Even the best marketing can't make up for a dumb idea. Don't get me wrong. It helps but you need more than just marketing.
This is a movie about snakes on a plane. I'm sorry but its just too stupid for me to spend $15-$20 to see in the movie theater. Maybe I'll see it when it goes to DVD - if nothing better is out on the same day. (Given the movies that have come out lately I won't get my hopes up.)
Microsoft has traditionally been a PC software company. While not there yet, the PC industry is transitioning into a commodity market. You do not want to compete in a commodity market. (I never tracked down the quote but didn't someone from MS recently proclaim the end of the PC era was at hand?)
This is a big reason why you're seeing several companies shift from providing products to providing services. MS is making a transition to services in a big way (look at all of the services they're selling for xbox360). IBM did this same transition a few years ago (ask your local IBMer.. "IBM is not a computer company. We're a service company!")
Sure, we do computers. We also do buisness services, financing, embedded devices, asics, engineering consulting, research, etc... Dell may be the biggest "computer company" but IBM is much, much more.
Women were found on average to own 6.6 technology devices while men own 6.9
That could be a fun metric. I'm trying to think offhand how many "technology devices" I own and I keep coming up with some insane number.
What defines a "technology device?" Does my TV count? What about an exercise bike with a built-in computer? How about a binary coded decimal clock? Is my stero 1 device or can you split it into reciever and dvd player for 2 devices?
I say we come up with a tigher definition and fire up a/. poll... I'm betting the/. average is at least 15.
You've apparently forgotten, conveniently like many on Slashdot, that paper ballots (the butterfly ballots, hanging chads) was what led to "reform" our voting system in the first place. People have short memories on this site, unfortunately.
You've apparently forgotten that computers, despite what everyone tells you, are not the end-all solution to every problem. Sometimes simpler really is better.
Think back to why they started the switch... They were trying to use computers to make the system easier to use and verify. When it comes to selecting items off a list computers are neither easier to use nor easier to verify. (The same people who screwed up various paper ballot UIs could easily go off and screw up various computerized voting UIs.)
Its easier to give someone a piece of paper and have them circle A/B/C than it is to introduce them to a new piece of software.
They are verifiable. No more "oops. Someone tripped over the power cord, now we lost 100 votes"
They're inexpensive
Maybe you should standardize the paper ballets. This way we can't get complaints from one side or the other after-the-fact.
Require identification prior to voting.
I'm sick of people voting 10 times along with all of their dead relatives. Require a picture ID. If you aren't responsible enough to bring an ID you aren't responsible enough to vote.
On average, engineers are working 46 hours per week and more than 40 percent have a bachelor's degree in engineering.
Wait a minute... That implies ~60% don't have at least Bachelor's degree.
Is this article talking about real engineering or does it simply accept that anything with the word engineering in the title falls under engineering (eg. Refuse Disposal Engineer)?
"Engineers earned an average of $73,000 last year," if you can find a job that pay the "average" salary, half of people that i know get far less than that.
Given your use of the English language I'm not surprised.
Here's a random thought... Game sales are down because none of the recent games have been any good.
A couple times in the last few months I went out looking for a new game to pickup. I looked at online reviews, walked around stores when I was out... I couldn't find anything. I even went out one time with the sole purpose of finding a random game and making an impulse buy... still nothing.
The moment a decent game comes out I'll buy it. Untill then stop blaming others when you can't sell the same old crap.
Built into the chip (which is why they are getting much better yields than all of these random tech websites keep reporting.)
With this many transistors on this small of a process its pretty much standard to see redundancy. You see it in Cell and you see it in x86 cores.
It's relatively simple to recover faults in the cache and people have been doing it for a while (years). Static faults (aka. process errors) can be stored somewhere else. Transient faults (oops, a particle hit our bit and flipped it) on a cacheline are handled with ECC or sometimes parity on tag/state bits, and multiple ECC fields for data. These ECC schemes are sometimes also placed on non-cache data-arrays within the core.
In other logic it's a lot trickier to recover errors but you're starting to see it. This is most likely what he's talking about.
Because its not IT people developing the features.
