Well, there's classified information that very few people have seen, and then there's classified information that several billion people have (potentially) seen, and that your battlefield enemies have very likely studied in some detail.
I keep picking up this implication that the US military is keeping valuable information from itself while it's enemies have access. I'm not sure if that is the intended implication. But if it is, I find it suspect. It seems to me that US soldiers who'd find tactical use of this material likely already had access to it (re: old news). Any tactical value to this information to be gathered from the leak is going to be gained by those who didn't have access; namely the US military's adversaries.
Restrictions on the US military is about something else. I seriously doubt those restrictions would have any negative impact. Or at least, not the impact being implied here.
Absolutely. Look how much Google has had to back off of vacuuming up data from every source (even your router) imaginable and go back to selling services and software.
Nice fear mongering there. There's nothing that indicates that Google was busy cataloging payload data. There are some indications that Google wanted to identify WAPs. But hey - why not push that button while it's available and most people are clueless about wireless networks and sniffing?
Why would Google spend millions on dollars on creating, publishing and maintaining Android? Do you honestly believe it is because the folks at Google just wanted to "give something back" or to improve the lives of Symbian developers (so they could get laid off and find something better to do)? No, Android is something that will impact all of its users in the (probably near) future and it will make money for Google. Lots of money.
Because Google realizes their business works best when there is no single gatekeeper. Android is an attempt to disrupt the market and ensure there are multiple vendors providing multiple gateways to the Internet. And while one can spin that as a nice "giving back" angle, it is also good business. Google doesn't exist in the AOL era; they came to being in the world of (arguably) interchangeable ISPs. Android is a tactic to ensure we don't return to the old days (which, IMHO, is where Apple would like to go).
Will Google go ad-crazy? Possibly. But I don't think they have to at this point. AdMob is doing pretty good for them from what I can tell. And that didn't require force-feeding. But then, modern business is so obsessed with growth that your ad-laden prediction might come to pass.
And that's the exact issue. It's not The Whitehouse as in the seat of the US Presidential administration. That would be whitehouse.gov. This is some dude who, at first, wanted to be critical of the Clinton administration. And then he wanted to make money with pornography (and in there was some transition where he photoshopped the First Couple in to BDSM scenes).
He could get away with it under the whitehouse.com domain as there was no legal protection to the name. However, NASA has legal protection and, despite his crying over the injustice, he had to abandon nasa.com.
this has nothing to do with what's going on at all. FBI has no legal standing on this anyway, so unless wikipedia backs down for whatever illogical reason, this would end up being a whole lot of nothing.
You might be surprised at what laws exist. Years ago, the whitehouse.com pornographer ran in to issues when he tried to play the same game with the nasa.com domain name. The difference is that "whitehouse" has no legal protection while "nasa" does.
Oh, I don't disagree with your analysis of the content of the NYT article - indeed, see my Journal Entry on the subject for more.
But the fact that Slashdot did not even see fit to post the story, and allow discussion of the issues raised - that they weren't even willing to take the risk that people like you would find fault with the story - THAT is what is the real "tell" on what is going on.
Or maybe it's more along the lines of "...and nothing of value was lost." If you agree with the analysis that the article is bogus (and clearly, with a statement like "Oh, feel the BURN!", you feel otherwise) then I fail to see any significance in posting the story. People can, and will continue, to grouse about Slashdot without a topic dedicated to it. Although it would be interesting if said grousing was actually on-topic for once; I don't know what the complainers would do with themselves.
Since that time, and particularly without checks or even an accounting for after the murder of JFK, our country has been the bad guy in every conflict.
To be sure, the US has been involved in a lot of nasty dealings. We've done bad things - intentionally and unintentionally. But then, since WWII, the US became a lot more involved in world politics. And the world is full of pretty vicious people. You don't go wading in to that without getting dirty.
