nemoeac

Prof_Peabody said:

I hate these kinds of articles.  DED I presume?  AppleInsider doesn't do itself any favours by printing this kind of one-sided garbage.  A "year in review" type of article should contain the minuses as well as the plusses.  

A few that come to mind:

- the very, very late debut of the very, very expensive Apple Watch
- Apple TV being so delayed that it actually has last year's internals (for twice the price)
- the most talked about feature of the new Apple TV (skinny cable package) pulled at last second. 
- finally updating the iPad mini after three full years of languor. 
- the new $200 trackpad!  
- the new iPad that's more expensive than a laptop but half as capable.  
- Advertisements in the OS

I know others won't necessarily agree with me on all of these but the point is that there are many points of view and also pros and cons.  

These long, poorly written articles full of bitterness, that praise Apple to the heavens, while jousting against imaginary critics are tiresome, unfair, and uninteresting once you realize how biased they are.  Please stop. Someone knock that chip off Daniel's shoulder so he can write properly.  

Herbivore2 said:

Google is the true corporate thief. Samsung never had a corporate executive sit in on the iPhone/iOS development process like Eric Schmidt of Google did. 

When Google released Android, if my recollection is correct, it was first released on Motorola's Droid. And that phone was essentially a clone of the iPhone. 

Samsung was an opportunist, but can they really be blamed? Sony, HTC, LG, Motorola, Xiaomi and Huawei also produce Android based clones. 

Samsung makes nice products. Their DRAM and flash memory products are top notch. They as a company would actually like to abandon Android all together with Tizen now being used in all of their wearables. Tying those wearables into iOS is a good thing. Samsung is following a proprietary vertically integrated model like Apple as opposed to the commodity model of Intel and Google. 

Samsung and LG are going to produce components for Apple. While TSMC is able to build CPUs, they don't build displays and they don't build memory. 

At least Samsung is moving away from Android unlike the rest of the handset makers. 


I actually like many of Samsung's products including the chip and memory inside of my iPhone 6S. Google on the other hand is a totally different story. 

danvm said:

nemoeac said:

Tenly said that there should have been redundancies in the system and then went on to explain what spme of the redundancies should have been - network, servers, etc. He was speaking about the design of the system as whole - and then you jumped in claiming that the servers had nothing to do with the failure.  That's a completely irrelevant point and does not change the fact that the system should include redundancies for possible server faults

Like I posted before, I work IT and know the importance of redundant systems, and I agree with what Tenly said about that.  My post is based in the what happened in the game.  The backend was running, the network was working for Denver and NE via ethernet network.  I'm just pointing out that switching to the redundant servers would not had solved the problem.  BTW, there is a big chance an arena that host a big league team as the Broncos have a very robust network, which includes redundant systems.  

I'm looking forward to learn from you...

First, I didn't imagined nothing.  I know they have redundancy at different levels and layers.  BTW,  there is nothing new for me to learn from your post.  You don't have to be an expert to know this.  

The first two lines are assumptions from you part, and both are wrong.  And second, Have you consider the possibility that the arena already have configured the kind of network you mention in your post?  You are not the only person that know about this kind of infrastructure.  

Back to the point, they connect the SP using cable and it worked without issues.  So it looks like they had a plan that worked while they fixed the cabling issue that brought down the wireless in the NE side. They didn't not have to use a redundant network, since they were already connected to the network via cable.  Now you may understand why I mentioned that adding redundant servers, while it's a must for this kind of environment, wasn't a solution to the problem.  

BTW, I didn't learn nothing from your second point.  I already knew that.  

No, I didn't say that.  I mentioned that the NFL should check the guidelines for networks in the arenas.  Obviously MS should be part of that since they use their devices.  

I'm not too good with name calling.  On the contrary, I'm very respectful in my posts because I know I'm talking with many professionals I don't even know.  Looks like this is not the case.  

No, I don't need to defend nobody, be it MS, Apple, Amazon or whatever company exist.  

