But on the other hand I just can't stomach the fact that I pay $2k for a nice system, but I must have windows to play my games.
Why do you care what OS is underneath? Your nice $2K machine came with Windows, right? And it plays all your games out of the box, right? So what's the problem? Or is this some sort of irrational religious thing?
It's so artificial to me. I mean, I know that direct-x's APIs allow for ease of development and speedier time to market, as well as giving a simpler interface to modern video card's best features.
But the hardware is there!
You seem to understand something about what it takes to develop games, but apparently you have no clue what it takes to do that development at the level required for commercial (ie, something people will pay for) quality. Each new platform is a huge undertaking. And that's not just in coding, it's in test, distribution, and support. No company that wants to stay in business is going to take on that expense for a small market.
staggering that in such a short time the US has gone from loved to hated , the conclusion is Bush and his cronies have put the US populace in a lot more danger than they where 5 years ago
Ever since the US rose to superpower status there have been those who hate us. They hate us out of envy, they hate us out of jealousy. No matter what foreign policy we enact, there will be those who feel slighted and who will resent us. 9/11 was rooted in that hate. So was the previous attack on the World Trade Center, and the bombing of TWA 800, the marine barracks, the USS Cole, etc etc. From a pragmatic perspective, I know it is not possible to get the whole world to love us. Personally, I think that the best we can hope for is that those who hate us also fear us, so that they don't act upon that hate. So far, on that score, Bush's policies seem to have worked, as the number of terrorist acts against Americans has dramatically decreased in the last five years. Instead they are striking countries like Spain that they know will not strike back.
I think the marketplace has been very well-served by the two dualities that existed before this move: ATI and NVidia beat each other's brains out, as did Intel and AMD. This new dynamic with 3 players does not seem, to me, to promise anywhere near as many benefits for us, the customers. Will ATI become more AMD-centric? Undoubtably. Will NVidia (which has been a great AMD booster) become less supportive of AMD processors? Probably. As this plays out, it seems to me that NVidia will basically be an Intel graphics house (including Macs), and ATI will melt into AMD, becoming mostly an internal chipset house. In the end we lose a very healthy competition between NVidia and ATI. We gain, perhaps, a stronger AMD to keep Intel honest.
is going to willingly download political podcasts which are basically campaign ads, other than someone who is already fanatically committed to the particular candidate. Seriously, I simply can't imagine going to all that trouble to hear a campaign ad. Now I suppose if I have autofeeds set up and they find a way to jam their infomercials into my PodPlayer, I might accidentally hear one or two, but frankly, to me that would be like audio spam, and I would hold that against the candidate -- it would certainly not convince me to vote for him/her.
I'm sure there will be a large number of people listening to podcasts of their favorite politicians, but I am equally sure it will have no bearing on the outcome of the election.
Doesn't really seem like that many, considering the amount of cars of types of televisions there is out there.
Bad analogy... near as I can tell there are not that many kinds of cars either -- gasoline, diesel, hybrid, all-electric, synth-fuel. Sure, there are many models (hatchback, sports car, SUV, etc), but then there are many models of computers too (big iron servers, laptops, ultralights, desktops, workstations...). Please, please, let's not go back to the days when every hardware vendor had their own operating system; that made for really expensive hardware and really expensive software.
I have to say, I am continually amazed that the "perpetually offended" types haven't gone after Google for brazenly commemorating religious holidays like Christmas, and American imperialist holidays like Thanksgiving. I suppose it's only a matter of time before folks like the ACLU try to put a stop to this, but until then I'll simply enjoy them.
When a union opposes something there is always only 1 reason: self-interest. This is true for any union, and always has been. Likewise when a company opposes something it is also for 1 reason: self-interest. Sure, the teachers union will *claim* it's "about the children", but that is simply not the case. Now don't get me wrong -- I don't have a problem with that. I accept it, and believe, actually, that is the true role of a union. It's all about balance. But please, can we not pretend the teacher's union is really more concerned for the children than they are for protecting their own interests?
