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Dvorak Looks Back At 'Another Crappy Tech Year'
twitter writes "The Vista Death Watch is PC Magazine's most popular column. That is just one of many items in Dvorak's review of yet another 'disappointing' year in Technology. 'I was not a fan of 2007. It was another crappy tech year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000. Let's see some of the highlights and lowlights in no particular order ... The whopper for Intel, though, was its Viiv initiative, which was a dog from the get-go and was dropped--finally. Somewhere along the way, Intel bought into the Silicon Valley crock that CPUs were not important any more. What a laugh. Luckily for the company, it refocused on processor chips and found itself in the driver's seat once again. Of course, Intel will fall off the path again, of that you can be sure.'"
are bored by another dvorak troll article
It's another bad year, Dvorak is still writing.
Oh. Twitter posted it. That explains it.
Read twitters comment history. He is everything that is wrong with linux zealots.
He writes about how it's such a miserable year, but half the stuff he writes about is about companies being uber-successful. Google, Apple and the Wii come to mind.
Honestly, why does Dvorak still have a job?
"What is all this Windows Vista stuff we're hearing about? After so many years, it seems like Microsoft finally discovered that Windows are clear. You can see through 'em. Isn't that nice? But what if you are trying to read something in those Windows? My 4-year-old grandson writes on he windows all the time, and gets a good spanking for smudging the glass. Which reminds me: It seems like Microsoft has entered the Windex business - something they used to leave to real technology companies, like Symantec and Johnson Wax. Speaking of which, why doesn't Microsoft just start learning from Dow Corning, if they want us all to have clear windows in Vista?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Dvorack is like the tech equivalent of that pissed off old fart who alternates between wanting to tell you exaggerated war stories and screaming "GET OFf MY LAWN, YOU PUNK!"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It had to happen eventually. IT has become middle-aged, mass-market, everyday stuff. Everybody and his mother (and grandmother) are using computers so the majority of the industry is driven toward low-cost, lowest-common-denominator products.
Yet, that doesn't mean that there can't be excitement at the margins of technology (e.g., RFID, GPU processing, ubiquitous mesh networks, MIMO wireless, GPS-everything, or cloud computing). Fun stuff is happening even if the core of the technology has settled down into a workaday existence.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Another Dvorak article posted by Zonk. The only way this could suck more would be if it were posted by Roland.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
and along the way MS bought into the nonsense of software as a service. Google Apps might be OK for some small business where it's too much to buy a few servers, but not for any place that needs backups and the reliability of always being up. locally installed apps always work. my Outlook offline folder always has the latest copy of my mailbox in case the network goes down. if someone deletes something, we have backups in 2 places. and no one wants to write up a spreadsheet with advertising on the side
Google caught the MS bug. it's trying to get into markets where it has no business
just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000.
Translation : "I hate the 2000's, take me back to the late 90's! At least back then we were closer to the release of Duke Nukem Forever than we are now, somehow!"
You just got troll'd!
Somehow, that makes more sense.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The tech industry looks back at another crappy Dvorak year.
bash dvorak.
:)
he makes more money doing nearly nothing and pisses off more people than any of you.
he's one of my heroes.
even all you people who claim to totally despise him. you went and read the article didnt you.. and gave them some ad money. lol
"I'm certainly not going to be a happy camper if I have to switch to a Mac or Linux system full-time, yet that is exactly where this scatterbrained company seems to be sending me."
Why would that be so bad? As someone who uses all 3 operating systems daily (XP, not Vista), this new iMac way outshines the rest. What a dork. If MS is that bad than stop using it.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
It astonishes me how people are capable about bitching about every single year, and never notice the contradiction of every year being crappy, while this year is better than the one several years ago.
IT and tech is the worst. Oh, piss piss, moan moan, life sucks... except for the surprisingly affordable HDTVs, the free fall of per-gigabyte hard drive costs, the near-inability to buy non-dual-core CPUs, $200 laptops that do really useful things, the "gigabyte" being the new standard measurement of a RAM stick and the $10 bill being the new standard increment of its pricing, entire hardware categories like "MP3 players" that didn't exist a few years ago and in another couple of years will be given away free in cereal boxes, and on it goes.
Crappy year after crappy year after crappy year... yet somehow, here we are and you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming back to the year 2000's technology. Somehow, the "crappy year" math doesn't add up.
