Damn, looks like it's time again for the "April fools is x days away!" followed by "April fools was x days ago!" comments that always buffer April 1st. Wasn't funny last year, isn't funny this year.
I was looking for this comment, but it's sad I had to scroll half way down the replies to find it. The thing with the scientific method is that you can't use it to prove anything. You can only use it to falsify a hypothesis. As you falsify hypothesis after hypothesis, some hypotheses beings to stand out as not falling down to observation. Eventually, these hypotheses get packaged into a body of knowledge scientists call a "theory". One such theory is the "Theory of Gravity" which you don't find much controversy about. Its constituent hypotheses have stood up to test after test, and thus we're pretty sure those describe the actual physical universe. But the scientific method never allows us to say for certain that those ideas are absolute fact.
I can draw a direct parallel to the development of the theory of evolution. There have been many competing hypotheses on how we got here, but after hundreds of thousands of experiments, the hypotheses we collectively call evolution stand where others have fallen.
Thus we get to this great debate about teaching the controversy. Essentially, these people want to teach either hypotheses that have fallen, or hypotheses that cannot be falsified (and thus are not appropriate to the scientific method). This, is why the "teach the controversy" debate is so counterproductive. Not because it aims to add discourse to the scientific method (which is already there), but because it aims to add non-science to the scientific method.
They are competing sure, but by partnering with Microsoft they have an appreciable competitive advantage over the other manufacturers instead of being yet another Anroid manufacturer. Tell me, why exactly do we need another one of them? Is there not enough choice already for Android handsets? No, we don't need another, which is exactly why Nokia doesn't need to be yet another.
Your problem is you start from the premise that Windows Phone is a terrible OS. It's off to a slow start, but so was Android, and Windows Phone has it even tougher since they are up against 2 entrenched players instead of one. So you can point to slow sales and conclude the OS is terrible, but as a user of the OS my opinion is that it is much better than Android. Nokia obviously sees the same thing.
We're talking about entering a market. Samsung et al. are already making money in the Android marketplace. If you're talking about a company on the brink, and you say enter this brand new market alone which by the way is filled with 800 lb gorillas, they're going to completely destroy you unless you have some appreciable advantage over them.
As an investor/stakeholder in the company, what I'm hearing from you is that you plan on positioning Nokia as just another run of the mill Android manufacturer. You say compete on price, I say any random Chinese manufacturer can undercut you. You say compete on name, I say there are already HTC, Samsung, Motorola and other big names already in the ring.
I've seen a lot of business plans in my day, and my biggest gripe is when people come at me and say "The market size is X, which is huge! So if we only get Y% of X we'll make a ton of money!" It's such an amateur mistake, and the companies that make it have no appreciable competitive advantage over any other company. Nokia, for all its reputation, does not offer any real competitive advantage in the Android marketplace. Whatever brand recognition it does have, will simply be diluted among the other players.
I know you're probably saying that as if it's bad, but in reality Google offers effectively no support to manufacturers who make devices for Android. Microsoft offers legal support to all manufacturers, and for Nokia they are offering technical engineering support and cash, which is a pretty good deal compared to what Android is offering.
So it seems to me Nokia had three choices:
1. Continue on their own with Symbian/Meego/Maemo or whatever they develop in house and try to carve out a niche for a 4th (or 5th depending on how you count) OS in an already highly competitive market.
2. Develop for Android and compete with all the other Android manufacturers with no support or partnerships to help in the transition.
3. Develop for Windows Phone and gain a partner in the OS transition who not only will help in support of your hardware but will work independently to improve the ecosystem
There are pros and cons for each option, so it's easy to argue all day about which is best. In my opinion they chose the one with the best risk/reward ratio. Option 1 is the riskiest, but with the most reward. Option 2 is the safest, with the smallest reward. Option 3 is risky, but not as risky as going at it alone.
Although many here on/. believe Option 3 is doomed to fail, those who use the WP platform see it as a rising star, and obviously Nokia sees the same thing.
How exactly would Android save Nokia in a marketplace that is saturated with Android devices coming out every other week? Sure they could make a great phone, but they'd be competing against Motorola, Samsung, HTC, etc. who also sell top of the line Android devices.
