I know from past postings of yours that you've said you ran a business. But I don't know (or recall) what, whether public, how big, or how long ago.
I can assure you that this view would be considered overly narrow and limited in a large, publicly traded, Fortune 500 company in 2014. In fact, it probably wouldn't fly.
The fact that ATT was a monopoly has nothing to with it. What matters is the resources it had.
As someone who works in a university (and has, in a few), I can assure you that 'university donations' are unlikely to produce a lot of cutting-edge, industry-advancing research.
The fact that they were a monopoly has everything to do with it. That's why they were so big, and had so much money. It was estimated, at the time of the breakup, that their infrastructure alone was worth more than $1 trillion. It's why Bell Labs was so important to them. If you read the book, a lot of things will become clear. Otherwise you're just fishing.
Large donations to specific areas will help. We're not talking about the alumni who donate big bucks, and demand it be spent on the football program, which is a scandal.
Sorry to add a separate post for this, but just wanted to note that it's quite a platitudinous statement to say that a business is in business to sell something.
Also, as to being 'realistic,' expressing a wish -- which is what I was doing, if you could understand context -- is quite different.
Wow! That's a big word. I understand context. You're just wrong.
I think that a lot of what Google does is for publicity.
Good point. They can spend marketing money and list it as R&D (at least some of it).
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
No company is willing to have so many failures intentionally.
You should spend a decade working in the video game industry. I have shipped about 20 games, and only two of those were profitable, and only because they were niche games with a really really low budget (a licensed board game and a hunting game). This was through four studios, five companies, and eight publishers. All of the games we did that were intended to be "A" titles ended up being "B" titles. The publishers just have to try a bunch of them to get the one that actually becomes a hit, and pays for everything else. 95% of that business is throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
So I believe that a lot of their projects are destined to fail because they aren't well thought out. They really don't solve any problem. They're just there for people to say something like what you're saying. That is, how wonderful it is that Google does things like that. It's deflecting people from what Google really does, which is pretty dark, being a bigger collector of our information than the NSA.
It is certainly a distraction from their ad business, but I don't see how you can say a self-driving car or Project Loon wouldn't solve any problems if deployed. You have an argument if you're just saying that these projects will not deploy, but that's different than saying that the concepts wouldn't solve any problems.
It is certainly a distraction from their ad business, but I don't see how you can say a self-driving car or Project Loon wouldn't solve any problems if deployed. You have an argument if you're just saying that these projects will not deploy, but that's different than saying that the concepts wouldn't solve any problems.
I'm saying that these projects aren't well thought out, and won't solve any problems because they aren't well thought out.
Do you really want to ride in a car with no manual override? Because that's exactly what the Google car is. I believe it might have been the National Highway Administration that said that a driverless car needed an override. The Google car has no steering wheel. It looks like it should go back to the laboratory. It's already been involved in some (slow motion) crashes. Google has slowed the cruising speed down because of concerns.
Is this solving a problem? Is having big balloons deliver internet service really going to work? The experts don't think so. How about the, along with Amazon, delivering packages using drones? Really? I can think of so many problems with that.
Then there was the afore mentioned Tv sphere that didn't even make it to production after having a major introduction.
No one has seen Brinn wearing Glass for almost a year, after he wore it everywhere.
How about their setting up those barges that were illegal, and then claiming they were something they were not, having to remove them, and give them in for scrap? How may worthless projects does Google have to have fail before people understand that much of what they do is just odd, and poorly done?
Every company has its boners. Apple made the Cube. A good machine, but marketed so poorly that few people knew it was upgradable. It failed.
How about the round iMac mouse from the original iMacs? Jobs apparently, from talk, loved it, no one else did.
But Apple doesn't rush things out the way Google does. Muct of what Google does remains in beta forever. They discontinue software products as fast as they introduce them. It's confusing, to say the least.
I'm saying that these projects aren't well thought out, and won't solve any problems because they aren't well thought out.
Do you really want to ride in a car with no manual override? Because that's exactly what the Google car is. I believe it might have been the National Highway Administration that said that a driverless car needed an override. The Google car has no steering wheel. It looks like it should go back to the laboratory. It's already been involved in some (slow motion) crashes. Google has slowed the cruising speed down because of concerns.
