1) Three control keys on a keyboard (Ctrl,Alt,Command). It beggars the mind why you would need three 'special' keys, especially considering people rarely use anything more sophisticated than Shift. WTF has got to be put under the as-useless-as-the-windows-key 'Apple' key that couldn't live under Ctrl or Alt? The correct answer is 'nothing' that could justify muddying the primary interface.
2) A single-button mouse. *Come* *on* *Apple*. Talk about issues letting go. If you can toast floppy drives so easily, surely you can tack a second button onto a mouse after so many years of complaints.
3) The newest issue in the newest product: no stylus for the iPad. Jobs says "if it has a stylus, then its a failure". He really is an arrogant and clueless moron. Go ahead, geniuses, try and take notes and draw diagrams with your thumbs. iPad+stylus would put this currently useless consumer device into every boardroom and classroom on the planet. In the words of my 7-yr old, "Epic Fail".
4) Plenty of software UI dullardry, too. For instance: the most common action should be the most easily accessible, so does that mean that when a file is selected the most common action is to rename it? Must be for Apple users, as that's what hitting the enter key does. Or, how about adding a new folder? Does it do this in the currently selected folder? Nope, in the root. Then try and find a nice organized location for all your files. Doesn't exist, as most Mac users have little idea how they are 'supposed' to organize and there is no common install format so they could be anywhere. And how about all of those "eject me" icons that end up on the desktop, that serve no real purpose other than to intimidate the newbie. Or how about that the control menu for an application is physically detached from the he current app... how in the fuck is that *helpful*? (most of these came from trying to explain to coworkers who drank the Apple kool-aid and couldn't figure things out on their own. God I hate that they know I use Mac products).
The reason this is so entrenched isn't just Jobs fault, but also the fervent zealots that live among the fanbase and have absorbed the Jobs mindset as a type of religion. I had one, in response to my second example, as his final and ultimate argument, tell me to "give it a rest, people have been complaining about the one-button mouse for six years. Once you use it for a while you will realize it is better that way." This latter bit is the core and crux of their arguments, as it has been for Jobs. Don't discuss alternatives, don't disagree with me, just get used to it, I know best, you just don't get it.
And for the record (I hate having to justify this, but the fanboys really annoy me) I own 2 new Macs, an iPhone, and a host of other gear... and yet I am typing this out on my 7-year old PC. If they were soooo much better, don't you think I'd be using the sexy-looking aluminum laptop sitting beside it?
Charges are the only possible outcome from publishing this story, and his lawyer's efforts at using "Journalist" as a defense are an absurd stretch. The "for the sake of public interest" theme certainly won't mitigate the fact that Gizmodo staff knowingly purchased property from an individual who clearly did not own the property. While I'm no fan of Apple lately, and it certainly was an interesting story, common sense should have prevailed. I guess the carrot was too big and donkey too greedy.
Too bad. The 'ethical' choice might have earned them a place at the feet of Jobs, rather than under his heel.
Applebashing? I own a 1yr old MacBook Pro*, a new iMac and an iPhone, buddy.
A rational person can be an Apple user *and* be critical of the company's policies when he/she doesn't agree with them. I think the latest controversies (no Flash, restrictive dev platform requirements) are insulting, self-serving and isolationist, and so I reserve the right to be both an Apple user and snide/sarcastic when they offer with one hand and take away with the other.
If you want to blindly line up at the iTrough and lap up everything they pour into it, that's your decision.
*qualification: lately the MacBook does spend more time running Windows 7 then OSX.
Ding... under two minutes for somebody (actually two sombody's) not to recognize sarcasm on/.... *even* with the preceding "Should Adobe sue Apple" article.
The Daring Fireball article is obtuse and decidedly one-sided; you know how the cards are going to fall before they've even left the dealer's hand.
First, I suspect that this is only creating a pattern of diminishing returns. A smaller developer base will produce a smaller field of applications, attracting a smaller audience (...and repeat...)
Second, if you have a choice of becoming proficient on a specific subset of tools that can only be used to target a specific audience, you better hope that there are many riches to be found in your narrow niche. That is not true of the Apple store, where Chinese copy-cat apps and most favored nation statutes and poor delivery system (I never seen such a feature-poor store in my life) make extremely difficult to make a profit, never mind the fact that you first have to get over the opaque and unfathomable Apple App Approval process.
Third, programming towards a platform that is defined by such questionable ethics and so unquestionable self-serving (if you believe it is about quality you are fooling yourself... this is about control and profit) should be considered as an ethical question as well as financial. That's un-American, I realize, but then I'm not American.
