I'm not so sure - the thing that stopped everything looking like a blackberry was good capacitive touchscreens. Before that, you got resistive ones with styluses (eg the iPaq) or miniature keyboards.
Once the screen was good enough (ie responsive and accurate) to replace the keyboard, guess what happened. Apple was just one of the very early adopters and did such a good job that everyone thinks they invented it.
The speed thing is a bonus too - and that made the cloud-connected apps work well, but again, there were apps before GPRS, they just didn't download masses of graphic data.
except radio telecommunications is innovative, and touchscreens too, and a fair few other bits and bobs that make up a smartphone. Calling it "a small computer" is not giving credit to the advanced technology that has gone into making it - even if you think its a commonplace device (kids of today, tut).
that said, rounding off the corners is NOT innovation.
Similarly slide-to-unlock. No, 'slide' mechanisms weren't very popular until the Apple's use of it. That in itself isn't what makes it obvious, though. The average lock on a public restroom stall may be what makes it obvious
so it is obvious that slide-to-unlock exists and isn't something that was patented simply because it has been around since ancient times. What Apple did to "innovate" was to use the slide-to-unlock principle on a smartphone. Se, those few last words make all the difference within the patent system, that's what's broken.
the trouble is, you can make a standard for something like gsm phones, and have to pay motorola a cent or two for each device sold, in order to recompense them for the millions of dollars they spent innovating something essential to such devices. Then someone else comes along and says "you can't have it rectangular" and you have to give them billions.
This is why the patent encumbrance is a bad thing for open standards. I would be happy to have all patents used in such devices considered under the same FRAND terms, that would be ok, so you'd pay 1c per device if you made it rectangular with rounded corners or use a swipe to unlock it etc. Or I'd like to say no patents allowed whatsoever for open standard-based devices, but I'd worry that would only make companies spend their energies making non-standard things instead.
no, his complaint is that there are too many different ways of accessing different components, and that it would be really nice if everyone used a common one.
I think Linux already has this - its the file API, where "everything is a file" concept and you build your systems by piping inputs to outputs. An OO object model would be a bit restrictive and is definitely coming from a programmer viewpoint rather than a sysadmin one.
Incidentally, DCE was excellent, so it would be a good choice if Linux did decide upon a common API system, but that in itself would be against the concept of Linux. Stick with streaming data between apps.
I guess it depends if you think desktop is the only computing platform around.
Count the 3 platforms you mentioned, then add 3 more for server-side stuff. How much of all that is Windows (20%?, Mac (2%?) and Linux (78%). I guessed, but I think that makes a good guesstimate of the relative overall install bases. Now, maybe all that server platform is going to be replaced with Cloud - but then, most of the cloud platforms are running linux anyway.
Ps. Mint is very good, and is nicely "accessible" to ex Windows users.
funny, last time I did pair programming I looked up from the newspaper I was reading now and then to helpfully point out my colleague had missed a semicolon.
Dogbert says "lets me teach you how to do pair programming that will improve productivity by 150% over a single programmer".. followed by "let me teach you how to make each programmer working alone increase developer productivity by 133%".
you can work out the maths to see what I actually did there, but it'll cost you $1000 per day for at least 3 months consultancy:)
I mean, getting broadband isn't free, I pay my ISP for connectivity and they provide it.. and by "extra fast", my ISP has varying levels of service they can give me (subject to the technology available where I live) so I can get faster speeds by paying more money. I can also get faster speeds by changing to a cable ISP rather than a standard ADSL one, or I could even buy satellite link. If I was really rich I could pay to have fibre put into my house too.
So, maybe this is just an Americanism. What you guys need is a working system of capitalism where competition drives innovation and delivery. The rest of us have this kind of free market, where market forces drive things forward, I guess you guys have monopolies that hold you back. Good luck.
the quantity is also very important - if you have a team of 10 developers, you can't let them just go off working on their own thing hoping it'll come up with your customer's exact requirements.
