Interesting and Humour - page 1457
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A photo from the world's tallest building. Dubai. The Khalifa Tower.
...
Cool. Lots of interesting work.
And I liked this one (from the same place). You have to read it with an expression. :)
Blackberry ouch.
Today he would have been 67 years old
Supreme Court overturns arrest of casino ringleaders
Yes, no one expected a different result.
And a year later, after treating the child in Russia, she will be begging for money for an urgent operation in Israel.
I do not remember where, but in one country, they put you in jail for causing harm to a fetus
First, a little digression into history. Microsoft has never been a manufacturer of hardware solutions and has always relied on the support of hardware vendors and for obvious reasons - it's stupid to compete with the whole world at once if you can skim the cream off everyone. Moreover, it was precisely this (software sale) that was the cornerstone of Microsoft's victory in the personal computer market, which allowed Microsoft to leave IBM and Apple far behind. Also, it is worth dwelling on the personality of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. This is a man capable of bold, unpredictable actions. In a time when software was only sold with the hardware, such a move (selling the operating system separately from the hardware) was unexpected, to say the least. Ultimately, this is what led to the rapid evolution of the industry and made the PC accessible to everyone and everyone. For this alone, Bill Gates deserves to take his place in the pantheon of personalities who have made invaluable benefits to all of humanity. But enough about that. Among other things, Bill Gates is a man who is far from formalities, does not hesitate to use any means in the competition and is capable of sudden changes and decisive actions. We will return to this later.
For a long time, PCs and "smart phones" were the lot of "geeks", people who are literate and versed in technology. And if the PC was becoming (not without the help of Microsoft) more and more user-friendly, then mobile technology was not. At that time, few people understood what the user of mobile “smart devices” really needed. Here it is worth again returning to the role of personality in history and remembering Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs had very valuable qualities - he subtly understood the essence of the situation and had great charisma. And just like Gates (who had retired by then), he was capable of paradoxical, unpredictable solutions. When Apple thought about creating their own "smart phone", they made such a paradoxical decision - a smartphone should be an ordinary phone, only better. And this at a time when the mobile industry was groaning under the yoke of architectural astronauts, who passed off a mountain of terms that were incomprehensible to the buyer, who quickly began to get confused and instead of ease of use received “features for the sake of features”, simply because architectural astronauts thought it was cool . Jobs made a brilliant decision - to win in the smartphone market, you do not need to compete with architectural astronauts in their field. While everyone shifted their attention from the basis of the mobile industry, phones (and this is exactly what an ordinary person needs, simply and clearly) and went into space - Jobs releases the reincarnation of an ordinary dialer. But expensive, beautiful, comfortable and chic. In order for this to "work", a super-feature was needed that would force dialer users to massively switch to the iPhone. Not smartphone users, but dialer users! And this feature has become a multi-touch, finger-oriented interface. And it blew up the industry! Architectural astronauts from Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Microsoft laughed at Jobs. Was this person going to compete in the smartphone market? And he did not compete in this market. It competed in the mobile phone market as a whole. And the producers' laughter quickly turned into panic... These people didn't understand what was really going on. It is such a feeling when all the components of success seem to be there, but the result is failure. Nokia got the hardest. High (due to inertia) sales of their smartphones and phones have played the most cruel joke with Nokia. Nokia lost the most time, was the last to feel something was wrong and flew into space above all of the architectural astronauts. Many will challenge my opinion, especially geeks. Maemo and Meego were the quintessence, the ingenious idea of the astronauts from Nokia. This is a wunderwaffle on Linux, open on all sides and allowing the owner to do everything ... That is, she was the exact opposite of what Jobs entered the market with and a logical continuation of what led traditional smartphones as a class to collapse. It was not just a failure, it was a failure with an orchestra and flowers, with a choir of virgins and a smiling Jesus peeking out from behind a cloud. Funeral of the highest order! It was hard to imagine a more pompous way of suicide.