Best solution for Adobe: indefinitely delay CS5 for the Mac. Release it when Jobs is dead and is isolationist philosophy is gone with him. To be real jerks, Adobe could include a $100.00 credit towards the purchase of Windows 7 for their Mac users.
....when you put kids in situations where there lives are in danger and you've taught them to kill.
A lot of what you've said reveals how out of context this war has become. Taught them to kill? Where did that come from? Just like the guys in the gunships, you see targets where they don't exist. Did *you* see RPG's in the hands of the kids? No, but you are comforted/justified by the delusion that they could have one, or that they've been trained to kill you.
Put this scene in the parking lot of your local WalMart, and make those kids your own. That is the context that should be applied to *every* 'permission to fire' incident, but because of the "better them than us" mentality they are reduced to meaningless pixels in a reticle. If you aren't *really* trying to win the hearts and minds of the people, then the whole effort is a farce and you might as well pack up and go home.
...somehow think that web-based technologies are beneficial for users and developers. Clearly, they're not. They make everyone's lives more miserable.
How did you go from A to R to 7 and get marked "insightful?" Having to read a vapid and unrelated conclusion based upon a fractional slice of pseudo-logic (flash sucks = web-based technology sucks) is much more likely to make people miserable than anything you seem to have concluded. Is your argument that desktop-based applications never do this? Is your example put forth as "all web technology is bloat, for example Flash... "
Most web-based technologies run the bulk of their processing server-side, with only the rendering on the client side. For that reason alone non-client side web applications (i.e. non-Flash/Java based) are going to be *way* more resource friendly for the client.
You want a multi-platform app... your friggin' looking at one!!!! You want a rich application experience? Learn jQuery, YUI/etc. and (on the latest browsers) you'll have minimal bloat.
Get with the program, Grandpa (< an inference, not a logical deduction).
Yes, your comment is correct, but irrelevant to the argument (which essentially is "Apple is being a complete dick about the way they treat developers, and we want it changed").
What I can't understand is the number of developers who buy into what amounts to spec work (build it for free against our hidden 'today' strategy, know that we'll nuke it if it fails our 'tomorrow' strategy). This is something professionals typically ignore.
Adobe tried instituting something similar with mobile phones a few years ago and it failed utterly. I assume Apple has found some success in finding developers because the platform is 'cool' and 'hip' and there is a certain allure to building an iPhone app just for the sake of it.
I get that they want quality control and a hold on security, but for me the iPhone vendor lock and app store developer agreement killed a lot of what made Apple special as a company.
Ironically, one of the best post-iPad launch suggestions I ever heard is that Apple should have taken the Air and simply added a dual-screen lid, the outside being your "iPad"... that way you keep the laptop goodness and full-on OS without losing portability. If you added a stylus to the mix (still the biggest iPad deal breaker for me... finger-smeared drawings are a little archaic) this would be a *huge* win in my book.
Hell, you could experiment with a rotator-hinge or backflip-hinge and have one side eInk and the other backlit, giving wins in all categories... except complexity and possibly weight.
I'm not sure who you are calling the middle men... the publisher? Isn't Amazon/Apple just the new conjoined distributor/marketer/wholesaler middle man?
With this new model many authors are going to miss the work of the middle men. For instance, the first big sell is from book rep. to bookstore purchaser. I used to buy books for an independent bookshop and let me tell you, for anything that wasn't Oprah-popular, we were the gatekeepers as to quantity and shelf space. Without the hard sell of the book rep it would be "two/next" and a they'd be a spine amidst many other spines. And let me tell you, authoring is not music writing... you don't have the luxury of having only 1 out of 15 being a commercial success in order to pay the bills.
What I'm hoping for is actually a huge increase in the number of publisher "middle men", and growth of the smaller independents. They now have the tools to compete where once distribution power was reserved for the kings. And authors still need somebody out there hawking and flogging... they're mostly too eclectic a crowd to do it themselves.
I've been running Windows 7 Eval edition since august when OS 10.6 came out...
Yea, I installed 64-bit Windows 7 two weeks ago on my MacBook... running serious apps and serious games (in terms of processor/support requirements) with no issues. Dual monitors with miniDVI, swapping usb keyboards/mice/external hd's in & out while running and not a single problem.
