It has been my experience that these are usually the same people..
Been doing tech for 30 years and it is amazing the skills sets the people I work with have... Naturally curious people pick up an odd assortment of skills.
Computers have gone downhill since they no longer have those programming calls. Sometimes, I just want to see what is in a specific memory location and other times, I just want to put something there. F**k pointers.
well, the problem is that he has taken about 20 different groups and whatever and has combined them and then went wherever he imagined was his own reality...
His overlap between Burning Man and startups is not really that supportable. Actually, this reads like just a long diatribe of "Things Milo Hates" more than anything coherent.
seriously, go through that article and write down all the things he complains about and then draw a Venn Diagram of the items and how they overlap.
500 miles one-way from Denver still puts you 500-1000 miles from major destinations. A 200 mile round trip is a day trip for the guys in my office to go between the Denver and Cheyenne offices.
You just happen to live and have a job that does not require significant travel.. Don't mistake that for being representative of much beyond that, or as to the feasibility of your solution.
And the really wonderful thing is that they have already used your facebook password and profile as well as your google info to prefill in all your forms..
The only thing you about torrent you need to consider is that there is no inherent billing mechanism. Anything made available is available without restriction.
There is no connection between items in torrent and their legality. They can be any file. Used a lot for stolen materials, but also legal distributions. Here in the US, you can not be prosecuted for theft unless a theft occurs. This is a civil matter, not a criminal one. If the rights holder distributed solely in this channel, then they made it available exclusive of any billing optionss.
The key point you are missing is that Prenda has been suing people for downloading these files. Files which Prenda uploaded with no restrictions or billing mechanisms.
In *none* of Prenda's filings or disclosures did they ever mention that themselves loaded those files. Their legal filings claimed a massive loss of money as a result of these files being downloaded via torrent rather than purchased. Even the kindest interpretation, this is fraud. Even when asked directly if they had anything to do with the upload, they denied it. Prenda's actions went from unethical to criminal.
The ability to do this has been around a long, long time.
If you bought a TV guide back in the 1990's, there was a number in parenthesis next to the show title. So you would see something like "9:00 channel 13 Beverly Hills 90210 (938458764): description of the episode"
The number is a number embedded in the signal of the episode that notifies automated systems what the content is being shown then. You could program your equipment to record that number. It would cut out all commercials. You never had to set the time either. It would record whenever it saw that number. It is part of the video spec.
A lot of people are jumping in here claiming patent troll, but I remember enough about where the state of the Internet was in 1993 to feel that he was sincere in these patents. They did release a browser. they did offer licensing.
At the time he started development, there were under 100 total websites on the entire planet. A lot of people were pushing applications development to direct connect to services. For example, If you played internet chess, you opened XBoard, then pointed at a chess server. A lot of others were pushing other application specific services. There were competing paradigms in how things were going to develop. The whole idea of a web browser handling everything was not even close to being universally accepted.
So, he gets a patent. Launches a browser, but after Netscape launched their browser. No real traction with VC's as they were dumping their money into providing the services. The browser tanks, so he offers the tech for licensing. Microsoft among others says no. Then, Microsoft submits a set of patent applications that cover the exact same stuff under different names, then incorporates that tech into IE.
I dunno. Sure. Looks like a troll. He is suing to get money from his invention. But, then again, where Microsoft is concerned, he had a very solid case that they stole his ideas. He met with them, then they declined to license the technology, then they submitted patents covering the same material.
Now, given what we know now, embedded apps within HTML looks obvious, but there were other competing ideas and this one just won out. From our perspective in 2013, this was a clear winner, but when he patented it? Not so sure. And, under current laws of first-to-file, this patent would have held up.
I think the main problem I have with people claiming trolls is this: Whether a product is successful or not - in this case a browser, the IP behind it is still valid. If I invent a widget, but get swamped by companies with bigger bankrolls, that does not mean people can just take those ideas after my business goes under. IP is still property. The *only* reason this was overturned by prior art is because Microsoft decided it was cheaper to void their own patents rather than pay the lawsuit they lost.
Was there prior art? Yes... by a couple months. Did he know about it? There is enough doubt in that to overturn the patent. Was he strictly a troll? Nope. The date here is so early in development of the WWW that there were competing paradigms and multiple approaches being argued and discussed. He legitimately thought this was a valid patent.
