There's no global dumb-people-breeding conspiracy and every one of these kids has the ability for higher learning. The sad fact is there's a growing percentage that's never had to try in an education system where no-one fails.
I see evidence of this also. My reaction to reading the article summary was wondering why these students were accepted into college in the first place? Weren't they asked to write something in their application, and weren't they immediately rejected if they failed to put basic sentences together? Even more to the point, why were they allowed to graduate from high school? The basic ability to communicate clearly through written language is a skill almost universally required in the job market. It's inexcusable that high schools graduate students who have not achieved this skill.
They are pretty naive if they think iPad is a viable competitor to the Kindle. I have tried reading books on my desktop screen (which is way better than an iPhone, and I bet the iPad screen) and its just plain unusable for reading a hundred page book. Sure some people will read books on it, some people read books on their PCs. It is most likely more useful for reference books.
People are going to buy the iPad without having an ebook reader primary in mind. They'll buy it as a portable media / internet device that does many things other things. However, while the iPad isn't in the category of ebook readers, anyone who buys one is highly unlikely to buy a Kindle, shrinking Amazon's market. Obviously many people will still require an e-ink reader, but there are also plenty of people who won't see the colour LCD and short battery life as net downsides.
Amazon did nothing that, say, Walmart would not do.
Absolutely, and many people choose to boycott Walmart. MacMillan is not a monopoly, however, as you can buy books from many publishers.
Amazon has the right to sell whatever it damn chooses to.
And "MacMillan can go shove themselves" because Amazon chose not to sell their books? I don't understand the hostility, it's not like the publisher tried anything sneaky. Who cares if they want their ebooks to be listed at a higher price on Amazon?
The main reason I purchased the Kindle is because I do a lot of traveling, so I can carry much of my library with me and read whatever I'm in the mood to read without carrying a bag full of books and being in the mood to read the one I left at home on that trip, plus I can buy one that I would never have found in the airport bookstore. This is why something like the iPad will never work for me.
This is also why you spend several hundred dollars for a device: the convenience you describe above. I would love an ebook reader, but I don't travel a lot and don't need that convenience. Due to that, buying a pricey device and then having ebooks cost the same as their physical equivalents makes it a bad choice for me. I would absolutely love for ebooks to be cheap enough to justify buying a nice reader (or for someone to offer some sort of monthly subscription model), so I sympathise with your pricing complaints.
However, you own a Kindle and buy books from Amazon, so clearly it's worth the cost in your case. It's always nice to have things cheaper, but if Amazon really doesn't deliver on value you wouldn't own a Kindle and buy ebooks for it. Cost isn't the only measurement when it comes to a product; in your situation, I'd have an ebook reader, too.
As you pointed out, the iPad is going to sell to a lot of people that aren't in it for a dedicated ebook reader with e-ink and an ultra long battery life. Those people, however, will be extremely unlikely to buy a Kindle. Apple doesn't have to rely on ebooks to drive iPad sales, but every iPad sold shrinks the market for potential Kindle sales. The publishers have no reason to lament Apple opening up a competing ebook store, since iTunes has a fantastic track record with other media and software. Unlike at the launch of the music store, Apple doesn't have much reason be worried about what publishers charge, since the iPad isn't a dedicated ebook reader in the way that the iPod was a dedicated music player.
Amazon's Kindle division is the only one to worry, as the iPad is *enough* of an ebook reader that it will really hurt Kindle sales if a big success. Pulling all MacMillan products is a sign they're definitely worried.
The second issue is honestly more important to me. While it's not exactly new (Best Buy, Wal*mart and I'm sure many others demand a lower price from the manufacturer), one critical difference here is you'd be getting the EXACT same product, but the manufacturer would have a preferred retailer, and try their best to force (by price) potential customers to use that retailer over any other. Serves them right if Amazon dumps them!!!
These exclusive agreements with distributors go directly against the concept of free market. Amazon has every right to fight back, and any consumer who is at all concerned with his rights to choose what they buy and where they shop should be telling MacMillan goodbye at this point.
This isn't what happened, though. MacMillan did the opposite of pursuing an exclusive agreement, signing on with Apple in addition to their business with Amazon. They did not pull their ebooks from Amazon in favour of Apple, they asked Amazon to change the prices to match what they were offered by Apple (the free market at work). All that Amazon is fighting over here is an advantage for their Kindle against a soon-to-be competing product.
Amazon uses the $9.99 pricing as a sales point (even if it's not universally applied), and with the Kindle's market share, MacMillan didn't have much room to negotiate. Now Apple is entering the ebook sales market with a device that many think will compete extremely well against the Kindle, and Amazon no longer looks like the only big player. Again we see the free market work, and MacMillan is recognising that by Amazon asking them to raise the price of their ebooks. It's not anti-consumer behaviour for a publisher to set the price of their product, anyone who doesn't want to pay the price doesn't have to buy the book.
Amazon is the one with questionable behaviour, since they pulled ALL MacMillan books, digital and physical, as a means to maintain the pricing power they they had over ebooks when the Kindle was perceived as being without real competition. That is, they are leveraging their position as a large retailer of physical books to try to gain a price advantage in the ebook download market (and through that the ebook reader market). If pushing against market forces for one's own gain is the sort of thing that bothers you, then Amazon is the company to boycott.