I switched to Mac from PC because I grew tired of Windows enforcing its dull, witless paradigms on me, but there are many things I actually miss about Windows/hate in Mac culture:
With Windows, I could quickly find solutions to problems via forums, where most responses to Mac issues include countless "I refuse to acknowledge your criticism of my Apple product" or more often "but it's shiny" responses... most often you have to reply multiple times with "yes, it is shiny, but I would really like it to do this..." before finally giving up and living with the issue (example, I don't need to see my desktop when working in Photoshop... wtf would I want to see unrelated content of any kind???... but too bad live with it)
Mac has some serious/conflicting usability issues (come on, who builds both a three-control key keyboard and a single-button mouse?) like having the apple key (core to most actions) only on the left side of the keyboard ('suck on it, lefty!' seems to be the message)... but heaven forbid you ever suggest this in public
Apple's no-competition-when-playing-in-our-house philosophy (message: Apple, your iPhone email app sucks big time; no marking 'all read', no 'send only' accounts, no.... you get the idea) hints of an arrogance and hubris that is counter-apple-culture
The intellectual vacuum that exists in fanboyism causes the same sort of negative progress in the Mac arena as the self-entitlement that Windows brought to its own products. If you can't question God, how can you evolve?
This is precisely why I refuse to host my or my client's websites in the U.S., and now I suppose I'll have to dump GoDaddy and move all my domains to a registrar situated in a "real" freedom-honoring nation (red pill: it actually takes more than flag-waving and rhetoric).
Your argument is specious, only because it has to be applied unilaterally as well. When in recent history has the U.S. and it citizens practiced unilateralism in recent history (besides gestures and possibilities, Obama is still strictly PR). If you think economic recovery is going to take a long time to recover (thanks again for the guileless leader you let run your country for most of this decade), just wait to see how long it is before the rest of the world forgives his (and by acclamation, your) policies and rhetoric.
Swapping carrot for stick doesn't instantly make the donkey forget the stick (yes, world, in this story you are the donkey).
And I, as a Canadian, cheerily add a big FU to the EU. If their interest was even remotely in the artist's interests I'd side with them, but this is just corporate politics flavoured 1984 (thank's to new copyright law, the artists profits have been increased 30%).
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The only truth is that which you choose to believe.
There is a big difference between murder as the sub-plot to a country implementing a selfish and morally ambiguous agenda through force, and individuals who (as part of their job description) protect the general population from people who are trying to kill them, applying as a general rule non-lethal means.
On a more related note, jail is punishment, not redemption. I couldn't give a donkey's dick that they spent time in jail and want to move on with their lives, or that they're going to have trouble finding meaningful employment. You don't want people to point at you and say "yep, that's the dickhead who killed somebody", the path to that life is pretty frickin' obvious!
Re:Just to start us off with a car analogy...
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Lulu Introduces DRM
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Just as the vast majority of DRM opponents pretend there is nothing wrong with piracy? Most people don't even have a clue what you're talking about when people yap about DRM, and it's not just because they're ignorant of it, it's because it doesn't impede or impinge upon their lives... i.e. it is as transparent as it is intended to be.
People who manufacture a "creative" product have the same right to protect this item as somebody who carves figurines out of wood, paints a picture or builds a car. DRM is a tool they use to protect their product against dishonest people, just like car alarms and cops. Sure "regular, honest folk" occasionally get burned when things go pear-shaped, but I defy you to point out one corner in this money-driven little world where that isn't the case.
The fact is, without "reasonable, honest" approaches to protection of intellectual property (i.e. not the MPAA old boys club or American-style patents) we'd live in a world of indie-only bands, fanboy novels and intellectual drudgery if the market didn't fund the creative to produce their works.
You want to stop DRM? Fight the problem (theft) rather than the attempt at a solution.
Pretending is that they are drinking the cool-aid and that you aren't a peripheral minority screaming into the void.
Trademarking ties identification to a product, project or even concept/philosophy. This badge carries with it a culture and legacy of quality control, commitment, customer support, rules, regulations and a roadmap to the future. Those responsible for the product/etc. of course protect that space, wanting to ensure that some little piss-pot (i.e. the article's author) isn't interpreted as speaking with their voice.
Sure, trademarking is tied to marketing controls, access restrictions, and a whole assortment of tools that could be used to stifle innovation, but an invention that can be used for evil doesn't make it an evil invention. Used properly, even these sharper edges help establish source and maintain quality control.
The article was obviously inspired by a nose bent out of shape, and as usual with infotainment it offers opinion without balance, scope or suggestion of resolution. It should be taken as such and relegated to the pop-news section and forgotten.
Programmers are neither abstractly creative nor socially comfortable by default; in my experience it is usually the reverse. To be blunt, they are the worst spellers, often haven't read a book (not text, paper or graphic novel...'book') since high school, and have the communication skills of, well, that chubby guy sitting in the corner staring at the ceiling.
