Games are a safe way to learn to interact with the world. Most of the question of when and which games a child should play are really a question of who can I teach my child to interact with the world in which I, as a parent, wish they would. So, some parents are OK with boys playing with guns and girls playing with pots and pans, or boys playing football and girls dressing like Paris Hiton, and some are not. Some want every minutes of every day to be filled with healthy competition and others are obsessed with analytical skills.
It seems to me that the best thing to do is supply a kid with a variety of activities that are consistent with the way the parent wishes to rear the child. Books that age appropriate and teach the values of the parent. Physical toys that are age appropriate and expose the child to the norms that are expected of the parent.
Video games are no different. if the child does not have the hand coordination, the game will be useless. if the child does not understand the strategy, same thing. If the game depends on teamwork, and the child is still playing along instead of playing with, the game will not be useful. In the end, however, functioning in this world does depend on a high competence interacting with computers, so learning to interact sooner rather than later is probably a good thing.
OTOH, I notice that kids have such a myopic view of computers, as a device to consume games and prefab content from internet, that some of then have a very hard time treating the computer as a creative device. It is nice that they can pick up the technical aspects of the computer, but the overwhelming default use is as a television. I must say I miss the days when all I had was a bunch of sticks, or at most a bunch of Legos, with no pre-formulated expectations of what to do with them, and could just while the afternoon creating whatever came into my scary mind.
The statement is remarkable because it speaks to Mr. Gates sheer lack of history, innovation, or originality. What he is saying is what every robber baron, King, petty crook, and command economy enthusiast has said. That certain people are just better with money, they proof that they are bette with money through battle, and these people have the responsibility to acquire the money and then direct it appropriate social needs. For instance, J. Paul Getty saw no reason the robber barons say no reason to pay workers as they would just waste the money. It was better for him to keep the money so he could choose the social programs that were of merit. Sounds like communism. Many believe the this philosophy led to the great depression. We can see us going down the same path.
Here is the problem. As capital accumulates, the tendency is for it continue to accumulate. Even though some of it will seep out, most of it will tend to stagnant. We see this pattern throughout history, for instance the number of castles that royal families tend to accumulate. We see it in the modern world in developing countries where capital is present, but would be entrepreneurs cannot get a hold of it. Therefore the entrepreneur has no hope. I have literally seen small scale factories half built because there was no capital to buy the needed building supplies. Now that would not happen in the US. In spite of certain parties best efforts to turn the country into a command economy, we still can mostly get capital. For the past several years, that capital has come from Asia, and if there is any hope for the future, we must redistribute capital so that it will be more fully available to all entrepreneurs and social projects, not just those that in favor of an oligarchy.
And this is where the statements of Mr. Gates seem to be quite hypocritical. One of the best ways to avoid the long term formations of the dreaded lazy aristocracy, an aristocracy that the US fought a war to vanquish, is the inheritance tax. His father is father, junior is not. This tends to indicate that Mr. Gates is not in fact a supporter of capitalism, but in fact a supporter of feudalism, where the manor controls what the serfs are allowed to consume, believe, and earn.
First, not liking an idea just because it is a Bush idea is not such a bad thing. The idea to start a war sounded good at the time, but now has grown the deficit to an astronomical percentage of GDP, and has left us with little room to wiggle out of a depression. On another idea of he and his friends, you might want to ask the good people Arlington if the 135 million dollar tax funded toy was really worth it. It was worth it for Bush as it earned him nearly 15 million dollars with almost no investment(FYI major legue baseball is played in a field that cost only $190 million dollars, in 1990 dollars.
But lets leave the fact that Bush waste money at the speed of light. There are real reasons to wonder if the moon is the best place to settle. the primary issue is that getting things off earth is very expensive, and we are the realm of throw away rockets. One way to curb this expense is have reusable vehicles in LEO, and only worry about getting people to LEO. The parts for these vehicles could be launched as cargo, which is much cheaper than launching everything at human safety values.
It is much better for us to be patient and develop LEO as a transit point. The fanciful idea of the moon as a vacation spot is like flying cars. I am sure that all this is real in the fairy tale mind of our president, but in the real world, where we do not have rich parent to make sugar daddy deals for us, we have to make real concessions and real sacrifices.
Why limit this to filesharing? The only reason that this causes a problem is because it discriminates against other equally vicious crimes. Let's just put a general clause in the student loan and other funding bills that requires colleges to remove funding if colleges do not go to all measures to prevent the illegal activities of the students.
For instance, no one under 21 is supposed to drink. Most students at colleges are under 21, so clearly colleges should do more to make sure that alcohol is not available to the majority of the students.
I would also certainly think the software distributors would want the same protections, and representatives like the BSA has a zero tolerance policy. If one piece of pirated software is found on one computer on the campus, revoke all the funding.
i also know from pretty good sources that our college campuses are swarming with stolen calculators. Underage kids steal them, and then sell to college kids for half price. It is hard to prosecute the college kids for receiving stolen property, btu easy enough to revoke funding if the school does not put into place a program to teach the kids that stealing is wrong. Because, obviously, the problem is not that the temptation of cheap calcultors, but that they students were never taught right from wrong.
Not only branding, but in all honesty, price. While Apple does not compete on the entry level models, it competes hard on these high end models. For instance, the Compaq nc6400 is a very compact and full featured business machine. Last year when I looked at the price, it was about 3-500 more than a macbook pro. The question is are you going to pay more for a machine that is not an Apple?
I suspect this machine will be the same thing. Will they be able to sell it for less than $2000? Sure, with rebates, instant discounts, and other trickery I am sure the price will be lower than a comparable Apple, but that is another reason why Apple is preferable. They do not jack up the price just to offer a sale.