I see the no-steering-wheel car as a technology demo to get people thinking. We already have no-manual override systems in cars, where the car reacts so fast that most people wouldn't have time to intervene anyway (lane drift avoidance, or emergency braking).
Their actual on-road self-driving cars have steering wheels (this video was released the same month as the no-manual cars were introduced):
<to rehash an earlier comment, tell me this woman doesn't have a blast at work most days>
I'm not going to argue about no manual-override cars other than to say that it's silly to think that such a system wouldn't solve problems, even if you didn't want to ride in it. I'd rather be on a bicycle, and I'd rather have these in control of cars on the road than humans, but whatever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Is having big balloons deliver internet service really going to work? The experts don't think so. How about the, along with Amazon, delivering packages using drones? Really? I can think of so many problems with that.
Absolutely there are problems with both. Does that mean they shouldn't be pursued? Clearly, Loon and drone delivery are not something you'd invest in, but that has no influence on whether or not we'll see these things happen. At my CU-Boulder engineering commencement in the 90s, the CEO of Lockheed Martin gave a speech where he said that his grandmother arrived in Colorado as a little girl in the back of a covered wagon, but has shaken hands with Neil Armstrong at a party. I'm sure many in her generation were skeptical about the pace of change as well.
I work in drone programs for a living. The delivery thing is happening if the costs match up. Makes perfect sense to have a battery of drones in the top of a FedEx truck. Driver parks to deliver large packages, and 10 drones head out to make smaller deliveries to customers with beacons installed on their property, then they catch back up with the truck at some point. Easy peasy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Then there was the afore mentioned Tv sphere that didn't even make it to production after having a major introduction.
No one has seen Brinn wearing Glass for almost a year, after he wore it everywhere.
How about their setting up those barges that were illegal, and then claiming they were something they were not, having to remove them, and give them in for scrap? How may worthless projects does Google have to have fail before people understand that much of what they do is just odd, and poorly done?
Every company has its boners. Apple made the Cube. A good machine, but marketed so poorly that few people knew it was upgradable. It failed.
How about the round iMac mouse from the original iMacs? Jobs apparently, from talk, loved it, no one else did.
But Apple doesn't rush things out the way Google does. Muct of what Google does remains in beta forever. They discontinue software products as fast as they introduce them. It's confusing, to say the least.
I agree that Google has a much more shotgun approach. I am invested in Apple and Google, and I don't see any reason to change either position. Both tech, but there's diversity anyway.
On the flip side, Google just released Inbox, and I haven't used Gmail in over a day. I saw it, thought it looked ridiculous, gave it a try, and pretty soon I was finding email interfaces to be insane. Some of their crazy stuff works.
I'm not talking about the fun you're having. You can be grumpy all you want. I'm talking about more fun for the employees. I think that Google Glass is a great example of something that would be extremely fun to develop, even if it doesn't sell. I can't think of too many projects more fun to work on that something like a self-driving car. Look at the companies they are buying, like Boston Dynamics -- what a great opportunity to work with those teams on projects.
Yeah, that's different, the Googlers are the ones having the fun.
I'm obliged to point out that their fun is creating a churn of mental disturbance in its wake. Google Glass was not only doomed from the start by being monocular, it was actually harmful to those whose rage was stirred up, hostility aroused, without knowing why. One did not realize one was a technophobe or geekophobe until Google Glass arrived.
One actually wasn't either. Glass violated facial symmetry, and that was why we felt like punching out the wearer.. It had nothing to do with privacy invasion, though that was how we rationalized our instant hostility.
A simpleton could have told Google's twisted, left-brained tinkerers all this, anyone with the least bit of aesthetic sense. The point? Their "fun" is completely misguided, and I suspect it's because they don't treat R&D as a serious social art. Google can't be serious; they have had to suppress that because of their profane mission of selling our attention to a thousand advertisers. Unless they deal with that and start valuing human attention as their highest concern, they'll continue with their fractious, distracting projects, like Mel Gross says here.
