The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh."
Because (as has been said elsewhere in this thread) the people involved in promoting this garbage score political points with the more mindless element of the electorate. Come election time, it's important to have been seen taking a tough stance on... something. Doesn't matter all that much what, as long as you're taking a tough stance on it.
And let's not forget that old dudes often get more done per unit time than younger ones that haven't a clue what they're doing. Experience counts, and in many areas counts for a lot even if the average beancounter is complete unable to account for it in any meaningful way.
There was a white-collar gang that was caught some years ago that did something similar. They cashed lots of bad checks that were chemically treated to break down some time later, leaving no obvious evidence that said check ever existed. The way they got caught was because the treated checks began to dissolve other people's checks that were next to them. They still managed to get away with a lot of money before they got nailed. I've since wondered if anyone has repeated that particular gig more successfully... not that we'd ever hear about it.
I have the feeling that it was either starting to affect the quality of his work, or he was missing more than just sick time. I'll give him points for becoming aware of what was happening and taking steps. There are a whole lot of people that aren't able to do that, at least not without help.
Ballmer is just an evil Peter Boyle from a parallel universe. There's precedent for that sort of thing: remember the evil versions of the Enterprise crew in the original series episode Mirror, Mirror. Personally, I always thought Spock looked much better with the beard. I wonder how Ballmer would look with a beard.
If Apple is kicking the competition's butts by offering a simple, easy-to-use product, why would they garbage it up with all the "features" that their losing competitors have?
Because marketing drones that don't have a real, salesworthy product will insist on some means of "product differentiation" to make their product appear better than the competition's, or at least noteworthy. This is the driving force behind feature-creep in virtually everything, "How do we make our brand X more marketable than the other guy's brand Y?" Why, more features, of course! And that sucks in a surprising number of people.
This time MS needs to make a good product that will stand on its own merits, or they'll bleed red ink until the shareholders tell 'em to quit.
Sure, I agree... but it's still no different in that Microsoft doesn't mind bleeding for a while until they figure out how a particular marketplace works. They still screw up from a technological point of view more often than they succeed, but in this case they will probably do okay. What they ultimately come up with to compete with the likes of the iPod doesn't even have to be as good as the iPod, just better than average, and if they price it right and back it with sufficient marketing dollars it'll make money. Maybe it won't be an iPod killer, but if it makes money the shareholders will be happy enough with it. People like me, who couldn't give a flying you-know-what about Apple's "style" or "coolness" but are more interested in bang-for-the-buck will certainly take a look at any solid offering that Microsoft puts out. Not that the Zune is anywhere near a solid offering, but time will tell.
The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
to:
Windows 3.x is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
You'll realize that this is just a typical Microsoft "throw something out there" first effort. It was obviously never intended to be an iPod killer, or even to be successful at any particular level. However, you can bet your MP3 player (whatever it is) that there are a bunch of someones at Microsoft reading every public comment about the Zune that they can get their eyeballs on. It's just as important to know what customers think is stupid or otherwise dislike as it is to know what they do like (they need only look at the iPod for that information.) That's Marketing 101, and if nothing else Microsoft does know how to market.
Windows 1.x, 2.x and 3.x truly sucked at pretty much every level but at least 3.1 made a lot of money. Windows 95, for all it's many flaws made even more money, and 98+ made even more money. Don't expect anything positive for the first few years after Microsoft enters a particular market. Historically, they usually fail economically (if not technologically) at anything but operating systems and office suites anyway, but given time they could do well in the portable media player market.
Either way, Apple had best not rest on its laurels for too long. Microsoft isn't the only competitor out there that wants a piece of the iPod pie.
Actually, the T800's accent wasn't so much incomprehensible as it was inexplicable. I mean, come on... Austrian? On the other hand, given that Skynet's only interest in humanity was wiping it off the face of the Earth I suppose it can be forgiven for not picking a more appropriate accent.
Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and last but not least, Redneck Rampage, not necessarily in that order. Won't need an expensive console to play them, either, just a P133+ running some flavor of DOS. Alternatively, Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior are available as Windows ports as long as you have the original data files (I wish JonoF would port Blood next.)
Anyone that stupid should be put on an IV insulin drip until they drop into a coma themselves.
Some twenty-odd years ago I was involved in doing the software for a university research lab. They were testing the effects that extremes of blood glucose levels had on mental acuity. The software we came up with would flash LEDs in various patterns (to prevent the subject from predicting them) and measured their response time. As I happened to be on-hand when they were first testing the system I got hooked up to an IV and they ran my blood sugar up and down. The effect of extremely low blood levels on mentation is remarkable. I watched my measured latency (my normal reaction time was well under 200 ms) jump to two or three seconds. Oddly, I didn't really feel much different until it got really low, but there was no question I was impaired.
My father was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic a couple years later. I had a pretty good idea of what he was going through from my experience with that project.
You've heard the expression about people "being promoted to the level of their own incompetence"?
Yes indeed, "The Peter Principle", from Dr. Laurence J. Peter's 1968 book of the same name. Technically, this has nothing to do with some managers being dicks but in practice it does seem that way.
I'm not a diabetic myself (so far, anyway) but I've had several relatives that were Type II, and I knew a girl who was a Type I that died at thirty from complications from it. And this was an individual that exercised, kept her weight down, monitored her glucose level constantly and took care of herself way better than most. She said once evening, rather sadly, "Diabetes really sucks." My father also died of complications due to his diabetes mellitus, and I took care of him the last three years of his life before the final heart attack took him. Or perhaps it was a stroke, hard to say. At least he still had all of his limbs, although for ten years previously he couldn't feel them because severe neuropathy killed most of the sensory nerves.
My point is that you may indeed know a "successful" diabetic, but for every one of those there are dozens that suffer terribly. It's a degenerative disease... the girl I mentioned had multiple eye problems requiring surgery (retinal bleeding and so forth, my father had them too), they had to temporarily remove and freeze her eyeballs to fix it. They had to remove part of her intestines at one point. My father had multiple heart attacks, strokes, pacemaker, bone infections, total renal shutdown (home dialysis) and in the end was bedridden for two years before he died. And for about fifteen years he had neuropathic pain that was neverending, and at times was like continuous electric shocks. Yes, he had it worse than most, but there are many who aren't far behind.
So, while I agree with you that it's a wonderful thing that something resembling a "cure" may be on the way, believe me, maintaining a tolerable existence is very difficult for many of those so afflicted. It's a rough disease, it really is, and it affects every aspect of your life. About six months before he died, my father said, "I think I should go off the dialysis." Apparently, renal failure is a fairly decent way to go: you drop into a coma and die shortly afterwards. I talked him out of it then, although if I had it to do over again I wouldn't.
I've also lost relatives to different varieties of cancer, and frankly, if I had to choose one or the other as my way to go... I think I'd pick a nice fast-growing cancer. Oat-cell carcinoma, maybe.
Well, if the parents of these young sebastards would bother to get educated on what does (and does not!) constitute a health risk to their children, said offspring would be a lot better off. Those kids are more at risk from skin cancer due to playing outdoors on a sunny day than they'll ever be from some unforeseen malady induced by a WRT54G or a DI-624. And most parents see nothing wrong with ordering their kids outside on a sunny day.
Amazing. I have to wonder if there's something wrong with the water these people are drinking.
Slashdot Mirror
The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh."
... duh.
Well
Why can't all these people just chill out?
... something. Doesn't matter all that much what, as long as you're taking a tough stance on it.
Because (as has been said elsewhere in this thread) the people involved in promoting this garbage score political points with the more mindless element of the electorate. Come election time, it's important to have been seen taking a tough stance on
Hey ... bend over like a man and take it.
