I think the main reason why Apple is not interested in competing in the business world is that the business world buyers are not those that actually use the device. Apple's strength has been its focus on the people actually using their devices, and they stumble hardest with things that need to be device-independent, such as with iCloud.
This is what drove Apple's success with the iPod, then the iPhone and the iPad: instead of chasing feature lists, they concentrated on how the device would actually be used. This is especially true of the iPhone, as Apple was selling them to the customers, whereas Nokia, Motorola and the established manufacturers were still selling to the telecoms.
I do see a lot more Macs and Mac OS X in the office, but that is because developers have been able to choose their own devices recently. Those that stick to non-Apple hardware prefer Ubuntu as their desktop OS, but I must add as a caveat that I work in web development, where Posix compatibility is important for backend development, and the Mac has multiple ways to run Windows with VM's and through Boot Camp.
I would just like to add to your analysis that by controlling your phone, they can use it to figure out even those details that you did not properly enter in your Facebook profile. If your phone is not moving from 8pm to 8am at a certain address, they can calculate that your home address is now the place you were, and "helpfully" update your info. Or tell the world that you are on a business trip and not at home. Or even figure out by where your phone is during the day where you work, and reveal to the world that you work for SleazeBucket without you approving it. And of course they could just keep these little insights hidden even from you, and just sell that info to advertisers, privacy be damned.
Note that they already are on record by stating that they cannot do this on the iOS devices because Apple will not let them have the needed level of access.
Ah, but the ratings for violence are different between, say, Germany and the USA. Something considered PG in the United States might get a FSK16 (similar to R) rating in Germany due to violence. On the other hand, a movie that was shown in Germany with a FSK12 (analogue to PG or PG13) would get an R in the States due to mild nudity. That was my point.
I have a problem with claiming that the Colonists were Christians, mostly because of the whole Pilgrims mythology that ignores the more profit-oriented attitudes in Virginia and the other plantation colonies. Most of those coming to the Americas were more interested in making a pile of cash, not in the vaunted religious freedoms. I would have to go do some research again, but IIRC this elevation of the New England colonists over the Virginians came with the US Civil War, bringing with it the reinvention of the Thanksgiving holiday.
The current power of the prudes is more based upon an aphorism that Ben Franklin once put in Poor Richard's Almanac: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. They might not be more than a vocal minority, but boy, are they vocal! No wonder they have gotten their way for so long.
Actually, this is more the standard in the USA, where violence is tolerated more than nudity. In most European countries, the standard seems to be reversed: American television shows are considered extremely violent and not suitable for children, but you can see billboard advertisements for soap featuring mild nudity (anything except genitals, really). Other parts of the world like Saudi Arabia forbid even showing females in print, which caused a kerfluffle when Ikea photoshopped all women out of the Saudi version of their catalog.
The biggest problem, really, is that obscenity filters are oriented only towards Americans, since the USA has the noisiest "church ladies" and Tipper Gore wannabes (man, I am dating myself here!). The rest of the world is either not big enough a market to filter for, or tolerant anyways so there is no need for more restrictions. So the techies just do enough filtering to cover their asses and can't be bothered to actually maintain said filters, since that isn't really a moneymaker.
I would say the proper term is "plagiarised". What Zynga did was not (as one poster said) adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa and calling it an original, but rather selling copies of a famous painting that is alike except for the signature and the colour of the flowers in the far background. Alike enough to dupe careless buyers, and just different enough to pretend that it is an original work of art.
Considering that most artist work on commission up front, your snark is kind of moot. We're letting a tiny elite control the dialogue, and have long since abandoned the "publish or perish" intent of the original copyright term limits for their benefit.
A lot of studio musicians actually do use this model. They get paid per recording session, or a fixed rate per gig. Composers also often get an upfront fee in lieu of royalties, so in reality we are talking about a very small minority of artists involved, and for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth there is not less money being spent on music, and the amount going to commercial bootleggers and so-called pirates has not increased.
What *is* true is that Apple and Amazon, with their bookkeeping of copied downloaded and/or sold have exposed how often studios and the RIAA would cheat those due royalties. What also is true is that the first copyright laws were not written to protect the authors, but to protect those with printing presses who wanted to cut exclusive deals to offset the cost of their equipment. It is a system that originates from an era when duplication was expensive, when duplication for personal use was unknown.
The same could be said for Sicilians, for that matter. Or any other ethnic group/nationality with a reputation for corruption and/or organised crime.
