On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 03:40:45AM -0400, Greg Schmidt wrote:
> On Thu, 2 May 2002, Paul M Foster wrote:
>
> > On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 09:58:02PM -0400, steve wrote:
> >
<snip>
> Now I'm proud
> when people call me a geek or a weenie.
I've discovered that there are geeks everywhere. More people are geeks
than you'd ever imagine. It's just that you probably don't think of them
as geeks. My wife is a font geek-- she knows everything about typefaces
and collects them. Auto mechanics are car geeks-- they can tell you all
about carburetors, injectors, valve timings, etc. My grandmother was a
philatelist (postage stamp geek). My mom's a dog geek. People with a
passion for something tend to be geeks about that thing.
The real distinction that gets geeks in trouble is that a lot of geeks
(particularly computer geeks) lack social skills. In my opinion, the
word "geeks" doesn't necessarily imply a lack of social skills. There's
some other word the probably describes that lack of social skills, but I
don't know what it is. Maybe "nerd"? Dunno. I should probably have a
talk with Roget.
<snip>
> I'm not convinced VALinux, for example, ever
> really intended to butter their bread with hardware mark-ups.
>
I'm not sure about VA. According to legend, they had superior hardware
they designed themselves. But as you say, the commodity market killed
the need/desire for their brand of hardware. Companies are trading their
Sparcs and mainframes for PCs because they're so cheap. Eventually, VA
had to change their direction, and I'm not sure they'll ever recover.
When was the last time you heard about them?
Paul
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