I agree. Its frustrating to see how easily some people have trouble distinguishing between what they see on TV or the movies and what has or can happen in the real world. Often the justification for this is the fact that the communications satelite, moon landing, lasers, and a few other things were in fact predicted by science fiction before they became a reality.
On the other hand, Sci-Fi also placed us on Mars, Jupiter and even at distant stars by this point in time. We should have also established permanent undersea colonies by now, doubled our lifespans. Oh, yeah, and then there was that business about 1984.
Of course, if you predict every possible outcome in history, you are bound to be right... eventually.
Flextronics among others. From what I've read they are having financial troubles too.
As far as design goes, I think Nvidia and Intel had more to do with the hardware design of the XBox than Microsoft did.
Sony designed and manufactures the Playstation however, which is why they can make a slight profit selling the thing for $150-$200 while MS loses money even at the $200 price point. MS has to pass money along to subcontractors that Sony doesn't have to deal with.
No, Apple doesn't MAKE it's own computers either, however they do participate heavily in the design process.
Microsoft on the other hand tends to AVOID oportunities to get into the hardware end of things. Even when they DO participate in the design process such as for Pocket-PC devices and the new notepad style (I forget the official name) computers they leave the sale and marketing of the hardware to other companies.
MS is afraid to get into hardware because it is too risky, too hard, you have to constantly update your products, sell off old models etc. With software they have a nice comfortable 2-year cycle on major releases.
MS can charge what they please for Office and Windows because there are so many shops that have declared themselves "Windows Only". That is likely to change, and Microsoft needs badly to replace that cashflow with something else. Will that be hardware products? Consulting services? A new killer online service? Your guess is as good as mine. But keep in mind that Windows and Office are the only products in Microsofts inventory that are consitently profitable. Everything else can be thouught of as failed experiments.
Well, I don't know about his track record for predictions, as I don't read him that often, but the idea doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. Reading through some of the objections to it here makes his article seem well thought out by comparison.
BSD is a micro-kernel operating system. In theory even easier to port to other platforms than Linux. What advantage is there in remaining tied to a single hardware architecture? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Power-PC over Intel, but to the end user it really shouldn't make any difference. Very few people (including audiophiles) evaluate new stereo components based on the details of the integrated circuits used internally. The commodity PC will be that way too. Users will expect a certain number of basic features and the rest will be a matter of price, performance, and case color. Apple understands this a lot better than anyone else right now apparently. Their biggest weakness is price, not performance.
Don't forget they are selling servers now too. I doubt their goal is to lose gobs of money at this. They need to be flexible in terms of running on towers, blades, low power Transmetas and whatever other variations come out next year. To be perpetually tied to the fortunes of the Power-PC processor would be insane for them.
While I think OS X is far from being perfect, Apple is the the cat-bird seat with respect to Microsoft, who is just stuck selling software. With a fairly clean (by comparison with Windows) operating system that can be tailored to a number of uses, and an established reputation as a designer of hardware they not only compete with Microsoft, but with Sun and IBM as well. If, unlike these two, they start out with their server side software offerings as multiplatform compatible they'll have a big lead over everyone (except Linux) in terms of an OS that runs as comfortably on a desktop as it does in the computer room.
While there may be some technical challenges as pointed out here in Slashdot, I doubt that any of them are insurmountable. The more important question is: Is this a good idea from the Apple business perspective. I think the answer is a resounding YES!
Re:Don't take away freedoms to "improve" productiv
on
Improving Company Morale?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"The notion of flexible hours in startups has become "come late, leave late". If someone wants to start the work day at 7am in the hopes of getting out by 4 or 5 and get a life, there is almost palpable tension from the glares of coworkers who amble into work sometime at 10am or 10:30am. More so, if the bosses themselves are late comers."
More often, in my experience, it is the other way around. I've always been a night owl. My last job had an equal number of late comers and early birds. I was almost always the last one out of the office at night, sometimes including the night guard who locked up everything around 10PM.
I envy the person who can work at home whenever they feel like it. I had this luxury for about 2 years. The trick of course is that both you and your manager (or customer) must have a good idea of what the job is that you are doing so that you can agree on when it is 10 percent done, 50 percent done, or finished. These days, there are way too many manager that have never done any of the technical work that they manage. They don't have a clue what you are doing or how you do it. They don't know good quality from bad quality until the end user complains. I would rather work as a greeter at Walmart than work in one of these organizations again. I have no respect for the managers involved, and if you sign on to one of their projects you are doomed to fail even if your own work is beyond comparison.
At some point, and maybe we have already reached it, production of good software must be it's own reward, since the captains of industry don't seem to know good from bad. Results are slowly comming in from projects farmed out to cheap labor overseas and it ain't pretty. This has nothing to do with intelligence or talent of those workers who do work over there for a fraction of what we are used to getting paid. It has instead to do with the total inability of management to conceptualize (much less document) the products that they are trying to turn out.
It is unfortunate but true, these failures will not result in the perpetrators getting fired for incompetence. Rather they will be so monumental that they will cause businesses or at least divisions to be closed down entirely. As poor as mid management is at evaluating the quality of our work as programmers and technicians, top management is even *worse* at evaluating the results of mid-level managers. In almost every case the solutions will be too-little too-late.
They must not be getting bored of it too fast, since "Slasdotting" of web sites is still a regular occurrence.
I don't come here for hard news. Slashdot doesn't have a correspondent in Iraq as far as I know, nor do they send official representatives to all the tech conferences.
Slashdot *does* however represent a cross-section of the technical community, with an emphasis on the open source side. Turn your threshold to 5 and hit the highlights or turn it to -1 and read all 500 messages, the choice is up to you.
Slashdot also represents a lot of eyes and ears reading a lot of material that would be impossible for one person to keep up with. So I learn about a lot of new products by seeing them mentioned here first. And in many cases they are products that aren't going to get mentioned any time soon by CNet.com and all of its affiliates.
And finally, many of the comments that are modded up to 5;funny make me laugh, even if they are posted by morons. They're *my* kinda morons.