Besides, you only need *one* guy on a team who doesn't sweat like the proverbial whore in church every time he/she has to speak in front of a crowd. Call him king geek, let him speak on behalf the team, and let the rest of the guys get back to work. This is known as "the way it currently works".
Give a programmer a debugger, a pack of Redbull and some clearly defined goals, and he'll work magic. Put him in a suit and tell him to pitch a few new ideas and he'll show up with a cheetos-stained tie and a stress-induced facial tic.
Plato once suggested that we should all be assigned our jobs at birth, and that philosophers should be the leaders. This is sort of like that, but less realistic.
Lurching from pure melodrama to plain old post-apocalyptic drudgery, I watched for a) the hot Cylons and b) the all too rare space booms. While I usually like Ronald Moore's work, there was so much self-indulgent self-pity and self-loathing for anything but "Tivo on, fast-forward engaged".
And any writer who has to turn to Deus Ex Machina to resolve a story should be spanked severely. Of course the writing was on the walls and in the context of the story from the beginning, but why must it always be God who solves the really big problems? I would have preferred to have seen the external influence turn out to be internalized somehow, even perhaps some new, third factor introduced near the end, like a "gestalt intelligence formed over the cycles between humans and Cylons" that was fighting for its own survival as well. At least that's honest and 'real', and ultimately resolved without resorting to cosmic super-powers.
In the end the message is that we can't survive without God's intervention, which is as dreary a message as I've ever seen in any medium... and only means it's his fault anyway and we just sat through four seasons of His crappy technical support.
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Anybody who believes in Intelligent Design should stay out of the medical profession.
Is how much really relevant? YOu are asking to put a price on his integrity.....
Integrity... wha? He's talking about switching from free work to paid work, not becoming a Nazi for a couple of shiny nickles. How about a little perspective here, please.
He's a developer who's work is being appreciated and based upon that has had a company offering him compensation to continue, albeit in a commercial environment. Did you ever consider the possibility that they *need* to make this kind of demand, i.e. they are a corporate entity with rules of their own? Sure it could be a ploy, but I saw nothing about an after-employment perpetual NDA (which some have speculated at, and which I would absolutely recommend against) so if he gets screwed he could just leave and pick up where he left off.
If he's ostracized by the community, it's only going to be from that select group with the cup in their hands who have never contributed to the code base themselves (of course, that's typically 99% of the people running the code) and of course our beloved fanatics.
Besides, if you're so bent out of shape over it you could always step up and take his place.
I remember at a recent MAX conference Adobe insulted it's developer base in a similar way, in its vaunted Mobile Flash development push (encapsulated: you develop something, send it to us, and if by chance it passes through QC, marketing, "does-it-compete-with-our-bigger-partner's-stuff", legal and a bunch of other internal self-interest groups, we'll approve it and put it up in our store). The stench of self-interested "spec work" was heavy in air that day, my friends.
And now we have the iPhone, which adds to that absurd proposal in so many execrable ways. I work in an office with 5 die-hard apple addicts (we're all developers) and I must say the chest-beating speeches are pretty rare lately. Thanks to the iPhone everybody now sees Apple for what they are, i.e. just another big corporation maximizing profits by doing right by themselves instead of their customers.
DRM up the wazoo, vacuum-sealed OS, minimum contracts, NDA's on the dev. package (they really got a hard time on that one) and now this totalitarian control over the app store, which is decidedly measured in how advantageous any particular product is for Apple and not the consumer.
This is not your daddy's "hippy tech company" any more, kiddies.
I had a business that lost 90% of its business overnight because of changes an advertising company (Overture) made. We made a bunch of changes and recovered within a couple of months, only to suffer the same fate again a year later (by which time we had moved on and the revenue was luckily no longer that relevant).
If a company has a site that doesn't continue to work positively within this complex, maturing environment (read: heavily influenced by a mass of competing goals, ideals and agendas) then it's not going to be successful. Google is just a easy target and victim of its own success. I for one doubt they ever adjust rankings or their formulas to intentionally reduce the presence of their competitors, since this kind of action usually results in generally diminishing returns (bad press, loss of faith, etc.).
If the people running the network were unsophisticated enough to allow this to happen (I've worked in two university IT departments in Canada, and both had their share of very marginal, "unemployable commercially" individuals) and were doubtlessly going to be very embarrassed by it, he probably shouldn't have sent it off to fellow students. University employees by deign of their strong unions are virtually unfireable, and this lawsuit is probably more about job protection than prosecution.
