Hey, you can make fun of me all you want, and claim that I am stuck in the 90s, but there is really nothing that Javascript heavy websites bring to the table except for fancy effects in web browsers.
And there's nothing that a GUI brings to the table except for fancy effects on a computer screen?
If you seriously can't see any useful purpose for Javascript, then I submit that you really don't understand people, software functionality, or the ways of the world in general.
Why? If they're ripping up their old infastructure to upgrade, it makes no sense to move to IE7 when moving to IE8/9 would be just as easy. Then again, moving to a proper browser shouldn't be much more difficult, either...
Because part of the reason companies like that take so long to change is that they've got to test a given piece of software for 5 years before they can certify it as reliable enough. So they're going to start testing IE7 later this year, and then certify it in 2015;-)
Not sure whether you intended to reply to me or to the guy I was replying to, but I haven't actually ever been officially in "IT Security"; I'm just the sole full-time IT guy at the small insurance company where I work. Which means that part of what I'm responsible for is, of course, IT security, but it's hardly my field.
No, the whole "We must monitor EVERYTHING!" is just a BS policy made because people like you get off on your power trip.
For some? Sure. There are always going to be petty bureaucrats who enjoy power-trips.
But that's hardly the only reason for that type of policy. Here are a few I know of off the top of my head:
1. The company's connection is the company's, not yours. They have a right to prevent its use for non-work purposes if they choose to do so. (Although attempting to do so entirely is absurdly draconian, at least if you're not subject to DoD-type restrictions.)
2. It's very simple to monitor the entirety of your internet traffic, and, depending on how dedicated you want to be to it (and how good your automated systems are) doesn't necessarily take a full-time person just to handle it. It's certainly much easier than monitoring what you bring into the building with you, or what you have on your thumb drive (whether that thumb drive is personal or company property...).
3. It's surprisingly difficult to monitor less than the entirety of your internet traffic, at least without complicated automated systems to simply discard any packets or requests that you're not interested in.
4. Monitoring the entirety of the internet traffic in and out, or even blocking known bad sites, in no way gets in the way of those employees just trying to do their jobs. Yes, there are privacy concerns...but see point 1. And yes, whitelisting only known good sites can certainly get in the way of employees trying to do their jobs, particularly the more technical ones. This is why, except in specific situations where security is a higher priority than productivity, I wouldn't recommend whitelisting.
As you may be able to tell, I have been responsible for setting up some such monitoring at my company in the past (though it has since fallen into disuse, largely because we laid off 3/4 of the employees...). Though I have no problem with a certain amount of incidental web browsing, there were people who were spending essentially the entire day streaming video (which clobbers our relatively small pipe), browsing MySpace, or playing Flash games. And yes, a couple who would browse porn. (And then there were the one or two who would download games to install onto their computers which turned out to be viruses. So we'd have to clean their computers and explain that that was bad. And then they'd go and install the same bloody virus-ridden game. Again.) It's one thing to poke around a little—or post on Slashdot—but when there's urgent business that needs doing, and it's not happening because you're goofing off...I mean, yeah, that's an issue for HR, eventually, but it seems to me that it is IT's responsibility to at least take basic, reasonable steps to see that those specific temptations are not available.
Or perhaps you are missing the point that HTML5 is not adequate for every purpose, at least not yet.
So...what, exactly, are these restaurants trying to do that Flash does for them, but HTML5 cannot?
Sure, there's a lot of animation and fancy stuff you can do in Flash for games and cool videos that HTML5 can't easily do yet. But for simple navigation? For displaying a menu that they scanned in?
The way I look at it, the difference between Flash and HTML5 is, at worst, like the difference between MS Word and Mac OS X's TextEdit, a clean, simple rich-text editor: for 99% of people's needs, TextEdit is more than sufficient. It can handle writing essays and papers for school, résumés—pretty much anything that you want to do with styled text and inserted images, it can do. (Probably some other stuff, too, that I've never needed to do). No, it can't do full-fledged layout for brochures, flyers, books, etc, and I don't think it can do equations and footnotes and such for scholarly papers, but most people will never need to do those things. (Not to mention, Word doesn't do them particularly well or understandably...)
Similarly, the things that Flash does that HTML5 does not yet do well, most websites have absolutely no need of. (Some of them, such as replacing the cursor with a Flash animation, no website has need of, but that doesn't always stop them...) Sure, Homestar Runner or Super Mario Bros Z wouldn't have been created with HTML5, at least not with the state of the tools and support for it as they are now.
