Why bother with a tiny little article from WSJ when you have an entire website dedicated to dot-bomb companies? FuckedCompany.com was a big hit during the dot-bomb era, everyone I knew used the site to make bets on which company would get screwed next. They should be the ones authoring the story. They probably have all the great insider information on all the dot-bombs. If it weren't for NDAs, they could probably publish a top selling book with all that rumor-mill information they've got stored away.
As far as Rolex is concerned, I don't think you will ever see them dilute their name by moving downmarket - just like you'll never see a Ferrari or Porsche econobox (everyone knew Ferrari was a Fiat company and Porsche had close ties with VW but they were very careful to keep the lines distinct in both cases - to avoid brand dilution). Lotus did that (moved downmarket and forsook the upmarket customer) for a couple of years when they killed off the Esprit, offering only the Elise and the Exige, and look where they ended up - scrambling to put the Esprit back into production because they lost an entry in the performance car market (I've never seen the new Exige or Elise on the road but see quite a few Esprits).
I really don't want to comment further, because it does not make sense if you have not read "Innovator's Solution" by Dr. Christiensen. Rolex would never dilute their name by releasing a lower end product. What they would do is create a separate company with a separate brand to combat the lower market. These ideas & concepts are not mine, they are ideas of Dr. Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business school. If you feel his ideas are inadequate, please complain to him instead, but please before you complain, read his book so you know what's going on here.
Uhm, that was the point. AMD & Cyrix both had "crappy" low end processors that Intel really didn't care about because their more expensive processors had higher margins, but they did not see that AMD & Cyrix were producing the so-called disruptive technology that would could force the upper market to disappear. For example, DEC made minicomputers that were better and better but never focused on the personal computer which was significantly underpowered at the time of introduction. Had they focused on creating a separate brand to compete with the lower end "crappy product market" they may have saved their higher end market as well. If you look at Toyota in the early 1980's, they created crappy cars that only college students would want to own. The expensive automakers took no notice because these cars were not competing in the same price markets as theirs. And of course, if you look at Toyota today, they've got expensive brands like Lexus.
Back to your original point, Seiko, Casio, and Timex all had crappy watches when they brought their first products to market. Had companies like Rolex created a new low-end brand to compete with the low end market, Seiko would have probably not grown to the size that it is today. Such business strategies are discussed in Dr. Christiensen's new book, "The Innovator's Solution". It's the same reason Intel created a separate company/brand to focus on the Celeron product to compete with AMD & Cyrix. At the time, AMD & Cyrix were eating up Intel at the low end and Intel took no notice because it actually made their high end products produce greater margins. The instant Intel started competing at the low end, they basically forced brands like Cyrix into non-existence (bought out by AMD).
This is extremely similar to Seiko's crappy watches, Toyota's crappy cars, or Intel's crappy computers back in the 70's & 80's. Clayton Christiensen calls it disruptive technologies. You can read more about this phenomenon in his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma". Dr. Christiensen gave a talk at OSCON2005 (I think) that roughly described the contents of the book if you're too lazy to read the whole book, download the podcast at itconversations.com (called Capturing the Upside) and see how cheap crappy (yet decent) products eventually turn the tide. Companies in the past have avoided the cheap low end market simply because they don't want their name associated with it, and plus the margins at the high end sector is usually much more appealing to investors. Dr. Christiensen's ideas were one of the reasons Andy Grove created the Intel Celeron brand to compete with the extremely low end market.
Those chairs are actually pretty cheap now, in comparison to other office chairs. You'd think that the fabric chairs would be hundreds cheaper, but actually the fabric simple-looking office chair that is in my office right now has a list price of $900. The Aeron chair can be bought new for $800 these days.
Math is probably the wrong term anyway. The kind of "math" most software developers use is something along the lines of complexity theory. Designing code so that it can still solve problems in almost linear time.
AHEM. You can setup a full blown system using Ruby on Rails + RAGI (Ruby Asterisk Gateway Interface). I created one from scratch and in under a week I had a system that communicated via Jabber, persisted data with Rails, and called people taking some poll information. I did it for my WoW guild so that all the guild members could be notified when one of the green dragons spawned (Lethon, Emeriss, etc). The phone call would ask the user if they would be able to come online, and that information would be then persisted.
