simply faster, smaller, and more modular (read: well written) than the competition.
Leaving aside that jQuery has some substantial claims to being fast (fastest in IE6) and small (26k packed, vs MooTools 40+k packed)...
If the prevailing philosophy amongst the mootools team is in fact "more modular" == "well written" then that explains a good deal. Take a look at the download page:
Notice anything? There's a pretty sweet app that knows which parts of MooTools are dependent on the other parts of MooTools.
But note there's also no apparent way to download all the code -- something someone unfamiliar with the library might want to do in order to (a) read the code as part of the process of familiarizing themselves and (b) have everything present while you're still developing the familiarity required to *know* exactly what you do and don't need.
How is it that these people are smart enough to build something as cool as the sweet dependency app but not smart enough to let someone just download everything?
Well, it turns out there is a way, which they have noted over in the FAQ for the forum:
Think about this for a moment. This is a *Frequently Asked Question* -- how to download the whole thing, which means it's obviously something people want to do. There's an answer in the FAQ that would have as easy to add, in code, to the download page, as it would have been to post to the FAQ -- possibly easier. So why is there still no "download all" link on the page?
Because the MooTools team is more interested in having their philosophy of modularity impressed on you than giving you convenient access to the code.
Not a good sign. I investigated further anyway, but found pretty much what I expected after that: in many places (enough to be annoying) the library values certain somewhat arbitrary conceptions of correctness over ease of invocation for the developer.
Prototype is peppered with all kinds of "we can't stand programming in anything other than Ruby"isms that are almost as annoying, but when it comes down to it, it's simply easier to use. And jQuery stands up *very* well in that regard.
I don't begrudge the MooTools developers their choices -- they're the ones doing it, they should write the library that pleases them. And I imagine there are users with the same mindset as the developers who will love it. But MooTools doesn't live up to the broad claims like those the parent poster made here (faster, smaller, "simply" better).
What so wrong about it? If my car is pumping out noxious fumes then the state takes away my license.
Right. They don't seize your car... unless they repeatedly catch you continuing to use it on public roads without bothering to certify that you're running a vehicle that's clean by the local standards.
The "right thing", if there is one, is probably more like that.
So? If we do in fact know where they are physically located, local police should go and confiscate them.
Even though I think this idea is basically wrong, I'm intrigued by the potential consequences.
There's a lot of these computers out there, which is the whole point. If every one was subject to seizure, computer security would immediately become part of popular conversation. Helluva social storm, probably.
Frankly it pisses me off just as much when someone like you maintains they should just be able to shoot whoever the hell enters their house without bothering to verify their target first, as when the cops shoot an innocent person.
I don't think I said anything like that. I'm mostly pointing out a bit of absurdity in the statement "it's usually not all that difficult to tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion." At the very least, anybody who can *really* make that statement from enough experience to assert it with real confidence is already in a pretty absurd situation and has my sympathy. The odds seemed low that you're one of them, but hey, if I'm wrong, accept my apology and condolences and feel free to share.
I do think it's wrong when an amped-up cop thinks he sees something that's not there or otherwise gets caught up in a conflict and shoots someone who isn't armed (or otherwise doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of deadly force), and I think there should be more accountability for that, but I also think with the tension and threats inherent in the situation I can understand it. Doesn't make it right or desirable, but it's understandable.
Likewise, I think it's probably not right in the strictest sense for somebody to wildly shoot at anything moving in their house at night without determining who/what it is. But I think I can understand it -- I startle pretty easily from familiar people waking me up in the morning. So it's not at all hard to imagine that however easy might be to tell a SWAT team from random gangsters with good lighting and time to observe, if you're suddenly, loudly, and violently awakened and it's dark and you don't know what the !@$% is happening, you *might* react quickly with whatever you have available, including firearms.
The police and other authorities ought to understand this, and *better* than most given that many of them have been, as you point out, in a pretty similar situation. The idea that anyone should expect (let alone rely on) my hypothetical protagonist who's become calm, collected, and prepared for people busting down his door is the other absurdity.
It's usually not all that difficult to tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion.
Yeah! Well, it took me a while, but I've gotten to the point where I don't even have to wake up to tell the difference!
Just last week I woke up to find my already splintered and duct-taped door kicked in yet again, and I'd slept right through it! I'm pretty it was the police based on what they took and what they didn't take.
See, I've gotten to the point where I keep two packages handy whenever I go to bed: one with ID, a personal statement, some donuts, coffee, milk, etc., and the other with a few valuables and convincing amount of cash I round up before I go to bed. I give the appropriate one to whoever breaks in that night. I used to mess up *all* the time -- and while, sure, the thugs appreciated the donuts, they'd always want the valuables, too, even though they'd get nicer about it if the donuts were good. And you could see the police really had their feelings hurt when they thought I was trying to buy them off, and nobody wants that.
