You are, of course. Correct. I recall reading about the Springfields used by the North. They weren't a "true" rifling, like a modern rifle. At any rate, they were accurate enough. (A modern - 50 years old or newer - shotgun is capable of accurately hitting a deer with a slug at 50 yards; the biggest limitation is in the sighting and the shooter's ability.)
As far as the Civil War.. a tactical change is only possible once the necessary strategic changes are made. It doesn't matter if the rifle is more accurate if it isn't as effective (I recall hearing that the newer rifles were, at first, not preferred due to taking more effort to reload than a smoothbore).
A large, poorly trained army is not able to make good use of accurate small arms. Near the end of the war, they started to reap the benefits of those changes in tactics (the north and south both, but mainly the North which took a more scientific approach).
Additionally, the trench warfare was a near-necessity due to both the volume of fire capable of being put out at one time as well as the length of time it took to reload. They stood at their most effective distance, trying to balance casualties with capability.
The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face.
Are you kidding me? Then why was war so popular when all people had were clubs and stones? War is almost non-existent now in comparison, even in the shitty parts of the world.
War was horrifying and terrifying to several generations of Americans and Europeans - the ones who fought the World Wars. Those were terrifying wars! Even in reasonably modern history, there has been a non-trivial amount of bloodlust and pride in the minds of those going to war to kill. Things like taking scalps, pocket watches, and pendants from those slain, or making a show of those you've killed (pilots marking downed enemies on their plane fuselages, snipers/marksmen doing same on their rifle stocks, etc.)
War - and the associated killing - is fucking exciting. It's the dying which isn't so great, so it's mostly avoided at all costs. Those "costs" are usually killing more of the other side.
Especially in today's Western society of moral relativism, I'd think there'd be little to no compunction of killing someone else who has no social connection to you whatsoever, particularly for financial gain. (I don't personally agree with that, but it certainly meshes with the "if it feels good, do it" mentality.)
If the US were to switch to a carpet-bombing strategy in Afghanistan, things would be almost no different from a battle point of view. A few civilians might even cooperate with turning over the combatants out of sheer terror of the bombers. But the world opinion would turn against America, certainly to punitive isolation and perhaps even to the point of invasion. Which would be exactly what both the hawks and xenophobes of the extremist right wing want.
Seriously? Is invasion of one's country really what anyone wants?
I'm not saying you're wrong (or right) in the rest of what you say, but such a supposition at the end certainly draws question into your line of reasoning.
Incorrect. Most of the weapons of the civil war were not issued (especially in the South): they were what the soldiers brought to war with them. The Northern army did try to provide its soldiers (especially immigrants) with firearms, but most of them were smooth bores still. It wasn't until the later part of the war that rifles became available, and only then in very few numbers to specialists and the like.
Furthermore, it was the Revolutionary War in which British troops (mostly Prussian mercenaries) did the lining up (and dying), while us cowardly Americans hid behind trees in a strategic fashion to fire our shots and quickly fled independently before any retaliatory action could be taken.
As far as I know, the first examples of "asymmetrical warfare" in the Western world are American.
As far as Civil War weapon accuracy... the majority were not accurate, no. However, there were marksmen (iirc), later called Sharps Shooters (who used the infamous Sharps rifle) who could hit small targets at a very far distance. I've read of Civil War snipers taking other snipers out of trees from over 300 paces with smooth bore firearms. Granted, this was not your common soldier, but it was possible and not entirely uncommon: both sides employed snipers to pick off officers (and each other). The North became much more effective at doing so later in the war when accurate rifled firearms (with cartridges, not ball and powder) became available.
You're forgetting (or never knew) the many times that Westerners have been slaughtered by Muslim extremists in the last century. Hint: it didn't start with 9/11 and has been going on for a very, very long time (with Islamic adherents as the antagonists).
The US has been fighting Muslim barbarians since shortly after its founding. Hell, the very first action by the USMC was against Muslim pirate-lords who were doing much the same thing as current Muslim extremists are doing today. (Look up the Barbary Wars, in the event you haven't heard of them. I doubt you'll find reference to American Imperialism like you're surely hoping for, as there wasn't any. I should note: if we were to handle things now the way we did then, there would be no further issues with these cultural primitives.)
The bulk of Islam may be peaceful, but the people in their lands who control the power are not, and never have been. They have been a nuisance for the West for at least 200 years. It is only recently, since Western technologies such as air planes, telecommunications, modern weaponry, and cheap commercial transit have made it possible for them to strike us at home, have they become a threat.
