Engineer2Entrepreneur

Do you help the computer or does it help you?

Link: Critical Section - Shorthorn.

I remember Windows 386 (do you?), and Windows 3.0, and 3.1, and 3.11, and 95, and 95b, and 98, and 98SP.� And ME.� I remember NT 3.1 (do you?), and NT 4, and Windows 2000.� Now we have XP and 2003.� All through this evolution, Windows has solved three main problems, or should I say, has provided to software developers the means to create solutions for three main problems.� First, it enables development of reasonable and consistent graphical user interfaces.� Second, it enables multiple large programs to be run concurrently.� And third, it enables machines to be networked together.� Everything else - device management, multimedia, security, etc. - is peripheral.� (That ought to get me some email!)

I remember Win 1.0, a horrible monstrosity my roommate bought and regretted fairly quickly.

I spent most of this weekend updating my XP box, what a pain that was. Because once it was done updating and after the restart it no longer saw my network. Argh. I wasted 4 hours troubleshooting that.

I have long considered Windows boxes to be best deployed as single application machines. One for video, another for games, and another for productivity. I managed and used PCs for a long time before I got my Macs and the change is profound.

I've felt for the longest time that I had to help the PC do the job I asked it to do. I am helping the computer. But once I figured out the Mac it was the other way around, the computer is helping me.

On the PC I constantly have to make sure nothing is running that could interfere with what I am trying to do and maybe it will work all the way. And if I am having it burn a disk or something heavy I just leave it alone until it is done. It just feels as though trying to get anything done on a PC is just that trying, but not often succeeding.

With my Mac I just keep doing anything I feel like doing. Having stiff running in the background is no big deal until I end up having a lot of applications running and my old hard drive filled up with virtual memory. A bigger faster harddrive made a big difference in performance.

Creating a network between a pair of macs was a piece of cake, and adding a wireless base-station was as easy as pie.

Can MS make a Shorthorn? I am not sure, they have a huge base to cater to, and the inertia of backwards compatibility is a big drain on them. They would have a better chance with extending their Win CE product line, since it has a more limited hardware requirement. Going the Apple route with limited hardware support might make it easier.

Computers are commodities, but they are not yet appliances. Hopefully the Xbox 360 and the Pocket PC products will be developed into something useful someday.

Slacker Manager: The Carnival of the Capitalists for May 30th '05

Link: Slacker Manager: The Carnival of the Capitalists for May 30th '05.

Check out mad anthony's post on trying to bring a new SUV into the US.

Specializing your LIfe Away

Link: Gautam Ghosh on Management: The scourge of specialization? is commenting on Dave Pollard's post on 12 ways to think differently.

We live in an age of specialization, where we are encouraged to narrow our interests and our activities, to focus and limit ourselves to doing things at which we are very competent.

And that reminded me of this great quote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert Heinlein

Specialization at work is a good thing, we are living in a world that was created by the division of labor. People specialize doing what they do best, so others can specialize at what they do best and we trade currency to make it all come together and generally we are happy.

I once knew a guy who had done very well for himself, he had specialized in nuts and bolts, he had memorized the specifications for thousands of nuts and bolts, people would call him to find out what they needed for their particular application and he charged quite a bit to give out that information but still less then doing all the comparisons themselves. it was a good thing he retired before the Web, because not anyone can do the same thing from home in less then an hour via the Internet.

But change is ongoing. Like buggy whip manufacturers at the beginning of the Automobile Age, sure the business was going to last a few years but before too long it was gone.

Not all that long ago you could expect to work for one company all your life, now having 2-3 separate careers is not unusual.

Outsourcing is another big pressure on workers today. Mobile work, or work that can be done anywhere, is going to places with the least cost of overhead. It is also forcing many people to become Free Agents.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a move out of the comfort zone, and new skills will have to be learned.

But The most important thing to realize is to specialize in work is not to specialize in life. You need to mingle with other ideas and people. New ideas don't come into an industry from inside the industry but from outside it. Other industries face similar problems and find solutions, apply them to your own.

Carnival of the Capitalist

Link: Ideologic L.L.c..

This has a few good ones.

The Music Phone mating dance

Link: Welcome to 2005, the Year of the iPod Garage.

This is a possibility that mobile phones and portable music players will converge since they are both fundamentally audio devices. I was surprised when they started putting cameras on phones before a music player since it made more sense to me to keep audio applications together.

