I don't know how you can label the Leftist view of letting the government run everything (healthcare, housing, food) as a bottom-up approach. That sounds like a top-down approach to me (where the top mandates how citizens are supposed to live).
A lot of this depends on whether you have a bifurcated view of "The Government" and its citizens, or a view that identifies both together.
It also depends on if you're talking about "The Government" as a federal totalitarian state or as a self-determining democratic community (or an aggregation of such communities).
These points are only part of the problem with trying to make some kind of correlation with "top-down" "bottom-up" points of view and conventional "left" and "right" thinking. The truth is that there are few unalloyed figures and no unalloyed major parties from these perspectives -- no one is going to nationalize industry here, no one is going to go completely laissez fair.
Personally I prefer "authoritarian" versus "libertarian" as a way to separate the articles.
I think this dichotomy allows for a greater degree of objectivity -- in particular, it can reveal that both major U.S. parties are alloys here -- but only if you're the kind of person who's willing to see that as an objective rather than a normative judgment.
I still do not understand why everything is left/right. Reality tends to be complicated and every story has a lot more aspects than left/right (even if you manage to define those two terms).
I'm not sure if it's culturally constructed or inate, but there is definitely a human tendency to see things as a dialectic. Some people more than others, and it can definitely be culturally amplified -- possibly by certain kinds of media dialogues, but almost inevitably when you start to identify with a given group.
Once you've identified yourself with the political right or left (or something else) and have learned which term tends to describe your team, you'll start to filter the information around you and examine how it and its presentation represents your team (and, by extension because of identification, you). It's nearly inevitable.
This doesn't mean that efforts at trying to step back and look beyond casual labels and filters associated with terms like right and left aren't worthwhile -- if I thought it was futile, I wouldn't bother making this comment. It's just to say there's a natural tendency for people to pick sides.
If your highest priorities are open hardware and an open software economy and network freedom out of the box, then yes, the iPhone is not the phone for you. But remember, those are your priorities, and it's entirely possible for someone with different ones to be significantly unhappy with the product that you're quite pleased with.
A great example of Apple rabid reality-bending Apple fanboism. Thousands and thosands of customers have been _literally _ lobotomized by nothing other than the shiny industrial design, just like they have by Paris Hilton! If Apple weren't evil, they'd already have a Paris-blocker, but they've sold out their customers for greed and fame. Even if they didn't want to do it themselves, the least they could do is open the Iphon -- truly open iPhone would already have a Paris Hilton news-blocker! Did you know it can't even make calls without ATT! LOL Appletarsd!1!!!
Why did you assume I was talking about Apple in my comment above?
What kind of mental leap does it take to conclude you're talking about the Apple iPhone in a thread about the Apple iPhone?
we are getting dangerously close to having Apple fandom listed in the DSM-IV. I'm betting it has something to do with a seratonin imbalance.
References to some kind of irrational Apple fandom is one of the first refuges of people who haven't learned to talk intelligently about a product they don't understand and politely about the people who buy them.
This is a very subjective thing to measure. For one person, "customer friendly" might mean "makes a product that the customer thinks makes him cool" and for another it might mean "helps the customer adapt a product to his own purposes, rather than expect the customer to adapt to the purposes of the manufacturer".
You know, if you'd been fair enough to point out some of the things the iPhone does well -- say, "provides a smooth and unexcelled mobile web browsing experience" or "offers a well-integrated convergence between music player and phone" -- instead of "a product that the customer thinks makes him cool," you might have delivered some genuine insight and actually deserved the mod up.*
You started off so well, too. Lots of people on Slashdot (and elsewhere) can't seem to understand that just because a given product doesn't embody their priorities, there may still be a legitimate market for it.
And then you went south, essentially suggesting that anybody who finds the iPhone sufficient for their purposes must be buying it as a status item.
And people wonder why Apple fans sometimes end up with a chip on their shoulder.
I can't see a single point in what you've listed above that seems essentially connected to conservatism. I was thinking that conservatism meant things like:
* preserve traditional social values * look for other solutions besides government action where feasible * make sure government action runs efficiently where necessary * keep peace and provide for national defense through military strength * encourage individual responsibility above social responsibility * value individual property rights
But according to the list above, it's apparently:
* endorse torture * abandon the idea the government needs to behave in a fiscally responsibly manner * never cooperate with political opposition * oppose environmental conservation * avoid government involvement in regulation of ethically sensitive research * agree with Bush 43
I don't think the problem here is that where somebody stands on the political spectrum affects their view of how conservative McCain is. I think that the problem is that there's some pretty darn arbitrary definitions of what conservatism means these days.
My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
If you're wondering whether Obama's enthusiasm for the Internet and technology goes beyond "hip and in touch", you might consult Lawrence Lessig's endorsement of him. And after reading Obama's tech paper, I can't say I think any other candidate's compares even in showing awareness of issues.
That said, the fact that I see the net strongly leveraged elsewhere -- including Paul's rather impressive campaign -- makes me *less* jaded about the increasing use of social networking. Nor do I think it's really surprising or affected: to some extent, all politics is (among other things) organizing. Real-world social networks were a huge part of politics before social networks came to the web, it's a completely natural fit now that's here. So to one degree or another, *everybody* is using it. I think part of the reason Paul stands out in his use is his unfortunate and somewhat unfair uphill battle in traditional media -- he really didn't have anywhere else to go.
