Well... it can matter. Try taking your iPhone to Europe. If you forget to turn off 3G, you can accidentally get a phone bill in the thousands of dollars range, even if you never used your phone. On the other hand, I can put a Vodafone sim card in my Nexus One, and save a lot of money while travelling. A couple years ago, before making a two-week trip to Europe, I tried to unlock my iPhone. It didn't work, so in Europe, I simply removed my iPhone's sim card, and bought a cheap pre-paid phone for use there. When I got back to the US, Apple's next software update bricked my phone, on purpose. Apple can go crawl under a rock and die. The Nexus One is better in virtually every way. Cheaper, Europe compatible, unlocked, multi-tasking, faster, thinner, better screen, better software, better reception, and a lot less evil.
By the way: Wouldn’t you get a N900 for $529? With keyboard, Debian Linux / Maemo, etc?
I would if I didn't mind carrying around a brick in my pocket all day. For that matter, for $529 I can get a decent 15" laptop. As-is, I'm very happy with my unlocked Nexus One. It's the only phone out there that's better than an iPhone, IMO. Of course, if you require a keyboard, the Motorola Droid is the way to go.
My 300-minute plan with unlimited data is $55/month, which turns into about $60/mo after taxes and fees. Compare that to the $85/mo I pay every month for my wife's minimum-priced iPhone plan. I'm getting a better phone, and paying $25/mo less. I bought the phone for $570 (after tax and shipping). Compute the savings vs iPhone over two years:
So, an unlocked Nexus One is about 10% cheaper than an iPhone over two years. Did I mention it's a better phone? The Nexus One is the best hardware, and software out there. It's thinner, and has a far better screen, and way faster processor. T-Mobile is hands-down better than AT&T. The Nexus One actually has a better radio than an iPhone, too, with far better reception. The noise cancelling voice recognition rocks.
Perhaps instead of trying to say a Nexus One will only cost you $49, the poster could instead compared the savings and quality to the elephant in the room - the iPhone. He also could have pointed out to those of us who actually do math now and then that buying the phone with a 2-year contract is a huge waste of money, in addition to being a PITA.
Why on Earth would anyone buy this phone with a 2-year contract?
I often wonder where the next generation of computer OS architects will come from. With Windows closed, and Apple trending towards closed hardware as well as software, I suspect the next generation of OS super-hackers will mostly cut their teeth on Linux. Thank God for Linux.
So you don't actually talk to people on trains? As I recall, it's a bit loud, but I have conversations anyway. When voice recognition is that good, it'll work fine on your train, especially with a noice cancelling mic.
I programmed by voice for three years. It was not as fast as typing, but it was fine. The problem isn't that voice recognition is over-hyped, but that our existing system are designed for keyboard and mouse entry. There's also the problem that we old farts know how to type quite well, but talking into a mic to control things seem alien. You and I will never switch fully to voice entry for data, but our kids just might.
I have a Google Nexus One, and I use the voice regcognition feature all the time. Why would I want to type a sentance on a tiny virtual keyboard, when I can just speak it?
Hmmm.... so maybe a custom multi-touch desktop running GTK with a multi-touch overlay? Wouldn't it be easier to get UNR working well, since that's basically what UNR is?
I understand UNR isn't sold commercially on any netbooks, but the first thing I do is remove the OSes they do sell and install UNR. Why would I want a netbook or tablet that doesn't even ship with word processing?
Agreed, but what's the better option? Android? I want Open Office, for example. I'd like to develop directly on the device, not through an emulator. I'd say, run UNR, but work closely with Canonical to get it working very with the new tablet e-book readers.
Agreed. E-book reader is the killer app for 10" tablets. Replace the display with a sunlight readable Pixel Qi, thus reducing the battery size and price. I think it should run Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and be price-competitive with the Kindle, meaning around $300 or less. I think we'll start seeing these things later this year!
What's up with all the wasted screen space on the iPad? It's got like 1" all the way around with no purpose other than the "Home" button. Couldn't they have shrunk this device a ton, or offered a larger screen?
