The key to competing successfully in business is to offer a better value to the customer than they can get somewhere else.
If you run a small grocery, you will typically be outpriced by the large grocery chain down the block, but can keep business by offering your customers other services that keep them coming back. If you make widgets, it's better to be either the cheapest widget provider or the widget provider with the highest quality. In a competition where price and quality are the deciding features, it's best to pick one extreme and go for it.
So what happens with software? If everyone implements open standards, it limits the implementation to the limits of the standard. Ideally, you'd have a flexible enough standard that implementing cool ideas is no more of a break from the standard than implementing the standard verbatim. But for a company that leads the field by a large margin, it doesn't make sense to open up to standards and thus open the doors for your customers to leave the barn. Keep them locked in, and keep providing them with superior product. They will never have the need to switch to another product so long as their needs are met, and they would have a tough time switching anyway as their current data isn't easily transferrable to a new system, no matter how open that new system may be.
I'm of the opinion that companies ought to do what they want with regards to standards. It doesn't matter what package you are using, if the one you are using satisfies your needs. Open standards hardly ever make or break a deal.
Well, if you've ever used cHTML, they are the ones who came up with it. Back in the early days of featurephones, NTT Docomo sent out a call for browser software, and Access was the only game in Tokyotown. Unfortunately, they didn't really support all of HTML, only a subset. But that subset was handled well and allowed the browser to display pages on the small cellphone screen without forcing the user to scroll horizontally.
So Access, riding Docomo's coattails, became the premier web browser company for cellphones in Japan. It's like how Gary Kildall was approached by IBM to sell his CP/M system, only in this case Access was able to capitalize on their position instead of losing out to a second-rate compiler company.
Now with PalmSource in their possession, they are strategically aligned to provide browser software, mail software, scheduling software, and a host of other useful PDA-like features in their cellphone software suite. Add to that that with greater cellphone power is bound to come greater demand for more feature-filled "smartphones" and they're in a great place with a ready-for-delivery PDA suite.
You've already got the customer in your store. Are you really going to kick them out and turn them into ex-customers?
Technology can be used to empower the consumer, or it can be used to empower the vendor. This one seems to help shift the balance back towards the consumer. I think that's a pretty good balance of power.
I assume it's mostly meant to retrieve data on the current special offers for the particular item. Usually, scanning the barcode will give you price information, even without hitting some "3rd party" database. But if store X has a special on item Y, then it might be worth it to travel across town and buy it from there.
It seems like the logical evolution of systems like Froogle. Only this one would be much more personal and probably more local, not to mention tied to brick and mortar storefronts rather than online storefronts.
It does seem awfully like the thing mentioned in the news article for finding used book prices, though. Someone ought to look into that.
Ever had a tooth replaced at the dentist? They can custom color your new teeth to match the yellow of your old teeth. There really isn't a reason they couldn't do something similar to match the skin color of any hearing-aid patient.
I imagine something more along the lines of a malleable gel or putty that can form any shape thereby increasing contact surface area and making the grip stronger without increasing the amount of force on the object. It could hold an egg just as easily as an I-beam.
They are looking to mimic humans, but I doubt human form is the most efficient and adaptable. A blob-like form consisting of millions of nanobots working together, sometimes loosely, sometimes in a tight lattice, would make much more sense as it could take on any form and be solid or "liquid" at any given time.
I just turned prefetch off, then rebooted this computer. The sites I mentioned still freeze for a second when loading large pages. The behavior is unchanged.
What I don't want is a dropdown menu that needs to be selected each time I do a search. I don't want a small box that can barely display three search terms. I don't want the Search bar way over on the side of the screen.
I want highlighting to be toggled with a single click. I want to be able to do site searches without having to know the correct search engine syntax to do it. I want the full features of a search engine easily accessible.
There are two things I am not fond of with the current non-Beta Firefox. The first is the way it needs to download the whole installer just to update a point release. The second is how extensions with similar functionality are not coordinated.
Take the GoogleBar for example. When I first installed Firefox it didn't come with a usable search tool, so I had to find GoogleBar which approximated the functionality of Google's IE GoogleBar. Now, Google comes along and releases their GoogleBar for Firefox and I'm left having to uninstall the old toolbar and install the new one. I'd rather the two projects just work closely together so that it could be updated seamlessly in one fell swoop.
Things like these occasionally mar my Firefox experience which is otherwise very smooth.
Speaking of smooth, does anyone else get a brief (1 second) pause when loading large pages in Slashdot? It seems to load part of the page, then it freezes for a second, then renders the rest of the page. It also happens on Photo.net, but there the whole discussion page reloads itself after loading once. Just a strange thing I noticed about Firefox.