The biggest issue I have with this mind-set is that it ignores other players in that arena. The US hasn't acted alone. In fact, a lot of the more questionable activities the US has been involved with has also involved the Soviets. Never-mind that a lot of these situations involve entities that tend to have plenty of history on their own without US involvement. There's nothing wrong with being critical of US policy. But missing from so many of those criticisms is perspective.
Ludicrous. I could not possibly be overstating the situation. If you want a case by case detailed report of all the fallacious chicanery the US has done over the last 50 years, no. Frankly I'm not going to spend the next 100 years attempting to earn that PHD.
You've gone from claiming US bombings are random to a nice laundry list of conspiracy theories. Yet none of this is an over-statement? In the next breath, you claim understanding the situation will take 100 years of study. Indeed. Perhaps if you held off on the bong a bit, you'd complete your studies a bit faster. At the least, you might be less gullible and less inclined to believe every conspiracy theory you run across on the Internet.
At one time Iraq was a sovereign nation, with a long standing border dispute with Iran. They wouldn't sell us oil for as cheap as we'd have liked, so we installed SADDAM HUSSEIN. A genocidal madman who routinely hung living people on large hooks designed for hanging sides of butchered cattle. That's right, WE installed Saddam. This is most clearly in the record books, and no conspiracy theory.
Unfortunately, there is no clear record books to back this up. There are claims from individuals. There's a lot of inter-linked articles all based on these whispers. But there is very little evidence.
I can understand the inclination to believe this story. After all, the CIA has certainly been involved in the region; most famously in Iran. And at the very least, the US was pleased with the regime change. But support is a far cry from outright engineering the power struggle. And it should be pointed out that the regime change didn't put Saddam in power immediately.
Things were going well: for a little while. He was brutally massacring a bunch of towel heads we could care less about, we were getting cheap oil, he was getting new guns. What could be better?
He was getting new guns from the Soviets and French. The US wanted someone to keep the Iranians busy. Oil might have been involved, but it's very short-sighted to look at it as the end-all and be-all of involvement.
Then one day, he realized that Kuwait also had oil, and that we weren't paying enough. Begin operation desert storm.
One day? All sudden-like. As if years of border disputes (going back before Saddam's time) didn't exist. And that huge war debt financed by the Kuwaitis didn't exist. And the suspicion of Kuwaiti oil market and oil production shenanigans didn't exist. Oh no. It was all because the CIA's check didn't have enough zero's.
We shatter his whole army literally in one single day. We restore the retarded religious based fascism to Kuwait, start getting oil on the cheap again,
Wait a second - wasn't Kuwait a sovereign nation? I suppose that rhetoric only works when critical of the US. As for Kuwaiti oil - well, yes. Of course. That's one of Saddam's big mistakes. We always protected Kuwaiti oil interests as they are major suppliers to entities that are important to our economy. But I'm sure that's all a big revelation for you.
..and let Saddam go back to killing the Kurds, which is now especially despicable on our part now, because Bush Sr. had told the Kurds via TV broadcast to "Rise up, so we can help you over through this ruthless dictator". Nevermind the fact that WE installed him in the first place, and then couldn't be bothered when the Kurds rose up and he wiped them all out.
The US' handling of Kurd and Shia political actions has been sporadic. But then, the situation isn't entirely clear-cut with openly violent in-fighting among factions of each group. That's already a mess without tossing in the Saddam/CIA conspiracy theory. It'd be your first fair point if you hadn't tipped over the conspiracy edge.
He *is* overstating the case. This doesn't mean that he's wrong in principle
No, he is wrong in principle. He obviously doesn't understand the situation and can't be bothered to educate himself on the situation. Furthermore, he can't be bothered to put together a reasonable argument on why he doesn't agree with the situation. So he makes things up. That's a fiction, not a reasonable political view.
