all those Windows based tablets before were huge heavy and without great battery life on top of a clunky Microsoft defined UI which had to be like desktop Windows. The phone market was the same and those phone vendors would not create something interesting and easy to use. Apple's iPhone was a great package for ease of use and with the iPod like tie-in with the Apple App Store to make adding enhancements simple. That was easily slid over to the iPad and using the same model of a sleek, light and easy to handle device with the same easy to use UI. No tablets I'd seen ever did this before and most of the problem was because they had to run Microsoft Windows.
So all those things may have been on previous generations of tablets before but those tablets were junk from a user friendly perspective.
This is another reason why there's a good chance that Windows 8 on tablets is going to suck again. They're likely to require lots of CPU, lots of RAM and lots of battery power compared to the iPad. And the apps from Windows don't run on them and Microsoft is confiusing desktop Windows with the tablet and people will not get it. This Windows table phase is also likely to fail. IMO
how many times did we hear how difficult it was to put another office suite on desktops? Does anyone think this is just the Windows user base and not the Windows IT crowd too? So it's not surprising new IT projects get outsourced instead of using inhouse employees. If this was different, we'd probably see more open source used in IT but that's not the case with Windows shops. They only want to do what they know.
As a software developer, I have seen contractors brought in to get the team up and running on new tech and that worked great. But the team did have lots of UNIX background and learning new tools was nothing new to most of the team. I mentioned dropping in an open source CMS system to a friends team of Windows developers at lunch one time and they were all against it. Open source is too hard to figure out is what I got back and there's nobody to call for support. waaaaaaaaa
Exactly. But what I find strange about this article is that it is the first time I've seen this brought up yet over the past 20+ years, Microsoft has lost billions and billions on "projects" and never a peep. I for one like seeing companies like Google and IBM doing real R&D and coming up with some amazing projects. They don't always produce money makers for them but IMO they build the brand if they end up useful. Think about Google Sky. People love using this and yet it doesn't do much of anything for Google's bottom line but is a great brand builder.
And then there's Microsoft. Everything they spit out is 100% designed to the Windows empire and once they use the project to kill off the threat, it's left to whither. Pen for Windows, Windows CE, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Money, etc. Even the XBox cost them billions to get to market, cost billions in recalls and RRoF failures and billions in losses over it's production life.. They are just now pulling in profits from the division and at the current rates it'll probably be a decade before they make back the many 10s of billions they lost and shareholders lost in that "investment". All to make sure Sony and others didn't grow the console market and threaten the desktop.
So if you really want to see a company who's dumped billions on projects without a direct shareholder return, look at Microsoft. I know some will say that protecting Windows was a return on investment. To that I say look at the position they are in now by letting Windows CE/Mobile/Phone/whatever languish as a gawd awful excuse of an embedded OS. Apple and Google are stomping them on phones and tablets and threaten to work their way up and all Microsoft can do is try to make Windows fit on phones and tablets. And what's worst, they are still trying to leverage the desktop OS and by doing so they are threatening the bread winner they've protected for so very long. If Windows 8 misses, nobody is going to care what Windows 9 is or looks like. IMO.
so exactly where does their authority come from if it's not the legal system( including law enforcement )?
and if they do not adhere to the same rules of law as the law enforcement, can they use law enforcement to enforce their rules? ie have the Police help them take children away from their parents.
ur probably correct. As much as I dislike what Apple is doing with it's lawyers and patents, I will give them a bit of a pass since they have been leaders in many of the areas even if not originators. Microsoft, they created a BASIC implementation(not their own invention really ), they purchased DOS from another company, they learned the ins/outs of the MacOS and created Windows on DOS which copied lots of stuff from the Mac, etc, etc. Microsoft usually created stuff after others defined the market and Microsoft came up with their own twisted way of doing it such that it locked into Windows such that it made sure Windows was required.
Apple also has more design people too and at some point in their history I had heard they had a 1:1 ratio of UI designer to developers. BTW, had I not read and tried some of KDE's gestures I would have given them a pass on some of their iPhone innovations but they too are not 100% innovators and have resorted to copying or re-implementations. Again though, they seemed to improve on the original which is something which can hardly ever be said for Microsoft. We'll see where Windows 8 Metro goes but it does crack me up that they have to create a whole new OS for it. I mean why didn't they provide it as an update to Windows 7 and get apps rolling. Now they've got this mix of ARM and x86 to deal with and the public isn't going to understand it all. wow, I really wandered too much on this one.
