I used to be fairly familiar with this problem, and the answer is that there isn't one answer. There are lots, which is why it's such a hard problem for MSFT to tackle.
Some of it is hardware choices - Windows is a pretty heavyweight OS, so the tendency is to use Intel instead of ARM, higher CPU clock speeds and larger (S|D)RAMs to make it feel at home. Plus of course the apps are a bloatfest. The result is higher power consumption.
Some of it is Windows thinking it owns the idle time to do whatever it wants (defrag, virus, search indexing, etc.). On other mobile OSs, the idle time is owned by power management first and foremost.
Some of it is crappy drivers that don't bother to take advantage of power management features present in the hardware.
Some of it is Windows not having APIs to make apps power aware from the beginning. As a result lots of things you'd like to do break old apps, and backwards compatibility is viewed as key.
Some of it is irrationality in the Windows hardware logo testing procedures that cause HW vendors to do bass ackwards stuff to make Microsoft happy.
Some of it is that Microsoft didn't push power to the WinTel HW vendors very hard in the past, and it's hard to change directions on a dime.
Some of it is that Windows applications don't really have an API for sporadic updates out of idle timed by the OS (mail fetch etc) and instead have a tendency to set timers and go do things on their own schedule. Since the schedules aren't coordinated, the device isn't idle much.
Add all those problems up, and you have a structural gap that's basically impossible to fix by changing any one thing.
The various advanced anti-ship missiles usually have one or more of four features:
1) low altitude
2) supersonic cruise or a supersonic sprint at the end of their trajectory
3) low radar profile
4) high/random maneuverability during approach
The Russian missle discussed in that article has 2 and 3.
All four features are pretty well known and understood, and have been addressed in the most recent block upgrades of the CIWS, RIM-116 and SM-2. The SM-2 got improved target finding logic (helps with 1 and 3) and a tweaked IR seeker (helps with 3). The RIM-116 is in the process of getting the block 2 upgrade which will help with 3 and 4. CIWS blocks 1A and 1B help with 3 and 4 (1 and 2 were never a problem).
Five years ago you could plausibly argue there was a missile gap. Now, probably not.
This would actually be useful if it worked, but it faces the same problem as most would-be futures contracts: fungibility.
Fungibility is the property of one thing being like another, which allows them to be traded without worrying about which of the two you get. Stocks and bonds are fungible - you don't care what the serial # on your share of INTC stock is. They're all the same. But it's not clear that blocks of cloud computing or storage are fungible - is an hour on a Azure VM worth the same as an hour on a Amazon Web Services VM? Probably not.
Regardless of your thoughts on the ACA's other provisions, the idea of having state and federal bureaucrats handling the money for so much of the economy is pretty troubling.
These are the people who brought you the DMV and their federal contractor equivalents, who are arguably even less competent and hard working.
As someone who cautiously supported the Affordable Care Act and would like to use it for my family's coverage, I have to admit I'm worried. We just routed the money for 1/6th of the economy through the same people who run your local DMV (or their federal equivalent, depending on what state) and I have to admit they're probably not up to the task.
We'll have to see if they get it straightened out by the first of the year, but the history of major government IT projects is not comforting.
As someone who makes a good part of my living trading bonds, there's a lot of misinformation here.
1) There is no such thing as "insider trading" in treasury bonds or their futures (or commodities futures or foreign exchange or options on any of the above). The reasoning is that the majority of the participants in those markets are knowledgeable insiders. Corporate bonds are a grey area but no one has ever been prosecuted and numerous people have openly traded on insider info. The SEC brought one case related to trading on credit default swaps, but it didn't go anywhere. Insider trading on stocks and stock options is illegal by case law.
2) if you had information about the Fed's future rate policy, you could make you bet in the spot or futures markets well ahead of the announcement. You would get a better price on your bet by doing so assuming it was a large bet, because markets tend to thin out before announcements (for technical reasons irrelevant to this discussion - just know it happens reliably).
I would guess the most likely explanation here, as with most apparent violations of the speed of light, is poor clock synchronization or other measurement issues.
