This is also the case with IE6. MS promoted IE as the cross platform application front end. Business developed toward a platform that effectively culminated to IE6. At that point there were alternatives, so firms either stuck with the IE6 framework, or went in other directions, which were more cross platform and cross browser cost effective. Those, however, who stay IE6 have to use IE6. The applications I use now work in almost anything.
The primary purpose of Flash is still primarily adverts, either part of a larger site or a dedicated space. Even art installations are moving to more general tools, if for no other reason than Flash tools are hugely expensive.
I wonder if expense is one of the reasons Apple wants to keep Flash off iPhone. Right now the IDE is free and the only expense is $100 a year to apple. If Flash infected iPhone and it became widely used, would we be looking at $1000 just to play?
No. There was no formal notice given to students or their families. The functionality and intended use of the security feature should have been communicated clearly to students and families.
The key was that no one told about the security and that the features could be used to record students without their knowledge.
It is a simple thing to give everyone a blanket statement, as in industry, and as schools tell faculty and staff. Anything done on the computer can be monitored. Emails are not private. Browsing data is not private. The firm or school has a right to monitor and do as need be with the data.
As far the administration not being to look at the kids in their private bedroom, that is hardly the issue. Is is credible that some people did have such ability, and there is no way to know that ability was not used. Again, all this could have been avoided if the family were told the ramifications of the security system. I agree that the security system is of great benefit. I know that some kids take computers and calculators that they are issued and sell them at the pawn shop. This is a fact. Installing security can minimize such losses.
But disclosure is the key. Parents should have the option of putting a piece of tape over the camera, or only allowing the school computer in the family room. If kids know about the security, it can help keep them in line. of course they might just reinstall the OS, but that is a threat in all cases. If the students and parents knew, then this would be a storm in a teacup. Because there was no disclosure, the district basically made a poor decision and is now dealing with it. In the future other districts may learn from the mistake and use security that can be implemented cleanly and with full disclosure.
Like so many transitional businesses, newspapers have to ask what is their core concern. Do they want to collect and write news that will attract customers, or run printing presses and distribution routes.
While book publishers can claim that printing and distribution is not a major cost, newspapers cannot, and online newsreaders cannot subsidize the offline equipment. Given this anything over $100 a year is likely unreasonable. We do not have to a pay a human to deliver. We do not have to pay for a vehicle and gas. We do not have to pay for waste. The cut for the news agent does not have to be nearly as much.
There is an argument for artificially keeping the perceived value high, but there is also a value to having more customers for the advertisers.
On popular topics, Google is only useful as interface to Wikipedia or IMDB or the like. Occasionally a few other links are useful, but most of the time they are "we have more information on widgets" with tons of ads.
On technical topics I just go directly to the place I know, like Wolfram.
Lots of people say the problem with the Mac is that it has no applications. The truth is that the mac and Apple is often is one of the first to get truly revolutionary enabling applications. Think Visicalc. Think Photoshop. Think MacWrite. Think Excel. The iPhone is the same thing.
This is not to say that the PC does not have a greater number of applications, but when one thinks of what is able to be cheaply done on a computer, one thinks of a Visicalc, PhotoShop, page layout, etc.
Hopefully competition will push Flash to become less user hostile. Control of flash cookies is a step forward, but not enough. First, browsing is almost impossible when flash cookies are set to "ask". I think they might be doing this on purpose.
What we make me want less opposed to flash is if the site included an option to not autoplay flash content. True, we can use flashblock, but if flash is truly a tool for the user, and not just a way to deliver advertising, this little tweak should not be such a huge problem.
Blackberry has the corporate market, integrates with Exchange. The Google phones integrate with the million of people who use Google services. The iPhone integrates with the millions of users that use the Apple services.
Where is a MS phone going to fit in? Users are not going to pay for MS services as they do for Apple services. If MS was going to give away online service, they already would. Well, I guess they do but not with the popularity of Google, since such services are ties to the OS, which is counter to what the web is.
No matter how pretty MS makes the phone, it is unclear why anyone would buy it. It could be that MS leaves the corporate market to blackberry, and focuses on consumers. This might work if the sold the phone for significantly less than cost, as they did with the xBox. If they did, they would be the only cell phone provider who does so. If they teamed with cricket and the low end carriers they could demolish the competition. Other than that, I hardly see anyone leaving a phone so they can be locked back to the desktop.
