As a software engineer, you have debug builds and production builds, and as a general rule you don't ship builds to customers with the debug features enabled... unless you're beta testing. The White House probably wouldn't be my first choice for a beta test site!
Supposedly, Russian MiGS are using tube radar equipment, not because they are behind the times, but because they are much more resistant to EMP. So yes, I'm sure Russians have explored the use of electromagnetic pulses as a battle tactic.
How many software engineers does it take? None, that's a hardware problem!
How many hardware engineers does it take? We thought you were going to handle that in software!
Sure, just paint the whole planet with reflective paint to cool it down... problem is, that also keeps all the heat generated inside the planet from escaping too! This effect is seen in the decrease in ice sheets adding to global warming, ice sheets are the most reflective naturally occurring surface we have.
Buy Your Own Device doesn't save money because it is unsupportable; supporting every possible piece of hardware costs more than just giving every employee a cheap smart phone.
Bring Your Own Dope -- the Santa Cruz Operation official corporate policy.
Actually, BYOD obviously refers to Bring Your Own Device for the purposes of this article.
I worked for a company whose official policy was that email accounts could be left logged into on company owned laptops (which would require a password on bootup) but not on employee owned devices. They used corporate gmail, and when I pointed out that gmail had to be logged into in order for google calendar to remind me of the meetings I was scheduled for, the CIO told me (via email) that that was a violation of company policy. So I stopped doing it, but all my coworkers continued to leave their phones logged in to gmail -- they had positive deniability, but I no longer did.
Business schools teach that employees are fungible assets, i.e. interchangeable parts, so the only things that matter are things that can be tracked on spreadsheets -- like process. The fact that people matter is quickly becoming forgotten in the quest for maximizing quarterly return on investment.
Theft is much easier than deliberately introducing flaws. Any changes would have to be made via carefully controlled ECRs (Engineering Change Requests). Flaws are much more likely the result of quality going down in an attempt to meet overoptimistic production schedules, rather than as the result of deliberate sabotage.
Every time you ramp production of tech way up, quality control suffers, as you have to bring in new, inexperienced technicians to meet production deadlines. It's no secret that Obama has greatly increased the use of drones over his predecessor, so obviously production demands have gone way up, to the point where the Air Force doesn't have enough pilots and the few pilots they have are working 80 hour weeks.
Amazon seems to have the ability to move quickly. Microsoft can reinvent itself when it needs to. Of the big 5 mentioned, Apple now seem slowest to innovate and is falling behind, in my humble opinion.
For those of you that missed the reference, this refers to a statement made by Bill Gates in The Road Ahead: "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." By definition, all prime numbers have 2 factors: 1 and the prime itself. This gaff was fixed in later editions of the book.
Under Bill Gates, M$ was able to very quickly turn itself around and correct it's mistakes. I assume it still has that ability. Granted, it seems to be scrambling for a viable business model now, but will probably succeed is transitioning from the shrinkwrapped software to the software-as-a-service model. I still think Microsoft would have greater total value if split up into separate companies (like AT&T), but that probably isn't going to happen. (Even if it did happen for HP.)
Microsoft and Apple will have to put up with shrinking revenues as their business is increasingly commoditized, just like IBM and HP have already had to do. Intel is probably seeing shrinking margins and shrinking revenues as well. The Amazon business model is here to stay and can only grow. I don't understand the Facebook and Google business models, it seems like they are here to stay but it also seems like they could be very volatile.
Despite the fact that thousands of Apple fanbois would probably commit suicide if they went away, they certainly aren't a hardware leader anymore; they are falling farther being Samsung and the Chinese companies. We may be underestimating the impact of their integration of software and web services, however; I believe iTunes is a major player in music sales these days.
IBM is still in business as an Enterprise solution provider, Consistently losing market every quarter, but definitely not going away.DEC bet wrong on the viability of personal computing and got swallowed up by HP, where the remaining carcass of DEC quickly became worth much less than the purchase price, so DEC is a valid example.
Facebook is the de facto login mechanism to many web sites now, so like Adobe, they are fairly well entrenched into the system and hard to get rid of. Many websites are still providing videos that are Flash-only, despite Adobe's refusal to port flash to any new devices... go figure. I kept expecting Facebook to go the same way as MySpace, but it looks like i was wrong. Apple and Microsoft will lose market share, but they are not going away anytime soon. Amazon is probably the best run company in the world right now; any new tech business opportunities out there they are almost sure to have a finger in. They quickly evaluate new businesses and discard the ones that don't work for them.
Good analysis, but I'd put Google above Microsoft and Apple. Personally, I think both are overvalued right now in terms of market cap, but they'll still be around for a long time.
If I was to name some of the best managed companies around today, all 5 of those would be on the list, with Amazon ranked highest and Microsoft lowest. Microsoft makes a lot of mistakes, but they have an amazing ability to turn themselves around overnight. Amazon is constantly starting business "experiments", then quickly discarding the ones that don't work. Regardless of how you personally feel about these companies, if they continue to be run as they currently are, they'll be around for a while. All of them have embarrassing amounts of cash in the bank!
Sounds like an education issue to me. Make sure consumers know the repercussions of their purchasing decisions, then let them choose for themselves. Just like organic food, if there is enough demand for exploitation-free products, a supply will be created. Given the current popularity of shopping at Walmart, I suspect most people don't give at shit how their products are created, as long as they are cheap!
Slashdot Mirror
As a software engineer, you have debug builds and production builds, and as a general rule you don't ship builds to customers with the debug features enabled... unless you're beta testing. The White House probably wouldn't be my first choice for a beta test site!