E.g., one plausible reason for the Afghanistan conflict is to test out new weapons. Nobody's going to admit that, but it's the most plausible excuse that I've come up with. (Same for Iran, but with lots more evidence that all the excuses were lies, but another plausible excuse: I've heard someone claim that it started because Iran started to sell it's oil for Euros rather than dollars. Don't know if that's true or not, and by now it doesn't matter. But the excuses that were provided were obvious lies, that were proved false over and over.)
Well... yes. Because the US military can't possibly do any testing without a war. Nope. They need to take weapons systems in to a small, inconsequential war to expose the capabilities of those weapons systems to the world. That's the only way to tell if something works. And likewise, Iran is all a conspiracy over markets. There's absolutely no geopolitical history involving Iran in the region.
Seriously - get some education. Again... one might not agree with the party line. But at least the objections can have some basis in reality.
If our country wasn't randomly bombing the shit out of all manner of other people, and actually keeping an informed and healthy electorate whose votes were actually counted, we wouldn't need a system.
At this point, reasonable people will stop listening to you. Our country is not "randomly bombing the shit out of all manner of other people." There are very distinct reasons behind those actions. You may not agree with the reasons given. You may question whether we are given real reasons. You may disagree with the fundamental idea of such a policy. But it would serve your cause to give voice to those grievances instead of resorting to generic exaggerations. Otherwise, you sound like an uninformed raving lunatic. And you might even cause others who CAN voice rational criticism to be overlooked by the general public.
I think a better example there would be Commodore.
My first computer... that was bought and paid for by me... was my old C=64. I still have it in a box. It was a really nice system for it's time. And while I never jumped to the Amiga, I had a friend who did. And that too was a really amazing system.
However, I maintain the Apple story to be more interesting here. We are talking about another Apple product today; an Apple product that leads a niche market. There's an echo of the past in that.
Companies probably bought Apple II because of Visicalc, but not the other way.
Apple II was just the hardware platform, and it was only an expensive game platform at this time. Professional software was rare on it.
I completely agree. VisiCalc was the killer app. But VisiCalc's platform was (initially) the Apple II. And that combination made the market. Apple had a defacto lead in that market for a couple years.
Granted, without VisiCalc, the Apple II would have continued to exist as a hobbyist product; the view held on microcomputers in general. I didn't mean to imply that VisiCalc was created by Apple. However, Apple did produce a product that was designed to be consumer electronics and encourage the kind of development that lead to VisiCalc. There were other microcomputers around at the time. But VisiCalc was always, first and foremost, an Apple application.
Also, keep in mind that professional software for microcomputers was rare, period. It didn't matter what platform.
They did. The Apple II was selling very well as the first business microcomputer. Essentially, it was sold as a VisiCalc machine (one account I read from an early computer shop owner was that people came in to the store wanting to buy that exact setup without knowing what it was they needed to buy). Apple and VisiCalc created a new market and lead that market. But that success also attracted IBM's attention.
Keep in mind the timing here. The Apple II had been in production since 1977. VisiCalc comes out in 1979, the same year Apple produces the Apple II+. That combination changes the market. In 1981, IBM produces the 5150 specifically targeted at business after a rushed 1yr development cycle (completely counter to IBM's culture). VisiCalc is available for the IBM PC.
IBM already has a foot in the door with business customers. Most business computing before then involved mainframes and that was IBM's realm. The phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" comes from this era and really highlights the sales advantage for the IBM PC.
Apple had the initial market dominance. However, while that is often a major advantage, it is not the whole story. The microcomputer market was growing at that time. IBM didn't have to displace Apple. They just had to capture the growing market. And they did.
IT competition is all about control and platform. Microsoft is worried of anything that gets enough market to constitute a viable investment for development firms because if those firms make more money of the ipad/iphone then investing in microsoft develpment platform is less atractive and, given enough time, can even kill or seriously hinder the windows platform income which is way, way, way, way much more than anybody is ever going to get out of any ipad/iphone app.
It's all about control. Ultimately, it all leads to money. But I believe it's short-sighted to put money as the immediate motivator.