Touchscreens are not yet commodity hardware, and therefore most MS customers are not going to pay for the added benifit. It is like GPUs in the mid 80's. Critical for the GUI interface, but expensive so kit that ran MS Windows did not generally include it. The same goes for touchpads. Most computer that run MS software does not have the top of the line touchpads, so still need multibutton mice to work. Card readers are cheap, touchpads are less so.
Netbooks can be made cheaply from parts that fall off the assembly line, so this is where the future has to lie if MS is going to continue to show a profit, and Gates will continue to get the stock benifits. It would make no sense for him to promote a market in which MS cannot compete.
As discussed when Bush wanted us to go to the moon, the whole space program is a mess and it is unclear what we ought to do. What is clear is that the money that needed to spent 10 years ago on a new human spec launch vehicles was not spent. Certainly when Columbia was lost in 2003 it was time to fully fund what is now called the Constellation program. The year or two delay and lack of funding and focus was irresponsible and has really left the United States with no good option for human space flight.
I would like to see the shuttle operational for as long as possible. I would like to contract some of the ISS work out to private launch concerns. It may be that US astronauts have to go up to the ISS on other crafts. I would like to see more unmanned missions to more planets, and an emphasis on micro satellites that will allow a wider range of persons, down to high school students, in the US if the US is funding it, gain experience with LEO.
What I think I am saying that that space exploration and LEO is no longer the exclusive domain of the privileged few. I really do know how difficult space flight is, and that things never work the way one thinks they will, so I know it is risky. But we have to gain a broader experience. At this point, to some extent, we are just protecting government jobs, not doing useful work.
The most hypocritical things I have seen is Senator Olson, who represents the JSC area, crying because people at NASA are going to lose their jobs. Is that the job of republicans? To save government jobs? If there is no shuttle program, something which as decided under a republican president, they why do we need shuttle controllers? This is like complaining that health care reform is going to cut $500 billion out of medicare, then proposing a bill that would cut $650 billion out of medicare. NASA cannot be a jobs factory. They have to, and have been, doing useful things. If we want to keep the astronaut core up, then keep and expand the ISS, and let other take us up.
Yet calling important meeting by elected officals retard conventions seems to be helping the conservative tea baggers gain ground. What is the difference?
Here is my favorite thing Texas has done in the name of promoting christianity. Adding "under god" to the Texas pledge that all Texas public school children are forced to say every day. Now, I have not problem with a pledge. It is a fetish thing when people want to show allegiance without have to do anything uncomfortable to demonstrate allegiance. I do have an issue with adding the notion of god, because that make it more a religious prayer than a country thing.
Here is the problem. The bible, and jesus, pretty much considered the worst thing one can do it be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is one who does things in a crowd to make others believe he or she has faith. Here is a famous verse of prayer.
Mathew 6:5-6"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."
We also know the verses on giving money to be seen. The idea is that one does these things because they are in our heart, not to gain profit. And we are putting our children in jeopardy when we ask them to do these things we know are wrong, such as acting like hypocrites.
The problem with these nut cases in Texas is they have no faith. No amount of science will sway me from what i feel to be true. No amount of world religions will change my mind what I know to be right. This does not mean I am inflexible, but that flexibility comes with experience, not cult brain washing. And because these people have not faith, how can they build faith in their children. They can't. So they limit their exposure to the world knowing the false faith could never withstand the truths in the world.
In some ways I agree with this. If one is not able to build faith in a child, then ones options are limited. What I disagree with is making all the rest of us suffer. Sure, a parent may have a right to screw up their own child, but that does not mean they have the right to screw up everyone else's. The parent can home school, turn off the TV, but there is no reason that those of us who are responsible should have to suffer because a few are irresponsible. It would be like saying I can't buy a beer because some children weren't taught discipline, or because genetically they can't have beer, and haven't been trained to stay away from it.
I have no problem if publishers want to play the paperback game with ebooks. Put out the hardcover, then put out the eBook. They may eventually even choose not to put out the paperback.
This is publisher choice. The issue is that with a hardback, one is getting a product that more valuable, in the eyes of many people, than a paperback. Even now I will seek out hardbacks for used books. The question is what is the value of an eBook over a paperback? Why should one sell for $15 and the other sell for $10. I would much rather have ebooks 6 months later for less than $10.
