What they're forgetting to take into account is who subscribes to Newsweek: Doctors who often have patients waiting for an appointment. Who is going to subscribe to a Newsweek that can't be left out for patients to read while they wait for the doctor to see them?
The doctors of the future will have stacks of battered old iPad 2's on the table in the waiting area....
All of which will have batteries that no longer hold a charge longer than 10 minutes.
Every year we take 100 million tons of biomass from the oceans (mostly as pelagic fish, 70m tons). And each year, we dump 6 million tons of garbage in the oceans, 2 million tons of waste oil, and discharge about 450 cubic kilometres of waste water into rivers (about 450 billion tons, so even ppb chemicals release more than 100 tons).
But lets worry about 100 tons of iron sulphate dust.
Right, but it's some kind of tipping point, where a tiny bit (seen collectively) can cause huge changes. I remember reading that somewhere.
I think your experience is closer to normal. Mine has been less so, but was probably an anomaly. A few years back, I built up a medium sized data center with all SCSI fast-wide disks, using them there 7200 RPM disks, which were a new thing at the time. (5400 rpm being the standard at the time.)
Less than two months later, we had our first bearing failure. That this one failed early was actually a godsend, because it gave us time to get prepared for the avalanche of failed drives that started three weeks later.
When more than half of the drives had failed, we pulled all (100%) of the drives out of service and installed older technology.
You guessed it, all the 7200 RPM drives came from the same vendor, who bought them from the same manufacturer, who had bought all their bearings from the same supplier, etc. The root cause, I remember hearing, was traced back to a batch of faulty seal material that the bearing factory had purchased from *their* vendor. As all this happened under warranty, the cost to us was production downtime and some long hours for my team. The vendor very nearly went out of business.
You're right about the firmware thing. In another environment, which featured huge raid arrays, we insisted on the same manufacturer, routinely checked manufacturer's date and flashed all incoming drives to the same firmware level.
> You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
You'd think. I believe the real problem is that Comcast, et al can only envision one business model, and are reacting to cable tv doing the buggy-whip thing by holding tighter onto what they still have, not having the capability to understand that what they have isn't important anymore.
You're absolutely right; the cable TV companies are acting precisely like the dial-up services did when broadband became widespread -- try desperately to make their old business model work. (I actually knew someone who connected to earthlink over his new broadband connection because he didn't know any better.) The ones who continue flogging that dead equine will go out of business; the ones who move on may not.
In my area, Comcast is openly bad-mouthing their terrestrial competitor, (a salescreature comes to our door approx once a month to try to get us to give up fiber), trying to push cable TV at "introductory" prices, and advertising peak internet speeds way beyond what any consumer needs, still thinking that internet access is a raw numbers game. Having been a Comcast customer in the past, (I was handed to them by AT&T when they quit the cable modem business) I can't wait for them to go out of business. Worst customer service in the industry. Worse even than the old TCI Cable.
We get along with an antenna and a Roku. If it's not on one or the other, it's not important. Netflix costs me $7.99 a month. Screw the cable companies.
One example: I worked for a young company that announced a major new OS release, a real departure, that was not compatible in any way with what had gone before. Apps written on the old would not run on the new, even with compatibility mode. Apps written for the new would not run on the old. The biggest change was the network stack, which was a huge departure, and the company decided that forcing customers and software vendors to cut over was more important than providing backwards compatibility. So this wasn't just compile and test, it required a major rewrite of anything that touched the network, which is in a sense everything.
The company announced this new OS a year ahead of time, and for reasons of their own announced they would stop renewing service contracts on the old product. Within three months, their biggest customers had moved to a different platform, and most new purchases were put on hold. The company went from $250M/year in sales the previous year to $70M the year they made the announcements. More than half the company was laid off. They managed to suck it up and somehow survive, (much of which involved putting stuff back in the new product that they had pulled out) but it was a massacre. And it didn't have to happen. The new release was managed arrogantly and without regard to existing customers or customers ready to purchase, and they paid the price.
