Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Feb 2014 09:12

kenop wrote:Another gadget down at home. 11 years old Sony Trintron (CRT) gives up. The service center people are not too supportive of replacing the CRT ("thoda aur daal ke 22" LCD aa jayega") ignoring that a reasonably SQH-acceptable model (32" LED not LCD) will cost thrice the CRT replacement option
The days of CRT TVs were good when the min:max price ratio was about 1:3. It is 1:10 or more now. These days it is important to fix budget before going out shopping.

11 years old? I bet it was not the CRT, but the power supply or flyback transformer. You may be able to repair it if you can get the service manual. Look on-line. However, a modern LED-LCD television will give you a much superior picture anyway you slice it.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 04 Feb 2014 09:42

those huge heavy tubes probably suck a lot of power as well, vs flat screens. I could barely lift my 29" trinitron that I got locally on r2i. used it for 6 yrs before selling it to our kitchen carpenter and getting a flat.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 04 Feb 2014 09:57

Mort Walker wrote:Guy Kawasaki is now an Android guy with Google. There was article written by him on he preferred Android over iOS.

Yes. I looked up where is he is after his appearance on "Wait Wait Don't Tell" on NPR (or something on a Saturday morning - right after the car talk guys).

I used to listen to Guy Nuwar (is that the spelling) in the afternoon on Sundays. But not any more (for some reason).

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 04 Feb 2014 15:37

is this just another flytrap to get a exact log of people's surfing habits to use for commercial purposes?

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

I tried comparison pings to 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 and my corporate blr dns server which must be 100meters from my desk.
all came back around 8-10ms. a ping to my secondary corporate dns in bay area took 200ms.

so does that mean spider has reached deep into indian ISPs and installed distributed dns servers worldwide?

chandrasekaran · Post by **chandrasekaran** » 04 Feb 2014 16:54

Singha wrote:is this just another flytrap to get a exact log of people's surfing habits to use for commercial purposes?
https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

This service from Google has been up for a long time now. RTT from my place is about 64msec. Its a very good service to have though. Much better than the DNS servers doled out by my own ISP's (office and home) both in response and uptimes. Apparently they do validation as well that makes DNS based spoofing very difficult.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Feb 2014 17:11

Singha wrote:is this just another flytrap to get a exact log of people's surfing habits to use for commercial purposes?

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

I tried comparison pings to 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 and my corporate blr dns server which must be 100meters from my desk.
all came back around 8-10ms. a ping to my secondary corporate dns in bay area took 200ms.

so does that mean spider has reached deep into indian ISPs and installed distributed dns servers worldwide?

I have found Google's DNS servers to be more reliable than my ISP. The question comes down to whom do I trust more. My ISP's public DNS or Google's?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Feb 2014 21:53

Mort Walker wrote:Guy Kawasaki is now an Android guy with Google. There was article written by him on he preferred Android over iOS.

He's a professional evangelist. You pay him big bucks, he will go to town talking up your product. In fact back when the Mahdi was alive, Kawasaki had a falling out with him and had tried to get into Mickey....he got blocked by Vic babu. And now you say both ended up in Chacha?

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 04 Feb 2014 22:02

Kawasaki has a good sense of humor and quite charming unlike some who are a little too staid.

Saw on /. that NSA got hold of the entire real IP database of TOR users. Will dig this up.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Feb 2014 22:11

DNS hijackings are common. Thats how various agencies, countries, companies send you to fake websites. Having a fixed DNS provider is a smart idea.

BTW Nadella garu got picked for M$
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014 ... a/5193103/

This is great news. He will focus on their cloud efforts and hopefully leave legacy complicated licensing behind.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Feb 2014 22:18

Now expect MMS to open his mouth about how this is a great achievement for India, RaGa to claim credit for Nadella ending up as CEO due to Congi-era education policies and Pakistan to proudly lay claim to the new South Asian CEO of the world's largest software company.

Nadella already has been leading cloud efforts for a long time now and has made it a big fat revenue generator. What he needs to ensure is finding among his deputies somebody who can continue the charge while he focuses on the entire company instead of one BU.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 04 Feb 2014 22:40

As I said before MS Azure cloud offerings are better than others (at least to my non-eggspurt eye) in that they offer a large number of pre-configured images of both Linux and Windows to suite varying needs - TP to HPC. More options to do memory-processor trade-off depending on the kind of work that needs to be done, more options for mapping physical hardware to do proper scheduling in software etc. I had a quick look just to get educated on different cloud vendor offerings and MS seem to be the one to chose if we ever want to do anything in this direction.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Feb 2014 23:47

Raja Bose wrote:Now expect MMS to open his mouth about how this is a great achievement for India, RaGa to claim credit for Nadella ending up as CEO due to Congi-era education policies and Pakistan to proudly lay claim to the new South Asian CEO of the world's largest software company.

