This is exactly what happened when the iPod was announced: slashdot dismissed it as derivative while Apple quietly reinvented the freakin' walkman.
True. In the beginning of today's preso they showed some numbers: 250M iPods, plus (slightly combined with) 75M iPhones/iPod touches. So let's round that off and say roughly 300,000,000 devices in just over 8 years--roughly one for every man, woman, and child in the United States. (And pretend that the average price of those was $100--that's THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS. No sense mentioning the iTMS and App Store.) Obviously Jobs and crew know something that CmdrTaco and LoudMusic* and the rest of the unwashed masses of Slashdot don't. I'm not saying that Apple only hits home runs (Cube, puck mouse, newest Shuffle) but they score more often than they don't.
And look at delivery and pricing. Compare this to all the tablets from CES earlier this month: either underwhelming, or expensive, or not being released until the end of the year. Apple may not have invented the be-all, end-all device, but it's $500 and will be shipping in 2 months.
And remember folks, it's only going to get better.
* with respect to LoudMusic: iTunes is free, Apple went to USB, and they lowered the price. Still, the lesson is, it's bad form to predict success or failure based on the first version. It'd be like looking at a baby and saying "10 pounds, can't walk, can't talk, no teeth... he's doomed."
No, you don't need the birthday paradox to cover this. 1600/25 = 64 people with each ringtone, assuming even distribution.
The birthday paradox would dictate that with 365 ringtones available, there would be a 50-50 chance that two people would share a ringtone in a group of 23, and 97% with just 50 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
And what kills me is that he COULD HAVE, the bastard. Or at least, made a very large dent in it. All he had to do was have MS release some patches for Windows and give them for free to EVERYONE, "pirates" included. According to a quick search, 80 percent of spam comes from zombies.
> i hereby nominate apple speculation as the most boring internet subculture
With "complaining in forums about what other people enjoy" a close second.
Seriously--for the hojillionth time, if you don't care about it, don't read it! And FFS, if you don't like it, it boggles my mind why you would take time out of your day to let the world know. OF COURSE you're bored--you've evidently got too much free time and nothing worthwhile to fill it. Might I suggest sitting on a curb and tossing pebbles into a storm drain?
Which makes Disney the worst kind of hypocrite, since they've built their empire on public domain works, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Pinocchio (1940) to The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and Rapunzel (later this year) and many others in between. Over 70 years of taking from the public domain and what have they given back? NOTHING. Fuckers.
... I have seen similar things happening with poor-quality web caching proxies. I am specifically talking of the horror that is Microsoft's ISA server.
Of course that's correct. But google isn't getting out of China for any of the reasons you mentioned--they're getting out of China because of their actions.
"That's the thng about living in China-- even if you're a one-in-a-million kind of guy, there's a thousand other people out there just like you." -- A. Whitney Brown
"Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from China (Um, the world's largest Internet market)..."
They're not REQUIRED to do business with anyone. Some customers are just too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it. Imagine you own a store and there's an item you buy for $5 and sell for $10. If someone comes in and offers you $9 for it, would you sell? Sure, why not, it's still pretty good. How about $8? $7? $6? $5.50? $5.25? $5.05? $5.01? At what point do you tell them "Piss off, you're wasting my time"? I personally would much rather deal with a thousand nice well-off customers than a million pain-in-the-ass cheapskates.* Seems to be working pretty well for Apple too.:-)
So same thing here. If Google doesn't feel like dealing with China's BS, they don't have to. Let someone else try to make a buck off that headache.
* disclaimer: before anyone gets their panties in a knot, I'm not saying rich people are nice and poor people aren't. I'm talking about CHEAPNESS here--someone who has nothing better to do with their time than argue over every nickel versus someone who's content to pay a fair price. Cheapness** is why the US is so beholden to China right now. See also Schmatta.
Great summary, thanks. Now, a question, and I'm not being a smartass: is there any good software that does the exact opposite? I absolutely do not care about the built in social aspects of the software, nor do I use services like Hulu. (Internet connection and computers at home are on the slow side.) I do, however, have an extensive collection of video from various sources--ripped DVDs, captured from a TV card, etc. I just want something that lets me browse this with a good "ten foot interface" and do other useful things. (Playlists, searchable, etc.) I like Apple's Front Row but could go for something a little more powerful. Any suggestions?
> I think the real lesson here is not to stay at The Venetian.
Since The Venitian is hardly the first, last, or only company that ever has fucked over/will fuck over a customer, an additional lesson is "If it's important, get it in writing." Who's to say the Bellagio or Mandalay Bay won't do this to someone else in the future?