Yeah ... but if we've heard about it he probably got caught.
"Nano Nano ... ow, I just cut myself!"
And let's not forget that old dudes often get more done per unit time than younger ones that haven't a clue what they're doing. Experience counts, and in many areas counts for a lot even if the average beancounter is complete unable to account for it in any meaningful way.
There was a white-collar gang that was caught some years ago that did something similar. They cashed lots of bad checks that were chemically treated to break down some time later, leaving no obvious evidence that said check ever existed. The way they got caught was because the treated checks began to dissolve other people's checks that were next to them. They still managed to get away with a lot of money before they got nailed. I've since wondered if anyone has repeated that particular gig more successfully ... not that we'd ever hear about it.
I have the feeling that it was either starting to affect the quality of his work, or he was missing more than just sick time. I'll give him points for becoming aware of what was happening and taking steps. There are a whole lot of people that aren't able to do that, at least not without help.
You're right on the money.
Ballmer is just an evil Peter Boyle from a parallel universe. There's precedent for that sort of thing: remember the evil versions of the Enterprise crew in the original series episode Mirror, Mirror. Personally, I always thought Spock looked much better with the beard. I wonder how Ballmer would look with a beard.
If Apple is kicking the competition's butts by offering a simple, easy-to-use product, why would they garbage it up with all the "features" that their losing competitors have?
Because marketing drones that don't have a real, salesworthy product will insist on some means of "product differentiation" to make their product appear better than the competition's, or at least noteworthy. This is the driving force behind feature-creep in virtually everything, "How do we make our brand X more marketable than the other guy's brand Y?" Why, more features, of course! And that sucks in a surprising number of people.
Would you have felt better about that if they'd called it a "flawed product but great"?
This time MS needs to make a good product that will stand on its own merits, or they'll bleed red ink until the shareholders tell 'em to quit.
... but it's still no different in that Microsoft doesn't mind bleeding for a while until they figure out how a particular marketplace works. They still screw up from a technological point of view more often than they succeed, but in this case they will probably do okay. What they ultimately come up with to compete with the likes of the iPod doesn't even have to be as good as the iPod, just better than average, and if they price it right and back it with sufficient marketing dollars it'll make money. Maybe it won't be an iPod killer, but if it makes money the shareholders will be happy enough with it. People like me, who couldn't give a flying you-know-what about Apple's "style" or "coolness" but are more interested in bang-for-the-buck will certainly take a look at any solid offering that Microsoft puts out. Not that the Zune is anywhere near a solid offering, but time will tell.
Sure, I agree
If you change the following sentence from:
The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
to:
Windows 3.x is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
You'll realize that this is just a typical Microsoft "throw something out there" first effort. It was obviously never intended to be an iPod killer, or even to be successful at any particular level. However, you can bet your MP3 player (whatever it is) that there are a bunch of someones at Microsoft reading every public comment about the Zune that they can get their eyeballs on. It's just as important to know what customers think is stupid or otherwise dislike as it is to know what they do like (they need only look at the iPod for that information.) That's Marketing 101, and if nothing else Microsoft does know how to market.
Windows 1.x, 2.x and 3.x truly sucked at pretty much every level but at least 3.1 made a lot of money. Windows 95, for all it's many flaws made even more money, and 98+ made even more money. Don't expect anything positive for the first few years after Microsoft enters a particular market. Historically, they usually fail economically (if not technologically) at anything but operating systems and office suites anyway, but given time they could do well in the portable media player market.
Either way, Apple had best not rest on its laurels for too long. Microsoft isn't the only competitor out there that wants a piece of the iPod pie.
Just out of curiosity ... why do you refuse to use it?
Nah ... just an improvement in the paperairplanenet.
You forgot Directive 4.
Or maybe "Cyberdyne Systems". Products from both companies seem to be just about as fictional.