Control is about being the master of your own fate. There are few surprises when you control the platform. You know the long-term plan because it is your plan. You know when something crops up that may interfere with those plans. You know the alternative plans and the changes in direction before anyone else. You get to choose that change in a way that best benefits you and your goals. You don't have to fight to realize your ideas. Control is stability.
A lack of control puts your fate in others hands. If one other entity has control, everything you do relies on their judgment and whether your goals coincide with yours. If you have an idea, it may require selling them before you can realize it. Even worse is when the environment is owned by everyone and no-one.
Again - money enters the picture eventually. We are talking about business after all. But in this industry, one can still have altruistic grand visions and be fairly certain that the money will follow.
Excellent list. I'd offer one even more profound example. Apple. The Apple II (combined with VisiCalc) redefined the personal computer from hobbyist novelty to must-have business tool. If anyone has had a front-row seat to how the industry works, it's Apple.
I think he's indicating that he doesn't care about his personal information because he's already given most of it away on Facebook and Twitter. That, and he's a celebrity - personal life is the coin of that realm.
There's some context to think about. The US entered WWII as a direct result of American soil being attacked. It was pretty clear that fighting back was a matter of national security. In that context it would be easy to make the case that a leaker of battlefield secrets was treasonous.
Since then we've only waged elective wars, generally for purposes that leave many of us scratching our heads in confusion.
The US' involvement in geopolitics before and after WWII is vastly different. Before WWII, the US was staunchly isolationist. However, as the war in Europe began to unfold, the fear was that the US would eventually be attacked. By 1940, the US began to ostensibly support Allied efforts with supplies. By 1941, US shipping came under attack to include the first lives lost under a US flag. Then came Perl Harbor. Since then, the US has elected to be much more involved in world affairs.
The taliban still need to be destroyed. Afghanistan still needs massive amounts of reconstruction. For all the resources that have been applied, more still need to be applied. We are not in Afghanistan to prop up a fledgling democracy, we are not there to promote human rights. We are there to destroy a fundamentalist movement, and more effort needs to be spent in order to succeed.
Or we can let Afghanistan fall, again. They'll harbour enemies of the west, again.
When Afghanistan was a part of the Cold War, we were involved in a war-by-proxy with the Soviets. But as soon as that was over, we sort of forgot all about Afghanistan and left them to their own devices. So a group of fundamentalists from Pakistan invaded and took over. Eventually they became the last haven for a particular group of extremists who went on to finally succeed in an attack on US soil. If we had paid a bit more attention to propping up a fledgling democracy and human rights earlier, we would be less concerned about destroying a fundamentalist movement today.
"HELLO?! WHAT?! YEAH! I'M AT DEFCON. Yeah. Some guy is giving some demo now. No, it's rubbish. What? No. Nobody know's I'm a Fed. Right. OK. Got to go."
(Imagine that in all caps 'cause the/. filter doesn't like loud literary voice)
Did I say all criticism is suspect? No, I said an article that takes an overtly negative tone is suspect, and then I went on to mention a detail that should be included in any article that makes a fair criticism of Wikileaks.
And it would be possible to be critical of Wikileaks without being overtly negative?
No, they are not above criticism, but there is a plan out there to discredit Wikileaks, and that does make it hard to know whether the criticisms are just part of that plan.
A plan exists, according to Wikileaks. Which makes it "hard to know whether the criticisms are just part of that plan." That sounds awfully convenient.
Honestly. Sit back and think about that for a few minutes. Would you accept this if it came from the US Government?
IMHO, there's a lot of propaganda flying around. And while it is entirely possible the US Government is one source, it seems to me that they are hardly the only source.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there's classified information that very few people have seen, and then there's classified information that several billion people have (potentially) seen, and that your battlefield enemies have very likely studied in some detail.
