I wanted to make one more thing perfectly clear. Servers are as advanced, as complex, as innovative as desktops are. In many cases more so. But if you want to sell devices into the server space you don't play this game because people will laugh at you and your product will die. Maybe your company too. Devices for servers magically don't have these problems because the big company never had control in servers.
Only desktops and laptops and their devices have this problem. That is why they have to be replaced with the new mobile devices. We've had enough of the stagnation this game brings. We want progress. Progress is good. Progress is sexy. Even if in some ways we have to go three steps back to get around a roadblock. We have waited long enough. It's time to move forward.
You call me a paranoid loon, but essentially confirm what I wrote. That is odd.
This is not limited to graphics cards. Sound cards, wifi chipsets are also involved. Some wired networking. They tried to get printing too. Not every vendor comes to be committed in the same way, but they do all come to be committed. This is going on maybe 20 years, maybe more.
I agree that Intel generally doesn't play this game.
There are lots of folks working on that and they're making good progress. Mesh networking is a huge deal that lets ordinary folk handle both the edge of the network and facilitate backhaul in a way that cannot be prevented by incumbent interests who are trying to prevent democratization of the network. This work is essential to providing network services to the oppressed so they can get their message out - and so, to the folk who have it, to avoid being oppressed in the first place. It's also great for the rest of us who need wifi everywhere.
There's no escaping the fact that a mesh network will always have higher latencies than a well-implemented hierarchical network but with modern multipath routing the upside net bandwidth potential of mesh networks is unlimited. Hopefully with work the mesh network latencies will come down from fractions of a minute to fractions of a second. Access point technologies continue to advance, and Android and Linux's flexibility are a big help here. There's a problem with anonymity and resource utilization, but that will be worked out.
Before we get sidetracked into issues of ethics, morals and law: I don't profess to instruct or rule on any of these three. Some might say that if noone got hurt, morals are not in play - and if we are harmed by this what is the gauge and who is the victim? Everybody? Others might argue both sides of the ethics issue, and the company's duty to its shareholders to optimize the benefits of their investments must be considered in the main. In law I know of no law this violates, and if there were one they've gotten away with it anyway so the point is moot. Lots of things are illegal. You break the law unknowing as do I and if every law were perfectly enforced to the fullest extent we'd all be in prison by the end of the day.
The only part of this story that concerns me is how this history relates to future avenues of progress, and the rate thereof. Ethics, morals and law are for other people to worry about.
I was looking for an excuse to expand on this already overlong story but didn't want to be rude and self-reply. Thanks for giving the opportunity.
One must be mindful that these offers were all carrot and no stick. The developers came with a plausible story: we have experience and insight into the big company's software, as many of us came from there. We know how to pass validation. We have the inside track to getting on the CD, and can speed your way to market. We can use our secret ways to optimize it because we have special insight we can't share even with you. All we ask (other than pay) is that the interfaces become private between us. We will help you develop your hardware so that the hardware interfaces presented are optimal for interfacing with the software, and we don't want to share that work with others for no pay, which is fair, right? They had good stuff to offer too: the benefits of some deep research into compositing that the hardware vendors couln't get some other way - but it always came with this catch. And it seemed like such a little catch at the time since there were no credible challengers to the big company's ware. And it seemed quite reasonable to work together and not share with outsiders. But the devil is in the details.
Only rarely would the stick come out, in reference to some other company: "oh, that seems to be a smart way to think. So-and-so thought so." So-and-so being a dead company who failed to come around to the "right" way of thinking. The threat implied was never stated outright.
Later, when hardware vendors want more, they get more committed. Implement that new hardware feature in the OS game engine rendering interface? Sure.. but there's more cost than just money. Want the standard user interface to leverage high-end blurring, transparency and shadow features... sure.. but how that works has to remain private between us. That requires a specially committed level of partnership. Along the way there were more patents to incorporate and license, and a stronger bond to build until the hardware manufacturer is committed to the big vendor's software and none other - in a way they can't be free of even if they want to be. These aren't just patents and copyrights: they're trade secrets too, and those are immortal. Each is as much to blame as the other, as they used each other to mutual advantage. There's enough dirt in there to get mud all over everybody and nobody wants that.
Every now and then some PFY trying to implement a feature for X will call up the hardware vendor hoping for some help. "So I've got some app in the debugger, and I can see it load a texture in the buffer and trigger the interrupt that submits it to your hardware. But there are mode-setting things in here that have been deserialized and I can't see which one goes first, or the right grammar for the call so when it doesn't crash it looks like crap. Throw me a bone. Feed me just a tiny little hint please, I'm dying here." These calls used to be fielded by actual developers who might be conflicted and want to say the easy truth but would instead give the same bored answer every time: "sorry, but that's a trade secret." And never would they say the big secret: "and it's not our trade secret so we'll never be able to answer these questions." Now it's probably handled by some flunky in Bangalore who couldn't give the right answer if he wanted to. It might as well be a recording - but they still want to pretend that they care.
