I have to agree. Ironically I've had more trouble with Windows 7 in the last 3 days than I did Vista for over a year.
Granted I wasn't an early adopter of Vista, but of course, I am with Windows 7 because I bought into the hype that it was somehow stable at release unlike other Microsoft OS'.
I encountered the student deal issue people had been having with the installer not unpacking correctly, however in my case it was trivial to fix- I just extracted it to a different volume, I extracted it to a 4gb USB key rather than the drive it didn't work on on my laptop I downloaded it to and it was fine so that was no big deal.
Then I bought into the bullshit about how you could do a clean install with the upgrade version by choosing custom install like it stated all over Microsoft's site, whiped my drive (fine, I'd backed everything up), got it all copied across, reached the product key section and it didn't work, because Microsoft actually lied it doesn't ask for a Vista/XP disk/key like some people are Microsoft stated it would if you take this route, it doesn't let you just go ahead like others at Microsoft said it would like it was just a full install, no, it just fucks you over and tells you your key was invalid. I had to install Vista from scratch, then install Windows 7 over it, because my Vista edition was Ultimate and my Windows 7 edition was Professional it said "Oh by the way, you have to do a custom clean install for this", which I did, but because I was letting the install remove Vista this time rather than a blank drive it worked. It's a minor thing and yes I know it says upgrade, but when Microsoft employees themselves and Microsoft's official installation guide says you can do a clean install with the upgrade you should be able to do a clean fucking install.
So now it's all up and running okay, I thought I'll just copy some data across the network which I backed up on my other PC, I don't bother with a domain nowadays they're just in the same workgroup, so I just try the usual \\computer2\share, but no, it doesn't fucking work does it? "There is no login provider to service your request" - no fucking shit sherlock, that's because I do things peer to peer nowadays. I tried mapping the drive and specifying the username to use but there is absolutely no option to specify the domain- it forces you to use your local computer as the authentication domain when I wish to use the other computer as the authentication domain because that's the one I wish to connect to.
Then there's this new taskbar, where apps in the tray no longer work half the time- you can click away at the Steam icon and it doesn't popup like it should half the time. The RSS reader gadget doesn't popout story previews anymore, although it did randomly work for about 20mins before refusing to do it again due to some blatant bug. Installing applications and asking them to put icons in the quick launch means you lose your icons because the quick launch doesn't exist anymore so you have to go find them in the god awful Start Menu (although that does stem back to Vista) or on the disk itself. Even Microsoft's own MSN messenger acts a bit screwy with the new taskbar.
Explorer doesn't expand the treeview as you browse through directories anymore, meaning if you want to browse into one folder to copy something further down the treeview but not a subfolder of the path you're in means you have to copy, then browse all the way to that fucking folder to copy into it.
The sidebar has gone, and although there are hacks to bring it back, they're just that. Gadgets are now useless anyway, they're either underneath your windows and hence pointless, or over the top of your windows obscuring your Window making them simply annoying, not forced to the side of them with the Windows pushed away from them by the sidebar as in Vista which was blatantly a better option.
The only good thing about Windows 7 is it looks a little nicer and runs a little faster, otherwise? Windows 7, worse than Vista tbh- but personally, I thought V
Much of US culture spread stems entirely from the previous spread of English and related traditions as a result of the British empire.
If large parts of the world didn't speak English as a result of the British empire, Hollywood would have a much harder time for example. Effectively the spread of British traits by the British empire were an enabler for the later spread of American culture, hence the relative speed at which it could spread- the groundwork was already well in place.
Further to that, it's also worth noting that there is really nothing distinctly American about American culture for the most part, much of it is really just a mixing of other cultures, primarily from the nations America stemmed. It's language is English, it's food chains are primarily based on British, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian foods like fries, pizza etc. Fashion is another good example in that whilst America is a major fashion consumer, producer and supplier, the designs are still very often designed by Europeans and carry the traits of European fashion into the American market, which then
Tellingly, it's worth looking at things like American football, which have a prominent position in American culture- it's a game that's really played very little outside North America, in fact, it stems from games like Rugby, which it internationally has failed to supplant as a cultural element.
Whilst certainly there is no argument many American companies have been extremely successful and have managed to push their brand internationally over foreign competitors it is wrong to equate this with the spread of American culture- a lot of the time it's simply foreign culture resold by an American company.
Of course, it's not always simple, the spread of American products has pushed American cultural elements such as American misspellings of the English language such that those misspellings have become more popular worldwide than the original English variant and there's a fair argument this is a spread of American culture, which it is. What is wrong however is to ignore the fact that, at the end of the day, it's merely an evolution of the English language and it's still the English language at the core of it that is being used.
Yeah it's a mess. Britain's Labour government is seen as quite left in some circles due to their extremely socialist policies, yet when you look at other policies they're extremely right.
The problem is that parties can be left on some things and right on others, the problem with Labour in the UK is it's too far left on things it's left on and too far right on things it's right on. The only thing we can really tell from the left/right scale is that if a party is too far away from the centre in either direction on a particular issue then it's probably not a party that's particularly friendly to the idea of fairness- stray into socialism on the left and you're taking from those who work hard to give to those who don't, stray the same distance in the right and you start to see elements of fascism and bigotry.
I've not really seen a bad government that is truly centrist on just about all issues yet, but this could simply be because truly centrist governments rarely ever exist.
For what it's worth though, if the political compass is anything to go by, I'm with Ghandi!
Do you know for sure that their new networking model is going to be this primitive or are you just speculating about that?