I think the main reason is that Nigeria is chosen is because it is known for two things: having incredible wealth in natural resources (mostly oil) yet at the same time it's seen as one of the poorest nations in Africa. That disconnect suggests that a lot of corruption exists, thus setting the stage for believing that there really is someone trying to smuggle out millions in ill-gotten gains. It also sets the stage for believing that local officials are corrupt enough to let this happen. Something else I just thought of: ill-gotten wealth from skimming oil profits is also something I imagine sounds less risky than profits from selling, say, blood diamonds - less suggested risk of violent criminals looking for where the money disappeared to.
If it is entertaining, then yes. Think of all the other time wasters like watching TV, playing Angry Birds, reading Slashdot...... I just remembered, I have to get back to work.
I have a hunch that the FunnyJunk owner is not really all that interested any more, and that Carreon picked this fight as a way to gain a reputation. Now his ego won't let him back down, and in his world the Oatmeal is now the Moby Dick to his Ahab, with FunnyJunk tricked into being his Pequod.
Well, from what we know of this guy, it seems he really is the internet version of an ambulance chaser. He got a lucky break in the sex.com brouhaha, and now like a gambler that won a lottery jackpot he's scratching every card he can buy, desperate for the next big win. After all, look at this line from the Comic Riffs blog report:
Carreon tells Comic Riffs one of his goals is to become the go-to attorney for people who feel they have been cyber-vandalized or similarly wronged on the Internet.
Thank you, this. I was referring to the perceived efficiency, and one of those factors is the ratio of budget spent on actual purpose of the charity as opposed to fundraising and management. SJK is a celebrity case where other charities like the Red Cross and Unicef have also drawn fire, and can be compared to PP. The irony is that donating to SJK is in a way an indirect donation to PP.:)
If only it were true, but it ends up going into the bank accounts of the traders, who use it not to purchase goods and services but hoard it as a way of keeping score. A lot of the financial industry is only interested in competition on who can collect the most dollars.
Ah, more evidence that the financial industry has been overtaken by the gamblers and card sharps. Only instead of counting cards at the blackjack table, they are gambling that milliseconds of latency will give them an edge over the rubes.
Well, "poorly managed" is an unproven claim. Some are, it is true, but those that I have dealt with have less overhead than most businesses. Take women's health care: The Susan J. Komen turned out to be a vanity charity, but Planned Parenthood actually delivers a surprisingly efficient operation with much less going into bureaucratic and fundraising efforts.
So relax, just consider it giving Matt the money to blow on bears and cancer cures. You're just giving it to him to do with as he pleases, and it pleases him to give it to a couple of charities.
Let's be totally honest here, there has never been a time when musicians could expect to make a decent living making music. Being able to make a comfortable living as a musician was always akin to winning the lottery.
What the post-media conglomerate era does promise, though, is that there will be more chances again for good musicians to become moderate successes, as live performances become more important and music studios lose their power as gatekeepers. So instead of just one superstar act out of a thousand, we now have ten star acts out of a thousand.
You do recognise that recordings are becoming more of a promotional tool rather than something sold for profit, though I would add that what is important is the quality of the recording also plays a role. Those recordings that are swapped and shared tend to be lower or questionable quality, but people still buy music from Apple and Amazon, are willing to pay for high quality and reliability. This is an important nuance, and I feel that in the end streaming and sharing of low-fi files will take the role that radio and hit compilations used to fill, with hi-fi recordings replacing the purchased singles and albums.
But music, like any other art, will remain a difficult medium to become successful in. The only real difference now is that we can see the number of artists that couldn't even make it into the gatekeeper's stables.
I was thinking more of a combination Spanish Prisoner and Emperor's New Clothes scenario: keep promising vaporware and delivering nothing as long as the vain and greedy pay. But you could also be right, that the Russian developers have tricked Microsoft into letting them eventually take Windows itself hostage against a price...
Ah, but there was a lot of "pirating" from vinyl and CD to cassette tape, VHS recording off of pay TV and things like that. Also a slew of "sneakernet" copying of floppy discs, so that game publishers made malformatted discs on purpose, sometimes to the detriment of the disc drive heads (hint: they didn't prevent copying).
Later, CD publishers tried to add copy protection to their music CD's, mainly by breaking the Red Book standard and rendering the CD unplayable on some players, incurring a backlash from Philips, denying those discs that weren't Red Book conform the license for the Compact Disc logo.
