Google, huge though it is, is continuing to be a force for Good.
Here's the pattern Google is following, in the case of OpenSocial and now Android:
1. Big product with major consumer cred launches in June of this year and gains significant buzz and impressive growth.
In one case, iPhone. In the other case, the facebook platform
2. Big product, perhaps understandably, keeps certain things proprietary and closed
Apple releases the infamous 1.1.1 update, wiping out third party applications and locking down the iPhone software. (perhaps understandably because you really don't want malware infecting your phone)
Facebook's platform has its own proprietary markup language and API (perhaps understandably because it helps apps easily match the site's look-and-feel)
3. Google quietly works on a way to open things up some more. Allows ridiculous amounts of buzz to build up
Gphone, "Maka Maka"
4. Google quietly gathers a large list of industry partners that have been left behind by the trailblazer, and convinces them that uniting behind an open standard will be great for them.
Today's list of phone companies, last week's list of social networks.
5. Google makes a big announcement. Not a new product, but a new standard and some new software.
Android, OpenSocial
If this is what it looks like to have big bad Google exerting its influence on this industry, I wouldn't mind much, much more of the same. Compare this to how Microsoft acted when they were on top. Good for Google!
Thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself. I just plunked down on some Apple products, I like the company, and I really hope I still like them a year from now.
All the goodwill Apple has from the tech-savvy crowd is in jeopardy here, and that ought to be worth something to them.
Yeah, I read for a long time before getting a uid. I'm always very reluctant to actually sign up for a site. Yet another username/password to keep track of. Cost me a lot of bragging points I suppose.
I first found the open source world when, as a 16 year old, I searched for "hacking" and instead of tips on unlocking software and spreading 'warez', I found myself reading an essay by Eric Raymond on what it means to be a 'real hacker'.
From there I decided to build my own Linux box and started following Linux weekly news for updates (I needed support for my graphics card to come out, so I followed every update). Many of their stories linked to Slashdot stories, so that's how I found/. That was either 1997 or 1998.
Wow, why the angry tone? I'm not one of those people crying lawsuit. I just want the market to steer apple in the right direction here. To that end, I've sold my apple stock and will likely return the phone for a refund, since I'm not past the return date.
Your point about standards is well taken, and actually it would be sweet if something like Google Gears comes out for iphone. That would make a lot of client-side web apps possible that wouldn't need network connectivity all the time.
But for god's sake, when somebody writes a wicked cool 3rd party app that gives 80,000 people global positioning ability, don't kill it! That is not cool.
Is it unreasonable for me, an Apple customer and shareholder, to want this?
I'd like some of these myself. But the iPhone is not that product and never claimed to be.
What's frustrating is it's so damn close though! Screw tablets and subnotebooks. I've had both. They don't fit in a pocket. The iPhone represents minimizing what you haul around everywhere, while still packing all kinds of convenient technology. If I'm carrying more than one device in my pockets, something is wrong.
Go ahead, rub it in... I've had a longstanding dislike for Microsoft because of their business practices, and have actively avoided buying anything from them for the last 10 years or so. I really wanted to believe that, deep down, Apple was different.
I want it both ways - I want continued updates and improvements to my new mobile computer from Apple, and I want to be able to do other interesting things with my new mobile computer that fill a niche that Apple understandably wouldn't be writing software for.
Is it unreasonable for me, an Apple customer and shareholder, to want this?
When I'm buying a technology product, there are several factors that weigh into the decision. One is the quality of the technology. Just as important is the future outlook. Is there a good chance that missing features I want can be easily added later? Are there a lot of people, either in a company or on their own, working to improve it? Will I be able to adapt it to some niche problem that I'm working on that may not be important to most people, but is important to me?
Apple has a great technology, but lacking those other ingredients I just can't get too excited about the whole package. In a year's time, there will be other very similar phones on the market: http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/29/nokias-iphone-no-seriously/
So Apple, am I going to feel like an idiot for buying into a closed platform when similar but open models come out from other companies?
Barring a shift in policy of some kind, such as a released api or "binary application approval program", I am thinking it's time to get out of AAPL and think hard before buying more Apple products.
Well, I suppose the law defines these things according to how a "reasonable person" would view it, and not according to some scientific definition. Legalese is stilted enough as it is, and I imagine it got that way by some pragmatic process of evolution over hundreds of years. I would love to hear a lawyer's take on the question...
People posted the number on slashdot too. You can't ban a number.
Well, that's obviously not quite true. EVERY piece of data can be considered a number. This post I'm writing is a number. A full-length movie is a number. It's a stream of bits which could, in theory, be printed out as a decimal number and then counted out in meatballs. Lots and lots of meatballs.