Don't get me started on those vicious, evil robots they now own. Those are destruction and predation machines. Have some taste and soul, Google.
Notice in the self-driving car video (PR approved!) that the engineer allows the vehicle's software to commit two driving errors without comment. It hangs in a fast last and forces a following car to pass angrily on the right, a dangerous situation. And it fails to take the right of way at a four way stop and yields to the car on the left, another snafu with potential consequences. Does nobody screen these things? The answer is that no serious brains are in charge.
I'm obliged to point out that their fun is creating a churn of mental disturbance in its wake. Google Glass was not only doomed from the start by being monocular, it was actually harmful to those whose rage was stirred up, hostility aroused, without knowing why. One did not realize one was a technophobe or geekophobe until Google Glass arrived.
That's awesome. Very true. lmao
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaneur
A simpleton could have told Google's twisted, left-brained tinkerers all this, anyone with the least bit of aesthetic sense. The point? Their "fun" is completely misguided, and I suspect it's because they don't treat R&D as a serious social art. Google can't be serious; they have had to suppress that because of their profane mission of selling our attention to a thousand advertisers. Unless they deal with that and start valuing human attention as their highest concern, they'll continue with their fractious, distracting projects, like Mel Gross says here.
Don't get me started on those vicious, evil robots they now own. Those are destruction and predation machines. Have some taste and soul, Google.
Notice in the self-driving car video (PR approved!) that the engineer allows the vehicle's software to commit two driving errors without comment. It hangs in a fast last and forces a following car to pass angrily on the right, a dangerous situation. And it fails to take the right of way at a four way stop and yields to the car on the left, another snafu with potential consequences. Does nobody screen these things? The answer is that no serious brains are in charge.
When thinking of Google's self-driving cars as something with no forethought, keep in mind that if you don't have to drive, then you will have your eyeballs glued to a screen, and Google can sell eyeballs to advertisers for that time. This technology is an enabler for their core business, so there is plausible motivation to work it out.
The passing on the right was a premeditated demonstration of handling an aggressive driver. It could just as easily have been a left turn approach as a fast lane.
Robots? Did you know that Old Glory Insurance has a robot clause for people over 50?
Wishes should be changed into bug reports and feature requests.
… clipped a bunch of text.
I remember what spell-checkers were like in the late 1980s, a quarter of a century ago, and they've not improved one bit since then. HunSpell is actually worse than some. Apple needs form an alliance with others who use HunSpell (i.e. Adobe) and make it worth having.
There is a more general problem here that I see as Apple loosing control of the software development processes. Further there seems to be a lack of vision or willingness to acknowledge what users need, in Apples supplied apps. If they don't get a handle on this is see long term problems.
IOS is a perfect example where all we have gotten lately is new skins on the supplied apps with little in the way of feature set expansion. Consider Notes for example, why can't I create HTML lists in Notes on iOS devices? Seriously it is like they mis totally the idea that notes are often lists that you use to keep track of things. HTML of course is all set to display lists.
The Google car has no steering wheel. It looks like it should go back to the laboratory. It's already been involved in some (slow motion) crashes. Google has slowed the cruising speed down because of concerns.
Ah, tricky there Mel. Yes there was a crash involving a Google self-driving car.. . . A Prius being driven by a human at the time.
That's the only one I've seen reported, and back in 2011.
I really have to disagree. Proof can be seen the rather lackluster hardware released this year. Don't even get me started on software.
Smaller companies that are technological in nature need to spend a large percentage of their sales on R&D because there needs to be a minimum spent to come up with new products. For example, when Hp was still mainly a test and measurement company, and much smaller, they used to note, every year, in their large, hard bound, catalogs, that they spent between 10-11% of sales on R&D. But they were a small company, by today's standards.
That had very little to do with the size of the company. You are either on the bleeding edge or you aren't. Staying on that edge requires continuous development of new products to meet your customers needs. All we need to do is look at alternative companies that didn't maintain a strong R&D profile to see that HP's investments were a requirement.
As a company gets larger, R&D costs don't ramp up. If they did, then Apple would have spent over $18 billion on R&D. What would they have spent all that money on?
True; however Apple is recognized in the industry as getting by on relatively low R&D investments.
