LESS IS BETTER-- WILLIAM OF OCKHAM

Now you're going to hear about my Dell computer.

This is a short comment about my laptop computer.

If it were a "he" I wonder what I'd call the laptop then.

Would it be that I would say "My laptop can't come put he?"

As it turns out we all know that laptops go away when we stand.

Except that when the laptop is a Dell, then even if you sit

Your laptop will go away and you will wish it went to Hell.

So, com put her here, but be sure she's not a Dell

And if you err and that's really what she is, oh Hell!

You will see your laptop disappear while you work

And leave you sitting there feeling like a jerk

Because you will find that where a laptop should be

there will be a lap but sure as Hell it won't be a Dell.

Here's the story.  

Those of you who have attained a "certain age" can certainly remember the Three Stooges and the automobile that would not start. They call the automobile repair engineer and with frenetic gestures explain that the car won't start.  So they open the hood and he disappears from view for a few moments while to or three minor parts fly out from behind the raised hood. He reappears and tells one of them to try to make it start.  So Moe, I guess, goes out in front and cranks away, but to no avail.  The "expert" dives back into the inner bowels of the contraption and out fly some more substantial looking elements of what an automobile should need.  He then surfaces again and gives the same command.  Crank, crank, crank, NOTHING.  He disappears again and this time the parts that come out are truly essential...distributor cap, alternator, radiator, fan belt and a few more.  He is now greased up, sweaty and a bunch of other adjectives, not to mention almost dejected. There is a significant pile of essential automobile hardware piled up not too far from the car.  He does, however, give Moe the signal to give 'er a crank.  A good one this time.  The punch line is that after a half-turn of the crank that car nearly dances for joy, runs like a Swiss watch and everybody is happy.  The "Engineer" takes all the parts, throws then in the back of his donkey cart and leaves the happy Stooges dancing in ecstasy as he disappears into the sunset.

Turns out my Dell is like that.  Granted I only paid $450 for it some four or five years ago, but it has never been perfect, as computers are supposed to be.  The battery never worked, so I replaced it.  I had to pay half.  That made me very happy. The new battery, fresh from the Chinese factory, I think, worked like Ol' New York for all of about 6 weeks and died.  I figured that I would do without it.

Some 8 to ten weeks later, the DVD/CD drive which I hardly ever use anyway, proved to be useless, and noisy to boot.  I removed it, threw it out, went to Best Buy, spent $35.00 and got a perfectly wonderful plug-in through a USB port.  Three years later, it still works perfectly.  Last night, my computer started to slow down and then suddenly went dark.  I unplugged it, plugged it in again, pressed "go" and it went...75% and then went dark again.  So I pressed "go" again and this time it went to about 50% before going dark.  Hmmm.  I don't know why, but I suspected the battery.  Look, at 1:00 AM you can suspect anything.  There's no one around to ridicule and disparage you, so you think what you think and do what you do and the full moon be damned.  So I removed the battery, pressed "go" and the sweetheart has sped up faster than ever and is running as slick as snot every since.  It's a good thing that they have electricity in all those third world countries like France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria and the likes of them. Who needs a battery anyhow? That's when I thought of the Three Stooges.  So that's my computer story.  The little doggerel at the top of the piece is something that I did before diving into bed for my overnight snooze. 

So whatever you do, be sure that when you sit, your lap has a top and that when you stand, your top has no lap. If it's a Dell, you won't have far to look...It's stuck in the trap that usually has other purposes than processing electronic data.

