Yep. And they also make improvements on identifying objects and people in your photos. Which means it has to go through the 30 GB of pictures you have on your phone. Since they do this on-device rather than in the cloud, for privacy reasons, this takes processor and battery.
No development methodology or project management style is going to help you if: 1) people are not telling the truth about their progress and 2) the project has numerous stakeholders (or a revolving door of stakeholders) with conflicting goals pulling the project in different directions.
From the article: "[...] back in September they were telling us everything was great then too: so either they were lying then or they are lying now or they have been lying all along"
From another article: "The senior management responsible for delivering the programme has also undergone a significant overhaul in recent months, with UC programme director Hilary Reynolds being the latest figure to be taken off the project after just four months in the role."
"[...] esponsibility for the framework is now being moved to the Government Procurement Service – as we've always said it would."
So just what is the advantage of an open platform if OEMs are not allowed to customize it?
They can make it work better with their hardware or network. The danger is changing it in ways that makes it incompatible with applications that run fine on other phones.
Because who is management going to run to at 3:00 in the morning when something isn't working? Not the system administrator - the developer. Let them see the logs. Let them see what files/versions/timestamps were deployed. Let them see what else is running on the box. And let them do it without giving instructions over the phone to some admin who is sharing their console over GoToMeeting or something. Or this is going to take all freaking night.
As a side note, how many times has a developer been dragged in to troubleshoot why "their program quit working" only to find that the real problem was something like OS updates were applied without being tested, or a new virus scanner was installed, or system X was installed on the same box?
I'm 40 years old. It was obvious to me from the beginning (even before college) that being a programmer meant being on a treadmill of continous learning and "keeping up". That was actually part of the appeal - it was never going to get boring. Always something new to learn and figure out. I know people who do treat it as a "job". They've been COBOL programmers for who knows how many decades, working on the same accounting and payroll systems. Yuck.
I also understood early on that ANY salary position means you'll be expected to get the job done regardless of how many hours it takes - you don't punch a clock when you're salary. There is nothing about that peculiar to programming or IT. And unless you want to get into management, very few companies know how to create a decent career path for technical people of ANY kind. My brother is an electrician and is facing the same thing - he can either manage other electricians or continue to climb the electrical polls himself. He became an electrician because he enjoys doing the eletrical work, not because he was following a career path. Same for me and programming.
I fully realize that the non-NT line of Windows runs on top of (and therefore requires) DOS. My point was that DOS as a separate product ceased to have any sale value because people didn't want to use a command-line character based interface on their PC - they wanted to use Windows. From the prospective of most users (and Microsoft), there simply wasn't any reason to continue to sell DOS and Windows as separate products. For the die-hard command-line junkies, well they could have continued to buy DR DOS.
I also realize that "bundled" and "integrated" aren't the same thing. But this leads to some interesting questions... what if Microsoft had bundled IE on the Windows CD but not required that it be installed? Would this still be happening? Of course it would, and not just because most OEMs would have installed it on the pre-installs of Windows anyway. The anti-trust case would still be happening because the discussion of whether or not IE can be uninstalled or is really "integrated" has just been a sideshow - the root of this whole thing (at least in the court) has always been that once Microsoft dropped IE in people's laps they wouldn't/didn't go to the extra effort of acquiring Netscape's browser.
You say that Microsoft should be able to combine it's products "Unless harm can be demonstrated to others as a result". Well, I suppose if the combination of Windows and IE somehow caused cancer you'd have a point. But if you're talking about the "harm" that was done to Netscape... my heart bleeds. Is Apple "harming" Logitec by providing a mouse as standard equipment on Macs?
What you rabid libertarian types always seem to forget is that others besides the government can wield force, and there's more types of force than law or physical threats
The law can't be avoided. Microsoft can be. Someone physically threatening you isn't a mutually agreed-upon situation. OEMs that entering into stupid and foolish contractual agreements with Microsoft have nobody to blame but themselves. They were so fixated on lowering their costs to compete with each other that they signed their lives away to DOS/Windows. They could have (and should have) done their own unbundling of Microsoft's operating systems and their own hardware. List the hardware price without M$ and the additional charge of the OS. Then people would know just how much Microsoft was costing them and could choose whether or not they wanted it. They should have told Microsoft "we don't care how much of a discount you're offering us on your stuff, we aren't going to sign anything that says we have to pay you even for systems we ship without your software". They did themselves and their customers a great disservice.
So... Why exactly is it that BeOS was ignored by the rest of the industry? Isn't it simply because MS has the monopoly power to preven/make it not worthwhile to look at other OS's? Isn't BeOS a perfect example of the fact that your claim is, in fact, completely untrue?
