I'm somewhat amused by the article - clearly those folks are trying to cash in on the Ipad's popularity to sell their news nonsense. It's likely to backfire on them; calling the 3 million plus Ipad owners snobbish or elite is neither the truth nor a good idea - they're just insulting a large number of their potential readers.
I've got one; I've had it for a few months now and it's very, very useful. For many of the things that I would have previously needed to boot up a computer and wait for Windows to load - now I can just click the button, tap on an icon, and be looking at the information I wanted.
This reminds me of the days when the idea of a "personal computer" was new. I owned one and everyone wanted to know what it was good for. Years later, nearly everyone knows what they're good for and uses one daily. Now it's the Ipad's turn for those "what's it good for?" questions. As with the PC, what it's good for depends on what you want it to do - and like the PC, it will enable a new realm of applications and functions that can't be clearly described in these early days.
We've had the long string of "it's a flop, nobody needs this" stories and now that over 3.5 million of them have sold they can't keep beating that drum. So now let's insult the people that own them - that'll do that "news" source a lot of "good". Those who think the Ipad should be a miniature PC are still wrong - but those who take it as it is soon discover that there's another world that they didn't expect.
Regarding ActiveX - those object can be marked as "user choice" or "safe" - guess what the bad guys mark them as; newer Windows versions prompt on all of them so this reduces the danger a little bit - but the vast majority of users just hit the OK button when a prompt pops up. And Windows Media - you hit the nail on the head when you pinpointed it's ability to download and run install packages for codecs. But they aren't required to come from a central repository - they can come from the same domain as the media file. Every day, people click on a media file and WMP lets them know that it needs a codec to play it and they almost always say OK. A lot of malware gets installed in just this way. And Windows Update - it's not limited to a centralized server either. It'd break WSUS if they required it to only pull executables from just one Microsoft server. This one's a real beauty because most people have their system set to automatically download and install critical updates. Getting their systems to pull "updates" from your server is a trivial task for those in the know.
It just takes exploiting a couple of these built-in services to totally own a Windows box. While your codec download is installing some malware it can also tweak the Windows Update registry settings and point that service towards your own server. Now they can run whatever anti-spy/malware program and even if it manages to find and delete it (they're not as good at this as you think) your system will helpfully download and install another copy from the "windows update" server. So easy to setup; download a free copy of WSUS from Microsoft.
What makes this so easy is that Microsoft built in the ability for these things to happen. They set the default operation of these services to allow these exploits to happen. You can't disable these exploits without breaking some functionality - and the average user doesn't know how to tell if he's been exploited or how to turn these services off. This kind of design stupidity is all through the Microsoft operating systems - it's not the bugs that keep turning up that are the real problem, it's the exploit vectors that are coded in and intended to be operational at all times that are the real problem.
I see that you've listed some third-party programs that contain similar flaws - that's true, but you don't have to use those programs and by default your system doesn't include Even the Microsoft apologists can learn from this - and I'll bet you stop and think the next time WMP wants you to install a codec to view / play some media file. It might be a legitimate request - but if it's not, your machine will belong to someone else if you click that OK button.
Microsoft's "security" is drilled full of holes due to their desire to make the web more "active" and shut out other web services. Let's list some of the offenses: ActiveX, Windows Media, Windows Update. Each of these grand ideas have "download code from the web and execute it" at their heart and are wide open to exploits. They can claim that they're working on security all they want but as long as these and other security breaches are built into Windows, attempts to plug the security leaks will be as useful as trying to bail out the ocean with a teacup.
Their "authenticode" signatures are just an example of "security through obscurity" and have already been compromised. All of the other security fixes are nice, but they don't deal with the gaping wide holes that MS has built into their products. It doesn't matter how many buffer overflows you fix (they claimed they were all fixed - not so) or how you partition memory - when you give execute privileges to code downloaded from the web you're bypassing all of those "security" restrictions. Am I being clear enough here? Microsoft has built into their operating systems services and programs which download and execute code from the internet. Everything else is useless when you leave this door wide open.
Sure, all operating systems are subject to having their bugs be exploited. But it appears that Windows is the only one which has these "come screw me" doors wide open - can they be closed? By the average user? Sheesh.
If they're going to recycle the plastics right there on the island made of the plastics - the island will gradually be turned into whatever they're recycling the plastic into. This isn't a viable project - it's just a promotional piece intended to raise awareness. No real scientist would ever propose such a lunatic scheme.
I've been writing music for years and sometimes it's really good. Many of you have probably heard some of it - but would never know, because the only way I've ever made any money from this is by selling tunes for commercial use. You might hear it as the background to a educational video or maybe in a low-budget commercial. You'll never hear it on the radio on on the stage - but not because of piracy (although I've had tunes pirated - usually by corporations, not individuals or sailors with peg legs and a parrot on their shoulder).
The biggest obstacle to making any money in the music business isn't pirates - it's the record companies. Through their control of distribution and marketing they pretty much are the gatekeepers. If you don't sign up with them you'll never be heard. If you do, you might be heard but you'll never get paid. You may see some recording star climbing out of a luxury car or limousine and dressed like a king - but those things are rented by the studio and charged to the artist as promotional expenses; the studios use creative accounting to insure that they keep all the money for themselves. The artist's real lives aren't anything like what you've been shown - if they have a real life at all.
To add insult to injury, there are "performing rights" organizations like ASCAP and BMI that keep track of who is playing what and make sure that the royalties are collected and distributed to the artists. Or that's what they'd like you to think - they've got the "collect the royalties" routine down pat - but their "pay the artist" routine is still a work in progress - somehow, they just can figure out how to track down the artists so they just hang onto the money. It's a great business for these folks - they've even got laws in place that insure that they'll be able to shake people down and keep the money for years to come.
If you think that the recording industry associations are there to protect the artist - the truth is that they treat the artists even worse than the way they do the "pirates". In the recent past they've gained new legislation that makes the creative efforts of artists the property of the record company - and the record company can pay the artist as much or little for it as they wish. The artist can't take their creations anywhere else because the law says they belong to the record company.
In case you wonder why there's "no good music being released" perhaps it's because the talented artists don't wish to subject themselves to the recording industry's abusive practices - if you can work your tail off and not get paid, or sit at home and not get paid - what do you think is really happening? It's not the pirates that are causing artists to stay away from the music business, it's the music business and their practices that has caused the artists to stay away.
Is this going to change any time soon? No - the government is in the pocket of corporations like these and their mutual back-scratching will continue for many years to come.
That mythical place you deny the existence of is called the global labor market. Sure, the Chinese peasants who are "fortunate" enough to have a job in an electronics factory are making a huge $3 per day which is much more than what they had before - but they're starting to form labor unions and are pushing for higher wages. Will they get more money? Yes, in the short term while their jobs move to another country where the people will be happy to work for that $3 per day and labor unions are illegal. Yes, such countries do exist and they'd love to see those jobs come to their shores. Do big corporations exploit those workers? You bet they do and they can do it more effectively where labor and environmental laws are minimal or non-existent; this reduces their costs even further.
The big issue that you're completely missing is that those $3 per day factory workers that make Ipads and Iphones could never possibly afford to buy one on their incomes. And the people in the US who used to manufacture electronic devices are unemployed and they can't afford them either. Sure, it's "good business" to get the work done at the lowest possible cost but this kind of thinking leads to the destruction of the business in the end - and everyone loses in this race to the bottom, even those $3 per day workers - they'll be the first to go when the sales start falling off.