What sort of punishment would you get is you printed off 3000 CDs of copy right protected music, and gave them away for free with out the permission of the copy right holders?
Remember that 3000 is a number taken from the idea that other people made copies of the copies. So really, a much more accurate analogy would be:
What sort of punishment would you get if you took 24 songs and burned them to one or two CDs, and then gave the one or two CDs away for free without permission (leaving the recipient(s) to do what he or she will with the pirated content)?
So, are Apple planning on having the tablet replace the iPhone? Not likely, because it won't have phone functionality, and the iPhone market is new and huge and would just cut into Apple's already tremendous success.
Don't forget about the iPod, the primary model of which is an iPhone without phone functionality. Those products could be considered in competition with each other, but I don't think it means that much to Apple if someone buys an iPod or an iPhone, so long as they purchase media and applications through iTunes.
So it will need to replace the laptop. It fundimentally can't do that with the unsophsiticated workflow of a smart phone OS.
The article seems to argue that it can't fundamentally replace the laptop, period, and mentions that approach has been tried and failed. I don't think it's a stretch to say there's room for a product between smartphone and laptop. At the very least, Apple could be eyeing the Kindle and thinking, E-Ink and battery life be damned, we can entice consumers over with extra features and slick hardware design.
Exactly. The people who might buy a scaled up iPhone tablet are people who have an iPhone. Oops. No market.
Disclaimer: I mean this purely as an economic interjection, not as a jab at any company or their user-base.
"No market" isn't quite accurate here, as we're dealing not only with a new gadget, but an Apple gadget. Apple is lucky enough to have a notoriously loyal group of first adopters when it comes to their products. They do have some market space to work with, even if the tablet is only bought by iPhone owners.
All this isn't an argument for 3D interfaces instead of 2D interfaces, but some interfaces are more intuitive than others. Successful 2D interfaces already make use of our spacial intuition and common non-inborn ideas like "trash". Even things like "checkboxes" come from conventions that existed before computers, and those conventions were in turn based on layouts that were easy for people to understand.
I've played around with various attempts at 3D interfaces, and they all came down to one main issue: input devices. That traditional 2D interfaces are more efficient to use with traditional 2D input devices is not the least be surprising. It's one thing to implement an idea about how a user could interact with a computer in 3D using a mouse and keyboard, but it still boils down to those devices having flourished in computing due to their intrinsic efficiency with traditional 2D interfaces.
In order for a 3D interface to work intuitively and efficiently, we will need a new way to interact with the computer that is equally intuitive and efficient to the specific 3D interface. One might say, we moved out of the terminal and into a desktop environment successfully thanks to the mouse being added to the keyboard, and to move out of a 2D interface to a 3D interface, we will need another innovation in human input devices. Something that's not just "new" or "made for 3D space", but also specifically successful at the very specialised task of human input.
For example, you can stand in front of an XBox with Project Natal, pretend you're holding a steering wheel, and watch your movements control your car in a game like Need for Speed (or whichever was demo'd). It's neat, but certainly not the way to get high scores compared to a regular controller (for which the game was designed). In the case of the Wii, hardware and software are often designed to go together. This doesn't replace anything, however, it creates something new: gaming where fun is derived (on a game-by-game basis) from gesturing. We get an experience different than controller-based games, not an inherently "better" way to interact with games (only gesturing games).
It might be genuine people writing genuine articles, but it's still fed from the strategic "leaks" put out by Apple, with the purpose of generating hype. So the genuine people writing their genuine articles are actually Apple's PR strategy for getting people to talk about this without them having to make an official announcement. Of course, when they actually do make the announcement the hype will be so much that the free media coverage Apple will get out of it will be worth more than they would have ever wanted to spend on a pre-promo campaign for it.
So yeah, the articles are genuine, and it's also astroturfing, even if the authors don't realize they're astroturfing. Apple speculation is ridiculous and useless. It doesn't matter what the speculation is, we'll all found out exactly what Apple plans to do, exactly when Apple wants us to find that out, and it will have all of the features that it would have had if no one had been speculating.
Regardless, I found this specific article quite interesting. Sure, it is speculation on the Apple Tablet interface through a look at things that have been done (mainly by Apple, but also Microsoft and Palm). If that was all I got from the article I'd agree with "ridiculous and useless" completely. However, since I'm not really interested in Apple rumours, and I am extremely interested in device specific application UIs, I found parts of the article fascinating. I admit, I mostly skipped over talk about things like how Expose might or might not be implemented, but I was not aware of Mr. Raskin's work and quite pleased to read that little bit of computing history.
The unfortunately-named concept of the "information appliance" isn't something I've come across a lot of people writing about, which by itself is interesting if you consider how clearly successful that approach is over the alternative. There's a reason people still buy gaming consoles and commercial DVRs instead of just running a line from PC to TV and getting a couple game controllers and a media remote. Similarly, there's a reason why iPhone owners will use a Facebook or Google Maps App instead of just logging onto the respective website in Safari: it's a better device-specific interface.
Speculating on just what Apple is going to do may be interesting to some, and boring or annoying to others. IMO, device-specific application design is worth talking about, especially as more and more development moves to the web-browser-as-an-all-encompassing-platform model. The speculative eve of a major Apple release like a Tablet is a good time to talk about it, on the theory that more people are thinking about how things could be, prior to going back to their everyday use of how things currently are.