(This applies in other domains too, but that is left as an exercise to the reader to avoid topic drift. Note that only tech has the exponential improvement, though.)
Stop posting Dvorak's crap here and stop going to his website and we can finally pick this leach off of the computer world's underbelly. He only exists to stir up shit for web hits. If we stop giving a damn he'll have to go somewhere else for food!
God is real unless declared integer.
With all this talk about the imminent death of Vista I'm beginning to believe that Microsoft based it on BSD.
A cynic is somebody who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. See: Dvorak.
It was a crappy year for the industry because of Viiv?! If, like Dvorak, you are so totally uninformed that you don't know about core2, the 45nm advances, the x38 chipset, Intel's steady stock price in a failing economy, AMD/ATI's competitive next gen cards, the growth of the video game industry, the iPhone, & etc, then I suppose that Viiv might stand out, provided that you are an idiot.
The hockey equivalent of Dvorak is Don Cherry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Cherry_(ice_hockey) The guy says anything and makes half the hockey playing world mad at him. Of course, if he was reasonable, he wouldn't have a job anymore.
The other people who come to mind are all the celebs who are in and out of rehab. Their behavior keeps them in the news. That seems to help them sell CDs.
AFAICT, Dvorak has to say wildly stupid stuff to keep his job. He isn't paid for being right. He is paid to attract readers. If he could do that by standing on his head while singing God Save America, I bet he would.
On Soviet Slashdot, crappy tech year looks back at Dvorak.
Someone should legally change their last name to Qwerty, and start up a competing column.
Um, relevance?
...so I can skip reading without remorse.
But can you honestly blame him? unless you're one of those energy drink sipping geek who bounces around the office like some sort of hyped up 8 year old who has just been given a new toy - I've yet to have a single year when I've looked back and thought, "wow, that was one hell of year" then look at awe over all the great products released that year.
1) The iPhone delivered only to the US and using GSM 2G - and people are hyping it? I'm looking around New Zealand; at the bottom of the world, sitting at the crevice of the ass crack when it comes to technology availability, and yet, I'm seeing far superior smart phones being delivered, CDMA and 3G GSM.
2) The PS3 - Sony just don't get it. They didn't get it with BetaMax, they didn't get it with MiniDisc, and now they're repeating the same mistake with BluRay - apart from the mouth frothing PS3 zealots/fanboys - PS3 and BluRay have been a resounding failure.
3) Windows Vista has only made inroads because of it being the default installation on new computers; the better view is this; look at the rate at which Apple's Mac sales are growing compared to the rest of the industry. If Windows Vista was such a resounding success, Apple's market share should be staying static of shrinking. Neither have happened.
I could go on and on, but you get the basic idea; nothing to do with 'maturity' - just people willing to tolerate technology thats 'good enough' rather than expecting the 'fuck thats awesome!' factor.
Nobody is surprised that Vista isn't a success (perhaps with the exception of one or two Microsoft employees).
XP did/do the job for most people. So, why upgrade? The only time Vista is worth to consider is if you buy a
new machine. But even then, Vista makes you machine more expensive, both in terms of hardware and software. Then
there is the question if it will work well with your old existing network of XP or even win2k boxes.
Microsoft had the same problem to get people to upgrade from win2k to XP, but XP didn't look like such a total
failure. The reason for that was that there were a lot of win9x users that left that platform for XP. Unlike the win2k users these customers actually got good value for their money, so it was not so hard to make them upgrade.
Another factor is that the competition is much harder now than when they released XP. Apple is starting to get
back in the game, and Linux looks better and better and evolving fast.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
lets see, what law was passed in 1998, then used as a cudgel as the internet matured into 2000?
lets see.. duuuh... D... uuuuh M.... errrr C.... what was that last letter what was it.. oh yeah.. A.
and as long as that law allows hollywood to dictate the design of all tech, it will continue to be a crappy year for tech year after year.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I do agree that 2007 was a crappy tech year, but not for his reasons.
thereason that 2007 sucked for tech and 2008-2010 will suck is because of laws. Honestly we have the technology right now to do some amazing things with media. But the old business models refuse to adapt so they instead make everything illegal. I have an incredibly illegal (as far as the law is concerned) system in my home that makes everyone that sees it gasp in awe. I have every DVD i own on my own On demand system in every room, I also have all recordings from TV available in every room as well. Music, Video, News, media.. we have the technology RIGHT NOW to make the "star trek" universe as far as media is concerned. I should be able to from my bedroom TV call up a copy of last nights 11:00pm newscast FROM that station over the internet. but no, they believe that that newscast is more valuable than 90 pounds of platinum and i'm going to share it with 20,000,000,000 people and make it so nobody will watch the news.. So they put DRM on it and make it useless to me.
