Re:The 360 is console done right, Wii is console .
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 1
PS3 is failure of marketing.
It is more that just that. It is a failure of focus. Is the PS3 a games console? Is it a media center? Is is a computer? Is it a web appliance? Is it a blu ray player?
In addition some of the decisions were just plain bad, for example the decision to include a blu ray player. This decision alone has: - delayed the launch considerably - added to the price significantly
The benefit of the having a blu ray player is dependant on blu ray becoming the dominant format, which is questionable.
Now, maybe it's just me, personally, but I'm a home user and an IT professional. I use computers a lot for various things, and Windows seems to be getting harder to deal with. If I have to call Microsoft over another activation problem, I'm going to want to kill someone.... actually the truth is I've past that point a while ago.
As a matter of interest, who did you kill? Inquiring minds want to know.
MSR has grown from an idea to more than 700 researchers working out of five labs around the globe with a budget of more than $250 million. MSR incubates not only futuristic ideas but young minds, having hired 700 interns worldwide this year including 250 computer science PhD candidates in Redmond alone, which is roughly 21% of all the computer science PhD candidates in the United States. It's a program Microsoft officials say is the world's largest PhD. internship program for computer science.
That is all well and good, but what does it produce? The only things that I know that have come out of MSR are ideas like dancepad user input and attempts to produce a Microsoft version of bit torrent. The article lists a few more areas of research, but seriously, is this what you get for $250M? I just don't think Microsoft creates an environment that fosters innovation.
My only problem with that is I've always taken exceptions as something to be used when there is a error condition of some sort. Returning null from a function does not necessary imply that there is an error.
For example if you are querying for the existance of something and it doesn't exist, throwing an exception seems like a bad idea. It seems to me if you take the not null returns to its logical conclusion then you end up overusing exceptions.
There are also some people who just flat out dislike exceptions. I'm not one of them, but the view does exist.
I'm not trying to get into a flame war but why should it never return null? Returning null can be a way of saying whatever your function wanted to do couldn't be done. Eg, the function is part of a class factory and the class could not be created with the parameters passed in.
I use VS.Net 2003 on a codebase that is a couple of hundred thousand lines long. I haven't run into any real issues, although I hear VS.Net 2005 is a real headache.
Rubbish. This is an excellent use of technology. This is similar to people looking at the correlation between crime and childhood/area grew up in. This allows you to find who is likely to reoffend and target your resources. Now it may not be perfect, but it is certainly worth the effort, and you can judge how effective it is.
What you do with the results is something else. Being the US this may mean large heavily armed men in dark suits following targetted people around and shooting them when they reach for their wallet. On the other hand in Europe they might hold group bonding sessions where everyone holds hands. YMMV.
And on that note it is time of the "Technological solution to social problem" meme to die. Fact: most problems are complex. Fact: most problems have complex solutions that may have technological, social and judicial parts to the solution. Indeed, most solutions are only partial solutions.
Sure, but Ubuntu won't do some relatively basic OS things out of the box. Picking 2 WPA, play MP3s (yes I understand why, yes I know how to enable it).
Not offering WPA out of the box is a particular WTF.
As a web developer, this doesn't really do anything for me because: 1. Virtual PC was already free 2. An XP license is a negligable cost (if you don't already have an MSDN subscription) 3. This does nothing for IE 5 & 5.5
Maybe IE 5 & 5.5 are so long ago inside the Microsoft campus that they can be forgotten, however in the real world people still use them.
In addition Virtual PC is a headache because: 1. You need to boot the machine up which takes a while 2. You can't hit a local IP address 3. It is noticably slower than running natively (Core duo2 6400, 2Gb RAM)
When you compare this with how say firefox works, the Microsoft solution just doesn't compare well. With firefox I can install multiple versions and run them side by side.
In addition, this still doesn't answer why Microsoft chose to sic the lawyers onto the much more useful solution, which is closer to the Firefox style.
Full credit to Microsoft for the attempt, but it is a pretty half assed one at that.
FTA: At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.
What we're seeing is Apple fixing issues that cannot be successfully exploited on 90%+ of the Mac machines in existence. Worms like Code Red or Blaster wouldn't be able to find enough hosts due to the default security setup of OS X. The only folks who would be vulnerable would be the ones who know enough about internet hosting to enable a service.
It is worth noting that by default windows is not vulnerable to Code Red. You would need to install IIS. Incidentally that generally requires you to insert the windows CD to install it. Vista may include in by default, but it hasn't shipped with any version of windows that I have ever touched (95, 98, NT4 workstation/server, 2000 pro/server, 2003, XP pro).
That said, IIS is more integrated into the OS than Apache.
Do you have a learning disability? Hans Blix didn't think that. I didn't think that. None of my family thought that. I have just one very conservative friend who thought that. Now I am not in the US so maybe that means I get accurate information.
