Top Gear used to regularly review normal cars in a fairly serious way. 5 people used to watch it. Then they started testing Lamborghinis instead, building rockets out of Robin Reliants and racing to the north pole and now everyone watches it - even my wife who has no interest in cars. Some of the presenters from the old show moved to Fifth Gear where they mostly review sensible cars in a straight up way. About 5 people watch it...
The Smart Brabus Roadster is also a fantastically fun car to drive. 100HP in a car that weighs well under a tonne, and huge 17" / 225 rear tyres makes for a car that can be properly chucked about on country roads. Full size sports cars do have their appeal but for most places they're just too fast for the roads - even my 12yr old Honda Prelude can't really be pushed on most roads because (unless you're not concerned for cyclists / pedestrians) your speed is limited by how far you can see. I've only hit the limits of the cornering ability in heavy rain or ice - unfortunately on ice, I went through the limit and hit a dry stone wall. And went through that as well:( You can't drive the Roadster without a big smile - you can drive relatively sensibly and still feel like you're tearing about in a go kart. And you'll still get 50 MPG.
Oh sorry this was about the Tata. But since most people here aren't in India, test drive the Brabus instead:)
I've seen *EXACTLY* that problem myself with a relative of mine. Two and a half years in to a programming course, they had seemed to be understanding it and getting good grades (NB this was adult learning college not uni).
They asked me for something interesting to try out and I suggested a Sudoku solving program. They got to the stage of the GUI for a user to input the problem, and an array to hold the numbers. But the actual algorithm to solve the problem had them 100% stumped. I added code to track the options for each cell, rule out options based on already known numbers, and checked they actually understood and could solve Sudoku with pencil and paper.
But the algorithm they just couldn't do. The course taught students how to program a GUI with.NET, respond to button presses a little, but never went through any stages of how to break down a problem.
This sounds unfair on C. Every introduction I ever had to C included the disclaimer that C assumed I knew what I was doing. Java would check most stuff and C wouldn't. C is fast partly because it assumes you know what you're doing. Check your inputs and then you're into a safe area. After that you can just do everything quickly because the conditions are already checked - no need for the language to check it all again.
For writing things like an OS kernel this is hugely important. The kernel has to run quickly. If the language is wasting time checking things the programmer already knows are true, it isn't going to run as fast.
The problem is that significant amounts of modern software just don't have these requirements. They'll run on a fast CPU with plenty of memory and have a load of functionality that runs through once when the user clicks button A. No point thinking about the safe zones - just check everything. This might as well then be something the language does instead of sitting there waiting for the inevitable programmer error.
I think a lot of employers advertise Java /.NET as a lot of employees believe that is the new thing and the way forward. i.e. C programming is on the decline, and (young to middle aged) employees don't want to get too far behind the times. Older employees might instead make a selling point of their skills.
I'm mainly a C programmer these days, but I took the job basically understanding that I would be working significantly with Java. That was the only language I had experience with on leaving Uni, and I was promptly put to work on a Pascal / OpenVMS system! Friends from Uni have had similar experiences.
I have been a bit worried about an outdated skillset as lots of employers ask for lots of object oriented programming experience and I only occasionally use this. I think this would be my primary problem if I started looking for a new job. I also think it's a bit unfair as the skills are pretty transferrable - there's only a little new theory to learn and after that, good programming practices aren't hugely dependant on language used.
In dealings with many (perhaps even most) other companies whose software I write interfaces with, it's pretty clear that they are also using C or C++, and often even older systems (in one interface we have to convert our messages from ASCII to EBCDIC). You can frequently tell what language the other system is from the sort of errors that crop up, and sometimes from the design of the interface. I'm forced to believe that my area of the industry is still primarily C based.
I think this actually accentuates the differences between the platforms - you comment is very fitting for typical American-style action-oriented games but not for games with a more relaxed playing style as is popular in Japan. It is likely a feature that will be better used and better received in the Japanese market.
Many sports and racing games could benefit from additional space for videos also - I'd happily watch a bit of HD video of the new Nissan GT-R if it was included in Gran Turismo 5.
Just to point out, HDMI (high def multimedia interface) itself does not contain or require DRM. HDMI is pretty much the DVI standard with support for sending audio over the same cable, and a much smaller connector. The DRM scheme that goes with it is HDCP (high def copy protection).
PCs have been built with HDMI for a while now. I don't believe HDMI output requires any special software support, but the HDCP bit might. I got a nVidia 7300 for my media centre which has an HDMI port (I'm not sure if it supports HDCP, I'm fairly sure it's not using it). I therefore use an un-DRMed HDMI link between the PC and the TV. I'd have been almost as happy with DVI, but then I'd need another cable for the audio. Hardware wise, there's nothing wrong with HDMI - it's a fast digital link for audio and video.
Blu-Ray also doesn't seem to require DRM contrary to all the reports I've seen. The Planet Earth Blu-Ray discs I have (from the BBC) don't seem to be DRMed up, and they definitely are region-free. Unfortunately the films I have on Blu-Ray are fully DRMed and only playable on my PS3:(
I've got the 3007WFP and it's substantially better than an LCD TV as a monitor. The resolution is just huge - 2560x1600 is almost twice as many pixels as 1920x1080 on even the top TVs. My media centre is connected up via HDMI to a Sharp 37" 1080p TV. It's a great TV - still gives the best picture quality I've seen from a Blu-Ray film, but as a monitor it's very sub-par. It does a poor job of small text, relative to monitors. My PS3 clearly does something to compensate this because the web browser on there gives a much nicer result on the TV than Firefox on the media centre.
I think the big monitors have now caught up with TVs for displaying videos and pictures but TVs have remained well behind monitors for all other uses. i.e. you could probably now get away with using the Dell monitor as a TV, but I wouldn't suggest buying any TV to use as a monitor - just buy the cheapest 1920x1200 24" LCD monitor and it'll do a better job than any TV.
Not only that but plenty of 'A' roads aren't exactly suitable for trucks anyway. Particularly in rural areas, there are a lot of A-roads that get to be A-roads seemingly because they are the only way to get somewhere, and are only just wide enough for two cars to squeeze past each other.
Try being left handed (or working with others who are)! I've got wireless keyboard / mouse because almost everyone who ever sits at my desk to help with something for a couple of minutes can just move the mouse over to the right instead of complaining at me:)
There's half a dozen wireless keyboards operating OK in my current office room, which is probably about ten metres long. They're mostly things people have brought in from home as we also just get standard wired stuff by default. Maybe this helps as none are the exact same model, although most are Logitech.
Perhaps the ideal compromise would be wired keyboard and wireless mouse. But I think there's easier ways to hack into a computer than trying to receive the signals from a wireless keyboard.
I've got one of those 'portables' with a 17" screen, weighs 4kg and yeah it's not great for carrying around. However, I use it mainly for support or at home as a desktop replacement. At home the size and weight is fine, and normally on support, it can sit in the car boot. If I'm away on business, it's not like there's an awful lot of walking around to do where 4 kilos is a problem. When I do use it, the big keyboard and screen are great to work with - pretty comparable to a desktop.
I am thinking of getting an Eee to cover those times when I'm too far from home or the car and actually have to carry a laptop with me.
How much energy do you believe a hard disc uses ?!?!? I thought a typical 7200 rpm desktop drive uses around 12W at max load. My media server at home currently has 11 hard discs, and is built on an Athlon 64 3000+ platform. The total energy use is 150W, measured through a power meter plugged in at the wall. This was up by 9W when I added the latest 2 500GB SATA2 discs.
It would be great if the discs could tell they were being asked to read only 1-2MB/sec and just spin at minimal speed that enabled that. The oldest hard discs in my server are rather old and small - I'll have to start replacing them soon rather than adding more. I'll definitely be looking at this range when I need more space.
I agree 5W isn't much, but it is actually quite a lot for just the hard disc. If every other component of a PC got the same treatment the savings would add up.
The best point about e-ink is that it has the same properties of paper - LCD screens shine light in your eyes, which isn't really all that nice compared to paper. e-ink screens have capsules which are actually coloured black / white - the colour displayed is the actual colour of the capsules - and to display a page, the screen just rotates these to the correct orientation. The result is you're seeing ambient light reflected from the screen just the same as if you look at paper.
Not arguing your point about the price though. The only significant use I can think of is for holidays - on a beach holiday, I'll usually get through a book every couple of days, and my wife manages to read more than one a day. If you're travelling by plane, 20 books is a significant amount of your weight allowance.
How are they comparing the Kindle with an iPhone?!?!?!? The iPhone does have a nice big screen, but the e-ink displays I've seen are just much nicer on the eyes despite being less pretty, and genuinely comparable to reading printed paper. They've been beaten to the punch more by Sony's Reader which is already onto version 2. I'd much rather see a comparison of how those two stack up than against the iPhone.
How do you figure? If I send a letter demanding you to do something, under penalty of treason if you fail to comply, would that also make it true? Perjury is the specific act of lying to the courts - lying to me is just lying no matter what I say. If the letter is asking for information destined for court filings, it is pretty reasonable to point out the consequences of lying.
I work for a smaller commercial software company and quite frequently do fixes with even shorter turn-around times even down to 15 minutes if it's a data corruption type of bug getting worse at that very instant.
However, this is for fairly heavily customised software - for each project we take a new copy of the codebase and so changes made in an emergency for one customer do not have any effect on any other. The system is also designed for easy patching so we can usually put in an emergency fix with no downtime and without the operators even knowing. A knock on of the level of customisation is that our front-line support in emergencies is handled by the engineers that wrote the system, aided by a direct link to the client's site.
With increasing levels of 'bespokeness' of the software, you'll always see more bugs but they'll be easier and faster to fix. MS beta software goes out to tens of thousands of users for testing and still the final product has bugs that no-one ran into before. Fixing a bug in this sort of software generally involves reading a vague description from a non-technical user being interpreted by a semi-knowledgeable front line support guy. If you can work out what's going on, you still need to check the change isn't going affect the other users using the software in different ways.
The PS2 is still a very profitable venture though. Sony has actually got a pedigree in making consoles profitable over their lifetime - both the Playstations stayed on the market a good long time. The Xbox was just at the point where it could start to break even and it was cancelled - just not enough units were selling. The Wii has taken another approach of launching a product that was immediately profitable. Maybe Sony could push people to upgrade PS2 -> PS3 by cancelling the old model but it would be at the cost of making less money over the system's lifecycle.
I'm rather worried that so far MS isn't showing many signs of creating a profitable business model around the Xbox. The claim it should be profitable in 2008 seems to be mainly based on counting $1bn losses this year so that they don't need to count them next year. Profitability isn't much of a problem for Microsoft with money flooding in from Windows/Office, but if they do manage to capture the market, potential competitors will be put off re-entering it - there's just not much point if there's no money to be made over a product's lifetime. Part of the reason for the success of the Xbox has been the relative ease of programming. The reason for this is mainly down to Microsoft's monopoly in PC gaming - DX10 is mostly shared between PC and Xbox. I'd hate to see them extend this monopoly to yet another area.
Just browsing comments, a lot of people think Javascript is pretty horrible. I've developed a few internal web-based tools and always managed to produce nice looking Javascript that does a good job. Unless you try and use IE with it. I develop with Firefox as I can use Firebug to debug through the problems that crop up.
This last week I've been doing some javascript for a commercial product and it all fell apart in testing with IE. IE worked for two or three screens refreshed dynamically with Javascript - just enough for me to decide hey! cross-platform! But after that it went mental. I've had to change loads of stuff with heavy reference to a similar application that was tested and proven - the main problem being that there's no useful debugging tools I could find for IE and so much stuff just doesn't quite work.
Javascript is quite a nice language, it just has a poor implementation that you basically have to work around unless you're in the position to impose Firefox on the users.
People buy iPods because they're a nice bit of easy to use hardware. Apple also created a nice bit of easy to use software for buying content. The hardware is at a good cost that people are happy to pay and the software is free. Apple's profit margins are testament to the fact that most people are happy to pay sensible prices when they are getting what they want.
Meanwhile, the media companies have invested absolutely zero money and effort into providing their content in a form desired by consumers. While I like the iPod, I'm not expecting to always want one, or willing to buy any media that will only play on an iPod. That has ruled me out of buying anything from iTunes (until the DRM free stuff which is now out). I've got used to the hassle of ripping CDs now, but it's not an ideal solution. This is entirely the media companies fault.
I'm happy for Apple to profit - the media companies need to look at their own actions.
That is what I would consider useful though - my ideal reviews frequently tend to be mainly negative even for a good product. 99% of items on the market aren't the best in their class. Before I buy something, I'd like to know everything it's not that good at. If any of those are really important to me I'll get something else.
E.g. I've got a 17" Sony laptop. It's great for me - screen quality was the most important factor in choosing it. It's a far better screen than many laptops reviewed as having fantastic screens, but it's pretty difficult to tell one fantastic from another. My own review of the laptop would be that it's overweight, poor performance, has a ridiculously small keyboard given the size, is short of ports given the size, has atrocious battery life (70 mins) - basically huge sacrifices were made to get the screen in at the price point.
I narrowed my laptop choice down to three options from Sony, HP and Dell which all got annoyingly glowing reviews. I had to seek out the Sony and HP laptops to compare the screens myself but I never got a chance to compare the Dell. I'd have loved the reviews to have really slated the problems with the Sony and HP so you could tell the things they praised were actually any good.
There's my new support laptop sorted out. This looks very well targeted at the ever expanding groups of people who always just might need to get to a PC at any given time. I spend half my life on out-of-hours support for various systems.
There's a 15 minute response time so I can normally just throw the laptop in the car boot - as a result I've got a fantastic 17" laptop which is great for working on. But it's more luggable than portable. The occasions when I'm going to be more than 15 mins from the car, it's a real pain carrying a laptop weighing over 4 kilos.
I've been in the market for an ultra-portable for the last year. All it needs to do is run Putty, have a web browser, and VNC back to the office for any specialist applications. It'll probably only be used once or twice a week - and by used I mean carried around with me just in case - it'll get switched on less than that. Finally got something on the market at the right price.
There are hundreds of little niggles. The biggest one for me which can be purely blamed on Microsoft is that to do almost every action I want to do, I have to click more buttons than XP. Almost every settings screen has been simplified, and the useful settings are always one or two more screens away, because each screen has far fewer items. The new start menu looks kinda nice, but because it's fixed size, I have to scroll around to find the stuff I want, where in XP, it takes up as much space as required.
It looks to me like they've tried to take a page out of Apple's book, and have simple pretty screens you can just use. Problem is, Apple generally seems to think of the use-cases and have the stuff I want to use right there in front of me. Vista just has a simple pretty screen, but the button I want isn't there. It's hidden on a Related Items link and then in the advanced settings.
Secondly, whatever changes they've made to the way Windows works appear to have mostly broken almost every 'Remote Desktop' type of program - except Remote Desktop itself of course. I can't get Remote Desktop to reliably work from XP to Vista, so I can only use remote access from another Vista machine. I've found Ultra VNC is runnable, but with user access control on, every time a UAC dialog pops up, it kills all remote connections. I have to reconnect, click 'OK' on the UAC dialog, and then the connection is killed again. If you turn off UAC, the machine will no longer respond to Ctrl-Alt-Delete from a remote connection.
Final big problem is sleep mode. The behaviour on my work PC changes with each Windows Update, but half the time, my work PC goes to sleep overnight (even though set to always on). It is then completely unwakeable - in the morning, I have to unplug it and reboot from scratch. I do out-of-hours support and as some client's networks are only visible from within the work network (i.e. not even from a VPN) I've had to drive to the office as a result of this. I've now got a Linux box to stay on overnight and generally do a whole load of stuff that Vista just won't do.
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Top Gear used to regularly review normal cars in a fairly serious way. 5 people used to watch it. Then they started testing Lamborghinis instead, building rockets out of Robin Reliants and racing to the north pole and now everyone watches it - even my wife who has no interest in cars. Some of the presenters from the old show moved to Fifth Gear where they mostly review sensible cars in a straight up way. About 5 people watch it...
The Smart Brabus Roadster is also a fantastically fun car to drive. 100HP in a car that weighs well under a tonne, and huge 17" / 225 rear tyres makes for a car that can be properly chucked about on country roads. Full size sports cars do have their appeal but for most places they're just too fast for the roads - even my 12yr old Honda Prelude can't really be pushed on most roads because (unless you're not concerned for cyclists / pedestrians) your speed is limited by how far you can see. I've only hit the limits of the cornering ability in heavy rain or ice - unfortunately on ice, I went through the limit and hit a dry stone wall. And went through that as well :( You can't drive the Roadster without a big smile - you can drive relatively sensibly and still feel like you're tearing about in a go kart. And you'll still get 50 MPG.
:)
Oh sorry this was about the Tata. But since most people here aren't in India, test drive the Brabus instead
Well, he did say if you live sufficiently close to where you live - even 30HP could handle that journey :)
I've seen *EXACTLY* that problem myself with a relative of mine. Two and a half years in to a programming course, they had seemed to be understanding it and getting good grades (NB this was adult learning college not uni).
.NET, respond to button presses a little, but never went through any stages of how to break down a problem.
They asked me for something interesting to try out and I suggested a Sudoku solving program. They got to the stage of the GUI for a user to input the problem, and an array to hold the numbers. But the actual algorithm to solve the problem had them 100% stumped. I added code to track the options for each cell, rule out options based on already known numbers, and checked they actually understood and could solve Sudoku with pencil and paper.
But the algorithm they just couldn't do. The course taught students how to program a GUI with
This sounds unfair on C. Every introduction I ever had to C included the disclaimer that C assumed I knew what I was doing. Java would check most stuff and C wouldn't. C is fast partly because it assumes you know what you're doing. Check your inputs and then you're into a safe area. After that you can just do everything quickly because the conditions are already checked - no need for the language to check it all again.
For writing things like an OS kernel this is hugely important. The kernel has to run quickly. If the language is wasting time checking things the programmer already knows are true, it isn't going to run as fast.
The problem is that significant amounts of modern software just don't have these requirements. They'll run on a fast CPU with plenty of memory and have a load of functionality that runs through once when the user clicks button A. No point thinking about the safe zones - just check everything. This might as well then be something the language does instead of sitting there waiting for the inevitable programmer error.
I think a lot of employers advertise Java / .NET as a lot of employees believe that is the new thing and the way forward. i.e. C programming is on the decline, and (young to middle aged) employees don't want to get too far behind the times. Older employees might instead make a selling point of their skills.
I'm mainly a C programmer these days, but I took the job basically understanding that I would be working significantly with Java. That was the only language I had experience with on leaving Uni, and I was promptly put to work on a Pascal / OpenVMS system! Friends from Uni have had similar experiences.
I have been a bit worried about an outdated skillset as lots of employers ask for lots of object oriented programming experience and I only occasionally use this. I think this would be my primary problem if I started looking for a new job. I also think it's a bit unfair as the skills are pretty transferrable - there's only a little new theory to learn and after that, good programming practices aren't hugely dependant on language used.
In dealings with many (perhaps even most) other companies whose software I write interfaces with, it's pretty clear that they are also using C or C++, and often even older systems (in one interface we have to convert our messages from ASCII to EBCDIC). You can frequently tell what language the other system is from the sort of errors that crop up, and sometimes from the design of the interface. I'm forced to believe that my area of the industry is still primarily C based.
I think this actually accentuates the differences between the platforms - you comment is very fitting for typical American-style action-oriented games but not for games with a more relaxed playing style as is popular in Japan. It is likely a feature that will be better used and better received in the Japanese market.
Many sports and racing games could benefit from additional space for videos also - I'd happily watch a bit of HD video of the new Nissan GT-R if it was included in Gran Turismo 5.
Just to point out, HDMI (high def multimedia interface) itself does not contain or require DRM. HDMI is pretty much the DVI standard with support for sending audio over the same cable, and a much smaller connector. The DRM scheme that goes with it is HDCP (high def copy protection). PCs have been built with HDMI for a while now. I don't believe HDMI output requires any special software support, but the HDCP bit might. I got a nVidia 7300 for my media centre which has an HDMI port (I'm not sure if it supports HDCP, I'm fairly sure it's not using it). I therefore use an un-DRMed HDMI link between the PC and the TV. I'd have been almost as happy with DVI, but then I'd need another cable for the audio. Hardware wise, there's nothing wrong with HDMI - it's a fast digital link for audio and video. Blu-Ray also doesn't seem to require DRM contrary to all the reports I've seen. The Planet Earth Blu-Ray discs I have (from the BBC) don't seem to be DRMed up, and they definitely are region-free. Unfortunately the films I have on Blu-Ray are fully DRMed and only playable on my PS3 :(
I've got the 3007WFP and it's substantially better than an LCD TV as a monitor. The resolution is just huge - 2560x1600 is almost twice as many pixels as 1920x1080 on even the top TVs. My media centre is connected up via HDMI to a Sharp 37" 1080p TV. It's a great TV - still gives the best picture quality I've seen from a Blu-Ray film, but as a monitor it's very sub-par. It does a poor job of small text, relative to monitors. My PS3 clearly does something to compensate this because the web browser on there gives a much nicer result on the TV than Firefox on the media centre.
I think the big monitors have now caught up with TVs for displaying videos and pictures but TVs have remained well behind monitors for all other uses. i.e. you could probably now get away with using the Dell monitor as a TV, but I wouldn't suggest buying any TV to use as a monitor - just buy the cheapest 1920x1200 24" LCD monitor and it'll do a better job than any TV.
Not only that but plenty of 'A' roads aren't exactly suitable for trucks anyway. Particularly in rural areas, there are a lot of A-roads that get to be A-roads seemingly because they are the only way to get somewhere, and are only just wide enough for two cars to squeeze past each other.
Try being left handed (or working with others who are)! I've got wireless keyboard / mouse because almost everyone who ever sits at my desk to help with something for a couple of minutes can just move the mouse over to the right instead of complaining at me :)
There's half a dozen wireless keyboards operating OK in my current office room, which is probably about ten metres long. They're mostly things people have brought in from home as we also just get standard wired stuff by default. Maybe this helps as none are the exact same model, although most are Logitech.
Perhaps the ideal compromise would be wired keyboard and wireless mouse. But I think there's easier ways to hack into a computer than trying to receive the signals from a wireless keyboard.
I've got one of those 'portables' with a 17" screen, weighs 4kg and yeah it's not great for carrying around. However, I use it mainly for support or at home as a desktop replacement. At home the size and weight is fine, and normally on support, it can sit in the car boot. If I'm away on business, it's not like there's an awful lot of walking around to do where 4 kilos is a problem. When I do use it, the big keyboard and screen are great to work with - pretty comparable to a desktop.
I am thinking of getting an Eee to cover those times when I'm too far from home or the car and actually have to carry a laptop with me.
How much energy do you believe a hard disc uses ?!?!? I thought a typical 7200 rpm desktop drive uses around 12W at max load. My media server at home currently has 11 hard discs, and is built on an Athlon 64 3000+ platform. The total energy use is 150W, measured through a power meter plugged in at the wall. This was up by 9W when I added the latest 2 500GB SATA2 discs.
It would be great if the discs could tell they were being asked to read only 1-2MB/sec and just spin at minimal speed that enabled that. The oldest hard discs in my server are rather old and small - I'll have to start replacing them soon rather than adding more. I'll definitely be looking at this range when I need more space.
I agree 5W isn't much, but it is actually quite a lot for just the hard disc. If every other component of a PC got the same treatment the savings would add up.
The best point about e-ink is that it has the same properties of paper - LCD screens shine light in your eyes, which isn't really all that nice compared to paper. e-ink screens have capsules which are actually coloured black / white - the colour displayed is the actual colour of the capsules - and to display a page, the screen just rotates these to the correct orientation. The result is you're seeing ambient light reflected from the screen just the same as if you look at paper.
Not arguing your point about the price though. The only significant use I can think of is for holidays - on a beach holiday, I'll usually get through a book every couple of days, and my wife manages to read more than one a day. If you're travelling by plane, 20 books is a significant amount of your weight allowance.
How are they comparing the Kindle with an iPhone?!?!?!? The iPhone does have a nice big screen, but the e-ink displays I've seen are just much nicer on the eyes despite being less pretty, and genuinely comparable to reading printed paper. They've been beaten to the punch more by Sony's Reader which is already onto version 2. I'd much rather see a comparison of how those two stack up than against the iPhone.
How do you figure? If I send a letter demanding you to do something, under penalty of treason if you fail to comply, would that also make it true? Perjury is the specific act of lying to the courts - lying to me is just lying no matter what I say. If the letter is asking for information destined for court filings, it is pretty reasonable to point out the consequences of lying.
I work for a smaller commercial software company and quite frequently do fixes with even shorter turn-around times even down to 15 minutes if it's a data corruption type of bug getting worse at that very instant.
However, this is for fairly heavily customised software - for each project we take a new copy of the codebase and so changes made in an emergency for one customer do not have any effect on any other. The system is also designed for easy patching so we can usually put in an emergency fix with no downtime and without the operators even knowing. A knock on of the level of customisation is that our front-line support in emergencies is handled by the engineers that wrote the system, aided by a direct link to the client's site.
With increasing levels of 'bespokeness' of the software, you'll always see more bugs but they'll be easier and faster to fix. MS beta software goes out to tens of thousands of users for testing and still the final product has bugs that no-one ran into before. Fixing a bug in this sort of software generally involves reading a vague description from a non-technical user being interpreted by a semi-knowledgeable front line support guy. If you can work out what's going on, you still need to check the change isn't going affect the other users using the software in different ways.
Well to be fair, it's pretty much impossible to give a promised resolution time - just be glad the sales team didn't promise that :)
The PS2 is still a very profitable venture though. Sony has actually got a pedigree in making consoles profitable over their lifetime - both the Playstations stayed on the market a good long time. The Xbox was just at the point where it could start to break even and it was cancelled - just not enough units were selling. The Wii has taken another approach of launching a product that was immediately profitable. Maybe Sony could push people to upgrade PS2 -> PS3 by cancelling the old model but it would be at the cost of making less money over the system's lifecycle.
I'm rather worried that so far MS isn't showing many signs of creating a profitable business model around the Xbox. The claim it should be profitable in 2008 seems to be mainly based on counting $1bn losses this year so that they don't need to count them next year. Profitability isn't much of a problem for Microsoft with money flooding in from Windows/Office, but if they do manage to capture the market, potential competitors will be put off re-entering it - there's just not much point if there's no money to be made over a product's lifetime. Part of the reason for the success of the Xbox has been the relative ease of programming. The reason for this is mainly down to Microsoft's monopoly in PC gaming - DX10 is mostly shared between PC and Xbox. I'd hate to see them extend this monopoly to yet another area.
Just browsing comments, a lot of people think Javascript is pretty horrible. I've developed a few internal web-based tools and always managed to produce nice looking Javascript that does a good job. Unless you try and use IE with it. I develop with Firefox as I can use Firebug to debug through the problems that crop up.
This last week I've been doing some javascript for a commercial product and it all fell apart in testing with IE. IE worked for two or three screens refreshed dynamically with Javascript - just enough for me to decide hey! cross-platform! But after that it went mental. I've had to change loads of stuff with heavy reference to a similar application that was tested and proven - the main problem being that there's no useful debugging tools I could find for IE and so much stuff just doesn't quite work.
Javascript is quite a nice language, it just has a poor implementation that you basically have to work around unless you're in the position to impose Firefox on the users.
People buy iPods because they're a nice bit of easy to use hardware. Apple also created a nice bit of easy to use software for buying content. The hardware is at a good cost that people are happy to pay and the software is free. Apple's profit margins are testament to the fact that most people are happy to pay sensible prices when they are getting what they want.
Meanwhile, the media companies have invested absolutely zero money and effort into providing their content in a form desired by consumers. While I like the iPod, I'm not expecting to always want one, or willing to buy any media that will only play on an iPod. That has ruled me out of buying anything from iTunes (until the DRM free stuff which is now out). I've got used to the hassle of ripping CDs now, but it's not an ideal solution. This is entirely the media companies fault.
I'm happy for Apple to profit - the media companies need to look at their own actions.
That is what I would consider useful though - my ideal reviews frequently tend to be mainly negative even for a good product. 99% of items on the market aren't the best in their class. Before I buy something, I'd like to know everything it's not that good at. If any of those are really important to me I'll get something else.
E.g. I've got a 17" Sony laptop. It's great for me - screen quality was the most important factor in choosing it. It's a far better screen than many laptops reviewed as having fantastic screens, but it's pretty difficult to tell one fantastic from another. My own review of the laptop would be that it's overweight, poor performance, has a ridiculously small keyboard given the size, is short of ports given the size, has atrocious battery life (70 mins) - basically huge sacrifices were made to get the screen in at the price point.
I narrowed my laptop choice down to three options from Sony, HP and Dell which all got annoyingly glowing reviews. I had to seek out the Sony and HP laptops to compare the screens myself but I never got a chance to compare the Dell. I'd have loved the reviews to have really slated the problems with the Sony and HP so you could tell the things they praised were actually any good.
There's my new support laptop sorted out. This looks very well targeted at the ever expanding groups of people who always just might need to get to a PC at any given time. I spend half my life on out-of-hours support for various systems.
There's a 15 minute response time so I can normally just throw the laptop in the car boot - as a result I've got a fantastic 17" laptop which is great for working on. But it's more luggable than portable. The occasions when I'm going to be more than 15 mins from the car, it's a real pain carrying a laptop weighing over 4 kilos.
I've been in the market for an ultra-portable for the last year. All it needs to do is run Putty, have a web browser, and VNC back to the office for any specialist applications. It'll probably only be used once or twice a week - and by used I mean carried around with me just in case - it'll get switched on less than that. Finally got something on the market at the right price.
3126 :)
They really are increasing it quickly - I was on 2997 just two days ago
There are hundreds of little niggles. The biggest one for me which can be purely blamed on Microsoft is that to do almost every action I want to do, I have to click more buttons than XP. Almost every settings screen has been simplified, and the useful settings are always one or two more screens away, because each screen has far fewer items. The new start menu looks kinda nice, but because it's fixed size, I have to scroll around to find the stuff I want, where in XP, it takes up as much space as required.
It looks to me like they've tried to take a page out of Apple's book, and have simple pretty screens you can just use. Problem is, Apple generally seems to think of the use-cases and have the stuff I want to use right there in front of me. Vista just has a simple pretty screen, but the button I want isn't there. It's hidden on a Related Items link and then in the advanced settings.
Secondly, whatever changes they've made to the way Windows works appear to have mostly broken almost every 'Remote Desktop' type of program - except Remote Desktop itself of course. I can't get Remote Desktop to reliably work from XP to Vista, so I can only use remote access from another Vista machine. I've found Ultra VNC is runnable, but with user access control on, every time a UAC dialog pops up, it kills all remote connections. I have to reconnect, click 'OK' on the UAC dialog, and then the connection is killed again. If you turn off UAC, the machine will no longer respond to Ctrl-Alt-Delete from a remote connection.
Final big problem is sleep mode. The behaviour on my work PC changes with each Windows Update, but half the time, my work PC goes to sleep overnight (even though set to always on). It is then completely unwakeable - in the morning, I have to unplug it and reboot from scratch. I do out-of-hours support and as some client's networks are only visible from within the work network (i.e. not even from a VPN) I've had to drive to the office as a result of this. I've now got a Linux box to stay on overnight and generally do a whole load of stuff that Vista just won't do.