In other news, most of the people who read the article don't click on ads.
I say if not for google, people wouldn't even know you existed.
Unless you are the New York Times or Washington Post, hardly anyone knows you. Google brings all of you "anonymous cowards" together and makes you presentable so people who otherwise wouldn't can see you and know who you are.
To say these people would click through every paper if not for google is like saying everyone who downloads free songs would pay for them all if given the choice.
No. It's thanks, but no thanks. Not thanks, okay here you go.
If music downloads weren't free, then people wouldn't download all that music, period. If they were tangible records, then we wouldn't decide to pay for them. We would return them.
When you create a downside to information (like a fee), then most of us won't care for it. You can beg to differ, but the users will always think they can always get it somewhere else, where there is no downside (like for free). And it's not even the price that really matters. It's the thought of having to pay that is the real challenge.
What I want to know is, how much the lawyers made vs how much these companies actually made, what the court costs paid by our tax dollars were, and if there were any winners in all this!!!!!
If this is innovation at work, then I'll be damned.
IT is still young. And we have an extremely muddled labor pool that is mixed with young geniuses and out-of-date veterans, as well as idiot young guns and some older people who *really* know what they are doing.
The problem with this situation is that from everyone's own perspective, it becomes extremely difficult for everyone else to make the right decision.
A novice non-IT business is the perfect target for a one-stop shop type of IT outsourcing company. They will never truly understand what you need, teach you anything, or explain exactly what you are paying for. You will get propriety solutions and pay a heavy margin for maintenance. Yes, they will meet requirements, but this is far from ideal.
Another pitfall is hiring the true techie to *manage* an IT department or an IT solution. There is a HUUUGE difference between someone who excels at technical knowhow and accuracy, and someone who sees the whole picture, can work with people, and can make compromises when weighing non-technical priorities.
The best scenario for any company is to find a savvy insider early and hire them. This person might not be able to do everything themselves, but they will know good from bad. They will also be close to management and will be pragmatic about implementing the needs of the company. Give this person sufficient resources, and you are good to go. Of course, whether or not you hired such a person, you may never know. If you actually have such a person *in* management, then you are ahead of the curve.
One thing is for certain though. New businesses that embrace IT will have a distinct edge. If you work at a fairly young company that doesn't care about their web page, or is losing business to competitors that do, I would get ready to jump ship. Seriously, IT can make or break even a restaurant (eg. SEO and yelp management).
A patent is only worth it's strength in court. The USPTO has clearly given up trying to judge if a patent is truly worthy on their own, relying on the courts to decide afterwards when a patent is put to use and put to the test - in court.
What bothers me the most is the fact that anyone can get a patent for anything as long as they keep revising their application.
At the end of the day, those with the biggest wallets will get their patents, and they will also have their guns to fight and win in court.
I get about the same out of EDGE on T-Mobile as I did from 3G on AT&T. It would hardly go 3G anyway, and when it did, it wouldn't last, or would be slow.
I was practically forced to ditch AT&T because I got 1 bar at my house. And I am definitely in their coverage area.
Just to repeat what others are saying: It depends 100% on where exactly you'll be using your phone.
I think in the end, you'll find you don't really have many choices.
Buck passing is done when said. Everything else is easier said than done.
Being Microsoft helps. Many of Microsoft's achievements have been by just being a mammoth Goliath monopoly. But that is them just doing their job. If you can't innovate, then gather an army and go to war. Only lawyers can tell you what you can and can't do.
Innovation at Microsoft is a plus, but not a requirement. The substance of their products is only part of the very large picture.
Even though quantum encryption is theoretically perfect...
Most things that are perfect *are* theoretical.
...real hardware isn't, and they exploit these flaws.
Most modern encryption isn't cracked by breaking the technology used to encrypt it. Security is only as secure as the pain tolerance of the person who knows the PIN, or the size of the visor that is suppose to hide the numbers you press from the person in line behind you.