NCR - XEROX - IBM - MICROSOFT - APPLE

Beware of where your thoughts drove you when you opened this page today.  This is not about the relative merits of the three corporate behemoths named in the title.  It is about a thought that I have had for many years.  I have shared it verbally with many people.  Now, you're going to enjoy it up close and personal.  I have NCR at the top left because that is in my mind since November 8, 1960.  Some of you may remember the date.  It is the day when Jack Kennedy was elected president of the United States.  Lost in the minds of those who, like me, remember exactly where they were that long and weary night, is the fact that ENIAC, the mammoth computer produced by NCR was online that night, following the election and projecting the outcome.  This was a first.  It was a historic moment for the world.   Not only were humans working things out in their minds and using their pencils and slide rules to interpret the return numbers and produce probability predictions, there were also humans feeding the information into a machine which was providing results more rapidly that the slide rules and pencils.  I remember.  
XEROX is here close to the top not because XEROX was ever a big player in the production of computers.  It is there because it is the company that received a substantial sum of money through a federal grant to study the process that it would take to turn the world into a "paperless society."  It is clear that the U.S. government was as ignorant then as it is now.  Imagine giving a federal grant to a copier manufaturer to study how to eliminate the use of paper.  Of course, like all good, clean-cut Americans, XEROX took the money and ran.   For ten years.  Now here is the punch line.  XEROX actually had a conscience.  It put all the information that it had gathered in the ten years into its museum for public display.  In walk Steve Jobs and his buddy, Steve Wozniak.  They sneak and snoop for about a month or so, leave and go out to make history.  XEROX still hasn't figured out how to make copies without paper.

The small company represented by its logo on the left was run by a guy named Watson.  I forget his first name.  The company was able to bring the size of the computer down to manageable dimensions for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that between 1960 and 1965 or so, the solid state capacitor was invented and the days of the vacuum tube were numbered.  Bye-bye, ENIAC, bye-bye NCR.  So now that things are going faster,and of course cooler, much cooler, the demand for more and more calculating power was fast 
outstripping the ability of IBM to produce 
the operating systems needed to 
satiate the frenzy of the market.


It is now time for Bill Gates and Paul Allen to drop out 
of Harvard and offer to do a little programming for IBM.  Wouldn't you know that IBM thought that it would be a good idea to let these two guys see what they could do to make IBM more successful and more responsive to the market.  That's exactly what happened.  It happened so well that IBM no longer makes PC's or Laptops or anything like that.  Even Microsoft doesn't manufacture computers.  Never did.  Never will.  Microsoft is a purely software producer.  This brings us to our two other buddies, Steve squared, Jobs and Wozniak.

You got it.  They get together and they start Apple, Inc.  They decide that they are going to compete with IBM and Microsoft and manufacture computers and produce proprietary software for the machines that they produce.  They are very successful at what they do.  They are able to contribute to the shrinking size of computers.  They also make software that prompts the user of the machine through a set of pictures, called icons, rather than through a set of typed commands.  They dominate the market in a variety of product fields, always maintaining strict control over the rights to their finished products.


Through all of this, the computer never gets patented.  To this day.  That's where my thought entered the picture some 45 + years ago.  It is a thought that divides the world into two major groups.  Those who want to keep what they produce under their strict control, thereby being, as close as possible, the sole beneficiaries of their efforts, AND, those who produce and help others to produce so that a broad base of producers and users can benefit from the product.  It is a thought akin to the "Give a man a fish..." parable.  From the very beginning of the computer boom, IBM and Microsoft didn't patent anything.  They treated the fruits of their work as though it were already in the public domain, and in fact, from the beginning, it was.  It was always possible to buy an "IBM compatible" computer from the geek down the street who was building them in his garage.  So it remains to this day.  Hundreds, if not thousands of companies and even individuals produce PC's on the IBM/Microsoft model for their own benefit and the benefit of the broad base of computer users across the world.  Apple has had to make adjustments to its operating system in order to be available to the whole, wide world, but it still remains a more expensive machine with fewer users.  


Apple has been creative in many ways and must be admired for this.  It is also undeniable that in many ways it remains aloof and maintains a blue-blood attitude in relation to the rest of the world.  Microsoft is a hard driving, brass knuckles company too and maintains an attitude of inter-mingling with the world, for the good of the world.  
Finally, lately I have been having some difficulty finding the Steve Jobs Charitable Foundation information.  Do you suppose that Google has something against Apple?


Larry Page and Sergey Brin are exceptions:  They both graduated from college.  How come they are so successful?