Now, I'd agree it sometimes seems Obama is using this tool more heavily and talking more about his use of tools than anyone else in the field other than Paul. But I think to the extent that's true, it's largely because up until the last 4 years of his political career, organizing has been a big part of what he does -- his start, for goodness sake, was as a community organizer. It really does appear he has a philosophy that includes bottom-up organization as a component of well-balanced politics. And what the social networking tools do that's new to politics is increase the reach and efficiency of that kind of organizing. They only marginally bolster the traditional political networks, but they're a huge boost at the grassroots level, especially the more you know about grassroots organizing.
I also would agree that not all candidates are created equal on the tech-friendly front, however. In particular, McCain has some issues with not fighting the internet, and while Clinton might have some good progressive impulses regarding it, I don't trust her not to throw it under a bus if some other "expediency" arises.
So while I'm sometimes a bit disappointed we didn't get a race like Obama vs Paul -- one that I think would have essentially signaled a real end to business as usual and a significant shift to digital politics -- I still think Obama stands out as an evolutionary step in the right direction, if not the Paul revolution.
One other thing about a part of the premise of the post ("Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!"). This isn't necessarily directed at the poster I'm responding to, but I'm noticing a high degree of frequency in attacks on Obama that are essentially "Sure he SEEMS great, but SEEMING isn't the same things as BEING great and we just don't know what's REALLY behind HIM!" To some extent, I don't blame people for thinking this way. We've been let down pretty severely by quite a bit of our political leadership recently. And it's hard to really know whether what you know about a candidate is image or fact.
But I also think the time for this kind of talk about Obama is past. He's been in the spotlight for a while, there's plenty of material available about him and written by him to get genuinely familiar with the substance of his history and positions. I don't have a problem with people arguing about what they don't like about Obama's stated policies, or a vote he made in the past. But at this point, anybody bringing up this kind of "we don't KNOW" or "he's all STYLE and TALK" rehtoric isn't bringing up an insightful point, they're showing their own need to do homework. Or, in some cases, acting with ulterior motives.
Costs should be lower and/or falling
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Must a CD Cost $15.99?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
OK. The article is old news, but it's a good topic for anyone interested in the industry's future to consider, and most of the points are still relevant.
Consider this:
Production costs should be down with the advances in tech and refinement of manufacturing.
Wal-Mart *is* a distributor, so distribution costs should be lower.
Promotion costs *could* be lower if more of the music industry understood new media rather than treating it as somewhere between anathema and tolerable evil.
So, real CD costs should be falling. They probably are *somewhat*, given inflation, but in context of the given advances, it really doesn't seem like enough.
The costs in the article are also interesting. Some of 'em look on, but others don't:
$0.17 Musicians' unions - Unions get royalties on CDs? That's interesting. I've never heard that before. $0.80 Packaging/manufacturing - You can get smallish (2000-5000) runs for near this cost. A major label release really should be benefiting from an economy of scale here. $0.82 Publishing royalties - if it's cover songs, sure. If this is original material written for a contract or under licensing from a signed artist, this cost shouldn't be this high. $0.80 Retail profit - $.80 ain't anything a profit I'd begrudge the retail establishment. $0.90 Distribution - See Wal-Mart *is* the distributor. $1.60 Artists' royalties - Given the information available about industry accounting practices, is anyone else skeptical that the artists are getting this money? $1.70 Label profit - I'm OK with this. $2.40 Marketing/promotion - Since this is what a label is really supposed to do, I'm not surprised it's this big a portion, and maybe that's OK. $2.91 Label overhead - What exactly is supposed to be here other than production costs and everything else on this list? I suspect this is really one of two big issues. $3.89 Retail overhead - And this is the other one.
Those last two numbers pretty much tell the story of why disintermediation is going to continue to be a strong trend for the music industry. Slash them numbers and you're down *below* Wal-Mart's sale price and certainly competetive with prevailing online retailers. Fail to do it and you're not. Especially if you're acting like you're entitled to it in the meanwhile.
As is blind hatred. Specifically, the level of irrational virtiol targeted against apple on this site in particular is kind of amazing. I don't really understand it,
It's a few things.
(1) Most haters don't get Apple's products -- sometimes because they're not familiar with them, but also often because the product priorities aren't theirs, and they therefore conclude anyone who has different priorities has been duped. Unsurprisingly, people who've been told they've been duped don't respond well, there's a backlash, and self-fulfilling prophecies about rabid fans come into play (see here for longer comment on this point).
(2) PR. What, you don't think there are companies out there who would pay flacks to get out and try to fight the fact that Google and Apple have a better image? I've sure seen a lot of stories like this one lately. Maybe it's because Apple and Google are turning evil, no better than Microsoft! By the way, have you heard suits are back in style?
(3) There are in fact some number of insufferable Apple users out there.
(4) Apple does in fact get it wrong sometimes, and if you're expecting better, it's like when Moz does the wrong thing with a CSS property where IE gets it right, or a friend insults you while an enemy shows respect. Even if it might be rarer, it's extra maddening.
Opportunity for Third Party -- maybe even Linux
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The Death of Windows XP
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Unless MS is really going to *sell* users on Vista, trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else, among them:
(1) Microsoft Systems shops that have the ability to provide support or
(2) Competition that's open source ("Don't like being moved off your platform when your *vendor* decides it's time, not when you decide it's time? When you have the source, you can maintain or hire someone to maintain it as long as the cost is worth it to you.")
It's a self-fulfilling designation because it's essentially insulting by nature. Tell anybody their enthusiasm for *any* particular object is "rabid" or "irrational" and you're quite likely to get some kind of rise out of it.
