That makes Microsoft a blue-chip stock, like GM or IBM. They are not a bubble rally pump and dump stock. The ultimate value of a company is not what a wall street casino game of money chicken assigns to it, and listening to the gamblers is hardly the course that will find improvement.
A blue-chip like GM or IBM that has meager margins on their products and a low profitability, yes that's a great reason the stock is flat. But this is Microsoft, the key product profit margins are well over 50% and they are insanely profitable. They make incredible profit per employee.
There is no reason Microsoft should be held to the same low standard those other blue chips, aside from complete and utter mismanagement.
However the iPad is a horrible reading device. Anyone who thinks an iPad is a reading device doesn't read much.
You've already identified where the iPad is less functional than a Kindle/Nook, but let me round that out by pointing out areas where it is better (note this is in comparison to my Kindle3, which I also love)
It's better at PDFs and anything with images compared to an e-ink device... I much prefer my iPad to even a Kindle DX
It's better when you don't have ambient lighting (ie, in bed with spouse sleeping and no reading light, I can turn down brightness or use night-mode and still read stuff).
The browser navigation is actually usable
Regarding comparisons with books in general, it is about as portable as a hardcover book (which incidentally, is all my Mom reads anyway... she prefers the Kindle app on her iPad2 to her Kindle despite my pushing the Kindle).
So yeah, the iPad isn't the perfect reading device, but then again it does about 100 other things that an e-ink device cannot (some of these pros/cons are shared by the Fire, since it also is backlit and doesn't have e-ink).
If you just need something to look things up online, why don't you use your existing Kindle?
If you've ever tried to actually use one for net access, you would have never made that comment.
I love that I can access the net on my Kindle3, but it's usability is as bad as using a Tivo or Boxee to do the same thing. This may have changed with the new touch-based Kindles, but using a directional pad to orient a mouse to click buttons and links on screen near-unusable.
When they quote the £35 price, they don't usually include the 'hidden extras'. I found it impossible to get service at the price, as they wouldn't offer me the service unless I also took out a phone line (yes, even with Virgin cable), at around £15 a month. The end result is that my 30Mbps broadband is listed at £8.50 per month on the website, but I find myself paying £28.50 per month in reality.
Consider yourself lucky. I have a 12Mbps account in the USA (with wonderful Comcast) for $60+(ie, internet cost + either basic cable @ $15 or $15 fee). Getting 20Mbps or 50Mbps would cost $30 and $50 more.
Slow uptake may be more likely due to overall economic conditions and fear of reprisal for "illegal" activity. Also not sure about where you are, but here, we have monthly bandwidth quotas which are shrinking.
Or- more likely apple are trying to put a spin on their dwindling market share to try and win consumers back by trying to pretend to the consumer that they're not the only one-off operating system.
What an amusing statement, considering Apple has near dominance of the tablet market (ranging from 70-90% marketshare depending who you ask), they pretty much have nowhere to go but down.
Profits are a completely different story. While Google is busy trying to create a rent-seeking model similar to Microsoft/Windows which sacrifices today's profitability for future marketshare dominance, Apple's products are all profitable, and will likely continue to be far more profitable than Android vendors in the future.
This might get me downrated, but honestly, I don't think Ubuntu is for everyone. I do think that Canonical wants to stay relevant with those folks who have 5 year old or younger machines.
If you need a Linux distro that fits on a CD drive, there are other options, but just about every machine in the past 5-6 years boots off a USB key or DVD drive. Some newer machines like netbooks and macbook airs don't (and have never) come optical drives (hell I have a toshiba portege from 2001 without optical media).
Because it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience for a small number of users? Great, your battery drains before the day's over. So what? Charge your phone more frequently for a couple of weeks while Apple looks into the issue. Come back and make your RIM comparison when half the iPhones in the world stop working for three days straight.
