I'll agree that $75k isn't a king's ransom, but excepting parts of California and places like NYC, it's more than just barely making it. You said it's middle class, and you're right. That's better than "barely making it". It's well above the national average, and unless you live in one of those aforementioned ridiculous places, it's a good bit of money.
That's only true to a point. Once you get some experience tucked into your belt, there are employers out there who understand what that is worth. It may limit the number of companies that you have to choose from, but there are a lot of them out there.
If you've got around five years of experience or so and you're worried about being replaced by a fresh college grad, then the place you're working probably has all sorts of priority issues, and you probably hate being there.
Most of what you hear about in IT is the super-enthusiastic companies where everyone works 80 hours per week because they love what they're doing, or the giant corporate "dilbert" firms where everyone is miserable and does as little work as they can get away with. But you're not going to convince me that there aren't lots of smaller companies with decent leadership who can work hard but don't feel the need to march their employees to death. I have a few friends with jobs in IT like that around here, and this part of the country is by no means any sort of tech-wonderland.
And if I'm wrong and your only choice is a death march of misery, then seriously, go find a new career. You can always code on the weekends.
What's your logic here? Just plain ol' anti-IP mindset?
Even if they made a law to this effect, then everyone would just set up well protected shell companies for each valuable patent or whatever that they had, and have their real business license the IP from that shell company for peanuts. So if the business crashes and goes under, the shell company can just license to someone else.
I'd buy one of those machines in a second too, but the reality of it is that Apple actually doesn't need to appeal to that niche. Mac marketshare is growing and they're rolling in profits, so they don't really need to do much of anything different than what they're doing now.
That's not to say that it wouldn't be nice. But really, it's not a complicated idea, I'm sure they've considered it. There's got to be some math that they've done that has told them that it's not in their best interests. Probably something to do with undercutting their big expensive towers, but I don't know.
Actually, if you keep up on the Apple blogs and such, even a lot of long-time Apple fanboys are having trouble understanding Apple's play here. It's less a question of whether or not they're legally entitled to do what they're doing (it is their App store afterall), but more just a general wonder what Apple is trying to accomplish with the arbitrary nature of restrictions that they've created.
Long time and successful mac developers are wondering what the hell is going on. They see Apple rejecting well designed iPhone applications for reasons that haven't been previously disclosed, and it makes them hesitant to produce applications of their own for fear of having it rejected over some rule that they were never told about.
And looking at this from another angle, the NDA has meant that there aren't good forums or anything online for developers to share iPhone programming tricks or issues or whatever. Not to mention that you can't go buy a book about it to help you learn. That's just another wall that Apple has built that developers have to find their way over in order to make applications.
Again, Apple is probably fully within their legal rights to reject any application for any reason. But that still doesn't make it smart for them to do so. If they want to create a mobile platform, which it seems fairly obvious is a goal of theirs, then nobody is really sure how Apple's actions so far have helped. They're still selling the phones by the truckload, so maybe it doesn't matter that much to them, but taking the longer view, a lot of people who had been very excited about the iPhone are having a hard time seeing where Apple is going with this.
It's not just that they included functionality, but how they went about doing it. MS not only used their power to bully hardware manufacturers (as another comment reply noted), but they also tend to intertwine their apps so thoroughly with the OS that even a savvy user would have a hard time removing them.
Apple ships OSX with a web browser and a mail client, but if you never want to see them again, it's a simple matter of going into your apps folder and dragging them to the garbage. During the MS anti-trust mess, there was lots of back and forth about whether or not IE could be unbundled from Windows without making the OS inoperable.
I don't really care what sort of stuff MS decides to ship with windows, as long as it's no harder to remove than any other piece of software, and as long as the OS doesn't repeatedly pester me about reinstalling or switching back to the original MS stuff.
Actually, things like Dark Energy/matter are exactly what you suggest. They're rethinkings of the structure of the universe due to data that didn't fit into the previous theories. They might not be as wildly different from earlier theories as deciding that physical constants and laws change over time or whatever, but that doesn't make them less valid.
There's some history of scientists being resistant to big shifts in thinking such as the one you're describing, but that doesn't mean that it's wise to abandon everything you've learned so far in order to chase the new crazy theory of the week. There have been some giant changes in understanding with things like relativity and quantum mechanics coming onto the scene, but overall, science generally builds on past knowledge in little steps.
