Sure, it's easy to say that the Cube wasn't innovative, simply because it included so many things we've all seen before. However, putting them all together into a very small form factor was very innovative. Often times it's a collection of small refinements that add up to true innovation.
For those of us who don't have all kinds of space, the Cube was an excellent idea. From what I've heard, Apple was expecting to sell a whole lot of Cubes in Japan, for example.
The fact that Apple mispriced the Cube, making the G4 tower a much more cost-effective bet, and that they mistimed it by releasing it before OS X was available, doesn't take away from the fact that they had the right idea in a small form-factor CPU that actually looked nice.
But 30 seconds at each of cnn.com (mainsleaze), freerepublic.com (right/libertarian), salon.com (left/liberal), Slashdot (geek), thestreet.com (business), and finance.yahoo.com (news reports on my own holdings) gives me a 99.9% probability that I'll already have seen the 1.5 minutes of useful info on the news that night.
Quite true, and I do the same thing (perhaps with a few variations;-), but what I was getting at is that in the random, non-yet-defined-and-filtered info, there is sometimes some good stuff. I fear that we're in danger of becoming a world of narrow specialists, none of whom have anything approaching a Renaissance view of the world.
It's not that there is too much information out there, it's that the difficulty in sorting the wheat from the chaff forces us to limit ourselves.
until you examine it? When you first view information it's just information, because you haven't yet assigned a value to it. Katz is talking about that very filtering process.
For example, I don't watch TV news any more, because I know that there may be 1.5 minutes worth of "good" information provided to me in a given half hour, but I don't want to waste the time necessary to sit there and absorb all of the other crap they're sending my way.
But that also means that I'm missing 45 minutes of valuable information every month. Even when we use more refined filtering techniques (such as viewing comments in/. by score), there are still many chunks of information that are not "good". But then, there's no way for me to assign normative value to information until I view it, is there?
Sure, I can choose to filter all of my news so that it only relates to primate research in Guyana. But then what if some really interesting "good" piece of info about related research in the human sociology field came up, and I missed it because of my predetermined filtering habits?
Regardless of how you define "good" information, even though it does invite further investigation, the trickiest part is still to find that "good" information without throwing out information that doesn't have an immediate associative value to you but could still turn out to be of value once investigated.
"the next version wil be a lot less *nix-y". Uh. Not likely, they've pinned their future on OS X and its BSD foundation.
The graphic artists in your office who downgraded, its probably because Adobe has been slow off the mark in Carbonizing their apps. If they're like most graphic artists, they are dead in the water without Illustrator and Photoshop. "Low level access" to their computers has nothing to do with it. OS X protects users from having to do anything at the command-line. It's a different user experience than OS 9, but it's certainly not giving them anything like the complexity associated with the average Linux installation.
Apple would not have done better by continuing with OS 9. They've squeezed as much as they can out of a very old OS with no protected memory, no preemptive multitasking, and limited networking power. Not to embrace *NIX would have been suicide.
As for wanting "low-level access", a lot of Mac users do want it, but those that don't want it don't have to bother with it. Gee, what a concept!
Dell is supposedly moving into the services business. H-P has (so far unsuccessfully) been attempting the same thing.
IBM has (successfully) moved into the services business, but only because they were already diversified enough to make the move.
The trend isn't new. As long ago as 1999, the writing was on the wall.
The problem is, most of these hardware OEMs are going to have a difficult time making the transition. They're used to competing on price, not on service. The OEM business is brutally competitive in the price arena, but let's be honest, most PC clone makers are not really innovating. All they're doing is trying to squeeze inefficiency out of manufacturing and distribution, making money on very thin margins.
Entering services will be difficult for Compaq, just as it has been for Dell, H-P, and all the other OEMs that are jumping on the bandwagon. Compete on price alone at your own peril.
Intel isn't particularly interested in the Alpha. They're interested in co-opting the Alpha engineers and taking some of the Alpha technology for future Intel development.
Alpha engineers have been jumping ship to AMD, and Intel knows how valuable engineers are (remember, they poached Motorola engineers) to the competition.
So who is the competition? Intel already took much of Motorola's brain trust, and Motorola keeps screwing up. IBM continues to do well with PowerPC, but that's a niche market and Intel probably figures they'll take down IBM's PowerPC later.