Because everyone and their mother is invested in Android. If they go with Android, they're just another manufacturer in an already saturated market. If they go with Windows Phone, they get financial and technical backing from one of the biggest companies in the world, and have the advantage of being the manufacturer with the best windows phone integration as a result. Further, if they go with Android they're probably looking at legal issues with Microsoft and Apple, without any help from Google, just like every other Android manufacturer. Honestly they're making a big bet, but if Windows Phone starts picking up steam it will pay off big time.
As long as you can code and show you have academic potential (e.g. a peer reviewed paper, even if it's in an unrelated field), you'll be fine.
Not from my experience. I have an undergraduate degree from CMU in computational physics, had a couple publications, and took many classes there at the school of computer science. I applied to a many PhD programs in Computer Science and didn't meet much success. The general feedback I got back was that they weren't convinced I could be successful in a computer science program since I didn't have a degree in CS.
I did end up in a Computer Science program, but the general vibe I get among CS researchers is an overinflated sense of rigor in the CS curriculum. Honestly these hardest graduate level courses I've taken in the course of my PhD have been easier than even my sophomore level Physics curriculum. So that being said, I don't know how much luck a psychology student would have applying given my experience with a mathematically rigorous hard science degree.
For a question posted on a worldwide forum this is a very geographically specific question. Shall I also ask Slashdot which carrier has the best coverage outside my front door? This isn't even a question that requires the unique expertise of the/. crowd; just go on the 3, maybe 4 carrier websites and check the relevant maps.
The relevent quote: "We generated 96% of our revenues in 2011 from our advertisers."
Also you can find this statistic in any of their SEC quarterly filings. This number is of course down from 99% a few years ago, but with the addition of thousands of projects in the same time period I don't think any are earning large returns.
The things you have seen are as I said, highly edited and trivial.
I'd love to hear your definition of trivial... and highly edited?
It takes a car load of computers to follow a line, and in the end, is that a robot?
I can make a robot that follows lines with a microcontroller. My lab built a car that can drive autonomously (which is incredibly more complex than simple line following if you didn't know) with a few mac minis. I can make a robot that can autonomously navigate outdoor urban environments with a single commercial laptop computer.
The Kinect is a joke
How exactly is the Kinect a joke? It's a 3D sensor with 10x the resolution as some of the best 3D laser sensors out there for 1/10 the cost. Have you used one? From object detection to mapping to people detection to mapping... it's not just an "acceptable" substitution but a full-on replacement. The only place it is not acceptable is in multi-robot scenarios and outdoors.
Lasers are still available for $1,200 (http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R325-URG-04LX-UG01.html) (and your the expert here? you might reconsider your field).
I've used the URG. It's a terrible sensor in most regards, but the reason it costs $1200 is in spite of the Kinect. No one buys these sensors anymore for robotics unless they need the form factor. For every other application researchers are using the Kinect instead. In fact, the Neato robot you reference is an example of a robot that uses a laser, but has a price that has been driven down by economies of scale -- it only costs $400.
And I do not call a car that can park itself a Robot anymore than my microwave that turns off after 5 minutes. Getting excited about trivial technology changes is not Robotics. Watch lost in space, Forbidden planet - those are robots.
I think you have a pretty skewed idea about what a robot is. In my mind, a robot is a machine that can perform a task autonomously. A car that can park itself certainly meets that definition. But look at the robots you cited as being "true" robots. They're slow, bulky, but have sophisticated artificial intelligence. Is that your criteria for what a robot actually is? I mean, we have robots like the PR2 today that are capable of more dexterous tasks than both Robby the Robot and the Lost in Space robot. I'd like to see either of them fold a towel with those useless arms. We have robots like the Honda Asimo that can walk up stairs and run. I'd like to see Robbie the robot actually walk up stairs or sprint. So I'm very confused how you can consider these advances "trivial" and then point to incompetent scifi robots as the real deal.
I will agree with his disagreement on the first line. As a retired hobbyist I am hugely directly connected to the current state of robots.
