Keynote, their powerpoint replacement, generates XML files for its slideshows. And you can download a long and detailed explanation of the format. I started looking into writing a web application for my school where professors could browse digital photos from the slide library, select the ones they wanted, and have a keynote presentation automatically generated. And make it possible for students to download and generate slideshows, etc. It certainly seems possible, I just never had the time to get past the initial planning stages, and now that I've graduated, I'm not going to do it for them unless someone pays me.
Note that it's a low-end DTP program, but that's not a bad thing. It isn't meant to take on Quark or InDesign in the professional arena, but it's meant to make DTP a little more accessible to the more casual users. Sort of like Garageband tries to make audio editing accessible to everyone.
Pages is not full featured enough that I'd want to be producing a monthly magazine on it, but for a church newsletter, or a notice for a school or something, it's a good choice. It doesn't do everything, but it does a lot of the basic stuff really easily.
Yeah, I see that, but to a degree, even physical property can be that way. The value of my home is, to a large degree, outside of my control. If the city decides to build a bus depot a block over, that's going to hurt my property value. There are political routes I can take to try and fight that, but there's no guarantees.
It's the same way that we let the Fed control interest rates and such. There are a few people with the power to shift billions of dollars of wealth that belong to other people. We hope that those few have our best interests in mind, but they can't make everyone happy.
Granted, the virtualness of Second Life makes things even more arbitrary, but it's not a risk that people should be unaware of, it's just taken a little further.
A couple problems with that, the biggest one being that bandwidth seems to be the biggest bottleneck for Second Life. Everything is streamed to the client as it moves through the world, from the terrain, to the objects, to the textures and scripts. Because everything is user-created, the world is changing so constantly, it has to stream to stay updated.
If you fly through the world at a decent speed, you'll miss a lot, because it hasn't had time to download and appear. Or you'll go somewhere, but you have to just sit and wait for a bit before all the textures download and the place becomes useful.
Second, there's the problem of giving the client too much control. Basically, you can't trust the client at all, because there's lots of people out there with nothing better to do than try and find ways to cheat/break/confuse your game. This is inherent across all online games, and the solution is to do as much server-side as you can.
It's a little different, in that you have even less control. If Adobe went out of business tomorrow, my copy of Photoshop would still function. If Adobe sold photoshop to Microsoft, and MS decided to add Clippy to it, my current version would still work the same, and I could continue to live Clippy-less.
Second Life is different in that it all resides on their servers. If they decide to close up shop, all my in-game stuff goes with them. Even if I exported it somehow, it's of very little use to me out of game, so it might as well be gone.
Really, I think the best way to think of it is as a service. They're providing a service to me, sort of like a hosting provider. They're just hosting 3D primatives and textures and scripts instead of webpages and images. I could make a website that sells images, just like I can sell textures in Second Life. The only difference is that Second Life provides all the tools for creation as part of the service, where my hosting provider doesn't care how I make my content.
Well, your particular walmart example is just one anecdote, and there are plenty of anecdotes where the opposite has happened.
Your example is of a small area that doesn't have a big enough market for a lot of competitors. People hate on walmart because it comes in and creates a monopoly where there used to be competition. It's an entirely different situation.
What happens in your example when Walmart drives the other grocery store out of business? Think that can't happen? They've got a huge empire that can subsidize any losses they take until the competition is gone. Then you're back to square one, except your local grocery store has been replaced by a giant corporate entity that doesn't give a rats ass about your community. Don't think that Walmart moved into your neighborhood to provide more choices to you. They're there to wipe out all their competitors, like they've done in plenty of other towns.
Monopolies are never a good thing for anyone except that company's shareholders. It doesn't matter whether or not it's a local monopoly or some giant nationwide corporation.
And to take on your last point, yeah, a lot of people have taken on the biggest software companies in the world. And MS has killed a bunch of them. When Netscape IPO'ed, there was an even playing field, but only because MS wasn't interested in that sport yet. As soon as they got involved, they were able to crush one of the fastest growing companies in history. And they used their monopoly to do it.
Look at it this way. People might choose OS X over Linux, or vice versa, but what's really important is that they're choosing something other than Windows. As the windows monopoly breaks down, interoperability between systems will improve, and standards for files and data transfers will rule the day, not operating systems.
I don't care if any particular operating system exists 20 years from now. I just want to have a couple of good choices, with a solid line up of software for each one. And I certainly don't want any one company having as much of a say on the direction of the industry as MS currently has.
I agree with you to some degree. But not only has Steve changed, the marketplace has changed to give Apple a few more choices.
First off, Pre-OSX, Apple's operating system was decent, but it had a whole lot of problems. It was better than Windows in a lot of ways, but there are also a number of ways in which it was not. Not a good position to be in if you're going to challenge MS head on. Now Apple's got an operating system that many more people will agree is superior, including the techies, so things are more positive.