This is all in the desktop and laptop arena of course. Servers are different. The big software company didn't have tyranny over server vendors like they did over desktops. Servers had to support Unix at first, and then Novell, and then Linux - to the point where no server company could survive or even be taken seriously with servers that could only run the big company's software - though they did try, notably with Broadcom network chipsets. The special features of the software/hardware interface just weren't as importa
This story starts more than a decade ago. There was a hugely popular software vendor concerned that maybe one day people might choose to not use their software. They had vast sums of money and controlled access to the immediate future for software and hardware vendors alike.
Foreseeing a potential difficult future they chose to defend themselves in a particular way. They formed subsidiaries they controlled and gave them patents, and filled them with developers skilled in the finer (and secret) nuances of how to interact with their software, and they kept them informed with advance knowledge of how it would work in the future.
These subsidiaries approached hardware designers with a simple message: they would accept the patented technologies and use them; they would let the subsidiaries write the drivers that had special hooks into the software; they would do this under non-disclosure and never tell - or they wouldn't. If they accepted they would not be able to publish open specifications about how their own hardware worked because that would be exclusively cross-licensed with the subsidiaries in exchange for access to the patents. The hardware makers who wouldn't play along wouldn't get as good compatibility with the big company's software, nor inclusion in their distribution CD and OEM images. The refusers would be plagued with difficult installation, buggy drivers and unhappy customers and fail in the market. The software would change in ways the refusers could not predict, but the accepters could. Some accepted, and some refused. Those who accepted survived, those who refused mostly died.
This has continued to the present day and as the hardware has evolved the agreements persist in ways that are now not removable.
Nobody involved in Linux wants hardware manufacturers to write the device drivers for them. They only want open and clear specifications for how the hardware works so they can make their own drivers. They aren't going to get that from NVidia, nor ATI, nor any others whose technology is intertwined with this compromise from yesteryear. This boon is now beyond their ability to grant without starting again from the beginning.
People do care that when you buy Sony, you're almost guaranteed to get the kind of stuff that in some unique Sony way doesn't work with your other stuff.
It seems that the no Intel Android tablet and the expensive WinRT licensing are part of the old WinTel tango. It seems the lovebirds are settling their spat.
Oh, what they've got is interesting now if they'd drop Windows like the bad habit it is and give us a decent Intel Android tablet. You'd think they'd leap at it - bigger tablets mean more room for a bigger battery.
It's not like Microsoft is holding back on the Tegra 3 WinRT tablets to give them a leg up.
So now all we need is for them to come out with a mobile processor with 0.1 cores, and it will have all-day runtime. Is that how this conversion factor is supposed to work?
In the very same article the author asks about the KRAIT ARM SOC at 22nm, which is on a process technology well ahead of the very same Intel smartphone chip he's flogging. At least the author was kind enough to put that after the remarks about others being unable to compete.
At least he settled one thing quite clearly. We need not hold off our purchases of a quad-core Android tablet like the new Nexus 7" tablets to be released soon, in hopes of getting a cool Intel Android tablet instead. Because they're not going Android on tablets anytime soon. He thinks tablets are for Windows. BWaaaa hahaha.
There is no need to argue. The answer is right there in plain sight. To tediously elaborate the obvious would only give an opportunity to argue, to no purpose. I'll say it again, in case you've lost the thread: "Nokia's purpose seems to be to serve as a warning to others."
Obviously this is "own experience". He owned the product and showed it off to them not as a salesperson, but just another human in the regular course of interaction. They were moved to aspire to ownership by this brief personal experience and bought the product. That is the best possible marketing: building such insanely great products that every buyer becomes a salesman. It's happening a lot, with people being moved to buy both Android and iOS devices.
Consumerism is a philosophy and you introduced it as an explanation why Windows Phone wasn't doing well. Since consumerism as a philosophy relates to buying stuff, it's directly related. Hence my congnitive dissonance. I still can't tell where you're going with this. Please do carry on.
People seem to be discounting the value of reviews, advertising, blog comments, news reportage, retail sales personnel advice and a huge number of other things in favor of metrics like own experience and reliable friend recommendation. That's wonderful. Who could have predicted that?
Slashdot Mirror
Of all the times to forget the /s I had to pick this one.
You need to hold out. My guy sports a premium blunt out by the dumpster while he talks the blah blah.
I wanted to make one more thing perfectly clear. Servers are as advanced, as complex, as innovative as desktops are. In many cases more so. But if you want to sell devices into the server space you don't play this game because people will laugh at you and your product will die. Maybe your company too. Devices for servers magically don't have these problems because the big company never had control in servers.
