I don't think the writer is arguing against innovation, but his point is that until there is a use for an innovation and people are ready to use it, it will languish. Among other things, his argument explains why the technically-superior Betamax was replaced by VHS and why the technically-superior Amiga lost out to the Macintosh. The technology was better, but the use wasn't there.
All of us who use or develop technology can learn from this by keeping our focus centered on the practical. What group of users will apply this technology toward what ends under what circumstances? As a developer/technical writer, I am force to think of the user perspective constantly, and it has caused helpful changes in my technique.
Like most books, this is probably an overcorrection, a "the sky isn't blue, but a shade of purple, OMGWTF" where a truly scientific viewpoint might be more subtly stated. However, that's just selling books for ya. I think there's a good valid point here the open source movement and any developer can't afford to miss however.
Running a massively-popular, industry-unsupported service like freedb or free TV guide is difficult, apparently. Revenues need to come from somewhere, whether Google ads or private donors or corporate sponsors. It wouldn't surprise me if the open source community retaliated with a resource to replace Zap2It within months, along the same advertising-supported lines as FreeDB.org.
Then again, watching less TV might be good for all of you...
My guess is that they will use type of traffic, destination and statistics (filenames, sizes, media types) to catch excessive users. This is similar to how most spamblockers seem to work, or even, Slashdot's moderation system. While in theory I'm against it, in reality, it means that AT&T spends less effort to support the 5% of users who are heavy users of illegal traffic. It's a smart business decision. I for one will take my service provider dollars elsewhere however.
I recommend this method of trying out new OSs, or avoiding corrupting your computer's virtue by installing one is made by whichever large West Coast corporation you dislike.
Ownership can limit what knowledge or technologies you put into a potential product, so of course it is limiting. While not all of us may agree on the "perfect" product, we all agree that "more perfect" products exist, which is why we pick one (Linux) over another (-1 Troll).
Mandatory licensing, although it sounds fascist, could be a good idea. If you own a technology that others can use, you could be forced to license it at a fair market rate so as not to restrict innovation. Innovation benefits everyone in society after all, or at least that's what I keep telling my psychologist.
While Semel may be a business expert, what made Yahoo! was its understanding of how to use the net. If you think business-model-first, then you make what exists more profitable. But for profit to exist, it must first be useful.
I am hoping Jerry Yang will return Yahoo's focus to the useful. Many great and creative products have come out of Yahoo, albeit in a disunified, confused, under-promoted way. If he can tie them together into a strategy of how people use the net, like the original Yahoo directory did, he may be on to something.
I also hope they rebuild and continue the Yahoo directory project. As someone who routinely encounters too many junk hits in Google to make searches efficient, I'd like to see a dual-pane search that gives (a) raw results from the search engine and (b) search results from an updated, RDF-tagged, classified and vetted Yahoo directory.
A legend continues... this news makes me smile (despite a lack of corporate loyalty of fanboism, of course).
So the school district is corrupt, and the computers got jacked, and now we want corporate America to take it as a tax write-off. I'd like to see it referred to a criminal court so the guilty actually pay the price.
Companies are just groups of people. I can't be a fanboi about anything but an excellent product, and few companies make all excellent products. This keeps me from drinking the kool-aid of some populist cult based on a plastic object, but does let me praise true excellence where I find it (TextPad).
Any system based on "believe whatever you want" is threatened by consensus. Is democracy that system? Plato says yes, Arendt says no, I say have a great weekend and let's figure it out Monday.
"Why not the death penalty? Seriously, what social use is there for anyone who'd commit identity theft?"
Why not exile? What use is there for criminals of the predatory, parasitic type anyway? Can we send them overseas? I hear they need coal miners in Russia.
As long as "what people think about what you said" is more important than "how accurate was what you said," smart people everywhere will hide what they think to the detriment of all. It's a habit of most dying things to first go into denial (except BSD, which is not dying).
While I am fond of the users I support, I find it takes a lot of education to get them to stop falling for the most common scams: funny email attachments, phishing, and phone calls asking for their credit card numbers. They're not stupid people. They're just a little clueless and disconnected from a world that, quite frankly, bores and intimidates them.