Back in the early days of automobile and aircraft manufacturing, there were similar problems to this. In aircraft manufacturing, the Wright-Curtiss lawsuits held back aircraft development by a couple decades.
There automotive industry came up with a fairly decent solution fairly quickly, which is interesting as the Ford Company was well on its way to becoming a monopoly when it agreed to the terms set out. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) was formed as a licensing and technology sharing organization. Any member of that organization could license the technology of any other member of that organization.
"Q. What is the SAE patent policy with regard to standards in development? What must be disclosed, by whom and by when during the standards development process?
A. SAE's IP Policy provides the following guidance:
2.3 Patents It has been traditionally the position of SAE to avoid the use of patented technology in Technical Reports where the principal objective is conformance to the Technical Report as defined by the SAE Technical Standards Board. However, with the advent of more complex technologies, it is not always possible to provide Technical Reports that meet today's needs without incorporating technologies that are patented. It has become difficult, if not impossible, to develop standards that do not take advantage of or otherwise incorporate the use of products, systems or process that implementation would necessarily infringe a claim of such a patent. Accordingly, SAE Technical Reports may include the known use of patent(s), including patent applications, if there is in the opinion of the committee developing the Technical Report technical justification and provided that SAE receive assurance from the patent holder that it will license applicants under reasonable terms and conditions for the purpose of implementing the standard. This assurance shall be provided without coercion and prior to the approval of the standard or reaffirmation when a patent becomes known after the initial approval of the standard. This assurance shall be a letter that is in the form of either:
2.3.1 A general disclaimer to the effect that the patentee will not enforce any of its present or future patent(s) whose claims would be necessarily infringed by implementation of the proposed SAE Technical Report against any person or entity implementing the mandatory provisions of the Technical Report to effect compliance or;
2.3.2 A statement that a license will be made available to all applicants without compensation or under reasonable rates, with reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination."
---
The problem now is that people are a) allowed patents of pretty basic concepts that are quite obvious and b) using patents to stifle competition rather than license technologies.
If I were looking at reforming patents, I would look at the "obvious" clause and how to address license agreements. I don't have anything against patents as long as someone is bending hardware and selling products based on it.
Well, one of the big things is integration of the whole environment. End-to-end operations designed for end users is a bit sketchy these days.
You have to understand that Microsoft does have a rather significant edge with 8.1. My guess, if I were designing this, I would put hooks in this so that it talks to the app store. From there, they could easily extend this to sell designs. You go out to the app store, buy a design for 99 cents, then it will print it out.
When Gerstner stepped down and Palmisano took over, however, the company began a long, gradual slide. It became cost-obsessed and quarterly earnings-focused. Some belt-tightening was appropriate during the dotcom bust, but that actually didn't hit IBM very hard. The problem was that Palmisano's leadership team had no idea how to create new business, the IBM services group that Gerstner started and used to revitalize the company was reaching a kind of natural saturation point, so Palmisano started slashing costs to prop up profit growth as revenue growth got harder to find. Even worse, the cost pressure began to change the culture of the company, creating more internal competition which began to turn ugly.
By the time I left in 2011, IBM had become a fairly unpleasant place to work. Global Services was the worst, for example utilization targets were routinely set so high that it was impossible to take vacation time without working overtime in order to make up for it, and cost controls had squeezed out all career development funding unless you could hide it in customer contracts. Software Group was struggling and had shifted more to focus on sales rather than development. IBM has always been primarily a sales company, backed by engineering, but shifting the balance too far towards sales is a way to boost short-term profits at the expense of long-term success. I personally got caught in that shift; my job was transformed underneath me from an architecture and development role to a technical sales support role. I even hear from my friends in R&D that they were also getting squeezed hard, with increasing pressure to abandon work on any ideas that couldn't be productized within a few months.
When I heard that Ginni Rometty was taking over for Palmisano last year I just shook my head. Rometty was a driving force in squeezing services employees with ever-increasing utilization targets and ever-tightening cost structures. IMO, IBM needs another visionary like Gerstner, not another jumped-up middle manager like Palmisano, but that's what they got in Rometty. She's a smart, talented, aggressive jumped-up middle manager, but still not what IBM needs, IMO.