We get it, you hate George Bush. He is not (by a long shot) my favorite president either, but that shouldn't matter right now. Can we grow up and move on to actually accomplish something, or do we need to keep pointing fingers and accomplishing nothing?
OK clearly you don't get it. The responsibility for lying to the American people and the world lies with GWB. Even if he truly believed there were WMD, he is incompetant. Therefore it is appropriate that fingers be pointed. It is appropriate that he take responsibility for the mess he has created. But he won't because people like you will defend him.
And FYI, Bush is the worst US president that I have ever seen and I have studied some US history (I am not a USian). He is more corrupt that Harding, more idealistic than Wilson. He has materially breached his oath of office to respect and uphold the constitution.
There's a similar joke about ISO90001 that you get half the defect rate because it cuts your productivity in half, or practically doubles the cost per part because of the beauracracy involved.
We were once ISO 9000 qualified. That was hilarious. Effectively they don't care what you do so long as you intend to do it and you document. So your process for dealing with customer complaints was to tie the customers together to form a raft, that is fine so long as you document it.
Anti-Metric Engineer For the benefit of the majority of people who would be reading an American magazine, ignore the metric system entirely.
This person must either be an "engineer" or the standards for training engineers must be very low in the US. Maybe brain damage after receiving qualifications? No engineer with a modicum of sense would oppose the metric system for any reason other than difficulty of adoption.
And this is just another example of how spam breaks email.
The immediate response to this (for me) was to train my spam filter junk bounces. Which means there is no way to find out if an email arrived at its destination.
This is a pretty clear statement that the letter of GPLv2 is not touched.
(He does go on to say that GPLv3 will include new language.)
Whether this was the intent or not, the patent side of this deal has pissed off the FSF to the extent that it GPLv3 will be explicitly written to invalidate this deal. Equally this deal is likely to spur the adoption of GPLv3, even among people who were previously opposed.
Sorry Nat but whatever your intentions, I think you guys are in serious trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe next time you should do some research before talking about something...
Maybe I should farm the research out to MSR.
No, I'm still alive. You missed.
PS3 is failure of marketing.
It is more that just that. It is a failure of focus. Is the PS3 a games console? Is it a media center? Is is a computer? Is it a web appliance? Is it a blu ray player?
In addition some of the decisions were just plain bad, for example the decision to include a blu ray player. This decision alone has:
- delayed the launch considerably
- added to the price significantly
The benefit of the having a blu ray player is dependant on blu ray becoming the dominant format, which is questionable.
Now, maybe it's just me, personally, but I'm a home user and an IT professional. I use computers a lot for various things, and Windows seems to be getting harder to deal with. If I have to call Microsoft over another activation problem, I'm going to want to kill someone.... actually the truth is I've past that point a while ago.
As a matter of interest, who did you kill? Inquiring minds want to know.
MSR has grown from an idea to more than 700 researchers working out of five labs around the globe with a budget of more than $250 million. MSR incubates not only futuristic ideas but young minds, having hired 700 interns worldwide this year including 250 computer science PhD candidates in Redmond alone, which is roughly 21% of all the computer science PhD candidates in the United States. It's a program Microsoft officials say is the world's largest PhD. internship program for computer science.
That is all well and good, but what does it produce? The only things that I know that have come out of MSR are ideas like dancepad user input and attempts to produce a Microsoft version of bit torrent. The article lists a few more areas of research, but seriously, is this what you get for $250M? I just don't think Microsoft creates an environment that fosters innovation.
I thought that might be the idea.
My only problem with that is I've always taken exceptions as something to be used when there is a error condition of some sort. Returning null from a function does not necessary imply that there is an error.
For example if you are querying for the existance of something and it doesn't exist, throwing an exception seems like a bad idea. It seems to me if you take the not null returns to its logical conclusion then you end up overusing exceptions.
There are also some people who just flat out dislike exceptions. I'm not one of them, but the view does exist.
How about an acronym?
Altogether
Learning
Quickly
And
Effectively
Directing
Achievements
That's not true. They died to make your country less safe.
I'm not trying to get into a flame war but why should it never return null? Returning null can be a way of saying whatever your function wanted to do couldn't be done. Eg, the function is part of a class factory and the class could not be created with the parameters passed in.
I use VS.Net 2003 on a codebase that is a couple of hundred thousand lines long. I haven't run into any real issues, although I hear VS.Net 2005 is a real headache.
Nothing can replace years of professional practice and the ability to analyze the bumps on a perps skull.
I though that probationary officers tried to modify their behaviour by giving them bumps on the head.