I would like to suggest that, whatever operating system we put on the desktop for the average person, there be some initiative to educate them in best practices computing, even if only for the 4-10 common tasks (email, websurfing, games, mp3s, pr0n, quicken, word processing) they will use. I volunteer to design and write the curriculum if there's some rational initiative to get it out there to the human herd.
Who are we to say that our way of life is better? Don't we have rising illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, rapacious corporations and wars we don't believe in killing bucketloads of civilians?
Let's be tolerant of other points of view, please! (There may be a large cynical but friendly emoticon attached to this message. YMMV, but TMTOWTDI.)
Massacres are an emotional issue, and so are easy for us to latch on to as a means of overlooking our problems at home. And in the USA at least, the mess is huge. Most people hate their jobs. We spend half our lives commuting. The cities are disgusting, dirty and ugly thanks to commercialization. Corporations (insert MS|Apple|Google if you like) rule our world. Violence is increasing, so is desperation. Why don't we fix our own house before we try to tell others how to live?
You're right! Thanks for the help. I mostly agree on local products, although they are not always available, which is why I almost exclusively buy books and music online (since I don't watch video, movies/TV are not applicable). I have in the past seen the type of vendors you describe online, and they terrify me. Reckless PHP code, confused implementation, hosting on some white box in an outhouse next to a T1 line somewhere... I'll pass on those, no matter how good the "deals" are.
Once we're sure it's stable, because it looks like a massive improvement over the 1970s-style file systems we're using now. ZFS is now part of FreeBSD, Solaris will have ZFS "soon" and many Linux distros are also considering it. Good. Let's get to a common standard that's excellent and forget the tedium of these past, less effective file systems.
Idiot taxes are fees we pay to avoid the usual way vendors or governments do things, which is not only mediocre but criminally oblivious. You pay idiot taxes through insurance, higher prices, and of course the need to move when your neighborhood gets filled with violent idiots.
Let's examine a typical online purchase...
Purchase price: $24.32
Fee for non-insane privacy policy: $0.60 Fee for secured, audited servers: $0.81 Fee for someone to do anything when something goes wrong: $0.72 Fee to hire non-stupid people to pack up items: $1.41 Fee to ensure product listed is what's sold: $0.92
Total cost: $28.78 Equivalent cost locally: $30.78
We have a problem, this air neutrality thing. Air -- made of oxygen and other gasses -- is a valuable commodity. We all pay for it, since it's cheaper for us to pollute recklessly, but we don't. Why can't we charge for it? Neutral air is a threat to our economy and the basis of our great nation.
I think I was just born in the wrong time. I don't understand the motivation for our economy, for our government, for our mass media. It seems like we have lost sight of what really gives life importance, and I miss that vision of clarity of that importance I had during childhood. C'est la vie, but how does the story end?
Windows certifies hardware, and Apple makes it clear what they support. Could it be useful for an agency of Linux developers to certify hardware that is open (standards released so drivers can be written) and well-designed enough to support the rigors of a "UNIX-like" OS?
I do not know the answer to this one. My inner four-year-old anarchist is leery of certification in anything, but even something as simple as a list of supported hardware like BSD does, with the requirement that its standards be open so drivers can be developed, might help companies market to Linux users (1 in 10 users, by my estimate) and help Linux users get their market share behind a few quality products so they can stand up and be counted.
Just an idea. Feel free to mod -1, this guy's an idealistic moron.
I just made 12 bucks selling the OP's address to pump-and-dumpers, porners, viagraists, and the entire internet cafe population of Nigeria. I feel somewhat guilty about this, but that 12 bucks is going right into my kid's college fund.
Drugs, sex, violence, pigging out, now altruism. All are chemical reactions that make us feel good without necessarily doing good. Are humanity's signals disconnected from their results?
So... if your domain is held hostage by RegisterFly, and during the time when you cannot renew it, it expires, what happens? We all know how domain slammers will buy it up within 30.2 seconds of expiring and becoming available again, which means that a lot of ordinary folks are out of a domain name. Scary.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the writer is arguing against innovation, but his point is that until there is a use for an innovation and people are ready to use it, it will languish. Among other things, his argument explains why the technically-superior Betamax was replaced by VHS and why the technically-superior Amiga lost out to the Macintosh. The technology was better, but the use wasn't there.