Second, in the 90's, it didn't matter if windows was better than MacOS, Because Win 95 was so much damn better than Win3.1. As backwards as it sounds, the closer Windows has gotten to MacOS, the easier it has become for the average person to see the differences. When abandoning Win3.1, both MacOS and Windows 95 were so different to your every day consumer that the details weren't really important. Now that everyone is comfortable with the basic metaphors that both desktops are based on, we can nitpick the details, and that's where Apple really stomps all over Windows.
Third, Windows has some really big problems right now. The biggest one being malware, which is epidemic at this point, and really frustrating. And while a market shift towards Apple will eventually bring similar problems to Macs, windows has years of a head start in this unfortunate arena, not to mention some basic design decisions making it more vulnerable.
And fourth, Windows seems pretty stagnant. Windows 95 was this huge jump that amazed everyone. It might not have been as innovative as their marketing told everyone it was, but it was some real, visible progress for Microsoft. Since then, Windows 98, ME, XP...none of them have brought anything terribly compelling to the table. Stability has gotten better, but that's not as much a feature as it is something we should take for granted. Apple is more consistent in adding useful features, plus they're pumping them out at regular rate, so the development of OSX has really felt sort of evolutionary. When MS takes 4+ years to put out something new, you'd expect them to have something really great to show for all that time. Longhorn looks underwhelming. What's it going to offer that would convince my mom she should upgrade?
Fifth, Apple's got the ipod bringing in a lot of extra revenue, but more importantly, creating for them a huge brand identity, and re-establishing them as a cultural icon. And they're even a cool part of the culture now, not just a plain old geeky one. This coinciding nicely with computers and the internet being established as a part of normal life for everyone, just not for the nerds.
And sixth, having gone through the anti-trust stuff, MS would have a bit of a harder time pushing everyone around in order to kill Apple. They'd still probably try, especially with the current business-friendly government, but other computer manufacturers would hopefully be a little more bold about fighting back, and have the previous rulings against MS to use as a weapon.
Oh, and maybe seventh, Linux is a big and serious threat to MS, and it's always easier to battle an enemy who's involved in a two front war. Anytime MS loses ground, linux benefits, even if Apple picked up all that lost territory, and vice-versa. Breaking the windows monopoly is more important in the long run than any short term gains. Apple and Linux are fighting the same battle in many ways.
And actually, I can think of an eighth, and that's the portability of file formats. The internet has made the need for standard and open file formats apparent to a lot of people, and over time, business and individuals are going to become increasingly aware of the benefits of keeping their data in a format not controlled by just one company. There's been talk of MS opening up their XML formats for the next version of Office. They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't feel there was a demand for it. Over time, this will diminish the size of the stick that MS has to wield ove
Uh, mac zealots aren't the ones saying that. We all think that OSX is too wonderful for the unwashed masses, and that every piece of hardware the Apple sells us is an bargain priced altar to our Lord Steve Jobs. The mere thought of a filthy, unworthy whitebox PC running the divine OS of Kings makes us cringe in horror, fearful of apocalypse brought upon us all for desecrating all that is insanely great.
It's those godless heathen business analysts and some of those smelly free software yuppies that are spouting off this OSX on everyday PC's blasphemy.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that scientists feel the need to make silly comparisons in their press releases, in order to get the masses to take notice of their work. Technically, yeah, this planet's characteristics are closer to earth than any of the others found outside of our solar system. But no, this planet doesn't resemble earth at all.
But even if that's the kind of candy coated description that the public at large needs, I like to at least imagine that the average slashdot reader is a bit more savvy in terms of science, enough so that when the editors put together the summary paragraph for the front page, they could leave out a fluff line as obvious as "the most earthlike planet found to date." It's not a useful piece of information, it's just kind of silly.
I wasn't there, and I'm not trying to say that Raskin was just a worthless hack or anything, but having read a lot of his accounts of things, I have to wonder if he didn't stretch the truth a little. Just from the way he wrote and described how things developed, he just always seems to be trying to prove to everyone what a genius he was.
Just reading through it all, I get the feeling that he'd tell me that he single handedly designed the whole Apollo project and did most of the work putting a man on the moon, if he thought I'd believe it.
Then again, maybe he really was the brains behind all that, and he just happened to be a crappy writer.
That's all pretty damn interesting stuff to think about. I wasn't involved in furniture making in the 90's, so I'm not aware of that history.
On a pointles side note, since you mention Mennonites, I spent a summer working on a ranch out in the jungle in Belize. While there, just through a weird combination of events, I ended up watching South Park on my powerbook with a mennonite in the back of a pickup truck. He seemed fascinated by it.
Well yeah, there is that. But sometimes I don't want super nice stuff. I end up creating a lot of what I call "utility furniture", which is what IKEA's stuff generally is, theirs is just dressed up a little bit.