Besides, there's enough smart people on the planet that even the more crazy-seeming ideas can have some brain cells dedicated to them. If a theory is closer to the truth, then eventually its day will come.
Yes, except that Macs and Apple not only still exist, they're currently doing quite well. We (consumers)are not better off if Android "buries" the iPhone, we're better off if both platforms manage to survive and co-exist and compete with each other. Somewhere down the road one side or the other will end up with higher market share than the others, but that doesn't mean certain death for everyone else.
Apple has a decent phone and a strong brand. They're not going to die because of Android, even if Android surpasses it in users. Windows mobile isn't likely to die either. Having a few choices is a good thing.
Exactly right. Let's change the incident a little. What if a student met a handful of other students at mcdonalds one night, and convinced them that the next day at school, they were going to beat up a classmate. So that handful of students goes to class the next day and kicks the ass of this kid, while the student who organized it all fakes sick and stays home.
When the school administration finds out what happened, should the ringleader not face any consequences because he never participated in any parts of the scheme that took place on school grounds?
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's foolish to think that school, as a part of these kids' lives, only exists when they step across a sidewalk onto school property.
Exactly. I've worked at my current company for about three years. It'd take me a few days at least to go through all the documents that I've created since I've been here. The cost of storing all those documents is significantly less than the billable hours that my company would have to give up for me to spend those days sorting paper. Not to mention the fact that I can't imagine have the luxury of a few days without having to worry about projects/clients/etc and have the time to focus on sorting through stacks of documents and emails.
Coincidentally, I generally feel the same way about all my "life" paperwork that I get at home (bills and receipts and such). My wife is a bit obsessive about filing things and having it all very organized, while I'm perfectly happy to just throw everything in a box and forget about it. Sure, when I have to find something, I'll spend five minutes digging compared to my wife who could just walk over the file cabinet and find it in about 30 seconds. But I so rarely need to actually go retrieve something that a few five minute searching sessions per year adds up to significantly less time than I'd require to consistently file everything.
A fair amount of gaming is done in public, but not most of it. I don't think the issue of "looking dumb" is nearly as much a factor as the technology being unwieldy. If they can get that solved, and make the price attractive, it can be successful.
But can you get used to it? Sure, it's another barrier to entry, but I might put up with an hour or so of queasiness if it meant I could get some decent 3D gaming afterwards.
I had a friend in college that had some significant problems with feeling sick just playing half-life on a 21" monitor. But after forcing himself to sit through it for a few decent sessions, I guess his brain adapted and the problem went away.
While it's disorienting at first, I'd guess that your brain could adapt and make sense of it and eventually become comfortable with it.
Think of it more as Economics being much less of a science than an art. You can pretend that it's the study of money all you want, but in reality it's the study of how people interact. And not only that, but it's now all about how people interact on a global and completely detached impersonal way.
The end result is that there are no "right" answers, there's just a serious of hopefully educated guesses and various priorities. Whenever you have differing possible priorities, then you're going to have people choosing sides.
That uncertainty, plus the fact that in a global economy, there's really only one test case, means that it's not really possible to do the sort of precise experimenting to come up with perfect data. If one thing doesn't work, it's impossible to say that the other option would've worked better. Historical data is only semi-useful, because the conditions in the economy are so complex and variable.
It's not really possible to be objective in regards to economics. Even if you don't identify with one political party or another, you're bound to believe that one direction or the other is preferable. And once you take a side, everyone else is going to lump you in with one of the parties. Such is human nature.
Slashdot loves to pretend that all the work issues that IT faces are somehow unique or particular to what they do. But really it's not. Every career in the history of the universe comes with clueless managers, incompetent coworkers, illogical clients, and unreasonable timelines.
We all think we're smarter than the consultants that we have to work with. We all have to fight through ridiculous layers of management and bureaucracy. Everyone gets asked stupid questions at job interviews. And nobody thinks they get paid enough.
There's a few particulars vary from job to job, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to people. You're working with people, working for people, and creating a product/service that is going to be sold to people. And over the scale of a society, "people" are pretty much the same. We make getting things done way more complicated than any individual can understand, and that's why even working in a career field that you love is going to suck some days.