A second article states that it usually takes 90 days for the donation to be transferred.
While the phone companies are looking at how to speed this up, am I the only one who believes that this would be a good way for some banks to earn back some credibility? It seems like they could give the Red Cross a 90 day loan to give them the money today, at 0%. Makes them look really good.
Forget the loan with 0% interest, how about the banks match the amount, dollar for dollar?
TFA doesn't explain why the explosives were planted. One obvious reason is to test security but in that case you would have a "wicket keeper" to catch the undetected explosives.
I recall reading about police in (I think) Japan who were doing this with drugs. Planting the stuff on people then testing their inspectors. One sample got away I believe.
I expected security tests with planted explosives to come at some point, but I assumed that they would use undercover agents to test security, not innocent bystanders. However, I'd assumed the same would have happened for something like the described drug operation in Japan. I don't see how any government could do something so reckless.
Quite right, but while that fact makes Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft look less bad in that situation, it makes Google look better. From one of the cited articles:
"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," Nicole Wong, Google associate general counsel, said in a statement. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."
I'd say fighting a government subpoena issued on dubious grounds is a lot more respectable than simply not volunteering information.
I make my vodka martinis very dry indeed -- you'd think there was nothing in the glass at all. Then I fill it with gin and vermouth.
I respect gin for martinis completely; it's how the drink was designed. I can heap some scorn when I feel like it (my favourite jab is that gin is flavoured vodka), but, dry is dry, regardless of the gin/vodka distinction. Fill it with vermouth, and you're out of the "dry" club, for better or worse.
Of course, while PC fanboys may often be PC gamers, it doesn't mean that PC gamers are all fanboys. Manjoo's article, subtitled "Microsoft's latest release is the best operating system on the market" definitely shows someone who prefers / is used to the Windows way of doing things. I disagree completely with his assertion regarding the best operating system on the market. When it comes to computing as a tool, I haven't been able to treat Windows as a serious contender for my use for almost a decade now. I simply prefer working with an OS where tools like a bash shell and ssh are properly integrated, GUI functions like multiple desktops are par for the course, and ownership issues all but don't exist.
However, I do play video games for entertainment, and the computer is my primary platform, by far. So while I haven't thought much of Windows compared to many alternatives for some time, I've consistently kept an install around to use for gaming. XP has long been the gold standard in Windows for gaming use, but I see plenty of signs that Microsoft is working to change that, by making XP less viable as support for Windows updates dwindles. Of course, being a gamer, my desktop has a modest amount of power (though definitely not sporting any current generation hardware), and it runs Windows 7 without issue, and Windows 7 runs my games without issue. If Manjoo was to say, "Microsoft's latest release is the best operating system on the market for playing Windows games", at this point I'd likely agree.
Then I'd sigh, reflecting on how nice it would be to run an OS I prefer on my desktop (dual booting just leaves the non-Windows OS neglected since I got my laptop). Even so, I enjoy gaming and Windows remains the best OS for me to pursue that by FAR. Acknowledging that I'm stuck with Windows on at least one computer, I'm quite pleased with the Windows 7 release, and hope that nothing comes up that changes my experience with it.
I already pay for internet service and a computer. That should be like paying for a TV and an antenna. Anything that people put out there should be "free" to the end user, paid for through ads, related (offline) services, or donations. Like broadcast TV, since running any type of website is just the online version of running a small radio or TV station, but cheaper.
We only get this deal of content paid solely through advertising with the broadcast networks. I imagine many cable-only networks require having the different business model.
Hey, Hulu, you want to really make money? Team up with NetFlix, combine your content, get rid of your commercials, keep the $10/month price, and you guys would be the only game anyone needs.
"Hulu" = NBC collaborating with some other networks. If they do what you suggest, they risk hurting what is likely one of their biggest sources of revenue: DVD sales & rentals.
I want to pay about $15/mo to be able to download(1) TV shows at the same time they air in an patent-free, DRM-free(2) format(3).
(2) Apple is DRM free now and they're/b>. You could easily become the iTunes of the TV Show world.
I have looked at the TV offerings on iTunes from time to time, and I'm always shocked that it's there. Apparently, people buy TV shows through iTunes. I understand the desire, but the prices for popular shows are incredible! I know people will pay for convenience, but a season pass shouldn't be more expensive than a DVD box set, especially if the show is already released to DVD. More to the point, there are a lot of TV shows I like, but very few of them I like enough to put out that money for, on DVD or otherwise.
Hulu let's me watch many of these shows, and in return I let their ads play. Sometimes it's frustrating that I can't go back and watch a new series from the start, since it's too far in and the early episodes have expired. It can also be annoying to have to set up a laptop in the living room to share an episode on Hulu with the family. Still, I think DVD sales make a huge amount of money for TV networks, and the iTunes price reflects what it would cost per show to download episodes in any form that might substitute for having to at least rent the DVD.
I don't think we'll see a subscription service like you describe, but I would be content with being able to stream shows, just as Hulu does, but with more networks and a larger on-demand library. And, of course, I feel subscription fee should equal no ads. With a good delivery system, I'd even be happy to subscribe to some networksdirectly. How many $2/mo subscribers do you think Adult Swim would need to start making more money than they do now as a bundled minor network with advertisers?
but I would certainly consider paying for Hulu, so long as the price was reasonable
I watch Hulu quite a bit and I would consider it as well. Heck, I would probably pay about $1/month just so that I can forever disable certain ads that I do not like. Every time I see the Axe deodorant commercial I want to find the person who made it (approved it, came up with it, etc.) and kick them in the face for a very long time!