An important distinction here is between real investigative journalism, and prompt event reporting. Losing this distinction will result in lame AI news by automated article generators, and slow information gathering by humans. Building on this distinction will result in faster and larger data input streams automated and always on, feeding real journalists helping them build bigger pictures and recognizing what really matters. Jon Stuart can then filter it all and give us the real news.
It used to be we needed journalists to be our eyes and ears, but now with bloggers and phone cameras and tweets, that is not so much the case. Only a machine could gather all this information in real-time. It used to be that journalists would read deep in between the lines and provide us with insight, but now with Fox and MSNBC and even CNN all driven by politics, that is not so much the case. Only comics enjoy true journalistic freedom and can write their material with any honesty.
The chances of getting hit by a hijacked plane is less than winning the lottery. But guess what? Enough of us think it'll happen to them. So that makes it right.
Lotteries are taxes for people who can't do math, but unfortunately all of us are being forced to pay for anti-terrorism.
You shouldn't look at programming strictly from a "writing code" perspective. No matter how fun or friendly a language is, if it doesn't do anything, it is not interesting. And you will not be able to persuade most people into finding code alone interesting. Maybe scheme code is "interesting."
Instead, you need to focus on the results of the code. If the student is familiar with Windows, then teach them how to build windows apps. If they love their iPhone, then maybe how to write iPhone apps. If the kid loves blogging, then maybe how to build his own web site.
Give them the tools to fulfill *their* imagination, not yours.
And it is all about the tools. If there is anything a child has, it is time. Give them the tools to make their dreams come true, and they will work on it tirelessly on their own. That is how we learn the things we remember.
You should switch, but not because a better provider won't root your servers, but because you might not have to submit support tickets if their side of the network doesn't have problems.
Every hosting provider has Terms Of Use. They have every right to go into your system, and just because you encrypt everything or deny access, it doesn't mean they won't flat out unplug your service. In fact, the best providers are better because they are good at preventing high loads due to violations. They prevent them by investigating. If you do not allow them to investigate, they may just decide your fees aren't worth the risk that you might be a spammer or running some child porn site.
Obviously they have a plan. They have an NPO plan, not a business plan. People will misunderstand you if you are an NPO with a "business plan."
Techies sucking at business plans is an old cliche which parent sited and got modded "insightful" for, to which I was taking issue. Not only is OLPC not a business, it is run by an industry icon that has a lot of pull in academia and with governments. Aligning OLPC with every other business and pretending to know what they do and don't have sight of is hardly insightful.
one time when an actual terrorist tries to smuggle explosives on board
Not only that, it appears the bomber was also incompetent. So we have:
Incompetent people reacting to incompetent people spending billions and billions of our tax dollars in a country that doesn't have health care for the middle class.
It is almost 2010. Will next year be the year I'll finally be proud to be an american?
Parent misses the point. Which is a given, because he admits to not getting the point.
There is a fundamental difference between GIVING a PERSONAL computer "toy" versus providing a community with a few good computers. There are also many logistical problems.
Would you rather share a swing or have your own jungle gym in your back yard? To this end, I give OLPC props. Kids can possess something inspiring. Although, whether OLPC software really educates is a whole different debate.
Also, I must say this. Computer labs are overrated. You can't save anything. You can't build anything. You can tinker with it, then the next time around you are at zero. Also, it definitely depends on who is maintaining it all, but computer labs can break down very easily. Viruses, bugs, hacked by users, etc. Robbery can also be an issue depending on the hardware.
why can't twitter just build the same software on their own? Seems like a simple problem with a pretty straight forward feature set. Unless they are doing favors... with their investor's money.
...what all this tech + sales hybrid hooplah is all about. Any job that involves an individual selling their skills is such a job. Be it law, music, video productions, industrial design, consulting, politics, hair styling, whatever. It may be a coincidence that many freelance web designers emerged thinking their job was unique, but that has nothing to do with how the world really ticks.