And I don't know what kind of primitive lifestyle people are living now. Wired Ethernet? Sure sometimes you need it to download those special entertainment file, and some people do actually transfer that amount of data, but for the vast majority of users, other than the reliability issue, wired ethernet is so Y2K.
I suspect that almost no machine is used 100% during the work day. I would suspect that most machines would be better off set to automatically sleep after a period of inactivity rather than leaving it on all day, turning it off at night, and then turning it back on the next day.
The idea of turning off a machine is an old and out of date idea. Power management build into machines is now quite good. Another consideration is that commercial machines, at least, hit a central server on startup, and if everyone turns on the machine at 8:00, that can be quite a number of hits. Just everyone hitting the email server at once is a pain. Then there is the issue of updates, indexing and the like.
I can see how turning off some machines might be a significant power saving off the sleep option. I have, for instance, notice that my laptop PC will drain the batteries if left unused for a week or so, while my powermac will not. This indicates that the PC draws significant power when asleep, and is in fact a power hog. But, if machines are designed to energy star standards, I do not see how turning them off every night would save significant amounts of power.
A game or toy is wonderful thing. It does not matter if it not of perfect quality, if the uptime is bad, or if actually works for any useful purpose. This allows new technology to be tested in a safe environment. For example, the iPod is toy. Though expensive, it is not a critical device, and if it does not work, no real money will likely be lost. If it is critical, like a watch, many can buy two, and if one breaks, no data or time is lost. Otherwise, if the battery fails, nothing huge is usually lost.
We saw this toy issue with the iPhone. Phones have become critical tools, and the idea that such a tool is not reliable is scary to some people. In the iphone case, the battery will likely last long enough, but it requires a store visit, at least, to replace a battery. That down time pushes it to the toy category.
Now the macbook air. Clearly lack of upgradable memory and swappable battery gave way to a small size. Everyone is saying how small it is. But even without the slant, it would still be small. And without the slant maybe it could have a removable battery, an option to go up to 4 gigs of memory, and maybe even a fireport.
Clearly the machine was designed to be a testing platform, a toy so to speak, rather than a serious machine. This is probably why there was no backlash against the leaks. The macbook air exists to test the technology and market. It is not the successor to PowerBook 12" that many of us wanted. I believe most of the complaints stem for this. If I want a tiny machine to carry around, even if I am willing to pay $2K, Apple sells nothing I can buy. It is a sad day when Apple does not sell a high end machine to meet high end fashion needs.
Excuse me for asking, but isn't OO.org a lot of java, and open source. Wouldn't it be possible, at the corporate level, to do quite a bit of customization, more than possible for mere humans on MS Office.
I mean if the customizations are kept at a high enough level so not to conflict with updates, then it shouldn't be much different from the stability given by VBA. Do companies do such customization already? Does this make more sense than purchasing MS Visual Studio and learning to develop on it?
If Apple were supporting products the way they used to, i.e. 3-5 day turn around, basically assuming the customer is not trying to screw them, and honoring the original warrenty, not just applecare, then the lack of a removable battery would not kill the deal.
However, given my experience trying to get a battery replaced on my iPod, I suspect that instead of replacing the battery under warranty they will waste a couple days of the customers time and them say that it is not a warranty repair.
The thing that kills this is the slant, and I am not sure why Apple did this. Even without the slant, they still have been about 20% smaller than the 12" Powerbook, and we might have added, what, a kilogram or so? If it would have meant a user replaceable battery and a firewire port, it would have been worth it.
The lack of a firewire port make me wonder if this is a pro or consumer product. The price is pro, but the features is a consumer machine. OTOH, this may be just another indication that Apple is dropping firewire, which is sad as there are advantages.
I also wonder how good a price of $1000 is for a 64GB solid state drive. Typically, Apple sells memory at a 200-300% markup over average maket price. The SSD, along with the fast processor, is why the full configured machine is well over $3000.
Overall, I like the machine. It projection is a little bigge than the 12", 2" in one dimension, but I guess 13" screens are in. Nothing we can do about that. If 2 gigs are the most it can handle, that could be a problem as well.
Ultimately, the question is which market it is for. If it is an expensive consumer machine, with consumer features, it is too expensive. If it is like the Powerbook 12", with some compromises, but still solid, it looks like a good deal.
That is what I would say, but I would go one step further. The point that most analysts and pundit miss is that, like the Windows desktop monopoly, users want thing to be cheap and easy. They have a MS Windows machine at home because that is what they learned in school and hove at work, and they get most software for free.
In the same way, most people have an iPod, most people have iTunes, and anything else is going to require extra effort, especially for those users that have Macs. I know the reply to that this represents few users, but these few users tend to spend money. Even if Amazon and Netflix did work with Apple, I would be hesitant to install any third party software. There are plenty of cross platform methods to stream video that are already out there, and adding another one just seems like adding more security issues.
Ultimately the issue is going to be the DRM. Many people happily paid $10 for an hour of music that they knew they could play on multiple devices, even on standard CD players. It seems to me that far fewer people are paying $10 for 90 minutes movies. The only reason I can think of is that the DRM is less forgiving. As far as rentals, why bother with $4 for 16 hours. One can buy many movies for less than $10, and rental at some places is still $1-2 overnight, and the pirates are free to rip and keep.
Public or not, a college education is a privilege. Students choose to attend. Perhaps only a third of those 25 and older have a college degree. If we remove those student that get in through legacy or graft or because the university needs to support to support a multi-million dollar coaching salary, perhaps only one out five persons has a 4 year college degree or higher.