I share your pain when it comes to suffering from Hulu ads. If I get on a kick watching through a season, it seems like I'll get one ad over and over again. Presently my most-hated is the T-Mobile MyTouch ad; I've just heard that song too many times now.
At the same time, I made the effort to opt-in to watch these ads, disabling my ad blocking methods for Hulu's services. Sometimes, when I fail to mute in time and get that damn song again, I consider turning the ad blocking back on, but it passes. I keep the ads there because I appreciate the service Hulu provides, and the fact that it has improved so much in the time it's been running. Complaints I had initially, like having to reactivate full screen each time a new video started playing from my queue, or wanting to sit back and control it with a remote have each been implemented. As an online video service, it's really the best around in terms of how it works. Other networks not on Hulu have shows on their sites, and I've always found their attempts dismal experiences.
I also appreciate the concept that Hulu gives me a chance to bolster shows I like. I don't pay that much attention to television and new shows, and often miss broadcasts or even whole series. It's a terrible day for TV entertainment when a show gets canceled that either has a larger fan base than the network thinks, or develops one after it's canned. When Hulu keeps the last 4 or 5 episodes up, I can watch the show the next day. It might be a better experience to pay a low monthly subscription and have no ads, but I naively like to think that Hulu ad revenue reflects on individual shows. I know that Hulu ratings certainly don't count for as much as broadcast, and it's unlikely that they carry any real weight. Still, I see a potential for networks to use another way to gauge how well a show will do in the long run, and want to see Hulu work toward preventing another Firefly moment.
Of course, the Internet can be a source of too much information. I wasn't very happy when I noticed Hulu sharing cookies / LSOs with Facebook in particular, and found the BetterPrivacy Firefox add-on to help to keep Hulu's collection of information limited to my choices just on their site.
Properly managed opensource projects deal with this appropriately, some do not.
Properly managed proprietary projects deal with this appropriately, some do not.
How does that work? In a proprietary project if your boss says "do this" you either do it or find another job.
All the proprietary projects I've worked on that haven't been properly managed, the boss saying "do this" was consistently either the cause or the enabling factor of the code being a complete mess. If the results are the mess is made worse, as you say, one either does it or finds another job.
I assume the post was in regards to application GUIs. One thing OSX has is really polished software. Companies and individuals pay for applications like Transmit, which is just an SFTP client and doesn't really have anything functionality wise over it's freeware competitors. It's just polished. Same for a lot of OSX applications, and now we're seeing it in iPhone applications also.
As White Shade points out, it's often not hard to find FOSS applications that have great functionality written into them. However, without a sell-able product in mind, polished GUI might not be a top priority at the current stage of development (versus perhaps THE top priority in a proprietary alternative). This alone might answer why many users drop a free and open source app to buy an alternative.
It's not just about the desktop manager's GUI, it's also about the application GUI. It's also worth noting that it can be about how the application integrates with the desktop environment. I wouldn't exactly classify the OSX IM client Adium as proprietary, as it's based on the same GAIM foundation as Pidgin, but it remains a good example of one application integrating into the OS's usability MUCH better than a similar alternative.
Standard OTR, practically-out-of-the-box Growl ('pop under' notification) support, real theme customization, etc, Adium clearly has an edge in appealing to users. Pidgin could implement all that for KDE, and then it wouldn't work for Gnome (or even earlier versions of KDE). Pidgin could do it for Windows, but it would still have to be done all over again for the various desktop environments in Linux.
Pidgin, of course, is one of the better applications for Linux. I agree that Linux desktops are quite pleasant to use, but too many Linux applications are not. Many bundled apps like Totem, Audacity, Kopote always rubbed me the wrong way. Supposed OSS alternatives to mainstream applications, such as GnuCash, can only be classified as GUI nightmares.
There's just not enough consistency, not enough guidance, and not enough incentive for developers to produce extremely polished applications for Linux. The best we presently have are well ported applications, or a rare application that only fits into the specific environment it was developed for (and not the 99% of other linux setups).
They claim all usual rights of ownership, but foist responsibilities back on the user.
Twitter has to be able to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" the text in a tweet in order for the service to do anything. You may click "Tweet", but it's Twitter that has to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" for it to actually show up anywhere.
Far from just a punchline, the comic's content is both relevant and accurate here, as this release 2.6.31 has some news about the desktop, while supporting 4,096 CPUs is absolutely a real feature in a slightly earlier release (2.9.29).
I've no idea if drunken attention is better than totally diverted attention when it comes to driving, but I'd rather not drive with either about.
Of course, you have to drive with both about, regardless. Knowing that, I'd rather not have legislators imposing the same harsh penalties in areas that I suspect they also have no idea if the actions equate, criminally.
Many slashdotters have tried to equate the two activities, there is no comparison. Texting requires substantially more focus and time than switching radio stations. The comparison just does not work.
The comparison between texting and drunk driving works MUCH less so.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no global dumb-people-breeding conspiracy and every one of these kids has the ability for higher learning. The sad fact is there's a growing percentage that's never had to try in an education system where no-one fails.
