that's not true anymore. most of the hardware vendors of the 1980's and 1990's merged or went belly up and there are a few left for each component.
3 graphics card makers and 2 of them have a unified driver that supports every card going back a few years
seems like 1 or 2 audio makers. every Mac and PC seems to have realtek or soundmax. Creative is a shadow of what it used to be and no one remembers Soundblaster compatibility
only intel, amd and nvidia still make chipsets
i read the Mac forums because i have an iphone and lately Mac's have been a quality nightmare. Apple has disabled fast SATA speeds, 7200rpm SATA hard drives causing clicks, freezes and system panics. bad LCD's, bad graphics chips from nvidia, bad batteries. SL has been out a month and Service Pack 2 has already been seeded to developers with fixes that shouldn't have been in the RTM version. iphone OS 3.1 fixed issues that shouldn't have made it out of QA. Apple should have released itunes 9 and iphone OS 3.1 in the initial release. it takes months for apple to release fixes to Java security issues. my iphone has sync issues that RIM solved years ago. try syncing to exchange and tell itunes to sync MS Outlook and it will create duplicate contacts in your iphone.
the Cult of Steve tells everyone that anything Apple just works, but head on over to MacRumors or the Apple support forums and you will see it's not the case. far from it.
the hardware is exactly the same except that Apple uses laptop components in everything except Mac Pro's. if you want the only usable desktop ^nix and OSS operating system out there, you get a Mac
what for? it's the same exact hardware. same exact intel laptop CPU's except for the Mac Pro. biggest difference is Mac's use nvidia chipsets instead of Intel due to the fact that nvidia has better integrated graphics. all the other parts are exactly the same and Mac's have used identical PC components like RAM and hard drives for decades
unlike their computers, the iphone costs the same as every other smart phone. less than others. iphone will run you $70 a month on the basic plan. a BB on VZ will run you $85 a month. T-Mo's basic plan is around $65 and Sprint is the cheapest at $60 for everything including texting. too bad sprint and t-mo have crappy networks compared to AT&T and VZW.
do elementary school math and over 2 years the prices are almost exactly the same. unlike a computer where Mac's cost double what a PC costs and people treasure them for years like a child or a pet when it's the same cheapo hardware built by little kids chained to their desks.
ever since the orginal WinMo in 2000 or 2001 they tried to push the start bar and the Win95 interface and it was a failure. iphone and BB got it right, but even their interfaces are now straining and getting old the way smartphones are developing
that's because they are made by companies in china operating on low margins and meant to be throw away phones. i remember even with pocketPC the upgrade options were limited
i remember when smartphones and PDA's were first taking off 10 years ago and people were coming up with interfaces Bill Gates decreed that MS will have a "consistent user experience" and that was the end of any chance that MS had at success.
Apple and RIM went back to the OS 9/Win 3.1 days for an interface that works on a mobile device and it proved to be popular. MS stuck with it's stupid start button and pocket versions of MS Office and IE. i had a pocket PC back in the day and IE was so bad that it wouldn't close out and you had to reboot the device to free up memory.
Then there is Microsoft's use of selling a bare OS to Chinese and Korean companies who make the device. Apple, RIM and Palm proved that if you control the phone hardware and the OS you get a good user experience and a good brand name. MS and Google's strategy of using OEM's means their customers don't care which OS they use and no one knows the names of the phones since they are always changing and are considered throwaways. the phone manufacturers put on their own GUI's and themes so you can have two WinMo or two Android phones side by side and they will look completely different.
This is why people are buying blackberries and iphones. when you compare the 2 year cost of the phone it makes sense to buy a brand name.
and if you're one of the idiots writing a check to pay for a retail purchase because you think credit cards are evil then the store probably puts all kinds of other info on the check like driver's license # to track you down in case it bounces
i still can't believe how many people write checks because they think it's safer than computers. that one piece of paper gives a thief your name, sometimes your address, bank account # and the ABA routing #. if it's someone working in a mail room they can just copy the address from the envelope if you don't have it on the check. Then they can buy the rest of the info for cheap from some company and they have your entire profile. if you own property then all your info is available via your county courthouse and some company that organizes all this info.
i have a store credit card that my wife uses once every few months to buy something. usually baby clothes. a lot of times the card is in the drawer and she would just go the store and tell them my name and they would find the card in the system and ring up the sale. now she says they want to know identifying information like driver's license expiration date, SSN, birthday, etc. she asked about this and they said that they were losing too much money to ID theft.