Nadella already has been leading cloud efforts for a long time now and has made it a big fat revenue generator. What he needs to ensure is finding among his deputies somebody who can continue the charge while he focuses on the entire company instead of one BU.

On a personal level I am happy and wish him success. I am worried though as Ballmer and Gates still sit on the MSFT board, they may make life difficult for him should he appear too bold to them. At the end of the day, I suspect the rest of MSFT's board defers or looks to Ballmer and Gates for cues to the direction the company is going. Gates has showed a lot of maturity after being involved with his foundation, but I wouldn't trust Ballmer as he comes off as a big ar$ehole (compared to even other CEOs). One thing about Nadella, his wife is Indian and he visits India every year. To me at a personal level this is comforting that he is grounded in his Indic roots.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Feb 2014 05:25

Ideally if a CEO is not strong enough to stand up to the board, he should not be CEO. One of the reasons the Mahdi was successful was becoz he did not give a eff eff about the board. Which other CEO today has that ability? Perhaps Bezos, thats it.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Feb 2014 05:53

^When you have one board member who is an industry icon and former CEO (Gates), plus anther board member who was the last CEO and a known bully (Ballmer), it makes the new CEO's job harder. What I fear is that Nadella may become a bali. What I hope for is that Nadella dumps the legacy line of old software like Windows and brings in the smart people who made XBox.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Feb 2014 07:09

Billy G has recused himself from being chairman of the Board.

If so, it is a shrewd move by Nadella. He wanted BillyG to be his "advisor" (he can choose to ignore BillyG's advice, and tame the division heads by waving BillyG in front of them) and at the same time he got him removed form the chairman of the board. Fellow's first moves were shrewd.

From whatever I have seen of him, fellow understands why M$ has fallen behind. Bulk of computing today does not happen on windows -- it doesnt on the client side: People use their ipadwa, iphunwa, various androids, browsers not from M$ and it doesnt happen in the server side. Happens on Linux on servers hosted by companies like Amazon. This is the position they should seek to win back.

If they execute well, any new startup should think of deploying their backend on Azure and develop a client app for Windows. Today they think of deploying their backend on Amazon and developing a client app for iOS. If this trend continues, M$ will be consigned to the dustbin of "Also ran" -- Just like IBM. They will continue to be profitable -- just like IBM, but will no longer be a platform to be reckoned with -- Just like IBM. Used to be a time when all software worth its salt used to target IBM software and hardware.

On the other hand, it is huge opportunity for them. Mobile and Cloud business is in its early days. Just like the early days of the PC. Just becase Jobswa made the Mac and sprinkled it with pixie dust didnt mean Mac won the PC war. It was the cheaper, more widely deployed solution from microsoft that won. M$ has about 5 years to win it.

He has cash, talent, experience and M$ sales force to win the cloud battle. What he doesnt have is the consumer electronics chops. Hardware is treacherous business, with razor thin margins and fast product cycles. Like how Chacha burnt his fingers to find out. Like how iPods and Macs are declining and dwindling in their contribution to FruitCo's revenue. Like how iPad's margins have been shrinking.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Feb 2014 07:18

my airtel dns was 90ms avg ping time and G-dns just 32ms.
so changed over to G-dns. I have been having a lot of DNS trouble lately with host failing to resolve situation and recovering only when the beetel modem is rebooted again. sometimes it would resolve on its own if left alone for some time.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Feb 2014 08:24

Microsoft has been playing follow the leader in many areas of the tech revolution. They let Google run away with search, maps and Android OS; Apple ran away with the portable media player (iPod), the smartphone and the tablet; Oracle and Amazon and others took off with cloud computing; Facebook and Twitter practically monopolize social media. If it wasn't for Windows and MS Office, Microsoft might not even be relevant as a company at this point. Clearly, a lot of this took place during Ballmer's tenure but Nadella was a part of Microsoft too during this period. I wonder whether he ever envisioned any of these revolutions before they became mainstream and, if so, did he do anything to try to get Microsoft involved as a leader in these areas?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 05 Feb 2014 09:55

Mort Walker wrote: I have found Google's DNS servers to be more reliable than my ISP. The question comes down to whom do I trust more. My ISP's public DNS or Google's?