New technologies almost always target the high-end first, and later move down to the middle and low-end products. That's because initially there are no economies of scale from high-volume manufacturing. As the high-end ramps to reasonable volume, technolologies, like the batteries, will drop in price, allowing cost effective medium-end offerings. Take a look at the Tesla cars. Their first (the Roadster), is > $100K. Their second is expected to be around $57K. They plan a third in the $35K range, but first, their Model S has to succeed.
Anyway, the government is trying to help you get into a Chevey Volt, to the tune of about $7,000. Your price wont be $40K, you'll pay $33K. Given the performance and specs, it's not unreasonable, though if they could drop a few K, it'd sell a lot better. They'll also have a Cadillac version, but they plan cheaper versions in the future.
And don't forget typing on the virtual keyboard. On my Nexus One, I find the keyboard is easily a match for my wife's iPhone 3Gs, but I do notice I have to apply more pressure than is natural to click on the small virtual buttons along the bottom of my Nexus One. Only a problem until you get use to it.
Overall, the most important app isn't the UI, but how good is it as a phone. My wife envy's my ability to recieve calls in low-points along the streets in our neighborhood. Next time I go to Europe, I'll just drop in a Vodafone SIM card, and avoid insane roaming charges. The Nexus One on T-Mobile is a better phone than the iPhone on AT&T. On Verizon, it will be even better. As a handheld computer, the hardware is a bit better on the Nexus One, while the iPhone has a slight edge in the UI, and a large advantage in apps. The Nexus One is also less evil in several ways (restrictions on apps in the store, ability to remove apps you've paid for, lock-in to iTunes and the whole DRM mess, closed-source, no unlocked SIM cards, force you to pay for ringtones, no VoIP...)
Overall, I'm glad I've got the Nexus One, and my wife is glad to have her iPhone 3Gs. For those who require keyboards, the Droid is the best thing out there. It seems the iPhone has some real competition. Finally.
So, why does it take companies who aren't cell-phone manufacturers to design great ones?
I just bought one, unlocked, though I already have a T-mobile plan for my G1. T-Mobile totally screwed me here... I bought the first G1 sold in North Carolina, so far as I know, but to buy a Nexus One with a 2-year contract, T-Mobile wants $529 (That's right... a total of $0 discount!), and I have to increase my plan from $60/month to $80/month! So, screw them. Naturally, I bought it unlocked from Google instead, and I'll be making use of the sub-$60 plans to make up for the $529.
It's un-freaking-believable how screwed up mobile carriers are in America.
As for how this is different than the Droid... come on, guys! Apparently only male geeks review cell phones! The Droid is marketed to manly men. No proper feminine woman would be caught dead with a cell phone that bristles widgets like a Swiss Army Knife, and looks like a killer space weapon. That's the Droid. The iPhone is all about women, with those curves, and lack of switches and keyboard, and the big round Home button. The Nexus One is the first Android phone of consequence that competes in this space. Look at the huge trackball... what female body part does it represent? Do the curves on this phone look more like a woman or a man?
The Nexux One is not the fabled "iPhone Killer". However, the Droid plus Nexus One plus Sony Experia X10 plus all the rest... It's just like Windows vs Mac all over again. No one phone will compete in terms of market share with the iPhone, but in total, Android phones will dwarf the iPhone.
Very nice first post! I was thinking of writing much the same thing. Comments help teams of people work together. Poor team players either don't comment, or let them get out of date. Stupid large companies require useless comments with lots of parsable syntax, like AUTHOR, and DATE on every function. For teams, the middle ground is the best - comment each.c file's purpose at the top, have at least a short phrase for each function, and keep functions small with meaninful names. Use meaninful names for variables.
Some programmers are too amazing to ever work well with other programmers. I consider myself one of the best I know, but I'll mention the best I've ever met. Ken McElvain, founder of Synplicity, is a Mozart with code. The first day I went to work for him, there were 350K lines of code, 100% written by Ken. I opened a key algorithm file, which was 2000-ish lines. It was 1 freaking function! I tried to understand what was what, but most variabe names were 1 letter, and the rest were 2. There were no comments. I got a bit freaked out, so I grep-ed the entire code base for a comment. There was one: "This is a hack." To this date, I do not believe any other coder ever figured out how that particular function with that comment works.