Most of what I make is done with a finish grade plywood (birch/maple), and pretty straight forwards. Rarely do I use more expensive woods, and I don't have any skills in carving and the like. I'm not even that good at staining.
Making good "antique store" quality furniture takes a whole lot of skill and practice. For that reason, it's sort of less-relevant to the discussion brought up by the article, which I think was less about artistic craftsmanship, and more about making stuff that people need.
Right on. I had a friend's woodshop that I could use free of cost, and I built myself a number of pieces of furniture. Even when I assigned my time a value of $0/hour, I can't make a desk cheaper than some of the stuff you can get at office max. Basically, just buying the materials for myself costs as much as the whole desk does from a big store, because I'm not getting any sort of bulk discount. You can bet that ikea gets a sheet of OSB for a whole lot cheaper when they order it by the truckload. Hell, they probably have their own factory where they manufacture their materials themselves. Not to mention the fact that I don't have a machine to edge laminate, nor do I have a CNC router to cut out shapes in just a few quick minutes.
Now, the upside is, I can make totally custom stuff, completely suited to my needs. I also get a lot of enjoyment out of designing and building this stuff, so that's good too. But yeah, I've had friends ask me to make them stuff, but unless it's something creative and fun, I generally point them to overstock.com or something. I can't make a boring bookshelf any cheaper than a huge factory full of robots and machines.
Despite the fact that it's difficult to make happen, there are people who enjoy their jobs. Don't hate on them for that.
But moving along, this article wasn't really about compensation beyond the value of their work as much as it is about increasing the value of their work. More specifically, increasing the value of their work through sharing. And finding the right balance between freely sharing work, and protecting it.
And there are plenty of valid reasons to protect it. One of the examples given by the UserFriendly guy is that he's not comfortable with people replacing the dialogue in his strips with stuff he deems inappropriate for his characters. Not only does he feel like his artwork is being needlessly defaced, but there's the potential for the modified stuff to get confused with the real thing. But at the same time, these authors are trying to come to grips with the fact that their fans want to actively engage in these stories and characters, and that allowing them to do so can grow their audience, and enrich their art.
It's all about finding a balance, while working within some very convoluted and confusing laws regarding copyrights and trademarks. And it's not easy.
Sorta, but not exactly. I probably should've taken it further in my comment. Not only do you send your "spaceship" up there tucked away inside a rocket. Then you send your astronauts up seperately, in a capsule along with some supplies. They transfer to the spaceship, and do their thing. When they're done zooming around space, you leave the spaceship up there, and come home in a capsule or something.
A closer analogy would be Skylab. They didn't strap a bunch of boosters to it and fire it up into space like they do with the shuttle orbiter. If they did that, it would've needed to be designed to survive a trip through the atmosphere. Instead, they stuffed it all inside an extra Saturn V they had, and shot it up into space.
Actually, now that I think about it, the lunar lander from the apollo missions was pretty similar as well. It wasn't designed to function in an atmosphere, so it was well tailored to its true purpose, landing on the moon. It was much too frail to have been exposed to the atmosphere during launch.
What it basically boils down to is, the shuttle isn't as much a reuseable spacecraft as it is a mostly reusable launch vehicle. And, although I'm no rocket scientist, it seems to me that launch/rentry&landing are the most stressful parts of a mission. Designing the shuttle to survive and perform for the extreme conditions of the first and last twenty minutes of each flight resulted in a lot of compromises that made the shuttle much less effective and efficient for the rest of the mission in between.
Rutan isn't doing that, he's still sort of close to the orbiter/rocket-booster combo, just using a plane for the first stage instead of ginormous rockets. Not to poop on what he's doing, I think his progress is pretty exciting, since he'll eventually be offering tickets for a whole lot cheaper than the russians sell them.
Yeah, and don't forget one of the biggest contradictions in the space shuttle. It has to not only be controllable in space, it also has to be maneuverable in the atmosphere. Two entirely different situations, each causing problems for the other. I don't know why they didn't just go all out and make it work underwater as well.
Really, if you want a kickass spacecraft, make something that only has to function in space. Then wrap it up inside a big rocket, and have that put your ship up into space.
The original comment said that the Shuttle has a very good safety record for what it does. It carries people into orbit. Your Zenit doesn't do that. So your comparison doesn't exactly work.
The Saturn V did well. How many times did it fly? A dozen? Maybe a few more? Fire off a hundred of them, we'll see if the record stays consistent.
It's sort of silly to make comparisons of that sort to the shuttle, because there's not really anything else like it. I think the parent comment's main point was that, while not 100%, the shuttle is pretty damn good in the safety department, and seems to be within the realm of acceptable risk. And if you're not down with acceptable risk, then space flight is not the business for you to be in.
There are plenty of reasons to replace the space shuttle, but safety is not at the top of the list.
No, I think NASA knows what the shuttle's problems are. They've been trying to get a replacement for a while. The thing is, it's not as easy as just saying, hey, let's make something new, and getting it done.