Now, if you had an infinite monkey cage, then your options are more flexible and you can use the same development style as Anonymous.
But.. there is a way it does work - if you have a small team, of senior people, who are committed to your development goals... then you can put them in a room without supervision and tell them to make the requirement happen. That works, but it works by reducing the amount of interference, not changing the way people work. (BTW this is one of the Crystal Clear agile methodologies by Alistair Cockburn)
I think he was trying to make an analogy - FRAND patents are licenced for peanuts, while a rounded rectangle is licencable for millons.
Hence the emphasis on worthless crap. Why make something when you can sell insurance instead. Why create a truly great innovation when you can make up some shit and get paid a fortune more. Why keep that profitable factory running when you can close it down, rent out the facility and outsource the production to the 3rd world and make more profits. The MBA will tell you to do all those things in the name of short-term, selfish profit but it screws your society (and longer term your economy).
Still, people will "invent" the crap because that's what pays, and sod everyone else.
I am, but most of my career is Windows based (as I suppose is everyone else in the professional job industry. You do what they pay you to do after all, and for the last 15 years that's been winders.
Apparently the juror wanted to "send a message" abotu infringing patents (yeah, the guy who has a patent and is probably trying to set a precedent about getting a billion dollars for himself sometime in the future).
Groklaw said:
Final Jury Instruction No. 35, in part:
The amount of those damages must be adequate to compensate the patent holder for the infringement. A damages award should put the patent holder in approximately the financial position it would have been in had the infringement not occurred, but in no event may the damages award be less than a reasonable royalty. You should keep in mind that the damages you award are meant to compensate the patent holder and not to punish an infringer.
Mind you, if a patent like GSM radio communication sells for 1 cent per device, I can easily see why 'pinch to zoom' should sell for at least $10 per device:)
its true though - you want to be known for being able to do something, the only way to prove that is... to do it.
I got into Linux sysadmins when I was made redundant, a friend (who was similarly afflicted) opened a shop and he asked me if I would make him an ecommerce site to go with it (ok, he had a friend who had a shop too, and he had spent £10k on ecommerce software). So I said - "why not", got he software off him (turned out that was £10k spent of a slightly modified copy of osCommerce) and set about learning all about Linux admin and suchlike.
There is a lot of information out there on setting up, working with, installing, configuring, hardening and well, everything to do with Linux. 3 years of running the site later, I think I can say I'm a knowedgeable linux sysadmin (even though I'm a dev by trade). I also used this knowledge to set up internal dev systems - a wiki, bug tracking, svn, etc etc, on Linux servers at our Microsoft-only shop:)
As for the shop, it closed years ago, but I never had a single hack (plenty of attempts though, you get port sniffing many times a day), and downtime was only due to hardware failure (both fans and network cabling), but that was all informative. My Linux knowledge is still working for me though.
However, it still wasn't enough for Google, they didn't want to know - said my experience wasn't good enough, so don't think you'll get a job unless you already have a job doing it, or are lucky, or good at selling yourself.
compare the differences. Ignoring marketing, which should be even for both types - and depends on the pockets of the publisher, for a PC game you'd go to a website that lists the great new games this month and pick one. For a mobile app, you have the same kind of website but when you go to the app store to install it, you type in "great game" and you'll get a list of games with similar sounding names. Even when you install it, you'll also get a list of "what others installed" and "similar to this".
So ultimately, the PC apps have less exposure overall to mobile ones, simply because of the way they're delivered. Now that doesn't mean a mobile app will suddenly be successful, just that it has a slightly better chance of more downloads.
A new publisher is still going to have a hard time of course:(
spot the MBA. Angry Birds is not even top 50, so therefore a complete waste of time, you must spend all your efforts trying to write a new Windows to maximise profitability.
That Angry Birds cost less and made a ton of money is forgotten in the rush to fully leverage your development funding.