As a current active researcher in robotics, I am also "hugely directly connected to the current state of robotics" and I have to say I disagree completely. I have seen amazing robots in person, doing things I couldn't even imagine robots doing 10 years ago. 10 years from now, I can imagine a world where robots are doing things I can't imagine today. Honestly, the only thing keeping robots out of the home today is cost. Robot vacuum cleaners are a notable exception that made their way into households because they do not rely on any of the expensive perceptual sensors most robots need to operate; they fumble around blindly until the hit something with their bumpers.
Before 2010, any robot that needed to do any sort of perception needed lasers that cost at least $5000, or fancy 3D lasers that cost upwards of $20,000. Today, we have the Microsoft Kinect that performs the same job as these sensors for only $100. These exponential drops in cost will keep happening as long as the market keeps growing, and pretty soon the same sensor that cost $1000 today will cost $1 to produce.
But I have to wonder what exactly your deep connection with robotics is like, when we have cars that can drive themselves, humanoid robots capable of jogging, four legged robots capable of walking on ice and sprinting... this development is happening at a blinding pace, so how can you claim that there is stagnation? Sure you can't go and buy one at walmart, but that's how all industries start, and it won't before you can. For instance, Mercedes is including more and more autonomous components into their production cars. It won't be long before it can completely drive itself.
I really don't see your problem. The place to look for all applications is start>all programs, just as it was in Windows XP. The only differences are: instead of a giant list that fills your entire screen, you have a scrollable list; and instead of fly out menus you have clickable menus, a paradigm that has existed in explorer since forever. I seriously am missing the mental disconnect that makes this second scenario intractable for you.
Yes, you do. I know I personally mis-click sometimes, and is almost completely unusable for my mother, whose hand trembles. The Windows 7 menu is much more usable for her, and the larger targets of the Windows 8 menu are even better still. Always remember, Microsoft is developing their operating system for billions of people, and your super human skill at navigating a flyout list doesn't even play into their decision-making processes; accessibility is a legitimate concern in the design process.
There is an entire blog post about why the new menu is more efficient. Essentially, in Windows 8 the start menu scales better with resolution, especially on laptops; it engages different aspects of human memory including chunking and spacial memory that the old list menu can't engage; it's more customizable than the current start menu allowing you to make some items bigger than others, and even arrange items into groups and within groups; and most of all, Fitts' (since Slashdot nerds love citing Fitts' law) law says due to the new 2D applications menu along with the larger icons, more applications are reachable in the same amount of time in Windows 8 compared to Windows 7.
Basically, everyone is complaining about change for change sake, and they come back and say "Here are reasons a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h.... why this is technically a better design than the previous one with evidence and statistics to back us up."
You think having to type in the name is an improvement?
It's the difference between a O(1) operation and an O(n) operation.
But you certainly don't have to type the name... the common situation is you install something, and it's placed in a folder with the publisher's name that you might not know. Or perhaps you have so much software installed, your start menu fills the entire screen and it's hard to find a specific item. In those cases, it's easier to just type in the name and find it instantly rather than scan the whole list.
with loads of advanced notice and training, the phone was ringing for weeks "How do I print?" "How do I copy/paste?"
Must have been some terrible training, since printing and copy/paste shortcuts remained unchanged from 2003 to 2007. Your users must be exceptionally stupid since when you start the program, there are giant buttons that say "cut/copy/paste" right there.
Metro (Not metrosexual. You should be modded troll just for that) is a design language, not a commitment to any specific UI. The new xbox dashboard, xbox.com, microsoft.com, Zune desktop software are all Microsoft products that use the Metro design that are not meant for touch screens. In particular, the Zune software is an example of a great metro app that isn't meant for touch screen, but could be used on one easily. From all indications, the new Office suite will feature a Metro UI, and those applications certainly work well with mouse/keyboard.
I can never find the program I want to run on the new start menu. As far as I'm concerned it's a disaster zone.
Why? It's just list of applications.
The Windows XP start menu with its flyout application menus didn't scale well. It just grows and grows with the more applications you add. For some people finding a particular item is a matter of scanning a list that fills your entire screen. Then you have the application folders which can be several layers deep, and require you to hover over a single item then move to the next menu, which can take a great deal of dexterity. Make one wrong move and the whole thing closes, and you have to start again.