Trust yourself and run your own resolver. I highly recommend dnscache.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Feb 2014 13:33

Mort Walker wrote:^When you have one board member who is an industry icon and former CEO (Gates), plus anther board member who was the last CEO and a known bully (Ballmer), it makes the new CEO's job harder. What I fear is that Nadella may become a bali. What I hope for is that Nadella dumps the legacy line of old software like Windows and brings in the smart people who made XBox.

er...why would he dump Windoze?

Nadella is no Kalidasa, one hopes!

BTW XBox runs on Windoze too.

---

I guess whichever anal-e-cyst made the graph forgot to note what happened in the industry in 2000 unless he is blaming Ballmer for the dot com bust

Another trend I am seeing is that while the PC market is declining, the tablet market is saturating as per anal-e-cyst reports. So what happened to the post-PC/tablet replacing PCs era which anal-e-cysts were predicting back in 2010? If tablets are not eating into PC marketshare, then what is? Or is it the PC HW market which is declining (due to slower refresh cycles) but PC software is still growing? If something like ChromeOS becomes significant, will that mean even slower refresh cycles for PC HW? In that case the revenue model for the PC hardware market will have to change dramatically....profit sharing with the HW OEMs from the platform vendor's services would have to play a major role.

HW is tough business which is why one needs to own the value added parts to make the money, namely, software and services. What making your own HW gives you is control and tight integration. One cannot see it in simplistic terms as 2 separate pieces anymore and the trend for CE devices in that regard is very clear. The problem with Chacha's approach to making HW was that they decided to forget or ignore some basic fundamentals which go behind the development, manufacturing and support of high volume CE devices regardless of category/generation. That leads to ill-conceived devices like the Nexus Q or ChromeBook Pixel. They weren't products which iterative design improvements could fix (like the Surface tablets)...they were products which shouldn't have been considered for GTM in the 1st place.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Feb 2014 15:08

as predirected todays headline in Shomeless TOI _ "India makes a power point. Hyd born, manipal educated...rah rah rah"

looks like the legions of jobless and underemployed college grads roaming around under Congi low-growth regime should be jubilant about it.

sunilUpa · Post by **sunilUpa** » 05 Feb 2014 17:46

my team gifted me a Moto X with Walnut back as farewell present. I am impressed with it's touch less control, it even understands my accent perfectly!

chandrasekaran · Post by **chandrasekaran** » 05 Feb 2014 19:26

Starting tomorrow flipkart will sell Moto G at 12500 INR for the 8GB version and 14000 INR for the 16GB versions. Looks like very good price as flipkart bundles couples of other offers along with (500 INR off on e-books purchased from their site and 1000 INR off for clothes). All in all a decent deal. Fyi

kenop · Post by **kenop** » 05 Feb 2014 19:53

SaiK wrote:I have an unsed sony trinitron crt 32" for about 5 years now, and it was put to use for about 12 years before that making it 17 years. but it is working great and of course i have not tested for quite sometime now.

if you can pay for the S&H, take it free!

Thanks saikullah. Waiting for the orders from SQH. No more suggestions from my side.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Feb 2014 22:00

Raja Bose wrote:
er...why would he dump Windoze? Nadella is no Kalidasa, one hopes! BTW XBox runs on Windoze too.

---

I guess whichever anal-e-cyst made the graph forgot to note what happened in the industry in 2000 unless he is blaming Ballmer for the dot com bust Another trend I am seeing is that while the PC market is declining, the tablet market is saturating as per anal-e-cyst reports. So what happened to the post-PC/tablet replacing PCs era which anal-e-cysts were predicting back in 2010? If tablets are not eating into PC marketshare, then what is? Or is it the PC HW market which is declining (due to slower refresh cycles) but PC software is still growing? If something like ChromeOS becomes significant, will that mean even slower refresh cycles for PC HW? In that case the revenue model for the PC hardware market will have to change dramatically....profit sharing with the HW OEMs from the platform vendor's services would have to play a major role.