I'm glad I left. I really should have done it a few years before I did.
At least it was Ginni and not Bob Moffat. They were grooming him for CEO. They had to scramble to find someone after Moffat went to prison. (He's sad because that cost him $65 million in benefits).
Agreed about Global Services. Their LEAN thing a few years ago was horrible. I recall how it went for e-Business. They had a couple "pilot Programs" where they went through and switched us from dedicated syadmin teams to a call center operation. So, when the customer called in, they had to open a ticket for that, then it would get assigned to a sysadmin out of the pool. No one would be that familiar with the account. As soon as they got the pilot program procedures done and that customer used to the process, they then transferred everything to a call center in South America and laid off the people working in the sysadmin pool in the states.
After seeing how well that worked, they then decided to roll that out to all of e-Business. They had months of meetings of upper management. 18 hour days in Raleigh. Flew people in from all over for these meetings. Finally, they decide to implement this. So, May 1st, they gather everyone in a room at 8AM and show them a link to where the call center procedures were. They then showed a list of what people's new teams would be. It became *very* apparent that the sum total of planning for this was to have someone email the call center procedures and then assign some specific people to a couple of the teams. In fact, Moffat argued that they did not want analysis paralysis from trying to plan too completely. (I did not see evidence of 20 minutes worth of planning. They *literally* just had some emailed docs from a call center, then told us to work it out). So, what were the 18 hour day meetings for the past 6 month
Though I feel for these employees that will watch their work go elsewhere, cheaper, more flexible/captive, and lower quality.
It's the lies IBM will tell its customers, starting with the quality lies, then the onshore/offshore lies, and finally the resource commitment lies.
And how the government customers will roll over and ignore the contract provisions.
And later will stop asking IBM to even bother to keep work and data onshore when it is required by law.
Corpratists. Crony Capitalism. we are being fleeced.
When I was at IBM, it worked like this..
1Q disappointing sales. 2Q layoffs. 3Q OMG, look at things improve 4Q Look at how we've improved. Let's give the execs a bonus equivalent to the combined salary of the people we laid off. 1Q disappointing sales. 2Q layoffs. 3Q OMG, look at things improve 4Q Look at how we've improved. Let's give the execs a bonus equivalent to the combined salary of the people we laid off. 1Q disappointing sales. 2Q layoffs. 3Q OMG, look at things improve 4Q Look at how we've improved. Let's give the execs a bonus equivalent to the combined salary of the people we laid off.
Except they jumped the gun and sold product prior to the patent expiration.
3D printing has been evolving since 1986, so there a successive generations of patents as they improve techniques and as new technology becomes feasible. 3D filed a lot of patents in the mid-1990's.
They sold systems in Oct 2012 with a delivery date of Feb 2013. The particular patent in question does not expire until January 28, 2014.
Makerbot has been moving towards making and selling a consumer appliance.
The maker movement and DIY is a rather different group. Realistically, Makerbot went as far is it could with the DIY group and was running on name recognition at this point. By my count, there about 130 3D printing companies listed on 3ders.org. Most of them will be gone in a few years. And the list really does not include the major players in the 3D commercial printer market.
Historically, Makerbot had several things going for it. Bre had access to a better advertising channel than most. Effectively Make Magazine was his marketing arm. He also had most of the major R&D done by open source groups. He could concentrate on packaging and marketing. Name recognition is self-sustaining in terms of attracting deals, such as joint marketing with AutoCAD.
But, that said.. There is simply too little difference in technology between companies and their products. The extrusion based systems have their limits and to have a quantitatively better product gets very expensive, very quickly.
Most people use issued DSL or Cable modems for networking. Commodity use is directly tied to broadband. And those modems shipped based on the tech supported by the ISP. Switching to 1GbE on the switch side tracks to when companies implemented DOCSIS 2.0. When they move to DOCSIS 3.0, then you'll see an upgrade in networking layer in residential use.
The primary use of 10GbE is virtualization. The use of network cards are a function of the number of chassis, not the number of hosts. Numerically, 10GbE is not 10 1GbE cards. You can split the 10GbE between a lot of hosts. You can easily double, triple, or even quadruple that to making that 10 GbE card the equivalent of 1 GbE cards on 40 servers, depending of their load and use. Instead of buying 40 servers and associated cards, you're buying one larger chassis with larger pipes. In a large farm environment, and it makes sense.