One reason for pointing out that America is a republic is that when people say things like:
What if America was a real democracy and not run by oligarhic oportunists... ?"
(and being called "insightful" for it!)
They are calling into question whether America is still operating under it's original founding principles.
There seem to be a great number of people who think that if their favorite politician isn't in office at the moment that the system must therefore be broken.
America is both a democracy and a republic, the latter term (in *use* as opposed to Latin or Greek derivation) reminds us that we elect representatives rather than vote on every individual issue. I'd add to that that we are a Federal Republic composed of *States* which means that (in theory) we are even less likely to be subject to the whims of a dictator or an oligarchy.
I have no problem with people holding the view that we are being ruled by some secret society of Harvard graduates, or little green men from outer space for that matter, but I do have a problem with people taking such pot-shots at our form of government without also proposing some idea of what a good alternative might be.
The fact that about 50 percent of the population are unhappy with the outcomes of the last two elections here is no excuse for claiming that the system is broken. If its broken now, it was equally broken 10 years ago when the prevailing view in the White House and congress was quite different.
Gee this would have been funnier if you hadn't given out the answer. I would have guessed: They all start with "What if".
If you think that it is pure fantasy though then you must also think that Microsoft's business will continue raking in the money like they always have.
Fact is that their business model is beginning to fail. This has less to do with Open Source than it has to do with Business 101. You can't run a succesful buisiness selling the same product year after year for the same price. You can lower the price year after year to extend the product life-cycle, or you can introduce *significant* product enhancements, or you can move into new product lines altogether.
Microsoft has not *succeeded* in doing any of these things. So it reamains to be seen what they will eventually do. Until they actually do something, it remains anybodies guess as to what that will be, but I think Open Sourceing some of their "legacy" code makes a lot of sense.
Yep yep... it's fun to watch Microsoft occupy the seat normally occupied by its PC software competitors. Sony can afford to wait and see what Microsoft does next. Then counter it with something better and match the new price point.
Someone said that Sony loses money on every console sold at $200. Not so. They make a few dollars. Only MS is losing money on consoles.
If MS wants to be a serious player here they need to BUY a hardware company and start doing some "from the ground up" design. MS can buy a lot of influence with all its cash on hand, but Sony has the infrastructure to roll out new boxes without having to coordinate the efforts of other companies. This also allows them to make money where MS loses money for any given level of technology.
The next offering from Sony is not only likely to one-up whatever MS comes out with, but will most likely double as a home computer for many families. If Microsoft tries to go there they blow their own legs off.
Think of the Playstation II equipped with the Linux upgrade kit as a very crude prototype of what the Playstation III is likely to be and you will understand the predicament that Microsoft finds intelf in.
MS persues winning the console wars at it's own peril.
Very well said. I remember even before the Challenger disaster having these arguments. Ironic that anyone who suggests that the shuttle program is less than perfect will be accused of being against science or at least against space exploration. The truth of course is just the reverse. We have given up SO MUCH to pay for the shuttle program. We could have sent hundreds if not thousands of unmanned probes up by now and learned so much more about the origins of our planet and solar system.
The administrators want to rush back into production for one reason, and that is to cut off debate about whether we really need to be doing this any more. They are administrators, protecting their jobs and corporate infrastructure, nothing more. When NASA was young it was hailed as an example of government and business working together to do great things. Now it is just another bureaucracy like HUD that can't be fixed, or done away with.
What it will take for us to get off our asses again will be for the Chinese to have some successes in manned space flight. The threat of them establishing a permanent or even semi-permanent base on the moon will finally shake some brain cells loose in Washington. I'm a patriotic American, but it will serve us right if we lose the next space race. You can't keep trying to re-invent Tang and not expect the rest of the world to catch up eventually.
Well I recently worked with an organization that had about 50,000 copies of windows installed worldwide. And they had a couple hundred MCSEs who decided to lock down Windows as you suggest. That was more than 2 years ago and they are still on a regular basis visiting users machines and rendering them unusable.
It is probably reasonable to take a single use machine (say a departmental web server or a cash register) and lock it down so that it only does that one thing and nothing else and is secure.
Typical office users are almost impossible to secure and once you do secure them you have a bunch of complaining users who don't like being told that various options don't work any more.
For software developers I'd say it is mathematically impossible to lock down a Windows machine. The ones I know simply outsmart the admins and ignore company policy in order to get their jobs done.
I don't know anyone who is familiar with both Linux and Windows who thinks that it is even possible to make Windows as secure as Linux and I can't imagine why anyone with such knowledge would use Windows on anything but a small closed network.
But obviously people do, and we all have to suffer the consequences.
Worse than that. It *wasn't* a major screw-up. They could have left all the paper systems in place for another 200 years and it would have been fine. What happened was the vote was inicredibly close. Something that isn't likely to happen very often.
And had just about anyone but Al Gore (the inventor of the internet) been involved, it would have been over in a day or two without so much fanfare.
Having tried OS X for a while and liking it, I can't agree that it will "beat" Linux.
While using 10.1-10.1.5 I was pleased with the "beauty" of the thing as most people are. But when it came to running anything that didn't come pre-installed I didn't find it any more reliable, or easy to configure than a typical Windows machine.
I purchased SEVERAL peripheral devices and got most of them at an Apple store... just to be on the safe side. Even so, whether these devices would work or not was a crap-shoot.
Still I hung in there waiting for the promised benefits of Jaguar. When it came out I went and *purchased* a copy, even though I hadn't had my machine for 6 months yet.
Jaguar for me, and for many other people posting on the Apple forums was a total disaster. Not only did it provide few improvments that I could see, but the system was completely unstable.
Like so many other people at the Apple forums I wondered if maybe my hardware was at fault. People there have been advised to send their machines in for repair (at their expense) in order to cure Jaguar problems. Getting their machines back the glitches remain and they are out another $300. The level of support from what I can see is hardly any better than what a typical PC user would get from Microsoft and any name brand hardware vendor. You would at *least* expect with hardware and software comming from one company that there woul be no finger pointing about random lockups. But there is.