You'll note the rest of the PC market is horrible to discover new apps, at least with the mobile app stores you reduce this dramatically as your app might show up in a search, whereas a PC app will never get discovered that way - marketing is always required for them.
It hung on me after a couple of months, but its getting a lot worse recently - particularly after I upgraded to the ICS update, now I have less free memory and I think that this is the problem - Java apps either swapping (as it can be dreadfully slow too at times) or just not realising its run out of ram and throwing a wobbly.
but still, I've found alot of Linux systems very reliable, never-reboot type things, but Android?! I love my Galaxy S but the number of times I've had to pull the battery to reboot the thing because its unresponsive is just too much. Choose a different distro!
I always said "Its like acting in a radio play, only we don't have a script with everything written down, instead that guy there is the director who sets the scenes for us to act out our characters using improvisation".
I think that's a little more understandable. Anyone who understands what "statistical constraints" means already know RPGs:)
which is a nice idea - cables and heat in the centre of the rack rather than having a hot and cold aisle. Of course, cabling them up might be tricky, but as they're only half-width, it should be easy to pull them out for access to the back-ends.
Still, ARM SoCs aren't known for producing massive amounts of heat, so I think the cheapo fans are just there for show more than anything, but I agree - a better designed case with air throughput flowing from front to back would be more efficient. The current case design would pull air in and push warm air out in every direction, there's no flow through the case that I can see.
the whole point of Windows servers is that they provide a pointy-clicky way to configure things so your admins don't have to be good. That was the USP for Windows on the server, now you're saying they should run it headless, they might as well get Linux.
and I guess none of the facts get in the way of your little rant either. She *worded* at PARC, she currently works at Nielsen Norman group. She also used to work at Microsoft as a usability expert.
there's a link to her bio on the TFA, guess you read that to find out what she *actually* said, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure - the thing that stopped everything looking like a blackberry was good capacitive touchscreens. Before that, you got resistive ones with styluses (eg the iPaq) or miniature keyboards.
Once the screen was good enough (ie responsive and accurate) to replace the keyboard, guess what happened. Apple was just one of the very early adopters and did such a good job that everyone thinks they invented it.
The speed thing is a bonus too - and that made the cloud-connected apps work well, but again, there were apps before GPRS, they just didn't download masses of graphic data.
except radio telecommunications is innovative, and touchscreens too, and a fair few other bits and bobs that make up a smartphone. Calling it "a small computer" is not giving credit to the advanced technology that has gone into making it - even if you think its a commonplace device (kids of today, tut).
that said, rounding off the corners is NOT innovation.
Similarly slide-to-unlock. No, 'slide' mechanisms weren't very popular until the Apple's use of it. That in itself isn't what makes it obvious, though. The average lock on a public restroom stall may be what makes it obvious
so it is obvious that slide-to-unlock exists and isn't something that was patented simply because it has been around since ancient times. What Apple did to "innovate" was to use the slide-to-unlock principle on a smartphone. Se, those few last words make all the difference within the patent system, that's what's broken.
the trouble is, you can make a standard for something like gsm phones, and have to pay motorola a cent or two for each device sold, in order to recompense them for the millions of dollars they spent innovating something essential to such devices. Then someone else comes along and says "you can't have it rectangular" and you have to give them billions.
This is why the patent encumbrance is a bad thing for open standards. I would be happy to have all patents used in such devices considered under the same FRAND terms, that would be ok, so you'd pay 1c per device if you made it rectangular with rounded corners or use a swipe to unlock it etc. Or I'd like to say no patents allowed whatsoever for open standard-based devices, but I'd worry that would only make companies spend their energies making non-standard things instead.
So, yes, patents, but all on the same terms.
no, his complaint is that there are too many different ways of accessing different components, and that it would be really nice if everyone used a common one.
I think Linux already has this - its the file API, where "everything is a file" concept and you build your systems by piping inputs to outputs. An OO object model would be a bit restrictive and is definitely coming from a programmer viewpoint rather than a sysadmin one.