The windows 7 start menu is much more sensible: and alphabetical list with clickable folders. It scales well, it doesn't require any dexterity to manipulate it. Just pin your most used applications and you're set. What is so difficult about that?
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, looks like it's time again for the "April fools is x days away!" followed by "April fools was x days ago!" comments that always buffer April 1st. Wasn't funny last year, isn't funny this year.
I was looking for this comment, but it's sad I had to scroll half way down the replies to find it. The thing with the scientific method is that you can't use it to prove anything. You can only use it to falsify a hypothesis. As you falsify hypothesis after hypothesis, some hypotheses beings to stand out as not falling down to observation. Eventually, these hypotheses get packaged into a body of knowledge scientists call a "theory". One such theory is the "Theory of Gravity" which you don't find much controversy about. Its constituent hypotheses have stood up to test after test, and thus we're pretty sure those describe the actual physical universe. But the scientific method never allows us to say for certain that those ideas are absolute fact.
I can draw a direct parallel to the development of the theory of evolution. There have been many competing hypotheses on how we got here, but after hundreds of thousands of experiments, the hypotheses we collectively call evolution stand where others have fallen.
Thus we get to this great debate about teaching the controversy. Essentially, these people want to teach either hypotheses that have fallen, or hypotheses that cannot be falsified (and thus are not appropriate to the scientific method). This, is why the "teach the controversy" debate is so counterproductive. Not because it aims to add discourse to the scientific method (which is already there), but because it aims to add non-science to the scientific method.
Maybe instead of being a dick, realize that not everyone is a native speaker of English?
And how are they NOT competing against them now?
They are competing sure, but by partnering with Microsoft they have an appreciable competitive advantage over the other manufacturers instead of being yet another Anroid manufacturer. Tell me, why exactly do we need another one of them? Is there not enough choice already for Android handsets? No, we don't need another, which is exactly why Nokia doesn't need to be yet another.
Your problem is you start from the premise that Windows Phone is a terrible OS. It's off to a slow start, but so was Android, and Windows Phone has it even tougher since they are up against 2 entrenched players instead of one. So you can point to slow sales and conclude the OS is terrible, but as a user of the OS my opinion is that it is much better than Android. Nokia obviously sees the same thing.
We're talking about entering a market. Samsung et al. are already making money in the Android marketplace. If you're talking about a company on the brink, and you say enter this brand new market alone which by the way is filled with 800 lb gorillas, they're going to completely destroy you unless you have some appreciable advantage over them.
I've seen a lot of business plans in my day, and my biggest gripe is when people come at me and say "The market size is X, which is huge! So if we only get Y% of X we'll make a ton of money!" It's such an amateur mistake, and the companies that make it have no appreciable competitive advantage over any other company. Nokia, for all its reputation, does not offer any real competitive advantage in the Android marketplace. Whatever brand recognition it does have, will simply be diluted among the other players.
I know you're probably saying that as if it's bad, but in reality Google offers effectively no support to manufacturers who make devices for Android. Microsoft offers legal support to all manufacturers, and for Nokia they are offering technical engineering support and cash, which is a pretty good deal compared to what Android is offering.
So it seems to me Nokia had three choices:
There are pros and cons for each option, so it's easy to argue all day about which is best. In my opinion they chose the one with the best risk/reward ratio. Option 1 is the riskiest, but with the most reward. Option 2 is the safest, with the smallest reward. Option 3 is risky, but not as risky as going at it alone. Although many here on /. believe Option 3 is doomed to fail, those who use the WP platform see it as a rising star, and obviously Nokia sees the same thing.
How exactly would Android save Nokia in a marketplace that is saturated with Android devices coming out every other week? Sure they could make a great phone, but they'd be competing against Motorola, Samsung, HTC, etc. who also sell top of the line Android devices.
Because everyone and their mother is invested in Android. If they go with Android, they're just another manufacturer in an already saturated market. If they go with Windows Phone, they get financial and technical backing from one of the biggest companies in the world, and have the advantage of being the manufacturer with the best windows phone integration as a result. Further, if they go with Android they're probably looking at legal issues with Microsoft and Apple, without any help from Google, just like every other Android manufacturer. Honestly they're making a big bet, but if Windows Phone starts picking up steam it will pay off big time.