Ignoring all the technical and engineering compromises that went on in the design, just getting approval to design and build the thing sounds like it was quite the hassle to me. Everyone wanted to build a part of it in their state, because there's lots of money and nice jobs involved. There were engineers, politicians, military planners, administrators, all fighting over what features the shuttle would have, how much it should cost, and what companies would get paid to produce it. The fact that it happened at all is pretty amazing.
And all of those difficulties repeat themselves anytime NASA talks about a shuttle replacement, which is why it's been so hard to get one made. Unfortunately it took a second major accident to force non-engineers to consider alternatives. Hopefully some of the current initiatives will produce actual spacecraft.
Meanwhile, it's important politically for NASA to keep manned spaceflight going, partially for the space station, partially for national pride, and partially because they have to justify their budget to congress.
The story of NASA since Apollo has basically been a bunch of engineers, a bunch of bureaucrats, and a huge disconnect in between. The bureaucrats control the money, so the engineers can't get much done without them. Sucks, but that's one of the prices you pay to live in a democratic country.
But yeah, I'll bet NASA is chock full of people who'd like nothing better to have the STS stop taking all the funding. It's just not a simple matter to retire it.
I have no personal experience with 10.4, although I have heard about more problems than usual. If that's the case, then Apple dropped the ball there, and that's unfortunate. I still don't think that that presents a major problem to my original post.
I don't think apple is going to start selling OSX for any ol' PC either. It would kill the company, at least at this point in time. But if they can let a few more people get a taste of it, that's a good thing. LIke others have said, this is an unsupported, unupgradable copy, but it might whet the appetite for more.
I think he was talking about "experts" with the quotes around it. If he didn't actually make the little air quotes while saying it, it was probably implied.
What's really challenging about it all is that if you're just some guy trying to get involved in an industry, there's all manner of people who already have claimed their stake there, and you've got to deal with them. And it's hard knowing who got there cause they're good, who got there cause they're lucky, and who got there because their uncle is a big shot. It's hard to know who has valid advice, who has crappy advice, and who has worthless advice yet still has the power to wreck your career just because of their position. It's not an easy game to play.
Like you said, perseverance is the most reliable way to get through, it's just difficult, and almost soul-draining at times. One of the hardest parts of design, of any sort, is learning to deal with criticism. Not only learning to not take it personally, but also learning what's valid and what's not. It's easy to get depressed, since the world is so full of people with nothing better to do than crap on your ideas.
It wasn't a mistake. The PS2 won the last generation hands down, and its online abilites are not the least bit impressive. They had very little bearing on its success.
Nintendo didn't have any problem selling most of their games. SuperSmashBros. online would've been cool, no doubt, but they sold tons of them anyways. I doubt that online capabilities would've pushed through a significant number of extra gamecubes.
They're perfectly happy to sit back and watch stuff unfold, and learn from the mistakes and efforts of others. Expect the Revolution to learn a lot of lessons from XboxLive, as well as have some unique ideas from Nintendo. The technologies for online gaming are better, broadband is more widespread now, and like you said, online console gaming is ready to hit its prime.
Someone's still got to take the time to integrate it in. The last 10% of any project is always the hardest to get done, because it's boring. Tying up loose ends, adding extra polish, squashing tiny bugs. It's not exciting, it's not creative, and by the time a project has gotten that far, you're tired of looking at it and ready to start on something else.
Another distro may have done some of that leg work, but you've still got to work it into your build, and that's going to be some work. Maybe a little less, but just as boring and unappealing. It's hard enough to get people to do that work when you're paying them. Hoping people will sit down and do it with their free time is what happens now, and that progresses very slowly.
Documentation for free software often has the same problems.
I don't think it'll be much of a problem. First off, they've had this in development alongside the PPC version for years, so it's not like it's an ugly hack to get it working. It should be reasonably sound and stable.
Second, it'll be compared to Windows, which, despite massive improvements in stability, still has a reputation for crashing, not to mention malware problems. Simply stated, it's easier to look good when you're standing next to someone ugly. Windows is really ugly in a lot of ways. You don't have to be at the top of your game to look better than it.
Add in the fact that anyone tech savvy enough to track down a copy and install it, (ok, it probably won't be terribly hard, but there will be a knowledge barrier to stop my grandmother from doing it), anyone who can figure that out will understand that it's just a development version, that a lot of software is running slower through Rosetta, and that this is just a taste, not the total package Apple will be selling in a year or two.
I think Apple will come out looking pretty good after this. Sure, there will be some who criticize, but there always are. Sure, I'm an Apple fanboy, but truly believe that there are plenty of compelling reasons to use OSX over Windows, that most people who get the chance to try it out will want to switch. Anything that gives people a good opportunity to try (moreso than dicking around on the machines in the Apple Store for a half hour), is a good thing.