We will see what Apple does with the $15 book. If there is added content, such as DVD, then maybe consumers will go for it. Clips of interviews, even, perish the thought, professional reading of the books could make it work $20 or even $25. Then, later, a stripped down version can be produced
This is kind of a freaky argument. Sites need funding, so if a site provides a useful service and is not directly funded by end user payments, then it can do whatever it needs to generate advertising revenue.
Of course it is true. Without funding the site would not exist, so users should be happy to do endure whatever is necessary to support the advertising model, or be willing to cover costs and profits among themselves. In reality advertising is a heavily regulated system with many silly rules. For instance, during the superbowl I notice that the women in the adverts were wearing clothes. I am sure the advertisers and the majority of the viewers would have preferred otherwise.
Pop ups, and related 'browser hostage' ads, are more annoying. They are security risks. Furthermore, as the NYT fiasco a few months ago, interstitial and pop ups can destroy the creditability of a site and the advertising in general relatively quickly.
I realize that part of the argument is that 'proxies serve a holy purpose, and therefore are above the normal rules we place on society". This is kind of like saying that Baptists have a higher duty and can traffic children across national lines. I do not disagree on any particular point except to say no matter what higher power one believe you are serving, or whatever higher values ones believes one is serving, there are civilized rules on needs to follow. One can't say one is saving the world by allowing kids to play online video games at school, or circumvent their parents rules about not hooking up with 25 year old guys who will rape them, and then say these higher causes justfies something as repulsive, to most people, as pop up ads.
I agree. MS has always revalidated my version of windows after I have to do a reinstall. No biggie. Just like it was no biggie for me to ask my parents if I could borrow the car each and every time I needed it. Just like it is no biggie for to ask the line supervisor everytime I need to go the bathroom.
WGA may serve the purpose of keeping unlicensed copies of MS Windows off the average machine. I question what use that is, since such unlicensed copies only increase perceived market share of MS, and directly increases their power. At a corporate level, WGA increase the real and opportunity costs. Instead of getting work done, people are fretting over WGA.
Apple consumer gear is optional. But so is any music player, mobile phone, or portable computer. The vast majority of us could live life quite well without any of these, and it is just our rationalizations that make us think they are necessities. Sometimes these rationalizations are quite good. In a few cases, they are good enough to make the products look like necessities.
Take the phone. Almost no one needs 100% communication. When I had a phone, I used it only some. The smartphones are nicer because they allow me to do much more at a recurring cost that is not much more. The smartphone one chooses often depends on the services behind it. If one is running data on MS Exchange, then this sets the choice of smartphone. If one has all the data on google, then this might be another choice. If one has all the data on Apple, then that is another choice. All of these are optional, but when one makes a choice on service, the phone is an optional extension. If one wants the functionality, one phone is no more or less optional than the other.
The computer is the same way. We are talking about choice of working styles. For those of us that have a choice, and I acknowledge that most people do not have a choice and are locked into MS derived products, Apple stuff sometimes is a good choice. Sure, because we have the freedom to make the choice, some might call it optional. We are choosing an option that many do not, like choosing not to live of fast food. Certainly freshly prepared nutritious food is optional, and an expensive option, when compared to fast food, but one would hardly call it not serious. It is simply one option of many. Just because most choose not to take advantage of the option does not make one thing "optional" and everything else "required".
Only in the same way that men wish they were in a porn video. Meaning that many do wish this, but would not necessarily really take part if given the opportunity. There is certain subset that think porn videos are reflective of a realistic sex, just like there is a subset of women that think the romantic comedy is realistic. Then there are those that think drinking and watching women, a la superbowl commercials, are the top. Just like there are some that think titanic is the top, because she got to have a fling, and then he died so she never had to deal with the repercussions.
Mostly I see people looking for companionship, reliability, and a personal appropriate level of sex. I heard something about surprises. Everyone like those.
I must admit however, that sometimes I think Earth Girls are Easy is the most realistic depiction of what women want.
To me the math is simple, unless T-Mobile and Android is engaging in false advertising. The price is $179 which seems high for an HTC smart phone. Monthly is about $85. Two year cost is around $2200.
