> I heard elsewhere that the OS will detect (will this need a new API and drivers?) what input methods are available and adjust the UI accordingly. In which case the UI will be different on different devices for intents and purposes.
That's.... actually... a really good idea. Microsoft would actually be innovative, and for once, ahead of the pack. I'm trying to wrap my mind around that.
> I'm hopeful Nadella is talking more of a unified base with UI adjustments/differences as needed for each device type.
Now you're talking. On the one hand, it's an obvious strategy, so Microsoft will do something else instead -- like, a unified and mostly inappropriate UI over different code bases. Um, like, now.
On the other hand, Nadella is a new guy. He's not Ballmer. Maybe he'll surprise everyone in the freaking world and do the right thing.
> You might, but I, at least, wouldn't because what you'd end up with was a UI that worked equally badly on all types of screens and wasn't really right for any of them
"Apprenticeships"...."two-year community college degree"....rofl. Good news everyone, your Software Engineering / Computer Science degrees were silently downgraded during the night to trade-school status, meaning you are now no better off that our Information Technology 'plumber' friends. That 4-year / 5-year bachelors of science / arts program you soldiered through? Doesn't matter anymore.
But don't worry...our Electrical Engineering 'electrician' and Mechanical Engineering 'mechanics' friends will be joining you soon.
A friend of mine was a microwave engineer for a company that made military communications and countermeasures gear. He could not convince his family that he did not work on ovens. I haven't checked with him in awhile -- maybe "microwave engineers" do work on ovens now.
Yeah, imagine if they started using H-1B workers to replace middle and upper management. Those good old boys would rally together and end that in seconds.
What makes it work is the perception that whatever you're displacing whether it's IT or development is just a matter of following procedures, something anyone could do, so the smart company hires the cheapest people possible for the job. Go immediately to 4) $$PROFIT$$. Management, however, takes skill and insight and intuition and all those other things that are difficult to measure, so they can't possibly be replaced.
How would we recognize alien porn? They could be very, almost unreasonably, similar to us and maybe it'd look like binary fission. More likely, it would look like six or more Teslas crashing at speed.
...happened many years ago. The government speced a power supply so clean that it couldn't economically be done at the time. The company that won the contract produced a box that met all the specs. Except that it failed after several hours of use. Opening the box, they found the power cable connected to a strain relief and the main power provided by a lead-acid battery.
Word is, there was no spec for lifecycle so the devices met the contract as stated, and the government couldn't return the devices.
So I'd recommend to Google: At some point, look in the box.
It's like, you know, books. We don't all read the same novel chapter by chapter at the same time.
Oh really? One thing that Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio and Dickens's Oliver Twist have in common, other than that Walt Disney Pictures loosely adapted both decades later, is that they were both first published as serials.
...as was, for instance, much of Alexandre Dumas, or Edgar Rice Burroughs. But you also notice that publishing books as serials isn't done as much anymore. As it will be with video. This is the last of the TV generation. Hold onto your TV trays, they'll be collector's items soon.
> Let me put it another way: Waiting for the season box set breaks the shared social experience of all being at the same point in an original serial work. Then the question becomes whether this experience is beneficial.
I let that go by the first time, but since you made the point again, isn't it the case for at least some series that you can stream episodes before the entire season is available on DVD?
And, I know that the media providers (tv and movie) try to sell and do depend on the herd mentality to drive consumption, but I personally think "the shared social experience" (a) is overrated, and (b) doesn't need to be synced to the exact hour of the day. Just the other day, I talked to a friend who had just started "the last ship", and although I'm pretty much up to date, I didn't have a problem with having a spoiler-free conversation with him.
It's like, you know, books. We don't all read the same novel chapter by chapter at the same time. Or maybe you don't remember books.:-)
Regarding OTA, one's mileage may vary. I watch very little TV, but as a geek I'm interested a bit in the technical side, and observe that our OTA channels are much sharper than any cable/satellite service we've ever had (and we've had everything that's been available, because wife and daughter are pretty much addicted). But I concede that I've not looked everywhere, and it might be different elsewhere.
But you bring up a good point. I felt back when HD was being heavily promoted that there was a really good possibility that in practice, regardless of what the standard is actually capable, what we'll actually get won't be more than a slight bump from what we had before.
I was basing this on the old NTSC days, where the standard was capable of well over 500 horizontal lines, and most people were making do with less than a third of that. (That being the resolution of common time shifting tools of the time.)
So, yeah, I believe your assessment is correct. You can see it in other media -- there is considerable overlap between exceptionally well authored DVDs, and a poorly authored Blu-Rays, for instance.
What's the conclusion? Perhaps, that people get the quality they deserve. Or, that they are willing to put up with.
> But I was referring to things like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, where one may have to actively avoid spoilers that come up in casual conversation at work.