But I've gotten it right the last 15 times -- even last week, when I woke up in the morning to find out I'd slept through it all. The donuts were gone and the valuables were still there! I'm looking forward to the time when this will all be sorted out and I can just buy myself another door and stop spending all this money on donuts, duct tape, and miscellaneous valuables, but in the meanwhile, I'm glad I've adapted and learned to cope before doing anything really stupid like overreacting when someone breaks in.
I look at it this way: if the RIAA is getting $150,000 per song from some people (or even some smaller amount, like $9000), then that surely means that there's a lot of other people who can then safely copy/download for free without having to worry about the copyright holders being fairly compensated.
The only downside is that I'm not sure how I'm going to find enough time in the day to do enough downloading to equal things out.
I'd hardly argue that the current state of IP law is ideal, and perhaps no IP law would be an improvement (though there's a good deal of middle ground available that would likely be better), but it's very unlikely that it's primarily IP law that has kept competitors from developing something like the iPhone.
Consider that it isn't really multitouch patents or specific gestures that are at the heart of what makes the iPhone a better experience. It's really just a few things: it's responsive, it has a decent web browser, its UI is well-organized, and its visual design is clean and professional. The touchscreen is nice, but not necessary, multitouch certainly isn't necessary, you could have a phone that would look entirely different using rather conventional unencumbered mechanisms of interaction, and it would still work fine, as long as it followed those rules, which nobody has a corner on.
Also consider that most of the other phone manufacturers have been doing research and development in relevant arenas for tech-world aeons longer than Apple has. Even if a Nokia, Motorola, or Ericsson were for some reason to tread close to the recognizable and patent-protected elements of the iPhone as a product, it seems quite unlikely Apple would be interested in a serious fight with them. Each company very likely has a significant portfolio of mobile-related patents. A cross-licensing agreement would be a more likely outcome than any kind of threat that would keep a competing product from the market.
Finally, the same mobile developers have had an ample window of opportunity to get a jump on Apple and deliver a product that meets the basic criteria I outlined well before Apple introduced the specific technologies they used to implement the experience. Even with a head start stretching back to a decade and beyond in some cases, they didn't. One can hardly argue it was Apple's intellectual property which kept them from doing so.
So: (1) The most important things that make the iPhone an interesting product are not subject to IP constraints (2) The other manufacturers have a significant IP war chest they could cross leverage if they really wanted to use each other's IP (3) The other manufacturers could have staked out Apple's territory long before they did
Given these things, it's hard to pin the state of things on IP law.
I think the better explanation is simply that there are few people in the right places in industry who are product driven in the same people in similar places at Apple are. Other things take priority for them responsive devices, information services in the device, thoughtful interface, and high-quality visual design. Perhaps they're not wrong -- Apple's competitors have successful businesses, and their products may simply be good enough or worse-is-better. Or perhaps over time the market will favor products like the iPhone, but it's important to remember, IP law or no IP law, markets are not magic. They're more quickly adaptable than some other institutions, but they have their own inertia and often take time ("the long run", as noted economists have referred to it) to make changes and arrive at optimal states.
From this, one can conclude that European schedules are more likely to maximize individual productivity (more work per hour), while American schedules are more likely to maximize organizational productivity (more work per person).
I'm not sure I understand the later concept -- how can organizational productivity be maximized if individual productivity is compromised?
This is really pretty interesting, though. It might also speak to what I've always thought was a paradox regarding European unemployment. Theoretically, because of the increased vacation time and less demanding schedules, an organization might need to hire more workers to keep the number of man-hours the same. But if the workers are actually more productive per hour of work with a lighter schedule, an organization might neither need more workers or more worker time....
There's already a few companies who've realized that social promotion is a significant under/untapped advertising/marketing opportunity, and it's going to get bigger. It may not always be MySpace and Facebook where it happens, but the companies that build tools and gain expertise in it are going to see some real success.
I think it took a media guy to understand this. MySpace is actually a "social channel" of sorts... a kind of new entertainment media all its own. Like Fox or NBC it may not always be on top, but for the moment, it has value and that value can be shaped, invested in, increased or decreased... and used to exert or peddle influence.
How right Mr Murdoch is and how well he manages this remains to be seen, and I think it's possible MySpace was overvalued. But I don't think he made a fundamental mistake.
But "vision" does. Shipley touches on this before he gets lost in some other details.
A lot of commentators seemed to have missed this part of the article:
I know Steve Jobs; he's actually amazingly like my old business partner Mike Matas. They both love closed systems, for a simple reason -- they both know they're smarter than anyone else on the planet, and they don't need anyone else mucking up their systems.
