One huge difference between Apple and Microsoft is that nearly nobody is forced to buy or use Apple products
Okay, so what happens when millions (billions?) of persons use OS X and iTunes because they have to (company policy) or because they need to product iWhatever documents? Would you rather live in the Apple "Cupertino controls your entire experience" world or the "Build on top of our platforms to do what you want, just don't muck directly with the licensed software" world of Microsoft?
If the Empire had internet, then the rebel spies would have just uploaded the plans for the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance, and you'd skip straight to the final scene of the movie.
You're assuming a free and open internet (or holonet as described in the books), that wouldn't have been monitored by the Empire. With the Empire monitoring all communications a transfer of Death Start plans would have informed the Empire to the location of both the sender and the receiver.
Can you imagine what would happen if Dell, HP, Lenova all got together a funded a uniform XP like *nix desktop and a Wine like compatibility layer?
I imagine customers wouldn't purchase them because they're trying really hard to keep their existing machines. Also, I imagine that would be make liable for some sort of lawsuit, either copyright, patent or trade dress. I would have no idea exactly what though.
The irony of Apple suing people for patent infringement is how little work Apple actually put into developing the technologies in the iPhone and in iOS
I'm no Apple fan, but to say that they didn't put work into them is lying to yourself. If it was so effortless to create the iPhone/iOS experience, the existing players would have done it before the iPhone was launched. But the existing players didn't, and are either just getting around to it, or have died off.
My mother, who can barely turn on a computer, has more than 10.
Yes, but how many does she launch in any given day? She probably has a browser running, maybe some document reader, and perhaps some solitaire-esque game.
I never liked pinning items to the task bar because it makes it less efficient to determine what's running
Um, what? There's so much more running than what's being shown on the Taskbar that your reasoning is off by at an order of magnitude. As someone who's started pinning more items to the Taskbar about a year ago I can easily say that it hasn't affected how I know what's running at all.
The Desktop is a workspace that ideally should be clear of short cuts
Personally, I like a clean Desktop, and I can't believe that I'm going to be arguing this point. Your reasoning would be correct, if having a Desktop full of icons somehow prevented more windows being open or reduced performance in some way. But having a "messy" Desktop doesn't interfere with running any program in any way shape or form. The reason why a Desktop covered in icons isn't great is because it isn't an efficient way of launching applications. It creates a jarring experience to minimize/close all running programs to start a new program and then get "jarred" again by bringing all of the windows up again.
How different is telling this joke to her father, to yelling fire in a theatre.
The difference in the US is the physical proximity. If telling the joke to the father involves the father being in close physical proximity then it wouldn't be protected as free speech if it could be considered "fighting words" or "an incitement to violence". Writing down and publishing the joke is free speech because of the lack of physical proximity and the delay in time.
I know in the US telling fire in a theater isn't protected as free speech, but I'm not as positive about yelling fire in a theatre.
Perhaps if you wasted less mental energy on false gender-based dichotomies
I realize that not all members of the same gender are the same. But I didn't want to pepper every time I mentioned a gender with a parenthetical modifier (ie. "most women anyway"). Plus, I thought I was pretty clear that my anecdote comes from a not yet statistically significant sampling size. Thus far I've primarily been shocked on how universal the understandings have been.
A great read that goes over a more accurate grouping of similar attributes of people is "Why Him, Why Her" by Helen Fisher. It talks a lot about brain chemistry and goes over how many men and women have certain ratios of different chemicals. So as a society we may say "Women like X", when really it's people who have a certain brain chemistry like X, but it so happens that most women have that (or similar enough) brain chemistry, but a few men happen to do as well. I thought it would be insightful to share my anecdotic evidence that so far aligns pretty well with genders.
seemed to consider lunch to be some kind of personal expression that had to be absolutely perfect or face ridicule from everyone in the street for the rest of their lives.
Early on in my marriage my wife expressed frustration over how I wasn't giving much input into what I thought we should have for dinner, and how I was generally happy with whatever was decided upon. It was something that created a minor divide between us. One day, about two years into being married, my wife mentioned that she was hungry, and so I looked in the fridge and offered to get her two or three things. She declined all of them, saying how she didn't feel like eating any of them. I asked what she did feel like eating and she responded that she was trying to figure that out. After a couple more comments I drilled into something that I've confirmed with multiple other female associates of mine: women don't get hungry for food; women need to get to the point where they 'feel' like they need to eat a specific kind of food. It's possible that as time goes on the set of acceptable foods grow, but the desire to eat is rarely driven by their stomach, it's pretty much driven by their emotional 'feelings' (whatever those are). My wife found it very odd that when I'm hungry, it's because there's a pain in my stomach and any and all foods can satisfy this pain (just need to reduce the stomach acid). As long as my tongue is okay with it, all foods can make the hunger go away.
