What exactly is so bad about Windows? To describe using it as torture, you must have some rational well considered reasons, which I am sure everyone would benefit from hearing.
Here are my top 3 nits to pick on Windows. They sound very random, but that's because they have existed for many releases and would be VERY EASY for Redmond developers to address if usability was at all a priority.
When the default application isn't set for a document type, the first choice that's provided in the resulting pop-up is "Do you want to wander around on the web to find an application that can open this document?" rather than the option of selecting an application from the list of installed applications.
In SQL Server Management Studio, when you have multiple sessions open, they are tabbed. Even when you only have two or three tabs, the tabs are scrunched horizontally such that you can't read the labels, which usually start with the server name, then the database name. So, if you have six sessions all connecting to different databases on 'foo' server, all six tabs are labelled 'foo...'. Sure, that's not the OS, but that is an example of Redmond not giving a shit to produce quality usability in ways that would be trivially simple.
Sounds like a trip to the electronics recycler. For all the time you're going to invest into getting some very limited use out of that device, you could just get a decent $300 tablet that will be suited for many uses. Since you're a dad, you know that your time is valuable. More valuable than making this thing marginally more useful so you can save $212.
Put some edutainment apps on their and hand it over to your kids. No need to ruggedize it.
Don't get me wrong here, I think Kim is a criminal and deserves to spend time behind bars.
He probably expects he will spend some more time in prison, and he's launching this service quickly while he still has his illicit capital from MegaUpload and before he has to go to prison for running it. While he's in prison, the new Mega service will become lucrative and he'll still be rich when he gets out of prison.
I'm not sure which 'first time around' you're referring to here... The pump-and-dump ponzi scheme he ran during the late nineties dot-com bubble or the MegaUpload website he ran in the later oughts? Both operations paid him handsomely, and he so far only did a short stint in jail on the stock fraud, but the case is pending against him on the MegaUpload website. He's got more money than OJ Simpson did when he hired his legal 'dream team', so there's a chance he might avoid prosecution for MegaUpload.
But if the guy is already a celebrity, isn't attention-whoring part of his job description?
In a related topic, it's been something of an industry rumor for the past six months that Dice has made a confidential offer to an ex-member of the band, Guns-n-Roses, to change his last name to "dot org".
This Paunch guy needs to watch his ass. There are larger, darker players who were using this exploit for their own purposes. Some of them invested heavily in developing it. By bringing it out into the open like this, Paunch has directly limited their use of this vulnerability. I would not be surprised if this is the last we hear of mr. Paunch. A cleanup team has likely been engaged and is working on tracking him down in the physical world as I type this...
Multiple monitors are connected to a computer. A single HDTV is connected to a console, and it's located in the living room. Very few families have multiple HDTVs installed next to one another in the living room.
This is a byproduct of them working on a console they intend to ship. It'll run linux, so this beta is a nice way for them to test a bunch of their architectural design without actually putting the hardware in thousands of people's living rooms.
As far as bug reporting goes, I doubt they'll prioritize stuff that's not relevant to their expected console architecture. Issues like, "Hey, I have dual monitors and steam blacks one out and it never comes back" are going to be pretty well ignored because the console is unlikely to support dual monitors. This is more about testing out scaling issues for the servers and verifying that updates are working as expected. A more exciting bug report for them would be along the lines of, "XYZ game released an update, but it requires my Steam client to by version 123, and I upgraded Steam to 123, but the game refuses to update."
Oh, and the other thing that's important about this Linux release is that it be valid for the developers to test their ports on prior to the console being finalized. Those limited-run developer hardware kits are way more expensive to issue than just giving studios a Linux install CD and some basic hardware requirements. This beta is probably about making sure the Steam client on Linux isn't too buggy for the devs to work with. This way, when the console is released there will be a healthy selection of titles available right away.
if Valve can get enough traction behind Linux gaming I can finally cut out Microsoft. It will take years for that to potentially happen but Steam on Linux it can only serve to help Linux in general.
Valve is openly discussing their forthcoming console. That sucker isn't going to include a Microsoft OS tax, so you better expect that Valve is going to set up strong incentives for developers to release on Linux. That's what their console is going to be built on top of.
October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House from a fence overlooking the north lawn, thinking that President Bill Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing on the lawn (Clinton was in the White House Residence watching a football game). Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis, and Robert Haines, tackled Duran before he could injure anyone. Duran was found to have a suicide note in his pocket and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The Apple store developer fee of $99 is miniscule. That is the equivalent of what three developers earn in a few hours working on an application.