HW is tough business which is why one needs to own the value added parts to make the money, namely, software and services. What making your own HW gives you is control and tight integration. One cannot see it in simplistic terms as 2 separate pieces anymore and the trend for CE devices in that regard is very clear. The problem with Chacha's approach to making HW was that they decided to forget or ignore some basic fundamentals which go behind the development, manufacturing and support of high volume CE devices regardless of category/generation. That leads to ill-conceived devices like the Nexus Q or ChromeBook Pixel. They weren't products which iterative design improvements could fix (like the Surface tablets)...they were products which shouldn't have been considered for GTM in the 1st place.

1. Windows in terms of UX. Embedded Windows is fine as the user doesn't see it. A new GUI on top of Linux or Unix OS would be the way to go optimized for mobile computing. Make a clean break. I think MSFT can, but Gates and Ballmer are addicted to the revenue from captive customers, they won't change.
2. It is not an analyst graph.

But simply share price vs. time in a comparison over 14 years. Yes, you cant replicate 1986-2000 with 54,000% return, but Ballmer's record is not good in the corresponding years. Everything else like dot-com bust, 9/11, post-PC era, and so on are excuses over 14 years. Don't get me wrong, MSFT is still a good company just like IBM.
3. I agree that HW is a tough business for CE, especially nowadays when it is essentially disposable after a few years. However, that should not be an excuse for Ballmer's performance over 14 years. I think Nadella can do wonders as there is talent, but unfortunately he has the two previous CEOs as millstones around his neck.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Feb 2014 22:17

You are talking about the shell, not the OS. Two different things. To dump the OS in order to change the shell would be a Kalidasa move.

Why would you dump the worlds largest software ecosystem and go with Linux? The smart money is on keeping Windoze and simultaneously moving your service/software offerings to the cloud.

Mickeys stock price has remained stagnant till last year but gave steady dividends. FruitCo is volatile but gives dividends. Chacha is volatile but no dividends and now doing a d1ck move by doing their Lahori version of stock split....which Larry babu actually had the gall to claim last year was a dividend payment...till Chacha got hauled to court by its shareholders

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 05 Feb 2014 22:20

Chacha's stock split move is being quoted as a way to bring in more retail investors who otherwise find the >$1K/share price hard to make small purchases in. Splitting stock at that level isn't such a bad move, really. The last I checked BRK.A is over $150K a share, and they have a secondary issuing of BRK.B at a less stratospheric level, because Buffet doesn't do stock splits.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 05 Feb 2014 22:41

Here's The Hilarious And Brutal Chart That Whitney Tilson Sent Out To Explain The Crash In A Big 3D Printing Company

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Feb 2014 23:13

Suraj wrote:Chacha's stock split move is being quoted as a way to bring in more retail investors who otherwise find the >$1K/share price hard to make small purchases in. Splitting stock at that level isn't such a bad move, really. The last I checked BRK.A is over $150K a share, and they have a secondary issuing of BRK.B at a less stratospheric level, because Buffet doesn't do stock splits.

The problem is its not a regular stock split. Chacha is splitting a single stock into 2, each of a different category - one which has voting rights and one which doesn't....that is why they got sued.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 06 Feb 2014 03:31

chandrasekaran wrote:Starting tomorrow flipkart will sell Moto G at 12500 INR for the 8GB version and 14000 INR for the 16GB versions. Looks like very good price as flipkart bundles couples of other offers along with (500 INR off on e-books purchased from their site and 1000 INR off for clothes). All in all a decent deal. Fyi

Having seen the Moto X, the Moto G is quite similar and a pure Android experience. I suspect if they can keep up with demand, then it will be a hit in India, the rest of Asia and EU. IMHO, at these prices, it would be better than any WP device.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Feb 2014 03:46

Vina mullah take note. We had this discussion many moons ago...this is not some app loading a browser component....this is the browser component actually packaged as an app run-time and loading the app.

Chrome apps may soon run without any trace of the web browser

vina · Post by **vina** » 06 Feb 2014 04:20

Raja Bose wrote:Vina mullah take note. We had this discussion many moons ago...this is not some app loading a browser component....this is the browser component actually packaged as an app run-time and loading the app.

Chrome apps may soon run without any trace of the web browser

Yawn.. Back to~~1993~~ 1996 (the native java version came out in 1996. Thanks Anujan) ! OS2 warp had a native java run time in it's shell, and you could launch and run java apps directly like any .exe without a browser ! Same-same onree. Lipstick on pig. HTML instead of java. Bah!