A university must honor the choice of the student to gain a higher education by providing a conducive environment. In this way college is different from high school. In most high high schools one has free speech ad infinitum. A student can yell out in the classroom, curse the principle, and generally make sure the he or she is the center of attention. Short of a felony, the state still has to educate. The university on the other hand is not so comprehensive, and have the responsibility to genuinely educate, not just babysit. I wonder how many students would see free speech as a justification for a student to rant about the unfairness of school policy during a calculus exam. It is lucky for those of us who wanted an education that the university did not confuse rights with privileges, and therefore I was able to experience an education. As a matter of fact my high spool did not make such confusions either, which meant I was actually somewhat ready for college, unlike the vast majority of graduates today.
Given that college is a choice, so it success in college. A student can choose to get an education or waste the opportunity. There are many ways a student can lose the money and credit. The student could spend all his or her time blogging,nerve study, and fail the class. The student could bomb a final and turn a high average into a failing grade. The student could study as hard as he or she possible can, do the best on the final, and still fail the class. The school takes no responsibility for any of this. The school does not provide a refund when the student fucks up.
I do not know if what they student did was right or wrong. What I do know is that if my tax dollars are funding a students education, as it partially does at a state school, I want that student to be primarily concerned with the academics, and if that is not the case, let someone has the opportunity to achieve an education. I want a caring administration to keep track of the students and redirect them from behaviors that are destructive.
I also know that universities cannot release student data, so the ability of the university to defend itself in the press is limited, as well as the ability to get rid of such a student. I recall one such student when I was in school, that really seemed crazy and scary, and we would have all been better off without him. One reason he was allowed to stay, I believe, was that the fear of flack in the press.
This makes some sense as those who are now teenager are the first generation that have raised totally in front of the video games, and whose parent probably were raised in from of video games. This means that they probably were likely to sit in front of a video game with the parent rather than work or play outside. The fact that some of these teenagers may be heavier may be in part due to the fact that sitting in front of the computer is much more sendentary than previous generations.
OTOH, everyone over 40 was pretty much raised in front of the TV, and though it is probably easier to kick a kid out the house to go and play in the garden when the kid is watching TV, the fact is that many kids spent 40 hours a week in front of the TV, doing nothing buy drinking cokes and eating chips.
But here is something that has changed in the past 15 years. foodstuff, be it frozen dinners, McDonald's or whatever, is considered acceptable food, and more importantly it the only cheap sustenance that some families know how to eat. How many families will make pancakes, or casseroles, or a bunch or rice and beans. Sure one may say that there is no time to cook, or that such food is more expensive, but that just is a matter of priorities. If one does not know who to make dinner in a hour, or does not put down the video, then dinner will not get made and bad cheap food will be eaten instead.
Which is why I believe the problem is fast food. When I was a kid fast food was expensive. One did not see kids spending $2 for a snack at McDonalds, because $2 was hard to get. Now it seems that almost all kids, no matter how poor the family appears to be, has money to go to McDonalds, where the get calories but no nutrition. And then a school, where they are supposed to get the nutrition, the fast food concerns have bribed government officials so the kids again can get calories, but no nutrition. So hopefully at home they will be forced to eat some decent food. But in the process they have eaten 4000 calories, but only gotten 50% of the nutrition they need. Honestly if the fast food would supply 100% of the calories and 100% of the nutrition, that would be great. But it seems they supply 200% of the calories and a small fraction of the nutrition. Now that fast pseudo food is considered food, that is a unsustainable condition.
GM will not have increased liability for these cars, anymore than they have liability for marketing trucks to those that do not know how to drive them, and in such a way that makes encourages drivers to abuse them. Not to mention that they entire sport truck category rose from a cynical disregard to clean air regulations through the use of a loophole meant to help farmers and small bossinesses.
Car fatalities as a percentage has been decreasing at a huge rate since the early 80's. Recall that 79 onward was the time of the compact car, something everyone said would decrease safety. Fatalities, as a percentage, has all but held steady since the mid 90's. It seems that this is caused at least in part by the sports truck category, the fact that the design is dangerous, and the physics indefensible.
If GM can get away with putting a such death machines on the road, they have little to worry about with the computer driven car. On a whole the driver will be more competent than the driver who buys a truck because they are scared to drive and want something that is user error tolerant, at least from the point of view of the driver of the vehicle.
Here is the deal. MS Word is great for writing memos. Pages is great for short projects, especially if you know what things will look like when you begin.
From the point of view of writing, the problem with most programs is that they detract they from the writing process. This is process stringing, in English, about 30 characters together to from intelligible words that special order, and with that special punctuation, such that the finished product will be understandable, and hopefully interesting, enough to be a reader. The process of writing does not include the critically important aspects that most so called word processors are most interested in, i.e. page margins, fonts, colors, etc. These are typesetting features, and are most often used to cover up the fact that the writing itself is content free.
So, the word processor as a writing tool was developed quite adequately by the early 1980's. Most stuff after that involved moved typesetting features into word processors. Later page layout features were added. The problem as has been discussed in programming text for years, is the mish mash of content, attributes, and process. In programming we know that it is best for data and controller and rules to be each defined in a single well known location. Same thing for writing. Also, just like programming, for quick one off projects, like memos, it does not matter. For large projects it does. Given that most programs do not enforce good habits, they must be enforced.
So I tend to begin writing TextEdit, and save it as a text file. If I choose, I can load the text into OO.org, apply stylesheets, and add it to a master file. If I writing one of many standard pages, then I just open up a TeX file, get rid of the old content, and add the new. Both of these things are easy to do because, for the msot part, content and control are separate.
I actually tried to use MS Word a while back, and had to give up because the computer kept barking at me. I just went back to OO.org.
In response to another post regarding the learning curve. The learning curve only matters to firm that cannot afford to hire competent employess. Those of us who want to work will learn. For instance, if I was a script writer, I would certainly purchase and learn how to use one of those specialized programs.