Here's a lesson in basic economics for those unclear on the concepts: consumers give money to producers in exchange for their products. This is wonderful if your country produces many desirable things - but if yours doesn't and just acts as a consumer it's just a matter of time before you run out of money to send to the producing countries. Sometimes this is referred to as "balance of trade" but that road leads to obfuscation. Just remember: the money you send to China to buy a gadget is gone from the American economy. Do enough of this for enough years and we'll all be peasants. Really - do the math and quit spouting some idiotic political talking points.
First of all, let me state that I live in California. That said, years ago when I came to the state, I obtained a cell phone serviced by Pacific Bell Mobile. The service was good and the customer service was exceptional; no complaints from me. When it became Pacific Bell Wireless I didn't notice a change in service but the customer service was not as good as before. But then SBC got involved and called it Cingular. Now the customer service was awful, and the coverage was less than it was before. This is where I parted company with that outfit; one day I realized that I had no signal at my office and no signal at my home - there was a block or two along the way between home and office that had a usable signal but that was it.
When SBC renamed itself to AT&T, the transformation to suck was complete. They claim that the Iphone causes their dropped call problems; don't believe it. What's going on is that their system is not adequate to support the number of subscribers they have - when things get busy, calls get dropped. They're real good at making TV commercials, but they still haven't made any real effort to improve their infrastructure or their support - it's still guys in Dehli called "John" who take your support call and blow you off.
What I'd really like to see is for AT&T to be forced to prove their "covers 97% of America" claims. That claim is what is commonly called a "bald faced lie" and they know it. But that doesn't stop them from running those commercials as many times as they can afford.
HFT and the other modern computer trading systems are designed to obfuscate their mechanics - the average investor can't tell what's happening inside the black box. This opens up a window that dishonest traders use to skim large amounts from the public markets. They couldn't do this when trades were on pieces of paper because everyone could look at the paper and see what was traded and how much it traded for. Now it's just a flash of electrons in a black box machine and - well, did it trade fairly, or did it cheat? Only one or two people know and they're not talking about it.
The doublespeak is thick around this subject with people claiming it makes markets more efficient. I suppose that's true if what they mean is that it makes lining their pockets at someone else's expense easier and more efficient. It does NOT level the playing field - only those with the big powerful computers hooked to ultra low latency network links can play; the common man is excluded. And even if your broker does have all of these expensive tools to use - does he use them for your benefit, or does he use them to skim a few extra percent off of your trades? You'll never know and the crooked brokers know this and are happily taking advantage.
I'm not going to claim that electronic trading is sinful and that it should be eliminated - but it does need to be more transparent. To draw an appropriate parallel, consider the slot machine. Nevada inspects and regulates those machines to insure that they play a fair game. That might be the right solution for HFT, too.
Nope, you're not mistaken. The idea drives the implementation but patents (should, used to) only deal with actual physical things. Ideas aren't protected because there's no way to determine what's in your head.
Inspiration - well, let's say design - is the heart of engineering and invention. All technological devices are built upon "current technology" and what an invention consists of is simply using existing technologies in a novel and useful manner. So if someone puts robotics technology and chickens together and creates a robotic chicken plucker then that's a patentable invention (as long as there are no pre-existing descriptions of this invention and some other legal mumble).
This is actually a good description of a patentable invention because there's a tangible machine that performs only this specific task: pluck chickens. Software and business method patents are pretty stupid (in my opinion) and that's not what I'm talking about here. Building a better mousetrap means that there are already mousetraps and also that you're going to have to work with the materials and technologies that are available to you. The invention would be a new and novel machine that traps mice and it would be patentable.
Remember that there's a difference between creation and invention - you could invent a new kind of recliner that makes nerds happy and even though it was built out of off-the-shelf materials and recliners had been built before - if it's unique then it's patentable - it's a legitimate invention.
The patent system is badly broken but it's also widely misunderstood. Saying that Apple didn't invent anything when they created the Iphone is like saying that Thomas Edison didn't invent anything when he produced the electric light. Glass wasn't new and neither was carbon or the other materials his bulbs were made from. It was the unique combination of those existing technologies that made the electric light an invention. In the world of cell phones - what Apple created and called the Iphone is very much an invention. You can argue the pedigree of the technologies used all you want but it's the unique combination of those technologies that make the Iphone a true invention.
Saying that inspiration isn't patentable or copyrightable misses the mark by a wide margin. Take these words I'm writing right now - I'm "making it up" as I go along and these words are copyrighted by law - the moment I "fix" them (hit submit) then the copyright comes into existence. By posting here, I'm giving Slashdot an implicit license to reproduce these words as they wish.
There's something about copyrights, trademarks, and patents that so many seem to be unclear on: it really doesn't matter if you agree with the laws or not, they still apply to you with the full support of the law. If you disagree, then work to make positive changes in the system. Posting messages on internet sites doesn't help at all; making a change means actually doing something. Until that day, try to understand the system as it is so you don't make unfortunate mistakes that could land you in court.
One issue is the corporate use of questionably valid patents to attack their competitors. This does nothing to advance science or technology and is a clear abuse of the patent system. I'm not talking about legitimate patents covering real inventions - I'm talking about all of those patents that cover pre-existing technology or obvious ideas. There's far too many of those and they're taking a toll on our economy.
The other issue is the free riders - those corporations that choose to copy other's inventions and profit from someone else's ideas. This is what the patent system was intended to address and it's not doing very well at that either.
Rather than point fingers and toss accusations, I'd like to offer this thought to my fellow Slashdot readers: think back to what cell phones were like before the iPhone came out - and what they're like now. Say what you will about Apple but they did cause a revolution in cell phone design. They provided the "inspiration" for all of the touch-screen Iphone wanna-be phones that are now being produced by numerous companies - including HTC. Who will win in this latest exchange of legal briefs? One thing is for sure: it won't be the consumer.
One thing you can depend on is that patent suits take time and money - huge amounts of money for both the winner and the loser. And these expenses will be passed on to you in the cost of your new cell phone and the price of the cell service - the corporations aren't in business to do anyone a favor and they'll always make a profit no matter how much it costs you.
Situations like this one clearly show that the US patent system is badly broken - it's not promoting science and the arts and it's not protecting those who invent useful technology. It's become nothing but a weapon that corporations use to beat up on their competitors legally. This needs to change, and change soon.
I've been using Google Voice (previously Grand Central) for years. It's been great to have a stable phone number - home phone or cell phone numbers may change but just tweak the configuration and your Google Voice number is still good. It's worth much more than the price (free) for just this. But there's more!
When AT&T couldn't figure out how to sign me up for home phone service I started looking into VOIP service - I wanted something with a normal looking and acting telephone that didn't require a computer to work. Gizmo5 provided the answer; they provide standard SIP service which is compatible with numerous SIP phones. With Google Voice forwarding to my Gizmo5 SIP line I've got the best of both worlds - free incoming calls and 1 cent per minute for outbound calls to anywhere in the US, Canada and the European Union. I've been using this setup for over 8 months now and it works great - very good call quality and very reliable service. My total phone bill for those 8 months is just under four dollars.
Gizmo5 has been closed to new accounts for months now so those who wish to follow in these footsteps will have to wait. And I suspect there's going to be a lot of legal challenges before this is available to all; with good SIP phones (I'm using some Grandstream phones and they're OK) it's almost indistinguishable from AT&T service and many of the features you'd pay extra for from AT&T are free. This will severely impact AT&T's business - as well as the cable companies, Vonage, Magic Jack, etc. who are selling VOIP service at a big profit. The lawsuits should start flying soon and it's going to be interesting to see how those big operators state their case when everyone sees that they're selling very little more than nothing.
Google Voice and Gizmo5 together is powerful stuff and it's going to shake the telecommunications industry from top to bottom when this is available to everyone. I wonder how far away that day will be...