How do you know it wont be more like matchmaking on the XBox (which would make sense, then they could have a standardised codebase). On the XBox it figures out who has the best throughput across all the players and lets that one host, if they disconnect it migrates them to the next best host. In that respect it's more solid than dedicated servers because the game will continue as long as there are players whilst even dedicated servers can go down or be laggy. For what it's worth, I've never had any problems with lag on Halo, CoD4 CoD5 etc. on the XBox either so whatever algorithms they use seem pretty solid.
Back in the Quake days it used to be rare for a server to be running on a 2mbps connection. Nowadays that's below average in many parts of the world, not to mention networking code in games has drastically improved since then. The chance of someone in a group of people having a connection capable of hosting is extremely high nowadays. The issues you speak of were certainly true some years back, but they don't ring true nowadays as XBox live successfully demonstrates.
I'd say the mods thing is the biggest problem by far, mods are really what made PC gaming great. Quake was fucking awesome in its day, but Teamfortress made it even better again, and I have fond memories of the likes of Alien Quake, Special Forces Quake and so on.
Who says he's making trade offs? Maybe it's something he enjoys doing more than the other possible options like reading a newspaper or mindlessly listening to an MP3 player?
To be fair I think you're misrepresenting the point being made.
No one expects you to work in your free time, what him and others like him are saying is that there's little point hiring someone like you who has no interest in programming out of work when there are plenty who actually do enjoy programming outside work and will more often than not have far more skill and experience as a result.
Of course, that's not to say people who live programming are suited to every software development role, you don't want someone socially inept doing requirements gathering from users and such, but if it's a pure programming role then I think it's quite sensible to pick those who love programming and will happily keep their skills uptodate in their spare time well above and beyond the bear minimum required to get paid.
You're making a lot of assumptions, such as assuming someone will burn out. If they actually enjoy programming they're no more likely to burn out than you are to die of boredom "relaxing". Different people thrive on different things, some thrive on sitting back and chilling and get stressed if they can't do that, others thrive on constantly being challenged and go mad if they have nothing to do.
So in other words, they're not saying they wont hire you because you want to have a life, they're saying they'll take the guy who's more than happy not having a life and living as a programmer both at work, and at home. It might not be very encouraging to hear that, but you're in the fortunate position that there almost certainly aren't enough of these people to fill every role, leaving room for people like yourself to also get jobs in the field, if it ever becomes more competitive though don't be suprised if those who live programming are getting jobs over you, but don't get pissed off about it either- go for customer focussing development jobs if you like socialising whilst these types of guys stay in their dark rooms day in day out if it's what they like.
"But the worst part of this is that anyone with an advanced degree in the sciences can likely figure out for themselves how to make a very deadly bomb. Whatever they lack in skill can be filled in by a visit to the university library or engineering department."
I'd like to think the same too, but it's simply not the case. See this guy:
Which completely failed to go off. They then drove to Glasgow airport and drove into it throwing petrol bombs. He was the only casualty, managing to burn himself so badly he died in hospital. Bilal, the other attacker was arrested and is now in jail.
Sorry, but the assertion that phd = smart enough to perform a successful attack is completely wrong. This guy failed on two accounts, his bombs failed, and his second attack failed to the point he has to be a prime contender for a Darwin award.
I would agree that the potential for a smart terrorist is a worrying one, certainly here in the UK you'd have had a lot more reason to be scared of the IRA than you would any of the new wave of Al Qaeda wannabes that try it on here, 90% of whom, much like the guy in TFA, get caught before they even get anywhere. Probably because they join an internet chat room, start talking to MrWesternerKiller about how they plan to kill Westerners, thinking they've finally found someone who agrees with them whilst living in a continent where everyone completely disagrees with them to the point they can't even express their views, only to find MrWesternerKiller is actually an FBI agent and the guy has just signed his own arrest warrant.
From the articles I've seen about it, he was arrested for communicating the will to commit terrorist acts and had been seeking advice and information on doing just that. He was effectively at the very start of the planning stage.
Make of that what you will, if they have evidence of intent he could well be a dangerous person.
It really comes down to what evidence they really did have, and what was included in those communications for which he was arrested.
The problem is, you and I don't know what evidence they actually do have, and unless we do we can't say if the arrest was justified or not so it seems pointless speculating. If he was picked up simply out of paranoia because he was phoning uncle Abdullah in Pakistan then yeah, it's rediculous. If he was however phoning Mr Mehsud of the Taliban and asking for information producing bombs from house hold material and information on which targets Al Qaeda would most like him to blow up and what kind of casualty figures they were looking for then it's a different story.
It's a shame it rarely ever comes out what their evidence actually was so we can properly check the validity of arrests like this.
Of course it's not the only comparison you can make, particularly when you're trying to draw conclusions about the profits of only a small part of the business, I've told you quite clearly how you can do a better more worthwhile comparison.
It's not just "a few gadgets to sell", Dell has a whole global services division. Using your logic you may as well just compare Microsoft and Apple because they both make an operating system and come to the conclusion Apple's business plan is crap because they're not a touch on Microsoft financially.
You can't directly compare businesses that compete only in one single market when the businesses as a whole compete in multiple markets. It's pointless, it demonstrates nothing, you can deduce nothing from it.
Java has become the number one most prominent language in business with good reason. It's flexible, and can cater to pretty much anything you throw at it if you understand the tools and technologies available, and which ones are suited to your particular problem. Garbage collection really just comes down to having an understanding of the way the garbage collector works and being able to develop with that in mind. See here for an example discussion of just that from back in 2003:
The problem Java and.NET seem to face is people approaching the language, from say a C++ background and not understanding what's different about it and how it works to be able to implement a solution in it to an equivalent level of their C++ application. This does not mean experienced Java/.NET programmers cannot do just that though- they can, and do. Again, it's really a question of competence in a particular skillset rather than inherent flaws in a particular technology.