A kinder way of phrasing this point of view might have been to say that Jobs probably thinks as much like an artist as a product developer: he's driven by an internal desire to realize his vision for the product, to give life to his aesthetics of function, form, and interaction, and he doesn't want to compromise with people whose aesthetics he doesn't know and trust, at least insofar as he doesn't have to in order to give the product life at all.
This is a *very* distinct issue from greed. Both of these motives can lead to closed systems, and both of them can even be in play at once -- and either way, it ends up being somewhat antithetical to the hacker ethic, where a closed system is at a minimum a problem waiting to be solved (and more often as a wrong waiting to be righted.:)
But it's important to see the difference between the two, because the kind of control regime that coalesces around a vision-driven aesthetic is different, and susceptible to catalysts for change that a profit-driven regime might not be.
a minority of fanatics who believe that iPhone costed every single dollar of those $600 they paid.
I'm not sure those people are wrong.
I've seen lots of stuff that focuses on the cost of the parts. These people seem to act like it was inevitable that if you dumped enough of the specified parts into a vat together that they'd eventually inevitably produce an iPhone.
I've only seen speculation about costs for manufacturing/assembly, software development, and hardware R&D. Probably because only Apple really knows. But I'm sure those costs are there. Perhaps others that aren't immediately obvious.
This isn't to say there wasn't a good margin built into the iPhone on top of that. However true it actually is that Apple actually is a damn smart company that is in fact driven as much by a desire to produce quality products as the desire to reap profits, it and its shareholders also probably desires to reap profits. They probably knew they could command the price of early adopters and many would pay it.
It's also possible that high price helped them recover development costs, and with that done, they're free to drop the price.
It's also possible the high price likely keeps it in the hands of people who want one so badly they're willing to overlook some Rev A problems.
It's also possible the price itself was intended as a quality/caché signal.
And don't you presume to answer that question for me
Unless, of course, the long chain of physical and chemical processes has produced the kind of person emminently suited for answering questions of choice for other people.:)
We let the private industry in with it's self-serving interests and God forbid something goes wrong. Just like on Three Mile Island, private industry finds it in their interest to sweep problems under the rug to the detriment of the public
I definitely agree that privatization isn't the answer to every question, and that self-oversight inevitably trips over conflicts of interest.
However, I'm not sure this problem would go away if the reactor were public. A government with power spread across diverse actors like the U.S. will probably tend to be more open than others, but we're all aware governments have the "cover up" reflex too, and you end up with the question of how to work out effective oversight.
Kids are kids. Just because a kid is a genius doesn't make him anything other than a kid. You're expecting these kids to not only be smart but also extremely motivation and fully knowledgeable about what is possible.
Fully? Hardly. Just enough to find things that engage them. Though I definitely agree high quality mentoring (not only for bright students, but in general) that can help make students aware of possibilities is something we could use more of that would be generally valuable
You know what they'll figure out on their own? That it takes 10 minutes to get the password of every student in the school. Why? Because it's about the most interesting thing they can do during school hours.
I'd argue where that's true, it's real education at its finest for everyone involved.:)
Though this certainly wasn't the case in my high school. I spent a while looking for a way to brute force the password hashing scheme before I realized this was probably futile with the limited computing power. Now, the kids who went looking for privilege escalation bugs, *those* were the ones that really learned something. But not in 10 minutes, that's for sure.
Of course any attempt to claim they already know this will be returned with a "too bad, you need to stay in this class since we don't care how boring it is" response from the school.
My observation is that this is sometimes true, but not enough to work as a complete generalization. Often it's absolutely true that teachers or schools don't have anything else to do with these kids -- but it seems it's often true that teachers in this position were happy to let kids who'd demonstrated they knew the material work quietly on something else which interested them. And especially at a secondary level, many teachers absolutely will let kids who demonstrate precocious understanding move beyond the typical sequence.
And no the school doesn't care how good the child is or how gifted they are but simply sends out the same form reply anytime someone even dares to ask to do something different.
I agree there are some people who work like that, and I think you can beat the genuine desire to actually help people out of educators just like you can beat the desire to learn out of kids. But a genuine desire to help out is the reason a lot of educators are there in the first place.
... on whether or not the gifted student is smart enough to figure out how to use resources to direct their own learning.
I'm one of the first people to admit there are problems with many public schools. I went through an education to be a secondary math teacher. I stopped after student teaching because I realized I didn't want to deal with a lot of the issues.