Watching Ken code was amazing. He had two large screens full of icons, each programmed to do a different function, like "release code to build servers." His programming speed was limited by his typing, and he was very fast. Thus the 1 and two letter variable names. He always wrote code from the top of the file to the end, and then hit the "compile and run, optimized" button. He's the only programmer I ever met that by default compiles new code in release mode. Typically, he'd write synthesis algorithms he'd invented over night, and it usually turned out to be the best ever seen. He didn't even bother to read all the papers on how others do it. It was just amazing to watch.
However, it got ugly when he'd hand his code to another programmer (like me) to take over. I suspect most programmers early on at Synplicity spent most of their time fixing bugs they'd introduced because they didn't understand the full extent of what the original code was suppose to do. To get to 2X the producivity of just Ken, I think we had to have a team of around 20 very good programmers.
She wasn't the only one. I joined HP in 1988, and the job was horible. Donuts on Friday disapeared the week I arrived. the "HP Way" was being scuttled. I could only take it a year and a half, and then I moved on to more intresting work. The problem was that David Packard had retired from the board and no longer guided the company. It got so bad, he came out of retirement a couple years later to put HP back on track. When he passed away, there was no way to replace him. Stockholders always lean towards the likes of Carly Florina, for the reasons already described - short-term profits. It takes an genius evangelist with nearly unlimited power to keep a company great. Take a look at what's happening at Microsoft since Bill stepped back, and how the stock market follows Steve Job's health.
Anyway, I veiw all those famous brands mentioned in TFA quite differently. What they have in common is that they have faded, but that's all. Heathkit is a brand spoken even today in awe of what they did for America. Polorooid revolutionized film based photography, and faded into obscurity when their strong leadership faded. Westinghouse faded through conglomeration. What do they make now? Coffee or nuclear reactors? Netscape killed themselves, through incredible stupid and evil strategy - make the Internet so complicated that only Microsoft and Netscape could offer functional browsers... someone should be shot.
I reject the idea that a company the dies with it's market has failed. Sun Microsystems is the most amazing workstation vendor in history. They gave the world technologies that will benefit the world for generations. Just because my cell phone has more power than a 1990-vintage workstation doesn't make Sun less great. These are brands to be celebrated for what they did in their industry, not to be morned when their industry passes into history.
I agree, Verizon has the best coverage. T-Mobile and all the rest are worse. Now that Verizon has a decent Android phone, it's almost worth switching. Still, I'm turned off by the $350 termination fee at Verizon, as well as the way they have a dozen fees to ding you. They've got a great network, and now a great phone. Why not take the mobile world by storm by also offering a great plan? So close, and yet so far...
Nvidia already bundles their graphics acceleration with their own processor. The Tegra processor has plenty of power for Internet Tablets, with way lower power and overall system cost. I think it would be a terrible mistake for Nvidia to enter the i386 compatible market. They should instead help us build a future without all that baggage.
Verizon pissed me off by never letting me use my own camera for free. They had good coverage, though. With the Motorola Droid, I'd consider going back to them. AT&T pissed me off by screwing up account details with Apple, which eventually led to my iPhone being borked by Apple. T-Mobile has been good to me, with voice coverage at least as good as AT&T, and reasonable G3, and excellent EDGE coverage. When I wanted to go to Europe and use my G1 with another SIM card, T-Mobile send me the unlock code for free, with no fuss. My plan (voice + unlimited data) is only $60/month, a full $10 less than AT&T or Verizon. I hate my G1 (the hardware sucks big-time), but I'm super-excited about both the Nexus One and Sony Ericson Experia X10. Well... I'm a LOT more excited about the Nexus One. Give me one of those, and I'll probably be a long-term T-Mobile user.
So, I predict that T-Mobile will not piss you off in a month. It will probably take three.
If being dumb was her only major fault, we'd still be married. Given the choice, definitely go for a smarter woman. She had other issues, too, like massive depression. Eventually she had other guys in her bed, and that's when I cut her loose. Some guys on slashdot would go for the open relationship, but that's not how I'm wired.
