quickly send an email to the Athenians... oh, wait, those have been dead for a few thousand years... and they died thinking THEY invented it, poor souls.
Disclaimer: I'm sales. And I've worked in a few large PC Corps.
I'm not sure putting engineers in charge is a silver bullet. It will be better than office politicians, but basically companies succeed by - taking care of their customers. engineers are not an evident choice for that, as they may be too invested in pet projects or technologies, and too removed from customers, especially if they never do any on-site work. having for example witnessed developers designing user interfaces, I can attest... those were neither cute nor functional. - taking care of their company. office politicians are notoriously bad at that, as they'll push their own agendas even if it is detrimental to the company as a whole. I'm not sure engineers are much better placed to handle either the global picture nor the internal conflicts of interests. - taking care of their own people. I don't see what advantage engineers have here.
From the outside, I see MS as having issues in all of those, the worst being office politics. Apple seems to avoid that thanks to Steve Jobs acting as a dictator as short-circuiting would-be barons.
The one case in which putting engineers in charge is an asset, is if the company is very technology-driven. I'm not sure that's the case for MS any more.
you're picking and choosing your comparison points. you can - buy tablets much cheaper than the iPad, with stronger specs in some aspects (SD flash, cameras, ports, bluetooth stack...) - buy phones much cheaper than the iPhone with a bigger screen, more battery AND exchangeable batteries, more CPU/GPU performance indeed, more ports (HDMI..), better cameras, a keyboard, a more solid build... - there are MP3 players with better functionnality (iTunes-less upload, removable flash, actual buttons that you can feel and click...) and better sound quality that are much cheaper
Apple is not about the hardware. It's about style, easy-of-use, and ecosystem (which is both a blessing -variety- and a curse -lock-in- )
More likely, they factored in - huge quantity discounts on all parts, especially screens - good revenues from ancillary sales from their various "stores". Android thingies cannot really do that (fewer stores, sparser stores, revenues are mainly Google's and others', not manufacturers') - need for a low-end, cheap version to advertize, betting their customers would go for the high-end versions, whose margins are way higher ($15 extra materials costs, $300 extra price)
this new, cutting-edge, concept, involves duplicating several times your important data. Backups are: - off-line, so a single event (virus, hack... ) cannot wipe both your live and you backup data - off-site, same reason with fire, water, theft... - multiple, 'coz Murphy's law is twice as effective regarding backups, and data corruption may take days-months-years to surface, so several backups from different times/dates are required, a few of those archived long term. - tested, 'coz it's rumored that sometimes things don't work as advertised.
I'm working on popularizing the concept, and trademarking the name. I can tell you more about this advanced technique for a very reasonnable fee, considering.
Depends how you define mid-range. Steam has a nice breakdown of actual graphics cards used to play their games: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ Keep in mind that these stats are for players, the actual market is much more low-end that that.
So $250 would be about in the top 5% of the gamers' market, 1% general market ?
My guess is E. Schmidt is paying for Google's, and his, recent failures:
- being blindsided by FaceBook as "the" hot company - Google Wave fiasco. This was a good technology, and probable a key component in displacing FBook, or getting more into the enterprise market. - China fiasco. - Google TV delays and failed launch. - Android for tablets delay. It's been a year now ! - Chrome OS uncertainties
I'm looking for any thing actually exciting that Google has done recently... My take is: nothing much. And "execution" for what they did hasn't been compelling, either.
Plus, how come they're not a big cloud services provider ? Amazon ? really ?
do you really think one MUST dive to damage something underwater ? (hint: bombs, hacking, supply feeds...)
from your link: "Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons"... which has exactly what to do with France's nuclear power plants being on the ground, in the sea... ?
this said, I think my point is amply made and won't try and enlighten you any more.
"secure against nuclear proliferation". i'm not sure that word means what you think it means. "secure against terrorist attacks". coz terrorists can't swim ! same as they can't fly ! oh, wait...
Looking at what Apple is moving to (the same CPU to power smartphone, tablet, set-top box) and what Motorola is doing (phone that can be plugged into a desktop set), I'm wondering if the future is not about a very smart phone, pluggable into a tablet for larger screen, battery life, IO, storage, and/or a desktop set, for even more of that.
That way, we take our important files and apps with us everywhere, and can adjust our interface according to our circumstances: pocketable, portable, desktop.
It seems the upcoming ARM chips will have enough power for 95% of users, graphics being a sore point, but a "desktop set" might include a more powerful graphics card.
The sore points might be 1- OS/Software: it's hard to design something that works well in all those scenarios. 2- Lock-in: Both Apple and to a lesser extent Chrome OS (Android, less so) are trying to take advantage of that new field and lock us in, in a way MS never dreamed of. 3- Hardware standards: it'd be great in the table set and the desktop set had a standard interface to the phone/cpu module, so that we could switch phone without having to witch everything.