No, the competition here is certainly AMD. With AMD's stated goal of moving into the enterprise market starting to bear fruit, Intel has got to be a bit scared. As they say, "only the paranoid survive."
Agreed, remember, an IPO isn't a panacea
on
Google Plans an IPO
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· Score: 3
I'd like to see Google's real plans, from the horse's mouth. Do they intend to stay focused on search engine technology, or are they planning on branching out to compete with portals?
Other posts have mentioned how Yahoo! started as a directory. Remember Lycos? Search engine gone wrong. Remember AltaVista? Serach engine gone bad. Remember Excite? Search engine gone totally wrong.
These companies didn't all start with the intention of becoming bloated portals, but they wound up that way because there was a compelling business case that forced them to seek other methods of building revenue.
How is Google going to be different?
An IPO is primarily a means for a company to raise large amounts of cash with which to take the company up to the next level. That's the traditional case for an IPO, at least. In the past few years, the IPO has become a means of generating enough cash to build a company from thin air. Blame the companies all you want, but investors who didn't pay attention to the underlying mechanism of the IPO should take the blame just as well.
In the case of Google, I absolutely love it as search engine, but I'm not convinced I should love it as an investment. Let's hope Google is contemplating an IPO for the right reasons, and not as a means of staving off death.
The US Army has operated the National Training Center (NTC) in the Mojave Desert for years now. It's one of the big reasons for our success in Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
I was there with my battallion from the 10th MTN Division in 1991, and I can tell you that by the time most soldiers actually get into a "shoot/no-shoot" situation, they're already in a state that no video game can replicate.
1) They're tired. Military operations are 'round-the-clock affairs. Nobody ever gets enough sleep (except for pilots);-)
2) They're nervous. Even in "routine" situations, the adrenaline can run pretty high. For example, while on patrols in Kismayo, Somalia, we would often encounter young men who would hide in alleyways with sticks or small lengths of pipe held behind their backs. They'd whip these things out as you approached, and each and every time, you'd have to decide in a split-second if the thing was a weapon or just a stick.
3) They're dealing with visual conditions. If it's hot and sticky, and you've been on a patrol for a long period of time, you're going to be even more tired than usual. Your long-range visual acuity can be seriously hampered by glare. Sure, you can wear sunglasses, but then you're at a disadvantage in shadows.
4) They're often overburdened with equipment. Read this: this for a few notes on how the soldier's load can affect combat performance.
5) They're dealing with sound issues. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to pinpoint gunfire's point of origin. Test it yourself: Next time you hear a jet plane overhead, time how long it takes for you to find it, then imagine someone is shooting at you while you're looking. In crowd situations, it's even worse.
6) Terrain can have a tremendous effect. Dense jungle canopy, for example, tends to make you nervous all the time (unless you grew up in in, I suppose). At the Jungle Warfare School at Ft. Sherman, Panama, we'd go on 4-6 hour patrols, and the entire time we'd be constantly on edge because our OPFOR were likely to pop up anywhere.
The problem with any form of simulation is that the further removed you get from real situations, the less likely the training is to provide any real value. In fact, even in the most realistic training environments possible,. like the NTC and JRTC, "perfect" training is impossible.
The MILES laser training system tends to reward use of concealment as cover, for example. While bushes may stop MILES lasers, they don't stop bullets. Even with disadvantages like this, there's no substitute for out in the mud, getting your ass run down and tired, stressed out, is-that-guy-gonna-kill-me-or-not, why-in-the-hell-am-I-here training.
The JRTC is an excellent example of hands-on training that works. There are many situations during a JRTC rotation in which soldiers will have to deal with "civilians" whose motives are unclear. They'll have to try and win over the population by using their brains and communicating with them. The intangibles that computer simulations simply can't replicate are all there at the JRTC.
While I understand the need to save money in training, this is a supreme case of You Get What You Pay For.
The point isn't whether WAP is a good protocol or a bad protocol. If people had truly wanted to access the Web and do all the really wonderful things WAP promised us, in spite of any technical limitations, it would have become a screaming success.
I don't want to screw around with a numeric keypad for messaging. I don't want to attempt to use a 2" screen to read the daily news. I don't have any interest in postage-stamp porn. I don't want time-delayed stock quotes. I certainly am not going to use my phone to buy anything.
I'm not alone. Most people in the US and Europe just aren't clamoring for this technology. In looking for the next big thing, the tech investment community made this enormous 800-lb. gorilla made entirely of vapor.
