I can't think of any CPU+Chipset released since at last 3 years doesn't have video acceleration, so the DVD decoding example is widely off-base; it's the GPU doing that anyway.
For real CPU tasks, I think temperature and issues are exponential to the clock speed, so paying the multi-cpu penalty (only about 70-80% efficiency, lower single-thread perf) is a worthwhile tradeoff, especially since all moderne software is multithreaded, lowering the multicore penalty: They most probably couldn't do 3.6 GHz in the same thermal envelope, with the same process, with the same yield.
I'm sales, in a small consulting house (custom software development, from web sites to drivers). Customers indeed have a different, mostly more negative, attitude towards salesmen than towards techies. - if customers are really bothered by your sales guys, maybe you have the wrong ones. Consulting sales are technical ones, sales need to be able to handle that at least in part. Also, in my experience, consulting sales are not so much about the sale, as about a long-term relationship between the consulting firm and the client, so high-pressure sales, that work so well when selling carpets, don't work that well for consulting. - your sales guys should be really focused on existing customers and on consultants placed with customers: that's where the easiest sales are - identified projects with customers that already know you-. That might also be tainting your impression of consultants as good sales reps: they *are* in contact with the easiest projects. - as you say, clients trust techies... do you want to risk changing that ? Do you also want to risk endangering the always shaky relationship between sales and techs by making them compete for the easiest, best sales ?
Before trying to have an all-sales workforce, which always sounds sexy but mostly doesn't work, I'd try improving the sales-techs relationship: - make sure they do regular account reviews together, where they pool the knowledge of what's going on with a client, who's who, opportunities and issues - make sure sales guys have good pre-sales support, with one of those super-techies that are both extremely knowledgeable&experienced, and socially sophisticated, available for key pre-sales pitches. There are not that many of those. - I'm assuming you tech guys have bonuses linked to completing projects on time. Maybe you could add a customer satisfaction survey, and a project detection objective ? - Ask your guys what they think of the sales guys, and what the customers' feedback is. They can help you separate the wheat from the chaff.
If you really want to help sales as a tech guy, set up a training center, and use your consultants as teachers, rotating them as much as possible. You'll get oodles of contacts within existing customers, new contacts, establish a very good relationship with customers and prospects...
Actually, it's an increase in freedom of speech: there's limited time and resources for speech. Letting commercial companies take over all of it displaces and cancels cultural, philosophical... speech.
We'll all worked in the field, and taken visits from guys like you. The smallest glitch is "being in deep shit", the smallest deviation form doing what YOU know to do, the exact way YOU do it, is "fucking everything up beyond belief". And trying to actually work with you to get anything done yields... same results.
they have started enforcing user profile guidelines:
- people above 25 a body mass index of 25 may not use an iDevice in public. Nor in private in BMI > 30. - iDevice users must at all times maintain perfect cleanliness and decorum. - conversely, certain professions may *not* use iDevices: exotic dancers, janitors, butchers, fishmongers... if in doubt, contact a Genius, or point your iDevice's camera at you in your trade dress with your last paycheck, and ask "is this OK" twice. A genius will contact you shortly. - customers thinking they caught a virus will report to their closer AppleCamp for training on how Apple does NOT have viruses. Repeated offenses will result in termination. - your iDevice must remain pristine at all times. Don't allow it to become dirty, no stickers, no un-approved cases. - iDevices may not be taken to non-approved areas. if your device starts beeping loudly with a screen flashing red, immediately get back to an approved iDevice utilization zone.
Apple thanks the California Bureau of Investigations for their help in enforcing those guidelines.
harking back to the good old DOS, plenty of apps were accessing the BIOS, OS, or the hardware (video, I/O...) directly. There were no real UI norms: I remember thinking CUA (IBM's Common User Access) was quite cool: yeah for standardizing menus and menu access (Alt-F...), with Ctrl for shortcuts, F1 for help.
Apart from those internals, interfaces were totally different company from company, even app from app. There were no "Microsoft Design Guidelines" the way Apple had theirs. And hardware support was wide, rather than targeted. Installing a new card, or even just buying a new PC, could be stressful (remember the quasi-compatible Amstrad PCs in Europe ?).
