Seems odd when a committee (in this case, an entire senate)
deems a law pragmatic enough it
goes up for vote with a unanimous (30-0) sendoff and subsequently
because of special interest (MPAA allegedly) the final vote skews
not only away from unanimous but actually flips
the sentiment (bill loses 27-33).
Consider the gist of the bill (from the article):
The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and
would have barred investigators from making "false, fictitious or
fraudulent" statements or representations to obtain private
information about an individual, including telephone calling
records, Social Security numbers and financial information.
Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.
This means the MPAA and others argued for the right to
make "false, fictitious or fraudulent" statements...!
Amazing!
There are legitimate ways for the entertainment industry to
obtain data when prosecuting alleged piracy activity. This isn't
one of them. So, the practice (pretexting) remains legal and the
MPAA prevails in yet another seamy side of big business buying
milquetoast government.
I've lost the ability to record FM on my Creative Zen with my
last firmware update... ostensibly, though I can't confirm it
because of industry pressure on Creative -- it was one of the
features I bought it for.
The threat continues to loom for providers of excellent
technology like TiVo to rein in their features, also ostensibly
under pressure.
The better the technology gets, the less they want us to use
it.
Scoble tacitly supports Winer's argument by pointing to what would be normal "improvement" of products and technology citing that as innovation.
Come on! Every product is iterated! Scoble's claim this is innovation is specious. If any vendors out there didn't iterate on their own products with "small" improvements, they wouldn't stay in the business.
So, basically Scoble cedes the argument -- Microsoft really does lie in wait until the market is huge enough for predatory action, and jumps in with "small improvements". Innovation? Hardly.
Hopefully,/.'ers and others won't look upon this as an
Open Source failure, it isn't. It's (in my opinion) more of a
triumph somewhere of sanity... Technology has it's place, but a
laptop for every child smacks of the program's hubris and less of
a sane approach to helping poor countries.
I think they show real insight when fearing little return on
the effort because teachers are poorly trained. Heck, even in
wealthy countries teachers consistently have no computer smarts
(my sister is a teacher, she hasn't a clue!). Compound that with
a techie-Linux platform (I love Linux, but for the mass public,
with minimal background and training?) and this program was
running off the rails from the beginning.
There are excellent examples of schools in the United States
where huge investments in technology for schools
showed no tangible gains in students' profieciencies and at the
same time examples of poor schools shifting emphasis to basics,
discipline, and community with strong academic results.
Technology for technology's sake is just that, but not much of
a salve for third world economies, at least not by giving a
laptop to every child. I think this is actually a positive
development because it has (had) so many ways it could have gone
wrong allowing companies like Microsoft down the road to point fingers
at Open Source as the culprit, and if only Microsoft had been
chosen to save the world.
(For the record, this whole OLPC effort would be just as much
of a train wreck with Windows, just a whole heck of a lot more
expensive.)
Good gosh, HDTV would fly by itself if the industry
practiced a little common sense about the rollout. I remember in
1998 a sales guy trying to talk me into buying a sexy looking
HDTV on demo on the floor. Yeah, I was drooling.
This unit came sans tuner, and the universe as we know it was
still pretty much standard definition tv, i.e., if you could find
any HD content, it was for eye candy only,
nobody was broadcasting HD anywhere on anything remotely regular.
I told him I'd wait for the prices to come down, and the for
some content to show up -- he shook his finger at me, "These
prices [$10,000 for the unit I was looking at] won't come down
and might go up! And, there's more and more new HD
content available every day"
Prices went way down (though still way too high) and content
eventually showed up. The problem? Way too
many ways to set up for HD with way too many
ways to find out your setup isn't correct after spending big
bucks.
The minefield that is setting up for HD is too confusing, too
expensive, and yeah, if I were an advertiser I'd find it a tough
sell to pay any extra for an uncertain market.
It's too bad, I eventually settled on a Samsung 50" DLP a 2
years ago, absolutely LOVE it, but no thanks to any help I got
from anyone anywhere! Freak, even the Comcast HD cable box is
still a piece of garbage that regularly freezes, never behaves,
and offers a very limited range of HD (not entirely their fault,
come on networks!).
Toss in the confusing choices and still uncertain future of HD
on DVD, sheesh, it's a wonder the market is as penetrated as it
is.
Hey, and toss in the $50 HDMI cable lots of people have to
buy, they didn't even know about it until "after". Yeah, and
what about the almost non-existent HD On Demand (another
unfulfilled promise... aside from incredibly poor selection,
Comcast's On Demand movies have only a few HD, and all of them
(HD and standard) are so compressed, it hurts to watch on a good
TV). Oh, and don't forget, or don't forget to plan for, DRM.
Don't assume what's true today will still be true by the time you
set up your system, but assume if it's not the same it's going to
be more restrictive.
Shit, the more I prattle, the less I like about HD. I'm in as
deep as I want for what the market has offered so far, but am not
chomping at the byte for any more investment until the industry
sorts itself out.
This is very cool! But I'm not sure what NetFlix and
Blockbuster (among others) are going to think about this!
Finally, an easy way to get DVD's onto my computer!
The thesis is Microsoft needs to find their
un-Vista? Hardly! Microsoft needs to find their heart.
Or grow one.
Their 30-year path is strewn with castoff competitors, and
wannabe partners. Microsoft has sown nothing but ill-will for
the duration of their tenure. I would welcome the change that
shows Microsoft wants to be a good-citizen member of the IT
community and market but the evidence isn't there, in fact there
isn't even a glimmer of evidence, contrary to the article's these
that things like "Zune" and "X-box" are starts in the right
direction.
Consider only the most recent step to re-invent, the
Novell/Linux debacle. What many considered worth waiting for on
good faith to be a positive step took only days to be revealed
for what it was, more steps to stamp out any competition. As
long as executives with the hubris of a Steve Ballmer control the
direction of Microsoft, nothing positive will happen, period.