I agree with most of what you said but I laughed when you mentioned lots of development time fussing over details. Not that it ins't true but the recent crash of Azure's Management Console over leap year was too recent. Design and/or code reviews anyone?
they have always used the same methods to "take over the world" only with their monopoly on DOS based PCs, they could bring Windows in, then MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc. The PC was "the world" back then and they controlled it. Thanks to the iPod and then the iPad, Apple showed that "the world" is bigger than the desktop PC and you don't need to be the Windows interface or even look like it to be useful. Some would argue that Apple showed how not being like Windows was better. So they have always used the same techniques, goals, etc for business methods but they were in control and now they are not. But we shall see how many of their PC OEM's who now ship Android devices stop shipping Android to push Microsofts next great hope, Windows 8. I think it'll take lots of cash to make that happen this time.
lol
They have banged the patent drum loudly over the last few years but many predicted this over a decade ago. It would be nice if there was something new going on inside MS besides an office chair getting thrown around. I guess that was different. lol And the Monkey Boy Dance was different too. At least the ARM vs x86 versions of Windows 8 will keep the rags going for a few years attempting to figure out customer reactions. And that locked down boot loader too.
true although it would seem that with some change in size of department, one would see some result in the market. ie more legal maneuvers or more product releases or updates. Sure isn't possible to figure it out as a private corporation, they don't have to or want to give that kind of info out.
it was nothing more than a 'wouldn't it be nice if we could tell what the ratio was and what changes to it have been over the years'.
Microsoft these days because it sure seems like they have been bulking up in the lawyer side for a number of years.
And this after how many years of them hiring Linux experts only to use them against Linux? I don't see anything different about them hiring government people who showed signs of disliking Google to the point of attempting to block their business operations. Microsoft's high priority business method has always been to block and destabilize their competition over and above besting them in the market.
Same old Microsoft we've seen since the late '80s and early '90s.
frak'n AC.... GM owned the majority stake in the patent and they were also part owners of the Ovonics business. And you don't see any NiMH batteries in high capacity batteries because the NiMH patent owner does not allow it. Look up the Rav4 EV and read the section on the batteries they used. Panasonic was not allowed to continue making those high capacity batteries after being sued along with Toyota.
Did you even look for answers to your lack of understanding?
they were $21K but I can see them being $24K/25K now and that's "bare-bones". They decided to add lots of "extra's" to the Volt for some reason. I still think they were telling everyone they were going to be priced around the Prius and some of us didn't believe them. The Volt is interesting technically but unlike Toyota, they have not build a economical vehicle. It only took a couple of years before the Prius was being built on standard production lines and was selling for a profit.
The Volt reminds me of the EV1 in that it's not something they really care to continue. The Volt commercials aren't very convincing and lots of them seemed more like branding promo's.
and had they not sold the patent on NiMH batteries to the Texaco when they destroyed the EV1 they would also be the leader in high capacity vehicle battery technology.
IIRC, early on they were telling the world+dog it was going to be priced in the low $20K as the Prius was/is. How that changed and as you noted, it ended up being priced in the low $40K.
I guess they think they can compete with Tesla. Wrong.
remember that the Windows Phone 7 OS can't support multiple processors so they can't use any of the new SoCs Android phones are using. Notice on the Android phones how it's mentioned how many cores the hardware has? Nokia can't do this with their Windows Phone phones so what else can they market/advertise about? Screen size and the camera is about it. Notice how the Lumina phones are pretty much the same hardware with differing screen sizes?
The way I figure it, they're putting this ridiculous setup out to pave the way for mega pixel race in Windows Phone phones. They'll not really sell many of the Symbian models but it's a marketing technique to pave the way for a mega pixel race with Microsoft based phones. Again, because they really can't use newer multi-core SoC's.
I'd used a network backup server in a virtual machine previously and first backed up the default image. What was nice about the backup server was it had an iso image of a boot disk you'd use to boot and backup a machine so no worries what OS was on there. After the initial backup, do you disk partitioning, installation of Ubuntu and then create a Ubuntu repository image and set that new client to use that repository for updates. Now back that disk up and use it as your base image for all your laptops.