The $99 is a nice way to reduce fraudulent accounts from being created. It's also worth considering that Apple has to staff actual humans who review all the apps that get submitted. There is no charge for the developers who submit 200 apps in a month, but Apple has to screen them to try to block malware from getting into the app store. Where do you think the cost for that comes from?
Microsoft's General Manager for Strategy and Business Development, Kostas Mallios, said that Windows Phone will be an "ad-serving machine", pushing advertising and brand-related content to the user.
It looks like this is a core component of Redmond's business plan in all their OS offerings.
First it was self-serve gas pumps. That relegated the station attendant to a cash register operator.
Then they implemented gas pumps with credit card readers. No need to interact with a human running a cash register. Fully automated fuel stations.
Now, we've got a huge new industry being invented, and they're not even including humans in any part of this transaction. No one to ask what grade of fuel to use. No one to check the condition of the wiper blades or upsell the satellite owner on a new air filter. Probably going to have NFC chips on the satellites so there's not even a credit card to swipe to charge the customers for the fuel.
I gotta get on the horn to my congressman today. This is going to be too efficient at the cost of jobs. We need to employ a human operator up there or else there is no hope of the unemployment rate dropping below 7%.
"....and watching how that movie director Robert Rodriguez successfully preaches low-budget artistic control vs. bigger-budget studio-control has taught me how raw talent, motivation, and perseverance can still succeed against 'the odds'."
That dude hasn't made a worthwhile movie since Sin City. He uses low budgets as an excuse for making crappy movies. There was no reason Predators had to suck with that budget. It was all him. He's infatuated by Hollywood's adoration of him. Crammed so many celebrities into Machete, he bloated out the story to fit them all in. Should have turned the camera off when Booth was killed. That was the end of the story that mattered. Same with his career.
I'm really in agreement with the thrust of your comment here. Just wanted to add that SilverLight is also something developed by Microsoft under Ballmer that will probably deserve to be included in your list.
Some people might argue that courier doesn't deserve inclusion because it wasn't actually released and supposedly Bill Gates was the one who killed it because it didn't support MS Office. Another perspective might be that it was the product in your list that Ballmer should have championed and with the proper support it could have defeated the iPad. Not my perspective, but probably some zealots out there might make this claim.
Oh, hell. We should also add Ballmer's "Windows Store" initiative to the list while we're dogpiling failures here.
I admit that I am really reaching into something that might be very personal and I apologize in advance. I wouldn't even prod you with this question out of respect to you if it were not for my overwhelming need to confirm or disprove my suspicions.
Are you a complete stoner? Do you smoke pot every day all day long? How do you think your life might be different if you had stopped smoking pot in your mid-twenties?
A good example is a test db box for testing your SQL scripts. Such a box can have the exact same software, OS and patches, and with equivalent database configuration and schemas, but on lower-cost hardware and with a fraction of the data.
I don't want to pick nits here because Luis is giving out a lot of very valid information and observations here. Just want to take it one step further.
Mirror the production environment DB with an identical amount of data. The data doesn't have to match row-for-row. But the test environment DB should have the same scale as the production DB. Here's why: If you want to run an alter table or alter index command, you want a sense of how much of an impact that is going to have on the database before running the operation in production. If you only have 10k rows in the table in test and run the command, it'll complete pretty quickly. You run that against a 2-million-row table in production, depending on the vendor, that could mean a table lock that takes down your production environment until it finishes (could be hours). Been there. Done that. It ain't pretty.
Vision? Apple just waits for technology to reach a point where they can stick a really good UI on it.
By this myopic definition of 'vision' no company in the technology industry has it.
Every company out there is taking advantage of economies of scale for their components. Sure, they could invent their own processor from scratch and put it in their own laptop they designed from scratch and satisfy your definition of 'vision'. Production of the CPU will be on such a small scale for the device, that the per unit cost will be very high. Then the device based around it will be unattractively expensive. Few units would sell.
Here comes Apple with more money than anybody else. They bring a feasible economy of scale to this problem. If they want a custom LCD display that is non-standard per the rest of the industry, they front the manufacturer the money to build the factory and staff it with enough resources to churn out millions of displays per year, thereby making the per-unit cost of the LCD's fit with the pricing model of the device designed around it.
The only other company that can do this is Samsung, and that's why Apple is trying to curb-stomp them in the courtroom. Samsung makes displays, CPUs, memory, etc. and was drafting off the scale of Apple's orders from their factories to produce their own price-competitive devices. I suppose your definition of 'vision' would have Samsung as a visionary company.
The iPad hasn't had near the effect on the market the iPhone had so while it is notable it isn't really what the GP was getting at.
