In Search of Stupidity

By Merrill R. Chapman

ISBN 1-59059-104-6
APress 2003




About the Author
Rick Chapman has worked for them all; from Ashton-Tate to Ziff-Davis.

Also see:
InSearchofStupidity.com

Book Description

"... how did Microsoft get that monopoly?

According to Rick Chapman, the answer is simpler: Microsoft was the only company on the list that never made a fatal, stupid mistake. Whether this was by dint of superior brainpower or just dumb luck, the biggest mistake Microsoft made was the dancing paperclip. And how bad was that, really? We ridiculed them, shut it off, and went back to using Word, Excel, Outlook, and Internet Explorer every minute of every day. But for every other software company that once had market leadership and saw it go down the drain, you can point to one or two giant blunders that steered the boat into an iceberg.

Micropro fiddled around rewriting the printer architecture instead of upgrading their flagship product, WordStar. Lotus wasted a year and a half shoehorning 123 to run on 640kb machines; by the time they were done Excel was shipping and 640kb machines were a dim memory. Digital Research wildly overcharged for CP/M-86 and lost a chance to be the de-facto standard for PC operating systems. VisiCorp sued themselves out of existence. Ashton-Tate never missed an opportunity to piss off dBase developers, poisoning the fragile ecology that is so vital to a platform vendor's success."

Quote: the following quote was added just for the neat statistic.

"In 1993, Microsoft Excel 5.0 took up about $36.00 worth of hard drive space. In 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000 takes up about $1.03 in hard drive space. All adjusted for inflation."

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Find Someone's Email Address

Ether-like white pages

Finding a published landline phone number is pretty easy. Cell phones may be searchable in the future.

Here are directions on how to find an individual's email address.

There are some good hints, but remember that the first suggestion is to "Ask directly"


Finding List.

Email Lookup




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Self Help

Get started in the right direction

The Office of Technology Services of Towson University, located in Towson, Md., provides Self-Help Training Documents for many applications.

They are available for many levels of knowledge. They’re clean, clear, and concise.

• Access
  
  
• Adobe Acrobat
  
  
• Dreamweaver
  
  
• Excel
  
  
• FrontPage
  
  
• Microsoft Office Tools
  
  
• Outlook
  
  
• Outlook Web Access
  
  
• PowerPoint
  
  
• Publisher
  
  
• Visio
  
  
• Windows
  
  
• Word Art
  
  
• Word

Tech Docs



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Last Name Distribution

Where are your cousins?

This site shows the geographic positioning of last names. It links to a site that will find your relatives in Italy, as well.

The Gens project is born by the initiative and the experience of a team of graduates in Humanities at the University of Genoa - Italy, who have specialized in history, demography, statistics, archive-keeping and librarianship.

Why have the Smiths avoided certain states?




Surnames in the US




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Military Clipart

Thousands of items

If you find the need for Armed Forces photos and art, here is the place to look.
Regardless of your opinion about their present mission, the military does present a spectacular visage.

"06/17/06 - An F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft sits at the ready as storm clouds pass overhead aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) in the Philippine Sea June 17, 2006.
(U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Aaron Burden)

All of these files are in the public domain unless otherwise indicated. However, we request you credit the photographer/videographer as indicated or simply "Department of Defense."

HqDA.Army.Mil - Clipart




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Triangle with 3 Right Angles

They said - "Impossible!"

Forget high school geometry. A triangle can have more than on ninety degree angle.




Here's how it was done:

IllusionsEtc.Blogspot.com

"Caution!!!! Some of the optical illusions on this blog may cause dizziness or possibly epileptic seizures. The latter happens when the brain can't handle the conflicting information from your two eyes. If you start feeling unwell when using this website, immediately cover one eye with your hand and then leave the page. Do not close your eyes because that can make the attack worse."

Site map




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Paper Power

What do steam and paper have in common?

I find origami and paper sculpture intriguing.

Ed Bertschy provides a template that can be downloaded and printed on good paper to be used in the construction of a paper steam engine.

This paper steam engine is based on a Riches and Watts nominal 2 1/2 horsepower vertical A-frame double acting simple slide-valve steam engine circa 1870-75. The original engine was used to drive a water pump to irrigate the fields of Norfolk. If this model had a scale, it would be roughly 1:19. I had to double the size of the eccentric and strap in order to make it buildable. Everything else is close to scale, but changed in design and appearance because, well, paper isn't iron.

Everything will work on this engine, the flywheel turns, there really is a slide valve in the valve chest, the piston works, the cranks and the connecting rods, eccentric and strap all work if built carefully. The final model stands about 12 inches high. I hope you have as much fun building it as I had designing it.

Paper Steam Engine




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