I'm third generation Californian (but live in NC now). As a result, I've got a lot of Mexican uncles, cousins, and such. My uncle Fernando told me when I was younger, "Intelligence in a woman is overrated." That's the excuse I give myself for marrying a complete moron in my first marriage. She is still a very sweet, attractive woman. I hope she's happy. I spent eight years figuring out what a mistake that was. Second time around, I went the other way, and I tell all my friends to look for a smart girl. After 11 years, my second marriage is still going gang-busters.
You're obviously a big geek. You post on slashdot. I can't even tell you how attractive I find that, but as you know, guys like me are in the minority. If I could give you one bit of advice... make your way to Silicon Valley
After my divorce back around 1998, I hung around a lot of bars. I find it easy and interesting to talk to smart people, even if they are huge a-holes, like most of us here on slashdot. I just can't do small talk. So, more often than not, I'd discover in a bar that I'd just started a conversation with a complete ditz. At that point, I'd switch to reading auras, where I would try and guess as many details of a woman's life based on a shimmering color only I could see around her. Of course, I'm color blind. I had a lot of fun reading auras, but it got a bit weird in one case when I was dating a girl who believed me. We were chemically and physically an amazing match, but mentally, we were in different worlds.
And, yes, you are in the minority for a "Southern Man". Ask your friends if they would prefer to meet a dumb drunk blond at the next bar. Actually, that's not just the South... I think it's world-wide.
Well, I like her looks. However, by American norms she's a tad heavy, and her nose is one of those larger Jewish things. As for smarts, the night I met her and asked what she did, it was "I do mergers and acquisitions for a large medical device company." Most guys would have looked for someone a tad dumber at that point, but I went the other way... "Wooooo Whoooo!" I thought. She was CEO of the the company we started together, and our partnership relies heavily on her abilities. Our kids are "FGs", which means either "Florida Gators" or "F--king Geninuses", I'm not sure which.
There may be more to it... Evolutionary pressure pushes men to sleep around, while women are the nest builders, even today. Guys look for young "hot" women and watch a lot of porn (I liked your link to Miley Cyrus pole dancing), because men want to leave their seed with a woman who will be around a long time to raise above-average kids physically (I'll bet her kids will be very healthy and good looking). Men rape women, not the other way around, because it succeeds in spreading their genes more widely, with nothing but a single night's work, while women have to actually birth the child and usually raise them. A lot of this may influence attitudes towards the relationship between men and women. A hot dumb drunk blond really gets my attention at the bars, and I don't think it's just me. And for a guy, I'm a nest-builder.
Here in North Carolina, women try to act dumb. Actually, there's nothing hotter than a good-looking drunk dumb chick. I met my wife in a bar, and we discussed physics and religion and still managed to get to a first date, but the funny thing is on other occasions I'd pretend to be a pilot, and she'd pretend to be a dumb blond stewardess. Actually, around here some of the guys try and act dumb, too. We've got a strong anti-intellectual culture. One thing that's a sure turn-off to a southern man is a woman who thinks she's smarter than him.
Combine that with Pixel Qi multi-touch displays and you've got a rock'in platform. This display does color video with the backlight on, but with it off it does E-Ink-like low-power black and white as good as any e-book reader. Power it with an Nvidia Tegra processor, and run Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and you've got one freaking awesome Internet tablet, with e-book reader being the killer app. Add a dynamically warping virtual multi-touch keyboard, and you've got a killer device. I think I'll need one of these babies for every member of my family.
And a few days before launch and dies for such a stupid reason? Please.