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I used to be fairly familiar with this problem, and the answer is that there isn't one answer. There are lots, which is why it's such a hard problem for MSFT to tackle.
Some of it is hardware choices - Windows is a pretty heavyweight OS, so the tendency is to use Intel instead of ARM, higher CPU clock speeds and larger (S|D)RAMs to make it feel at home. Plus of course the apps are a bloatfest. The result is higher power consumption.
Some of it is Windows thinking it owns the idle time to do whatever it wants (defrag, virus, search indexing, etc.). On other mobile OSs, the idle time is owned by power management first and foremost.
Some of it is crappy drivers that don't bother to take advantage of power management features present in the hardware.
Some of it is Windows not having APIs to make apps power aware from the beginning. As a result lots of things you'd like to do break old apps, and backwards compatibility is viewed as key.
Some of it is irrationality in the Windows hardware logo testing procedures that cause HW vendors to do bass ackwards stuff to make Microsoft happy.
Some of it is that Microsoft didn't push power to the WinTel HW vendors very hard in the past, and it's hard to change directions on a dime.
Some of it is that Windows applications don't really have an API for sporadic updates out of idle timed by the OS (mail fetch etc) and instead have a tendency to set timers and go do things on their own schedule. Since the schedules aren't coordinated, the device isn't idle much.
Add all those problems up, and you have a structural gap that's basically impossible to fix by changing any one thing.
The various advanced anti-ship missiles usually have one or more of four features:
1) low altitude
2) supersonic cruise or a supersonic sprint at the end of their trajectory
3) low radar profile
4) high/random maneuverability during approach
The Russian missle discussed in that article has 2 and 3.
All four features are pretty well known and understood, and have been addressed in the most recent block upgrades of the CIWS, RIM-116 and SM-2. The SM-2 got improved target finding logic (helps with 1 and 3) and a tweaked IR seeker (helps with 3). The RIM-116 is in the process of getting the block 2 upgrade which will help with 3 and 4. CIWS blocks 1A and 1B help with 3 and 4 (1 and 2 were never a problem). Five years ago you could plausibly argue there was a missile gap. Now, probably not.
This would actually be useful if it worked, but it faces the same problem as most would-be futures contracts: fungibility.
Fungibility is the property of one thing being like another, which allows them to be traded without worrying about which of the two you get. Stocks and bonds are fungible - you don't care what the serial # on your share of INTC stock is. They're all the same. But it's not clear that blocks of cloud computing or storage are fungible - is an hour on a Azure VM worth the same as an hour on a Amazon Web Services VM? Probably not.
This problem seems fatal to me.
Regardless of your thoughts on the ACA's other provisions, the idea of having state and federal bureaucrats handling the money for so much of the economy is pretty troubling.
These are the people who brought you the DMV and their federal contractor equivalents, who are arguably even less competent and hard working.
As someone who cautiously supported the Affordable Care Act and would like to use it for my family's coverage, I have to admit I'm worried. We just routed the money for 1/6th of the economy through the same people who run your local DMV (or their federal equivalent, depending on what state) and I have to admit they're probably not up to the task.
We'll have to see if they get it straightened out by the first of the year, but the history of major government IT projects is not comforting.
As someone who makes a good part of my living trading bonds, there's a lot of misinformation here.
1) There is no such thing as "insider trading" in treasury bonds or their futures (or commodities futures or foreign exchange or options on any of the above). The reasoning is that the majority of the participants in those markets are knowledgeable insiders. Corporate bonds are a grey area but no one has ever been prosecuted and numerous people have openly traded on insider info. The SEC brought one case related to trading on credit default swaps, but it didn't go anywhere. Insider trading on stocks and stock options is illegal by case law.
2) if you had information about the Fed's future rate policy, you could make you bet in the spot or futures markets well ahead of the announcement. You would get a better price on your bet by doing so assuming it was a large bet, because markets tend to thin out before announcements (for technical reasons irrelevant to this discussion - just know it happens reliably).
I would guess the most likely explanation here, as with most apparent violations of the speed of light, is poor clock synchronization or other measurement issues.