And, what of the collaboration with Samsung, Creative and
others? To what end other than wasted time and money for
Microsoft's "partners"? Bah!
An interesting quote from the article (Allard's response to bad words from Apple re: their Zune, and how Microsoft doesn't "get it"):
Allard was using one of the oldest motivational tricks in the book--his version of a football coach posting an opponent's quote on the locker room wall. "I for one...want to see this guy eat his words," Allard wrote. "Those are fighting words. He is speaking to every one of us and saying that we don't get it."
This only demonstrates how much Microsoft doesn't "get it". Microsoft benchmarks everything it does against perceived outside competition -- it'd be nice to see them invent their own cool stuff. Interestingly (to me), they had a chance to do just that with Zune, and completely blew it by trying to measure themselves against the ipod.
I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't have the right to be a good
tough business to make good products and good profits, but
Microsoft has mostly been about making products barely clearing
the bar while making usurious profits with (what eventually was
ruled by DOJ, and the EU) illegal monopolistic
leveraging.
I know it's an old saw, but I've been waiting more than 20
years for market forces to take hold and allow technology to evolve in a
marketplace that encourages competition, i.e., one that
diminishes the Microsoft effect (how many company's do
you know of whose business model included a goal
or contingency to be bought out by Microsoft?). Microsoft may now
reap what they've sown.
So, what this seems to say: Microsoft will allow anybody
and everybody to plant their seed (the ribbon UI), to start the
viral/grassroots campaign to their way of doing things. Unless
and until it conflicts with their existing products.
It's royalty free... translation: Microsoft gets a free ad
campaign. But for those who may not be familiar with the company
Microsoft, Microsoft is not likely to be friendly about anyone
using their UI on any product down the road they
decide should be protected.
So are these the dying rattle breaths of a behemoth unable to
compete today? Or is it one more salvo (consider Ballmer and his
innuendo about Microsoft's Novell-Linux pact) in a war to control
even more tightly the computing business world?
Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of
their software all of a sudden must render their
older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to
all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This
is the classical Microsoft business model. Microsoft is about
selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.
This may be a bigger shift for Microsoft than the internet
was, retooling the way they think about business as a service and
value-added support company rather than a company trotting out
latest and greatest generations of (already quite mature)
software (sheeesh, how many more features can you conceive for
today's word processors?). And, have you looked at the new
interfaces for their "got to have" Office products? Maybe good,
maybe not, but who in their right corporate business mind would
foist yet another learning curve on their entire company for yet
another interface?
Considering Microsoft has never really cared for the rest of
the world (in my opinion), their entire corporate mentality must
reverse field, not something I'm sure they're even capable of...
consider the latest rantings by Ballmer about a peek under the
Microsoft covers about why they really forged
the Suse/Linux deal. More evidence Microsoft continues to be
about controlling, not collaborating. Does Microsoft even have
the personnel capable of shifting their mindset? Time will tell.
Microsoft's stranglehold on the economy may be loosening as
technology, distribution of technology, and support for
technology become more about the people. That (in my opinion)
can be only a good thing for the world.
(an interesting aside... my editor spellchecker offered
Blamer as an
alternative spelling for Ballmer... snicker.)
Driving that train, high on cocaine.
Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
With a beginning like this, who knows? They got the O.J.
special and book release canceled!
Goodness, if the heads of the two "agreement" corporations are
on pages so far apart for this deal, how can this possibly work?
Reminds me of the IBM/Microsoft marriage for work on OS/2, which
Microsoft continued to claim was blissful right up until the time
they got enough ideas for their own Windows replacement and
unceremoniously dumped IBM. Too bad, too... OS/2 (while not my
fave) was a pretty decent system for its time.
fallacies don't exist within methodologies
on
You Call This Agile?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I think one of the blessings and curses of methodologies,
in this article's instance, "Agile" (ha!), is they are their own
universe. So, unless there is something within the methodology
that is self-contradictory methodologies don't have fallacies.
Methodologies are theses, usually tepid ones at best.
Methodologies are someone's or some group's or some company's
idea of a way to successfully accomplish a task, project, etc.
Fortunately for all who sell these (vapor)wares, methodologies
never fail, they merely suffer from those who have improperly
used them.
Methodologies then become the convenient whipping boy for work
not done satisfactorily. Sigh.
Peel away the layers, eventually it all still boils down to
knowing what you want to do, knowing how to do it, and doing it
with a strong instinct for balancing things that matter and
things that don't. Methodologies won't do that for you, good
project managers will.
(Some of the very best and most successful
projects I worked on were with a friend who I consider
to this day to be one of the best project managers I ever knew
(and I knew many). He used no methodology, but
had incredible instincts and a strong will. He knew how to
handle time frames, important (and not-so-important) crises,
difficult workers, and how to prioritize. It's a shame he didn't
get better recognition - he might have had he "used a
methodology". I found it ironic he was ostracized/admonished by
the company, but he continued to be their go-to guy for the
important work.
Bottom line, "Agile" isn't. But "Agile" is just one of a long
list of bit players for methodologies in IT.
I think (just my opinion) with all of the up-front hype and
the resulting "flaccid" initial sales figures, Microsoft may have
offered up a pretty big loser. Why? Because so much about the
Zune and (some of) its features depend on the social network
aspect to achieve functionality, and that won't happen with this
slow of a ramp.
The flip side, also not good, is that with the slow uptake,
the disappointing lack of ability to really use the wireless
(because of a dearth of "others") will generate a viral,
grassroots word of mouth ripple discourageing potential "others"
to buy.