The reality is that the the "good" candidates already have insiders feeding them as much knowledge as possible... this is actually a good way to select candidates because they a) know someone (and won't be isolated) in your organization and b) know how to get at answers the social route.
Where this falls down is when the insiders feed the actual answers to the candidates (I've seen this happen)... especially if there is a hiring bonus to be had. As a hiring manager, it's good to ensure who the candidate knows inside and why, and also to change-up your questions... of course, anyone doing this already is likely not using trick/puzzle questions anyway.
Because it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience for a small number of users? Great, your battery drains before the day's over. So what? Charge your phone more frequently for a couple of weeks while Apple looks into the issue. Come back and make your RIM comparison when half the iPhones in the world stop working for three days straight.
But this is why people usually buy an iPhone/iPad/etc. over an Android. Apple spent 15+ months between cycles on the 4S, and they're known for "sweatting the details". I know for a fact that iOS5 has reduced battery life on my iPad v1 considerably, so it's clear that some of the features were not tested extensively (which makes sense, iCloud is a huge leap in feature-set for Apple).
... is when I abandon the platform. As it stands, only 3-4 Apps on my Mac are from the MAS. Unless I can get VMWare, MS Office and other basic desktop apps on my system, the platform is not meaningful for my work.
Which is probably the reason why it will never happen.
It seems like Google has been having problems communicating within its own departments lately. They're just doing too many things at once. It's like watching a sleep-deprived juggler get thrown a few extra chainsaws during their act - not a pretty sight.
Is this any surprise after Larry Page restructured the organization to resemble more (in the words of the linked article) "a confederacy". The last line of the article may have been prophetic:
As far as internal practices go, the new model appears to give more autonomy to the business heads and let them do most of the interacting with only a little centralized leadership from the top.
This confederate model may work well for Google, but keeping a cohesive company focus will remain challenging for the new CEO.
Every apple product I have ever bought has broken within a year or two, honestly i think the zune is a better product that the ipod.
I was following you until this point. As long as we're speaking anecdotall, I have a huge list of Apple products (iPod, iPhone2G, Macbook) that are 5+ years old, and with a little care, are just about as usable now (in the case of the macbook it's even better with the SSD retrofit) as they were when I first got them. The only Apple product that's failed me is a 2004 iPod color.
Apple products are historically longer-lived (in terms of functionality and usability) than competitors' products. I am running OSX Lion on my 5 year-old macbook. Last week installed new iOS apps on my 2G iPhone (handed down to the tyke).
You may have a valid complaint about Jobs but don't conflate that with Apple products.
If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
Problem is, what is to determine the tastes of future employers for public speech. Say, for example, I post negative things about a proprietary technology that then becomes ubiquitous (ie, skype, twitter, twilio, etc). What about political speech?
Sure you can post anonymously or pseudonymously, but speech/text can easily be analyzed for patterns to match against a known good source.
Don't worry, user, of course you own those little files of yours.
s/user/license holder/
If you think "you" are the intended interest party, you are sorely mistaken. Microsoft's real customers are the content companies, hardware manufacturers and large corporations/organizations.
In fact, this rant this applies equally to most political discussion... you think Obama/Romney/etc are really interested in your vote? They know your vote will be influenced by marketing dollars controlled by larger entities anyway. It's all a bunch of foxes deciding the seating plan for dinner at the chicken coop.
If you can show me a way to be vegetarian while also getting proper nutrition...
There are more vegetarians in India than omnivores (or even people) in the USA (Wikipedia estimates 1.2B ppl * 40% lacto-ovo vegetarian = 480M lacto-ovo vegetarians). This has been the case for centuries. The culture and traditions there support it heavily, and thus it's possible/easy.
I'm not an Android developer, or any kind of developer. Why is "wall time" so different in this case from CPU time?
Maybe I don't understand completely what "CPU time" really means. A little help here?