There are fundamental problems in computer science they could be researching. Programming languages are still pretty primitive. Computer security is a big problem. And Microsoft and IBM are spending big on quantum processors now. Apple is kicking butt with the A8 but they need to keep an eye out for any fundamental advances that could come out of left field and turn the market on it's head.
These are significant considerations. I'd add to that list extensive research in AI, speech recognition, neural network tech and the like. In fact I see AI research as perhaps the near term hot technology that could easily slip by Apple.
Neural networks is another interesting tech as it has a far greater potential for implementation into an iPad in the short term. Certainly quantum computing would be nice but I just don t see a short term solution where it will be implemented into Apples hardware. Neural networks on the other hand can implement some solutions at very low power levels compared to conventional CPUs. Apple really should be looking into this just to accelerate speech recognition.
Actually, it is your job. All spell checkers, at least the better ones, give the option of adding words. If you don't know why dictionaries aren't bigger, then you don't understand how spell checkers work. Many offer extra dictionaries for specialized writing. But you don't want those dictionaries on all of the time, because of the extra errors that you will get. Errors corrections that themselves are wrong.
I think you are missing the point, there is much that needs to be improved with Apples spell checkers. You won't get extra errors if reasonable intelligence is added to the spell checker. Some of the errors Apples software is coming up with is beyond explanation. I run into this all the time.
I'd go so far as to say there isn't anything in Apples software library that is more defective than their spell checking solutions.
Well yes, I guess you write instant messages at the grade-school level OS X/Hunspell isn't that bad. It does know that "cathc" ought to be spelled "catch." It's a great spell checker for grammar schools, middle-schools, and junior high. But that's all.
But I edit science books by people with multiple PhDs. I don't gripe that it doesn't understand extremely technical terms or the Latin names used for various plants and animals. I gripe that it doesn't have words that are a part of any college-level vocabulary, and that you can find commonly used in any of our country's more important newspapers.
Hell I'm going through life with a two year degree and find Apples spell checkers to be frustrating and at times mind boggling in their behavior.
Take one that's used numerous times in a book I'm editing—exceptionalism. Yeah, there is is with a red line under it. Stupid OS X doesn't know it exists. OS X's spell-checker is a high school dropout who flips burgers for the minimum wage. Pity him. It's not his fault, it's Apple's fault, Adobe's fault, and the fault of all those who put him in that lamentable position. They use Hunspell but contribute little to improving it.
This is a constant problem, words flagged as mis spelled that are very common in english yet Apples software rejects them with no rational reason. Worst is substitutions that come completely out of left field. You may focus on the word exceptionalism but this problem is extremely common with even mainstream vocabularies.
As to contributing little to HunSpell that may be so, I really don't know If Apple has commits on the server. However they have certainly ignored basic feature in their software in favor of skins every year. Honestly it is a bit pathetic.
Google gives almost 3 million hits for "exceptionalism," and Wikipedia has several entries for it in various forms. Although my context is different, it's a common term in today's political debate—whether "American exceptionalism" should be a part of our foreign policy. Here's a Washington Post article that has the term in a headline:
That is just how bad the spell checker in OS X is. It's not even useful for newspaper reporters. If you're high school dropout, OS X's spell checker is fine, and I don't fault the Hungarians who created it. English isn't their mother tongue. This isn't their problem.
I don't know, some high school drop outs do better with spelling than Apples solution.
But I do fault Apple for selling hardware at premium prices and yet shipping it with a spell-checker that still thinks this is 1988 and that lots of memory means 640K or RAM.
Apple has become to damn cheap. There is lots of talk about their R&D expenses of late but little talk about Apple actually moving tech forward. In the case of a spell checker you would think that everybody on the management team at Apple would be frustrated with the spell checking that goes on in their software. Either that or they have moved beyond fith grade writing skills.
Today's spell-checkers should do a lot more than they do. They need to know obvious derivative words, such as "exceptionalism" from "exceptional." They need to understand proper hyphenation rather than just slap two words in their word list together and pretend that might be an actual word.
It isn't like the technology doesn't exist.