Throw in the fact that network is only as fast as its narrowest choke point, there is no reason to put in a 10 GbE card behind a 7MB DSL connection.
What 10GbE needs to become a commodity is a) end of any data caps, b) data to put down that pipe, and c) a pipe that can handle it.
Show me fiber to my door and then, it will be a commodity.
I have seen many coding sessions where all the effort and push early is meeting basic functionality. That takes a lot of coding and communication to get going. I have been in agile sessions where they do their sprint and get basic functionality, then they write their bug reports, then go on to the next sprint coding the next batch of basic features. They never take sprints to fix bugs. You'll always see the number of outstanding bugs rise.
So, to the initial poster:
1) What is the time allocated for the coding? 2) What is the time allocated for debugging? 3) Does it take 90% of the contract timeline just to get basic functionality? 4) What are the metrics along the line for payment? Does the programmer get paid as they go along, or only at contract completion? 5) When is the spec freeze? 6) What are the test cases and who provides them?
I have a few red flags here that kinda indicates to me that it is irrelevant whether you bring in a contractor in-house as opposed to bringing them in from the outside. "Developers can make more work for themselves by causing bugs, and with the specifications I write there is no excuse for not testing their code." is a red flag for me. You don't trust your developers. I have *never* in 30 years really ran into any systemic problem along those lines, even with an individual developer. In general terms, bugs are the last thing to be addressed after getting core functionality and basic QA completed.
The reason why they generally don't complain upfront is because you are backloading all the ways to get away without paying them.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, Byte, Datamation, and a few others quit being really must read for techs long before the Internet really hit.
In the IT field back in the late 80's through about 2000, the scariest thing to see would be an executive with a glossy magazine..
It has been my experience that these are usually the same people..
Been doing tech for 30 years and it is amazing the skills sets the people I work with have... Naturally curious people pick up an odd assortment of skills.
Except some companies, like HP, flat out will not hire unless you have a degree.
It is standard HR practice to use whether you have completed college as a criteria for hiring.
Hmm. I could easily see commercial parking lots putting in these readers at their entrances if they could make money reporting the cars..
I usually stack the shows, then binge-watch. Much easier to track serials this way.
So.. someone got their hands on the Marauder's Map..
Since it is the fuel source that burns in the car (Tesla or gasoline), is granite your fuel?
peek and poke..
Computers have gone downhill since they no longer have those programming calls. Sometimes, I just want to see what is in a specific memory location and other times, I just want to put something there. F**k pointers.
well, the problem is that he has taken about 20 different groups and whatever and has combined them and then went wherever he imagined was his own reality...
His overlap between Burning Man and startups is not really that supportable. Actually, this reads like just a long diatribe of "Things Milo Hates" more than anything coherent.
seriously, go through that article and write down all the things he complains about and then draw a Venn Diagram of the items and how they overlap.
I personally have trouble focusing on lettering when the background color/shade varies.
500 miles one-way from Denver still puts you 500-1000 miles from major destinations. A 200 mile round trip is a day trip for the guys in my office to go between the Denver and Cheyenne offices.
You just happen to live and have a job that does not require significant travel.. Don't mistake that for being representative of much beyond that, or as to the feasibility of your solution.
And the really wonderful thing is that they have already used your facebook password and profile as well as your google info to prefill in all your forms..
The only thing you about torrent you need to consider is that there is no inherent billing mechanism. Anything made available is available without restriction.
There is no connection between items in torrent and their legality. They can be any file. Used a lot for stolen materials, but also legal distributions. Here in the US, you can not be prosecuted for theft unless a theft occurs. This is a civil matter, not a criminal one. If the rights holder distributed solely in this channel, then they made it available exclusive of any billing optionss.
The key point you are missing is that Prenda has been suing people for downloading these files. Files which Prenda uploaded with no restrictions or billing mechanisms.
In *none* of Prenda's filings or disclosures did they ever mention that themselves loaded those files. Their legal filings claimed a massive loss of money as a result of these files being downloaded via torrent rather than purchased. Even the kindest interpretation, this is fraud. Even when asked directly if they had anything to do with the upload, they denied it. Prenda's actions went from unethical to criminal.
