
Rage on
"Gang of Four" in computing uniquely refers to Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides, or their wonderful book. Using it any other way is just wrong, which I suppose is what I've come to expect from Herr Schmidt.
Tablet-friendly Windows 8 won't allow Microsoft into Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google's cosy clique, said Google’s executive chairman. Quoted in a rather thin Wall Street Journal Q&A, Eric Schmidt maintained his belief that Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook comprise a consumer-pleasing web-conquering “gang of four”. And …
Typical geek nonsense. :)
First and foremost it's not about 'computing' whatsoever, it's about the technology industry. Secondly it's more specifically about its business world and "Gang of Four" typically - should I say "uniquely"? - refers to Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.
It's a common knowledge (except if you are an old, dorky geek who refuses to join the real world and can only brag about his old hacking of that X.25 terminal, not to mention that using these kind of collective naming ('group') is very common (see Big Four in professional tax-cheating, errr, I mean auditing business etc.) :P
To be fair to the original poster, I have heard the term big four used a lot when talking about companies but in tech circles or at least dev circles Gang of Four refers to a specific group of individuals and more commonly a specific book.
I guess the corporate GOF would rather appear more like wise gurus than the corporate pirates that they really are.
But it did say that the gang of four mentioned were cool.
So I thought that could only mean the stuttering guitars and bonkers Trotskyist invective of 1978 Leeds-based band Gang of Four - chief influences of REM and Nirvana.
OK i thought it might be something to do with Chinese political history, OK, but then I hear that its a reference to some dad-dancing poncy overbloated corporate entities.
Cool - In a way that brands simply fucking aren't.
Rage off.
" Those who don't learn from history, and all that: he might be referring to the Chinese leadership who ruled during the Cultural Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four). '
....and those of us who remember the classic Not the Nine O'Clock News parody of aforementioned GoF!
Add another who thought this was about Design Patterns or possibly the Chinese Communist Party, but given that even Eric Schmidt's sublime postmodernism would struggle to call the Chinese GoF "cool", I figured it was about development frameworks.
Looking at the list, it's a pretty arbitrary collection, and Apple is odd-man-out, as they make the client terminals, not the web applications. And if it's about web-scale services, then where are Citrix, Akamai, VMWare or hosting companies like Rackspace?
Schmidt's comment on Windows Phone ("haven't used it") reminded me of the story from Nokia's collapse, where the newly-appointed Stephen Elop asked the company's phone engineers how many of them had an iPhone. Only one or two hands. And yet, this was the product they were trying to compete with...
I'm not saying that Windows Phone is going to succed the same way -- far from it. But if your company's future success depends on mobile platforms, and you make a mobile platform, it's dangerously arrogant to ignore competing platforms, no matter how weak or insignificant you think they might be (Nokia and SonyEricsson both considered iPhone to be an overpriced featurephone, and no threat...).
"Dangerously arrogant", and "Eric Schmidt"... that's getting to be a cliché.
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does come over as a bit of a dick.
I especially think that he's taken the wrong tack with his statements about privacy - google should be doing all they can to reassure us that they will take special care of our data if they want us to be their ongoing users so they can still exploit us in the future.
Anyway, what is this windows 8 thing - some new iphone app?
Schmidt comes over as a bit of a dick
There, fixed that for you. It has a very simple cause: he is using the technique of reinforcement to make us believe something that is blatant bullshit. You have a legal right to privacy that Schmidt cannot invade without breaking the law. Which he is doing, all over Europe, every day, and he is fully aware of that.
That's why he needs to spin like Murdoch - he knows most regulators in Europe are on to him and it is going to *SERIOUSLY* hurt when they start taking action. He has already been warned by the EU Article 29 working group that things need to change, so the clock is ticking.
. . . the Microsoft Surface concept is exactly the sort of thing I would like to see--something with a thin tablet form factor and detachable keyboard (and mouse, ideally) which runs an OS that will run the same apps as my desktop (which the Surface RT won't, I realize, but the Surface Pro will). To my mind, that's less "confused" and more "functional."
Now, whether Microsoft's implementation of this concept is any good is something I have yet to investigate, but the fact that both Eric and Tim are willing to write it off without even trying it is a sign of a blind spot that Microsoft may be able to exploit.
It is confused because the software design doesn't match up the hardware design.
RT doesn't run "normal" windows software, but is portable, Pro runs the software but isn't very portable.
It isn't that its bad, but it isn't a stand-alone product and is unlikely to sell in the way IOS & Android devices do.
"We had never in our industry seen four network platforms that scale."
What is a "network platform" and what does it mean to say that "it scales"? Can anyone provide definitions for both that make it clear why the chosen four meet the criteria and no-one else does?
Otherwise I'm tempted to say that there is but a single platform here (the internet) and four applications sitting on top of it which "scale" only in the sense that their functions are embarrassingly parallel and can therefore be scaled by throwing dollars at server farms.
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Thumbs up for "embarrassingly parallel ". Things that have any shared state are no so 'cool', obviously. You just can't add cheap hardware and bluntly scale 'em.
At some point the the shared state transfer exceeds the interconnection bandwidth or the latency kicks in... The entire cloud nonsense is a truly annoying fad.
