The Canadian news bias towards BlackBerry is not doing the company or investors any good. The level of hype north of the 49th is out of control.
Full disclosure: I'm a BB user.
When a product gets this much hype, the expectations outpace the market. We need to really sit back for a bit and see how it all shakes out.
My personal attitude is: hopeful - hopeful that it 'takes'. I would not, as yet, put myself into the category of optimistic.
It's going to be very interesting to see what BB does to carve out market share. My first impression would be to convert the existing customer base. Every BB user wants a better experience. The OS 6 browser sucks. There is not enough memory/capacity so that, after a while, old emails and calendar items randomly disappear. This is behaviour that should have a warming before it happens. Will BB10 be better at the business side of things? From what I've seen so far, I am very interested in its use for sales: combining ALL messaging with one contact. This will make it far easier for the user to know what was said and to whom (yes, I know that this was available in a rudimentary way in OS 6.
Swirling Alicia Keys into the mix is a good strategy. That said, where's the corresponding endorsement from a major CEO? You need to balance business with 'fun'.
Querty: Typing on Gorilla Glass is VERY bad for your fingers (carpal tunnel). They should have launched the Q10 at the same time as the Z10.
My best to BB - I hope it grabs the market share it deserves.
So, let me get this straight: Windows 8 uses Unified Extensible Firmware Interface to block the installation of any other operating system. Microsoft Office ONLY runs (properly) on Apple and Windows, it has taken the Samba team some 15 years to figure out Active Directory, MS Office files are not 100% ODF compliant (and probably never will be), SQLServer only runs on Windows machines etc. etc.
the bottom line is this: because of all the above, the migration away from this closed-shop monolith is happening - and the RATE at which it's happening is ramping up extremely quickly.
In short, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the monopoly.
I have long marvelled at the level of hype that every power generating scheme manages to come up with: Coal, Oil, Solar, Wind, Nuclear, Hydro. Every one of them has positives and negatives - but none will ever will be perfect.
Let's use that as a starting point before we all jump on the latest band-wagon.
That said, Thorium appears to make a lot of sense. For countries such as Japan, it might offer a reasonable solution to their current power production woes.
To my mind, the bigger issue will be to produce a reactor that comes in at a reasonable overall (not just acquisition) cost.
As well, it is important to look at the overall ecosystem of the process from procurement of material through refinement, use and, finally, disposal.
It's obvious that nothing new has been invented here. It's just that they have put one previous idea cleverly together with another. What they are trying to do is to create Coded TCP... IP!!
Great point. I used my 7280 BB for nearly eight (8) years and it was great! In this throw-away world, getting a well-built, solid workhorse is far better than dumping product because it's not new enough. If RIM wants to REALLY move forward, they need to build their units with TWO (2) sim card slots so that users can handle work AND personal calls with separate billings. What accounting dept. would not like that feature? The other thing that they need to do is to keep refining the O/S so that aging phones run FASTER, not slower. Keeping updates coming would be really beneficial to their image. As we know from Ubuntu boot time research (for example), it CAN be done.
Six years ago, I took some tupperware cereal containers, drilled two holes in the bottom and pushed a WRT54G router's twin antennae through each hole. I caulked both holes. I inverted the containers, took an old broom stick and jammed it up into the contaners and screwed each router up high outdoors on buildings spaced 400' apart. I configured all three routers with DD-WRT in bridged/AP mode. I have never taken them down. This is in Vermont. They work great and cover some 18 acres. What more can I say?
Don't get me wrong here, I'm FOR driving and I'm FOR roads. The simple concept of a road is to shorten the travel distance between two points. The real issues at stake here are two-fold:
1. We have a population that is growing and yet, we do no demographic projections or analysis prior to building roads. We just build them because the existing ones get full and the voters complain.
2. We have urban planners and city fathers who let developers run the show. As a result, in most cities, you have to drive two miles to buy a quart of milk.
No one is tackling the crazy innefficiencies of WHY we travel as opposed to WHERE we travel. Do this and we'd have less, yet better roads.
I have a simple proposal with simpler regulations: sell internet connectivity based on MINIMUM standards, not 'up to' or 'maximum' or 'capped'. The vendor MUST guarantee a minimum speed to the modem with 99% uptime. Any failure will be easy for all parties to monitor. Let competition and the market decide the pricing and speed packages, but let the end user be guaranteed of getting what they are paying for.
Contact every level of your government. Impress upon them that you, the taxpayer, has already paid for every map of every road. Demand that they post their jurisdiction's road online and keep it up to date. This will benefit emergency personnel, road crews (by keeping contruction locations up to date) and speed up delivery times.