If you look at his cores (2x4C with HT) then you'll notice the OS sees 16 virtual cores. Dividing the 3hrs CPU time by 25 min wall time you get about a factor 12 (which means his 16 virtual cores had about a 75% usage over those 25min - quite solid). Unless I'm way off track, I think that's what he means.
If you don't have 16GB RAM, having virtual memory on an SSD isn't too far a step down...
However, it was not developed by Apple. It was a 3rd party...
You could say the same of Google and Android, or Microsoft and MS-DOS. However, the fact is, that the purchasing corporation deserves credit for seeing the possibilities with the smaller company and pushing the technology/product to mass-adoption... this is no trivial undertaking.
loans are crucial to a functioning economy, despite what those "occupy" protesters tell you
Nice strawman argument. The "occupy" protesters are not against loans, loans have existed for millennia. What they are against, is speculative bets disguised as loans (ie, "securitzed" debt or MBS) which are then bet against by the very banks offering the loans (i.e., default swap or CDS). Both of these recent financial instruments have been called by even conservative folks like Warren Buffet as financial WMDs.
Let's not forget that Apple came back from a far worse shape than this in the late 90s. It is way too early to say that "they just don't have time".
Have you even heard one of their co-CEOs talk? One is all techno-babble and the other is a bean-counter with no real product experience. None of them are the caliber of Steve Jobs, and as a company, RIM is not the caliber of pre-Jobs Apple in the 90s (which was still quite innovative, just mismanaged).
Fire one or both of the current leadership, and we can talk turnaround. As it is RIM does not have the DNA for a massive course-change.
Maybe for a fee, but a pluggable implementation of slashcode would be worth a lot to folks, as the moderation system is very good for signal/noise ratio. As long as you make the comments searchable by commenters and site admins alike, and provide tools to increase signal and block noise for all interested parties, it would be a great service which many might pay for.
Sad new about Jobs. But I sure as hell didn't need ABC to break into the middle of the Double Jeopardy round and give me a fucking seven-minute retrospective of his career, hailing him as the god of all modern technology.
ABC is owned by Disney, who's largest single owner of stock was... Steve Jobs. Not that I agree with their decision, but maybe the folks there felt a bit more strongly about Jobs' passing a bit more than the people at NBC / CBS.
The only savings I could see were if the windows were in full sun and caused your place to heat up in summer. So the film might save some more in terms of cooling bills.
Even roof-mounted photovoltaic cells reduce summer heat... think about it, all that energy hitting your roof, previously converting into mostly heat + some reflected light, replaced by photovoltaics that now convert mostly into electricity and some heat. With a much higher efficiency rate and larger surface area, the roof-mounted ones may "cool" your house better than the window ones do.
Nowadays, most new houses are outfitted with Low-E or Super-Low-E (ie, argon sandwich) glass that insulates pretty well.
They could have allowed power-users to legitimately browse using roaming 3G with a bandwidth limit and nominal monthly cost (say $5/mo for 10MB). Props if they could do this on a PAYGO basis (similar to how iPad 3G works).
Then they could have gained a bit of extra cash from those who really never/rarely use those features, but wanted security for emergency roaming data... the could even build in a version of their Silk to reduce impacts further.
And then Apple will sue their ass, further adding to the cost.
You left out Oracle (Amazon is using the Android codebase, which Oracle is suing Google for).
You also didn't mention about Microsoft, who has successfully extracted patent moneys from several Android-using manufacturers.
Finally, there is Google (who now owns Motorola and their 24,000 patents). Amazon basically used and abused Android (in spirit with the license, of course) to fashion their tablet operating system (which they don't even publicly state runs Android in the first place).
No, Apple is the least of Amazon's concerns right now. They are likely the only folks who can compete versus the Apple ecosystem and media juggernaut, but they will need the Palm patent asbestos suit or they will be burning a LOT more than $10/unit on each Fire sold - and it's not just Apple who are willing and capable of doing it.
