They're similar in that they both seem to fear that some upstart or technology will supplant them so they're constantly moving into areas that have had nothing to do with their core business up to that point (e.g. Microsoft got into browsers because they were afraid of the web replacing Windows, and Google got into social because they were afraid that Facebook would replace search.) and generally done a half-assed effort in those spaces. However, they have had some successes like Android and Xbox so it's not as though these investments can't pay off.
Other than that, the similarities end. Microsoft's abuses make Googles pale in comparison, but as of late Google has definitely been heading down that path. The wi-fi snooping case is starting to look worse and worse for them, and they've been using their search to push their social network so I can see where the comparison's arise. In some ways Google's actions are also probably a little easier to swallow since many of their products or projects are open source which plays well with the community here.
I would have thought the opposite, honestly. Both Facebook and Google have been drug through the mud over privacy issues on numerous occasions and as the new, biggest tech company, Apple is a lightning rod for all matter of attention, such as recent reporting surrounding Chinese manufacturing. Nearly all of the reports focus on Apple even though companies like Foxconn make products for other major companies.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is largely ignored. They're still a huge company, but they really haven't done anything new or interesting in several years. All of their recent consumer products are just their version of something that companies such as Google or Apple have pioneered or acquisitions of existing companies. Anything they've done on the business side isn't terribly newsworthy as far as most consumers are concerned, so even if they make the world's best SQL server, no one will care and it won't be reported.
People still bitch about Microsoft around here, but the average consumer no longer cares. They're not in the lime light so it's much better to sling mud at one of the more popular companies such as Apple, Facebook, or Google. I don't have any statistics or a comprehensive analysis of the news surrounding different companies, but to me it just feels as though people are indifferent towards Microsoft.
If I got a letter like that, I'd tell the government that as long as they support the actions of groups like the TSA, they have no business at all asking anyone else about their privacy policies or trying legislate privacy rights. They probably won't like being told to pound sand, or having the truth thrown in their faces, but those assholes deserve it.
It really seems like a non-issue regardless of whether or not the Y chromosome is "rotting." Evolution moves slowly enough that by the time it would become an issue, humans will probably have learned enough about genetics to prevent it from happening if necessary. The other alternative is that we decide it's a good idea and speed the process up by a lot.
If they were going to let nVidia use it for GPUs, they'd probably let AMD use it for GPUs as well. If they didn't AMD would probably die within a few years and leave Intel as the only major remaining x86 manufacturer and make them a de facto monopoly. Alternatively, Intel could let AMD make anything that they wanted to at Intel's fabs. Right now Intel has a much better architecture and is better in almost every way outside of integrated graphics, so they would still maintain superiority over AMD for several years. Hell, Intel might consider it just to keep AMD alive so that Intel doesn't come under increased scrutiny for future actions.
However, assuming that they're not interested in letting any of their competition use their fabs, it seems as though the number of companies that can will be quite limited. ARM SoC makers are obviously out because Intel has been trying to move into that market for a while now and wouldn't want to make things more difficult. AMD and nVidia might also be out, at least for most of their products. Cellular baseband manufacturers might be interested in using it, if only because it will reduce the power draw for those parts, but companies like Qualcomm are starting to build the baseband in to the SoC now so that seems less likely. It could just come down to FPGA makers and a few other niche markets that Intel doesn't compete in or has a very small presence and no interest in increasing it.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out as it does present the opportunity for significant advantages to any companies that get their parts made there.
Apple gets singled out a lot now, not because there's some new Apple bashing trend, but merely because they're now the largest and one of the most influential tech company on the planet. If this story were written in the 90's, the headline would be changed to work in Microsoft somehow. It's mostly just an attention grabbing mechanism as Foxconn alone doesn't have that kind of name recognition, but pretty much everyone is aware of Apple. Also, even if people despise the company, they might be interested in an article that makes it seems as though Apple's in trouble.
The chips that they're comparing it to are not fabricated on a 32 nm process so the power consumption is going to be worse from a manufacturing standpoint, making it difficult to compare the architectures. We won't have a real comparison until we start getting ARM chips made on a 32nm or 28nm process.
I know you're being facetious, but that really sounds more like a Microsoft patent. They're the ones that have been shaking companies down for money. Apple seems more interested in getting products or product features pulled.
That ascribes entirely too much emotion that may not exist.
