Bill Belichick Is Done With Microsoft Tablets

[PlanB]

all BB wants is Ernie Adams in a box

 

[XLIX]

I think I disagree with you there.

All the vision in the world is worthless if you can't make it work in the organization.

Michelle Doyle is the CIO of the NFL. She's no doubt pulling down well into seven figures. To coin a phrase, the buck stops with her. Her league bio gives her credit for bringing the tablets into the game. That means she is responsible for being sure that they not only work, but also work together with the other game day technology.

I've been working at senior levels in companies for more years than I care to admit as employee and consultant.

Ultimately, dysfunction at the operating level is the responsibility of management. In this case, Doyle. If she were worth the money she's being paid, she would have been on an NFL jet with her operations officer to visit Belichick and find out why one of the most important "line managers" in the organization was dissatisfied, with an eye to fixing the problem not blaming the manager.

She'll probably get away with her failure because Goodell seems to be about as useless a CEO as I've ever seen, so he won't make her "do her job."

The problem is the NFL doesn't give a **** whether the damn things work or not, so long as they collect their hundreds of millions of dollars of product placement. As long as that check clears, she has done her job.

It makes me think of the ridiculously conspicuously placed Surface tablets on the Fox pregame show. I would bet those guys don't even use them except for the occasional, staged "let's pretend these things are worthwhile" moments. They probably aren't even turned on most of the time. But they aren't there to be used, they're there for an advertisement. Whether or not they actually *work* is irrelevant.

 

[GoBlue]

There is big money involved here and the NFL is going to take advantage of it whether the technology helps the teams or doesn't. It's like everything else today. It's all about the money.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

I do not think she runs game day ops. What she should have influence over is to pick the right tech that can be stable in functionality and performance that the ops team can implement and support consistently.

With that said if their technology strategy is too aggressive, the tech is too unstable and the customer unhappy, she should be leading the charge to simplify. I doubt she has that influence and this Surface stuff was shoved down her throat.

Yeah. That sounds all too familiar. Companies can get away with behaving like that until they can't. The NFL is fat and happy, like most corporations before they fail. I've seen the movie so many times that I know the plot inside and out.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

This was buried in today's Globe article on the Tablet ruckus. I wonder if this has anything to do with Belichick's focus on this issue:

"The Patriots’ tablets malfunctioned for about 20 minutes in last year’s AFC title game, while the Broncos’ equipment worked normally. Microsoft responded that it was an issue with the private, secure, in-stadium networks that exist solely for the team’s in-game communications, not with the Surface’s themselves."

Bill Belichick has had it with sideline tablets - The Boston Globe

 

[The Brandon Five]

This was buried in today's Globe article on the Tablet ruckus. I wonder if this has anything to do with Belichick's focus on this issue:

"The Patriots’ tablets malfunctioned for about 20 minutes in last year’s AFC title game, while the Broncos’ equipment worked normally. Microsoft responded that it was an issue with the private, secure, in-stadium networks that exist solely for the team’s in-game communications, not with the Surface’s themselves."

Bill Belichick has had it with sideline tablets - The Boston Globe

So you are telling me that there was an issue with the communications that affected the Patriots and not the Broncos? If the tables were turned would Belichick even be coaching this year?

 

[Bill Lee]

From his comments, it sounds like his complaints go beyond just Microsoft, though they appear to be the main problem. Sounds to me like there are too many systems that don't work well together and that the entire process has been over-engineered.

From my reading of his comments, it seems many of them are related to more basic things such as batteries that aren't charged correctly or are past their lifespan, and connectivity issues that probably have little or nothing to do with the tablets.

As for wireless issues, I really doubt Microsoft customized these to use different frequencies than bog standard WiFi. That would involve a lot of money, a special set of FCC certifications, futzing with wireless firmware on both the tablet and the network side, etc. I bet they are using the same crappy WiFi bands at Gilette that everyone else says are overloaded. Presumably they use a VPN for security but beyond that, my bet is that it is all bog standard stuff. Hopefully Bill's frustration results in them hiring a few experts (not Exponent!) that can figure out what is going on.

That being said, trying to use a tablet with connectivity issues in the bright sunlight and stress of a game day has to be frustrating. I doubt it's the right tool for the job. With a critical employee such as BB you're better off having well-trained assistants bringing him the hardcopy photos he'll most likely want. But this is the NFL and M$ had some money to throw so here we are. It's far more likely that the key decisions were made on a golf course, not in a tech lab.

Isn't this actually a nice little occasional game advantage for the Pats?

Given the current state of affairs, I think you are on to something. In theory the new system has a lot of advantages. Printing the photos takes time and time is critical. Printers in general suck, they break in all kinds of ways. You can't show a video on a piece of paper. However tablets suck for different reasons. In general they are underpowered and laggy. Add that to an overloaded network and it really sucks. There's a reason why the refs doing reviews go under a hood to look at replays. Presumably their TV is hardwired so it doesn't have the issues that wireless can have.

iOS is Unix as well and uses the same kernel as OS X (now known as macOS). Oh, and macOS does not share a Unix heritage with Linux. macOS is from the BSD family of Unix operating systems, most notably FreeBSD which is what NeXTSTEP (pre eminent OS X) was a fork of.