In the same way that MS created IE so that third parties could gain control of your computer to generate profits(think of pop ups that were not disabled until XP SP 2, a continuing lack of Flash blocking, even though images can be blocked) I wonder if facebook has somehow facilitated this spyware. Clearly, if facebook gets a cut of revenue generated by the spyware, this would result in some large coin.
Well, if a store cannot set up a proper source connected to the proper port on the a proper display, what hope do I have. It sounds like all this HD stuff is just theoretical.
On a serious note, the DVD taught us that labels have no problem making it more difficult to view the product we bought. Viewing a DVD is 10X as hard as viewing a video Cassette, and most DVD players can't even record. I suspect that HD content will require 10X as hard to view as the DVD, which will probably eventually involve a long conversation between the device that is want to play the content and a central server in order to gain authorization to play the content, which part of the content may be played, at a which resolution and with which options.
If the labels are losing money, it is because they are not managing their business properly. From what I read and remember, sales figures have been down ever since the labels began giving MTV a hard time. From what I have read, more people are buying music now, probably due to the fact that entry level is now $1 instead of $20.
One cannot run a business in that la la fantasy land of suing people until they buy the product. A business must be run on a realistic expectation of the demand at a certain price level, and then expenses must be structured accordingly. If a business loses money, in a capitalistic society that is the fault of the business, not the consumer. A capitalist is rewarded for taking risks and filling demand, not for crying to the government for a bailout.
What Apple has done is, in exchange for internalizing all distribution costs, i.e. the label is not responsible for packaging, delivery, or returns, was ask for a simple price structure that could be easily implemented and understood. The music industry did not understand it because, as the parent stated, they are so inefficient that even when sales are good they cannot make any money. The labels could have taken on those costs of distribution, could have sold DRM free music, could have supplied a product to meet the demand, but instead they decided to run to the government for help.
As far as keeping prices low, I hardly see that is the case. The labels are getting huge amounts of money per track. The labels are purportedly charging artists for returns and defective merchandise that does not exist. One might think, again, that if the price that apple charges was really an issue, we would see a greater selection on Amazon. in fact the price deflation in music occurred before the ITMS existing. It has to do with the loss of a price fixing case, and the growth of Wal Mart as the major seller of music, and the resulting negotiations of rock bottom prices.
If you go into a store and use one of the affinity cards, the details of the transaction can be stored, collated, and sold. The store can offer to sell you much or your order at cost because the store in no longer in the retail business, but in the data trading business.
If you buy on credit, a record is kept of everything you buy and when you bought it. Remember all those figures about christmas sales. Many of those come from mastercard. Retailers and analysts will pay money for the breakdown of those sales. Do you get compensated for you data? Only in the way that if you have good credit the companies can afford to give you money for free.
So, all facebook and most social networking sites are free. Users voluntarily put huge amounts of data on themselves. What do you expect to happen? The companies just to sit on such a gold mine and not exploit it? It is just like those forms you fill out to win a free car or a free gym membership. These are not given out the goodness of someone's heart. No, they want something, to get a phone number, to change your phone company, to get you in the gym so they can pressure you into a membership.
I understand that the kids do not understand that they are being taken for a ride by using these sites, and most adults are not sophisticated enough with computers to understand the scam either. But the rules of the world don't change just because the medium changes. Facebook and myspace have to make a profit and in the age of computers profits are made by those who have the most data and can organize and sell it. If you don't believe me just look at google. These social networking firms provide a service, and in exchange they expect to get huge amounts of data they can sell to make a profit. Maybe it was not that way in the beginning, but now they are corporate, and corporate is reality.
MS Windows users tend to be dogmatic. Linux users tend to be dogmatic. It is hard to fight dogma with dogma. I hear more MS Windows users say I grew up on windows and hate anything else. I hear more Linux users say we like freedom, and hate apple for have closed source products. As much as we make fun of it, I mostly hear Mac users say look at the pretty colors, and buy stuff as long as it is pretty, but are agnostic enough to leave when it is not longer pretty.
I continue to use apple because although they can't do alot, I know that I will be in the forefront of the next big thing, with a pretty machine. Be it Visicalc, or Excel or MacWrite, or pagemaker or iTunes, I know that I will be able to do work that matters. It might be closed, I might have to pay, but I will have the capability. Of course, I will have to give up all those millions of programs for MS Windows, but hey, if I have to run it, it is pretty cheap to buy a PC just for that purpose.
Linux has a great development platform and makes a very inexpensive server platform. As much as there is talk about free, the one workable GUI is in fact not free as in beer.
The one thing that could make Linux the desktop winner is to have a company, perhaps Red Hat, create a reference machine including desktop, applications, and hardware. The machine would not run MS Windows natively, so, like the Apple, there would be no issue of piracy being the sole purpose of non-Windows PC. Just think of a re-imagined ThinkPad integrated with OSS calendaring, Office applications, etc, all included. A good deal as the machine would have everything the consumer expects. Now just imagine the folks at Best Buy trying to sell this machine for $1000 when the PC costs $600 and the Apple costs $1300.
What I found interesting about this suit is how uncreative it is. It is unlikely that anyone will get anywhere with the monopoly issue. What might be illegal is the fact that Apple formed a cartel and engaged in price fixing. This has gotten companies and cartels, like Monsanto and De Beers, into serious problems, that have resulted in serious fines. What saves Apple and the labels involved in the cartel is the fact that ITMS sells on a small fraction of the music, so customers are free to buy music on CD and rip and store on the iPod. However, if the labels persist in their assertion that such ripping violates copyright, then the only way to legally get music on the iPod is through the online stores like ITMS, Amazon, and the like. At this point Apple does become the major player, and and can certainly be construed as fixing prices in that market.
Users will install the plugin when they need it. Obviously, MS users who want support will have to install immediately. This is why MS is doing this. For other users it give additional incentive to not use any MS product. Ever. Why would one want to use a product from a company that has a tradition of continuously added components that inhibit user functionality. We can expect 50%+ market penetration within a few months after the rewrite is complete.