Now slap on the silly DRM, the incompatiblity with almost
everything else, the silly purchase plan (float MS a loan
anyone?), this product is going nowhere fast. In some ways, too
bad, it actually looked to have a certain coolness, but Microsoft
forgot and left too heavy a signature...
Maybe the good news out of all of this is the added prompting
for makers like Apple to be more aggressive rolling out things
like wireless, etc., though it looks to me like Apple has
titrated their rollout almost perfectly.
one good staff member with a
couple hours free time
I've seen lots of different packages and frankly I sometimes
wonder why people pay for them. They're typically (actually I
guess they're literally) off-the-shelf stuff that, while offering
nice and interesting features, don't cover everything for
everybody. I think it's a "you get what you pay for mentality",
i.e., people insist on buying packages to do this kind of
analysis.
I've written probably more than 20 different web filters for
various analyses because the OTS stuff didn't get me the info I
wanted.
And for any more-than-small IT staff, there's always someone
there who knows the tools, and can slap together stat info and
tweak it ad nauseum until management sees the analysis they think
they want. Lots of staff will even write it on their own time --
they like to tinker with that stuff.
Also, though I haven't looked, I'll bet there are some great
CPAN modules that get you what you want as a good start with the
added benefit of having the code for your own tweaking.
Considering the article specifically is asking for
simple web stats, I think sed, awk, perl, and others is
a perfect way to go.
Or, you could buy yet another package and risk Microsoft
buying that product and disappearing it.
And for those
wondering, the splash screen of three women in distress isn't our
contributor's stab at a knee-slapper.
Cool, Zune comes with it's own soft porn.
All seriousness aside, I think I'd already heard Zune wouldn't
work with Vista immediately. Is that really a big show stopper?
I'm guessing they've laid plans to have it ready to go by the
time the OEMs are rolling out Vista-installed machines. An
embarrassment perhaps, but Microsoft has many bigger and better
gaffes to be proud of (say Clippy, and Microsoft Bob!).
Oh, and back to the soft porn, it must have been approved by
the Ballmer himself, just look at the quote from his quoted Q&A
session from Business Week in the article:
"I want to squirt you a picture of my kids. You want to squirt me
back a video of your vacation. That's [an] experience," he
said.
I think Steve's been spending a little too much time on-line.
The inspiration to digitize this
far-flung bureaucracy first surfaced in late 2001, when
Microsoft's Bill Gates paid a visit to British Prime Minister
Tony Blair at No. 10 Downing St. The subject of the meeting, as
reported by The Guardian, was what could be done to improve the
National Health Service. At the time, much of the service was
paper-based and severely lagging in its use of technology. A
long-term review of NHS funding that was issued just before the
Blair-Gates meeting had concluded: "The U.K. health service has a
poor record on the use of information and communications
technology--the result of many years of serious
under-investment."
It's unfortunate but common to look at "under-investment" as
root cause. Britain's problem could have been vastly improved
even as a paper system by just getting their arms around
communication, procedures, standards, etc. (I'm not talking
about IT standards here, they're about as worthless as the
electrons they spin on.) And then to be tantalized by Gates
himself that technology (probably especially Microsoft Windows,
sigh) would solve the problem.
I've seen amazing organization and communication among systems
with simple low speed modem and dialup connectivity. It's not
the technology, it's the grasp of the subject matter and how to
organize it. Britain's example looks to be one of classic "good
money after bad".
Get a bunch of people in a room who know what they need
(sounds like they didn't) and put them together with a bunch of
people who know how to do it (sounds like they didn't). It
really is that simple, and it's not as hard as they made it.
The evidence?:
The process for selecting
vendors began in the late fall of 2002. It was centralized and
standardized, and was conducted, Brennan and others say, in great
secrecy. To avoid negative publicity, NHS insisted that
contractors not reveal any details about contracts, a May 2005
story in ComputerWeekly noted. As a byproduct of these hush-hush
negotiations, front-line clinicians, except at the most senior
levels, were largely excluded from the selection and early
planning process, according to Brennan.
Though in the next paragraph the "CfH" denies that (why is it
always organizations "denying" something, come on
someone, step up and take accountability), I'm
guessing the accusation is accurate.
When projects like this get
going and the emphasis should be on subject matter experts (SME), the
projects usually get expendable high-level highly paid deadweight
-- I've seen it too many times. One project I was on we got
assigned two SME's, one was so oblivious to the statement of the
problem we even wondered if he (or she) had ever worked in the
industry.
Other evidence the project was ill-conceived and guaranteed a
disaster?: from the article:
[from the baseline
goals] Reduce the time it takes
to send medical images, such as X-rays, from about four minutes
to less than one minute.
I'm guessing $24B spent to get an X-ray in one minute instead
of four begins to be diminished returns.
Also:
Gates is viewed as the godfather of the
NPfIT because he reportedly sold Tony Blair on the benefits of
bringing the digital revolution into every doctor's office and
hospital in Great Britain. In the process, the British government
signed an Enterprise Subscription Agreement (ESA) with Microsoft
for 900,000 desktops for Office Professional Enterprise Edition
2003 and various client access licenses. Microsoft also is
developing a common user interface for CfH. Gates received an
honorary knighthood in 2005.
This just reeks of cronyism and idiocy. If
for no other reason, I'd vote Blair out of office for this --
it's insane. Bill probably walked away from this pretty happy
though. Aside from the questionable broad brush technology
choice, "Microsoft is develop
There is a bit of a "you rub my back..." going on when
Microsoft maintains backwards compatibility. While MS is still
the 800-lb Guerrilla, they have an audience with which they
collaborate to some degree to make billions of dollars. MS holds
the reins, but the team would refuse to pull at all if Microsoft
cut them all of at the compatibility pass -- that would
guarantee a stampede to find alternatives in OS implementations.