On the other hand one can buy the phone and the same two year cost will be about the same. This would be the reasonable thing to do as you would not incur the wrath of the Google termination fee.
I don't even know why anyone would by a Nexus 1, since one can get a no contract phone from T-Mobile for much less and have the same fee.
I wonder if Google is setting such high prices to keep the cell companies happy, or if they are actually so inefficient that they can't market the phone for less.
Precisely, why can't Adobe let us decide. I can disable Java, Javascript, image animation. I can block pop ups. Why not Flash? And I am not even talking about disabling flash. I am only talking about click to play so when a site I visit has 20 flash entities, I can choose not to load the 10 I don't need.
I have said this a hundred times and I will say this again. IMHO, Flash on iPhone requires that there be an option not to load Flash by default. Not only because too many Flash entities can crash the browser, not only because Flash can have inappropriate content for an area of us, not only because flash can create excessive load on the network, but because users should have a choice.
Adobe, respect your end users and give them a choice. But then, you do, because those of us who browse are not your end users, we are your play things.
Do you really want to award a patent to someone that files so many patents that they cannot take the time to send a form right side up? Furthermore, what does it say about the person who files the patent. It is not really that hard to do. I can imagine the patents we are talking about. A patent for a electronic machine to beep when spurious user input is detected. I would say let's make this even more difficult and require a hand written cover sheet.
Then there is the cost. Someone has to correct these mistakes. Sure they are mostly funded by patent fees, but they also have a budget of 2 billion dollars, any deficit covered by the taxpayers.
It is also the hubris of the developers. More than once I, and those that I know, have isolated issues with products only to be ignored by the developers. In one case, that of a website that used a third party for data, I was able to see that the URL was malformed. It was a very subtle error that most of the time would not manifest, and would unlikely appear in normal testing. I informed the developer of issue and the fix and was basically told I was an idiot.
I don't blame the developer. I have been there and there is no way to know who is the quack and who is the knowledgeable amateur or pro. It does take time and resources. In some cases I have been in the situation where I was given the resources to chase down every issue, and that was fun. In other cases, unless something was about to blow up, we had to ignore it.
With Toyota this seems to be a subtle but persistent issue. I, personally, have had control cable issues on every Toyota I have owned, be is a stuck gas pedal, a stretched clutch cable, or sticky brake. I suspect Toyotas have fundamental, albeit extremely minor, design problems in that area that have been amplified by an electronics issue.
To reinterpret, the proprietary, nonstandard, internet breaking MS engine may soon be a minority operator leaving developers to concentrate on the majority of browsers that do comply with the civilized standards. This may be very bad news for MS, if, combined with HTML 5, it allows application front ends (read google docs, games, tax software) that is independent of an OS. Google is embracing this OS independence. Apple is embracing this OS independence(OS X for iPhone, OS X for Mac). What is MS going to do, who knows.
All this person did on his Apple ][e was write software. You know what? The mac comes with a sophisticated IDE for free! Any one can buy the computer and write software. It is not like writing software for the ][e because we know how to write that software. We are beyond shape tables. I thank the heavens that we are past the bastardized language called Pascal. PL is more popular.
When I was in grade 7-12 school, we had mainframes to learn how to program as well as the Apple. We did Fortran and C and Basic. On the Apple we burn EEPROMs for our embedded computer.On my Apple and peripherals I hacked the hardware and soldered in new functionality. In college we used every machine under the Sun to control experiments and analyze data. Such things taught me the difference between GPC and embedded devices and taught me that software is not all there is to computers.
There is nothing I did back then that I cannot do on the Mac. About the only thing that is missing is PLD software. The only difference is that software is much more sophisticated, so the learning curve is steeper, but the process is simpler.
Comparing an Apple][ to a iPod or iPhone is also silly. The later are embedded devices. It is like complaining one can't software hack a thermostat. Given no mention of Forth in the article(BTW forth was built into Macs until the Intel Mac) I suspect the writer could not hack it anyway.
If the writers wants to teach kids about tinkering, then most hardware is simply too complex anyway. There are too many levels of abstractions between the hardware and User. I suggest a subscription to circuit celler. In this issue we have a teletext based tv interface.
A used paperback is $2. I don't see any reason to pay more than that.