What are these people smoking? I want some.
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Flight of the Desktops
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Articles like TFA are written by people who don't really know what they're talking about. Desktop and laptop computers serve different purposes - they don't really interchange well. If you need lots of power for gaming / rendering / compliling then you can't really get it from a laptop. Even when they're equipped with high powered processors, the design compromises made in shrinking a machine to laptop size take a heavy toll on performance. If you need portable "use it anywhere" computing then a laptop is your answer.
For heavy work - the desktop machine does the job and doesn't roast your tender bits. That desktop is hard to take along on a trip, though.
What's probably going on is that the "writers" have noticed that Ipads are selling like hotcakes and everybody and his dog has a tablet computer waiting in the wings - they're lumping these in with the laptops and calling desktops dead. That's a pretty poor analysis of what's really going on in the market but we don't expect much from that crowd, do we?
I'm sitting in the living room typing on a laptop right now. I'm noticing that my lap is getting uncomfortably warm so I'll put this thing aside and go in the other room and sit in my comfy chair at my desktop if I'm going to be writing a lot tonight. My Ipad is sitting on the table; it's fine for what I use it for but not for lots of typing - not because the on-screen keyboard is useless - it's actually very usable. You can't use it while you're holding the tablet, though - it needs to be on a table to type on it. Fooey; give me the full-sized keyboard with real key travel and a real mouse.
I'm continually amazed by the number of web forms that will not allow enough characters to spell the name of the California city I live in. And then some of them try to match city names - and their entry forms truncate them at varying lengths. Even major corporate websites fail spectacularly - I couldn't track an order at a major retailer because my city didn't match the city on the order. If I knew how many characters they were looking for I could truncate my input appropriately - but what the heck are some coders thinking?
Here's a handy tip: if you're allowing 16 bytes for the city name you are making a stupid assumption.
And those of you who insist that phone numbers be entered in a specific format - get a clue, would you? Databases are most useful when the data is clean and regular - but names, addresses, cities, phone numbers, etc. are not always clean or regular. As a coder, you should be doing as much data cleaning as you can when it's being input. If the database is going to be used for many years and many purposes, somebody's going to have to clean that data. If not your code, then some warm body is going to have to go over the data.
Since I quit buying anything from HP after that laptop fiasco - I guess I'll just have to miss out on having my printer spam me. They keep on Inventing so many interesting products that show how much they care about their customers that it's hard to sit back and just watch it go by without me.
But it's OK; this is just the price I'm going to have to pay for making the choice to say NO to any HP products.
I can actually see some use for this thing. Those wasp nests won't stand a chance; a whole watt should be enough to ignite the nest and do it from a safe distance. You'll have to hold the beam on one spot for a while, though - one watt isn't exactly industrial cutting laser stuff.
All through this thread I see people posting who vaguely understand that it's dangerous - but they don't seem to have a good idea of how dangerous. First thing to consider are eyes. Yours and also anyone else's eyes that the beam could reach. This power level will instantly destroy the retinal tissue - the damage is done much faster than you can blink. If you use one of these you MUST wear the protective goggles and you NEED to be aware of what the beam can reach. If there's any reflective surfaces (they don't have to be mirrors, just reflective) then the beam can go just about anywhere. You MUST wear the protective goggles if you light this thing up - even if you're smart enough to never look into the beam, the reflected beam from a glass window, shiny beer can, etc. will get you - sooner or later. The eye damage is permanent and it accumulates as more of the retina is destroyed.
Here's how it usually goes: step one - play with your new laser in the living room, spraying photons everywhere. Step two is when you have a "wow, that was really bright" moment. Step three is the trip to the doctor who gives you the bad news. Wear the goggles! And consider carefully where you are operating this thing. There's a reason laser labs don't have windows or shiny things of any kind and the lasers are bolted down - this allows them to guarantee that the beam is under control. There will also be a beam stop that is capable of blocking the full output of the laser. Do you have a place like this to light up your new laser?
OK, let's step away from the "you'll put your eye out with that thing" talk for a moment and consider the destructive power of this one watt laser. You're not going to be able to wave it in front of a piece of paper and expect the paper to fall into two pieces. It'll cut electrical tape and black garbage bags pretty well and popping balloons can be fun. But actually setting something on fire will require the beam to be on the same spot for many, many seconds before enough heat is built up to ignite what you're burning. If you want to use this thing as a weapon you'd be well advised to stick to burning out retinas. It'll do that real well.
This laser comes with a set of protective goggles - if you want to show it off to your friends, be sure to get some extra goggles for them to use and don't light the laser until everyone has their goggles on. And always know where the beam is going - even if you and your friends are wearing goggles there's none on the innocent bystanders outside and they're not expecting you to have the beam take a bad bounce and nail them through a window.
Gartner says what they're paid to say
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Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 1
You're not allowed to have a lawyer represent you in Small Claims Court - that's different from "no lawyers allowed".
For small items where the amount asked for is less than the corporation would spend on a defense - you're almost certain to receive a full settlement. But if it's big money then expect the corporation to work to have the case moved to a "real" court.
The reason Apple is doing so well is that they turn out devices that suit the people's needs and are well-designed and reliable. This marketing bullshit about how Apple has some "secret sauce" is just nonsense promoted by those who can't research the stories they write - or those who want to turn out the same old junk and think they should be competitive just because they showed up.
The so-called competitors have been shown up for what they really are and they're squealing. Ever use a Motorola phone? How did you like their excuse for a user interface? Or have you ever used a Blackberry? How many times a week do you have to pull the battery to reboot it? Even the newer Droid phones - great concept, but they leave a lot to be desired in the execution. And that's just the cell phones.
How about tablets? I've used a HP TX series tablet and after that I bought an iPad. There's lots of noise from vaporware vendors but anything like competition for the iPad is nowhere in sight. At least HP looked at the way things are and killed their Windows tablet - they'll bring it out running Web/OS sometime in the future. Probably it'll be delivered by virgins riding unicorns.
Creating and building fully developed and well rounded products isn't a trivial task - Apple spent a lot of time and money making their iThingies good. For those companies who want to compete with Apple on this ground - they're going to have to get rid of their "good enough" mentality and create great products. And even then, they'll be months or years behind Apple. This isn't wrong or unfair; when all the geeks were kicking Apple while they were down, they had some good stuff brewing in the labs. Now that it's out on the street it's a different day and a different game.
I'm hoping that other corporations will be impelled to improve their game and actually compete with Apple. That would be good for everyone - but until they can compete in the market, the promotional BS is nothing more than vapor that isn't worth listening to.
One thing that the commenters here have overlooked is the availability of direct connections to the Internet backbone. The biggest nexus of end and peering points is right there in Silicon Valley so hooking into huge bandwidth is much less expensive than it would be in other locations. Is the property cost too high? It used to be, but these days there's plenty of vacant space and the costs have gone down substantially thanks to the recession. There's plenty of electrical power available and it's in close proximity to a very large population of internet users. What's not to like?
Those who see this as a boom that will produce jobs that are worth moving to Silicon Valley for are best advised to stay home. The recession has hit the IT folks there very hard and there's about 30% unemployment in that field. Data centers aren't places that require large staffs; one or two people to monitor the systems is about it and they'll do it all from moving servers around to fielding support calls. There's nothing there for people coming from out of state and nothing for the folks that are already here. Many of those H1B workers and illegal aliens have already left for home and more are leaving every day; even the slaves are bailing out.
Facebook has already jumped the shark, so their build-out in Silicon Valley will become even more vacant space in the near future. Green energy was planned to be the next boom but it's stillborn so the hard times in the valley are going to continue for now.