Meanwhile, a certain vacuum of ideas and opportunities arises on the market to oppose Apple. Among vendors (except self-confident Nokia) there is panic and understanding that in the near future they will be thrown out of the market to make ends meet. It is useless to go to Microsoft for advice - the astronauts there are no worse than in Nokia. .NET, SOAP, XML are raving there and all questions are answered with “look at what cool technologies we have”. No, they realized the importance of a multi-touch and a finger-oriented interface. But that was not the whole point. We needed a very cool dialer with a cool app store and a cool user interface. But, it is worth noting that Microsoft still worked on it. A working group was created and good specialists were invited. Here and now, however, Microsoft had nothing. And then Google appears like a piano from the bushes. Google had nothing but a Linux-based handicraft bought for the future with its own Java interpreter (the interpreter! in the then Dalvik did not even have a just in time mode for compiling to native code). Google, in the best traditions of Ostap Bender, puffed out its cheeks and offered vendors ... Everything they wanted. Not right away. Will have to work. Together. But we have the most popular search engine. And (hurriedly cut into the qwerty-oriented OS initially) touch. And you know? Vendors believed. What they saw was terrible. But apart from Google, no one else showed them. If Apple was able to make a non-trivial strategic decision, then Google was far from such visionary talents. But there were excellent tactics, quickly orienting themselves in the situation. As a result, the industry has received a direction, purpose and promise that all this will “take off”. The crooks from Google themselves were not sure that all this would take off, they simply took a chance and made the most of the situation. And the main thing in this was to reach as many agreements as possible with vendors, to connect them tightly with Android. For example, the fact that Android was completed collectively, and everyone invested in Android much more than Google itself. Google didn't risk anything. They were giving away an open source system for free and all their investment was in paying programmers. But the vendors risked everything. And they invested conscientiously. Because the prospect of flying out of the market under pressure from Apple loomed before my eyes.
What was going on at Microsoft at that time? They already had all the resources to create a great system that could compete on an equal footing with IOS. Were. There was only one subtlety. Microsoft took the setback with Windows Vista very hard. The failure of architectural astronauts, who did their best to stuff the system with features that any developer can understand, thought about reliability and security. But they forgot to attach backward compatibility, low resource requirements and ease of use to this. No. Vista wasn't bad, but it clearly didn't fit in with the hardware of the time, and it had serious driver issues. It was at this point that the astronauts lost confidence in Microsoft and someone Steven Sinofsky emerged from the Office team. He was an ambitious, intelligent and charismatic person. It was one of those passionaries who were able to move mountains. It was genius. Too bad this genius was evil. Jobs was clearly Sinofsky's idol. And now Sinofsky is heading the Windows division. Sinofsky correctly understood what the user needed. He needed something simple, beautiful and comfortable. And the hardware in personal computers by that time was already able to “pull” a system based on Vista, and the drivers were written. And besides, the Enterprise and Professional editions of Windows 7 had support for older, non-Vista compatible software. Windows 7 was a resounding success - because the project was led by an adequate and talented person. What does Windows 7 and Steven Sinofsky have to do with it, you ask? And despite the fact that he was a man of great ambitions. He planned to at least become Ballmer's right hand, and at the most - the head of the company. Using his position after the resounding success of Windows 7, he sabotaged the work of all possible competitors. He took all the resources for the Windows 8 project, he did not allow the Windows Phone team to work, thanks to him Microsoft went through a wave of layoffs and Zune, Kin failed with a deafening roar. Sinofsky wanted to lead the production of operating systems for mobile devices himself and could not allow them to be based on Windows CE. If success came to Windows Phone, then the tablet OS would be based on Windows Phone, not Windows. This (Sinofsky's ambitions) explains the leapfrog in the next generation mobile OS development team, the failure of Kin (all resources were taken from the project), restarting the project from scratch, and most importantly, the loss of time. Sinofsky had a big influence on the Windows Phone 7 project (albeit not publicly), and it was he who insisted on the rather strange Windows Phone 7 branding to once again emphasize the significance of the victorious Windows 7. When Windows Phone entered the market, it was not bad, even compared to competitors. It was IOS - only better. YES, the first release was missing a lot. But Android at that time was very far from perfect. But this time, Microsoft failed. All vendors were passionate about Android and had no desire to get involved in the game with Microsoft, because Android had already made a lot of investments. Microsoft was betrayed by those who were the mainstay of its existence - hardware vendors. Even