The only real issue I have is that $10 for an ebook is unattainably low. Distribution for the book is pennies. As the parent say, no printing or distribution costs. No pulping. A book sells or it does not.
I can see one drawback. Nowhere to go if a book does not sell. If all ebooks are 9.99, then is there a mechanism to make the book $5 if it is not selling? At least that way the publisher might get cover some costs.
As TFA says, MacMillian does not want to sell books for $10, and now does not have to. They can sell through Apple for $15. This is like if MS had been able to develop a superior audio player, and used it's marketing might to get consumers to pay $1.30 per track. Of course MS did not do this, but Apple does for new tracks.
The question is will people pay $15 for an ebook. I won't for fiction. The Kindle app is on the iphone, so it is on the ipad. I can continue to buy kindle books even if I buy an ipad. The benifit is if a Kindle evolves into a great machine, I can buy on and no lost my investment in books. OTOH, like iTunes Movies, if i buy an iBook, it is useless on anything buy an Apple. Even with the multimedia included, as a rule I don'tthink iBooks are going to of great value, even if the iPad is.
Some say that the iPad is just a portable TV. True, if they want to sell it, selling it as a TV is the best way. Most people are pretty illiterate so the market for a book type device is limited. Ergo, if the machine will not run flash, it is of no use to the vast majority of the population.
That does not mean that for people who are looking for a portable reading device, and do not want the flash crap defecating on the all the web pages, will not want the device. In any case, I think we will have a netflix app in the near future, which will be fine we me.
People complain that macs are more closed than MS Windows. The hardware is, in a way, but it has very fast, efficient, and accessible bus. In terms of hardware I find it more open because I do not need a driver for every device. I can hook an HP printer to it without installing a driver that takes over my computer and crashes it. I can hook any standard still or video camera without having to install a driver that may or may not be safe. I can't even hook up a USB drive to a MS Windows machine without installing proprietary spyware.
The software is reasonably open. Unlike MS Windows, anyone can get real IDE from Apple. They supply everything. They have never, in my experience, hidden critical system hooks. We may complain that they bury stuff in interfaces, but anyone can, in pricipal, develop any software for the Mac, iPhone or Touch.
I am tolerant of things like phones and music players to be more closed. After all, these are not GPCs but embedded devices. I need them to work all the time and working is more important than flexibility. I do not want to spend an hour on my iPod getting rid of a conflict. It is not a $2000 machine that I wish to work on, or pay someone to work on.
The article mentioned the first PCs. Everyone says how open the first PCs were. This, of course, is hogwash. Sure they might have been more open than Big Iron, but that is not saying much. Also, Apple was more open than anyone else, but then most people chose to buy the more closed IBM or Compaq, even though the Apple had Visicalc. Go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
This is also the case with IE6. MS promoted IE as the cross platform application front end. Business developed toward a platform that effectively culminated to IE6. At that point there were alternatives, so firms either stuck with the IE6 framework, or went in other directions, which were more cross platform and cross browser cost effective. Those, however, who stay IE6 have to use IE6. The applications I use now work in almost anything.
The primary purpose of Flash is still primarily adverts, either part of a larger site or a dedicated space. Even art installations are moving to more general tools, if for no other reason than Flash tools are hugely expensive.
I wonder if expense is one of the reasons Apple wants to keep Flash off iPhone. Right now the IDE is free and the only expense is $100 a year to apple. If Flash infected iPhone and it became widely used, would we be looking at $1000 just to play?
The key was that no one told about the security and that the features could be used to record students without their knowledge.
It is a simple thing to give everyone a blanket statement, as in industry, and as schools tell faculty and staff. Anything done on the computer can be monitored. Emails are not private. Browsing data is not private. The firm or school has a right to monitor and do as need be with the data.
As far the administration not being to look at the kids in their private bedroom, that is hardly the issue. Is is credible that some people did have such ability, and there is no way to know that ability was not used. Again, all this could have been avoided if the family were told the ramifications of the security system. I agree that the security system is of great benefit. I know that some kids take computers and calculators that they are issued and sell them at the pawn shop. This is a fact. Installing security can minimize such losses.