"A large scale trading system like this one is one of those circumstances."
No, the circumstances which I refer are very specific, and are not circumstances that can be easily determined and made use of for a whole system, particularly of this size. An example of the circumstances to which I refer are extremely small programs, where the JVM/CLR startup time will lose the fight for Java/.NET, however this has no bearing on performance once they have started up, and for a system like this that runs continuously that is far, far more important than a few milliseconds of additional startup time.
It's often cited that there's little point hand optimising nowadays because compilers do a better job of it than 99% of programmers could anyway. This is a fair point, but it's even more relevant with interpreted/JIT compiled languages like Java and the.NET family. Why? Because a VM can perform this kind of optimisation at runtime where relevant and required, it can do it based on the data the system has to handle in the real world. You cannot do that with a compiled language when you do not know the data conditions you will have to handle at the time, but again, if you really, really can be sure you can do it better, just implement that section in unmanaged assembly. If you're interested in reading more about Java in particular in high performance computing, there's a decent paper here if you can be bothered to register an account:
There is really nothing about Java or.NET that prevents them from solving this particular application, again, the only barrier is developer competence. It is of course worth noting that developer competence is very much a concern with C++ too because there is more room for error, and more scope for damage when you put a bad programmer in front of C++.
Of course, I am not arguing that C++ no longer has a place, it certainly does- the additional memory footprint of Java/.NET is a concern for high performance embedded devices for example. Consoles are also a good example because it's really the only language available that is common to multiple platforms such as the PS2, PS3, 360 and Wii and also these platforms still rely more heavily on manual optimization due to their unique architectures. I'm still very fond of C++, but what I'm not fond of are people who have a fixed outdated view on languages and their usefulness in particular settings. Like it or not, in the last 10 years, the areas where C++ is the best tool for the job have rapidly diminished. Enterprise applications and HPC is one area where C++ no longer holds any real discernible advantage.
"Clearly in this case the optimizations weren't sufficient."
For what it's worth, the speed issue does not seem to have been the reason for the switch, although the new system is faster they cite costs and control as the key reasons for the change and do not suggest that performance was a reason for change, only a benefit of change. Your assertion that the optimisations weren't sufficient, assuming much optmimisation was even done isn't true.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that a GC-based, VM-based language that has layers of intermediate execution is going to be slower than is required for a trading system."
Actually, this is only true in an ever decreasing set of circumstances.
See here for an explanation of some of the common reasons why this is often not the case:
These sites are focussed on Java, but the points are applicable to.NET also as it's on par nowadays. In.NET you also get the option of using unmanaged code anyway so you can have areas that don't require the VM to underlie execution.
I'd imagine the real problem in this case was a combination of poor project management with poorly skilled developers in an attempt to make the profit margins for Microsoft and Accenture as big as possible. The net result though, as you can see, is quite bad. I do not believe for a second.NET was the problem as there is no reason it can't be used in a way that performs as well as or better than a C++ application. It would use a bit more memory to achieve that performance, but memory is cheap enough for this to not be an issue for most cases nowadays, particularly when you factor in the benefits of security and resilience you get from the managed parts of the codebase.
There's quite a fundamental difference between Dell and Apple. Dell has much stronger ties to the enterprise than Apple, it provides services as well as just hardware, but of the hardware it sells it provides blade servers, networking equipment and so on.
Dell is still profitable, but is much more vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy due to it's large investment in business divisions that Apple simply doesn't even have. Similarly, Apple has a near monopoly in the portable media player market, whilst Dell is not really in this market at all. Apple's strength in portable media players nets it a vast amount of it's revenue, but clearly has no bearing on the quality of it's PCs. iTunes also brings in a lot of money for Apple.
Rather than simply speculating if you're interested in finding out whether Apple's computer hardware business model is better than Dell's you could probably get hold of both companies accounts and compare the strengths of those specific divisions of both companies if they offer accounts in such a form, rather than trying to compare both companies as a whole.
Sorry, what has satisfaction got to do with reliability exactly?
I'm a Wii and XBox 360 owner, the Wii has never had any faults or problems whilst I'm on my 4th Xbox 360 due to hardware failures. I'm still far more satisfied with the XBox 360 though because I simply prefer the games on it. The Wii despite looking full of promise at first really has very little for hardcore gamers like myself. As my XBox was replaced same-day in store every time it failed and I was given 2000 MS points free in compensation by Microsoft each time when I contacted them about it also I really have little to complain about, but again, that doesn't mean the system is in any way reliable whatsoever.
Even then there's the issues of how accurate satisfaction surveys are. It's easy to say you're satisfied with something that's unreliable if you paid over the odds for it because you don't want to admit you got suckered into buying an expensive piece of junk. There's also the question of who funds these surveys, can you be sure they are independent?
So to sum up, what has your post got to do with the fact the parent you were responding to made a comment about reliability? Between easily scratched iPod nano screens, overheating and igniting magsafe power adapters, exploding iPhones, discolouring MacBook cases is it any wonder that people question the reliability of Apple hardware? We've certainly seen far more stories of recurring problems in various pieces of Apple hardware in the last 5 years than we have any other hardware manufacturer I believe. I'm sure you'll put it down to media bias or similar though.
I think there are even good reasons why this is the case, Apple is often at the forefront of technology, technology that is unfortunately at times not fully tested because some of the errors arise only after longer term testing which they do not have time to do before going to market. I can understand and sympathise with Apple as to why these things happen, but the important point is that they do actually happen, and reliability is an issue in some Apple products.