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Keynote, their powerpoint replacement, generates XML files for its slideshows. And you can download a long and detailed explanation of the format. I started looking into writing a web application for my school where professors could browse digital photos from the slide library, select the ones they wanted, and have a keynote presentation automatically generated. And make it possible for students to download and generate slideshows, etc. It certainly seems possible, I just never had the time to get past the initial planning stages, and now that I've graduated, I'm not going to do it for them unless someone pays me.
Note that it's a low-end DTP program, but that's not a bad thing. It isn't meant to take on Quark or InDesign in the professional arena, but it's meant to make DTP a little more accessible to the more casual users. Sort of like Garageband tries to make audio editing accessible to everyone.
Pages is not full featured enough that I'd want to be producing a monthly magazine on it, but for a church newsletter, or a notice for a school or something, it's a good choice. It doesn't do everything, but it does a lot of the basic stuff really easily.
Yeah, I see that, but to a degree, even physical property can be that way. The value of my home is, to a large degree, outside of my control. If the city decides to build a bus depot a block over, that's going to hurt my property value. There are political routes I can take to try and fight that, but there's no guarantees.
It's the same way that we let the Fed control interest rates and such. There are a few people with the power to shift billions of dollars of wealth that belong to other people. We hope that those few have our best interests in mind, but they can't make everyone happy.
Granted, the virtualness of Second Life makes things even more arbitrary, but it's not a risk that people should be unaware of, it's just taken a little further.
A couple problems with that, the biggest one being that bandwidth seems to be the biggest bottleneck for Second Life. Everything is streamed to the client as it moves through the world, from the terrain, to the objects, to the textures and scripts. Because everything is user-created, the world is changing so constantly, it has to stream to stay updated.
If you fly through the world at a decent speed, you'll miss a lot, because it hasn't had time to download and appear. Or you'll go somewhere, but you have to just sit and wait for a bit before all the textures download and the place becomes useful.
Second, there's the problem of giving the client too much control. Basically, you can't trust the client at all, because there's lots of people out there with nothing better to do than try and find ways to cheat/break/confuse your game. This is inherent across all online games, and the solution is to do as much server-side as you can.
It's a little different, in that you have even less control. If Adobe went out of business tomorrow, my copy of Photoshop would still function. If Adobe sold photoshop to Microsoft, and MS decided to add Clippy to it, my current version would still work the same, and I could continue to live Clippy-less.
Second Life is different in that it all resides on their servers. If they decide to close up shop, all my in-game stuff goes with them. Even if I exported it somehow, it's of very little use to me out of game, so it might as well be gone.
Really, I think the best way to think of it is as a service. They're providing a service to me, sort of like a hosting provider. They're just hosting 3D primatives and textures and scripts instead of webpages and images. I could make a website that sells images, just like I can sell textures in Second Life. The only difference is that Second Life provides all the tools for creation as part of the service, where my hosting provider doesn't care how I make my content.
Well, your particular walmart example is just one anecdote, and there are plenty of anecdotes where the opposite has happened.
Your example is of a small area that doesn't have a big enough market for a lot of competitors. People hate on walmart because it comes in and creates a monopoly where there used to be competition. It's an entirely different situation.
What happens in your example when Walmart drives the other grocery store out of business? Think that can't happen? They've got a huge empire that can subsidize any losses they take until the competition is gone. Then you're back to square one, except your local grocery store has been replaced by a giant corporate entity that doesn't give a rats ass about your community. Don't think that Walmart moved into your neighborhood to provide more choices to you. They're there to wipe out all their competitors, like they've done in plenty of other towns.
Monopolies are never a good thing for anyone except that company's shareholders. It doesn't matter whether or not it's a local monopoly or some giant nationwide corporation.
And to take on your last point, yeah, a lot of people have taken on the biggest software companies in the world. And MS has killed a bunch of them. When Netscape IPO'ed, there was an even playing field, but only because MS wasn't interested in that sport yet. As soon as they got involved, they were able to crush one of the fastest growing companies in history. And they used their monopoly to do it.
Look at it this way. People might choose OS X over Linux, or vice versa, but what's really important is that they're choosing something other than Windows. As the windows monopoly breaks down, interoperability between systems will improve, and standards for files and data transfers will rule the day, not operating systems.
I don't care if any particular operating system exists 20 years from now. I just want to have a couple of good choices, with a solid line up of software for each one. And I certainly don't want any one company having as much of a say on the direction of the industry as MS currently has.
I agree with you to some degree. But not only has Steve changed, the marketplace has changed to give Apple a few more choices.
First off, Pre-OSX, Apple's operating system was decent, but it had a whole lot of problems. It was better than Windows in a lot of ways, but there are also a number of ways in which it was not. Not a good position to be in if you're going to challenge MS head on. Now Apple's got an operating system that many more people will agree is superior, including the techies, so things are more positive.
