The WP7 tools are almost too easy to use.. Being late to the game may be the best thing for MS. Learn from everyone elses mistakes
To be fair, MS has a mixed bag with that approach... for every XBox (which, yes I know the arguments for it not being one, but I still consider it to be a success) or.NET you've got a Zune or a Kin.
(You can make a list like that for a Google or Apple as well, but it's a lot easier to point to recent MS failures than Apple ones.)
Actually it's kind of too late for Microsoft already. They're entering the market so late, what can they possibly offer consumers (I'm ignoring business use cases here, since it isn't for business anyways, or so they stated) that they can't already get from current offerings, and better?
I had come to this conclusion as well.
The only solution I can see if MS means to seriously compete in this market is to make the hard decision to run at a loss to try to get some momentum going -- to lose money on each Windows phone in much the same way that video game console makers usually sell the first consoles at a loss.
A competitor has accused Google of something. Perhaps, we should wait and see if it is true? When Microsoft said Linux was using its patents without permission did we just accept it as fact? The/. view certainly seemed to be put up or shut up.
It's not inconsistent at all:
On/., big corporations need to put up or shut up, whereas other entities challenging big corporations are usually assumed to be in the right.
Maybe a little mechanical or chemical aptitude is the reason. A bomber with an engineering degree might have the skills necessary to build a bomb and not blow themselves up in the process, whereas a non-engineer bomber might either fail to build a bomb or wind up blowing themselves to kingdom come.
That's exactly what I was thinking -- our statistics mostly count the successes, not the attempts. Engineers are the guys with the skills to do it.
My god, is our opinion of IE really THAT low that we find this impressive?
I don't know if it (not that they're getting better speed, but the how of it) is so much impressive as it is interesting. We still can discuss interesting pieces of technology here, right?:)
Bottom line: if other browsers started using the same resources, would IE still be the slowest?
You could equally say: if IE's JavaScript engine were as fast as Firefox's, would it still be the slowest?
Browser speed, like many things in the software world, is a constant arms' race. (At least, since the rise of Firefox some years ago made it an actual race again instead of the sad 'IE wins by default' show.) I'm sure that, if what IE9 is doing is effective/smart, other browsers will do something similar in their next iteration -- but meanwhile, IE would be doing something else in its next iteration, be it more efficiency, even better use of the extra resources, whatever.
In other words, I think it's disingenuous to assume that software you like will quickly absorb the smartest features of software you don't like, and that the reverse won't also happen to some degree.
Maybe that's the missing step, then -- being able to get an Ubuntu install that's prepackaged with the drivers and such for your specific machine or a subset of machines that includes yours. E.g. if you have a Dell Inspiron series (or whatever), this Ubuntu disc is everything you need to get rolling without further work.
Add to that... a police department of a sizeable city usually has a few cops that temporarily aren't put on active duty (whether it's some kind of formal or informal suspension) because they've had recent problems abusing their authority or other violations that were egregious enough that the chief/sheriff had to do something.
In the case of my local P.D., these cops generally get D.A.R.E. duty or are sent places dressed up as McGruff the crime dog. That's right -- if you're the cop that can't be trusted with the authority of your office, you get to be the one they send to deal with children. That's a great idea.
In the context of that, getting the cops you can't put on duty to warn of the dangers of pedobear doesn't seem that ridiculous, and, as you said, probably is helpful at election time.
My experience is, all but the most computer illiterate person I know (and that guy thankfully now has a Mac and bothers the guys at the Apple store instead of me) feel reasonably comfortable re-installing Windows on a machine as a last resort.
Could they do the same thing given an Ubuntu disc? I suspect they probably could, but I don't know if they would take the leap of faith to try. How you address that confidence gap I don't know.
It's really easy to pick on Linux for not being Windows
I don't know that it's fair, exactly, to assume that most people will have a rough idea of their way around a Windows machine and will not have a rough idea of how to do those things on a Linux machine (when they're different), but nonetheless, that's reality.
If I build a car that has no steering wheel but has an equally good (or even superior!) control mechanism that isn't a steering wheel, I would expect a review comparing my car to a normal car to mention that, hey, you probably know how to work a steering wheel but it's going to take some getting used to this newfangled pwnstick to drive.
IMHO, for this to happen, there has to first be more of a paradigm shift in the FOSS community to value things like documentation and support as highly as committing code. Yesterday's article about Ubuntu being ripped for not committing more code is a perfect example of this.
To large degree, Linux is still seen (by people who even know what it is) as an OS that you need a "Linux guy" to set up and possibly maintain for you if you're a non-technical user. In some respects that's not as fair a generalization as it would have been ten years ago, but there's still strides to make there.
The second they break our laws to be here they demonstrate a belief that we owe them something.