I keep picking up this implication that the US military is keeping valuable information from itself while it's enemies have access. I'm not sure if that is the intended implication. But if it is, I find it suspect. It seems to me that US soldiers who'd find tactical use of this material likely already had access to it (re: old news). Any tactical value to this information to be gathered from the leak is going to be gained by those who didn't have access; namely the US military's adversaries.
Restrictions on the US military is about something else. I seriously doubt those restrictions would have any negative impact. Or at least, not the impact being implied here.
Ever use something like OpenRPG? If so, how'd it compare?
Absolutely. Look how much Google has had to back off of vacuuming up data from every source (even your router) imaginable and go back to selling services and software.
Nice fear mongering there. There's nothing that indicates that Google was busy cataloging payload data. There are some indications that Google wanted to identify WAPs. But hey - why not push that button while it's available and most people are clueless about wireless networks and sniffing?
Why would Google spend millions on dollars on creating, publishing and maintaining Android? Do you honestly believe it is because the folks at Google just wanted to "give something back" or to improve the lives of Symbian developers (so they could get laid off and find something better to do)? No, Android is something that will impact all of its users in the (probably near) future and it will make money for Google. Lots of money.
Because Google realizes their business works best when there is no single gatekeeper. Android is an attempt to disrupt the market and ensure there are multiple vendors providing multiple gateways to the Internet. And while one can spin that as a nice "giving back" angle, it is also good business. Google doesn't exist in the AOL era; they came to being in the world of (arguably) interchangeable ISPs. Android is a tactic to ensure we don't return to the old days (which, IMHO, is where Apple would like to go).
Will Google go ad-crazy? Possibly. But I don't think they have to at this point. AdMob is doing pretty good for them from what I can tell. And that didn't require force-feeding. But then, modern business is so obsessed with growth that your ad-laden prediction might come to pass.
And that's the exact issue. It's not The Whitehouse as in the seat of the US Presidential administration. That would be whitehouse.gov. This is some dude who, at first, wanted to be critical of the Clinton administration. And then he wanted to make money with pornography (and in there was some transition where he photoshopped the First Couple in to BDSM scenes).
He could get away with it under the whitehouse.com domain as there was no legal protection to the name. However, NASA has legal protection and, despite his crying over the injustice, he had to abandon nasa.com.
this has nothing to do with what's going on at all. FBI has no legal standing on this anyway, so unless wikipedia backs down for whatever illogical reason, this would end up being a whole lot of nothing.
You might be surprised at what laws exist. Years ago, the whitehouse.com pornographer ran in to issues when he tried to play the same game with the nasa.com domain name. The difference is that "whitehouse" has no legal protection while "nasa" does.
You can have a pony WITH a FBI seal of approval. The seal likes fish.
Oh, I don't disagree with your analysis of the content of the NYT article - indeed, see my Journal Entry on the subject for more.
But the fact that Slashdot did not even see fit to post the story, and allow discussion of the issues raised - that they weren't even willing to take the risk that people like you would find fault with the story - THAT is what is the real "tell" on what is going on.
Or maybe it's more along the lines of "...and nothing of value was lost." If you agree with the analysis that the article is bogus (and clearly, with a statement like "Oh, feel the BURN!", you feel otherwise) then I fail to see any significance in posting the story. People can, and will continue, to grouse about Slashdot without a topic dedicated to it. Although it would be interesting if said grousing was actually on-topic for once; I don't know what the complainers would do with themselves.
Since that time, and particularly without checks or even an accounting for after the murder of JFK, our country has been the bad guy in every conflict.
To be sure, the US has been involved in a lot of nasty dealings. We've done bad things - intentionally and unintentionally. But then, since WWII, the US became a lot more involved in world politics. And the world is full of pretty vicious people. You don't go wading in to that without getting dirty.
The biggest issue I have with this mind-set is that it ignores other players in that arena. The US hasn't acted alone. In fact, a lot of the more questionable activities the US has been involved with has also involved the Soviets. Never-mind that a lot of these situations involve entities that tend to have plenty of history on their own without US involvement. There's nothing wrong with being critical of US policy. But missing from so many of those criticisms is perspective.