As regards online middle school, I say "why not?". Maybe I've consumed too much of the "diversity koolaid", but my view is, let's try a bunch of things. Different types of school environments are best for different types of children. Let's give parents and children some choices. Why is that such a bad thing?
Yipee! We will all get to pay double or triple for our OSes then! Seriously, for such a nasty monopoly, I think most rational people will agree that charging $89 for an OS (retail) is pretty reasonable. Take Microsoft out of the mix and prices go through the roof, in my opinion. Ditto for the hardware, unless another player emerges as a dominant enough force to prevent the HW vendors from reverting to the "good old days" when nothing was compatible so you were a captive customer. you want a spreadsheet that runs on our systems? Sure, that'll be $10,000!
I think selecting Carly was a symptom of HP's decline, not the cause of it. The company was well down the path of losing its way by the time Carly came along. Look at the history of HP to see what I mean. The original culture and values of the company instilled by Bill and Dave were all about innovation, quality, community, employees... basically the vaunted "HP way". And this recipe worked extremely well as is evidenced by the financial performance and growth of HP over many decades, through boom times and slow times. No long term debt. Very high margins. Unparalleled customer and employee loyalty (extremely low turnover, no layoffs). Unequalled product quality. This is the company that brought us such hallmark products as the scientific handheld calculator (the venerable HP35 and its follow-ons), the logic analyzer, the inkjet printer, the laser printer, the "Pisces" emulation systems, the HPIB instrument interconnection bus (now better known as IEEE-488), 360-series PC board test stations, phased array cardiac ultrasound systems with color flow for non-invasively measuring blood flow... the list of notable, first-in-class (as opposed to me-too), commercially successful products is indeed long. But as Bill and Dave moved into retirement the company began to evolve (devolve in my opinion). Innovation mattered less than "time to market". Quality mattered less than "cost". Employees mattered less than "efficiencies". Engineering mattered less than marketing.
So, by the time Carly was hired as CEO of HP, they had already spun out the intruments and medical divisions - basically destroying the diversity of HP, leaving it as a computer company operating in a viscious low-margin market. They had already moved away from the concept of autonomous divisions, towards big, bureaucratic, centralized behemoths. They had already abandoned the fiscal discipline whereby all growth was self-funded and moved towards funding growth with long-term debt. And isn't it obvious that the company that was once HP is now just another computer company - nothing special. Sure, they have lots of shelf-space at CompUSA, and they move lots of boxes for a small profit. But the breakthrough, innovative products are no more. The reputation for quality is gone. I don't blame Carly, nor do I give her credit "for saving HP", since the HP I knew is long dead.
it doesn't sound alot different than my trusty iPaq which I have been carrying for several years and absolutely love. I guess the difference might be a built-in hard drive (I am limited to SD storage - 4GB), and perhaps a more up-to-date and smaller industrial design. But I already have a big (touch) screen, built-in WIFI, a camera, lots of games, outlook syncing, and the ability to play videos, MP3s or subscription WMAs.
I think you are, for the most part, spot-on. And I might add, never sell short switching costs. For iPod users, the switching cost is moving their music collection to another music management app (iTunes only supports iPods, right?). Further, since they've most likely ripped their music to Apple/AAC format, they would have to re-rip to WMA or whatever other format their new player wanted (the smart ones ripped to mp3, but I suspect that is not the default for iTunes?).
Similar arguments obviously apply to Windows users. As you point out, it's the devil you know. And you no doubt have lots of apps (and their affiliated data files) that you would have to deal with if you changed horses. As long as the horse you are on is not completely horrible the path of least resistance is to simply stay put, and so that is what most people will do. Because of the significant switching costs, I take issue with your characterization of folks as "Sheeple". It's more than "comfort" -- there is actual, insignificant effort involved in switching. Most people are too busy to bother.