Nowadays? Kids don't torrent music as much as rip it from YouTube-videos or mail the songs to each other. Torrents aren't really trusted, and the kids I know think that half the torrents are put out by the big studios as a trap. I'm sure they share music as much as we did when I was a teenager, the main difference is that they now share with friends that they know through the net. They still don't care about quality, they aren't audiophiles. They just want the song now, and have the same youthful disregard for Right and Wrong that we had when we were their age.
You're right, it's anecdotal. And really, is it any different from when I was in the university in the 1980's and we copied to cassette tape? Or how I listen to the radio rather than buy the newest hit single? I kinda sorta doubt you would have purchased the albums. And considering that you posted as an anonymous coward, I also kinda sorta doubt that you are interested in seeing my reply in the first place. Er.
That looks to me as if they were incredulous at first. After the shock wore off, they probably made their opening number almost as a joke, almost in the "we're not really interested" range. Once they figured out that the money offered was real, they had to absorb the shock before saying yes, and rebuild their poker faces.
Let me rephrase this case so that you can understand why the administration was wrong in its actions, and why your suspicions are also wrong, with my Clever Analogy (sorry, no cars involved):
"Ms. Hester, we have heard from a mother that she saw a photo album in your home that had a picture of someone half dressed. We need you to hand over the keys to your apartment so that we can search it and see just how damaging that photo is. You refuse? Then we must assume the worst. You're fired."
Note in the article that the photo in question was taken before employment at the school, and that the state where this occurred is already considering legislation to make this sort of request illegal.
Still irrelevant. If a parent reported the TA, then the parent should provide the screen shot. It is poor thinking to believe that this is just cause for demanding the Facebook password. If said parent complained that the TA had that picture in a photo album in her home and showed it to guests, does the school district have a right to demand the keys to the TA's private residence to search for said photo album?
Agreed, it seems to be a lot of astroturfing going on here by people afraid to risk their karma. I also would bet that a lot of the AC's are from the MPAA or its client states.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the main reason why Apple is not interested in competing in the business world is that the business world buyers are not those that actually use the device. Apple's strength has been its focus on the people actually using their devices, and they stumble hardest with things that need to be device-independent, such as with iCloud.
This is what drove Apple's success with the iPod, then the iPhone and the iPad: instead of chasing feature lists, they concentrated on how the device would actually be used. This is especially true of the iPhone, as Apple was selling them to the customers, whereas Nokia, Motorola and the established manufacturers were still selling to the telecoms.
I do see a lot more Macs and Mac OS X in the office, but that is because developers have been able to choose their own devices recently. Those that stick to non-Apple hardware prefer Ubuntu as their desktop OS, but I must add as a caveat that I work in web development, where Posix compatibility is important for backend development, and the Mac has multiple ways to run Windows with VM's and through Boot Camp.
I would just like to add to your analysis that by controlling your phone, they can use it to figure out even those details that you did not properly enter in your Facebook profile. If your phone is not moving from 8pm to 8am at a certain address, they can calculate that your home address is now the place you were, and "helpfully" update your info. Or tell the world that you are on a business trip and not at home. Or even figure out by where your phone is during the day where you work, and reveal to the world that you work for SleazeBucket without you approving it. And of course they could just keep these little insights hidden even from you, and just sell that info to advertisers, privacy be damned.
Note that they already are on record by stating that they cannot do this on the iOS devices because Apple will not let them have the needed level of access.
Ah, but the ratings for violence are different between, say, Germany and the USA. Something considered PG in the United States might get a FSK16 (similar to R) rating in Germany due to violence. On the other hand, a movie that was shown in Germany with a FSK12 (analogue to PG or PG13) would get an R in the States due to mild nudity. That was my point.
I have a problem with claiming that the Colonists were Christians, mostly because of the whole Pilgrims mythology that ignores the more profit-oriented attitudes in Virginia and the other plantation colonies. Most of those coming to the Americas were more interested in making a pile of cash, not in the vaunted religious freedoms. I would have to go do some research again, but IIRC this elevation of the New England colonists over the Virginians came with the US Civil War, bringing with it the reinvention of the Thanksgiving holiday.
The current power of the prudes is more based upon an aphorism that Ben Franklin once put in Poor Richard's Almanac: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. They might not be more than a vocal minority, but boy, are they vocal! No wonder they have gotten their way for so long.