Not sci-fi, but that reminds me: Charlie's Angels was on the air from 1976-1981 and was remade as a movie in 2000 -- nineteen years later. The Simpsons has been on the air for 21 years--I think it's due.:-)
Yeah, and that's going to solve a very, very small batch of problems. Everyone could start doing this tomorrow, and then a malicious dev will write a get-a-free-LOLcat-wallpaper-every-day app and pwn half of the Android phones out there.
Cool link. Naked statistics are almost useless, though. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_08_ca.html San Francisco, CA: Population, 740k. One hundred murders. Daly City, the first suburb south of SF: 100k people, ZERO murders.
I'm not saying the US is perfect, but throwing out one statistic does not make England an island paradise and Georgia a guncrazy anarchy. It's possible that there are other factors involved.
"Across the world, approximately 30% of recorded Wi-Fi access points are unlocked, while some 70% are locked. Nice to see everybody taking security so seriously..."
F U, I've been intentionally open since 2002 or so. (Basically, since I got it.) It's like, if you leave your lights on and windows open, someone can sit outside your house and read a book with the light you're giving off--OH NOES!
First of all, it doesn't cost anything to share a bit of WiFi. If someone happens to be driving by and needs it, they can park and use it. If a neighbor loses their connectivity for a day and wants to use mine, FINE, GO AHEAD--I won't even notice or care. Nor will my ISP.
Secondly: security? What security? I doubt there is a band of leet hackers hiding behind my fence trying to get financial data off my wife's laptop (hint: it's usually closed) or trying to pull my credit card number or bank login name as it whizzes by among gigs of other data. (Hint: you'll also have to crack HTTPS.)
You're worried about credit card fraud? Worry more about the 19-year-old you give your card to at a restaurant who disappears with it for a couple minutes. My family and I have had credit card info stolen and abused several times in the last decade and not once was the Internet involved, let alone hackers sitting outside our house at night doing MITM attacks. I'm more worried about an ACTUAL break-in (which I've also experienced) than a cyber one.
9.7in e-paper display on one side and a 10.1in LCD screen on the other...
That strange rumble you just heard was the sound of a million obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive, symmetry-loving neatniks simultaneously cursing upon reading those specs.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly what happened when the iPod was announced: slashdot dismissed it as derivative while Apple quietly reinvented the freakin' walkman.
True. In the beginning of today's preso they showed some numbers: 250M iPods, plus (slightly combined with) 75M iPhones/iPod touches. So let's round that off and say roughly 300,000,000 devices in just over 8 years--roughly one for every man, woman, and child in the United States. (And pretend that the average price of those was $100--that's THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS. No sense mentioning the iTMS and App Store.) Obviously Jobs and crew know something that CmdrTaco and LoudMusic* and the rest of the unwashed masses of Slashdot don't. I'm not saying that Apple only hits home runs (Cube, puck mouse, newest Shuffle) but they score more often than they don't.
And look at delivery and pricing. Compare this to all the tablets from CES earlier this month: either underwhelming, or expensive, or not being released until the end of the year. Apple may not have invented the be-all, end-all device, but it's $500 and will be shipping in 2 months.
And remember folks, it's only going to get better.
* with respect to LoudMusic: iTunes is free, Apple went to USB, and they lowered the price. Still, the lesson is, it's bad form to predict success or failure based on the first version. It'd be like looking at a baby and saying "10 pounds, can't walk, can't talk, no teeth... he's doomed."
Because Spyker makes this (which was featured in the Jet Li/Jason Statham movie War.) Car nerds are nerds too.
No, you don't need the birthday paradox to cover this. 1600/25 = 64 people with each ringtone, assuming even distribution.
The birthday paradox would dictate that with 365 ringtones available, there would be a 50-50 chance that two people would share a ringtone in a group of 23, and 97% with just 50 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
And what kills me is that he COULD HAVE, the bastard. Or at least, made a very large dent in it. All he had to do was have MS release some patches for Windows and give them for free to EVERYONE, "pirates" included. According to a quick search, 80 percent of spam comes from zombies.
"Hello Twitterverse!... send your ?s"
First response: "A/S/L?"
> i hereby nominate apple speculation as the most boring internet subculture
With "complaining in forums about what other people enjoy" a close second.
Seriously--for the hojillionth time, if you don't care about it, don't read it! And FFS, if you don't like it, it boggles my mind why you would take time out of your day to let the world know. OF COURSE you're bored--you've evidently got too much free time and nothing worthwhile to fill it. Might I suggest sitting on a curb and tossing pebbles into a storm drain?
... all PHP coders are secretly py-curious.
Which makes Disney the worst kind of hypocrite, since they've built their empire on public domain works, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Pinocchio (1940) to The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and Rapunzel (later this year) and many others in between. Over 70 years of taking from the public domain and what have they given back? NOTHING. Fuckers.
... I have seen similar things happening with poor-quality web caching proxies. I am specifically talking of the horror that is Microsoft's ISA server.
Happened to Google, too.
