Last generation consoles? You mean the XBox and Playstation 2?
Last I checked, there aren't xb720 or Playstation 4 consoles on the shelves this year for Christmas. The purse strings will loosen for the WiiU this year, or possibly for the steeply discounted Wii, at Christmas time. For many families, the Wii will be the only console attached to their TVs for some time.
They'll be hurting on console sales next year (or whenever their competition releases a new console) but that doesn't matter. They'll already be in people's homes selling games at profit, having already made up their initial investment in tooling, etc. That gives them a lot more room to move should they want to offer some stiff competition to the other consoles a year or two from now.
Quite obviously employers have a very different definition of talent than people who actually have said talent and capabilities. It's either that or we are in an all-out war with employers at this point over wages and foreign worker importation/outsourcing - take your pick.
This seems to me to be yet another ploy to push for more H1B workers and to justify outsourcing. There's no two ways about it.
"Not enough qualified applicants" my ass. I happen to be aware of quite a few competent people who are out there looking for positions in "in-demand" fields. Guess what? They're getting stonewalled.
(Sorry, you're going to be hiring 5 green programmers for every 2 experienced, and 5 experienced for every expert - that's just the way it is. You can't only staff experts unless you're willing to pay expert rates. It's not good for anyone.)
If, in fact, they really think there is a lack of qualified people, here's their problem: there has been a breakdown of communication, and their formalized hiring processes, excessive HR, and outsourced employee sourcing (you know, headhunters) are at the root of the problem. Finding (and keeping) good employees is the single most important part of maintaining and growing a business. Why would you push that responsibility to someone else? What ends up happening is that headhunters (of all kinds) do end up finding qualified applicants who are looking for work - we just write them off as spam, telemarketers, or insincere requests without so much as a second notice because of how unprofessionally we're addressed. (Hint: having an Indian "initial contact" team for your HR is not a good idea; neither is using an automated system for requesting potentially qualified applicants to submit a resume via eg. LinkedIn - you're only going to get desperate people, not those who are capable.)
The culpability for this problem sits squarely on the employer.
I don't know about you, but I've rarely seen a pair of officers in most cars unless we're talking about somewhere like Oakland, CA.
In the Dodge Charger squad cars, there simply isn't enough room for the electronics and a passenger - not unless the passenger is under 6' and 150lb at least. Not only do the newer cars afford barely any space, but the equipment takes up a lot. (This was much less a problem in a Vic.)
Because it's not like this is even a fractional amount of the setup most police squad cars have (at least here in the US):
* Multiple radios, usually 2-3 from what I've seen (emergency, local police dispatch, national or state frequencies, etc.) * A laptop on a mount * A printer * A shotgun * A radar gun * spot lights * fancy data uplinks
What exactly would the problem be with anyone having these things in their car?
Keep in mind that "all of the above", plus what the guy in Germany had, is common fare for many US truckers (well, except the shotgun, which I believe is now illegal for a trucker to have in his cab).
Are you seriously comparing a new phone to one from 2 and a half years ago (running a very dated Android release, assuming you didn't bother to update it) or an iPhone (the original? if no, then which?) to a phone that came out two weeks ago?
I agree that Windows Phone offers a very nice 'no frills, just works' experience, and for some people it's a great choice. It does the basic "keep me connected" functionality very well. But please, let's not be disingenuous in our comparisons.
* Zune * Windows 8 * Windows ME * Windows Vista * Windows * iPhone 5 * Nokia Lumia * Windows Mobile * Windows Phone * Microsoft Bob
These are all products which bled or are in the process of bleeding money for their companies; they're all products which ultimately failed or will do so. Slashdotters overwhelmingly acknowledged these as crap products long before they were acknowledged as failures by their respective companies.
Here's the thing about people who are overwhelmingly intellectually skeptical (or 'negative' as viewed by others). They're usually right - if not exactly correct, they see things through a pretty clear lens of observational experience. You can have people say "Republicans are wrong" and on the other side of the fence have people say "Democrats are wrong", and have both be 100% correct.
In this specific case, it is our job to be critical, skeptical, and generally consider products to be shit until proven to be otherwise - that's how the industry has been for 20 years, and it is only increasingly the case today. Discretion is necessary.
