Erdos Had The Number First

While it may be important to understand that  the wicked may use the ethics and morals of the just against them, one must be vigilant and not treat the wicked in kind.  Otherwise, the just would be devoured.  The Righteous cannot remain so by acting as the wicked do.  Nor can just ends be pursued by wicked means.

So Dell just hired the fourth horseman (OK, he’s not that bad, but its not a good sign) X-Motoroller Ron Garriques
. Here’s the deal, Moto is dead. They got lucky with the Razr but they are getting their lunch eaten by the Koreans.

And this guy is one of those people who thinks that if they just make their products pretty everything will be fine. Well, here’s the problem:  When you comodify yourself, you can’t differentiate.  Dell makes a commodity product, they are the GM of the computer world. Which is the source of their problems, the Chinese can out-dell Dell.  And so, now they are thrashing around, looking for Silver Bullets and they’ve pounced on this guy. I’d bet they’re seeing Apple be so successful and think “hey man, if our boxes looked good we’d be able raise prices!”. The problem is that people already understand Dell to be a company that produces comodity boxes.  They’re not going to see a nice looking Dell and convert any more than a Porche driver buys a Chrysler because she found one that looks nice.

The other problem is that Cell phones are not computers.  People can afford to make fashionable phone choices because they’re cheap.  Edgy computers are not cheap, and a cheap edgy computer won’t sell. Dell already proved that with Alienware (which had a really nice placement last week in USA Networks’ Psyche).   They’ve hired the wrong guy on many fronts.
Dell?  Sell!

It’s funny, I never thought about Flash as an application development platform. Its not that I didn’t know you could write programs in ActionScript, it’s just, well, it’s just Flash. I also don’t think this is a positioning problem that Adobe can easily rectify. One of the bigger issues that Flash faces, in my opinion, is that is has some pretty serious Usability Problems and presents issues with search engines and the stuff like that. Sure, Adobe has a download-able accessibility kit, but that is something else rather than a core component of the architecture.Then I read Bruce Eckel’s “Hybridizing Java” posting and I now have to think about it. On one hand, Mr. Eckels mentions that he has been hired by Adobe and that may color his feelings. But he is, again in my opinion, one of the more level-headed technologist out there. I like his books, and pretty much consider him to be someone whose opinion deserves consideration.

I honestly think that my consideration would be a lot easier, though, if the development environment for this stuff didn’t cost about $1000.

I know, I already sound like a breathless fanboi. But trust me, this is not just a johny-come-lately to the XML camp expressing praise. What I really love about XML isn’t really XML itself but the applications that can be written with it. Like the XMLResume library.

If you have ever written a resume, you should go now (don’t even both reading the rest of this posting until you See The Glory) to XMLResume on Source forge and check it out.

The biggest thing that has me right now so, so happy is the ability to filter elements of your resume. I’m in the camp that you should always target your resume to each employer. This is because it is up to YOU the job seeker to present yourself as attractive to the potential employer. You should never rely upon the innate brilliance of whoever is reading your resume to translate it for you.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: Way back during the Great Bubble I had an interview. I was then working for a very large Options clearing firm, and we were processing a little more than half of all of the options trades done in the world. I figured that the people who were interviewing me would understand these things. The interview started out with one guy saying “You’re coming from a pretty small environment, what makes you think you can cut it here?” They did, indeed have a largeish environment. I was stunned. In my head I thought “Huh? you don’t get it: my CEO’s bonus last year was more than the gross sales of all the companies you’ve ever worked for combined! What makes me think I can cut it? Are you nuts?” and on and on and on. The problem during this interview wasn’t this guy. He was, after all, interpreting what he read on my resume according to his own experience and world-view. The number of server and admins was not very large comparatively. If I had been coming from a warehouse operation or some other data-center he would have been quite correct. I didn’t offer him the information in a way that he could have understood.  Now I can, and XML made that possible.

What a wonderful world.

The funny thing about TiVo hiring is that they have the ability to put want ads on their own TiVo boxen. That, honestly, is pretty cool. My wife does usability work (and of course, Tivo is hiring Usability People), and even she was impressed.

The only problem is that it seems like they are casting a pretty wide net. I know, as a hiring manager in the past, when you put up a job posting you get deluged with resumes. Even if the job isn’t a cool job, and TiVo is pretty cool place to work (I suspect, you could at least get good discounts on the boxes).