Did you see that little newspaper article about a year ago where the CEO of HP said they were considering leaving the hardware business? Do you know what part of the inspiration for that might have been?
Slashdot Mirror
Here are my top 3 nits to pick on Windows. They sound very random, but that's because they have existed for many releases and would be VERY EASY for Redmond developers to address if usability was at all a priority.
-- Seth Johnson
Sounds like a trip to the electronics recycler. For all the time you're going to invest into getting some very limited use out of that device, you could just get a decent $300 tablet that will be suited for many uses. Since you're a dad, you know that your time is valuable. More valuable than making this thing marginally more useful so you can save $212.
Put some edutainment apps on their and hand it over to your kids. No need to ruggedize it.
Not that http requests are how these passwords are being cracked, but to entertain you and the others who think so, I'll throw this word out to you:
botnet
Seth
Beardo, This is a great mechanism for me to abuse to lock all your users out of the system.
Great thinking, there.
Seth
Don't get me wrong here, I think Kim is a criminal and deserves to spend time behind bars.
He probably expects he will spend some more time in prison, and he's launching this service quickly while he still has his illicit capital from MegaUpload and before he has to go to prison for running it. While he's in prison, the new Mega service will become lucrative and he'll still be rich when he gets out of prison.
Seth
I'm not sure which 'first time around' you're referring to here... The pump-and-dump ponzi scheme he ran during the late nineties dot-com bubble or the MegaUpload website he ran in the later oughts? Both operations paid him handsomely, and he so far only did a short stint in jail on the stock fraud, but the case is pending against him on the MegaUpload website. He's got more money than OJ Simpson did when he hired his legal 'dream team', so there's a chance he might avoid prosecution for MegaUpload.
But if the guy is already a celebrity, isn't attention-whoring part of his job description?
In a related topic, it's been something of an industry rumor for the past six months that Dice has made a confidential offer to an ex-member of the band, Guns-n-Roses, to change his last name to "dot org".
This Paunch guy needs to watch his ass. There are larger, darker players who were using this exploit for their own purposes. Some of them invested heavily in developing it. By bringing it out into the open like this, Paunch has directly limited their use of this vulnerability. I would not be surprised if this is the last we hear of mr. Paunch. A cleanup team has likely been engaged and is working on tracking him down in the physical world as I type this...
Seth
Multiple monitors are connected to a computer. A single HDTV is connected to a console, and it's located in the living room. Very few families have multiple HDTVs installed next to one another in the living room.
Seth
This is a byproduct of them working on a console they intend to ship. It'll run linux, so this beta is a nice way for them to test a bunch of their architectural design without actually putting the hardware in thousands of people's living rooms.
As far as bug reporting goes, I doubt they'll prioritize stuff that's not relevant to their expected console architecture. Issues like, "Hey, I have dual monitors and steam blacks one out and it never comes back" are going to be pretty well ignored because the console is unlikely to support dual monitors. This is more about testing out scaling issues for the servers and verifying that updates are working as expected. A more exciting bug report for them would be along the lines of, "XYZ game released an update, but it requires my Steam client to by version 123, and I upgraded Steam to 123, but the game refuses to update."
Oh, and the other thing that's important about this Linux release is that it be valid for the developers to test their ports on prior to the console being finalized. Those limited-run developer hardware kits are way more expensive to issue than just giving studios a Linux install CD and some basic hardware requirements. This beta is probably about making sure the Steam client on Linux isn't too buggy for the devs to work with. This way, when the console is released there will be a healthy selection of titles available right away.
Seth
Valve is openly discussing their forthcoming console. That sucker isn't going to include a Microsoft OS tax, so you better expect that Valve is going to set up strong incentives for developers to release on Linux. That's what their console is going to be built on top of.
Seth
I wouldn't say there is never one of these normal individuals around.... In this incident, there were three of them.
I know I'm just voicing what every logical reader is thinking while reading this rhetorical question....
If I am to fight a guy with nothing to loose (SIC), I would most certainly want to be holding a gun.
Seth
The Apple store developer fee of $99 is miniscule. That is the equivalent of what three developers earn in a few hours working on an application.
The $99 is a nice way to reduce fraudulent accounts from being created. It's also worth considering that Apple has to staff actual humans who review all the apps that get submitted. There is no charge for the developers who submit 200 apps in a month, but Apple has to screen them to try to block malware from getting into the app store. Where do you think the cost for that comes from?
Seth
The progress of computer hardware architecture and operating systems is steadily creating more work to do in order to maintain 'perfect emulation.'