back in 2006 and 2007 no one cared since business was good. when a recession hits you start to look at every penny you can save
it was in the first story. Palm wants $99 and a paypal account linked to a checking account to allow you to upload apps to their store. whether the apps are free or not. he thought he was above the rules
having one app conflict with another app. 10 years ago we had a few apps. today there are too many to count and constant point releases where minor functionality is added by user request or small bugs fixed.
and it's not just java apps. weblogic instances, other apps we might buy or code internally. then there is QA since they need everything production has. Moving QA to VMWare was one of the first things we did when we bought it. the QA and Dev SQL servers are still physical, but a lot of their apps are now virtualized
a lot of businesses don't have cash on hand to meet their needs even if they are profitable. Even Best Buy has to borrow short term to buy up enough inventory to meet demand. Suppliers want to be paid right away. Amazon's solution is ideal for cash poor companies
we have used VMWare for a few years. Our devs would write a java app and it would require it's own server but it would use maybe 20% if not less of the resources. Now we just provision a VM. less server clutter in the datacenter and smaller electricity bills. Also great for DR. we ship the entire VM to a DR site so all we have to do is bring it up, change the IP and we're ready to go. otherwise we would spend days trying to configure all the apps, find the source, etc.
i have my own server i used to test a SQL Server migration. we went from a single DB/Web Server for reporting services to a clustered DB and a scale out web farm. needed VM's to test out a long list of things since the cluster was already in production with another instance running on it.
For production physical hardware is still cheap for heavy duty stuff. HP Proliant servers are dirt cheap and they scale out to 144GB for 1U models. Next year it will probably double. and with SQL and Oracle there is no need for VM, since you can just create new instances and not worry about hypervisor performance issues.
i see that Apple is a total failure with their policies. from 0 to over 75,000 apps in just over a year and everyone is trying to copy them. Blackberry had tons of apps and most people didn't know about them because you had to hunt them down on developer websites or via stores like crackberry. with the appstore you have all apps in one location making search and purchase easier.
there was even a survey out a few weeks ago that found that developers make a lot more money via Apple's AppStore than selling the same app over Google's Marketplace. One reason is that the Android Marketplace people request a lot more refunds than iphone users. And most developers will follow the money
Palm, Apple and MS want you to sign up once pay the fees and have the ability to upload free or paid apps. no one wants to wasted time on a second process for paid apps. the reason for paypal and other access is if you write paid apps and people ask for refunds then Palm needs the ability to get money from you.
While this genius is complaining about these "hoops" others are writing apps and will be getting paid soon.
anyone can go buy some medical books and journals and learn about medicine. the value in going to a doctor is that the license means he's met some minimum standard or learning and on the job training via his/her residency where you are sure he can perform the duties. in fact in a lot of hospitals high risk procedures are only allowed to be performed by the chiefs of the department. all the drug ingredients are open as well. that's the point of patents, you share the secrets of your invention in return for a monopoly for 18 years.
you can complain about telco's but Google's way of doing things for the last few years has been to take other companies' data and make money off it while giving nothing back.
Google bid on the 700MHz auction a few years ago and either lost or purposefully underbid to saddle VZW other ATT wtih debt while planning to ride on their network. if Google wants to be a telecom they should have won the auction or did like Boost Mobile and MetroPCS and start up a cell phone service by buying other frequencies.
Even Vonage had to bow to regulators a few years ago because it has been decided that the law is that if you provide a communications service there are a lot of laws you have to follow. and vonage tried to use the same argument
even with Steam and D2D developers still go through publishers. Reason is that publishers have the employees to sign deals with the companies selling you the games. developers will then have to hire people to sign and manage these deals. and publishers usually lend devs money. unless you have games being sold then you aren't making any revenue while developing the next game. but you still have to pay salaries, bills and pay for licenses of dev software kits.
i forgot the term but it's taught in finance 101. even companies like best buy have to borrow money to buy inventory. reason is that they never have enough cash on hand to cover all their expenses so they have to borrow short term and the price you pay reflects that. same with devs. even if you have revenue coming in from games being sold, it might not be enough to cover the dev expenses of the next game.
same concept why bands need LiveNation to go on tour. someone needs to lend them the money to be able to pay the start up costs
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that's not true anymore. most of the hardware vendors of the 1980's and 1990's merged or went belly up and there are a few left for each component.