In the end I see this like Flash adoption. All casual users will have it installed, and be bombarded with lame content, More sophisticated users will have it installed in a special browser, or will have the functionality blocked by default. This will be justified for the same reason that it is justified in Flash. Security issues. It is almost guaranteed that someone will figure out how to gain root access using Silverlight, so downloading code from unknown sources will be counter-indicated. The corollary to this is that because the casual MS user now has to have the product installed and in use, hackers have a new tool to control MS machines.
Even though he has gone corporate and is mostly Web Design now, I would add Jakob Nielsen to the list, in particular "Usability Engineering".
One thing that many UI people state is that the UI is supposed to be an interface that will make sense to the user, i.e. relate to how the user will work, and not, as most interfaces are, to simply expose the inner working of the program to the user. Most users to do care how the program works. They only care how they work. Web sites make this mistake by exposing company structure to the user instead of thinking of the user works.
I noticed this on Apple's telephone support the other day. I called in, and was prompted to choose the machine I was interested in. I was not interested in a machine, I was interested in returning a part. Once I understood that I had to choose a machine to get anywhere, I was ok, but to do that I had to abstract my own needs to the Apple organizational structure. The most difficult part of UI is abstracting company design to user needs, and no amount of testing will make that happen. The user does not often have the skill to state how the design in fundamentally wrong. The user can only say it is wrong. Of course, the user is no expert so saying the design is wrong may or may not make it so.
not just competitors, but users
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RTF Vs. OOXML
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I wish that MS would come up with some format that was standard, easily implemented, and provided some level of predictability. It would mean that I might start using their office products again. The problem is that every version has radical changes in design, and even similar versions can cause problems. Then then there is the issue of the formats holding active content, so MS then limits what can be done with the files. It is way to limiting. I suppose that if I just wrote memos, or had a spreadsheet I needed to work on everyday, or needed to fool people with a presentation, MS OOXML would be fine. But I need to have reliably get access to stuff a from a couple years ago, work on any machine I happen to find, and put book chapters together. With RTF, ODF and TeX I can always download and install what I need within 10 minutes. I had a case the other day where a file was brought in using the latest format, and the only way to deal with it was to upgrade the license for hundreds of dollars. If OOXML was open, I would at least be able to download something that would allow some level of functionality.
But given the MS of embrace and extend, I must resign myself to a world in which MS products are just too unreliable to use for real work of any significant magnitude. I know that RTF is not sufficient to make the fancy memos people like, but it does seem to work.
The point is that real money is involved, but it does not necessarily look like real money, and you may or may not lose it. Such games are called gambling, and are regulated. If virtual worlds are turning into such things, then they should be regulated and refereed to as gambling sites. Just like the lotteries are, just like investment sites are. The later clearly state that you are risking real money.
How they can get away with this is exactly how real world gaming rooms get away with it. By not using money, and not directly giving money. As I understand it, most gaming rooms in non gambling areas charge fixed fees and give away prizes. These prizes are sometimes things chosen by the winner to be of equal value to what the amount of money they have won, or perhaps items from a large local retailer that can be returned for the cash.
I have seen one more thing on this thread. Comparing this to selling fo in game assets. I see nothing wrong with this. Someone spent time developing those assets, and someone else sees value in it. There is little additional risk here, other than the normal mail or wire fraud. Real currency is being exchange for goods and services. That I may see no value in it does not invalidate the exchange.
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It seems to me that the best thing to do is supply a kid with a variety of activities that are consistent with the way the parent wishes to rear the child. Books that age appropriate and teach the values of the parent. Physical toys that are age appropriate and expose the child to the norms that are expected of the parent.
Video games are no different. if the child does not have the hand coordination, the game will be useless. if the child does not understand the strategy, same thing. If the game depends on teamwork, and the child is still playing along instead of playing with, the game will not be useful. In the end, however, functioning in this world does depend on a high competence interacting with computers, so learning to interact sooner rather than later is probably a good thing.
OTOH, I notice that kids have such a myopic view of computers, as a device to consume games and prefab content from internet, that some of then have a very hard time treating the computer as a creative device. It is nice that they can pick up the technical aspects of the computer, but the overwhelming default use is as a television. I must say I miss the days when all I had was a bunch of sticks, or at most a bunch of Legos, with no pre-formulated expectations of what to do with them, and could just while the afternoon creating whatever came into my scary mind.
Here is the problem. As capital accumulates, the tendency is for it continue to accumulate. Even though some of it will seep out, most of it will tend to stagnant. We see this pattern throughout history, for instance the number of castles that royal families tend to accumulate. We see it in the modern world in developing countries where capital is present, but would be entrepreneurs cannot get a hold of it. Therefore the entrepreneur has no hope. I have literally seen small scale factories half built because there was no capital to buy the needed building supplies. Now that would not happen in the US. In spite of certain parties best efforts to turn the country into a command economy, we still can mostly get capital. For the past several years, that capital has come from Asia, and if there is any hope for the future, we must redistribute capital so that it will be more fully available to all entrepreneurs and social projects, not just those that in favor of an oligarchy.
And this is where the statements of Mr. Gates seem to be quite hypocritical. One of the best ways to avoid the long term formations of the dreaded lazy aristocracy, an aristocracy that the US fought a war to vanquish, is the inheritance tax. His father is father, junior is not. This tends to indicate that Mr. Gates is not in fact a supporter of capitalism, but in fact a supporter of feudalism, where the manor controls what the serfs are allowed to consume, believe, and earn.
But lets leave the fact that Bush waste money at the speed of light. There are real reasons to wonder if the moon is the best place to settle. the primary issue is that getting things off earth is very expensive, and we are the realm of throw away rockets. One way to curb this expense is have reusable vehicles in LEO, and only worry about getting people to LEO. The parts for these vehicles could be launched as cargo, which is much cheaper than launching everything at human safety values.