Media needs to be in open NON DRM formats and via RSS feeds so I can automatically collect what I want. I SHOULD be able to buy a download of a movie and play it on MY HDTV using whatever system I desire to play it.
Information, Video, Audio, news, all of it should be on-demand at any TV I have and it is not because of the silly delusion that this media is incredibly valuable. When in reality it is not.
And that is not even covering the incredibly retarded IP laws that stifle innovation.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What's wrong with MiniDisc? Before the advent of mp3-players MiniDisc was the way to to for either the ones with style (who didn't want to run around with a large "portable" CD-player) or the amateur artists (easy digital recording options).
All the siblings in my family (from my 9 year older sister down to me) have had a minidisc (and my sister still uses it for easy piano recording).
The thing that actually killed MiniDisc was the late adoption of native mp3 playback on Hi-MD's though... A great mistake by Sony.
not to be rude..but WTF are you talking about????
An Article on another crappy year.... Of Dvorak tech articles.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
...that the Russians during the communist era were willing to experiment on their people in a way that would be completely unthinkable in the US".
...why should anyone care who he is, or what his opinion is?
portfolio
Microsoft had the same problem to get people to upgrade from win2k to XP
In general, people didn't upgrade from 2k to XP until they had to, or they bought a new computer. As you say, it was the huge 9x/Me user base that drove the adoption of XP, and they don't have that this time.
I'm still using the old retail Windows 2k I got six years ago, and if Vista hadn't been such an appalling monster I'd have skipped XP completely. Now I'm considering upgrading from 2k to XP because as much as I dislike the subtracted value in XP I'm concerned I'll lose that option if I don't take it.
I propose another topic of discussion, specifically a question raised by my dad after I read him several of the current comments:
What individual piece of tech do you use that you've used for the longest period of time?
For reference, he's got a computer he's happy has lasted 6 years, and some woodworking tools he's hoping will last 50.
--
The corporations hold back innovation to maximize their profit on current outdated tech. Their share holders demand it so.
Apple is moving forward, and so is OSS. But there is only so much they can do when they are in danger of being sued at every turn.
If I were as rich as Bill Gates, I would buy an island and get all the smart people I could to live there. Then I would build the future unencumbered by the rest of the world's greed for money and power. And this island would become the richest, most powerful place on earth.
bwahahaha
The above is not worth reading.
That said, I have to agree that the thrill is largely gone. Even slashdot, the stories all seem to be something I've read before, and so do the comments. The late 90's, they were fantastic. But like the hippies after Woodstock, this is not the low point of a cycle -- it's over. Whatever "it" was, it will only return in a different form, and it will revolve around people other than us.
That's a fantastic analogy, Abe Simpson. Let's try not to be so annoyingly self-indulgent as the Baby Boomers. The internet revolution, which the older of us experienced as teenagers, college students, or even adults, was one of the biggest transformations in the exchange of information that we'll ever see. The kiddies talk about how different "2.0" will be, but these little bastards have never used a card catalog system to know how different the internet is that what we had before. Things are good now. We're spoiled.
So expecting the changes of 1995-2000 to keep going would be stupid. But that doesn't mean what we're getting now is actually bad. Device creators are focusing more on UIs now, so that the stuff we have is actually, you know, not a pain in the ass to use. That's good. Online services continue to get better, if not in a "blow your mind" kind of way. That's good.
" I don't even expect them to take second in the end, for that matter (although I may yet be surprised). That doesn't make it a resounding failure, though. "
Matter of taste, of course, but with Sony coming from holding 70+ percent of the home console market last generation with the PS2, I would certainly consider dropping down to third place this gen a significant failure.
It had to happen eventually. IT has become middle-aged, mass-market, everyday stuff.
