Re:Affordable replacement for something paid for
on
The F-35 Story
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· Score: 1
Is it really that critical? It's certainly nice to have, but it's also very expensive. I don't know of any stealth plane that is not hideously expensive. And while stealth certainly has its place, a lot of fighters seem to be quite effective without it. All those planes without stealth are still being used and sent into real combat situations. With living people on board, even!
It's quite possible that for situations too dangerous for living pilots, disposable drones might end up being more economical than expensive stealth fighters.
Re:Affordable replacement for something paid for
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
But one big question is: Even if the old planes are wearing out, are the old designs really outdated? Airplane (especially jet fighter) technology went through the roof between the '30s and the '70. Yet we don't seem to be able to really improve upon the designs of the '70s without budgets going through the roof.
Maybe technology reached a plateau in the '70s? We can put better computers and radars in, but in the end, we may be running into the limits of what's physically possible. A fighter that can do everything the F16 can, but with supersonic cruise, VTOL and stealth for a reasonable price may just not be possible. Each individually is already a pretty hard problem. Maybe our expectations are just too high, and we should be betting on a slightly smaller improvement for a much smaller price.
I suspect the reason that we have a shortage of programmers is that in Netherland they're not paid quite as much as some other highly educated professions.
Not that my pay is bad by any means, but I get the impression that management, financial, farmaceutical etc jobs pay a lot more. But yes, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of jobs here.
No, you still end up with trivial crap patents, and big corps can still afford to patent lots of trivial crap with the sole purpose to threaten others.
What you need is actual convincing proof that a patent is truly innovative, and not merely an obvous idea. For that, the approval of a patent office clerk is not going to be enough. I think you really need a jury of the inventor's peers. People who know the technology involved. They're the only ones who can really determine whether it's innovative or just something they could have figured out themselves.
Mac OS is not all that different from how Windows does it. The Applications folder is basically the Programs menu, and the Dock is Quick Launch + Task Bar, with that change that stuff doesn't show up twice. It's easy to configure too. And icons of running programs take up less space than the big blocks in the Task Bar.
Personally I would love to see a system that does it completely differently. I'm sure there are ways to really improve upon this idea, but I haven't seen it yet. Even smartphones are basically the same. Android's home screens have the quick launch stuff, and the app menu is similar to the Programs menu.
I personally hate the program menu. It accumulates way too much crap, too much following stuff with the mouse in order to find what you need, and often stuff isn't where you expect it.
Of ocurse you can customize the program menu, and throw all the useless crap in a "useless crap" section, but personally I think there should be a better way. Apple's Dock is an interesting variation on the theme, though functionally not all that much different, really: Applications may still accumulate all sorts of useless crap, but the stuff you actually use goes in the Dock for easy access (similar to Windows' quick launch section of the task bar at the bottom), and anything else you start up temporarily shows up in the Dock too (similar to the rest of the task bar in Windows). The Dock is easier to modify and reorganize, and it's somewhat cleaner because things generally don't show up twice. But in the end, it's just an improvement of the same idea.
Personally I'd love to see something new that makes it even easier and cleaner. No idea if that's what Unity does, though. In any case, I've never been terribly enthousiastic about any Linux UI. Though I used to love the old Unix window managers like tvtwm and fvwm. I think it should be possible to combine powerful configuration options with ease of use and powerful organization tools. But I have no clear ideas on how to accomplish that exactly.
I don't think it's short sightedness so much as just greed and short term profiteering.
That's exactly what I meant. I consider greed and short term profiteering short sighted. They undermine consumer trust. These companies have existed for quite some time. How hard is it for them to think beyond the current launch? Are quality and support really such alien concepts to them?
Hopefully within a few years all those guys will be gone, though it just seems that the culture in all these telephony businesses is to screw the customer over in whatever way they can.
I still hope a company stands up and starts making really good, open Android phones and providing support for them, including updates for at least a couple of years. I think there's definitely room in the market fr a company like that.
I'm very surprised that Google themselves didn't make more of an effort with providing updates to their own phone though. Hopefully they'll put the effort into current and future Motorola devices, though things will still be limited by the telcos in some way I'm sure, since they apparently like to test every release on every handset..
What do the telcos have to do with it? Doesn't Apple control iPhone updates? Why don't Android manufacturers do the same?
I too hope that the Motorola takeover will make a big difference. So far, Motorola has been one of the worst offenders in terms of locking down and crippling Android, while Google is easily the best, the only one that gets close to Apple's support. I really hope Google will lay down some ground rules for this to Motorola. Put a new guy in charge who understands these kind of things.
It's okay to want updates, but you shouldn't expect them.
Not when you get an Android phone, at least. With an iPhone, you can expect updates. All I'm saying is that this is a difference to consider when buying a new phone.