The happy ending to my story is that I used the unreliability of my iBook as an excuse to try out Yellow Dog Linux. I figured if *that* didn't work I'd take the machine back to the Apple store for another one.
That was 6 months ago and I don't think the machine has crashed or locked up once. I'm running Mozilla and Apache and PHP and all sorts of things that never worked right under OS X.
I prefer Evolution for email and calandar to anything OS X provided. I load picture from my camera into file folders with automatic thumbnail viewing. The KDE desktop looks as good as OS X in many respects and better in some too, plus it is more configurable than OS X is likely to be.
Updating is as easy as the OS X update program was. I type "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get upgrade" every week or two and its all taken care of. I could easily automate this, or make an icon out of it.
Did I have to study a bit to get all this stuff working? Yes I did. But I've spent far less time getting Linux to work the way I want and ultimatly succeeded whereas I spent far more time stuggling with my broken Jaguar and ultimately gave up. Which was the time better spent?
Maybe you're right and OS X will beat Linux, but to do so, Apple will have to make a quantum leap in support services. They will also have to do a much better job of herding hardware vendors into the OS X corral than they have so far. They'll have to do this without raising their prices, because PC prices continue to drop.
The article and my recollection say that Moore's law predicts a doubling (of whatever) every 12 months, but I regularly see it sited as 18 months. So my question is: after how many or how much altering of the original numbers does Moore's law become something else?
It is, after all a fact that at some point these densities CAN'T double any longer and while we are not right up against the speed of light and molecular limitations yet, we are suring getting into the same ball park.
At some point (and I think we may have reached it) the constraints placed on us by physics will have to be overcome by cleaver use of software, massively parallel systems etc. and at that point, Moore's law becomes relatively moot.
Nobody calls MS about bugs any more because it is a total waste of time. I last called them pre-Windows 95 days and it they were already making it clear that if you were calling about a bug, or problem you were having you had better expect to pay for help.
If he thinks that the typical Windows user considers calling Microsoft for support for even a nanosecond he is either stupid, or a lier.
I fail to understand the hostility in the responses to Segway.
I'm not sure its hostility. On the other hand for every product that is more hype than reality, there are probably dozens of products that get passed over by the type of "high voltage" people who market Segway. There may be a few thousand people in the world for which the Segway is just the right thing, and therefore worth the big price tag. The promise of it revolutionizing our cities however will never happen until the price is more approachable. In fact if the thing were under $1000 I'm sure it would sell millions just to people who were curious about it.
If they are smart they will eat the development costs and sell the thing sooner rather than later at a price point that assumes they are selling 100,000 a year or so. Then, it might have a chance to revolutionize something.
" I was only a kid at the time, but I distinctly remember there being two factions in the PC world at the beginning. The evil IBM empire with sidekick Compaq, who were selling their machines at extremely high prices, and the rest of the clone world."
"Well, I was more or less a kid at the time as well, but I'm pretty sure at least one part of this is wrong -- Compaq wasn't IBM's "sidekick". Compaq was the company that reverse-engineered IBM's machines, which couldn't have made IBM very happy. "
Well, since I wasn't a kid at the time, my 2 cents:
IBM, unlike Microsoft, and many other companies these days has always engaged in a wide variety of research efforts. A true research company (unlike Microsoft) doesn't expect every effort they undertake to result in a profitable product next month. They did research in fabrication of electronic components, varieties of memory devices many of which never caught on (bubble) and even research into things that were only remotely related to their core business.
For those things that made it out of the realm of research and into some sort of product status the number of products that failed by far exceeds the number that are still with us today. Products within IBM even today get second class treatment if IBM leadership can't see how to make big bucks off of them. The VM operating system within IBM has always had second class status with respect to their primary MVS (now called something else I think) operating system. Even though many internal functions at IBM are dependant on the flexibility VM provides, their existing MVS installed base made them too timid to ever consider taking the chance of migrating all of those users to something else. Microsoft must feel a similar timidity when they try and decide what to do with the existing Windows/Office base. Lack of significant change on those systems leaves users wondering why the huge upgrade fees, while a major change to those core products would potentially give users a good justification to switch to something else.
Neither the original IBM PC, nor any of the clones of the time were any threat at all to the IBM mainframe business. It MIGHT have been a truly visionary thing for IBM to keep total control of PC hardware and software, but my guess is that if they had taken that approach, the PC (as we know it) would have failed and some other small computer would have surpassed it.
By keeping only a very LOOSE control over the direction of the PC IBM allowed the technology to grow in an unconstrained fashion. Keep in mind that IBM sold a LOT of PCs then, and still does. This whole situation while not being IBM dominated is still a lot more profitable to them than it would be had (for example) Apple become the standard for PC type devises.
For IBM, having a leading product or two, another couple in the background, and a big pile of projects on the scrap heap has always been standard operating procedure. In fact this is fairly standard for most really big companies, and it is to some extent what causes America to lead the world in science and technology in spite of our awful performance with respect to other countries in providing a basic education to our population.
Microsoft is a different company. They only bet research dollars on ideas that they think have a high chance of returning profit in the near term. Failures for them in areas such as 3D, publishing, and Internet services are doubly embarrassing because these are the handpicked roads to success. Microsoft would do well to imitate some of the great companies of the past and use that $40 billion warchest on something other than putting AOL and Quicken out of business.
Gates has probably done more to spur pure R&D in building his never finished house than has been spent to run the company that made him all that money. Unless the MS corporate culture undergoes a significant change, maybe in conjunction with a leadership change, I see them clutching on to Windows and Office far too long for the companies own good.
I can understand the original posters "screw them" attitude. It is very frustrating for people who actually want to do quality work to be ultimately punished for trying to do so.
Process improvement methodologies that proliferated in the 90's seem to be falling by the wayside. I think part of the problem is that at about the same time RAD techniques promised upper management almost instant turnaround on their requests. The RAD techniques, and the tools that go with them have turned out reams of bad and unmaintainable code that companies will either have to live with, or replace the old fashioned way (which involves thinking about business rules, a process quite foreign to most of the people involved).