So I guess it cuts both ways: strictly controlling the hardware, OS, and software does limit flexibility and openness, but it also simplifies hardware support, makes skills more transferable... My take is it's a good move, and MS should go all the way and just make their own devices, the way they make their xboxes.
the market has changed. Back at the start of the Wintel PC era, PCs were either business tools one simply HAD to use, or hobbyist stuff one actually enjoyed tinkering/fighting with.
smartphones and tablets today are used by choice, by a much larger public, and not really tinkered with (hardware mods are pretty much impossible, and on the software side, I'm the only person I know to root my phone). plus, there's plenty spare power in these things to have nice interfaces.
I don't really like the term "dumbing down", but... people want a cool, easy, reliable device, even at the cost of features. The MS model of having second-rate interfaces, software glitches, and half-baked support for a lot of hardware instead of top-notch support for a handful of options doesn't work that well anymore. Honestly, when I see the smörgåsbord of android user interfaces (Sense...)... they rather get in the way.
I do think MS should fully bite the bullet, buy Nokia, and do their own phones and tablets the way they do their own xboxes (success) and zunes (failure). The current charade where it seems one WinPhone partner gets (will get) preferential treatment, and all must only manufacture the exact same phone with a different case color is disheartening for both partners and buyers. The Symbian -> WinPhone transition seems to be going so badly for Nokia, I'm wondering if that was not the plan from the start.
one does not prevent the other: to take the example of ReadyBoost, it was pure intelligent caching (of small OS read-only files): you could take your USB key away, the OS still booted (not sure if you could actually unplug while running, but that's probably not very important). The cache can simply duplicate files, and, implemented at the OS level, it can do so very intelligently: cache preferrably small files, that are only read, and frequently; never cache frequently-written files, use a fancy format with as few writes as possible (timestamps...)...
in the later seasons, I thought they were always well used and quite fun, popping up at weird times and delightfully evil. And their simplicity contrasts nicely with the rest of Dr Who, which is usually a bit involved.
NewsFlash: SSD are much faster than HDD, but much more expensive, so it makes sense to use an SSD to cache HDD content. For some obscure reason (probably the need for something new in Win8); MS refuses to do that (even though they can ReadyBoost off of a USB stick...), so it has fallen to third parties to implement it in software of hardware, even though it should really be the OS doing it.
How it's actually done is of no real import, all are kludges anyway because MS is, once again, letting us down.
You are delusional. MS actually lets you install and watch whatever you want on their OS. Nokia actually encourages you to root your N900 and try out OSes. Comcast actually lets you download pretty much anything... and so on. All of those being taken over by Apple would be a catastrophe ! One bad Apple is enough.
Nowadays I'm just guessing there's an issue with their technology, or their marketing. With all the action and the need for differentiation in the tablet market, they've only managed to sign up one, 4th-tier player. There must be something wrong, don't hold your breath.
Did anybody really think they'd meld the *best* gpu with the *best* cpu ? this is beyond naive, it has never happened and will never happen.
what is *is* is the best integrated graphics/video, with an OK CPU. That combo is OK for 95% of users. Brazos is completely sold out due to much better sales than expected. The new APUs can have the same success, especially given Intel over-emphasis on the CPU, and sucky integrated GPUs.
Given how Apple likes to actually announce stuff at their shindigs, either they are priming us for a relatively empty one, or they have big news that will overshadow all that. Apart from them taking over Sony, I don't see what could be THAT big, though.
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I can't think of any CPU+Chipset released since at last 3 years doesn't have video acceleration, so the DVD decoding example is widely off-base; it's the GPU doing that anyway.
For real CPU tasks, I think temperature and issues are exponential to the clock speed, so paying the multi-cpu penalty (only about 70-80% efficiency, lower single-thread perf) is a worthwhile tradeoff, especially since all moderne software is multithreaded, lowering the multicore penalty: They most probably couldn't do 3.6 GHz in the same thermal envelope, with the same process, with the same yield.
that he didn't get his payoff. This will blow over.
and most of the world outside the US uses 31/12/1990, which is fine until you get to 1/2/1992
can't be: there are no viruses on Apple. Go ask your local Genius !
uTorrent is reporting a few peers with v6 addresses, so I'm guessing I have v6 access. Didn't do anything at all for this, though.