But disclosure is the key. Parents should have the option of putting a piece of tape over the camera, or only allowing the school computer in the family room. If kids know about the security, it can help keep them in line. of course they might just reinstall the OS, but that is a threat in all cases. If the students and parents knew, then this would be a storm in a teacup. Because there was no disclosure, the district basically made a poor decision and is now dealing with it. In the future other districts may learn from the mistake and use security that can be implemented cleanly and with full disclosure.
While book publishers can claim that printing and distribution is not a major cost, newspapers cannot, and online newsreaders cannot subsidize the offline equipment. Given this anything over $100 a year is likely unreasonable. We do not have to a pay a human to deliver. We do not have to pay for a vehicle and gas. We do not have to pay for waste. The cut for the news agent does not have to be nearly as much.
There is an argument for artificially keeping the perceived value high, but there is also a value to having more customers for the advertisers.
On technical topics I just go directly to the place I know, like Wolfram.
This is not to say that the PC does not have a greater number of applications, but when one thinks of what is able to be cheaply done on a computer, one thinks of a Visicalc, PhotoShop, page layout, etc.
What we make me want less opposed to flash is if the site included an option to not autoplay flash content. True, we can use flashblock, but if flash is truly a tool for the user, and not just a way to deliver advertising, this little tweak should not be such a huge problem.
Where is a MS phone going to fit in? Users are not going to pay for MS services as they do for Apple services. If MS was going to give away online service, they already would. Well, I guess they do but not with the popularity of Google, since such services are ties to the OS, which is counter to what the web is.
No matter how pretty MS makes the phone, it is unclear why anyone would buy it. It could be that MS leaves the corporate market to blackberry, and focuses on consumers. This might work if the sold the phone for significantly less than cost, as they did with the xBox. If they did, they would be the only cell phone provider who does so. If they teamed with cricket and the low end carriers they could demolish the competition. Other than that, I hardly see anyone leaving a phone so they can be locked back to the desktop.
Netbooks can be made cheaply from parts that fall off the assembly line, so this is where the future has to lie if MS is going to continue to show a profit, and Gates will continue to get the stock benifits. It would make no sense for him to promote a market in which MS cannot compete.
I would like to see the shuttle operational for as long as possible. I would like to contract some of the ISS work out to private launch concerns. It may be that US astronauts have to go up to the ISS on other crafts. I would like to see more unmanned missions to more planets, and an emphasis on micro satellites that will allow a wider range of persons, down to high school students, in the US if the US is funding it, gain experience with LEO.
What I think I am saying that that space exploration and LEO is no longer the exclusive domain of the privileged few. I really do know how difficult space flight is, and that things never work the way one thinks they will, so I know it is risky. But we have to gain a broader experience. At this point, to some extent, we are just protecting government jobs, not doing useful work.
The most hypocritical things I have seen is Senator Olson, who represents the JSC area, crying because people at NASA are going to lose their jobs. Is that the job of republicans? To save government jobs? If there is no shuttle program, something which as decided under a republican president, they why do we need shuttle controllers? This is like complaining that health care reform is going to cut $500 billion out of medicare, then proposing a bill that would cut $650 billion out of medicare. NASA cannot be a jobs factory. They have to, and have been, doing useful things. If we want to keep the astronaut core up, then keep and expand the ISS, and let other take us up.
Yet calling important meeting by elected officals retard conventions seems to be helping the conservative tea baggers gain ground. What is the difference?
Here is the problem. The bible, and jesus, pretty much considered the worst thing one can do it be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is one who does things in a crowd to make others believe he or she has faith. Here is a famous verse of prayer.
Mathew 6:5-6"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."
We also know the verses on giving money to be seen. The idea is that one does these things because they are in our heart, not to gain profit. And we are putting our children in jeopardy when we ask them to do these things we know are wrong, such as acting like hypocrites.
The problem with these nut cases in Texas is they have no faith. No amount of science will sway me from what i feel to be true. No amount of world religions will change my mind what I know to be right. This does not mean I am inflexible, but that flexibility comes with experience, not cult brain washing. And because these people have not faith, how can they build faith in their children. They can't. So they limit their exposure to the world knowing the false faith could never withstand the truths in the world.
