11–20 of 48 posts
“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html
"Confront reality and focus on execution of your product/sales plan to get competitive. No pie-in-the-sky strategizing would save your bacon if you fail to get stuff done."
Famed chef Gordon Ramsay has a show called "Kitchen Nightmares" where he rescues restaurants that are in trouble. There's a fair share of drama and spectacle in every episode but much of what he does is apply the same fundamental changes to every restaurant. And it's not silver bullets, it's just sound execution of basic, common sense practices. Keep the menu simple, make stuff fresh, keep the kitchen clean, keep ser…
In a DEC Press book covering the history of minicomputers (Gordon Bell was one of the authors as I recall), the most interesting observation was that the companies that survived let alone thrived in the frothy period for them were the ones that did an acceptable job of every essential thing. E.g. make great hardware but don't document it well enough, you fail. DEC's forte at the time was CPUs, most of the rest wasn't…
Alpha was (and possibly still is) one of the most elegant cpu architectures ever designed.
It just arrived too late to save DEC and that's a real pity.
DEC pretty much pioneered interactive computing and for that alone we all owe them a great deal.
It's weird how the DEC legacy got passed from company to company, now HP owns it, like an old cupboard passed on through inheritance.
Engineers went to both Intel and AMD.
Being able to engineer CPUs at that lefl is probably not the kind of skill that will see you without a job from time to time, those must be very desirable people.
“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html
Yeah, that is a pretty huge over sight. Who would want to make a reference to PE without realizing that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a DEC Press book covering the history of minicomputers (Gordon Bell was one of the authors as I recall), the most interesting observation was that the companies that survived let alone thrived in the frothy period for them were the ones that did an acceptable job of every essential thing. E.g. make great hardware but don't document it well enough, you fail. DEC's forte at the time was CPUs, most of the rest wasn't…
The end of DEC was the end of an era. Alpha was (and possibly still is) one of the most elegant cpu architectures ever designed. It just arrived too late to save DEC and that's a real pity. DEC pretty much pioneered interactive computing and for that alone we all owe them a great deal. It's weird how the DEC legacy got passed from company to company, now HP owns it, like an old cupboard passed on through inheritance.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that is a pretty huge over sight. Who would want to make a reference to PE without realizing that?
Because he intentionally made the reference to PE to pick up on PE's context. He "sampled" PE, he didn't "sample" Thomas N. Todd.
In the article he mentions his employees wanting to avoid a direct fight, that is not the same as switching sides!
If you listen to the quote in context it's obvious Todd's main point is not not fighting but joining the other side (He stretches out "swwwwwiiiiiitch").
The author's not a journalist by trade so I'll cut him some slack, he's ignorant rather than lazy.
I wonder if the last point is why buyers tend to do worse than sellers in M&A. Of course buyers chasing silver bullets probably helps HN readers on the margin. :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The end of DEC was the end of an era. Alpha was (and possibly still is) one of the most elegant cpu architectures ever designed. It just arrived too late to save DEC and that's a real pity. DEC pretty much pioneered interactive computing and for that alone we all owe them a great deal. It's weird how the DEC legacy got passed from company to company, now HP owns it, like an old cupboard passed on through inheritance.…
The DEC Alpha legacy actually wound up at AMD, in the form of the early generation Athlon processors. HP abandoned the Alpha but AMD snapped up the core ideas and a lot of the talent.
“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html
Do you have a transcript of Thomas N. Todd saying that so I can see some context?