It's an cart-and-horse problem that favors Microsoft, no doubt about it. People won't use an OS that doesn't have gobs of software available, software vendors won't write for an OS that doesn't have gobs of users. OEMs won't pre-install their boxes with an OS that doesn't have gobs of users and software. This can be overcome, but it takes OEMs, software vendors, and users who are willing to start with a small base and grow it over time. Which is just what the Linux community is doing. BTW, BeOS is a fine operating system. I encourage everyone to check it out. It's painfully easy to install BeOS right along side of Windows. Be is even giving the thing away for free.
Microsoft's market position can be overcome. But it will take people standing up and saying "I want more viable choices" and the industry giving them those choices. It doesn't matter how many pieces Microsoft is broken up into, or how its software is bundled/integrated/combined, if PC users don't break out of their self-imposed Microsoft cage, it ain't gonna happen. I sincerely hope it does. I'd love to see Microsoft scrambling to offer Office for Linux and Office for Be. I'd love to see IIS supporting non-Microsoft directories for authentication. I'd love to see Gateway and Dell give me the choice of three or four operating systems for each box in their catalog. But we don't need bad law to do it.
This brief demonstrates some of the worst flaws in the so-called "anti-trust" laws and this entire stupid case.
First, it completely dismisses any "tautological benefits" of combining two existing programs, when those "tautological benefits" are in fact the only benefits most consumers are ever likely to notice or care about. End users don't know and don't give a damn about the technical inner workings of their operating system, shared libraries, and applications. Yet these benefits are the first to be tossed out of consideration.
The brief says:
"In the context of the Consent Decree, this Court indicated that the test for 'integration' should not consider whether the combination of the computer programs results in an overall benefit to the users of the combined program."
and
"...the claimed benefits should be examined to determine whether they are benefits that don't directly benefit consumers..."
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. If we aren't judging whether or not it benefits the users, what the HELL are we doing? Judging if it provides some obscure technical improvement that won't be noticed by 99% of the users?
Second, the market for a compatible DOS was effectively eliminated when Windows finally picked up steam, not when Microsoft started including DOS in the same cardboard box as Windows 95. I'm sure MS would have preferred to simply retire DOS completely and make Windows 95 a free-standing OS, but couldn't do so because it would have orphaned all those old DOS apps (not to mention the fact that Windows still relied (relies?) on much of the basic services of DOS - but that's another story). So it put DOS in semi-retirement by hiding it behind the Windows shell. In fact, one could argue that by effectively abandoning the DOS-without-Windows market, Microsoft handed that market to DR DOS on a silver platter. But there were precious few customers for that market anymore. People wanted a GUI operating system, not a new version of DOS.
The discussion of the Melissa virus is another red herring. The fact that Outlook has dim-witted security has nothing to do with the legality of a vendor combining two products into a single offering. Eudora, Notes, or any other application that offers email services could just as easily blindly execute any script or binary sent to it. The fact that they don't only proves the people who wrote those applications were more security-minded than Microsoft's crew. Besides, if the combining a program into the Windows OS made the OS weaker that would actually be a benefit to Microsoft's competitors! Linux vendors around the world should be encouraging Microsoft to start adding as many buggy, insecure programs to Windows as possible. And this whole discussion ignores the fact that Microsoft does include Outlook Express with Windows now, and if you got your PC with Windows pre-installed you also got Outlook Express pre-installed. But as Hollarr himself demonstrates, you can still use other email clients and not expose yourself to the security risks of Outlook. This would be true whether you have Outlook installed or not.
I also find it laughable to hear so many people bitching about Microsoft bundling non-operating system programs with Windows when most Linux distributions come with every piece of Linux freeware under the sun "bundled" on the same CD and nobody complains about that or whines that it's "unfair" to Microsoft.
This brief, and most discussion of the case completely ignores the facts that 1) Microsoft owns Windows and IE and ought to be able to combine them if it damn well wants to regardless of technical or any other kind of benefits 2) Neither OEMs, nor consumers, or anybody else is forced by law to use Windows or any other Microsoft product and 3) If anybody offered consumers a viable replacement for Windows most will tell Microsoft to go screw themselves. PC history over the last 20 years is littered with examples of operating systems and applications that were either worse than Microsoft's offerings (Lotus SmartSuite), were pathetically marketed (OS/2) or were ignored by the rest of the industry (BeOS). Microsoft has practically won by default.
I also find it ridiculous that the "problem" seems to be that Microsoft previously offered Windows and IE as separate products, and now only offers them as a single product. Does that mean that if Microsoft had never released IE as a separate product but simply kept it under wraps and then included it in the next version of Windows none of this would be happening?
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. And they also make improvements on identifying objects and people in your photos. Which means it has to go through the 30 GB of pictures you have on your phone. Since they do this on-device rather than in the cloud, for privacy reasons, this takes processor and battery.
