept and there'll be more where that came from, lots more, Ok?
s/he would have gotten as much info about it before having to turn it back in - like get lots of close up shots of the circuit boards, ROM dumps, case design, pull the ASIC's, (chips? what chips??) etc. just in case a potential competitor is, ahem, interested ($$). A rare opportunity.
a browser, email, newsgroup, IM, etc. device that's as easy to use as plugging in a toaster or, more realistically, programming a VCR or any other household appliance, or an Internet vehicle as easy to use as a car w/little or no techie knowledge required.
No, you can't even put an identity on this 'prediction', so we can't chuckle at you personally next February (and if Win2k is anything like NT, it's going to be 5 long years of luser testing before they get it up to snuff - Gartner Group: wait untill service pack 3). At least Bob Metcalf had the courage to put his name on his belief that these Internet stocks we're all going to crash on Nov. 8
Besides, OS/2 was pretty much just another NT (in more ways than one) w/o the benefit of an installed base of DOS and Win31 to leverage, capitalize on, exploit and ensure they migrate to yet another Mickysoft product from.
Win2k will meets the needs of a lot of people, it will succeed - just some of us will demand software we can work with and control, not luserware that want's to control us w/ 'proactive help/marketing'. And I'm certainly not going to make the mistake of supporting M$ products on someone else's dime again (they're still getting a lot of 'free' support from their suckers) - if someone pays for a Win2k license (and esp if they pirate it) and has a problem and swivels around to look at me, I'm just going to read them the EULA, laugh and say "sorry I don't support it - call MSFT, it's their property".
that's about all I know to do. Last time w/ a note that I spend about 15 min/business day sorting thru the crap and asking if the total industry wide loss of productivity is worth what little revenues and taxes that spam generates.
you know who needs a commandment plastered on his office wall that says, "Thou shalt not embrace, extend and propriatize" (is that a word? it is now!) in order to enslave your customers with 'vendor lock in' and then call it 'progress' or 'standards plus'.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa! That's two compressed into one! There's Rudolf Diesel and then there's Nikolaus Otto. Kinda like saying Nikolai Edison, :))
Boojum
We did the TQM thing as a govt contractor about 10 years ago. Good way to burn up half a day for a couple of weeks, was a change of pace if anything. In the end, we bench techs still did things as we did before because we didn't control the procedures anyway. If anybody actually DID want to alter a 'procedure' to improve the quality of our output (in this case 'work' was 90% attention to paperwork to document the 10% actual work done) it would've taken going over heads, pissing folks off, filling out forms 99-TQ/120-X in triplicate, a congressional appropriation, and in general being such a pain to everyone involved that the payoffs didn't warrant the effort.
In short, mgmt procedures just limit my freedom to innovate! See the movie 'Brazil'.
maybe in some small planets - I asked an acquaintance if she'd heard anything about 'Linux' and got the response, 'Isn't that a furnace company?' (Lennox) :))
Nowhere near the massive multibillion dollar ad budget overhyping of those other guys. Linux is real, the other guys are the smoke and mirrors that are destined to dissapoint (and don't blame ME! It's THEIR property - YOU bought it, I NEVER recommended buying their licenses!)
Boojum
true hurricane Floyd story:
Hey, I was ready this summer with a 3kw generator and two 120A/h marine deep discharge batteries powering a converted 650W computer UPS that'll keep lights, stereo and vid games (only essentials) going during power outage - when Floyd knocked us out for about 6 hours I had to fire up the generator to make microwave popcorn - oh the horror of it all!
Boojum
backing up stuff like there's no tomorrow
d'ja notice that about every 'y2k plan' involves "going out and buying stuff" - no matter what happens, grocers and retails are cleaning up this season.
Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching!
Boojum
Backing up stuff like there's no tomorrow.
Boojum
was on an Atari ST - running a multitasking extension called 'mint' (multiple windows running ksh & gnu utils, kewl! (but sloooow!)) and a friend from the local U came over with something called 'unix windows' I /think/ it was (a mind is a horrible thing to lose) someting like slirp that I could use to ftp to atari.archive.umich.edu, yessssssss!!!
Sadly, I had to give in and a 486/50 soon replaced the aging ST.
Boojum
strike "extensions sometimes requires cunning trickery" and sub "extensions."
Missing paragraph - Windows isn't always a dream itself, they've got their share of tech support calls and upgrades that require an expert and cunning trickery to get runnings.
One of my hosed boxes at work has a win95 display properties windows that is 50 screens wide - sure takes a long time to get to the "OK" button, heee.
Boojum
is the superior intelligence that is required to set it up, gaining esoteric knowledge on the way that puts one in the exclusive club and 'leet class of snobs that can look down our noses at the 'stoopid windoze lusers' that had to pay for it, haha! That is, you meet someone with the badge of honor of having installed Linux and you know this person is someone of depth you can trust, and not another self styled "expurt" poser who just popped in a CD and hit return a bunch of times and tries to claim they actually accomplished something. But that's democritization I guess.
Raw unix isn't for everyone, it's user friendly but picky about it's friends, etc etc.
But seriously, what they'll be talking about after all these IPO's is market penetrataion which means custom tailoring the system to the markets existing level of expertise or a tolerable learning curve to expand the user base. It'll probably be up to the developers paid by RHAT and VA to do all the boring 'user friendly' extensions necessary to make Linux accessible to the average person in the mall; a lot of the developers who 'do it for fun' and share their code get their kicks in other ways, usually pushing the technology in front of them and probably couldn't care less about coding in proactive help and dancing paper clips - it's hard enough just to get release notes typed up! Of course some developers may get a charge just out of eroding the mighty snake god's empire enough to help with the friendifying extensions sometimes requires cunning trickery.