You can configure firefox privacy options to drop most cookies when you log out. I trust a few sites to persist cookies in my browser, everyone else my browser accepts cookies from and quietly drops them on the floor when I exit. I don't know that it helps all that much but it's not that much effort to make it harder to snoop around at what I'm browsing.
Your solution fails when dealing with Flash cookies, as those can't be removed via the browser, only through the Adobe Flash interface. This also explains why Facebook is so interested in Disqus and IntenseDebate market... they want to profiile everyone all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
That makes Microsoft a blue-chip stock, like GM or IBM. They are not a bubble rally pump and dump stock. The ultimate value of a company is not what a wall street casino game of money chicken assigns to it, and listening to the gamblers is hardly the course that will find improvement.
A blue-chip like GM or IBM that has meager margins on their products and a low profitability, yes that's a great reason the stock is flat. But this is Microsoft, the key product profit margins are well over 50% and they are insanely profitable. They make incredible profit per employee.
There is no reason Microsoft should be held to the same low standard those other blue chips, aside from complete and utter mismanagement.
However the iPad is a horrible reading device. Anyone who thinks an iPad is a reading device doesn't read much.
You've already identified where the iPad is less functional than a Kindle/Nook, but let me round that out by pointing out areas where it is better (note this is in comparison to my Kindle3, which I also love)
So yeah, the iPad isn't the perfect reading device, but then again it does about 100 other things that an e-ink device cannot (some of these pros/cons are shared by the Fire, since it also is backlit and doesn't have e-ink).
If you just need something to look things up online, why don't you use your existing Kindle?
If you've ever tried to actually use one for net access, you would have never made that comment.
I love that I can access the net on my Kindle3, but it's usability is as bad as using a Tivo or Boxee to do the same thing. This may have changed with the new touch-based Kindles, but using a directional pad to orient a mouse to click buttons and links on screen near-unusable.
When they quote the £35 price, they don't usually include the 'hidden extras'.
I found it impossible to get service at the price, as they wouldn't offer me the service unless I also took out a phone line (yes, even with Virgin cable), at around £15 a month.
The end result is that my 30Mbps broadband is listed at £8.50 per month on the website, but I find myself paying £28.50 per month in reality.
Consider yourself lucky. I have a 12Mbps account in the USA (with wonderful Comcast) for $60+(ie, internet cost + either basic cable @ $15 or $15 fee). Getting 20Mbps or 50Mbps would cost $30 and $50 more.
Slow uptake may be more likely due to overall economic conditions and fear of reprisal for "illegal" activity. Also not sure about where you are, but here, we have monthly bandwidth quotas which are shrinking.
Or- more likely apple are trying to put a spin on their dwindling market share to try and win consumers back by trying to pretend to the consumer that they're not the only one-off operating system.
What an amusing statement, considering Apple has near dominance of the tablet market (ranging from 70-90% marketshare depending who you ask), they pretty much have nowhere to go but down.
Profits are a completely different story. While Google is busy trying to create a rent-seeking model similar to Microsoft/Windows which sacrifices today's profitability for future marketshare dominance, Apple's products are all profitable, and will likely continue to be far more profitable than Android vendors in the future.
This might get me downrated, but honestly, I don't think Ubuntu is for everyone. I do think that Canonical wants to stay relevant with those folks who have 5 year old or younger machines.
If you need a Linux distro that fits on a CD drive, there are other options, but just about every machine in the past 5-6 years boots off a USB key or DVD drive. Some newer machines like netbooks and macbook airs don't (and have never) come optical drives (hell I have a toshiba portege from 2001 without optical media).
Because it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience for a small number of users? Great, your battery drains before the day's over. So what? Charge your phone more frequently for a couple of weeks while Apple looks into the issue. Come back and make your RIM comparison when half the iPhones in the world stop working for three days straight.
The reality is that the the "good" candidates already have insiders feeding them as much knowledge as possible... this is actually a good way to select candidates because they a) know someone (and won't be isolated) in your organization and b) know how to get at answers the social route.