For instance, I just entered: "<span style="line-height:1.4em;">catdowry" and Hunspell's response is to give me a choice between "cat dowry and "cat-dowry." The first is OK, but is the latter an actual word? No, I can't even force Google to give me a single hit on it. A word has to be in common use before people began to hyphenate it or merge it into one word. Cat-dowry isn't such a word, even though Hunspell will give that impression. Hunspell does what no spelling checker should do, it lies. It tells me something is a correct spelling, when it isn't even a spelling.</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">That's what I'm talking about. Apple spends millions making little tweaks to the UI just so OS X 10.10 looks different from 10.9. But it doesn't seem to have spent a penny giving OS X a college-level vocabulary.</span>
This is the thing, we as developers are seeing lots of great new features in Apples operating systems. However as a user their software seems to be in stasis. The only thing that gets major improvements is Safari. The rest get new skins and maybe a few new bugs.
Google isn't always correct either. The have a massive server farm to do those word lookups. We don't have that facility on our local computers. Google is also constantly fixing word definitions, spelling, etc. in short notice because their business depends on it. No doubt they spend hundreds of millions a year on just getting better word recognition. I certainly wouldn't expect Apple to do the same. As I've suggested before, if the free checker isn't good enough, buy a better one.
That might be a reasonable suggestion in some cases but the problem is Apples spell checkers are into everything and as such you would expect a reasonable investment on Apples part to make sure they don't suck. Honestly Mel, I'm not sure how you can defend Apple here. Apple can't imprive anything without putting energy into it. You seem to think because real progress has been slow with spell checkers that Apple should just punt and let somebody else do it.
Frankly that is rediculous and is where good R&D money should be going. If Apple want to support a system wide spell checking feature (a modern day expectation) then it needs to be excellent. If the majority of users out there didn't exoect viable spell checking that would be one thing, but these days it is a rational desire to have your OS support spell checking in a performant way.
When thinking of Google's self-driving cars as something with no forethought, keep in mind that if you don't have to drive, then you will have your eyeballs glued to a screen, and Google can sell eyeballs to advertisers for that time. This technology is an enabler for their core business, so there is plausible motivation to work it out.
The passing on the right was a premeditated demonstration of handling an aggressive driver. It could just as easily have been a left turn approach as a fast lane.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross:
I don't expect them to work on R&D that has nothing to do with eventual possible sales. I hope you don't either. Bell Labs never did
Err no, Bell labs researchers have pursued a number of things with and without Bell labs support. The thing with basic research is that you will never know before hand if it has a payoff that will aid the bottoms line.
Absolutely correct Anant. Bell Labs was far from alone in pursuing research that advanced science and industry as a whole even if they themselves did not benefit economically from it. "What's in it for me?" is short-sighted IMO.
Very shortsighted! However the research shouldn't involve new techniques in basket weaving.
This link is for Me's benefit as well as others who don't believe Apple or any other big tech should freely give back to the scientific research that made their own businesses possible. A rising tide lifts all ships. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_36/b4145036681619.htm
Honestly I'd like to see Apple funding basic research that has nothing to do with Apple.
Here is the thing though, consider what would happen these days if Apple acknowledged that it was funding research that had nothing to do with a near term project. Stock holders would be up in arms. Every analyst out there would be asking for Cooks head on a pike.
I see the no-steering-wheel car as a technology demo to get people thinking. We already have no-manual override systems in cars, where the car reacts so fast that most people wouldn't have time to intervene anyway (lane drift avoidance, or emergency braking).
Their actual on-road self-driving cars have steering wheels (this video was released the same month as the no-manual cars were introduced):
<to rehash an earlier comment, tell me this woman doesn't have a blast at work most days>
<iframe width="640" height="385" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TsaES--OTzM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
I'm not going to argue about no manual-override cars other than to say that it's silly to think that such a system wouldn't solve problems, even if you didn't want to ride in it. I'd rather be on a bicycle, and I'd rather have these in control of cars on the road than humans, but whatever.