Seth
Ouch. That must have received blank stares from the dozens of kiwis in attendance.
Seth
It looks like this is a core component of Redmond's business plan in all their OS offerings.
First it was self-serve gas pumps. That relegated the station attendant to a cash register operator.
Then they implemented gas pumps with credit card readers. No need to interact with a human running a cash register. Fully automated fuel stations.
Now, we've got a huge new industry being invented, and they're not even including humans in any part of this transaction. No one to ask what grade of fuel to use. No one to check the condition of the wiper blades or upsell the satellite owner on a new air filter. Probably going to have NFC chips on the satellites so there's not even a credit card to swipe to charge the customers for the fuel.
I gotta get on the horn to my congressman today. This is going to be too efficient at the cost of jobs. We need to employ a human operator up there or else there is no hope of the unemployment rate dropping below 7%.
Seth
That dude hasn't made a worthwhile movie since Sin City. He uses low budgets as an excuse for making crappy movies. There was no reason Predators had to suck with that budget. It was all him. He's infatuated by Hollywood's adoration of him. Crammed so many celebrities into Machete, he bloated out the story to fit them all in. Should have turned the camera off when Booth was killed. That was the end of the story that mattered. Same with his career.
Here's a wonderful music video Robert Rodriguez shot that may-or-may-not be self-aware that it's the story of Rodriguez banging a Hollywood Starlet (Rose McGowan) and then stressing over whether or not his kids from his divorce will accept the younger woman. Bob Schneider plays the Robert Rodriguez role while Kat Demming fills in for Rose McGowan. His kid plays himself in the video. I can't tell if he's tipping his hat to Nena with the release of the red balloons at the end or is just outright ripping the ending off.
Seth
I'm really in agreement with the thrust of your comment here. Just wanted to add that SilverLight is also something developed by Microsoft under Ballmer that will probably deserve to be included in your list.
Some people might argue that courier doesn't deserve inclusion because it wasn't actually released and supposedly Bill Gates was the one who killed it because it didn't support MS Office. Another perspective might be that it was the product in your list that Ballmer should have championed and with the proper support it could have defeated the iPad. Not my perspective, but probably some zealots out there might make this claim.
Oh, hell. We should also add Ballmer's "Windows Store" initiative to the list while we're dogpiling failures here.
Seth
Nope. Quite the opposite. Woz seems like a complacent slacker who has subdued his brilliance with pot. He just isn't motivated to do much.
Seth
I admit that I am really reaching into something that might be very personal and I apologize in advance. I wouldn't even prod you with this question out of respect to you if it were not for my overwhelming need to confirm or disprove my suspicions.
Are you a complete stoner? Do you smoke pot every day all day long? How do you think your life might be different if you had stopped smoking pot in your mid-twenties?
Seth
I don't want to pick nits here because Luis is giving out a lot of very valid information and observations here. Just want to take it one step further.
Mirror the production environment DB with an identical amount of data. The data doesn't have to match row-for-row. But the test environment DB should have the same scale as the production DB. Here's why: If you want to run an alter table or alter index command, you want a sense of how much of an impact that is going to have on the database before running the operation in production. If you only have 10k rows in the table in test and run the command, it'll complete pretty quickly. You run that against a 2-million-row table in production, depending on the vendor, that could mean a table lock that takes down your production environment until it finishes (could be hours). Been there. Done that. It ain't pretty.
Seth
By this myopic definition of 'vision' no company in the technology industry has it.
Every company out there is taking advantage of economies of scale for their components. Sure, they could invent their own processor from scratch and put it in their own laptop they designed from scratch and satisfy your definition of 'vision'. Production of the CPU will be on such a small scale for the device, that the per unit cost will be very high. Then the device based around it will be unattractively expensive. Few units would sell.
Here comes Apple with more money than anybody else. They bring a feasible economy of scale to this problem. If they want a custom LCD display that is non-standard per the rest of the industry, they front the manufacturer the money to build the factory and staff it with enough resources to churn out millions of displays per year, thereby making the per-unit cost of the LCD's fit with the pricing model of the device designed around it.
The only other company that can do this is Samsung, and that's why Apple is trying to curb-stomp them in the courtroom. Samsung makes displays, CPUs, memory, etc. and was drafting off the scale of Apple's orders from their factories to produce their own price-competitive devices. I suppose your definition of 'vision' would have Samsung as a visionary company.
Seth
Did you see that little newspaper article about a year ago where the CEO of HP said they were considering leaving the hardware business? Do you know what part of the inspiration for that might have been?
Seth