Where this falls down is when the insiders feed the actual answers to the candidates (I've seen this happen)... especially if there is a hiring bonus to be had. As a hiring manager, it's good to ensure who the candidate knows inside and why, and also to change-up your questions... of course, anyone doing this already is likely not using trick/puzzle questions anyway.
Because it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience for a small number of users? Great, your battery drains before the day's over. So what? Charge your phone more frequently for a couple of weeks while Apple looks into the issue. Come back and make your RIM comparison when half the iPhones in the world stop working for three days straight.
But this is why people usually buy an iPhone/iPad/etc. over an Android. Apple spent 15+ months between cycles on the 4S, and they're known for "sweatting the details". I know for a fact that iOS5 has reduced battery life on my iPad v1 considerably, so it's clear that some of the features were not tested extensively (which makes sense, iCloud is a huge leap in feature-set for Apple).
... is when I abandon the platform. As it stands, only 3-4 Apps on my Mac are from the MAS. Unless I can get VMWare, MS Office and other basic desktop apps on my system, the platform is not meaningful for my work.
Which is probably the reason why it will never happen.
It seems like Google has been having problems communicating within its own departments lately. They're just doing too many things at once. It's like watching a sleep-deprived juggler get thrown a few extra chainsaws during their act - not a pretty sight.
Is this any surprise after Larry Page restructured the organization to resemble more (in the words of the linked article) "a confederacy". The last line of the article may have been prophetic:
As far as internal practices go, the new model appears to give more autonomy to the business heads and let them do most of the interacting with only a little centralized leadership from the top.
This confederate model may work well for Google, but keeping a cohesive company focus will remain challenging for the new CEO.
Every apple product I have ever bought has broken within a year or two, honestly i think the zune is a better product that the ipod.
I was following you until this point. As long as we're speaking anecdotall, I have a huge list of Apple products (iPod, iPhone2G, Macbook) that are 5+ years old, and with a little care, are just about as usable now (in the case of the macbook it's even better with the SSD retrofit) as they were when I first got them. The only Apple product that's failed me is a 2004 iPod color.
Apple products are historically longer-lived (in terms of functionality and usability) than competitors' products. I am running OSX Lion on my 5 year-old macbook. Last week installed new iOS apps on my 2G iPhone (handed down to the tyke).
You may have a valid complaint about Jobs but don't conflate that with Apple products.
If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
Problem is, what is to determine the tastes of future employers for public speech. Say, for example, I post negative things about a proprietary technology that then becomes ubiquitous (ie, skype, twitter, twilio, etc). What about political speech?
Sure you can post anonymously or pseudonymously, but speech/text can easily be analyzed for patterns to match against a known good source.
Don't worry, user, of course you own those little files of yours.
s/user/license holder/
If you think "you" are the intended interest party, you are sorely mistaken. Microsoft's real customers are the content companies, hardware manufacturers and large corporations/organizations.
In fact, this rant this applies equally to most political discussion... you think Obama/Romney/etc are really interested in your vote? They know your vote will be influenced by marketing dollars controlled by larger entities anyway. It's all a bunch of foxes deciding the seating plan for dinner at the chicken coop.
If you can show me a way to be vegetarian while also getting proper nutrition...
There are more vegetarians in India than omnivores (or even people) in the USA (Wikipedia estimates 1.2B ppl * 40% lacto-ovo vegetarian = 480M lacto-ovo vegetarians). This has been the case for centuries. The culture and traditions there support it heavily, and thus it's possible/easy.
I'm not an Android developer, or any kind of developer. Why is "wall time" so different in this case from CPU time?
Maybe I don't understand completely what "CPU time" really means. A little help here?
If you look at his cores (2x4C with HT) then you'll notice the OS sees 16 virtual cores. Dividing the 3hrs CPU time by 25 min wall time you get about a factor 12 (which means his 16 virtual cores had about a 75% usage over those 25min - quite solid). Unless I'm way off track, I think that's what he means.