This took 1 week, with unit tests, web framework, jabber framework, and asterisk functionality. Check out our guild, The Transcendent on Medivh:-D
Yes. However, RubyGems is much more "integrated" into the operating system than the Java equivalents. Plus, Ruby developers seem to be more likely to create a gem for their project than java developers creating an equivalent package type.
Just because Ruby is a dynamically typed language, it does not make the language a "scripting language". Look at the Smalltalk/Squeak system. The Squeak system has probably near 1-2 million lines of code. I would not call the Squeak system a "scripting language". Just because historically statically typed languages have been all compile-time languages, that does not mean in the future that there may be dynamically typed compile-time languages.
Unfortunately, when you get deep into hibernate development (and have around 100 persistable object types) doing the database design in xdoclet mappings just doesn't cut it. You have an urge to just go to the database and do it yourself. Hibernate tries to (rightfully) hide a ton of behind-the-scene legwork which only contributes to productivity on large object models.
One of the things I really liked about Ruby was the RubyGems project. It's sorta similar to Maven in the Java world in that it will go out and fetch additional package dependencies for software. I think Java really needs some kind of semi-centralized repository of open source packages so that one does not have to go through the trouble of reconfiguring packages all the time. My current project at work uses over 30 lgpl licensed projects and it's one big pain in the butt to upgrade these packages all the time. We software people need apt-get!
One thing I like about Rails (or Ruby in general) is that you can have a relatively short turn-around time since Ruby is interpreted. In the old Java & Hibernate world, I'd have to run xdoclet for every new field in the database, re-compile with javac every time I added more functional code (either in the model or controller), or reload tomcat every now and then.
However with Ruby + Rails + Ruby & Rails Eclipse plugins, I almost never need to sit around for more than 2 seconds to see my generated output. I can quickly make a quick modification in model code and immediately see the effect by pressing the reload button on the web browser. I'll also say, the default debugging output of Rails is a lot easier to read than the default debugging output generated by Tomcat & faulty jsps.
After working with Hibernate for a good 3 years, I can say that it is sometimes nice to develop your database schema first rather than develop object mappings that will generate the schema. The whole "automated naming convention" also removes the possibility of a neophyte programmer to come along and create some ugly get/set methods with side effects.
Liquid cooling can be cheap too! Instead of wasting all that cash on expensive rigs, just get your parts from the auto store & home depot. The only thing you'll have to buy are the cpu/vga water blocks. Everything else can by bought via home depot. I bought a $50 1985 Honda radiator on ebay (new) and retrofitted it to 4 CPUs and 2 video cards. There's also a 5 gallon jug of water connected to the system. I used 2 $40 500gph pond pumps from petsmart to pump the water through all the tubing. The most expensive part of all of this is probably the water blocks which will usually run you about $70 per cpu. I'm using 2 Koolance blocks, and 4 Zalman blocks. The single radiator is large enough that it doesn't need a fan to reduce the temperature 10 degrees celsius. The car radiator isn't the prettiest thing in the world, but at least it's got more surface area than any other passive water cooling system commercially available. I'm just using basic distilled water.
I know this thread has long since died, but I thought I should make this comment anyway. NTP consisted of 2 guys, the inventor and the lawyer. The inventor worked at a different company where he tried to make his idea work. It sort of worked, but never caught on. A few years down the road RIM picks up the idea and the inventor asks RIM for a license on his patent. RIM disagrees and moves on. Later on, a court asks RIM to pay 53 million and RIM ignores them, And now finally the court asks RIM to pay 600 million and RIM finally gives in. This isn't a story about some greedy bastard suing some big corporation. Besides, the guy that finally got the money is already dead. He died in 2004. This was not a case about incredible greed, it was a case about right and wrong.
Either way, one could say Google is violating copyright laws by caching content of the website. Suppose someone creates a book on the web, and Google randomly cached it. Whether it was deliberate or not, Google violated copyright laws. This is where I think Lessig has the right idea about how copyright should be handled in this country, we're all becoming a bunch of anal assholes that are ready to sue anyone that even has links to our content.