Seriously, you're being fairly silly. While it's probably completely within Apple's rights to do this, it's a total shoot-themselves-in-the-foot move. The computer world is full of competing software, and for every Apple written application out there, there's a big pile of competing apps available. More often then not, the Apple apps are be able to stand successfully on their own. Apple doesn't need to lock out competitors to be successful, they just need to keep making quality software, and that plus their brand name pretty much guarantees them success.
But even if I took your silly "developers should know better than to make a competing application" idea as valid, try to think ahead a little. What if I write a completely original application, and then six months later Apple comes out with their own version. Do they shut down my competing app then? Is my user base then unable to get updates? What if some other third-party developer pays Apple for the right to be the only notepad available? Will Apple kick all the other notepad apps out of the store?
All those questions are valid concerns for developers. A lot of people are motivated to spend the time making things because they're interested in sharing them with others, whether for profit or for free. If they aren't convinced that they'll be allowed to share those apps, then they'll go make their software for a different platform. I don't know why Apple would want that.
Yeah, Apple Stores are certainly nicer. There's supposedly going to be one opening up around here soon. But until then, BestBuy is about the best I can do.
Heavy timber and large engineered wood members generally do survive fires better than steel, at least from a structural sense. The beams can burn, but wood is a pretty good insulator, so while the outside of the beam might be charred black, there's still plenty of sound material left in the middle to hold the building up. Structure in buildings are generally specified with a very large safety margin. There's more than enough wood there so that you can afford to lose some of it to a fire. Steel, on the other hand, conducts heat very well, and so the heat required to weaken it moves throughout the member quickly. The fire doesn't have to work through the steel to weaken it, it can basically attack it all the way through all at once.
I've been in a number of buildings in the french quater in new orleans that are over 100 years old, and which have been through a number of fires. Many of those buildings contain beams that are black with char all around, but have continued to support their roof for decades.
There are a lot of reasons why steel is used instead of wood. There are many ways to protect steel from fire damage, and even with those measures, steel will often be significantly cheaper than wood. There's often a lot more flexibility with steel, as you can get a far wider variety of shapes than wood.
And just FYI, building structure is designed by structural engineers, who generally come across as pretty intelligent. Mechanical engineers (in building design at least) design HVAC, electrical, and plumbing systems. Overall, I've been far less impressed with their skill and enthusiasm compared to structural engineers.
I think the connection implied between 9/11 and this research into the properties of steel are silly at best. While the average person on the street may not have known about it, it was well known to architects, structural engineers, firefighting personnel, etc... that steel loses its structural properties at temperatures well below its actual melting point. Fire protection is a huge issue in building design, and protecting steel is a primary part of that.
Many steel framed buildings were destroyed by fire before the twin towers were attacked. I'm not sure why the article even mentioned 9/11 other than it's the most visible example of such damage. Or maybe as an way of making the research more "fundable". As the article mentioned, the bigger issue with the twin towers was that the impact of the aircraft knocked the fire protection off of the steel. Once you realize that, the fact that the steel failed is not surprising at all.
It's sort of a reverse chicken-egg problem. Why will people pay that much? Because they need it and that's what it costs. Why does it cost that much? Because that's what people will pay for it.
Text messaging should basically be a commodity at this point. And a commodity that for all intents and purposes is unlimited. The fact that the cost is going up almost from all providers almost certainly indicates that a lack of competition is allowing entrenched providers to raise their prices with no fear of customers going anywhere.
I don't understand why anybody expected an "in depth" game. Spore is, in many ways, a spinoff from The Sims, which was aimed squarely at the more casual gamer crowd. That plus the huge scope of content that Spore was attempting to cover made it seem pretty likely to me that it'd end up almost end up being a collection of mini-games, loosely tied together with the thread of "evolution." It's still an interesting idea, and I'm sure it'll be fun for a lot of people.
I have no doubt that the basic idea of Spore could be iterated and complicated to the point where it would become an incredibly deep and intricate experience, and that there are plenty of people who would enjoy playing such a game over and over again for the next 5 years. But there's a much bigger market of people who just want to mess around with a game and not have to micromanage, balance, and optimize a million different aspects at once in order to advance.