If you want to blame someone for it, British Imperialism would be the most logical target. After that, Mohammed himself or the very nature of Arab tribal culture and politics which has become so infused with Islam as to be inseparable.
Cool technology and all, but it doesn't matter if we own the air or not.
Air superiority resulting in victory has not been the case since World War II. Even then, it's debatable how significant the air superiority was to said success and not just as a counter-action measure to deny their opponents. Bombing only goes so far in subduing an opponent.
What wins wars is troops on the ground: soldiers, specifically, but all the support trappings (tanks, bases, antiaircraft, regional support carriers, etc.) as well.
This is why we've got the military funding the creation of technologies which could one day be used to take soldiers off the ground. Warfare science is getting freakishly close to the capabilities of the horrors of science fiction - Terminators and Cylons alike.
No, we're nowhere near the AI necessary for such things (thus why the prospect of such things is so scary, and why it makes good fiction). But we're probably not all that far from being able to make the battle suits of Starship Troopers. And once we get that far, we're not bound by the visions of someone over 50 years ago: we have the technology to control the robots remotely, and don't need to put the extra funding and design into making the suit life-sustaining.
That's still pretty scary. I can't imagine what it would be like to be pitted up against a squad of robotic troopers with bulletproof armor, carrying 12 gauge HE rifles, and the accuracy of a skilled twitch gamer (who doesn't have the concern of dying pushing adrenaline through his blood). Even if they've only got an effective battlefield "use cycle" of several hours due to power requirements, that's a hell of a lot of firepower at little to no human life risk for those holding said robots.
Guess what? Flash sites don't work well on any platform that exists now, so this is is hardly a surprise.
The "hover" issue is endemic to the web, these days. When you've got only a single tap or a hold to indicate input, you're bound to only two forms of input: this prevents things like mouseover javascript and the various "interactive" web features which are currently available.
Saying input limitations are what would keep Flash off touchscreen devices is a cop out. Complex web pages are browsable on mobile devices right now, albeit with some limitations. The real problems with flash are, indeed stability, bloat/inefficiency/memory use, and battery drain. When flash vvideo only just-barely plays full screen on a 2GHz desktop with mediocre dedicated graphics, there's an obvious problem.
At best, Flash will have limited utility on such devices due to memory use. Otherwise, they'd have to completely rewrite the platform.
Caveat: the water moisture condensing on the phones may be pure "enough", but that's not what causes the damage in such a situation (arguably). It would be the sweat, grease, oils, and dirt which have also worked their way into the device from daily regular handling and contact with users' faces.
Realistically, there's no reason why the iPhone can't be hermetically sealed. There are no replaceable parts in them. Just seal them and be done with it: then there'd be no possible way for failure to occur. However, I suspect that wouldn't net Apple as much revenue.
Have you looked at the provider price for a new, unlocked cell phone lately? It could hardly go up more: most are as much as, if not more than, a new desktop/laptop computer! The prices are going up for many providers.
Providers should give me a new laptop/phone/whatever if I drop it in water because that's what the fucking warranty they provided me says they'd do: I pay the monthly added fee for the damage warranty, and if my device is damaged, they will replace or repair it. There is no mention of a little pink sticker.
I had them pull that nonsense on me - telling me I couldn't get it replaced because I was "abusive" to the phone, which put it outside the bounds of the country - all on account of moisture (sticker activation was not the cause of the failure: a button physically stopped working/didn't click). So I carefully cut out a piece of paper and replaced the sticker, then took it to antoher Verizon store: problem solved.
However, I consider myself a systems engineer, despite having no "formal" background in engineering.
I've got an IT degree as well as approximately a decade of helping my father with his self-owned engineering company: I was involved in all the nuances of the business and engineering side, often working side-by-side with my PE father to get a project out the door.
In short, I think like an engineer: I look at the low-level problem (or, at least, try to).
The "engineer" distinction is much more difficult to nail down for a programmer than it is for a systems or network guy. A "throw shit together" programmer doesn't have nearly as much distinguishing him from the others as a "throw shit together" net/sys guy does.
I'd say that to be true. Programmers/developers are more like artists than they are engineers due to the way they tend to go about things. I'd say that if there were engineers in IT, it'd be the systems and network guys. Not so much the Jr. level system/network guys, but the senior level guys who design things out properly (as an engineer would) are certainly engineers.