:-). It's sad. Now that the industry is taking its first painful steps away from Babbage's serial paradigm toward massive parallelism, the old school insists on using failed ideas like multi-threading as the solution. What the computer industry needs is to retire all of their so-called "corporate fellows" and inject fresh new blood into research. The first company to crack the parallel programming nut will dominate computing in this century, you can bet on it. Microsoft and Intel know this and they are spending a shitload of money on it. Unfortunately for them, the old geeks are still in charge. Too bad. A little known startup is bound to come from left field and steal the pot of gold. ahahaha...
Yeah. That's the real problem, in my opinion. The computer industry is dominated by a bunch of aged computer academics who haven't had a really innovative thought since Charles Babbage designed the analytical engine 150 years ago
A troll with such bad karma that every comment he makes is automatically modded -1, and who can't spell Microsoft without using a dollar sign?
"As soon as somebody uses a dollar sign to replace the letter S in "Microsoft" or "MS", it's a very relieving feeling. I know that I can ignore everything they have to say because it is meaningless." - Anonymous
is NOT the antichrist!
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to think "profiling is worse than the slaughter of innocent people..."
Every article Dvorak writes is complaining about the tech industry, or some subset thereof. Why does he even bother with the tech industry, then? He seems miserable with the entire subject, so why doesn't he just find something else to do? I know the answer; he keeps doing it because of the money, plus the fact that his "popularity" (I use the term loosely) is due to his negative attitude. He doesn't really hate the industry, but is paid to.
/. does not matter because he writes for a magazine. PC Magazine hasn't been relevant for years. If you stop paying attention to them, trolls will go away.
What I don't understand is why people can't figure this out and stop giving him exposure. It's the same situation with that other guy that I refuse to name, you know, the anti-video game industry guy. The attention they receive only encourages them to do it again, and again, ad nauseam.
Please don't tell me that the attention he receives from article such as this on sites like
I can't be bothered to read Dvorak's drivel any more. The man should have been made redundant ten years ago.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Don't RTFM!
You save time and Dvorak makes less money. It's win-win!
Dvorak says in his Vista Death Watch column that he wouldn't be happy to have to switch to Mac or Linux, why? what is so great about the Windows experience?
In my eyes it's the Ford or GM argument, Windows is the cheap easily accessible OS for the masses, clunky and not a luxury but just gets the job done.
The problem is with Vista it simply isn't cheap anymore, plus it doesn't get the job done easily. These are the two big failing, DRM and restrictions getting in the way, price too high.
Linux is the more open and friendly alternative now, it's getting a lot easier to install and use. A few things get in the way of mass adoption, the whole driver issue, you can't simply download a kernel module and install it.
For those who truly want to use a computer and not have to fool fixing it then you need a Mac. They're no perfect but it's a lot easier to fix problems when you do get them since there's fewer models of hardware.
Andy Rooney is a commentator on 60 Minutes, a US television magazine, for those might not know.
That's funny, not two days ago you were full of praise about Dvorak's dumbness. Takes one to know one.
That's all fine and dandy, but you seem to be forgetting the fact that the Unites States doesn't care about international borders. Private island or not, the US would never allow your scenario to come to fruition. Unless you have a fully functional, impenetrable energy shield. :p
QWERTY is the best keyboard layout!
2G isn't as bad as you think
I can't believe you're still pushing the party line. Will you think different when Apple's new phone is a 3G? Two legs good, four legs better?
wireless is more prevelant than you think
Tell me more about the state of WiFi in New Zealand...
the iPhone UI is about 10,000x better than you seem to be making out.
The OP said nothing about Apple's UI. But it's nice to get a concrete figure nailed down here.
They are just Japanese, and thus don't care that something takes five years to become dominant rather than dropping everything else out of the gate.
Still banking on MiniDisc sweeping the world?
we saw the music industry crack and bow to demands for DRM free music.
Yes, here's hoping that one of the last, strongest bastions of vendor-controlled DRM caves. Maybe 2008 will be when Apple stops being evil.
Da Blog
1) OLPC starts shipping; sales under G1G1 program exceed 150,000 units (number does not include sales to governments).
2) Dell ships Ubuntu loaded PCs.
3) Other computer manufacturers follow Dell's lead in preinstalling Linux on inexpensive laptops; Wal-Mart sells out of the 10,000 units of the model they carry in less than two weeks
4) Samba/Microsoft agreement defangs Microsoft's patent FUD
5) MS-Vista bombs. After years of delays, MS-Vista finally debuts. Even those kind to Microsoft admit that Vista is bloated and buggy. Adoption is slow.The public demanded XP be installed by default. This is the first time there was such a major backlash against a major Microsoft release.