"if anything the problem is that Apple doesn't make CHEAP computers like $300 netbooks so that cuts out the poor/cheap folks looking only at price."
People buy netbooks not simply because they're poor or cheap, they buy them because they realise that when all you need to do is type up documents, make spreadsheets and so forth without having to lug around a laptop case they're best in class. The netbook was a realisation that there is a fuck load of people out there who only need the usual computing capabilities (Office suite, web browser etc.) but found mobile phones/PDAs too small for this purpose and laptops too big. I know a few people who bought netbooks not because they couldn't afford a Macbook, but because it wouldn't fit in their handbag or rucksack like a netbook. Apple does not offer this form factor of laptop, instead it release the air, which is just as wide and long, but thinner, that's a useless form factor to 99% of people because it still doesn't fit well in many casual bags due to it's width.
"Most people own a PC because the workplace DEMANDS it. 12% of people that own a Mac in addition to a PC went out of their way to seek it out because they didn't like Windows.... that's a huge and growing dissatisfaction rating."
Or, you know, maybe many people just like both? I understand that might be a tough concept for fanboys to comprehend though of course, but really, for most people the world just isn't that binary.
People who argue Macs are better than PCs and vice versa and make up stories for themselves about how it's because people obviously hate the other system that they own both are an absolutely tiny subset of the set of people who own these systems. The reality is, most people just want to be able to type up documents, send e-mails and browse the internet, they couldn't give a fuck if they were doing this in Windows, Mac OS X or Linux as long as it does the job well enough. At the end of the day, for these basic tasks, there just really isn't enough between the 3 OS' for people to care, hence why Linux netbooks did so well at first before Microsoft managed to force netbook producers to start sticking Windows on. The fact it's Linux was just no hurdle to most people because they had their web browser, their word processor and so on.
Well, it's marketshare is second only to RIM and Symbian. It may not be great, but usable or not it's still a major player ahead of Mac OS X, Linux, Palm's Web OS and such.
There's certainly no question it's losing ground to these other players now, but writing it off when it holds such a noticable segment of the market is stupid. Losing ground does not equal irrelevant, for example, Internet Explorer has been and still is (thankfully!) losing ground to Firefox relatively quickly, but you'd be a fool to ignore it and develop a website that didn't support it.
It's not just a new skin over the same old features, there are new features- just not as many as are planned for Windows 7, again, it's still an improvement, and it's better to be selling 6.5 than 6.1 until 7 comes out if 6.5 is better.
Reasons for sticking with an inferior platform may be resources invested in that platform- many companies have applications built in.NET for the Windows Mobile platform that they do not wish to spend resources porting. Some will no doubt jump on this as an example of Microsoft being anti-competitive but it's really the same with the iPhone. Personally, it's why I'd always write general mobile applications in Java too, in case I ever did need to port, although that wouldn't help with a move to the iPhone it'd at least open up porting between Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android etc. It's just a shame J2ME has been shit for so long allowing other platform specific technologies to take hold, but it's rapidly improving now at least.
Again, to put it into survival speak, you have WM6.1 which isn't fit to survive in todays market, you have 6.5 which is fit to survive, but not thrive, and 7 which Microsoft hopes will thrive. Keeping 6.1 as the only option would kill Microsoft's userbase in almost it's entirety, releasing 6.5 at very least stems the flow of people leaving the platform even if it can't reverse the pattern, that's still better than nothing and it's presumably the best they could do in the short term.
Because although it's not the release he wanted, it's still better than 6.1.
If they released nothing they'd likely lose the remaining Windows Mobile providers they have so they had little choice. That's also why it can't be compared to Apple's rumoured tablet PC, because Apple doesn't yet have a tablet market to lose.
WM6.1 isn't good enough compared to alternatives to survive in todays market, 6.5 is good enough to survive, but not to thrive and it's that that was the source of Ballmer's dissapointment. The hope for Microsoft is that 7 will be good enough for WM to thrive once again in the face of the likes of Android, the iPhone, Maemo and Blackberry's.
Again, whether it really does or not we'll have to see of course!
Even Ballmer admitted it's not the release he wanted and that they'd wished they could've got Windows Mobile 7 out the door earlier instead. It's wrong to assume that Windows Mobile 7 will only comprise of a year and a half of additional work on top of Windows Mobile 6.5 when Windows Mobile 7 has been receieving development time in parallel with Windows 6.5.
It's too early to judge how 7 will end up, and it's no suprise 6.5 is dissapointing. Microsoft knew they were caught with their pants down in the mobile market and now they're frantically playing catch up. Whether Windows Mobile 7 will be their catch up we'll realistically have to just wait and see, but it's wrong to assume what the quality of 7 will be like based on this rather poor release that is 6.5.
I should've been more clear, those were the costs for the client's bandwidth. BitTorrent eliminates the server side costs pretty much, however the client costs would increase under BitTorrent due to the uploading requirement, failed chunks etc.
Those were the costs for the client that either that client would have to cover or the company would have to subsidise, server side costs would sit on top of that.
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I have to agree. Ironically I've had more trouble with Windows 7 in the last 3 days than I did Vista for over a year.
Granted I wasn't an early adopter of Vista, but of course, I am with Windows 7 because I bought into the hype that it was somehow stable at release unlike other Microsoft OS'.
I encountered the student deal issue people had been having with the installer not unpacking correctly, however in my case it was trivial to fix- I just extracted it to a different volume, I extracted it to a 4gb USB key rather than the drive it didn't work on on my laptop I downloaded it to and it was fine so that was no big deal.
