Posted on 04/04/2004 12:42:06 PM PDT by yonif
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:04:09 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
STOCKHOLM, (Reuters) - Ingvar Kamprad, the Swede who founded furniture retail chain IKEA, has overtaken Microsoft's Bill Gates as the world's richest man, Swedish TV news reported on Sunday.
Citing next week's edition of the Swedish business weekly Veckans Affarer, public service SVT2 television said Kamprad, 77, has a personal fortune of 400 billion crowns ($53 billion).
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
You're sounding like Ralph Nader. The center of any market is by definition, mediocre.
And the center of gravity of mediocrity (a very elastic term) in any given market is dragged down by shoddy products. Overall car quality has risen dramatically because first the Japanese and then American car makers paid more attention to quality assurance - which means a mediocre new car made this year has vastly better quality than a mediocre car from the late seventies.
Your definition places the cart in front of the horse.
If you want to know, take a couple of basic business courses -- you'll be amazed at a revolution it will cause in your views. If you don't, that is fine too: just understand that what you say is a common, well-known, fallacy of engineers and make you look foolish if you insist on it too strongly.
Again, you chose to ingore the difference between political and business institutions --- and you pride yourself at lumping them together. That is a blunder.
In sum, you try to find answers to two ill-posed questions, which do not have answers.
I do not want to turn this into a contest: there is no contest about something that is available in any textbook. I was trying to help, and you feel you do not need it --- that's fine.
Kind of ironic to have missed it altogether, isn't it?
No, it's median, not mediocre.
IDEA furniture is not that bad at all. When I moved to NYC my firm sent an IKEA designer to my loft and set us all with all the furnishings we would need. When I got transfered back to Texas I sold most of the furniture but still have some lamps, a futon, dishes, work desk and chairs.
No. I am capable of doing both. Most people are capable of doing both.
You are simply is a very special category of customers and YOUR wants differ from most.
I guess not all people. : )
Had you gone beyond spelling and typing, you'd have noticed that my point was precisely that quality assurance had nothing to do with the issue.
topquark, re-read your wordy response to Dirtboy. The issue I took was that your comments about quality control and quality assurance were incongruent with how and what you wrote.
Kind of ironic to have missed it altogether, isn't it?
One of us missed it.
... measured by products arI have worked as a quality assurance lead, so I know something about the concept of quality.
I imagine you do. : )
No argument from me on that. Even though I'm a dedicated Mac guy, Office X on the Mac is a good product. Unfortunately for MS, most people are satisfied with Office, so they're having problems getting people to upgrade. Most people don't use a tenth of the features currently available in Office, so they don't care about the new ones.
MS can't continue the level of growth they've made or continue to pour billions into losing propositions like MSN and (so far) the XBox, without the revenue stream from Office.
The growth market isn't big enough to satisfy the company needs without current users upgrading. My college, for example, has about 100 extra Office licenses because of the price benefit of purchasing them in bulk. When we get new computers, we use one of those licenses, and when we replace a computer, we uninstall Office to free up a license. There's no need for us to upgrade unless the campus grows by about 30%. I think a lot of companies are in this position.
Computers are becoming a commodity product, and the level of expense for single stations cannot be maintained for much longer. Just as hardware prices have fallen (10 years ago, nearly $5,000 to around $1,000 now), mature software where the development costs have been recovered cannot continue to maintain the premium prices they have been commanding.
Very true.
Some can't even keep track of their sources, even when it relates to one-liners:
... measured by products arI have worked as a quality assurance lead, so I know something about the concept of quality. I never said these words.
OK, we've learned that you are a child that thinks that typing and motor skills are equivalent to education. We've learned that you can't get past typing errors 'cause you have nothing to say.
Since I do not wrestle with pigs and children as a matter of principle, I'll not write to you again until you show evidence of maturity to any finite degree.
Enjoy proofreading.
Wrong. The two richest men in the world get people to buy crappy furniture and buggy software. It isn't hard to make crappy furniture and buggy software, there just isn't much money in it. The real key, for which these two people deserve their wealth, is gettings millions upon millions of people to buy and to keep buying their crappy furniture and buggy software. Man, I LOVE capitalism!!!! Go Bill Gates! Go Ikea dude!
Yes, you did. Although it is not too clear why you would lump it all into one big pile, at some point in your response to Dirtboy, you jumped from your comments to Dirtboy's. Reread what you wrote:
Your remark regarding Clinton is more on the money for a different reason: in a representative democracy, an elected leader has a duty to fulfil the desires of electorate (yes, that includes, idiots) but he has a duty to lead, to be ahead in some ways, of that electorate. Businesses, however, do not have any such duty: they are supposed to bring profit to investors while surving their customers. That is what Gates and IKEA do --- extremely well. measured by products arI have worked as a quality assurance lead, so I know something about the concept of quality. Maybe the multitudes are satisfied by mediocrity, but I'm not, and I've found it's better to pay a bit more for products that are made better, that last much longer. So get off YOUR condescending hobby horse - whether or not the two men are successful, my statement was an accurate accessment of what they produce - just as many movie studio heads have gotten rrich making movies that are pure crap, and Bill Clinton became president by pandering to idiots.
In post 19 '... create something in this world other than passing warm air trrough yout lips ...' and post 35 'Quality assurance is aims at compliance ...' you presented yourself as someone who thinks they know something about quality contol and quality assurance, yet when someone points out the irony of your comments you don't seem to understand what's going on.
You words to me:"... you are a child that thinks that typing and motor skills are equivalent to education.
You words to Dirt boy:"...you are only screaming that you are a kid that does not know how to ride."
I think there is more at issue with you than your lack of understanding.
I'll not write to you again until you show evidence of maturity to any finite degree.
Anytime you happen to pass my house--I'd appreciate it.
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