It is much better for us to be patient and develop LEO as a transit point. The fanciful idea of the moon as a vacation spot is like flying cars. I am sure that all this is real in the fairy tale mind of our president, but in the real world, where we do not have rich parent to make sugar daddy deals for us, we have to make real concessions and real sacrifices.
For instance, no one under 21 is supposed to drink. Most students at colleges are under 21, so clearly colleges should do more to make sure that alcohol is not available to the majority of the students.
I would also certainly think the software distributors would want the same protections, and representatives like the BSA has a zero tolerance policy. If one piece of pirated software is found on one computer on the campus, revoke all the funding.
i also know from pretty good sources that our college campuses are swarming with stolen calculators. Underage kids steal them, and then sell to college kids for half price. It is hard to prosecute the college kids for receiving stolen property, btu easy enough to revoke funding if the school does not put into place a program to teach the kids that stealing is wrong. Because, obviously, the problem is not that the temptation of cheap calcultors, but that they students were never taught right from wrong.
I suspect this machine will be the same thing. Will they be able to sell it for less than $2000? Sure, with rebates, instant discounts, and other trickery I am sure the price will be lower than a comparable Apple, but that is another reason why Apple is preferable. They do not jack up the price just to offer a sale.
And I don't know what kind of primitive lifestyle people are living now. Wired Ethernet? Sure sometimes you need it to download those special entertainment file, and some people do actually transfer that amount of data, but for the vast majority of users, other than the reliability issue, wired ethernet is so Y2K.
The idea of turning off a machine is an old and out of date idea. Power management build into machines is now quite good. Another consideration is that commercial machines, at least, hit a central server on startup, and if everyone turns on the machine at 8:00, that can be quite a number of hits. Just everyone hitting the email server at once is a pain. Then there is the issue of updates, indexing and the like.
I can see how turning off some machines might be a significant power saving off the sleep option. I have, for instance, notice that my laptop PC will drain the batteries if left unused for a week or so, while my powermac will not. This indicates that the PC draws significant power when asleep, and is in fact a power hog. But, if machines are designed to energy star standards, I do not see how turning them off every night would save significant amounts of power.
We saw this toy issue with the iPhone. Phones have become critical tools, and the idea that such a tool is not reliable is scary to some people. In the iphone case, the battery will likely last long enough, but it requires a store visit, at least, to replace a battery. That down time pushes it to the toy category.
Now the macbook air. Clearly lack of upgradable memory and swappable battery gave way to a small size. Everyone is saying how small it is. But even without the slant, it would still be small. And without the slant maybe it could have a removable battery, an option to go up to 4 gigs of memory, and maybe even a fireport.
Clearly the machine was designed to be a testing platform, a toy so to speak, rather than a serious machine. This is probably why there was no backlash against the leaks. The macbook air exists to test the technology and market. It is not the successor to PowerBook 12" that many of us wanted. I believe most of the complaints stem for this. If I want a tiny machine to carry around, even if I am willing to pay $2K, Apple sells nothing I can buy. It is a sad day when Apple does not sell a high end machine to meet high end fashion needs.
I mean if the customizations are kept at a high enough level so not to conflict with updates, then it shouldn't be much different from the stability given by VBA. Do companies do such customization already? Does this make more sense than purchasing MS Visual Studio and learning to develop on it?
However, given my experience trying to get a battery replaced on my iPod, I suspect that instead of replacing the battery under warranty they will waste a couple days of the customers time and them say that it is not a warranty repair.
The thing that kills this is the slant, and I am not sure why Apple did this. Even without the slant, they still have been about 20% smaller than the 12" Powerbook, and we might have added, what, a kilogram or so? If it would have meant a user replaceable battery and a firewire port, it would have been worth it.
I also wonder how good a price of $1000 is for a 64GB solid state drive. Typically, Apple sells memory at a 200-300% markup over average maket price. The SSD, along with the fast processor, is why the full configured machine is well over $3000.
Overall, I like the machine. It projection is a little bigge than the 12", 2" in one dimension, but I guess 13" screens are in. Nothing we can do about that. If 2 gigs are the most it can handle, that could be a problem as well.
Ultimately, the question is which market it is for. If it is an expensive consumer machine, with consumer features, it is too expensive. If it is like the Powerbook 12", with some compromises, but still solid, it looks like a good deal.
In the same way, most people have an iPod, most people have iTunes, and anything else is going to require extra effort, especially for those users that have Macs. I know the reply to that this represents few users, but these few users tend to spend money. Even if Amazon and Netflix did work with Apple, I would be hesitant to install any third party software. There are plenty of cross platform methods to stream video that are already out there, and adding another one just seems like adding more security issues.
Ultimately the issue is going to be the DRM. Many people happily paid $10 for an hour of music that they knew they could play on multiple devices, even on standard CD players. It seems to me that far fewer people are paying $10 for 90 minutes movies. The only reason I can think of is that the DRM is less forgiving. As far as rentals, why bother with $4 for 16 hours. One can buy many movies for less than $10, and rental at some places is still $1-2 overnight, and the pirates are free to rip and keep.
A university must honor the choice of the student to gain a higher education by providing a conducive environment. In this way college is different from high school. In most high high schools one has free speech ad infinitum. A student can yell out in the classroom, curse the principle, and generally make sure the he or she is the center of attention. Short of a felony, the state still has to educate. The university on the other hand is not so comprehensive, and have the responsibility to genuinely educate, not just babysit. I wonder how many students would see free speech as a justification for a student to rant about the unfairness of school policy during a calculus exam. It is lucky for those of us who wanted an education that the university did not confuse rights with privileges, and therefore I was able to experience an education. As a matter of fact my high spool did not make such confusions either, which meant I was actually somewhat ready for college, unlike the vast majority of graduates today.