6) Even after shameless bribing and ballot stuffing, Microsoft loses the first round in the OOXML approval process.
7) GPLv3 approved. This should have put an end to the Microsoft/Novell scam. But it didn't, the Microsoft/Novell scam was "grandfathered" in.
8) Patent troll Acacia sues Redhat, just two days after two top Microsoft executives leave to join Acacia.
9) After more than four years, Federal Judge Dale Kimball *finally* rules that The SCO Group does not own UNIX. The plain language of TSG's contract with Novell made it perfectly obvious that TSG did not own UNIX, and Kimball could have ruled on this years earlier. Considering that The SCO Group never had any evidence what-so-ever, no standing, and no prima-facia case, the length of time required for this ruling is, in my opinion, inexcusable. This ruling has not stopped The SCO Group from claiming they own UNIX - maybe in another four years. Still, this is some progress.
10)ASUS eee PC.
2007 definitely had the least new stuff of any previous year. The trend is more copies of less new stuff, more copies the less new information. And the next technology boom after Web 1.0 was .... another dot com boom. The next great language was ... Java again. The next big business was .... routers, networking, & databases again.
Personally, I spent several hours this afternoon using a relatively low-cost computer, with 4 gig of RAM and four CPU cores, gigabit ether and Firewire connections to audio hardware capable of 24-bit, 192khz sampling and software that allows me to create 80 tracks of sound and MIDI goodness to make music that gives me great joy. When I finished a rough mix, I was able to sync that music to video in a program that lets me manipulate SMPTE time code as easily as tapping my foot, editing that video using special effects and image synthesis that would have cost a quarter-million when George Bush became president. Oh, and when I was at my mother-in-law's house for dinner last night, my Slingbox was serving my viewing needs from 45 miles away.
A crappy year is one when there's violence in my town that means my kids can't go to school and I can't make a living and there's nothing to eat. I guarantee that Mr. Dvorak has not missed any meals recently.
Sometimes, when I encounter the kind of lack of self-knowledge like Dvorak shows by having the temerity to complain about tech when a sizable portion of the world is unable to grow crops because of climate change, or when our own government is using a technology that is capable of making broad improvement in the lives of billions in the service of gathering information in order to limit our freedom, it really makes me think that there are certain overfed, overbred shitheads that don't deserve our attention and that Dvorak is high on that list.
OK, enough of the rant, now where's my drink?
You are welcome on my lawn.
long shot but we can always hope, right?
After all, the Macintosh finally did die. Leopard killed Classic support even on PPC, which means the current "Mac OS" has the same support for Mac apps that 1997's OPENSTEP did -- zero.
I mean, if Dvorak says it sucked.. And if Bob Metcalfe agrees with him, it must have been an AWESOME year.
:(
No xMac though
You already posted in this article with your sockpuppet. Please don't game Slashdot.
Was showing up to 'casual' dress jobs and finding out that 'casual' meant 'not in a suit' again like in 1995.
OK. Vista is dead in the water. But how about refining some of the Vista interface niceties into a light XP upgrade. Just a few interface improvements, no under the hood stuff. Refresh the franchise a bit. I mean, it'd probably only take a team of 3-5 people to transfer some widgets, revamp windows.exe with some gloss and bevels, or just add some nice 'dock' features like stardock. Probably adding less than 1% cpu usage. That would do A LOT to improve Microsoft's image to the XP world, and probably placate the osx loving housewives out there.
Well, I'll agree that the "crappiness of tech" is more psychological than reality (as other have pointed to really amazing innovations for 2007) I think it is important to clarify that personal computers are not yet to the point that they are as refined as, say, a toaster.
What has happened, I think, is that marketing hype leads individuals to have the expectation of technology that it is as easy as the "old" way and that it is somehow much better. People want tech like a toaster.. you press the button, you get what you want. For the tech arena, I think this is why devices like the iPod have been brilliant. It does what you want without a lot of fuss.
With Vista, the marketing hype was all there but they failed to actually make a product that was a clear improvement over the prior generation from the user's perspective.
Vista doesn't have that. In fact, vista does dumb things like... the fiasco with windows explorer being plagued with slow file copies, being flaky with copies, etc. SP1 is supposed to correct this, but the RC of SP1 is being met with mixed reviews. Very often we see Vista portrayed as User Vs. Vista, not working together harmoniously.
