Memory Lane
From Ye Old Blogge: Monday, April 05, 2004 #2
Monday, April 05, 2004
Ingvar Kamprad is the AntiGates
Farewell Bill Gates, from all your rich mates,Farewell the AntiGeek, dumped, no more great.Bad taste will always trump bugridden code,Done by a Swedish cheap furnishing bloke.
Okay so it's doggerel in the worst taste - but hey this is Ikea we're talking about, and Microsoft - taste doesn't enter into the equation...
So now that Ingvar K is the new world's richest bloke, does that make him the new enemy of the home handyman? Are thousands of socially withdrawn home carpenters sitting at turning lathes at home making copies of Ikea spindle back chairs?
Are they engraving anti-Kamprad slogans into the tops of pine bolt-together kitchen table with their routers?
Or - gasp! - are they breeding ever newer, faster, more voracious woodworms in their workshops and sheds to release onto our unsuspecting furniture? "If you von't buy Ikea orichinalls den p'raps won day you chuss sitting for breakfas an voom! - you lend on floor on you ass... Ve sell you new lacquer to put on, stop dose vorms..."
Why isn't this happening? What's the difference between Bill and Ingvar? They both buy other people's ideas really cheap, bash them into a form suitable for production, and then sell them for a lot more than they're worth. They both have design and look and feel and copyright and property patents on a variety of things.
Yet Bill is reviled and hated while Ingvar is applauded. What gives here? Why this difference?
Hmmm - there are a lot of people out there producing software, and crying out that Microsoft owning all those patents is making it impossible for anyone else to make a living at software - yet they're making a living...
On the other hand, Ikea owns and copyrights a lot of designs and a large range of products, and there are furniture makers out there making a living...
Software was, until recently, pumped out by expensive programmers, with expensive managers. Now, more and more, the programmers are becoming cheaper because more software is produced offshore where expertise is cheaper.
A long time ago, furniture was made by expensive craftsman artisans and sold by expensive sellers, then they discovered offshore mass production where labour is cheaper - and the furniture makers flourish to this day...
Microsoft should just go away and let us software houses make a living at softwarwe! Make Microsoft go away please!
Ikea makes a table? Hell, we'll make our own tables! They make chairs? We'll make cushions for them!
Seem to me that the difference is mostly attitude, no?
These are random blog posts I recently rescued from a text dump of my earliest recorded blog posts from Ye Good Ole Days of writing stuff in Notepad and using some weird software that basically uploaded your entire blog every time you added a new article or edited an old one.
I'm shamelessly adding that little mini-banner graphic with links for you to donate, check my newsletter site, and generally get more entangled in my weird world.
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