I don't think many are aware how hard Microsoft has to work to
maintain compatibility... I once talked with one of the MS
engineers -- he said much of the OS code has preamble code to run
through a giant "case" statement to accommodate and make
allowances for either bad or incorrect coding by outside
developers, or bugs in their code that don't execute correctly
for the outside software. It's a lot of baggage to carry around,
but it's baggage worth billions of dollars.
Interestingly (to me) is I don't think Linux's big task yet is
to maintain backwards compatibility with Linux programs (though
that would be nice, and seems to mostly be a given anyway), I
think the bigger task for Linux is to maintain backwards
compatibility with Microsoft programs,
specifically legacy Windows software. Unless and until that
hurdle is cleared, Linux will always be #2, or #3, etc.
Let's see, we got cell phones so we could talk. Then the cool idea of texting (yawn). And now, a mobile phone that let's you talk into it, and convert that to text to send a text message? Wow!
I'm holding out for the phone that translates my voice directly into voice the other party can hear. Sigh
I recently (days ago) posted an on-line ad to sell my car.
Within a day I found 5 missed calls all from the same number.
Hmmm, better carry my cell phone with me until I sell this thing.
Next time he called, he asked if the car was still for sale.
Yes! Cool, maybe I can sell this thing.
He asked if he could send someone out to take some pictures...
I asked what exactly it was he wanted. He said they (autotrader
magazine) was having a special and they wanted to run my car ad
in their mag for the special one-time offer of $25. WTF?
I said no, I wasn't interested, hung up on him. They've
called seven more times since, I didn't answer (didn't have the
phone with me).
I also got the first e-mail on that cell phone EVER from
someone interested in buying my time share? WTF? I don't have a
time share.
The timing seems more than a coincidence... It's probably not
truly a crime, but it seems sleazy at best. Why would people be
allowed to base their cold-calls on someone's posted ads?
For the record, if anyone's interested, the phone number from
which they called is: 407 515-6094.
I've owned and sampled various active noise cancellation headphones. At best, I've found them to be good. At worst I've found them totally ineffective.
To attenuate high dB environments, I'd consider the "good" of headphones I've tried to be less than satisfactory, i.e., my subjective evaluation has been about a 10 dB or so drop in levels, good, but if you're looking to get rid of noise these won't do that. If the room is loud enough, I think they'd only lessen the noise to barely acceptable levels.
You mentioned you don't want to wear the silly yellow ear plugs... there are some available in other silly colors.;-) On the other hand, you aren't likely to be anymore comfortable with headphones on the whole time, and you're going to look no less silly. I've found earplugs to be quite effective, and they're something you can get used to.
If you're looking to "use" headphones, i.e., listen to music, you might consider various ear-canal headphones. I own a pair of those, and aside from the amazing sound quality of the music, I get about a 30dB attenuation of ambient noise. Two birds with one stone. YMMV.
I've been looking at all of the threads here -- interesting
points for and against what Microsoft is doing. For any
other large dominant company I might look at
this as an encouraging development that could help the Linux
movement. But Microsoft's history and habits lead me to
different conclusions, or at least instincts about their intent.
I could list the litany of Microsoft's trespasses, not the
least of which includes their DOJ conviction and subsequent
Consent Decree which Microsoft seems to only loosely honor. Buy
I need only look to the very recent past to
find typical strong-armed and bullying Microsoft behavior,
specifically their introduction of Zune and its
associated music store silo.
Microsoft brought big guns, and big players (Samsung,
Creative, among others) to develop and create the portable music
industry of "Plays for Sure". The idea was to have players and
music compatible across a wide swath of hardware with a large
musical repertoire for purchase.
But Microsoft has thumbed its nose at that effort and struck
out on its own with an incompatible "other" way of doing music...
heck it's even incompatible with the old Microsoft Music Store!
What the heck?
So, while I can't predict or summon up the specifics of
Microsoft's intentions to harm the Linux community and how
Microsoft would do just that, but I sure have seen enough to be
pretty sure their ultimate goal is to squash Linux, or make it
completely theirs to the extent and extreme it no longer looks
anything like the Linux of today.
I hope the other Linux distros can withstand the Microsoft
juggernaut.
That said, a disturbing quote to me from the article was,
"His [Allchin's son] machine is locked down with parental
controls, he can't
download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he
could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that," he
[Allchin]
added. "That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows
XP SP2.""
It's not disturbing they/he claim the security in Vista, it's
disturbing I've been around long enough it's an old tape.
Every single new Windows, every single new version, every
single new service pack brings the old saw "this time
${WindowsVersin} is really secure and stable". I guess I'm
tired of saying "told you so", when it's not. (Oooops, I did it
again.)
Prediction (not too hard...): Vista will be riddled with
stability and security issues.
Yeah, that's pretty descriptive, it's all I put on my resume
and they know EXACTLY what my career was about.
I'd love to know the man-hour charges racked up scratching our
collective heads about what the titles and job descriptions
needed to be.
I especially loved being an architect -- I had as difficult
time defining it to people as they had grasping it.
I also get (got) a kick out of people and their "I LOVE ME"
walls in their offices and cubicles, pasting and taping up all of
their certificates for classes they'd taken, certifications
achieved, etc. In the final analysis, I don't ever see a
consistent and understandable title/job description semantic,
especially in IT where the landscape changes dramatically
sometimes in months. (Other professions seem not much better
defined, btw.) If your management is good, they're more tuned
into and cognizant of what each employee does well and how to
balance work loads accordingly. If they're not, they'll obsess
about job titles (sometimes employees do the same, and drive
management crazy).
I've been installing, troubleshooting, setting up Linux
boxes since the days of the 75+ floppy disk installs. Back then
it was fun, how cool to get a FREE version of Unix on my PC!