But when I look back over my public education -- in Utah, where per pupil spending traditionally lags pretty far behind many other places -- I have to admit it was pretty damn good overall. When they realized I was breezing through all the reading primers in first grade, they made sure I knew how to use the school library and pointed me at a few particular topics. I got after school access to some of the first computers the schools had. My parents helped, taking me to the local library and enrolling me in community classes, but the staff was helpful. That was elementary school. My high school had a full quiver of AP classes and the teachers were, by and large, good. And they had a program where advanced students could also take courses from the public community college. All in a small-government, relatively low income and not large tax-base state.
I daresay I didn't get near as much out of my public education as I could have if I were more focused and ambitious. One guy took all of the computer science classes, took advantage of after school lab time to learn everything he could about the unix minicomputer we had and C, and got a job not long out of high school working as a sysadmin for a salary that a lot of college grads don't get. Couple of people I knew used some pretty advanced language skills to work as au pairs or English teachers in foreign countries. Me, I learned to play nethack in the lab after school.:)
The point? I think most of the smart kids -- especially if they have any kind of decent direction from parents, or a counselor, or some kind of mentor -- can take advantage of the existing system just fine, and learn to find resources outside of it to further their own goals.
The ones with developmental disabilities, by contrast, are often the one with issues that are actually keeping them from getting even a fraction out of the system. That's why a disproportionate amount of resources are directed there.
None of this is to say there shouldn't be some changes in how things are done. I'm just a tad skeptical of sweeping statements like "no one can get ahead." My observation is that's simply false.
I used ClarisWorks 3/4 for years under System 7 and OS 8/9. Vector & raster graphics, word processing, page layout, spreadsheet, database -- all there in a package that made creating documents integrating all of those elements reasonably easy. Its capabilities were more limited than other software products in each area, but generally adequate for most desktop needs at the time. A computer *should* have had something exactly like that 10 years ago, especially since that's what most people bought computers for.
Now I do think AppleWorks has definitely been showing its age for a while, and with Apple's new apps up and coming I'm not at all surpised they killed it. But I don't think the ascendancy of the new apps is the whole story. It may be that Apple's realized those things aren't necessarily what people buy machines for by and large anymore. For the average user, the computer is now more of a client/communication tool. The iWork suite plays to that focus by giving Apple users clients for handling/working with common documents.
Sure, but so are scandal sheets. You don't rely on them for accuracy or reliable information.
Not a brilliant comparison, since Wikipedia, by and large, is in fact useful for a large number of knowledge domains.
What if this example, Wikipedia, has a particularly deleterious organizational culture, and an extremely rampant and calcified editorial bias? The problem is not the existence of an organizational culture or editorial bias, but to the degree that it is existent.
I'm skeptical because the results I see don't suggest this is a crippling problem. I'm familiar with some of the problematic stories about the organization, but the bottom line is that nearly everything I've been in a position to verify has turned out to be defensbile at worst, and usually factual or accurate.
It has, in fact, become a generally useful source of information. It's useful as a starting point for real research. It is, in short, not at all a bad encyclopedia.
It's influenced by its own organizational culture and editorial bias. Welcome to the story of every publication on the planet.
A PC manufacturer can choose the default installations and settings on your machine, and thus dramatically influence adoption.
The question arises, however -- do manufacturers end up having reasons for defaults/settings that may not have much to do with choice and benefits to the consumer?
I recently bought one to replace a phone I inadvertantly smashed. My observation is that the "automatic" volume control doesn't work, there's very limited means to control it manually, and the fused-faceplate design of the menu buttons means you're constantly pushing one of the buttons you don't mean to. The chrome is also wearing off rather quickly for a very recent purchase. Couldn't recommend it, wouldn't buy one again unless I was desperate.
Sure, develop a tiered network. Charge a premium for the higher speeds and QoS. Let your customers and peers decided if they want to pay you to use it.
Just don't try to shake down the customers of your peers. You have a problem with traffic coming through a peer, you work it out with them.
The guy that was paid by the US government to create a free browser, Mosaic, turns around and starts a company to sell a browser based on one that the US govt was giving away for free
While I'm sure some code and ideas came with Andreeson, I'm given to understand the actual codebases for Navigator and Mosaic were rather different (and indeed, if anybody's browser is based on Mosaic, you could argue it's IE, as it's a direct descendant of the Mosaic codebase under a deal between MS and U of Illinois).
then complains that browsers should not be given away for free.
I don't think that was Netscape's complaint. What they seemed to be worked up about was Microsoft *preventing* Netscape from being given away for free. In particular, in the OEM channels, and where they could, by making deals with ISPs. Basically, the automatic distribution channels.
Netscape may well have shot itself in the foot even if none of that had happened, but it certainly didn't help at all.
Slashdot Mirror
simply faster, smaller, and more modular (read: well written) than the competition.
