And who could forget RIMM? Well, any more, I guess it's easy to forget RIMM.
(I was offered a Blackberry in late 2002. I turned it down, saying "if I'm doing email, I want a full-sized keyboard." I've never regretted that decision.)
Anyone got data on failure rates on HP, Dell and Lenovo laptops? Anecdotally, it's my observation that Lenovo laptops are a lot sturdier than either HP or Dell laptops. Purchase price is not quite the same as TCO, and the "utility cost" of having your laptop shit-the-bed on the road is rarely accounted for in the CIO's cost models.
On the other hand, as soon as you do need to do anything creative, or do any real computation, or scale up to multiple users, or support non-trivial interactions, the current crop of mobile devices suck. All those downsides that didn't matter before are now dominant, and the high price, low power and almost zero flexibility are fatal liabilities. And no matter how much window dressing you lay out, they always will be, because it's not the job these devices were designed for.
I don't buy this in a lot of cases. How much 'computational power' (or storage) does it take to write a book (even "War and Peace":-)? Or to write an App? I could easily write a book using a tablet with a keyboard, and lots and lots of powerful applications were done with a lot less computational power than the average iPad now has (including the Unix and Linux kernels...)
There certainly are creative endeavors (e.g. signal processing, including still image, video or sound editing, or computational biology/ecology/climatology, or data mining in social sciences) that do require a fair amount of computation, but a lot of that computation can be done with special purpose hardware (e.g. GPUs.) Those might require general purpose desktops, or special purpose desktops, or mobile devices with specialized hardware, or a combination of mobile device plus cloud services.
In part, this is what the Apple/Samsung lawsuit is about. If you follow the "Innovator's Dilemma" arguments, the PC makers, and now a lot of the Android makers (tablets and phones) are competing solely on price, because the innovation to get any other advantage has already occurred.
Certainly Apple has invested a lot in product development for iPhone, iPad, iOS, etc. Whether these things should be patentable in the first place, should be separated from whether enforcing the patents, "trade dress", etc results in more or less innovation.
The question for HP in particular, is whether they can innovate on top of (a) Microsoft licensed technologies, (b) Android licensed technologies, or (c) invest time and energies in doing something original. (c) is definitely a gamble, but it's not clear that HP can ever grow out of the bottom by following either (a) or (b).
All we need now is an unexplained outbreak of an unknown disease in some conflict-ridden part of the world. (Maybe the recent Ebola outbreak in Uganda? http://allafrica.com/stories/201208120306.html )
Yeah. There's always the "low speed race condition" when two cars on either side of the traffic lane decide to back out at the same time.
For a "real-world driving experience" claim, I think parking is something Google should run and document. When they get 3000 "in and out of parking", I'll be a lot more impressed...
Samsung devices will be required to contain a warning: "This device contains technology that Her Majesty's Courts have determined is not as cool as an iPad."
And Apple will post a precise statement, "In the United Kingdom, the Court has determined that Samsung Galaxy Tab does not copy the iPad. In other jurisdictions (list), an opposing judgement has been rendered."
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
I respect RMS' position on software, even if I don't fully agree with it. As I understand it, he says that a software developer should be able to make money by selling services, e.g. maintaining/customizing software, and there are people out there who do just that.
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
I think the "music is like software and should be just as free" analogy does no't work.
(This is not to support the RIAA's unacceptable use of the the courts to prosecute the token file-sharing user with outrageous and probably unconstitutional damage judgements.)
Several people pointed out Win 8 Tablets don't support AD. Thanks, I didn't know that.
But we've been here before! MSFT Win 8 Tablets not supporting AD is exactly like RIM Tablets not supporting Email. In both cases, the developer fscked up by ignoring their greatest strength for using and integrating their devices into corporate networks.
A premium price for Windows tablets would make sense if Microsoft plans to leverage their (strangle)hold on the business world. The argument would be "you know how to manage and secure Windows desktops. By paying this premium for Windows tablets, you get tablet devices that you can similarly control, thereby reducing Total Cost of Ownership."
But that would mean Microsoft is abandoning, or at least substantially downplaying, the consumer, and ceding that ground to Android and iOS. That -would be- a bet-the-company move for Ballmer, et.al.
Really? Are you using the Internet? Guess where that came from, "knucklehead". DARPA funded the basic research, and then DoD direct contracts funded a lot of the BBN switch development. That's just one example.