OTOH, it doesn't really matter if your non-internet-facing servers are v6 or V4, since they'll only serve local adresses ?
I'm sales, in a small consulting house (custom software development, from web sites to drivers). Customers indeed have a different, mostly more negative, attitude towards salesmen than towards techies.
- if customers are really bothered by your sales guys, maybe you have the wrong ones. Consulting sales are technical ones, sales need to be able to handle that at least in part. Also, in my experience, consulting sales are not so much about the sale, as about a long-term relationship between the consulting firm and the client, so high-pressure sales, that work so well when selling carpets, don't work that well for consulting.
- your sales guys should be really focused on existing customers and on consultants placed with customers: that's where the easiest sales are - identified projects with customers that already know you-. That might also be tainting your impression of consultants as good sales reps: they *are* in contact with the easiest projects.
- as you say, clients trust techies... do you want to risk changing that ? Do you also want to risk endangering the always shaky relationship between sales and techs by making them compete for the easiest, best sales ?
Before trying to have an all-sales workforce, which always sounds sexy but mostly doesn't work, I'd try improving the sales-techs relationship:
- make sure they do regular account reviews together, where they pool the knowledge of what's going on with a client, who's who, opportunities and issues
- make sure sales guys have good pre-sales support, with one of those super-techies that are both extremely knowledgeable&experienced, and socially sophisticated, available for key pre-sales pitches. There are not that many of those.
- I'm assuming you tech guys have bonuses linked to completing projects on time. Maybe you could add a customer satisfaction survey, and a project detection objective ?
- Ask your guys what they think of the sales guys, and what the customers' feedback is. They can help you separate the wheat from the chaff.
If you really want to help sales as a tech guy, set up a training center, and use your consultants as teachers, rotating them as much as possible. You'll get oodles of contacts within existing customers, new contacts, establish a very good relationship with customers and prospects...
Actually, it's an increase in freedom of speech: there's limited time and resources for speech. Letting commercial companies take over all of it displaces and cancels cultural, philosophical... speech.
i liked the "working for profit, not pride" bit.
We'll all worked in the field, and taken visits from guys like you. The smallest glitch is "being in deep shit", the smallest deviation form doing what YOU know to do, the exact way YOU do it, is "fucking everything up beyond belief". And trying to actually work with you to get anything done yields... same results.
I missed the disclaimer that this website is for US only. was there a EULA too ?
Do you have *any* example of stuff where MS is in a very dominant position (as Skype is), and keeps its stuff, good, free, and multiplatform ?
they have started enforcing user profile guidelines:
- people above 25 a body mass index of 25 may not use an iDevice in public. Nor in private in BMI > 30.
- iDevice users must at all times maintain perfect cleanliness and decorum.
- conversely, certain professions may *not* use iDevices: exotic dancers, janitors, butchers, fishmongers... if in doubt, contact a Genius, or point your iDevice's camera at you in your trade dress with your last paycheck, and ask "is this OK" twice. A genius will contact you shortly.
- customers thinking they caught a virus will report to their closer AppleCamp for training on how Apple does NOT have viruses. Repeated offenses will result in termination.
- your iDevice must remain pristine at all times. Don't allow it to become dirty, no stickers, no un-approved cases.
- iDevices may not be taken to non-approved areas. if your device starts beeping loudly with a screen flashing red, immediately get back to an approved iDevice utilization zone.
Apple thanks the California Bureau of Investigations for their help in enforcing those guidelines.
harking back to the good old DOS, plenty of apps were accessing the BIOS, OS, or the hardware (video, I/O ...) directly. There were no real UI norms: I remember thinking CUA (IBM's Common User Access) was quite cool: yeah for standardizing menus and menu access (Alt-F...), with Ctrl for shortcuts, F1 for help.