Spore is not black and white. Besides, given Will Wright's background, I don't think he will produce a failed game. Everything he has done in the past has been borderline amazing. He's one sharp cookie and although I don't think Spores will have the success of The Sims, it will still be at least as popular as his other Sim-type games.
Ah, wonderful. Another clueless poster with no clue what the whole RIM lawsuit was all about. Why didn't RIM settle before when NTP asked for 4 million back in 2001? And why did RIM decide to go through all the trouble of lying to a federal judge, paying off a congressman to invalidate a patent, giving away hundreds of blackberries to congressmen to make a claim that turning off the service will be bad for the government, when they could have settled all this mess 5 years ago by paying some guy 4 million? Did you know that RIM was suing other competitors for a patent that was orginally held by this one man? I'm sorry, but I don't think NTP and it's investors will be rotting in hell... it will be people like you who side with criminal theives.
It's pretty unfortunate that most people (like yourself) have absolutely no fucking clue what the whole dispute was all about. But hey, I guess it's slashdot, what was I expecting?
Maybe you're doing something wrong. I have been able to send emails just fine to gmail accounts just by changing the extension. You sure it's not something on your end that is blocking it? maybe your SMTP gateway doesn't allow binaries of certain types.
You know the people in china are saying the exact same thing! Why do I have to learn english to type a URL? According to Wikipedia, there are roughly 3 times as many chinese speaking individuals compared to english speaking individuals, and since China consists of mostly chinese speaking individuals, wouldn't it make sense to have TLDs encoded in chinese? It would almost be as if we had to use German-encoded urls for everything. (there are roughly 3 times as many english speaking individuals compared to german speaking individuals)
Slashdot Mirror
if you want to source, go to jabber.org and download one of the many existing clients.
Well, my bet is the site will get a lot more traffic, if we have another bubble burst. I'm guessing we'll have one a bit later, perhaps 2008 or 2010?
Why bother with a tiny little article from WSJ when you have an entire website dedicated to dot-bomb companies? FuckedCompany.com was a big hit during the dot-bomb era, everyone I knew used the site to make bets on which company would get screwed next. They should be the ones authoring the story. They probably have all the great insider information on all the dot-bombs. If it weren't for NDAs, they could probably publish a top selling book with all that rumor-mill information they've got stored away.
So would they be able to replicate the full experience in just 3 days?
As far as Rolex is concerned, I don't think you will ever see them dilute their name by moving downmarket - just like you'll never see a Ferrari or Porsche econobox (everyone knew Ferrari was a Fiat company and Porsche had close ties with VW but they were very careful to keep the lines distinct in both cases - to avoid brand dilution). Lotus did that (moved downmarket and forsook the upmarket customer) for a couple of years when they killed off the Esprit, offering only the Elise and the Exige, and look where they ended up - scrambling to put the Esprit back into production because they lost an entry in the performance car market (I've never seen the new Exige or Elise on the road but see quite a few Esprits).
I really don't want to comment further, because it does not make sense if you have not read "Innovator's Solution" by Dr. Christiensen. Rolex would never dilute their name by releasing a lower end product. What they would do is create a separate company with a separate brand to combat the lower market. These ideas & concepts are not mine, they are ideas of Dr. Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business school. If you feel his ideas are inadequate, please complain to him instead, but please before you complain, read his book so you know what's going on here.
Uhm, that was the point. AMD & Cyrix both had "crappy" low end processors that Intel really didn't care about because their more expensive processors had higher margins, but they did not see that AMD & Cyrix were producing the so-called disruptive technology that would could force the upper market to disappear. For example, DEC made minicomputers that were better and better but never focused on the personal computer which was significantly underpowered at the time of introduction. Had they focused on creating a separate brand to compete with the lower end "crappy product market" they may have saved their higher end market as well. If you look at Toyota in the early 1980's, they created crappy cars that only college students would want to own. The expensive automakers took no notice because these cars were not competing in the same price markets as theirs. And of course, if you look at Toyota today, they've got expensive brands like Lexus.