I'm by no means an Apple fanboy. I don't want to go back to the walled garden. But I'm sorely disappointed about the horticultural maintainance outside that garden. The short-sighted hit & run releases by many Android manufacturers, often unnecessarily crippled, pisses me off.
I'm also saying that if you're not happy with your phone as it is, why did you buy it? Do you want the upgrade because it's going to be of use for you, or simply as a fashion statement?
I was very happy with it when I bought it. I think it was the first Android phone that was superior to the ruling iPhone at the time of its release. But that doesn't mean there aren't still a lot of things that could be improved about it.
It's not that Apple sets the rules, but it does make for an interesting comparison. Android and iOS are the two biggest platforms in the smartphone market. With one of them, you get pretty consistent and reliable software updates for 2-3 years, with the other it's a complete gamble whether you're going to get any updates at all. This is a factor to consider when deciding between the two platforms, and Android manufacturers would do well to be aware of that. They're undermining their own market.
Are you arguing against the need for any kind of OS updates? Still running a 10 year old version of Linux/Windows/Mac OS?
New versions often fix bugs, improve security or performance, and sometimes actually do add new features, which may be used by new apps that you might want to use. I'm not going to discuss the relative merits of iOS and Android as OS, but I think it's abundantly clear that Apple supports their phones with software updates, while many Android manufacturers don't. And apparently even Google is not dropping the ball with the Nexus One.
I'm definitely disappointed, because I have always had great hopes about Android, but it seems the companies involved are determined to undermine the customers' trust in their products.
My iPhone? I don't have one. Installing a new OS on my locked-down Milestone is somewhat problematic, unfortunately. Another sign of Android manufacturers destroying their own market.
This doesn't deserve to be modded Troll, because it's true. Apple's software support is obviously far, far better than that of any Android manufacturer, Google included (though they are easily the best in the Android crowd). Noting that does not make you a troll, nor even a fanboy. I don't like Apple's walled garden, and really prefer the openness of Android, but manufacturers seem dedicated to destroy their own market, and that pisses me off.
No, that's an easy thing to do, but not necessarily responsible. If your goal is to provide users the best possible experience, then you do want to give them access to new features, but in a way that keeps everything working as smoothly as you originally intended. Apple does this, Android manufacturers don't.
Exactly. It's not automation that's the problem, it's competition! Food has to be cheap, or else it will be imported from countries where people are willing to work in deplorable conditions. Same thing with manufacturing. Our labour is expensive, while or goods have to be cheap.
Personally I don't think it'd hurt us too much if our food got slightly more expensive. A fine example of this is milk in Netherland. Many cattle farmers can hardly make a decent living while working insane hours. Of the price we pay in the supermarket, they get like 10 cents or something. What's another 10 cents on that price? Most consumers would gladly pay 10 cents extra if they knew it went to the farmers, yet for some reason the prices stay ridiculously low.
Jobs must have gone to the same low rent executive training program that we send our executives too because making products people want to buy so that you can make money isn't really earth shattering.
Yet a surprising number of companies try to make money by making bad products. Or average products.
Laying off thousands of people, cutting hundreds of product lines to focus on three main products which are beginning to stagnate is hardly 'innovative'. It's hardly a good idea either.
It's certainly not always a good idea, but for Apple it very obviously was. Had they not done that, they wouldn't exist anymore. Now they're the most valuable company in the world. You really need to ignore 20 years worth of data if you want to claim that Steve Jobs' approach was a bad one.
Give Apple another 10 years and we'll see if this "culture of innovation" supposedly created at Apple continues, or it was just one man with a plan that drove their share price.
That depends on whether they manage to continue in the same direction or not. They might deviate too far from this vision, or they might cling to the status quo instead of continuing to create new markets. It's unlikely that they will manage to do as good as they did in the past 10 years, because that kind of unprecedented, spectacular growth requires unique circumstances. But if they've learned from Jobs, then they might manage to stay on top.
That's a library, not a language. It does fix one really big problem with Javascript, but in the end, you're still programming in the same confused hybrid language.
Being considerably easier, faster or better to program in than javascript shouldn't be too hard. I've been wondering for years why nobody has proposed a superior replacement for javascript yet.
Smalltalks seem to be doing well lately. It's not that weird for Google to jump on that bandwagon, is it? In any case, it can't be worse than Javascript.
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Is it really that critical? It's certainly nice to have, but it's also very expensive. I don't know of any stealth plane that is not hideously expensive. And while stealth certainly has its place, a lot of fighters seem to be quite effective without it. All those planes without stealth are still being used and sent into real combat situations. With living people on board, even!
It's quite possible that for situations too dangerous for living pilots, disposable drones might end up being more economical than expensive stealth fighters.