It really is plagued by stability problems-- our (limited) vista production machines can scarcely make it through a day without rebooting to keep things stable. See this video for a very, very common video related crash. Also from the video, I find it amusing that the command prompt is faster AND more coherent at handling files than the new awesomer windows explorer.
Lets not even get into the Windows Home Server (tm) corrupting files randomly. How does crap like this this happen!?!?!?
I'd say from a user expectations point of view (for their day to day tech needs), it was a pretty crappy year for users.
Apple will be moving forward when they drop DRM from all the media sold through iTunes. Until then, there isn't a whole ton of innovation coming from Apple. What was new and innovative about Leopard? Oh right... the desktop background (I use Leopard everyday on a Macbook Pro, for the record). Leopard doesn't do anything for me that Vista couldn't.
please me, have no regrets.
I can't believe you're still pushing the party line.
Hey, in the U.S. we dropped party lines about twenty years ago.
Will you think different when Apple's new phone is a 3G? Two legs good, four legs better?
Nope. I knew one was coming when I bought one, and though at the time my area had no 3G coverage I knew it wouldn't matter. That's because for most the of time I'm at home or work and get a good WiFi signal (far faster than 3G). And the rest of the times, I have used 2G for browsing enough to know it's workable. I have checked in for flights, used Wikipedia, browsed for news, read lots of interesting blogs. If you have time to read you have an extra few seconds to spare for a page load after all! And for Google Maps, 2G is plenty fast enough to scroll around in real time with almost no delay. You see, actually having used the device extensively in different locations I can speak from personal experience unlike the OP - and it would seem yourself.
In short, even when 3G phones come it it will not matter to me, I'm in this phone for at least the next few years until some other enhancement arises that I actually find enticing (though what that would be I don't know since I don't really care about GPS either, triangulated location is good enough for me).
Tell me more about the state of WiFi in New Zealand...
Since I don't live in New Zealand I cannot. If have no ability to use WiFi because you entire continent resonates at 2.4GHz or whatever, then by all means you should stay away from the iPhone. My comment was of course targeted at the US, it's a shame you NZ people are so self centered you can''t realize there are other nations on this planet.
The OP said nothing about Apple's UI. But it's nice to get a concrete figure nailed down here.Still banking on MiniDisc sweeping the world?
No, because that format was hamstrung my the music industry and a company delivering it that didn't really know what to do with it. You do realize what a phone is right? I mean there in New Zealand perhaps you talk to minidsic players but overseas we all use phones and MP3 players and combinations of them.
Yes, here's hoping that one of the last, strongest bastions of vendor-controlled DRM caves. Maybe 2008 will be when Apple stops being evil.
Well since Apple was the one that broke the DRM stranglehold I'd probably not critique them as much as you like to - you fall into the classical Apple Hater mould, unwilling to give them any credit and living a life of hatred that goes stronger with each new success that Apple enjoys, constantly targeting any positive mention of them with your mindless venom. How we all pity your sort! It must twist your mind after a while, to be filled constantly with such loathing.
I'll grant you the honor of the Final Word, though what it's worth I'm not sure since I'll certainly not bother reading whatever claptrap you spring forth next and doubt very much that anyone else will either.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think he's right about Facebook. It's a breeding ground for spammers. I'm seriously getting annoyed at all the applications and invitations. I must get something like 5-10 application invitations daily. I wish there was some way to turn the damn thing off. I don't want to use any of those stupid applications...all I ever want is to add friends and post pictures to stay in touch.
The Facebook dude is an idiot, IMHO. People are already getting tired of all these "features" he's adding. it's just terrible.
Tech looks Back At 'Another Crappy Dvorak Year'
I read the article, and I actually agree with his assessment of tech failures in 2007. As much as Dvorak is annoying, this article is pretty accurate. Slashdotters moaning and groaning about Dvorak would be better served not posting or addressing the article. Isn't this the whole point about slashdot? We are one of the few places that actually deals with information instead of groaning and moaning and acting like grade-schoolers? I have a little secret for those of you that don't want Dvorak posted here:
Don't post in the Dvorak threads. When you do, whether you complain or not, you show there is an interest in Dvorak here. Its not the negativity or positivity of reaction that determines the stories around here, its the reaction.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
that when I read a Dvorak article, all I hear is "You kids get off my lawn!" and nothing else?