Yeah, we'll get right on that. I'm currently working on a prototype which burns hippies. There are some kinks to work out (such as burning hippies requiring an initial dousing of burning oil), but I'm sure that'll all be worked out once we get the venture capital and hit the banks.
Oh yeah, I thought I might add: if the asking price in a Chinese market is $40, you know they'll part with the device for a fraction of that. They probably get them for $10-15 each and are pleased if they make $25 each.
The one thing which would make me seriously consider buying one (or more) of these phones - even though I'm in an all-CDMA area - is the ability to run Linux on them - Maemo/Moblin/Android or similar.
So, I have to wonder: why hasn't anyone put Linux on any of these, and why isn't there an extensive modding community? Do they have DRM or some such thing preventing such a thing, or are so many corners taken that booting anything but the stock ROM will fail? A new $50 ARM computer with decent specs and a usable touchscreen, not to mention killer battery life? Where do I sign up!
Think about it: these are dirt cheap MIPS or (more likely) ARM based devices. They've got some solidly impressive specifications (even if half the parts barely meet electrical tolerances). They are not slow. Equivalent or lesser development platforms (FriendlyARM) are much more expensive ($140 or so) for something similar, and that's about as good as you can find for a dev board with a touchscreen LCD of any type.
If this school is anything like the schools I remember growing up from my and my siblings' childhood, then I'd say the chances of many of these "faculty" being "students" is fairly high.
I'm not saying the faculty didn't do it (I didn't RTFA, I heard about it on the radio w/ skepticism about whether the claims were real), but these are "educators" we're talking about here. They're the soft, squishy types (or the limp-wrists who hang hang out with them) with nothing between the ears (for the most part).
My youngest sibling graduated high school in 2004. One of her classmates was caught "hacking" computers in the lab (access to unrestricted file servers which should have been). One of my brother's siblings got caught for accessing the teacher electronic grading system (from the lab, not from a special computer, using the last names of the teachers and blank passwords - as observed from the classroom as the teacher typed it). When I was in school, I know there were at least a couple people gaining juicy gossip and hotmail account login credentials through keyloggers, and I imagine such things go on still today.
I remember this nonsense going on back into the early 1990s. No matter what, there will always be one or two curious, creative, and inquisitive kids within a student populace which will be able to get around the simple restrictive measures put in forth by a group self-selected for mediocrity.
Let's put it this way: If you were a high school geek with a mischeivious streak and knew that all of the laptops - which every student had one of and could be remotely administered/accessed - had web cams, would you see if you could acquire images from that hot cheerleader you've had a crush on since middle school? Damn straight you would, consequences be damned. Boobs have a strange way of enticing geeky high school kids to do stupid shit.
I have a 700MHz Celeron laptop I still use; it has 386Mb of RAM. It runs OO.org just fine (Windows XP and Linux) - though load time is a bit long (not over 20s).
over the years it has received extra RAM, new graphics, and so forth, so it now boasts...
... a massive percentage of your power bill.
Really, though. The P3 was a good chip. The P4 was smoking silicon slag. I'd rather have a P3 today than a P4 - unless the P4 came with a bunch of RAMBUS memory. That, I'd sell.
There's not much memorable or even appreciable from that era of x86 other than being able to say "I was there", and maybe being able to actually gain a leg up against competitors by using AMD.
I've noticed an attitude in many people which might be falsely construed as "jaded", "biased", "angry", "hostile", "unfriendly" - you name it. My experience is that the observers are just missing the vapid, bubbly personality that a younger person is more likely to put forward to try to impress with.
An older person knows better: they know such tricks work short term, but do nothing in the long term. They know real people - ones with knowledge and (importantly!) life experience are not typically so doe-eyed and bushy tailed.
An older person hopefully knows, likely through mistakes, that you've got to be true to yourself. This isn't to the preclusion of a pleasant personality, mind you. But I honestly would not trust an "older" person who has not become at least a little bit jaded in their lives - and I'd advise others to do the same. If someone hasn't become biased, jaded, or cynical to some degree, I'd say the likelihood is high that they've done more stepping on others than they've been stepped on, and should be best avoided.
Gadget insurance is idiotic. The only people who carry it either (a) can't take care of their shit, or (b) intend to defraud the insurer.
... or they take reasonable precautions so that they don't have to pay the "lump sum" again (within an expected/planned time frame, at least).
I've never bought insurance before (aside from state regulated, etc.) but I do have a friend who bought a laptop from Dell last summer. It was around $2500, so it wasn't a "gadget" but the principle remains the same: the insurance was roughly proportional to what you'd pay for a $500 phone. He paid another $100 or so for a three year "unlimited" warranty.