But one big question is: Even if the old planes are wearing out, are the old designs really outdated? Airplane (especially jet fighter) technology went through the roof between the '30s and the '70. Yet we don't seem to be able to really improve upon the designs of the '70s without budgets going through the roof.
Maybe technology reached a plateau in the '70s? We can put better computers and radars in, but in the end, we may be running into the limits of what's physically possible. A fighter that can do everything the F16 can, but with supersonic cruise, VTOL and stealth for a reasonable price may just not be possible. Each individually is already a pretty hard problem. Maybe our expectations are just too high, and we should be betting on a slightly smaller improvement for a much smaller price.
I suspect the reason that we have a shortage of programmers is that in Netherland they're not paid quite as much as some other highly educated professions.
Not that my pay is bad by any means, but I get the impression that management, financial, farmaceutical etc jobs pay a lot more. But yes, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of jobs here.
What about patents? It's very easy to accidentally infringe on dozens of patents of obvious ideas without even trying.
Maybe we need a law to prevent countries from forming cartels?
No, you still end up with trivial crap patents, and big corps can still afford to patent lots of trivial crap with the sole purpose to threaten others.
What you need is actual convincing proof that a patent is truly innovative, and not merely an obvous idea. For that, the approval of a patent office clerk is not going to be enough. I think you really need a jury of the inventor's peers. People who know the technology involved. They're the only ones who can really determine whether it's innovative or just something they could have figured out themselves.
A lot of "Power Users" who got entrenched before Ubuntu are "too cool for Ubuntu," perhaps with good reason, at first.
Now, I'd say most of them are just frozen into their distro of choice because they know all the cool tricks there and they'd feel impotent in Ubuntu.
Which is still a very good reason to avoid it, mind you. There's a good reason why people are still using vi.
Mac OS is not all that different from how Windows does it. The Applications folder is basically the Programs menu, and the Dock is Quick Launch + Task Bar, with that change that stuff doesn't show up twice. It's easy to configure too. And icons of running programs take up less space than the big blocks in the Task Bar.
Personally I would love to see a system that does it completely differently. I'm sure there are ways to really improve upon this idea, but I haven't seen it yet. Even smartphones are basically the same. Android's home screens have the quick launch stuff, and the app menu is similar to the Programs menu.
I personally hate the program menu. It accumulates way too much crap, too much following stuff with the mouse in order to find what you need, and often stuff isn't where you expect it.
Of ocurse you can customize the program menu, and throw all the useless crap in a "useless crap" section, but personally I think there should be a better way. Apple's Dock is an interesting variation on the theme, though functionally not all that much different, really: Applications may still accumulate all sorts of useless crap, but the stuff you actually use goes in the Dock for easy access (similar to Windows' quick launch section of the task bar at the bottom), and anything else you start up temporarily shows up in the Dock too (similar to the rest of the task bar in Windows). The Dock is easier to modify and reorganize, and it's somewhat cleaner because things generally don't show up twice. But in the end, it's just an improvement of the same idea.
Personally I'd love to see something new that makes it even easier and cleaner. No idea if that's what Unity does, though. In any case, I've never been terribly enthousiastic about any Linux UI. Though I used to love the old Unix window managers like tvtwm and fvwm. I think it should be possible to combine powerful configuration options with ease of use and powerful organization tools. But I have no clear ideas on how to accomplish that exactly.
I don't think it's short sightedness so much as just greed and short term profiteering.
That's exactly what I meant. I consider greed and short term profiteering short sighted. They undermine consumer trust. These companies have existed for quite some time. How hard is it for them to think beyond the current launch? Are quality and support really such alien concepts to them?
Hopefully within a few years all those guys will be gone, though it just seems that the culture in all these telephony businesses is to screw the customer over in whatever way they can.
I still hope a company stands up and starts making really good, open Android phones and providing support for them, including updates for at least a couple of years. I think there's definitely room in the market fr a company like that.
I'm very surprised that Google themselves didn't make more of an effort with providing updates to their own phone though. Hopefully they'll put the effort into current and future Motorola devices, though things will still be limited by the telcos in some way I'm sure, since they apparently like to test every release on every handset..
What do the telcos have to do with it? Doesn't Apple control iPhone updates? Why don't Android manufacturers do the same?
I too hope that the Motorola takeover will make a big difference. So far, Motorola has been one of the worst offenders in terms of locking down and crippling Android, while Google is easily the best, the only one that gets close to Apple's support. I really hope Google will lay down some ground rules for this to Motorola. Put a new guy in charge who understands these kind of things.
It's okay to want updates, but you shouldn't expect them.