In some ways I agree with this. If one is not able to build faith in a child, then ones options are limited. What I disagree with is making all the rest of us suffer. Sure, a parent may have a right to screw up their own child, but that does not mean they have the right to screw up everyone else's. The parent can home school, turn off the TV, but there is no reason that those of us who are responsible should have to suffer because a few are irresponsible. It would be like saying I can't buy a beer because some children weren't taught discipline, or because genetically they can't have beer, and haven't been trained to stay away from it.
This is publisher choice. The issue is that with a hardback, one is getting a product that more valuable, in the eyes of many people, than a paperback. Even now I will seek out hardbacks for used books. The question is what is the value of an eBook over a paperback? Why should one sell for $15 and the other sell for $10. I would much rather have ebooks 6 months later for less than $10.
We will see what Apple does with the $15 book. If there is added content, such as DVD, then maybe consumers will go for it. Clips of interviews, even, perish the thought, professional reading of the books could make it work $20 or even $25. Then, later, a stripped down version can be produced
Of course it is true. Without funding the site would not exist, so users should be happy to do endure whatever is necessary to support the advertising model, or be willing to cover costs and profits among themselves. In reality advertising is a heavily regulated system with many silly rules. For instance, during the superbowl I notice that the women in the adverts were wearing clothes. I am sure the advertisers and the majority of the viewers would have preferred otherwise.
Pop ups, and related 'browser hostage' ads, are more annoying. They are security risks. Furthermore, as the NYT fiasco a few months ago, interstitial and pop ups can destroy the creditability of a site and the advertising in general relatively quickly.
I realize that part of the argument is that 'proxies serve a holy purpose, and therefore are above the normal rules we place on society". This is kind of like saying that Baptists have a higher duty and can traffic children across national lines. I do not disagree on any particular point except to say no matter what higher power one believe you are serving, or whatever higher values ones believes one is serving, there are civilized rules on needs to follow. One can't say one is saving the world by allowing kids to play online video games at school, or circumvent their parents rules about not hooking up with 25 year old guys who will rape them, and then say these higher causes justfies something as repulsive, to most people, as pop up ads.
WGA may serve the purpose of keeping unlicensed copies of MS Windows off the average machine. I question what use that is, since such unlicensed copies only increase perceived market share of MS, and directly increases their power. At a corporate level, WGA increase the real and opportunity costs. Instead of getting work done, people are fretting over WGA.
Take the phone. Almost no one needs 100% communication. When I had a phone, I used it only some. The smartphones are nicer because they allow me to do much more at a recurring cost that is not much more. The smartphone one chooses often depends on the services behind it. If one is running data on MS Exchange, then this sets the choice of smartphone. If one has all the data on google, then this might be another choice. If one has all the data on Apple, then that is another choice. All of these are optional, but when one makes a choice on service, the phone is an optional extension. If one wants the functionality, one phone is no more or less optional than the other.
The computer is the same way. We are talking about choice of working styles. For those of us that have a choice, and I acknowledge that most people do not have a choice and are locked into MS derived products, Apple stuff sometimes is a good choice. Sure, because we have the freedom to make the choice, some might call it optional. We are choosing an option that many do not, like choosing not to live of fast food. Certainly freshly prepared nutritious food is optional, and an expensive option, when compared to fast food, but one would hardly call it not serious. It is simply one option of many. Just because most choose not to take advantage of the option does not make one thing "optional" and everything else "required".
Mostly I see people looking for companionship, reliability, and a personal appropriate level of sex. I heard something about surprises. Everyone like those.
I must admit however, that sometimes I think Earth Girls are Easy is the most realistic depiction of what women want.
On the other hand one can buy the phone and the same two year cost will be about the same. This would be the reasonable thing to do as you would not incur the wrath of the Google termination fee.
I don't even know why anyone would by a Nexus 1, since one can get a no contract phone from T-Mobile for much less and have the same fee.
I wonder if Google is setting such high prices to keep the cell companies happy, or if they are actually so inefficient that they can't market the phone for less.
I have said this a hundred times and I will say this again. IMHO, Flash on iPhone requires that there be an option not to load Flash by default. Not only because too many Flash entities can crash the browser, not only because Flash can have inappropriate content for an area of us, not only because flash can create excessive load on the network, but because users should have a choice.
Adobe, respect your end users and give them a choice. But then, you do, because those of us who browse are not your end users, we are your play things.