So for your co-workers, what they're doing while they're standing in the queue deciding on what they should eat, is having an introspective therapy session. They're trying to find out what their current hormones tell them they 'feel' like eating, and are hoping that something on the menu matches their 'feelings'. That's why it takes so long.
am I the only one in the universe that sorely misses Quick Launch?
Yes
No typing... What was so wrong with that?
Typing is the fastest way a human can currently communicate with a computer. Plus with typing you don't have to hunt and hover like what the average user does with a sea of small icons.
The real laymen will have a truckload of issues. For one, the start button is gone. How are they supposed to know how to start an app?
You lost 70% of your users right there. No need to go any further.
Having had both my family and my in laws use my Win 8 computers when they've been over and having no/minimal issues in finding how to do what they wanted, I really think that it's really not that big of a deal. True they weren't doing major OS management, but average users have trouble doing that anyway.
If all companies had to do the same amount of drug testing with the FDA there'd still be an incentive to get your drug past the FDA, because the FDA would prevent other companies from selling the same drug, because the copy cats would need to get past the FDA too.
Freedom of Speech is a right. Trying to curb it in anyway by trying to not hurt peoples feelings is morally wrong. I think the US has it right by having close physical proximity be the test for if incitement has crossed the line of peoples rights to assembly peacefully. As long as there's no close physical proximity (ie, posting something online), people must be free to express themselves in whatever way they want.
Muslims could not be offended by not watching the videos of people trying to piss them off.
Unless a foreigner makes a political video that offends the US, in which case we reserve the right to brand him a terrorist and send a drone to assassinate him in his own country.
Can you provide an instance of the US branding someone a terrorist because of an offensive video that didn't involve attacking US citizens?
The freedom of speech has always been limited by the exception of speech intended to solely cause harm or public backlash (ie - yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater, calling in bomb threats).
Um, no. Yelling 'Fire' is not covered as freedom of speech if it's in physical proximity of a group. You can go into an empty theater and yell it all you want. In the US, the proximity is important. Falsely calling in bomb crosses the line of freedom of speech if it's considered imminent violence against a particular person. There's nothing illegal with causing public backlash in the US.
Apparently the Start Menu isn't working yet. I can't even find the Start Button.
My mom's in town and I ran an errand last night while she stayed at my place. I come back and she's using my Win 8 computer (I left it unlocked) and was in Metro IE (which is odd given that she would have been in the desktop when she started). I asked her if she had any problem using the computer and she said that she did have trouble trying to find out how to go somewhere (browse to a website), but then she right clicked and found what she needed. No big deal. I asked her if she noticed that the Windows Orb/Start Button was missing, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I re-explained a few times and still had no idea. She's been launching pinned programs from the task bar for long enough (~3 years) that she's completely forgotten about the Start Button. While I don't think that's typical, I imagine how since it isn't an issue with my computer illiterate mother, it'll be less of a problem than you think for many.
Actually it's the reason why anti-trust laws were created in the first place. Contracts forbidding you from working with a competitor was business as usual before anti-trust laws were enacted. I'm not saying that Google is doing that, but that's how they'd become a monopoly. What companies try to get away with today isn't out right banning, but will do things like "you can get a %90 discount if you don't work with our competitors".
I'm not clear as to how Google is a monopoly. It does not control the physical or electronic structure of the Internet. Web searching certainly cannot be considered a natural monopoly. It can't stop competing web services.
So how can Google maintain any kind of abusive monopoly.
Google can become an abusive monopoly because of where the money comes from. If a competitor tries to enter the market (ad supported services), Google could tell its customers (companies advertising products) that if they work with the Google competitor, Google will stop doing business with them. That would prevent any competition for Google, which would result in EU citizens not having a free market of competing services.
Oh, and you start out by asking about natural monopolies and then finish with abusive monopolies. Which one are you more concerned about? Please be consistent.
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One huge difference between Apple and Microsoft is that nearly nobody is forced to buy or use Apple products
Okay, so what happens when millions (billions?) of persons use OS X and iTunes because they have to (company policy) or because they need to product iWhatever documents? Would you rather live in the Apple "Cupertino controls your entire experience" world or the "Build on top of our platforms to do what you want, just don't muck directly with the licensed software" world of Microsoft?