(Some of us are pretty damn good at predicting the stock market, by the way. We pulled out before the bitch got herself pregnant again, as it were.)
You seem to be under the idea that the US is a democracy. It isn't, legally. It's a democratic republic. Republics operate differently than we operate today; that's why those 'excess' urban votes shouldn't matter.
* Intel would not be able to only offer high-end consumer processors. Nobody would buy them. Their big customers (OEMs) would not buy them - they'd jump to another platform, first (Windows runs on ARM now, after all - as does Android and a number of other minor players, like Ubuntu). Guess what? Apple could probably get OS X moved over to ARM fairly quickly too, if faced with a huge overhead cost increase. * Apple is not the end-all, be-all of ARM. They're a minor player in a very big game. For instance, Samsung makes 'open' hardware, I believe - their bootloader, etc. is able to be accessed. HTC does the same. * The ARM market is expanding. It's not just in phones and tablets; efforts are being taken to move it out to other platforms similar to the current 'homebrew' home PC. Even if you don't go home brew, people will need to have serviceable 'home computers' if they're going to be storing more than 16GB or more of data: people will be very angry when they can't "get their files out of their computer" when it dies. * Core was good, but nowhere near as i7. Core didn't really compete with Phenom, either - and that's where AMD should go back to. There's some good engineering in Bobcat and later, but really, they need to do a re-think.
It's additionally interesting that AMD may or may not be doing this right around the time when they've just started doing ARM themselves. If I were to place money, I'd put it on Microsoft being the most interested in buying them.
For complex software needs, emulation, or virtualization, is really the only way to go these days - especially if it's legacy.
I will frequently run my workstation(s) with 16GB out of RAM/into swap, so I have a couple more systems which just run virtual hosts. For instance, I've got a w7 VM that I run only basic "Windows" things on, and long run processes (eg. transcoding, torrenting). I've got another as a 'test' platform for misc browsers, and then I've got another VM which just has about a dozen different installed versions of Java (exclusively for Cisco crap, YAY).
I don't personally need 32 bit anything right now, but if I did, a VM would be the only way I'd even think of dealing with it due to the fact that it's a corner case. Corner cases make for a mess when you try to make them fit within an existing picture.
I've got many others (egads, 32 VMs in all and 22 running currently), but the basic idea is that "one OS" can get cluttered quite quickly and really doesn't provide the full suite of what you need. I don't need (or want!) Java installed on my main laptop or desktop. My laptop doesn't have the storage for all the movies I've ripped, so I keep them on a media server VM (which talks to another storage VM). It's quick and trivial to fit something else into the picture, and I never have to reinstall anything (rarely, at least) because some other program screwed up the registry or I got experimental and broke my package repository - just revert the snapshot.
If Samsung caused the cessation of iPhone sales altogether, iPhone customers might move to a brand that doesn't use Samsung parts at all.
Such as? That leaves maybe a handful of phones on the market. LG, maybe? It would be consistent with Apple quality, but in all seriousness, that's not likely to happen.
What I found especially amusing was the tea-tard messages claiming people would high-tail it to Canada if Obama got re-elected. Yeah, the country next door with single-payer health insurance, decent social security, more gun regulation, etc.
That's a pretty damning judgement on the US Government's ability to perform or execute those things properly, then, not an indictment on the policies in concept. But no matter, there's really no need to pay attention to actual causes...
So are you saying that the 'stuff that got (Nixon) impeached' were distinctly conservative? That's laughable. I guess all negative characteristics of a candidate are considered conservative, then? That makes Lenin and Stalin pretty damn conservative, then...
You don't seem to understand how something like that would work.
"Give" them a state? No, Texas would chose to leave, if they were to do so. If Texas were to go, AZ, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Utah, and pretty much everything in between would go, too. You'd lose a substantial number of the states West of the Mississippi, and they'd have a fair amount of sympathy from the non-urban, non-reservation parts of places like PA, FL, NV, etc. Alaska would likely throw in, or even say, "leave us alone".
Congratulations, you just lost a substantial amount (even a majority) of your domestic refineries, domestic resources, and domestic food production. These are not states lacking industry, either - in many cases, they're where the industry actually occurs, in no small part because it's economically unfeasible to do those things at all in more tax progressive states.