Every company have it's list of issues, including Apple, MS, Google or Amazon.  And on Sunday it was the NFL and the Sports Authority Field at Mile High IT department. Don't forget that Surface Pros were working all the time, even when there was no wireless in the NE side.  

matrix077 said:

redraider11 said:

Not really sure what Jesus has to do with it, but if you don't like it don't use it.

Yeah.. neither was I. Somehow I don't think Jesus is a fan of "dark" theme.

danvm said:

tenly said:

I mentioned redundant systems which would include network and servers.  It doesn't matter that this particular problem was network related - my comments stand that there should have been backup servers.  They should not have had to fix the network - they should have had a hot standby network ready and waiting.  The downtime could/should have been reduced to less than a minute as opposed to the 15 or 20 it took to switch to a hard-wired solution.

Again, I don't see how in this specific case backup servers would help, since the network was the issue.  And I don't think they have "backup servers" in this kind of business. Those are big league teams with huge pockets, so it's no strange to hear them using clusters, SAN storage and cloud replication.  And you still mention how the downtime could reduced to less than a minute, without even knowing what kind of infrastructure they have.  


Here is some information from the CNet regarding the issue,

"An NFL spokesman confirmed that the Surfaces were not the problem. He told me: "The issue was identified as a network cable malfunction and was resolved during the 2nd quarter. The issue was not caused by the tablets or the software that runs on the tablets. We have experienced no issues with the tablets this season. Any issues were network related."

So it looks like the problem was with networking hardware.  So now you blame MS that they didn't implement a "truly resilient system".  You know why?  Here is another line from the article,

"A Microsoft spokesman told me: "Not once this season have we experienced an issue related to the devices themselves. The issue is one of network stability in the various stadiums, which we have little control over."

So MS has little control over what they can do with stadium networks.  Looks like the stadium manager are the one how need to apologise.  I hope the whole article clarify more of your questions.

http://www.cnet.com/news/patriots-belichick-says-microsoft-surface-breakdowns-are-commonplace/

BTW, from what I understood from the live game, the fixed the issue quickly going hardwire.  The 15-20 minutes was to fix the network problem.  Al least with the Surface you have to option to use ethernet. 

Wow.  My 11-year old son wanted me to ask "How dumb are you?" but I explained to him that we have to be polite on the public forums and can't ask a question like that. 

But, the fact that you can't understand why a well-designed, resilient system would include backup servers baffles both of us.  We are all aware that in this case, it was the network that failed.  But at the time the system is being designed - nothing has failed - and a proper design will assume that ANY part of the system is capable of failing and therefore should have some sort of hot standby.  You keep harping on the fact that backup servers were not necessary because it was the network that failed.  LOL  We think you have a problem understanding how "time" flows.  We know now - AFTER the failure has occurred - that it was the network that failed so there should not have been any redundancies except maybe for the network.  But if you can't understand why parallels systems are required - for every part of the system - we can't explain it to you any better than we already have.  Its frustrating for us.  We really want you to understand - but I guess we have to realize and accept that sometimes, some people just don't have the capacity to understand even the simplest of concepts.

Moving on to another comment you made - that you think excuses Microsoft (but doesn't) - is the fact that they have "very little control over" the stadium networks!  Wow.  Big red flag for me as a project manager!!!  If there was a component critical to my projects success (such as the network) that I had "very little control over" - I wouldn't use it!  I would have (and Microsoft should have) installed their own network that they DID have control over.  It's not THAT major of an undertaking and it would have put them back in control of their own destiny.

Make all the excuses you want for Microsoft's negligence.  They gambled and lost.  They built a half-assed system and hoped nothing would break.  While it wasn't specifically a problem with the surface - the problem was still one that Microsoft could have avoided so I agree that they deserve the negative publicity.  And as far as negative publicity is concerned - this is almost nothing compared to how people would be screaming if this were Apple instaead of Microsoft - even if the outage was only for 5 minutes instead of 20!