Some of the people throwing it around even realize this, of course, although I'm sure quite a few don't.
The plain and simple fact is there are plenty of people who can make significant criticism of flaws in Apple's products without generating that kind of fallout.
But here's a few differences between these people and the hopelessly vexed critic who's destined, knowingly or not, to essentially be a troll on the matter:
(1) The good critics genuinely understand the products. They haven't just tried them, they've really used them, at least enough to understand the strengths and weaknesses.
(2) The good critics are able to separate the product strengths and weaknesses from value judgments about the buyers, with or without judicious use of the ability to imagine consumers who have different product values from their own.
As an example, you can probably find hundreds of conversations on Slashdot about the iPhone. There's at least two classes of critics visible in these discussions, even amongst those that agree that the iPhone would be a better product with 3G and a truly open development ecosystem. One sees that even without these things, the product has other merits that mean it's valuable to people. The other sees these things missing and concludes it has no other merits ("It's just shiny design!" or "It's just a status item!")... or that those who *buy* it are missing their own superior ability to assess merit ("Fanbois!" "Apple Cultists"). And it's usually this later category that is somehow missing the ability to understand how that judgment could possibly lead to cranky responses from those it's leveled at.
"I do have an unhealthy obsession with my Roomba, but it doesn't come close to the religious outrage that descends on my blog whenever / if-ever I say anything that doesn't approach worship of substantially incorrect or trollish about Apple"
Maybe this isn't you, but what *I* see, repeated over and over again, is that a lot of Apple's critics have serious terminal gaps not only in their *information* about Apple products and behavior, but possibly in their fundamental ability to understand them. Then when they inflict their factually incorrect and insight-free rantings on the world, they're amazed that they taste a backlash.
None of this is to say that Apple's products and decisions are beyond criticism. I don't think that way and I have plenty my own criticisms.
But if you're the kind of person who even thinks for a moment that merely saying "anything that doesn't approach worship" is the problem, I'm not going out on a limb to say that you may fall in the idiotic and/or uninformed camp.
It's a fact there are people out there who can and do get away with criticism of Apple. The difference is those people know what they're talking about and know how to express themselves.
The rest of the crowd tries to hide the fact they've been incorrect or insulting by shucking it off on strawmen Apple fanbois.
The fact that this category includes so-called tech journalists is extra maddening.
Javascript lacks interface inheritance, and that's what makes it weak.
Near as I can tell, the single-type/prototype nature of objects in the language sortof moots the need to define interfaces for the interpreter ahead of time. That leaves interface inheritance completely up to the programmer, which means that it's as weak as the programmer's ability to keep that straight.
I think I understand this -- Holub's article is actually the way I was exposed to the quote in the first place. And while Gosling's remark was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I don't think he was entirely kidding.
The problem is that classes tend to encourage type hierarchies and implementation inheritance... and thus the use of extends, which is part of the new JS spec. Especially when combined with standard OO instruction these days -- implementation inheritance is one of first things typically mentioned in your average course or latest book explaining OOP.
The interesting thing is that with dynamic typing and prototype inheritance, half the agility issues Holub mentions in that piece go away.
Q: "If you could do Java over again, what would you change?" James Gosling: "I'd leave out classes!"
The functional/prototype hybrid in Javascript was a little odd and hard to get used to, but once I did, I've found I like it better than a Class model. Interface/implementation works for me too, but especially in Javascript, I never feel like I really need that fancy keywords to get that done.
There's an awful lot of serious work in the Java community, but I sometimes feel like a lot of *common* practices have evolved because people condensed "best practices" into a formula without disseminating the principles behind them, and it's ended up becoming a lot of busywork. Now it's filtering out to languages like PHP and Javascript that apparently want to grow up to be like Java.
I take some comfort in the fact that there will almost certainly have to be a backward compatibility layer for a long time. And I like the idea of units and constants and namespaces. But I'm not sure this is Javascript anymore, and I'm pretty certain it's not a step forward for the language.
allowing mp3 on the iPod, and then lock you into the formats they want you to like
Near as I can tell, after using iTunes since 2002 and an iPod since 2005, there is no such thing as lock-in on the platform. The only pain I've ever felt was using up machine authorizations on stuff bought from the iTunes store, and I quickly fixed that problem by freely stopping my purchases and freely taking my business somewhere else. Later Apple themselves fixed that problem by offering DRM-free material, which is great, but my buying habits have migrated elsewhere and there's no punishment from Apple.
The iTunes store certainly encourages purchase of a large class of their material in a locked format. But there's no punishment for operating outside of that, and it's really not even particularly difficult to unlock the DRM'd stuff.
The complaints about his temper were mentioned, but the "making up" part wasn't. And the phrases used to describe him were less along the lines of "quick temper" and more along the lines of "bitter and vindictive", "mentally unstable", and "meds not quite right".
These are not the words of Democratic party operatives. They're the words of former *Republican* senate staff, albeit off-the-record.
The biggest condemnation for me may well have been "refusing to concede a point in the face of overwhelming evidence," something I think we've had a good deal too much of in the White House during the last eight years.
Logic programming languages have no functions, or even a sense of time or order.
It depends.
A Prolog implementation, for example, generally has a well-defined order in which it traverses rules. If you understand it, you can use this to control program flow effectively. And some of the idioms from functional programming transfer as well.