At most companies the closest developers (and PM's if you're MS) at come to IT is when they have a problem with their office workstation. They call/email IT and someone swings by to fix the problem.
Sure, there are companies where the IT people think up & implement features in key products. MS is not one of them.
Development of these devices is actually a fun little field for a lot of electrical & computer engineering students who decide they want to do something else.
A couple years ago I toured one of the research labs at Michigan where they were developing these electrodes and the algorithms they're using to interpret the impulses... At least half of the lab were ex-EE students who decided they wanted to do biomed for grad school.
The scary part was that it was these same EE students who were running around performing basic brain surgery on rats. The amazing part was that if you stuck the electrode anywhere in the correct general area it would "just work" without needing to worry about hitting exact nerves, etc.
If you want an exclusive title then you have your lawers draw up a contact with their lawers. The fact that two APIs are different might just be due to the fact that they were *gasp* designed by two different design teams.
If someone wants to port a game then they will figure out how to port the API. Figuring out how to get around a legal contract is another story.
Don't use the existance of the patent to conclude the ps3 will have this tech.
A lot of tech companies encourage employees to think up & file patents. Hell, where I work you're required to submit certain numbers of patents before you can move into some of the higher positions. This could easily have been some idea that poped into someone's head and they decided to use it to fill their patent quota.
Today we have to burn, shred, and otherwise annihilate drives when we're done with them in order to be certain our data is safe... With these we simply open the top and wipe them down with your favorite anti-bacterial soap!
Though, that may be a problem if anyone wants to turn these into some sort of DVD-style disk. "Hey, the disk is smudged, I'll go get some soap!"
I generally have better things to do than read up about burning cow poo but I'm curious about one thing...
I'm assuming this is marketed towards people who want some sort of "green energy" powering their homes. Is this really a clean(er) fuel source?
Sure, burning your favorite fossil fuel on a large scale isn't exactly clean. It is however heavily regulated and uses countless filters & scrubbers to clean up most of the nasty by-products. I'd be tempted to believe that a random milk farmer burning a few tons of cow manure in the back yard would be worse for the environment.
Please start spelling words however you like. I beg you.
It'll make it infinitely easier to decide which resumes to throw out and which posts to ignore.
Even if it was "official" I would still disregard anything from someone who couldn't take the time to spell something "correctly"
Slashdot Mirror
Even the best marketing can't make up for a dumb idea. Don't get me wrong. It helps but you need more than just marketing.
This is a movie about snakes on a plane. I'm sorry but its just too stupid for me to spend $15-$20 to see in the movie theater. Maybe I'll see it when it goes to DVD - if nothing better is out on the same day. (Given the movies that have come out lately I won't get my hopes up.)
Its already happened... Look at the top-level post directly below yours
Microsoft has traditionally been a PC software company. While not there yet, the PC industry is transitioning into a commodity market. You do not want to compete in a commodity market. (I never tracked down the quote but didn't someone from MS recently proclaim the end of the PC era was at hand?)
This is a big reason why you're seeing several companies shift from providing products to providing services.
MS is making a transition to services in a big way (look at all of the services they're selling for xbox360).
IBM did this same transition a few years ago (ask your local IBMer.. "IBM is not a computer company. We're a service company!")
For what it's worth I would fire a +1 in your direction if I had any in stock.
Sadly I'm fresh out so all you get is this AC post.
IBM isn't strictly a "computer company."
Sure, we do computers. We also do buisness services, financing, embedded devices, asics, engineering consulting, research, etc... Dell may be the biggest "computer company" but IBM is much, much more.
What defines a "technology device?" Does my TV count? What about an exercise bike with a built-in computer? How about a binary coded decimal clock? Is my stero 1 device or can you split it into reciever and dvd player for 2 devices?
I say we come up with a tigher definition and fire up a
Someday the cost of firing 12,000 lbs of waste into space will not be prohibitve. Perhaps if we get a working space elevator.
Think back to why they started the switch... They were trying to use computers to make the system easier to use and verify. When it comes to selecting items off a list computers are neither easier to use nor easier to verify. (The same people who screwed up various paper ballot UIs could easily go off and screw up various computerized voting UIs.)