Just to comment about drones;
I have nothing against them offhand, but the way Amazon and Google are talking about them, we will see clouds of them over our cities. Rubbish! The first time one crashes, and it will, it will be banned. These can't be little drones, they have to carry a decent sized package, and they have to do it reliably, every day, for a long time, or their initial purchase cost and well as the maintaince cost and the cost of running them won't even be paid off. No, I don't see this working anywhere than in very rural areas, and even then, the cost would be enormous. A terrible idea.
Comments
Mine would, but yours wouldn't.
The fact that they were a monopoly has everything to do with it. That's why they were so big, and had so much money. It was estimated, at the time of the breakup, that their infrastructure alone was worth more than $1 trillion. It's why Bell Labs was so important to them. If you read the book, a lot of things will become clear. Otherwise you're just fishing.
Large donations to specific areas will help. We're not talking about the alumni who donate big bucks, and demand it be spent on the football program, which is a scandal.
Wow! That's a big word. I understand context. You're just wrong.
Unless I read a book you recommend, I am "just fishing"?
Is that even a semi-serious comment!?
I think that a lot of what Google does is for publicity.
Good point. They can spend marketing money and list it as R&D (at least some of it).
Quote:
No company is willing to have so many failures intentionally.
So I believe that a lot of their projects are destined to fail because they aren't well thought out. They really don't solve any problem. They're just there for people to say something like what you're saying. That is, how wonderful it is that Google does things like that. It's deflecting people from what Google really does, which is pretty dark, being a bigger collector of our information than the NSA.
It is certainly a distraction from their ad business, but I don't see how you can say a self-driving car or Project Loon wouldn't solve any problems if deployed. You have an argument if you're just saying that these projects will not deploy, but that's different than saying that the concepts wouldn't solve any problems.
Because you're making statement about Bell Labs that you can't support.
I'm saying that these projects aren't well thought out, and won't solve any problems because they aren't well thought out.
Do you really want to ride in a car with no manual override? Because that's exactly what the Google car is. I believe it might have been the National Highway Administration that said that a driverless car needed an override. The Google car has no steering wheel. It looks like it should go back to the laboratory. It's already been involved in some (slow motion) crashes. Google has slowed the cruising speed down because of concerns.
Is this solving a problem? Is having big balloons deliver internet service really going to work? The experts don't think so. How about the, along with Amazon, delivering packages using drones? Really? I can think of so many problems with that.
Then there was the afore mentioned Tv sphere that didn't even make it to production after having a major introduction.
No one has seen Brinn wearing Glass for almost a year, after he wore it everywhere.
How about their setting up those barges that were illegal, and then claiming they were something they were not, having to remove them, and give them in for scrap? How may worthless projects does Google have to have fail before people understand that much of what they do is just odd, and poorly done?
Every company has its boners. Apple made the Cube. A good machine, but marketed so poorly that few people knew it was upgradable. It failed.
How about the round iMac mouse from the original iMacs? Jobs apparently, from talk, loved it, no one else did.
But Apple doesn't rush things out the way Google does. Muct of what Google does remains in beta forever. They discontinue software products as fast as they introduce them. It's confusing, to say the least.
I'm saying that these projects aren't well thought out, and won't solve any problems because they aren't well thought out.
Do you really want to ride in a car with no manual override? Because that's exactly what the Google car is. I believe it might have been the National Highway Administration that said that a driverless car needed an override. The Google car has no steering wheel. It looks like it should go back to the laboratory. It's already been involved in some (slow motion) crashes. Google has slowed the cruising speed down because of concerns.
I see the no-steering-wheel car as a technology demo to get people thinking. We already have no-manual override systems in cars, where the car reacts so fast that most people wouldn't have time to intervene anyway (lane drift avoidance, or emergency braking).
Their actual on-road self-driving cars have steering wheels (this video was released the same month as the no-manual cars were introduced):
<to rehash an earlier comment, tell me this woman doesn't have a blast at work most days>
I'm not going to argue about no manual-override cars other than to say that it's silly to think that such a system wouldn't solve problems, even if you didn't want to ride in it. I'd rather be on a bicycle, and I'd rather have these in control of cars on the road than humans, but whatever.
Is having big balloons deliver internet service really going to work? The experts don't think so. How about the, along with Amazon, delivering packages using drones? Really? I can think of so many problems with that.
