Today, a day that will live in infamy, I was beaten by a 1000 byte program.
Whippersnapper. I seem to recall being beaten more than two decades ago by a 1k chess program on a Timex/Sinclair 1000 (aka ZX81).
Possibly even this one:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/
About half of the force sounds right. It took me a while to get used to after typing on the Model M, but now that I'm used to it I prefer the lighter touch of the Scorpius.
Multi-million annual dollar contracts for products and services with both companies.
No- we can't retain staff with the necessary technical skill to deal with problems when something mysteriously doesn't work.
Multi-million annual dollars (times two) cannot retain staff with the necessary technical skill? The mind boggles.
The iOne Scorpius M10 has the \ where you want it. It uses the same mechanical switches as the Das Keyboard III, and is about 1/3 or 1/2 the price. I'm typing on one now.
No built-in USB hub, but I can get a USB hub for far less than the difference in price...
But the fact remains, when the software doesn't work- we can *make* IBM or Microsoft spend thousands of dollars analyzing and FIXING the problem (even if it requires a software patch).
Okay, what's your secret? I've got bugs that I opened with MS against Windows 2000 and Visual Studio 2003 that *still* weren't fixed as of Vista and Visual Studio 2008. So far, the only thing I've been able to *make* MS do is say "Closed (wontfix)".
We can't *make* a group of random people do that.
Maybe not a randomly chosen group of people, but you can certainly make your own employees do that, since the source is available. Or contract it out to RedHat, or whomever you like.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