If the Empire had internet, then the rebel spies would have just uploaded the plans for the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance, and you'd skip straight to the final scene of the movie.
You're assuming a free and open internet (or holonet as described in the books), that wouldn't have been monitored by the Empire. With the Empire monitoring all communications a transfer of Death Start plans would have informed the Empire to the location of both the sender and the receiver.
Can you imagine what would happen if Dell, HP, Lenova all got together a funded a uniform XP like *nix desktop and a Wine like compatibility layer?
I imagine customers wouldn't purchase them because they're trying really hard to keep their existing machines. Also, I imagine that would be make liable for some sort of lawsuit, either copyright, patent or trade dress. I would have no idea exactly what though.
Is it really so hard to create an Android phone that we can get excited about?
Yes.
All Apple has contributed is making things look smooth and pretty.
And still that took work and effort that no one else at the time was willing to do.
The galaxy s3 came out months before the iphone5.
I was referring to the effort that went into creating the first iPhone.
The irony of Apple suing people for patent infringement is how little work Apple actually put into developing the technologies in the iPhone and in iOS
I'm no Apple fan, but to say that they didn't put work into them is lying to yourself. If it was so effortless to create the iPhone/iOS experience, the existing players would have done it before the iPhone was launched. But the existing players didn't, and are either just getting around to it, or have died off.
My mother, who can barely turn on a computer, has more than 10.
Yes, but how many does she launch in any given day? She probably has a browser running, maybe some document reader, and perhaps some solitaire-esque game.
I never liked pinning items to the task bar because it makes it less efficient to determine what's running
Um, what? There's so much more running than what's being shown on the Taskbar that your reasoning is off by at an order of magnitude. As someone who's started pinning more items to the Taskbar about a year ago I can easily say that it hasn't affected how I know what's running at all.
The Desktop is a workspace that ideally should be clear of short cuts
Personally, I like a clean Desktop, and I can't believe that I'm going to be arguing this point. Your reasoning would be correct, if having a Desktop full of icons somehow prevented more windows being open or reduced performance in some way. But having a "messy" Desktop doesn't interfere with running any program in any way shape or form. The reason why a Desktop covered in icons isn't great is because it isn't an efficient way of launching applications. It creates a jarring experience to minimize/close all running programs to start a new program and then get "jarred" again by bringing all of the windows up again.
Sooner than later people have to decide what forum free speech takes. If it isn't on the net then it isn't anywhere.
People could decide that free speech is fine on the net, but Facebook is a special exception to that.
How different is telling this joke to her father, to yelling fire in a theatre.
The difference in the US is the physical proximity. If telling the joke to the father involves the father being in close physical proximity then it wouldn't be protected as free speech if it could be considered "fighting words" or "an incitement to violence". Writing down and publishing the joke is free speech because of the lack of physical proximity and the delay in time.
I know in the US telling fire in a theater isn't protected as free speech, but I'm not as positive about yelling fire in a theatre.
Perhaps if you wasted less mental energy on false gender-based dichotomies
I realize that not all members of the same gender are the same. But I didn't want to pepper every time I mentioned a gender with a parenthetical modifier (ie. "most women anyway"). Plus, I thought I was pretty clear that my anecdote comes from a not yet statistically significant sampling size. Thus far I've primarily been shocked on how universal the understandings have been.
A great read that goes over a more accurate grouping of similar attributes of people is "Why Him, Why Her" by Helen Fisher. It talks a lot about brain chemistry and goes over how many men and women have certain ratios of different chemicals. So as a society we may say "Women like X", when really it's people who have a certain brain chemistry like X, but it so happens that most women have that (or similar enough) brain chemistry, but a few men happen to do as well. I thought it would be insightful to share my anecdotic evidence that so far aligns pretty well with genders.
seemed to consider lunch to be some kind of personal expression that had to be absolutely perfect or face ridicule from everyone in the street for the rest of their lives.
Early on in my marriage my wife expressed frustration over how I wasn't giving much input into what I thought we should have for dinner, and how I was generally happy with whatever was decided upon. It was something that created a minor divide between us. One day, about two years into being married, my wife mentioned that she was hungry, and so I looked in the fridge and offered to get her two or three things. She declined all of them, saying how she didn't feel like eating any of them. I asked what she did feel like eating and she responded that she was trying to figure that out. After a couple more comments I drilled into something that I've confirmed with multiple other female associates of mine: women don't get hungry for food; women need to get to the point where they 'feel' like they need to eat a specific kind of food. It's possible that as time goes on the set of acceptable foods grow, but the desire to eat is rarely driven by their stomach, it's pretty much driven by their emotional 'feelings' (whatever those are). My wife found it very odd that when I'm hungry, it's because there's a pain in my stomach and any and all foods can satisfy this pain (just need to reduce the stomach acid). As long as my tongue is okay with it, all foods can make the hunger go away.