Then there was the afore mentioned Tv sphere that didn't even make it to production after having a major introduction.
No one has seen Brinn wearing Glass for almost a year, after he wore it everywhere.
How about their setting up those barges that were illegal, and then claiming they were something they were not, having to remove them, and give them in for scrap? How may worthless projects does Google have to have fail before people understand that much of what they do is just odd, and poorly done?
Every company has its boners. Apple made the Cube. A good machine, but marketed so poorly that few people knew it was upgradable. It failed.
How about the round iMac mouse from the original iMacs? Jobs apparently, from talk, loved it, no one else did.
But Apple doesn't rush things out the way Google does. Muct of what Google does remains in beta forever. They discontinue software products as fast as they introduce them. It's confusing, to say the least.
Yeah, that's different, the Googlers are the ones having the fun.
I'm obliged to point out that their fun is creating a churn of mental disturbance in its wake. Google Glass was not only doomed from the start by being monocular, it was actually harmful to those whose rage was stirred up, hostility aroused, without knowing why. One did not realize one was a technophobe or geekophobe until Google Glass arrived.
One actually wasn't either. Glass violated facial symmetry, and that was why we felt like punching out the wearer.. It had nothing to do with privacy invasion, though that was how we rationalized our instant hostility.
A simpleton could have told Google's twisted, left-brained tinkerers all this, anyone with the least bit of aesthetic sense. The point? Their "fun" is completely misguided, and I suspect it's because they don't treat R&D as a serious social art. Google can't be serious; they have had to suppress that because of their profane mission of selling our attention to a thousand advertisers. Unless they deal with that and start valuing human attention as their highest concern, they'll continue with their fractious, distracting projects, like Mel Gross says here.
Don't get me started on those vicious, evil robots they now own. Those are destruction and predation machines. Have some taste and soul, Google.
Notice in the self-driving car video (PR approved!) that the engineer allows the vehicle's software to commit two driving errors without comment. It hangs in a fast last and forces a following car to pass angrily on the right, a dangerous situation. And it fails to take the right of way at a four way stop and yields to the car on the left, another snafu with potential consequences. Does nobody screen these things? The answer is that no serious brains are in charge.
I'm obliged to point out that their fun is creating a churn of mental disturbance in its wake. Google Glass was not only doomed from the start by being monocular, it was actually harmful to those whose rage was stirred up, hostility aroused, without knowing why. One did not realize one was a technophobe or geekophobe until Google Glass arrived.
That's awesome. Very true. lmao
A simpleton could have told Google's twisted, left-brained tinkerers all this, anyone with the least bit of aesthetic sense. The point? Their "fun" is completely misguided, and I suspect it's because they don't treat R&D as a serious social art. Google can't be serious; they have had to suppress that because of their profane mission of selling our attention to a thousand advertisers. Unless they deal with that and start valuing human attention as their highest concern, they'll continue with their fractious, distracting projects, like Mel Gross says here.
Don't get me started on those vicious, evil robots they now own. Those are destruction and predation machines. Have some taste and soul, Google.
Notice in the self-driving car video (PR approved!) that the engineer allows the vehicle's software to commit two driving errors without comment. It hangs in a fast last and forces a following car to pass angrily on the right, a dangerous situation. And it fails to take the right of way at a four way stop and yields to the car on the left, another snafu with potential consequences. Does nobody screen these things? The answer is that no serious brains are in charge.
When thinking of Google's self-driving cars as something with no forethought, keep in mind that if you don't have to drive, then you will have your eyeballs glued to a screen, and Google can sell eyeballs to advertisers for that time. This technology is an enabler for their core business, so there is plausible motivation to work it out.
The passing on the right was a premeditated demonstration of handling an aggressive driver. It could just as easily have been a left turn approach as a fast lane.
Robots? Did you know that Old Glory Insurance has a robot clause for people over 50?
https://screen.yahoo.com/old-glory-insurance-ad-000000469.html
… clipped a bunch of text.
There is a more general problem here that I see as Apple loosing control of the software development processes. Further there seems to be a lack of vision or willingness to acknowledge what users need, in Apples supplied apps. If they don't get a handle on this is see long term problems.