The downfall of every crime (for lack of a better term) is usually arrogance or pride. If he had left it as a letter, he might have had an outside chance of just getting a 'talking to' or at worst booted out, but the extra mud-in-your-face of making it public is probably what did him in.
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Good intentions and a sack are equal to exactly one sack, minus court costs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll gladly give examples, I will!
1) Three control keys on a keyboard (Ctrl,Alt,Command). It beggars the mind why you would need three 'special' keys, especially considering people rarely use anything more sophisticated than Shift. WTF has got to be put under the as-useless-as-the-windows-key 'Apple' key that couldn't live under Ctrl or Alt? The correct answer is 'nothing' that could justify muddying the primary interface.
2) A single-button mouse. *Come* *on* *Apple*. Talk about issues letting go. If you can toast floppy drives so easily, surely you can tack a second button onto a mouse after so many years of complaints.
3) The newest issue in the newest product: no stylus for the iPad. Jobs says "if it has a stylus, then its a failure". He really is an arrogant and clueless moron. Go ahead, geniuses, try and take notes and draw diagrams with your thumbs. iPad+stylus would put this currently useless consumer device into every boardroom and classroom on the planet. In the words of my 7-yr old, "Epic Fail".
4) Plenty of software UI dullardry, too. For instance: the most common action should be the most easily accessible, so does that mean that when a file is selected the most common action is to rename it? Must be for Apple users, as that's what hitting the enter key does. Or, how about adding a new folder? Does it do this in the currently selected folder? Nope, in the root. Then try and find a nice organized location for all your files. Doesn't exist, as most Mac users have little idea how they are 'supposed' to organize and there is no common install format so they could be anywhere. And how about all of those "eject me" icons that end up on the desktop, that serve no real purpose other than to intimidate the newbie. Or how about that the control menu for an application is physically detached from the he current app ... how in the fuck is that *helpful*? (most of these came from trying to explain to coworkers who drank the Apple kool-aid and couldn't figure things out on their own. God I hate that they know I use Mac products).
The reason this is so entrenched isn't just Jobs fault, but also the fervent zealots that live among the fanbase and have absorbed the Jobs mindset as a type of religion. I had one, in response to my second example, as his final and ultimate argument, tell me to "give it a rest, people have been complaining about the one-button mouse for six years. Once you use it for a while you will realize it is better that way." This latter bit is the core and crux of their arguments, as it has been for Jobs. Don't discuss alternatives, don't disagree with me, just get used to it, I know best, you just don't get it.
And for the record (I hate having to justify this, but the fanboys really annoy me) I own 2 new Macs, an iPhone, and a host of other gear ... and yet I am typing this out on my 7-year old PC. If they were soooo much better, don't you think I'd be using the sexy-looking aluminum laptop sitting beside it?
Charges are the only possible outcome from publishing this story, and his lawyer's efforts at using "Journalist" as a defense are an absurd stretch. The "for the sake of public interest" theme certainly won't mitigate the fact that Gizmodo staff knowingly purchased property from an individual who clearly did not own the property. While I'm no fan of Apple lately, and it certainly was an interesting story, common sense should have prevailed. I guess the carrot was too big and donkey too greedy.
Too bad. The 'ethical' choice might have earned them a place at the feet of Jobs, rather than under his heel.
Applebashing? I own a 1yr old MacBook Pro*, a new iMac and an iPhone, buddy.
A rational person can be an Apple user *and* be critical of the company's policies when he/she doesn't agree with them. I think the latest controversies (no Flash, restrictive dev platform requirements) are insulting, self-serving and isolationist, and so I reserve the right to be both an Apple user and snide/sarcastic when they offer with one hand and take away with the other.
If you want to blindly line up at the iTrough and lap up everything they pour into it, that's your decision.
*qualification: lately the MacBook does spend more time running Windows 7 then OSX.
Ding ... under two minutes for somebody (actually two sombody's) not to recognize sarcasm on /. ... *even* with the preceding "Should Adobe sue Apple" article.
I weep for today's youth.
Shiny, yes ... but what languages am I allowed to use when I develop for them?
The Daring Fireball article is obtuse and decidedly one-sided; you know how the cards are going to fall before they've even left the dealer's hand.
First, I suspect that this is only creating a pattern of diminishing returns. A smaller developer base will produce a smaller field of applications, attracting a smaller audience (...and repeat...)