But that kind of loss wouldn't be all - you'd also lose out to competition. You could expect those states (and possibly the new nation) to do what is necessary to thrive. Since they'd be leaving a government-heavy nation for that very reason, expect small government. Expect taxes and regulations to not burden innovation or even the exploitation of resources. There would be a lot of opportunity for all kinds due to the restructuring of power, and it would result in strong competition with the "United States" - now divided by an economically competitive nation.
Of course, the USA would not allow for that division - there'd be disagreement on whether or not they're even allowed to do that. The Civil War "concluded" it's not allowable for states to leave the Union. So there'd be military enforcement of the union. Lines would get drawn, and allegiance would be staked on one side or another (one reason why the US government composes its military units with troops from multiple regions instead of from geographic areas now). But it would still happen, particularly with the NG units. Military bases would come under the command of localities.
Basically, you'd be looking at a civil war or a drastic reversal of Federal policies and urban attitudes. I'm not counting on urbanites looking at harsh realities, so it's more than likely another aggressive war forged by the Union against a lesser force with greater resources. It would not end well for anyone.
None of those states, except Connecticut and Delaware, are really all that liberal. Even when you look at a county-by-county Presidential election map from last week, Obama only took the more populous areas. Due to how electoral votes are now divided, that was enough to win. It's quite clear that the electoral system was gamed, with the vast majority of the country preferring Romney, of all candidates, over him.
So what really should be proposed here is letting the states secede the cities, on behalf of the cities.
They're mostly the poorest states that use the most welfare and medicaid and medicare per capita.
California, New York, Illinois, and DC are leaving the US? Maybe we were reading different articles...
I also find it somewhat ironic that the lack of the balanced budget you claim those states are responsible for is "welfare, medicaid, and medicare".
Give all the right wing conservatives a year to relocate to the red state of their choice then close the borders.
By the following year, the "blue" states would be petitioning the "red" state capitols for redress and assistance, both independently and collectively.
It's a win win because they get to live in a world of fear and hate and teach their kids about Jesus riding dinosaurs while the rest of us get the economy back on track and fix the pollution problem and finally get energy independent.
How horribly trite and small-minded. Do you live by stereotypes? You will indeed be fully energy independent - you'll be bankrupt, with no exploitable reserves or ways to refine them, your economy will be shot due to high energy costs, and everyone will be bemoaning the $1.50/gallon for fuel in the clean air/blue sky Free States.
iOS itself, not the iPhones. iOS reached its current maturity years ago and has only filled in its whiskers in the time since. It's starting to get grey and long in the tooth, with a bit of pudge around the center. It really should've considered working more to stay in shape.
That's one possible outcome, based solely on the assumption that Apple's patents aren't useless.
It's pretty clear at this point that Apple's patents are form over function and they reason they're where they are now is marketing and jackboot tactics. The truth of the matter is that this is just Apple setting up HTC to use as their PR bitch: "Use our patents or we'll ruin you" -> "OK" -> "Look, HTC used our patents, we play fair".
Meanwhile, there are a dozen other phones people might be waiting for in Android land, as it seems like a new one comes out every other day. Each of these phones have their own strengths (and weaknesses) and people pick the one that fits their needs best (often based on price but not always.)
Market numbers aren't broken down by "Android 4.1" vs. "iPhone 4" they're broken down by device, despite any inherrent software feature differences. It makes comparisons all but useless if you're trying to compare things concretely.
I've already heard 'rumors' of iPhone 5s failing wonderously and people returning them to get another iPhone 4/use their old phone/get an Android phone.
The iPhone 5 is not going to do good things for Apple. Mark my words.
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Last generation consoles? You mean the XBox and Playstation 2?
Last I checked, there aren't xb720 or Playstation 4 consoles on the shelves this year for Christmas. The purse strings will loosen for the WiiU this year, or possibly for the steeply discounted Wii, at Christmas time. For many families, the Wii will be the only console attached to their TVs for some time.