Apple's had them also. Guy Kawasaki was one of their big evangelists a few years back.
Their role is to get the word out about their project/product/concept and turn sceptics into true believers by flooding them with positive information about it. Is there anyone who doesn't know what the Internet is?
I was able to hear Dvorak's Enter the New World crystal clear on nano's lowest volume setting while jackhammers busted up the street outside my window and parrots squawked within a meter of my ear.
My experience with FEMA has been that once the rescue operations are completed and the rebuilding phase has begun, that FEMA will set up "registration centers" where applicants can go to apply for aid.
It's not the most efficient way, but it helps even those who don't own computers.
Please see my other posts in this thread. I agree 100% with you. But the site isn't going to get fixed RIGHT NOW because a bunch of geeks don't like it.
"You don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you've got."
They should have prepared for this hurricane. They should have programmed the site better. They should have had a plan to keep civil order. They should have had a rescue operation planned out.
They didn't and people are suffering. So what are we going to do now? Rewrite the site for cross-browser compatibility? And have it crash miserably when it goes live? Better to keep those 87% of IE users, no?
I'm with you on this. Really. I'm not trying to make excuses for the programming, and I am certainly not condoning the lack of leadership and foresight shown by FEMA before and during this crisis.
But what they've got is what they've got, for better or worse. As I mentioned before, 87% of internet users use IE. So assuming that their house is still around and they have power and an internet connection, approximately 87% of computer owners in the New Orleans area can access the site. Yeah, it's probably pretty terrible for the remaining 13% of users with a house, computer, and power that they can't use the FEMA website to fill out the application forms. They will probably have to either use their Windows-using neighbor's computer or wait until mail is restored or until FEMA sets up neighborhood FEMA-stations where people can apply for relief in person.
That said, yes, they should have had a more compatible site up in the first place. They should have had an emergency response plan too, but that is just another thing that they failed to sufficiently prepare.
I will say again that, yes, I agree. The site should have been made cross compatible. But it's not. At least it claims it isn't. All these people using the site, are they actually submitting the application form? Or are they just accessing the page?
The page should not have been built this way. But for a stopgap, it's better to throw something together that works for 87% (since last August 15) of users than nothing. It probably would have been just as easy to make the site work across all browsers. I don't know, I'm not a web programmer. But what is there is what is there.
It looks like a really useful tool. I wonder what the performance penalty is when the tool is turned off.
Do you need to instrument the calls you expect to profile? If so, how can you avoid taking that performance hit when deciding whether to perform the profiling or not, even when the profiler is off? It's still got to check the profiler level each time, doesn't it?
But can you really be so quick as to say that the site works 100% in Firefox? From the other comments it sounds like people are able to access the site by changing their UserAgent, but I doubt anyone's actually tried to fill out the application form and submit it (such would be fraud, and fraud is bad) as a test.
I don't know what kind of problem the system has. Maybe there is no problem. But putting aside the fact that they didn't design it for cross compatibility in the first place, isn't it better that they tell you up front that your browser isn't going to work rather than you filling out the form only to find that for whatever reason you can't submit it or the form gets corrupted or any other bug which would cause you to have completely wasted your time?
Better to say "IE6 works, use it. Other browsers not supported" than to say "use Firefox at your own risk". At least then you know the requirements.
I don't know any details, naturally, but what if they just whipped up the site in Frontpage and it just so happened that it worked out to be incompatible with anything but IE?
Speed is of the essence in the response here, and having something up is better than having nothing up, even if it does limit usage to only 87% of all internet users.
It's doubtful, however, that most of those filing claims with FEMA will do it online. With their houses flooded or destroyed, those who had computers in the first place now don't have them (and don't have power either) and those who didn't have computers to begin with weren't going that route anyway.
There is a whole lot of blame to go around here, but don't put it on the web developer who had to throw this together at the last minute. Blame it on the management for not foreseeing this catastrophe and preparing for it.
Once the rescue effort has completed and the effort shifts to rebuilding, FEMA will set up several "registration sites" to which people can show up and fill out these forms. That's been my experience with them in the past.
These people don't have power, so computers are almost completely out of the question.
I'm surprised that there didn't seem to be any CD activity at all during and after this disaster. Surely New Orleans has a Civil Defense department. They were probably just overwhelmed with lack of preparation and funding, as you say.
Anyway, hopefully New Orleans can get back to some semblance of normalcy before too long.
They should not put anything up until the site is 100% cross-browser compatible.