I have probably installed hundreds of Linuxes. In the
beginning it was cool, it was fun, and the end result was always
worth the effort. Today, while a fully functional Linux box is
almost always worth the effort, the blood, sweat, and tears of an
install-troubleshoot doesn't come as easily. I've found other
Linux "experts" who agree... it's time Linux works out of the
box.
That said, I might disagree a bit with the thesis Linux
doesn't work out of the box... I've found especially with distros
like Ubuntu Linux has come far to "just working". As I've posted
before, on a raw machine I've actually had better installation
success with a cold install of Linux over XP.
But the main point is valid, and I think it extends to the
Linux experts. Not only is troubleshooting geek-cool only to
geeks, it doesn't bring warm fuzzies to people for whom you
introduce to Linux. There's nothing more scary to the general
users than seeing gibberish bootup messages complaining about
missing or incompatible drivers and hardware when what they want
to see is a shiny new GUI with applications they can use right
away.
Linux experts can and still do slough through the pain of
perfect Linux installs but the rest of the world isn't impressed.
Give them something they can use that works well with everything
else. Ultimately it looks like Linux is getting there and may
even have a chance of becoming a major desktop... I'm not as
pessimistic as the article seems to be.
In the meantime, good points from the article to win favor for
Linux and its future:
evangelize, but don't be religious (there's a
difference).
educate
give good support...
(mine) don't give Linux to someone for whom it isn't going to
make any sense... that's a disservice to your "client" and Linux
Slashdot Mirror
Seems odd when a committee (in this case, an entire senate) deems a law pragmatic enough it goes up for vote with a unanimous (30-0) sendoff and subsequently because of special interest (MPAA allegedly) the final vote skews not only away from unanimous but actually flips the sentiment (bill loses 27-33).
Consider the gist of the bill (from the article):
This means the MPAA and others argued for the right to make "false, fictitious or fraudulent" statements...! Amazing!
There are legitimate ways for the entertainment industry to obtain data when prosecuting alleged piracy activity. This isn't one of them. So, the practice (pretexting) remains legal and the MPAA prevails in yet another seamy side of big business buying milquetoast government.
I've lost the ability to record FM on my Creative Zen with my last firmware update... ostensibly, though I can't confirm it because of industry pressure on Creative -- it was one of the features I bought it for.
The threat continues to loom for providers of excellent technology like TiVo to rein in their features, also ostensibly under pressure.
The better the technology gets, the less they want us to use it.
Scoble tacitly supports Winer's argument by pointing to what would be normal "improvement" of products and technology citing that as innovation.
Come on! Every product is iterated! Scoble's claim this is innovation is specious. If any vendors out there didn't iterate on their own products with "small" improvements, they wouldn't stay in the business.
So, basically Scoble cedes the argument -- Microsoft really does lie in wait until the market is huge enough for predatory action, and jumps in with "small improvements". Innovation? Hardly.
Hopefully, /.'ers and others won't look upon this as an
Open Source failure, it isn't. It's (in my opinion) more of a
triumph somewhere of sanity... Technology has it's place, but a
laptop for every child smacks of the program's hubris and less of
a sane approach to helping poor countries.
I think they show real insight when fearing little return on the effort because teachers are poorly trained. Heck, even in wealthy countries teachers consistently have no computer smarts (my sister is a teacher, she hasn't a clue!). Compound that with a techie-Linux platform (I love Linux, but for the mass public, with minimal background and training?) and this program was running off the rails from the beginning.
There are excellent examples of schools in the United States where huge investments in technology for schools showed no tangible gains in students' profieciencies and at the same time examples of poor schools shifting emphasis to basics, discipline, and community with strong academic results.
Technology for technology's sake is just that, but not much of a salve for third world economies, at least not by giving a laptop to every child. I think this is actually a positive development because it has (had) so many ways it could have gone wrong allowing companies like Microsoft down the road to point fingers at Open Source as the culprit, and if only Microsoft had been chosen to save the world.
(For the record, this whole OLPC effort would be just as much of a train wreck with Windows, just a whole heck of a lot more expensive.)
Good gosh, HDTV would fly by itself if the industry practiced a little common sense about the rollout. I remember in 1998 a sales guy trying to talk me into buying a sexy looking HDTV on demo on the floor. Yeah, I was drooling.
This unit came sans tuner, and the universe as we know it was still pretty much standard definition tv, i.e., if you could find any HD content, it was for eye candy only, nobody was broadcasting HD anywhere on anything remotely regular.
I told him I'd wait for the prices to come down, and the for some content to show up -- he shook his finger at me, "These prices [$10,000 for the unit I was looking at] won't come down and might go up! And, there's more and more new HD content available every day"
Prices went way down (though still way too high) and content eventually showed up. The problem? Way too many ways to set up for HD with way too many ways to find out your setup isn't correct after spending big bucks.
The minefield that is setting up for HD is too confusing, too expensive, and yeah, if I were an advertiser I'd find it a tough sell to pay any extra for an uncertain market.
It's too bad, I eventually settled on a Samsung 50" DLP a 2 years ago, absolutely LOVE it, but no thanks to any help I got from anyone anywhere! Freak, even the Comcast HD cable box is still a piece of garbage that regularly freezes, never behaves, and offers a very limited range of HD (not entirely their fault, come on networks!).
Toss in the confusing choices and still uncertain future of HD on DVD, sheesh, it's a wonder the market is as penetrated as it is.
Hey, and toss in the $50 HDMI cable lots of people have to buy, they didn't even know about it until "after". Yeah, and what about the almost non-existent HD On Demand (another unfulfilled promise... aside from incredibly poor selection, Comcast's On Demand movies have only a few HD, and all of them (HD and standard) are so compressed, it hurts to watch on a good TV). Oh, and don't forget, or don't forget to plan for, DRM. Don't assume what's true today will still be true by the time you set up your system, but assume if it's not the same it's going to be more restrictive.