The first thing that happened was the screen died. He called up and tried to get it repaired. They said it was his fault (despite the 'unlimited' warranty) and that the warranty didn't cover it: obviously he did something to break it intentionally. Note, he'd had the laptop for only 2-3 months at this point, and he's the kind of laptop user who keeps a (thin) protective sheet between the LCD and keyboard and wipes it down carefully before and after use.
Almost 30 hours(!) on the phone later, he finally got them to allow him to ship the laptop to them to have the panel replaced. About a week and a half later, the laptop was returned: this time with the low-end (1280x780 or some such thing) LCD and a broken Bluray drive and chassis (from improper/rough LCD replacement).
This went on for a while, and he finally got it all sorted... but for over $2,000, or even $250, that's a shitload to pay for something which might not work in 3 months. Most people have a "fun fund" in the low hundreds every month (you know, non-singles and/or people with kids) and it might take weeks to recoup
Consider: mom and dad had the same two or or three phones in their house while you were growing up (maybe they sprung for a wireless handset or two). Grandma and Grandpa had the same phone in the house from the time that Mom/Dad was a kid through until it no longer worked (digital conversion switchover) and the wiring had to be replaced in the walls to get phone service again.
Seemingly, most replacements are due to the item being replaced no longer working (whether due to failure or antiquity).
(The irony is that the hardware in many "junk" phones is still quite capable of modern functionality: it's the software stacks which don't get updated which are lacking. If they'd focus on providing upgrades to the phones, maybe they'd not have to contend with so many intentionally broken phones. Likewise, if people didn't get "free" phones, they'd probably be a bit more careful.)
True story: I worked with a guy for a little while who ran over his cell phone while he was driving. He went to pick up the phone and put it to his ear while he was driving around a corner. it flew out the window, off the side-view window, and into the front wheel-well (if I recall the story right). I've done similar "impossible" feats, like dropping something fragile and in an attempt to grab it before it hits the floor, kick/punch it half way across the room.
He was seriously pissed, too, because he'd just gotten the phone and had passed up the insurance. Had to go back to his ancient phone until he could get another.
Another thing to note... until very recently (Windows Mobile 6, I'd say), Microsoft has not been focusing their smartphone tech towards common users. The main suite of functionality has been: MAPI connectivity/email, productivity (mini-office) contacts, email and navigation. Including navigation, Windows Mobile devices (and all prior WinCE based devices) have been far beyond the capabilities of anything else: there just hasn't been competition. There still isn't.
When they rolled the Zune team into the WinMo team, things changed with a more "user centric" device. That's really when they started pushing for the same market. While Apple did start the 'inexpensive smart phone', Microsoft has been doing smartphones (through proxies) for much longer. Instead of $350 or so, they cost over 3 times as much, granted - but things have changed a lot, and what is now possible at the $350-500 price point is different than it was almost a decade ago.
The foundation of WinCE is actually not that bad for such a device. It's a fairly stable OS at this point: it has "true" multitasking, for one thing. Battery life on a WinCE device kicks the crap out of Android and iPhone (possibly due to the MIPS heritage, but I couldn't say for sure).
I'm a Linux geek, and frankly, I don't see much exciting in Android. The tools are limited compared to what's available on Windows Mobile or the iPhone. Likewise, the iPhone lacks a lot of what Windows Mobile has. Except for the "Microsoft makes it" and the Activesync skeleton in the closet, I can't think of a single reason to prefer an iPhone or Android over modern Windows Mobile phone. I'd love to be able to have a Touch Pro 2 (carrier support).
Hell, if you know what you're doing, you can roll and upgrade your own WinMo phone without -too- much of a headache. Most of them don't seem to require extensive "jailbreaking". Even the Verizon Touch Pro 2 is trivial to gain full access to.
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You are, of course. Correct. I recall reading about the Springfields used by the North. They weren't a "true" rifling, like a modern rifle. At any rate, they were accurate enough. (A modern - 50 years old or newer - shotgun is capable of accurately hitting a deer with a slug at 50 yards; the biggest limitation is in the sighting and the shooter's ability.)
As far as the Civil War.. a tactical change is only possible once the necessary strategic changes are made. It doesn't matter if the rifle is more accurate if it isn't as effective (I recall hearing that the newer rifles were, at first, not preferred due to taking more effort to reload than a smoothbore).