If I had to guess the reasoning, it's because rats are prey for many other animals and having weak pack members or even weak rats around probably only encourages predators to congregate as the weak animals are a steady source of food. If the healthy rats dispose of the weak ones it might encourage predators to find easier sources for their meal. Therefore, the rats that ate other weaker rats tended to survive longer and procreate more, passing the behavior on to the next generation.
Not to say that this line of reasoning is correct, but it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Behaviors and traits that are harmful don't tend to stick around in the long run.
Is it because the handset manufacturers don't make any money from the software and are probably more interested in selling you a new phone? After a year or so of support, they've generally shown almost no interest in pushing out additional upgrades as they probably don't even sell that particular model of phone any longer. Unless it's a Nexus phone, or a particularly popular model, support is pretty sketchy. There are a lot of promises to update phones to ICS, but I won't be surprised when a lot of those plans get canceled or delayed indefinitely.
Wading through the code and carrier requirements certainly tacks on some additional time, but considering that these companies don't have much incentive outside of brand loyalty, which may not even exist to any serious extent, to update their old hardware, I don't think that they try too terribly hard to get it done in a timely fashion.
I think people are taking this ruling for more than it means. If you've read through the details of the ruling, the judge essentially says that it's likely that Samsung infringes on Apple's patents, but that it's unlikely that allowing Samsung to continue to sell their products will cause any significant damage to Apple, hence that there's no need for an injunction.
Even if an injunction were granted it wouldn't matter much. The ASUS Transformer Prime is dropping in a few weeks and it's superior in every way to Samsung's offering. It's unlikely that Samsung will see significant sales in the wake of a better product launching unless they decide to cut their prices. This lends even more credibility to the ruling in my opinion.
Maybe it's just me, but those two vehicles don't look similar. From a broad point of view, they might both be trying to convey the same ideas through their design, but they're different in so many individual aspects that I think it's a poor comparison for the point you're trying to make. Then again car analogies on Slashdot have never been good, so perhaps I'm judging too harshly.
It's very similar to when eBay acquired Paypal. Paypal sold itself on eBay and eBay paid for the auction using Paypal. No one is still entirely sure how that works, but one investor was quoted as saying, "Favorably."
Metrics can be used for comparison, it's just that most of them aren't good for measuring performance and that when you incentivize people to produce large scores for certain metrics, they'll start to cook the books.
For example, lines of code per hour is an absolutely terrible metric to measure performance. It does not take into account the type of problem or how difficult it may be to engineer a solution for that problem. Also, once it becomes apparent that people rewarded for producing a larger number of LoC per hour, they'll start to produce more lines of code, whether they're necessary or not, often to the detriment of readability.
There's nothing wrong with measuring things like this, and many software development methodologies use metrics such as LoC to provide feedback for the project, but in no way should they be used to evaluate employees. Many of the attributes that make up a good employee cannot be quantified by simple metrics. Metrics are just another tool. Using them correctly is necessary to get anything meaningful out of them.
Against other products that aren't even in the same category, no less. Sure they can all read books, but that's like comparing sales prices for bicycles against cars because they can get you from point A to point B.
Let's just tag this one "slownewsday" and move along.
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much. Eventually they'll have to do a thesis or dissertation and there's no way they can easily cheat their way through that. If you really dislike them that much, show up to their defense and give them some tough questions, especially if they've done shit work. Really I feel as though anyone cheating is only cheating themselves, especially in graduate school.
I recall one of the professors from my undergrad made three separate versions of his tests that had some very subtle changes. The problems were all very similar, but some of the tests would have problems involving variable n, whereas others used m. You'd also see things such as 6 instead of 8, and the exam questions in a slightly different order. If he suspected that a large amount of the class was cheating, he'd use the modified exams, catch a bunch of people and fail them on that exam, which pretty much limited their ability to get anything better than a C in the class, especially if they had no idea how to do the work themselves.
Nate Silver, the man behind fivethirtyeight.com He does analysis on multiple topics and has been pretty accurate historically. The questions that he can answer can probably be a lot more geeky than those that could be asked of others, and are also the types of questions that are less likely to get bullshit responses. I also think he's the type of person who would probably be willing to answer Slashdot questions so there's that to be said as well.
"But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue."
What a load of shit. The device has been out for about three weeks at this point. How many other companies actually work this quickly to actually determine whether or not a problem exists, determine what the problem actually is, and then start working on a fix? I wish the companies that I regularly deal with were remotely as responsive to issues.