Obviously.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone. There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE, then that's just how it's going to be for the time being. There are other methods to file your claim (and let's face it, if you're online, you've got it better than 99% of the refugees who are stuck in a shelter).
The article you mention is very vague in regards to the actual information it provides. I do not doubt that deep vein thrombosis (economy class syndrome) is a very real threat for those with a pre-existing tendency towards it. In addition, the article you linked ties the stresses of lowered pressure to DVT, not the sudden loss of cabin pressure (which has its own problems). And even if it were proven (which Dr. Dixon admits it is not) that cabin air pressure was a contributing factor to the condition, what does that have to do with system reliability?
A system such as the cabin pressure system of an airplane is relatively simple. There is a pressurizing device which is told to raise or lower pressure determinant upon some external factor such as altitude or external pressure. It really doesn't take much more than a UART to implement the interface, and any embedded OS worth its salt has a fully-implemented UART driver. So even an OS like Windows CE can be trusted to run signals between the main airplane systems and the cabin control devices.
If you want "reliable, rock solid" systems, those are out there. I believe Green Hills has a huge business in providing a zero-delay interrupt handling operating system to device manufacturers who need that kind of reliability. That kind of thing is useful when you want your fly-by-wire flaps to react immediately when you adjust the stick. But to manage the cabin controls? There's no need for that kind of response time just to adjust the pressure every few seconds, play multiple streams of videos at once (I doubt that the Green Hills system is even capable of that; it's just not part of its design), turn the cabin lights up and down, or to allow flight attendants to communicate with each other from different galleys.
Here's what I think it all boils down to. You don't like Windows CE, you don't like Microsoft. That's great. But would you really be afraid to fly in a plane that had its cabin pressure controls driven by Windows CE? Would you ask at the counter each time you boarded the plane and ask to be transferred to another flight if you found out the awful truth? According to the linked interview, that's exactly what the Apple developer would do, it seems. That is fanaticism.
And lest you think this is all academic, Microsoft is installing CE in a jet to control the cabin pressure (which is why I brought up the topic in the first place). Please have a look at the interview linked from the article.
Slashdot Mirror
The key to competing successfully in business is to offer a better value to the customer than they can get somewhere else.
If you run a small grocery, you will typically be outpriced by the large grocery chain down the block, but can keep business by offering your customers other services that keep them coming back. If you make widgets, it's better to be either the cheapest widget provider or the widget provider with the highest quality. In a competition where price and quality are the deciding features, it's best to pick one extreme and go for it.
So what happens with software? If everyone implements open standards, it limits the implementation to the limits of the standard. Ideally, you'd have a flexible enough standard that implementing cool ideas is no more of a break from the standard than implementing the standard verbatim. But for a company that leads the field by a large margin, it doesn't make sense to open up to standards and thus open the doors for your customers to leave the barn. Keep them locked in, and keep providing them with superior product. They will never have the need to switch to another product so long as their needs are met, and they would have a tough time switching anyway as their current data isn't easily transferrable to a new system, no matter how open that new system may be.
I'm of the opinion that companies ought to do what they want with regards to standards. It doesn't matter what package you are using, if the one you are using satisfies your needs. Open standards hardly ever make or break a deal.
Well, if you've ever used cHTML, they are the ones who came up with it. Back in the early days of featurephones, NTT Docomo sent out a call for browser software, and Access was the only game in Tokyotown. Unfortunately, they didn't really support all of HTML, only a subset. But that subset was handled well and allowed the browser to display pages on the small cellphone screen without forcing the user to scroll horizontally.
So Access, riding Docomo's coattails, became the premier web browser company for cellphones in Japan. It's like how Gary Kildall was approached by IBM to sell his CP/M system, only in this case Access was able to capitalize on their position instead of losing out to a second-rate compiler company.
Now with PalmSource in their possession, they are strategically aligned to provide browser software, mail software, scheduling software, and a host of other useful PDA-like features in their cellphone software suite. Add to that that with greater cellphone power is bound to come greater demand for more feature-filled "smartphones" and they're in a great place with a ready-for-delivery PDA suite.
You've already got the customer in your store. Are you really going to kick them out and turn them into ex-customers?
Technology can be used to empower the consumer, or it can be used to empower the vendor. This one seems to help shift the balance back towards the consumer. I think that's a pretty good balance of power.
I assume it's mostly meant to retrieve data on the current special offers for the particular item. Usually, scanning the barcode will give you price information, even without hitting some "3rd party" database. But if store X has a special on item Y, then it might be worth it to travel across town and buy it from there.
It seems like the logical evolution of systems like Froogle. Only this one would be much more personal and probably more local, not to mention tied to brick and mortar storefronts rather than online storefronts.