So, are you calling your government now?? Let's make this happen.
...and actually respond to the comments. Start making us feel like we're part of the development loop. Let us know when you run into a problem and why something is difficult or an obstacle. If we know and understand the problems you're facing, we'll be far more likely to have a positive attitude towards your product line and cut you some slack. If you ignore us and create a huge, anti-feedback corporate wall, we'll feel shunned and ignored and respond with negative posts (whether we're accurate or not about what's really going on).
Are you out of your fucking minds??!! I thought this article was left over from April 1st.
Having worked around sales people for a lot of my career, I can tell you one thing: the good ones don't give a shit about programming. Period. If it doesn't make them money, they don't have time for it.
I am also a member of a Linux User Group. These guys really care etc. but they are also complete nerds who don't understand concepts such as: "Thank you." or "May I...?" - let alone marketing.
Myself, I'm a hybrid. I have tried doing both and I am a lousy salesman (I care) and I'm a very shitty programmer (I don't have the attention span) so I think I have a fairly objective perspective!
Tom-Tom, Google and the rest should not even be topics in this discussion. The issue is this: when are we, as tax-payers, going to agitate for our Nations, States, Provinces and municipalities to do the map updating and maintenance? After all, these are the bodies who are actually responsible for the roads for which we have, and continue to, pay dearly for. They have the most accurate raw data. They schedule repairs and maintenance. They should maintain their sections of the worlds' roadways.
I'm a fan but they are STILL missing the boat.
on
BlackBerry 10 Unveiled
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· Score: 4, Interesting
To regain market share, RIM needs a product that will:
1. Be the BEST and most integrated social networking tool.
2. Be a WALLET by leveraging their existing encryption infrastructure.
Humans are social creatures. Making a product directly targeted at these two areas will be a winner.
Humans are fed up with carrying around a ton of credit cards, bank card, coins and bills.
RIM needs to get away from feature-itis and gimmicks. There are no legs to this approach. Leveraging the existing social and commercial ecosystem is the way to go.
This year, the TSA is requesting 8.2 Billion dollars. In the past five (5) years, the TSA has made some 1,035 arrests. Approximately 30% of those were related to clear immigration violations and had nothing to do with security. If we use today's annual budget number, multiply it by five and divide it into the remainder of the arrests, we get a figure of approximately $53,000,000. This is extremely rough math. Give or take $5,000,000 either way, we are looking at a price of around $50,000,000 per arrest. I don't know about you, but I thank that's extremely expensive. Swirl in the unbelievable cost in TIME for each passensger to screened and you have a serious net drain on the economy. The question becomes not can we have 100% security but, as Mr. Hawley states, what will be the ACCEPTABLE level of security that will be a reasonable balance between risk and cost?
I followed OLPC, got excited, bought a "Get one, give one." and watched as the project lurched and banged off walls. No one - and everyone - is to blame for OLPC's failures. The reason has nothing to do with the concept, the contributors, Microsoft or any other 'competitors'. It has everything to do with the fact that the ecosystem in the field is not there. Why send something 1/2 way 'round the planet when there is little or no infrastruture in place to distribute, support, repair and update these devices. It's like sending an F35 to Sierra Leone with no ground crew, support or fuel. Sure it will land - but it will be as useful as a brick after that.
"The first incandescent lamp [developed by Woodward and Evans] was constructed at Morrison's brass foundry in Toronto, and was a very crude affair. It consisted of a water gauge glass with a piece of carbon, filed by hand and drilled at each end, for the electrodes, and hermetically sealed at both ends, having a petcock at one end with a brass tube to exhaust the air. Woodward made the mistake of filling the tube or globe of this lamp with nitrogen after having exhausted the air. Prof. Elihu Thomson is quoted as having said that had he stopped when he had the tube exhausted he would have had the honor of being the inventor of the incandescent light as used for commercial purposes... the principle of the incandescent lamp dates several decades before the Woodward experiments, and that King, Chanzy, Farmer and others in the twenty years preceding 1860 made and used incandescent lamps much superior to the very imperfect one upon which Woodward's claims are based. Moreover, the Edison claims, as sustained in the courts, were not on the discovery of the principles of the incandescent lamp but on a definite combination of parts—all well known—which resulted in the production of a practical form of the incandescent lamp."[1] (From Wikipedia)
Dude, this is what Darwinism is all about. I am so fed up with all these people who are a) mis-diagnosed, b) have an allergy but it clears up and they don't get re-tested, c) due to their mother's vanity, they did not get breast milk as an infant and hence, have allergies and d) are forever whining about it.