I might be wrong but I think Microsoft needs to rename things asap. This is how I think public perception stands at the moment:
Internet Explorer 10 = 10th incarnation of an old browser
Windows 8 = 8th incarnation of an old operating system
Windows Phone = Phone that runs an old operating system
Microsoft Surface = Tablet made by an old software company that made excel (sounds fun!)
I am not even sure anyone can remember (myself included) which IE is the latest. "Oh there's a 10 now? Im not sure which one I am using, 7?")
Why not throw the old names away and come up with new ones? To give the impression hat we've now left the age of Windows and have entered the age of a new Microsoft operating system for example.
Also when entering new modern recreational consumer markets (phones, tablets) perhaps avoid using words (Windows, Microsoft) that could be perceived as being associated with old technology and office/work applications? I thought Microsoft had figured all this out when they launched the XBox instead of the Microsoft Game Console. I thought they were being clever by de-emphasizing the Microsoft association.
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.. the choice is between Atlantis or Titanic.
Both sank without a trace, and both are subject to a lot of myth. It's just that Microsoft starts with the myth before the sinking, but given that technical people put the root of a tree at the top I think that's acceptable.
Actually, I think it must be Atlantis. Ballmer has trashed the deck chairs, so Titanic is out..
I don't want cool, I want something which works with what I already have, is fairly tough, not too expensive, will be supported after the first six months and is expandable.
I'm not saying that I'll get that, but it's what I want and pretty much discounts all the current offerings in one way or another.
"However, Schmidt said it was “extremely curious” that Apple was suing Google's Android partners rather than Google itself."
Did Schmidt lose his status as a man and is now genderless?
I too find it funny that Apple is suing Samsung and not Google itself and files a court motion to have Jelly Bean banned along with its lawsuit against Samsung. Even a five year old knows that there is a difference! And why oh WHY is Apple not suing others like Asus and HP and Lenovo for ripping off their designs?
A while ago I forgot what being a sane customer was like and stepped into a Future Shop to look around. And at first glance, I thought that several machines were MacBooks with the way they were designed! On closer inspection, I THEN saw the Lenovo name and the HP name and such. How come we don't hear about these people being hauled before a judge with Apple crying and saying, "They copied our innovative designs???"
And why oh WHY is Apple not suing others like Asus and HP and Lenovo for ripping off their designs?
Not sure how HP is copying Apple (are their ultrabooks Air lookalikes or something?) but the mere idea of suing HP at all is just hard to wrap my head around, considering how their board is doing a far better job of destroying the company than even the most slam dunk lawsuit ever could. Suing HP is like shooting a terminal cancer patient in the leg. There's a chance it could hasten their demise, but they'd probably not even notice versus the pain they're already enduring.
...that fails to keep an eye on his enemy.
Asked for his thoughts on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, the search supremo replied: “I have not used it.”
The arrogance of this man. Perhaps in a few years' time: 'All of your Googlephones are belong to us' while his back is turned, ignoring the feeble and irrelevant competition. Seismic shifts have happened before, Yahoo!, Apple.
Wet dreams, sure it would be nice with only four "guys" around the table, Hopefully that will never happen. True, Microsoft is not cool but how cool will Facebook be in a few years, and how cool will Apple remain in the long term. And who could kill IBM as long as they refuse to commit suicide.
I think they do a bit of advertising stuff as well? It's easy, with an add on or two, to forget that, but people tell me there is quite a lot of it about.
Speaking of addons, I'm close to getting rid of all those facebook and twitter buttons. A bit of selective memory loss, and I might even be able to say, "What's 'Facebook'?" a year or three before everyone else does.
When it comes down to it the only important thing is what you think.
Do what is in your own best interests. (Not Apple's or Googles).
(Although I would give more weight to what Woz thinks than the CEO's of any of the companies listed and he thinks the Surface is more interesting than anything Apple has done recently.)
I hope we get as many options as possible.
I have loads of gadgets don't really use any of them that much. (Other than my eink kindle).
Want to put Tizen on my Xoom. (And I will try as soon as there is a way for me to buy or use
"OpenMobile's Application Compatibility Layer (ACL)™"
Cornerstone was the most useful Android thing that has happened recently but yet people don't use it.
(Having 4 decent phone apps at once on a tablet sized screen could be quite good.)
Android 4.2 feels rushed (Like 3.0/3.1 Honeycomb was.)
Android would be better if they banned custom UI's and forced the OEM's (3 months or no market access)
to keep up for 2 years.
only people with something to hide worry about losing their privacy online. I see that Mr. Schmidt hasn't changed and couldn't care less about the law.
The same as Goggle who hasn't respected court orders in France for 6 years.
Goggle who hasn't respected court orders in France for 6 years
I'd be interested to know more about that. Do you have any links? All I have is this recent one, and that doesn't just play in France, it plays in 27 countries concurrently.
With the possible exception of Apple (and even that probably depends on which side of the fanboi/fandroid fence you sit) none of the gang of four is cool in any way shape or form.
fwiw I quite like Apple from a design perspective but the humble PC/Android handset does enough for me
Mine's the one thats slightly shabby but does the job I need