Ludicrous. I could not possibly be overstating the situation. If you want a case by case detailed report of all the fallacious chicanery the US has done over the last 50 years, no. Frankly I'm not going to spend the next 100 years attempting to earn that PHD.
You've gone from claiming US bombings are random to a nice laundry list of conspiracy theories. Yet none of this is an over-statement? In the next breath, you claim understanding the situation will take 100 years of study. Indeed. Perhaps if you held off on the bong a bit, you'd complete your studies a bit faster. At the least, you might be less gullible and less inclined to believe every conspiracy theory you run across on the Internet.
At one time Iraq was a sovereign nation, with a long standing border dispute with Iran. They wouldn't sell us oil for as cheap as we'd have liked, so we installed SADDAM HUSSEIN. A genocidal madman who routinely hung living people on large hooks designed for hanging sides of butchered cattle. That's right, WE installed Saddam. This is most clearly in the record books, and no conspiracy theory.
Unfortunately, there is no clear record books to back this up. There are claims from individuals. There's a lot of inter-linked articles all based on these whispers. But there is very little evidence.
I can understand the inclination to believe this story. After all, the CIA has certainly been involved in the region; most famously in Iran. And at the very least, the US was pleased with the regime change. But support is a far cry from outright engineering the power struggle. And it should be pointed out that the regime change didn't put Saddam in power immediately.
Things were going well: for a little while. He was brutally massacring a bunch of towel heads we could care less about, we were getting cheap oil, he was getting new guns. What could be better?
He was getting new guns from the Soviets and French. The US wanted someone to keep the Iranians busy. Oil might have been involved, but it's very short-sighted to look at it as the end-all and be-all of involvement.
Then one day, he realized that Kuwait also had oil, and that we weren't paying enough. Begin operation desert storm.
One day? All sudden-like. As if years of border disputes (going back before Saddam's time) didn't exist. And that huge war debt financed by the Kuwaitis didn't exist. And the suspicion of Kuwaiti oil market and oil production shenanigans didn't exist. Oh no. It was all because the CIA's check didn't have enough zero's.
We shatter his whole army literally in one single day. We restore the retarded religious based fascism to Kuwait, start getting oil on the cheap again,
Wait a second - wasn't Kuwait a sovereign nation? I suppose that rhetoric only works when critical of the US. As for Kuwaiti oil - well, yes. Of course. That's one of Saddam's big mistakes. We always protected Kuwaiti oil interests as they are major suppliers to entities that are important to our economy. But I'm sure that's all a big revelation for you.
..and let Saddam go back to killing the Kurds, which is now especially despicable on our part now, because Bush Sr. had told the Kurds via TV broadcast to "Rise up, so we can help you over through this ruthless dictator". Nevermind the fact that WE installed him in the first place, and then couldn't be bothered when the Kurds rose up and he wiped them all out.
The US' handling of Kurd and Shia political actions has been sporadic. But then, the situation isn't entirely clear-cut with openly violent in-fighting among factions of each group. That's already a mess without tossing in the Saddam/CIA conspiracy theory. It'd be your first fair point if you hadn't tipped over the conspiracy edge.
At this point we completely starve the
He *is* overstating the case. This doesn't mean that he's wrong in principle
No, he is wrong in principle. He obviously doesn't understand the situation and can't be bothered to educate himself on the situation. Furthermore, he can't be bothered to put together a reasonable argument on why he doesn't agree with the situation. So he makes things up. That's a fiction, not a reasonable political view.
E.g., one plausible reason for the Afghanistan conflict is to test out new weapons. Nobody's going to admit that, but it's the most plausible excuse that I've come up with. (Same for Iran, but with lots more evidence that all the excuses were lies, but another plausible excuse: I've heard someone claim that it started because Iran started to sell it's oil for Euros rather than dollars. Don't know if that's true or not, and by now it doesn't matter. But the excuses that were provided were obvious lies, that were proved false over and over.)