Netflix. (I must be one of the only people on earth who doesn't watch either Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. But I know people who are addicted, and I'm told the experience is much better when binge-watching. Major advantage: No cliff-hangers.)
I mean, Breaking Bad is off the air, isn't it?
>> Usually (but admittedly not always) [...]
> If I'm making this up, then so are [...]
Are you and I having the same conversation? I get the impression you're responding to something someone else said.
> Someone is a fan of a particular talk show host on one of the cable "news" channels.
Depending on which program you're talking about, it might be available via streaming, perhaps for a fee.
> Someone watches sporting events that aren't shown OTA and are blacked out online because they're on cable.
My wife is a football and basketball fanatic. For blacked out shows, she goes to sports bars. The rest she watches either OTA online. One year she got the DirecTV football ticket, and was very upset at the selection -- apparently the games she couldn't watch OTA were also not offered as part of the bundle, and she had to go to sports bars for those games anyway.
> Someone wants to watch a TV series as it airs rather than waiting a year for the season box set and having to deal with water-cooler spoilers.
This is a leftover from what I call the "tv tray generation", people who watch TV shows on the content provider's schedule, with commercials. "Oh, it's time for my shows" and hurry so you don't miss something, taking bathroom or snack breaks as commercials provide. On device types (televisions) of the content providers' choosing. I submit that this generation is starting to die out, and today's consumers tend to expect that they can watch what they want when they want it and on the device of their own choosing. The cable companies and to a certain extent the existing networks depend on this older, dying consumer base. At some point this will no longer be a thing.
> The cable company offers basic TV at no additional charge with the purchase of Internet access.
You can't be this naive. The cable company bundles in basic TV with the cost of internet. Nothing is free. Usually (but admittedly not always) there's a way to get internet without also having to get cable. You may have to argue with the salescreature.
> The biggest issue I have with Verizon Fios is the TV service. All of the video channels are so compressed that you inevitably get pixelation and tearing. This is particularly infuriating when it happens during playback for video on demand shows that you are paying extra for.
I think this is pretty much true no matter what the medium. We've noticed high compression rates on satellite (both dish and directv), Comcast (awhile back...) and FIOS. We finally dumped cable entirely. For what network TV my family still watches, we have a big antenna pointing at the TV towers on the ridge over there. The signal is head and shoulders over anything I've seen from cable or dish, with the possible exception of sports on dish (for which additional bandwidth is allowed).
I guess my learning from all of this is that traditional real time TV, with the possible exception of direct off-air broadcasts, just haven't moved with the times. There are no doubt business reasons for this, but it calls into question, why cable at all? High cost for low quality? Just say no.
The subject line isn't actually true, of course. It's the package as a whole on which users generally base their decisions. But I suspect that people in decision making capacity in companies who's primary product is hardware tend to think in these terms. Hardware needs to be cool and compact and capable because that's what differentiates this new model from last year's model or from competitors' models. Software is just... stuff that you use. It's overhead, a necessary evil. And much more likely to be outsourced. For a manufacturer of phones, hardware is their core business, software gets relegated to the LCC (least cost country) and there is a presumption that the customer base will serve as unpaid QA, so funding for testing is an afterthought. And so, the products are cool looking and suck to use.
Some companies try to differentiate on software, and tend to do a better job, but even then, you can get stubborn "we know better than you" decisions that detract from the user experience.
I'm trying to imagine a country where all telemarketers abide by an opt-out list. Must be nice. (In the US it's called the "do not call list", and is actually used by scammers and the more slimy of telemarketers as a known list of working numbers to call...)
So... how does Sweden enforce the opt-out list? For that matter, how would they enforce a law against telemarketing? Robocalls can originate from anywhere, including self storage units, and be moved rapidly from location to location. In this day of telephony over IP, escaping detection is probably even easier now -- a matter of programming.
At work you can hear them ratchet through the phone numbers allocated to the local prairie dog colony, excuse me, cubicle farm. RingHelloClick... RingHelloClick... RingHelloClick... and eventually me... Ring Hello "Congratulations! You have just won a free..." click.
I've read that some collection agencies will harass phone numbers that had been associated with the debtor in the past. You might be getting collection calls for someone who previously had your phone number. Good luck getting them to stop.
Even when I get what sounds like a legitimate call, I refuse to "verify my identity" by giving out personal information. Instead I'll look up the company phone number online or from my own records and call them back. And a few times, thereby uncovered a scam. Most recently from someone pretending to be from my credit union. (I guess they scammed a lot of people -- it was on the news.)
Slashdot Mirror
> I heard elsewhere that the OS will detect (will this need a new API and drivers?) what input methods are available and adjust the UI accordingly. In which case the UI will be different on different devices for intents and purposes.