Then there is the cost. Someone has to correct these mistakes. Sure they are mostly funded by patent fees, but they also have a budget of 2 billion dollars, any deficit covered by the taxpayers.
I don't blame the developer. I have been there and there is no way to know who is the quack and who is the knowledgeable amateur or pro. It does take time and resources. In some cases I have been in the situation where I was given the resources to chase down every issue, and that was fun. In other cases, unless something was about to blow up, we had to ignore it.
With Toyota this seems to be a subtle but persistent issue. I, personally, have had control cable issues on every Toyota I have owned, be is a stuck gas pedal, a stretched clutch cable, or sticky brake. I suspect Toyotas have fundamental, albeit extremely minor, design problems in that area that have been amplified by an electronics issue.
To reinterpret, the proprietary, nonstandard, internet breaking MS engine may soon be a minority operator leaving developers to concentrate on the majority of browsers that do comply with the civilized standards. This may be very bad news for MS, if, combined with HTML 5, it allows application front ends (read google docs, games, tax software) that is independent of an OS. Google is embracing this OS independence. Apple is embracing this OS independence(OS X for iPhone, OS X for Mac). What is MS going to do, who knows.
When I was in grade 7-12 school, we had mainframes to learn how to program as well as the Apple. We did Fortran and C and Basic. On the Apple we burn EEPROMs for our embedded computer.On my Apple and peripherals I hacked the hardware and soldered in new functionality. In college we used every machine under the Sun to control experiments and analyze data. Such things taught me the difference between GPC and embedded devices and taught me that software is not all there is to computers.
There is nothing I did back then that I cannot do on the Mac. About the only thing that is missing is PLD software. The only difference is that software is much more sophisticated, so the learning curve is steeper, but the process is simpler.
Comparing an Apple][ to a iPod or iPhone is also silly. The later are embedded devices. It is like complaining one can't software hack a thermostat. Given no mention of Forth in the article(BTW forth was built into Macs until the Intel Mac) I suspect the writer could not hack it anyway.
If the writers wants to teach kids about tinkering, then most hardware is simply too complex anyway. There are too many levels of abstractions between the hardware and User. I suggest a subscription to circuit celler. In this issue we have a teletext based tv interface.
The only real issue I have is that $10 for an ebook is unattainably low. Distribution for the book is pennies. As the parent say, no printing or distribution costs. No pulping. A book sells or it does not.
I can see one drawback. Nowhere to go if a book does not sell. If all ebooks are 9.99, then is there a mechanism to make the book $5 if it is not selling? At least that way the publisher might get cover some costs.
As TFA says, MacMillian does not want to sell books for $10, and now does not have to. They can sell through Apple for $15. This is like if MS had been able to develop a superior audio player, and used it's marketing might to get consumers to pay $1.30 per track. Of course MS did not do this, but Apple does for new tracks.
The question is will people pay $15 for an ebook. I won't for fiction. The Kindle app is on the iphone, so it is on the ipad. I can continue to buy kindle books even if I buy an ipad. The benifit is if a Kindle evolves into a great machine, I can buy on and no lost my investment in books. OTOH, like iTunes Movies, if i buy an iBook, it is useless on anything buy an Apple. Even with the multimedia included, as a rule I don'tthink iBooks are going to of great value, even if the iPad is.
That does not mean that for people who are looking for a portable reading device, and do not want the flash crap defecating on the all the web pages, will not want the device. In any case, I think we will have a netflix app in the near future, which will be fine we me.
The software is reasonably open. Unlike MS Windows, anyone can get real IDE from Apple. They supply everything. They have never, in my experience, hidden critical system hooks. We may complain that they bury stuff in interfaces, but anyone can, in pricipal, develop any software for the Mac, iPhone or Touch.
I am tolerant of things like phones and music players to be more closed. After all, these are not GPCs but embedded devices. I need them to work all the time and working is more important than flexibility. I do not want to spend an hour on my iPod getting rid of a conflict. It is not a $2000 machine that I wish to work on, or pay someone to work on.
The article mentioned the first PCs. Everyone says how open the first PCs were. This, of course, is hogwash. Sure they might have been more open than Big Iron, but that is not saying much. Also, Apple was more open than anyone else, but then most people chose to buy the more closed IBM or Compaq, even though the Apple had Visicalc. Go figure.