If you don't have 16GB RAM, having virtual memory on an SSD isn't too far a step down...
However, it was not developed by Apple. It was a 3rd party...
You could say the same of Google and Android, or Microsoft and MS-DOS. However, the fact is, that the purchasing corporation deserves credit for seeing the possibilities with the smaller company and pushing the technology/product to mass-adoption... this is no trivial undertaking.
loans are crucial to a functioning economy, despite what those "occupy" protesters tell you
Nice strawman argument. The "occupy" protesters are not against loans, loans have existed for millennia. What they are against, is speculative bets disguised as loans (ie, "securitzed" debt or MBS) which are then bet against by the very banks offering the loans (i.e., default swap or CDS). Both of these recent financial instruments have been called by even conservative folks like Warren Buffet as financial WMDs.
Let's not forget that Apple came back from a far worse shape than this in the late 90s. It is way too early to say that "they just don't have time".
Have you even heard one of their co-CEOs talk? One is all techno-babble and the other is a bean-counter with no real product experience. None of them are the caliber of Steve Jobs, and as a company, RIM is not the caliber of pre-Jobs Apple in the 90s (which was still quite innovative, just mismanaged).
Fire one or both of the current leadership, and we can talk turnaround. As it is RIM does not have the DNA for a massive course-change.
Maybe for a fee, but a pluggable implementation of slashcode would be worth a lot to folks, as the moderation system is very good for signal/noise ratio.
As long as you make the comments searchable by commenters and site admins alike, and provide tools to increase signal and block noise for all interested parties, it would be a great service which many might pay for.
Sad new about Jobs. But I sure as hell didn't need ABC to break into the middle of the Double Jeopardy round and give me a fucking seven-minute retrospective of his career, hailing him as the god of all modern technology.
ABC is owned by Disney, who's largest single owner of stock was... Steve Jobs. Not that I agree with their decision, but maybe the folks there felt a bit more strongly about Jobs' passing a bit more than the people at NBC / CBS.
The only savings I could see were if the windows were in full sun and caused your place
to heat up in summer. So the film might save some more in terms of cooling bills.
Even roof-mounted photovoltaic cells reduce summer heat... think about it, all that energy hitting your roof, previously converting into mostly heat + some reflected light, replaced by photovoltaics that now convert mostly into electricity and some heat. With a much higher efficiency rate and larger surface area, the roof-mounted ones may "cool" your house better than the window ones do.
Nowadays, most new houses are outfitted with Low-E or Super-Low-E (ie, argon sandwich) glass that insulates pretty well.
They could have allowed power-users to legitimately browse using roaming 3G with a bandwidth limit and nominal monthly cost (say $5/mo for 10MB). Props if they could do this on a PAYGO basis (similar to how iPad 3G works).
Then they could have gained a bit of extra cash from those who really never/rarely use those features, but wanted security for emergency roaming data... the could even build in a version of their Silk to reduce impacts further.
And then Apple will sue their ass, further adding to the cost.
No, Apple is the least of Amazon's concerns right now. They are likely the only folks who can compete versus the Apple ecosystem and media juggernaut, but they will need the Palm patent asbestos suit or they will be burning a LOT more than $10/unit on each Fire sold - and it's not just Apple who are willing and capable of doing it.
Now it sucks up processor and memory faster than Firefox using some "Safari Web Content" process.
You can configure firefox privacy options to drop most cookies when you log out. I trust a few sites to persist cookies in my browser, everyone else my browser accepts cookies from and quietly drops them on the floor when I exit. I don't know that it helps all that much but it's not that much effort to make it harder to snoop around at what I'm browsing.
Your solution fails when dealing with Flash cookies, as those can't be removed via the browser, only through the Adobe Flash interface. This also explains why Facebook is so interested in Disqus and IntenseDebate market... they want to profiile everyone all the time.