The Department of Education was created in 1979. Are you seriously suggesting that we wouldn't have public education anymore if it were removed? Only the Department of the Interior has been around for nearly the entirety of the nation. Somehow things managed to get done before they were put in place.
Personally, I wish that he'd go a step farther and get rid of the abomination that is Homeland Security. That should be the first one on the chopping block and then we can worry about working backwards.
Presumably the Omnia W is a phone, which can be inferred from context. Gringotts is a Harry Potter reference for bank or vault, so that one's fairly hit or miss depending on your taste in books and/or films. Mango is Windows Phone 7.5, which you could have at least learned by reading the artic— bwa ha ha ha ha. Sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face.
Delivery costs are relatively low in general, especially when the factories that build these devices use components produced in other nearby factories. Even shipping these from Asia to other markets is fairly inexpensive considering the high value/volume that these items possess. Manufacturing costs are generally considered to be about $10 per device in most tablet/phone estimates that I've seen. The software is for the most part already been written since it's using 2.x Android, the rest can probably be covered by some in-house developers who are already on the payroll. The cloud services already exist; perhaps Amazon is just looking to keep their hardware utilized.
The costs certainly aren't something to be discounted, but in many cases they are either incredibly low or already covered in some other manner. Additionally, I feel as though the BoM is on the high side. The Playbook was estimated as costing $200 in terms of materials. The Kindle Fire is essentially a stripped-down version of the Playbook with fewer components of certain types, reducing the cost around $20. Also, Amazon is in a position to order sufficiently many of these devices to further reduce the price.
Which is really awesome up until someone manages to pretend they're you and get all of your data. At least shipping it on a disc to a physical address adds a few extra layers of inconvenience for the people who might otherwise attempt to do this. Considering how much information Facebook has on some people, that data falling into the wrong hands could do some serious damage to a person's life.
Hopefully there's some follow up from the people who have requested their data. It will be interesting to see how much stuff Facebook stores and all of the things that it knows that people would rather prefer it didn't.
Slashdot Mirror
They're similar in that they both seem to fear that some upstart or technology will supplant them so they're constantly moving into areas that have had nothing to do with their core business up to that point (e.g. Microsoft got into browsers because they were afraid of the web replacing Windows, and Google got into social because they were afraid that Facebook would replace search.) and generally done a half-assed effort in those spaces. However, they have had some successes like Android and Xbox so it's not as though these investments can't pay off.
Other than that, the similarities end. Microsoft's abuses make Googles pale in comparison, but as of late Google has definitely been heading down that path. The wi-fi snooping case is starting to look worse and worse for them, and they've been using their search to push their social network so I can see where the comparison's arise. In some ways Google's actions are also probably a little easier to swallow since many of their products or projects are open source which plays well with the community here.
I would have thought the opposite, honestly. Both Facebook and Google have been drug through the mud over privacy issues on numerous occasions and as the new, biggest tech company, Apple is a lightning rod for all matter of attention, such as recent reporting surrounding Chinese manufacturing. Nearly all of the reports focus on Apple even though companies like Foxconn make products for other major companies.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is largely ignored. They're still a huge company, but they really haven't done anything new or interesting in several years. All of their recent consumer products are just their version of something that companies such as Google or Apple have pioneered or acquisitions of existing companies. Anything they've done on the business side isn't terribly newsworthy as far as most consumers are concerned, so even if they make the world's best SQL server, no one will care and it won't be reported.
People still bitch about Microsoft around here, but the average consumer no longer cares. They're not in the lime light so it's much better to sling mud at one of the more popular companies such as Apple, Facebook, or Google. I don't have any statistics or a comprehensive analysis of the news surrounding different companies, but to me it just feels as though people are indifferent towards Microsoft.
If I got a letter like that, I'd tell the government that as long as they support the actions of groups like the TSA, they have no business at all asking anyone else about their privacy policies or trying legislate privacy rights. They probably won't like being told to pound sand, or having the truth thrown in their faces, but those assholes deserve it.
It really seems like a non-issue regardless of whether or not the Y chromosome is "rotting." Evolution moves slowly enough that by the time it would become an issue, humans will probably have learned enough about genetics to prevent it from happening if necessary. The other alternative is that we decide it's a good idea and speed the process up by a lot.