It does seem awfully like the thing mentioned in the news article for finding used book prices, though. Someone ought to look into that.
That's not really a concern, though.
Ever had a tooth replaced at the dentist? They can custom color your new teeth to match the yellow of your old teeth. There really isn't a reason they couldn't do something similar to match the skin color of any hearing-aid patient.
I imagine something more along the lines of a malleable gel or putty that can form any shape thereby increasing contact surface area and making the grip stronger without increasing the amount of force on the object. It could hold an egg just as easily as an I-beam.
They are looking to mimic humans, but I doubt human form is the most efficient and adaptable. A blob-like form consisting of millions of nanobots working together, sometimes loosely, sometimes in a tight lattice, would make much more sense as it could take on any form and be solid or "liquid" at any given time.
I just turned prefetch off, then rebooted this computer. The sites I mentioned still freeze for a second when loading large pages. The behavior is unchanged.
Firefox 1.0.6 on Windows
What I don't want is a dropdown menu that needs to be selected each time I do a search. I don't want a small box that can barely display three search terms. I don't want the Search bar way over on the side of the screen.
I want highlighting to be toggled with a single click. I want to be able to do site searches without having to know the correct search engine syntax to do it. I want the full features of a search engine easily accessible.
I don't want to just search.
Firefox's default search tool is teh suk. At least it was several versions ago. I haven't touched it since.
There are two things I am not fond of with the current non-Beta Firefox. The first is the way it needs to download the whole installer just to update a point release. The second is how extensions with similar functionality are not coordinated.
Take the GoogleBar for example. When I first installed Firefox it didn't come with a usable search tool, so I had to find GoogleBar which approximated the functionality of Google's IE GoogleBar. Now, Google comes along and releases their GoogleBar for Firefox and I'm left having to uninstall the old toolbar and install the new one. I'd rather the two projects just work closely together so that it could be updated seamlessly in one fell swoop.
Things like these occasionally mar my Firefox experience which is otherwise very smooth.
Speaking of smooth, does anyone else get a brief (1 second) pause when loading large pages in Slashdot? It seems to load part of the page, then it freezes for a second, then renders the rest of the page. It also happens on Photo.net, but there the whole discussion page reloads itself after loading once. Just a strange thing I noticed about Firefox.
Apple's had them also. Guy Kawasaki was one of their big evangelists a few years back.
Their role is to get the word out about their project/product/concept and turn sceptics into true believers by flooding them with positive information about it. Is there anyone who doesn't know what the Internet is?
Boy, that Internet thing just isn't catching on. I guess we need someone to really spread the word about it!
Chief Internet Evangelist? Really?
I was able to hear Dvorak's Enter the New World crystal clear on nano's lowest volume setting while jackhammers busted up the street outside my window and parrots squawked within a meter of my ear.
I'm curious. Does it seek out function signatures (i.e. push params onto the stack and branch) and insert itself automatically?
Does it swap out normal binaries for instrumented binaries on the fly?
How is it able to manage a zero penalty hit?
My experience with FEMA has been that once the rescue operations are completed and the rebuilding phase has begun, that FEMA will set up "registration centers" where applicants can go to apply for aid.
It's not the most efficient way, but it helps even those who don't own computers.
Please see my other posts in this thread. I agree 100% with you. But the site isn't going to get fixed RIGHT NOW because a bunch of geeks don't like it.
"You don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you've got."
They should have prepared for this hurricane. They should have programmed the site better. They should have had a plan to keep civil order. They should have had a rescue operation planned out.
They didn't and people are suffering. So what are we going to do now? Rewrite the site for cross-browser compatibility? And have it crash miserably when it goes live? Better to keep those 87% of IE users, no?
I'm with you on this. Really. I'm not trying to make excuses for the programming, and I am certainly not condoning the lack of leadership and foresight shown by FEMA before and during this crisis.
But what they've got is what they've got, for better or worse. As I mentioned before, 87% of internet users use IE. So assuming that their house is still around and they have power and an internet connection, approximately 87% of computer owners in the New Orleans area can access the site. Yeah, it's probably pretty terrible for the remaining 13% of users with a house, computer, and power that they can't use the FEMA website to fill out the application forms. They will probably have to either use their Windows-using neighbor's computer or wait until mail is restored or until FEMA sets up neighborhood FEMA-stations where people can apply for relief in person.
That said, yes, they should have had a more compatible site up in the first place. They should have had an emergency response plan too, but that is just another thing that they failed to sufficiently prepare.
