Exactly - there's no benefit to a company in developing a nice, free, safe application. Either they need ad revenue, or people have to start paying for software again.
The thing is, they CAN'T be upfront about how free apps get converted into revenue. All these "markets" (facebook, etc.) revolve around harvesting consumer data.
People don't want their information harvested, and will say "No" to that if confronted honestly.
But that blows the trend we've seen in recent years where you can use software for free that we used to walk into a store and buy in a box for $50.
Will we go back to the $50 model, or will people surrender privacy in exchange for "free"?
By "sold for what I paid for it" I mean I conducted a transaction whereupon someone paid me an amount of currency that was roughly the same as the amount of currency I paid the carrier to give me the phone in the first place.
Personally, I was on the brink with smartphones anyway. I have owned blackberry, android, and iphone devices. Most recently, an iphone.
The privacy issues combined with the huge data plan expense, bandwidth caps - and the fact that most of the time I'm near PCs anyway - these things just made it feel like there are better things I can do with that $30-40 a month.
The fact that I was able to go back to a dumbphone while selling my iphone online for what I paid for it, 6 months later, was helpful too.
I see this as having a huge impact for the market for apps and what kinds of apps can be developed.
The situation is developing where users don't want to give apps access to anything on the phone other than the data pipe, except for maybe a mapping application or something with an obvious need. This is really going to limit where apps can go.Because of the sins of Apple (and others), people don't trust the platform as much as they used to.
Instead of being a device we voluntarily turned over information to in order to expand its role in our life, we are starting to see it as something that needs to be reigned in, controlled, watched like a hawk.
Formerly people happily used Windows and IE to bring the internet into their lives. Now these are items you don't trust, you run several other programs on top to police them, etc.
It's really a shame that this greed for personal information to sell has set back the role that palmtop tech may otherwise have headed toward in our lives.
There's a qualitative difference, though, between removing compatibility issues (like Apple does) and dumbing something down to the point where it barely seems like a PC anymore.
Canonical may be forcing people to use PCs like they use cellphones, but people don't like this.
They will never manufacture hardware as Apple does because it's antithetical to what they are. They will never have the control over compatibility issues that Apple does as a result.
Linux unfortunately has no penetration into consumer computing space, but it's for some very good reasons that aren't going to be overcome by trying to turn people's desktops into iPhones vis-a-vis Unity
But you're right - MySpace's advantage was that you could meet new people there. On Facebook there's really no such convention. Myspace could try to reinvent itself as a simple, open platform that promises not to make their service an ad-serving platform.
Instead of "a place for friends", how about a secure, private place for "old friends and new friends"
Facebook has been adopted by the audience that is slow to adopt and slow to move away as well, which is older people.
Myspace was never generally being used by people over 30 or so (maybe even 25), and it wasn't used to connect with family or long-lost friends. It was being used the way Twitter is used today.
Facebook created a niche and I think will occupy it for the foreseeable future. Myspace's niche was gobbled up 75% by Twitter, 25% by facebook.
Nokia can't sell phones in the United States anymore because they don't have a mobile OS that anyone wants. Selling their soul to Ballmer gets them back into the US market. They'll be in the major carriers' stores, and sell phones because of it. Not that hard to fathom...
The flip side of that is that it's been sadly obvious for a long time that Symbian was going to be the next casualty in the marketplace. At some point people are contributing to these life issues themselves by choosing to place their hopes on the future of Symbian. Not a good bet.
That's not the broadest definition that could be unreasonably imagined, we have a regime in the White House who thinks having some limited powers to regulate interstate commerce means they can force everyone to buy health insurance, as a cost of being alive.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly - there's no benefit to a company in developing a nice, free, safe application. Either they need ad revenue, or people have to start paying for software again.
The thing is, they CAN'T be upfront about how free apps get converted into revenue. All these "markets" (facebook, etc.) revolve around harvesting consumer data.
People don't want their information harvested, and will say "No" to that if confronted honestly.
But that blows the trend we've seen in recent years where you can use software for free that we used to walk into a store and buy in a box for $50.
Will we go back to the $50 model, or will people surrender privacy in exchange for "free"?
By "sold for what I paid for it" I mean I conducted a transaction whereupon someone paid me an amount of currency that was roughly the same as the amount of currency I paid the carrier to give me the phone in the first place.