HTC is the main partner of Microsoft. A number of devices were released, but they received zero support for advertising, promotion, and the desire to sell them. They were made not for sale, but in order to appease Microsoft. At that time, the Android PR machine was in full swing, aimed at fighting Apple. Windows Phone did not fit into the plans of manufacturers. How was it possible to advertise and promote something other than a product aimed at fighting the almighty Apple? This would be a dispersal of forces and the creation of an incomprehensible situation on the PR front. Whom to love? Bigamy doesn't work here. And it was necessary to create an uncompromising army of fans, able to compete with Apple fans. As a result, Windows Phone was cynically leaked in the press, leaked in sales, everything was done to destroy it. On Windows Phone, those tricks were worked out that would later be used against Apple. Windows Phone has become a whipping boy, and Microsoft has found itself in an openly stupid position. Vendors verbally recognized the importance of Windows Phone and praised the system in front of Ballmer, but in reality they sabotaged sales and shrugged their shoulders - "well, it's not for sale, it's not for sale." Microsoft in a hurry rushed to correct all claims from users and began to look for a strategic partner. Here Steven Sinofsky planted another pig. As head of the Windows division and head of the Windows RT project, he insisted on restarting Windows Phone, now on the Windows RT kernel. And all Microsoft's efforts were spent not on actively refining Windows Phone, but on porting the system to a new kernel. For a whole year, the team was engaged not in the development of the system, but in the alteration of the system from scratch. And, looking ahead, it was precisely this (Sinofsky's desire to shift all focus to the new Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8) that caused, to put it mildly, the "scam" of Windows Phone 7 users. At this time, a strategic partner was found - Nokia. The only company of all that did not invest a single cent in Android and came to understand the full depth of the crisis much later than the others. A brilliant diplomatic operation was carried out (I remind you that Elop was elected by the board of directors) and Nokia became a new loyal partner of Microsoft.
And everything would be fine, but here is the delay in the release of Windows Phone 8. Nokia had to notably get out. By that time, the PR machine of the Android Vendors Association was also working against Nokia with might and main, but the way Nokia got along with Microsoft took everyone by surprise. This alliance was feared. The collective collusion of manufacturers felt that such a tandem could slightly undermine their plans to destroy Apple (their plans included cracking down on Apple and only then somehow sorting themselves out among themselves). And here comes another diplomatic trick - vendors remember Windows Phone and offer Ballmer support for a new generation of devices on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. And they ask him very much not to give advantages to Nokia. The second time, vendors hang noodles on Ballmer's ears. Nokia, on the other hand, finds itself in a foolish position - they promised mountains of gold, but in reality - somehow not very much with exclusive support. And Elop has already started to break Symbian and MeeGo. We recall the very beginning - Microsoft has always worked with hardware vendors and they were the basis of its existence. Therefore, this time Ballmer went on about the vendors. Nm, what kind of purchase of Nokia was out of the question. Microsoft (still) valued relationships with vendors. But Elop had to get out. This time they fed him breakfast and promises. Microsoft, on the other hand, was busy not making urgent improvements to Windows Phone (which Nokia categorically required), but rewriting Windows Phone from scratch, due to Sinofsky's irrepressible ambitions. But the worst thing was that a PR-machine was again spun against Windows Phone, the unspoken locomotive of which was Samsung. Vendors managed with one hand to sell Windows Phone in quantities sufficient to appease Ballmer, and with the other - interfere with sales of Windows Phone as a whole. The front was kept only in Nokia. Heroically. And now Windows Phone 8 comes out. Support for new hardware, some kind of established user loyalty, a community is formed, programs are written, people begin to pay attention to the system. It turned out ugly with Windows Phone 7 users, but somehow it was generally settled. And here, at the moment when it would be possible to hope for the support of vendors and let Nokia go free - this does not happen. Vendors nominally support Microsoft for the third time. This time, WP didn’t rest on them at all - everyone has a ready-made business, their own squabbling on the Android market, a well-educated army of fans, pressed by the joint efforts of Apple. And again - zero promotion, zero interest in sales. Only this time they didn’t really care and pretended that they were interested in it. The ideas of abandoning the PC, a complete transition to the Google ecosystem are in the air, the PR machine is hitting Microsoft itself with might and main (although it has not been directly touched before), Samsung has imperial ambitions. Microsoft has been scrapped. I repeat - the very vendors that Microsoft has always counted on to support and which have always been the basis of its existence. Cynical betrayal, violation of all conventions, several years of deceit and driving Microsoft by the nose. Of