The gaming press and the sort of people who'd spend time writing reviews aren't the primary market for these types of games. Gaming magazines and websites are generally written by hardcore gamers, who have a whole different perspective than the targeted market, and it's been very interesting watching them try to understand the rise of casual gaming.
You're right, but it's a bit more complicated than that. There's really four main aspects that I think make up a device like an MP3 player. I'd break hardware into two sections. There's the technical capability, but there's also the physical form of the device. Also there's the interface, and there's the music. Like you said, the other players focused on technical capability, while Apple not only focused on the music, but they also took a good stab at the physical design and the interface. Those two aspects are related, but I think they're distinct. My roommate in college had a Creative player (nomad I think, but I don't remember for sure) that he bought right about the time that the iPod was first released. The interface wasn't great, but really that ended up being a non-issue because the device was a terrible shape. It was about an inch and a half deep, but along the other two dimensions it was basically a square, maybe 4 inches on each side. It could not fit comfortably into a pocket.
The inability to easily carry it around was the single biggest flaw in the device, and I don't understand why it wasn't immediately obvious to the designers. Apple was very careful and deliberate with their hardware, it's just that they understood that for a piece of portable consumer electronics, the hardware package is more important than what's under the hood.
It's not that Dell is doing something that's inherently silly for any company, it's just that for a company that built their brand on computer manufacturing, outsourcing the manufacturing seems kind of silly.
I think the argument is that Apple doesn't manufacture computers as much as it designs them. That's been a working strategy for Apple for decades. Dell made their money by refining a built-to-order assembly line system that allowed for decent prices, reasonable build quality, and responsive warranty service. At the end of the day, they were always about just shipping out boring boxes as fast as they could.
They're basically abandoning that whole business strategy, and planning on becoming a computer designer. If that's what they want to do, best of luck, but it's by no means a guaranteed success. They're really two very different skill sets.
Two of your complaints are valid, but seriously, would you enjoy playing a game where the only sound you hear is your pilot shifting around in the cockpit?
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I'll agree that $75k isn't a king's ransom, but excepting parts of California and places like NYC, it's more than just barely making it. You said it's middle class, and you're right. That's better than "barely making it". It's well above the national average, and unless you live in one of those aforementioned ridiculous places, it's a good bit of money.
That's only true to a point. Once you get some experience tucked into your belt, there are employers out there who understand what that is worth. It may limit the number of companies that you have to choose from, but there are a lot of them out there.
If you've got around five years of experience or so and you're worried about being replaced by a fresh college grad, then the place you're working probably has all sorts of priority issues, and you probably hate being there.
Most of what you hear about in IT is the super-enthusiastic companies where everyone works 80 hours per week because they love what they're doing, or the giant corporate "dilbert" firms where everyone is miserable and does as little work as they can get away with. But you're not going to convince me that there aren't lots of smaller companies with decent leadership who can work hard but don't feel the need to march their employees to death. I have a few friends with jobs in IT like that around here, and this part of the country is by no means any sort of tech-wonderland.
And if I'm wrong and your only choice is a death march of misery, then seriously, go find a new career. You can always code on the weekends.
What's your logic here? Just plain ol' anti-IP mindset?
Even if they made a law to this effect, then everyone would just set up well protected shell companies for each valuable patent or whatever that they had, and have their real business license the IP from that shell company for peanuts. So if the business crashes and goes under, the shell company can just license to someone else.
I'd buy one of those machines in a second too, but the reality of it is that Apple actually doesn't need to appeal to that niche. Mac marketshare is growing and they're rolling in profits, so they don't really need to do much of anything different than what they're doing now.
That's not to say that it wouldn't be nice. But really, it's not a complicated idea, I'm sure they've considered it. There's got to be some math that they've done that has told them that it's not in their best interests. Probably something to do with undercutting their big expensive towers, but I don't know.
Apple never had anywhere near 95% of the computer market. You've been drinking the stupid kool-aid.
Actually, if you keep up on the Apple blogs and such, even a lot of long-time Apple fanboys are having trouble understanding Apple's play here. It's less a question of whether or not they're legally entitled to do what they're doing (it is their App store afterall), but more just a general wonder what Apple is trying to accomplish with the arbitrary nature of restrictions that they've created.