So much for "progress" in 21 18 years. Sounds like "plogless" to me.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 06 Feb 2014 05:12

There is shitton of money to be made in the IT sector. Both in consumer facing applications and in enterprise. There is intense competition among corporations too. To own the consumer space and developer mindshare. In such a marketplace I always take "Back in my grandpappy's days..." anecdotes with a pinch of salt.

By that measure ENIAC was a nice computer too. In 1946 nonetheless. It had CPU, RAM and could be programmed. You could call the various mobile and custom processors, low voltage ram and flash and various programming languages, runtimes and platforms as nothing new.

By the way Java was first relased in 1995. And JRE does not need a browser.

Meanwhile

vina · Post by **vina** » 06 Feb 2014 05:24

Anujan wrote:..In such a marketplace I always take "Back in my grandpappy's days..." anecdotes with a pinch of salt. ..

By the way Java was first relased in 1995. And JRE does not need a browser.

Sorry. It is back to 1996 (OS2 Warp with native Java runtime), not 1993

Meanwhile

Ah. In Inglees, what this graph shows is, the recent Mickey Saaft surge in shareprice is because they managed to stanch the hemorrhage in Bing. That made up for the loss in Windoze. Despite all the rah-rah, the tools and servers bizness did only show a "sekoolar" growth

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 06 Feb 2014 05:30

Let me rant a bit about the web platform.

When PCs were not connected, most of the money to be made was using offline software and offline media distribution. Like Photoshop and DVDs. The rise of the internet has made most of the software and services online.

Yes you can argue that online services are useless because they can't work without a net connection. That is true. You can't shop in amazon without a net connection but can go to a local grocery store. That is a moot point.

Online software has two properties. It is distributed online. Like Google maps. You go to a website. And its features rely on being connected. Like twitter. Even if you install a twitter app, it is useless without tweet updates.

These two features pose challenges and opportunities. Online distribution means the client can access using any machine and you have to write portable apps. Yes you can write java applets. Constant connection means your platform needs to provide connection primitives that are easy to use, resilient, abstracted and secure.

People figured "hey browsers provide both, let's use it". A fantastic example is email. Take gmail. You can access it from any machine running any OS as long as the browser is standards compliant. In fact web-based email provides such a great experience for most people that they don't miss installed email clients at all. Same goes for facekitab, Netflix, amazon ityadi.

Now you could argue that its all software and software is nothing new. Which would be true but would be akin to calling electric cars as nothing new because we had electric trains and petrol cars for a long time.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Feb 2014 05:34

vina wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:Vina mullah take note. We had this discussion many moons ago...this is not some app loading a browser component....this is the browser component actually packaged as an app run-time and loading the app.

Chrome apps may soon run without any trace of the web browser
Yawn.. Back to~~1993~~ 1996 (the native java version came out in 1996. Thanks Anujan) ! OS2 warp had a native java run time in it's shell, and you could launch and run java apps directly like any .exe without a browser ! Same-same onree. Lipstick on pig. HTML instead of java. Bah!

So much for "progress" in 21 18 years. Sounds like "plogless" to me.

Its all language onlee. C++ instead of C....Java instead of C++....what plogless?? All lipstick on a pig. By that Lahori argument computing has not fundamentally changed since the 60s-70s when you were a phata abdul.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 06 Feb 2014 06:09

The huge bing dip is due to the massive capex spend they took on. Most possibly for their fleet capacity. Said so much in the investor call. I would assume some of the azure infrastructure costs is being billed to bing.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 06 Feb 2014 07:54

Anujan wrote:The huge bing dip is due to the massive capex spend they took on. Most possibly for their fleet capacity. Said so much in the investor call. I would assume some of the azure infrastructure costs is being billed to bing.

I guess this may be the the "300,000 xbox live (for multi-player games) servers" and xbox pne's cloud compute.

Chandragupta · Post by **Chandragupta** » 06 Feb 2014 08:05

Looks like a bubble alright.

vina · Post by **vina** » 06 Feb 2014 10:31

Raja Bose wrote:language onlee. C++ instead of C....Java instead of C++....what plogless?? All lipstick on a pig. By that Lahori argument computing has not fundamentally changed since the 60s-70s when you were a phata abdul.

LANGUAGE onlee! C++ to Java is. " progress"? As technology advances man regresses onree. They said that at the beginning of the industrial revolution and is being proved every day since. Now Java to HTML/ Javascrpit is progress also?

BTW, I am still a phata Abdul

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 06 Feb 2014 12:14

^^^ yeah right