Leaving aside that jQuery has some substantial claims to being fast (fastest in IE6) and small (26k packed, vs MooTools 40+k packed)...
If the prevailing philosophy amongst the mootools team is in fact "more modular" == "well written" then that explains a good deal. Take a look at the download page:
http://mootools.net/download
Notice anything? There's a pretty sweet app that knows which parts of MooTools are dependent on the other parts of MooTools.
But note there's also no apparent way to download all the code -- something someone unfamiliar with the library might want to do in order to (a) read the code as part of the process of familiarizing themselves and (b) have everything present while you're still developing the familiarity required to *know* exactly what you do and don't need.
How is it that these people are smart enough to build something as cool as the sweet dependency app but not smart enough to let someone just download everything?
Well, it turns out there is a way, which they have noted over in the FAQ for the forum:
http://forum.mootools.net/viewtopic.php?id=1964#post-9398
Think about this for a moment. This is a *Frequently Asked Question* -- how to download the whole thing, which means it's obviously something people want to do. There's an answer in the FAQ that would have as easy to add, in code, to the download page, as it would have been to post to the FAQ -- possibly easier. So why is there still no "download all" link on the page?
Because the MooTools team is more interested in having their philosophy of modularity impressed on you than giving you convenient access to the code.
Not a good sign. I investigated further anyway, but found pretty much what I expected after that: in many places (enough to be annoying) the library values certain somewhat arbitrary conceptions of correctness over ease of invocation for the developer.
Prototype is peppered with all kinds of "we can't stand programming in anything other than Ruby"isms that are almost as annoying, but when it comes down to it, it's simply easier to use. And jQuery stands up *very* well in that regard.
I don't begrudge the MooTools developers their choices -- they're the ones doing it, they should write the library that pleases them. And I imagine there are users with the same mindset as the developers who will love it. But MooTools doesn't live up to the broad claims like those the parent poster made here (faster, smaller, "simply" better).
What so wrong about it? If my car is pumping out noxious fumes then the state takes away my license.
Right. They don't seize your car... unless they repeatedly catch you continuing to use it on public roads without bothering to certify that you're running a vehicle that's clean by the local standards.
The "right thing", if there is one, is probably more like that.
So? If we do in fact know where they are physically located, local police should go and confiscate them.
Even though I think this idea is basically wrong, I'm intrigued by the potential consequences.
There's a lot of these computers out there, which is the whole point. If every one was subject to seizure, computer security would immediately become part of popular conversation. Helluva social storm, probably.
Frankly it pisses me off just as much when someone like you maintains they should just be able to shoot whoever the hell enters their house without bothering to verify their target first, as when the cops shoot an innocent person.
I don't think I said anything like that. I'm mostly pointing out a bit of absurdity in the statement "it's usually not all that difficult to tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion." At the very least, anybody who can *really* make that statement from enough experience to assert it with real confidence is already in a pretty absurd situation and has my sympathy. The odds seemed low that you're one of them, but hey, if I'm wrong, accept my apology and condolences and feel free to share.
I do think it's wrong when an amped-up cop thinks he sees something that's not there or otherwise gets caught up in a conflict and shoots someone who isn't armed (or otherwise doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of deadly force), and I think there should be more accountability for that, but I also think with the tension and threats inherent in the situation I can understand it. Doesn't make it right or desirable, but it's understandable.
Likewise, I think it's probably not right in the strictest sense for somebody to wildly shoot at anything moving in their house at night without determining who/what it is. But I think I can understand it -- I startle pretty easily from familiar people waking me up in the morning. So it's not at all hard to imagine that however easy might be to tell a SWAT team from random gangsters with good lighting and time to observe, if you're suddenly, loudly, and violently awakened and it's dark and you don't know what the !@$% is happening, you *might* react quickly with whatever you have available, including firearms.
The police and other authorities ought to understand this, and *better* than most given that many of them have been, as you point out, in a pretty similar situation. The idea that anyone should expect (let alone rely on) my hypothetical protagonist who's become calm, collected, and prepared for people busting down his door is the other absurdity.
It's usually not all that difficult to tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion.
Yeah! Well, it took me a while, but I've gotten to the point where I don't even have to wake up to tell the difference!
Just last week I woke up to find my already splintered and duct-taped door kicked in yet again, and I'd slept right through it! I'm pretty it was the police based on what they took and what they didn't take.
See, I've gotten to the point where I keep two packages handy whenever I go to bed: one with ID, a personal statement, some donuts, coffee, milk, etc., and the other with a few valuables and convincing amount of cash I round up before I go to bed. I give the appropriate one to whoever breaks in that night. I used to mess up *all* the time -- and while, sure, the thugs appreciated the donuts, they'd always want the valuables, too, even though they'd get nicer about it if the donuts were good. And you could see the police really had their feelings hurt when they thought I was trying to buy them off, and nobody wants that.