I'm sick of people voting 10 times along with all of their dead relatives. Require a picture ID. If you aren't responsible enough to bring an ID you aren't responsible enough to vote.
I can see the next MS vs Apple add:
Mac: PCs were infected with over 1230985981723 viruses last year!
PC: Yeah, but they were all friendly.
That's why the mod system is in place. Fire away! ;)
Is this article talking about real engineering or does it simply accept that anything with the word engineering in the title falls under engineering (eg. Refuse Disposal Engineer)?
Here's a random thought... Game sales are down because none of the recent games have been any good.
A couple times in the last few months I went out looking for a new game to pickup. I looked at online reviews, walked around stores when I was out... I couldn't find anything. I even went out one time with the sole purpose of finding a random game and making an impulse buy... still nothing.
The moment a decent game comes out I'll buy it. Untill then stop blaming others when you can't sell the same old crap.
Built into the chip (which is why they are getting much better yields than all of these random tech websites keep reporting.)
With this many transistors on this small of a process its pretty much standard to see redundancy. You see it in Cell and you see it in x86 cores.
It's relatively simple to recover faults in the cache and people have been doing it for a while (years). Static faults (aka. process errors) can be stored somewhere else. Transient faults (oops, a particle hit our bit and flipped it) on a cacheline are handled with ECC or sometimes parity on tag/state bits, and multiple ECC fields for data. These ECC schemes are sometimes also placed on non-cache data-arrays within the core.
In other logic it's a lot trickier to recover errors but you're starting to see it. This is most likely what he's talking about.
Because its not IT people developing the features.
At most companies the closest developers (and PM's if you're MS) at come to IT is when they have a problem with their office workstation. They call/email IT and someone swings by to fix the problem.
Sure, there are companies where the IT people think up & implement features in key products. MS is not one of them.
Development of these devices is actually a fun little field for a lot of electrical & computer engineering students who decide they want to do something else.
A couple years ago I toured one of the research labs at Michigan where they were developing these electrodes and the algorithms they're using to interpret the impulses... At least half of the lab were ex-EE students who decided they wanted to do biomed for grad school.
The scary part was that it was these same EE students who were running around performing basic brain surgery on rats. The amazing part was that if you stuck the electrode anywhere in the correct general area it would "just work" without needing to worry about hitting exact nerves, etc.
Great theory but no.
If you want an exclusive title then you have your lawers draw up a contact with their lawers. The fact that two APIs are different might just be due to the fact that they were *gasp* designed by two different design teams.
If someone wants to port a game then they will figure out how to port the API. Figuring out how to get around a legal contract is another story.
Don't use the existance of the patent to conclude the ps3 will have this tech.
A lot of tech companies encourage employees to think up & file patents. Hell, where I work you're required to submit certain numbers of patents before you can move into some of the higher positions. This could easily have been some idea that poped into someone's head and they decided to use it to fill their patent quota.
These would be great for data security!
Today we have to burn, shred, and otherwise annihilate drives when we're done with them in order to be certain our data is safe... With these we simply open the top and wipe them down with your favorite anti-bacterial soap!
Though, that may be a problem if anyone wants to turn these into some sort of DVD-style disk. "Hey, the disk is smudged, I'll go get some soap!"
I generally have better things to do than read up about burning cow poo but I'm curious about one thing...
I'm assuming this is marketed towards people who want some sort of "green energy" powering their homes. Is this really a clean(er) fuel source?
Sure, burning your favorite fossil fuel on a large scale isn't exactly clean. It is however heavily regulated and uses countless filters & scrubbers to clean up most of the nasty by-products. I'd be tempted to believe that a random milk farmer burning a few tons of cow manure in the back yard would be worse for the environment.
The Slashdot editors... Faithfully bringing you last weeks Reg stories today!
Please start spelling words however you like. I beg you.
It'll make it infinitely easier to decide which resumes to throw out and which posts to ignore.
Even if it was "official" I would still disregard anything from someone who couldn't take the time to spell something "correctly"