I'm guessing you've never started a company. When you do, you'll find out that a fair number of your friends turn into psychopaths when money is involved. This is why the best number of partners in any new venture is 1. I got screwed by AMIS in a somewhat similar situation. We co-developed the Express Array using our technology from cell design to routing. The first chip came out and worked 8 months after we started this very aggressive project. The day the chip worked, AMIS basically said "we don't need you anymore. Fuck off and die now." For AMIS, the entire project was delayed a year. It was incredible, unexplainable stupidity. And yet, it's an entirely common story.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... it can matter. Try taking your iPhone to Europe. If you forget to turn off 3G, you can accidentally get a phone bill in the thousands of dollars range, even if you never used your phone. On the other hand, I can put a Vodafone sim card in my Nexus One, and save a lot of money while travelling. A couple years ago, before making a two-week trip to Europe, I tried to unlock my iPhone. It didn't work, so in Europe, I simply removed my iPhone's sim card, and bought a cheap pre-paid phone for use there. When I got back to the US, Apple's next software update bricked my phone, on purpose. Apple can go crawl under a rock and die. The Nexus One is better in virtually every way. Cheaper, Europe compatible, unlocked, multi-tasking, faster, thinner, better screen, better software, better reception, and a lot less evil.
I would if I didn't mind carrying around a brick in my pocket all day. For that matter, for $529 I can get a decent 15" laptop. As-is, I'm very happy with my unlocked Nexus One. It's the only phone out there that's better than an iPhone, IMO. Of course, if you require a keyboard, the Motorola Droid is the way to go.
Sounds like a great deal. I'd like to sign up for 10,000 phones today. Got the link?
My 300-minute plan with unlimited data is $55/month, which turns into about $60/mo after taxes and fees. Compare that to the $85/mo I pay every month for my wife's minimum-priced iPhone plan. I'm getting a better phone, and paying $25/mo less. I bought the phone for $570 (after tax and shipping). Compute the savings vs iPhone over two years:
iPhone = $200 + $85/mo * 24 = $2,240
Nexus One = $570 + $60/mo * 24 = $2,010
So, an unlocked Nexus One is about 10% cheaper than an iPhone over two years. Did I mention it's a better phone? The Nexus One is the best hardware, and software out there. It's thinner, and has a far better screen, and way faster processor. T-Mobile is hands-down better than AT&T. The Nexus One actually has a better radio than an iPhone, too, with far better reception. The noise cancelling voice recognition rocks.
Perhaps instead of trying to say a Nexus One will only cost you $49, the poster could instead compared the savings and quality to the elephant in the room - the iPhone. He also could have pointed out to those of us who actually do math now and then that buying the phone with a 2-year contract is a huge waste of money, in addition to being a PITA.
Why on Earth would anyone buy this phone with a 2-year contract?
I often wonder where the next generation of computer OS architects will come from. With Windows closed, and Apple trending towards closed hardware as well as software, I suspect the next generation of OS super-hackers will mostly cut their teeth on Linux. Thank God for Linux.
So you don't actually talk to people on trains? As I recall, it's a bit loud, but I have conversations anyway. When voice recognition is that good, it'll work fine on your train, especially with a noice cancelling mic.
I programmed by voice for three years. It was not as fast as typing, but it was fine. The problem isn't that voice recognition is over-hyped, but that our existing system are designed for keyboard and mouse entry. There's also the problem that we old farts know how to type quite well, but talking into a mic to control things seem alien. You and I will never switch fully to voice entry for data, but our kids just might.
I have a Google Nexus One, and I use the voice regcognition feature all the time. Why would I want to type a sentance on a tiny virtual keyboard, when I can just speak it?
Hmmm.... so maybe a custom multi-touch desktop running GTK with a multi-touch overlay? Wouldn't it be easier to get UNR working well, since that's basically what UNR is?
I understand UNR isn't sold commercially on any netbooks, but the first thing I do is remove the OSes they do sell and install UNR. Why would I want a netbook or tablet that doesn't even ship with word processing?
Agreed, but what's the better option? Android? I want Open Office, for example. I'd like to develop directly on the device, not through an emulator. I'd say, run UNR, but work closely with Canonical to get it working very with the new tablet e-book readers.
Agreed. E-book reader is the killer app for 10" tablets. Replace the display with a sunlight readable Pixel Qi, thus reducing the battery size and price. I think it should run Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and be price-competitive with the Kindle, meaning around $300 or less. I think we'll start seeing these things later this year!
What's up with all the wasted screen space on the iPad? It's got like 1" all the way around with no purpose other than the "Home" button. Couldn't they have shrunk this device a ton, or offered a larger screen?