MS and Intel don't seem to have any plans in that direction, and neither x86 nor Windows seem to have any advantages in that scenario.
if what you're saying is true, why didn't they just make it open, maybe with a foundation in charge of certifying different implementations ?
what do you mean by "pissing in their pool" ? do you mean competing ? is that a bed thing now ? or illegal ?
my take is the patent holder are out to make money. they can't really make it off of the consumer, client side, so they're reluctantly making it free as in beer, in order to safeguard their business-side revenue. and they may change their mind at any later date about the special terms under which x.264 is for now allowed to be used to for free in certain specific cases.
you're wrong to think that h.264 comes for free. your devices' manufacturers have had to pay royalties, which are reflected in the price you paid for the devices.
some people do get that hardware is only part of the equation. OS, Apps, Content, Ecosystem are probably more important to the user experience. Even on the very narrow subject of performance, it may be news to you, but it's not all about hardware: the OS and the way apps are written is as important, if not more, as the hardware.
I'm sure Apple is still making a lot more money from their hardware + software + cut of service fees + content sales + app sales + data harvesting.... ecosystem than all other players... combined, and creating nice lock-ins and network effects is the process.
once you know that, and find one that can do it, go for it.
in my personal case, that means reading books, watchings vids, browsing the internets, and doing some light office stuff. i need a reasonably open system (not apple), a good screen (asus and the adam seem promising), and lotsa ports + full bluetooth for a keyboard, mouse, headset, and good battery life. As always with portable system, build quality is important.
it also seems that any android version lower than 3.0 is not designed for tablets. i'll probably wait for 3.0 unless some of the new pads have very good hardware specs. i'll be watching asus closely, from what I've read they seem to be the ones closest to getting it.
Why are you going on about memory ? Science is about facts and theories to explain them. Scientists are able to prove those, and get others to repeat their experiments+results.
Facts are not one man's memories. They are several men's, plus records.
Are you trying to lower facts' substantiality to the level of faith's ?
Slashdot Mirror
quickly send an email to the Athenians... oh, wait, those have been dead for a few thousand years... and they died thinking THEY invented it, poor souls.
Disclaimer: I'm sales. And I've worked in a few large PC Corps.
I'm not sure putting engineers in charge is a silver bullet. It will be better than office politicians, but basically companies succeed by
- taking care of their customers. engineers are not an evident choice for that, as they may be too invested in pet projects or technologies, and too removed from customers, especially if they never do any on-site work. having for example witnessed developers designing user interfaces, I can attest... those were neither cute nor functional.
- taking care of their company. office politicians are notoriously bad at that, as they'll push their own agendas even if it is detrimental to the company as a whole. I'm not sure engineers are much better placed to handle either the global picture nor the internal conflicts of interests.
- taking care of their own people. I don't see what advantage engineers have here.
From the outside, I see MS as having issues in all of those, the worst being office politics. Apple seems to avoid that thanks to Steve Jobs acting as a dictator as short-circuiting would-be barons.
The one case in which putting engineers in charge is an asset, is if the company is very technology-driven. I'm not sure that's the case for MS any more.
i'm sure there isn't: it's not the CPUs, it's the chipsets, and it's all of them for now.
mainly, phones get dropped and scratched. the iPhone is bad at being dropped, and so-so at being scratched.
Yep, 'coz you can"t install anything over the net on a Windows PC.
Oh wait ...
Are all Apple users that incompetent ?
Hey, you can also get a couple of desktops with those specs !
See you on the plane !
you're picking and choosing your comparison points. you can
- buy tablets much cheaper than the iPad, with stronger specs in some aspects (SD flash, cameras, ports, bluetooth stack...)
- buy phones much cheaper than the iPhone with a bigger screen, more battery AND exchangeable batteries, more CPU/GPU performance indeed, more ports (HDMI..), better cameras, a keyboard, a more solid build...
- there are MP3 players with better functionnality (iTunes-less upload, removable flash, actual buttons that you can feel and click...) and better sound quality that are much cheaper
Apple is not about the hardware. It's about style, easy-of-use, and ecosystem (which is both a blessing -variety- and a curse -lock-in- )
More likely, they factored in
- huge quantity discounts on all parts, especially screens
- good revenues from ancillary sales from their various "stores". Android thingies cannot really do that (fewer stores, sparser stores, revenues are mainly Google's and others', not manufacturers')
- need for a low-end, cheap version to advertize, betting their customers would go for the high-end versions, whose margins are way higher ($15 extra materials costs, $300 extra price)
Same as you can upgrade Android smartphones ? oh, wait...
'coz we all know that installing, maintaining, administering a mail server and its attendant backups, antivirus, antispam... indeed costs a flat £200
this new, cutting-edge, concept, involves duplicating several times your important data. Backups are:
- off-line, so a single event (virus, hack... ) cannot wipe both your live and you backup data
- off-site, same reason with fire, water, theft...