Sure, the Japanese dig instant messaging with their mobile phones. But they're also into animae, robot dogs, and anything that is miniaturized. Some things just don't translate. Happily, the world isn't completely homogenized yet.
Agreed - Security Council worse than ineffectual
on
Harm From The Hague
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· Score: 1
The "peacekeeping" mission in Somalia wasn't, because there was no peace to keep. Then it became a "peacemaking" operation, and we jumped right into "nation building". What a joke, a parody of a military operation. We raised people's hopes just enough to dash them. Thank you, UN!
I know for a fact that we could have gone in and done a pure "peacemaking" operation and done it well. We had several documented opportunities to act swiftly and assert control, but we failed to because we had to wait for clearance from the UN, zillions of miles away.
Same story in Bosnia. Just ask the few who survived Srebrinica. The UN commanders sat by and watched as their own troops on the ground were overwhelmed, and civilians were massacred.
A military presence controlled by a posse of non-elected, unaccountable Geneva suits is obscene.
Let the UN stick to law, economics, and poverty. But keep them out of military and security matters.
Actually, I'd say people are drawn to the promise of something they want but can't have. Seriously, when you're running a business, you can't just say "Oh, I'll just train someone to perform IS duties for our company."
Simply deciding who to trust is something that most business owners, large and small, spend an amazing amount of time at. If you don't have expertise in something, how can you judge the qualities of someone who supposedly is an expert?
You're making the assumption that businesses that chose ASPs were doing so because they were greedy. Most likely, they were concerned with survival, pure and simple. Reducing the bottom line isn't a luxury for companies, it's a necessity in a very competitive environment.
You seem to have an axe to grind against management types, which is understandable, but I think you're using a pretty broad brush to characterize all users of ASPs as stupid.
Sure, it's easy to say "what a bunch of dumbasses! They shouldn't have let someone else store their data," etc., etc.
But think of this from the business point of view. Many companies have a very hard time attracting and maintaining competent technical staff. Like any service, ASPs were really offering their expertise more than anything.
Sure, I could buy a few RAID drives down at Fry's and hook them up to my LAN, but if I were the average "computer guy" that most companies have, I wouldn't really know what I was doing.
People in some businesses were willing to put their bets on ASPs because they finally found someone who seemed to know what they were doing.
Of course, the ASP industry is just like most tech industries - there are a few geniuses, a good number of smart people, and then the lumpen proletariat who are just along for the ride.
As for free website services, you're right. You do get what you pay for. But before you hammer people for believing the hype, remember these "next great things" some of us believed in:
- Linux for the desktop will topple M$!
- Java applets will topple M$!
- The Web will overthrow big, bloated corporations!
- ICANN!
Businesspeople may not be technically savvy most of the time, and they may make stupid decisions, but that doesn't mean that they're all idiots. And they're certainly not alone in wanting to believe things that are too good to be true.
Sure, the Brits were tired of it by '79, but in the United States punk took off in the early 80s precisely because kids realized how blatantly the radio stations were being manipulated.
We all knew that the same bland, vanilla-flavored crap was being pumped out on every channel. We knew that demographics dictated that the King Biscuit Flower Hour was going to be played on every freakin' station in the nation on weekends, while we were being fed pap by Journey, et. al. during the weekdays.
When people say that punk was a rebellion against boredom, and nothing more, they're missing the point. It was a rebellion against the media control addressed in the article.
All the blather about colonial exploitation aside, wouldn't you be pissed if someone tried to trademark a word or idiom from your culture?
"Now introducing 'Dude'(tm), the linguistic innovation from Microsoft, the company that also brought you 'Buddy'(tm), 'Radical'(tm), and 'Gnarly'(tm)!!! Don't worry, you can still use these words in your head, in dreams or other thoughts, but if you use them in any written or oral form, you'll have to pay us a small usage fee."
Seriously. How does Eazel expect to make *money*.. you know, the stuff that companies run on. This is not a troll, I'm seriously confused about how Eazel is supposed to grow, let alone survive, as a company.
Great technology is one thing, but staying alive in business is a totally different animal.
First - Windows Media Services is a great way to go if you want to continue Microsoft's hegemony on the desktop. Competition is good.
Second - Last I heard, Real was charging $2,000+ for Real Server 8. That may be cheap to you, but it isn't to me.