There's a difference between writing a 1000 line application, and contributing to a 100,000 line system. How many 10 year programmers have experience with multiple, multi-year, large systems? How many know how to architect them to, for example, identify and/or avoid issues of scalability, concurrency, etc? Some of that -can be taught-, but how many of you got taught large-scale concurrency/distributed systems in school? (Example: raise your hands if you can give an example of 'byzantine failure'. Keep your hands up if you've actually experienced it. And stand up if you were able to locate, recreate or otherwise analyze, and fix 'heisenbugs' in a deployed/running application.)
Because governments care about accountability, and businesses care about efficiency.
Agreed, but one of the things the government is supposed to be accountable for is efficiency.
As you correctly pointed out, red tape incurs a real cost. So beyond a certain point, red tape meant to prevent excessive spending is self-defeating.
Actually "efficiency" is only one metric, and there are others that are more important. That includes "conform to policies" (many, if not most, are set by Congress; often for the best of motives), "fair/open", and "timely."
I say these without prejudice; "timely" was certainly a major motivation to get MRAPs (including their command and control/situational awareness software components) to the troops in Iraq, from a financial perspective that was certainly not "efficient. (Multiple vehicles with different capabilities, a lot of maintenance costs/problems, etc. "fast" but most certainly not "efficient" when you consider a 5 or 10 year total cost of ownership. Furthermore, basic MRAPs work great in Iraq and lousy in Afghanistan; lousy off-road performance, too big for bridges, etc, etc.)
Others here have poked fun at the application of contract rules (e.g. 3 competitive bids), but consider the alternative. In business with a clear bottom-line, spending $5k for computers may well be in the noise, but the corporation has the choice to do this. A lot of contracting rules favor small business, disadvantaged businesses/individuals, are there to prevent potential fraud, etc. Those are all social goods that often contradict the basic notion of "efficiency."
Consider the most recent GSA scandal: If this were Trump Enterprises, would anyone question those expenditures?
Actually, I learned a lot from doing COBOL work. But it's clear that experience doesn't count. Instead employers do buzzword search on resumes for the latest hip technology or alphabet soup "certifications".
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the industry didn't choose to adopt one labor-intensive technology after another. Most of the current programming fads don't scale up for large projects (>100k SLOC) any better than a lot of the stuff we used 20-30 years ago. Too much training and education, and then too many tools, focus on the individual, rather than on the team of developers/maintainers for long-lived applications. But I suspect a lot of senior managers think that large systems are irrelevant; everything will be a 1000 line "app".
This is a problem that is -independent- of the inefficiencies implicit in working for the government (as either an employee or a contractor.)
For what it's worth, I have always insisted that any programmer/developer that I had any influence over hiring must have demonstrated competence in more than 1 programming language/development approach. And "C/C++" didn't count as 2 languages (both because so much of C++ is bad C with an OOP veneer, and because a lot of core concepts, including bad habits, are shared between the two languages.)
And that is the point... what incentive is there for Adobe to make sure there are little to none security flaws when they make consumers pay for the "fixes"?
None of course, and can even breed a corporate strategy of "who can hide the best security flaw so we force people to upgrade?".
Kinda... If Adobe had its sh*t together, it would make even more money through a reasonable approach that allowed them to fix once and charge multiple separate product upgrades. But I don't think Adobe's that smart. When it comes to the free Acrobat Reader, Adobe's lost a lot of market share, at least on Macs where PDF viewing and distilling is built into the OS/Apple applications. Acrobat Reader bugs don't generate income for Adobe, but they certainly generate negative perception/goodwill (which accountants do take into consideration for corporate valuations.)
Well, maybe Adobe runs independent codebases for their projects, so some poor schmuck coder has to go to each projectbase, check out the offending file(s), and make the changes. That would run counter to a Product Line Approach as recommended by the SEI...:-)
Of course, if Adobe would tighten up on their security coding practices, they wouldn't have these problems in the first place. But judging by Flash's patch history, that's too much to ask.
Apple has dominated the high end of the -personal- computer market at least in the US, making it a more lucrative target for attempts to steal personal information.
On the other side, is there any way to measure how easy/difficult it's been to develop successful viruses on platforms, MacOS, Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8), various Linux distributions, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
And who could forget RIMM? Well, any more, I guess it's easy to forget RIMM.
(I was offered a Blackberry in late 2002. I turned it down, saying "if I'm doing email, I want a full-sized keyboard." I've never regretted that decision.)
Anyone got data on failure rates on HP, Dell and Lenovo laptops? Anecdotally, it's my observation that Lenovo laptops are a lot sturdier than either HP or Dell laptops. Purchase price is not quite the same as TCO, and the "utility cost" of having your laptop shit-the-bed on the road is rarely accounted for in the CIO's cost models.