Now your clients can stay updated based on what you setup in the update repository and you have default images to restore should you want a stock system again or you want to add more clients.
If you're talking about managing the data on the clients then use LTSP on the clients and use the same repository server to manage the LTSP clients.
"pba backup" is the backup server I used back when I did this.
it could also be that T-Mobile is not big enough to get a compatible God Phone so to do so, they are designing their upgrade path to result in not only a faster network but also one compatible with existing iPhone hardware.
Wasn't there a commercial from IBM in the mid '90s showing a guy jumping up and down in a courtyard full of birds yelling "buy, buy" and then talking on the phone to someone all using a HUD system? I don't recall if that was for IBM's voice control system or OS/2 but it sounds like we're finally there at a price many can now afford.
I think the big thing which held up the hacker community from doing this years ago was the lack of an inexpensive tiny LCDs with decent resolution.
BTW, the speech engine IBM put into OS/2 was derived from their client-server based system they originally used on AS400 servers and many clients. It worked like Siri in that the client grabbed the users speech and sent it to server to be picked apart and a command string was sent back to the client. Missing was the output speech engine on the client since it was more of a speech control system than a speech search engine. It was pretty decent once you used it for a time and it became trained on your speech patterns.
I agree he is scarier but speaking well isn't needed to get voted in as president by the American people. I put before you one George W. Bush as evidence.
wasn't Bush running around the world in 2001 enraging peoples everywhere by backing out of treaties and basically saying 'we're the US of A and we will do things the way we want.'? I recall massive demonstrations everywhere he went and this was all before the 9/11 attacks. After which, even those he pissed off were behind him for going after Osama in Afghanistan but then his obsession with Iraq turned them all against the US again. Bush was an idiot and the Americans were too for not seeing the mess Iraq was.
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all those Windows based tablets before were huge heavy and without great battery life on top of a clunky Microsoft defined UI which had to be like desktop Windows. The phone market was the same and those phone vendors would not create something interesting and easy to use. Apple's iPhone was a great package for ease of use and with the iPod like tie-in with the Apple App Store to make adding enhancements simple. That was easily slid over to the iPad and using the same model of a sleek, light and easy to handle device with the same easy to use UI. No tablets I'd seen ever did this before and most of the problem was because they had to run Microsoft Windows.
So all those things may have been on previous generations of tablets before but those tablets were junk from a user friendly perspective.
This is another reason why there's a good chance that Windows 8 on tablets is going to suck again. They're likely to require lots of CPU, lots of RAM and lots of battery power compared to the iPad. And the apps from Windows don't run on them and Microsoft is confiusing desktop Windows with the tablet and people will not get it. This Windows table phase is also likely to fail. IMO
LoB
you are the exception to the rule.
LoB
how many times did we hear how difficult it was to put another office suite on desktops? Does anyone think this is just the Windows user base and not the Windows IT crowd too? So it's not surprising new IT projects get outsourced instead of using inhouse employees. If this was different, we'd probably see more open source used in IT but that's not the case with Windows shops. They only want to do what they know.
As a software developer, I have seen contractors brought in to get the team up and running on new tech and that worked great. But the team did have lots of UNIX background and learning new tools was nothing new to most of the team. I mentioned dropping in an open source CMS system to a friends team of Windows developers at lunch one time and they were all against it. Open source is too hard to figure out is what I got back and there's nobody to call for support. waaaaaaaaa
LoB
Exactly. But what I find strange about this article is that it is the first time I've seen this brought up yet over the past 20+ years, Microsoft has lost billions and billions on "projects" and never a peep. I for one like seeing companies like Google and IBM doing real R&D and coming up with some amazing projects. They don't always produce money makers for them but IMO they build the brand if they end up useful. Think about Google Sky. People love using this and yet it doesn't do much of anything for Google's bottom line but is a great brand builder.
And then there's Microsoft. Everything they spit out is 100% designed to the Windows empire and once they use the project to kill off the threat, it's left to whither. Pen for Windows, Windows CE, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Money, etc. Even the XBox cost them billions to get to market, cost billions in recalls and RRoF failures and billions in losses over it's production life.. They are just now pulling in profits from the division and at the current rates it'll probably be a decade before they make back the many 10s of billions they lost and shareholders lost in that "investment". All to make sure Sony and others didn't grow the console market and threaten the desktop.
