This is the first April Fool to actually make me laugh out loud this year.
It actually looks almost identical to an accessory being sold with a real Foreman grill (in this months Makro catalogue if you're in the UK), described as a "translucent bun warmer" - same colour/size etc etc.
I'm a bit too drunk to comment on this fully, but a few points as to why this approach doesn't work in the long term.
The UK tried this when other countries semiconductor capabilities exceeded their own - tariffs were impose on imported components. It was meant to protect the UK computer industry - but it backfired badly. Unable to compete in the manufacture of ICs, UK companies couldn't even import components and produce full systems competitively. The policy led to the death of systems manufacturing without benefitting the component producers.
The same thing happened to the UK film industry. In order to fight against films produced in Hollywood, a law was passed requiring a certain percentage of all films to be produced in the UK. Since the general public wanted Hollywood films, the only way to comply was to show supporting features produced in the UK. Since this was more profitable than producing feature films, the UK film industry ended up producing supporting features about candlemaking in Birmingham. So it died. We are now seeing some recovery, but only after at least two decades of decline.
As has been seen in the automotive industry, protection of national producers in this manner only leeds to apathy within the domestic industry. Protected from outside innovation and competition there is no reason to improve, instead the industry will settle into a cosy cabal with domestic producers. When, eventually, the import duty is removed the existing industries are far behind their foreign competitors. This is detrimental not only to the industry long-term but also to the domestic consumer.
Eventually, for the reasons outlined above, domestic producers will not be able to export - for two reasons. Lack of competition will lead to an atrophying of the state-of-the-art within the country and hence be behind other counties producers that are open to a free market. Also profit from export will be much lower than domestically. These factors will produce an inward facing industry which does nothing to help the balance of trade.
Lastly, those countries who have tariffs levied against them, may retaliate with equivalent tariffs or legislation against the import of other goods and services from the tariff imposing country which will hurt the countries export marketing and thier domestic industry as a whole.
For better or worse (and I believe better) we all operate in a global market. This drives competition and innovation and in the longer term will bring benefit to all. Protectionism only serves to kill those it seeks to protect.
There is a big trade-off between getting a decent sized community to test a product and allowing a not-yet-debugged product out into the wild.
As a developer is it very valuable to have a willing group of people willing to test and feedback on not-yet-ready-for-market products. Unfortunately if these releases then get a wider distribution to people who don't understand that the app us a work in progress (as has happened with safari), any problems (which would be solved before an official release) reflect badly on both the product and the developer.
Given that the betas are being leaked, and Apple's reputation for quality of its products, I don't think they had any option but to cancel to program. I also welcome their move for other reasons:
As a web developer, one of the major issues I face is not just making a site compatible with the major browser releases (which in itself is a problem), but also with all the betas that are still being used. Many beta releases (or should have been betas) have quite significant bugs which are *very* difficult to work around. For example, I still see hits from people using betas of Netscape 4.
Once a pre-release product makes it into the wild, many of the initial users will continue it use it since 'it works for me'. Of course, if this browser doesn't work with a site due to bugs or incompatibilities in the browser, its the sites fault - from the users perspective - and my clients if the user complains. These almost-right products seem to persist almost forever.
Also recommend 'Writing Solid C Code' from the same publisher. Although it uses C as its language, it covers development approaches which remove 90% of the main causes of bugs. Its a great companion to 'Code Complete'
It *is* the job of programmers to find bugs. The addititude of 'all software contains bugs' and 'they will catch it in QA' is dangerous and inefficient.
It's everyone in the organisations responsibility to a) prevent bugs in the first place. and b) find them, c) fix them.
In an ideal world QA would always pass, because the architects/coders have done their job. In an ideal world no bugs would pass QA. OK this isn't an ideal world - but you should strive for it.
Saying that its not the coders job to find bugs, or that the customers wantonly break your software is an approach which will actually take you away from your goals. If the code is correct, it will correctly handle any input or situation (including the big-red-switch); where 'correctly' is according to specification.
Now I'm really nosy how in freak'n hell any memory technology can reduce multimedia download times? That's just non-sense, it seems the word "multimedia" must be in everything you want to sell.
I suspect it means downloading onto MP3 players etc. Not to your actual PC but between it and other persistant memory devices which could use the new tech.
They're mostly looking at rebuilding, restoring and/or simulating systems from very early on in the development of computers as we now know it. Also activities is preserving some of the earliest software, such as the first true stored program to be run.