But that doesn't mean that Flash is necessary for normal websites.
Having an open market for aftermarket replacement parts is important for keeping prices down. Does Apple let you change your iPhone battery without having to send it back to Apple? There is a big market for aftermarket parts for the PC, in part because enthusists are willing to pay a premium for 'advanced' replacement products. I don't think this will be going away any time soon.
But I think this is a feature of Apple as a company rather than the "mobile computing appliance" in general. For instance, compare the iPhone to other smartphones, and the current Mac laptops to other laptops. Apple's products have non-replaceable batteries, which Apple claims allows them to get much longer life out of them, and certainly allows them to improve the aesthetics of the machine. It's a tradeoff (one which some people feel is not worth it, which is, again, fine with me).
Once the market for iPad-like devices is well-established, as the consumer smartphone market is now, I'm sure you'll see plenty of competing devices that are much more open in the hardware, and together they may well outsell the iPad itself. Though, judging from recent times, not many of them will likely gain as much individual marketshare as the iPad.
Let's face it. We are geeks. We are always going to like the freedom and power to do whatever we want with our computers.
But we are not the majority.
Most people don't really care if their operating system allows them to recompile their kernel, write a new text editor, or even install arbitrary software. They would be happy enough to be able to install the stuff their friends have, not have to worry about viruses, and surf the web and chat with the aforementioned friends. And do some occasional work.
Some of this stuff is still Not There Yet on the iPad. And maybe the iPad itself will not be the dominant device of its type once things settle down in a few more years. But I think it's foolish to expect that the completely-open, easily breakable, general-purpose PC is going to be the only, or even the primary, computing device that most ordinary people use in 10 years.
PCs will certainly still be around. Business applications, by and large, will always be a poor fit for the iPad and similar devices. So will programming. So will some types of games (but not all!). And, heck, at least for the time being, the iPad requires a computer with iTunes on it for managing it.
But for the vast majority of people, a fully-featured PC is overkill for what they want to do. We're entering a period of transition—and, I would say, moving further toward the maturity of the computer age. As many people have pointed out in previous discussions, in the 1950s, if you owned a car, you more or less had to know how to do a bunch of basic maintenance tasks. Now, many of the parts you had to maintain no longer exist (such as the carburetor, as I understand it—I'm not a car person), and most of the others you can't maintain on your own: you have to take it to the dealer or an authorized service center, or void your warranty. Computers today are just starting to move past where cars were in the 1950s. It's no longer absolutely necessary to know how to perform maintenance tasks, but it still makes things run much more smoothly. And with the iPad, not only do you not need to do those tasks—you can't.
For some people, that will always be a dealbreaker. And you know what? That's OK. Apple doesn't care if everyone buys an iPad, any more than they've ever cared that not everyone buys Macs. The world will go on, but changed: instead of just computers, we'll have computers and "curated computing" devices.
Oh, the poor victimized game publishers. Weep for them! Pity them! Because of rampant, unstoppable, evil piracy, they're only making billions and billions of dollars every year!
Start blaming the actual perpetrators—the smug rich bastards with all the power to do something about this rather than just trying harder and harder to control everything and rake in more money! MORE!
Actually, all of the devices in the platform do allow app upgrades over their own connection. You *can* use iTunes and USB, but apps 10MB or you don't have carrier data you can upgrade them over wifi. The app store icon will even notify you when there are upgrades available.
Yes, for apps. Not for the OS itself, which is what was being talked about.
Note that there’s no legitimate reason that you’d ever need to connect the iPad to a second computer to update it. It has its own internet connection.
Now, I don't have an iPad, so I don't know how they're updated, but the iPhone and iPod touch, which also have their own internet connections, get software updates through iTunes, over USB.
The reality is that the closer you are to the money, the more you'll make. It doesn't make sense
Sure, it does. You have more visibility, more negotiating power, and being "closer to the money" means it takes less effort to redirect some of that money in your direction.
No, it doesn't even work that way. The sales guys don't even have to expend effort to redirect money in their direction: they get obscene commissions on the sales they make, sometimes on top of high salaries.
The engineers (or whatever job it is) who make it all possible are seen by management—which is usually made up of former salesmen, or people in the same social circles as the salesmen—as interchangeable cogs, who can simply be swapped out if they start to get too uppity about pay. Because it's not them who will have to work three times as hard to both pick up the slack of the work not getting done because they let go someone who had been there for 10 years, and train that person's replacement, while still getting all your own work done...