Supposedly, Russian MiGS are using tube radar equipment, not because they are behind the times, but because they are much more resistant to EMP. So yes, I'm sure Russians have explored the use of electromagnetic pulses as a battle tactic.
Mirror peer into you and take selfie!
How many software engineers does it take? None, that's a hardware problem! How many hardware engineers does it take? We thought you were going to handle that in software!
Sure, just paint the whole planet with reflective paint to cool it down... problem is, that also keeps all the heat generated inside the planet from escaping too! This effect is seen in the decrease in ice sheets adding to global warming, ice sheets are the most reflective naturally occurring surface we have.
Yes, of course it can. GoldenEye is soon to become reality (although it obviously wouldn't be as impressive as it was in the movie).
Great to hear that good ol' 'Merican companies can still compete with the Chinese in a least one metric: production of cheap crap!
Buy Your Own Device doesn't save money because it is unsupportable; supporting every possible piece of hardware costs more than just giving every employee a cheap smart phone.
Bring Your Own Dope -- the Santa Cruz Operation official corporate policy. Actually, BYOD obviously refers to Bring Your Own Device for the purposes of this article.
I worked for a company whose official policy was that email accounts could be left logged into on company owned laptops (which would require a password on bootup) but not on employee owned devices. They used corporate gmail, and when I pointed out that gmail had to be logged into in order for google calendar to remind me of the meetings I was scheduled for, the CIO told me (via email) that that was a violation of company policy. So I stopped doing it, but all my coworkers continued to leave their phones logged in to gmail -- they had positive deniability, but I no longer did.
Business schools teach that employees are fungible assets, i.e. interchangeable parts, so the only things that matter are things that can be tracked on spreadsheets -- like process. The fact that people matter is quickly becoming forgotten in the quest for maximizing quarterly return on investment.
Theft is much easier than deliberately introducing flaws. Any changes would have to be made via carefully controlled ECRs (Engineering Change Requests). Flaws are much more likely the result of quality going down in an attempt to meet overoptimistic production schedules, rather than as the result of deliberate sabotage.
Every time you ramp production of tech way up, quality control suffers, as you have to bring in new, inexperienced technicians to meet production deadlines. It's no secret that Obama has greatly increased the use of drones over his predecessor, so obviously production demands have gone way up, to the point where the Air Force doesn't have enough pilots and the few pilots they have are working 80 hour weeks.
Amazon seems to have the ability to move quickly. Microsoft can reinvent itself when it needs to. Of the big 5 mentioned, Apple now seem slowest to innovate and is falling behind, in my humble opinion.
Microsoft isn't moving entertainment markets? Hey, the Zune is going to take over the music industry any day real soon now!
For those of you that missed the reference, this refers to a statement made by Bill Gates in The Road Ahead: "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." By definition, all prime numbers have 2 factors: 1 and the prime itself. This gaff was fixed in later editions of the book.
Under Bill Gates, M$ was able to very quickly turn itself around and correct it's mistakes. I assume it still has that ability. Granted, it seems to be scrambling for a viable business model now, but will probably succeed is transitioning from the shrinkwrapped software to the software-as-a-service model. I still think Microsoft would have greater total value if split up into separate companies (like AT&T), but that probably isn't going to happen. (Even if it did happen for HP.)
Microsoft and Apple will have to put up with shrinking revenues as their business is increasingly commoditized, just like IBM and HP have already had to do. Intel is probably seeing shrinking margins and shrinking revenues as well. The Amazon business model is here to stay and can only grow. I don't understand the Facebook and Google business models, it seems like they are here to stay but it also seems like they could be very volatile.
Despite the fact that thousands of Apple fanbois would probably commit suicide if they went away, they certainly aren't a hardware leader anymore; they are falling farther being Samsung and the Chinese companies. We may be underestimating the impact of their integration of software and web services, however; I believe iTunes is a major player in music sales these days.
IBM is still in business as an Enterprise solution provider, Consistently losing market every quarter, but definitely not going away.DEC bet wrong on the viability of personal computing and got swallowed up by HP, where the remaining carcass of DEC quickly became worth much less than the purchase price, so DEC is a valid example.
Amazing, the companies built on providing networking via dial-up modems are no longer in business... who could have predicted that?
Facebook is the de facto login mechanism to many web sites now, so like Adobe, they are fairly well entrenched into the system and hard to get rid of. Many websites are still providing videos that are Flash-only, despite Adobe's refusal to port flash to any new devices... go figure. I kept expecting Facebook to go the same way as MySpace, but it looks like i was wrong. Apple and Microsoft will lose market share, but they are not going away anytime soon. Amazon is probably the best run company in the world right now; any new tech business opportunities out there they are almost sure to have a finger in. They quickly evaluate new businesses and discard the ones that don't work for them.
Good analysis, but I'd put Google above Microsoft and Apple. Personally, I think both are overvalued right now in terms of market cap, but they'll still be around for a long time.
If I was to name some of the best managed companies around today, all 5 of those would be on the list, with Amazon ranked highest and Microsoft lowest. Microsoft makes a lot of mistakes, but they have an amazing ability to turn themselves around overnight. Amazon is constantly starting business "experiments", then quickly discarding the ones that don't work. Regardless of how you personally feel about these companies, if they continue to be run as they currently are, they'll be around for a while. All of them have embarrassing amounts of cash in the bank!
Sounds like an education issue to me. Make sure consumers know the repercussions of their purchasing decisions, then let them choose for themselves. Just like organic food, if there is enough demand for exploitation-free products, a supply will be created. Given the current popularity of shopping at Walmart, I suspect most people don't give at shit how their products are created, as long as they are cheap!