A large, poorly trained army is not able to make good use of accurate small arms. Near the end of the war, they started to reap the benefits of those changes in tactics (the north and south both, but mainly the North which took a more scientific approach).
Additionally, the trench warfare was a near-necessity due to both the volume of fire capable of being put out at one time as well as the length of time it took to reload. They stood at their most effective distance, trying to balance casualties with capability.
The readiness to kill is somewhat lower if you have to be involved face-to-face.
Are you kidding me? Then why was war so popular when all people had were clubs and stones? War is almost non-existent now in comparison, even in the shitty parts of the world.
War was horrifying and terrifying to several generations of Americans and Europeans - the ones who fought the World Wars. Those were terrifying wars! Even in reasonably modern history, there has been a non-trivial amount of bloodlust and pride in the minds of those going to war to kill. Things like taking scalps, pocket watches, and pendants from those slain, or making a show of those you've killed (pilots marking downed enemies on their plane fuselages, snipers/marksmen doing same on their rifle stocks, etc.)
War - and the associated killing - is fucking exciting. It's the dying which isn't so great, so it's mostly avoided at all costs. Those "costs" are usually killing more of the other side.
Especially in today's Western society of moral relativism, I'd think there'd be little to no compunction of killing someone else who has no social connection to you whatsoever, particularly for financial gain. (I don't personally agree with that, but it certainly meshes with the "if it feels good, do it" mentality.)
If the US were to switch to a carpet-bombing strategy in Afghanistan, things would be almost no different from a battle point of view. A few civilians might even cooperate with turning over the combatants out of sheer terror of the bombers. But the world opinion would turn against America, certainly to punitive isolation and perhaps even to the point of invasion. Which would be exactly what both the hawks and xenophobes of the extremist right wing want.
Seriously? Is invasion of one's country really what anyone wants?
I'm not saying you're wrong (or right) in the rest of what you say, but such a supposition at the end certainly draws question into your line of reasoning.
Incorrect. Most of the weapons of the civil war were not issued (especially in the South): they were what the soldiers brought to war with them. The Northern army did try to provide its soldiers (especially immigrants) with firearms, but most of them were smooth bores still. It wasn't until the later part of the war that rifles became available, and only then in very few numbers to specialists and the like.
Furthermore, it was the Revolutionary War in which British troops (mostly Prussian mercenaries) did the lining up (and dying), while us cowardly Americans hid behind trees in a strategic fashion to fire our shots and quickly fled independently before any retaliatory action could be taken.
As far as I know, the first examples of "asymmetrical warfare" in the Western world are American.
As far as Civil War weapon accuracy... the majority were not accurate, no. However, there were marksmen (iirc), later called Sharps Shooters (who used the infamous Sharps rifle) who could hit small targets at a very far distance. I've read of Civil War snipers taking other snipers out of trees from over 300 paces with smooth bore firearms. Granted, this was not your common soldier, but it was possible and not entirely uncommon: both sides employed snipers to pick off officers (and each other). The North became much more effective at doing so later in the war when accurate rifled firearms (with cartridges, not ball and powder) became available.
Pretty sure that wasn't John Wayne - it was Patton. The actual quote is some variation of:
I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.
You're forgetting (or never knew) the many times that Westerners have been slaughtered by Muslim extremists in the last century. Hint: it didn't start with 9/11 and has been going on for a very, very long time (with Islamic adherents as the antagonists).
The US has been fighting Muslim barbarians since shortly after its founding. Hell, the very first action by the USMC was against Muslim pirate-lords who were doing much the same thing as current Muslim extremists are doing today. (Look up the Barbary Wars, in the event you haven't heard of them. I doubt you'll find reference to American Imperialism like you're surely hoping for, as there wasn't any. I should note: if we were to handle things now the way we did then, there would be no further issues with these cultural primitives.)
The bulk of Islam may be peaceful, but the people in their lands who control the power are not, and never have been. They have been a nuisance for the West for at least 200 years. It is only recently, since Western technologies such as air planes, telecommunications, modern weaponry, and cheap commercial transit have made it possible for them to strike us at home, have they become a threat.
If you want to blame someone for it, British Imperialism would be the most logical target. After that, Mohammed himself or the very nature of Arab tribal culture and politics which has become so infused with Islam as to be inseparable.
Cool technology and all, but it doesn't matter if we own the air or not.