New technologies almost always target the high-end first, and later move down to the middle and low-end products. That's because initially there are no economies of scale from high-volume manufacturing. As the high-end ramps to reasonable volume, technolologies, like the batteries, will drop in price, allowing cost effective medium-end offerings. Take a look at the Tesla cars. Their first (the Roadster), is > $100K. Their second is expected to be around $57K. They plan a third in the $35K range, but first, their Model S has to succeed.
Anyway, the government is trying to help you get into a Chevey Volt, to the tune of about $7,000. Your price wont be $40K, you'll pay $33K. Given the performance and specs, it's not unreasonable, though if they could drop a few K, it'd sell a lot better. They'll also have a Cadillac version, but they plan cheaper versions in the future.
And don't forget typing on the virtual keyboard. On my Nexus One, I find the keyboard is easily a match for my wife's iPhone 3Gs, but I do notice I have to apply more pressure than is natural to click on the small virtual buttons along the bottom of my Nexus One. Only a problem until you get use to it.
Overall, the most important app isn't the UI, but how good is it as a phone. My wife envy's my ability to recieve calls in low-points along the streets in our neighborhood. Next time I go to Europe, I'll just drop in a Vodafone SIM card, and avoid insane roaming charges. The Nexus One on T-Mobile is a better phone than the iPhone on AT&T. On Verizon, it will be even better. As a handheld computer, the hardware is a bit better on the Nexus One, while the iPhone has a slight edge in the UI, and a large advantage in apps. The Nexus One is also less evil in several ways (restrictions on apps in the store, ability to remove apps you've paid for, lock-in to iTunes and the whole DRM mess, closed-source, no unlocked SIM cards, force you to pay for ringtones, no VoIP...)
Overall, I'm glad I've got the Nexus One, and my wife is glad to have her iPhone 3Gs. For those who require keyboards, the Droid is the best thing out there. It seems the iPhone has some real competition. Finally.
So, why does it take companies who aren't cell-phone manufacturers to design great ones?
I just bought one, unlocked, though I already have a T-mobile plan for my G1. T-Mobile totally screwed me here... I bought the first G1 sold in North Carolina, so far as I know, but to buy a Nexus One with a 2-year contract, T-Mobile wants $529 (That's right... a total of $0 discount!), and I have to increase my plan from $60/month to $80/month! So, screw them. Naturally, I bought it unlocked from Google instead, and I'll be making use of the sub-$60 plans to make up for the $529.
It's un-freaking-believable how screwed up mobile carriers are in America.
As for how this is different than the Droid... come on, guys! Apparently only male geeks review cell phones! The Droid is marketed to manly men. No proper feminine woman would be caught dead with a cell phone that bristles widgets like a Swiss Army Knife, and looks like a killer space weapon. That's the Droid. The iPhone is all about women, with those curves, and lack of switches and keyboard, and the big round Home button. The Nexus One is the first Android phone of consequence that competes in this space. Look at the huge trackball... what female body part does it represent? Do the curves on this phone look more like a woman or a man?
The Nexux One is not the fabled "iPhone Killer". However, the Droid plus Nexus One plus Sony Experia X10 plus all the rest... It's just like Windows vs Mac all over again. No one phone will compete in terms of market share with the iPhone, but in total, Android phones will dwarf the iPhone.
Very nice first post! I was thinking of writing much the same thing. Comments help teams of people work together. Poor team players either don't comment, or let them get out of date. Stupid large companies require useless comments with lots of parsable syntax, like AUTHOR, and DATE on every function. For teams, the middle ground is the best - comment each .c file's purpose at the top, have at least a short phrase for each function, and keep functions small with meaninful names. Use meaninful names for variables.
Some programmers are too amazing to ever work well with other programmers. I consider myself one of the best I know, but I'll mention the best I've ever met. Ken McElvain, founder of Synplicity, is a Mozart with code. The first day I went to work for him, there were 350K lines of code, 100% written by Ken. I opened a key algorithm file, which was 2000-ish lines. It was 1 freaking function! I tried to understand what was what, but most variabe names were 1 letter, and the rest were 2. There were no comments. I got a bit freaked out, so I grep-ed the entire code base for a comment. There was one: "This is a hack." To this date, I do not believe any other coder ever figured out how that particular function with that comment works.