Enough ranting for today. :)
Actually, this is more the standard in the USA, where violence is tolerated more than nudity. In most European countries, the standard seems to be reversed: American television shows are considered extremely violent and not suitable for children, but you can see billboard advertisements for soap featuring mild nudity (anything except genitals, really). Other parts of the world like Saudi Arabia forbid even showing females in print, which caused a kerfluffle when Ikea photoshopped all women out of the Saudi version of their catalog.
The biggest problem, really, is that obscenity filters are oriented only towards Americans, since the USA has the noisiest "church ladies" and Tipper Gore wannabes (man, I am dating myself here!). The rest of the world is either not big enough a market to filter for, or tolerant anyways so there is no need for more restrictions. So the techies just do enough filtering to cover their asses and can't be bothered to actually maintain said filters, since that isn't really a moneymaker.
I would say the proper term is "plagiarised". What Zynga did was not (as one poster said) adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa and calling it an original, but rather selling copies of a famous painting that is alike except for the signature and the colour of the flowers in the far background. Alike enough to dupe careless buyers, and just different enough to pretend that it is an original work of art.
Considering that most artist work on commission up front, your snark is kind of moot. We're letting a tiny elite control the dialogue, and have long since abandoned the "publish or perish" intent of the original copyright term limits for their benefit.
A lot of studio musicians actually do use this model. They get paid per recording session, or a fixed rate per gig. Composers also often get an upfront fee in lieu of royalties, so in reality we are talking about a very small minority of artists involved, and for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth there is not less money being spent on music, and the amount going to commercial bootleggers and so-called pirates has not increased.
What *is* true is that Apple and Amazon, with their bookkeeping of copied downloaded and/or sold have exposed how often studios and the RIAA would cheat those due royalties. What also is true is that the first copyright laws were not written to protect the authors, but to protect those with printing presses who wanted to cut exclusive deals to offset the cost of their equipment. It is a system that originates from an era when duplication was expensive, when duplication for personal use was unknown.
The same could be said for Sicilians, for that matter. Or any other ethnic group/nationality with a reputation for corruption and/or organised crime.
I think the main reason is that Nigeria is chosen is because it is known for two things: having incredible wealth in natural resources (mostly oil) yet at the same time it's seen as one of the poorest nations in Africa. That disconnect suggests that a lot of corruption exists, thus setting the stage for believing that there really is someone trying to smuggle out millions in ill-gotten gains. It also sets the stage for believing that local officials are corrupt enough to let this happen. Something else I just thought of: ill-gotten wealth from skimming oil profits is also something I imagine sounds less risky than profits from selling, say, blood diamonds - less suggested risk of violent criminals looking for where the money disappeared to.
If it is entertaining, then yes. Think of all the other time wasters like watching TV, playing Angry Birds, reading Slashdot... ... I just remembered, I have to get back to work.
Ahem.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/card-sharp.html
I have a hunch that the FunnyJunk owner is not really all that interested any more, and that Carreon picked this fight as a way to gain a reputation. Now his ego won't let him back down, and in his world the Oatmeal is now the Moby Dick to his Ahab, with FunnyJunk tricked into being his Pequod.
Well, from what we know of this guy, it seems he really is the internet version of an ambulance chaser. He got a lucky break in the sex.com brouhaha, and now like a gambler that won a lottery jackpot he's scratching every card he can buy, desperate for the next big win. After all, look at this line from the Comic Riffs blog report:
Carreon tells Comic Riffs one of his goals is to become the go-to attorney for people who feel they have been cyber-vandalized or similarly wronged on the Internet.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/funnyjunk-lawyer-suing-the-oatmeal-cartoonist-inman-over-indiegogo-charity-drive/2012/06/18/gJQAbZhDlV_blog.html
We can only hope that his hubris will soon make him the disgraced pariah that he needs to be.
Thank you, this. I was referring to the perceived efficiency, and one of those factors is the ratio of budget spent on actual purpose of the charity as opposed to fundraising and management. SJK is a celebrity case where other charities like the Red Cross and Unicef have also drawn fire, and can be compared to PP. The irony is that donating to SJK is in a way an indirect donation to PP. :)
If only it were true, but it ends up going into the bank accounts of the traders, who use it not to purchase goods and services but hoard it as a way of keeping score. A lot of the financial industry is only interested in competition on who can collect the most dollars.