So for your co-workers, what they're doing while they're standing in the queue deciding on what they should eat, is having an introspective therapy session. They're trying to find out what their current hormones tell them they 'feel' like eating, and are hoping that something on the menu matches their 'feelings'. That's why it takes so long.
am I the only one in the universe that sorely misses Quick Launch?
Yes
No typing... What was so wrong with that?
Typing is the fastest way a human can currently communicate with a computer. Plus with typing you don't have to hunt and hover like what the average user does with a sea of small icons.
For programs you write yourself (and don't run an installer for), you need to hit Win+F, whereas with Win 7 you just needed to hit the Win key.
The real laymen will have a truckload of issues. For one, the start button is gone. How are they supposed to know how to start an app?
You lost 70% of your users right there. No need to go any further.
Having had both my family and my in laws use my Win 8 computers when they've been over and having no/minimal issues in finding how to do what they wanted, I really think that it's really not that big of a deal. True they weren't doing major OS management, but average users have trouble doing that anyway.
If all companies had to do the same amount of drug testing with the FDA there'd still be an incentive to get your drug past the FDA, because the FDA would prevent other companies from selling the same drug, because the copy cats would need to get past the FDA too.
Freedom of Speech is a right. Trying to curb it in anyway by trying to not hurt peoples feelings is morally wrong. I think the US has it right by having close physical proximity be the test for if incitement has crossed the line of peoples rights to assembly peacefully. As long as there's no close physical proximity (ie, posting something online), people must be free to express themselves in whatever way they want.
Muslims could not be offended by not watching the videos of people trying to piss them off.
Unless a foreigner makes a political video that offends the US, in which case we reserve the right to brand him a terrorist and send a drone to assassinate him in his own country.
Can you provide an instance of the US branding someone a terrorist because of an offensive video that didn't involve attacking US citizens?
The freedom of speech has always been limited by the exception of speech intended to solely cause harm or public backlash (ie - yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater, calling in bomb threats).
Um, no. Yelling 'Fire' is not covered as freedom of speech if it's in physical proximity of a group. You can go into an empty theater and yell it all you want. In the US, the proximity is important. Falsely calling in bomb crosses the line of freedom of speech if it's considered imminent violence against a particular person. There's nothing illegal with causing public backlash in the US.
Now what about windows and mac app stores with the same lock in??
and the systems that can only run app store apps?
They're not important.
the golden plates that no-one ever saw
Multiple other people saw the golden plates and wrote testimonies to that affect. The two groups are known as the three and eight witnesses.
Apparently the Start Menu isn't working yet. I can't even find the Start Button.
My mom's in town and I ran an errand last night while she stayed at my place. I come back and she's using my Win 8 computer (I left it unlocked) and was in Metro IE (which is odd given that she would have been in the desktop when she started). I asked her if she had any problem using the computer and she said that she did have trouble trying to find out how to go somewhere (browse to a website), but then she right clicked and found what she needed. No big deal. I asked her if she noticed that the Windows Orb/Start Button was missing, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I re-explained a few times and still had no idea. She's been launching pinned programs from the task bar for long enough (~3 years) that she's completely forgotten about the Start Button. While I don't think that's typical, I imagine how since it isn't an issue with my computer illiterate mother, it'll be less of a problem than you think for many.
That is highly theoretical.
Actually it's the reason why anti-trust laws were created in the first place. Contracts forbidding you from working with a competitor was business as usual before anti-trust laws were enacted. I'm not saying that Google is doing that, but that's how they'd become a monopoly. What companies try to get away with today isn't out right banning, but will do things like "you can get a %90 discount if you don't work with our competitors".
I'm not clear as to how Google is a monopoly. It does not control the physical or electronic structure of the Internet. Web searching certainly cannot be considered a natural monopoly. It can't stop competing web services.
So how can Google maintain any kind of abusive monopoly.
Google can become an abusive monopoly because of where the money comes from. If a competitor tries to enter the market (ad supported services), Google could tell its customers (companies advertising products) that if they work with the Google competitor, Google will stop doing business with them. That would prevent any competition for Google, which would result in EU citizens not having a free market of competing services.
Oh, and you start out by asking about natural monopolies and then finish with abusive monopolies. Which one are you more concerned about? Please be consistent.