You're making a logical leap there that I'm not convinced is defensible.
I assume there exist people who never break any law, ever, no matter whether they disagree with it or how light the penalty for being caught breaking it is. However, I've never met any such person, and if you claimed to be one, I would not believe you.
If the upside of breaking immigration laws is that a person can get a better job and provide a better life for their family, and the downside of being caught isn't all that bad, many rational, even ethical people will take that gamble. It would be delusional to believe otherwise.
People don't hold laws, especially laws they don't have a voice in making, sacred. It doesn't matter to them if you think they should. Calling them names won't change their behavior. Altering the risk/reward equation of breaking the law, on the other hand, probably would to some degree.
Furthermore, it's completely pathological to insist on being where you're not wanted.
If illegal immigrants were unwanted by all of America, no one would hire them.
If I tell you to stay out of my house, but it's also known that I'll give you $100/hour (or whatever wage would seem attractive to a given person) if you show up anyway, there's something pathological about that, but it's not the person who shows up and works.
Of course, most people charged with a crime actually did it, and in those cases, the defense's motivation is to get people on the jury who are even stupider than the defendant.
Sure -- I'd argue that it's in a smart person's best interest to be on that jury, too.
Someone will post that bringing shurikens onto a plane is a brilliant innovation of the plane user experience, and someone else will post complaining that airport security is a walled garden.
Smart people are smart enough to get out of jury duty if they want to, but ask yourself: if falsely accused of a crime, wouldn't I want someone on the jury to be at least as smart as me?
It's not that they ever would dick around in the guts of their software, it's that they have the ability to if they ever really wanted/needed to... as long as they're software developers with nothing more important to do. Who also have enough experience in the particular area of specialty that the software in question covers to really understand what's going on, or enough spare time to learn.
At some point idealogy has to at least wave politely at pragmatism.
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The WP7 tools are almost too easy to use.. Being late to the game may be the best thing for MS. Learn from everyone elses mistakes
To be fair, MS has a mixed bag with that approach... for every XBox (which, yes I know the arguments for it not being one, but I still consider it to be a success) or .NET you've got a Zune or a Kin.
(You can make a list like that for a Google or Apple as well, but it's a lot easier to point to recent MS failures than Apple ones.)
Actually it's kind of too late for Microsoft already. They're entering the market so late, what can they possibly offer consumers (I'm ignoring business use cases here, since it isn't for business anyways, or so they stated) that they can't already get from current offerings, and better?
I had come to this conclusion as well.
The only solution I can see if MS means to seriously compete in this market is to make the hard decision to run at a loss to try to get some momentum going -- to lose money on each Windows phone in much the same way that video game console makers usually sell the first consoles at a loss.
Kevin Bacon visited the CIA in 2008!
I'll be in the corner fashioning my tinfoil hat, now.
A competitor has accused Google of something. Perhaps, we should wait and see if it is true? When Microsoft said Linux was using its patents without permission did we just accept it as fact? The /. view certainly seemed to be put up or shut up.
It's not inconsistent at all:
On /., big corporations need to put up or shut up, whereas other entities challenging big corporations are usually assumed to be in the right.
Also, geeks are never guilty of crimes.
What about the gay engineers?
They're covered -- they've already invented Grindr for themselves.
You've got to be trolling to post that engineers and scientists don't know/learn how to think on /.
Maybe a little mechanical or chemical aptitude is the reason. A bomber with an engineering degree might have the skills necessary to build a bomb and not blow themselves up in the process, whereas a non-engineer bomber might either fail to build a bomb or wind up blowing themselves to kingdom come.
That's exactly what I was thinking -- our statistics mostly count the successes, not the attempts. Engineers are the guys with the skills to do it.
don't know about killing unicorns to make bacon out of them, regardless how awesome that bacon would be =P
But think of the (U)BLTs you could make!
My god, is our opinion of IE really THAT low that we find this impressive?
I don't know if it (not that they're getting better speed, but the how of it) is so much impressive as it is interesting. We still can discuss interesting pieces of technology here, right? :)
Bottom line: if other browsers started using the same resources, would IE still be the slowest?
You could equally say: if IE's JavaScript engine were as fast as Firefox's, would it still be the slowest?
Browser speed, like many things in the software world, is a constant arms' race. (At least, since the rise of Firefox some years ago made it an actual race again instead of the sad 'IE wins by default' show.) I'm sure that, if what IE9 is doing is effective/smart, other browsers will do something similar in their next iteration -- but meanwhile, IE would be doing something else in its next iteration, be it more efficiency, even better use of the extra resources, whatever.
In other words, I think it's disingenuous to assume that software you like will quickly absorb the smartest features of software you don't like, and that the reverse won't also happen to some degree.