Back to your original point, Seiko, Casio, and Timex all had crappy watches when they brought their first products to market. Had companies like Rolex created a new low-end brand to compete with the low end market, Seiko would have probably not grown to the size that it is today. Such business strategies are discussed in Dr. Christiensen's new book, "The Innovator's Solution". It's the same reason Intel created a separate company/brand to focus on the Celeron product to compete with AMD & Cyrix. At the time, AMD & Cyrix were eating up Intel at the low end and Intel took no notice because it actually made their high end products produce greater margins. The instant Intel started competing at the low end, they basically forced brands like Cyrix into non-existence (bought out by AMD).
This is extremely similar to Seiko's crappy watches, Toyota's crappy cars, or Intel's crappy computers back in the 70's & 80's. Clayton Christiensen calls it disruptive technologies. You can read more about this phenomenon in his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma". Dr. Christiensen gave a talk at OSCON2005 (I think) that roughly described the contents of the book if you're too lazy to read the whole book, download the podcast at itconversations.com (called Capturing the Upside) and see how cheap crappy (yet decent) products eventually turn the tide. Companies in the past have avoided the cheap low end market simply because they don't want their name associated with it, and plus the margins at the high end sector is usually much more appealing to investors. Dr. Christiensen's ideas were one of the reasons Andy Grove created the Intel Celeron brand to compete with the extremely low end market.
This is Kevin, your boss. You can given Karen your office supplies too. I am not going to babysit kids posting on Slashdot during working hours.
Those chairs are actually pretty cheap now, in comparison to other office chairs. You'd think that the fabric chairs would be hundreds cheaper, but actually the fabric simple-looking office chair that is in my office right now has a list price of $900. The Aeron chair can be bought new for $800 these days.
Math is probably the wrong term anyway. The kind of "math" most software developers use is something along the lines of complexity theory. Designing code so that it can still solve problems in almost linear time.
AHEM. You can setup a full blown system using Ruby on Rails + RAGI (Ruby Asterisk Gateway Interface). I created one from scratch and in under a week I had a system that communicated via Jabber, persisted data with Rails, and called people taking some poll information. I did it for my WoW guild so that all the guild members could be notified when one of the green dragons spawned (Lethon, Emeriss, etc). The phone call would ask the user if they would be able to come online, and that information would be then persisted.
:-D
This took 1 week, with unit tests, web framework, jabber framework, and asterisk functionality. Check out our guild, The Transcendent on Medivh
Yes. However, RubyGems is much more "integrated" into the operating system than the Java equivalents. Plus, Ruby developers seem to be more likely to create a gem for their project than java developers creating an equivalent package type.
Just because Ruby is a dynamically typed language, it does not make the language a "scripting language". Look at the Smalltalk/Squeak system. The Squeak system has probably near 1-2 million lines of code. I would not call the Squeak system a "scripting language". Just because historically statically typed languages have been all compile-time languages, that does not mean in the future that there may be dynamically typed compile-time languages.
Unfortunately, when you get deep into hibernate development (and have around 100 persistable object types) doing the database design in xdoclet mappings just doesn't cut it. You have an urge to just go to the database and do it yourself. Hibernate tries to (rightfully) hide a ton of behind-the-scene legwork which only contributes to productivity on large object models.
One of the things I really liked about Ruby was the RubyGems project. It's sorta similar to Maven in the Java world in that it will go out and fetch additional package dependencies for software. I think Java really needs some kind of semi-centralized repository of open source packages so that one does not have to go through the trouble of reconfiguring packages all the time. My current project at work uses over 30 lgpl licensed projects and it's one big pain in the butt to upgrade these packages all the time. We software people need apt-get!
One thing I like about Rails (or Ruby in general) is that you can have a relatively short turn-around time since Ruby is interpreted. In the old Java & Hibernate world, I'd have to run xdoclet for every new field in the database, re-compile with javac every time I added more functional code (either in the model or controller), or reload tomcat every now and then.