Actually, Apple's stock price is driven by the iPod franchise. And in that area they are facing increasing competition. The new Sansa series from Sandisk (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ETTFRG/sr=8- 4/qid=1152187519/ref=pd_bbs_4/103-5524415-6770269? ie=UTF8) is getting rave reviews, Samsung is getting stronger, and there are rumors Microsoft will enter the fray this Christmas (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/ja n2006/tc20060126_148049.htm). I think these are the reasons for the recent drop in their stock price, and frankly (as Intel can attest), holding on to 75% of a technology-driven market is really hard to do. Personally, I don't think Apple stock is a very good bet right now. Of course if this new machine is a blockbuster maybe they could wean themselves off of the iPod as their big growth driver.
In a sense Microsoft is a lot like the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire's growth and economy was driven by conquering and plundering neighboring regions. Within the Empire they created a sort of safe economic zone where commerce could work and technology could be developed. However, that came at a price, as they tended to destroy everything outside the empire as it grew.
Even though I am not a Microsoft basher -- in fact probably on these boards I would be characterized as a Microsoft shill -- I think this analogy really does a nice job of describing Microsoft's behavior. And it probably also explains why my personal feeling is that, by-and-large, Microsoft has done more good than bad for folks like me (software developer). That's because I'm essentially "inside the empire". No doubt most Roman citizens felt the same way about their government's actions. That said, this analogy helps me to better understand the bitterness and vitriol directed at Microsoft that I witness on places like these boards, as many of the complaining folks consider themselves among the plundered.
Of course if one accepts the analogy, it is tempting to extrapolate what the future might hold for Microsoft. The Roman Empire grew so large that ultimately it collapsed because they couldn't control such a large and disparate entity. I think we may be seeing signs of that collapse in Microsoft as well.
OpenDocument is a standard format for documents that anyone can use. It doesn't have anything to do with voice synthesizing or special screen readers. That's the editor/viewing application's responsibility or capability.
I invented an open music format that I plan to publish to the world. Hopefully I can get Massachusetts to mandate its use. It is unencumbered by DRM, and is 100x compressed with no quality loss. There is no player for this format (yet), but that shouldn't stop its adoption since that's the playing application's responsibility. Surely a lack of application support shouldn't get in the way of adopting my clearly superior, open format, should it? Heck, anybody can just get the source code for Songbird and make the changes to support my format.
Well there is an option 3... do you really need top-end gaming power with you at all times while you travel for your job? I suppose if you "live on the road" it makes sense, but otherwise why not just get a "regular" laptop for half the price that is OK at gaming, but is also half the weight, gets twice the battery life, etc... then put the rest of the money you saved into a nice desktop (cube if you want to take it to a friend's house) gaming system. This covers gaming at home, having light-weight gaming on the road, having good gaming in limited venues by lugging the cube... all it doesn't cover is heavy-duty gaming on the road... so I guess that would be the target market, and I'm assuming it must be a fairly sizable market to warrant machines aimed at that niche.
In fact, that's the real irony (from a geeky perspective): the only kids that are actually trained to personally deal with adversity (and adversaries) are the jocks.
Actually they are working on this problem too! Witness the push for not keeping score in youth sports (which, as a Little League coach, I can testify only teaches kids that adults are idiots).
kid: Coach, what's the score? coach: It's a tie game! Everyone is playing really well! kid: Nuh-uh, they're killing us. We suck!
I never quite understood why someone would buy these really pricey gaming laptops. For my boys I built microATX cubes that have every bit as much performance as these high end laptops, for about 1/4th the price -- and they are easily and cheaply upgradeable down the road. When they go to a friend's house for a LANparty they just grab the cube by its handle and throw their keyboard/mouse into a bag. Monitors are not a problem -- most people have monitors leftover in their basement/attic from when they upgraded to LCD, so they just connect to the surplus monitor, plug into their network and off they go. Seriously, you can build a nice cube gaming box for about $550 (DVD writer, Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB DDR400, 300GB SATA HD, Windows XP license, box w/420W supply, motherboard) plus whatever graphics floats your boat (I find the $99 NVidia 6 series PCIe boards are more than adequate, though I have also found that many games are actually quite playable using just the embedded graphics like the NVidia 6150). Sure, you may be 10 or 20 fps slower than your buddies, with a little less detail in the shadows, but who cares (especially when most LCD monitors top out at 60Hz refresh rate anyhow;-).