Maybe that's the missing step, then -- being able to get an Ubuntu install that's prepackaged with the drivers and such for your specific machine or a subset of machines that includes yours. E.g. if you have a Dell Inspiron series (or whatever), this Ubuntu disc is everything you need to get rolling without further work.
Add to that... a police department of a sizeable city usually has a few cops that temporarily aren't put on active duty (whether it's some kind of formal or informal suspension) because they've had recent problems abusing their authority or other violations that were egregious enough that the chief/sheriff had to do something.
In the case of my local P.D., these cops generally get D.A.R.E. duty or are sent places dressed up as McGruff the crime dog. That's right -- if you're the cop that can't be trusted with the authority of your office, you get to be the one they send to deal with children. That's a great idea.
In the context of that, getting the cops you can't put on duty to warn of the dangers of pedobear doesn't seem that ridiculous, and, as you said, probably is helpful at election time.
My experience is, all but the most computer illiterate person I know (and that guy thankfully now has a Mac and bothers the guys at the Apple store instead of me) feel reasonably comfortable re-installing Windows on a machine as a last resort.
Could they do the same thing given an Ubuntu disc? I suspect they probably could, but I don't know if they would take the leap of faith to try. How you address that confidence gap I don't know.
It's really easy to pick on Linux for not being Windows
I don't know that it's fair, exactly, to assume that most people will have a rough idea of their way around a Windows machine and will not have a rough idea of how to do those things on a Linux machine (when they're different), but nonetheless, that's reality.
If I build a car that has no steering wheel but has an equally good (or even superior!) control mechanism that isn't a steering wheel, I would expect a review comparing my car to a normal car to mention that, hey, you probably know how to work a steering wheel but it's going to take some getting used to this newfangled pwnstick to drive.
For my parents (total computer illiterates) it's since 2002.
My question would be, to what degree would that have been possible without your help?
that anything "free" ... has sub-par quality
IMHO, for this to happen, there has to first be more of a paradigm shift in the FOSS community to value things like documentation and support as highly as committing code. Yesterday's article about Ubuntu being ripped for not committing more code is a perfect example of this.
To large degree, Linux is still seen (by people who even know what it is) as an OS that you need a "Linux guy" to set up and possibly maintain for you if you're a non-technical user. In some respects that's not as fair a generalization as it would have been ten years ago, but there's still strides to make there.
Eh, more technically literate than the general population for sure.
Maybe that puts into perspective what you're up against.
The second they break our laws to be here they demonstrate a belief that we owe them something.
You're making a logical leap there that I'm not convinced is defensible.
I assume there exist people who never break any law, ever, no matter whether they disagree with it or how light the penalty for being caught breaking it is. However, I've never met any such person, and if you claimed to be one, I would not believe you.
If the upside of breaking immigration laws is that a person can get a better job and provide a better life for their family, and the downside of being caught isn't all that bad, many rational, even ethical people will take that gamble. It would be delusional to believe otherwise.
People don't hold laws, especially laws they don't have a voice in making, sacred. It doesn't matter to them if you think they should. Calling them names won't change their behavior. Altering the risk/reward equation of breaking the law, on the other hand, probably would to some degree.
Furthermore, it's completely pathological to insist on being where you're not wanted.
If illegal immigrants were unwanted by all of America, no one would hire them.
If I tell you to stay out of my house, but it's also known that I'll give you $100/hour (or whatever wage would seem attractive to a given person) if you show up anyway, there's something pathological about that, but it's not the person who shows up and works.
Wrong. The post was funny, you just don't get the joke. It doesn't have anything to do with Finland at all except in the most tangental sense.
Of course, most people charged with a crime actually did it, and in those cases, the defense's motivation is to get people on the jury who are even stupider than the defendant.
Sure -- I'd argue that it's in a smart person's best interest to be on that jury, too.
Hey, it's Steve Jobs and this is /.
Someone will post that bringing shurikens onto a plane is a brilliant innovation of the plane user experience, and someone else will post complaining that airport security is a walled garden.
Yes. (I honestly don't think I can give a longer form answer without being inflammatory.)
Hey, jury duty is important.
Smart people are smart enough to get out of jury duty if they want to, but ask yourself: if falsely accused of a crime, wouldn't I want someone on the jury to be at least as smart as me?
It's not that they ever would dick around in the guts of their software, it's that they have the ability to if they ever really wanted/needed to ... as long as they're software developers with nothing more important to do. Who also have enough experience in the particular area of specialty that the software in question covers to really understand what's going on, or enough spare time to learn.
At some point idealogy has to at least wave politely at pragmatism.
I live healthier, calmer, better life than I would without religion
And I live healthier, calmer, and better without it. Hey, how about that? We like different stuff.
Which is exactly my point.