(with apologies to Terry Pratchett)
Rubbish. This is an excellent use of technology. This is similar to people looking at the correlation between crime and childhood/area grew up in. This allows you to find who is likely to reoffend and target your resources. Now it may not be perfect, but it is certainly worth the effort, and you can judge how effective it is.
What you do with the results is something else. Being the US this may mean large heavily armed men in dark suits following targetted people around and shooting them when they reach for their wallet. On the other hand in Europe they might hold group bonding sessions where everyone holds hands. YMMV.
And on that note it is time of the "Technological solution to social problem" meme to die. Fact: most problems are complex. Fact: most problems have complex solutions that may have technological, social and judicial parts to the solution. Indeed, most solutions are only partial solutions.
Sure, but Ubuntu won't do some relatively basic OS things out of the box. Picking 2 WPA, play MP3s (yes I understand why, yes I know how to enable it).
Not offering WPA out of the box is a particular WTF.
...that doesn't impress me much.
As a web developer, this doesn't really do anything for me because:
1. Virtual PC was already free
2. An XP license is a negligable cost (if you don't already have an MSDN subscription)
3. This does nothing for IE 5 & 5.5
Maybe IE 5 & 5.5 are so long ago inside the Microsoft campus that they can be forgotten, however in the real world people still use them.
In addition Virtual PC is a headache because:
1. You need to boot the machine up which takes a while
2. You can't hit a local IP address
3. It is noticably slower than running natively (Core duo2 6400, 2Gb RAM)
When you compare this with how say firefox works, the Microsoft solution just doesn't compare well. With firefox I can install multiple versions and run them side by side.
In addition, this still doesn't answer why Microsoft chose to sic the lawyers onto the much more useful solution, which is closer to the Firefox style.
Full credit to Microsoft for the attempt, but it is a pretty half assed one at that.
FTA:
At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.
And let the flame war begin.
What we're seeing is Apple fixing issues that cannot be successfully exploited on 90%+ of the Mac machines in existence. Worms like Code Red or Blaster wouldn't be able to find enough hosts due to the default security setup of OS X. The only folks who would be vulnerable would be the ones who know enough about internet hosting to enable a service.
It is worth noting that by default windows is not vulnerable to Code Red. You would need to install IIS. Incidentally that generally requires you to insert the windows CD to install it. Vista may include in by default, but it hasn't shipped with any version of windows that I have ever touched (95, 98, NT4 workstation/server, 2000 pro/server, 2003, XP pro).
That said, IIS is more integrated into the OS than Apache.
2) We all thought there were WMDs
Do you have a learning disability? Hans Blix didn't think that. I didn't think that. None of my family thought that. I have just one very conservative friend who thought that. Now I am not in the US so maybe that means I get accurate information.
We get it, you hate George Bush. He is not (by a long shot) my favorite president either, but that shouldn't matter right now. Can we grow up and move on to actually accomplish something, or do we need to keep pointing fingers and accomplishing nothing?
OK clearly you don't get it. The responsibility for lying to the American people and the world lies with GWB. Even if he truly believed there were WMD, he is incompetant. Therefore it is appropriate that fingers be pointed. It is appropriate that he take responsibility for the mess he has created. But he won't because people like you will defend him.
And FYI, Bush is the worst US president that I have ever seen and I have studied some US history (I am not a USian). He is more corrupt that Harding, more idealistic than Wilson. He has materially breached his oath of office to respect and uphold the constitution.
Learn perl. Think of it as an intermediate step.
There's a similar joke about ISO90001 that you get half the defect rate because it cuts your productivity in half, or practically doubles the cost per part because of the beauracracy involved.
We were once ISO 9000 qualified. That was hilarious. Effectively they don't care what you do so long as you intend to do it and you document. So your process for dealing with customer complaints was to tie the customers together to form a raft, that is fine so long as you document it.
This person must either be an "engineer" or the standards for training engineers must be very low in the US. Maybe brain damage after receiving qualifications? No engineer with a modicum of sense would oppose the metric system for any reason other than difficulty of adoption.
Maybe you could print the current live president on them. Then people would want to spend the money as fast as possible, stimulating the economy.
And this is just another example of how spam breaks email.
The immediate response to this (for me) was to train my spam filter junk bounces. Which means there is no way to find out if an email arrived at its destination.
This is a pretty clear statement that the letter of GPLv2 is not touched.
(He does go on to say that GPLv3 will include new language.)
Whether this was the intent or not, the patent side of this deal has pissed off the FSF to the extent that it GPLv3 will be explicitly written to invalidate this deal. Equally this deal is likely to spur the adoption of GPLv3, even among people who were previously opposed.
Sorry Nat but whatever your intentions, I think you guys are in serious trouble.
But regulation stifles the free market! /sarcasm
Actually the most effective form of birth control is to educate women, particularly at a tertiary level.