God damnit we're on a football forum people.

So if you're going to go off topic, perhaps you should be a bit more accurate... Just sayin'...

Classic iOS as seen on iPod and the early iPhones and iPads definitely was not "Unix". ( ref: iPod - Wikipedia ).

macOS (what we now know as OS X, not the ancient 68000/PowerPC stuff) does share a Unix heritage with Linux. macOS is a direct descendent of System V (i.e. it has Bell Labs / AT&T code throughout its implementation ). Linux shares the heritage of System V (the commands and APIs are clones of System V) but not the implementation.

Bbobbo is not wrong. He posted a graphic that "showing the unix roots of OS X and linux:". What you posted is .... something related to MacOS ... but not that. If you have some other point, you failed to make it.

If you don't know the question, googling the answer is problematic..

Nope, what we now call "OS X" was called MacOS for quite a long time, and the graphic I posted totally reflects the architecture of OS X. Feel free to read the link I provided and do some homework and you'll find I'm right.

Thanks Bbobbo for taking me down memory lane on all the different instantiations of unix I've seen over the years. And Bill, I'll take your OSF/1 and raise you programming a PDP-11 ... with paper tape .... using the Multics OS.

And of course, the name "Multics" is what inspired a later ser of developers to name their OS .... "Unix"

And now you know ... the rest of the story.

Nope you never ran Multics on a PDP-11, that never was possible. Multics ran on expensive GE (later Honeywell) mainframes. If it had run on PDP-11s we'd never have seen Unix or the C language, since Thompson and Ritchie created Unix because they could not get funding for a machine to run Multics.

My background includes using Unix Version 6 on PDP-11s in college, then developing code for IBM's AIX and DEC's OSF/1 in the 80s and 90s so I have hands-on experience with a lot of this stuff as it was happening. I worked alongside DEC's Ultrix team too, so I've seen more PDPs, VAXes, MIPSes and Alphas than you can imagine.

As for the name, Unix is said to be a pun combining eunuchs and Multics -- Unix is Multics without the balls!

And now you really know ... the rest of the story.

 

[XLIX]

I do not think she runs game day ops. What she should have influence over is to pick the right tech that can be stable in functionality and performance that the ops team can implement and support consistently.

With that said if their technology strategy is too aggressive, the tech is too unstable and the customer unhappy, she should be leading the charge to simplify. I doubt she has that influence and this Surface stuff was shoved down her throat.

Agreed. This isn't about finding the right tech to perform a function, it's about marketing and product placement.

Suppose the iPad had an app that did exactly what the NFL wanted with no glitches or problems and she went to Goodell and said "let's use the iPad instead." She would get laughed out of the room. This isn't about the tablet's functionality, it's about collecting that $400 million check.

 

[The Brandon Five]

Agreed. This isn't about finding the right tech to perform a function, it's about marketing and product placement.

Suppose the iPad had an app that did exactly what the NFL wanted with no glitches or problems and she went to Goodell and said "let's use the iPad instead." She would get laughed out of the room. This isn't about the tablet's functionality, it's about collecting that $400 million check.

To fund the goal-line cameras? Oh, wait. Nevermind.

 

[The Gr8est]

This was buried in today's Globe article on the Tablet ruckus. I wonder if this has anything to do with Belichick's focus on this issue:

"The Patriots’ tablets malfunctioned for about 20 minutes in last year’s AFC title game, while the Broncos’ equipment worked normally. Microsoft responded that it was an issue with the private, secure, in-stadium networks that exist solely for the team’s in-game communications, not with the Surface’s themselves."

Bill Belichick has had it with sideline tablets - The Boston Globe

OK, this post demonstrates the need for yet another rating icon.

I rated it as "useful", but it really needs to be rated "useful as ****! "

 

[PatsFanSince74]

OK, this post demonstrates the need for yet another rating icon.

I rated it as "useful", but it really needs to be rated "useful as ****! "

Without knowing what the **** covered, I don't know how to respond to that.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Agreed. This isn't about finding the right tech to perform a function, it's about marketing and product placement.

Suppose the iPad had an app that did exactly what the NFL wanted with no glitches or problems and she went to Goodell and said "let's use the iPad instead." She would get laughed out of the room. This isn't about the tablet's functionality, it's about collecting that $400 million check.

Exactly. There is also more to this deal than just the Surface Watching games over Skype, Xbox, real-timing Red Zone, etc.

The league is pissing and moaning over traditional TV ratings. Thats what happens when you cannibalize your avenues of product distribution and have set up leaky and inadequate revenue capture strategies and mechanisms to make up the difference.

 

[The Gr8est]

Without knowing what the **** covered, I don't know how to respond to that.