However with Ruby + Rails + Ruby & Rails Eclipse plugins, I almost never need to sit around for more than 2 seconds to see my generated output. I can quickly make a quick modification in model code and immediately see the effect by pressing the reload button on the web browser. I'll also say, the default debugging output of Rails is a lot easier to read than the default debugging output generated by Tomcat & faulty jsps.
After working with Hibernate for a good 3 years, I can say that it is sometimes nice to develop your database schema first rather than develop object mappings that will generate the schema. The whole "automated naming convention" also removes the possibility of a neophyte programmer to come along and create some ugly get/set methods with side effects.
Ruby is a pretty nice tool, I do think it has far too much hype however. The hype is almost as bad as AJAX.
Liquid cooling can be cheap too! Instead of wasting all that cash on expensive rigs, just get your parts from the auto store & home depot. The only thing you'll have to buy are the cpu/vga water blocks. Everything else can by bought via home depot. I bought a $50 1985 Honda radiator on ebay (new) and retrofitted it to 4 CPUs and 2 video cards. There's also a 5 gallon jug of water connected to the system. I used 2 $40 500gph pond pumps from petsmart to pump the water through all the tubing. The most expensive part of all of this is probably the water blocks which will usually run you about $70 per cpu. I'm using 2 Koolance blocks, and 4 Zalman blocks. The single radiator is large enough that it doesn't need a fan to reduce the temperature 10 degrees celsius. The car radiator isn't the prettiest thing in the world, but at least it's got more surface area than any other passive water cooling system commercially available. I'm just using basic distilled water.
I know this thread has long since died, but I thought I should make this comment anyway. NTP consisted of 2 guys, the inventor and the lawyer. The inventor worked at a different company where he tried to make his idea work. It sort of worked, but never caught on. A few years down the road RIM picks up the idea and the inventor asks RIM for a license on his patent. RIM disagrees and moves on. Later on, a court asks RIM to pay 53 million and RIM ignores them, And now finally the court asks RIM to pay 600 million and RIM finally gives in. This isn't a story about some greedy bastard suing some big corporation. Besides, the guy that finally got the money is already dead. He died in 2004. This was not a case about incredible greed, it was a case about right and wrong.
Either way, one could say Google is violating copyright laws by caching content of the website. Suppose someone creates a book on the web, and Google randomly cached it. Whether it was deliberate or not, Google violated copyright laws. This is where I think Lessig has the right idea about how copyright should be handled in this country, we're all becoming a bunch of anal assholes that are ready to sue anyone that even has links to our content.
Spore is not black and white. Besides, given Will Wright's background, I don't think he will produce a failed game. Everything he has done in the past has been borderline amazing. He's one sharp cookie and although I don't think Spores will have the success of The Sims, it will still be at least as popular as his other Sim-type games.
Ah, wonderful. Another clueless poster with no clue what the whole RIM lawsuit was all about. Why didn't RIM settle before when NTP asked for 4 million back in 2001? And why did RIM decide to go through all the trouble of lying to a federal judge, paying off a congressman to invalidate a patent, giving away hundreds of blackberries to congressmen to make a claim that turning off the service will be bad for the government, when they could have settled all this mess 5 years ago by paying some guy 4 million? Did you know that RIM was suing other competitors for a patent that was orginally held by this one man? I'm sorry, but I don't think NTP and it's investors will be rotting in hell... it will be people like you who side with criminal theives.
It's pretty unfortunate that most people (like yourself) have absolutely no fucking clue what the whole dispute was all about. But hey, I guess it's slashdot, what was I expecting?
Maybe you're doing something wrong. I have been able to send emails just fine to gmail accounts just by changing the extension. You sure it's not something on your end that is blocking it? maybe your SMTP gateway doesn't allow binaries of certain types.
You know the people in china are saying the exact same thing! Why do I have to learn english to type a URL? According to Wikipedia, there are roughly 3 times as many chinese speaking individuals compared to english speaking individuals, and since China consists of mostly chinese speaking individuals, wouldn't it make sense to have TLDs encoded in chinese? It would almost be as if we had to use German-encoded urls for everything. (there are roughly 3 times as many english speaking individuals compared to german speaking individuals)