It's kindof fun as an exercise and useful to some extent for small programs. But after the novelty wears off or you have to tackle a project of any size, it wears thin and you realize there's a reason imperative languages exist and you're best off applying both imperative and logical languages where their strengths are an advantage.
It's a full-fledged computing device that Apple's put some annoying restrictions on. Which ones are about making sure the experience with the product is good (ie, that it's first and foremost both a good phone and a good music player), which ones are about keeping the carrier happy, and which ones are motivated by the AntiChrist Lurking Within Steve Jobs(TM) aren't completely clear (though are clearly up for discussion).
It's great to create two ideal categories -- phone and computer -- and I also think it's annoying that the two haven't entirely converged, and that it sometimes seems like Apple is doing some things to deliberately obstruct the progress. But you don't have to be an Apple apologist to understand there's a landscape in between both categories, and that whether or not the iPhone can be said to be furthest along the continuum between the two, it's part of the momentum toward the later.
Ok, I'm willimg to admit I might be mistaken, but I always believed that OpenOffice was a descendent of Star Office which was an old OS/2 app. But since nothing would exist in the computer world without Steve to create it, i'm sure you will find some way to retell the OO.o creation story.
This isn't at all what the GP was trying to do, nor is any reference to Jobs' considerable influence on the computing industry necessarily the product of someone fabricating a Steve-centric cosmology.
At any rate, OpenOffice is descended from Star Office, that's correct, and I don't see anyone saying otherwise. What's being pointed out is that Schwartz's career is essentially a consequence of his cofounding and involvement with Lighthouse Design, and it's arguable that Lighthouse wouldn't have existed in any congruent form without OpenStep... from NeXT, the work of, among others, Steve Jobs.
You could *potentially* argue further that the various incarnations of Sun's Application Development group wouldn't have existed without OpenStep in general (and Lighthouse specifically) to demonstrate the viability of Sun's software as a platform for running applications, but that's a bit of a stretch, pulling together an applications group to compete with Microsoft was the thing to do in the mid-90s, Novell had already done it, McNealy probably didn't need Lighthouse to give him the idea.
Except for the couple million marching morons who buy the shiny handcuffs Steve sells.... Because Apple knows something you obviously don't; Apple will never play in the Enterprise space. Luxury boutique goods are never going to be picked by the green eyeshades types. Kewl industrial design means nothing.
Apple also knows something you don't. Just because your priorities (or my priorities) aren't met in any given device doesn't at all mean that the only selling point is the shiny industrial design.
I'm also disappointed Apple seems to be resisting the compelling (and nearly inevitable) idea that the iPhone (or any smartphone) can be a full-fledged computing device. I'm also frustrated that they're doing things by half-measures and holding people back rather than reprising the role of a company that simply ignites revolutions.
But the fact is, on the merits *alone* that it is an iPod and a cell phone, the iPhone is a successful convergence device. This is to say nothing of the fact that the web experience on it is unexcelled (arguably unmatched, even), that the use experience is superior to the majority of existing phones, and that it is going to have a vibrant market for 3rd party software (*certainly* a more vibrant market than anything the mobile industry's done so far), even if that never includes interpreters, virtual machines, or other browsers.
No, it's not. It's worse. This is akin to Microsoft releasing a version of Windows, let's call it Windows Fist-up-your-ass edition, and then saying "Our EULA states you cannot install Firfox, Opera, or Java," while, at the same time, adding rules to the Win32 API that block out these applications.
If Microsoft did this, you'd be screaming bloody murder.
The important distinction here is that Microsoft used to (and to some extent, still does) own the PC desktop -- so if they did something like this, it would largely kill the market for the given software.
The iPhone? Not so much. As has been pointed out, there are plenty of alternatives.
Because Apple's doing this, it's okay.
Even though I don't think the comparison to Microsoft is apt, I actually disapprove of their actions thoroughly. Apple should know better, they don't try to pull this off with their desktops or they wouldn't have the market they do, and what they don't seem to get yet is that the iPhone *is* a computer.
I still suspect Apple does understand this and that it's the influence from the cell phone carriers (who SO totally do not get this) that's causing the issue. But the longer they draw this out, the less credible I find that idea.
By good, we mean people who have worked on 1-2 games before and have more than 3 years experience and can answer simple questions like "what is a pointer in C++". This isn't a stringent requirement.
Not super stringent, but consider for a moment: if everyone hires at that minimum level, nothing lower, where do members of the talent pool get their first three years of experience?
I don't think this is the biggest problem in the gaming industry, or that it's confined to the gaming industry, but I think it has a lot to do with the problem of the the small talent pool.
Try stripping your requirements down to the simple questions and some code samples and hiring at an entry level. Give better compensation to the ones you want to keep.
If you're someone like Google and you have stricter standards, I could easily see a shortage of good programmers.
They don't really have this problem -- or at least, they seem to mitigate it successfully by providing superior compensation and a great work environment. And they still turn some great people away.
Governments need to relax regulations on locking-in apprentices to their sponsoring employer.
There is a market solution that doesn't involve short-term contract slavery: employers could compete to retain their valued and newly-trained staff.
Some organizations already do this, and succeed in keeping people for a long time. Others seem to never want what they already have: The new guy with the shiny resumé can command more than the solid employee they *know* has reported to work for two years for $10,000 less. So they talk about salary freezes, while they're hiring people for more -- and that's to say nothing of what they're paying the guys in marketing....