I agree with everything you said. I believe this a process which can and *should* be formalized. My experience is that at most companies this is not the case. And in those companies that do attempt some sort of formalization there is a distressing (in my opinion) trend towards these "personality/behavioral-based' interviews, leaving less time to assess technical competence and "passion for product development".
FWIW, I was exposed to a very rigorous and (I think effective) interview process at the second company I worked for. They had a remarkable hiring track record - a lab full of excellent engineers (most would be top-ranked at any other company) and almost non-existent turnover (over more than a decade, so it was sustained). Their process was formal and quite rigorous. Interview teams were cross-functional, even when hiring for a particular discipline (ie R&D interviewed MFG candidates and vice versa, and everyone talked to both a software and a hardware technical interviewer even if that was not their forte; we believed in hiring flexible, well-grounded generalists). Interviewers all had standard questions that they asked of every candidate - usually one 20-minute-ish technical question that was fairly open-ended and could lead to much discussion, so they could compare candidates on the same material. All of the morning interviews (usually 4) were technical. During the plant tour immedately following lunch with the candidate, the technical interviewers got together and discussed the candidate on technical merits and, if the candidate passed muster (most didn't) the managers did the "soft skills" interviews after lunch. If the technical interviews did not go well usually a short debrief with HR would close out the interview. For good candidates, the whole thing closed with a "sell job" (cool product demos, perhaps a short meeting with a high level manager to sell them on the company's prospects.
Actually I look at loose coupling as a style of architecture, not a methodology. But you are right, it could be construed as a methodology for building large systems.
I have been developing products for a long time (decades if you must know). For what it's worth, it is my experience that the people on the team have by far the biggest impact on product quality, timeliness, and all those other goodness measures. I believe that the methodology is almost immaterial. Good engineers will instinctively use the appropriate process for the problem at hand. Now, this doesn't necessarily scale to very large projects, which is why I am a firm believer in loose coupling. As soon as practical, decompose the big project in to a collection of loosely coupled smaller projects and then put in place the teams (unfettered by process dogma) to develop the pieces. Ahh, you ask, but what process do you use to decompose the system? See my earlier comment - choose a small team of very good engineers and have them do it. Don't tell them how -- they already know that. Trust people, not process. Ironically there is one process that I believe is critical to every organization's success, and it probably the least-studied, least-optimized, least-formalized process every company has... and that process is the interview process. Clearly if I am going to trust my people to do the right things and make the right choices, I had better hire the right people. Anyhow, that's about $0.93 more than my $0.02 so I'll step down off my soapbox now.
It's interesting how just the image of human eyes "humanizes" the coffee fund. I was chatting with a professor friend who was complaining about how most of the boys in his classes wear baseball caps that prevent him from seeing most of their face, including their eyes. He felt that even subconsciously this affected their grades in a negative way. It bothered him that he didn't really know them. In fact he joked that mostly he knew their hats --- "the kid with the red hat with the black bill seems pretty good at derivatives."
I thought FUD == Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. My comment was more feigned surprise with perhaps a touch of sarcasm. Consider, what would be the downside of a European court fining an American company (especially one as successful and reviled as Microsoft)? They had virtually nothing to lose and everything to gain. I was not, believe it or not, suggesting the fine is not warranted. I was only pointing out that the outcome was entirely predictable.
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Performance is the short answer.
But on the other hand I just can't stomach the fact that I pay $2k for a nice system, but I must have windows to play my games.