Well... yes. Because the US military can't possibly do any testing without a war. Nope. They need to take weapons systems in to a small, inconsequential war to expose the capabilities of those weapons systems to the world. That's the only way to tell if something works. And likewise, Iran is all a conspiracy over markets. There's absolutely no geopolitical history involving Iran in the region.
Seriously - get some education. Again... one might not agree with the party line. But at least the objections can have some basis in reality.
If our country wasn't randomly bombing the shit out of all manner of other people, and actually keeping an informed and healthy electorate whose votes were actually counted, we wouldn't need a system.
At this point, reasonable people will stop listening to you. Our country is not "randomly bombing the shit out of all manner of other people." There are very distinct reasons behind those actions. You may not agree with the reasons given. You may question whether we are given real reasons. You may disagree with the fundamental idea of such a policy. But it would serve your cause to give voice to those grievances instead of resorting to generic exaggerations. Otherwise, you sound like an uninformed raving lunatic. And you might even cause others who CAN voice rational criticism to be overlooked by the general public.
Where are you that you can do these things? And is your geographic location governed by the same Government the parent poster noted?
Aren't CAs establishing (at best) identity and not reputation?
I think a better example there would be Commodore.
My first computer... that was bought and paid for by me... was my old C=64. I still have it in a box. It was a really nice system for it's time. And while I never jumped to the Amiga, I had a friend who did. And that too was a really amazing system.
However, I maintain the Apple story to be more interesting here. We are talking about another Apple product today; an Apple product that leads a niche market. There's an echo of the past in that.
Companies probably bought Apple II because of Visicalc, but not the other way.
Apple II was just the hardware platform, and it was only an expensive game platform at this time.
Professional software was rare on it.
I completely agree. VisiCalc was the killer app. But VisiCalc's platform was (initially) the Apple II. And that combination made the market. Apple had a defacto lead in that market for a couple years.
Granted, without VisiCalc, the Apple II would have continued to exist as a hobbyist product; the view held on microcomputers in general. I didn't mean to imply that VisiCalc was created by Apple. However, Apple did produce a product that was designed to be consumer electronics and encourage the kind of development that lead to VisiCalc. There were other microcomputers around at the time. But VisiCalc was always, first and foremost, an Apple application.
Also, keep in mind that professional software for microcomputers was rare, period. It didn't matter what platform.
Then why didn't businesses tend to buy Apple IIs?
They did. The Apple II was selling very well as the first business microcomputer. Essentially, it was sold as a VisiCalc machine (one account I read from an early computer shop owner was that people came in to the store wanting to buy that exact setup without knowing what it was they needed to buy). Apple and VisiCalc created a new market and lead that market. But that success also attracted IBM's attention.
Keep in mind the timing here. The Apple II had been in production since 1977. VisiCalc comes out in 1979, the same year Apple produces the Apple II+. That combination changes the market. In 1981, IBM produces the 5150 specifically targeted at business after a rushed 1yr development cycle (completely counter to IBM's culture). VisiCalc is available for the IBM PC.
IBM already has a foot in the door with business customers. Most business computing before then involved mainframes and that was IBM's realm. The phrase "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" comes from this era and really highlights the sales advantage for the IBM PC.
Apple had the initial market dominance. However, while that is often a major advantage, it is not the whole story. The microcomputer market was growing at that time. IBM didn't have to displace Apple. They just had to capture the growing market. And they did.
IT competition is all about control and platform. Microsoft is worried of anything that gets enough market to constitute a viable investment for development firms because if those firms make more money of the ipad/iphone then investing in microsoft develpment platform is less atractive and, given enough time, can even kill or seriously hinder the windows platform income which is way, way, way, way much more than anybody is ever going to get out of any ipad/iphone app.
It's all about control. Ultimately, it all leads to money. But I believe it's short-sighted to put money as the immediate motivator.