Really - if you're thinking of moving to Silicon Valley from out of state - stop now. The chances of employment are very slim and the expense of living there is very high; the best you could do is submit resumes until you run out of money. You're better off almost anywhere else.
The clues are always visible to those who look
on
Privacy Machiavellis
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Supplying useful web services to a large number of people costs real money; it's not free. And there are no successful companies or corporations that give these services away for free - they get paid for them, and they're paid very well.
So when you see a great new free web service you need to stop and think - it's not free, someone is paying for it and that someone is almost always the users. If you don't see the price tag then you don't want to play their game. In most cases, this benevolent company giving you a free service is building up user profiles that they sell to marketing companies. If you're big like Facebook or Google, you've got millions of those profiles and they're very detailed and also very valuable. But nobody ever thinks about this when they happily give up all kinds of personal info as they register for their free account.
Google is pretty transparent about this stuff: they use the profile data to serve targeted ads and advertisers pay them a premium price for those ads. This wouldn't work without the information about you that Google has amassed but it's the source of all of their financial might. Who do you think pays Facebook's bills? That's right, and that's why their privacy options don't include any that would prevent them - and their "affiliates" - from collecting your personal data.
That personal information is valuable and it's yours - and you give it away. Those corporations thank you for your generosity! Here's a tip for further study: view the mandatory privacy policy at any major web site; they'll tell you (sort of) what kind of data they collect - then promise to keep it safe and only give it to the government upon request and to their affiliates and/or third parties that supply some kind of service to the company. So what is an affiliate? Could one of them be the marketing clearinghouse that buys your personal profile? Could one be an Indian call center that will resell the data to anyone with the price? Could one of them be the guy with the CC skimmer? You'll never know; you'll just look at the privacy policy and say "that's cool" and click OK.
You may have noticed that when ad blocking software is discussed it's the small websites that whine and cry about the loss of revenue. The big corporate sites only report what the small sites say because it serves to preserve the legend. Banner adds are small beans - but live and verified profiles are big money.
The input method for an OS or its applications is very basic stuff; what works well for input from a keyboard doesn't work well with a mouse. Try operating programs in a Windows CMD window with your mouse and see how far that gets you. Operating Windows from a keyboard is possible but you wouldn't want to try to do serious work this way - and even today there's important menu functions that don't have keyboard equivalents. Neither of those designs is wrong, they're just designed for a particular input method. You can attempt to patch things so that the support for a wrong input device is a different kind of wrong but the only way to do it right is to start from scratch and design from the ground up for the input method.
A touch screen interface - especially multi-touch - is also a different input method. Your finger isn't a mouse and while you can try to emulate a mouse with a finger you'll quickly find that there's information a mouse supplies that a finger can only do awkwardly if at all. You'd think that Microsoft - who was right there in the thick of the battle to change input methods from text to mouse - would know these things. I suspect their engineers do but their marketing people apparently don't.
Anyone that has a digitizer tablet connected to a Windows box can easily verify that attempting to operate Windows with nothing more than "point" and "click" is a frustrating experience. Everything is much more difficult to do until you reach a critical point where you won't be able to proceed any further. Their tablet add-ons try to address these fundamental problems but they can only do it imperfectly - Windows is designed from the ground up to be operated with a mouse / keyboard. The companies making tablet PCs have known this for years and you might note that they include a detachable keyboard and a PS/2 mouse port in their designs. Their hope was that your in-house programs would be good enough to work from the touch screen and that this would make their product truly useful. Trying to use Office apps on a touch screen just doesn't work well enough to be usable.
Apple's success with their touch screen devices is largely due to the simple fact that the OS that runs them was built to use a touch screen as its primary input device. And much of their app approval process is there to insure that quickie ports of mouse operated apps aren't inflicted on their users. Touch is another different input method and like the others, only works well when the system is built from the ground up to be operated in that way.
If Microsoft wants to play in this market they're going to have to break away from tradition and build a lightweight touch operated OS - they've got the talent to do it but I'm not sure if they have the willingness to do it. I suspect they'll just keep on pushing their desktop OS on tablets and watching them fail in the market.
Linux on tablets is going to face the same challenges. To operate not just the kernel but the applications using an interface that reports nothing more than a "click" at a screen address and do it well will require some very serious effort - and a willingness of the various programmers to support not only the keyboard / mouse version but the touch version as well. If we want to see successful Linux tablets this will need to be done - or else Linux can follow the Windows model and suffer the same fate.
Those big shops that get talked about here are not what you describe them as. I spent seven years at one of the biggest and - well, I wish I had those years back. The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the budget doesn't include new code or new hardware and actually it's going to require a headcount reduction and the rest of you guys can just pick up the slack.
Maybe you'll get to spend some time fixing things - but you're more likely to be sucked into some deathmarch project where you don't have enough time to complete it much less debug or document it. Those that come after point at these things and call them sloppy work and say how it could be better if we'd just documented what we'd done. Those fools will have their eyes opened very soon.
Let me explain some basic facts to you: IT is a cost center; it adds nothing to the bottom line. When management is looking to cut costs, it's always among the first targets. And if you do the job well and things work reliably - they won't have any reason to believe you're necessary. First rule of working in large IT shops: keep your resume updated. After enough lay-offs, most of the remaining staff will quit. Then the company coasts along for a while until things start falling apart then hires a bunch more IT people at a higher rate to make things work again. And the cycle repeats, over and over.
Those who blame management for their woes are unaware of how much BS their manager puts up with and how much he tries to keep the executives from tearing the department apart. And after so many years I can only come up with one solution for the whole mess: make IT a chargeable service and charge the various departments / desks for the IT services they request. Try suggesting this at your company and see what they say - they'll say that nobody would request IT services under these conditions. OK, so now we know what the rest of the company feels that IT is worth. I'm sure glad to be far away from that dysfunctional clusterfuk.
All this talk about technology and time invested is largely a smokescreen. Do you want to know what's in that ink cartridge? Some colored (or black) dye, a little alcohol and water and some glycol for body. Adjust the non-dye components for best results. Or buy ink refill kits; they're pretty close to the factory formulation and work perfectly well no matter what HP's marketing machine would like you to believe.
How about that "more pages from HP ink" claim? That's like a oil company claiming you get more miles per gallon from their gasoline; in other words, bullshit.
What they're really doing is playing the old "the razor is free but you have to buy our blades" game. Instead of charging you what the true retail value of their inkjet printer is, they give you a discount on the purchase price to bait the "it's on sale!" folks in - then they stick it to you on the ink and make up the difference and then some over the life of the printer. How long will your printer last? Until HP says it's dead - they'll discontinue the ink cartridges and that's it for your printer.
And as long as they can keep the public (and the government) snowed about all of this they'll continue to rake it in. Have ink formulas improved over time? Yes, they have. 1 Billion a year worth? Nope, not even if you pad the budget with lots and lots of hookers and blow. It's just a simple dye formula, not rocket science. Their greed is amazing; they equip their ink cartridges with chips that do NOTHING to improve the operation of the ink cartridge - their sole function is to cause good cartridges to fail early ("to provide the best printing results") and prevent you from refilling their cartridges ("to provide the best printing results"). How about to "enhance HP's bottom line" instead?
Once upon a time HP was a technology company that stood behind their products. Now they're a second-rate consumer electronics company that depends on the revenue from printer ink to balance its books. I mentioned the formula earlier in this message - price out the ingredients and see what it costs per gallon to make and you'll never look at printer ink the same way again. What a scam; they've snookered you folks into paying $35 for a plastic box containing less than a penny's worth of dye.
You know what's really sad? The cartridge refill people are taking you to the cleaners on ink, too. Not nearly as bad as HP does but how do these people sleep at night?