Air superiority resulting in victory has not been the case since World War II. Even then, it's debatable how significant the air superiority was to said success and not just as a counter-action measure to deny their opponents. Bombing only goes so far in subduing an opponent.
What wins wars is troops on the ground: soldiers, specifically, but all the support trappings (tanks, bases, antiaircraft, regional support carriers, etc.) as well.
This is why we've got the military funding the creation of technologies which could one day be used to take soldiers off the ground. Warfare science is getting freakishly close to the capabilities of the horrors of science fiction - Terminators and Cylons alike.
No, we're nowhere near the AI necessary for such things (thus why the prospect of such things is so scary, and why it makes good fiction). But we're probably not all that far from being able to make the battle suits of Starship Troopers. And once we get that far, we're not bound by the visions of someone over 50 years ago: we have the technology to control the robots remotely, and don't need to put the extra funding and design into making the suit life-sustaining.
That's still pretty scary. I can't imagine what it would be like to be pitted up against a squad of robotic troopers with bulletproof armor, carrying 12 gauge HE rifles, and the accuracy of a skilled twitch gamer (who doesn't have the concern of dying pushing adrenaline through his blood). Even if they've only got an effective battlefield "use cycle" of several hours due to power requirements, that's a hell of a lot of firepower at little to no human life risk for those holding said robots.
Guess what? Flash sites don't work well on any platform that exists now, so this is is hardly a surprise.
The "hover" issue is endemic to the web, these days. When you've got only a single tap or a hold to indicate input, you're bound to only two forms of input: this prevents things like mouseover javascript and the various "interactive" web features which are currently available.
Saying input limitations are what would keep Flash off touchscreen devices is a cop out. Complex web pages are browsable on mobile devices right now, albeit with some limitations. The real problems with flash are, indeed stability, bloat/inefficiency/memory use, and battery drain. When flash vvideo only just-barely plays full screen on a 2GHz desktop with mediocre dedicated graphics, there's an obvious problem.
At best, Flash will have limited utility on such devices due to memory use. Otherwise, they'd have to completely rewrite the platform.
Caveat: the water moisture condensing on the phones may be pure "enough", but that's not what causes the damage in such a situation (arguably). It would be the sweat, grease, oils, and dirt which have also worked their way into the device from daily regular handling and contact with users' faces.
Realistically, there's no reason why the iPhone can't be hermetically sealed. There are no replaceable parts in them. Just seal them and be done with it: then there'd be no possible way for failure to occur. However, I suspect that wouldn't net Apple as much revenue.
Have you looked at the provider price for a new, unlocked cell phone lately? It could hardly go up more: most are as much as, if not more than, a new desktop/laptop computer! The prices are going up for many providers.
Providers should give me a new laptop/phone/whatever if I drop it in water because that's what the fucking warranty they provided me says they'd do: I pay the monthly added fee for the damage warranty, and if my device is damaged, they will replace or repair it. There is no mention of a little pink sticker.
I had them pull that nonsense on me - telling me I couldn't get it replaced because I was "abusive" to the phone, which put it outside the bounds of the country - all on account of moisture (sticker activation was not the cause of the failure: a button physically stopped working/didn't click). So I carefully cut out a piece of paper and replaced the sticker, then took it to antoher Verizon store: problem solved.
I couldn't agree with you more.
However, I consider myself a systems engineer, despite having no "formal" background in engineering.
I've got an IT degree as well as approximately a decade of helping my father with his self-owned engineering company: I was involved in all the nuances of the business and engineering side, often working side-by-side with my PE father to get a project out the door.
In short, I think like an engineer: I look at the low-level problem (or, at least, try to).
The "engineer" distinction is much more difficult to nail down for a programmer than it is for a systems or network guy. A "throw shit together" programmer doesn't have nearly as much distinguishing him from the others as a "throw shit together" net/sys guy does.
I'd say that to be true. Programmers/developers are more like artists than they are engineers due to the way they tend to go about things. I'd say that if there were engineers in IT, it'd be the systems and network guys. Not so much the Jr. level system/network guys, but the senior level guys who design things out properly (as an engineer would) are certainly engineers.
But it's not "chance" which allowed them to succeed or caused them to fail. It was market position and maturity - timing, essentially.
If your timing is off, it doesn't matter what you've got: you're going to fail. That was the point.
(The Nupedia idea was too little too late; the resturaunt idea was way too soon. No telling on the others.)
If your timing is right, the rest is marketing.
Microsoft is exceedingly prone to failure. Most of their products are - even the ones which make them money.