Hopefully the current generation of programmers who were obsessed with pretty graphics will be replaced by a new generation who take those things for granted and can get back to solving actual problems.
Regarding the original story I do find it odd that the existence of that box in the wild represents a threat. One would HOPE that these transmitions use encryption techniques that depend on large keys for their security and not on the obscurity of the algorithm itself
On the other hand I've read that a lot of this code is written in Ada and NASA is going to be walking on eggshells trying to modernize anything that uses this old software.
While it may be completely debugged, transition of this software via new hardware and a new Ada compiler, or a re-write to a more modern language is bound to generate errors.
If I were buying a laptop now I'd be tempted. I'm happy with the iBook I got 10 months or so ago.
The Bad:
But, I was a bit disappointed that they came out with a new operating system (OS X 10.2) that I had to PAY for in less than 6 months.
I was further disappointed that deciding to just stay with the older 10.1.5 (which was rock solid stable) was discoraged by Apple's only releasing updates to applications (iPhoto) for the latest version of the OS.
The on-line update that made it easy to keep up with bug fixes quickly started to dry up for 10.1.x and only security related updates could be found there.
So, I went out (after the lines died down) and got a copy of 10.2. After updating as far as 10.2.2 and reading the Apple forums for weeks I was still experiencing regular crashes and lock-ups. Many people on the forums seemed to be in the same boat.
Eventually I gave up on OS X and tried Yellow Dog Linux. No more crashes, no more lock-ups. While I know there are people who are perfectly happy with OS X, it didn't meet my standards for production quality software.
It will be interesting to see how Apple works with (or against) the open source community in the future. My own sense is that they have taken advantage of the BSD license to get a UNIX based OS off the ground quickly. In the process they have improved the user interface and ruined the stability of the software they started with. Improvements to Linux and the GUIs on top of it come along pretty rapidly without stability issues. I can forsee that in a few years the Apple OS might actually fall behind in many respects. Then Apple would just be a hardware company.
The Ugly:
But that wouldn't be so bad in my opinion. Apple designs GREAT hardware. They are forced to come up with some variations that are senselessly crammed together to make up for the fact that they can't keep up with processor speed on the PCs, and yet, every "product line" needs more than one product to tempt people at various price points. With only a few viable versions of the CPU to choose from that means Apple has to come up with some strange compromises to justify the less expensive systems. Thats really what this box is about.
I'd love to see Apple switch to a truly open OS, then work their way out of the OS business (in the Microsoft and Sun sense) and focus on integrating the best hardware-as-appliance which is their true strength.
The perfect computer for me would be an Apple that came with Linux out of the box and all the drivers and basic end-user tools ready to go (i.e. the YDL distribution with a few tweaks and the Apple aps thrown in.)
If that were to happen (and of course there would be nothing to stop people from compiling most of it to work on PCs) there would be a rapid migration away from the PC as we know it today.
Which, come to think of it, is going to happen with or without Apple's participation.
The problem with "Joe Sixpack" using a tool like this goes way beyond the installation step.
Every time I've seen a novice set up a "database" application using Access or any similar product it has only taken a few weeks to discover that the system has serious design flaws and bugs.
If a standalone Acess database is involved they almost always discover that they have more records than the system will handle with adequate performance. They get stuck when it turns out that several people need to access the data at the same time and they haven't figured out how to lock records.
Using Access or an Access-like program with ODBC is better, but not by much. Most non-programmers don't really understand the concept of joining tables, or the concept of matching real data with null values, or the ramifications of locking data for update while putting an editing screen up for the end user.
The "nice" thing about hooking up and RDBMS to an end user tool like Access or Excel is that you can bring a database server to its knees with only a few random clicks. Good for testing your backend setup, not too good for doing something useful with a database.
As far as *ease* of setup goes, the last time I installed Access and made it talk to a remote Oracle database I don't remember it being any easier than setting up MySQL and a PHP/Web front end. I've never played with the Open Office front end though.
I agree with much of what you say, but your opening remark taints the rest:
" OK, I'm tired of all this stupidity about how nobody knows exactly what MHz means, and how its not really a measure of speed."
I've found several contradictions to your assertion that micro-instructions must take one cycle. There is no "rule" to this affect, there is a tendency for it to be true.
If you have designed hardware you will know that it is possible to consume multiple cycles using ordinary "or","and","not" gates etc. In fact its hard to avoid doing so.
I don't think people are stupid (particularly in large numbers) for not all agreeing on terminology used to describe complex subject matter.
The debates over CISC vs RISC and how benchmarks relate to clock cycles won't end any time soon, nor should they.
Ultimately the best way to test the speed of a machine is by running real applications. For that determination nothing that goes on at lower levels, be it clock cycles or RISC vs CISC makes a bit of difference.
"Seriously, I'm all for getting kids involved in science and mathematics, but this is probably one of the dumbest experiments I've ever heard of. Unless the ants evolve into giant mutant space ants before the shuttle returns, I don't see how this can be of any practical value."
You think this is dumb, you should see some of the experiments the adults come up with.
The manned space program as it stands now is a hammer in search of a nail. We have all this expensive hardware floating around up here....now what? Tang II?
I'd like to see much more done with unmanned probes to the moon and other planets. We brought back some rocks 30 years ago and have been content to stay in earth orbit ever since.
I bet once the Chinese get a man in orbit and start talking about their own lunar landing NASA will suddenly pop up and say "HEY, lets go back to the moon!". Sometimes it seems it all more PR and showmanship than real substance doesn't it?
Best quote, regarding a world without the big media conglomerates:
All of these models would produce fewer global superstars and more locally successful musicians. We might not see another Michael Jackson circa 1982, but we also wouldn't see another Michael Jackson circa 2002. Not a bad tradeoff.
" What will stop Microsoft from buying all or investing in the game companies to kill competition?"
Oh, the US Government, 10 or 15 years from now will sit up and take notice!
But seriously: The stunt MS pulled to take over the US PC market won't work again. It is a global market now and really, the biggest part that the US plays is as a consumer of this technology, not as a supplier of it. Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sold, while Sony makes money on the Playstation. Nothing is going to change that imbalance any time soon.