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I'm somewhat amused by the article - clearly those folks are trying to cash in on the Ipad's popularity to sell their news nonsense. It's likely to backfire on them; calling the 3 million plus Ipad owners snobbish or elite is neither the truth nor a good idea - they're just insulting a large number of their potential readers.
I've got one; I've had it for a few months now and it's very, very useful. For many of the things that I would have previously needed to boot up a computer and wait for Windows to load - now I can just click the button, tap on an icon, and be looking at the information I wanted.
This reminds me of the days when the idea of a "personal computer" was new. I owned one and everyone wanted to know what it was good for. Years later, nearly everyone knows what they're good for and uses one daily. Now it's the Ipad's turn for those "what's it good for?" questions. As with the PC, what it's good for depends on what you want it to do - and like the PC, it will enable a new realm of applications and functions that can't be clearly described in these early days.
We've had the long string of "it's a flop, nobody needs this" stories and now that over 3.5 million of them have sold they can't keep beating that drum. So now let's insult the people that own them - that'll do that "news" source a lot of "good". Those who think the Ipad should be a miniature PC are still wrong - but those who take it as it is soon discover that there's another world that they didn't expect.
Regarding ActiveX - those object can be marked as "user choice" or "safe" - guess what the bad guys mark them as; newer Windows versions prompt on all of them so this reduces the danger a little bit - but the vast majority of users just hit the OK button when a prompt pops up. And Windows Media - you hit the nail on the head when you pinpointed it's ability to download and run install packages for codecs. But they aren't required to come from a central repository - they can come from the same domain as the media file. Every day, people click on a media file and WMP lets them know that it needs a codec to play it and they almost always say OK. A lot of malware gets installed in just this way. And Windows Update - it's not limited to a centralized server either. It'd break WSUS if they required it to only pull executables from just one Microsoft server. This one's a real beauty because most people have their system set to automatically download and install critical updates. Getting their systems to pull "updates" from your server is a trivial task for those in the know.
It just takes exploiting a couple of these built-in services to totally own a Windows box. While your codec download is installing some malware it can also tweak the Windows Update registry settings and point that service towards your own server. Now they can run whatever anti-spy/malware program and even if it manages to find and delete it (they're not as good at this as you think) your system will helpfully download and install another copy from the "windows update" server. So easy to setup; download a free copy of WSUS from Microsoft.
What makes this so easy is that Microsoft built in the ability for these things to happen. They set the default operation of these services to allow these exploits to happen. You can't disable these exploits without breaking some functionality - and the average user doesn't know how to tell if he's been exploited or how to turn these services off. This kind of design stupidity is all through the Microsoft operating systems - it's not the bugs that keep turning up that are the real problem, it's the exploit vectors that are coded in and intended to be operational at all times that are the real problem.
I see that you've listed some third-party programs that contain similar flaws - that's true, but you don't have to use those programs and by default your system doesn't include Even the Microsoft apologists can learn from this - and I'll bet you stop and think the next time WMP wants you to install a codec to view / play some media file. It might be a legitimate request - but if it's not, your machine will belong to someone else if you click that OK button.
Microsoft's "security" is drilled full of holes due to their desire to make the web more "active" and shut out other web services. Let's list some of the offenses: ActiveX, Windows Media, Windows Update. Each of these grand ideas have "download code from the web and execute it" at their heart and are wide open to exploits. They can claim that they're working on security all they want but as long as these and other security breaches are built into Windows, attempts to plug the security leaks will be as useful as trying to bail out the ocean with a teacup.
Their "authenticode" signatures are just an example of "security through obscurity" and have already been compromised. All of the other security fixes are nice, but they don't deal with the gaping wide holes that MS has built into their products. It doesn't matter how many buffer overflows you fix (they claimed they were all fixed - not so) or how you partition memory - when you give execute privileges to code downloaded from the web you're bypassing all of those "security" restrictions. Am I being clear enough here? Microsoft has built into their operating systems services and programs which download and execute code from the internet. Everything else is useless when you leave this door wide open.
Sure, all operating systems are subject to having their bugs be exploited. But it appears that Windows is the only one which has these "come screw me" doors wide open - can they be closed? By the average user? Sheesh.
If they're going to recycle the plastics right there on the island made of the plastics - the island will gradually be turned into whatever they're recycling the plastic into. This isn't a viable project - it's just a promotional piece intended to raise awareness. No real scientist would ever propose such a lunatic scheme.
I've been writing music for years and sometimes it's really good. Many of you have probably heard some of it - but would never know, because the only way I've ever made any money from this is by selling tunes for commercial use. You might hear it as the background to a educational video or maybe in a low-budget commercial. You'll never hear it on the radio on on the stage - but not because of piracy (although I've had tunes pirated - usually by corporations, not individuals or sailors with peg legs and a parrot on their shoulder).
The biggest obstacle to making any money in the music business isn't pirates - it's the record companies. Through their control of distribution and marketing they pretty much are the gatekeepers. If you don't sign up with them you'll never be heard. If you do, you might be heard but you'll never get paid. You may see some recording star climbing out of a luxury car or limousine and dressed like a king - but those things are rented by the studio and charged to the artist as promotional expenses; the studios use creative accounting to insure that they keep all the money for themselves. The artist's real lives aren't anything like what you've been shown - if they have a real life at all.
To add insult to injury, there are "performing rights" organizations like ASCAP and BMI that keep track of who is playing what and make sure that the royalties are collected and distributed to the artists. Or that's what they'd like you to think - they've got the "collect the royalties" routine down pat - but their "pay the artist" routine is still a work in progress - somehow, they just can figure out how to track down the artists so they just hang onto the money. It's a great business for these folks - they've even got laws in place that insure that they'll be able to shake people down and keep the money for years to come.
If you think that the recording industry associations are there to protect the artist - the truth is that they treat the artists even worse than the way they do the "pirates". In the recent past they've gained new legislation that makes the creative efforts of artists the property of the record company - and the record company can pay the artist as much or little for it as they wish. The artist can't take their creations anywhere else because the law says they belong to the record company.
In case you wonder why there's "no good music being released" perhaps it's because the talented artists don't wish to subject themselves to the recording industry's abusive practices - if you can work your tail off and not get paid, or sit at home and not get paid - what do you think is really happening? It's not the pirates that are causing artists to stay away from the music business, it's the music business and their practices that has caused the artists to stay away.
Is this going to change any time soon? No - the government is in the pocket of corporations like these and their mutual back-scratching will continue for many years to come.
That mythical place you deny the existence of is called the global labor market. Sure, the Chinese peasants who are "fortunate" enough to have a job in an electronics factory are making a huge $3 per day which is much more than what they had before - but they're starting to form labor unions and are pushing for higher wages. Will they get more money? Yes, in the short term while their jobs move to another country where the people will be happy to work for that $3 per day and labor unions are illegal. Yes, such countries do exist and they'd love to see those jobs come to their shores. Do big corporations exploit those workers? You bet they do and they can do it more effectively where labor and environmental laws are minimal or non-existent; this reduces their costs even further.
The big issue that you're completely missing is that those $3 per day factory workers that make Ipads and Iphones could never possibly afford to buy one on their incomes. And the people in the US who used to manufacture electronic devices are unemployed and they can't afford them either. Sure, it's "good business" to get the work done at the lowest possible cost but this kind of thinking leads to the destruction of the business in the end - and everyone loses in this race to the bottom, even those $3 per day workers - they'll be the first to go when the sales start falling off.