All of us who use or develop technology can learn from this by keeping our focus centered on the practical. What group of users will apply this technology toward what ends under what circumstances? As a developer/technical writer, I am force to think of the user perspective constantly, and it has caused helpful changes in my technique.
Like most books, this is probably an overcorrection, a "the sky isn't blue, but a shade of purple, OMGWTF" where a truly scientific viewpoint might be more subtly stated. However, that's just selling books for ya. I think there's a good valid point here the open source movement and any developer can't afford to miss however.
Running a massively-popular, industry-unsupported service like freedb or free TV guide is difficult, apparently. Revenues need to come from somewhere, whether Google ads or private donors or corporate sponsors. It wouldn't surprise me if the open source community retaliated with a resource to replace Zap2It within months, along the same advertising-supported lines as FreeDB.org.
Then again, watching less TV might be good for all of you...
My guess is that they will use type of traffic, destination and statistics (filenames, sizes, media types) to catch excessive users. This is similar to how most spamblockers seem to work, or even, Slashdot's moderation system. While in theory I'm against it, in reality, it means that AT&T spends less effort to support the 5% of users who are heavy users of illegal traffic. It's a smart business decision. I for one will take my service provider dollars elsewhere however.
...that you could fly a 747 through!
Oops, that was in bad taste.
I've already got VMs out the nose with different OSs I just had to try. The PC-BSD folks make one readily available at the following location:
PC-BSD VMWare Image
I recommend this method of trying out new OSs, or avoiding corrupting your computer's virtue by installing one is made by whichever large West Coast corporation you dislike.
Ownership can limit what knowledge or technologies you put into a potential product, so of course it is limiting. While not all of us may agree on the "perfect" product, we all agree that "more perfect" products exist, which is why we pick one (Linux) over another (-1 Troll).
Mandatory licensing, although it sounds fascist, could be a good idea. If you own a technology that others can use, you could be forced to license it at a fair market rate so as not to restrict innovation. Innovation benefits everyone in society after all, or at least that's what I keep telling my psychologist.
While Semel may be a business expert, what made Yahoo! was its understanding of how to use the net. If you think business-model-first, then you make what exists more profitable. But for profit to exist, it must first be useful.
I am hoping Jerry Yang will return Yahoo's focus to the useful. Many great and creative products have come out of Yahoo, albeit in a disunified, confused, under-promoted way. If he can tie them together into a strategy of how people use the net, like the original Yahoo directory did, he may be on to something.
I also hope they rebuild and continue the Yahoo directory project. As someone who routinely encounters too many junk hits in Google to make searches efficient, I'd like to see a dual-pane search that gives (a) raw results from the search engine and (b) search results from an updated, RDF-tagged, classified and vetted Yahoo directory.
A legend continues... this news makes me smile (despite a lack of corporate loyalty of fanboism, of course).
So the school district is corrupt, and the computers got jacked, and now we want corporate America to take it as a tax write-off. I'd like to see it referred to a criminal court so the guilty actually pay the price.
Companies are just groups of people. I can't be a fanboi about anything but an excellent product, and few companies make all excellent products. This keeps me from drinking the kool-aid of some populist cult based on a plastic object, but does let me praise true excellence where I find it (TextPad).
Any system based on "believe whatever you want" is threatened by consensus. Is democracy that system? Plato says yes, Arendt says no, I say have a great weekend and let's figure it out Monday.
"Why not the death penalty? Seriously, what social use is there for anyone who'd commit identity theft?" Why not exile? What use is there for criminals of the predatory, parasitic type anyway? Can we send them overseas? I hear they need coal miners in Russia.
As long as "what people think about what you said" is more important than "how accurate was what you said," smart people everywhere will hide what they think to the detriment of all. It's a habit of most dying things to first go into denial (except BSD, which is not dying).
While I am fond of the users I support, I find it takes a lot of education to get them to stop falling for the most common scams: funny email attachments, phishing, and phone calls asking for their credit card numbers. They're not stupid people. They're just a little clueless and disconnected from a world that, quite frankly, bores and intimidates them.