Shit, the more I prattle, the less I like about HD. I'm in as deep as I want for what the market has offered so far, but am not chomping at the byte for any more investment until the industry sorts itself out.
This is very cool! But I'm not sure what NetFlix and Blockbuster (among others) are going to think about this! Finally, an easy way to get DVD's onto my computer!
The thesis is Microsoft needs to find their un-Vista? Hardly! Microsoft needs to find their heart. Or grow one.
Their 30-year path is strewn with castoff competitors, and wannabe partners. Microsoft has sown nothing but ill-will for the duration of their tenure. I would welcome the change that shows Microsoft wants to be a good-citizen member of the IT community and market but the evidence isn't there, in fact there isn't even a glimmer of evidence, contrary to the article's these that things like "Zune" and "X-box" are starts in the right direction.
Consider only the most recent step to re-invent, the Novell/Linux debacle. What many considered worth waiting for on good faith to be a positive step took only days to be revealed for what it was, more steps to stamp out any competition. As long as executives with the hubris of a Steve Ballmer control the direction of Microsoft, nothing positive will happen, period.
And, what of the collaboration with Samsung, Creative and others? To what end other than wasted time and money for Microsoft's "partners"? Bah!
An interesting quote from the article (Allard's response to bad words from Apple re: their Zune, and how Microsoft doesn't "get it"):
This only demonstrates how much Microsoft doesn't "get it". Microsoft benchmarks everything it does against perceived outside competition -- it'd be nice to see them invent their own cool stuff. Interestingly (to me), they had a chance to do just that with Zune, and completely blew it by trying to measure themselves against the ipod.
I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't have the right to be a good tough business to make good products and good profits, but Microsoft has mostly been about making products barely clearing the bar while making usurious profits with (what eventually was ruled by DOJ, and the EU) illegal monopolistic leveraging.
I know it's an old saw, but I've been waiting more than 20 years for market forces to take hold and allow technology to evolve in a marketplace that encourages competition, i.e., one that diminishes the Microsoft effect (how many company's do you know of whose business model included a goal or contingency to be bought out by Microsoft?). Microsoft may now reap what they've sown.
So, what this seems to say: Microsoft will allow anybody and everybody to plant their seed (the ribbon UI), to start the viral/grassroots campaign to their way of doing things. Unless and until it conflicts with their existing products.
It's royalty free... translation: Microsoft gets a free ad campaign. But for those who may not be familiar with the company Microsoft, Microsoft is not likely to be friendly about anyone using their UI on any product down the road they decide should be protected.
So are these the dying rattle breaths of a behemoth unable to compete today? Or is it one more salvo (consider Ballmer and his innuendo about Microsoft's Novell-Linux pact) in a war to control even more tightly the computing business world?
Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model. Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.
This may be a bigger shift for Microsoft than the internet was, retooling the way they think about business as a service and value-added support company rather than a company trotting out latest and greatest generations of (already quite mature) software (sheeesh, how many more features can you conceive for today's word processors?). And, have you looked at the new interfaces for their "got to have" Office products? Maybe good, maybe not, but who in their right corporate business mind would foist yet another learning curve on their entire company for yet another interface?
Considering Microsoft has never really cared for the rest of the world (in my opinion), their entire corporate mentality must reverse field, not something I'm sure they're even capable of... consider the latest rantings by Ballmer about a peek under the Microsoft covers about why they really forged the Suse/Linux deal. More evidence Microsoft continues to be about controlling, not collaborating. Does Microsoft even have the personnel capable of shifting their mindset? Time will tell.
Microsoft's stranglehold on the economy may be loosening as technology, distribution of technology, and support for technology become more about the people. That (in my opinion) can be only a good thing for the world.
(an interesting aside... my editor spellchecker offered Blamer as an alternative spelling for Ballmer... snicker.)
Driving that train, high on cocaine.
Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
With a beginning like this, who knows? They got the O.J. special and book release canceled!
Goodness, if the heads of the two "agreement" corporations are on pages so far apart for this deal, how can this possibly work? Reminds me of the IBM/Microsoft marriage for work on OS/2, which Microsoft continued to claim was blissful right up until the time they got enough ideas for their own Windows replacement and unceremoniously dumped IBM. Too bad, too... OS/2 (while not my fave) was a pretty decent system for its time.
I think one of the blessings and curses of methodologies, in this article's instance, "Agile" (ha!), is they are their own universe. So, unless there is something within the methodology that is self-contradictory methodologies don't have fallacies. Methodologies are theses, usually tepid ones at best.
Methodologies are someone's or some group's or some company's idea of a way to successfully accomplish a task, project, etc. Fortunately for all who sell these (vapor)wares, methodologies never fail, they merely suffer from those who have improperly used them.
Methodologies then become the convenient whipping boy for work not done satisfactorily. Sigh.
Peel away the layers, eventually it all still boils down to knowing what you want to do, knowing how to do it, and doing it with a strong instinct for balancing things that matter and things that don't. Methodologies won't do that for you, good project managers will.
(Some of the very best and most successful projects I worked on were with a friend who I consider to this day to be one of the best project managers I ever knew (and I knew many). He used no methodology, but had incredible instincts and a strong will. He knew how to handle time frames, important (and not-so-important) crises, difficult workers, and how to prioritize. It's a shame he didn't get better recognition - he might have had he "used a methodology". I found it ironic he was ostracized/admonished by the company, but he continued to be their go-to guy for the important work.
Bottom line, "Agile" isn't. But "Agile" is just one of a long list of bit players for methodologies in IT.
I like the look, I like the idea... I've waited a long to see these be available... but, around $400???
At that kind of expense, it better have a 100G drive, about 512M memory, and run Linux. (and for an extra $100 - $200, Windows XP...)