No, that's not how they'll get away with it. (Well, partly.) Mostly, they'll get away with it because they've carefully written their contracts so that it is a violation—or at least so that they are perfectly within their rights to throttle you or charge you extra if you so much as look at them funny.
In other words, they will make quite certain that all this is completely legal. Don't like it? Maybe all that deregulation wasn't such a great idea after all... *glares at the nearest Republican*
So in other words this is the opinion of someone who read an article which quotes someone as saying that he was told to do something suspicious. Good stuff.
While the original source (an unnamed Google engineer at a conference) isn't ironclad, it's a good starting point for investigative journalism.
That said, the article has since been updated with the comment that Google has now conceding that it does provide access to the US government on request.
...Where by "on request," you mean "when we're presented with a lawful warrant or court order."
So, in other words, they comply with the law and follow the same procedures everyone else does (at least, everyone who doesn't want to end up in contempt of court).
Sure, but if you wanted to show that the GSM patents were not meant to be available under RAND terms to non-members, why the hell did you quote that passage? All it says is, "Usually when you patent something and get it added to a standard, you have to license it under RAND terms."
That would be like being asked for evidence that the grass outside your window was red, and saying, "Well, usually, grass is green."
Balancing effort and reward doesn't interest most employers. They're interested in getting the most effort out of their employees for the least possible reward.
If they were to balance effort and reward, they might actually have to (for instance) pay overtime to the programmers who put in 80-hour weeks to meet the deadline...
The normal case is that when joining the standardization body , companies agree that if they receive any patents on technologies which become essential to the standard then they agree to allow other groups attempting to implement the standard to use those patents and they agree that the charges for those patents shall be reasonable. RAND licenses allow a competitive market to develop between multiple companies making products which implement a standard.
That paragraph says what diamondsw and I were saying. Not what GuyFawkes was trying to say.
That goes counter to how I've always understood the whole point if RAND to be. If you're correct, then no company that ever wanted to use a GSM chip, but was unable to have participated in the creation of the standard due to, oh, I don't know, not having existed at the time or some other equally lame reason would be effectively excluded from being able to make use of this standard in any practical way.
I suspect you're thinking of more normal cross-licensing agreements. Because that's what you've described. If not...extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Dan Aris
Now, someone else may have more recent information that contradicts this, but...
My understanding was that Apple tried to license these patents from Nokia. They are part of the GSM specification, which no GSM phone can function without. Because they are part of the standard, they must be licensed under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms.
But Nokia wanted more from Apple for these patents than they did from anyone else.
What, exactly? I don't know. Either the articles I've read didn't say, or I've since forgotten. I think it was cross-licensing with some of the specific patents on the iPhone, but as I say, I'm not sure.
Either way, if Nokia isn't licensing the original patents under RAND terms to Apple, then they should be burned to hell and back for this. They knew the price when they put patents of theirs into the GSM spec, and now they have to live with it.
Can you in any way deny that President Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior? Do you think Bush II was more tech-savvy than Obama? Clinton? Bush I? I very much doubt it.
We have had Presidents who held engineering degrees and Carter joined the damned Navy Nuclear program when it was just starting.
"Tech-savvy" isn't generally held to have anything to do with engineering or nuclear physics. I know some nuclear physicists who are not at all tech-savvy. No one asked if previous Presidents were smarter than Obama.
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy
Your naivette is refreshing, but I would not like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Could you maybe read what he actually said (and if you want to use the word, learn to spell "naïveté", good grief!)?
Can you in any way deny that President Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior? Do you think Bush II was more tech-savvy than Obama? Clinton? Bush I? I very much doubt it.
There's a serious problem with your analogy, though:
The game publishers are making money. They're raking it in hand over fist. It's an incredibly lucrative industry.
Which is why they can afford to keep throwing money down the drain alienating their customers and making it more difficult for legitimate purchasers to use their own games: because those same people will keep coming back to buy the next Halo, or Mass Effect, or Sims, or whatever their next game is, whether it be a glorious diamond or a piece of cheap glass.
Slashdot Mirror
And if your app works on Firefox and Safari without any hacks, it'll run on Opera as well.
Not necessarily. There are a number of quirky behaviours in Opera that screw things up—sometimes just UI glitches, but sometimes worse things.