Ah, more evidence that the financial industry has been overtaken by the gamblers and card sharps. Only instead of counting cards at the blackjack table, they are gambling that milliseconds of latency will give them an edge over the rubes.
Well, "poorly managed" is an unproven claim. Some are, it is true, but those that I have dealt with have less overhead than most businesses. Take women's health care: The Susan J. Komen turned out to be a vanity charity, but Planned Parenthood actually delivers a surprisingly efficient operation with much less going into bureaucratic and fundraising efforts.
So relax, just consider it giving Matt the money to blow on bears and cancer cures. You're just giving it to him to do with as he pleases, and it pleases him to give it to a couple of charities.
Let's be totally honest here, there has never been a time when musicians could expect to make a decent living making music. Being able to make a comfortable living as a musician was always akin to winning the lottery.
What the post-media conglomerate era does promise, though, is that there will be more chances again for good musicians to become moderate successes, as live performances become more important and music studios lose their power as gatekeepers. So instead of just one superstar act out of a thousand, we now have ten star acts out of a thousand.
You do recognise that recordings are becoming more of a promotional tool rather than something sold for profit, though I would add that what is important is the quality of the recording also plays a role. Those recordings that are swapped and shared tend to be lower or questionable quality, but people still buy music from Apple and Amazon, are willing to pay for high quality and reliability. This is an important nuance, and I feel that in the end streaming and sharing of low-fi files will take the role that radio and hit compilations used to fill, with hi-fi recordings replacing the purchased singles and albums.
But music, like any other art, will remain a difficult medium to become successful in. The only real difference now is that we can see the number of artists that couldn't even make it into the gatekeeper's stables.
I was thinking more of a combination Spanish Prisoner and Emperor's New Clothes scenario: keep promising vaporware and delivering nothing as long as the vain and greedy pay. But you could also be right, that the Russian developers have tricked Microsoft into letting them eventually take Windows itself hostage against a price...
Ah, but there was a lot of "pirating" from vinyl and CD to cassette tape, VHS recording off of pay TV and things like that. Also a slew of "sneakernet" copying of floppy discs, so that game publishers made malformatted discs on purpose, sometimes to the detriment of the disc drive heads (hint: they didn't prevent copying).
Later, CD publishers tried to add copy protection to their music CD's, mainly by breaking the Red Book standard and rendering the CD unplayable on some players, incurring a backlash from Philips, denying those discs that weren't Red Book conform the license for the Compact Disc logo.
Nowadays? Kids don't torrent music as much as rip it from YouTube-videos or mail the songs to each other. Torrents aren't really trusted, and the kids I know think that half the torrents are put out by the big studios as a trap. I'm sure they share music as much as we did when I was a teenager, the main difference is that they now share with friends that they know through the net. They still don't care about quality, they aren't audiophiles. They just want the song now, and have the same youthful disregard for Right and Wrong that we had when we were their age.
You're right, it's anecdotal. And really, is it any different from when I was in the university in the 1980's and we copied to cassette tape? Or how I listen to the radio rather than buy the newest hit single? I kinda sorta doubt you would have purchased the albums. And considering that you posted as an anonymous coward, I also kinda sorta doubt that you are interested in seeing my reply in the first place. Er.
That looks to me as if they were incredulous at first. After the shock wore off, they probably made their opening number almost as a joke, almost in the "we're not really interested" range. Once they figured out that the money offered was real, they had to absorb the shock before saying yes, and rebuild their poker faces.
And that is how three days can pass.
Let me rephrase this case so that you can understand why the administration was wrong in its actions, and why your suspicions are also wrong, with my Clever Analogy (sorry, no cars involved):
"Ms. Hester, we have heard from a mother that she saw a photo album in your home that had a picture of someone half dressed. We need you to hand over the keys to your apartment so that we can search it and see just how damaging that photo is. You refuse? Then we must assume the worst. You're fired."
Note in the article that the photo in question was taken before employment at the school, and that the state where this occurred is already considering legislation to make this sort of request illegal.
Still irrelevant. If a parent reported the TA, then the parent should provide the screen shot. It is poor thinking to believe that this is just cause for demanding the Facebook password. If said parent complained that the TA had that picture in a photo album in her home and showed it to guests, does the school district have a right to demand the keys to the TA's private residence to search for said photo album?
Agreed, it seems to be a lot of astroturfing going on here by people afraid to risk their karma. I also would bet that a lot of the AC's are from the MPAA or its client states.