Comment Example, please! (Score 1) 203
Can somebody give an example of that IBM score card, please? Is it just another Balanced Score Card system, just adapted to software development? The article misses to give that information.
Comment Stop outsourcing production, first (Score 4, Insightful) 625
Cry me a river! America's innovation lost its shine, because of outsourcing every single production bit overseas.
Most innovation steps are incremental improvements, not radical. Therefore, feedback from the market (customers) and from the production line is absolutely necessary. By outsourcing production to an external contractor, companies will first loose the feedback from production. Once the outsourcing contractors know the products, they will get to know the sales channels, too. In time companies loose their market, their ability to produce products and finally the ability to improve their products.
What we see today is the result of a short-sighted service-oriented economic principle. Wake up! Start "doing" things, again.
Submission + - A Car You Can Drive With Your Thoughts (ieee.org)
Anonymous Coward writes: "German researchers have demonstrated a car that can be driven with brain power alone [http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/braindriver-a-mind-controlled-car]. In a video, a driver wears a EEG head cap, which records brain activity. Software converts the neural signals into steering and acceleration commands, feeding the data into the car's drive-by-wire system. The brain-car interface, which the researchers call the "BrainDriver," is far from being commercially viable. But it could one day allow disabled and paralyzed people to gain more mobility. It could also, the researchers say, help people control autonomous vehicles, like a future driverless cab; just by thinking, passengers would tell the cab where to go."
Submission + - Intel CEO: Nokia should have gone with Android (pcpro.co.uk)
nk497 writes: "Intel's CEO Paul Otellini has said Nokia made a mistake choosing Windows Phone 7, and should have gone with Android — but admitted the money on offer may have been too much to ignore. "I wouldn't have made the decision he made, I would probably have gone to Android if I were him," he said. "MeeGo would have been the best strategy but he concluded he couldn't afford it." Otellini said some closed mobile platforms will "certainly survive," but said open systems will "win" in the end."
Comment Re:Not only tablets...AC-100 is also an epic failu (Score 1) 480
Yeah, the Toshiba firmware is politely spoken, unusable. If you want access to the Google market place plus CIFS access to your home servers plus Flash, etc., you seriously should consider to download a modified Android version and install it on your Folio. Like this one here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=846199.
A Brief History of Chip Hype and Flops 275
On CNet.com, Brooke Crowthers has a review of some flops in the chip-making world — from IBM, Intel, and AMD — and the hype that surrounded them, which is arguably as interesting as the chips' failures. "First, I have to revisit Intel's Itanium. Simply because it's still around and still missing production target dates. The hype: 'This design philosophy will one day replace RISC and CISC. It is a gateway into the 64-bit future.' ... The reality: Yes, Itanium is still warm, still breathing in the rarefied very-high-end server market — where it does have a limited role. But... it certainly hasn't remade the computer industry."
IWF Backs Down On Wiki Censorship 226
jonbryce writes "The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain, have stopped censoring Wikipedia for hosting what they considered to be a child porn image. They had previously threatened to block Amazon for hosting the same image." Here is the IWF's statement, which credits the Streisand Effect for opening their eyes: "...in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. ... IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect."
Report Says China Will Demand Source Code 305
An anonymous reader alerts us to a two-week-old story that hasn't gotten much traction in the press to date. A Japanese newspaper and the AP report that China plans to demand source code from hardware manufacturers, and ban the sale of products from companies that don't comply. China is calling this an "obligatory accreditation system for IT security products." The plan is to go into effect next May, according to sources. "Products expected to be subject to the system are those equipped with secret coding, such as [a] contactless smart card system developed by Sony Corp., digital copiers, and computer servers. The Chinese government said it needs the source code to prevent computer viruses taking advantage of software vulnerabilities and to shut out hackers. However, this explanation is unlikely to satisfy concerns that disclosed information might be handed from the Chinese government to Chinese companies. There also are fears that Chinese intelligence services could exploit such confidential information by making it easier to break codes used in... digital devices."
Comment Space Shuttle - too fragile for manned spaceflight (Score 1) 494
"The most complicated machine ever built got knocked out of the sky by a pound and a half of foam."
In my opinion this is clearly a call for a more robust, maybe simpler technology. O-rings, lost pieces of foam, what will it be next time? I'm starting to believe that the current shuttle technology is so TITANIC, that it's better to stop the running program immediately and switch over to disposable rockets until a new, more robust generation of shuttles becomes available.