While it is not totally stupid for Microsoft to go after the home entertainment market to supplement their declining status as a serious supplier of software (or should that be a supplier of serious software?), I bet they are not kidding themselves about this being an easy task. I just don't see Sony, Toshiba, JVC, and a long list of others falling all over themselves to get out of Microsoft's way the way that IBM did back in the 90's.
What IBM did was born out of their own myopia about the future of computing. I don't see some of the established consumer electronics companies having the same "vision thing" about the industry they dominate.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. Its frustrating to see how easily some people have trouble distinguishing between what they see on TV or the movies and what has or can happen in the real world. Often the justification for this is the fact that the communications satelite, moon landing, lasers, and a few other things were in fact predicted by science fiction before they became a reality.
On the other hand, Sci-Fi also placed us on Mars, Jupiter and even at distant stars by this point in time. We should have also established permanent undersea colonies by now, doubled our lifespans. Oh, yeah, and then there was that business about 1984.
Of course, if you predict every possible outcome in history, you are bound to be right... eventually.
http://xbox.gamerweb.com/news/0602/030.asp
Flextronics among others. From what I've read they are having financial troubles too.
As far as design goes, I think Nvidia and Intel had more to do with the hardware design of the XBox than Microsoft did.
Sony designed and manufactures the Playstation however, which is why they can make a slight profit selling the thing for $150-$200 while MS loses money even at the $200 price point. MS has to pass money along to subcontractors that Sony doesn't have to deal with.
No, Apple doesn't MAKE it's own computers either, however they do participate heavily in the design process.
Microsoft on the other hand tends to AVOID oportunities to get into the hardware end of things. Even when they DO participate in the design process such as for Pocket-PC devices and the new notepad style (I forget the official name) computers they leave the sale and marketing of the hardware to other companies.
MS is afraid to get into hardware because it is too risky, too hard, you have to constantly update your products, sell off old models etc. With software they have a nice comfortable 2-year cycle on major releases.
MS can charge what they please for Office and Windows because there are so many shops that have declared themselves "Windows Only". That is likely to change, and Microsoft needs badly to replace that cashflow with something else. Will that be hardware products? Consulting services? A new killer online service? Your guess is as good as mine. But keep in mind that Windows and Office are the only products in Microsofts inventory that are consitently profitable. Everything else can be thouught of as failed experiments.
Well, I don't know about his track record for predictions, as I don't read him that often, but the idea doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. Reading through some of the objections to it here makes his article seem well thought out by comparison.
BSD is a micro-kernel operating system. In theory even easier to port to other platforms than Linux. What advantage is there in remaining tied to a single hardware architecture? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Power-PC over Intel, but to the end user it really shouldn't make any difference. Very few people (including audiophiles) evaluate new stereo components based on the details of the integrated circuits used internally. The commodity PC will be that way too. Users will expect a certain number of basic features and the rest will be a matter of price, performance, and case color. Apple understands this a lot better than anyone else right now apparently. Their biggest weakness is price, not performance.
Don't forget they are selling servers now too. I doubt their goal is to lose gobs of money at this. They need to be flexible in terms of running on towers, blades, low power Transmetas and whatever other variations come out next year. To be perpetually tied to the fortunes of the Power-PC processor would be insane for them.
While I think OS X is far from being perfect, Apple is the the cat-bird seat with respect to Microsoft, who is just stuck selling software. With a fairly clean (by comparison with Windows) operating system that can be tailored to a number of uses, and an established reputation as a designer of hardware they not only compete with Microsoft, but with Sun and IBM as well. If, unlike these two, they start out with their server side software offerings as multiplatform compatible they'll have a big lead over everyone (except Linux) in terms of an OS that runs as comfortably on a desktop as it does in the computer room.
While there may be some technical challenges as pointed out here in Slashdot, I doubt that any of them are insurmountable. The more important question is: Is this a good idea from the Apple business perspective. I think the answer is a resounding YES!
More often, in my experience, it is the other way around. I've always been a night owl. My last job had an equal number of late comers and early birds. I was almost always the last one out of the office at night, sometimes including the night guard who locked up everything around 10PM.
I envy the person who can work at home whenever they feel like it. I had this luxury for about 2 years. The trick of course is that both you and your manager (or customer) must have a good idea of what the job is that you are doing so that you can agree on when it is 10 percent done, 50 percent done, or finished. These days, there are way too many manager that have never done any of the technical work that they manage. They don't have a clue what you are doing or how you do it. They don't know good quality from bad quality until the end user complains. I would rather work as a greeter at Walmart than work in one of these organizations again. I have no respect for the managers involved, and if you sign on to one of their projects you are doomed to fail even if your own work is beyond comparison.
At some point, and maybe we have already reached it, production of good software must be it's own reward, since the captains of industry don't seem to know good from bad. Results are slowly comming in from projects farmed out to cheap labor overseas and it ain't pretty. This has nothing to do with intelligence or talent of those workers who do work over there for a fraction of what we are used to getting paid. It has instead to do with the total inability of management to conceptualize (much less document) the products that they are trying to turn out.
It is unfortunate but true, these failures will not result in the perpetrators getting fired for incompetence. Rather they will be so monumental that they will cause businesses or at least divisions to be closed down entirely. As poor as mid management is at evaluating the quality of our work as programmers and technicians, top management is even *worse* at evaluating the results of mid-level managers. In almost every case the solutions will be too-little too-late.
They must not be getting bored of it too fast, since "Slasdotting" of web sites is still a regular occurrence.
I don't come here for hard news. Slashdot doesn't have a correspondent in Iraq as far as I know, nor do they send official representatives to all the tech conferences.
Slashdot *does* however represent a cross-section of the technical community, with an emphasis on the open source side. Turn your threshold to 5 and hit the highlights or turn it to -1 and read all 500 messages, the choice is up to you.
Slashdot also represents a lot of eyes and ears reading a lot of material that would be impossible for one person to keep up with. So I learn about a lot of new products by seeing them mentioned here first. And in many cases they are products that aren't going to get mentioned any time soon by CNet.com and all of its affiliates.