3 graphics card makers and 2 of them have a unified driver that supports every card going back a few years
seems like 1 or 2 audio makers. every Mac and PC seems to have realtek or soundmax. Creative is a shadow of what it used to be and no one remembers Soundblaster compatibility
only intel, amd and nvidia still make chipsets
i read the Mac forums because i have an iphone and lately Mac's have been a quality nightmare. Apple has disabled fast SATA speeds, 7200rpm SATA hard drives causing clicks, freezes and system panics. bad LCD's, bad graphics chips from nvidia, bad batteries. SL has been out a month and Service Pack 2 has already been seeded to developers with fixes that shouldn't have been in the RTM version. iphone OS 3.1 fixed issues that shouldn't have made it out of QA. Apple should have released itunes 9 and iphone OS 3.1 in the initial release. it takes months for apple to release fixes to Java security issues. my iphone has sync issues that RIM solved years ago. try syncing to exchange and tell itunes to sync MS Outlook and it will create duplicate contacts in your iphone.
the Cult of Steve tells everyone that anything Apple just works, but head on over to MacRumors or the Apple support forums and you will see it's not the case. far from it.
the hardware is exactly the same except that Apple uses laptop components in everything except Mac Pro's. if you want the only usable desktop ^nix and OSS operating system out there, you get a Mac
can you load SL on a year Mac? i can use a 10 year old PC as well with XP on it. i just can't do a lot of things that current PC's can do
what for? it's the same exact hardware. same exact intel laptop CPU's except for the Mac Pro. biggest difference is Mac's use nvidia chipsets instead of Intel due to the fact that nvidia has better integrated graphics. all the other parts are exactly the same and Mac's have used identical PC components like RAM and hard drives for decades
unlike their computers, the iphone costs the same as every other smart phone. less than others. iphone will run you $70 a month on the basic plan. a BB on VZ will run you $85 a month. T-Mo's basic plan is around $65 and Sprint is the cheapest at $60 for everything including texting. too bad sprint and t-mo have crappy networks compared to AT&T and VZW.
do elementary school math and over 2 years the prices are almost exactly the same. unlike a computer where Mac's cost double what a PC costs and people treasure them for years like a child or a pet when it's the same cheapo hardware built by little kids chained to their desks.
ever since the orginal WinMo in 2000 or 2001 they tried to push the start bar and the Win95 interface and it was a failure. iphone and BB got it right, but even their interfaces are now straining and getting old the way smartphones are developing
on the BB and and iphone the interface is just icons similar to the old Win 3.1. no taskbar, dock or whatever. just icons
that's because they are made by companies in china operating on low margins and meant to be throw away phones. i remember even with pocketPC the upgrade options were limited
i remember when smartphones and PDA's were first taking off 10 years ago and people were coming up with interfaces Bill Gates decreed that MS will have a "consistent user experience" and that was the end of any chance that MS had at success.
Apple and RIM went back to the OS 9/Win 3.1 days for an interface that works on a mobile device and it proved to be popular. MS stuck with it's stupid start button and pocket versions of MS Office and IE. i had a pocket PC back in the day and IE was so bad that it wouldn't close out and you had to reboot the device to free up memory.
Then there is Microsoft's use of selling a bare OS to Chinese and Korean companies who make the device. Apple, RIM and Palm proved that if you control the phone hardware and the OS you get a good user experience and a good brand name. MS and Google's strategy of using OEM's means their customers don't care which OS they use and no one knows the names of the phones since they are always changing and are considered throwaways. the phone manufacturers put on their own GUI's and themes so you can have two WinMo or two Android phones side by side and they will look completely different.
This is why people are buying blackberries and iphones. when you compare the 2 year cost of the phone it makes sense to buy a brand name.
i can imagine all the calls to Dell. i burned the iso to a dvd and it still won't boot
and if you're one of the idiots writing a check to pay for a retail purchase because you think credit cards are evil then the store probably puts all kinds of other info on the check like driver's license # to track you down in case it bounces
i still can't believe how many people write checks because they think it's safer than computers. that one piece of paper gives a thief your name, sometimes your address, bank account # and the ABA routing #. if it's someone working in a mail room they can just copy the address from the envelope if you don't have it on the check. Then they can buy the rest of the info for cheap from some company and they have your entire profile. if you own property then all your info is available via your county courthouse and some company that organizes all this info.
i have a store credit card that my wife uses once every few months to buy something. usually baby clothes. a lot of times the card is in the drawer and she would just go the store and tell them my name and they would find the card in the system and ring up the sale. now she says they want to know identifying information like driver's license expiration date, SSN, birthday, etc. she asked about this and they said that they were losing too much money to ID theft.
