Oh, I think I understand the appeal of the brand just fine. In fact when you start talking about "brand", you're inherently in the realm of marketing, which is my point.
To some extent this is true, because Apple tends to use higher-end Intel products (well, except in the Mini) with the latest fab tech and so on, and that eventually rolls downhill to the mass market.
No, I think you completely missed his point. Surveys have show that Apple brand loyalty and customer enthusiasm and whatever other metric you want is off the charts. In other words the "fanboy" affect is very real.
Now you could argue that those people are fanboys because of OS X, nice hardware, and so on. But those same metrics were off the charts when Apple sold System 7.5 on Performa 6300s.
In other words, dismissing marketing as a key element of Apple's success is living in complete denial.
It is a completely ridiculous process at most companies. I agree with what an AC said above, it actually makes more sense to buy people off with a "severance" than go through the HR rigamrole (after which they still might sue).
Years ago, I had an old boss who was a Novell guru and he talked about he'd timebombed various systems (to make sure he would get paid). Apparently there was a TIMEBOMB.NLM that you could download from BBSes so it wasn't even particularly difficult.
IMO this guy had a personal disagreement with his manager, and was fired because that guy was working full time trying to find a way to fire someone he disliked.. considering he earned an extra 30k as a trouble shooter and was able to pull off a time bomb, i'm sure he knew what he was doing with technology...
And this incident proves the manager was completely in the right to get rid of him. No amount of tech skills are worth the damage that an unprofessional employee can cause.
Point release for OS X is more like "Patch Tuesday" for Windows than a Service Pack. The GP is basically saying he goes years between patches, which I hope no Mac user would consider.
Sorry, GPL advocates have use the "copy into RAM" argument, although usually referencing laws in some other country. This comes up in arguments about plugins or proprietary drivers.
I would expect to start hearing references to this case this quite frequently in future GPL Virus flamewars.
If you read the decision, one of the points made was that the Game Genie only added functionality and did zero financial harm to Nintendo, and therefore would be fair use.
A key point in the Blizzard decision seems to be that it compromised their business model (as stated in the EULA) and therefore oughta be banned.
So a mod for a single player game versus a multiplayer service have different copyright status because the level of financial harm is different.
If you honestly believe that people aren't using these groups for self-gratification, you have committed the thoughtcrime of being really, really stupid.
The legal standards for possession of this stuff is really strict, it doesn't really matter what the person was thinking. And that is not at all inconsistent with other matters of law (for example possession of narcotics, or burgler tools)
Considering once the data is on their network, it costs them (virtually) zero to transmit it to their customers, a usenet leech is the best customer you could ever have.
This makes the huge assumption anyone is looking at this stuff in the first place.
When you consider all the spam and junk on usenet there's a good possibility that the majority of the content is downloaded by 0 to 1 users. And that could more than make up for the "popular" content downloaded by multiple users.
It's dumb to make armchair proclamations without any real numbers.
While you're correct in theory, I've yet to see a web message board with killfile abilities such as I recall from USENET newsreaders. (I seriously hope that such software exists and that it becomes widely used.)
Nearly every web board package has a ignore list function.
Even the site you are posting on right now can plonk people by using the enemy list and a proper threshold.
+1 Insightful. Exactly right, USENET was fundamentally a democratic medium, since except for moderated groups, it wasn't "owned" by someone like a web forum. And as noted, it was all in one place. in so many ways, a lot of the "innovation" on the Web is retrograde. In some sense, what we have gone back to is the old BBS model, only with Google so you can actually find the locations of discussions.
Not really. "Democratic" Usenet only worked when you had a limited number of students and professionals on it. It collapsed like a cheap house of cards as soon as the hoi polloi got access.
The modern internet user has simply zero tolerance for an unmoderated environment where trolls and kooks can run free and raise havok endlessly. (Read any site about usenet kooks -- some of these people are pathological.) People demand some form of administration, or a high-level of control, as seen on social networking sites.
I mean you're right that Usenet is boring, ugly, hard-to-use, and almost impossible to monetize. But that's not really why nobody uses it anymore.
Is some of that really 'kiddie porn'? I checked out naturism newsgroup has lots of regular looking folks not engaging in sex and doing regular activities in the nude, I wouldn't exactly call that 'porn', many of them look like family vacation/bbq/get together photos to me IMHO.
"Naturism" was used as a way to sell nudie mags back in the days when they were illegal in many places.
Why do you think anyone would want to look at pictures of naked people barbecuing except to arouse themselves? It might be boring, but its still porn.
It's quite easy to hire XHTML/CSS people that have little to no backend experience. It's also easy hire ASP.NET devs that are barely warmed over VBers that don't understand anything about the front-end. And it's easy to hire designers that can't do anything outside of photoshop or flash.
It's very hard to find someone with a cross-section of skillsets.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I think I understand the appeal of the brand just fine. In fact when you start talking about "brand", you're inherently in the realm of marketing, which is my point.
To some extent this is true, because Apple tends to use higher-end Intel products (well, except in the Mini) with the latest fab tech and so on, and that eventually rolls downhill to the mass market.
But it would so much more fun to change the login banner to "PAY UP YOU TIGHTWADS" and then fire phasers 1000 times.
No, I think you completely missed his point. Surveys have show that Apple brand loyalty and customer enthusiasm and whatever other metric you want is off the charts. In other words the "fanboy" affect is very real.