I see evidence of this also. My reaction to reading the article summary was wondering why these students were accepted into college in the first place? Weren't they asked to write something in their application, and weren't they immediately rejected if they failed to put basic sentences together? Even more to the point, why were they allowed to graduate from high school? The basic ability to communicate clearly through written language is a skill almost universally required in the job market. It's inexcusable that high schools graduate students who have not achieved this skill.
They are pretty naive if they think iPad is a viable competitor to the Kindle. I have tried reading books on my desktop screen (which is way better than an iPhone, and I bet the iPad screen) and its just plain unusable for reading a hundred page book. Sure some people will read books on it, some people read books on their PCs. It is most likely more useful for reference books.
People are going to buy the iPad without having an ebook reader primary in mind. They'll buy it as a portable media / internet device that does many things other things. However, while the iPad isn't in the category of ebook readers, anyone who buys one is highly unlikely to buy a Kindle, shrinking Amazon's market. Obviously many people will still require an e-ink reader, but there are also plenty of people who won't see the colour LCD and short battery life as net downsides.
Amazon did nothing that, say, Walmart would not do.
Absolutely, and many people choose to boycott Walmart. MacMillan is not a monopoly, however, as you can buy books from many publishers.
Amazon has the right to sell whatever it damn chooses to.
And "MacMillan can go shove themselves" because Amazon chose not to sell their books? I don't understand the hostility, it's not like the publisher tried anything sneaky. Who cares if they want their ebooks to be listed at a higher price on Amazon?
The main reason I purchased the Kindle is because I do a lot of traveling, so I can carry much of my library with me and read whatever I'm in the mood to read without carrying a bag full of books and being in the mood to read the one I left at home on that trip, plus I can buy one that I would never have found in the airport bookstore. This is why something like the iPad will never work for me.
This is also why you spend several hundred dollars for a device: the convenience you describe above. I would love an ebook reader, but I don't travel a lot and don't need that convenience. Due to that, buying a pricey device and then having ebooks cost the same as their physical equivalents makes it a bad choice for me. I would absolutely love for ebooks to be cheap enough to justify buying a nice reader (or for someone to offer some sort of monthly subscription model), so I sympathise with your pricing complaints.
However, you own a Kindle and buy books from Amazon, so clearly it's worth the cost in your case. It's always nice to have things cheaper, but if Amazon really doesn't deliver on value you wouldn't own a Kindle and buy ebooks for it. Cost isn't the only measurement when it comes to a product; in your situation, I'd have an ebook reader, too.
As you pointed out, the iPad is going to sell to a lot of people that aren't in it for a dedicated ebook reader with e-ink and an ultra long battery life. Those people, however, will be extremely unlikely to buy a Kindle. Apple doesn't have to rely on ebooks to drive iPad sales, but every iPad sold shrinks the market for potential Kindle sales. The publishers have no reason to lament Apple opening up a competing ebook store, since iTunes has a fantastic track record with other media and software. Unlike at the launch of the music store, Apple doesn't have much reason be worried about what publishers charge, since the iPad isn't a dedicated ebook reader in the way that the iPod was a dedicated music player.
Amazon's Kindle division is the only one to worry, as the iPad is *enough* of an ebook reader that it will really hurt Kindle sales if a big success. Pulling all MacMillan products is a sign they're definitely worried.
The second issue is honestly more important to me. While it's not exactly new (Best Buy, Wal*mart and I'm sure many others demand a lower price from the manufacturer), one critical difference here is you'd be getting the EXACT same product, but the manufacturer would have a preferred retailer, and try their best to force (by price) potential customers to use that retailer over any other. Serves them right if Amazon dumps them!!!
These exclusive agreements with distributors go directly against the concept of free market. Amazon has every right to fight back, and any consumer who is at all concerned with his rights to choose what they buy and where they shop should be telling MacMillan goodbye at this point.
This isn't what happened, though. MacMillan did the opposite of pursuing an exclusive agreement, signing on with Apple in addition to their business with Amazon. They did not pull their ebooks from Amazon in favour of Apple, they asked Amazon to change the prices to match what they were offered by Apple (the free market at work). All that Amazon is fighting over here is an advantage for their Kindle against a soon-to-be competing product.
Amazon uses the $9.99 pricing as a sales point (even if it's not universally applied), and with the Kindle's market share, MacMillan didn't have much room to negotiate. Now Apple is entering the ebook sales market with a device that many think will compete extremely well against the Kindle, and Amazon no longer looks like the only big player. Again we see the free market work, and MacMillan is recognising that by Amazon asking them to raise the price of their ebooks. It's not anti-consumer behaviour for a publisher to set the price of their product, anyone who doesn't want to pay the price doesn't have to buy the book.
Amazon is the one with questionable behaviour, since they pulled ALL MacMillan books, digital and physical, as a means to maintain the pricing power they they had over ebooks when the Kindle was perceived as being without real competition. That is, they are leveraging their position as a large retailer of physical books to try to gain a price advantage in the ebook download market (and through that the ebook reader market). If pushing against market forces for one's own gain is the sort of thing that bothers you, then Amazon is the company to boycott.
It's not the downloading, it's the uploading.
The correct analogy would be:
What sort of punishment would you get is you printed off 3000 CDs of copy right protected music, and gave them away for free with out the permission of the copy right holders?