Why do you care what OS is underneath? Your nice $2K machine came with Windows, right? And it plays all your games out of the box, right? So what's the problem? Or is this some sort of irrational religious thing?
It's so artificial to me. I mean, I know that direct-x's APIs allow for ease of development and speedier time to market, as well as giving a simpler interface to modern video card's best features.
But the hardware is there!
You seem to understand something about what it takes to develop games, but apparently you have no clue what it takes to do that development at the level required for commercial (ie, something people will pay for) quality. Each new platform is a huge undertaking. And that's not just in coding, it's in test, distribution, and support. No company that wants to stay in business is going to take on that expense for a small market.
staggering that in such a short time the US has gone from loved to hated , the conclusion is Bush and his cronies have put the US populace in a lot more danger than they where 5 years ago
Ever since the US rose to superpower status there have been those who hate us. They hate us out of envy, they hate us out of jealousy. No matter what foreign policy we enact, there will be those who feel slighted and who will resent us. 9/11 was rooted in that hate. So was the previous attack on the World Trade Center, and the bombing of TWA 800, the marine barracks, the USS Cole, etc etc. From a pragmatic perspective, I know it is not possible to get the whole world to love us. Personally, I think that the best we can hope for is that those who hate us also fear us, so that they don't act upon that hate. So far, on that score, Bush's policies seem to have worked, as the number of terrorist acts against Americans has dramatically decreased in the last five years. Instead they are striking countries like Spain that they know will not strike back.
I think the marketplace has been very well-served by the two dualities that existed before this move: ATI and NVidia beat each other's brains out, as did Intel and AMD. This new dynamic with 3 players does not seem, to me, to promise anywhere near as many benefits for us, the customers. Will ATI become more AMD-centric? Undoubtably. Will NVidia (which has been a great AMD booster) become less supportive of AMD processors? Probably. As this plays out, it seems to me that NVidia will basically be an Intel graphics house (including Macs), and ATI will melt into AMD, becoming mostly an internal chipset house. In the end we lose a very healthy competition between NVidia and ATI. We gain, perhaps, a stronger AMD to keep Intel honest.
is going to willingly download political podcasts which are basically campaign ads, other than someone who is already fanatically committed to the particular candidate. Seriously, I simply can't imagine going to all that trouble to hear a campaign ad. Now I suppose if I have autofeeds set up and they find a way to jam their infomercials into my PodPlayer, I might accidentally hear one or two, but frankly, to me that would be like audio spam, and I would hold that against the candidate -- it would certainly not convince me to vote for him/her.
I'm sure there will be a large number of people listening to podcasts of their favorite politicians, but I am equally sure it will have no bearing on the outcome of the election.
Doesn't really seem like that many, considering the amount of cars of types of televisions there is out there.
... near as I can tell there are not that many kinds of cars either -- gasoline, diesel, hybrid, all-electric, synth-fuel. Sure, there are many models (hatchback, sports car, SUV, etc), but then there are many models of computers too (big iron servers, laptops, ultralights, desktops, workstations ...). Please, please, let's not go back to the days when every hardware vendor had their own operating system; that made for really expensive hardware and really expensive software.
Bad analogy
I have to say, I am continually amazed that the "perpetually offended" types haven't gone after Google for brazenly commemorating religious holidays like Christmas, and American imperialist holidays like Thanksgiving. I suppose it's only a matter of time before folks like the ACLU try to put a stop to this, but until then I'll simply enjoy them.
When a union opposes something there is always only 1 reason: self-interest. This is true for any union, and always has been. Likewise when a company opposes something it is also for 1 reason: self-interest. Sure, the teachers union will *claim* it's "about the children", but that is simply not the case. Now don't get me wrong -- I don't have a problem with that. I accept it, and believe, actually, that is the true role of a union. It's all about balance. But please, can we not pretend the teacher's union is really more concerned for the children than they are for protecting their own interests?