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
What a ridiculous complaint. 2007 was not a bad tech year at all. Consider the following:
... and there's more. On the downside, Dvorak is still writing whiny articles that bear little resemblance to reality.
"Journal written by twitter (104583) and posted by Zonk"
Oh man, now the editors aren't even writing the summaries anymore.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Thirty years of crappy articles in computer magazines. When to pull the plug?
Yup, I actually use one now and then. It's about 100 years old though I've only been using one since mid-70s. This is a tecnology that started in the 1600s and was used extensively into the 1980s (with some niche use still today). Technology just does not last as long as it used to.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
t's a shame you NZ people are so self centered
I'm in the US, in ur 2G, teln u it sux.
Apple was the one that broke the DRM stranglehold
How did it do that now? What company is the biggest purveyor of DRM-bollixed media in the world today?
Da Blog
people have done direct comparisons of the speed of web browsing on 2G vs. 3G phones, and found very little real-world difference.
Who are these people? Video URLs or GTFO.
Da Blog
"The only fly in the ointment is that customers want to see improvements"
Most I know do not like change where a computer is involved. Of course many do like a specific new toy, whether it is a web cam or a game. But they do not tolerate changes to how they have learned to do things even if it means improvements, unless it comes with a new toy or treat. If you could somehow give them a cookie or sucker, real ones that is, when they learned something new that they needed to know it might actually happen.
They would like problems fixed IF that is they were aware that a fix was possible. Unfortunately the vast majority do not realize there is a problem, much less a fix for it. For instance most are resigned to reinstalling the OS, or even replacing a infested box, and losing a lot of data as part of a 'normal' life with computers. They do not know anything else somewhat because of what has been presented to them by the industry and somewhat of their own doing. Mostly this is due to lack of interest but it is also somewhat due to intellectual laziness.
Many I know are not knowledgeable enough, and don't want to be bothered to learn, or simply too paranoid about computers in general or the internet to make full use of them. Many others stick their heads in the sand and trust that Windows Update and a $29.99 AV subscription will magically protect from all dangers, as they tell Internet Exploder to save their banks password then proceed open every VBX or EXE loaded email joke they get.
"If you can take over the whole market, stifle competition so there's minimal expectations of change, you can keep gouging those 85-90% profit margins forever."
I agree, with the current crop of colluded and entrenched monopolies enjoying insane copyright and patent protection progress gets bogged down. It seems to me that there is a gross lack of vision in much, not all, but probably most of the business community these days. Other than the outright fraud and simple dumbass mismanagement presented as neo-fiducial science there is a lot of fighting over chump change, and few real innovations in business practice. Indeed it seems to me that the bean counters are the primary restraint on technological innovation. Kind of like local chambers of commerce work their collective asses off to exclude or coerce a new business from inflating local wages. So scared they might have to pay higher wages that they miss the point that these employees will have more money to spend.
My only hope is that technology can some how continue evade the yoke of the patents well enough to compensate for the ignorance and greed so prevalent today. If it can't I am afraid the system is gonna break, and things are gonna get really ugly really fast. This has happened before, many times, and will again. And so it goes...
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
If I had mod points and if mod points could buy beer your jaw teeth would be floating in less time than it will take for your blood pressure to come down.
Wabi-Sabi --- remember this when you think of Dvorak, it'll help take the edge off.
Matthew
So 95% of satisfaction?
Says who?
How big is each population of users?
And anyway, how many people are shelling out the insane amounts of money for the contract and phone? (in the UK it is the equivalent of around $2000)
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That's an interesting video, but I suspect the issue with that dinky little phone is that it's running an older Symbian OS on a 200 MHz CPU with a dodgy renderer. I did my own test on EVDO and found that a 400 MHz phone CPU was limiting the bandwidth - tethering the phone and using my laptop to render enabled a 100% bandwidth increase.
/. thread was full of people pouring scorn on Apple's new attempt at creating a pseudo-MHz Myth by claiming that its crappy 2G is sufficient. You can only run this confidence game for a limited duration until people figure out what's going on. In Apple's case, it became so laughable that it finally stopped dissing Intel and instead began to suckle at Intel's tit. I suspect it will take less time before Apple is dissing 2G as worthless.
That
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