Comparing fresh install operating systems is only relevant to the user who doesn't install any programs... so no one.
I think this guy's ego is so big he's saying he wants $140k just to return a phone call :P
As long as you can code and show you have academic potential (e.g. a peer reviewed paper, even if it's in an unrelated field), you'll be fine.
Not from my experience. I have an undergraduate degree from CMU in computational physics, had a couple publications, and took many classes there at the school of computer science. I applied to a many PhD programs in Computer Science and didn't meet much success. The general feedback I got back was that they weren't convinced I could be successful in a computer science program since I didn't have a degree in CS.
I did end up in a Computer Science program, but the general vibe I get among CS researchers is an overinflated sense of rigor in the CS curriculum. Honestly these hardest graduate level courses I've taken in the course of my PhD have been easier than even my sophomore level Physics curriculum. So that being said, I don't know how much luck a psychology student would have applying given my experience with a mathematically rigorous hard science degree.
Mayan pyramids were stepped.
For a question posted on a worldwide forum this is a very geographically specific question. Shall I also ask Slashdot which carrier has the best coverage outside my front door? This isn't even a question that requires the unique expertise of the /. crowd; just go on the 3, maybe 4 carrier websites and check the relevant maps.
The relevent quote: "We generated 96% of our revenues in 2011 from our advertisers."
Also you can find this statistic in any of their SEC quarterly filings. This number is of course down from 99% a few years ago, but with the addition of thousands of projects in the same time period I don't think any are earning large returns.
You fund 1,000 projects, in the hope that 1 of them will return more then the other 999 consume.
Except is that really happening? Google is still a one hit wonder, with 96% of their revenue generated by search and advertising.
The things you have seen are as I said, highly edited and trivial.
I'd love to hear your definition of trivial... and highly edited?
It takes a car load of computers to follow a line, and in the end, is that a robot?
I can make a robot that follows lines with a microcontroller. My lab built a car that can drive autonomously (which is incredibly more complex than simple line following if you didn't know) with a few mac minis. I can make a robot that can autonomously navigate outdoor urban environments with a single commercial laptop computer.
The Kinect is a joke
How exactly is the Kinect a joke? It's a 3D sensor with 10x the resolution as some of the best 3D laser sensors out there for 1/10 the cost. Have you used one? From object detection to mapping to people detection to mapping... it's not just an "acceptable" substitution but a full-on replacement. The only place it is not acceptable is in multi-robot scenarios and outdoors.
Lasers are still available for $1,200 (http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R325-URG-04LX-UG01.html) (and your the expert here? you might reconsider your field).
I've used the URG. It's a terrible sensor in most regards, but the reason it costs $1200 is in spite of the Kinect. No one buys these sensors anymore for robotics unless they need the form factor. For every other application researchers are using the Kinect instead. In fact, the Neato robot you reference is an example of a robot that uses a laser, but has a price that has been driven down by economies of scale -- it only costs $400.
And I do not call a car that can park itself a Robot anymore than my microwave that turns off after 5 minutes. Getting excited about trivial technology changes is not Robotics. Watch lost in space, Forbidden planet - those are robots.
I think you have a pretty skewed idea about what a robot is. In my mind, a robot is a machine that can perform a task autonomously. A car that can park itself certainly meets that definition. But look at the robots you cited as being "true" robots. They're slow, bulky, but have sophisticated artificial intelligence. Is that your criteria for what a robot actually is? I mean, we have robots like the PR2 today that are capable of more dexterous tasks than both Robby the Robot and the Lost in Space robot. I'd like to see either of them fold a towel with those useless arms. We have robots like the Honda Asimo that can walk up stairs and run. I'd like to see Robbie the robot actually walk up stairs or sprint. So I'm very confused how you can consider these advances "trivial" and then point to incompetent scifi robots as the real deal.
I will agree with his disagreement on the first line. As a retired hobbyist I am hugely directly connected to the current state of robots.
As a current active researcher in robotics, I am also "hugely directly connected to the current state of robotics" and I have to say I disagree completely. I have seen amazing robots in person, doing things I couldn't even imagine robots doing 10 years ago. 10 years from now, I can imagine a world where robots are doing things I can't imagine today. Honestly, the only thing keeping robots out of the home today is cost. Robot vacuum cleaners are a notable exception that made their way into households because they do not rely on any of the expensive perceptual sensors most robots need to operate; they fumble around blindly until the hit something with their bumpers.