So, you come home drunk one night. You lurch towards the window to get some air and, as you do so, you bump clumsily into the hive breaking it open. The bees, sensing that something is very wrong, attack the intruder.....
Slashdot Mirror
Full disclosure: I'm a BB user.
When a product gets this much hype, the expectations outpace the market. We need to really sit back for a bit and see how it all shakes out.
My personal attitude is: hopeful - hopeful that it 'takes'. I would not, as yet, put myself into the category of optimistic.
It's going to be very interesting to see what BB does to carve out market share. My first impression would be to convert the existing customer base. Every BB user wants a better experience. The OS 6 browser sucks. There is not enough memory/capacity so that, after a while, old emails and calendar items randomly disappear. This is behaviour that should have a warming before it happens. Will BB10 be better at the business side of things? From what I've seen so far, I am very interested in its use for sales: combining ALL messaging with one contact. This will make it far easier for the user to know what was said and to whom (yes, I know that this was available in a rudimentary way in OS 6.
Swirling Alicia Keys into the mix is a good strategy. That said, where's the corresponding endorsement from a major CEO? You need to balance business with 'fun'.
Querty: Typing on Gorilla Glass is VERY bad for your fingers (carpal tunnel). They should have launched the Q10 at the same time as the Z10.
My best to BB - I hope it grabs the market share it deserves.
They should have hired Linus Torvalds to consult and used git for the master blueprint.
the bottom line is this: because of all the above, the migration away from this closed-shop monolith is happening - and the RATE at which it's happening is ramping up extremely quickly.
In short, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the monopoly.
Let's use that as a starting point before we all jump on the latest band-wagon.
That said, Thorium appears to make a lot of sense. For countries such as Japan, it might offer a reasonable solution to their current power production woes.
To my mind, the bigger issue will be to produce a reactor that comes in at a reasonable overall (not just acquisition) cost.
As well, it is important to look at the overall ecosystem of the process from procurement of material through refinement, use and, finally, disposal.
Low on gas!
It's obvious that nothing new has been invented here. It's just that they have put one previous idea cleverly together with another. What they are trying to do is to create Coded TCP... IP!!
Great point. I used my 7280 BB for nearly eight (8) years and it was great! In this throw-away world, getting a well-built, solid workhorse is far better than dumping product because it's not new enough. If RIM wants to REALLY move forward, they need to build their units with TWO (2) sim card slots so that users can handle work AND personal calls with separate billings. What accounting dept. would not like that feature? The other thing that they need to do is to keep refining the O/S so that aging phones run FASTER, not slower. Keeping updates coming would be really beneficial to their image. As we know from Ubuntu boot time research (for example), it CAN be done.
Six years ago, I took some tupperware cereal containers, drilled two holes in the bottom and pushed a WRT54G router's twin antennae through each hole. I caulked both holes. I inverted the containers, took an old broom stick and jammed it up into the contaners and screwed each router up high outdoors on buildings spaced 400' apart. I configured all three routers with DD-WRT in bridged/AP mode. I have never taken them down. This is in Vermont. They work great and cover some 18 acres. What more can I say?
Will it transmit Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in a never-ending loop?
Take out the HD's and carry them with you. If the machines are fucked when they get to you, at least you have all your software/config.
1. We have a population that is growing and yet, we do no demographic projections or analysis prior to building roads. We just build them because the existing ones get full and the voters complain.
2. We have urban planners and city fathers who let developers run the show. As a result, in most cities, you have to drive two miles to buy a quart of milk.
No one is tackling the crazy innefficiencies of WHY we travel as opposed to WHERE we travel. Do this and we'd have less, yet better roads.
I have a simple proposal with simpler regulations: sell internet connectivity based on MINIMUM standards, not 'up to' or 'maximum' or 'capped'. The vendor MUST guarantee a minimum speed to the modem with 99% uptime. Any failure will be easy for all parties to monitor. Let competition and the market decide the pricing and speed packages, but let the end user be guaranteed of getting what they are paying for.
Making a little hydrogen at home (enough for a few balloons) solves the problem of having tanks of potentially explosive gas around.
Also, if hydrogen catches fire, it burns UP, not down. It can also make a fun way to end the party: light the balloons with the birthday candles!!
Bill: "But, Honey, we already have three kids and we can afford as many more as we'd like."
Melinda: "It's the masses. They're clogging up the roads."
Bill: "But, we have helicopters."
Melinda: "They're breeding like locusts. Soon, there will be nothing left of the planet."