Then I bought into the bullshit about how you could do a clean install with the upgrade version by choosing custom install like it stated all over Microsoft's site, whiped my drive (fine, I'd backed everything up), got it all copied across, reached the product key section and it didn't work, because Microsoft actually lied it doesn't ask for a Vista/XP disk/key like some people are Microsoft stated it would if you take this route, it doesn't let you just go ahead like others at Microsoft said it would like it was just a full install, no, it just fucks you over and tells you your key was invalid. I had to install Vista from scratch, then install Windows 7 over it, because my Vista edition was Ultimate and my Windows 7 edition was Professional it said "Oh by the way, you have to do a custom clean install for this", which I did, but because I was letting the install remove Vista this time rather than a blank drive it worked. It's a minor thing and yes I know it says upgrade, but when Microsoft employees themselves and Microsoft's official installation guide says you can do a clean install with the upgrade you should be able to do a clean fucking install.
So now it's all up and running okay, I thought I'll just copy some data across the network which I backed up on my other PC, I don't bother with a domain nowadays they're just in the same workgroup, so I just try the usual \\computer2\share, but no, it doesn't fucking work does it? "There is no login provider to service your request" - no fucking shit sherlock, that's because I do things peer to peer nowadays. I tried mapping the drive and specifying the username to use but there is absolutely no option to specify the domain- it forces you to use your local computer as the authentication domain when I wish to use the other computer as the authentication domain because that's the one I wish to connect to.
Then there's this new taskbar, where apps in the tray no longer work half the time- you can click away at the Steam icon and it doesn't popup like it should half the time. The RSS reader gadget doesn't popout story previews anymore, although it did randomly work for about 20mins before refusing to do it again due to some blatant bug. Installing applications and asking them to put icons in the quick launch means you lose your icons because the quick launch doesn't exist anymore so you have to go find them in the god awful Start Menu (although that does stem back to Vista) or on the disk itself. Even Microsoft's own MSN messenger acts a bit screwy with the new taskbar.
Explorer doesn't expand the treeview as you browse through directories anymore, meaning if you want to browse into one folder to copy something further down the treeview but not a subfolder of the path you're in means you have to copy, then browse all the way to that fucking folder to copy into it.
The sidebar has gone, and although there are hacks to bring it back, they're just that. Gadgets are now useless anyway, they're either underneath your windows and hence pointless, or over the top of your windows obscuring your Window making them simply annoying, not forced to the side of them with the Windows pushed away from them by the sidebar as in Vista which was blatantly a better option.
The only good thing about Windows 7 is it looks a little nicer and runs a little faster, otherwise? Windows 7, worse than Vista tbh- but personally, I thought V
Yes, I was wondering myself why this option in answer to the question posted in the title was missing.
A better analogy is that publishers are like RIAA members, and developers are like artists.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide from that analogy what level of relevance publishers have in this day and age.
Much of US culture spread stems entirely from the previous spread of English and related traditions as a result of the British empire.
If large parts of the world didn't speak English as a result of the British empire, Hollywood would have a much harder time for example. Effectively the spread of British traits by the British empire were an enabler for the later spread of American culture, hence the relative speed at which it could spread- the groundwork was already well in place.
Further to that, it's also worth noting that there is really nothing distinctly American about American culture for the most part, much of it is really just a mixing of other cultures, primarily from the nations America stemmed. It's language is English, it's food chains are primarily based on British, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian foods like fries, pizza etc. Fashion is another good example in that whilst America is a major fashion consumer, producer and supplier, the designs are still very often designed by Europeans and carry the traits of European fashion into the American market, which then
Tellingly, it's worth looking at things like American football, which have a prominent position in American culture- it's a game that's really played very little outside North America, in fact, it stems from games like Rugby, which it internationally has failed to supplant as a cultural element.
Whilst certainly there is no argument many American companies have been extremely successful and have managed to push their brand internationally over foreign competitors it is wrong to equate this with the spread of American culture- a lot of the time it's simply foreign culture resold by an American company.
Of course, it's not always simple, the spread of American products has pushed American cultural elements such as American misspellings of the English language such that those misspellings have become more popular worldwide than the original English variant and there's a fair argument this is a spread of American culture, which it is. What is wrong however is to ignore the fact that, at the end of the day, it's merely an evolution of the English language and it's still the English language at the core of it that is being used.
Yeah it's a mess. Britain's Labour government is seen as quite left in some circles due to their extremely socialist policies, yet when you look at other policies they're extremely right.
The problem is that parties can be left on some things and right on others, the problem with Labour in the UK is it's too far left on things it's left on and too far right on things it's right on. The only thing we can really tell from the left/right scale is that if a party is too far away from the centre in either direction on a particular issue then it's probably not a party that's particularly friendly to the idea of fairness- stray into socialism on the left and you're taking from those who work hard to give to those who don't, stray the same distance in the right and you start to see elements of fascism and bigotry.
I've not really seen a bad government that is truly centrist on just about all issues yet, but this could simply be because truly centrist governments rarely ever exist.
For what it's worth though, if the political compass is anything to go by, I'm with Ghandi!
Do you know for sure that their new networking model is going to be this primitive or are you just speculating about that?
How do you know it wont be more like matchmaking on the XBox (which would make sense, then they could have a standardised codebase). On the XBox it figures out who has the best throughput across all the players and lets that one host, if they disconnect it migrates them to the next best host. In that respect it's more solid than dedicated servers because the game will continue as long as there are players whilst even dedicated servers can go down or be laggy. For what it's worth, I've never had any problems with lag on Halo, CoD4 CoD5 etc. on the XBox either so whatever algorithms they use seem pretty solid.