Before 2010, any robot that needed to do any sort of perception needed lasers that cost at least $5000, or fancy 3D lasers that cost upwards of $20,000. Today, we have the Microsoft Kinect that performs the same job as these sensors for only $100. These exponential drops in cost will keep happening as long as the market keeps growing, and pretty soon the same sensor that cost $1000 today will cost $1 to produce.
But I have to wonder what exactly your deep connection with robotics is like, when we have cars that can drive themselves, humanoid robots capable of jogging, four legged robots capable of walking on ice and sprinting... this development is happening at a blinding pace, so how can you claim that there is stagnation? Sure you can't go and buy one at walmart, but that's how all industries start, and it won't before you can. For instance, Mercedes is including more and more autonomous components into their production cars. It won't be long before it can completely drive itself.
I really don't see your problem. The place to look for all applications is start>all programs, just as it was in Windows XP. The only differences are: instead of a giant list that fills your entire screen, you have a scrollable list; and instead of fly out menus you have clickable menus, a paradigm that has existed in explorer since forever. I seriously am missing the mental disconnect that makes this second scenario intractable for you.
Yes, you do. I know I personally mis-click sometimes, and is almost completely unusable for my mother, whose hand trembles. The Windows 7 menu is much more usable for her, and the larger targets of the Windows 8 menu are even better still. Always remember, Microsoft is developing their operating system for billions of people, and your super human skill at navigating a flyout list doesn't even play into their decision-making processes; accessibility is a legitimate concern in the design process.
There is an entire blog post about why the new menu is more efficient. Essentially, in Windows 8 the start menu scales better with resolution, especially on laptops; it engages different aspects of human memory including chunking and spacial memory that the old list menu can't engage; it's more customizable than the current start menu allowing you to make some items bigger than others, and even arrange items into groups and within groups; and most of all, Fitts' (since Slashdot nerds love citing Fitts' law) law says due to the new 2D applications menu along with the larger icons, more applications are reachable in the same amount of time in Windows 8 compared to Windows 7.
Basically, everyone is complaining about change for change sake, and they come back and say "Here are reasons a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h.... why this is technically a better design than the previous one with evidence and statistics to back us up."
You think having to type in the name is an improvement?
It's the difference between a O(1) operation and an O(n) operation.
But you certainly don't have to type the name... the common situation is you install something, and it's placed in a folder with the publisher's name that you might not know. Or perhaps you have so much software installed, your start menu fills the entire screen and it's hard to find a specific item. In those cases, it's easier to just type in the name and find it instantly rather than scan the whole list.
with loads of advanced notice and training, the phone was ringing for weeks "How do I print?" "How do I copy/paste?"
Must have been some terrible training, since printing and copy/paste shortcuts remained unchanged from 2003 to 2007. Your users must be exceptionally stupid since when you start the program, there are giant buttons that say "cut/copy/paste" right there.
Metro (Not metrosexual. You should be modded troll just for that) is a design language, not a commitment to any specific UI. The new xbox dashboard, xbox.com, microsoft.com, Zune desktop software are all Microsoft products that use the Metro design that are not meant for touch screens. In particular, the Zune software is an example of a great metro app that isn't meant for touch screen, but could be used on one easily. From all indications, the new Office suite will feature a Metro UI, and those applications certainly work well with mouse/keyboard.
I can never find the program I want to run on the new start menu. As far as I'm concerned it's a disaster zone.
Why? It's just list of applications.
The Windows XP start menu with its flyout application menus didn't scale well. It just grows and grows with the more applications you add. For some people finding a particular item is a matter of scanning a list that fills your entire screen. Then you have the application folders which can be several layers deep, and require you to hover over a single item then move to the next menu, which can take a great deal of dexterity. Make one wrong move and the whole thing closes, and you have to start again.
The windows 7 start menu is much more sensible: and alphabetical list with clickable folders. It scales well, it doesn't require any dexterity to manipulate it. Just pin your most used applications and you're set. What is so difficult about that?