If they were going to let nVidia use it for GPUs, they'd probably let AMD use it for GPUs as well. If they didn't AMD would probably die within a few years and leave Intel as the only major remaining x86 manufacturer and make them a de facto monopoly. Alternatively, Intel could let AMD make anything that they wanted to at Intel's fabs. Right now Intel has a much better architecture and is better in almost every way outside of integrated graphics, so they would still maintain superiority over AMD for several years. Hell, Intel might consider it just to keep AMD alive so that Intel doesn't come under increased scrutiny for future actions.
However, assuming that they're not interested in letting any of their competition use their fabs, it seems as though the number of companies that can will be quite limited. ARM SoC makers are obviously out because Intel has been trying to move into that market for a while now and wouldn't want to make things more difficult. AMD and nVidia might also be out, at least for most of their products. Cellular baseband manufacturers might be interested in using it, if only because it will reduce the power draw for those parts, but companies like Qualcomm are starting to build the baseband in to the SoC now so that seems less likely. It could just come down to FPGA makers and a few other niche markets that Intel doesn't compete in or has a very small presence and no interest in increasing it.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out as it does present the opportunity for significant advantages to any companies that get their parts made there.
Apple gets singled out a lot now, not because there's some new Apple bashing trend, but merely because they're now the largest and one of the most influential tech company on the planet. If this story were written in the 90's, the headline would be changed to work in Microsoft somehow. It's mostly just an attention grabbing mechanism as Foxconn alone doesn't have that kind of name recognition, but pretty much everyone is aware of Apple. Also, even if people despise the company, they might be interested in an article that makes it seems as though Apple's in trouble.
Someone found where he lived and burned his house down.
The chips that they're comparing it to are not fabricated on a 32 nm process so the power consumption is going to be worse from a manufacturing standpoint, making it difficult to compare the architectures. We won't have a real comparison until we start getting ARM chips made on a 32nm or 28nm process.
I know you're being facetious, but that really sounds more like a Microsoft patent. They're the ones that have been shaking companies down for money. Apple seems more interested in getting products or product features pulled.
That ascribes entirely too much emotion that may not exist.
If I had to guess the reasoning, it's because rats are prey for many other animals and having weak pack members or even weak rats around probably only encourages predators to congregate as the weak animals are a steady source of food. If the healthy rats dispose of the weak ones it might encourage predators to find easier sources for their meal. Therefore, the rats that ate other weaker rats tended to survive longer and procreate more, passing the behavior on to the next generation.
Not to say that this line of reasoning is correct, but it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Behaviors and traits that are harmful don't tend to stick around in the long run.
Is it because the handset manufacturers don't make any money from the software and are probably more interested in selling you a new phone? After a year or so of support, they've generally shown almost no interest in pushing out additional upgrades as they probably don't even sell that particular model of phone any longer. Unless it's a Nexus phone, or a particularly popular model, support is pretty sketchy. There are a lot of promises to update phones to ICS, but I won't be surprised when a lot of those plans get canceled or delayed indefinitely.
Wading through the code and carrier requirements certainly tacks on some additional time, but considering that these companies don't have much incentive outside of brand loyalty, which may not even exist to any serious extent, to update their old hardware, I don't think that they try too terribly hard to get it done in a timely fashion.
I think people are taking this ruling for more than it means. If you've read through the details of the ruling, the judge essentially says that it's likely that Samsung infringes on Apple's patents, but that it's unlikely that allowing Samsung to continue to sell their products will cause any significant damage to Apple, hence that there's no need for an injunction.
Even if an injunction were granted it wouldn't matter much. The ASUS Transformer Prime is dropping in a few weeks and it's superior in every way to Samsung's offering. It's unlikely that Samsung will see significant sales in the wake of a better product launching unless they decide to cut their prices. This lends even more credibility to the ruling in my opinion.
Maybe it's just me, but those two vehicles don't look similar. From a broad point of view, they might both be trying to convey the same ideas through their design, but they're different in so many individual aspects that I think it's a poor comparison for the point you're trying to make. Then again car analogies on Slashdot have never been good, so perhaps I'm judging too harshly.
It's very similar to when eBay acquired Paypal. Paypal sold itself on eBay and eBay paid for the auction using Paypal. No one is still entirely sure how that works, but one investor was quoted as saying, "Favorably."
You mean to suggest that if a socialist system (or any other for that matter) were used, stupid management would suddenly disappear?