I know it's new, I know price points start high, I'll wait.
I think (just my opinion) with all of the up-front hype and the resulting "flaccid" initial sales figures, Microsoft may have offered up a pretty big loser. Why? Because so much about the Zune and (some of) its features depend on the social network aspect to achieve functionality, and that won't happen with this slow of a ramp.
The flip side, also not good, is that with the slow uptake, the disappointing lack of ability to really use the wireless (because of a dearth of "others") will generate a viral, grassroots word of mouth ripple discourageing potential "others" to buy.
Now slap on the silly DRM, the incompatiblity with almost everything else, the silly purchase plan (float MS a loan anyone?), this product is going nowhere fast. In some ways, too bad, it actually looked to have a certain coolness, but Microsoft forgot and left too heavy a signature...
Maybe the good news out of all of this is the added prompting for makers like Apple to be more aggressive rolling out things like wireless, etc., though it looks to me like Apple has titrated their rollout almost perfectly.
From the /. summary:
Did I miss the memo? Is there some danger around the 8-track and availability. Please... ... ... click
... ..., someone tell me this isn't so! Have I invested all
this money on all these artists and their tapes... ... ...click
for naught? Sigh.
Maybe they can merge the two projects (the Britain and the KP project) for greater efficiencies.
I've seen lots of different packages and frankly I sometimes wonder why people pay for them. They're typically (actually I guess they're literally) off-the-shelf stuff that, while offering nice and interesting features, don't cover everything for everybody. I think it's a "you get what you pay for mentality", i.e., people insist on buying packages to do this kind of analysis.
I've written probably more than 20 different web filters for various analyses because the OTS stuff didn't get me the info I wanted.
And for any more-than-small IT staff, there's always someone there who knows the tools, and can slap together stat info and tweak it ad nauseum until management sees the analysis they think they want. Lots of staff will even write it on their own time -- they like to tinker with that stuff.
Also, though I haven't looked, I'll bet there are some great CPAN modules that get you what you want as a good start with the added benefit of having the code for your own tweaking.
Considering the article specifically is asking for simple web stats, I think sed, awk, perl, and others is a perfect way to go.
Or, you could buy yet another package and risk Microsoft buying that product and disappearing it.
Disclaimer from the article:
Cool, Zune comes with it's own soft porn.
All seriousness aside, I think I'd already heard Zune wouldn't work with Vista immediately. Is that really a big show stopper? I'm guessing they've laid plans to have it ready to go by the time the OEMs are rolling out Vista-installed machines. An embarrassment perhaps, but Microsoft has many bigger and better gaffes to be proud of (say Clippy, and Microsoft Bob!).
Oh, and back to the soft porn, it must have been approved by the Ballmer himself, just look at the quote from his quoted Q&A session from Business Week in the article:
I think Steve's been spending a little too much time on-line.
The article:
It's unfortunate but common to look at "under-investment" as root cause. Britain's problem could have been vastly improved even as a paper system by just getting their arms around communication, procedures, standards, etc. (I'm not talking about IT standards here, they're about as worthless as the electrons they spin on.) And then to be tantalized by Gates himself that technology (probably especially Microsoft Windows, sigh) would solve the problem.
I've seen amazing organization and communication among systems with simple low speed modem and dialup connectivity. It's not the technology, it's the grasp of the subject matter and how to organize it. Britain's example looks to be one of classic "good money after bad".
Get a bunch of people in a room who know what they need (sounds like they didn't) and put them together with a bunch of people who know how to do it (sounds like they didn't). It really is that simple, and it's not as hard as they made it.
The evidence?:
Though in the next paragraph the "CfH" denies that (why is it always organizations "denying" something, come on someone, step up and take accountability), I'm guessing the accusation is accurate.
When projects like this get going and the emphasis should be on subject matter experts (SME), the projects usually get expendable high-level highly paid deadweight -- I've seen it too many times. One project I was on we got assigned two SME's, one was so oblivious to the statement of the problem we even wondered if he (or she) had ever worked in the industry.
Other evidence the project was ill-conceived and guaranteed a disaster?: from the article:
I'm guessing $24B spent to get an X-ray in one minute instead of four begins to be diminished returns.
Also:
This just reeks of cronyism and idiocy. If for no other reason, I'd vote Blair out of office for this -- it's insane. Bill probably walked away from this pretty happy though. Aside from the questionable broad brush technology choice, "Microsoft is develop
There is a bit of a "you rub my back..." going on when Microsoft maintains backwards compatibility. While MS is still the 800-lb Guerrilla, they have an audience with which they collaborate to some degree to make billions of dollars. MS holds the reins, but the team would refuse to pull at all if Microsoft cut them all of at the compatibility pass -- that would guarantee a stampede to find alternatives in OS implementations.
I don't think many are aware how hard Microsoft has to work to maintain compatibility... I once talked with one of the MS engineers -- he said much of the OS code has preamble code to run through a giant "case" statement to accommodate and make allowances for either bad or incorrect coding by outside developers, or bugs in their code that don't execute correctly for the outside software. It's a lot of baggage to carry around, but it's baggage worth billions of dollars.
Interestingly (to me) is I don't think Linux's big task yet is to maintain backwards compatibility with Linux programs (though that would be nice, and seems to mostly be a given anyway), I think the bigger task for Linux is to maintain backwards compatibility with Microsoft programs, specifically legacy Windows software. Unless and until that hurdle is cleared, Linux will always be #2, or #3, etc.
(Sorry for the paragraph of metaphors.)
Let's see, we got cell phones so we could talk. Then the cool idea of texting (yawn). And now, a mobile phone that let's you talk into it, and convert that to text to send a text message? Wow!
I'm holding out for the phone that translates my voice directly into voice the other party can hear. Sigh
I recently (days ago) posted an on-line ad to sell my car. Within a day I found 5 missed calls all from the same number. Hmmm, better carry my cell phone with me until I sell this thing.
