Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jwright who wrote (34684)	11/6/2000 10:38:44 AM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

I have a very strange relationship with Novell Back in 93 a recruiter called me about working for the company. I didn't want to go back into software development. When I ran my own software company in the 80's I had built up an entire set of familiar tools that let me create a useful computer program in a matter of hours. (The goal was get something to work before lunch!) At Bell Labs we had to use C libraries and all types of "includes" and the software bloated up. But UNIX and C were certainly an improvement over Fortran and assembler on top of VMS. Of course the libraries were never constructed in a way where the details of the coding sequence were hidden away and the usefulness was front and center, it was always just the opposite. What it did wasn't evident, PURPOSELY. Then there was the idiocy of having to learn yet another editor, database, OS etc. etc. I liked powerful little programs that called upon efficient subroutines to do the work. (You remember those 64Kcode 64K data space limitations?) So I didn't think another experience working with systems engineers and corporate code libraries would be good for me at Novell or anywhere else. When digitalme came along Mike Sheridan took my resume and passed it to Adams who was then in charge of digitalme and he promptly filed it away. After all if you can get someone to give you ideas for free why pay him for what might be "trouble". And you can always ignore the suggestions. But if the guy is an employee then what if he isn't reasonable. (Of course I'm reasonable but a lot of younger engineers are fanatics. Right!) The problem of course is that it is impossible to follow through on those ideas in any depth --- find out if they really work etc. from outside Novell. So I really cannot contribute much to Novell. That is the conclusion I've reached. ======================== Have you ever noticed what an artist can do with simple tools. I walked by the Picasso sculpture at NYU this weekend. It is done in cast concrete with the lines of the drawing upon the face of the sculpture done by exposing the crushed stone in the concrete mix. You start to look at where the artist exposed the stone, the angles of the sculpture and you realize the difficulty of raising software to the same level. It can be done, this is after all a sculpture of poured concrete. Somebody had to engineer the mix in such a way that the stones could be exposed to get the black lines on the surface. But it takes a Medici or two to make things happen like this. The possibilities of doing something at Novell that fundamentally changes the course of human development are there. Eric seems to sometimes grasp this. But he hasn't figured out how to get the organization to click. There do not appear to be any Medici's at Novell. Not even Eric. He just doesn't conceive of his job there as being to "make things happen".