IOS is a perfect example where all we have gotten lately is new skins on the supplied apps with little in the way of feature set expansion. Consider Notes for example, why can't I create HTML lists in Notes on iOS devices? Seriously it is like they mis totally the idea that notes are often lists that you use to keep track of things. HTML of course is all set to display lists.
Ah, tricky there Mel. Yes there was a crash involving a Google self-driving car.. . . A Prius being driven by a human at the time.
That's the only one I've seen reported, and back in 2011.
Anyway if you have any interest there's a fairly recent article on the current progress. As with any other new tech the first iteration (remember Newton?) won't be the last. Ya gotta start somewhere or sit on the sidelines while others with the cajones take the lead. Your choice. But to say there's a lot of miles to go before driver-less tech is ready would be an understatement.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/181508-googles-self-driving-car-passes-700000-accident-free-miles-can-now-avoid-cyclists-stop-for-trains
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/
True; however Apple is recognized in the industry as getting by on relatively low R&D investments.
These are significant considerations. I'd add to that list extensive research in AI, speech recognition, neural network tech and the like. In fact I see AI research as perhaps the near term hot technology that could easily slip by Apple.
Neural networks is another interesting tech as it has a far greater potential for implementation into an iPad in the short term. Certainly quantum computing would be nice but I just don t see a short term solution where it will be implemented into Apples hardware. Neural networks on the other hand can implement some solutions at very low power levels compared to conventional CPUs. Apple really should be looking into this just to accelerate speech recognition.
I think you are missing the point, there is much that needs to be improved with Apples spell checkers. You won't get extra errors if reasonable intelligence is added to the spell checker. Some of the errors Apples software is coming up with is beyond explanation. I run into this all the time.
I'd go so far as to say there isn't anything in Apples software library that is more defective than their spell checking solutions.
As to contributing little to HunSpell that may be so, I really don't know If Apple has commits on the server. However they have certainly ignored basic feature in their software in favor of skins every year. Honestly it is a bit pathetic. I don't know, some high school drop outs do better with spelling than Apples solution. Apple has become to damn cheap. There is lots of talk about their R&D expenses of late but little talk about Apple actually moving tech forward. In the case of a spell checker you would think that everybody on the management team at Apple would be frustrated with the spell checking that goes on in their software. Either that or they have moved beyond fith grade writing skills. It isn't like the technology doesn't exist.
This is the thing, we as developers are seeing lots of great new features in Apples operating systems. However as a user their software seems to be in stasis. The only thing that gets major improvements is Safari. The rest get new skins and maybe a few new bugs.
That might be a reasonable suggestion in some cases but the problem is Apples spell checkers are into everything and as such you would expect a reasonable investment on Apples part to make sure they don't suck. Honestly Mel, I'm not sure how you can defend Apple here. Apple can't imprive anything without putting energy into it. You seem to think because real progress has been slow with spell checkers that Apple should just punt and let somebody else do it.
Frankly that is rediculous and is where good R&D money should be going. If Apple want to support a system wide spell checking feature (a modern day expectation) then it needs to be excellent. If the majority of users out there didn't exoect viable spell checking that would be one thing, but these days it is a rational desire to have your OS support spell checking in a performant way.
Coincidentally, Sephko on Google is linked by Gruber today:
http://sephko.tumblr.com/image/101275314843
Fun.
Honestly I'd like to see Apple funding basic research that has nothing to do with Apple.
Here is the thing though, consider what would happen these days if Apple acknowledged that it was funding research that had nothing to do with a near term project. Stock holders would be up in arms. Every analyst out there would be asking for Cooks head on a pike.
Just to comment about drones;
I have nothing against them offhand, but the way Amazon and Google are talking about them, we will see clouds of them over our cities. Rubbish! The first time one crashes, and it will, it will be banned. These can't be little drones, they have to carry a decent sized package, and they have to do it reliably, every day, for a long time, or their initial purchase cost and well as the maintaince cost and the cost of running them won't even be paid off. No, I don't see this working anywhere than in very rural areas, and even then, the cost would be enormous. A terrible idea.