The ability to do this has been around a long, long time.
If you bought a TV guide back in the 1990's, there was a number in parenthesis next to the show title. So you would see something like "9:00 channel 13 Beverly Hills 90210 (938458764): description of the episode"
The number is a number embedded in the signal of the episode that notifies automated systems what the content is being shown then. You could program your equipment to record that number. It would cut out all commercials. You never had to set the time either. It would record whenever it saw that number. It is part of the video spec.
Actually, the University of California is *owed* money. It does not owe money. The University of California is the original patentee.
A lot of people are jumping in here claiming patent troll, but I remember enough about where the state of the Internet was in 1993 to feel that he was sincere in these patents. They did release a browser. they did offer licensing.
At the time he started development, there were under 100 total websites on the entire planet. A lot of people were pushing applications development to direct connect to services. For example, If you played internet chess, you opened XBoard, then pointed at a chess server. A lot of others were pushing other application specific services. There were competing paradigms in how things were going to develop. The whole idea of a web browser handling everything was not even close to being universally accepted.
So, he gets a patent. Launches a browser, but after Netscape launched their browser. No real traction with VC's as they were dumping their money into providing the services. The browser tanks, so he offers the tech for licensing. Microsoft among others says no. Then, Microsoft submits a set of patent applications that cover the exact same stuff under different names, then incorporates that tech into IE.
I dunno. Sure. Looks like a troll. He is suing to get money from his invention. But, then again, where Microsoft is concerned, he had a very solid case that they stole his ideas. He met with them, then they declined to license the technology, then they submitted patents covering the same material.
Now, given what we know now, embedded apps within HTML looks obvious, but there were other competing ideas and this one just won out. From our perspective in 2013, this was a clear winner, but when he patented it? Not so sure. And, under current laws of first-to-file, this patent would have held up.
I think the main problem I have with people claiming trolls is this: Whether a product is successful or not - in this case a browser, the IP behind it is still valid. If I invent a widget, but get swamped by companies with bigger bankrolls, that does not mean people can just take those ideas after my business goes under. IP is still property. The *only* reason this was overturned by prior art is because Microsoft decided it was cheaper to void their own patents rather than pay the lawsuit they lost.
Was there prior art? Yes... by a couple months. Did he know about it? There is enough doubt in that to overturn the patent. Was he strictly a troll? Nope. The date here is so early in development of the WWW that there were competing paradigms and multiple approaches being argued and discussed. He legitimately thought this was a valid patent.
Back in the early days of automobile and aircraft manufacturing, there were similar problems to this. In aircraft manufacturing, the Wright-Curtiss lawsuits held back aircraft development by a couple decades.
There automotive industry came up with a fairly decent solution fairly quickly, which is interesting as the Ford Company was well on its way to becoming a monopoly when it agreed to the terms set out. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) was formed as a licensing and technology sharing organization. Any member of that organization could license the technology of any other member of that organization.
-----------
http://www.sae.org/about/intelproperty/faqs.htm
"Q. What is the SAE patent policy with regard to standards in development? What must be disclosed, by whom and by when during the standards development process?
A. SAE's IP Policy provides the following guidance:
2.3 Patents
It has been traditionally the position of SAE to avoid the use of patented technology in Technical Reports where the principal objective is conformance to the Technical Report as defined by the SAE Technical Standards Board. However, with the advent of more complex technologies, it is not always possible to provide Technical Reports that meet today's needs without incorporating technologies that are patented. It has become difficult, if not impossible, to develop standards that do not take advantage of or otherwise incorporate the use of products, systems or process that implementation would necessarily infringe a claim of such a patent. Accordingly, SAE Technical Reports may include the known use of patent(s), including patent applications, if there is in the opinion of the committee developing the Technical Report technical justification and provided that SAE receive assurance from the patent holder that it will license applicants under reasonable terms and conditions for the purpose of implementing the standard. This assurance shall be provided without coercion and prior to the approval of the standard or reaffirmation when a patent becomes known after the initial approval of the standard. This assurance shall be a letter that is in the form of either:
2.3.1 A general disclaimer to the effect that the patentee will not enforce any of its present or future patent(s) whose claims would be necessarily infringed by implementation of the proposed SAE Technical Report against any person or entity implementing the mandatory provisions of the Technical Report to effect compliance or;
2.3.2 A statement that a license will be made available to all applicants without compensation or under reasonable rates, with reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination."