I will say again that, yes, I agree. The site should have been made cross compatible. But it's not. At least it claims it isn't. All these people using the site, are they actually submitting the application form? Or are they just accessing the page?
The page should not have been built this way. But for a stopgap, it's better to throw something together that works for 87% (since last August 15) of users than nothing. It probably would have been just as easy to make the site work across all browsers. I don't know, I'm not a web programmer. But what is there is what is there.
It looks like a really useful tool. I wonder what the performance penalty is when the tool is turned off.
Do you need to instrument the calls you expect to profile? If so, how can you avoid taking that performance hit when deciding whether to perform the profiling or not, even when the profiler is off? It's still got to check the profiler level each time, doesn't it?
First off, I absolutely agree with you.
But can you really be so quick as to say that the site works 100% in Firefox? From the other comments it sounds like people are able to access the site by changing their UserAgent, but I doubt anyone's actually tried to fill out the application form and submit it (such would be fraud, and fraud is bad) as a test.
I don't know what kind of problem the system has. Maybe there is no problem. But putting aside the fact that they didn't design it for cross compatibility in the first place, isn't it better that they tell you up front that your browser isn't going to work rather than you filling out the form only to find that for whatever reason you can't submit it or the form gets corrupted or any other bug which would cause you to have completely wasted your time?
Better to say "IE6 works, use it. Other browsers not supported" than to say "use Firefox at your own risk". At least then you know the requirements.
I don't know any details, naturally, but what if they just whipped up the site in Frontpage and it just so happened that it worked out to be incompatible with anything but IE?
Speed is of the essence in the response here, and having something up is better than having nothing up, even if it does limit usage to only 87% of all internet users.
It's doubtful, however, that most of those filing claims with FEMA will do it online. With their houses flooded or destroyed, those who had computers in the first place now don't have them (and don't have power either) and those who didn't have computers to begin with weren't going that route anyway.
There is a whole lot of blame to go around here, but don't put it on the web developer who had to throw this together at the last minute. Blame it on the management for not foreseeing this catastrophe and preparing for it.
Once the rescue effort has completed and the effort shifts to rebuilding, FEMA will set up several "registration sites" to which people can show up and fill out these forms. That's been my experience with them in the past.
These people don't have power, so computers are almost completely out of the question.
I'm surprised that there didn't seem to be any CD activity at all during and after this disaster. Surely New Orleans has a Civil Defense department. They were probably just overwhelmed with lack of preparation and funding, as you say.
Anyway, hopefully New Orleans can get back to some semblance of normalcy before too long.
They should not put anything up until the site is 100% cross-browser compatible.
Obviously.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone. There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE, then that's just how it's going to be for the time being. There are other methods to file your claim (and let's face it, if you're online, you've got it better than 99% of the refugees who are stuck in a shelter).
The article you mention is very vague in regards to the actual information it provides. I do not doubt that deep vein thrombosis (economy class syndrome) is a very real threat for those with a pre-existing tendency towards it. In addition, the article you linked ties the stresses of lowered pressure to DVT, not the sudden loss of cabin pressure (which has its own problems). And even if it were proven (which Dr. Dixon admits it is not) that cabin air pressure was a contributing factor to the condition, what does that have to do with system reliability?
A system such as the cabin pressure system of an airplane is relatively simple. There is a pressurizing device which is told to raise or lower pressure determinant upon some external factor such as altitude or external pressure. It really doesn't take much more than a UART to implement the interface, and any embedded OS worth its salt has a fully-implemented UART driver. So even an OS like Windows CE can be trusted to run signals between the main airplane systems and the cabin control devices.
If you want "reliable, rock solid" systems, those are out there. I believe Green Hills has a huge business in providing a zero-delay interrupt handling operating system to device manufacturers who need that kind of reliability. That kind of thing is useful when you want your fly-by-wire flaps to react immediately when you adjust the stick. But to manage the cabin controls? There's no need for that kind of response time just to adjust the pressure every few seconds, play multiple streams of videos at once (I doubt that the Green Hills system is even capable of that; it's just not part of its design), turn the cabin lights up and down, or to allow flight attendants to communicate with each other from different galleys.
Here's what I think it all boils down to. You don't like Windows CE, you don't like Microsoft. That's great. But would you really be afraid to fly in a plane that had its cabin pressure controls driven by Windows CE? Would you ask at the counter each time you boarded the plane and ask to be transferred to another flight if you found out the awful truth? According to the linked interview, that's exactly what the Apple developer would do, it seems. That is fanaticism.
And lest you think this is all academic, Microsoft is installing CE in a jet to control the cabin pressure (which is why I brought up the topic in the first place). Please have a look at the interview linked from the article.