Only desktops and laptops and their devices have this problem. That is why they have to be replaced with the new mobile devices. We've had enough of the stagnation this game brings. We want progress. Progress is good. Progress is sexy. Even if in some ways we have to go three steps back to get around a roadblock. We have waited long enough. It's time to move forward.
It's for high performance computing (HPC). HPC people pretty much only run Linux. No Windows.
Personally I am more interested in using it for bulk transcoding and raytracing. But that's just me.
You call me a paranoid loon, but essentially confirm what I wrote. That is odd.
This is not limited to graphics cards. Sound cards, wifi chipsets are also involved. Some wired networking. They tried to get printing too. Not every vendor comes to be committed in the same way, but they do all come to be committed. This is going on maybe 20 years, maybe more.
I agree that Intel generally doesn't play this game.
You're projecting. The thing is awesome. I can't wait to get one.
And I wouldn't be so sure it won't be adapted to play games.
There are lots of folks working on that and they're making good progress. Mesh networking is a huge deal that lets ordinary folk handle both the edge of the network and facilitate backhaul in a way that cannot be prevented by incumbent interests who are trying to prevent democratization of the network. This work is essential to providing network services to the oppressed so they can get their message out - and so, to the folk who have it, to avoid being oppressed in the first place. It's also great for the rest of us who need wifi everywhere.
There's no escaping the fact that a mesh network will always have higher latencies than a well-implemented hierarchical network but with modern multipath routing the upside net bandwidth potential of mesh networks is unlimited. Hopefully with work the mesh network latencies will come down from fractions of a minute to fractions of a second. Access point technologies continue to advance, and Android and Linux's flexibility are a big help here. There's a problem with anonymity and resource utilization, but that will be worked out.
Before we get sidetracked into issues of ethics, morals and law: I don't profess to instruct or rule on any of these three. Some might say that if noone got hurt, morals are not in play - and if we are harmed by this what is the gauge and who is the victim? Everybody? Others might argue both sides of the ethics issue, and the company's duty to its shareholders to optimize the benefits of their investments must be considered in the main. In law I know of no law this violates, and if there were one they've gotten away with it anyway so the point is moot. Lots of things are illegal. You break the law unknowing as do I and if every law were perfectly enforced to the fullest extent we'd all be in prison by the end of the day.
The only part of this story that concerns me is how this history relates to future avenues of progress, and the rate thereof. Ethics, morals and law are for other people to worry about.
I was looking for an excuse to expand on this already overlong story but didn't want to be rude and self-reply. Thanks for giving the opportunity.
One must be mindful that these offers were all carrot and no stick. The developers came with a plausible story: we have experience and insight into the big company's software, as many of us came from there. We know how to pass validation. We have the inside track to getting on the CD, and can speed your way to market. We can use our secret ways to optimize it because we have special insight we can't share even with you. All we ask (other than pay) is that the interfaces become private between us. We will help you develop your hardware so that the hardware interfaces presented are optimal for interfacing with the software, and we don't want to share that work with others for no pay, which is fair, right? They had good stuff to offer too: the benefits of some deep research into compositing that the hardware vendors couln't get some other way - but it always came with this catch. And it seemed like such a little catch at the time since there were no credible challengers to the big company's ware. And it seemed quite reasonable to work together and not share with outsiders. But the devil is in the details.
Only rarely would the stick come out, in reference to some other company: "oh, that seems to be a smart way to think. So-and-so thought so." So-and-so being a dead company who failed to come around to the "right" way of thinking. The threat implied was never stated outright.
Later, when hardware vendors want more, they get more committed. Implement that new hardware feature in the OS game engine rendering interface? Sure.. but there's more cost than just money. Want the standard user interface to leverage high-end blurring, transparency and shadow features... sure.. but how that works has to remain private between us. That requires a specially committed level of partnership. Along the way there were more patents to incorporate and license, and a stronger bond to build until the hardware manufacturer is committed to the big vendor's software and none other - in a way they can't be free of even if they want to be. These aren't just patents and copyrights: they're trade secrets too, and those are immortal. Each is as much to blame as the other, as they used each other to mutual advantage. There's enough dirt in there to get mud all over everybody and nobody wants that.
Every now and then some PFY trying to implement a feature for X will call up the hardware vendor hoping for some help. "So I've got some app in the debugger, and I can see it load a texture in the buffer and trigger the interrupt that submits it to your hardware. But there are mode-setting things in here that have been deserialized and I can't see which one goes first, or the right grammar for the call so when it doesn't crash it looks like crap. Throw me a bone. Feed me just a tiny little hint please, I'm dying here." These calls used to be fielded by actual developers who might be conflicted and want to say the easy truth but would instead give the same bored answer every time: "sorry, but that's a trade secret." And never would they say the big secret: "and it's not our trade secret so we'll never be able to answer these questions." Now it's probably handled by some flunky in Bangalore who couldn't give the right answer if he wanted to. It might as well be a recording - but they still want to pretend that they care.