They'll be hurting on console sales next year (or whenever their competition releases a new console) but that doesn't matter. They'll already be in people's homes selling games at profit, having already made up their initial investment in tooling, etc. That gives them a lot more room to move should they want to offer some stiff competition to the other consoles a year or two from now.
Not this shit again. "We can't find talent!"
Quite obviously employers have a very different definition of talent than people who actually have said talent and capabilities. It's either that or we are in an all-out war with employers at this point over wages and foreign worker importation/outsourcing - take your pick.
This seems to me to be yet another ploy to push for more H1B workers and to justify outsourcing. There's no two ways about it.
"Not enough qualified applicants" my ass. I happen to be aware of quite a few competent people who are out there looking for positions in "in-demand" fields. Guess what? They're getting stonewalled.
(Sorry, you're going to be hiring 5 green programmers for every 2 experienced, and 5 experienced for every expert - that's just the way it is. You can't only staff experts unless you're willing to pay expert rates. It's not good for anyone.)
If, in fact, they really think there is a lack of qualified people, here's their problem: there has been a breakdown of communication, and their formalized hiring processes, excessive HR, and outsourced employee sourcing (you know, headhunters) are at the root of the problem. Finding (and keeping) good employees is the single most important part of maintaining and growing a business. Why would you push that responsibility to someone else? What ends up happening is that headhunters (of all kinds) do end up finding qualified applicants who are looking for work - we just write them off as spam, telemarketers, or insincere requests without so much as a second notice because of how unprofessionally we're addressed. (Hint: having an Indian "initial contact" team for your HR is not a good idea; neither is using an automated system for requesting potentially qualified applicants to submit a resume via eg. LinkedIn - you're only going to get desperate people, not those who are capable.)
The culpability for this problem sits squarely on the employer.
Since something like 3 out of 5 of them need to be returned due to defects?
I don't know about you, but I've rarely seen a pair of officers in most cars unless we're talking about somewhere like Oakland, CA.
In the Dodge Charger squad cars, there simply isn't enough room for the electronics and a passenger - not unless the passenger is under 6' and 150lb at least. Not only do the newer cars afford barely any space, but the equipment takes up a lot. (This was much less a problem in a Vic.)
Because it's not like this is even a fractional amount of the setup most police squad cars have (at least here in the US):
* Multiple radios, usually 2-3 from what I've seen (emergency, local police dispatch, national or state frequencies, etc.)
* A laptop on a mount
* A printer
* A shotgun
* A radar gun
* spot lights
* fancy data uplinks
What exactly would the problem be with anyone having these things in their car?
Keep in mind that "all of the above", plus what the guy in Germany had, is common fare for many US truckers (well, except the shotgun, which I believe is now illegal for a trucker to have in his cab).
Are you seriously comparing a new phone to one from 2 and a half years ago (running a very dated Android release, assuming you didn't bother to update it) or an iPhone (the original? if no, then which?) to a phone that came out two weeks ago?
I agree that Windows Phone offers a very nice 'no frills, just works' experience, and for some people it's a great choice. It does the basic "keep me connected" functionality very well. But please, let's not be disingenuous in our comparisons.
Oh?
* Zune
* Windows 8
* Windows ME
* Windows Vista
* Windows
* iPhone 5
* Nokia Lumia
* Windows Mobile
* Windows Phone
* Microsoft Bob
These are all products which bled or are in the process of bleeding money for their companies; they're all products which ultimately failed or will do so. Slashdotters overwhelmingly acknowledged these as crap products long before they were acknowledged as failures by their respective companies.
Here's the thing about people who are overwhelmingly intellectually skeptical (or 'negative' as viewed by others). They're usually right - if not exactly correct, they see things through a pretty clear lens of observational experience. You can have people say "Republicans are wrong" and on the other side of the fence have people say "Democrats are wrong", and have both be 100% correct.
In this specific case, it is our job to be critical, skeptical, and generally consider products to be shit until proven to be otherwise - that's how the industry has been for 20 years, and it is only increasingly the case today. Discretion is necessary.
(Some of us are pretty damn good at predicting the stock market, by the way. We pulled out before the bitch got herself pregnant again, as it were.)
You seem to be under the idea that the US is a democracy. It isn't, legally. It's a democratic republic. Republics operate differently than we operate today; that's why those 'excess' urban votes shouldn't matter.