AnyLetter: Carnival of the Capitalists

Link: AnyLetter: Carnival of the Capitalists.

Carnival Of the Capitalist is up. The best article I read was from
Marketing eYe

The best advice I ever got was from an elephant trainer in the jungle outside Bangalore. I was doing a hike through the jungle as a tourist. I saw these large elephants tethered to a small stake.

I asked him "How can you keep such a large elephant tied to such a small stake?"

He said "When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stake and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again."

That parable reminds me that we have to go for what we think we’re fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we’ve been in the past.

Are we holding ourselves back?

The Object at Hand - Hearing Aid

Link: The Object at Hand - Hearing Aid.

Much of the richness of life is absorbed through the ear. And much of the clash and chaos too. From a mother's lullaby to the drumroll of thunder from an approaching storm to the cacophony of car horns in a traffic jam, the sounds of our lives help define our lives.

You don't realize how powerful sounds can be until they are gone. I was listening to the radio for once and the local PBS station was playing an opera and it was good but I was really irritable until the news came on and then changed to some chamber music, I became all relaxed. It was quite profound.

During a blackout all the little sounds, a computer fan buzz there, a refrigerator compressor chugging there, a humming transformer somewhere else, go away, and then a quiet house goes silent and it is amazing the difference.

I don't think I'll miss the whine of computer fans if they ever go away, or the swish of a dishwasher without insulation but I think I would miss this if when it goes away.

Storm warning: using your iPod to avoid disaster

Link: Welcome to 2005, the Year of the iPod Garage.

Last night I was awoken at 1:22 am by a very bright flash of lightning and window-rattling blast of thunder. Welcome to spring in Colorado.

While pulling the plugs to the computer and other electronic gear, I was thinking that making some backups wouldn't be a bad idea. It isn't that I don't have surge protectors, but if I have the chance I would rather not have the computer exposed to a lightning strike.

My latest article is up at iPod Garage.

No need to worry about store loyalty cards

Link: Brigadoon, Local Stores, Millions, Guess Who, 1812, Bering Strait - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything.

This is simply amazing. Here these stores have a computer inventory system that allows them to know exactly how many of each item they're selling in every store. My purchases were constant enough to establish a pattern. If they had cared to go to the bother, they could have kept supplying me with the number of cartons I usually buy.

Heck, if they'd only bothered to say to me, "Mr. Card, you're only buying four of these a month, and we can only afford to stock them if we sell eight, because they come eight to the box," I would have bought all eight! (I take my ice cream seriously.)

In other words, with the help of computers, every Harris-Teeter or Fresh Market in the world could be the perfect neighborhood store, always stocking what the customers want to buy, in the quantities they need.

Instead, they make chainwide decisions: "We're only selling fourteen of these a month in Greensboro, so we'll take it out of the stores," instead of noticing that ten of those fourteen are all selling in one store, and allowing the customers who shop there to keep buying it.

When the store loyalty cards came out people freaked over how they could be tracked.

Obviously it is not a big problem because they just don't care.

A store could do some wonderful things with this technology. With a special products section, they could quickly customize their stock for the neighborhood they serve and do great things for profits. There are only two concepts to apply here

The first concept is straightforward enough, stock what people actually buy. You have the records in your database, use them.

The second is bring in related stock that they might buy and see if they do. You could do special endcap promotions or just group things together. Then see what actually happens.

A Penny For...: Carnival of the Capitalists

Link: A Penny For...: Carnival of the Capitalists.

Carnival of the Capitalist is up And there are some very interesting entries.

Lead and Gold has a great point on how Jack Welsh has to break GE to drag it kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

Talking Story has a great little article on the Daily 5 Minutes that is something I want to start doing. The best thing is that with only 5 minutes there's no time to beat around the bush. This is part 2.

Gautam Ghosh makes some fine points on corporate training. Like most bureaucracies they don't know what they are doing.

JSLogan is one I have to disagree with. Failure is always an option, because you can't control outside forces but you can and must change the name of the game if you do want to survive. Instead of retreating you "advance in another direction" Just look at business history many of the the companies that still exist today are doing quite different work from what they started with. Look at GM they started with cars, then they would a loan company and now they are a benefits management company. Having a backup plan that you can implement means more confidence, because you do have a fall back position, you are working from a position of strength not desperation. Desperate people make stupid errors.