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As an amateur singer, I think that MOST people who believe that they "can't sing" - - can very likely develop their voice far beyond what they imagine, with some hard work, dedication, and practice, (and some professional instruction). Many, many common vocal flaws can be overcome with proper training, and practice.

Derek Sivers has a great post about this, and about the value of practice and training over at https://sivers.org/15-years.

I think more than understanding programming, what people need is understanding that ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is the execution.

Very true. So basically this again.

It's in one of the comments, and a pointer from that linked page shows some exercises his instructor had him perform -- singing at different speeds and pitches. I myself wonder why software engineering never tries to teach solving the same problem in a variety of paradigms or languages; 99 bottles is the closest example I can find.

Every computer science degree program that I know of does this. Where the heck did you learn to program that didn't have a Programming Languages course?

It's in one of the comments, and a pointer from that linked page shows some exercises his instructor had him perform -- singing at different speeds and pitches. I myself wonder why software engineering never tries to teach solving the same problem in a variety of paradigms or languages; 99 bottles is the closest example I can find.

We're at a stage in the computer industry where innovation is the LAST thing we need. What we need is bug fixes and "refinement". . . . Apple isn't redesigning OS X every 2 years. They're tweaking it an making it better.

Agreed. I keep hearing these lies:

Apple is successful because it's innovative? Apple never came up with anything.

• - The Apple ][ was not the first PC
• - The Macintosh xeroxed Xerox (they didn't invent it either, though)
• - OS X is Unix
• - The iPod was not the first MP3 player.
• - The iPhone was not the first smart phone.
• - The iPad was not the first tablet computer.

Apple's strength has always been its execution. Steve Jobs's biography makes it clear that his talent was refining, refining, refining --- long beyond the patience and courage of most corporate leaders.

As Derek Sivers said, ideas are just multipliers:

It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.

The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas.

I'm not interested until I see their execution.

Microsoft used to be great but lost its way? It can become better again? Microsoft is great in size alone. It has never been innovative or, like Apple, good at execution. Which of any of their products in their entire history was new? Or which of any of their products won out because, like Apple, they executed best on an idea already out there? No, the reason Microsoft has been successful is because of the lucky break IBM first gave them, which Microsoft cemented with a variety of techniques, none of which were (a) innovation or (b) execution.

Neither innovation nor execution have ever been part of Microsoft's culture. John Sculley tells this story:

Well, I'll tell you a great story that a friend of mine told me. I won't tell you his name because I think he wouldn't like it. But he was doing business with both Apple and Microsoft, doing peripheral products for one of their products in each company. And he was at an Apple meeting. He goes in at the Infinite Loop, in their headquarters in Cupertino. Everyone's sitting around talking in the room. In walks Johnny Ives, head of design, the room goes quiet. Everyone waits to hear what Johnny Ive has to say. Why? Because they know Johnny speaks for Steve. Design is at the top of the priorities at Apple. Some days later he was up at Microsoft. Goes in. This is with the Zune group, a large group of really smart people in the room talking with each other. No designer walks in because there is no such thing. And the meeting then goes into people negotiating with each other. "Well, I'll support your feature if you'll support mine."

--- How do Apple's and Microsoft's corporate cultures reflect their products?

That could change some day at Microsoft (anything is possible) but it won't under Steve Ballmer's watch.

Innovation is not the reason any of the leading tech companies are the leading

Which industry? Music or computing? How does one qualify a low-blow?

The music biz, and a low blow would be something like locking Apple out of catalogues through pricing or by just not allowing them on iTunes. Apple's the one who for the large part made buying music on the net legit, popular and reasonably priced through the iTunes store. If Google moved in to the music business and they started to feud, carrying the fight from the computing industry over into the music business, it would strengthen the position of the traditional music companies that Apple has succeeded to cow into making concessions. That wouldn't be good for consumers I think.

I don't know of the CDBaby story. I googled it and it just came up with a one-sided story by the CDBaby founder, 7 years after the fact. I'm not saying it didn't happen that way, there's a ton of stories like that and Jobs can certainly be a ruthless bastard, but anyway it worked out OK for them in the end it seems.

Also, KDE needs a built-in (meaning no extra stuff to install, lightweight, no glitches, no elaborate tray pop-ups) no-mouse-required, minimal-keyboard-gymnastics way of entering all Unicode characters into everything that accepts text.

It might not cover all Unicode characters, but you can get a lot of useful characters using the Compose key. I first heard about it from this blog post, which explains it well.

You can set it up in KDE -> System Settings -> Input Devices -> Keyboard -> Advanced -> Compose Key.

Of course, that's just a few handy characters, not support for all of unicode. So your point still stands.

From The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote quoting Steve Jobs:

This number could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to let in every song.
But we realize record companies do a great service.
They edit!
Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries?
We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40?
Well we don't want to let that stuff on our site!
So we've had to edit it.
And these are 400,000 quality songs.

About the pay-what-you-want approach for independent music: http://sivers.org/livecd