It's really similar to the last federal election we had in Australia -- polls running strongly for the centre-left party for a long while before the election, with a large electoral movement for change.
Australia also lacks the prominent hard right wing of the US, or at least the evangelical christians and gun lobby stay out of the way of the mainstream media here.
On a personal note, it was pretty clear even in Australia what a disaster Bush has become, and how incompetent the Republican party has been. If I had been in the US, I would have dropped everything to volunteer for the democrat campaign, no matter who was nominated!
Basically, Obama was disciplined and thoughtful, had a strategic plan that extended well into the future for the entire campaign, and got a lot of smart people who were frustrated by Republican incompetence and partisanship on board. He listened to them and went with their best ideas.
McCain flailed around wildly, without long term planning and had to give in to vested GOP interests at various important turning points.
You think journalism is dead because the two candidates got different press coverage? That's because the news media was paying attention. If the Olympic games altered the results to make it seem like mismatched competitors were much closer than they actually were, that would be a travesty.
Given all the material that has come out in the aftermath, I don't think you can plausibly say that McCain/Palin operated a functional campaign. If the news coverage had been 'more balanced' and you found out after the election that they were incompetent, wouldn't that indicate that journalism had failed?
My suspicion is that they're keeping their options open and directing media attention where they want it most: They can always announce extra features later, but they don't have to.
Look at the WinFS debacle -- if MS hadn't made a big deal about it, they wouldn't have been hoist with their own petard when they had to remove it.
Basically, Apple gets media coverage focused on the iphone beyond any advertising budget ever. They have a release planned which might not have reasons for end users to upgrade (developers have many more reasons to switch) but Vista gives them breathing space to do housecleaning.
If you wanted to be mean, you might say that they could work on new features, deliberately leave them out of snow leopard, and then take a GIGANTIC DUMP on the release of windows 7 by releasing them then.
But for that to happen, you'd need someone really ruthless in charge. Everyone knows Jobs is a fluffy little bunny who wants to be friends with MS...
I think you hit the nail on the head: Apple has to persuade the marketplace to follow them, they can't use a monopoly position to force unwelcome changes on everyone.
Vista's DRM/Content protection is going to affect all of us, since the operation of your motherboard, graphics and sound cards have to comply in order to be able to view media as intended. Your Linux box in 3 years time will be more expensive, and the drivers more complicated, because of a decision made at Redmond.
At least you can decide not to use an iPhone without having to pay more for any other smartphone on the market. In fact, I suspect smart phones are going to get a lot friendlier and cheaper as RIM and Palm try to fend off Apple.
It also depends on the packages. I've been using http://macports.com/ (nee DarwinPorts) and it's a great package manager: install dependencies, update to the latest versions, deactivate without installing and so on.
There's also Fink, but I found it a harder to use. Check what packages they support and see what suits you.
The firm where I used to work ( http://www.toop.com.au ) has got quite a system up: properties are added to the website before the first ad appears in a newspaper, ipix panoramas are on the website within a week of listing, you save your search criteria and get SMS/email notification when something comes in that suits you...
This took a pretty major rearrangement of the business systems, though. My understanding is also that the major real estate portals for Australia slipped up to begin with a few years ago, retarding the uptake of the internet when it was 'boomtime' -- expensive, late to update (auctions had been held by the time the property was on the website, in far too many cases) and crashed too often. Also, as has been noted, the web was meant to reduce middlemen, and agents resist _that_ idea for obvious reasons.
Essentially, real estate won't shift to the 'net until they gain more from it (exposure to potential buyers) than they lose (by slimming margins) and even then, the shift will be slow rather than dramatic because real estate is an area where people can't depend entirely on the virtual. A book from Amazon will be the same as the book from the local bookstore chain, but a house is a much larger purchase, and unique in location/design/etc.
Slashdot Mirror
It's really similar to the last federal election we had in Australia -- polls running strongly for the centre-left party for a long while before the election, with a large electoral movement for change.
Australia also lacks the prominent hard right wing of the US, or at least the evangelical christians and gun lobby stay out of the way of the mainstream media here.
On a personal note, it was pretty clear even in Australia what a disaster Bush has become, and how incompetent the Republican party has been. If I had been in the US, I would have dropped everything to volunteer for the democrat campaign, no matter who was nominated!
You should check out the NewsWeek articles on 'Secrets of the 2008 campaign
Basically, Obama was disciplined and thoughtful, had a strategic plan that extended well into the future for the entire campaign, and got a lot of smart people who were frustrated by Republican incompetence and partisanship on board. He listened to them and went with their best ideas.
McCain flailed around wildly, without long term planning and had to give in to vested GOP interests at various important turning points.
You think journalism is dead because the two candidates got different press coverage? That's because the news media was paying attention. If the Olympic games altered the results to make it seem like mismatched competitors were much closer than they actually were, that would be a travesty.
Given all the material that has come out in the aftermath, I don't think you can plausibly say that McCain/Palin operated a functional campaign. If the news coverage had been 'more balanced' and you found out after the election that they were incompetent, wouldn't that indicate that journalism had failed?
My suspicion is that they're keeping their options open and directing media attention where they want it most: They can always announce extra features later, but they don't have to.
Look at the WinFS debacle -- if MS hadn't made a big deal about it, they wouldn't have been hoist with their own petard when they had to remove it.
Basically, Apple gets media coverage focused on the iphone beyond any advertising budget ever. They have a release planned which might not have reasons for end users to upgrade (developers have many more reasons to switch) but Vista gives them breathing space to do housecleaning.
If you wanted to be mean, you might say that they could work on new features, deliberately leave them out of snow leopard, and then take a GIGANTIC DUMP on the release of windows 7 by releasing them then.
But for that to happen, you'd need someone really ruthless in charge. Everyone knows Jobs is a fluffy little bunny who wants to be friends with MS...
I think you hit the nail on the head: Apple has to persuade the marketplace to follow them, they can't use a monopoly position to force unwelcome changes on everyone.
Vista's DRM/Content protection is going to affect all of us, since the operation of your motherboard, graphics and sound cards have to comply in order to be able to view media as intended. Your Linux box in 3 years time will be more expensive, and the drivers more complicated, because of a decision made at Redmond.
At least you can decide not to use an iPhone without having to pay more for any other smartphone on the market. In fact, I suspect smart phones are going to get a lot friendlier and cheaper as RIM and Palm try to fend off Apple.
-Luke
It also depends on the packages. I've been using http://macports.com/ (nee DarwinPorts) and it's a great package manager: install dependencies, update to the latest versions, deactivate without installing and so on.
There's also Fink, but I found it a harder to use. Check what packages they support and see what suits you.
The firm where I used to work ( http://www.toop.com.au ) has got quite a system up: properties are added to the website before the first ad appears in a newspaper, ipix panoramas are on the website within a week of listing, you save your search criteria and get SMS/email notification when something comes in that suits you...
This took a pretty major rearrangement of the business systems, though. My understanding is also that the major real estate portals for Australia slipped up to begin with a few years ago, retarding the uptake of the internet when it was 'boomtime' -- expensive, late to update (auctions had been held by the time the property was on the website, in far too many cases) and crashed too often. Also, as has been noted, the web was meant to reduce middlemen, and agents resist _that_ idea for obvious reasons.
Essentially, real estate won't shift to the 'net until they gain more from it (exposure to potential buyers) than they lose (by slimming margins) and even then, the shift will be slow rather than dramatic because real estate is an area where people can't depend entirely on the virtual. A book from Amazon will be the same as the book from the local bookstore chain, but a house is a much larger purchase, and unique in location/design/etc.
Just my perspective on things...