Second, in the 90's, it didn't matter if windows was better than MacOS, Because Win 95 was so much damn better than Win3.1. As backwards as it sounds, the closer Windows has gotten to MacOS, the easier it has become for the average person to see the differences. When abandoning Win3.1, both MacOS and Windows 95 were so different to your every day consumer that the details weren't really important. Now that everyone is comfortable with the basic metaphors that both desktops are based on, we can nitpick the details, and that's where Apple really stomps all over Windows.
Third, Windows has some really big problems right now. The biggest one being malware, which is epidemic at this point, and really frustrating. And while a market shift towards Apple will eventually bring similar problems to Macs, windows has years of a head start in this unfortunate arena, not to mention some basic design decisions making it more vulnerable.
And fourth, Windows seems pretty stagnant. Windows 95 was this huge jump that amazed everyone. It might not have been as innovative as their marketing told everyone it was, but it was some real, visible progress for Microsoft. Since then, Windows 98, ME, XP...none of them have brought anything terribly compelling to the table. Stability has gotten better, but that's not as much a feature as it is something we should take for granted. Apple is more consistent in adding useful features, plus they're pumping them out at regular rate, so the development of OSX has really felt sort of evolutionary. When MS takes 4+ years to put out something new, you'd expect them to have something really great to show for all that time. Longhorn looks underwhelming. What's it going to offer that would convince my mom she should upgrade?
Fifth, Apple's got the ipod bringing in a lot of extra revenue, but more importantly, creating for them a huge brand identity, and re-establishing them as a cultural icon. And they're even a cool part of the culture now, not just a plain old geeky one. This coinciding nicely with computers and the internet being established as a part of normal life for everyone, just not for the nerds.
And sixth, having gone through the anti-trust stuff, MS would have a bit of a harder time pushing everyone around in order to kill Apple. They'd still probably try, especially with the current business-friendly government, but other computer manufacturers would hopefully be a little more bold about fighting back, and have the previous rulings against MS to use as a weapon.
Oh, and maybe seventh, Linux is a big and serious threat to MS, and it's always easier to battle an enemy who's involved in a two front war. Anytime MS loses ground, linux benefits, even if Apple picked up all that lost territory, and vice-versa. Breaking the windows monopoly is more important in the long run than any short term gains. Apple and Linux are fighting the same battle in many ways.
And actually, I can think of an eighth, and that's the portability of file formats. The internet has made the need for standard and open file formats apparent to a lot of people, and over time, business and individuals are going to become increasingly aware of the benefits of keeping their data in a format not controlled by just one company. There's been talk of MS opening up their XML formats for the next version of Office. They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't feel there was a demand for it. Over time, this will diminish the size of the stick that MS has to wield ove
Uh, mac zealots aren't the ones saying that. We all think that OSX is too wonderful for the unwashed masses, and that every piece of hardware the Apple sells us is an bargain priced altar to our Lord Steve Jobs. The mere thought of a filthy, unworthy whitebox PC running the divine OS of Kings makes us cringe in horror, fearful of apocalypse brought upon us all for desecrating all that is insanely great.
It's those godless heathen business analysts and some of those smelly free software yuppies that are spouting off this OSX on everyday PC's blasphemy.
I sure do love that Apple Koolaide.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that scientists feel the need to make silly comparisons in their press releases, in order to get the masses to take notice of their work. Technically, yeah, this planet's characteristics are closer to earth than any of the others found outside of our solar system. But no, this planet doesn't resemble earth at all.
But even if that's the kind of candy coated description that the public at large needs, I like to at least imagine that the average slashdot reader is a bit more savvy in terms of science, enough so that when the editors put together the summary paragraph for the front page, they could leave out a fluff line as obvious as "the most earthlike planet found to date." It's not a useful piece of information, it's just kind of silly.
I wasn't there, and I'm not trying to say that Raskin was just a worthless hack or anything, but having read a lot of his accounts of things, I have to wonder if he didn't stretch the truth a little. Just from the way he wrote and described how things developed, he just always seems to be trying to prove to everyone what a genius he was.
Just reading through it all, I get the feeling that he'd tell me that he single handedly designed the whole Apollo project and did most of the work putting a man on the moon, if he thought I'd believe it.
Then again, maybe he really was the brains behind all that, and he just happened to be a crappy writer.
That's all pretty damn interesting stuff to think about. I wasn't involved in furniture making in the 90's, so I'm not aware of that history.
On a pointles side note, since you mention Mennonites, I spent a summer working on a ranch out in the jungle in Belize. While there, just through a weird combination of events, I ended up watching South Park on my powerbook with a mennonite in the back of a pickup truck. He seemed fascinated by it.
Well yeah, there is that. But sometimes I don't want super nice stuff. I end up creating a lot of what I call "utility furniture", which is what IKEA's stuff generally is, theirs is just dressed up a little bit.