This is all in the desktop and laptop arena of course. Servers are different. The big software company didn't have tyranny over server vendors like they did over desktops. Servers had to support Unix at first, and then Novell, and then Linux - to the point where no server company could survive or even be taken seriously with servers that could only run the big company's software - though they did try, notably with Broadcom network chipsets. The special features of the software/hardware interface just weren't as importa
This story starts more than a decade ago. There was a hugely popular software vendor concerned that maybe one day people might choose to not use their software. They had vast sums of money and controlled access to the immediate future for software and hardware vendors alike.
Foreseeing a potential difficult future they chose to defend themselves in a particular way. They formed subsidiaries they controlled and gave them patents, and filled them with developers skilled in the finer (and secret) nuances of how to interact with their software, and they kept them informed with advance knowledge of how it would work in the future.
These subsidiaries approached hardware designers with a simple message: they would accept the patented technologies and use them; they would let the subsidiaries write the drivers that had special hooks into the software; they would do this under non-disclosure and never tell - or they wouldn't. If they accepted they would not be able to publish open specifications about how their own hardware worked because that would be exclusively cross-licensed with the subsidiaries in exchange for access to the patents. The hardware makers who wouldn't play along wouldn't get as good compatibility with the big company's software, nor inclusion in their distribution CD and OEM images. The refusers would be plagued with difficult installation, buggy drivers and unhappy customers and fail in the market. The software would change in ways the refusers could not predict, but the accepters could. Some accepted, and some refused. Those who accepted survived, those who refused mostly died.
This has continued to the present day and as the hardware has evolved the agreements persist in ways that are now not removable.
Nobody involved in Linux wants hardware manufacturers to write the device drivers for them. They only want open and clear specifications for how the hardware works so they can make their own drivers. They aren't going to get that from NVidia, nor ATI, nor any others whose technology is intertwined with this compromise from yesteryear. This boon is now beyond their ability to grant without starting again from the beginning.
People do care that when you buy Sony, you're almost guaranteed to get the kind of stuff that in some unique Sony way doesn't work with your other stuff.
It seems that the no Intel Android tablet and the expensive WinRT licensing are part of the old WinTel tango. It seems the lovebirds are settling their spat.
You're putting words in my mouth.
Ebola disables and kills too fast to make an effective bioweapon.
Oh, what they've got is interesting now if they'd drop Windows like the bad habit it is and give us a decent Intel Android tablet. You'd think they'd leap at it - bigger tablets mean more room for a bigger battery.
It's not like Microsoft is holding back on the Tegra 3 WinRT tablets to give them a leg up.
So now all we need is for them to come out with a mobile processor with 0.1 cores, and it will have all-day runtime. Is that how this conversion factor is supposed to work?
In the very same article the author asks about the KRAIT ARM SOC at 22nm, which is on a process technology well ahead of the very same Intel smartphone chip he's flogging. At least the author was kind enough to put that after the remarks about others being unable to compete.
At least he settled one thing quite clearly. We need not hold off our purchases of a quad-core Android tablet like the new Nexus 7" tablets to be released soon, in hopes of getting a cool Intel Android tablet instead. Because they're not going Android on tablets anytime soon. He thinks tablets are for Windows. BWaaaa hahaha.
Words mean things. An expectation is not quite an assumption. The meaning of these two words is close but not quite the same.
There is no need to argue. The answer is right there in plain sight. To tediously elaborate the obvious would only give an opportunity to argue, to no purpose. I'll say it again, in case you've lost the thread: "Nokia's purpose seems to be to serve as a warning to others."
Did that help?
Microsoft and Linux go together like gasoline and chocolate. No way am I installing their ware on my stuff.
Obviously this is "own experience". He owned the product and showed it off to them not as a salesperson, but just another human in the regular course of interaction. They were moved to aspire to ownership by this brief personal experience and bought the product. That is the best possible marketing: building such insanely great products that every buyer becomes a salesman. It's happening a lot, with people being moved to buy both Android and iOS devices.
Consumerism is a philosophy and you introduced it as an explanation why Windows Phone wasn't doing well. Since consumerism as a philosophy relates to buying stuff, it's directly related. Hence my congnitive dissonance. I still can't tell where you're going with this. Please do carry on.
People seem to be discounting the value of reviews, advertising, blog comments, news reportage, retail sales personnel advice and a huge number of other things in favor of metrics like own experience and reliable friend recommendation. That's wonderful. Who could have predicted that?
When the lesson confounds, introspection instructs. The reason others see things you do not is not that they are blind.