Slashdot Mirror
It actually looks almost identical to an accessory being sold with a real Foreman grill (in this months Makro catalogue if you're in the UK), described as a "translucent bun warmer" - same colour/size etc etc.
The UK tried this when other countries semiconductor capabilities exceeded their own - tariffs were impose on imported components. It was meant to protect the UK computer industry - but it backfired badly. Unable to compete in the manufacture of ICs, UK companies couldn't even import components and produce full systems competitively. The policy led to the death of systems manufacturing without benefitting the component producers.
The same thing happened to the UK film industry. In order to fight against films produced in Hollywood, a law was passed requiring a certain percentage of all films to be produced in the UK. Since the general public wanted Hollywood films, the only way to comply was to show supporting features produced in the UK. Since this was more profitable than producing feature films, the UK film industry ended up producing supporting features about candlemaking in Birmingham. So it died. We are now seeing some recovery, but only after at least two decades of decline.
As has been seen in the automotive industry, protection of national producers in this manner only leeds to apathy within the domestic industry. Protected from outside innovation and competition there is no reason to improve, instead the industry will settle into a cosy cabal with domestic producers. When, eventually, the import duty is removed the existing industries are far behind their foreign competitors. This is detrimental not only to the industry long-term but also to the domestic consumer.
Eventually, for the reasons outlined above, domestic producers will not be able to export - for two reasons. Lack of competition will lead to an atrophying of the state-of-the-art within the country and hence be behind other counties producers that are open to a free market. Also profit from export will be much lower than domestically. These factors will produce an inward facing industry which does nothing to help the balance of trade.
Lastly, those countries who have tariffs levied against them, may retaliate with equivalent tariffs or legislation against the import of other goods and services from the tariff imposing country which will hurt the countries export marketing and thier domestic industry as a whole.
For better or worse (and I believe better) we all operate in a global market. This drives competition and innovation and in the longer term will bring benefit to all. Protectionism only serves to kill those it seeks to protect.
There is a big trade-off between getting a decent sized community to test a product and allowing a not-yet-debugged product out into the wild.
As a developer is it very valuable to have a willing group of people willing to test and feedback on not-yet-ready-for-market products. Unfortunately if these releases then get a wider distribution to people who don't understand that the app us a work in progress (as has happened with safari), any problems (which would be solved before an official release) reflect badly on both the product and the developer.
Given that the betas are being leaked, and Apple's reputation for quality of its products, I don't think they had any option but to cancel to program. I also welcome their move for other reasons:
As a web developer, one of the major issues I face is not just making a site compatible with the major browser releases (which in itself is a problem), but also with all the betas that are still being used. Many beta releases (or should have been betas) have quite significant bugs which are *very* difficult to work around. For example, I still see hits from people using betas of Netscape 4.
Once a pre-release product makes it into the wild, many of the initial users will continue it use it since 'it works for me'. Of course, if this browser doesn't work with a site due to bugs or incompatibilities in the browser, its the sites fault - from the users perspective - and my clients if the user complains. These almost-right products seem to persist almost forever.
Also recommend 'Writing Solid C Code' from the same publisher. Although it uses C as its language, it covers development approaches which remove 90% of the main causes of bugs. Its a great companion to 'Code Complete'
It *is* the job of programmers to find bugs. The addititude of 'all software contains bugs' and 'they will catch it in QA' is dangerous and inefficient.
It's everyone in the organisations responsibility to a) prevent bugs in the first place. and b) find them, c) fix them.
In an ideal world QA would always pass, because the architects/coders have done their job. In an ideal world no bugs would pass QA. OK this isn't an ideal world - but you should strive for it.
Saying that its not the coders job to find bugs, or that the customers wantonly break your software is an approach which will actually take you away from your goals. If the code is correct, it will correctly handle any input or situation (including the big-red-switch); where 'correctly' is according to specification.
Amen brother... preach on... (I spend 90% of my time trying to convince people (or clients who are almost simian) the error of their flash fixations)
I suspect it means downloading onto MP3 players etc. Not to your actual PC but between it and other persistant memory devices which could use the new tech.
Interesting stuff, but very US orientated. There's a group in the UK doing similar stuff: The British Computer Society's Computer Preversavation Society.
They're mostly looking at rebuilding, restoring and/or simulating systems from very early on in the development of computers as we now know it. Also activities is preserving some of the earliest software, such as the first true stored program to be run.
Maybe these two groups should get together.