As regards online middle school, I say "why not?". Maybe I've consumed too much of the "diversity koolaid", but my view is, let's try a bunch of things. Different types of school environments are best for different types of children. Let's give parents and children some choices. Why is that such a bad thing?
Apple will certainly try to push into the market
Yipee! We will all get to pay double or triple for our OSes then! Seriously, for such a nasty monopoly, I think most rational people will agree that charging $89 for an OS (retail) is pretty reasonable. Take Microsoft out of the mix and prices go through the roof, in my opinion. Ditto for the hardware, unless another player emerges as a dominant enough force to prevent the HW vendors from reverting to the "good old days" when nothing was compatible so you were a captive customer. you want a spreadsheet that runs on our systems? Sure, that'll be $10,000!
I think selecting Carly was a symptom of HP's decline, not the cause of it. The company was well down the path of losing its way by the time Carly came along. Look at the history of HP to see what I mean. The original culture and values of the company instilled by Bill and Dave were all about innovation, quality, community, employees ... basically the vaunted "HP way". And this recipe worked extremely well as is evidenced by the financial performance and growth of HP over many decades, through boom times and slow times. No long term debt. Very high margins. Unparalleled customer and employee loyalty (extremely low turnover, no layoffs). Unequalled product quality. This is the company that brought us such hallmark products as the scientific handheld calculator (the venerable HP35 and its follow-ons), the logic analyzer, the inkjet printer, the laser printer, the "Pisces" emulation systems, the HPIB instrument interconnection bus (now better known as IEEE-488), 360-series PC board test stations, phased array cardiac ultrasound systems with color flow for non-invasively measuring blood flow ... the list of notable, first-in-class (as opposed to me-too), commercially successful products is indeed long. But as Bill and Dave moved into retirement the company began to evolve (devolve in my opinion). Innovation mattered less than "time to market". Quality mattered less than "cost". Employees mattered less than "efficiencies". Engineering mattered less than marketing.
So, by the time Carly was hired as CEO of HP, they had already spun out the intruments and medical divisions - basically destroying the diversity of HP, leaving it as a computer company operating in a viscious low-margin market. They had already moved away from the concept of autonomous divisions, towards big, bureaucratic, centralized behemoths. They had already abandoned the fiscal discipline whereby all growth was self-funded and moved towards funding growth with long-term debt. And isn't it obvious that the company that was once HP is now just another computer company - nothing special. Sure, they have lots of shelf-space at CompUSA, and they move lots of boxes for a small profit. But the breakthrough, innovative products are no more. The reputation for quality is gone. I don't blame Carly, nor do I give her credit "for saving HP", since the HP I knew is long dead.
it doesn't sound alot different than my trusty iPaq which I have been carrying for several years and absolutely love. I guess the difference might be a built-in hard drive (I am limited to SD storage - 4GB), and perhaps a more up-to-date and smaller industrial design. But I already have a big (touch) screen, built-in WIFI, a camera, lots of games, outlook syncing, and the ability to play videos, MP3s or subscription WMAs.
I think you are, for the most part, spot-on. And I might add, never sell short switching costs. For iPod users, the switching cost is moving their music collection to another music management app (iTunes only supports iPods, right?). Further, since they've most likely ripped their music to Apple/AAC format, they would have to re-rip to WMA or whatever other format their new player wanted (the smart ones ripped to mp3, but I suspect that is not the default for iTunes?).
Similar arguments obviously apply to Windows users. As you point out, it's the devil you know. And you no doubt have lots of apps (and their affiliated data files) that you would have to deal with if you changed horses. As long as the horse you are on is not completely horrible the path of least resistance is to simply stay put, and so that is what most people will do. Because of the significant switching costs, I take issue with your characterization of folks as "Sheeple". It's more than "comfort" -- there is actual, insignificant effort involved in switching. Most people are too busy to bother.