Of course, the market seems to let some of both kinds of organizations survive, so maybe the second type is on to something.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how you can label the Leftist view of letting the government run everything (healthcare, housing, food) as a bottom-up approach. That sounds like a top-down approach to me (where the top mandates how citizens are supposed to live).
A lot of this depends on whether you have a bifurcated view of "The Government" and its citizens, or a view that identifies both together.
It also depends on if you're talking about "The Government" as a federal totalitarian state or as a self-determining democratic community (or an aggregation of such communities).
These points are only part of the problem with trying to make some kind of correlation with "top-down" "bottom-up" points of view and conventional "left" and "right" thinking. The truth is that there are few unalloyed figures and no unalloyed major parties from these perspectives -- no one is going to nationalize industry here, no one is going to go completely laissez fair.
Personally I prefer "authoritarian" versus "libertarian" as a way to separate the articles.
I think this dichotomy allows for a greater degree of objectivity -- in particular, it can reveal that both major U.S. parties are alloys here -- but only if you're the kind of person who's willing to see that as an objective rather than a normative judgment.
I still do not understand why everything is left/right. Reality tends to be complicated and every story has a lot more aspects than left/right (even if you manage to define those two terms).
I'm not sure if it's culturally constructed or inate, but there is definitely a human tendency to see things as a dialectic. Some people more than others, and it can definitely be culturally amplified -- possibly by certain kinds of media dialogues, but almost inevitably when you start to identify with a given group.
Once you've identified yourself with the political right or left (or something else) and have learned which term tends to describe your team, you'll start to filter the information around you and examine how it and its presentation represents your team (and, by extension because of identification, you). It's nearly inevitable.
This doesn't mean that efforts at trying to step back and look beyond casual labels and filters associated with terms like right and left aren't worthwhile -- if I thought it was futile, I wouldn't bother making this comment. It's just to say there's a natural tendency for people to pick sides.
The iPhone has crippled software, crippled hardware, and crippled contracts.
True.
There is no reason on earth to buy one.
False.
If your highest priorities are open hardware and an open software economy and network freedom out of the box, then yes, the iPhone is not the phone for you. But remember, those are your priorities, and it's entirely possible for someone with different ones to be significantly unhappy with the product that you're quite pleased with.
If it did, I'd buy it at any cost!
A great example of Apple rabid reality-bending Apple fanboism. Thousands and thosands of customers have been _literally _ lobotomized by nothing other than the shiny industrial design, just like they have by Paris Hilton! If Apple weren't evil, they'd already have a Paris-blocker, but they've sold out their customers for greed and fame. Even if they didn't want to do it themselves, the least they could do is open the Iphon -- truly open iPhone would already have a Paris Hilton news-blocker! Did you know it can't even make calls without ATT! LOL Appletarsd!1!!!
Why did you assume I was talking about Apple in my comment above?
What kind of mental leap does it take to conclude you're talking about the Apple iPhone in a thread about the Apple iPhone?
we are getting dangerously close to having Apple fandom listed in the DSM-IV. I'm betting it has something to do with a seratonin imbalance.
References to some kind of irrational Apple fandom is one of the first refuges of people who haven't learned to talk intelligently about a product they don't understand and politely about the people who buy them.
This is a very subjective thing to measure. For one person, "customer friendly" might mean "makes a product that the customer thinks makes him cool" and for another it might mean "helps the customer adapt a product to his own purposes, rather than expect the customer to adapt to the purposes of the manufacturer".
You know, if you'd been fair enough to point out some of the things the iPhone does well -- say, "provides a smooth and unexcelled mobile web browsing experience" or "offers a well-integrated convergence between music player and phone" -- instead of "a product that the customer thinks makes him cool," you might have delivered some genuine insight and actually deserved the mod up.*
You started off so well, too. Lots of people on Slashdot (and elsewhere) can't seem to understand that just because a given product doesn't embody their priorities, there may still be a legitimate market for it.
And then you went south, essentially suggesting that anybody who finds the iPhone sufficient for their purposes must be buying it as a status item.
And people wonder why Apple fans sometimes end up with a chip on their shoulder.
I can't see a single point in what you've listed above that seems essentially connected to conservatism. I was thinking that conservatism meant things like:
* preserve traditional social values
* look for other solutions besides government action where feasible
* make sure government action runs efficiently where necessary
* keep peace and provide for national defense through military strength
* encourage individual responsibility above social responsibility
* value individual property rights
But according to the list above, it's apparently:
* endorse torture
* abandon the idea the government needs to behave in a fiscally responsibly manner
* never cooperate with political opposition
* oppose environmental conservation
* avoid government involvement in regulation of ethically sensitive research
* agree with Bush 43
I don't think the problem here is that where somebody stands on the political spectrum affects their view of how conservative McCain is. I think that the problem is that there's some pretty darn arbitrary definitions of what conservatism means these days.
My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
If you're wondering whether Obama's enthusiasm for the Internet and technology goes beyond "hip and in touch", you might consult Lawrence Lessig's endorsement of him. And after reading Obama's tech paper, I can't say I think any other candidate's compares even in showing awareness of issues.
That said, the fact that I see the net strongly leveraged elsewhere -- including Paul's rather impressive campaign -- makes me *less* jaded about the increasing use of social networking. Nor do I think it's really surprising or affected: to some extent, all politics is (among other things) organizing. Real-world social networks were a huge part of politics before social networks came to the web, it's a completely natural fit now that's here. So to one degree or another, *everybody* is using it. I think part of the reason Paul stands out in his use is his unfortunate and somewhat unfair uphill battle in traditional media -- he really didn't have anywhere else to go.