course, this does not apply to all vendors. But these were well-known, skimmed the cream off the consumer market, were the basis of informational occasions in the media and longed for the redistribution of the entire industry and the fastest "mobilization" of all IT. The fact that Microsoft released a tablet under its own brand did not bother anyone. Well released and released. Some concern was caused by Nokia, which stubbornly did not want to sink and even showed an increase in sales of Lumia and, in general, actively got down to business. The stronger vendors are talking about alternative operating systems - Tizen, Firefox, etc. But why not about Windows Phone? But because through the efforts of PR departments and the press, Windows Phone has already been recorded as an outsider. It was not good to turn 180 degrees. If HTC took an ambivalent position and was preparing for the introduction of Windows Phone, then Samsung, LG, Sony did not need it. And HTC has already begun to experience a clear crisis. Somehow he did not grow together with Android. Generally speaking, everyone for whom smartphones were the only business did not grow together with Android. Lost Motorola, HTC (almost), Sony Ericsson. The example of Motorola is especially indicative. And here everything was simple - those for whom phones were the main business played fairly, for them all this was a real matter of survival, as well as for Nokia. Others could afford to play in the red, write off the cost of PR and promotion from other income, play not for profit, but for dominance. Everyone who dealt only with phones dropped out of this wild game of vendors. This is worth remembering and drawing a conclusion about the "price" of Android. What could be next? Slow struggle against independent Nokia, there were preconditions for that. Likely reorientation of HTC to a dual-OS model (finally!). Others would follow behind them. And then, like a bolt from the blue - three things. Microsoft's announcement of a change in strategy (that is, abandoning the paradigm of its existence), Ballmer's resignation and, finally, the purchase of Nokia. Only one person could do this - Bill Gates. The one that is distinguished by decisiveness, a sober look and the ability to make seemingly paradoxical decisions. Gates' logic is very clear. Vendors can no longer be considered partners, they have played their games. There is no need to refuse to take over Nokia in order to maintain relations with them, there is no benefit from cooperation with them, only harm - they purposefully sabotaged Windows Phone and led Ballmer by the nose. Gates is taking decisive action, doing what he has always been famous for as a leader. He sacrifices Nokia without any remorse. This was impossible under Ballmer, so all Murtazin's arguments were nothing more than speculation and an information war against Nokia and Microsoft, creating uncertainty and doubt. However, for completely different reasons, Murtazin's prediction came true. What Ballmer could never do was done by Gates. If not for Ballmer's desire to maintain relationships with vendors, this would have happened even when Elop became CEO of Nokia. And he would not have become CEO - the board of directors could well have sold Nokia back then. At a different price, of course. Elop did not ruin the company. He honestly was a strategic partner of Microsoft - what Microsoft expected from HTC and Samsung. But in the new mobile world there is no place for a quiet division of the market. Ambitions and the desire to have everything, instead of a share, reign here. There is a war of survival unleashed by Jobs here. Here, no one wants to coexist relatively peacefully, as it was in the days of conventional mobile phones. It was under these conditions that the decision to sell Nokia was made. As an independent company, Nokia was already dead when the Nokia architectural astronauts went into outer space and were there even when everyone else hit the ground and began to look for a way out. Nokia had every chance to remain a semi-independent company along the lines of Hewlett-Packard and Dell (vendors traditionally closely associated with Microsoft's PC business).
But exactly what happened happened. Therefore, the news about the purchase of Nokia sounded so unexpected against the backdrop of the deployment of a wide range of Lumia devices, the start of sales of the Lumia 1020 with fanfare. So the company is not killed. The decision was shocking to both Elop himself and Ballmer. And it is worth noting that the decision to sell was not made by Elop, but by the board of directors. And this board of directors did not oust Elop earlier, despite Nokia's very precarious position before the release of Windows Phone 8. After all, the CEO does not make such decisions. The arguments of analysts on the topic of the "mishandled Cossack" are ridiculous. It was a conscious decision by the board of directors. They knew who they put and what line Elop would bend. And the option of selling Nokia was considered from the very beginning, and it was not the board of directors who did not want to sell, but Microsoft did not want to buy, because the purchase of Nokia went against the strategy of Ballmer (who simply continued the strategy that brought Microsoft to the lead). Here is some, perhaps far-fetched, digression into history and an attempt to analyze all the processes associated with Nokia and Microsoft. More objective and unbiased than other analysts do.
Eugeny Ipatov
Medvedev transfers his monthly salary to help flood victims in the Far East
Good for him! I wonder how he will live without a salary for a month now?