Metrics can be used for comparison, it's just that most of them aren't good for measuring performance and that when you incentivize people to produce large scores for certain metrics, they'll start to cook the books.
For example, lines of code per hour is an absolutely terrible metric to measure performance. It does not take into account the type of problem or how difficult it may be to engineer a solution for that problem. Also, once it becomes apparent that people rewarded for producing a larger number of LoC per hour, they'll start to produce more lines of code, whether they're necessary or not, often to the detriment of readability.
There's nothing wrong with measuring things like this, and many software development methodologies use metrics such as LoC to provide feedback for the project, but in no way should they be used to evaluate employees. Many of the attributes that make up a good employee cannot be quantified by simple metrics. Metrics are just another tool. Using them correctly is necessary to get anything meaningful out of them.
Against other products that aren't even in the same category, no less. Sure they can all read books, but that's like comparing sales prices for bicycles against cars because they can get you from point A to point B.
Let's just tag this one "slownewsday" and move along.
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much. Eventually they'll have to do a thesis or dissertation and there's no way they can easily cheat their way through that. If you really dislike them that much, show up to their defense and give them some tough questions, especially if they've done shit work. Really I feel as though anyone cheating is only cheating themselves, especially in graduate school.
I recall one of the professors from my undergrad made three separate versions of his tests that had some very subtle changes. The problems were all very similar, but some of the tests would have problems involving variable n, whereas others used m. You'd also see things such as 6 instead of 8, and the exam questions in a slightly different order. If he suspected that a large amount of the class was cheating, he'd use the modified exams, catch a bunch of people and fail them on that exam, which pretty much limited their ability to get anything better than a C in the class, especially if they had no idea how to do the work themselves.
Nate Silver, the man behind fivethirtyeight.com He does analysis on multiple topics and has been pretty accurate historically. The questions that he can answer can probably be a lot more geeky than those that could be asked of others, and are also the types of questions that are less likely to get bullshit responses. I also think he's the type of person who would probably be willing to answer Slashdot questions so there's that to be said as well.
From the summary:
"But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue."
What a load of shit. The device has been out for about three weeks at this point. How many other companies actually work this quickly to actually determine whether or not a problem exists, determine what the problem actually is, and then start working on a fix? I wish the companies that I regularly deal with were remotely as responsive to issues.
The Department of Education was created in 1979. Are you seriously suggesting that we wouldn't have public education anymore if it were removed? Only the Department of the Interior has been around for nearly the entirety of the nation. Somehow things managed to get done before they were put in place.
Personally, I wish that he'd go a step farther and get rid of the abomination that is Homeland Security. That should be the first one on the chopping block and then we can worry about working backwards.
If it were a chair's throw away it would probably explain the good deals.
Presumably the Omnia W is a phone, which can be inferred from context. Gringotts is a Harry Potter reference for bank or vault, so that one's fairly hit or miss depending on your taste in books and/or films. Mango is Windows Phone 7.5, which you could have at least learned by reading the artic— bwa ha ha ha ha. Sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face.
I'll get off your lawn now.
Delivery costs are relatively low in general, especially when the factories that build these devices use components produced in other nearby factories. Even shipping these from Asia to other markets is fairly inexpensive considering the high value/volume that these items possess. Manufacturing costs are generally considered to be about $10 per device in most tablet/phone estimates that I've seen. The software is for the most part already been written since it's using 2.x Android, the rest can probably be covered by some in-house developers who are already on the payroll. The cloud services already exist; perhaps Amazon is just looking to keep their hardware utilized.
The costs certainly aren't something to be discounted, but in many cases they are either incredibly low or already covered in some other manner. Additionally, I feel as though the BoM is on the high side. The Playbook was estimated as costing $200 in terms of materials. The Kindle Fire is essentially a stripped-down version of the Playbook with fewer components of certain types, reducing the cost around $20. Also, Amazon is in a position to order sufficiently many of these devices to further reduce the price.
Which is really awesome up until someone manages to pretend they're you and get all of your data. At least shipping it on a disc to a physical address adds a few extra layers of inconvenience for the people who might otherwise attempt to do this. Considering how much information Facebook has on some people, that data falling into the wrong hands could do some serious damage to a person's life.
Hopefully there's some follow up from the people who have requested their data. It will be interesting to see how much stuff Facebook stores and all of the things that it knows that people would rather prefer it didn't.