Incidentally, DCE was excellent, so it would be a good choice if Linux did decide upon a common API system, but that in itself would be against the concept of Linux. Stick with streaming data between apps.
I guess it depends if you think desktop is the only computing platform around.
Count the 3 platforms you mentioned, then add 3 more for server-side stuff. How much of all that is Windows (20%?, Mac (2%?) and Linux (78%). I guessed, but I think that makes a good guesstimate of the relative overall install bases. Now, maybe all that server platform is going to be replaced with Cloud - but then, most of the cloud platforms are running linux anyway.
Ps. Mint is very good, and is nicely "accessible" to ex Windows users.
funny, last time I did pair programming I looked up from the newspaper I was reading now and then to helpfully point out my colleague had missed a semicolon.
Dogbert says "lets me teach you how to do pair programming that will improve productivity by 150% over a single programmer".. followed by "let me teach you how to make each programmer working alone increase developer productivity by 133%".
you can work out the maths to see what I actually did there, but it'll cost you $1000 per day for at least 3 months consultancy :)
I mean, getting broadband isn't free, I pay my ISP for connectivity and they provide it.. and by "extra fast", my ISP has varying levels of service they can give me (subject to the technology available where I live) so I can get faster speeds by paying more money. I can also get faster speeds by changing to a cable ISP rather than a standard ADSL one, or I could even buy satellite link. If I was really rich I could pay to have fibre put into my house too.
So, maybe this is just an Americanism. What you guys need is a working system of capitalism where competition drives innovation and delivery. The rest of us have this kind of free market, where market forces drive things forward, I guess you guys have monopolies that hold you back. Good luck.
the quantity is also very important - if you have a team of 10 developers, you can't let them just go off working on their own thing hoping it'll come up with your customer's exact requirements.
Now, if you had an infinite monkey cage, then your options are more flexible and you can use the same development style as Anonymous.
But.. there is a way it does work - if you have a small team, of senior people, who are committed to your development goals... then you can put them in a room without supervision and tell them to make the requirement happen. That works, but it works by reducing the amount of interference, not changing the way people work. (BTW this is one of the Crystal Clear agile methodologies by Alistair Cockburn)
I think he was trying to make an analogy - FRAND patents are licenced for peanuts, while a rounded rectangle is licencable for millons.
Hence the emphasis on worthless crap. Why make something when you can sell insurance instead. Why create a truly great innovation when you can make up some shit and get paid a fortune more. Why keep that profitable factory running when you can close it down, rent out the facility and outsource the production to the 3rd world and make more profits. The MBA will tell you to do all those things in the name of short-term, selfish profit but it screws your society (and longer term your economy).
Still, people will "invent" the crap because that's what pays, and sod everyone else.
I am, but most of my career is Windows based (as I suppose is everyone else in the professional job industry. You do what they pay you to do after all, and for the last 15 years that's been winders.
They contacted me too, which chuffed me loads :)
Apparently the juror wanted to "send a message" abotu infringing patents (yeah, the guy who has a patent and is probably trying to set a precedent about getting a billion dollars for himself sometime in the future).
Groklaw said:
Final Jury Instruction No. 35, in part:
The amount of those damages must be adequate to compensate the patent holder for the infringement. A damages award should put the patent holder in approximately the financial position it would have been in had the infringement not occurred, but in no event may the damages award be less than a reasonable royalty. You should keep in mind that the damages you award are meant to compensate the patent holder and not to punish an infringer.
Mind you, if a patent like GSM radio communication sells for 1 cent per device, I can easily see why 'pinch to zoom' should sell for at least $10 per device :)
its true though - you want to be known for being able to do something, the only way to prove that is... to do it.
