Genii Weblog


Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Sun 2 May 2004, 03:32 PM
My son, who has a tendency to come down to my office and play on my laptop, is sitting next to me playing a rather idiotic on-line pseudo gambling game.  His latest hand was four sixes, and he lost!  He says that is "jake", and that you "can't lose with four sixes".  

I say, "Of course you can, you can lose to four aces".

"Grrr", he says, "you shouldn't lose with four sixes."

Welcome to the real world, son!   

This sounds a lot like the plaintive cries I hear from people who have written a software package, or taken a software package they wrote for a client, and now want to get rich selling it to others.  The software is always great, of course.  The reason it doesn't sell is the competition, or the economic climate, or people in other countries who work for less and can make software at prices we can't compete.  Fine whine with your lunch?

So, are they wrong?  Is the software not really so great?  Often, it is perfectly fine.  They are perfectly good salespeople, with a perfectly good product, selling to a perfectly fine market.   But they have four sixes... and somebody else has four sevens, or a straight flush, or even has three jacks but manages to make it sound better than four sixes (the Microsoft model).  Welcome to the real world.

Am I immune to this?  Do I think I'm better than that because Genii Software is doing so well and CoexLinks and Midas are hot right now?  HA!  Anybody remember ReportLogic?  It was a great product.  Great, I tell you.  It made amazing reports, and worked within Notes and...  It was just awesome.  But somebody else had four sevens.  Game over.  Four years of work down the drain, and precious little to show for it.  

Welcome to the real world, son!

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.