Consider it useful on steroids, and it is a positive reflection on your post.

Rest assured though, the next time ANOTHER team has communications problems in Foxboro, expect the calls for BB's head to intensify.

 

[VrabelJr]

So if you're going to go off topic, perhaps you should be a bit more accurate... Just sayin'...

Classic iOS as seen on iPod and the early iPhones and iPads definitely was not "Unix". ( ref: iPod - Wikipedia).

macOS (what we now know as OS X, not the ancient 68000/PowerPC stuff) does share a Unix heritage with Linux. macOS is a direct descendent of System V (i.e. it has Bell Labs / AT&T code throughout its implementation ). Linux shares the heritage of System V (the commands and APIs are clones of System V) but not the implementation.

Ummmm... no.

The iPod never ran iOS until the iPod Touch in 2008. (read the Wikipedia link you offered up, it's in there)

Linux is not part of System V's heritage. Linux started as a monolithic kernel that was compatible with libraries from GNU (this is why Richard Stallman so passionately refers to Linux as Linux/GNU). System V is closed source, an open source operating system like Linux couldn't possibly benefit from its implementation. To further separate Linux and System V lineage, Linus Torvalds also developed the original Linux kernel on MINIX which has its roots in BSD.

System V's heritage is dead and does not include macOS or Linux. The heritage of System V were other proprietary implementations from companies like HP and IBM. OpenSolaris, which ironically isn't open source anymore, is the only living descendant of System V but that's owned by Oracle so who even cares (see Bryan Cantrill's epic conference talks on this).

The Unix history tree is so deep that it's like believing in god and saying we're all descendants of Adam and Eve. It means nothing. If you check out the Unix history tree you'll see MINIX, Linux, and macOS are all next to each other but not connected. The reason for this is they all benefit from BSD in some way but macOS is the only direct descendant of FreeBSD as in it is running significant amounts of BSD source code. BSD was the only open source Unix implementation at the time so you either took its code (macOS) or you looked at its implementation and created your own (Linux).

Anyway, back to work -- where I used to write operating systems.

 

[Dragda]

If you choose your printer wisely, you don't need to do anything, as the driver will either already be in the Linux kernel, or the package will be installed by default in the distribution you are using.

The printers were already in the office. They were HP laser printers. Nothing exotic. We just had to make them work with the new Suse OS the company decided on for a while. I got a different job. That company realized it was more expensive to run a free OS than Windows and Cisco.

It may be easier to do things now than in 2009, but I moved on. It wasn't ready then to support a mixed enterprise.

 

[Bill Lee]

I think we're using mixed terminology and/or talking past each other.

The iPod never ran iOS until the iPod Touch in 2008.

That's why I used the terminology "classic iOS" not just iOS. I was referring to the stuff that was on those devices before 2008. The link I provided describes it as:

Apple did not develop the iPod software entirely in-house, instead using PortalPlayer's reference platform based on two ARM cores. The platform had rudimentary software running on a commercial microkernel embedded operating system.

The point I'm addressing is that the early iPod/iPhone/iPhone software had no Unix heritage at all, it ran on a proprietary embedded microkernel. iOS - Wikipedia suggests that even the current iOS is based on that technology via "iPhone OS" and not based on any Unix-derived technology. My understanding is that iOS is nothing more than a newer marketing term for what used to be referred to as iPhone OS.

Linux is not part of System V's heritage.

To make sure we're talking about the same thing, dictionary.com defines heritage as "something that is handed down from the past, as a tradition". Linux definitely shares System V's heritage, as does Minix. My post specifically said Linux shares the same command line and APIs as did System V and not its implementation. I have no idea why you're focusing on the implementation, since heritage is a broader term.

Anyway, back to work -- where I used to write operating systems.

Have a great day!

 

[neuronet]

Nerd fight!

 

[neuronet]

Is there audio or video of Belichick trashing the tablets? Or just the transcript?

 

[bbobbo]

Is there audio or video of Belichick trashing the tablets? Or just the transcript?

it was a conference call, so audio. play the media at the top of the transcript. the surface question and answer starts at 11:45:

Bill Belichick Conference Call Transcript 10/18

 

[Bill Lee]

This was buried in today's Globe article on the Tablet ruckus. I wonder if this has anything to do with Belichick's focus on this issue:

"The Patriots’ tablets malfunctioned for about 20 minutes in last year’s AFC title game, while the Broncos’ equipment worked normally. Microsoft responded that it was an issue with the private, secure, in-stadium networks that exist solely for the team’s in-game communications, not with the Surface’s themselves."

Bill Belichick has had it with sideline tablets - The Boston Globe

Interesting. That game is in DEN so it isn't about our WiFi. The "private, secure, in-stadium network" is almost certainly a VPN. There's lots of ways to poorly implement VPNs, several of which involve using Microsoft's implementations of them. However there's also lots of scenarios where its easy to blame the VPN but the real problem is a lossy, congested network.