Third - Darwin was not written for the Macinosh, it was built on BSD and was never intended to be used solely on PowerPC hardware.
Fourth - If you're down on apps that are configured through text files, perhaps you're not really very familiar with this thing called UNIX, which happens to use a text files all over the place for configuration. Ever heard of Apache?
Fifth - Speaking of web server platforms running on the Mac, maybe you've heard of Apache, WebTen, WebStar...
Sixth - "free with the purchase of Windows 2000" says it all.
Absolutely true - good management will help smooth out the interaction between business/marketing types and technical folks.
My primary point was that without marketing and business types, technical types would be jobless. The marketers need someone to build the products they market, but the engineers need someone to generate demand for the things they build. It's symbiotic.
Slashdot Mirror
For those of us who don't have all kinds of space, the Cube was an excellent idea. From what I've heard, Apple was expecting to sell a whole lot of Cubes in Japan, for example.
The fact that Apple mispriced the Cube, making the G4 tower a much more cost-effective bet, and that they mistimed it by releasing it before OS X was available, doesn't take away from the fact that they had the right idea in a small form-factor CPU that actually looked nice.
Quite true, and I do the same thing (perhaps with a few variations ;-), but what I was getting at is that in the random, non-yet-defined-and-filtered info, there is sometimes some good stuff. I fear that we're in danger of becoming a world of narrow specialists, none of whom have anything approaching a Renaissance view of the world.
It's not that there is too much information out there, it's that the difficulty in sorting the wheat from the chaff forces us to limit ourselves.
For example, I don't watch TV news any more, because I know that there may be 1.5 minutes worth of "good" information provided to me in a given half hour, but I don't want to waste the time necessary to sit there and absorb all of the other crap they're sending my way.
But that also means that I'm missing 45 minutes of valuable information every month. Even when we use more refined filtering techniques (such as viewing comments in /. by score), there are still many chunks of information that are not "good". But then, there's no way for me to assign normative value to information until I view it, is there?
Sure, I can choose to filter all of my news so that it only relates to primate research in Guyana. But then what if some really interesting "good" piece of info about related research in the human sociology field came up, and I missed it because of my predetermined filtering habits?
Regardless of how you define "good" information, even though it does invite further investigation, the trickiest part is still to find that "good" information without throwing out information that doesn't have an immediate associative value to you but could still turn out to be of value once investigated.
what'll we see next?
Business Week: "Bill Gates - No Longer Our Hero"
ABC News: "Next up - Why Soundbite Journalism Sucks"
ZDNet: ... uh... well... I don't want to push my luck. ;-) Guess I'll just count my blessings.
BTW, I hear Disney has a new documentary out about Atlantis. You may want to check it out.
"the next version wil be a lot less *nix-y". Uh. Not likely, they've pinned their future on OS X and its BSD foundation.
The graphic artists in your office who downgraded, its probably because Adobe has been slow off the mark in Carbonizing their apps. If they're like most graphic artists, they are dead in the water without Illustrator and Photoshop. "Low level access" to their computers has nothing to do with it. OS X protects users from having to do anything at the command-line. It's a different user experience than OS 9, but it's certainly not giving them anything like the complexity associated with the average Linux installation.
Apple would not have done better by continuing with OS 9. They've squeezed as much as they can out of a very old OS with no protected memory, no preemptive multitasking, and limited networking power. Not to embrace *NIX would have been suicide.
As for wanting "low-level access", a lot of Mac users do want it, but those that don't want it don't have to bother with it. Gee, what a concept!
Glad to hear you didn't jump to Intel. :-)
Dell is supposedly moving into the services business. H-P has (so far unsuccessfully) been attempting the same thing.
IBM has (successfully) moved into the services business, but only because they were already diversified enough to make the move.
The trend isn't new. As long ago as 1999, the writing was on the wall. The problem is, most of these hardware OEMs are going to have a difficult time making the transition. They're used to competing on price, not on service. The OEM business is brutally competitive in the price arena, but let's be honest, most PC clone makers are not really innovating. All they're doing is trying to squeeze inefficiency out of manufacturing and distribution, making money on very thin margins.
Entering services will be difficult for Compaq, just as it has been for Dell, H-P, and all the other OEMs that are jumping on the bandwagon. Compete on price alone at your own peril.
Alpha engineers have been jumping ship to AMD, and Intel knows how valuable engineers are (remember, they poached Motorola engineers) to the competition.