Control is about being the master of your own fate. There are few surprises when you control the platform. You know the long-term plan because it is your plan. You know when something crops up that may interfere with those plans. You know the alternative plans and the changes in direction before anyone else. You get to choose that change in a way that best benefits you and your goals. You don't have to fight to realize your ideas. Control is stability.
A lack of control puts your fate in others hands. If one other entity has control, everything you do relies on their judgment and whether your goals coincide with yours. If you have an idea, it may require selling them before you can realize it. Even worse is when the environment is owned by everyone and no-one.
Again - money enters the picture eventually. We are talking about business after all. But in this industry, one can still have altruistic grand visions and be fairly certain that the money will follow.
Excellent list. I'd offer one even more profound example. Apple. The Apple II (combined with VisiCalc) redefined the personal computer from hobbyist novelty to must-have business tool. If anyone has had a front-row seat to how the industry works, it's Apple.
Back then we didn't have credit cards, so I paid with the small amount of money that was in my pocket.
Did you have to move aside the onion you wore on your belt as that was the fashion at the time?
I think he's indicating that he doesn't care about his personal information because he's already given most of it away on Facebook and Twitter. That, and he's a celebrity - personal life is the coin of that realm.
History has consequences and isn't always about firepower.
There's some context to think about. The US entered WWII as a direct result of American soil being attacked. It was pretty clear that fighting back was a matter of national security. In that context it would be easy to make the case that a leaker of battlefield secrets was treasonous.
Since then we've only waged elective wars, generally for purposes that leave many of us scratching our heads in confusion.
The US' involvement in geopolitics before and after WWII is vastly different. Before WWII, the US was staunchly isolationist. However, as the war in Europe began to unfold, the fear was that the US would eventually be attacked. By 1940, the US began to ostensibly support Allied efforts with supplies. By 1941, US shipping came under attack to include the first lives lost under a US flag. Then came Perl Harbor. Since then, the US has elected to be much more involved in world affairs.
The taliban still need to be destroyed. Afghanistan still needs massive amounts of reconstruction. For all the resources that have been applied, more still need to be applied. We are not in Afghanistan to prop up a fledgling democracy, we are not there to promote human rights. We are there to destroy a fundamentalist movement, and more effort needs to be spent in order to succeed.
Or we can let Afghanistan fall, again. They'll harbour enemies of the west, again.
When Afghanistan was a part of the Cold War, we were involved in a war-by-proxy with the Soviets. But as soon as that was over, we sort of forgot all about Afghanistan and left them to their own devices. So a group of fundamentalists from Pakistan invaded and took over. Eventually they became the last haven for a particular group of extremists who went on to finally succeed in an attack on US soil. If we had paid a bit more attention to propping up a fledgling democracy and human rights earlier, we would be less concerned about destroying a fundamentalist movement today.
[Nokia ringtone]
"HELLO?! WHAT?! YEAH! I'M AT DEFCON. Yeah. Some guy is giving some demo now. No, it's rubbish. What? No. Nobody know's I'm a Fed. Right. OK. Got to go."
(Imagine that in all caps 'cause the /. filter doesn't like loud literary voice)
Did I say all criticism is suspect? No, I said an article that takes an overtly negative tone is suspect, and then I went on to mention a detail that should be included in any article that makes a fair criticism of Wikileaks.
And it would be possible to be critical of Wikileaks without being overtly negative?
No, they are not above criticism, but there is a plan out there to discredit Wikileaks, and that does make it hard to know whether the criticisms are just part of that plan.
A plan exists, according to Wikileaks. Which makes it "hard to know whether the criticisms are just part of that plan." That sounds awfully convenient.
Honestly. Sit back and think about that for a few minutes. Would you accept this if it came from the US Government?
IMHO, there's a lot of propaganda flying around. And while it is entirely possible the US Government is one source, it seems to me that they are hardly the only source.