Long time and successful mac developers are wondering what the hell is going on. They see Apple rejecting well designed iPhone applications for reasons that haven't been previously disclosed, and it makes them hesitant to produce applications of their own for fear of having it rejected over some rule that they were never told about.
And looking at this from another angle, the NDA has meant that there aren't good forums or anything online for developers to share iPhone programming tricks or issues or whatever. Not to mention that you can't go buy a book about it to help you learn. That's just another wall that Apple has built that developers have to find their way over in order to make applications.
Again, Apple is probably fully within their legal rights to reject any application for any reason. But that still doesn't make it smart for them to do so. If they want to create a mobile platform, which it seems fairly obvious is a goal of theirs, then nobody is really sure how Apple's actions so far have helped. They're still selling the phones by the truckload, so maybe it doesn't matter that much to them, but taking the longer view, a lot of people who had been very excited about the iPhone are having a hard time seeing where Apple is going with this.
It's not just that they included functionality, but how they went about doing it. MS not only used their power to bully hardware manufacturers (as another comment reply noted), but they also tend to intertwine their apps so thoroughly with the OS that even a savvy user would have a hard time removing them.
Apple ships OSX with a web browser and a mail client, but if you never want to see them again, it's a simple matter of going into your apps folder and dragging them to the garbage. During the MS anti-trust mess, there was lots of back and forth about whether or not IE could be unbundled from Windows without making the OS inoperable.
I don't really care what sort of stuff MS decides to ship with windows, as long as it's no harder to remove than any other piece of software, and as long as the OS doesn't repeatedly pester me about reinstalling or switching back to the original MS stuff.
Actually, things like Dark Energy/matter are exactly what you suggest. They're rethinkings of the structure of the universe due to data that didn't fit into the previous theories. They might not be as wildly different from earlier theories as deciding that physical constants and laws change over time or whatever, but that doesn't make them less valid.
There's some history of scientists being resistant to big shifts in thinking such as the one you're describing, but that doesn't mean that it's wise to abandon everything you've learned so far in order to chase the new crazy theory of the week. There have been some giant changes in understanding with things like relativity and quantum mechanics coming onto the scene, but overall, science generally builds on past knowledge in little steps.
Besides, there's enough smart people on the planet that even the more crazy-seeming ideas can have some brain cells dedicated to them. If a theory is closer to the truth, then eventually its day will come.
Yes, except that Macs and Apple not only still exist, they're currently doing quite well. We (consumers)are not better off if Android "buries" the iPhone, we're better off if both platforms manage to survive and co-exist and compete with each other. Somewhere down the road one side or the other will end up with higher market share than the others, but that doesn't mean certain death for everyone else.
Apple has a decent phone and a strong brand. They're not going to die because of Android, even if Android surpasses it in users. Windows mobile isn't likely to die either. Having a few choices is a good thing.
Exactly right. Let's change the incident a little. What if a student met a handful of other students at mcdonalds one night, and convinced them that the next day at school, they were going to beat up a classmate. So that handful of students goes to class the next day and kicks the ass of this kid, while the student who organized it all fakes sick and stays home.
When the school administration finds out what happened, should the ringleader not face any consequences because he never participated in any parts of the scheme that took place on school grounds?
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's foolish to think that school, as a part of these kids' lives, only exists when they step across a sidewalk onto school property.
Exactly. I've worked at my current company for about three years. It'd take me a few days at least to go through all the documents that I've created since I've been here. The cost of storing all those documents is significantly less than the billable hours that my company would have to give up for me to spend those days sorting paper. Not to mention the fact that I can't imagine have the luxury of a few days without having to worry about projects/clients/etc and have the time to focus on sorting through stacks of documents and emails.
Coincidentally, I generally feel the same way about all my "life" paperwork that I get at home (bills and receipts and such). My wife is a bit obsessive about filing things and having it all very organized, while I'm perfectly happy to just throw everything in a box and forget about it. Sure, when I have to find something, I'll spend five minutes digging compared to my wife who could just walk over the file cabinet and find it in about 30 seconds. But I so rarely need to actually go retrieve something that a few five minute searching sessions per year adds up to significantly less time than I'd require to consistently file everything.