Second, if you have a choice of becoming proficient on a specific subset of tools that can only be used to target a specific audience, you better hope that there are many riches to be found in your narrow niche. That is not true of the Apple store, where Chinese copy-cat apps and most favored nation statutes and poor delivery system (I never seen such a feature-poor store in my life) make extremely difficult to make a profit, never mind the fact that you first have to get over the opaque and unfathomable Apple App Approval process.
Third, programming towards a platform that is defined by such questionable ethics and so unquestionable self-serving (if you believe it is about quality you are fooling yourself ... this is about control and profit) should be considered as an ethical question as well as financial. That's un-American, I realize, but then I'm not American.
Best solution for Adobe: indefinitely delay CS5 for the Mac. Release it when Jobs is dead and is isolationist philosophy is gone with him. To be real jerks, Adobe could include a $100.00 credit towards the purchase of Windows 7 for their Mac users.
....when you put kids in situations where there lives are in danger and you've taught them to kill.
A lot of what you've said reveals how out of context this war has become. Taught them to kill? Where did that come from? Just like the guys in the gunships, you see targets where they don't exist. Did *you* see RPG's in the hands of the kids? No, but you are comforted/justified by the delusion that they could have one, or that they've been trained to kill you.
Put this scene in the parking lot of your local WalMart, and make those kids your own. That is the context that should be applied to *every* 'permission to fire' incident, but because of the "better them than us" mentality they are reduced to meaningless pixels in a reticle. If you aren't *really* trying to win the hearts and minds of the people, then the whole effort is a farce and you might as well pack up and go home.
...somehow think that web-based technologies are beneficial for users and developers. Clearly, they're not. They make everyone's lives more miserable.
How did you go from A to R to 7 and get marked "insightful?" Having to read a vapid and unrelated conclusion based upon a fractional slice of pseudo-logic (flash sucks = web-based technology sucks) is much more likely to make people miserable than anything you seem to have concluded. Is your argument that desktop-based applications never do this? Is your example put forth as "all web technology is bloat, for example Flash ... "
Most web-based technologies run the bulk of their processing server-side, with only the rendering on the client side. For that reason alone non-client side web applications (i.e. non-Flash/Java based) are going to be *way* more resource friendly for the client.
You want a multi-platform app ... your friggin' looking at one!!!! You want a rich application experience? Learn jQuery, YUI/etc. and (on the latest browsers) you'll have minimal bloat.
Get with the program, Grandpa (< an inference, not a logical deduction).
Yes, your comment is correct, but irrelevant to the argument (which essentially is "Apple is being a complete dick about the way they treat developers, and we want it changed").
What I can't understand is the number of developers who buy into what amounts to spec work (build it for free against our hidden 'today' strategy, know that we'll nuke it if it fails our 'tomorrow' strategy). This is something professionals typically ignore.
Adobe tried instituting something similar with mobile phones a few years ago and it failed utterly. I assume Apple has found some success in finding developers because the platform is 'cool' and 'hip' and there is a certain allure to building an iPhone app just for the sake of it.
I get that they want quality control and a hold on security, but for me the iPhone vendor lock and app store developer agreement killed a lot of what made Apple special as a company.
Ironically, one of the best post-iPad launch suggestions I ever heard is that Apple should have taken the Air and simply added a dual-screen lid, the outside being your "iPad" ... that way you keep the laptop goodness and full-on OS without losing portability. If you added a stylus to the mix (still the biggest iPad deal breaker for me ... finger-smeared drawings are a little archaic) this would be a *huge* win in my book.
Hell, you could experiment with a rotator-hinge or backflip-hinge and have one side eInk and the other backlit, giving wins in all categories ... except complexity and possibly weight.
Wow ... Jobs is sliding from Hero to Zero; tantrums and school-boy ethics aren't going to win him support in any community.
Next up: pop-ups in Safari that chastise you for being 'un-Apple' when you search via Google.
I'm not sure who you are calling the middle men ... the publisher? Isn't Amazon/Apple just the new conjoined distributor/marketer/wholesaler middle man?
With this new model many authors are going to miss the work of the middle men. For instance, the first big sell is from book rep. to bookstore purchaser. I used to buy books for an independent bookshop and let me tell you, for anything that wasn't Oprah-popular, we were the gatekeepers as to quantity and shelf space. Without the hard sell of the book rep it would be "two/next" and a they'd be a spine amidst many other spines. And let me tell you, authoring is not music writing ... you don't have the luxury of having only 1 out of 15 being a commercial success in order to pay the bills.
What I'm hoping for is actually a huge increase in the number of publisher "middle men", and growth of the smaller independents. They now have the tools to compete where once distribution power was reserved for the kings. And authors still need somebody out there hawking and flogging ... they're mostly too eclectic a crowd to do it themselves.