Actually, Apple's stock price is driven by the iPod franchise. And in that area they are facing increasing competition. The new Sansa series from Sandisk (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ETTFRG/sr=8- 4/qid=1152187519/ref=pd_bbs_4/103-5524415-6770269? ie=UTF8) is getting rave reviews, Samsung is getting stronger, and there are rumors Microsoft will enter the fray this Christmas (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/ja n2006/tc20060126_148049.htm). I think these are the reasons for the recent drop in their stock price, and frankly (as Intel can attest), holding on to 75% of a technology-driven market is really hard to do. Personally, I don't think Apple stock is a very good bet right now. Of course if this new machine is a blockbuster maybe they could wean themselves off of the iPod as their big growth driver.
In a sense Microsoft is a lot like the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire's growth and economy was driven by conquering and plundering neighboring regions. Within the Empire they created a sort of safe economic zone where commerce could work and technology could be developed. However, that came at a price, as they tended to destroy everything outside the empire as it grew.
Even though I am not a Microsoft basher -- in fact probably on these boards I would be characterized as a Microsoft shill -- I think this analogy really does a nice job of describing Microsoft's behavior. And it probably also explains why my personal feeling is that, by-and-large, Microsoft has done more good than bad for folks like me (software developer). That's because I'm essentially "inside the empire". No doubt most Roman citizens felt the same way about their government's actions. That said, this analogy helps me to better understand the bitterness and vitriol directed at Microsoft that I witness on places like these boards, as many of the complaining folks consider themselves among the plundered.
Of course if one accepts the analogy, it is tempting to extrapolate what the future might hold for Microsoft. The Roman Empire grew so large that ultimately it collapsed because they couldn't control such a large and disparate entity. I think we may be seeing signs of that collapse in Microsoft as well.
Et tu, Ozzie?
OpenDocument is a standard format for documents that anyone can use. It doesn't have anything to do with voice synthesizing or special screen readers. That's the editor/viewing application's responsibility or capability.
I invented an open music format that I plan to publish to the world. Hopefully I can get Massachusetts to mandate its use. It is unencumbered by DRM, and is 100x compressed with no quality loss. There is no player for this format (yet), but that shouldn't stop its adoption since that's the playing application's responsibility. Surely a lack of application support shouldn't get in the way of adopting my clearly superior, open format, should it? Heck, anybody can just get the source code for Songbird and make the changes to support my format.
Well there is an option 3 ... do you really need top-end gaming power with you at all times while you travel for your job? I suppose if you "live on the road" it makes sense, but otherwise why not just get a "regular" laptop for half the price that is OK at gaming, but is also half the weight, gets twice the battery life, etc ... then put the rest of the money you saved into a nice desktop (cube if you want to take it to a friend's house) gaming system. This covers gaming at home, having light-weight gaming on the road, having good gaming in limited venues by lugging the cube ... all it doesn't cover is heavy-duty gaming on the road ... so I guess that would be the target market, and I'm assuming it must be a fairly sizable market to warrant machines aimed at that niche.
hmmmm, um, put me down for option 3.
In fact, that's the real irony (from a geeky perspective): the only kids that are actually trained to personally deal with adversity (and adversaries) are the jocks.
Actually they are working on this problem too! Witness the push for not keeping score in youth sports (which, as a Little League coach, I can testify only teaches kids that adults are idiots).
kid: Coach, what's the score?
coach: It's a tie game! Everyone is playing really well!
kid: Nuh-uh, they're killing us. We suck!
I never quite understood why someone would buy these really pricey gaming laptops. For my boys I built microATX cubes that have every bit as much performance as these high end laptops, for about 1/4th the price -- and they are easily and cheaply upgradeable down the road. When they go to a friend's house for a LANparty they just grab the cube by its handle and throw their keyboard/mouse into a bag. Monitors are not a problem -- most people have monitors leftover in their basement/attic from when they upgraded to LCD, so they just connect to the surplus monitor, plug into their network and off they go. Seriously, you can build a nice cube gaming box for about $550 (DVD writer, Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB DDR400, 300GB SATA HD, Windows XP license, box w/420W supply, motherboard) plus whatever graphics floats your boat (I find the $99 NVidia 6 series PCIe boards are more than adequate, though I have also found that many games are actually quite playable using just the embedded graphics like the NVidia 6150). Sure, you may be 10 or 20 fps slower than your buddies, with a little less detail in the shadows, but who cares (especially when most LCD monitors top out at 60Hz refresh rate anyhow ;-).