So who is the competition? Intel already took much of Motorola's brain trust, and Motorola keeps screwing up. IBM continues to do well with PowerPC, but that's a niche market and Intel probably figures they'll take down IBM's PowerPC later.
No, the competition here is certainly AMD. With AMD's stated goal of moving into the enterprise market starting to bear fruit, Intel has got to be a bit scared. As they say, "only the paranoid survive."
Other posts have mentioned how Yahoo! started as a directory. Remember Lycos? Search engine gone wrong. Remember AltaVista? Serach engine gone bad. Remember Excite? Search engine gone totally wrong.
These companies didn't all start with the intention of becoming bloated portals, but they wound up that way because there was a compelling business case that forced them to seek other methods of building revenue.
How is Google going to be different?
An IPO is primarily a means for a company to raise large amounts of cash with which to take the company up to the next level. That's the traditional case for an IPO, at least. In the past few years, the IPO has become a means of generating enough cash to build a company from thin air. Blame the companies all you want, but investors who didn't pay attention to the underlying mechanism of the IPO should take the blame just as well.
In the case of Google, I absolutely love it as search engine, but I'm not convinced I should love it as an investment. Let's hope Google is contemplating an IPO for the right reasons, and not as a means of staving off death.
I was there with my battallion from the 10th MTN Division in 1991, and I can tell you that by the time most soldiers actually get into a "shoot/no-shoot" situation, they're already in a state that no video game can replicate.
1) They're tired. Military operations are 'round-the-clock affairs. Nobody ever gets enough sleep (except for pilots) ;-)
2) They're nervous. Even in "routine" situations, the adrenaline can run pretty high. For example, while on patrols in Kismayo, Somalia, we would often encounter young men who would hide in alleyways with sticks or small lengths of pipe held behind their backs. They'd whip these things out as you approached, and each and every time, you'd have to decide in a split-second if the thing was a weapon or just a stick.
3) They're dealing with visual conditions. If it's hot and sticky, and you've been on a patrol for a long period of time, you're going to be even more tired than usual. Your long-range visual acuity can be seriously hampered by glare. Sure, you can wear sunglasses, but then you're at a disadvantage in shadows.
4) They're often overburdened with equipment. Read this: this for a few notes on how the soldier's load can affect combat performance.
5) They're dealing with sound issues. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to pinpoint gunfire's point of origin. Test it yourself: Next time you hear a jet plane overhead, time how long it takes for you to find it, then imagine someone is shooting at you while you're looking. In crowd situations, it's even worse.
6) Terrain can have a tremendous effect. Dense jungle canopy, for example, tends to make you nervous all the time (unless you grew up in in, I suppose). At the Jungle Warfare School at Ft. Sherman, Panama, we'd go on 4-6 hour patrols, and the entire time we'd be constantly on edge because our OPFOR were likely to pop up anywhere.
The problem with any form of simulation is that the further removed you get from real situations, the less likely the training is to provide any real value. In fact, even in the most realistic training environments possible,. like the NTC and JRTC, "perfect" training is impossible.
The MILES laser training system tends to reward use of concealment as cover, for example. While bushes may stop MILES lasers, they don't stop bullets. Even with disadvantages like this, there's no substitute for out in the mud, getting your ass run down and tired, stressed out, is-that-guy-gonna-kill-me-or-not, why-in-the-hell-am-I-here training.
The JRTC is an excellent example of hands-on training that works. There are many situations during a JRTC rotation in which soldiers will have to deal with "civilians" whose motives are unclear. They'll have to try and win over the population by using their brains and communicating with them. The intangibles that computer simulations simply can't replicate are all there at the JRTC.
While I understand the need to save money in training, this is a supreme case of You Get What You Pay For.
"Gee, what kernel is that?"
"Oh, it's the amazing, slices, dices, does it all more securely and faster Tux 2.0! Run out and get one today!"
The folks at Redomond are hiring PR flacks, maybe they should talk to the Tux people. ;-)
I don't want to screw around with a numeric keypad for messaging. I don't want to attempt to use a 2" screen to read the daily news. I don't have any interest in postage-stamp porn. I don't want time-delayed stock quotes. I certainly am not going to use my phone to buy anything.
I'm not alone. Most people in the US and Europe just aren't clamoring for this technology. In looking for the next big thing, the tech investment community made this enormous 800-lb. gorilla made entirely of vapor.
