Way back when Boeing was going for a smaller, more efficient jet. Airbus wanted to build a big plane, aka an Ultra High Capacity Airliner to challenge Boeing's dominance of the large-jet market.
Boeing built the 787, and Airbus built the A380. I guess the market is now forcing Airbus to compete with Boeing's 787, and thus the a350.
It's easy to make fun of IT managers. At the company I worked at, our last one was pretty bad. He was a terrible coder, couldn't estimate or keep a project on track, made bad technology decisions.
Our current one is excellent, however. Not sure how technical he is, as he hasn't had time to write code, but he asks us hard questions that challenge assumptions, projects go through the documentation phases that we need (business rules, elaboration, use cases), there is a full project plan that is updated weekly, and management knows as soon as something start slipping.
It's no problem to get a day off on short notice, he helps out on weekends when servers need to be moved, he fixes issues with vacation-day-allocation HR, and goes back to the product management group when to challenge them when change-requests start to get a bit silly. After every cycle, he drives a process to figure out what could have been done better, and then we attempt to put methodology in place to try to fix it for the next cycle.
Our company is small - 20 or so people, and a dev/qa team of 10, but he's done a great job of getting the maximum return on investment on our development efforts.
British Columbia, Canada.
Around here,
There have been all sorts of issues with this. One is that you are tried and convicted at the side of the road with no chance of appeal, possibly due to a faulty machine (and many cases have been tossed due to a suspected bad machine).
There was a case where an older woman who rarely drank had sip of champagne at a celebratory dinner, and drove home. It was dark, she got lost, and made an illegal u-turn. An off-duty police officer was behind her, and pulled her over, got a cruiser to show up, and had her charged. She had poor lung capacity, so it took them over 2 hours to come to the conclusion that they couldn't get a breath sample (they charged her an additional $500 penalty for failing to provide a breath sample).
The woman knew she wasn't over the limit, so she took a cab to the hospital, and got blood drawn; it showed that there was no alcohol in her system. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but she had spent about $10,000 on lawyers by that point.
That's a good guess, but wouldn't Samsung rather have the technology and any potential patents?
Samsung is pretty good at making smart technology moves - buying factories, and other companies at the right time, and then dominating the market. You would think that this would be a nice technology to have with their tv/tablet/phone/laptop screen technology.
So maybe there are issues with the company (inept management, etc), intellectual property (ie the violate someone's patents), or technology (there are still significant barriers to overcome).
Or maybe Samsung sees the future on OLED, and doesn't want to spend resources on a stepping-stone technology that will disappear without a ripple in a few years.
Questions questions.
Apple has iOS that powers tablets, phones, and MP3 players. Google has Android, which powers phones, tablets, and other consumer devices.
If Microsoft has a decent mobile OS, it's buried under so much marketing that I don't know what it is. I guess there is "Surface", but it seems pretty limited. I've never used it, much less seen it outside a commercial.
They need to come out with an OS, and brand it differently that "Windows". Windows makes me think big and clunky and slow.
Second, they need to stick with their products, and improve them until they get traction. Their approach seems to be make a few dozen consumer products, and drop the ones that don't immediately succeed - quantity versus quality. Why not pick the niche that helps your business the most, and stick with it. Phones, MP3 players, tablets, or some other technology - do it, and follow "kaizen" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen). Eventually your competitors make a misstep, and the ecosystem is yours for the taking. It takes a willingness to spend money, be stubborn, continuously improve, and wait till the big fish makes a mistake. Apple took out Blackberry, and Android/Samsung/HTC have grabbed a nice chunk of market share from Apple.
Microsoft is coasting on previous successes - Windows, Office, and more recently the XBox, and abandoning not-successes too quickly.
And don't forget that the age/gender demographic of The Consumerist is one that plays games. Ask 60-year old women who the worst corporation is, and you'll get a different response.
In reality, EA is just the worst corporation according to people who read The Consumerist.
The Koch brothers, and their private company, Koch Industries, is another good one for your list of companies that are actually evil.
And that's why my degree was a co-op degree, where at the end of my 5 years, I had 2 years of work experience doing software development and hardware support. The last co-op position ended up being a full-time job post graduation, and I haven't looked back.
I'm just waiting for the next Studio Ghibli film to grace our shores, or maybe a Wallace and Grommit. I'll skip Planes, and I won't take my under-10 kids to see it. The Croods can wait till video (AKA TorrentLeech).
And you can thank goatse.cx for that. I can't imagine looking at that gaping hole a dozen times per day.
I make cheese, including paneer, which is just pressed cheese curds. In fact, several types of cheeses are made from simple curds, including cottage cheese and quark.
The only ass in this thread is you.
The stomach of a young mammal naturally turns milk into curds and when. It solidifies the milk so that it digests more slowly, and the young mammal gets more out of it. Our ancestors turned breast milk into a primitive cheese, in their stomachs.
When a baby spits up milk, think about what it looks like - it's curds. Our ability to make curds from milk disappears about the same time our so-called milk-teeth start falling out.
As a result, to make cheese, you need the stomach lining of a young mammal to turn your milk to curds. Old mammals have lost the ability.
It's time to open my wireless router, and give my kids access to the internet; I need plausible deniability.
The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.