A couple points which you're overlooking.
* Intel would not be able to only offer high-end consumer processors. Nobody would buy them. Their big customers (OEMs) would not buy them - they'd jump to another platform, first (Windows runs on ARM now, after all - as does Android and a number of other minor players, like Ubuntu). Guess what? Apple could probably get OS X moved over to ARM fairly quickly too, if faced with a huge overhead cost increase.
* Apple is not the end-all, be-all of ARM. They're a minor player in a very big game. For instance, Samsung makes 'open' hardware, I believe - their bootloader, etc. is able to be accessed. HTC does the same.
* The ARM market is expanding. It's not just in phones and tablets; efforts are being taken to move it out to other platforms similar to the current 'homebrew' home PC. Even if you don't go home brew, people will need to have serviceable 'home computers' if they're going to be storing more than 16GB or more of data: people will be very angry when they can't "get their files out of their computer" when it dies.
* Core was good, but nowhere near as i7. Core didn't really compete with Phenom, either - and that's where AMD should go back to. There's some good engineering in Bobcat and later, but really, they need to do a re-think.
It's additionally interesting that AMD may or may not be doing this right around the time when they've just started doing ARM themselves. If I were to place money, I'd put it on Microsoft being the most interested in buying them.
For complex software needs, emulation, or virtualization, is really the only way to go these days - especially if it's legacy.
I will frequently run my workstation(s) with 16GB out of RAM/into swap, so I have a couple more systems which just run virtual hosts. For instance, I've got a w7 VM that I run only basic "Windows" things on, and long run processes (eg. transcoding, torrenting). I've got another as a 'test' platform for misc browsers, and then I've got another VM which just has about a dozen different installed versions of Java (exclusively for Cisco crap, YAY).
I don't personally need 32 bit anything right now, but if I did, a VM would be the only way I'd even think of dealing with it due to the fact that it's a corner case. Corner cases make for a mess when you try to make them fit within an existing picture.
I've got many others (egads, 32 VMs in all and 22 running currently), but the basic idea is that "one OS" can get cluttered quite quickly and really doesn't provide the full suite of what you need. I don't need (or want!) Java installed on my main laptop or desktop. My laptop doesn't have the storage for all the movies I've ripped, so I keep them on a media server VM (which talks to another storage VM). It's quick and trivial to fit something else into the picture, and I never have to reinstall anything (rarely, at least) because some other program screwed up the registry or I got experimental and broke my package repository - just revert the snapshot.
(For what it's worth, I prefer Virtualbox.)
If Samsung caused the cessation of iPhone sales altogether, iPhone customers might move to a brand that doesn't use Samsung parts at all.
Such as? That leaves maybe a handful of phones on the market. LG, maybe? It would be consistent with Apple quality, but in all seriousness, that's not likely to happen.
What I found especially amusing was the tea-tard messages claiming people would high-tail it to Canada if Obama got re-elected. Yeah, the country next door with single-payer health insurance, decent social security, more gun regulation, etc.
That's a pretty damning judgement on the US Government's ability to perform or execute those things properly, then, not an indictment on the policies in concept. But no matter, there's really no need to pay attention to actual causes...
There was basically not a single 'point' the GP made which wasn't also a half-truth (at best). No point in arguing with that kind of person.
So are you saying that the 'stuff that got (Nixon) impeached' were distinctly conservative? That's laughable. I guess all negative characteristics of a candidate are considered conservative, then? That makes Lenin and Stalin pretty damn conservative, then...
You don't seem to understand how something like that would work.
"Give" them a state? No, Texas would chose to leave, if they were to do so. If Texas were to go, AZ, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Utah, and pretty much everything in between would go, too. You'd lose a substantial number of the states West of the Mississippi, and they'd have a fair amount of sympathy from the non-urban, non-reservation parts of places like PA, FL, NV, etc. Alaska would likely throw in, or even say, "leave us alone".
Congratulations, you just lost a substantial amount (even a majority) of your domestic refineries, domestic resources, and domestic food production. These are not states lacking industry, either - in many cases, they're where the industry actually occurs, in no small part because it's economically unfeasible to do those things at all in more tax progressive states.