Watching Ken code was amazing. He had two large screens full of icons, each programmed to do a different function, like "release code to build servers." His programming speed was limited by his typing, and he was very fast. Thus the 1 and two letter variable names. He always wrote code from the top of the file to the end, and then hit the "compile and run, optimized" button. He's the only programmer I ever met that by default compiles new code in release mode. Typically, he'd write synthesis algorithms he'd invented over night, and it usually turned out to be the best ever seen. He didn't even bother to read all the papers on how others do it. It was just amazing to watch.
However, it got ugly when he'd hand his code to another programmer (like me) to take over. I suspect most programmers early on at Synplicity spent most of their time fixing bugs they'd introduced because they didn't understand the full extent of what the original code was suppose to do. To get to 2X the producivity of just Ken, I think we had to have a team of around 20 very good programmers.
She wasn't the only one. I joined HP in 1988, and the job was horible. Donuts on Friday disapeared the week I arrived. the "HP Way" was being scuttled. I could only take it a year and a half, and then I moved on to more intresting work. The problem was that David Packard had retired from the board and no longer guided the company. It got so bad, he came out of retirement a couple years later to put HP back on track. When he passed away, there was no way to replace him. Stockholders always lean towards the likes of Carly Florina, for the reasons already described - short-term profits. It takes an genius evangelist with nearly unlimited power to keep a company great. Take a look at what's happening at Microsoft since Bill stepped back, and how the stock market follows Steve Job's health.
Anyway, I veiw all those famous brands mentioned in TFA quite differently. What they have in common is that they have faded, but that's all. Heathkit is a brand spoken even today in awe of what they did for America. Polorooid revolutionized film based photography, and faded into obscurity when their strong leadership faded. Westinghouse faded through conglomeration. What do they make now? Coffee or nuclear reactors? Netscape killed themselves, through incredible stupid and evil strategy - make the Internet so complicated that only Microsoft and Netscape could offer functional browsers... someone should be shot.
I reject the idea that a company the dies with it's market has failed. Sun Microsystems is the most amazing workstation vendor in history. They gave the world technologies that will benefit the world for generations. Just because my cell phone has more power than a 1990-vintage workstation doesn't make Sun less great. These are brands to be celebrated for what they did in their industry, not to be morned when their industry passes into history.
I agree, Verizon has the best coverage. T-Mobile and all the rest are worse. Now that Verizon has a decent Android phone, it's almost worth switching. Still, I'm turned off by the $350 termination fee at Verizon, as well as the way they have a dozen fees to ding you. They've got a great network, and now a great phone. Why not take the mobile world by storm by also offering a great plan? So close, and yet so far...
Nvidia already bundles their graphics acceleration with their own processor. The Tegra processor has plenty of power for Internet Tablets, with way lower power and overall system cost. I think it would be a terrible mistake for Nvidia to enter the i386 compatible market. They should instead help us build a future without all that baggage.
Verizon pissed me off by never letting me use my own camera for free. They had good coverage, though. With the Motorola Droid, I'd consider going back to them. AT&T pissed me off by screwing up account details with Apple, which eventually led to my iPhone being borked by Apple. T-Mobile has been good to me, with voice coverage at least as good as AT&T, and reasonable G3, and excellent EDGE coverage. When I wanted to go to Europe and use my G1 with another SIM card, T-Mobile send me the unlock code for free, with no fuss. My plan (voice + unlimited data) is only $60/month, a full $10 less than AT&T or Verizon. I hate my G1 (the hardware sucks big-time), but I'm super-excited about both the Nexus One and Sony Ericson Experia X10. Well... I'm a LOT more excited about the Nexus One. Give me one of those, and I'll probably be a long-term T-Mobile user.
So, I predict that T-Mobile will not piss you off in a month. It will probably take three.
If being dumb was her only major fault, we'd still be married. Given the choice, definitely go for a smarter woman. She had other issues, too, like massive depression. Eventually she had other guys in her bed, and that's when I cut her loose. Some guys on slashdot would go for the open relationship, but that's not how I'm wired.