I'm sorry if you don't understand "what that even means". Your job may someday rely on someone understanding it.
Nice bit of editing, there, leaving off the point at the end. You can go through life believing what you will, but there are ways to manage a new platform that doesn't alienate buyers and put a strain on suppliers, and there are ways to mismanage a new platform that hurt suppliers, (see: last two quarters of Apple's 4s sales) sometimes driving them out of business (again, see osbourne). This exists; belief is optional.
Declaring a platform dead means (a) declaring that a device running the current OS can never be upgraded to the next OS, (b) declaring that the next OS is an essential part of Microsoft's new framework (pc/tablet/phone) and will therefore be the platform getting support going forward, (c) announcing that applications written for the new OS will not run on the old OS, and (d) doing a huge marketing push for the new product six months before it was due to be released. (Google The Osborne Effect.) Microsoft did everything exactly right to put Nokia in as bad a position as possible. Anyone interested in buying a Windows 7 phone in the last two business quarters would naturally wait until Windows 8 phones are released. And then wait a little longer, because every Microsoft user knows that they never get it right the first time. The thing is, I strongly suspect Nokia can't survive three dead quarters. They're not going to make it. At least, not as a company even fractionally the size they are now.
Slashdot Mirror
I have birds, so I occasionally have to buy a Sunday edition.
What they're forgetting to take into account is who subscribes to Newsweek: Doctors who often have patients waiting for an appointment. Who is going to subscribe to a Newsweek that can't be left out for patients to read while they wait for the doctor to see them?
The doctors of the future will have stacks of battered old iPad 2's on the table in the waiting area....
All of which will have batteries that no longer hold a charge longer than 10 minutes.
All those issues are from 2009 anyway. All the doctors have to do is save up Newsweek's last issues, and then leave them in waiting rooms forever.
> It's illegal and a contract violation to work with Cablecard while not sucking.
Hands down, this wins my favorite line of the week award.
Yep. Sony VCRs had something called the "IR mouse" a long time ago.
In some cases, it was the same people.
Are we talking IBM technical manual sized or list of jewish sports stars sized?
IBM Redbook. Which would essentially make it a death sentence.
Every year we take 100 million tons of biomass from the oceans (mostly as pelagic fish, 70m tons). And each year, we dump 6 million tons of garbage in the oceans, 2 million tons of waste oil, and discharge about 450 cubic kilometres of waste water into rivers (about 450 billion tons, so even ppb chemicals release more than 100 tons).
But lets worry about 100 tons of iron sulphate dust.
Right, but it's some kind of tipping point, where a tiny bit (seen collectively) can cause huge changes. I remember reading that somewhere.
If carbon credits werent involved, would the same people be in an uproar?
Does it really matter? I thought carbon credits were supposed to encourage this type of, er, entrepreneurship.
You are not paranoid enough. See my other post. A batch of bad drive bearing sealant took out our entire data center.
I think your experience is closer to normal. Mine has been less so, but was probably an anomaly. A few years back, I built up a medium sized data center with all SCSI fast-wide disks, using them there 7200 RPM disks, which were a new thing at the time. (5400 rpm being the standard at the time.)
Less than two months later, we had our first bearing failure. That this one failed early was actually a godsend, because it gave us time to get prepared for the avalanche of failed drives that started three weeks later.
When more than half of the drives had failed, we pulled all (100%) of the drives out of service and installed older technology.
You guessed it, all the 7200 RPM drives came from the same vendor, who bought them from the same manufacturer, who had bought all their bearings from the same supplier, etc. The root cause, I remember hearing, was traced back to a batch of faulty seal material that the bearing factory had purchased from *their* vendor. As all this happened under warranty, the cost to us was production downtime and some long hours for my team. The vendor very nearly went out of business.
You're right about the firmware thing. In another environment, which featured huge raid arrays, we insisted on the same manufacturer, routinely checked manufacturer's date and flashed all incoming drives to the same firmware level.