Actually, Ann and Mike are pop culture's politics. No one who's seriously into drilling down into the political quagmire is going to bother with either one of these entertainers. Entertainers is exactly what they are and shouldn't be taken as much else.
Indeed, that's kinda why I picked those examples. Whenever somebody mentions either in trying to make a point, I have to roll my eyes.
I got the power glove back when that came out for the original 8 bit NES, and was very disappointed by it. It sounds like they've finally, 15 years later, gotten it right with the Wii.
The #1 unsuggestion for "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" (a great book) is "The Devil Wears Prada", which I thought was pretty good. Just because not many people are likely to own both doesn't mean you can expect an active dislike the way you would between, say, an Ann Coulter book and a Michael Moore book.
As growth in IT technologies peter out (Moore's law hockey-stick growth) inevitably flat-lines as technologies hit their limits growth will fall to the same growth as the economy as a whole.
Stevens placed the hold on the bill because he was worried that it would create more bureaucracy to create and maintain such a massive database, Saunders said. He also wanted to see a cost-benefit analysis before granting approval, he said.
I demand a hold be put on Stevens' cost-benefit analysis, as it would be too costly to draw up.
I'm interested to see where the whole activism thing will go. The people this academic is really writing about are probably about 18 and younger - people shaped by the idea of social networking to such a degree that they haven't known a world where they couldn't just get on their computer and instantly immerse themselves in the personal lives of their peers.
We will all continue to learn how to organize ourselves into various interesting networks in the coming years. Myspace and Facebook are big now but I doubt this phenomenon will continue to revolve around them for much longer. And of course as another poster has said, online activism has already made a splash (moveon.org anyone?)
But this new "myspace generation" has a jump on things. The same way my generation (I'm 26 now) grew up with technology and got to be better with computers than our parents, the myspace generation will be better at online networking. Since childhood they'll have been making connections halfway around the world, sharing ideas, and context-switching between the mediums of phone, email, instant text messages, online profiles, blogs, shared photos and videos, and face to face conversation.
Simply put, they'll be better connected than the generations before them. They'll share more ideas more often. The world will be more of a global village. With a community like that, if a pressing issue is suddenly forced on them that the way the military draft did in the Vietnam war, I bet they could mobilize within days.
In the case of current attrocities the prof mentioned, I imagine something needs to happen to make them more close to home. Hopefully, as the internet spreads it will encroach on the parts of the world dealing with problems such as genocide, and personal accounts will find their way into the public consciousness the way a horrible trampoline accident becomes a sensation on youtube today. People don't respond to numbers; they need these things to be broken apart, personalized for them, and then added back up again.
Web usage by only HitsLink subscribers is just a small random sampling and has nothing to do with overall market share.
If that is really a random sampling, it has everything to do with overall market share. But it isn't. It is a sample of the market which subscribes to HitsLink. That's not a random sample.
"Windows XP Home Edition is all you can do to embiggen the producationality of your human resourcers and empower to leverage the outcome-bottomlime of your stickholders... plus even more!"
It's funny, I don't remember hearing the word 'embiggen' until I started reading slashdot...
Nothing you write about yourself in your blog will seem as clever, funny, and/or meaningful at age 35 as it did at age 22, and it's not because you have lost your sense of humor or appreciation for art and philosophy.
Agreed. When I was between 20 and 22 or so I wrote some stuff in a few posts to usenet, using my real name. Not that there's a lot of dirt there, but I shared more than I would have cared to. At that time one probably would have had to go to DejaNews to find it. Of course DejaNews is now Google Groups, and it'll probably be there for ever and ever. I found it recenetly (I'm 26 now) and cringed at my rambling prose, and somewhat self-important tone.
That might have been one of the worst ways to put something out there. At least if you're running a blog you can take something down and it takes something like the internet archive's time machine to retrieve it.
Exactly. It took a guy named Ponzi to show the real world the dangers of pyramid schemes, and afterwards, corrective actions were taken. Now this guy has done the same online. I can think of at least two positive side effects of that.
One, people playing online games that don't understand things like securities fraud have just learned a lot about it - through personal experience, no less - without losing any real money.
Two, some controls will be put in place, either by the developers or the community playing the game. That sounds like a fascinating subject for some economics major looking for a thesis, since economics is basically the study of how people get what they want when what they want is in limited supply.
You say banks in this virtual world have limited means to collect on debts. Well why should that be? Even if the developers don't help banks collect on debts (garnishWages(poorSchmoe)), banks don't have godlike power in this world either. We have independent credit reporting agencies to help keep bad borrowers from borrowing repeatedly. Why couldn't someone set up such a business in the game?
I imagine the biggest difference is that if you dig yourself a hole in a game, you can just stop playing under that username and start fresh. Perhaps this is the equivalent of getting a fake social security number in real life;-)
A friend of mine commented on this. He declared that the computer is the new 'hearth', or gathering place, for conversations and trips down memory lane. Friends crowd around its warm glow, looking at photos, looking up obscure topics that come up in conversation, and watching youtube videos. Or, in this case, games.