If you suck at sales, get a job at a firm where they only need your tech skills. If you suck at tech, but are great at sales, get a job at the same firm but in the department opposite. If you think you got what it takes to do it on your own, go for it. The real world will readily provide you with a real world answer to whether you have what it takes.
If Apple was in the smartphone business, then sure, but they are in the mobile phone business. They are not competing to be king of smart phones. They are (or were) going for the whole pie. Also the smart phone market is not an emerging one. It is a failed one.
In any case, the problem with this article is it is dishonest. You can make statistics say anything, and this is a prime demonstration of that. This article tries to lead people in thinking the iPhone is successful. But the iPhone in Japan is fucked.
Apple isn't hurting as much as Sofbank is, that bet their whole mobile business and their kitchen sink on it, and are stuck with the tens of thousands SIM locked iPhones that Apple isn't taking back. But they placed their bet, are cutting their losses, and they will survive to fight another day. And that is what they will be doing.
Of course, I have nothing against the iPhone. If they listened to the needs of their users in Japan, they would have a product that would sell more. But Sofbank had already inked a deal that gave Apple no reason to further innovate. So it is really Sofbank's fault. They thought the iPhone was good enough as it was before it was market tested, and when really it was only competitive enough for the US market which by far has the lowest standard for mobile phones in the world.
The article should read: The few people that are buying smart phones are buying iPhones.
Apple has a huge share of the TINY smart phone market. They key to this article is omitting the Smart phone market share.
Average Japanese phones are smart enough that smart phones are very unpopular in Japan. People who need to do more than surf and email carry laptops, and more recently "netbooks."
Also most people prefer the keypad over a keyboard for entering Japanese into their phones. This is just how Japanese is. So all those keypad phones are also unpopular.
So anonymity in this case was simply a type of encryption. Making information less obvious doesn't mean the information is lost. True anonymity can only be achieved by purging information, and hence only no information is truly anonymous. Or is it?
Cracking google's anonymity code is another related topic. It is good that these companies anonymity cards are being challenged.
Yes. And on a more positive note, even if the train derails, someone can fork it and put it back on the right track. At least that wouldn't happen if Mozilla were proprietary, in which case the company would just implode (Netscape).
Microsoft has a monopoly. Maybe less so than before on the "desktop" category, but to state the obvious their monopoly on "Windows" is 100%. So naturally, they have every advantage when creating products for their own platform, and they'll do everything legally possible to shove dev products down developers throats.
So I say whether they call it.Net or.Piss, it does not matter much. The success of ASP is a bi-product of their desktop advantage. If ASP.NET were sold by ASPsoft, then no one would buy it.
Business 101: How do you sell a product regardless of its quality?
Microsoft is great at this, as every other major US corporation is and should be.
BTW I am not saying anything about their quality. I am just saying it doesn't really matter much, because their software is sold by weight.
I guess suggesting this open source project has failed in certain regards would earn you Troll mods here, but some of you get what I am getting at. For example, when I list on eBay, I paste about 500 lines of HTML in their description box. FireFox literally freezes for 2 seconds. This has forced me to use IE8 for this, and before FF 3.5 I had never had to resort to IE. A part of me died.
From the original article:
"Anyone who knows JavaScript and HTML can develop a great app without having to learn a specific mobile platform," Jay Sullivan, vice president of mobile at Mozilla told PC Pro.
That sounds like pure PR speak from the mouth of the PR machine itself. Vice president of mobile? Mozilla is playing politics. Hint 2: It's a PC Pro article.
Anyone remember XUL? At least back then it felt like the developers were doing the selling. Of course, it never took over anything.
Really, if you think twice about this article, it is fake news going for fake buzz. It is a corporate propaganda piece.
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, most of the people who read the article don't click on ads.
I say if not for google, people wouldn't even know you existed.