And finally, many of the comments that are modded up to 5;funny make me laugh, even if they are posted by morons. They're *my* kinda morons.
So, Shut Up!!
What if America was a real democracy and not run by oligarhic oportunists... ?"
(and being called "insightful" for it!)
They are calling into question whether America is still operating under it's original founding principles.
There seem to be a great number of people who think that if their favorite politician isn't in office at the moment that the system must therefore be broken.
America is both a democracy and a republic, the latter term (in *use* as opposed to Latin or Greek derivation) reminds us that we elect representatives rather than vote on every individual issue. I'd add to that that we are a Federal Republic composed of *States* which means that (in theory) we are even less likely to be subject to the whims of a dictator or an oligarchy.
I have no problem with people holding the view that we are being ruled by some secret society of Harvard graduates, or little green men from outer space for that matter, but I do have a problem with people taking such pot-shots at our form of government without also proposing some idea of what a good alternative might be.
The fact that about 50 percent of the population are unhappy with the outcomes of the last two elections here is no excuse for claiming that the system is broken. If its broken now, it was equally broken 10 years ago when the prevailing view in the White House and congress was quite different.
Gee this would have been funnier if you hadn't given out the answer. I would have guessed: They all start with "What if".
If you think that it is pure fantasy though then you must also think that Microsoft's business will continue raking in the money like they always have.
Fact is that their business model is beginning to fail. This has less to do with Open Source than it has to do with Business 101. You can't run a succesful buisiness selling the same product year after year for the same price. You can lower the price year after year to extend the product life-cycle, or you can introduce *significant* product enhancements, or you can move into new product lines altogether.
Microsoft has not *succeeded* in doing any of these things. So it reamains to be seen what they will eventually do. Until they actually do something, it remains anybodies guess as to what that will be, but I think Open Sourceing some of their "legacy" code makes a lot of sense.
Yep yep... it's fun to watch Microsoft occupy the seat normally occupied by its PC software competitors. Sony can afford to wait and see what Microsoft does next. Then counter it with something better and match the new price point.
Someone said that Sony loses money on every console sold at $200. Not so. They make a few dollars. Only MS is losing money on consoles.
If MS wants to be a serious player here they need to BUY a hardware company and start doing some "from the ground up" design. MS can buy a lot of influence with all its cash on hand, but Sony has the infrastructure to roll out new boxes without having to coordinate the efforts of other companies. This also allows them to make money where MS loses money for any given level of technology.
The next offering from Sony is not only likely to one-up whatever MS comes out with, but will most likely double as a home computer for many families. If Microsoft tries to go there they blow their own legs off.
Think of the Playstation II equipped with the Linux upgrade kit as a very crude prototype of what the Playstation III is likely to be and you will understand the predicament that Microsoft finds intelf in.
MS persues winning the console wars at it's own peril.
Very well said. I remember even before the Challenger disaster having these arguments. Ironic that anyone who suggests that the shuttle program is less than perfect will be accused of being against science or at least against space exploration. The truth of course is just the reverse. We have given up SO MUCH to pay for the shuttle program. We could have sent hundreds if not thousands of unmanned probes up by now and learned so much more about the origins of our planet and solar system.
The administrators want to rush back into production for one reason, and that is to cut off debate about whether we really need to be doing this any more. They are administrators, protecting their jobs and corporate infrastructure, nothing more. When NASA was young it was hailed as an example of government and business working together to do great things. Now it is just another bureaucracy like HUD that can't be fixed, or done away with.
What it will take for us to get off our asses again will be for the Chinese to have some successes in manned space flight. The threat of them establishing a permanent or even semi-permanent base on the moon will finally shake some brain cells loose in Washington. I'm a patriotic American, but it will serve us right if we lose the next space race. You can't keep trying to re-invent Tang and not expect the rest of the world to catch up eventually.
Well I recently worked with an organization that had about 50,000 copies of windows installed worldwide. And they had a couple hundred MCSEs who decided to lock down Windows as you suggest. That was more than 2 years ago and they are still on a regular basis visiting users machines and rendering them unusable.
It is probably reasonable to take a single use machine (say a departmental web server or a cash register) and lock it down so that it only does that one thing and nothing else and is secure.
Typical office users are almost impossible to secure and once you do secure them you have a bunch of complaining users who don't like being told that various options don't work any more.
For software developers I'd say it is mathematically impossible to lock down a Windows machine. The ones I know simply outsmart the admins and ignore company policy in order to get their jobs done.
I don't know anyone who is familiar with both Linux and Windows who thinks that it is even possible to make Windows as secure as Linux and I can't imagine why anyone with such knowledge would use Windows on anything but a small closed network.
But obviously people do, and we all have to suffer the consequences.
Worse than that. It *wasn't* a major screw-up. They could have left all the paper systems in place for another 200 years and it would have been fine. What happened was the vote was inicredibly close. Something that isn't likely to happen very often.
And had just about anyone but Al Gore (the inventor of the internet) been involved, it would have been over in a day or two without so much fanfare.
Having tried OS X for a while and liking it, I can't agree that it will "beat" Linux.
While using 10.1-10.1.5 I was pleased with the "beauty" of the thing as most people are. But when it came to running anything that didn't come pre-installed I didn't find it any more reliable, or easy to configure than a typical Windows machine.
I purchased SEVERAL peripheral devices and got most of them at an Apple store... just to be on the safe side. Even so, whether these devices would work or not was a crap-shoot.
Still I hung in there waiting for the promised benefits of Jaguar. When it came out I went and *purchased* a copy, even though I hadn't had my machine for 6 months yet.
Jaguar for me, and for many other people posting on the Apple forums was a total disaster. Not only did it provide few improvments that I could see, but the system was completely unstable.
Like so many other people at the Apple forums I wondered if maybe my hardware was at fault. People there have been advised to send their machines in for repair (at their expense) in order to cure Jaguar problems. Getting their machines back the glitches remain and they are out another $300. The level of support from what I can see is hardly any better than what a typical PC user would get from Microsoft and any name brand hardware vendor. You would at *least* expect with hardware and software comming from one company that there woul be no finger pointing about random lockups. But there is.