But I've gotten it right the last 15 times -- even last week, when I woke up in the morning to find out I'd slept through it all. The donuts were gone and the valuables were still there! I'm looking forward to the time when this will all be sorted out and I can just buy myself another door and stop spending all this money on donuts, duct tape, and miscellaneous valuables, but in the meanwhile, I'm glad I've adapted and learned to cope before doing anything really stupid like overreacting when someone breaks in.
I look at it this way: if the RIAA is getting $150,000 per song from some people (or even some smaller amount, like $9000), then that surely means that there's a lot of other people who can then safely copy/download for free without having to worry about the copyright holders being fairly compensated.
The only downside is that I'm not sure how I'm going to find enough time in the day to do enough downloading to equal things out.
I'd hardly argue that the current state of IP law is ideal, and perhaps no IP law would be an improvement (though there's a good deal of middle ground available that would likely be better), but it's very unlikely that it's primarily IP law that has kept competitors from developing something like the iPhone.
Consider that it isn't really multitouch patents or specific gestures that are at the heart of what makes the iPhone a better experience. It's really just a few things: it's responsive, it has a decent web browser, its UI is well-organized, and its visual design is clean and professional. The touchscreen is nice, but not necessary, multitouch certainly isn't necessary, you could have a phone that would look entirely different using rather conventional unencumbered mechanisms of interaction, and it would still work fine, as long as it followed those rules, which nobody has a corner on.
Also consider that most of the other phone manufacturers have been doing research and development in relevant arenas for tech-world aeons longer than Apple has. Even if a Nokia, Motorola, or Ericsson were for some reason to tread close to the recognizable and patent-protected elements of the iPhone as a product, it seems quite unlikely Apple would be interested in a serious fight with them. Each company very likely has a significant portfolio of mobile-related patents. A cross-licensing agreement would be a more likely outcome than any kind of threat that would keep a competing product from the market.
Finally, the same mobile developers have had an ample window of opportunity to get a jump on Apple and deliver a product that meets the basic criteria I outlined well before Apple introduced the specific technologies they used to implement the experience. Even with a head start stretching back to a decade and beyond in some cases, they didn't. One can hardly argue it was Apple's intellectual property which kept them from doing so.
So:
(1) The most important things that make the iPhone an interesting product are not subject to IP constraints
(2) The other manufacturers have a significant IP war chest they could cross leverage if they really wanted to use each other's IP
(3) The other manufacturers could have staked out Apple's territory long before they did
Given these things, it's hard to pin the state of things on IP law.
I think the better explanation is simply that there are few people in the right places in industry who are product driven in the same people in similar places at Apple are. Other things take priority for them responsive devices, information services in the device, thoughtful interface, and high-quality visual design. Perhaps they're not wrong -- Apple's competitors have successful businesses, and their products may simply be good enough or worse-is-better. Or perhaps over time the market will favor products like the iPhone, but it's important to remember, IP law or no IP law, markets are not magic. They're more quickly adaptable than some other institutions, but they have their own inertia and often take time ("the long run", as noted economists have referred to it) to make changes and arrive at optimal states.
From this, one can conclude that European schedules are more likely to maximize individual productivity (more work per hour), while American schedules are more likely to maximize organizational productivity (more work per person).
I'm not sure I understand the later concept -- how can organizational productivity be maximized if individual productivity is compromised?
This is really pretty interesting, though. It might also speak to what I've always thought was a paradox regarding European unemployment. Theoretically, because of the increased vacation time and less demanding schedules, an organization might need to hire more workers to keep the number of man-hours the same. But if the workers are actually more productive per hour of work with a lighter schedule, an organization might neither need more workers or more worker time....
There's already a few companies who've realized that social promotion is a significant under/untapped advertising/marketing opportunity, and it's going to get bigger. It may not always be MySpace and Facebook where it happens, but the companies that build tools and gain expertise in it are going to see some real success.
I think it took a media guy to understand this. MySpace is actually a "social channel" of sorts... a kind of new entertainment media all its own. Like Fox or NBC it may not always be on top, but for the moment, it has value and that value can be shaped, invested in, increased or decreased... and used to exert or peddle influence.
How right Mr Murdoch is and how well he manages this remains to be seen, and I think it's possible MySpace was overvalued. But I don't think he made a fundamental mistake.
A lot of commentators seemed to have missed this part of the article:
A kinder way of phrasing this point of view might have been to say that Jobs probably thinks as much like an artist as a product developer: he's driven by an internal desire to realize his vision for the product, to give life to his aesthetics of function, form, and interaction, and he doesn't want to compromise with people whose aesthetics he doesn't know and trust, at least insofar as he doesn't have to in order to give the product life at all.