That's.... actually... a really good idea. Microsoft would actually be innovative, and for once, ahead of the pack. I'm trying to wrap my mind around that.
> I'm hopeful Nadella is talking more of a unified base with UI adjustments/differences as needed for each device type.
Now you're talking. On the one hand, it's an obvious strategy, so Microsoft will do something else instead -- like, a unified and mostly inappropriate UI over different code bases. Um, like, now.
On the other hand, Nadella is a new guy. He's not Ballmer. Maybe he'll surprise everyone in the freaking world and do the right thing.
> I think I understand why they want to do this: Only one code base, less overhead and more profit.
Not if nobody buys it.
> Both Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 are equally impossible to use effectively.
$$PROFIT$$!!!!!
Wait, what?
As a practical matter, Linux is the unified Unix. Or as unified as its a-gonna get.
> You might, but I, at least, wouldn't because what you'd end up with was a UI that worked equally badly on all types of screens and wasn't really right for any of them
Sorta like today, then.
"Apprenticeships"...."two-year community college degree"....rofl. Good news everyone, your Software Engineering / Computer Science degrees were silently downgraded during the night to trade-school status, meaning you are now no better off that our Information Technology 'plumber' friends. That 4-year / 5-year bachelors of science / arts program you soldiered through? Doesn't matter anymore.
But don't worry...our Electrical Engineering 'electrician' and Mechanical Engineering 'mechanics' friends will be joining you soon.
A friend of mine was a microwave engineer for a company that made military communications and countermeasures gear. He could not convince his family that he did not work on ovens. I haven't checked with him in awhile -- maybe "microwave engineers" do work on ovens now.
Yeah, imagine if they started using H-1B workers to replace middle and upper management. Those good old boys would rally together and end that in seconds.
What makes it work is the perception that whatever you're displacing whether it's IT or development is just a matter of following procedures, something anyone could do, so the smart company hires the cheapest people possible for the job. Go immediately to 4) $$PROFIT$$. Management, however, takes skill and insight and intuition and all those other things that are difficult to measure, so they can't possibly be replaced.
Well, yeah. The real excuse is that those locals get paid too much and are too difficult to intimidate, but that can't be made public.
How would we recognize alien porn? They could be very, almost unreasonably, similar to us and maybe it'd look like binary fission. More likely, it would look like six or more Teslas crashing at speed.
Word is, there was no spec for lifecycle so the devices met the contract as stated, and the government couldn't return the devices.
So I'd recommend to Google: At some point, look in the box.
Agreed. What a waste of time.
It's like, you know, books. We don't all read the same novel chapter by chapter at the same time.
Oh really? One thing that Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio and Dickens's Oliver Twist have in common, other than that Walt Disney Pictures loosely adapted both decades later, is that they were both first published as serials.
> Let me put it another way: Waiting for the season box set breaks the shared social experience of all being at the same point in an original serial work. Then the question becomes whether this experience is beneficial.
I let that go by the first time, but since you made the point again, isn't it the case for at least some series that you can stream episodes before the entire season is available on DVD?
And, I know that the media providers (tv and movie) try to sell and do depend on the herd mentality to drive consumption, but I personally think "the shared social experience" (a) is overrated, and (b) doesn't need to be synced to the exact hour of the day. Just the other day, I talked to a friend who had just started "the last ship", and although I'm pretty much up to date, I didn't have a problem with having a spoiler-free conversation with him.
It's like, you know, books. We don't all read the same novel chapter by chapter at the same time. Or maybe you don't remember books. :-)
Regarding OTA, one's mileage may vary. I watch very little TV, but as a geek I'm interested a bit in the technical side, and observe that our OTA channels are much sharper than any cable/satellite service we've ever had (and we've had everything that's been available, because wife and daughter are pretty much addicted). But I concede that I've not looked everywhere, and it might be different elsewhere.
But you bring up a good point. I felt back when HD was being heavily promoted that there was a really good possibility that in practice, regardless of what the standard is actually capable, what we'll actually get won't be more than a slight bump from what we had before.
I was basing this on the old NTSC days, where the standard was capable of well over 500 horizontal lines, and most people were making do with less than a third of that. (That being the resolution of common time shifting tools of the time.)
So, yeah, I believe your assessment is correct. You can see it in other media -- there is considerable overlap between exceptionally well authored DVDs, and a poorly authored Blu-Rays, for instance.
What's the conclusion? Perhaps, that people get the quality they deserve. Or, that they are willing to put up with.
I've never seen an episode of Under the Dome. Yet, I know how it ends. Want to know? It's a really stupid ending.
> Except you're wrong. [...]
And then later...
> [...] That or torrents.
Yeah, about that.