I heard the problem was Clint Eastwood didn't want to give this game the go-ahead, that he wanted his movie to stand on its own.
Of course that's correct. But google isn't getting out of China for any of the reasons you mentioned--they're getting out of China because of their actions.
"That's the thng about living in China-- even if you're a one-in-a-million kind of guy, there's a thousand other people out there just like you."
-- A. Whitney Brown
... they can do whatever the hell they want.
"Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from China (Um, the world's largest Internet market)..."
They're not REQUIRED to do business with anyone. Some customers are just too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it. Imagine you own a store and there's an item you buy for $5 and sell for $10. If someone comes in and offers you $9 for it, would you sell? Sure, why not, it's still pretty good. How about $8? $7? $6? $5.50? $5.25? $5.05? $5.01? At what point do you tell them "Piss off, you're wasting my time"? I personally would much rather deal with a thousand nice well-off customers than a million pain-in-the-ass cheapskates.* Seems to be working pretty well for Apple too. :-)
So same thing here. If Google doesn't feel like dealing with China's BS, they don't have to. Let someone else try to make a buck off that headache.
* disclaimer: before anyone gets their panties in a knot, I'm not saying rich people are nice and poor people aren't. I'm talking about CHEAPNESS here--someone who has nothing better to do with their time than argue over every nickel versus someone who's content to pay a fair price. Cheapness** is why the US is so beholden to China right now. See also Schmatta.
** and a few other things
Great summary, thanks. Now, a question, and I'm not being a smartass: is there any good software that does the exact opposite? I absolutely do not care about the built in social aspects of the software, nor do I use services like Hulu. (Internet connection and computers at home are on the slow side.) I do, however, have an extensive collection of video from various sources--ripped DVDs, captured from a TV card, etc. I just want something that lets me browse this with a good "ten foot interface" and do other useful things. (Playlists, searchable, etc.) I like Apple's Front Row but could go for something a little more powerful. Any suggestions?
How about Spider-Man?
>> "I asked... They said..."
> I think the real lesson here is not to stay at The Venetian.
Since The Venitian is hardly the first, last, or only company that ever has fucked over/will fuck over a customer, an additional lesson is "If it's important, get it in writing." Who's to say the Bellagio or Mandalay Bay won't do this to someone else in the future?
Not sci-fi, but that reminds me: Charlie's Angels was on the air from 1976-1981 and was remade as a movie in 2000 -- nineteen years later. The Simpsons has been on the air for 21 years--I think it's due. :-)
> It seems like droid users are just as zealous about their phones as they accuse iPhone users of being.
The only thing worse than fanbois are haters.
Yeah, and that's going to solve a very, very small batch of problems. Everyone could start doing this tomorrow, and then a malicious dev will write a get-a-free-LOLcat-wallpaper-every-day app and pwn half of the Android phones out there.
I'll get off your lawn when my brother gets off mine.
ob. The Onion: We Need a Fourth Law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife
Didn't all airlines switch to pretzels a few years back? I haven't seen a nut on an airplane in ages.
Cool link. Naked statistics are almost useless, though.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_08_ca.html
San Francisco, CA: Population, 740k. One hundred murders. Daly City, the first suburb south of SF: 100k people, ZERO murders.
I'm not saying the US is perfect, but throwing out one statistic does not make England an island paradise and Georgia a guncrazy anarchy. It's possible that there are other factors involved.
"Across the world, approximately 30% of recorded Wi-Fi access points are unlocked, while some 70% are locked. Nice to see everybody taking security so seriously..."
F U, I've been intentionally open since 2002 or so. (Basically, since I got it.) It's like, if you leave your lights on and windows open, someone can sit outside your house and read a book with the light you're giving off--OH NOES!
First of all, it doesn't cost anything to share a bit of WiFi. If someone happens to be driving by and needs it, they can park and use it. If a neighbor loses their connectivity for a day and wants to use mine, FINE, GO AHEAD--I won't even notice or care. Nor will my ISP.
Secondly: security? What security? I doubt there is a band of leet hackers hiding behind my fence trying to get financial data off my wife's laptop (hint: it's usually closed) or trying to pull my credit card number or bank login name as it whizzes by among gigs of other data. (Hint: you'll also have to crack HTTPS.)
You're worried about credit card fraud? Worry more about the 19-year-old you give your card to at a restaurant who disappears with it for a couple minutes. My family and I have had credit card info stolen and abused several times in the last decade and not once was the Internet involved, let alone hackers sitting outside our house at night doing MITM attacks. I'm more worried about an ACTUAL break-in (which I've also experienced) than a cyber one.
9.7in e-paper display on one side and a 10.1in LCD screen on the other...
That strange rumble you just heard was the sound of a million obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive, symmetry-loving neatniks simultaneously cursing upon reading those specs.