Most of what I make is done with a finish grade plywood (birch/maple), and pretty straight forwards. Rarely do I use more expensive woods, and I don't have any skills in carving and the like. I'm not even that good at staining.
Making good "antique store" quality furniture takes a whole lot of skill and practice. For that reason, it's sort of less-relevant to the discussion brought up by the article, which I think was less about artistic craftsmanship, and more about making stuff that people need.
Right on. I had a friend's woodshop that I could use free of cost, and I built myself a number of pieces of furniture. Even when I assigned my time a value of $0/hour, I can't make a desk cheaper than some of the stuff you can get at office max. Basically, just buying the materials for myself costs as much as the whole desk does from a big store, because I'm not getting any sort of bulk discount. You can bet that ikea gets a sheet of OSB for a whole lot cheaper when they order it by the truckload. Hell, they probably have their own factory where they manufacture their materials themselves. Not to mention the fact that I don't have a machine to edge laminate, nor do I have a CNC router to cut out shapes in just a few quick minutes.
Now, the upside is, I can make totally custom stuff, completely suited to my needs. I also get a lot of enjoyment out of designing and building this stuff, so that's good too. But yeah, I've had friends ask me to make them stuff, but unless it's something creative and fun, I generally point them to overstock.com or something. I can't make a boring bookshelf any cheaper than a huge factory full of robots and machines.
Despite the fact that it's difficult to make happen, there are people who enjoy their jobs. Don't hate on them for that.
But moving along, this article wasn't really about compensation beyond the value of their work as much as it is about increasing the value of their work. More specifically, increasing the value of their work through sharing. And finding the right balance between freely sharing work, and protecting it.
And there are plenty of valid reasons to protect it. One of the examples given by the UserFriendly guy is that he's not comfortable with people replacing the dialogue in his strips with stuff he deems inappropriate for his characters. Not only does he feel like his artwork is being needlessly defaced, but there's the potential for the modified stuff to get confused with the real thing. But at the same time, these authors are trying to come to grips with the fact that their fans want to actively engage in these stories and characters, and that allowing them to do so can grow their audience, and enrich their art.
It's all about finding a balance, while working within some very convoluted and confusing laws regarding copyrights and trademarks. And it's not easy.
Sorta, but not exactly. I probably should've taken it further in my comment. Not only do you send your "spaceship" up there tucked away inside a rocket. Then you send your astronauts up seperately, in a capsule along with some supplies. They transfer to the spaceship, and do their thing. When they're done zooming around space, you leave the spaceship up there, and come home in a capsule or something.
A closer analogy would be Skylab. They didn't strap a bunch of boosters to it and fire it up into space like they do with the shuttle orbiter. If they did that, it would've needed to be designed to survive a trip through the atmosphere. Instead, they stuffed it all inside an extra Saturn V they had, and shot it up into space.
Actually, now that I think about it, the lunar lander from the apollo missions was pretty similar as well. It wasn't designed to function in an atmosphere, so it was well tailored to its true purpose, landing on the moon. It was much too frail to have been exposed to the atmosphere during launch.
What it basically boils down to is, the shuttle isn't as much a reuseable spacecraft as it is a mostly reusable launch vehicle. And, although I'm no rocket scientist, it seems to me that launch/rentry&landing are the most stressful parts of a mission. Designing the shuttle to survive and perform for the extreme conditions of the first and last twenty minutes of each flight resulted in a lot of compromises that made the shuttle much less effective and efficient for the rest of the mission in between.
Rutan isn't doing that, he's still sort of close to the orbiter/rocket-booster combo, just using a plane for the first stage instead of ginormous rockets. Not to poop on what he's doing, I think his progress is pretty exciting, since he'll eventually be offering tickets for a whole lot cheaper than the russians sell them.
Yeah, and don't forget one of the biggest contradictions in the space shuttle. It has to not only be controllable in space, it also has to be maneuverable in the atmosphere. Two entirely different situations, each causing problems for the other. I don't know why they didn't just go all out and make it work underwater as well.
Really, if you want a kickass spacecraft, make something that only has to function in space. Then wrap it up inside a big rocket, and have that put your ship up into space.
The original comment said that the Shuttle has a very good safety record for what it does. It carries people into orbit. Your Zenit doesn't do that. So your comparison doesn't exactly work.
The Saturn V did well. How many times did it fly? A dozen? Maybe a few more? Fire off a hundred of them, we'll see if the record stays consistent.
It's sort of silly to make comparisons of that sort to the shuttle, because there's not really anything else like it. I think the parent comment's main point was that, while not 100%, the shuttle is pretty damn good in the safety department, and seems to be within the realm of acceptable risk. And if you're not down with acceptable risk, then space flight is not the business for you to be in.
There are plenty of reasons to replace the space shuttle, but safety is not at the top of the list.
No, I think NASA knows what the shuttle's problems are. They've been trying to get a replacement for a while. The thing is, it's not as easy as just saying, hey, let's make something new, and getting it done.