Here's a lesson in basic economics for those unclear on the concepts: consumers give money to producers in exchange for their products. This is wonderful if your country produces many desirable things - but if yours doesn't and just acts as a consumer it's just a matter of time before you run out of money to send to the producing countries. Sometimes this is referred to as "balance of trade" but that road leads to obfuscation. Just remember: the money you send to China to buy a gadget is gone from the American economy. Do enough of this for enough years and we'll all be peasants. Really - do the math and quit spouting some idiotic political talking points.
First of all, let me state that I live in California. That said, years ago when I came to the state, I obtained a cell phone serviced by Pacific Bell Mobile. The service was good and the customer service was exceptional; no complaints from me. When it became Pacific Bell Wireless I didn't notice a change in service but the customer service was not as good as before. But then SBC got involved and called it Cingular. Now the customer service was awful, and the coverage was less than it was before. This is where I parted company with that outfit; one day I realized that I had no signal at my office and no signal at my home - there was a block or two along the way between home and office that had a usable signal but that was it.
When SBC renamed itself to AT&T, the transformation to suck was complete. They claim that the Iphone causes their dropped call problems; don't believe it. What's going on is that their system is not adequate to support the number of subscribers they have - when things get busy, calls get dropped. They're real good at making TV commercials, but they still haven't made any real effort to improve their infrastructure or their support - it's still guys in Dehli called "John" who take your support call and blow you off.
What I'd really like to see is for AT&T to be forced to prove their "covers 97% of America" claims. That claim is what is commonly called a "bald faced lie" and they know it. But that doesn't stop them from running those commercials as many times as they can afford.
HFT and the other modern computer trading systems are designed to obfuscate their mechanics - the average investor can't tell what's happening inside the black box. This opens up a window that dishonest traders use to skim large amounts from the public markets. They couldn't do this when trades were on pieces of paper because everyone could look at the paper and see what was traded and how much it traded for. Now it's just a flash of electrons in a black box machine and - well, did it trade fairly, or did it cheat? Only one or two people know and they're not talking about it.
The doublespeak is thick around this subject with people claiming it makes markets more efficient. I suppose that's true if what they mean is that it makes lining their pockets at someone else's expense easier and more efficient. It does NOT level the playing field - only those with the big powerful computers hooked to ultra low latency network links can play; the common man is excluded. And even if your broker does have all of these expensive tools to use - does he use them for your benefit, or does he use them to skim a few extra percent off of your trades? You'll never know and the crooked brokers know this and are happily taking advantage.
I'm not going to claim that electronic trading is sinful and that it should be eliminated - but it does need to be more transparent. To draw an appropriate parallel, consider the slot machine. Nevada inspects and regulates those machines to insure that they play a fair game. That might be the right solution for HFT, too.
Nope, you're not mistaken. The idea drives the implementation but patents (should, used to) only deal with actual physical things. Ideas aren't protected because there's no way to determine what's in your head.
Inspiration - well, let's say design - is the heart of engineering and invention. All technological devices are built upon "current technology" and what an invention consists of is simply using existing technologies in a novel and useful manner. So if someone puts robotics technology and chickens together and creates a robotic chicken plucker then that's a patentable invention (as long as there are no pre-existing descriptions of this invention and some other legal mumble).
This is actually a good description of a patentable invention because there's a tangible machine that performs only this specific task: pluck chickens. Software and business method patents are pretty stupid (in my opinion) and that's not what I'm talking about here. Building a better mousetrap means that there are already mousetraps and also that you're going to have to work with the materials and technologies that are available to you. The invention would be a new and novel machine that traps mice and it would be patentable.
Remember that there's a difference between creation and invention - you could invent a new kind of recliner that makes nerds happy and even though it was built out of off-the-shelf materials and recliners had been built before - if it's unique then it's patentable - it's a legitimate invention.
The patent system is badly broken but it's also widely misunderstood. Saying that Apple didn't invent anything when they created the Iphone is like saying that Thomas Edison didn't invent anything when he produced the electric light. Glass wasn't new and neither was carbon or the other materials his bulbs were made from. It was the unique combination of those existing technologies that made the electric light an invention. In the world of cell phones - what Apple created and called the Iphone is very much an invention. You can argue the pedigree of the technologies used all you want but it's the unique combination of those technologies that make the Iphone a true invention.
Saying that inspiration isn't patentable or copyrightable misses the mark by a wide margin. Take these words I'm writing right now - I'm "making it up" as I go along and these words are copyrighted by law - the moment I "fix" them (hit submit) then the copyright comes into existence. By posting here, I'm giving Slashdot an implicit license to reproduce these words as they wish.
There's something about copyrights, trademarks, and patents that so many seem to be unclear on: it really doesn't matter if you agree with the laws or not, they still apply to you with the full support of the law. If you disagree, then work to make positive changes in the system. Posting messages on internet sites doesn't help at all; making a change means actually doing something. Until that day, try to understand the system as it is so you don't make unfortunate mistakes that could land you in court.
One issue is the corporate use of questionably valid patents to attack their competitors. This does nothing to advance science or technology and is a clear abuse of the patent system. I'm not talking about legitimate patents covering real inventions - I'm talking about all of those patents that cover pre-existing technology or obvious ideas. There's far too many of those and they're taking a toll on our economy.
The other issue is the free riders - those corporations that choose to copy other's inventions and profit from someone else's ideas. This is what the patent system was intended to address and it's not doing very well at that either.
Rather than point fingers and toss accusations, I'd like to offer this thought to my fellow Slashdot readers: think back to what cell phones were like before the iPhone came out - and what they're like now. Say what you will about Apple but they did cause a revolution in cell phone design. They provided the "inspiration" for all of the touch-screen Iphone wanna-be phones that are now being produced by numerous companies - including HTC. Who will win in this latest exchange of legal briefs? One thing is for sure: it won't be the consumer.
One thing you can depend on is that patent suits take time and money - huge amounts of money for both the winner and the loser. And these expenses will be passed on to you in the cost of your new cell phone and the price of the cell service - the corporations aren't in business to do anyone a favor and they'll always make a profit no matter how much it costs you.
Situations like this one clearly show that the US patent system is badly broken - it's not promoting science and the arts and it's not protecting those who invent useful technology. It's become nothing but a weapon that corporations use to beat up on their competitors legally. This needs to change, and change soon.
I had some problems paying them too - what worked out for me was to use Google Checkout to pay them.
I've been using Google Voice (previously Grand Central) for years. It's been great to have a stable phone number - home phone or cell phone numbers may change but just tweak the configuration and your Google Voice number is still good. It's worth much more than the price (free) for just this. But there's more!
When AT&T couldn't figure out how to sign me up for home phone service I started looking into VOIP service - I wanted something with a normal looking and acting telephone that didn't require a computer to work. Gizmo5 provided the answer; they provide standard SIP service which is compatible with numerous SIP phones. With Google Voice forwarding to my Gizmo5 SIP line I've got the best of both worlds - free incoming calls and 1 cent per minute for outbound calls to anywhere in the US, Canada and the European Union. I've been using this setup for over 8 months now and it works great - very good call quality and very reliable service. My total phone bill for those 8 months is just under four dollars.
Gizmo5 has been closed to new accounts for months now so those who wish to follow in these footsteps will have to wait. And I suspect there's going to be a lot of legal challenges before this is available to all; with good SIP phones (I'm using some Grandstream phones and they're OK) it's almost indistinguishable from AT&T service and many of the features you'd pay extra for from AT&T are free. This will severely impact AT&T's business - as well as the cable companies, Vonage, Magic Jack, etc. who are selling VOIP service at a big profit. The lawsuits should start flying soon and it's going to be interesting to see how those big operators state their case when everyone sees that they're selling very little more than nothing.