No development methodology or project management style is going to help you if: 1) people are not telling the truth about their progress and 2) the project has numerous stakeholders (or a revolving door of stakeholders) with conflicting goals pulling the project in different directions.
From the article:
"[...] back in September they were telling us everything was great then too: so either they were lying then or they are lying now or they have been lying all along"
From another article:
"The senior management responsible for delivering the programme has also undergone a significant overhaul in recent months, with UC programme director Hilary Reynolds being the latest figure to be taken off the project after just four months in the role."
"[...] esponsibility for the framework is now being moved to the Government Procurement Service – as we've always said it would."
... if you are a touch typist you don't have to think about the typing - you can think about the programming instead.
Yeah, but the IBM / Microsoft collaboration on OS/2 worked out so well what could possibly go wrong with this?
You can make GOOD ENOUGH applications for Android quite easily and then stamp out the bugs as you go.
Yeah, that will give the Android platform a good reputation.
So just what is the advantage of an open platform if OEMs are not allowed to customize it?
They can make it work better with their hardware or network. The danger is changing it in ways that makes it incompatible with applications that run fine on other phones.
Modify access? Absolutely not. Read access? Yes.
Because who is management going to run to at 3:00 in the morning when something isn't working? Not the system administrator - the developer. Let them see the logs. Let them see what files/versions/timestamps were deployed. Let them see what else is running on the box. And let them do it without giving instructions over the phone to some admin who is sharing their console over GoToMeeting or something. Or this is going to take all freaking night.
As a side note, how many times has a developer been dragged in to troubleshoot why "their program quit working" only to find that the real problem was something like OS updates were applied without being tested, or a new virus scanner was installed, or system X was installed on the same box?
he leaves behind a next-generation iPad.
I'm 40 years old. It was obvious to me from the beginning (even before college) that being a programmer meant being on a treadmill of continous learning and "keeping up". That was actually part of the appeal - it was never going to get boring. Always something new to learn and figure out. I know people who do treat it as a "job". They've been COBOL programmers for who knows how many decades, working on the same accounting and payroll systems. Yuck.
I also understood early on that ANY salary position means you'll be expected to get the job done regardless of how many hours it takes - you don't punch a clock when you're salary. There is nothing about that peculiar to programming or IT. And unless you want to get into management, very few companies know how to create a decent career path for technical people of ANY kind. My brother is an electrician and is facing the same thing - he can either manage other electricians or continue to climb the electrical polls himself. He became an electrician because he enjoys doing the eletrical work, not because he was following a career path. Same for me and programming.
Please mark postings like this with SPOILER alerts!
The Ansible!
This article provides some more technical details about the claims.
I fully realize that the non-NT line of Windows runs on top of (and therefore requires) DOS. My point was that DOS as a separate product ceased to have any sale value because people didn't want to use a command-line character based interface on their PC - they wanted to use Windows. From the prospective of most users (and Microsoft), there simply wasn't any reason to continue to sell DOS and Windows as separate products. For the die-hard command-line junkies, well they could have continued to buy DR DOS.
I also realize that "bundled" and "integrated" aren't the same thing. But this leads to some interesting questions... what if Microsoft had bundled IE on the Windows CD but not required that it be installed? Would this still be happening? Of course it would, and not just because most OEMs would have installed it on the pre-installs of Windows anyway. The anti-trust case would still be happening because the discussion of whether or not IE can be uninstalled or is really "integrated" has just been a sideshow - the root of this whole thing (at least in the court) has always been that once Microsoft dropped IE in people's laps they wouldn't/didn't go to the extra effort of acquiring Netscape's browser.
You say that Microsoft should be able to combine it's products "Unless harm can be demonstrated to others as a result". Well, I suppose if the combination of Windows and IE somehow caused cancer you'd have a point. But if you're talking about the "harm" that was done to Netscape... my heart bleeds. Is Apple "harming" Logitec by providing a mouse as standard equipment on Macs?
What you rabid libertarian types always seem to forget is that others besides the government can wield force, and there's more types of force than law or physical threats
The law can't be avoided. Microsoft can be. Someone physically threatening you isn't a mutually agreed-upon situation. OEMs that entering into stupid and foolish contractual agreements with Microsoft have nobody to blame but themselves. They were so fixated on lowering their costs to compete with each other that they signed their lives away to DOS/Windows. They could have (and should have) done their own unbundling of Microsoft's operating systems and their own hardware. List the hardware price without M$ and the additional charge of the OS. Then people would know just how much Microsoft was costing them and could choose whether or not they wanted it. They should have told Microsoft "we don't care how much of a discount you're offering us on your stuff, we aren't going to sign anything that says we have to pay you even for systems we ship without your software". They did themselves and their customers a great disservice.