Sure, the Japanese dig instant messaging with their mobile phones. But they're also into animae, robot dogs, and anything that is miniaturized. Some things just don't translate. Happily, the world isn't completely homogenized yet.
I know for a fact that we could have gone in and done a pure "peacemaking" operation and done it well. We had several documented opportunities to act swiftly and assert control, but we failed to because we had to wait for clearance from the UN, zillions of miles away.
Same story in Bosnia. Just ask the few who survived Srebrinica. The UN commanders sat by and watched as their own troops on the ground were overwhelmed, and civilians were massacred.
A military presence controlled by a posse of non-elected, unaccountable Geneva suits is obscene.
Let the UN stick to law, economics, and poverty. But keep them out of military and security matters.
Actually, I'd say people are drawn to the promise of something they want but can't have. Seriously, when you're running a business, you can't just say "Oh, I'll just train someone to perform IS duties for our company."
Simply deciding who to trust is something that most business owners, large and small, spend an amazing amount of time at. If you don't have expertise in something, how can you judge the qualities of someone who supposedly is an expert?
You're making the assumption that businesses that chose ASPs were doing so because they were greedy. Most likely, they were concerned with survival, pure and simple. Reducing the bottom line isn't a luxury for companies, it's a necessity in a very competitive environment.
You seem to have an axe to grind against management types, which is understandable, but I think you're using a pretty broad brush to characterize all users of ASPs as stupid.
But think of this from the business point of view. Many companies have a very hard time attracting and maintaining competent technical staff. Like any service, ASPs were really offering their expertise more than anything.
Sure, I could buy a few RAID drives down at Fry's and hook them up to my LAN, but if I were the average "computer guy" that most companies have, I wouldn't really know what I was doing.
People in some businesses were willing to put their bets on ASPs because they finally found someone who seemed to know what they were doing.
Of course, the ASP industry is just like most tech industries - there are a few geniuses, a good number of smart people, and then the lumpen proletariat who are just along for the ride.
As for free website services, you're right. You do get what you pay for. But before you hammer people for believing the hype, remember these "next great things" some of us believed in:
- Linux for the desktop will topple M$!
- Java applets will topple M$!
- The Web will overthrow big, bloated corporations!
- ICANN!
Businesspeople may not be technically savvy most of the time, and they may make stupid decisions, but that doesn't mean that they're all idiots. And they're certainly not alone in wanting to believe things that are too good to be true.
and they skewer everyone, not just MS.
We all knew that the same bland, vanilla-flavored crap was being pumped out on every channel. We knew that demographics dictated that the King Biscuit Flower Hour was going to be played on every freakin' station in the nation on weekends, while we were being fed pap by Journey, et. al. during the weekdays.
When people say that punk was a rebellion against boredom, and nothing more, they're missing the point. It was a rebellion against the media control addressed in the article.
In closing, I leave you with some words from the Dead Kennedys' historic performance at the Bammies.
All the blather about colonial exploitation aside, wouldn't you be pissed if someone tried to trademark a word or idiom from your culture?
"Now introducing 'Dude'(tm), the linguistic innovation from Microsoft, the company that also brought you 'Buddy'(tm), 'Radical'(tm), and 'Gnarly'(tm)!!! Don't worry, you can still use these words in your head, in dreams or other thoughts, but if you use them in any written or oral form, you'll have to pay us a small usage fee."
Oh.. you're talking about THAT kind of control panel. ;-)
Great technology is one thing, but staying alive in business is a totally different animal.
uh.. ok.. I'm not sure what that has to do with Katz going to Mongolia, but thanks for the history note.
Second - Last I heard, Real was charging $2,000+ for Real Server 8. That may be cheap to you, but it isn't to me.
Third - Darwin was not written for the Macinosh, it was built on BSD and was never intended to be used solely on PowerPC hardware.
Fourth - If you're down on apps that are configured through text files, perhaps you're not really very familiar with this thing called UNIX, which happens to use a text files all over the place for configuration. Ever heard of Apache?
Fifth - Speaking of web server platforms running on the Mac, maybe you've heard of Apache, WebTen, WebStar...
Sixth - "free with the purchase of Windows 2000" says it all.
My primary point was that without marketing and business types, technical types would be jobless. The marketers need someone to build the products they market, but the engineers need someone to generate demand for the things they build. It's symbiotic.