So if you really want to see a company who's dumped billions on projects without a direct shareholder return, look at Microsoft. I know some will say that protecting Windows was a return on investment. To that I say look at the position they are in now by letting Windows CE/Mobile/Phone/whatever languish as a gawd awful excuse of an embedded OS. Apple and Google are stomping them on phones and tablets and threaten to work their way up and all Microsoft can do is try to make Windows fit on phones and tablets. And what's worst, they are still trying to leverage the desktop OS and by doing so they are threatening the bread winner they've protected for so very long. If Windows 8 misses, nobody is going to care what Windows 9 is or looks like. IMO.
LoB
so exactly where does their authority come from if it's not the legal system( including law enforcement )?
and if they do not adhere to the same rules of law as the law enforcement, can they use law enforcement to enforce their rules? ie have the Police help them take children away from their parents.
Sounds like quite the strange setup to me.
LoB
ur probably correct. As much as I dislike what Apple is doing with it's lawyers and patents, I will give them a bit of a pass since they have been leaders in many of the areas even if not originators. Microsoft, they created a BASIC implementation(not their own invention really ), they purchased DOS from another company, they learned the ins/outs of the MacOS and created Windows on DOS which copied lots of stuff from the Mac, etc, etc. Microsoft usually created stuff after others defined the market and Microsoft came up with their own twisted way of doing it such that it locked into Windows such that it made sure Windows was required.
Apple also has more design people too and at some point in their history I had heard they had a 1:1 ratio of UI designer to developers.
BTW, had I not read and tried some of KDE's gestures I would have given them a pass on some of their iPhone innovations but they too are not 100% innovators and have resorted to copying or re-implementations. Again though, they seemed to improve on the original which is something which can hardly ever be said for Microsoft. We'll see where Windows 8 Metro goes but it does crack me up that they have to create a whole new OS for it. I mean why didn't they provide it as an update to Windows 7 and get apps rolling. Now they've got this mix of ARM and x86 to deal with and the public isn't going to understand it all. wow, I really wandered too much on this one.
LoB
I agree with most of what you said but I laughed when you mentioned lots of development time fussing over details. Not that it ins't true but the recent crash of Azure's Management Console over leap year was too recent. Design and/or code reviews anyone?
they have always used the same methods to "take over the world" only with their monopoly on DOS based PCs, they could bring Windows in, then MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc. The PC was "the world" back then and they controlled it. Thanks to the iPod and then the iPad, Apple showed that "the world" is bigger than the desktop PC and you don't need to be the Windows interface or even look like it to be useful. Some would argue that Apple showed how not being like Windows was better. So they have always used the same techniques, goals, etc for business methods but they were in control and now they are not. But we shall see how many of their PC OEM's who now ship Android devices stop shipping Android to push Microsofts next great hope, Windows 8. I think it'll take lots of cash to make that happen this time.
LoB
yes, that was what I was looking for, how much one new lawyer changed the ratio. What?
Loved that part about Microsoft getting screwed in the 90s because they were not politically savvy.
LoB
lol
They have banged the patent drum loudly over the last few years but many predicted this over a decade ago. It would be nice if there was something new going on inside MS besides an office chair getting thrown around. I guess that was different. lol And the Monkey Boy Dance was different too. At least the ARM vs x86 versions of Windows 8 will keep the rags going for a few years attempting to figure out customer reactions. And that locked down boot loader too.
LoB
true although it would seem that with some change in size of department, one would see some result in the market. ie more legal maneuvers or more product releases or updates. Sure isn't possible to figure it out as a private corporation, they don't have to or want to give that kind of info out.
it was nothing more than a 'wouldn't it be nice if we could tell what the ratio was and what changes to it have been over the years'.
LoB
Microsoft these days because it sure seems like they have been bulking up in the lawyer side for a number of years.
And this after how many years of them hiring Linux experts only to use them against Linux? I don't see anything different about them hiring government people who showed signs of disliking Google to the point of attempting to block their business operations. Microsoft's high priority business method has always been to block and destabilize their competition over and above besting them in the market.
Same old Microsoft we've seen since the late '80s and early '90s.
LoB
frak'n AC.... GM owned the majority stake in the patent and they were also part owners of the Ovonics business. And you don't see any NiMH batteries in high capacity batteries because the NiMH patent owner does not allow it. Look up the Rav4 EV and read the section on the batteries they used. Panasonic was not allowed to continue making those high capacity batteries after being sued along with Toyota.