Next time he called, he asked if the car was still for sale. Yes! Cool, maybe I can sell this thing.
He asked if he could send someone out to take some pictures... I asked what exactly it was he wanted. He said they (autotrader magazine) was having a special and they wanted to run my car ad in their mag for the special one-time offer of $25. WTF?
I said no, I wasn't interested, hung up on him. They've called seven more times since, I didn't answer (didn't have the phone with me).
I also got the first e-mail on that cell phone EVER from someone interested in buying my time share? WTF? I don't have a time share.
The timing seems more than a coincidence... It's probably not truly a crime, but it seems sleazy at best. Why would people be allowed to base their cold-calls on someone's posted ads?
For the record, if anyone's interested, the phone number from which they called is: 407 515-6094.
I've owned and sampled various active noise cancellation headphones. At best, I've found them to be good. At worst I've found them totally ineffective.
To attenuate high dB environments, I'd consider the "good" of headphones I've tried to be less than satisfactory, i.e., my subjective evaluation has been about a 10 dB or so drop in levels, good, but if you're looking to get rid of noise these won't do that. If the room is loud enough, I think they'd only lessen the noise to barely acceptable levels.
You mentioned you don't want to wear the silly yellow ear plugs... there are some available in other silly colors. ;-) On the other hand, you aren't likely to be anymore comfortable with headphones on the whole time, and you're going to look no less silly. I've found earplugs to be quite effective, and they're something you can get used to.
If you're looking to "use" headphones, i.e., listen to music, you might consider various ear-canal headphones. I own a pair of those, and aside from the amazing sound quality of the music, I get about a 30dB attenuation of ambient noise. Two birds with one stone. YMMV.
Good luck!
I've been looking at all of the threads here -- interesting points for and against what Microsoft is doing. For any other large dominant company I might look at this as an encouraging development that could help the Linux movement. But Microsoft's history and habits lead me to different conclusions, or at least instincts about their intent.
I could list the litany of Microsoft's trespasses, not the least of which includes their DOJ conviction and subsequent Consent Decree which Microsoft seems to only loosely honor. Buy I need only look to the very recent past to find typical strong-armed and bullying Microsoft behavior, specifically their introduction of Zune and its associated music store silo.
Microsoft brought big guns, and big players (Samsung, Creative, among others) to develop and create the portable music industry of "Plays for Sure". The idea was to have players and music compatible across a wide swath of hardware with a large musical repertoire for purchase.
But Microsoft has thumbed its nose at that effort and struck out on its own with an incompatible "other" way of doing music... heck it's even incompatible with the old Microsoft Music Store! What the heck?
So, while I can't predict or summon up the specifics of Microsoft's intentions to harm the Linux community and how Microsoft would do just that, but I sure have seen enough to be pretty sure their ultimate goal is to squash Linux, or make it completely theirs to the extent and extreme it no longer looks anything like the Linux of today.
I hope the other Linux distros can withstand the Microsoft juggernaut.
BTW, Vista Is Still The Anti-OS.
That said, a disturbing quote to me from the article was, "His [Allchin's son] machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that," he [Allchin] added. "That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2.""
It's not disturbing they/he claim the security in Vista, it's disturbing I've been around long enough it's an old tape. Every single new Windows, every single new version, every single new service pack brings the old saw "this time ${WindowsVersin} is really secure and stable". I guess I'm tired of saying "told you so", when it's not. (Oooops, I did it again.)
Prediction (not too hard...): Vista will be riddled with stability and security issues.
Yeah, that's pretty descriptive, it's all I put on my resume and they know EXACTLY what my career was about.
I'd love to know the man-hour charges racked up scratching our collective heads about what the titles and job descriptions needed to be.
I especially loved being an architect -- I had as difficult time defining it to people as they had grasping it.
I also get (got) a kick out of people and their "I LOVE ME" walls in their offices and cubicles, pasting and taping up all of their certificates for classes they'd taken, certifications achieved, etc. In the final analysis, I don't ever see a consistent and understandable title/job description semantic, especially in IT where the landscape changes dramatically sometimes in months. (Other professions seem not much better defined, btw.) If your management is good, they're more tuned into and cognizant of what each employee does well and how to balance work loads accordingly. If they're not, they'll obsess about job titles (sometimes employees do the same, and drive management crazy).
I've been installing, troubleshooting, setting up Linux boxes since the days of the 75+ floppy disk installs. Back then it was fun, how cool to get a FREE version of Unix on my PC!
I have probably installed hundreds of Linuxes. In the beginning it was cool, it was fun, and the end result was always worth the effort. Today, while a fully functional Linux box is almost always worth the effort, the blood, sweat, and tears of an install-troubleshoot doesn't come as easily. I've found other Linux "experts" who agree... it's time Linux works out of the box.
That said, I might disagree a bit with the thesis Linux doesn't work out of the box... I've found especially with distros like Ubuntu Linux has come far to "just working". As I've posted before, on a raw machine I've actually had better installation success with a cold install of Linux over XP.
But the main point is valid, and I think it extends to the Linux experts. Not only is troubleshooting geek-cool only to geeks, it doesn't bring warm fuzzies to people for whom you introduce to Linux. There's nothing more scary to the general users than seeing gibberish bootup messages complaining about missing or incompatible drivers and hardware when what they want to see is a shiny new GUI with applications they can use right away.
Linux experts can and still do slough through the pain of perfect Linux installs but the rest of the world isn't impressed. Give them something they can use that works well with everything else. Ultimately it looks like Linux is getting there and may even have a chance of becoming a major desktop... I'm not as pessimistic as the article seems to be.
In the meantime, good points from the article to win favor for Linux and its future: