Posts by naw 30 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2011
"But if I purchase a PS4 I can expect the wife to say "so what does it do different?". I need to come up with some justification other than its new. "
Well you could always use the argument that because the product has been launched prematurely, you will be spending much less time using it and more time with her ;-)
And IBMs AIX (Power Unix) did it for Linux with Lx86, and SCO Unix did it for AT&T Unix, I'm sure there's others - I'm not putting down BB's technical capability here, certainly it's beyond me to do the same, but I do wonder if they put a lot of effort into the wrong area. They now have to maintain compatibility with the Android Appstore, App Developers won't care about BB compatibility, so BB will have to make ALL of th effort and as Android develops that will become more and more difficult. IMO, they should have bit the bullet and gone down the Android (or Cyanogen or Replicant or some other Android Fork) and produce their own Android fork, but Hardened and Optimised for Business users with all the sort of back end services and integration that business users might want.
- sorry to post again so soon - but I should add that MS know their model is broken, that they are hemorrhaging users and business and are in rapid decline. Previously they made money by selling you new versions of stuff you already had. But Windows XP & Office 2003 are pretty robust and does everything most people need, so there's no need to upgrade continually - so what if it's out of support, when did you ever call MS for help anyway.
So the first action to generate repeat sales was to stop supplying media on pre-installed systems, not to stop piracy but rather to stop you reinstalling the SW you bought onto your new machine and force a re-sale of stuff you already own.
Now everything is available online, so MS are looking at a new model to keep revenue coming in - Office 365. Now we get to rent our SW and own nothing which looks like a great deal for a year. But compared to the value we got from XP & Office 2003 - lets say maybe £500 over 10 - 15 years, then thats just £33 /year, MS needs much more than that to keep pay those world class execs fat & happy.
WindowsXP has become a curse to MS. Initially, it was simply good enough, but by SP3 it was too good (for users to bother upgrading every three or four years). Most users would be perfectly happy to keep XP and just install it on to their new HW, but MS change the HW specs that manufacturers have to follow for WindowsVista/7/8 to ensure XP cannot be installed onto new kit
"XP isn't nearly as dependable or sturdy as Win7. I had to reinstall everything every few months with XP."
Thats funny I only ever had to reinstall XP once after a disk crash. Windows ME (remember that) and Vista on the other hand was every few months. You're probably right about Windows7, nobody is using Windows8 so nobody knows yet.
But the fact is WindowsXP is plenty good enough for most users, so there's no reason to *upgrade* other than catastrophic HW failure. The majority of home and education users (not corporate yet) are actually upgrading to Linux in the form of Android. Those same people will ultimately influence the buying decisions in business over a 5-8year period.
That's how Sun got into the corporates, by first getting into the Universities. Thats how Apple got into corporates by first getting into the home. MS on the other hand got into the home by first winning the corporates, back in the 1980's when people couldn't afford PCs / laptops at home - it was right for that period but not today.
The next generation of IT users are growing up with Apple, Android, Google, Facebook and eBay so why are they going to invest into MS products? This is a long game (well 5-8 years) and MS have already lost.
MS have screwed up in a major way, first with MS Office, and now with Windows. If you tear up your User Interface, forcing your users to completely re-learn core apps, then you open the door to alternatives.
Fact is, it's as easy to go from XP & Office 2003 to Ubuntu & Open Office as it is to go to Windows 8/8.1 & Office 2007/2010/2012/2013.
In fact my wife and mum totally gave up on the latest from MS and both opted for Ubuntu & OO - it was just an easier transition. So MS effectively abandoned 2 customers - and they're never going back to MS - Why pay for something you can't use.
Also Ubuntu installed perfectly on both their laptops while I spent weeks searching for XP drivers for a FJS Amilo laptop (having given up on the horrific pre-installed Vista). So MS (under the stewardship of Steve Ballmer and his pals) opened the door a crack for OpenOffice with the MS Office Ribbon menus (the Ribbon simply does not work with the new wide-screen format laptops). Then they opened it a bit more for Ubuntu and finally, for Android, they took it off its hinges and broke it up for firewood with Windows8.
That's what happens when you give your adolescent kid (Ballmer) the keys to their first car (Microsoft). They try to put their stamp on it. Paint flames down the side, smoke the windows, furry dice air freshners, lower the suspension, ruin performance with a fat exhaust. Then they crash and burn at the first corner with their pals on the back seat yelling encouragement.
Apple's next ;-)
Linux has been ported to and used (both in development and commercially) on IBM Power hardware and mainframe for many years - SUSE & Redhat among various others. You may have forgotten how SCO (former owner of AT&T Unix - later sold to Novell) who also licenced Microsoft Xenix (another Unix derivative) had various long running patent infringment battles against Linux. Microsoft had long been a major share-holder in SCO and later it was discovered that MS had bankrolled SCO's attempts to kill/hinder Linux.
So yes, I reckon "MS understood the value of Linux" and they didn't like what they saw...
"Translation: Poor people don't need Internet."
"I'm rich and don't need effing facebook........."