I've been running Windows 7 Eval edition since august when OS 10.6 came out...
Yea, I installed 64-bit Windows 7 two weeks ago on my MacBook ... running serious apps and serious games (in terms of processor/support requirements) with no issues. Dual monitors with miniDVI, swapping usb keyboards/mice/external hd's in & out while running and not a single problem.
Er, thanks Apple?
I switched to Mac from PC because I grew tired of Windows enforcing its dull, witless paradigms on me, but there are many things I actually miss about Windows/hate in Mac culture:
Anyway, at least it *is* shiny.
This is precisely why I refuse to host my or my client's websites in the U.S., and now I suppose I'll have to dump GoDaddy and move all my domains to a registrar situated in a "real" freedom-honoring nation (red pill: it actually takes more than flag-waving and rhetoric).
Just sayin'...
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Freedom is in the eye of the upholder.
Your argument is specious, only because it has to be applied unilaterally as well. When in recent history has the U.S. and it citizens practiced unilateralism in recent history (besides gestures and possibilities, Obama is still strictly PR). If you think economic recovery is going to take a long time to recover (thanks again for the guileless leader you let run your country for most of this decade), just wait to see how long it is before the rest of the world forgives his (and by acclamation, your) policies and rhetoric.
Swapping carrot for stick doesn't instantly make the donkey forget the stick (yes, world, in this story you are the donkey).
And I, as a Canadian, cheerily add a big FU to the EU. If their interest was even remotely in the artist's interests I'd side with them, but this is just corporate politics flavoured 1984 (thank's to new copyright law, the artists profits have been increased 30%).
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The only truth is that which you choose to believe.
WTF?
There is a big difference between murder as the sub-plot to a country implementing a selfish and morally ambiguous agenda through force, and individuals who (as part of their job description) protect the general population from people who are trying to kill them, applying as a general rule non-lethal means.
On a more related note, jail is punishment, not redemption. I couldn't give a donkey's dick that they spent time in jail and want to move on with their lives, or that they're going to have trouble finding meaningful employment. You don't want people to point at you and say "yep, that's the dickhead who killed somebody", the path to that life is pretty frickin' obvious!
Just as the vast majority of DRM opponents pretend there is nothing wrong with piracy? Most people don't even have a clue what you're talking about when people yap about DRM, and it's not just because they're ignorant of it, it's because it doesn't impede or impinge upon their lives ... i.e. it is as transparent as it is intended to be.
People who manufacture a "creative" product have the same right to protect this item as somebody who carves figurines out of wood, paints a picture or builds a car. DRM is a tool they use to protect their product against dishonest people, just like car alarms and cops. Sure "regular, honest folk" occasionally get burned when things go pear-shaped, but I defy you to point out one corner in this money-driven little world where that isn't the case.
The fact is, without "reasonable, honest" approaches to protection of intellectual property (i.e. not the MPAA old boys club or American-style patents) we'd live in a world of indie-only bands, fanboy novels and intellectual drudgery if the market didn't fund the creative to produce their works.
You want to stop DRM? Fight the problem (theft) rather than the attempt at a solution.
Pretending is that they are drinking the cool-aid and that you aren't a peripheral minority screaming into the void.
Trademarking ties identification to a product, project or even concept/philosophy. This badge carries with it a culture and legacy of quality control, commitment, customer support, rules, regulations and a roadmap to the future. Those responsible for the product/etc. of course protect that space, wanting to ensure that some little piss-pot (i.e. the article's author) isn't interpreted as speaking with their voice.
Sure, trademarking is tied to marketing controls, access restrictions, and a whole assortment of tools that could be used to stifle innovation, but an invention that can be used for evil doesn't make it an evil invention. Used properly, even these sharper edges help establish source and maintain quality control.
The article was obviously inspired by a nose bent out of shape, and as usual with infotainment it offers opinion without balance, scope or suggestion of resolution. It should be taken as such and relegated to the pop-news section and forgotten.
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"The baby is the bathwater".
Programmers are neither abstractly creative nor socially comfortable by default; in my experience it is usually the reverse. To be blunt, they are the worst spellers, often haven't read a book (not text, paper or graphic novel...'book') since high school, and have the communication skills of, well, that chubby guy sitting in the corner staring at the ceiling.
Besides, you only need *one* guy on a team who doesn't sweat like the proverbial whore in church every time he/she has to speak in front of a crowd. Call him king geek, let him speak on behalf the team, and let the rest of the guys get back to work. This is known as "the way it currently works".
