

Scott Adams: The Problem With the Economy - cwan
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_problem_with_the_economy/

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MikeCapone
Am I the only one who's pretty much always under-whelmed by Scott Adams blog
posts?

I feel like if this had been written by a nobody, it would never have gotten
any attention here.

~~~
bootload
_"... It doesn't seem to matter what applications I use. And closing
applications doesn't free up memory. This has been true on every computer I
have owned, both Macs and PCs. Rebooting periodically is the only temporary
fix. To which I say, "SERIOUSLY?? WTF???? IS THIS REALLY AN UNSOLVEABLE
PROBLEM, LIKE FRICKIN' GRAVITY???" ..."_

Though not perfect solution, Web Apps try to address this problem. One reason
to read articles is they simultaneously show how crap desktop application (and
operating system) software can be and how difficult it is to make good
software. The ability to hold two contradictory statements in ones head is
difficult but necessary. To understand why Adams wrote the post and find a
solution is a recipe for Startups.

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lliiffee
I wonder how much these problems are problems of information. The reason
printers are crap is that most people buy them based on 1) price, and 2)
listed features. As a result, manufacturers optimize for these. If people
understood that most of the listed features would never work, the paper would
constantly jam, the drivers would never be updated, toner/ink would be
expensive, installing the printer would require adding lots of stupid software
to windows, they would probably pick a more expensive printer with less
features that actually works.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I have a HP 4100 laser printer at home for just the reasons you mentioned.
Unlike consumer-oriented printers, it's marketed to IT managers who have to
internalize all the pain associated with such purchases. These buyers ask the
right questions.

I'd love to see hardware manufacturers offer SLAs on driver availability.
"Support for all MSFT non-EOL publicly available OSes through 12/2013" or
something similar. The actual quality of the drivers would be much harder to
quantify.

The information asymmetry problem is really hard to solve for the "it just
works" meta-feature. Could someone build a site that features it-just-works
products in various categories? How could one crowd-source this information?
When I tell people to buy a five year-old printer off eBay because it's the
most reliable thing out there, they think I'm nuts.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Here's a site of product reviews that have a focus on quality and no emphasis
on newness, i.e. things that just work. <http://kk.org/cooltools/>

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ianferrel
One of either Scott Adams or I is really ignorant of the furniture market.
I've bought

* A bed * Bookshelves * A table * Chairs * A desk * A couch

And I've never had to wait more than a week for delivery. The chairs, table,
bookshelves, and bed were available to take immediately. In what universe do
you have to wait 2 months for furniture?

~~~
angelbob
Do you buy cheap stuff, IKEA or similar? It's really a different market if you
do.

~~~
Periodic
I bought a dining set from a furniture company in Canada through a retailer
here in the Bay Area. It took 2 weeks to get delivered, then I had to return
one item and get a replacement, which also took about 2 weeks.

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mynameishere
Sorry, had to stop reading when he was complaining about his computers. My
vista and linux machines can pretty much run forever without any memory
problems. I'm pretty sure OSX is the same way.

~~~
kaffeinecoma
Same here (OSX and Linux). I had to go and double-check the date of the
article when I read that line. Are people really still having this problem
with modern operating systems?

~~~
asolove
Yes. You can apt-get or ports as many well-reviewed opens source packages are
you like without problems, but when was the last time you downloaded any
Windows shareware/freeware?

But for a normal person who wants to make a photo album or bingo cards, or
have a nice screensaver, their first thought is to go to the internet and
download a program. This is the problem.

Your or I would first:

1\. See if the web site seemed legit. 2\. Rule out anything with lots of
Google adware or image ads 3\. Find an open-source version.

But the crappy scammer site seems about par for the internet course to this
person, so they download it and soon have viruses and registry entries that
crowd out all their actual programs.

This happens every three or six months on a Windows computer run by a normal
person, and is a huge part of why the iPad and its closed ecosystem is going
to eventually take over the consumer market unless Linux geeks get serious
about usability.

~~~
kaffeinecoma
Wow. I remember XP being this way, but I kinda figured it was a solved problem
with Vista/Win7 by now. I haven't had to do any Windows hand-holding since I
got my parents an iMac about 5 years ago.

I'm feeling something that's not quite schadenfreude, but certainly along the
lines having dodged a bullet with that move. :-)

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th0ma5
I think if you ignore his specific technical examples, he has a good point,
that perception is being sold mostly and firstly, not reality.

~~~
jacoblyles
And that's the way things have always been. This is not some new development.
Look at newspaper ads from 80 years ago.

I'm a bit of a curmudgeon, but I'm not old enough yet to insist that
_everything_ was better back in my day.

~~~
angelbob
Some of it's sampling bias. The stuff from your day that is still around was
better. You've forgotten the cheap crap that fell apart long since.

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dan_sim
That's a depressing thing. Too many people (me included) are working on
software or to correct problems caused by software and it is not really that
important.

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roc
For a rant about poor quality products, the knock about _delivery times of
furniture_ is totally out of place.

Five or ten years down the line, when the legs _aren't_ falling off because
you purchased a decent quality item, are you really going to care that it took
two extra weeks to deliver? And how often are you even ordering furniture?

What an odd product category to use for that example.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Agree (although I accidentally down-modded you). There are many ways to
measure quality, and timeliness of availability is certainly one. For a kid in
a dorm room who just wants a particle board bookshelf, waiting two months
would be absurd. However, I wanted some nice oak bookshelves for my office,
and I wouldn't mind waiting a couple of months if they were otherwise what I
desired.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Right with you on the custom furniture thing. Most skilled crafts-people are
booked for months ahead.

The ones that I know don't want to scale because then they would not be making
furniture, they would be running a business.

Interestingly, a furniture 'startup' is frequently a vehicle for one person to
make a living doing what they love. Often after years of working as a
professional in another field making money for the family, building a nest
egg, tooling up, honing their skills and trying to develop a reputation and
market.

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elidourado
To be _extremely_ charitable, he is at best describing symptoms of the
problems with the economy, not the problem itself.

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runT1ME
I run _gasp_ windows vista at work. I've never had to reboot my computer due
to memory problems. It'll run for two or 3 weeks before our admin makes us
reboot for windows update reasons....