This is a *very* distinct issue from greed. Both of these motives can lead to closed systems, and both of them can even be in play at once -- and either way, it ends up being somewhat antithetical to the hacker ethic, where a closed system is at a minimum a problem waiting to be solved (and more often as a wrong waiting to be righted.
But it's important to see the difference between the two, because the kind of control regime that coalesces around a vision-driven aesthetic is different, and susceptible to catalysts for change that a profit-driven regime might not be.
a minority of fanatics who believe that iPhone costed every single dollar of those $600 they paid.
I'm not sure those people are wrong.
I've seen lots of stuff that focuses on the cost of the parts. These people seem to act like it was inevitable that if you dumped enough of the specified parts into a vat together that they'd eventually inevitably produce an iPhone.
I've only seen speculation about costs for manufacturing/assembly, software development, and hardware R&D. Probably because only Apple really knows. But I'm sure those costs are there. Perhaps others that aren't immediately obvious.
This isn't to say there wasn't a good margin built into the iPhone on top of that. However true it actually is that Apple actually is a damn smart company that is in fact driven as much by a desire to produce quality products as the desire to reap profits, it and its shareholders also probably desires to reap profits. They probably knew they could command the price of early adopters and many would pay it.
It's also possible that high price helped them recover development costs, and with that done, they're free to drop the price.
It's also possible the high price likely keeps it in the hands of people who want one so badly they're willing to overlook some Rev A problems.
It's also possible the price itself was intended as a quality/caché signal.
And don't you presume to answer that question for me
:)
Unless, of course, the long chain of physical and chemical processes has produced the kind of person emminently suited for answering questions of choice for other people.
We let the private industry in with it's self-serving interests and God forbid something goes wrong. Just like on Three Mile Island, private industry finds it in their interest to sweep problems under the rug to the detriment of the public
I definitely agree that privatization isn't the answer to every question, and that self-oversight inevitably trips over conflicts of interest.
However, I'm not sure this problem would go away if the reactor were public. A government with power spread across diverse actors like the U.S. will probably tend to be more open than others, but we're all aware governments have the "cover up" reflex too, and you end up with the question of how to work out effective oversight.
Kids are kids. Just because a kid is a genius doesn't make him anything other than a kid. You're expecting these kids to not only be smart but also extremely motivation and fully knowledgeable about what is possible.
:)
Fully? Hardly. Just enough to find things that engage them. Though I definitely agree high quality mentoring (not only for bright students, but in general) that can help make students aware of possibilities is something we could use more of that would be generally valuable
You know what they'll figure out on their own? That it takes 10 minutes to get the password of every student in the school. Why? Because it's about the most interesting thing they can do during school hours.
I'd argue where that's true, it's real education at its finest for everyone involved.
Though this certainly wasn't the case in my high school. I spent a while looking for a way to brute force the password hashing scheme before I realized this was probably futile with the limited computing power. Now, the kids who went looking for privilege escalation bugs, *those* were the ones that really learned something. But not in 10 minutes, that's for sure.
Of course any attempt to claim they already know this will be returned with a "too bad, you need to stay in this class since we don't care how boring it is" response from the school.
My observation is that this is sometimes true, but not enough to work as a complete generalization. Often it's absolutely true that teachers or schools don't have anything else to do with these kids -- but it seems it's often true that teachers in this position were happy to let kids who'd demonstrated they knew the material work quietly on something else which interested them. And especially at a secondary level, many teachers absolutely will let kids who demonstrate precocious understanding move beyond the typical sequence.
And no the school doesn't care how good the child is or how gifted they are but simply sends out the same form reply anytime someone even dares to ask to do something different.
I agree there are some people who work like that, and I think you can beat the genuine desire to actually help people out of educators just like you can beat the desire to learn out of kids. But a genuine desire to help out is the reason a lot of educators are there in the first place.
... on whether or not the gifted student is smart enough to figure out how to use resources to direct their own learning.
:)
I'm one of the first people to admit there are problems with many public schools. I went through an education to be a secondary math teacher. I stopped after student teaching because I realized I didn't want to deal with a lot of the issues.
But when I look back over my public education -- in Utah, where per pupil spending traditionally lags pretty far behind many other places -- I have to admit it was pretty damn good overall. When they realized I was breezing through all the reading primers in first grade, they made sure I knew how to use the school library and pointed me at a few particular topics. I got after school access to some of the first computers the schools had. My parents helped, taking me to the local library and enrolling me in community classes, but the staff was helpful. That was elementary school. My high school had a full quiver of AP classes and the teachers were, by and large, good. And they had a program where advanced students could also take courses from the public community college. All in a small-government, relatively low income and not large tax-base state.