Remember that 3000 is a number taken from the idea that other people made copies of the copies. So really, a much more accurate analogy would be:
What sort of punishment would you get if you took 24 songs and burned them to one or two CDs, and then gave the one or two CDs away for free without permission (leaving the recipient(s) to do what he or she will with the pirated content)?
So, are Apple planning on having the tablet replace the iPhone? Not likely, because it won't have phone functionality, and the iPhone market is new and huge and would just cut into Apple's already tremendous success.
Don't forget about the iPod, the primary model of which is an iPhone without phone functionality. Those products could be considered in competition with each other, but I don't think it means that much to Apple if someone buys an iPod or an iPhone, so long as they purchase media and applications through iTunes.
So it will need to replace the laptop. It fundimentally can't do that with the unsophsiticated workflow of a smart phone OS.
The article seems to argue that it can't fundamentally replace the laptop, period, and mentions that approach has been tried and failed. I don't think it's a stretch to say there's room for a product between smartphone and laptop. At the very least, Apple could be eyeing the Kindle and thinking, E-Ink and battery life be damned, we can entice consumers over with extra features and slick hardware design.
Exactly. The people who might buy a scaled up iPhone tablet are people who have an iPhone. Oops. No market.
Disclaimer: I mean this purely as an economic interjection, not as a jab at any company or their user-base.
"No market" isn't quite accurate here, as we're dealing not only with a new gadget, but an Apple gadget. Apple is lucky enough to have a notoriously loyal group of first adopters when it comes to their products. They do have some market space to work with, even if the tablet is only bought by iPhone owners.
All this isn't an argument for 3D interfaces instead of 2D interfaces, but some interfaces are more intuitive than others. Successful 2D interfaces already make use of our spacial intuition and common non-inborn ideas like "trash". Even things like "checkboxes" come from conventions that existed before computers, and those conventions were in turn based on layouts that were easy for people to understand.
I've played around with various attempts at 3D interfaces, and they all came down to one main issue: input devices. That traditional 2D interfaces are more efficient to use with traditional 2D input devices is not the least be surprising. It's one thing to implement an idea about how a user could interact with a computer in 3D using a mouse and keyboard, but it still boils down to those devices having flourished in computing due to their intrinsic efficiency with traditional 2D interfaces.
In order for a 3D interface to work intuitively and efficiently, we will need a new way to interact with the computer that is equally intuitive and efficient to the specific 3D interface. One might say, we moved out of the terminal and into a desktop environment successfully thanks to the mouse being added to the keyboard, and to move out of a 2D interface to a 3D interface, we will need another innovation in human input devices. Something that's not just "new" or "made for 3D space", but also specifically successful at the very specialised task of human input.
For example, you can stand in front of an XBox with Project Natal, pretend you're holding a steering wheel, and watch your movements control your car in a game like Need for Speed (or whichever was demo'd). It's neat, but certainly not the way to get high scores compared to a regular controller (for which the game was designed). In the case of the Wii, hardware and software are often designed to go together. This doesn't replace anything, however, it creates something new: gaming where fun is derived (on a game-by-game basis) from gesturing. We get an experience different than controller-based games, not an inherently "better" way to interact with games (only gesturing games).
It might be genuine people writing genuine articles, but it's still fed from the strategic "leaks" put out by Apple, with the purpose of generating hype. So the genuine people writing their genuine articles are actually Apple's PR strategy for getting people to talk about this without them having to make an official announcement. Of course, when they actually do make the announcement the hype will be so much that the free media coverage Apple will get out of it will be worth more than they would have ever wanted to spend on a pre-promo campaign for it.
So yeah, the articles are genuine, and it's also astroturfing, even if the authors don't realize they're astroturfing. Apple speculation is ridiculous and useless. It doesn't matter what the speculation is, we'll all found out exactly what Apple plans to do, exactly when Apple wants us to find that out, and it will have all of the features that it would have had if no one had been speculating.
Regardless, I found this specific article quite interesting. Sure, it is speculation on the Apple Tablet interface through a look at things that have been done (mainly by Apple, but also Microsoft and Palm). If that was all I got from the article I'd agree with "ridiculous and useless" completely. However, since I'm not really interested in Apple rumours, and I am extremely interested in device specific application UIs, I found parts of the article fascinating. I admit, I mostly skipped over talk about things like how Expose might or might not be implemented, but I was not aware of Mr. Raskin's work and quite pleased to read that little bit of computing history.
The unfortunately-named concept of the "information appliance" isn't something I've come across a lot of people writing about, which by itself is interesting if you consider how clearly successful that approach is over the alternative. There's a reason people still buy gaming consoles and commercial DVRs instead of just running a line from PC to TV and getting a couple game controllers and a media remote. Similarly, there's a reason why iPhone owners will use a Facebook or Google Maps App instead of just logging onto the respective website in Safari: it's a better device-specific interface.
Speculating on just what Apple is going to do may be interesting to some, and boring or annoying to others. IMO, device-specific application design is worth talking about, especially as more and more development moves to the web-browser-as-an-all-encompassing-platform model. The speculative eve of a major Apple release like a Tablet is a good time to talk about it, on the theory that more people are thinking about how things could be, prior to going back to their everyday use of how things currently are.
A second article states that it usually takes 90 days for the donation to be transferred.