But, they've had a handful of products which are "good enough", and that's "good enough". So they're successful.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of companies making EMR software which is a complete failure on every level, but most of those companies post profit.
Yeah, we'll get right on that. I'm currently working on a prototype which burns hippies. There are some kinks to work out (such as burning hippies requiring an initial dousing of burning oil), but I'm sure that'll all be worked out once we get the venture capital and hit the banks.
Oh yeah, I thought I might add: if the asking price in a Chinese market is $40, you know they'll part with the device for a fraction of that. They probably get them for $10-15 each and are pleased if they make $25 each.
The one thing which would make me seriously consider buying one (or more) of these phones - even though I'm in an all-CDMA area - is the ability to run Linux on them - Maemo/Moblin/Android or similar.
So, I have to wonder: why hasn't anyone put Linux on any of these, and why isn't there an extensive modding community? Do they have DRM or some such thing preventing such a thing, or are so many corners taken that booting anything but the stock ROM will fail? A new $50 ARM computer with decent specs and a usable touchscreen, not to mention killer battery life? Where do I sign up!
Think about it: these are dirt cheap MIPS or (more likely) ARM based devices. They've got some solidly impressive specifications (even if half the parts barely meet electrical tolerances). They are not slow. Equivalent or lesser development platforms (FriendlyARM) are much more expensive ($140 or so) for something similar, and that's about as good as you can find for a dev board with a touchscreen LCD of any type.
If this school is anything like the schools I remember growing up from my and my siblings' childhood, then I'd say the chances of many of these "faculty" being "students" is fairly high.
I'm not saying the faculty didn't do it (I didn't RTFA, I heard about it on the radio w/ skepticism about whether the claims were real), but these are "educators" we're talking about here. They're the soft, squishy types (or the limp-wrists who hang hang out with them) with nothing between the ears (for the most part).
My youngest sibling graduated high school in 2004. One of her classmates was caught "hacking" computers in the lab (access to unrestricted file servers which should have been). One of my brother's siblings got caught for accessing the teacher electronic grading system (from the lab, not from a special computer, using the last names of the teachers and blank passwords - as observed from the classroom as the teacher typed it). When I was in school, I know there were at least a couple people gaining juicy gossip and hotmail account login credentials through keyloggers, and I imagine such things go on still today.
I remember this nonsense going on back into the early 1990s. No matter what, there will always be one or two curious, creative, and inquisitive kids within a student populace which will be able to get around the simple restrictive measures put in forth by a group self-selected for mediocrity.
Let's put it this way: If you were a high school geek with a mischeivious streak and knew that all of the laptops - which every student had one of and could be remotely administered/accessed - had web cams, would you see if you could acquire images from that hot cheerleader you've had a crush on since middle school? Damn straight you would, consequences be damned. Boobs have a strange way of enticing geeky high school kids to do stupid shit.
I have a 700MHz Celeron laptop I still use; it has 386Mb of RAM. It runs OO.org just fine (Windows XP and Linux) - though load time is a bit long (not over 20s).
over the years it has received extra RAM, new graphics, and so forth, so it now boasts...
... a massive percentage of your power bill.
Really, though. The P3 was a good chip. The P4 was smoking silicon slag. I'd rather have a P3 today than a P4 - unless the P4 came with a bunch of RAMBUS memory. That, I'd sell.
There's not much memorable or even appreciable from that era of x86 other than being able to say "I was there", and maybe being able to actually gain a leg up against competitors by using AMD.
I've noticed an attitude in many people which might be falsely construed as "jaded", "biased", "angry", "hostile", "unfriendly" - you name it. My experience is that the observers are just missing the vapid, bubbly personality that a younger person is more likely to put forward to try to impress with.
An older person knows better: they know such tricks work short term, but do nothing in the long term. They know real people - ones with knowledge and (importantly!) life experience are not typically so doe-eyed and bushy tailed.
An older person hopefully knows, likely through mistakes, that you've got to be true to yourself. This isn't to the preclusion of a pleasant personality, mind you. But I honestly would not trust an "older" person who has not become at least a little bit jaded in their lives - and I'd advise others to do the same. If someone hasn't become biased, jaded, or cynical to some degree, I'd say the likelihood is high that they've done more stepping on others than they've been stepped on, and should be best avoided.
Gadget insurance is idiotic. The only people who carry it either (a) can't take care of their shit, or (b) intend to defraud the insurer.
... or they take reasonable precautions so that they don't have to pay the "lump sum" again (within an expected/planned time frame, at least).