Now, I'd agree it sometimes seems Obama is using this tool more heavily and talking more about his use of tools than anyone else in the field other than Paul. But I think to the extent that's true, it's largely because up until the last 4 years of his political career, organizing has been a big part of what he does -- his start, for goodness sake, was as a community organizer. It really does appear he has a philosophy that includes bottom-up organization as a component of well-balanced politics. And what the social networking tools do that's new to politics is increase the reach and efficiency of that kind of organizing. They only marginally bolster the traditional political networks, but they're a huge boost at the grassroots level, especially the more you know about grassroots organizing.
I also would agree that not all candidates are created equal on the tech-friendly front, however. In particular, McCain has some issues with not fighting the internet, and while Clinton might have some good progressive impulses regarding it, I don't trust her not to throw it under a bus if some other "expediency" arises.
So while I'm sometimes a bit disappointed we didn't get a race like Obama vs Paul -- one that I think would have essentially signaled a real end to business as usual and a significant shift to digital politics -- I still think Obama stands out as an evolutionary step in the right direction, if not the Paul revolution.
One other thing about a part of the premise of the post ("Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!"). This isn't necessarily directed at the poster I'm responding to, but I'm noticing a high degree of frequency in attacks on Obama that are essentially "Sure he SEEMS great, but SEEMING isn't the same things as BEING great and we just don't know what's REALLY behind HIM!" To some extent, I don't blame people for thinking this way. We've been let down pretty severely by quite a bit of our political leadership recently. And it's hard to really know whether what you know about a candidate is image or fact.
But I also think the time for this kind of talk about Obama is past. He's been in the spotlight for a while, there's plenty of material available about him and written by him to get genuinely familiar with the substance of his history and positions. I don't have a problem with people arguing about what they don't like about Obama's stated policies, or a vote he made in the past. But at this point, anybody bringing up this kind of "we don't KNOW" or "he's all STYLE and TALK" rehtoric isn't bringing up an insightful point, they're showing their own need to do homework. Or, in some cases, acting with ulterior motives.
OK. The article is old news, but it's a good topic for anyone interested in the industry's future to consider, and most of the points are still relevant.
Consider this:
Production costs should be down with the advances in tech and refinement of manufacturing.
Wal-Mart *is* a distributor, so distribution costs should be lower.
Promotion costs *could* be lower if more of the music industry understood new media rather than treating it as somewhere between anathema and tolerable evil.
So, real CD costs should be falling. They probably are *somewhat*, given inflation, but in context of the given advances, it really doesn't seem like enough.
The costs in the article are also interesting. Some of 'em look on, but others don't:
$0.17 Musicians' unions - Unions get royalties on CDs? That's interesting. I've never heard that before.
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing - You can get smallish (2000-5000) runs for near this cost. A major label release really should be benefiting from an economy of scale here.
$0.82 Publishing royalties - if it's cover songs, sure. If this is original material written for a contract or under licensing from a signed artist, this cost shouldn't be this high.
$0.80 Retail profit - $.80 ain't anything a profit I'd begrudge the retail establishment.
$0.90 Distribution - See Wal-Mart *is* the distributor.
$1.60 Artists' royalties - Given the information available about industry accounting practices, is anyone else skeptical that the artists are getting this money?
$1.70 Label profit - I'm OK with this.
$2.40 Marketing/promotion - Since this is what a label is really supposed to do, I'm not surprised it's this big a portion, and maybe that's OK.
$2.91 Label overhead - What exactly is supposed to be here other than production costs and everything else on this list? I suspect this is really one of two big issues.
$3.89 Retail overhead - And this is the other one.
Those last two numbers pretty much tell the story of why disintermediation is going to continue to be a strong trend for the music industry. Slash them numbers and you're down *below* Wal-Mart's sale price and certainly competetive with prevailing online retailers. Fail to do it and you're not. Especially if you're acting like you're entitled to it in the meanwhile.
As is blind hatred. Specifically, the level of irrational virtiol targeted against apple on this site in particular is kind of amazing. I don't really understand it,
It's a few things.
(1) Most haters don't get Apple's products -- sometimes because they're not familiar with them, but also often because the product priorities aren't theirs, and they therefore conclude anyone who has different priorities has been duped. Unsurprisingly, people who've been told they've been duped don't respond well, there's a backlash, and self-fulfilling prophecies about rabid fans come into play (see here for longer comment on this point).
(2) PR. What, you don't think there are companies out there who would pay flacks to get out and try to fight the fact that Google and Apple have a better image? I've sure seen a lot of stories like this one lately. Maybe it's because Apple and Google are turning evil, no better than Microsoft! By the way, have you heard suits are back in style?
(3) There are in fact some number of insufferable Apple users out there.
(4) Apple does in fact get it wrong sometimes, and if you're expecting better, it's like when Moz does the wrong thing with a CSS property where IE gets it right, or a friend insults you while an enemy shows respect. Even if it might be rarer, it's extra maddening.
Unless MS is really going to *sell* users on Vista, trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else, among them:
(1) Microsoft Systems shops that have the ability to provide support or
(2) Competition that's open source ("Don't like being moved off your platform when your *vendor* decides it's time, not when you decide it's time? When you have the source, you can maintain or hire someone to maintain it as long as the cost is worth it to you.")
It's a self-fulfilling designation because it's essentially insulting by nature. Tell anybody their enthusiasm for *any* particular object is "rabid" or "irrational" and you're quite likely to get some kind of rise out of it.