Unless you are the New York Times or Washington Post, hardly anyone knows you. Google brings all of you "anonymous cowards" together and makes you presentable so people who otherwise wouldn't can see you and know who you are.
To say these people would click through every paper if not for google is like saying everyone who downloads free songs would pay for them all if given the choice.
No. It's thanks, but no thanks. Not thanks, okay here you go.
If music downloads weren't free, then people wouldn't download all that music, period. If they were tangible records, then we wouldn't decide to pay for them. We would return them.
When you create a downside to information (like a fee), then most of us won't care for it. You can beg to differ, but the users will always think they can always get it somewhere else, where there is no downside (like for free). And it's not even the price that really matters. It's the thought of having to pay that is the real challenge.
What I want to know is, how much the lawyers made vs how much these companies actually made, what the court costs paid by our tax dollars were, and if there were any winners in all this!!!!!
If this is innovation at work, then I'll be damned.
When IT is a business, selling to its "internal customers,"
Any business inside a business is a bad idea!! Businesses are *not* your friend. Think about it.
IT is still young. And we have an extremely muddled labor pool that is mixed with young geniuses and out-of-date veterans, as well as idiot young guns and some older people who *really* know what they are doing.
The problem with this situation is that from everyone's own perspective, it becomes extremely difficult for everyone else to make the right decision.
A novice non-IT business is the perfect target for a one-stop shop type of IT outsourcing company. They will never truly understand what you need, teach you anything, or explain exactly what you are paying for. You will get propriety solutions and pay a heavy margin for maintenance. Yes, they will meet requirements, but this is far from ideal.
Another pitfall is hiring the true techie to *manage* an IT department or an IT solution. There is a HUUUGE difference between someone who excels at technical knowhow and accuracy, and someone who sees the whole picture, can work with people, and can make compromises when weighing non-technical priorities.
The best scenario for any company is to find a savvy insider early and hire them. This person might not be able to do everything themselves, but they will know good from bad. They will also be close to management and will be pragmatic about implementing the needs of the company. Give this person sufficient resources, and you are good to go. Of course, whether or not you hired such a person, you may never know. If you actually have such a person *in* management, then you are ahead of the curve.
One thing is for certain though. New businesses that embrace IT will have a distinct edge. If you work at a fairly young company that doesn't care about their web page, or is losing business to competitors that do, I would get ready to jump ship. Seriously, IT can make or break even a restaurant (eg. SEO and yelp management).
A patent is only worth it's strength in court. The USPTO has clearly given up trying to judge if a patent is truly worthy on their own, relying on the courts to decide afterwards when a patent is put to use and put to the test - in court.
What bothers me the most is the fact that anyone can get a patent for anything as long as they keep revising their application.
At the end of the day, those with the biggest wallets will get their patents, and they will also have their guns to fight and win in court.
I get about the same out of EDGE on T-Mobile as I did from 3G on AT&T. It would hardly go 3G anyway, and when it did, it wouldn't last, or would be slow.
I was practically forced to ditch AT&T because I got 1 bar at my house. And I am definitely in their coverage area.
Just to repeat what others are saying: It depends 100% on where exactly you'll be using your phone.
I think in the end, you'll find you don't really have many choices.
Free market capitalism at its best!
Buck passing is done when said. Everything else is easier said than done.
Being Microsoft helps. Many of Microsoft's achievements have been by just being a mammoth Goliath monopoly. But that is them just doing their job. If you can't innovate, then gather an army and go to war. Only lawyers can tell you what you can and can't do.
Innovation at Microsoft is a plus, but not a requirement. The substance of their products is only part of the very large picture.
Even though quantum encryption is theoretically perfect...
Most things that are perfect *are* theoretical.
...real hardware isn't, and they exploit these flaws.
Most modern encryption isn't cracked by breaking the technology used to encrypt it. Security is only as secure as the pain tolerance of the person who knows the PIN, or the size of the visor that is suppose to hide the numbers you press from the person in line behind you.