I'm third generation Californian (but live in NC now). As a result, I've got a lot of Mexican uncles, cousins, and such. My uncle Fernando told me when I was younger, "Intelligence in a woman is overrated." That's the excuse I give myself for marrying a complete moron in my first marriage. She is still a very sweet, attractive woman. I hope she's happy. I spent eight years figuring out what a mistake that was. Second time around, I went the other way, and I tell all my friends to look for a smart girl. After 11 years, my second marriage is still going gang-busters.
You're obviously a big geek. You post on slashdot. I can't even tell you how attractive I find that, but as you know, guys like me are in the minority. If I could give you one bit of advice... make your way to Silicon Valley
After my divorce back around 1998, I hung around a lot of bars. I find it easy and interesting to talk to smart people, even if they are huge a-holes, like most of us here on slashdot. I just can't do small talk. So, more often than not, I'd discover in a bar that I'd just started a conversation with a complete ditz. At that point, I'd switch to reading auras, where I would try and guess as many details of a woman's life based on a shimmering color only I could see around her. Of course, I'm color blind. I had a lot of fun reading auras, but it got a bit weird in one case when I was dating a girl who believed me. We were chemically and physically an amazing match, but mentally, we were in different worlds.
And, yes, you are in the minority for a "Southern Man". Ask your friends if they would prefer to meet a dumb drunk blond at the next bar. Actually, that's not just the South... I think it's world-wide.
Well, I like her looks. However, by American norms she's a tad heavy, and her nose is one of those larger Jewish things. As for smarts, the night I met her and asked what she did, it was "I do mergers and acquisitions for a large medical device company." Most guys would have looked for someone a tad dumber at that point, but I went the other way... "Wooooo Whoooo!" I thought. She was CEO of the the company we started together, and our partnership relies heavily on her abilities. Our kids are "FGs", which means either "Florida Gators" or "F--king Geninuses", I'm not sure which.
There may be more to it... Evolutionary pressure pushes men to sleep around, while women are the nest builders, even today. Guys look for young "hot" women and watch a lot of porn (I liked your link to Miley Cyrus pole dancing), because men want to leave their seed with a woman who will be around a long time to raise above-average kids physically (I'll bet her kids will be very healthy and good looking). Men rape women, not the other way around, because it succeeds in spreading their genes more widely, with nothing but a single night's work, while women have to actually birth the child and usually raise them. A lot of this may influence attitudes towards the relationship between men and women. A hot dumb drunk blond really gets my attention at the bars, and I don't think it's just me. And for a guy, I'm a nest-builder.
Here in North Carolina, women try to act dumb. Actually, there's nothing hotter than a good-looking drunk dumb chick. I met my wife in a bar, and we discussed physics and religion and still managed to get to a first date, but the funny thing is on other occasions I'd pretend to be a pilot, and she'd pretend to be a dumb blond stewardess. Actually, around here some of the guys try and act dumb, too. We've got a strong anti-intellectual culture. One thing that's a sure turn-off to a southern man is a woman who thinks she's smarter than him.
Combine that with Pixel Qi multi-touch displays and you've got a rock'in platform. This display does color video with the backlight on, but with it off it does E-Ink-like low-power black and white as good as any e-book reader. Power it with an Nvidia Tegra processor, and run Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and you've got one freaking awesome Internet tablet, with e-book reader being the killer app. Add a dynamically warping virtual multi-touch keyboard, and you've got a killer device. I think I'll need one of these babies for every member of my family.
I'm guessing you've never started a company. When you do, you'll find out that a fair number of your friends turn into psychopaths when money is involved. This is why the best number of partners in any new venture is 1. I got screwed by AMIS in a somewhat similar situation. We co-developed the Express Array using our technology from cell design to routing. The first chip came out and worked 8 months after we started this very aggressive project. The day the chip worked, AMIS basically said "we don't need you anymore. Fuck off and die now." For AMIS, the entire project was delayed a year. It was incredible, unexplainable stupidity. And yet, it's an entirely common story.