Did you even look for answers to your lack of understanding?
LoB
they were $21K but I can see them being $24K/25K now and that's "bare-bones". They decided to add lots of "extra's" to the Volt for some reason. I still think they were telling everyone they were going to be priced around the Prius and some of us didn't believe them. The Volt is interesting technically but unlike Toyota, they have not build a economical vehicle. It only took a couple of years before the Prius was being built on standard production lines and was selling for a profit.
The Volt reminds me of the EV1 in that it's not something they really care to continue. The Volt commercials aren't very convincing and lots of them seemed more like branding promo's.
LoB
and had they not sold the patent on NiMH batteries to the Texaco when they destroyed the EV1 they would also be the leader in high capacity vehicle battery technology.
LoB
IIRC, early on they were telling the world+dog it was going to be priced in the low $20K as the Prius was/is. How that changed and as you noted, it ended up being priced in the low $40K.
I guess they think they can compete with Tesla. Wrong.
LoB
on how to handle date functions with a claim specifically for leap year. lol
Then watch for its approval and subsequent issuance.
LoB
remember that the Windows Phone 7 OS can't support multiple processors so they can't use any of the new SoCs Android phones are using. Notice on the Android phones how it's mentioned how many cores the hardware has? Nokia can't do this with their Windows Phone phones so what else can they market/advertise about? Screen size and the camera is about it. Notice how the Lumina phones are pretty much the same hardware with differing screen sizes?
The way I figure it, they're putting this ridiculous setup out to pave the way for mega pixel race in Windows Phone phones. They'll not really sell many of the Symbian models but it's a marketing technique to pave the way for a mega pixel race with Microsoft based phones. Again, because they really can't use newer multi-core SoC's.
LoB
I'd used a network backup server in a virtual machine previously and first backed up the default image. What was nice about the backup server was it had an iso image of a boot disk you'd use to boot and backup a machine so no worries what OS was on there. After the initial backup, do you disk partitioning, installation of Ubuntu and then create a Ubuntu repository image and set that new client to use that repository for updates. Now back that disk up and use it as your base image for all your laptops.
Now your clients can stay updated based on what you setup in the update repository and you have default images to restore should you want a stock system again or you want to add more clients.
If you're talking about managing the data on the clients then use LTSP on the clients and use the same repository server to manage the LTSP clients.
"pba backup" is the backup server I used back when I did this.
LoB
it could also be that T-Mobile is not big enough to get a compatible God Phone so to do so, they are designing their upgrade path to result in not only a faster network but also one compatible with existing iPhone hardware.
LoB
because human life is a renewable resource. ;-)
LoB
true but should not have been even close but it was and those tricks were enough for what looked like a win.
LoB
Wasn't there a commercial from IBM in the mid '90s showing a guy jumping up and down in a courtyard full of birds yelling "buy, buy" and then talking on the phone to someone all using a HUD system? I don't recall if that was for IBM's voice control system or OS/2 but it sounds like we're finally there at a price many can now afford.
I think the big thing which held up the hacker community from doing this years ago was the lack of an inexpensive tiny LCDs with decent resolution.
BTW, the speech engine IBM put into OS/2 was derived from their client-server based system they originally used on AS400 servers and many clients. It worked like Siri in that the client grabbed the users speech and sent it to server to be picked apart and a command string was sent back to the client. Missing was the output speech engine on the client since it was more of a speech control system than a speech search engine. It was pretty decent once you used it for a time and it became trained on your speech patterns.
LoB
I agree he is scarier but speaking well isn't needed to get voted in as president by the American people. I put before you one George W. Bush as evidence.
LoB
wasn't Bush running around the world in 2001 enraging peoples everywhere by backing out of treaties and basically saying 'we're the US of A and we will do things the way we want.'? I recall massive demonstrations everywhere he went and this was all before the 9/11 attacks. After which, even those he pissed off were behind him for going after Osama in Afghanistan but then his obsession with Iraq turned them all against the US again. Bush was an idiot and the Americans were too for not seeing the mess Iraq was.
LoB
ditto on G W Bush in 2000 showed how stupid Americans are and in 2004 showed how ignorant Americans are. But Santorum is as scary as Palin was.
LoB