Slashdot Mirror
Color me skeptical. Apple likes to do things its own way.
My current phone is an iPhone. That's fine, I like my iPhone.
But assuming this goes well, my next phone will be one of these Android phones.
Wow!
Google, huge though it is, is continuing to be a force for Good.
Here's the pattern Google is following, in the case of OpenSocial and now Android:
1. Big product with major consumer cred launches in June of this year and gains significant buzz and impressive growth.
In one case, iPhone. In the other case, the facebook platform
2. Big product, perhaps understandably, keeps certain things proprietary and closed
Apple releases the infamous 1.1.1 update, wiping out third party applications and locking down the iPhone software.
(perhaps understandably because you really don't want malware infecting your phone)
Facebook's platform has its own proprietary markup language and API
(perhaps understandably because it helps apps easily match the site's look-and-feel)
3. Google quietly works on a way to open things up some more. Allows ridiculous amounts of buzz to build up
Gphone, "Maka Maka"
4. Google quietly gathers a large list of industry partners that have been left behind by the trailblazer, and convinces them that uniting behind an open standard will be great for them.
Today's list of phone companies, last week's list of social networks.
5. Google makes a big announcement. Not a new product, but a new standard and some new software.
Android, OpenSocial
If this is what it looks like to have big bad Google exerting its influence on this industry, I wouldn't mind much, much more of the same. Compare this to how Microsoft acted when they were on top. Good for Google!
Thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself. I just plunked down on some Apple products, I like the company, and I really hope I still like them a year from now.
All the goodwill Apple has from the tech-savvy crowd is in jeopardy here, and that ought to be worth something to them.
Yeah, I read for a long time before getting a uid. I'm always very reluctant to actually sign up for a site. Yet another username/password to keep track of. Cost me a lot of bragging points I suppose.
/. That was either 1997 or 1998.
I first found the open source world when, as a 16 year old, I searched for "hacking" and instead of tips on unlocking software and spreading 'warez', I found myself reading an essay by Eric Raymond on what it means to be a 'real hacker'.
From there I decided to build my own Linux box and started following Linux weekly news for updates (I needed support for my graphics card to come out, so I followed every update). Many of their stories linked to Slashdot stories, so that's how I found
Wow, why the angry tone? I'm not one of those people crying lawsuit. I just want the market to steer apple in the right direction here. To that end, I've sold my apple stock and will likely return the phone for a refund, since I'm not past the return date.
Your point about standards is well taken, and actually it would be sweet if something like Google Gears comes out for iphone. That would make a lot of client-side web apps possible that wouldn't need network connectivity all the time.
But for god's sake, when somebody writes a wicked cool 3rd party app that gives 80,000 people global positioning ability, don't kill it! That is not cool.
What's frustrating is it's so damn close though! Screw tablets and subnotebooks. I've had both. They don't fit in a pocket. The iPhone represents minimizing what you haul around everywhere, while still packing all kinds of convenient technology. If I'm carrying more than one device in my pockets, something is wrong.
Go ahead, rub it in... I've had a longstanding dislike for Microsoft because of their business practices, and have actively avoided buying anything from them for the last 10 years or so. I really wanted to believe that, deep down, Apple was different.
I want it both ways - I want continued updates and improvements to my new mobile computer from Apple, and I want to be able to do other interesting things with my new mobile computer that fill a niche that Apple understandably wouldn't be writing software for.
Is it unreasonable for me, an Apple customer and shareholder, to want this?
When I'm buying a technology product, there are several factors that weigh into the decision. One is the quality of the technology. Just as important is the future outlook. Is there a good chance that missing features I want can be easily added later? Are there a lot of people, either in a company or on their own, working to improve it? Will I be able to adapt it to some niche problem that I'm working on that may not be important to most people, but is important to me?
Apple has a great technology, but lacking those other ingredients I just can't get too excited about the whole package. In a year's time, there will be other very similar phones on the market:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/29/nokias-iphone-no-seriously/
And some of those will likely be infinitely customizable. Nokia is already running with this Apple blunder:
http://www.nseries.com/index.html?l=campaigns,open
So Apple, am I going to feel like an idiot for buying into a closed platform when similar but open models come out from other companies?
Barring a shift in policy of some kind, such as a released api or "binary application approval program", I am thinking it's time to get out of AAPL and think hard before buying more Apple products.
Well, I suppose the law defines these things according to how a "reasonable person" would view it, and not according to some scientific definition. Legalese is stilted enough as it is, and I imagine it got that way by some pragmatic process of evolution over hundreds of years. I would love to hear a lawyer's take on the question...