I got into Linux sysadmins when I was made redundant, a friend (who was similarly afflicted) opened a shop and he asked me if I would make him an ecommerce site to go with it (ok, he had a friend who had a shop too, and he had spent £10k on ecommerce software). So I said - "why not", got he software off him (turned out that was £10k spent of a slightly modified copy of osCommerce) and set about learning all about Linux admin and suchlike.
There is a lot of information out there on setting up, working with, installing, configuring, hardening and well, everything to do with Linux. 3 years of running the site later, I think I can say I'm a knowedgeable linux sysadmin (even though I'm a dev by trade). I also used this knowledge to set up internal dev systems - a wiki, bug tracking, svn, etc etc, on Linux servers at our Microsoft-only shop :)
As for the shop, it closed years ago, but I never had a single hack (plenty of attempts though, you get port sniffing many times a day), and downtime was only due to hardware failure (both fans and network cabling), but that was all informative. My Linux knowledge is still working for me though.
However, it still wasn't enough for Google, they didn't want to know - said my experience wasn't good enough, so don't think you'll get a job unless you already have a job doing it, or are lucky, or good at selling yourself.
compare the differences. Ignoring marketing, which should be even for both types - and depends on the pockets of the publisher, for a PC game you'd go to a website that lists the great new games this month and pick one. For a mobile app, you have the same kind of website but when you go to the app store to install it, you type in "great game" and you'll get a list of games with similar sounding names. Even when you install it, you'll also get a list of "what others installed" and "similar to this".
So ultimately, the PC apps have less exposure overall to mobile ones, simply because of the way they're delivered. Now that doesn't mean a mobile app will suddenly be successful, just that it has a slightly better chance of more downloads.
A new publisher is still going to have a hard time of course :(
spot the MBA. Angry Birds is not even top 50, so therefore a complete waste of time, you must spend all your efforts trying to write a new Windows to maximise profitability.
That Angry Birds cost less and made a ton of money is forgotten in the rush to fully leverage your development funding.
You'll note the rest of the PC market is horrible to discover new apps, at least with the mobile app stores you reduce this dramatically as your app might show up in a search, whereas a PC app will never get discovered that way - marketing is always required for them.
It hung on me after a couple of months, but its getting a lot worse recently - particularly after I upgraded to the ICS update, now I have less free memory and I think that this is the problem - Java apps either swapping (as it can be dreadfully slow too at times) or just not realising its run out of ram and throwing a wobbly.
of course they have ECC, but they run Windows 95 because that was the only OS available at the time NASA started the ISS OS-validation program, :)
but still, I've found alot of Linux systems very reliable, never-reboot type things, but Android?! I love my Galaxy S but the number of times I've had to pull the battery to reboot the thing because its unresponsive is just too much. Choose a different distro!
I always said "Its like acting in a radio play, only we don't have a script with everything written down, instead that guy there is the director who sets the scenes for us to act out our characters using improvisation".
I think that's a little more understandable. Anyone who understands what "statistical constraints" means already know RPGs :)
how long before /. updates their logo then?
actually, got that completely wrong - its a cold chimney, cables and the PSU output is outward-facing. See the video on their site
which is a nice idea - cables and heat in the centre of the rack rather than having a hot and cold aisle. Of course, cabling them up might be tricky, but as they're only half-width, it should be easy to pull them out for access to the back-ends.
Still, ARM SoCs aren't known for producing massive amounts of heat, so I think the cheapo fans are just there for show more than anything, but I agree - a better designed case with air throughput flowing from front to back would be more efficient. The current case design would pull air in and push warm air out in every direction, there's no flow through the case that I can see.
the whole point of Windows servers is that they provide a pointy-clicky way to configure things so your admins don't have to be good. That was the USP for Windows on the server, now you're saying they should run it headless, they might as well get Linux.
and I guess none of the facts get in the way of your little rant either. She *worded* at PARC, she currently works at Nielsen Norman group. She also used to work at Microsoft as a usability expert.
there's a link to her bio on the TFA, guess you read that to find out what she *actually* said, right?