An important distinction here is between real investigative journalism, and prompt event reporting. Losing this distinction will result in lame AI news by automated article generators, and slow information gathering by humans. Building on this distinction will result in faster and larger data input streams automated and always on, feeding real journalists helping them build bigger pictures and recognizing what really matters. Jon Stuart can then filter it all and give us the real news.
It used to be we needed journalists to be our eyes and ears, but now with bloggers and phone cameras and tweets, that is not so much the case. Only a machine could gather all this information in real-time. It used to be that journalists would read deep in between the lines and provide us with insight, but now with Fox and MSNBC and even CNN all driven by politics, that is not so much the case. Only comics enjoy true journalistic freedom and can write their material with any honesty.
How is that different from network execs deciding what you should or should not know about?
At least a robot has a chance of being objective, but the programmer would have to allow it.
The chances of getting hit by a hijacked plane is less than winning the lottery. But guess what? Enough of us think it'll happen to them. So that makes it right.
Lotteries are taxes for people who can't do math, but unfortunately all of us are being forced to pay for anti-terrorism.
You shouldn't look at programming strictly from a "writing code" perspective. No matter how fun or friendly a language is, if it doesn't do anything, it is not interesting. And you will not be able to persuade most people into finding code alone interesting. Maybe scheme code is "interesting."
Instead, you need to focus on the results of the code. If the student is familiar with Windows, then teach them how to build windows apps. If they love their iPhone, then maybe how to write iPhone apps. If the kid loves blogging, then maybe how to build his own web site.
Give them the tools to fulfill *their* imagination, not yours.
And it is all about the tools. If there is anything a child has, it is time. Give them the tools to make their dreams come true, and they will work on it tirelessly on their own. That is how we learn the things we remember.
You should switch, but not because a better provider won't root your servers, but because you might not have to submit support tickets if their side of the network doesn't have problems.
Every hosting provider has Terms Of Use. They have every right to go into your system, and just because you encrypt everything or deny access, it doesn't mean they won't flat out unplug your service. In fact, the best providers are better because they are good at preventing high loads due to violations. They prevent them by investigating. If you do not allow them to investigate, they may just decide your fees aren't worth the risk that you might be a spammer or running some child porn site.
Just trying to add some perspective.
Obviously they have a plan. They have an NPO plan, not a business plan. People will misunderstand you if you are an NPO with a "business plan."
Techies sucking at business plans is an old cliche which parent sited and got modded "insightful" for, to which I was taking issue. Not only is OLPC not a business, it is run by an industry icon that has a lot of pull in academia and with governments. Aligning OLPC with every other business and pretending to know what they do and don't have sight of is hardly insightful.
one time when an actual terrorist tries to smuggle explosives on board
Not only that, it appears the bomber was also incompetent. So we have:
Incompetent people reacting to incompetent people spending billions and billions of our tax dollars in a country that doesn't have health care for the middle class.
It is almost 2010. Will next year be the year I'll finally be proud to be an american?
to implement a business plan
BTW, They are a nonprofit organization.
Parent misses the point. Which is a given, because he admits to not getting the point.
There is a fundamental difference between GIVING a PERSONAL computer "toy" versus providing a community with a few good computers. There are also many logistical problems.
Would you rather share a swing or have your own jungle gym in your back yard? To this end, I give OLPC props. Kids can possess something inspiring. Although, whether OLPC software really educates is a whole different debate.
Also, I must say this. Computer labs are overrated. You can't save anything. You can't build anything. You can tinker with it, then the next time around you are at zero. Also, it definitely depends on who is maintaining it all, but computer labs can break down very easily. Viruses, bugs, hacked by users, etc. Robbery can also be an issue depending on the hardware.
why can't twitter just build the same software on their own? Seems like a simple problem with a pretty straight forward feature set. Unless they are doing favors... with their investor's money.