- multiple, 'coz Murphy's law is twice as effective regarding backups, and data corruption may take days-months-years to surface, so several backups from different times/dates are required, a few of those archived long term.
- tested, 'coz it's rumored that sometimes things don't work as advertised.
I'm working on popularizing the concept, and trademarking the name. I can tell you more about this advanced technique for a very reasonnable fee, considering.
Depends how you define mid-range. Steam has a nice breakdown of actual graphics cards used to play their games: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ Keep in mind that these stats are for players, the actual market is much more low-end that that.
So $250 would be about in the top 5% of the gamers' market, 1% general market ?
My guess is E. Schmidt is paying for Google's, and his, recent failures:
- being blindsided by FaceBook as "the" hot company
- Google Wave fiasco. This was a good technology, and probable a key component in displacing FBook, or getting more into the enterprise market.
- China fiasco.
- Google TV delays and failed launch.
- Android for tablets delay. It's been a year now !
- Chrome OS uncertainties
I'm looking for any thing actually exciting that Google has done recently... My take is: nothing much. And "execution" for what they did hasn't been compelling, either.
Plus, how come they're not a big cloud services provider ? Amazon ? really ?
do you really think one MUST dive to damage something underwater ? (hint: bombs, hacking, supply feeds...)
from your link: "Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons"... which has exactly what to do with France's nuclear power plants being on the ground, in the sea ... ?
this said, I think my point is amply made and won't try and enlighten you any more.
"secure against nuclear proliferation". i'm not sure that word means what you think it means. ...
"secure against terrorist attacks". coz terrorists can't swim ! same as they can't fly ! oh, wait
as opposed to having it on land ?
there's a toxicity threshold though. A glass of water in every room in your city is OK, your room filled with all that water is not.
Looking at what Apple is moving to (the same CPU to power smartphone, tablet, set-top box) and what Motorola is doing (phone that can be plugged into a desktop set), I'm wondering if the future is not about a very smart phone, pluggable into a tablet for larger screen, battery life, IO, storage, and/or a desktop set, for even more of that.
That way, we take our important files and apps with us everywhere, and can adjust our interface according to our circumstances: pocketable, portable, desktop.
It seems the upcoming ARM chips will have enough power for 95% of users, graphics being a sore point, but a "desktop set" might include a more powerful graphics card.
The sore points might be
1- OS/Software: it's hard to design something that works well in all those scenarios.
2- Lock-in: Both Apple and to a lesser extent Chrome OS (Android, less so) are trying to take advantage of that new field and lock us in, in a way MS never dreamed of.
3- Hardware standards: it'd be great in the table set and the desktop set had a standard interface to the phone/cpu module, so that we could switch phone without having to witch everything.
MS and Intel don't seem to have any plans in that direction, and neither x86 nor Windows seem to have any advantages in that scenario.
you can pretty much freely implement a c++ compiler. you can't implement an h.264 codec.
if what you're saying is true, why didn't they just make it open, maybe with a foundation in charge of certifying different implementations ?
what do you mean by "pissing in their pool" ? do you mean competing ? is that a bed thing now ? or illegal ?
my take is the patent holder are out to make money. they can't really make it off of the consumer, client side, so they're reluctantly making it free as in beer, in order to safeguard their business-side revenue. and they may change their mind at any later date about the special terms under which x.264 is for now allowed to be used to for free in certain specific cases.
you're wrong to think that h.264 comes for free. your devices' manufacturers have had to pay royalties, which are reflected in the price you paid for the devices.
some people do get that hardware is only part of the equation. OS, Apps, Content, Ecosystem are probably more important to the user experience. Even on the very narrow subject of performance, it may be news to you, but it's not all about hardware: the OS and the way apps are written is as important, if not more, as the hardware.
I'm sure Apple is still making a lot more money from their hardware + software + cut of service fees + content sales + app sales + data harvesting.... ecosystem than all other players... combined, and creating nice lock-ins and network effects is the process.
once you know that, and find one that can do it, go for it.
in my personal case, that means reading books, watchings vids, browsing the internets, and doing some light office stuff. i need a reasonably open system (not apple), a good screen (asus and the adam seem promising), and lotsa ports + full bluetooth for a keyboard, mouse, headset, and good battery life. As always with portable system, build quality is important.
it also seems that any android version lower than 3.0 is not designed for tablets. i'll probably wait for 3.0 unless some of the new pads have very good hardware specs. i'll be watching asus closely, from what I've read they seem to be the ones closest to getting it.
I'm really counting on MS to lead the pack with innovative, sexy, fun, easy to use and reliable stuff.
I'll go back to my smoke now... tastes funny today, maybe because it's been is the back of my dad's closet where I found it for too long ?
Why are you going on about memory ? Science is about facts and theories to explain them. Scientists are able to prove those, and get others to repeat their experiments+results.
Facts are not one man's memories. They are several men's, plus records.
Are you trying to lower facts' substantiality to the level of faith's ?