Bill: "Then, we'll have it all to ourselves."
Melinda: "No one will be left to by Microsoft products."
Bill: "Here's 590 Million."
Having my password leaked online with all the potential that that holds is far less abusive than what Yahoo! does with the information in my emails.
So, are you calling your government now?? Let's make this happen.
...and actually respond to the comments. Start making us feel like we're part of the development loop. Let us know when you run into a problem and why something is difficult or an obstacle. If we know and understand the problems you're facing, we'll be far more likely to have a positive attitude towards your product line and cut you some slack. If you ignore us and create a huge, anti-feedback corporate wall, we'll feel shunned and ignored and respond with negative posts (whether we're accurate or not about what's really going on).
Having worked around sales people for a lot of my career, I can tell you one thing: the good ones don't give a shit about programming. Period. If it doesn't make them money, they don't have time for it.
I am also a member of a Linux User Group. These guys really care etc. but they are also complete nerds who don't understand concepts such as: "Thank you." or "May I...?" - let alone marketing.
Myself, I'm a hybrid. I have tried doing both and I am a lousy salesman (I care) and I'm a very shitty programmer (I don't have the attention span) so I think I have a fairly objective perspective!
Tom-Tom, Google and the rest should not even be topics in this discussion. The issue is this: when are we, as tax-payers, going to agitate for our Nations, States, Provinces and municipalities to do the map updating and maintenance? After all, these are the bodies who are actually responsible for the roads for which we have, and continue to, pay dearly for. They have the most accurate raw data. They schedule repairs and maintenance. They should maintain their sections of the worlds' roadways.
1. Be the BEST and most integrated social networking tool.
2. Be a WALLET by leveraging their existing encryption infrastructure.
Humans are social creatures. Making a product directly targeted at these two areas will be a winner. Humans are fed up with carrying around a ton of credit cards, bank card, coins and bills.
RIM needs to get away from feature-itis and gimmicks. There are no legs to this approach. Leveraging the existing social and commercial ecosystem is the way to go.
This year, the TSA is requesting 8.2 Billion dollars. In the past five (5) years, the TSA has made some 1,035 arrests. Approximately 30% of those were related to clear immigration violations and had nothing to do with security. If we use today's annual budget number, multiply it by five and divide it into the remainder of the arrests, we get a figure of approximately $53,000,000. This is extremely rough math. Give or take $5,000,000 either way, we are looking at a price of around $50,000,000 per arrest. I don't know about you, but I thank that's extremely expensive. Swirl in the unbelievable cost in TIME for each passensger to screened and you have a serious net drain on the economy. The question becomes not can we have 100% security but, as Mr. Hawley states, what will be the ACCEPTABLE level of security that will be a reasonable balance between risk and cost?
I followed OLPC, got excited, bought a "Get one, give one." and watched as the project lurched and banged off walls. No one - and everyone - is to blame for OLPC's failures. The reason has nothing to do with the concept, the contributors, Microsoft or any other 'competitors'. It has everything to do with the fact that the ecosystem in the field is not there. Why send something 1/2 way 'round the planet when there is little or no infrastruture in place to distribute, support, repair and update these devices. It's like sending an F35 to Sierra Leone with no ground crew, support or fuel. Sure it will land - but it will be as useful as a brick after that.
"The first incandescent lamp [developed by Woodward and Evans] was constructed at Morrison's brass foundry in Toronto, and was a very crude affair. It consisted of a water gauge glass with a piece of carbon, filed by hand and drilled at each end, for the electrodes, and hermetically sealed at both ends, having a petcock at one end with a brass tube to exhaust the air. Woodward made the mistake of filling the tube or globe of this lamp with nitrogen after having exhausted the air. Prof. Elihu Thomson is quoted as having said that had he stopped when he had the tube exhausted he would have had the honor of being the inventor of the incandescent light as used for commercial purposes... the principle of the incandescent lamp dates several decades before the Woodward experiments, and that King, Chanzy, Farmer and others in the twenty years preceding 1860 made and used incandescent lamps much superior to the very imperfect one upon which Woodward's claims are based. Moreover, the Edison claims, as sustained in the courts, were not on the discovery of the principles of the incandescent lamp but on a definite combination of parts—all well known—which resulted in the production of a practical form of the incandescent lamp."[1] (From Wikipedia)
Bring on the bees!!
So, you come home drunk one night. You lurch towards the window to get some air and, as you do so, you bump clumsily into the hive breaking it open. The bees, sensing that something is very wrong, attack the intruder.....