But that kind of loss wouldn't be all - you'd also lose out to competition. You could expect those states (and possibly the new nation) to do what is necessary to thrive. Since they'd be leaving a government-heavy nation for that very reason, expect small government. Expect taxes and regulations to not burden innovation or even the exploitation of resources. There would be a lot of opportunity for all kinds due to the restructuring of power, and it would result in strong competition with the "United States" - now divided by an economically competitive nation.
Of course, the USA would not allow for that division - there'd be disagreement on whether or not they're even allowed to do that. The Civil War "concluded" it's not allowable for states to leave the Union. So there'd be military enforcement of the union. Lines would get drawn, and allegiance would be staked on one side or another (one reason why the US government composes its military units with troops from multiple regions instead of from geographic areas now). But it would still happen, particularly with the NG units. Military bases would come under the command of localities.
Basically, you'd be looking at a civil war or a drastic reversal of Federal policies and urban attitudes. I'm not counting on urbanites looking at harsh realities, so it's more than likely another aggressive war forged by the Union against a lesser force with greater resources. It would not end well for anyone.
And if we're being honest(snicker), you're wrong.
None of those states, except Connecticut and Delaware, are really all that liberal. Even when you look at a county-by-county Presidential election map from last week, Obama only took the more populous areas. Due to how electoral votes are now divided, that was enough to win. It's quite clear that the electoral system was gamed, with the vast majority of the country preferring Romney, of all candidates, over him.
So what really should be proposed here is letting the states secede the cities, on behalf of the cities.
They're mostly the poorest states that use the most welfare and medicaid and medicare per capita.
California, New York, Illinois, and DC are leaving the US? Maybe we were reading different articles...
I also find it somewhat ironic that the lack of the balanced budget you claim those states are responsible for is "welfare, medicaid, and medicare".
Give all the right wing conservatives a year to relocate to the red state of their choice then close the borders.
By the following year, the "blue" states would be petitioning the "red" state capitols for redress and assistance, both independently and collectively.
It's a win win because they get to live in a world of fear and hate and teach their kids about Jesus riding dinosaurs while the rest of us get the economy back on track and fix the pollution problem and finally get energy independent.
How horribly trite and small-minded. Do you live by stereotypes? You will indeed be fully energy independent - you'll be bankrupt, with no exploitable reserves or ways to refine them, your economy will be shot due to high energy costs, and everyone will be bemoaning the $1.50/gallon for fuel in the clean air/blue sky Free States.
iOS itself, not the iPhones. iOS reached its current maturity years ago and has only filled in its whiskers in the time since. It's starting to get grey and long in the tooth, with a bit of pudge around the center. It really should've considered working more to stay in shape.
That's one possible outcome, based solely on the assumption that Apple's patents aren't useless.
It's pretty clear at this point that Apple's patents are form over function and they reason they're where they are now is marketing and jackboot tactics. The truth of the matter is that this is just Apple setting up HTC to use as their PR bitch: "Use our patents or we'll ruin you" -> "OK" -> "Look, HTC used our patents, we play fair".
Time to give the polar bears coffee, so that they can be more useful.
And how well does W8 run on a P4 with 2GB of RAM? (It doesn't, does it?)
They're also having a hard time meeting QC on it due to how obscene the assembly is.
They're having a lot of problems and it's going to cost Apple.
Meanwhile, there are a dozen other phones people might be waiting for in Android land, as it seems like a new one comes out every other day. Each of these phones have their own strengths (and weaknesses) and people pick the one that fits their needs best (often based on price but not always.)
Market numbers aren't broken down by "Android 4.1" vs. "iPhone 4" they're broken down by device, despite any inherrent software feature differences. It makes comparisons all but useless if you're trying to compare things concretely.
In fairness, the newer Android phones are all/mostly shipping without an SD card slot. That's the trend, at least. It's quite disheartening.
Everything else you said is pretty damn accurate. :)
Indeed.
I've already heard 'rumors' of iPhone 5s failing wonderously and people returning them to get another iPhone 4/use their old phone/get an Android phone.
The iPhone 5 is not going to do good things for Apple. Mark my words.