Ignoring all the technical and engineering compromises that went on in the design, just getting approval to design and build the thing sounds like it was quite the hassle to me. Everyone wanted to build a part of it in their state, because there's lots of money and nice jobs involved. There were engineers, politicians, military planners, administrators, all fighting over what features the shuttle would have, how much it should cost, and what companies would get paid to produce it. The fact that it happened at all is pretty amazing.
And all of those difficulties repeat themselves anytime NASA talks about a shuttle replacement, which is why it's been so hard to get one made. Unfortunately it took a second major accident to force non-engineers to consider alternatives. Hopefully some of the current initiatives will produce actual spacecraft.
Meanwhile, it's important politically for NASA to keep manned spaceflight going, partially for the space station, partially for national pride, and partially because they have to justify their budget to congress.
The story of NASA since Apollo has basically been a bunch of engineers, a bunch of bureaucrats, and a huge disconnect in between. The bureaucrats control the money, so the engineers can't get much done without them. Sucks, but that's one of the prices you pay to live in a democratic country.
But yeah, I'll bet NASA is chock full of people who'd like nothing better to have the STS stop taking all the funding. It's just not a simple matter to retire it.
I have no personal experience with 10.4, although I have heard about more problems than usual. If that's the case, then Apple dropped the ball there, and that's unfortunate. I still don't think that that presents a major problem to my original post.
I don't think apple is going to start selling OSX for any ol' PC either. It would kill the company, at least at this point in time. But if they can let a few more people get a taste of it, that's a good thing. LIke others have said, this is an unsupported, unupgradable copy, but it might whet the appetite for more.
I think he was talking about "experts" with the quotes around it. If he didn't actually make the little air quotes while saying it, it was probably implied.
What's really challenging about it all is that if you're just some guy trying to get involved in an industry, there's all manner of people who already have claimed their stake there, and you've got to deal with them. And it's hard knowing who got there cause they're good, who got there cause they're lucky, and who got there because their uncle is a big shot. It's hard to know who has valid advice, who has crappy advice, and who has worthless advice yet still has the power to wreck your career just because of their position. It's not an easy game to play.
Like you said, perseverance is the most reliable way to get through, it's just difficult, and almost soul-draining at times. One of the hardest parts of design, of any sort, is learning to deal with criticism. Not only learning to not take it personally, but also learning what's valid and what's not. It's easy to get depressed, since the world is so full of people with nothing better to do than crap on your ideas.
It wasn't a mistake. The PS2 won the last generation hands down, and its online abilites are not the least bit impressive. They had very little bearing on its success.
Nintendo didn't have any problem selling most of their games. SuperSmashBros. online would've been cool, no doubt, but they sold tons of them anyways. I doubt that online capabilities would've pushed through a significant number of extra gamecubes.
They're perfectly happy to sit back and watch stuff unfold, and learn from the mistakes and efforts of others. Expect the Revolution to learn a lot of lessons from XboxLive, as well as have some unique ideas from Nintendo. The technologies for online gaming are better, broadband is more widespread now, and like you said, online console gaming is ready to hit its prime.
Someone's still got to take the time to integrate it in. The last 10% of any project is always the hardest to get done, because it's boring. Tying up loose ends, adding extra polish, squashing tiny bugs. It's not exciting, it's not creative, and by the time a project has gotten that far, you're tired of looking at it and ready to start on something else.
Another distro may have done some of that leg work, but you've still got to work it into your build, and that's going to be some work. Maybe a little less, but just as boring and unappealing. It's hard enough to get people to do that work when you're paying them. Hoping people will sit down and do it with their free time is what happens now, and that progresses very slowly.
Documentation for free software often has the same problems.
I don't think it'll be much of a problem. First off, they've had this in development alongside the PPC version for years, so it's not like it's an ugly hack to get it working. It should be reasonably sound and stable.
Second, it'll be compared to Windows, which, despite massive improvements in stability, still has a reputation for crashing, not to mention malware problems. Simply stated, it's easier to look good when you're standing next to someone ugly. Windows is really ugly in a lot of ways. You don't have to be at the top of your game to look better than it.
Add in the fact that anyone tech savvy enough to track down a copy and install it, (ok, it probably won't be terribly hard, but there will be a knowledge barrier to stop my grandmother from doing it), anyone who can figure that out will understand that it's just a development version, that a lot of software is running slower through Rosetta, and that this is just a taste, not the total package Apple will be selling in a year or two.
I think Apple will come out looking pretty good after this. Sure, there will be some who criticize, but there always are. Sure, I'm an Apple fanboy, but truly believe that there are plenty of compelling reasons to use OSX over Windows, that most people who get the chance to try it out will want to switch. Anything that gives people a good opportunity to try (moreso than dicking around on the machines in the Apple Store for a half hour), is a good thing.