> But I was referring to things like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, where one may have to actively avoid spoilers that come up in casual conversation at work.
Netflix. (I must be one of the only people on earth who doesn't watch either Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. But I know people who are addicted, and I'm told the experience is much better when binge-watching. Major advantage: No cliff-hangers.)
I mean, Breaking Bad is off the air, isn't it?
>> Usually (but admittedly not always) [...]
> If I'm making this up, then so are [...]
Are you and I having the same conversation? I get the impression you're responding to something someone else said.
> Someone is a fan of a particular talk show host on one of the cable "news" channels.
Depending on which program you're talking about, it might be available via streaming, perhaps for a fee.
> Someone watches sporting events that aren't shown OTA and are blacked out online because they're on cable.
My wife is a football and basketball fanatic. For blacked out shows, she goes to sports bars. The rest she watches either OTA online. One year she got the DirecTV football ticket, and was very upset at the selection -- apparently the games she couldn't watch OTA were also not offered as part of the bundle, and she had to go to sports bars for those games anyway.
> Someone wants to watch a TV series as it airs rather than waiting a year for the season box set and having to deal with water-cooler spoilers.
This is a leftover from what I call the "tv tray generation", people who watch TV shows on the content provider's schedule, with commercials. "Oh, it's time for my shows" and hurry so you don't miss something, taking bathroom or snack breaks as commercials provide. On device types (televisions) of the content providers' choosing. I submit that this generation is starting to die out, and today's consumers tend to expect that they can watch what they want when they want it and on the device of their own choosing. The cable companies and to a certain extent the existing networks depend on this older, dying consumer base. At some point this will no longer be a thing.
> The cable company offers basic TV at no additional charge with the purchase of Internet access.
You can't be this naive. The cable company bundles in basic TV with the cost of internet. Nothing is free. Usually (but admittedly not always) there's a way to get internet without also having to get cable. You may have to argue with the salescreature.
> The biggest issue I have with Verizon Fios is the TV service. All of the video channels are so compressed that you inevitably get pixelation and tearing. This is particularly infuriating when it happens during playback for video on demand shows that you are paying extra for.
I think this is pretty much true no matter what the medium. We've noticed high compression rates on satellite (both dish and directv), Comcast (awhile back...) and FIOS. We finally dumped cable entirely. For what network TV my family still watches, we have a big antenna pointing at the TV towers on the ridge over there. The signal is head and shoulders over anything I've seen from cable or dish, with the possible exception of sports on dish (for which additional bandwidth is allowed).
I guess my learning from all of this is that traditional real time TV, with the possible exception of direct off-air broadcasts, just haven't moved with the times. There are no doubt business reasons for this, but it calls into question, why cable at all? High cost for low quality? Just say no.
The subject line isn't actually true, of course. It's the package as a whole on which users generally base their decisions. But I suspect that people in decision making capacity in companies who's primary product is hardware tend to think in these terms. Hardware needs to be cool and compact and capable because that's what differentiates this new model from last year's model or from competitors' models. Software is just... stuff that you use. It's overhead, a necessary evil. And much more likely to be outsourced. For a manufacturer of phones, hardware is their core business, software gets relegated to the LCC (least cost country) and there is a presumption that the customer base will serve as unpaid QA, so funding for testing is an afterthought. And so, the products are cool looking and suck to use.
Some companies try to differentiate on software, and tend to do a better job, but even then, you can get stubborn "we know better than you" decisions that detract from the user experience.
The interesting thing about that.... google "red light cameras increase accidents" and read a few articles.
I'm trying to imagine a country where all telemarketers abide by an opt-out list. Must be nice. (In the US it's called the "do not call list", and is actually used by scammers and the more slimy of telemarketers as a known list of working numbers to call...)
So... how does Sweden enforce the opt-out list? For that matter, how would they enforce a law against telemarketing? Robocalls can originate from anywhere, including self storage units, and be moved rapidly from location to location. In this day of telephony over IP, escaping detection is probably even easier now -- a matter of programming.
I've already had four calls from Cardholder Services today! I wish they had been taken out!!!!!!!!
At work you can hear them ratchet through the phone numbers allocated to the local prairie dog colony, excuse me, cubicle farm. RingHelloClick... RingHelloClick... RingHelloClick... and eventually me... Ring Hello "Congratulations! You have just won a free..." click.
I've read that some collection agencies will harass phone numbers that had been associated with the debtor in the past. You might be getting collection calls for someone who previously had your phone number. Good luck getting them to stop.
Even when I get what sounds like a legitimate call, I refuse to "verify my identity" by giving out personal information. Instead I'll look up the company phone number online or from my own records and call them back. And a few times, thereby uncovered a scam. Most recently from someone pretending to be from my credit union. (I guess they scammed a lot of people -- it was on the news.)