A fair amount of gaming is done in public, but not most of it. I don't think the issue of "looking dumb" is nearly as much a factor as the technology being unwieldy. If they can get that solved, and make the price attractive, it can be successful.
But can you get used to it? Sure, it's another barrier to entry, but I might put up with an hour or so of queasiness if it meant I could get some decent 3D gaming afterwards.
I had a friend in college that had some significant problems with feeling sick just playing half-life on a 21" monitor. But after forcing himself to sit through it for a few decent sessions, I guess his brain adapted and the problem went away.
While it's disorienting at first, I'd guess that your brain could adapt and make sense of it and eventually become comfortable with it.
Think of it more as Economics being much less of a science than an art. You can pretend that it's the study of money all you want, but in reality it's the study of how people interact. And not only that, but it's now all about how people interact on a global and completely detached impersonal way.
The end result is that there are no "right" answers, there's just a serious of hopefully educated guesses and various priorities. Whenever you have differing possible priorities, then you're going to have people choosing sides.
That uncertainty, plus the fact that in a global economy, there's really only one test case, means that it's not really possible to do the sort of precise experimenting to come up with perfect data. If one thing doesn't work, it's impossible to say that the other option would've worked better. Historical data is only semi-useful, because the conditions in the economy are so complex and variable.
It's not really possible to be objective in regards to economics. Even if you don't identify with one political party or another, you're bound to believe that one direction or the other is preferable. And once you take a side, everyone else is going to lump you in with one of the parties. Such is human nature.
Slashdot loves to pretend that all the work issues that IT faces are somehow unique or particular to what they do. But really it's not. Every career in the history of the universe comes with clueless managers, incompetent coworkers, illogical clients, and unreasonable timelines.
We all think we're smarter than the consultants that we have to work with. We all have to fight through ridiculous layers of management and bureaucracy. Everyone gets asked stupid questions at job interviews. And nobody thinks they get paid enough.
There's a few particulars vary from job to job, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to people. You're working with people, working for people, and creating a product/service that is going to be sold to people. And over the scale of a society, "people" are pretty much the same. We make getting things done way more complicated than any individual can understand, and that's why even working in a career field that you love is going to suck some days.
Seriously, you're being fairly silly. While it's probably completely within Apple's rights to do this, it's a total shoot-themselves-in-the-foot move. The computer world is full of competing software, and for every Apple written application out there, there's a big pile of competing apps available. More often then not, the Apple apps are be able to stand successfully on their own. Apple doesn't need to lock out competitors to be successful, they just need to keep making quality software, and that plus their brand name pretty much guarantees them success.
But even if I took your silly "developers should know better than to make a competing application" idea as valid, try to think ahead a little. What if I write a completely original application, and then six months later Apple comes out with their own version. Do they shut down my competing app then? Is my user base then unable to get updates? What if some other third-party developer pays Apple for the right to be the only notepad available? Will Apple kick all the other notepad apps out of the store?
All those questions are valid concerns for developers. A lot of people are motivated to spend the time making things because they're interested in sharing them with others, whether for profit or for free. If they aren't convinced that they'll be allowed to share those apps, then they'll go make their software for a different platform. I don't know why Apple would want that.
Yeah, Apple Stores are certainly nicer. There's supposedly going to be one opening up around here soon. But until then, BestBuy is about the best I can do.
Best Buy has sold Macs for quite some time. The new-ish BB store not far from me has a small but reasonably nice Apple section.
Heavy timber and large engineered wood members generally do survive fires better than steel, at least from a structural sense. The beams can burn, but wood is a pretty good insulator, so while the outside of the beam might be charred black, there's still plenty of sound material left in the middle to hold the building up. Structure in buildings are generally specified with a very large safety margin. There's more than enough wood there so that you can afford to lose some of it to a fire. Steel, on the other hand, conducts heat very well, and so the heat required to weaken it moves throughout the member quickly. The fire doesn't have to work through the steel to weaken it, it can basically attack it all the way through all at once.
I've been in a number of buildings in the french quater in new orleans that are over 100 years old, and which have been through a number of fires. Many of those buildings contain beams that are black with char all around, but have continued to support their roof for decades.