Well, I hope not.
> You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
You'd think. I believe the real problem is that Comcast, et al can only envision one business model, and are reacting to cable tv doing the buggy-whip thing by holding tighter onto what they still have, not having the capability to understand that what they have isn't important anymore.
You're absolutely right; the cable TV companies are acting precisely like the dial-up services did when broadband became widespread -- try desperately to make their old business model work. (I actually knew someone who connected to earthlink over his new broadband connection because he didn't know any better.) The ones who continue flogging that dead equine will go out of business; the ones who move on may not.
In my area, Comcast is openly bad-mouthing their terrestrial competitor, (a salescreature comes to our door approx once a month to try to get us to give up fiber), trying to push cable TV at "introductory" prices, and advertising peak internet speeds way beyond what any consumer needs, still thinking that internet access is a raw numbers game. Having been a Comcast customer in the past, (I was handed to them by AT&T when they quit the cable modem business) I can't wait for them to go out of business. Worst customer service in the industry. Worse even than the old TCI Cable.
Ew, you're doing business with Comcast? I'm sorry.
Roger that. My daughter prefers Roku to cable. Netflix is less than $10 a month. She's even watching (gasp!) documentaries!
Just sayin'.
We get along with an antenna and a Roku. If it's not on one or the other, it's not important. Netflix costs me $7.99 a month. Screw the cable companies.
Mass transit?
Or Asimov's Nightfall? (The story, not the movie.)
One example: I worked for a young company that announced a major new OS release, a real departure, that was not compatible in any way with what had gone before. Apps written on the old would not run on the new, even with compatibility mode. Apps written for the new would not run on the old. The biggest change was the network stack, which was a huge departure, and the company decided that forcing customers and software vendors to cut over was more important than providing backwards compatibility. So this wasn't just compile and test, it required a major rewrite of anything that touched the network, which is in a sense everything.
The company announced this new OS a year ahead of time, and for reasons of their own announced they would stop renewing service contracts on the old product. Within three months, their biggest customers had moved to a different platform, and most new purchases were put on hold. The company went from $250M/year in sales the previous year to $70M the year they made the announcements. More than half the company was laid off. They managed to suck it up and somehow survive, (much of which involved putting stuff back in the new product that they had pulled out) but it was a massacre. And it didn't have to happen. The new release was managed arrogantly and without regard to existing customers or customers ready to purchase, and they paid the price.
I'm sorry if you don't understand "what that even means". Your job may someday rely on someone understanding it.
Nice bit of editing, there, leaving off the point at the end. You can go through life believing what you will, but there are ways to manage a new platform that doesn't alienate buyers and put a strain on suppliers, and there are ways to mismanage a new platform that hurt suppliers, (see: last two quarters of Apple's 4s sales) sometimes driving them out of business (again, see osbourne). This exists; belief is optional.
Declaring a platform dead means (a) declaring that a device running the current OS can never be upgraded to the next OS, (b) declaring that the next OS is an essential part of Microsoft's new framework (pc/tablet/phone) and will therefore be the platform getting support going forward, (c) announcing that applications written for the new OS will not run on the old OS, and (d) doing a huge marketing push for the new product six months before it was due to be released. (Google The Osborne Effect.) Microsoft did everything exactly right to put Nokia in as bad a position as possible. Anyone interested in buying a Windows 7 phone in the last two business quarters would naturally wait until Windows 8 phones are released. And then wait a little longer, because every Microsoft user knows that they never get it right the first time. The thing is, I strongly suspect Nokia can't survive three dead quarters. They're not going to make it. At least, not as a company even fractionally the size they are now.
Agreed. And what separates the intellectually honest from the converts is the ability to look at evidence that disputes their theories.
Right right right... I've heard Mitt is going to outlaw Tampons also. It'll be just horrible.
> Obama pulled the country out of a death spiral
This must be some definition of "pulled the country out of a death spiral" with which I am not familiar.