Not when you get an Android phone, at least. With an iPhone, you can expect updates. All I'm saying is that this is a difference to consider when buying a new phone.
I'm by no means an Apple fanboy. I don't want to go back to the walled garden. But I'm sorely disappointed about the horticultural maintainance outside that garden. The short-sighted hit & run releases by many Android manufacturers, often unnecessarily crippled, pisses me off.
I'm also saying that if you're not happy with your phone as it is, why did you buy it? Do you want the upgrade because it's going to be of use for you, or simply as a fashion statement?
I was very happy with it when I bought it. I think it was the first Android phone that was superior to the ruling iPhone at the time of its release. But that doesn't mean there aren't still a lot of things that could be improved about it.
It's not that Apple sets the rules, but it does make for an interesting comparison. Android and iOS are the two biggest platforms in the smartphone market. With one of them, you get pretty consistent and reliable software updates for 2-3 years, with the other it's a complete gamble whether you're going to get any updates at all. This is a factor to consider when deciding between the two platforms, and Android manufacturers would do well to be aware of that. They're undermining their own market.
Are you arguing against the need for any kind of OS updates? Still running a 10 year old version of Linux/Windows/Mac OS?
New versions often fix bugs, improve security or performance, and sometimes actually do add new features, which may be used by new apps that you might want to use. I'm not going to discuss the relative merits of iOS and Android as OS, but I think it's abundantly clear that Apple supports their phones with software updates, while many Android manufacturers don't. And apparently even Google is not dropping the ball with the Nexus One.
I'm definitely disappointed, because I have always had great hopes about Android, but it seems the companies involved are determined to undermine the customers' trust in their products.
My iPhone? I don't have one. Installing a new OS on my locked-down Milestone is somewhat problematic, unfortunately. Another sign of Android manufacturers destroying their own market.
It also doesn't list the Motorola Milestone, which is virtually identical to the Droid, but is at least two versions behind right now.
This doesn't deserve to be modded Troll, because it's true. Apple's software support is obviously far, far better than that of any Android manufacturer, Google included (though they are easily the best in the Android crowd). Noting that does not make you a troll, nor even a fanboy. I don't like Apple's walled garden, and really prefer the openness of Android, but manufacturers seem dedicated to destroy their own market, and that pisses me off.
No, that's an easy thing to do, but not necessarily responsible. If your goal is to provide users the best possible experience, then you do want to give them access to new features, but in a way that keeps everything working as smoothly as you originally intended. Apple does this, Android manufacturers don't.
Then TFA is definitely informative, because it points out that Android phones don't get the bonuses that iPhones do. It's valuable information.
Exactly. It's not automation that's the problem, it's competition! Food has to be cheap, or else it will be imported from countries where people are willing to work in deplorable conditions. Same thing with manufacturing. Our labour is expensive, while or goods have to be cheap.
Personally I don't think it'd hurt us too much if our food got slightly more expensive. A fine example of this is milk in Netherland. Many cattle farmers can hardly make a decent living while working insane hours. Of the price we pay in the supermarket, they get like 10 cents or something. What's another 10 cents on that price? Most consumers would gladly pay 10 cents extra if they knew it went to the farmers, yet for some reason the prices stay ridiculously low.
Jobs must have gone to the same low rent executive training program that we send our executives too because making products people want to buy so that you can make money isn't really earth shattering.
Yet a surprising number of companies try to make money by making bad products. Or average products.
Laying off thousands of people, cutting hundreds of product lines to focus on three main products which are beginning to stagnate is hardly 'innovative'. It's hardly a good idea either.
It's certainly not always a good idea, but for Apple it very obviously was. Had they not done that, they wouldn't exist anymore. Now they're the most valuable company in the world. You really need to ignore 20 years worth of data if you want to claim that Steve Jobs' approach was a bad one.
Give Apple another 10 years and we'll see if this "culture of innovation" supposedly created at Apple continues, or it was just one man with a plan that drove their share price.
That depends on whether they manage to continue in the same direction or not. They might deviate too far from this vision, or they might cling to the status quo instead of continuing to create new markets. It's unlikely that they will manage to do as good as they did in the past 10 years, because that kind of unprecedented, spectacular growth requires unique circumstances. But if they've learned from Jobs, then they might manage to stay on top.
That's a library, not a language. It does fix one really big problem with Javascript, but in the end, you're still programming in the same confused hybrid language.
But which ones exactly? Nobody seems able or willing to specify them, and those deals happen behind closed doors.
Being considerably easier, faster or better to program in than javascript shouldn't be too hard. I've been wondering for years why nobody has proposed a superior replacement for javascript yet.
Smalltalks seem to be doing well lately. It's not that weird for Google to jump on that bandwagon, is it? In any case, it can't be worse than Javascript.