...what all this tech + sales hybrid hooplah is all about. Any job that involves an individual selling their skills is such a job. Be it law, music, video productions, industrial design, consulting, politics, hair styling, whatever. It may be a coincidence that many freelance web designers emerged thinking their job was unique, but that has nothing to do with how the world really ticks.
If you suck at sales, get a job at a firm where they only need your tech skills. If you suck at tech, but are great at sales, get a job at the same firm but in the department opposite. If you think you got what it takes to do it on your own, go for it. The real world will readily provide you with a real world answer to whether you have what it takes.
If Apple was in the smartphone business, then sure, but they are in the mobile phone business. They are not competing to be king of smart phones. They are (or were) going for the whole pie. Also the smart phone market is not an emerging one. It is a failed one.
In any case, the problem with this article is it is dishonest. You can make statistics say anything, and this is a prime demonstration of that. This article tries to lead people in thinking the iPhone is successful. But the iPhone in Japan is fucked.
Apple isn't hurting as much as Sofbank is, that bet their whole mobile business and their kitchen sink on it, and are stuck with the tens of thousands SIM locked iPhones that Apple isn't taking back. But they placed their bet, are cutting their losses, and they will survive to fight another day. And that is what they will be doing.
Of course, I have nothing against the iPhone. If they listened to the needs of their users in Japan, they would have a product that would sell more. But Sofbank had already inked a deal that gave Apple no reason to further innovate. So it is really Sofbank's fault. They thought the iPhone was good enough as it was before it was market tested, and when really it was only competitive enough for the US market which by far has the lowest standard for mobile phones in the world.
The article should read: The few people that are buying smart phones are buying iPhones.
Apple has a huge share of the TINY smart phone market. They key to this article is omitting the Smart phone market share.
Average Japanese phones are smart enough that smart phones are very unpopular in Japan. People who need to do more than surf and email carry laptops, and more recently "netbooks."
Also most people prefer the keypad over a keyboard for entering Japanese into their phones. This is just how Japanese is. So all those keypad phones are also unpopular.
So anonymity in this case was simply a type of encryption. Making information less obvious doesn't mean the information is lost. True anonymity can only be achieved by purging information, and hence only no information is truly anonymous. Or is it?
Cracking google's anonymity code is another related topic. It is good that these companies anonymity cards are being challenged.
Yes. And on a more positive note, even if the train derails, someone can fork it and put it back on the right track. At least that wouldn't happen if Mozilla were proprietary, in which case the company would just implode (Netscape).
Microsoft has a monopoly. Maybe less so than before on the "desktop" category, but to state the obvious their monopoly on "Windows" is 100%. So naturally, they have every advantage when creating products for their own platform, and they'll do everything legally possible to shove dev products down developers throats.
So I say whether they call it .Net or .Piss, it does not matter much. The success of ASP is a bi-product of their desktop advantage. If ASP.NET were sold by ASPsoft, then no one would buy it.
Business 101: How do you sell a product regardless of its quality?
Microsoft is great at this, as every other major US corporation is and should be.
BTW I am not saying anything about their quality. I am just saying it doesn't really matter much, because their software is sold by weight.
I guess suggesting this open source project has failed in certain regards would earn you Troll mods here, but some of you get what I am getting at. For example, when I list on eBay, I paste about 500 lines of HTML in their description box. FireFox literally freezes for 2 seconds. This has forced me to use IE8 for this, and before FF 3.5 I had never had to resort to IE. A part of me died.
From the original article:
"Anyone who knows JavaScript and HTML can develop a great app without having to learn a specific mobile platform," Jay Sullivan, vice president of mobile at Mozilla told PC Pro.
That sounds like pure PR speak from the mouth of the PR machine itself. Vice president of mobile? Mozilla is playing politics. Hint 2: It's a PC Pro article.
Anyone remember XUL? At least back then it felt like the developers were doing the selling. Of course, it never took over anything.
Really, if you think twice about this article, it is fake news going for fake buzz. It is a corporate propaganda piece.