I've never bought insurance before (aside from state regulated, etc.) but I do have a friend who bought a laptop from Dell last summer. It was around $2500, so it wasn't a "gadget" but the principle remains the same: the insurance was roughly proportional to what you'd pay for a $500 phone. He paid another $100 or so for a three year "unlimited" warranty.
The first thing that happened was the screen died. He called up and tried to get it repaired. They said it was his fault (despite the 'unlimited' warranty) and that the warranty didn't cover it: obviously he did something to break it intentionally. Note, he'd had the laptop for only 2-3 months at this point, and he's the kind of laptop user who keeps a (thin) protective sheet between the LCD and keyboard and wipes it down carefully before and after use.
Almost 30 hours(!) on the phone later, he finally got them to allow him to ship the laptop to them to have the panel replaced. About a week and a half later, the laptop was returned: this time with the low-end (1280x780 or some such thing) LCD and a broken Bluray drive and chassis (from improper/rough LCD replacement).
This went on for a while, and he finally got it all sorted... but for over $2,000, or even $250, that's a shitload to pay for something which might not work in 3 months. Most people have a "fun fund" in the low hundreds every month (you know, non-singles and/or people with kids) and it might take weeks to recoup
Consider: mom and dad had the same two or or three phones in their house while you were growing up (maybe they sprung for a wireless handset or two). Grandma and Grandpa had the same phone in the house from the time that Mom/Dad was a kid through until it no longer worked (digital conversion switchover) and the wiring had to be replaced in the walls to get phone service again.
Seemingly, most replacements are due to the item being replaced no longer working (whether due to failure or antiquity).
(The irony is that the hardware in many "junk" phones is still quite capable of modern functionality: it's the software stacks which don't get updated which are lacking. If they'd focus on providing upgrades to the phones, maybe they'd not have to contend with so many intentionally broken phones. Likewise, if people didn't get "free" phones, they'd probably be a bit more careful.)
True story: I worked with a guy for a little while who ran over his cell phone while he was driving. He went to pick up the phone and put it to his ear while he was driving around a corner. it flew out the window, off the side-view window, and into the front wheel-well (if I recall the story right). I've done similar "impossible" feats, like dropping something fragile and in an attempt to grab it before it hits the floor, kick/punch it half way across the room.
He was seriously pissed, too, because he'd just gotten the phone and had passed up the insurance. Had to go back to his ancient phone until he could get another.
It's really not, it's just (I suspect) more common than with other phones due to the typical demographic of iPhone users.
From what I've seen, iPhone users are typically:
a) atypically trendy
b) politically apathetic or adherent to the philosophies of Marx
c) morally relativistic
d) pompous and self righteous
It's not surprising that these people might be prone to take advantage of others for their self-gratification and fulfillment.
Another thing to note... until very recently (Windows Mobile 6, I'd say), Microsoft has not been focusing their smartphone tech towards common users. The main suite of functionality has been: MAPI connectivity/email, productivity (mini-office) contacts, email and navigation. Including navigation, Windows Mobile devices (and all prior WinCE based devices) have been far beyond the capabilities of anything else: there just hasn't been competition. There still isn't.
When they rolled the Zune team into the WinMo team, things changed with a more "user centric" device. That's really when they started pushing for the same market. While Apple did start the 'inexpensive smart phone', Microsoft has been doing smartphones (through proxies) for much longer. Instead of $350 or so, they cost over 3 times as much, granted - but things have changed a lot, and what is now possible at the $350-500 price point is different than it was almost a decade ago.
The foundation of WinCE is actually not that bad for such a device. It's a fairly stable OS at this point: it has "true" multitasking, for one thing. Battery life on a WinCE device kicks the crap out of Android and iPhone (possibly due to the MIPS heritage, but I couldn't say for sure).
I'm a Linux geek, and frankly, I don't see much exciting in Android. The tools are limited compared to what's available on Windows Mobile or the iPhone. Likewise, the iPhone lacks a lot of what Windows Mobile has. Except for the "Microsoft makes it" and the Activesync skeleton in the closet, I can't think of a single reason to prefer an iPhone or Android over modern Windows Mobile phone. I'd love to be able to have a Touch Pro 2 (carrier support).
Hell, if you know what you're doing, you can roll and upgrade your own WinMo phone without -too- much of a headache. Most of them don't seem to require extensive "jailbreaking". Even the Verizon Touch Pro 2 is trivial to gain full access to.