back in 2006 and 2007 no one cared since business was good. when a recession hits you start to look at every penny you can save
under Bush the DoJ sent more than one CEO to Club Fed. Ken Lay decided to kill himself first
just like we did with Arthur Andersen?
you can't do it to every corporation since it puts a lot of innocent people out of work
it was in the first story. Palm wants $99 and a paypal account linked to a checking account to allow you to upload apps to their store. whether the apps are free or not. he thought he was above the rules
Coke is set up to sell syrup to local bottlers who actually make the drink and distribute it in their local area
having one app conflict with another app. 10 years ago we had a few apps. today there are too many to count and constant point releases where minor functionality is added by user request or small bugs fixed.
and it's not just java apps. weblogic instances, other apps we might buy or code internally. then there is QA since they need everything production has. Moving QA to VMWare was one of the first things we did when we bought it. the QA and Dev SQL servers are still physical, but a lot of their apps are now virtualized
not really
a lot of businesses don't have cash on hand to meet their needs even if they are profitable. Even Best Buy has to borrow short term to buy up enough inventory to meet demand. Suppliers want to be paid right away. Amazon's solution is ideal for cash poor companies
we have used VMWare for a few years. Our devs would write a java app and it would require it's own server but it would use maybe 20% if not less of the resources. Now we just provision a VM. less server clutter in the datacenter and smaller electricity bills. Also great for DR. we ship the entire VM to a DR site so all we have to do is bring it up, change the IP and we're ready to go. otherwise we would spend days trying to configure all the apps, find the source, etc.
i have my own server i used to test a SQL Server migration. we went from a single DB/Web Server for reporting services to a clustered DB and a scale out web farm. needed VM's to test out a long list of things since the cluster was already in production with another instance running on it.
For production physical hardware is still cheap for heavy duty stuff. HP Proliant servers are dirt cheap and they scale out to 144GB for 1U models. Next year it will probably double. and with SQL and Oracle there is no need for VM, since you can just create new instances and not worry about hypervisor performance issues.
i see that Apple is a total failure with their policies. from 0 to over 75,000 apps in just over a year and everyone is trying to copy them. Blackberry had tons of apps and most people didn't know about them because you had to hunt them down on developer websites or via stores like crackberry. with the appstore you have all apps in one location making search and purchase easier.
there was even a survey out a few weeks ago that found that developers make a lot more money via Apple's AppStore than selling the same app over Google's Marketplace. One reason is that the Android Marketplace people request a lot more refunds than iphone users. And most developers will follow the money
Palm, Apple and MS want you to sign up once pay the fees and have the ability to upload free or paid apps. no one wants to wasted time on a second process for paid apps. the reason for paypal and other access is if you write paid apps and people ask for refunds then Palm needs the ability to get money from you.
While this genius is complaining about these "hoops" others are writing apps and will be getting paid soon.
medicine and law are open
anyone can go buy some medical books and journals and learn about medicine. the value in going to a doctor is that the license means he's met some minimum standard or learning and on the job training via his/her residency where you are sure he can perform the duties. in fact in a lot of hospitals high risk procedures are only allowed to be performed by the chiefs of the department. all the drug ingredients are open as well. that's the point of patents, you share the secrets of your invention in return for a monopoly for 18 years.
you can complain about telco's but Google's way of doing things for the last few years has been to take other companies' data and make money off it while giving nothing back.
Google bid on the 700MHz auction a few years ago and either lost or purposefully underbid to saddle VZW other ATT wtih debt while planning to ride on their network. if Google wants to be a telecom they should have won the auction or did like Boost Mobile and MetroPCS and start up a cell phone service by buying other frequencies.
Even Vonage had to bow to regulators a few years ago because it has been decided that the law is that if you provide a communications service there are a lot of laws you have to follow. and vonage tried to use the same argument
the publishers have to pay the developers as well
even with Steam and D2D developers still go through publishers. Reason is that publishers have the employees to sign deals with the companies selling you the games. developers will then have to hire people to sign and manage these deals. and publishers usually lend devs money. unless you have games being sold then you aren't making any revenue while developing the next game. but you still have to pay salaries, bills and pay for licenses of dev software kits.
i forgot the term but it's taught in finance 101. even companies like best buy have to borrow money to buy inventory. reason is that they never have enough cash on hand to cover all their expenses so they have to borrow short term and the price you pay reflects that. same with devs. even if you have revenue coming in from games being sold, it might not be enough to cover the dev expenses of the next game.
same concept why bands need LiveNation to go on tour. someone needs to lend them the money to be able to pay the start up costs