Give a programmer a debugger, a pack of Redbull and some clearly defined goals, and he'll work magic. Put him in a suit and tell him to pitch a few new ideas and he'll show up with a cheetos-stained tie and a stress-induced facial tic.
Plato once suggested that we should all be assigned our jobs at birth, and that philosophers should be the leaders. This is sort of like that, but less realistic.
Lurching from pure melodrama to plain old post-apocalyptic drudgery, I watched for a) the hot Cylons and b) the all too rare space booms. While I usually like Ronald Moore's work, there was so much self-indulgent self-pity and self-loathing for anything but "Tivo on, fast-forward engaged".
And any writer who has to turn to Deus Ex Machina to resolve a story should be spanked severely. Of course the writing was on the walls and in the context of the story from the beginning, but why must it always be God who solves the really big problems? I would have preferred to have seen the external influence turn out to be internalized somehow, even perhaps some new, third factor introduced near the end, like a "gestalt intelligence formed over the cycles between humans and Cylons" that was fighting for its own survival as well. At least that's honest and 'real', and ultimately resolved without resorting to cosmic super-powers.
In the end the message is that we can't survive without God's intervention, which is as dreary a message as I've ever seen in any medium ... and only means it's his fault anyway and we just sat through four seasons of His crappy technical support.
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Anybody who believes in Intelligent Design should stay out of the medical profession.
Is how much really relevant? YOu are asking to put a price on his integrity.....
Integrity ... wha? He's talking about switching from free work to paid work, not becoming a Nazi for a couple of shiny nickles. How about a little perspective here, please.
He's a developer who's work is being appreciated and based upon that has had a company offering him compensation to continue, albeit in a commercial environment. Did you ever consider the possibility that they *need* to make this kind of demand, i.e. they are a corporate entity with rules of their own? Sure it could be a ploy, but I saw nothing about an after-employment perpetual NDA (which some have speculated at, and which I would absolutely recommend against) so if he gets screwed he could just leave and pick up where he left off.
If he's ostracized by the community, it's only going to be from that select group with the cup in their hands who have never contributed to the code base themselves (of course, that's typically 99% of the people running the code) and of course our beloved fanatics.
Besides, if you're so bent out of shape over it you could always step up and take his place.
I remember at a recent MAX conference Adobe insulted it's developer base in a similar way, in its vaunted Mobile Flash development push (encapsulated: you develop something, send it to us, and if by chance it passes through QC, marketing, "does-it-compete-with-our-bigger-partner's-stuff", legal and a bunch of other internal self-interest groups, we'll approve it and put it up in our store). The stench of self-interested "spec work" was heavy in air that day, my friends.
And now we have the iPhone, which adds to that absurd proposal in so many execrable ways. I work in an office with 5 die-hard apple addicts (we're all developers) and I must say the chest-beating speeches are pretty rare lately. Thanks to the iPhone everybody now sees Apple for what they are, i.e. just another big corporation maximizing profits by doing right by themselves instead of their customers.
DRM up the wazoo, vacuum-sealed OS, minimum contracts, NDA's on the dev. package (they really got a hard time on that one) and now this totalitarian control over the app store, which is decidedly measured in how advantageous any particular product is for Apple and not the consumer.
This is not your daddy's "hippy tech company" any more, kiddies.
I had a business that lost 90% of its business overnight because of changes an advertising company (Overture) made. We made a bunch of changes and recovered within a couple of months, only to suffer the same fate again a year later (by which time we had moved on and the revenue was luckily no longer that relevant).
If a company has a site that doesn't continue to work positively within this complex, maturing environment (read: heavily influenced by a mass of competing goals, ideals and agendas) then it's not going to be successful. Google is just a easy target and victim of its own success. I for one doubt they ever adjust rankings or their formulas to intentionally reduce the presence of their competitors, since this kind of action usually results in generally diminishing returns (bad press, loss of faith, etc.).
If the people running the network were unsophisticated enough to allow this to happen (I've worked in two university IT departments in Canada, and both had their share of very marginal, "unemployable commercially" individuals) and were doubtlessly going to be very embarrassed by it, he probably shouldn't have sent it off to fellow students. University employees by deign of their strong unions are virtually unfireable, and this lawsuit is probably more about job protection than prosecution.
The downfall of every crime (for lack of a better term) is usually arrogance or pride. If he had left it as a letter, he might have had an outside chance of just getting a 'talking to' or at worst booted out, but the extra mud-in-your-face of making it public is probably what did him in.
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Good intentions and a sack are equal to exactly one sack, minus court costs.