Google Voice and Gizmo5 together is powerful stuff and it's going to shake the telecommunications industry from top to bottom when this is available to everyone. I wonder how far away that day will be...
Articles like TFA are written by people who don't really know what they're talking about. Desktop and laptop computers serve different purposes - they don't really interchange well. If you need lots of power for gaming / rendering / compliling then you can't really get it from a laptop. Even when they're equipped with high powered processors, the design compromises made in shrinking a machine to laptop size take a heavy toll on performance. If you need portable "use it anywhere" computing then a laptop is your answer.
For heavy work - the desktop machine does the job and doesn't roast your tender bits. That desktop is hard to take along on a trip, though.
What's probably going on is that the "writers" have noticed that Ipads are selling like hotcakes and everybody and his dog has a tablet computer waiting in the wings - they're lumping these in with the laptops and calling desktops dead. That's a pretty poor analysis of what's really going on in the market but we don't expect much from that crowd, do we?
I'm sitting in the living room typing on a laptop right now. I'm noticing that my lap is getting uncomfortably warm so I'll put this thing aside and go in the other room and sit in my comfy chair at my desktop if I'm going to be writing a lot tonight. My Ipad is sitting on the table; it's fine for what I use it for but not for lots of typing - not because the on-screen keyboard is useless - it's actually very usable. You can't use it while you're holding the tablet, though - it needs to be on a table to type on it. Fooey; give me the full-sized keyboard with real key travel and a real mouse.
I'm continually amazed by the number of web forms that will not allow enough characters to spell the name of the California city I live in. And then some of them try to match city names - and their entry forms truncate them at varying lengths. Even major corporate websites fail spectacularly - I couldn't track an order at a major retailer because my city didn't match the city on the order. If I knew how many characters they were looking for I could truncate my input appropriately - but what the heck are some coders thinking?
Here's a handy tip: if you're allowing 16 bytes for the city name you are making a stupid assumption.
And those of you who insist that phone numbers be entered in a specific format - get a clue, would you? Databases are most useful when the data is clean and regular - but names, addresses, cities, phone numbers, etc. are not always clean or regular. As a coder, you should be doing as much data cleaning as you can when it's being input. If the database is going to be used for many years and many purposes, somebody's going to have to clean that data. If not your code, then some warm body is going to have to go over the data.
Since I quit buying anything from HP after that laptop fiasco - I guess I'll just have to miss out on having my printer spam me. They keep on Inventing so many interesting products that show how much they care about their customers that it's hard to sit back and just watch it go by without me.
But it's OK; this is just the price I'm going to have to pay for making the choice to say NO to any HP products.
I can actually see some use for this thing. Those wasp nests won't stand a chance; a whole watt should be enough to ignite the nest and do it from a safe distance. You'll have to hold the beam on one spot for a while, though - one watt isn't exactly industrial cutting laser stuff.
All through this thread I see people posting who vaguely understand that it's dangerous - but they don't seem to have a good idea of how dangerous. First thing to consider are eyes. Yours and also anyone else's eyes that the beam could reach. This power level will instantly destroy the retinal tissue - the damage is done much faster than you can blink. If you use one of these you MUST wear the protective goggles and you NEED to be aware of what the beam can reach. If there's any reflective surfaces (they don't have to be mirrors, just reflective) then the beam can go just about anywhere. You MUST wear the protective goggles if you light this thing up - even if you're smart enough to never look into the beam, the reflected beam from a glass window, shiny beer can, etc. will get you - sooner or later. The eye damage is permanent and it accumulates as more of the retina is destroyed.
Here's how it usually goes: step one - play with your new laser in the living room, spraying photons everywhere. Step two is when you have a "wow, that was really bright" moment. Step three is the trip to the doctor who gives you the bad news. Wear the goggles! And consider carefully where you are operating this thing. There's a reason laser labs don't have windows or shiny things of any kind and the lasers are bolted down - this allows them to guarantee that the beam is under control. There will also be a beam stop that is capable of blocking the full output of the laser. Do you have a place like this to light up your new laser?
OK, let's step away from the "you'll put your eye out with that thing" talk for a moment and consider the destructive power of this one watt laser. You're not going to be able to wave it in front of a piece of paper and expect the paper to fall into two pieces. It'll cut electrical tape and black garbage bags pretty well and popping balloons can be fun. But actually setting something on fire will require the beam to be on the same spot for many, many seconds before enough heat is built up to ignite what you're burning. If you want to use this thing as a weapon you'd be well advised to stick to burning out retinas. It'll do that real well.
This laser comes with a set of protective goggles - if you want to show it off to your friends, be sure to get some extra goggles for them to use and don't light the laser until everyone has their goggles on. And always know where the beam is going - even if you and your friends are wearing goggles there's none on the innocent bystanders outside and they're not expecting you to have the beam take a bad bounce and nail them through a window.
It's not news, it's just paid for advertising.
You're not allowed to have a lawyer represent you in Small Claims Court - that's different from "no lawyers allowed". For small items where the amount asked for is less than the corporation would spend on a defense - you're almost certain to receive a full settlement. But if it's big money then expect the corporation to work to have the case moved to a "real" court.
The reason Apple is doing so well is that they turn out devices that suit the people's needs and are well-designed and reliable. This marketing bullshit about how Apple has some "secret sauce" is just nonsense promoted by those who can't research the stories they write - or those who want to turn out the same old junk and think they should be competitive just because they showed up.
The so-called competitors have been shown up for what they really are and they're squealing. Ever use a Motorola phone? How did you like their excuse for a user interface? Or have you ever used a Blackberry? How many times a week do you have to pull the battery to reboot it? Even the newer Droid phones - great concept, but they leave a lot to be desired in the execution. And that's just the cell phones.
How about tablets? I've used a HP TX series tablet and after that I bought an iPad. There's lots of noise from vaporware vendors but anything like competition for the iPad is nowhere in sight. At least HP looked at the way things are and killed their Windows tablet - they'll bring it out running Web/OS sometime in the future. Probably it'll be delivered by virgins riding unicorns.
Creating and building fully developed and well rounded products isn't a trivial task - Apple spent a lot of time and money making their iThingies good. For those companies who want to compete with Apple on this ground - they're going to have to get rid of their "good enough" mentality and create great products. And even then, they'll be months or years behind Apple. This isn't wrong or unfair; when all the geeks were kicking Apple while they were down, they had some good stuff brewing in the labs. Now that it's out on the street it's a different day and a different game.
I'm hoping that other corporations will be impelled to improve their game and actually compete with Apple. That would be good for everyone - but until they can compete in the market, the promotional BS is nothing more than vapor that isn't worth listening to.
One thing that the commenters here have overlooked is the availability of direct connections to the Internet backbone. The biggest nexus of end and peering points is right there in Silicon Valley so hooking into huge bandwidth is much less expensive than it would be in other locations. Is the property cost too high? It used to be, but these days there's plenty of vacant space and the costs have gone down substantially thanks to the recession. There's plenty of electrical power available and it's in close proximity to a very large population of internet users. What's not to like?
Those who see this as a boom that will produce jobs that are worth moving to Silicon Valley for are best advised to stay home. The recession has hit the IT folks there very hard and there's about 30% unemployment in that field. Data centers aren't places that require large staffs; one or two people to monitor the systems is about it and they'll do it all from moving servers around to fielding support calls. There's nothing there for people coming from out of state and nothing for the folks that are already here. Many of those H1B workers and illegal aliens have already left for home and more are leaving every day; even the slaves are bailing out.
Facebook has already jumped the shark, so their build-out in Silicon Valley will become even more vacant space in the near future. Green energy was planned to be the next boom but it's stillborn so the hard times in the valley are going to continue for now.