Back in the Quake days it used to be rare for a server to be running on a 2mbps connection. Nowadays that's below average in many parts of the world, not to mention networking code in games has drastically improved since then. The chance of someone in a group of people having a connection capable of hosting is extremely high nowadays. The issues you speak of were certainly true some years back, but they don't ring true nowadays as XBox live successfully demonstrates.
I'd say the mods thing is the biggest problem by far, mods are really what made PC gaming great. Quake was fucking awesome in its day, but Teamfortress made it even better again, and I have fond memories of the likes of Alien Quake, Special Forces Quake and so on.
Maybe they play Trauma Center on the DS or Sim Hospital on the PC whilst watching back to back episodes of House, Casualty, ER, Green Wing and Scrubs?
Who says he's making trade offs? Maybe it's something he enjoys doing more than the other possible options like reading a newspaper or mindlessly listening to an MP3 player?
To be fair I think you're misrepresenting the point being made.
No one expects you to work in your free time, what him and others like him are saying is that there's little point hiring someone like you who has no interest in programming out of work when there are plenty who actually do enjoy programming outside work and will more often than not have far more skill and experience as a result.
Of course, that's not to say people who live programming are suited to every software development role, you don't want someone socially inept doing requirements gathering from users and such, but if it's a pure programming role then I think it's quite sensible to pick those who love programming and will happily keep their skills uptodate in their spare time well above and beyond the bear minimum required to get paid.
You're making a lot of assumptions, such as assuming someone will burn out. If they actually enjoy programming they're no more likely to burn out than you are to die of boredom "relaxing". Different people thrive on different things, some thrive on sitting back and chilling and get stressed if they can't do that, others thrive on constantly being challenged and go mad if they have nothing to do.
So in other words, they're not saying they wont hire you because you want to have a life, they're saying they'll take the guy who's more than happy not having a life and living as a programmer both at work, and at home. It might not be very encouraging to hear that, but you're in the fortunate position that there almost certainly aren't enough of these people to fill every role, leaving room for people like yourself to also get jobs in the field, if it ever becomes more competitive though don't be suprised if those who live programming are getting jobs over you, but don't get pissed off about it either- go for customer focussing development jobs if you like socialising whilst these types of guys stay in their dark rooms day in day out if it's what they like.
"But the worst part of this is that anyone with an advanced degree in the sciences can likely figure out for themselves how to make a very deadly bomb. Whatever they lack in skill can be filled in by a visit to the university library or engineering department."
I'd like to think the same too, but it's simply not the case. See this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafeel_Ahmed
He set bombs in London with this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Abdullah
Which completely failed to go off. They then drove to Glasgow airport and drove into it throwing petrol bombs. He was the only casualty, managing to burn himself so badly he died in hospital. Bilal, the other attacker was arrested and is now in jail.
Sorry, but the assertion that phd = smart enough to perform a successful attack is completely wrong. This guy failed on two accounts, his bombs failed, and his second attack failed to the point he has to be a prime contender for a Darwin award.
I would agree that the potential for a smart terrorist is a worrying one, certainly here in the UK you'd have had a lot more reason to be scared of the IRA than you would any of the new wave of Al Qaeda wannabes that try it on here, 90% of whom, much like the guy in TFA, get caught before they even get anywhere. Probably because they join an internet chat room, start talking to MrWesternerKiller about how they plan to kill Westerners, thinking they've finally found someone who agrees with them whilst living in a continent where everyone completely disagrees with them to the point they can't even express their views, only to find MrWesternerKiller is actually an FBI agent and the guy has just signed his own arrest warrant.
From the articles I've seen about it, he was arrested for communicating the will to commit terrorist acts and had been seeking advice and information on doing just that. He was effectively at the very start of the planning stage.
Make of that what you will, if they have evidence of intent he could well be a dangerous person.
It really comes down to what evidence they really did have, and what was included in those communications for which he was arrested.
The problem is, you and I don't know what evidence they actually do have, and unless we do we can't say if the arrest was justified or not so it seems pointless speculating. If he was picked up simply out of paranoia because he was phoning uncle Abdullah in Pakistan then yeah, it's rediculous. If he was however phoning Mr Mehsud of the Taliban and asking for information producing bombs from house hold material and information on which targets Al Qaeda would most like him to blow up and what kind of casualty figures they were looking for then it's a different story.
It's a shame it rarely ever comes out what their evidence actually was so we can properly check the validity of arrests like this.
Of course it's not the only comparison you can make, particularly when you're trying to draw conclusions about the profits of only a small part of the business, I've told you quite clearly how you can do a better more worthwhile comparison.
It's not just "a few gadgets to sell", Dell has a whole global services division. Using your logic you may as well just compare Microsoft and Apple because they both make an operating system and come to the conclusion Apple's business plan is crap because they're not a touch on Microsoft financially.
You can't directly compare businesses that compete only in one single market when the businesses as a whole compete in multiple markets. It's pointless, it demonstrates nothing, you can deduce nothing from it.
There are plenty of real world case studies that prove your personal experience to not be the general case for Java:
http://www.sun.com/customers/index.xml?soln=31a8487e-0f60-11da-99bc-080020a9ed93&page=1&sort=date&asc=false
This case study is particularly relevant:
http://www.sun.com/customers/servers/transact_tools.xml
This page is rather out of date, but shows that Java was performing well even in 2003:
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=8142
Java has become the number one most prominent language in business with good reason. It's flexible, and can cater to pretty much anything you throw at it if you understand the tools and technologies available, and which ones are suited to your particular problem. Garbage collection really just comes down to having an understanding of the way the garbage collector works and being able to develop with that in mind. See here for an example discussion of just that from back in 2003:
http://java.sys-con.com/node/37613
here's a slightly more recent (but still relatively dated in technology terms) article:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6108296.html
The problem Java and .NET seem to face is people approaching the language, from say a C++ background and not understanding what's different about it and how it works to be able to implement a solution in it to an equivalent level of their C++ application. This does not mean experienced Java/.NET programmers cannot do just that though- they can, and do. Again, it's really a question of competence in a particular skillset rather than inherent flaws in a particular technology.
"A large scale trading system like this one is one of those circumstances."
No, the circumstances which I refer are very specific, and are not circumstances that can be easily determined and made use of for a whole system, particularly of this size. An example of the circumstances to which I refer are extremely small programs, where the JVM/CLR startup time will lose the fight for Java/.NET, however this has no bearing on performance once they have started up, and for a system like this that runs continuously that is far, far more important than a few milliseconds of additional startup time.
It's often cited that there's little point hand optimising nowadays because compilers do a better job of it than 99% of programmers could anyway. This is a fair point, but it's even more relevant with interpreted/JIT compiled languages like Java and the .NET family. Why? Because a VM can perform this kind of optimisation at runtime where relevant and required, it can do it based on the data the system has to handle in the real world. You cannot do that with a compiled language when you do not know the data conditions you will have to handle at the time, but again, if you really, really can be sure you can do it better, just implement that section in unmanaged assembly. If you're interested in reading more about Java in particular in high performance computing, there's a decent paper here if you can be bothered to register an account:
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=391266
There is really nothing about Java or .NET that prevents them from solving this particular application, again, the only barrier is developer competence. It is of course worth noting that developer competence is very much a concern with C++ too because there is more room for error, and more scope for damage when you put a bad programmer in front of C++.
Of course, I am not arguing that C++ no longer has a place, it certainly does- the additional memory footprint of Java/.NET is a concern for high performance embedded devices for example. Consoles are also a good example because it's really the only language available that is common to multiple platforms such as the PS2, PS3, 360 and Wii and also these platforms still rely more heavily on manual optimization due to their unique architectures. I'm still very fond of C++, but what I'm not fond of are people who have a fixed outdated view on languages and their usefulness in particular settings. Like it or not, in the last 10 years, the areas where C++ is the best tool for the job have rapidly diminished. Enterprise applications and HPC is one area where C++ no longer holds any real discernible advantage.
"Clearly in this case the optimizations weren't sufficient."
For what it's worth, the speed issue does not seem to have been the reason for the switch, although the new system is faster they cite costs and control as the key reasons for the change and do not suggest that performance was a reason for change, only a benefit of change. Your assertion that the optimisations weren't sufficient, assuming much optmimisation was even done isn't true.
Marketplace, Mobile IE, My Phone backup service etc.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that a GC-based, VM-based language that has layers of intermediate execution is going to be slower than is required for a trading system."
Actually, this is only true in an ever decreasing set of circumstances.
See here for an explanation of some of the common reasons why this is often not the case:
http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Computer/javaCbenchmark.html
Also here are some benchmarks:
http://kano.net/javabench/
These sites are focussed on Java, but the points are applicable to .NET also as it's on par nowadays. In .NET you also get the option of using unmanaged code anyway so you can have areas that don't require the VM to underlie execution.
I'd imagine the real problem in this case was a combination of poor project management with poorly skilled developers in an attempt to make the profit margins for Microsoft and Accenture as big as possible. The net result though, as you can see, is quite bad. I do not believe for a second .NET was the problem as there is no reason it can't be used in a way that performs as well as or better than a C++ application. It would use a bit more memory to achieve that performance, but memory is cheap enough for this to not be an issue for most cases nowadays, particularly when you factor in the benefits of security and resilience you get from the managed parts of the codebase.
There's quite a fundamental difference between Dell and Apple. Dell has much stronger ties to the enterprise than Apple, it provides services as well as just hardware, but of the hardware it sells it provides blade servers, networking equipment and so on.
Dell is still profitable, but is much more vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy due to it's large investment in business divisions that Apple simply doesn't even have. Similarly, Apple has a near monopoly in the portable media player market, whilst Dell is not really in this market at all. Apple's strength in portable media players nets it a vast amount of it's revenue, but clearly has no bearing on the quality of it's PCs. iTunes also brings in a lot of money for Apple.
Rather than simply speculating if you're interested in finding out whether Apple's computer hardware business model is better than Dell's you could probably get hold of both companies accounts and compare the strengths of those specific divisions of both companies if they offer accounts in such a form, rather than trying to compare both companies as a whole.
Sorry, what has satisfaction got to do with reliability exactly?
I'm a Wii and XBox 360 owner, the Wii has never had any faults or problems whilst I'm on my 4th Xbox 360 due to hardware failures. I'm still far more satisfied with the XBox 360 though because I simply prefer the games on it. The Wii despite looking full of promise at first really has very little for hardcore gamers like myself. As my XBox was replaced same-day in store every time it failed and I was given 2000 MS points free in compensation by Microsoft each time when I contacted them about it also I really have little to complain about, but again, that doesn't mean the system is in any way reliable whatsoever.
Even then there's the issues of how accurate satisfaction surveys are. It's easy to say you're satisfied with something that's unreliable if you paid over the odds for it because you don't want to admit you got suckered into buying an expensive piece of junk. There's also the question of who funds these surveys, can you be sure they are independent?
So to sum up, what has your post got to do with the fact the parent you were responding to made a comment about reliability? Between easily scratched iPod nano screens, overheating and igniting magsafe power adapters, exploding iPhones, discolouring MacBook cases is it any wonder that people question the reliability of Apple hardware? We've certainly seen far more stories of recurring problems in various pieces of Apple hardware in the last 5 years than we have any other hardware manufacturer I believe. I'm sure you'll put it down to media bias or similar though.