The happy ending to my story is that I used the unreliability of my iBook as an excuse to try out Yellow Dog Linux. I figured if *that* didn't work I'd take the machine back to the Apple store for another one.
That was 6 months ago and I don't think the machine has crashed or locked up once. I'm running Mozilla and Apache and PHP and all sorts of things that never worked right under OS X.
I prefer Evolution for email and calandar to anything OS X provided. I load picture from my camera into file folders with automatic thumbnail viewing. The KDE desktop looks as good as OS X in many respects and better in some too, plus it is more configurable than OS X is likely to be.
Updating is as easy as the OS X update program was. I type "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get upgrade" every week or two and its all taken care of. I could easily automate this, or make an icon out of it.
Did I have to study a bit to get all this stuff working? Yes I did. But I've spent far less time getting Linux to work the way I want and ultimatly succeeded whereas I spent far more time stuggling with my broken Jaguar and ultimately gave up. Which was the time better spent?
Maybe you're right and OS X will beat Linux, but to do so, Apple will have to make a quantum leap in support services. They will also have to do a much better job of herding hardware vendors into the OS X corral than they have so far. They'll have to do this without raising their prices, because PC prices continue to drop.
I can't make the math work for it. Maybe you can.
The article and my recollection say that Moore's law predicts a doubling (of whatever) every 12 months, but I regularly see it sited as 18 months. So my question is: after how many or how much altering of the original numbers does Moore's law become something else?
It is, after all a fact that at some point these densities CAN'T double any longer and while we are not right up against the speed of light and molecular limitations yet, we are suring getting into the same ball park.
At some point (and I think we may have reached it) the constraints placed on us by physics will have to be overcome by cleaver use of software, massively parallel systems etc. and at that point, Moore's law becomes relatively moot.
If he thinks that the typical Windows user considers calling Microsoft for support for even a nanosecond he is either stupid, or a lier.
OK, maybe both.
I'm not sure its hostility. On the other hand for every product that is more hype than reality, there are probably dozens of products that get passed over by the type of "high voltage" people who market Segway. There may be a few thousand people in the world for which the Segway is just the right thing, and therefore worth the big price tag. The promise of it revolutionizing our cities however will never happen until the price is more approachable. In fact if the thing were under $1000 I'm sure it would sell millions just to people who were curious about it.
If they are smart they will eat the development costs and sell the thing sooner rather than later at a price point that assumes they are selling 100,000 a year or so. Then, it might have a chance to revolutionize something.
"Well, I was more or less a kid at the time as well, but I'm pretty sure at least one part of this is wrong -- Compaq wasn't IBM's "sidekick". Compaq was the company that reverse-engineered IBM's machines, which couldn't have made IBM very happy. "
Well, since I wasn't a kid at the time, my 2 cents:
IBM, unlike Microsoft, and many other companies these days has always engaged in a wide variety of research efforts. A true research company (unlike Microsoft) doesn't expect every effort they undertake to result in a profitable product next month. They did research in fabrication of electronic components, varieties of memory devices many of which never caught on (bubble) and even research into things that were only remotely related to their core business.
For those things that made it out of the realm of research and into some sort of product status the number of products that failed by far exceeds the number that are still with us today. Products within IBM even today get second class treatment if IBM leadership can't see how to make big bucks off of them. The VM operating system within IBM has always had second class status with respect to their primary MVS (now called something else I think) operating system. Even though many internal functions at IBM are dependant on the flexibility VM provides, their existing MVS installed base made them too timid to ever consider taking the chance of migrating all of those users to something else. Microsoft must feel a similar timidity when they try and decide what to do with the existing Windows/Office base. Lack of significant change on those systems leaves users wondering why the huge upgrade fees, while a major change to those core products would potentially give users a good justification to switch to something else.
Neither the original IBM PC, nor any of the clones of the time were any threat at all to the IBM mainframe business. It MIGHT have been a truly visionary thing for IBM to keep total control of PC hardware and software, but my guess is that if they had taken that approach, the PC (as we know it) would have failed and some other small computer would have surpassed it.
By keeping only a very LOOSE control over the direction of the PC IBM allowed the technology to grow in an unconstrained fashion. Keep in mind that IBM sold a LOT of PCs then, and still does. This whole situation while not being IBM dominated is still a lot more profitable to them than it would be had (for example) Apple become the standard for PC type devises.
For IBM, having a leading product or two, another couple in the background, and a big pile of projects on the scrap heap has always been standard operating procedure. In fact this is fairly standard for most really big companies, and it is to some extent what causes America to lead the world in science and technology in spite of our awful performance with respect to other countries in providing a basic education to our population.
Microsoft is a different company. They only bet research dollars on ideas that they think have a high chance of returning profit in the near term. Failures for them in areas such as 3D, publishing, and Internet services are doubly embarrassing because these are the handpicked roads to success. Microsoft would do well to imitate some of the great companies of the past and use that $40 billion warchest on something other than putting AOL and Quicken out of business.
Gates has probably done more to spur pure R&D in building his never finished house than has been spent to run the company that made him all that money. Unless the MS corporate culture undergoes a significant change, maybe in conjunction with a leadership change, I see them clutching on to Windows and Office far too long for the companies own good.
You're supposed to use a vault?
ut-oh
I can understand the original posters "screw them" attitude. It is very frustrating for people who actually want to do quality work to be ultimately punished for trying to do so.
Process improvement methodologies that proliferated in the 90's seem to be falling by the wayside. I think part of the problem is that at about the same time RAD techniques promised upper management almost instant turnaround on their requests. The RAD techniques, and the tools that go with them have turned out reams of bad and unmaintainable code that companies will either have to live with, or replace the old fashioned way (which involves thinking about business rules, a process quite foreign to most of the people involved).
Hopefully the current generation of programmers who were obsessed with pretty graphics will be replaced by a new generation who take those things for granted and can get back to solving actual problems.