On the other hand, as soon as you do need to do anything creative, or do any real computation, or scale up to multiple users, or support non-trivial interactions, the current crop of mobile devices suck. All those downsides that didn't matter before are now dominant, and the high price, low power and almost zero flexibility are fatal liabilities. And no matter how much window dressing you lay out, they always will be, because it's not the job these devices were designed for.
I don't buy this in a lot of cases. How much 'computational power' (or storage) does it take to write a book (even "War and Peace" :-)? Or to write an App? I could easily write a book using a tablet with a keyboard, and lots and lots of powerful applications were done with a lot less computational power than the average iPad now has (including the Unix and Linux kernels...)
There certainly are creative endeavors (e.g. signal processing, including still image, video or sound editing, or computational biology/ecology/climatology, or data mining in social sciences) that do require a fair amount of computation, but a lot of that computation can be done with special purpose hardware (e.g. GPUs.) Those might require general purpose desktops, or special purpose desktops, or mobile devices with specialized hardware, or a combination of mobile device plus cloud services.
In part, this is what the Apple/Samsung lawsuit is about. If you follow the "Innovator's Dilemma" arguments, the PC makers, and now a lot of the Android makers (tablets and phones) are competing solely on price, because the innovation to get any other advantage has already occurred.
Certainly Apple has invested a lot in product development for iPhone, iPad, iOS, etc. Whether these things should be patentable in the first place, should be separated from whether enforcing the patents, "trade dress", etc results in more or less innovation.
The question for HP in particular, is whether they can innovate on top of (a) Microsoft licensed technologies, (b) Android licensed technologies, or (c) invest time and energies in doing something original. (c) is definitely a gamble, but it's not clear that HP can ever grow out of the bottom by following either (a) or (b).
We stayed up and watched this, initially to see Benedict Cumberbatch: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/lastenemy/synopsis.html
All we need now is an unexplained outbreak of an unknown disease in some conflict-ridden part of the world. (Maybe the recent Ebola outbreak in Uganda? http://allafrica.com/stories/201208120306.html )
Yeah. There's always the "low speed race condition" when two cars on either side of the traffic lane decide to back out at the same time.
For a "real-world driving experience" claim, I think parking is something Google should run and document. When they get 3000 "in and out of parking", I'll be a lot more impressed...
How many times has the Google-mobile pulled into and out of parking spaces at busy malls? Frankly, that's where I've had my accidents.
Great stuff, particularly well done for time travel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beam_Piper
Samsung devices will be required to contain a warning: "This device contains technology that Her Majesty's Courts have determined is not as cool as an iPad."
And Apple will post a precise statement, "In the United Kingdom, the Court has determined that Samsung Galaxy Tab does not copy the iPad. In other jurisdictions (list), an opposing judgement has been rendered."
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
I have recreations of both Greek and Roman works. See http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/beginlst/ancient.html for a good summary of available recordings.
I respect RMS' position on software, even if I don't fully agree with it. As I understand it, he says that a software developer should be able to make money by selling services, e.g. maintaining/customizing software, and there are people out there who do just that.
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
I think the "music is like software and should be just as free" analogy does no't work.
(This is not to support the RIAA's unacceptable use of the the courts to prosecute the token file-sharing user with outrageous and probably unconstitutional damage judgements.)
It's a pocket computer. -THAT's- the big shift that RIMM missed, and -is still missing-.
Nice summary of what the iPhone changed here: http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/iphone_disruption_five_years_in
Yeah, lots of precedent for Microsoft following (and losing lots of money) under Ballmer's watch. Not just Apple, but also Google.
I don't understand why he's still CEO.
Seriously... There's a lot of cool things to build and the bricks would probably be a lot easier to handle.
Several people pointed out Win 8 Tablets don't support AD. Thanks, I didn't know that.
But we've been here before! MSFT Win 8 Tablets not supporting AD is exactly like RIM Tablets not supporting Email. In both cases, the developer fscked up by ignoring their greatest strength for using and integrating their devices into corporate networks.
(Queue "repeat lessons of history" quote...)
A premium price for Windows tablets would make sense if Microsoft plans to leverage their (strangle)hold on the business world. The argument would be "you know how to manage and secure Windows desktops. By paying this premium for Windows tablets, you get tablet devices that you can similarly control, thereby reducing Total Cost of Ownership."
But that would mean Microsoft is abandoning, or at least substantially downplaying, the consumer, and ceding that ground to Android and iOS. That -would be- a bet-the-company move for Ballmer, et.al.