I would like to suggest that, whatever operating system we put on the desktop for the average person, there be some initiative to educate them in best practices computing, even if only for the 4-10 common tasks (email, websurfing, games, mp3s, pr0n, quicken, word processing) they will use. I volunteer to design and write the curriculum if there's some rational initiative to get it out there to the human herd.
Who are we to say that our way of life is better? Don't we have rising illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, rapacious corporations and wars we don't believe in killing bucketloads of civilians?
Let's be tolerant of other points of view, please! (There may be a large cynical but friendly emoticon attached to this message. YMMV, but TMTOWTDI.)
Let me ask you this: what does he offer our society? If the answer is nothing, why should we keep him alive?
Massacres are an emotional issue, and so are easy for us to latch on to as a means of overlooking our problems at home. And in the USA at least, the mess is huge. Most people hate their jobs. We spend half our lives commuting. The cities are disgusting, dirty and ugly thanks to commercialization. Corporations (insert MS|Apple|Google if you like) rule our world. Violence is increasing, so is desperation. Why don't we fix our own house before we try to tell others how to live?
You're right! Thanks for the help. I mostly agree on local products, although they are not always available, which is why I almost exclusively buy books and music online (since I don't watch video, movies/TV are not applicable). I have in the past seen the type of vendors you describe online, and they terrify me. Reckless PHP code, confused implementation, hosting on some white box in an outhouse next to a T1 line somewhere... I'll pass on those, no matter how good the "deals" are.
Once we're sure it's stable, because it looks like a massive improvement over the 1970s-style file systems we're using now. ZFS is now part of FreeBSD, Solaris will have ZFS "soon" and many Linux distros are also considering it. Good. Let's get to a common standard that's excellent and forget the tedium of these past, less effective file systems.
Idiot taxes are fees we pay to avoid the usual way vendors or governments do things, which is not only mediocre but criminally oblivious. You pay idiot taxes through insurance, higher prices, and of course the need to move when your neighborhood gets filled with violent idiots.
Let's examine a typical online purchase...
Purchase price: $24.32
Fee for non-insane privacy policy: $0.60
Fee for secured, audited servers: $0.81
Fee for someone to do anything when something goes wrong: $0.72
Fee to hire non-stupid people to pack up items: $1.41
Fee to ensure product listed is what's sold: $0.92
Total cost: $28.78
Equivalent cost locally: $30.78
Peace of mind: priceless
We have a problem, this air neutrality thing. Air -- made of oxygen and other gasses -- is a valuable commodity. We all pay for it, since it's cheaper for us to pollute recklessly, but we don't. Why can't we charge for it? Neutral air is a threat to our economy and the basis of our great nation.
I think I was just born in the wrong time. I don't understand the motivation for our economy, for our government, for our mass media. It seems like we have lost sight of what really gives life importance, and I miss that vision of clarity of that importance I had during childhood. C'est la vie, but how does the story end?
Windows certifies hardware, and Apple makes it clear what they support. Could it be useful for an agency of Linux developers to certify hardware that is open (standards released so drivers can be written) and well-designed enough to support the rigors of a "UNIX-like" OS?
I do not know the answer to this one. My inner four-year-old anarchist is leery of certification in anything, but even something as simple as a list of supported hardware like BSD does, with the requirement that its standards be open so drivers can be developed, might help companies market to Linux users (1 in 10 users, by my estimate) and help Linux users get their market share behind a few quality products so they can stand up and be counted.
Just an idea. Feel free to mod -1, this guy's an idealistic moron.
Hire Al-Qaida as security consultants, give them a bonus and promotion, and then put them on every flight as paid self-defense instructions.
I just made 12 bucks selling the OP's address to pump-and-dumpers, porners, viagraists, and the entire internet cafe population of Nigeria. I feel somewhat guilty about this, but that 12 bucks is going right into my kid's college fund.
Drugs, sex, violence, pigging out, now altruism. All are chemical reactions that make us feel good without necessarily doing good. Are humanity's signals disconnected from their results?
So... if your domain is held hostage by RegisterFly, and during the time when you cannot renew it, it expires, what happens? We all know how domain slammers will buy it up within 30.2 seconds of expiring and becoming available again, which means that a lot of ordinary folks are out of a domain name. Scary.