Some of the people throwing it around even realize this, of course, although I'm sure quite a few don't.
The plain and simple fact is there are plenty of people who can make significant criticism of flaws in Apple's products without generating that kind of fallout.
But here's a few differences between these people and the hopelessly vexed critic who's destined, knowingly or not, to essentially be a troll on the matter:
(1) The good critics genuinely understand the products. They haven't just tried them, they've really used them, at least enough to understand the strengths and weaknesses.
(2) The good critics are able to separate the product strengths and weaknesses from value judgments about the buyers, with or without judicious use of the ability to imagine consumers who have different product values from their own.
As an example, you can probably find hundreds of conversations on Slashdot about the iPhone. There's at least two classes of critics visible in these discussions, even amongst those that agree that the iPhone would be a better product with 3G and a truly open development ecosystem. One sees that even without these things, the product has other merits that mean it's valuable to people. The other sees these things missing and concludes it has no other merits ("It's just shiny design!" or "It's just a status item!")... or that those who *buy* it are missing their own superior ability to assess merit ("Fanbois!" "Apple Cultists"). And it's usually this later category that is somehow missing the ability to understand how that judgment could possibly lead to cranky responses from those it's leveled at.
"I do have an unhealthy obsession with my Roomba, but it doesn't come close to the religious outrage that descends on my blog whenever / if-ever I say anything that doesn't approach worship of substantially incorrect or trollish about Apple"
Maybe this isn't you, but what *I* see, repeated over and over again, is that a lot of Apple's critics have serious terminal gaps not only in their *information* about Apple products and behavior, but possibly in their fundamental ability to understand them. Then when they inflict their factually incorrect and insight-free rantings on the world, they're amazed that they taste a backlash.
None of this is to say that Apple's products and decisions are beyond criticism. I don't think that way and I have plenty my own criticisms.
But if you're the kind of person who even thinks for a moment that merely saying "anything that doesn't approach worship" is the problem, I'm not going out on a limb to say that you may fall in the idiotic and/or uninformed camp.
It's a fact there are people out there who can and do get away with criticism of Apple. The difference is those people know what they're talking about and know how to express themselves.
The rest of the crowd tries to hide the fact they've been incorrect or insulting by shucking it off on strawmen Apple fanbois.
The fact that this category includes so-called tech journalists is extra maddening.
Javascript lacks interface inheritance, and that's what makes it weak.
Near as I can tell, the single-type/prototype nature of objects in the language sortof moots the need to define interfaces for the interpreter ahead of time. That leaves interface inheritance completely up to the programmer, which means that it's as weak as the programmer's ability to keep that straight.
I think I understand this -- Holub's article is actually the way I was exposed to the quote in the first place. And while Gosling's remark was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I don't think he was entirely kidding.
The problem is that classes tend to encourage type hierarchies and implementation inheritance... and thus the use of extends, which is part of the new JS spec. Especially when combined with standard OO instruction these days -- implementation inheritance is one of first things typically mentioned in your average course or latest book explaining OOP.
The interesting thing is that with dynamic typing and prototype inheritance, half the agility issues Holub mentions in that piece go away.
Q: "If you could do Java over again, what would you change?"
James Gosling: "I'd leave out classes!"
The functional/prototype hybrid in Javascript was a little odd and hard to get used to, but once I did, I've found I like it better than a Class model. Interface/implementation works for me too, but especially in Javascript, I never feel like I really need that fancy keywords to get that done.
There's an awful lot of serious work in the Java community, but I sometimes feel like a lot of *common* practices have evolved because people condensed "best practices" into a formula without disseminating the principles behind them, and it's ended up becoming a lot of busywork. Now it's filtering out to languages like PHP and Javascript that apparently want to grow up to be like Java.
I take some comfort in the fact that there will almost certainly have to be a backward compatibility layer for a long time. And I like the idea of units and constants and namespaces. But I'm not sure this is Javascript anymore, and I'm pretty certain it's not a step forward for the language.
allowing mp3 on the iPod, and then lock you into the formats they want you to like
Near as I can tell, after using iTunes since 2002 and an iPod since 2005, there is no such thing as lock-in on the platform. The only pain I've ever felt was using up machine authorizations on stuff bought from the iTunes store, and I quickly fixed that problem by freely stopping my purchases and freely taking my business somewhere else. Later Apple themselves fixed that problem by offering DRM-free material, which is great, but my buying habits have migrated elsewhere and there's no punishment from Apple.
The iTunes store certainly encourages purchase of a large class of their material in a locked format. But there's no punishment for operating outside of that, and it's really not even particularly difficult to unlock the DRM'd stuff.
Is there something beyond this?
The complaints about his temper were mentioned, but the "making up" part wasn't. And the phrases used to describe him were less along the lines of "quick temper" and more along the lines of "bitter and vindictive", "mentally unstable", and "meds not quite right".
These are not the words of Democratic party operatives. They're the words of former *Republican* senate staff, albeit off-the-record.
The biggest condemnation for me may well have been "refusing to concede a point in the face of overwhelming evidence," something I think we've had a good deal too much of in the White House during the last eight years.
Logic programming languages have no functions, or even a sense of time or order.
It depends.
A Prolog implementation, for example, generally has a well-defined order in which it traverses rules. If you understand it, you can use this to control program flow effectively. And some of the idioms from functional programming transfer as well.