Really - if you're thinking of moving to Silicon Valley from out of state - stop now. The chances of employment are very slim and the expense of living there is very high; the best you could do is submit resumes until you run out of money. You're better off almost anywhere else.
Supplying useful web services to a large number of people costs real money; it's not free. And there are no successful companies or corporations that give these services away for free - they get paid for them, and they're paid very well.
So when you see a great new free web service you need to stop and think - it's not free, someone is paying for it and that someone is almost always the users. If you don't see the price tag then you don't want to play their game. In most cases, this benevolent company giving you a free service is building up user profiles that they sell to marketing companies. If you're big like Facebook or Google, you've got millions of those profiles and they're very detailed and also very valuable. But nobody ever thinks about this when they happily give up all kinds of personal info as they register for their free account.
Google is pretty transparent about this stuff: they use the profile data to serve targeted ads and advertisers pay them a premium price for those ads. This wouldn't work without the information about you that Google has amassed but it's the source of all of their financial might. Who do you think pays Facebook's bills? That's right, and that's why their privacy options don't include any that would prevent them - and their "affiliates" - from collecting your personal data.
That personal information is valuable and it's yours - and you give it away. Those corporations thank you for your generosity! Here's a tip for further study: view the mandatory privacy policy at any major web site; they'll tell you (sort of) what kind of data they collect - then promise to keep it safe and only give it to the government upon request and to their affiliates and/or third parties that supply some kind of service to the company. So what is an affiliate? Could one of them be the marketing clearinghouse that buys your personal profile? Could one be an Indian call center that will resell the data to anyone with the price? Could one of them be the guy with the CC skimmer? You'll never know; you'll just look at the privacy policy and say "that's cool" and click OK.
You may have noticed that when ad blocking software is discussed it's the small websites that whine and cry about the loss of revenue. The big corporate sites only report what the small sites say because it serves to preserve the legend. Banner adds are small beans - but live and verified profiles are big money.
The input method for an OS or its applications is very basic stuff; what works well for input from a keyboard doesn't work well with a mouse. Try operating programs in a Windows CMD window with your mouse and see how far that gets you. Operating Windows from a keyboard is possible but you wouldn't want to try to do serious work this way - and even today there's important menu functions that don't have keyboard equivalents. Neither of those designs is wrong, they're just designed for a particular input method. You can attempt to patch things so that the support for a wrong input device is a different kind of wrong but the only way to do it right is to start from scratch and design from the ground up for the input method.
A touch screen interface - especially multi-touch - is also a different input method. Your finger isn't a mouse and while you can try to emulate a mouse with a finger you'll quickly find that there's information a mouse supplies that a finger can only do awkwardly if at all. You'd think that Microsoft - who was right there in the thick of the battle to change input methods from text to mouse - would know these things. I suspect their engineers do but their marketing people apparently don't.
Anyone that has a digitizer tablet connected to a Windows box can easily verify that attempting to operate Windows with nothing more than "point" and "click" is a frustrating experience. Everything is much more difficult to do until you reach a critical point where you won't be able to proceed any further. Their tablet add-ons try to address these fundamental problems but they can only do it imperfectly - Windows is designed from the ground up to be operated with a mouse / keyboard. The companies making tablet PCs have known this for years and you might note that they include a detachable keyboard and a PS/2 mouse port in their designs. Their hope was that your in-house programs would be good enough to work from the touch screen and that this would make their product truly useful. Trying to use Office apps on a touch screen just doesn't work well enough to be usable.
Apple's success with their touch screen devices is largely due to the simple fact that the OS that runs them was built to use a touch screen as its primary input device. And much of their app approval process is there to insure that quickie ports of mouse operated apps aren't inflicted on their users. Touch is another different input method and like the others, only works well when the system is built from the ground up to be operated in that way.
If Microsoft wants to play in this market they're going to have to break away from tradition and build a lightweight touch operated OS - they've got the talent to do it but I'm not sure if they have the willingness to do it. I suspect they'll just keep on pushing their desktop OS on tablets and watching them fail in the market.
Linux on tablets is going to face the same challenges. To operate not just the kernel but the applications using an interface that reports nothing more than a "click" at a screen address and do it well will require some very serious effort - and a willingness of the various programmers to support not only the keyboard / mouse version but the touch version as well. If we want to see successful Linux tablets this will need to be done - or else Linux can follow the Windows model and suffer the same fate.
Those big shops that get talked about here are not what you describe them as. I spent seven years at one of the biggest and - well, I wish I had those years back. The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the budget doesn't include new code or new hardware and actually it's going to require a headcount reduction and the rest of you guys can just pick up the slack.
Maybe you'll get to spend some time fixing things - but you're more likely to be sucked into some deathmarch project where you don't have enough time to complete it much less debug or document it. Those that come after point at these things and call them sloppy work and say how it could be better if we'd just documented what we'd done. Those fools will have their eyes opened very soon.
Let me explain some basic facts to you: IT is a cost center; it adds nothing to the bottom line. When management is looking to cut costs, it's always among the first targets. And if you do the job well and things work reliably - they won't have any reason to believe you're necessary. First rule of working in large IT shops: keep your resume updated. After enough lay-offs, most of the remaining staff will quit. Then the company coasts along for a while until things start falling apart then hires a bunch more IT people at a higher rate to make things work again. And the cycle repeats, over and over.
Those who blame management for their woes are unaware of how much BS their manager puts up with and how much he tries to keep the executives from tearing the department apart. And after so many years I can only come up with one solution for the whole mess: make IT a chargeable service and charge the various departments / desks for the IT services they request. Try suggesting this at your company and see what they say - they'll say that nobody would request IT services under these conditions. OK, so now we know what the rest of the company feels that IT is worth. I'm sure glad to be far away from that dysfunctional clusterfuk.
All this talk about technology and time invested is largely a smokescreen. Do you want to know what's in that ink cartridge? Some colored (or black) dye, a little alcohol and water and some glycol for body. Adjust the non-dye components for best results. Or buy ink refill kits; they're pretty close to the factory formulation and work perfectly well no matter what HP's marketing machine would like you to believe.
How about that "more pages from HP ink" claim? That's like a oil company claiming you get more miles per gallon from their gasoline; in other words, bullshit.
What they're really doing is playing the old "the razor is free but you have to buy our blades" game. Instead of charging you what the true retail value of their inkjet printer is, they give you a discount on the purchase price to bait the "it's on sale!" folks in - then they stick it to you on the ink and make up the difference and then some over the life of the printer. How long will your printer last? Until HP says it's dead - they'll discontinue the ink cartridges and that's it for your printer.
And as long as they can keep the public (and the government) snowed about all of this they'll continue to rake it in. Have ink formulas improved over time? Yes, they have. 1 Billion a year worth? Nope, not even if you pad the budget with lots and lots of hookers and blow. It's just a simple dye formula, not rocket science. Their greed is amazing; they equip their ink cartridges with chips that do NOTHING to improve the operation of the ink cartridge - their sole function is to cause good cartridges to fail early ("to provide the best printing results") and prevent you from refilling their cartridges ("to provide the best printing results"). How about to "enhance HP's bottom line" instead?
Once upon a time HP was a technology company that stood behind their products. Now they're a second-rate consumer electronics company that depends on the revenue from printer ink to balance its books. I mentioned the formula earlier in this message - price out the ingredients and see what it costs per gallon to make and you'll never look at printer ink the same way again. What a scam; they've snookered you folks into paying $35 for a plastic box containing less than a penny's worth of dye.
You know what's really sad? The cartridge refill people are taking you to the cleaners on ink, too. Not nearly as bad as HP does but how do these people sleep at night?