I daresay I didn't get near as much out of my public education as I could have if I were more focused and ambitious. One guy took all of the computer science classes, took advantage of after school lab time to learn everything he could about the unix minicomputer we had and C, and got a job not long out of high school working as a sysadmin for a salary that a lot of college grads don't get. Couple of people I knew used some pretty advanced language skills to work as au pairs or English teachers in foreign countries. Me, I learned to play nethack in the lab after school.
The point? I think most of the smart kids -- especially if they have any kind of decent direction from parents, or a counselor, or some kind of mentor -- can take advantage of the existing system just fine, and learn to find resources outside of it to further their own goals.
The ones with developmental disabilities, by contrast, are often the one with issues that are actually keeping them from getting even a fraction out of the system. That's why a disproportionate amount of resources are directed there.
None of this is to say there shouldn't be some changes in how things are done. I'm just a tad skeptical of sweeping statements like "no one can get ahead." My observation is that's simply false.
I used ClarisWorks 3/4 for years under System 7 and OS 8/9. Vector & raster graphics, word processing, page layout, spreadsheet, database -- all there in a package that made creating documents integrating all of those elements reasonably easy. Its capabilities were more limited than other software products in each area, but generally adequate for most desktop needs at the time. A computer *should* have had something exactly like that 10 years ago, especially since that's what most people bought computers for.
Now I do think AppleWorks has definitely been showing its age for a while, and with Apple's new apps up and coming I'm not at all surpised they killed it. But I don't think the ascendancy of the new apps is the whole story. It may be that Apple's realized those things aren't necessarily what people buy machines for by and large anymore. For the average user, the computer is now more of a client/communication tool. The iWork suite plays to that focus by giving Apple users clients for handling/working with common documents.
Sure, but so are scandal sheets. You don't rely on them for accuracy or reliable information.
Not a brilliant comparison, since Wikipedia, by and large, is in fact useful for a large number of knowledge domains.
What if this example, Wikipedia, has a particularly deleterious organizational culture, and an extremely rampant and calcified editorial bias? The problem is not the existence of an organizational culture or editorial bias, but to the degree that it is existent.
I'm skeptical because the results I see don't suggest this is a crippling problem. I'm familiar with some of the problematic stories about the organization, but the bottom line is that nearly everything I've been in a position to verify has turned out to be defensbile at worst, and usually factual or accurate.
By what standard?
It has, in fact, become a generally useful source of information. It's useful as a starting point for real research. It is, in short, not at all a bad encyclopedia.
It's influenced by its own organizational culture and editorial bias. Welcome to the story of every publication on the planet.
If ever there were a time to bring it back...
A PC manufacturer can choose the default installations and settings on your machine, and thus dramatically influence adoption.
The question arises, however -- do manufacturers end up having reasons for defaults/settings that may not have much to do with choice and benefits to the consumer?
I think since it's only been a matter of weeks, it's safe to say I've got whatever they're selling right now.
I recently bought one to replace a phone I inadvertantly smashed. My observation is that the "automatic" volume control doesn't work, there's very limited means to control it manually, and the fused-faceplate design of the menu buttons means you're constantly pushing one of the buttons you don't mean to. The chrome is also wearing off rather quickly for a very recent purchase. Couldn't recommend it, wouldn't buy one again unless I was desperate.
"Semantic Web" is right up there with old buzzwords like "Push technology" and "Voice over IP".
The semantic web has been in use since somewhere between 1996 and 1998, since Google relies on the semanticity of the HTML hyperlink syntax.
Sure, develop a tiered network. Charge a premium for the higher speeds and QoS. Let your customers and peers decided if they want to pay you to use it.
Just don't try to shake down the customers of your peers. You have a problem with traffic coming through a peer, you work it out with them.
The guy that was paid by the US government to create a free browser, Mosaic, turns around and starts a company to sell a browser based on one that the US govt was giving away for free
While I'm sure some code and ideas came with Andreeson, I'm given to understand the actual codebases for Navigator and Mosaic were rather different (and indeed, if anybody's browser is based on Mosaic, you could argue it's IE, as it's a direct descendant of the Mosaic codebase under a deal between MS and U of Illinois).
then complains that browsers should not be given away for free.
I don't think that was Netscape's complaint. What they seemed to be worked up about was Microsoft *preventing* Netscape from being given away for free. In particular, in the OEM channels, and where they could, by making deals with ISPs. Basically, the automatic distribution channels.
Netscape may well have shot itself in the foot even if none of that had happened, but it certainly didn't help at all.