While the phone companies are looking at how to speed this up, am I the only one who believes that this would be a good way for some banks to earn back some credibility? It seems like they could give the Red Cross a 90 day loan to give them the money today, at 0%. Makes them look really good.
Forget the loan with 0% interest, how about the banks match the amount, dollar for dollar?
TFA doesn't explain why the explosives were planted. One obvious reason is to test security but in that case you would have a "wicket keeper" to catch the undetected explosives.
I recall reading about police in (I think) Japan who were doing this with drugs. Planting the stuff on people then testing their inspectors. One sample got away I believe.
I expected security tests with planted explosives to come at some point, but I assumed that they would use undercover agents to test security, not innocent bystanders. However, I'd assumed the same would have happened for something like the described drug operation in Japan. I don't see how any government could do something so reckless.
Responding to a Subpoena is not "volunteering".
Quite right, but while that fact makes Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft look less bad in that situation, it makes Google look better. From one of the cited articles:
"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," Nicole Wong, Google associate general counsel, said in a statement. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."
I'd say fighting a government subpoena issued on dubious grounds is a lot more respectable than simply not volunteering information.
I make my vodka martinis very dry indeed -- you'd think there was nothing in the glass at all. Then I fill it with gin and vermouth.
I respect gin for martinis completely; it's how the drink was designed. I can heap some scorn when I feel like it (my favourite jab is that gin is flavoured vodka), but, dry is dry, regardless of the gin/vodka distinction. Fill it with vermouth, and you're out of the "dry" club, for better or worse.
Dear John Dvorak,
A martini is made with gin and vermouth.
A vodka martini is made with vodka.
Finally, someone who knows how to make a proper vodka martini! Dry like a desert.
Of course, while PC fanboys may often be PC gamers, it doesn't mean that PC gamers are all fanboys. Manjoo's article, subtitled "Microsoft's latest release is the best operating system on the market" definitely shows someone who prefers / is used to the Windows way of doing things. I disagree completely with his assertion regarding the best operating system on the market. When it comes to computing as a tool, I haven't been able to treat Windows as a serious contender for my use for almost a decade now. I simply prefer working with an OS where tools like a bash shell and ssh are properly integrated, GUI functions like multiple desktops are par for the course, and ownership issues all but don't exist.
However, I do play video games for entertainment, and the computer is my primary platform, by far. So while I haven't thought much of Windows compared to many alternatives for some time, I've consistently kept an install around to use for gaming. XP has long been the gold standard in Windows for gaming use, but I see plenty of signs that Microsoft is working to change that, by making XP less viable as support for Windows updates dwindles. Of course, being a gamer, my desktop has a modest amount of power (though definitely not sporting any current generation hardware), and it runs Windows 7 without issue, and Windows 7 runs my games without issue. If Manjoo was to say, "Microsoft's latest release is the best operating system on the market for playing Windows games", at this point I'd likely agree.
Then I'd sigh, reflecting on how nice it would be to run an OS I prefer on my desktop (dual booting just leaves the non-Windows OS neglected since I got my laptop). Even so, I enjoy gaming and Windows remains the best OS for me to pursue that by FAR. Acknowledging that I'm stuck with Windows on at least one computer, I'm quite pleased with the Windows 7 release, and hope that nothing comes up that changes my experience with it.
I already pay for internet service and a computer. That should be like paying for a TV and an antenna. Anything that people put out there should be "free" to the end user, paid for through ads, related (offline) services, or donations. Like broadcast TV, since running any type of website is just the online version of running a small radio or TV station, but cheaper.
We only get this deal of content paid solely through advertising with the broadcast networks. I imagine many cable-only networks require having the different business model.
Hey, Hulu, you want to really make money? Team up with NetFlix, combine your content, get rid of your commercials, keep the $10/month price, and you guys would be the only game anyone needs.
"Hulu" = NBC collaborating with some other networks. If they do what you suggest, they risk hurting what is likely one of their biggest sources of revenue: DVD sales & rentals.
I want to pay about $15/mo to be able to download(1) TV shows at the same time they air in an patent-free, DRM-free(2) format(3).
(2) Apple is DRM free now and they're /b>. You could easily become the iTunes of the TV Show world.
I have looked at the TV offerings on iTunes from time to time, and I'm always shocked that it's there. Apparently, people buy TV shows through iTunes. I understand the desire, but the prices for popular shows are incredible! I know people will pay for convenience, but a season pass shouldn't be more expensive than a DVD box set, especially if the show is already released to DVD. More to the point, there are a lot of TV shows I like, but very few of them I like enough to put out that money for, on DVD or otherwise.
Hulu let's me watch many of these shows, and in return I let their ads play. Sometimes it's frustrating that I can't go back and watch a new series from the start, since it's too far in and the early episodes have expired. It can also be annoying to have to set up a laptop in the living room to share an episode on Hulu with the family. Still, I think DVD sales make a huge amount of money for TV networks, and the iTunes price reflects what it would cost per show to download episodes in any form that might substitute for having to at least rent the DVD.