It's kindof fun as an exercise and useful to some extent for small programs. But after the novelty wears off or you have to tackle a project of any size, it wears thin and you realize there's a reason imperative languages exist and you're best off applying both imperative and logical languages where their strengths are an advantage.
So which is it?
It's a full-fledged computing device that Apple's put some annoying restrictions on. Which ones are about making sure the experience with the product is good (ie, that it's first and foremost both a good phone and a good music player), which ones are about keeping the carrier happy, and which ones are motivated by the AntiChrist Lurking Within Steve Jobs(TM) aren't completely clear (though are clearly up for discussion).
It's great to create two ideal categories -- phone and computer -- and I also think it's annoying that the two haven't entirely converged, and that it sometimes seems like Apple is doing some things to deliberately obstruct the progress. But you don't have to be an Apple apologist to understand there's a landscape in between both categories, and that whether or not the iPhone can be said to be furthest along the continuum between the two, it's part of the momentum toward the later.
Ok, I'm willimg to admit I might be mistaken, but I always believed that OpenOffice was a descendent of Star Office which was an old OS/2 app. But since nothing would exist in the computer world without Steve to create it, i'm sure you will find some way to retell the OO.o creation story.
This isn't at all what the GP was trying to do, nor is any reference to Jobs' considerable influence on the computing industry necessarily the product of someone fabricating a Steve-centric cosmology.
At any rate, OpenOffice is descended from Star Office, that's correct, and I don't see anyone saying otherwise. What's being pointed out is that Schwartz's career is essentially a consequence of his cofounding and involvement with Lighthouse Design, and it's arguable that Lighthouse wouldn't have existed in any congruent form without OpenStep... from NeXT, the work of, among others, Steve Jobs.
You could *potentially* argue further that the various incarnations of Sun's Application Development group wouldn't have existed without OpenStep in general (and Lighthouse specifically) to demonstrate the viability of Sun's software as a platform for running applications, but that's a bit of a stretch, pulling together an applications group to compete with Microsoft was the thing to do in the mid-90s, Novell had already done it, McNealy probably didn't need Lighthouse to give him the idea.
Except for the couple million marching morons who buy the shiny handcuffs Steve sells.... Because Apple knows something you obviously don't; Apple will never play in the Enterprise space. Luxury boutique goods are never going to be picked by the green eyeshades types. Kewl industrial design means nothing.
Apple also knows something you don't. Just because your priorities (or my priorities) aren't met in any given device doesn't at all mean that the only selling point is the shiny industrial design.
I'm also disappointed Apple seems to be resisting the compelling (and nearly inevitable) idea that the iPhone (or any smartphone) can be a full-fledged computing device. I'm also frustrated that they're doing things by half-measures and holding people back rather than reprising the role of a company that simply ignites revolutions.
But the fact is, on the merits *alone* that it is an iPod and a cell phone, the iPhone is a successful convergence device. This is to say nothing of the fact that the web experience on it is unexcelled (arguably unmatched, even), that the use experience is superior to the majority of existing phones, and that it is going to have a vibrant market for 3rd party software (*certainly* a more vibrant market than anything the mobile industry's done so far), even if that never includes interpreters, virtual machines, or other browsers.
No, it's not. It's worse. This is akin to Microsoft releasing a version of Windows, let's call it Windows Fist-up-your-ass edition, and then saying "Our EULA states you cannot install Firfox, Opera, or Java," while, at the same time, adding rules to the Win32 API that block out these applications.
If Microsoft did this, you'd be screaming bloody murder.
The important distinction here is that Microsoft used to (and to some extent, still does) own the PC desktop -- so if they did something like this, it would largely kill the market for the given software.
The iPhone? Not so much. As has been pointed out, there are plenty of alternatives.
Because Apple's doing this, it's okay.
Even though I don't think the comparison to Microsoft is apt, I actually disapprove of their actions thoroughly. Apple should know better, they don't try to pull this off with their desktops or they wouldn't have the market they do, and what they don't seem to get yet is that the iPhone *is* a computer.
I still suspect Apple does understand this and that it's the influence from the cell phone carriers (who SO totally do not get this) that's causing the issue. But the longer they draw this out, the less credible I find that idea.
By good, we mean people who have worked on 1-2 games before and have more than 3 years experience and can answer simple questions like "what is a pointer in C++". This isn't a stringent requirement.
Not super stringent, but consider for a moment: if everyone hires at that minimum level, nothing lower, where do members of the talent pool get their first three years of experience?
I don't think this is the biggest problem in the gaming industry, or that it's confined to the gaming industry, but I think it has a lot to do with the problem of the the small talent pool.
Try stripping your requirements down to the simple questions and some code samples and hiring at an entry level. Give better compensation to the ones you want to keep.
If you're someone like Google and you have stricter standards, I could easily see a shortage of good programmers.
They don't really have this problem -- or at least, they seem to mitigate it successfully by providing superior compensation and a great work environment. And they still turn some great people away.
Governments need to relax regulations on locking-in apprentices to their sponsoring employer.
There is a market solution that doesn't involve short-term contract slavery: employers could compete to retain their valued and newly-trained staff.
Some organizations already do this, and succeed in keeping people for a long time. Others seem to never want what they already have: The new guy with the shiny resumé can command more than the solid employee they *know* has reported to work for two years for $10,000 less. So they talk about salary freezes, while they're hiring people for more -- and that's to say nothing of what they're paying the guys in marketing....
Of course, the market seems to let some of both kinds of organizations survive, so maybe the second type is on to something.