Apart from those internals, interfaces were totally different company from company, even app from app. There were no "Microsoft Design Guidelines" the way Apple had theirs. And hardware support was wide, rather than targeted. Installing a new card, or even just buying a new PC, could be stressful (remember the quasi-compatible Amstrad PCs in Europe ?).
So I guess it cuts both ways: strictly controlling the hardware, OS, and software does limit flexibility and openness, but it also simplifies hardware support, makes skills more transferable... My take is it's a good move, and MS should go all the way and just make their own devices, the way they make their xboxes.
the market has changed. Back at the start of the Wintel PC era, PCs were either business tools one simply HAD to use, or hobbyist stuff one actually enjoyed tinkering/fighting with.
smartphones and tablets today are used by choice, by a much larger public, and not really tinkered with (hardware mods are pretty much impossible, and on the software side, I'm the only person I know to root my phone). plus, there's plenty spare power in these things to have nice interfaces.
I don't really like the term "dumbing down", but... people want a cool, easy, reliable device, even at the cost of features. The MS model of having second-rate interfaces, software glitches, and half-baked support for a lot of hardware instead of top-notch support for a handful of options doesn't work that well anymore. Honestly, when I see the smörgåsbord of android user interfaces (Sense...)... they rather get in the way.
I do think MS should fully bite the bullet, buy Nokia, and do their own phones and tablets the way they do their own xboxes (success) and zunes (failure). The current charade where it seems one WinPhone partner gets (will get) preferential treatment, and all must only manufacture the exact same phone with a different case color is disheartening for both partners and buyers. The Symbian -> WinPhone transition seems to be going so badly for Nokia, I'm wondering if that was not the plan from the start.
one does not prevent the other: to take the example of ReadyBoost, it was pure intelligent caching (of small OS read-only files): you could take your USB key away, the OS still booted (not sure if you could actually unplug while running, but that's probably not very important). The cache can simply duplicate files, and, implemented at the OS level, it can do so very intelligently: cache preferrably small files, that are only read, and frequently; never cache frequently-written files, use a fancy format with as few writes as possible (timestamps...)...
in the later seasons, I thought they were always well used and quite fun, popping up at weird times and delightfully evil. And their simplicity contrasts nicely with the rest of Dr Who, which is usually a bit involved.
I'm sure their come back will be grand.
NewsFlash: SSD are much faster than HDD, but much more expensive, so it makes sense to use an SSD to cache HDD content. For some obscure reason (probably the need for something new in Win8); MS refuses to do that (even though they can ReadyBoost off of a USB stick...), so it has fallen to third parties to implement it in software of hardware, even though it should really be the OS doing it.
How it's actually done is of no real import, all are kludges anyway because MS is, once again, letting us down.
You are delusional. MS actually lets you install and watch whatever you want on their OS. Nokia actually encourages you to root your N900 and try out OSes. Comcast actually lets you download pretty much anything... and so on. All of those being taken over by Apple would be a catastrophe ! One bad Apple is enough.
1 year ago I was still kinda interested.
Nowadays I'm just guessing there's an issue with their technology, or their marketing. With all the action and the need for differentiation in the tablet market, they've only managed to sign up one, 4th-tier player. There must be something wrong, don't hold your breath.
give him a break: he's being home schooled. Which probably explains word processing being CS...
Did anybody really think they'd meld the *best* gpu with the *best* cpu ? this is beyond naive, it has never happened and will never happen.
what is *is* is the best integrated graphics/video, with an OK CPU. That combo is OK for 95% of users. Brazos is completely sold out due to much better sales than expected. The new APUs can have the same success, especially given Intel over-emphasis on the CPU, and sucky integrated GPUs.
Given how Apple likes to actually announce stuff at their shindigs, either they are priming us for a relatively empty one, or they have big news that will overshadow all that. Apart from them taking over Sony, I don't see what could be THAT big, though.
as long as we're allowed to work a way into Uranus ....
Isn't Echelon a permanent cyber-attack ?
What about that virus in the Iran nuclear program ?