I don't think we'll see a subscription service like you describe, but I would be content with being able to stream shows, just as Hulu does, but with more networks and a larger on-demand library. And, of course, I feel subscription fee should equal no ads. With a good delivery system, I'd even be happy to subscribe to some networksdirectly. How many $2/mo subscribers do you think Adult Swim would need to start making more money than they do now as a bundled minor network with advertisers?
but I would certainly consider paying for Hulu, so long as the price was reasonable
I watch Hulu quite a bit and I would consider it as well. Heck, I would probably pay about $1/month just so that I can forever disable certain ads that I do not like. Every time I see the Axe deodorant commercial I want to find the person who made it (approved it, came up with it, etc.) and kick them in the face for a very long time!
I share your pain when it comes to suffering from Hulu ads. If I get on a kick watching through a season, it seems like I'll get one ad over and over again. Presently my most-hated is the T-Mobile MyTouch ad; I've just heard that song too many times now.
At the same time, I made the effort to opt-in to watch these ads, disabling my ad blocking methods for Hulu's services. Sometimes, when I fail to mute in time and get that damn song again, I consider turning the ad blocking back on, but it passes. I keep the ads there because I appreciate the service Hulu provides, and the fact that it has improved so much in the time it's been running. Complaints I had initially, like having to reactivate full screen each time a new video started playing from my queue, or wanting to sit back and control it with a remote have each been implemented. As an online video service, it's really the best around in terms of how it works. Other networks not on Hulu have shows on their sites, and I've always found their attempts dismal experiences.
I also appreciate the concept that Hulu gives me a chance to bolster shows I like. I don't pay that much attention to television and new shows, and often miss broadcasts or even whole series. It's a terrible day for TV entertainment when a show gets canceled that either has a larger fan base than the network thinks, or develops one after it's canned. When Hulu keeps the last 4 or 5 episodes up, I can watch the show the next day. It might be a better experience to pay a low monthly subscription and have no ads, but I naively like to think that Hulu ad revenue reflects on individual shows. I know that Hulu ratings certainly don't count for as much as broadcast, and it's unlikely that they carry any real weight. Still, I see a potential for networks to use another way to gauge how well a show will do in the long run, and want to see Hulu work toward preventing another Firefly moment.
Of course, the Internet can be a source of too much information. I wasn't very happy when I noticed Hulu sharing cookies / LSOs with Facebook in particular, and found the BetterPrivacy Firefox add-on to help to keep Hulu's collection of information limited to my choices just on their site.
Properly managed opensource projects deal with this appropriately, some do not.
Properly managed proprietary projects deal with this appropriately, some do not.
How does that work? In a proprietary project if your boss says "do this" you either do it or find another job.
All the proprietary projects I've worked on that haven't been properly managed, the boss saying "do this" was consistently either the cause or the enabling factor of the code being a complete mess. If the results are the mess is made worse, as you say, one either does it or finds another job.
I assume the post was in regards to application GUIs. One thing OSX has is really polished software. Companies and individuals pay for applications like Transmit, which is just an SFTP client and doesn't really have anything functionality wise over it's freeware competitors. It's just polished. Same for a lot of OSX applications, and now we're seeing it in iPhone applications also.
As White Shade points out, it's often not hard to find FOSS applications that have great functionality written into them. However, without a sell-able product in mind, polished GUI might not be a top priority at the current stage of development (versus perhaps THE top priority in a proprietary alternative). This alone might answer why many users drop a free and open source app to buy an alternative.
It's not just about the desktop manager's GUI, it's also about the application GUI. It's also worth noting that it can be about how the application integrates with the desktop environment. I wouldn't exactly classify the OSX IM client Adium as proprietary, as it's based on the same GAIM foundation as Pidgin, but it remains a good example of one application integrating into the OS's usability MUCH better than a similar alternative.
Standard OTR, practically-out-of-the-box Growl ('pop under' notification) support, real theme customization, etc, Adium clearly has an edge in appealing to users. Pidgin could implement all that for KDE, and then it wouldn't work for Gnome (or even earlier versions of KDE). Pidgin could do it for Windows, but it would still have to be done all over again for the various desktop environments in Linux.
Pidgin, of course, is one of the better applications for Linux. I agree that Linux desktops are quite pleasant to use, but too many Linux applications are not. Many bundled apps like Totem, Audacity, Kopote always rubbed me the wrong way. Supposed OSS alternatives to mainstream applications, such as GnuCash, can only be classified as GUI nightmares.
There's just not enough consistency, not enough guidance, and not enough incentive for developers to produce extremely polished applications for Linux. The best we presently have are well ported applications, or a rare application that only fits into the specific environment it was developed for (and not the 99% of other linux setups).
They claim all usual rights of ownership, but foist responsibilities back on the user.
Twitter has to be able to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" the text in a tweet in order for the service to do anything. You may click "Tweet", but it's Twitter that has to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" for it to actually show up anywhere.
Far from just a punchline, the comic's content is both relevant and accurate here, as this release 2.6.31 has some news about the desktop, while supporting 4,096 CPUs is absolutely a real feature in a slightly earlier release (2.9.29).
True, texting has been proven to be much more distracting.
Link
Only for the British.
I've no idea if drunken attention is better than totally diverted attention when it comes to driving, but I'd rather not drive with either about.
Of course, you have to drive with both about, regardless. Knowing that, I'd rather not have legislators imposing the same harsh penalties in areas that I suspect they also have no idea if the actions equate, criminally.
Many slashdotters have tried to equate the two activities, there is no comparison. Texting requires substantially more focus and time than switching radio stations. The comparison just does not work.
The comparison between texting and drunk driving works MUCH less so.