I agree with everything you said. I believe this a process which can and *should* be formalized. My experience is that at most companies this is not the case. And in those companies that do attempt some sort of formalization there is a distressing (in my opinion) trend towards these "personality/behavioral-based' interviews, leaving less time to assess technical competence and "passion for product development".
FWIW, I was exposed to a very rigorous and (I think effective) interview process at the second company I worked for. They had a remarkable hiring track record - a lab full of excellent engineers (most would be top-ranked at any other company) and almost non-existent turnover (over more than a decade, so it was sustained). Their process was formal and quite rigorous. Interview teams were cross-functional, even when hiring for a particular discipline (ie R&D interviewed MFG candidates and vice versa, and everyone talked to both a software and a hardware technical interviewer even if that was not their forte; we believed in hiring flexible, well-grounded generalists). Interviewers all had standard questions that they asked of every candidate - usually one 20-minute-ish technical question that was fairly open-ended and could lead to much discussion, so they could compare candidates on the same material. All of the morning interviews (usually 4) were technical. During the plant tour immedately following lunch with the candidate, the technical interviewers got together and discussed the candidate on technical merits and, if the candidate passed muster (most didn't) the managers did the "soft skills" interviews after lunch. If the technical interviews did not go well usually a short debrief with HR would close out the interview. For good candidates, the whole thing closed with a "sell job" (cool product demos, perhaps a short meeting with a high level manager to sell them on the company's prospects.
Actually I look at loose coupling as a style of architecture, not a methodology. But you are right, it could be construed as a methodology for building large systems.
I have been developing products for a long time (decades if you must know). For what it's worth, it is my experience that the people on the team have by far the biggest impact on product quality, timeliness, and all those other goodness measures. I believe that the methodology is almost immaterial. Good engineers will instinctively use the appropriate process for the problem at hand. Now, this doesn't necessarily scale to very large projects, which is why I am a firm believer in loose coupling. As soon as practical, decompose the big project in to a collection of loosely coupled smaller projects and then put in place the teams (unfettered by process dogma) to develop the pieces. Ahh, you ask, but what process do you use to decompose the system? See my earlier comment - choose a small team of very good engineers and have them do it. Don't tell them how -- they already know that. Trust people, not process. Ironically there is one process that I believe is critical to every organization's success, and it probably the least-studied, least-optimized, least-formalized process every company has ... and that process is the interview process. Clearly if I am going to trust my people to do the right things and make the right choices, I had better hire the right people. Anyhow, that's about $0.93 more than my $0.02 so I'll step down off my soapbox now.
It's interesting how just the image of human eyes "humanizes" the coffee fund. I was chatting with a professor friend who was complaining about how most of the boys in his classes wear baseball caps that prevent him from seeing most of their face, including their eyes. He felt that even subconsciously this affected their grades in a negative way. It bothered him that he didn't really know them. In fact he joked that mostly he knew their hats --- "the kid with the red hat with the black bill seems pretty good at derivatives."
Heaven forbid somebody actually make a profit as a reward for finding a cure for cancer.
I thought FUD == Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. My comment was more feigned surprise with perhaps a touch of sarcasm. Consider, what would be the downside of a European court fining an American company (especially one as successful and reviled as Microsoft)? They had virtually nothing to lose and everything to gain. I was not, believe it or not, suggesting the fine is not warranted. I was only pointing out that the outcome was entirely predictable.
A European court enacts steep, recurring fines on an American corporation. Who could ever have seen this coming? I am shocked, shocked I say!