Given that college is a choice, so it success in college. A student can choose to get an education or waste the opportunity. There are many ways a student can lose the money and credit. The student could spend all his or her time blogging,nerve study, and fail the class. The student could bomb a final and turn a high average into a failing grade. The student could study as hard as he or she possible can, do the best on the final, and still fail the class. The school takes no responsibility for any of this. The school does not provide a refund when the student fucks up.
I do not know if what they student did was right or wrong. What I do know is that if my tax dollars are funding a students education, as it partially does at a state school, I want that student to be primarily concerned with the academics, and if that is not the case, let someone has the opportunity to achieve an education. I want a caring administration to keep track of the students and redirect them from behaviors that are destructive.
I also know that universities cannot release student data, so the ability of the university to defend itself in the press is limited, as well as the ability to get rid of such a student. I recall one such student when I was in school, that really seemed crazy and scary, and we would have all been better off without him. One reason he was allowed to stay, I believe, was that the fear of flack in the press.
OTOH, everyone over 40 was pretty much raised in front of the TV, and though it is probably easier to kick a kid out the house to go and play in the garden when the kid is watching TV, the fact is that many kids spent 40 hours a week in front of the TV, doing nothing buy drinking cokes and eating chips.
But here is something that has changed in the past 15 years. foodstuff, be it frozen dinners, McDonald's or whatever, is considered acceptable food, and more importantly it the only cheap sustenance that some families know how to eat. How many families will make pancakes, or casseroles, or a bunch or rice and beans. Sure one may say that there is no time to cook, or that such food is more expensive, but that just is a matter of priorities. If one does not know who to make dinner in a hour, or does not put down the video, then dinner will not get made and bad cheap food will be eaten instead.
Which is why I believe the problem is fast food. When I was a kid fast food was expensive. One did not see kids spending $2 for a snack at McDonalds, because $2 was hard to get. Now it seems that almost all kids, no matter how poor the family appears to be, has money to go to McDonalds, where the get calories but no nutrition. And then a school, where they are supposed to get the nutrition, the fast food concerns have bribed government officials so the kids again can get calories, but no nutrition. So hopefully at home they will be forced to eat some decent food. But in the process they have eaten 4000 calories, but only gotten 50% of the nutrition they need. Honestly if the fast food would supply 100% of the calories and 100% of the nutrition, that would be great. But it seems they supply 200% of the calories and a small fraction of the nutrition. Now that fast pseudo food is considered food, that is a unsustainable condition.
Car fatalities as a percentage has been decreasing at a huge rate since the early 80's. Recall that 79 onward was the time of the compact car, something everyone said would decrease safety. Fatalities, as a percentage, has all but held steady since the mid 90's. It seems that this is caused at least in part by the sports truck category, the fact that the design is dangerous, and the physics indefensible.
If GM can get away with putting a such death machines on the road, they have little to worry about with the computer driven car. On a whole the driver will be more competent than the driver who buys a truck because they are scared to drive and want something that is user error tolerant, at least from the point of view of the driver of the vehicle.
From the point of view of writing, the problem with most programs is that they detract they from the writing process. This is process stringing, in English, about 30 characters together to from intelligible words that special order, and with that special punctuation, such that the finished product will be understandable, and hopefully interesting, enough to be a reader. The process of writing does not include the critically important aspects that most so called word processors are most interested in, i.e. page margins, fonts, colors, etc. These are typesetting features, and are most often used to cover up the fact that the writing itself is content free.
So, the word processor as a writing tool was developed quite adequately by the early 1980's. Most stuff after that involved moved typesetting features into word processors. Later page layout features were added. The problem as has been discussed in programming text for years, is the mish mash of content, attributes, and process. In programming we know that it is best for data and controller and rules to be each defined in a single well known location. Same thing for writing. Also, just like programming, for quick one off projects, like memos, it does not matter. For large projects it does. Given that most programs do not enforce good habits, they must be enforced.
So I tend to begin writing TextEdit, and save it as a text file. If I choose, I can load the text into OO.org, apply stylesheets, and add it to a master file. If I writing one of many standard pages, then I just open up a TeX file, get rid of the old content, and add the new. Both of these things are easy to do because, for the msot part, content and control are separate.
I actually tried to use MS Word a while back, and had to give up because the computer kept barking at me. I just went back to OO.org.
In response to another post regarding the learning curve. The learning curve only matters to firm that cannot afford to hire competent employess. Those of us who want to work will learn. For instance, if I was a script writer, I would certainly purchase and learn how to use one of those specialized programs.
In the same way that MS created IE so that third parties could gain control of your computer to generate profits(think of pop ups that were not disabled until XP SP 2, a continuing lack of Flash blocking, even though images can be blocked) I wonder if facebook has somehow facilitated this spyware. Clearly, if facebook gets a cut of revenue generated by the spyware, this would result in some large coin.
On a serious note, the DVD taught us that labels have no problem making it more difficult to view the product we bought. Viewing a DVD is 10X as hard as viewing a video Cassette, and most DVD players can't even record. I suspect that HD content will require 10X as hard to view as the DVD, which will probably eventually involve a long conversation between the device that is want to play the content and a central server in order to gain authorization to play the content, which part of the content may be played, at a which resolution and with which options.
One cannot run a business in that la la fantasy land of suing people until they buy the product. A business must be run on a realistic expectation of the demand at a certain price level, and then expenses must be structured accordingly. If a business loses money, in a capitalistic society that is the fault of the business, not the consumer. A capitalist is rewarded for taking risks and filling demand, not for crying to the government for a bailout.