---
The problem now is that people are a) allowed patents of pretty basic concepts that are quite obvious and b) using patents to stifle competition rather than license technologies.
If I were looking at reforming patents, I would look at the "obvious" clause and how to address license agreements. I don't have anything against patents as long as someone is bending hardware and selling products based on it.
Well, one of the big things is integration of the whole environment. End-to-end operations designed for end users is a bit sketchy these days.
You have to understand that Microsoft does have a rather significant edge with 8.1. My guess, if I were designing this, I would put hooks in this so that it talks to the app store. From there, they could easily extend this to sell designs. You go out to the app store, buy a design for 99 cents, then it will print it out.
When Gerstner stepped down and Palmisano took over, however, the company began a long, gradual slide. It became cost-obsessed and quarterly earnings-focused. Some belt-tightening was appropriate during the dotcom bust, but that actually didn't hit IBM very hard. The problem was that Palmisano's leadership team had no idea how to create new business, the IBM services group that Gerstner started and used to revitalize the company was reaching a kind of natural saturation point, so Palmisano started slashing costs to prop up profit growth as revenue growth got harder to find. Even worse, the cost pressure began to change the culture of the company, creating more internal competition which began to turn ugly.
By the time I left in 2011, IBM had become a fairly unpleasant place to work. Global Services was the worst, for example utilization targets were routinely set so high that it was impossible to take vacation time without working overtime in order to make up for it, and cost controls had squeezed out all career development funding unless you could hide it in customer contracts. Software Group was struggling and had shifted more to focus on sales rather than development. IBM has always been primarily a sales company, backed by engineering, but shifting the balance too far towards sales is a way to boost short-term profits at the expense of long-term success. I personally got caught in that shift; my job was transformed underneath me from an architecture and development role to a technical sales support role. I even hear from my friends in R&D that they were also getting squeezed hard, with increasing pressure to abandon work on any ideas that couldn't be productized within a few months.
When I heard that Ginni Rometty was taking over for Palmisano last year I just shook my head. Rometty was a driving force in squeezing services employees with ever-increasing utilization targets and ever-tightening cost structures. IMO, IBM needs another visionary like Gerstner, not another jumped-up middle manager like Palmisano, but that's what they got in Rometty. She's a smart, talented, aggressive jumped-up middle manager, but still not what IBM needs, IMO.
I'm glad I left. I really should have done it a few years before I did.
At least it was Ginni and not Bob Moffat. They were grooming him for CEO. They had to scramble to find someone after Moffat went to prison. (He's sad because that cost him $65 million in benefits).
Agreed about Global Services. Their LEAN thing a few years ago was horrible. I recall how it went for e-Business. They had a couple "pilot Programs" where they went through and switched us from dedicated syadmin teams to a call center operation. So, when the customer called in, they had to open a ticket for that, then it would get assigned to a sysadmin out of the pool. No one would be that familiar with the account. As soon as they got the pilot program procedures done and that customer used to the process, they then transferred everything to a call center in South America and laid off the people working in the sysadmin pool in the states.
After seeing how well that worked, they then decided to roll that out to all of e-Business. They had months of meetings of upper management. 18 hour days in Raleigh. Flew people in from all over for these meetings. Finally, they decide to implement this. So, May 1st, they gather everyone in a room at 8AM and show them a link to where the call center procedures were. They then showed a list of what people's new teams would be. It became *very* apparent that the sum total of planning for this was to have someone email the call center procedures and then assign some specific people to a couple of the teams. In fact, Moffat argued that they did not want analysis paralysis from trying to plan too completely. (I did not see evidence of 20 minutes worth of planning. They *literally* just had some emailed docs from a call center, then told us to work it out). So, what were the 18 hour day meetings for the past 6 month
Though I feel for these employees that will watch their work go elsewhere, cheaper, more flexible/captive, and lower quality.
It's the lies IBM will tell its customers, starting with the quality lies, then the onshore/offshore lies, and finally the resource commitment lies.
And how the government customers will roll over and ignore the contract provisions.