So... Why exactly is it that BeOS was ignored by the rest of the industry? Isn't it simply because MS has the monopoly power to preven/make it not worthwhile to look at other OS's? Isn't BeOS a perfect example of the fact that your claim is, in fact, completely untrue?
It's an cart-and-horse problem that favors Microsoft, no doubt about it. People won't use an OS that doesn't have gobs of software available, software vendors won't write for an OS that doesn't have gobs of users. OEMs won't pre-install their boxes with an OS that doesn't have gobs of users and software. This can be overcome, but it takes OEMs, software vendors, and users who are willing to start with a small base and grow it over time. Which is just what the Linux community is doing. BTW, BeOS is a fine operating system. I encourage everyone to check it out. It's painfully easy to install BeOS right along side of Windows. Be is even giving the thing away for free.
Microsoft's market position can be overcome. But it will take people standing up and saying "I want more viable choices" and the industry giving them those choices. It doesn't matter how many pieces Microsoft is broken up into, or how its software is bundled/integrated/combined, if PC users don't break out of their self-imposed Microsoft cage, it ain't gonna happen. I sincerely hope it does. I'd love to see Microsoft scrambling to offer Office for Linux and Office for Be. I'd love to see IIS supporting non-Microsoft directories for authentication. I'd love to see Gateway and Dell give me the choice of three or four operating systems for each box in their catalog. But we don't need bad law to do it.
This brief demonstrates some of the worst flaws in the so-called "anti-trust" laws and this entire stupid case.
First, it completely dismisses any "tautological benefits" of combining two existing programs, when those "tautological benefits" are in fact the only benefits most consumers are ever likely to notice or care about. End users don't know and don't give a damn about the technical inner workings of their operating system, shared libraries, and applications. Yet these benefits are the first to be tossed out of consideration.
The brief says:
and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. If we aren't judging whether or not it benefits the users, what the HELL are we doing? Judging if it provides some obscure technical improvement that won't be noticed by 99% of the users?Second, the market for a compatible DOS was effectively eliminated when Windows finally picked up steam, not when Microsoft started including DOS in the same cardboard box as Windows 95. I'm sure MS would have preferred to simply retire DOS completely and make Windows 95 a free-standing OS, but couldn't do so because it would have orphaned all those old DOS apps (not to mention the fact that Windows still relied (relies?) on much of the basic services of DOS - but that's another story). So it put DOS in semi-retirement by hiding it behind the Windows shell. In fact, one could argue that by effectively abandoning the DOS-without-Windows market, Microsoft handed that market to DR DOS on a silver platter. But there were precious few customers for that market anymore. People wanted a GUI operating system, not a new version of DOS.
The discussion of the Melissa virus is another red herring. The fact that Outlook has dim-witted security has nothing to do with the legality of a vendor combining two products into a single offering. Eudora, Notes, or any other application that offers email services could just as easily blindly execute any script or binary sent to it. The fact that they don't only proves the people who wrote those applications were more security-minded than Microsoft's crew. Besides, if the combining a program into the Windows OS made the OS weaker that would actually be a benefit to Microsoft's competitors! Linux vendors around the world should be encouraging Microsoft to start adding as many buggy, insecure programs to Windows as possible. And this whole discussion ignores the fact that Microsoft does include Outlook Express with Windows now, and if you got your PC with Windows pre-installed you also got Outlook Express pre-installed. But as Hollarr himself demonstrates, you can still use other email clients and not expose yourself to the security risks of Outlook. This would be true whether you have Outlook installed or not.
I also find it laughable to hear so many people bitching about Microsoft bundling non-operating system programs with Windows when most Linux distributions come with every piece of Linux freeware under the sun "bundled" on the same CD and nobody complains about that or whines that it's "unfair" to Microsoft.
This brief, and most discussion of the case completely ignores the facts that 1) Microsoft owns Windows and IE and ought to be able to combine them if it damn well wants to regardless of technical or any other kind of benefits 2) Neither OEMs, nor consumers, or anybody else is forced by law to use Windows or any other Microsoft product and 3) If anybody offered consumers a viable replacement for Windows most will tell Microsoft to go screw themselves. PC history over the last 20 years is littered with examples of operating systems and applications that were either worse than Microsoft's offerings (Lotus SmartSuite), were pathetically marketed (OS/2) or were ignored by the rest of the industry (BeOS). Microsoft has practically won by default.
I also find it ridiculous that the "problem" seems to be that Microsoft previously offered Windows and IE as separate products, and now only offers them as a single product. Does that mean that if Microsoft had never released IE as a separate product but simply kept it under wraps and then included it in the next version of Windows none of this would be happening?