I think there are even good reasons why this is the case, Apple is often at the forefront of technology, technology that is unfortunately at times not fully tested because some of the errors arise only after longer term testing which they do not have time to do before going to market. I can understand and sympathise with Apple as to why these things happen, but the important point is that they do actually happen, and reliability is an issue in some Apple products.
"if anything the problem is that Apple doesn't make CHEAP computers like $300 netbooks so that cuts out the poor/cheap folks looking only at price."
People buy netbooks not simply because they're poor or cheap, they buy them because they realise that when all you need to do is type up documents, make spreadsheets and so forth without having to lug around a laptop case they're best in class. The netbook was a realisation that there is a fuck load of people out there who only need the usual computing capabilities (Office suite, web browser etc.) but found mobile phones/PDAs too small for this purpose and laptops too big. I know a few people who bought netbooks not because they couldn't afford a Macbook, but because it wouldn't fit in their handbag or rucksack like a netbook. Apple does not offer this form factor of laptop, instead it release the air, which is just as wide and long, but thinner, that's a useless form factor to 99% of people because it still doesn't fit well in many casual bags due to it's width.
"Most people own a PC because the workplace DEMANDS it. 12% of people that own a Mac in addition to a PC went out of their way to seek it out because they didn't like Windows.... that's a huge and growing dissatisfaction rating."
Or, you know, maybe many people just like both? I understand that might be a tough concept for fanboys to comprehend though of course, but really, for most people the world just isn't that binary.
People who argue Macs are better than PCs and vice versa and make up stories for themselves about how it's because people obviously hate the other system that they own both are an absolutely tiny subset of the set of people who own these systems. The reality is, most people just want to be able to type up documents, send e-mails and browse the internet, they couldn't give a fuck if they were doing this in Windows, Mac OS X or Linux as long as it does the job well enough. At the end of the day, for these basic tasks, there just really isn't enough between the 3 OS' for people to care, hence why Linux netbooks did so well at first before Microsoft managed to force netbook producers to start sticking Windows on. The fact it's Linux was just no hurdle to most people because they had their web browser, their word processor and so on.
Well, it's marketshare is second only to RIM and Symbian. It may not be great, but usable or not it's still a major player ahead of Mac OS X, Linux, Palm's Web OS and such.
There's certainly no question it's losing ground to these other players now, but writing it off when it holds such a noticable segment of the market is stupid. Losing ground does not equal irrelevant, for example, Internet Explorer has been and still is (thankfully!) losing ground to Firefox relatively quickly, but you'd be a fool to ignore it and develop a website that didn't support it.
It's not just a new skin over the same old features, there are new features- just not as many as are planned for Windows 7, again, it's still an improvement, and it's better to be selling 6.5 than 6.1 until 7 comes out if 6.5 is better.
Reasons for sticking with an inferior platform may be resources invested in that platform- many companies have applications built in .NET for the Windows Mobile platform that they do not wish to spend resources porting. Some will no doubt jump on this as an example of Microsoft being anti-competitive but it's really the same with the iPhone. Personally, it's why I'd always write general mobile applications in Java too, in case I ever did need to port, although that wouldn't help with a move to the iPhone it'd at least open up porting between Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android etc. It's just a shame J2ME has been shit for so long allowing other platform specific technologies to take hold, but it's rapidly improving now at least.
Again, to put it into survival speak, you have WM6.1 which isn't fit to survive in todays market, you have 6.5 which is fit to survive, but not thrive, and 7 which Microsoft hopes will thrive. Keeping 6.1 as the only option would kill Microsoft's userbase in almost it's entirety, releasing 6.5 at very least stems the flow of people leaving the platform even if it can't reverse the pattern, that's still better than nothing and it's presumably the best they could do in the short term.
Government services charge a nominal fee that the majority of people pay for services rendered already.
They call this fee, "tax"
Most people don't want to pay again for what they've already paid for.
Because although it's not the release he wanted, it's still better than 6.1.
If they released nothing they'd likely lose the remaining Windows Mobile providers they have so they had little choice. That's also why it can't be compared to Apple's rumoured tablet PC, because Apple doesn't yet have a tablet market to lose.
WM6.1 isn't good enough compared to alternatives to survive in todays market, 6.5 is good enough to survive, but not to thrive and it's that that was the source of Ballmer's dissapointment. The hope for Microsoft is that 7 will be good enough for WM to thrive once again in the face of the likes of Android, the iPhone, Maemo and Blackberry's.
Again, whether it really does or not we'll have to see of course!
Even Ballmer admitted it's not the release he wanted and that they'd wished they could've got Windows Mobile 7 out the door earlier instead. It's wrong to assume that Windows Mobile 7 will only comprise of a year and a half of additional work on top of Windows Mobile 6.5 when Windows Mobile 7 has been receieving development time in parallel with Windows 6.5.
It's too early to judge how 7 will end up, and it's no suprise 6.5 is dissapointing. Microsoft knew they were caught with their pants down in the mobile market and now they're frantically playing catch up. Whether Windows Mobile 7 will be their catch up we'll realistically have to just wait and see, but it's wrong to assume what the quality of 7 will be like based on this rather poor release that is 6.5.
I should've been more clear, those were the costs for the client's bandwidth. BitTorrent eliminates the server side costs pretty much, however the client costs would increase under BitTorrent due to the uploading requirement, failed chunks etc.
Those were the costs for the client that either that client would have to cover or the company would have to subsidise, server side costs would sit on top of that.