Now you could argue that those people are fanboys because of OS X, nice hardware, and so on. But those same metrics were off the charts when Apple sold System 7.5 on Performa 6300s.
In other words, dismissing marketing as a key element of Apple's success is living in complete denial.
It is a completely ridiculous process at most companies. I agree with what an AC said above, it actually makes more sense to buy people off with a "severance" than go through the HR rigamrole (after which they still might sue).
Years ago, I had an old boss who was a Novell guru and he talked about he'd timebombed various systems (to make sure he would get paid). Apparently there was a TIMEBOMB.NLM that you could download from BBSes so it wasn't even particularly difficult.
IMO this guy had a personal disagreement with his manager, and was fired because that guy was working full time trying to find a way to fire someone he disliked.. considering he earned an extra 30k as a trouble shooter and was able to pull off a time bomb, i'm sure he knew what he was doing with technology...
And this incident proves the manager was completely in the right to get rid of him. No amount of tech skills are worth the damage that an unprofessional employee can cause.
In short, some free software types do not like complete freedom of usage and want to extend copyright laws to enforce more EULA-like provisions.
I don't agree with this at all, but this case will stoke their fires.
Unfortunately that's a long established aspect of copyright law.
On the upside it creates a lot of "fair use" situations that might not otherwise exist.
Point release for OS X is more like "Patch Tuesday" for Windows than a Service Pack. The GP is basically saying he goes years between patches, which I hope no Mac user would consider.
XP SP2 comes with a firewall on by default. Vista comes with a firewall on by default.
This is only seems interesting if you're installing from your vintage 2001 XP disk.
This isn't my logic, it's society's. Save it for the judge, pal.
Sorry, GPL advocates have use the "copy into RAM" argument, although usually referencing laws in some other country. This comes up in arguments about plugins or proprietary drivers.
I would expect to start hearing references to this case this quite frequently in future GPL Virus flamewars.
If you read the decision, one of the points made was that the Game Genie only added functionality and did zero financial harm to Nintendo, and therefore would be fair use.
A key point in the Blizzard decision seems to be that it compromised their business model (as stated in the EULA) and therefore oughta be banned.
So a mod for a single player game versus a multiplayer service have different copyright status because the level of financial harm is different.
There's two relevant questions:
1) What IBM could accomplish
2) What Apple was willing to pay for
The answer to the IBM/Apple breakup question is somewhere between those two.
Drag-n-drop installs really only work for a subset of Mac applications.
Apple still has a package system and installer engine for everything else. (One that's arguably not as good as Linux package managers.)
If you honestly believe that people aren't using these groups for self-gratification, you have committed the thoughtcrime of being really, really stupid.
The legal standards for possession of this stuff is really strict, it doesn't really matter what the person was thinking. And that is not at all inconsistent with other matters of law (for example possession of narcotics, or burgler tools)
Considering once the data is on their network, it costs them (virtually) zero to transmit it to their customers, a usenet leech is the best customer you could ever have.
This makes the huge assumption anyone is looking at this stuff in the first place.
When you consider all the spam and junk on usenet there's a good possibility that the majority of the content is downloaded by 0 to 1 users. And that could more than make up for the "popular" content downloaded by multiple users.
It's dumb to make armchair proclamations without any real numbers.
While you're correct in theory, I've yet to see a web message board with killfile abilities such as I recall from USENET newsreaders. (I seriously hope that such software exists and that it becomes widely used.)
Nearly every web board package has a ignore list function.
Even the site you are posting on right now can plonk people by using the enemy list and a proper threshold.
+1 Insightful. Exactly right, USENET was fundamentally a democratic medium, since except for moderated groups, it wasn't "owned" by someone like a web forum. And as noted, it was all in one place. in so many ways, a lot of the "innovation" on the Web is retrograde. In some sense, what we have gone back to is the old BBS model, only with Google so you can actually find the locations of discussions.
Not really. "Democratic" Usenet only worked when you had a limited number of students and professionals on it. It collapsed like a cheap house of cards as soon as the hoi polloi got access.
The modern internet user has simply zero tolerance for an unmoderated environment where trolls and kooks can run free and raise havok endlessly. (Read any site about usenet kooks -- some of these people are pathological.) People demand some form of administration, or a high-level of control, as seen on social networking sites.
I mean you're right that Usenet is boring, ugly, hard-to-use, and almost impossible to monetize. But that's not really why nobody uses it anymore.
Is some of that really 'kiddie porn'? I checked out naturism newsgroup has lots of regular looking folks not engaging in sex and doing regular activities in the nude, I wouldn't exactly call that 'porn', many of them look like family vacation/bbq/get together photos to me IMHO.
"Naturism" was used as a way to sell nudie mags back in the days when they were illegal in many places.
Why do you think anyone would want to look at pictures of naked people barbecuing except to arouse themselves? It might be boring, but its still porn.
That corresponds to my experience.
It's quite easy to hire XHTML/CSS people that have little to no backend experience. It's also easy hire ASP.NET devs that are barely warmed over VBers that don't understand anything about the front-end. And it's easy to hire designers that can't do anything outside of photoshop or flash.
It's very hard to find someone with a cross-section of skillsets.
IBM is a great test to determine if someone knows anything about IT beyond what they read on Slashdot.
Windows 3.2 (Chinese Windows)
http://toastytech.com/guis/win32.html
I bet most of us can remember the day you loaded 3.11.... and said "you gotta be kidding me"!
I was a Mac user, so I was more like "Thank god I don't have to run WordPerfect anymore!"