Personally, I was on the brink with smartphones anyway. I have owned blackberry, android, and iphone devices. Most recently, an iphone.
The privacy issues combined with the huge data plan expense, bandwidth caps - and the fact that most of the time I'm near PCs anyway - these things just made it feel like there are better things I can do with that $30-40 a month.
The fact that I was able to go back to a dumbphone while selling my iphone online for what I paid for it, 6 months later, was helpful too.
I see this as having a huge impact for the market for apps and what kinds of apps can be developed.
The situation is developing where users don't want to give apps access to anything on the phone other than the data pipe, except for maybe a mapping application or something with an obvious need. This is really going to limit where apps can go.Because of the sins of Apple (and others), people don't trust the platform as much as they used to.
Instead of being a device we voluntarily turned over information to in order to expand its role in our life, we are starting to see it as something that needs to be reigned in, controlled, watched like a hawk.
Formerly people happily used Windows and IE to bring the internet into their lives. Now these are items you don't trust, you run several other programs on top to police them, etc.
It's really a shame that this greed for personal information to sell has set back the role that palmtop tech may otherwise have headed toward in our lives.
There's a qualitative difference, though, between removing compatibility issues (like Apple does) and dumbing something down to the point where it barely seems like a PC anymore.
From advertising.
Apple makes money from selling stuff.
This is /., that's what passes for a good business idea - something which will never make any money.
(actually this would need to promise that you'd be sued into oblivion for it to be a /. business idea, but...)
Canonical may be forcing people to use PCs like they use cellphones, but people don't like this.
They will never manufacture hardware as Apple does because it's antithetical to what they are. They will never have the control over compatibility issues that Apple does as a result.
Linux unfortunately has no penetration into consumer computing space, but it's for some very good reasons that aren't going to be overcome by trying to turn people's desktops into iPhones vis-a-vis Unity
AOL didn't become AOL by making smart business decisions.
They made it by doing things like thinking Bebo was a great product.
But you're right - MySpace's advantage was that you could meet new people there. On Facebook there's really no such convention. Myspace could try to reinvent itself as a simple, open platform that promises not to make their service an ad-serving platform.
Instead of "a place for friends", how about a secure, private place for "old friends and new friends"
Facebook has been adopted by the audience that is slow to adopt and slow to move away as well, which is older people.
Myspace was never generally being used by people over 30 or so (maybe even 25), and it wasn't used to connect with family or long-lost friends. It was being used the way Twitter is used today.
Facebook created a niche and I think will occupy it for the foreseeable future. Myspace's niche was gobbled up 75% by Twitter, 25% by facebook.
Microsoft doesn't buy ruined companies, they buy decent ones and THEN ruin them.
Hopefully without the impossible to decipher maze of privacy settings, security issues, harvesting user data for advertisers, etc?
And nothing of value was lost.
(although I guess shitty local bands are going to have to find some other way to annoy people)
Nokia can't sell phones in the United States anymore because they don't have a mobile OS that anyone wants. Selling their soul to Ballmer gets them back into the US market. They'll be in the major carriers' stores, and sell phones because of it. Not that hard to fathom...
Not just WinCE but the prior Windows Phone systems were just dire.
WP7 is years late and several dollars short at imitating Apple.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Windows Phone is never going to eclipse iOS in the mobile space.
Sorry to have to put on my Captain Obvious cape.
The flip side of that is that it's been sadly obvious for a long time that Symbian was going to be the next casualty in the marketplace. At some point people are contributing to these life issues themselves by choosing to place their hopes on the future of Symbian. Not a good bet.
That's not the broadest definition that could be unreasonably imagined, we have a regime in the White House who thinks having some limited powers to regulate interstate commerce means they can force everyone to buy health insurance, as a cost of being alive.
I take it you didn't go to elementary school in the United States or you'd know how "checks and balances" is supposed to work.
And no, the purpose is not "so branch A can overrule what branch B did that I didn't like".
a shuttle, or the shuttle?
This is his second flight... he would be a better plot device if it were his rookie mission.
We have to train the law that your router != you.
You first...
Someone sent you some high fructose corn syrup, I mean, some corn sugar!
With friends like these...