Well, that's obviously not quite true. EVERY piece of data can be considered a number. This post I'm writing is a number. A full-length movie is a number. It's a stream of bits which could, in theory, be printed out as a decimal number and then counted out in meatballs. Lots and lots of meatballs.
Indeed, that's kinda why I picked those examples. Whenever somebody mentions either in trying to make a point, I have to roll my eyes.
I got the power glove back when that came out for the original 8 bit NES, and was very disappointed by it. It sounds like they've finally, 15 years later, gotten it right with the Wii.
The #1 unsuggestion for "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" (a great book) is "The Devil Wears Prada", which I thought was pretty good. Just because not many people are likely to own both doesn't mean you can expect an active dislike the way you would between, say, an Ann Coulter book and a Michael Moore book.
Tell that to Ray Kurzweil...
I demand a hold be put on Stevens' cost-benefit analysis, as it would be too costly to draw up.
I'm interested to see where the whole activism thing will go. The people this academic is really writing about are probably about 18 and younger - people shaped by the idea of social networking to such a degree that they haven't known a world where they couldn't just get on their computer and instantly immerse themselves in the personal lives of their peers.
We will all continue to learn how to organize ourselves into various interesting networks in the coming years. Myspace and Facebook are big now but I doubt this phenomenon will continue to revolve around them for much longer. And of course as another poster has said, online activism has already made a splash (moveon.org anyone?)
But this new "myspace generation" has a jump on things. The same way my generation (I'm 26 now) grew up with technology and got to be better with computers than our parents, the myspace generation will be better at online networking. Since childhood they'll have been making connections halfway around the world, sharing ideas, and context-switching between the mediums of phone, email, instant text messages, online profiles, blogs, shared photos and videos, and face to face conversation.
Simply put, they'll be better connected than the generations before them. They'll share more ideas more often. The world will be more of a global village. With a community like that, if a pressing issue is suddenly forced on them that the way the military draft did in the Vietnam war, I bet they could mobilize within days.
In the case of current attrocities the prof mentioned, I imagine something needs to happen to make them more close to home. Hopefully, as the internet spreads it will encroach on the parts of the world dealing with problems such as genocide, and personal accounts will find their way into the public consciousness the way a horrible trampoline accident becomes a sensation on youtube today. People don't respond to numbers; they need these things to be broken apart, personalized for them, and then added back up again.
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20060919/is-apple-
If that is really a random sampling, it has everything to do with overall market share. But it isn't. It is a sample of the market which subscribes to HitsLink. That's not a random sample.
It's funny, I don't remember hearing the word 'embiggen' until I started reading slashdot...
Agreed. When I was between 20 and 22 or so I wrote some stuff in a few posts to usenet, using my real name. Not that there's a lot of dirt there, but I shared more than I would have cared to. At that time one probably would have had to go to DejaNews to find it. Of course DejaNews is now Google Groups, and it'll probably be there for ever and ever. I found it recenetly (I'm 26 now) and cringed at my rambling prose, and somewhat self-important tone.
That might have been one of the worst ways to put something out there. At least if you're running a blog you can take something down and it takes something like the internet archive's time machine to retrieve it.
Exactly. It took a guy named Ponzi to show the real world the dangers of pyramid schemes, and afterwards, corrective actions were taken. Now this guy has done the same online. I can think of at least two positive side effects of that.
;-)
One, people playing online games that don't understand things like securities fraud have just learned a lot about it - through personal experience, no less - without losing any real money.
Two, some controls will be put in place, either by the developers or the community playing the game. That sounds like a fascinating subject for some economics major looking for a thesis, since economics is basically the study of how people get what they want when what they want is in limited supply.
You say banks in this virtual world have limited means to collect on debts. Well why should that be? Even if the developers don't help banks collect on debts (garnishWages(poorSchmoe)), banks don't have godlike power in this world either. We have independent credit reporting agencies to help keep bad borrowers from borrowing repeatedly. Why couldn't someone set up such a business in the game?
I imagine the biggest difference is that if you dig yourself a hole in a game, you can just stop playing under that username and start fresh. Perhaps this is the equivalent of getting a fake social security number in real life
A friend of mine commented on this. He declared that the computer is the new 'hearth', or gathering place, for conversations and trips down memory lane. Friends crowd around its warm glow, looking at photos, looking up obscure topics that come up in conversation, and watching youtube videos. Or, in this case, games.
I wonder if using good, full-spectrum light bulbs could have a positive effect on the selling price of a house. That may also help offset the cost.
Also, aren't there full-spectrum flourescent lights out there?
For instance, http://www.ottlite.com/
Hetrosexual ...
Homosexual
Incest
Self
2-way
3-way
Orgy
Multiple people sharing the same skull
yikes!