Maybe if Video card mfgrs distribute a linux CD already configured for their card. Or rhat sponsors a hardware testing/certification program so vendors can put a "Linux OK!" sticker on their box and an easy to find rpm just has to be loaded to use it.
Boojum
probably the same physics that applies to hossman's gut.
Boojum
going way out on a limb and staking my whole life's reputation - that they pick the assassinated civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for century person - that ought to grab headlines and sell magazines.
Boojum
to be at a party when this guy walks thru the room carrying a tray of drinks and hor's dourves ?
Boojum
Microsoft® - Leave the Thinking to Us!
ASP - a highly poisonous snake indigenous to Washington state. Once bitten, the victim becomes a mindless zombie completely under the control of the mighty snake god who dwells in the temple of Redmond.
Boojum
I was going to title this: "Msft solutions are Msft's problems" - but my first voyage into the world of FreeBSD years ago came with instructions to use the Microsoft® undocumented "fdisk /mbr" command - which taught me that those bastards take over the master boot record of you hard disk and don't even tell you about it! Talk about getting your foot in the door to leverage a monopoly...
Ok, they have a desktop monopoly and billions in revenue for R&D - think that maybe NOW they can deliver a quality product for a change??
Boojum
yeah yeah - with all the 'new media' outlets and the old media scrapping for market share of eyeballs they are really cranking up the bullcrap factor - just like the number of dead in Venezuala, just pick a number bigger than your competing network ("50,000 dead" - now that ought to sell papers and get the ratings back up, jeez) and hang onto your liability disclaimer ("this news report is for entertainment purposes only, we are not responsible for the accuracy of any content, we're just passing on whatever juicy gossip we hear").
I've been making deals over the Internet for about 2 years and maybe I'm just careful but of all the eBay stuff (a Bandai FriskyTom! Gimme gimme!!) and cheapbyte CD's and about 10 books from Book Exchange and deal arranged on mailing lists - maybe *2* have gone wrong: one was an Error 404 on tigerdirect.com last xmas trying to buy a Lego Mindstorm (ok, so just drive the 5 miles to ToysR'us) and once a guys sent me the wrong signal generator - that's IT. I'm actually amazed at the integrity of the people I've delt with considering the opportunity for wire fraud.
Boojum
prophetic in last Sunday's comic?
Boojum
Yeah, hows the ol' senate campaign going? Really? Sure, sure, glad we could help out. Look, there's been a little mix up here, and, haha, was wondering if you could do us a little favor this time? Sure, look, I need to get our shipping mgr. in touch with your police chief, What's that Rudi? No, no, no, just a small operation, nothing big, just a single user, uh voter, yeah; What? Oh, yeah, they are a dime a dozen, hehheh. Sure, just talk with my shipping dept and there'll be more where that came from, lots more, Ok?
Boojum
s/he would have gotten as much info about it before having to turn it back in - like get lots of close up shots of the circuit boards, ROM dumps, case design, pull the ASIC's, (chips? what chips??) etc. just in case a potential competitor is, ahem, interested ($$). A rare opportunity.
Boojum
a browser, email, newsgroup, IM, etc. device that's as easy to use as plugging in a toaster or, more realistically, programming a VCR or any other household appliance, or an Internet vehicle as easy to use as a car w/little or no techie knowledge required.
Boojum
a saying we used to hear :)
Boojum
No, you can't even put an identity on this 'prediction', so we can't chuckle at you personally next February (and if Win2k is anything like NT, it's going to be 5 long years of luser testing before they get it up to snuff - Gartner Group: wait untill service pack 3). At least Bob Metcalf had the courage to put his name on his belief that these Internet stocks we're all going to crash on Nov. 8
Besides, OS/2 was pretty much just another NT (in more ways than one) w/o the benefit of an installed base of DOS and Win31 to leverage, capitalize on, exploit and ensure they migrate to yet another Mickysoft product from.
Win2k will meets the needs of a lot of people, it will succeed - just some of us will demand software we can work with and control, not luserware that want's to control us w/ 'proactive help/marketing'. And I'm certainly not going to make the mistake of supporting M$ products on someone else's dime again (they're still getting a lot of 'free' support from their suckers) - if someone pays for a Win2k license (and esp if they pirate it) and has a problem and swivels around to look at me, I'm just going to read them the EULA, laugh and say "sorry I don't support it - call MSFT, it's their property".
Boojum
while driving thru an oil pipeline he whips out some palm device and there's a "WindowsCE" product placement, hehe. Wonder how much that one co$t 'em.
Boojum
that's about all I know to do.
Last time w/ a note that I spend about 15 min/business day sorting thru the crap and asking if the total industry wide loss of productivity is worth what little revenues and taxes that spam generates.
Boojum
you know who needs a commandment plastered on his office wall that says, "Thou shalt not embrace, extend and propriatize" (is that a word? it is now!) in order to enslave your customers with 'vendor lock in' and then call it 'progress' or 'standards plus'.
Boojum
what Louis Rukeyser is going to say about this, he's usually pretty OPTIMISTIC.
A lot of monied people have tried M$ and found it wanting - they probably know there's GOT to be something better - and Linux CAN fill that order.
Chuck