nobody31415

it's not like they hide their ideology though - the paper is called the economist!

Oddly enough they and The Telegraph (the most conservative UK daily) were the only places with decent science reporting, which is an interesting difference with 'conservative' in the USA

I think that's actually the mathematical definition of zero !

If you have a CNC mill or a 3D printer in the office you can certainly turn around prototype designs quickly!

It cuts both ways. There are designers who build things that can't be made - and especially things that can't be mass produced cheaply and easily.

But there are also people with 20years of manufacturing experience who don't what that we can do more things cheaply and easily with 5-axis CNC mills and hot-wire cutters than you can with a casting.

I think it's more that when the NYT talks about the new "Job's designed iPad", Ive kicks the cat.

>Do some fancy satellites have proximity sensors and self-destruct mechanisms.

If the opposition had just spent $XXXBn on a reusable space shuttle to retrieve satellites and you were a paranoid cold war enemy wouldn't you?

So apart from the tricky business of grabbing a bit of space junk going past you at Mach33 and changing it's delta-V so you can grab it and attach it to your satelite.

And the tricky business of dismantling a satelite and somehow re-wiring a dead 1970s TV broadcast sat into being a new earth resources bird.

It's then going to presumably reach down into the Silicon lattice structure of the panels and remove all the defects that 10years in space has introduced.

- You know all those secret DARPA/CIA projects on mind control drugs in the 60s the conspiracy nuts talk about? I think we have found their stockpile - and I suspect they might have a leak!

Porting pure .Net apps should be trivial - if you also believed that Java was "build once and runs everywhere"!

But how many real world (especially corporate in-house) .Net apps don't also assume a windows file structure, or a keyboard, or a mouse or 8.3 names, or .......

So the problem is, do you sell it as "Windows" and deal with all the tech support and returns because it doesn't run Grandmas scrapbook app. Or do you run a massive ad campaign to tell everybody it's "Windows but not really Windows" !

edit: sorry won't let me reply to you -------------

That's rather the point - just porting the .Net runtime to ARM isn't the whole story. Can you have a single Windows8 design that does corporate desktops and smartphones?

If Windows8 for tablets has to have apps in "c:\program files", have 12 function keys, have a mouse with a wheel etc, for backwards compatibility then they are going to have quite a task to deliver iPad type tablet experience as well.

Corporates will buy it because it's Windows.

Average Joe will buy it because MSFT has a massive ad budget

Of the rest; (money>sense) > iPad : Android ;

It was a very 'sensible' decision if you are an MBA! If Sony had been a little more flexible and far sighted it could have worked. But as you say, it resulted in the DAT tape and minidisk being restricted to protect the studio.

It's the same sensible that means Apple shouldn't have started iTunes (we aren't a record company) and Amazon shouldn't have done Kindle (we aren't a computer company) !

If you wanted a tablet that had no compatibility with Windows - why would you get a Windows tablet?

You are stuck in the problem of either adding a 'bit' of backwards compatibility until you get into the state of supporting 1980s netware apps because some customer in one focus group mentioned them. Or you deliberately change things to differentiate it.

He doesn't have to run a company - that's what VPs are for - he has to LEAD a company.

In the 70s you lead by having the best hardware - you needed Woz at the head.

In the 80/90s you lead by having the best OS - that's why Next mattered.

Then you lead by having the best design - it would have made sense to have the designer at the head.

Apple is currently winning because it has the best production management in the world. It got their by having the best design but it's unassailable now because it totally owns the manufacturing business. Who else can get Samsung to produce cheaper parts for it's tablet than they can supply to their own tablets!

You could take everything you just said and apply it to Sony in 1980. Then their founder, Akio Morita, retired with poor health and they diversified into lots of sensible business decisions about owning studios

Then some little computer company in California moved in on their territory and began making beautiful, simple, well made upmarket products.

Twas ever thus. Ben Rich was Kelly Johnson's assistant at the original Lockheed Skunkworks (creator of the U2, SR71, etc) - he was regularly approached to leave and create skunkworks for every other aerospace company.

As soon as he talked to them they enthused about the Skunkworks setup and how their version would be better since it would be in the main plant, with it's own set of VPs to supervise it and be properly intergrated into the main business etc.

ps. Read his biography http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d... if you think any of this Silicon Valley stuff is new