I was with you until you misused "it's" in your link.
Really? Are you using the Internet? Guess where that came from, "knucklehead". DARPA funded the basic research, and then DoD direct contracts funded a lot of the BBN switch development. That's just one example.
There's a difference between writing a 1000 line application, and contributing to a 100,000 line system. How many 10 year programmers have experience with multiple, multi-year, large systems? How many know how to architect them to, for example, identify and/or avoid issues of scalability, concurrency, etc? Some of that -can be taught-, but how many of you got taught large-scale concurrency/distributed systems in school? (Example: raise your hands if you can give an example of 'byzantine failure'. Keep your hands up if you've actually experienced it. And stand up if you were able to locate, recreate or otherwise analyze, and fix 'heisenbugs' in a deployed/running application.)
Agreed, but one of the things the government is supposed to be accountable for is efficiency.
As you correctly pointed out, red tape incurs a real cost. So beyond a certain point, red tape meant to prevent excessive spending is self-defeating.
Actually "efficiency" is only one metric, and there are others that are more important. That includes "conform to policies" (many, if not most, are set by Congress; often for the best of motives), "fair/open", and "timely."
I say these without prejudice; "timely" was certainly a major motivation to get MRAPs (including their command and control/situational awareness software components) to the troops in Iraq, from a financial perspective that was certainly not "efficient. (Multiple vehicles with different capabilities, a lot of maintenance costs/problems, etc. "fast" but most certainly not "efficient" when you consider a 5 or 10 year total cost of ownership. Furthermore, basic MRAPs work great in Iraq and lousy in Afghanistan; lousy off-road performance, too big for bridges, etc, etc.)
Others here have poked fun at the application of contract rules (e.g. 3 competitive bids), but consider the alternative. In business with a clear bottom-line, spending $5k for computers may well be in the noise, but the corporation has the choice to do this. A lot of contracting rules favor small business, disadvantaged businesses/individuals, are there to prevent potential fraud, etc. Those are all social goods that often contradict the basic notion of "efficiency."
Consider the most recent GSA scandal: If this were Trump Enterprises, would anyone question those expenditures?
Actually, I learned a lot from doing COBOL work. But it's clear that experience doesn't count. Instead employers do buzzword search on resumes for the latest hip technology or alphabet soup "certifications".
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the industry didn't choose to adopt one labor-intensive technology after another. Most of the current programming fads don't scale up for large projects (>100k SLOC) any better than a lot of the stuff we used 20-30 years ago. Too much training and education, and then too many tools, focus on the individual, rather than on the team of developers/maintainers for long-lived applications. But I suspect a lot of senior managers think that large systems are irrelevant; everything will be a 1000 line "app".
This is a problem that is -independent- of the inefficiencies implicit in working for the government (as either an employee or a contractor.)
For what it's worth, I have always insisted that any programmer/developer that I had any influence over hiring must have demonstrated competence in more than 1 programming language/development approach. And "C/C++" didn't count as 2 languages (both because so much of C++ is bad C with an OOP veneer, and because a lot of core concepts, including bad habits, are shared between the two languages.)
Hey Karmashock, when does that ship sail?
The only thing VI's good for is editing the configuration file used to make EMACS :-)
And that is the point... what incentive is there for Adobe to make sure there are little to none security flaws when they make consumers pay for the "fixes"?
None of course, and can even breed a corporate strategy of "who can hide the best security flaw so we force people to upgrade?".
Kinda... If Adobe had its sh*t together, it would make even more money through a reasonable approach that allowed them to fix once and charge multiple separate product upgrades. But I don't think Adobe's that smart. When it comes to the free Acrobat Reader, Adobe's lost a lot of market share, at least on Macs where PDF viewing and distilling is built into the OS/Apple applications. Acrobat Reader bugs don't generate income for Adobe, but they certainly generate negative perception/goodwill (which accountants do take into consideration for corporate valuations.)
Well, maybe Adobe runs independent codebases for their projects, so some poor schmuck coder has to go to each projectbase, check out the offending file(s), and make the changes. That would run counter to a Product Line Approach as recommended by the SEI... :-)
Of course, if Adobe would tighten up on their security coding practices, they wouldn't have these problems in the first place. But judging by Flash's patch history, that's too much to ask.
Apple has dominated the high end of the -personal- computer market at least in the US, making it a more lucrative target for attempts to steal personal information.
On the other side, is there any way to measure how easy/difficult it's been to develop successful viruses on platforms, MacOS, Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8), various Linux distributions, etc?