What Apple has done is, in exchange for internalizing all distribution costs, i.e. the label is not responsible for packaging, delivery, or returns, was ask for a simple price structure that could be easily implemented and understood. The music industry did not understand it because, as the parent stated, they are so inefficient that even when sales are good they cannot make any money. The labels could have taken on those costs of distribution, could have sold DRM free music, could have supplied a product to meet the demand, but instead they decided to run to the government for help.
As far as keeping prices low, I hardly see that is the case. The labels are getting huge amounts of money per track. The labels are purportedly charging artists for returns and defective merchandise that does not exist. One might think, again, that if the price that apple charges was really an issue, we would see a greater selection on Amazon. in fact the price deflation in music occurred before the ITMS existing. It has to do with the loss of a price fixing case, and the growth of Wal Mart as the major seller of music, and the resulting negotiations of rock bottom prices.
If you buy on credit, a record is kept of everything you buy and when you bought it. Remember all those figures about christmas sales. Many of those come from mastercard. Retailers and analysts will pay money for the breakdown of those sales. Do you get compensated for you data? Only in the way that if you have good credit the companies can afford to give you money for free.
So, all facebook and most social networking sites are free. Users voluntarily put huge amounts of data on themselves. What do you expect to happen? The companies just to sit on such a gold mine and not exploit it? It is just like those forms you fill out to win a free car or a free gym membership. These are not given out the goodness of someone's heart. No, they want something, to get a phone number, to change your phone company, to get you in the gym so they can pressure you into a membership.
I understand that the kids do not understand that they are being taken for a ride by using these sites, and most adults are not sophisticated enough with computers to understand the scam either. But the rules of the world don't change just because the medium changes. Facebook and myspace have to make a profit and in the age of computers profits are made by those who have the most data and can organize and sell it. If you don't believe me just look at google. These social networking firms provide a service, and in exchange they expect to get huge amounts of data they can sell to make a profit. Maybe it was not that way in the beginning, but now they are corporate, and corporate is reality.
I continue to use apple because although they can't do alot, I know that I will be in the forefront of the next big thing, with a pretty machine. Be it Visicalc, or Excel or MacWrite, or pagemaker or iTunes, I know that I will be able to do work that matters. It might be closed, I might have to pay, but I will have the capability. Of course, I will have to give up all those millions of programs for MS Windows, but hey, if I have to run it, it is pretty cheap to buy a PC just for that purpose.
Linux has a great development platform and makes a very inexpensive server platform. As much as there is talk about free, the one workable GUI is in fact not free as in beer. The one thing that could make Linux the desktop winner is to have a company, perhaps Red Hat, create a reference machine including desktop, applications, and hardware. The machine would not run MS Windows natively, so, like the Apple, there would be no issue of piracy being the sole purpose of non-Windows PC. Just think of a re-imagined ThinkPad integrated with OSS calendaring, Office applications, etc, all included. A good deal as the machine would have everything the consumer expects. Now just imagine the folks at Best Buy trying to sell this machine for $1000 when the PC costs $600 and the Apple costs $1300.
What I found interesting about this suit is how uncreative it is. It is unlikely that anyone will get anywhere with the monopoly issue. What might be illegal is the fact that Apple formed a cartel and engaged in price fixing. This has gotten companies and cartels, like Monsanto and De Beers, into serious problems, that have resulted in serious fines. What saves Apple and the labels involved in the cartel is the fact that ITMS sells on a small fraction of the music, so customers are free to buy music on CD and rip and store on the iPod. However, if the labels persist in their assertion that such ripping violates copyright, then the only way to legally get music on the iPod is through the online stores like ITMS, Amazon, and the like. At this point Apple does become the major player, and and can certainly be construed as fixing prices in that market.
In the end I see this like Flash adoption. All casual users will have it installed, and be bombarded with lame content, More sophisticated users will have it installed in a special browser, or will have the functionality blocked by default. This will be justified for the same reason that it is justified in Flash. Security issues. It is almost guaranteed that someone will figure out how to gain root access using Silverlight, so downloading code from unknown sources will be counter-indicated. The corollary to this is that because the casual MS user now has to have the product installed and in use, hackers have a new tool to control MS machines.
One thing that many UI people state is that the UI is supposed to be an interface that will make sense to the user, i.e. relate to how the user will work, and not, as most interfaces are, to simply expose the inner working of the program to the user. Most users to do care how the program works. They only care how they work. Web sites make this mistake by exposing company structure to the user instead of thinking of the user works.
I noticed this on Apple's telephone support the other day. I called in, and was prompted to choose the machine I was interested in. I was not interested in a machine, I was interested in returning a part. Once I understood that I had to choose a machine to get anywhere, I was ok, but to do that I had to abstract my own needs to the Apple organizational structure. The most difficult part of UI is abstracting company design to user needs, and no amount of testing will make that happen. The user does not often have the skill to state how the design in fundamentally wrong. The user can only say it is wrong. Of course, the user is no expert so saying the design is wrong may or may not make it so.
But given the MS of embrace and extend, I must resign myself to a world in which MS products are just too unreliable to use for real work of any significant magnitude. I know that RTF is not sufficient to make the fancy memos people like, but it does seem to work.
How they can get away with this is exactly how real world gaming rooms get away with it. By not using money, and not directly giving money. As I understand it, most gaming rooms in non gambling areas charge fixed fees and give away prizes. These prizes are sometimes things chosen by the winner to be of equal value to what the amount of money they have won, or perhaps items from a large local retailer that can be returned for the cash.
I have seen one more thing on this thread. Comparing this to selling fo in game assets. I see nothing wrong with this. Someone spent time developing those assets, and someone else sees value in it. There is little additional risk here, other than the normal mail or wire fraud. Real currency is being exchange for goods and services. That I may see no value in it does not invalidate the exchange.