Nobody _needs_ facebook - it is neither a requirement or an enhancement to life - just an alternative to having one. Truly rich people (define that any way you want) don't spend any time on facebook - it's too full of wannabe's.
Nope - you're all wrong ;-) - mp3.com around 1998 - 1999 really started the digital music revolution, because not only was it before Amazon, iTunes and napster and everyone else, but it also put unsigned bands alongside (a few *name bands*) and a generation realised that unknown bands could produce better music with equal recording quality to the homogenised manufactured bands that the recording industry were (still are) turning out
But sometimes, a genetic defect can have a positive effect - for instance sickle cell anemia, which is very debilitating and life-shortening when not treated, is thought to offer advantageous protection from malaria. Sickle cell, carriers represent 30-40% of the population in some areas where malaria is prevalent. But what would happen I wonder if sickle cell were not treated (by blood transfusion) or malaria were eradicated?
So exactly which of these 6 countries Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil is claiming the right to own the .Amazon TLD? What do the others think about it? I suspect that if successful, the owner of .Amazon might be looking to sell the Domain to a certain online Retailer. $$$$$$$
Unix Admins have been doing it this way for decades. Write a script once, test it thoroughly, use it often, maybe give it a pretty GUI front end to launch it.
The Windows way requires you to do everything in a GUI - including remembering to check this, select that - no wonder Windows Admins are always firefighting.
If Google are specifying the design and manufacturers are producing somehting that is specific to google, then sure why not - but a USD metric is not useful since the other commercial vendors are selling with a mark up and google will be buying and deploying at cost (in which case the chart is skewed out of googles favour).
The only useful metric is GB
If Ubuntu Phone is good it will be successful - most users don't care if their phone is Android / iOS / whatever else. All manufacturers need to do is provide a good phone with Ubuntu on it. I think manufacturers will embrace Ubuntu simply because firstly, it is a differentiator from all the me-too Android Phones and secondly it offers a possibility (not that Android/iOS doesn't) to sell peripheral devices to add functionality to their phone (thinking larger screen, keyboard, printer)
Once you realise that the *traditional* PC market is shrinking rapidly and massively (as MS, Google, Apple, IBM, Ubuntu already have) then you will see that there is a huge opportunity for Ubuntu / Android and any other non-MS Operating System.
Basically, for most users, what you could _only_ do with a PC (ie Windows or Mac) a couple of years ago, you can now do with a phone / tablet / TV / console. Most users only surf the web (YouTube / eBay / Facebook / porn) and send emails and _don't_ need a traditional PC. For most users, the host OS is irrelevant - the WWW is their platform and with increasing consolidation of standards based web browers (onto webkit Chrome / Safari) the web platform is becoming easier to program for - heck - even MS IE is starting to plat nice.
It won't be long (may already have happened with some isolated products) where your phone will become everything. Dock your phone to a larger screen and keyboard and it becomes a PC. Dock it to your TV and you get a Smart TV. Many Phones / Tablets have better resolution than most TVs so can sure as heck drive a big display. With increasing use of Web-based Apps, the compute power is performed on a server somewhere else, all your phone has to do is render the screen, so any short-comings your phones CPU may have become increasingly irrelevant.
No - Moving Ubuntu from a Linux on a PC distribution to a Linux on Phone/TV/Tablet makes perfect sense simply because the PC form factor will soon be irrelevant and an increasingly niche market. The future of user-based computing is mobile and TV integration. Goodbye PC.
- I'd vote for Stephen Fry to add that uniquely british blend of irony, innuendo, sarcasm and self-deprecating humour (plus he's a huge Apple Fanboi).
Alternately, an American wit could have some *canned-laughter* (the mainstay of most US comedy) appended to the end of every response - so we know when to laugh.
Yep - since widescreen TV took over the world, laptop screen ratios are just awful. Add to that M$ move to the Office Ribbon in Office 207 and you lose about a 1/4 of vertical screen. Widescreen - good for TVs but lousy for PCs and laptops.
Because the management get an idea about how they make savings/get bonus, then they ask their in-house experts who disagree, so they get into a cycle of asking the same question to people of decreasing expertise and increasing vested interest (eg outsourcing supplier) until they the answer they want to hear. Delighted because they've finally been proven right they blunder on and sign a deal as fast as possible before someone *higher up* changes their mind. Forget about *Due Diligence* - sign the deal Kerching!
Seems like the spirit of Fred the Shred lives on in RBS
Thats a pretty narrow view - the PowerPC CPU was a just derivative of the IBM Power CPU, other derivatives of which are used in all the major games consoles, various auto engine management systems and the worlds leading (by volume and performance/capacity) Unix systems - Apple got a better $$$ deal from the intel volume CPU - thats all, they swapped CPUs once and they could easily do it again - thanks to the Transitive emulation SW - no one really noticed.
With cloud computing, CPU Architectures become increasingly irrelevant. Watch this space: there's a big slice of the pie that is waiting for ARM to pick up and lots of experienced developers who are familiar with the platform. CPUs scale up more successfully than down - especially now everything is Multi Core. As soon as the SW devs catch up with the HW, then a desktop / server / portable with a bank of low power CPUs have a lot of advantages...
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