There are a lot of reasons why steel is used instead of wood. There are many ways to protect steel from fire damage, and even with those measures, steel will often be significantly cheaper than wood. There's often a lot more flexibility with steel, as you can get a far wider variety of shapes than wood.
And just FYI, building structure is designed by structural engineers, who generally come across as pretty intelligent. Mechanical engineers (in building design at least) design HVAC, electrical, and plumbing systems. Overall, I've been far less impressed with their skill and enthusiasm compared to structural engineers.
I think the connection implied between 9/11 and this research into the properties of steel are silly at best. While the average person on the street may not have known about it, it was well known to architects, structural engineers, firefighting personnel, etc... that steel loses its structural properties at temperatures well below its actual melting point. Fire protection is a huge issue in building design, and protecting steel is a primary part of that.
Many steel framed buildings were destroyed by fire before the twin towers were attacked. I'm not sure why the article even mentioned 9/11 other than it's the most visible example of such damage. Or maybe as an way of making the research more "fundable". As the article mentioned, the bigger issue with the twin towers was that the impact of the aircraft knocked the fire protection off of the steel. Once you realize that, the fact that the steel failed is not surprising at all.
It's sort of a reverse chicken-egg problem. Why will people pay that much? Because they need it and that's what it costs. Why does it cost that much? Because that's what people will pay for it.
Text messaging should basically be a commodity at this point. And a commodity that for all intents and purposes is unlimited. The fact that the cost is going up almost from all providers almost certainly indicates that a lack of competition is allowing entrenched providers to raise their prices with no fear of customers going anywhere.
I don't understand why anybody expected an "in depth" game. Spore is, in many ways, a spinoff from The Sims, which was aimed squarely at the more casual gamer crowd. That plus the huge scope of content that Spore was attempting to cover made it seem pretty likely to me that it'd end up almost end up being a collection of mini-games, loosely tied together with the thread of "evolution." It's still an interesting idea, and I'm sure it'll be fun for a lot of people.
I have no doubt that the basic idea of Spore could be iterated and complicated to the point where it would become an incredibly deep and intricate experience, and that there are plenty of people who would enjoy playing such a game over and over again for the next 5 years. But there's a much bigger market of people who just want to mess around with a game and not have to micromanage, balance, and optimize a million different aspects at once in order to advance.
The gaming press and the sort of people who'd spend time writing reviews aren't the primary market for these types of games. Gaming magazines and websites are generally written by hardcore gamers, who have a whole different perspective than the targeted market, and it's been very interesting watching them try to understand the rise of casual gaming.
You're right, but it's a bit more complicated than that. There's really four main aspects that I think make up a device like an MP3 player. I'd break hardware into two sections. There's the technical capability, but there's also the physical form of the device. Also there's the interface, and there's the music. Like you said, the other players focused on technical capability, while Apple not only focused on the music, but they also took a good stab at the physical design and the interface. Those two aspects are related, but I think they're distinct. My roommate in college had a Creative player (nomad I think, but I don't remember for sure) that he bought right about the time that the iPod was first released. The interface wasn't great, but really that ended up being a non-issue because the device was a terrible shape. It was about an inch and a half deep, but along the other two dimensions it was basically a square, maybe 4 inches on each side. It could not fit comfortably into a pocket.
The inability to easily carry it around was the single biggest flaw in the device, and I don't understand why it wasn't immediately obvious to the designers. Apple was very careful and deliberate with their hardware, it's just that they understood that for a piece of portable consumer electronics, the hardware package is more important than what's under the hood.
It's not that Dell is doing something that's inherently silly for any company, it's just that for a company that built their brand on computer manufacturing, outsourcing the manufacturing seems kind of silly.
I think the argument is that Apple doesn't manufacture computers as much as it designs them. That's been a working strategy for Apple for decades. Dell made their money by refining a built-to-order assembly line system that allowed for decent prices, reasonable build quality, and responsive warranty service. At the end of the day, they were always about just shipping out boring boxes as fast as they could.
They're basically abandoning that whole business strategy, and planning on becoming a computer designer. If that's what they want to do, best of luck, but it's by no means a guaranteed success. They're really two very different skill sets.
Two of your complaints are valid, but seriously, would you enjoy playing a game where the only sound you hear is your pilot shifting around in the cockpit?