Actually, the T800's accent wasn't so much incomprehensible as it was inexplicable. I mean, come on ... Austrian? On the other hand, given that Skynet's only interest in humanity was wiping it off the face of the Earth I suppose it can be forgiven for not picking a more appropriate accent.
Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and last but not least, Redneck Rampage, not necessarily in that order. Won't need an expensive console to play them, either, just a P133+ running some flavor of DOS. Alternatively, Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior are available as Windows ports as long as you have the original data files (I wish JonoF would port Blood next.)
Anyone that stupid should be put on an IV insulin drip until they drop into a coma themselves.
Some twenty-odd years ago I was involved in doing the software for a university research lab. They were testing the effects that extremes of blood glucose levels had on mental acuity. The software we came up with would flash LEDs in various patterns (to prevent the subject from predicting them) and measured their response time. As I happened to be on-hand when they were first testing the system I got hooked up to an IV and they ran my blood sugar up and down. The effect of extremely low blood levels on mentation is remarkable. I watched my measured latency (my normal reaction time was well under 200 ms) jump to two or three seconds. Oddly, I didn't really feel much different until it got really low, but there was no question I was impaired.
My father was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic a couple years later. I had a pretty good idea of what he was going through from my experience with that project.
I'm "incompetent" as an engineer next to John Carmack, Woz, and any number of other people, but I don't bear them any hostility.
... they don't work for you!
I'm sure you don't, but on the other hand
You've heard the expression about people "being promoted to the level of their own incompetence"?
Yes indeed, "The Peter Principle", from Dr. Laurence J. Peter's 1968 book of the same name. Technically, this has nothing to do with some managers being dicks but in practice it does seem that way.
I'm not a diabetic myself (so far, anyway) but I've had several relatives that were Type II, and I knew a girl who was a Type I that died at thirty from complications from it. And this was an individual that exercised, kept her weight down, monitored her glucose level constantly and took care of herself way better than most. She said once evening, rather sadly, "Diabetes really sucks." My father also died of complications due to his diabetes mellitus, and I took care of him the last three years of his life before the final heart attack took him. Or perhaps it was a stroke, hard to say. At least he still had all of his limbs, although for ten years previously he couldn't feel them because severe neuropathy killed most of the sensory nerves.
... the girl I mentioned had multiple eye problems requiring surgery (retinal bleeding and so forth, my father had them too), they had to temporarily remove and freeze her eyeballs to fix it. They had to remove part of her intestines at one point. My father had multiple heart attacks, strokes, pacemaker, bone infections, total renal shutdown (home dialysis) and in the end was bedridden for two years before he died. And for about fifteen years he had neuropathic pain that was neverending, and at times was like continuous electric shocks. Yes, he had it worse than most, but there are many who aren't far behind.
... I think I'd pick a nice fast-growing cancer. Oat-cell carcinoma, maybe.
My point is that you may indeed know a "successful" diabetic, but for every one of those there are dozens that suffer terribly. It's a degenerative disease
So, while I agree with you that it's a wonderful thing that something resembling a "cure" may be on the way, believe me, maintaining a tolerable existence is very difficult for many of those so afflicted. It's a rough disease, it really is, and it affects every aspect of your life. About six months before he died, my father said, "I think I should go off the dialysis." Apparently, renal failure is a fairly decent way to go: you drop into a coma and die shortly afterwards. I talked him out of it then, although if I had it to do over again I wouldn't.
I've also lost relatives to different varieties of cancer, and frankly, if I had to choose one or the other as my way to go
Well, if the parents of these young sebastards would bother to get educated on what does (and does not!) constitute a health risk to their children, said offspring would be a lot better off. Those kids are more at risk from skin cancer due to playing outdoors on a sunny day than they'll ever be from some unforeseen malady induced by a WRT54G or a DI-624. And most parents see nothing wrong with ordering their kids outside on a sunny day.
Amazing. I have to wonder if there's something wrong with the water these people are drinking.