And later will stop asking IBM to even bother to keep work and data onshore when it is required by law.
Corpratists. Crony Capitalism. we are being fleeced.
When I was at IBM, it worked like this..
1Q disappointing sales.
2Q layoffs.
3Q OMG, look at things improve
4Q Look at how we've improved. Let's give the execs a bonus equivalent to the combined salary of the people we laid off.
1Q disappointing sales.
2Q layoffs.
3Q OMG, look at things improve
4Q Look at how we've improved. Let's give the execs a bonus equivalent to the combined salary of the people we laid off.
1Q disappointing sales.
2Q layoffs.
3Q OMG, look at things improve
4Q Look at how we've improved. Let's give the execs a bonus equivalent to the combined salary of the people we laid off.
Except they jumped the gun and sold product prior to the patent expiration.
3D printing has been evolving since 1986, so there a successive generations of patents as they improve techniques and as new technology becomes feasible. 3D filed a lot of patents in the mid-1990's.
They sold systems in Oct 2012 with a delivery date of Feb 2013. The particular patent in question does not expire until January 28, 2014.
Makerbot has been moving towards making and selling a consumer appliance.
The maker movement and DIY is a rather different group. Realistically, Makerbot went as far is it could with the DIY group and was running on name recognition at this point. By my count, there about 130 3D printing companies listed on 3ders.org. Most of them will be gone in a few years. And the list really does not include the major players in the 3D commercial printer market.
Historically, Makerbot had several things going for it. Bre had access to a better advertising channel than most. Effectively Make Magazine was his marketing arm. He also had most of the major R&D done by open source groups. He could concentrate on packaging and marketing. Name recognition is self-sustaining in terms of attracting deals, such as joint marketing with AutoCAD.
But, that said.. There is simply too little difference in technology between companies and their products. The extrusion based systems have their limits and to have a quantitatively better product gets very expensive, very quickly.
Most people use issued DSL or Cable modems for networking. Commodity use is directly tied to broadband. And those modems shipped based on the tech supported by the ISP. Switching to 1GbE on the switch side tracks to when companies implemented DOCSIS 2.0. When they move to DOCSIS 3.0, then you'll see an upgrade in networking layer in residential use.
Of course its growth was going to be lower.
The primary use of 10GbE is virtualization. The use of network cards are a function of the number of chassis, not the number of hosts. Numerically, 10GbE is not 10 1GbE cards. You can split the 10GbE between a lot of hosts. You can easily double, triple, or even quadruple that to making that 10 GbE card the equivalent of 1 GbE cards on 40 servers, depending of their load and use. Instead of buying 40 servers and associated cards, you're buying one larger chassis with larger pipes. In a large farm environment, and it makes sense.
Throw in the fact that network is only as fast as its narrowest choke point, there is no reason to put in a 10 GbE card behind a 7MB DSL connection.
What 10GbE needs to become a commodity is a) end of any data caps, b) data to put down that pipe, and c) a pipe that can handle it.
Show me fiber to my door and then, it will be a commodity.
A few other points..
I have seen many coding sessions where all the effort and push early is meeting basic functionality. That takes a lot of coding and communication to get going. I have been in agile sessions where they do their sprint and get basic functionality, then they write their bug reports, then go on to the next sprint coding the next batch of basic features. They never take sprints to fix bugs. You'll always see the number of outstanding bugs rise.
So, to the initial poster:
1) What is the time allocated for the coding?
2) What is the time allocated for debugging?
3) Does it take 90% of the contract timeline just to get basic functionality?
4) What are the metrics along the line for payment? Does the programmer get paid as they go along, or only at contract completion?
5) When is the spec freeze?
6) What are the test cases and who provides them?
I have a few red flags here that kinda indicates to me that it is irrelevant whether you bring in a contractor in-house as opposed to bringing them in from the outside. "Developers can make more work for themselves by causing bugs, and with the specifications I write there is no excuse for not testing their code." is a red flag for me. You don't trust your developers. I have *never* in 30 years really ran into any systemic problem along those lines, even with an individual developer. In general terms, bugs are the last thing to be addressed after getting core functionality and basic QA completed.
The reason why they generally don't complain upfront is because you are backloading all the ways to get away without paying them.