Regarding the original story I do find it odd that the existence of that box in the wild represents a threat. One would HOPE that these transmitions use encryption techniques that depend on large keys for their security and not on the obscurity of the algorithm itself
On the other hand I've read that a lot of this code is written in Ada and NASA is going to be walking on eggshells trying to modernize anything that uses this old software.
While it may be completely debugged, transition of this software via new hardware and a new Ada compiler, or a re-write to a more modern language is bound to generate errors.
The Good:
If I were buying a laptop now I'd be tempted. I'm happy with the iBook I got 10 months or so ago.
The Bad:
But, I was a bit disappointed that they came out with a new operating system (OS X 10.2) that I had to PAY for in less than 6 months.
I was further disappointed that deciding to just stay with the older 10.1.5 (which was rock solid stable) was discoraged by Apple's only releasing updates to applications (iPhoto) for the latest version of the OS.
The on-line update that made it easy to keep up with bug fixes quickly started to dry up for 10.1.x and only security related updates could be found there.
So, I went out (after the lines died down) and got a copy of 10.2. After updating as far as 10.2.2 and reading the Apple forums for weeks I was still experiencing regular crashes and lock-ups. Many people on the forums seemed to be in the same boat.
Eventually I gave up on OS X and tried Yellow Dog Linux. No more crashes, no more lock-ups. While I know there are people who are perfectly happy with OS X, it didn't meet my standards for production quality software.
It will be interesting to see how Apple works with (or against) the open source community in the future. My own sense is that they have taken advantage of the BSD license to get a UNIX based OS off the ground quickly. In the process they have improved the user interface and ruined the stability of the software they started with. Improvements to Linux and the GUIs on top of it come along pretty rapidly without stability issues. I can forsee that in a few years the Apple OS might actually fall behind in many respects. Then Apple would just be a hardware company.
The Ugly:
But that wouldn't be so bad in my opinion. Apple designs GREAT hardware. They are forced to come up with some variations that are senselessly crammed together to make up for the fact that they can't keep up with processor speed on the PCs, and yet, every "product line" needs more than one product to tempt people at various price points. With only a few viable versions of the CPU to choose from that means Apple has to come up with some strange compromises to justify the less expensive systems. Thats really what this box is about.
I'd love to see Apple switch to a truly open OS, then work their way out of the OS business (in the Microsoft and Sun sense) and focus on integrating the best hardware-as-appliance which is their true strength.
The perfect computer for me would be an Apple that came with Linux out of the box and all the drivers and basic end-user tools ready to go (i.e. the YDL distribution with a few tweaks and the Apple aps thrown in.)
If that were to happen (and of course there would be nothing to stop people from compiling most of it to work on PCs) there would be a rapid migration away from the PC as we know it today.
Which, come to think of it, is going to happen with or without Apple's participation.
The problem with "Joe Sixpack" using a tool like this goes way beyond the installation step.
Every time I've seen a novice set up a "database" application using Access or any similar product it has only taken a few weeks to discover that the system has serious design flaws and bugs.
If a standalone Acess database is involved they almost always discover that they have more records than the system will handle with adequate performance. They get stuck when it turns out that several people need to access the data at the same time and they haven't figured out how to lock records.
Using Access or an Access-like program with ODBC is better, but not by much. Most non-programmers don't really understand the concept of joining tables, or the concept of matching real data with null values, or the ramifications of locking data for update while putting an editing screen up for the end user.
The "nice" thing about hooking up and RDBMS to an end user tool like Access or Excel is that you can bring a database server to its knees with only a few random clicks. Good for testing your backend setup, not too good for doing something useful with a database.
As far as *ease* of setup goes, the last time I installed Access and made it talk to a remote Oracle database I don't remember it being any easier than setting up MySQL and a PHP/Web front end. I've never played with the Open Office front end though.
" OK, I'm tired of all this stupidity about how nobody knows exactly what MHz means, and how its not really a measure of speed."
I've found several contradictions to your assertion that micro-instructions must take one cycle. There is no "rule" to this affect, there is a tendency for it to be true.
If you have designed hardware you will know that it is possible to consume multiple cycles using ordinary "or","and","not" gates etc. In fact its hard to avoid doing so.
I don't think people are stupid (particularly in large numbers) for not all agreeing on terminology used to describe complex subject matter.
The debates over CISC vs RISC and how benchmarks relate to clock cycles won't end any time soon, nor should they.
Ultimately the best way to test the speed of a machine is by running real applications. For that determination nothing that goes on at lower levels, be it clock cycles or RISC vs CISC makes a bit of difference.
You think this is dumb, you should see some of the experiments the adults come up with.
The manned space program as it stands now is a hammer in search of a nail. We have all this expensive hardware floating around up here....now what? Tang II?
I'd like to see much more done with unmanned probes to the moon and other planets. We brought back some rocks 30 years ago and have been content to stay in earth orbit ever since.
I bet once the Chinese get a man in orbit and start talking about their own lunar landing NASA will suddenly pop up and say "HEY, lets go back to the moon!". Sometimes it seems it all more PR and showmanship than real substance doesn't it?
All of these models would produce fewer global superstars and more locally successful musicians. We might not see another Michael Jackson circa 1982, but we also wouldn't see another Michael Jackson circa 2002. Not a bad tradeoff.
Oh, the US Government, 10 or 15 years from now will sit up and take notice!
But seriously: The stunt MS pulled to take over the US PC market won't work again. It is a global market now and really, the biggest part that the US plays is as a consumer of this technology, not as a supplier of it. Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sold, while Sony makes money on the Playstation. Nothing is going to change that imbalance any time soon.
While it is not totally stupid for Microsoft to go after the home entertainment market to supplement their declining status as a serious supplier of software (or should that be a supplier of serious software?), I bet they are not kidding themselves about this being an easy task. I just don't see Sony, Toshiba, JVC, and a long list of others falling all over themselves to get out of Microsoft's way the way that IBM did back in the 90's.
What IBM did was born out of their own myopia about the future of computing. I don't see some of the established consumer electronics companies having the same "vision thing" about the industry they dominate.