Don't have any examples handy right now, but on the web game in my sig (of which I'm a volunteer developer), we've run into issues with Opera.
Dan Aris
Hey, you can make fun of me all you want, and claim that I am stuck in the 90s, but there is really nothing that Javascript heavy websites bring to the table except for fancy effects in web browsers.
And there's nothing that a GUI brings to the table except for fancy effects on a computer screen?
If you seriously can't see any useful purpose for Javascript, then I submit that you really don't understand people, software functionality, or the ways of the world in general.
Dan Aris
Why? If they're ripping up their old infastructure to upgrade, it makes no sense to move to IE7 when moving to IE8/9 would be just as easy. Then again, moving to a proper browser shouldn't be much more difficult, either...
Because part of the reason companies like that take so long to change is that they've got to test a given piece of software for 5 years before they can certify it as reliable enough. So they're going to start testing IE7 later this year, and then certify it in 2015 ;-)
Dan Aris
Well, there was the infamous "Hockey Puck"-mouse.
Yes, and people whining about it were spaztic idiots, since you can find the top of the mouse by touching the cord, in a darkened room while drunk.
Next?
Um...that really wasn't the main problem with the puck mouse.
The problem was that it gave you carpal tunnel just by touching it. :-P
(And I'm usually a pretty unapologetic Mac fan...trust me, for most people with normal-sized hands, the things were awful.)
Dan Aris
Not sure whether you intended to reply to me or to the guy I was replying to, but I haven't actually ever been officially in "IT Security"; I'm just the sole full-time IT guy at the small insurance company where I work. Which means that part of what I'm responsible for is, of course, IT security, but it's hardly my field.
Dan Aris
No, the whole "We must monitor EVERYTHING!" is just a BS policy made because people like you get off on your power trip.
For some? Sure. There are always going to be petty bureaucrats who enjoy power-trips.
But that's hardly the only reason for that type of policy. Here are a few I know of off the top of my head:
As you may be able to tell, I have been responsible for setting up some such monitoring at my company in the past (though it has since fallen into disuse, largely because we laid off 3/4 of the employees...). Though I have no problem with a certain amount of incidental web browsing, there were people who were spending essentially the entire day streaming video (which clobbers our relatively small pipe), browsing MySpace, or playing Flash games. And yes, a couple who would browse porn. (And then there were the one or two who would download games to install onto their computers which turned out to be viruses. So we'd have to clean their computers and explain that that was bad. And then they'd go and install the same bloody virus-ridden game. Again.) It's one thing to poke around a little—or post on Slashdot—but when there's urgent business that needs doing, and it's not happening because you're goofing off...I mean, yeah, that's an issue for HR, eventually, but it seems to me that it is IT's responsibility to at least take basic, reasonable steps to see that those specific temptations are not available.
Dan Aris
Or perhaps you are missing the point that HTML5 is not adequate for every purpose, at least not yet.
So...what, exactly, are these restaurants trying to do that Flash does for them, but HTML5 cannot?
Sure, there's a lot of animation and fancy stuff you can do in Flash for games and cool videos that HTML5 can't easily do yet. But for simple navigation? For displaying a menu that they scanned in?
The way I look at it, the difference between Flash and HTML5 is, at worst, like the difference between MS Word and Mac OS X's TextEdit, a clean, simple rich-text editor: for 99% of people's needs, TextEdit is more than sufficient. It can handle writing essays and papers for school, résumés—pretty much anything that you want to do with styled text and inserted images, it can do. (Probably some other stuff, too, that I've never needed to do). No, it can't do full-fledged layout for brochures, flyers, books, etc, and I don't think it can do equations and footnotes and such for scholarly papers, but most people will never need to do those things. (Not to mention, Word doesn't do them particularly well or understandably...)
Similarly, the things that Flash does that HTML5 does not yet do well, most websites have absolutely no need of. (Some of them, such as replacing the cursor with a Flash animation, no website has need of, but that doesn't always stop them...) Sure, Homestar Runner or Super Mario Bros Z wouldn't have been created with HTML5, at least not with the state of the tools and support for it as they are now.
But that doesn't mean that Flash is necessary for normal websites.
Dan Aris
Like it or hate it, it doesn't change it. (I may be wrong, but either way, your or my opinion doesn't change the facts ;-) )
Plus, did you notice where I made clear that I don't believe for a second that the PC is going away?
Dan Aris
Having an open market for aftermarket replacement parts is important for keeping prices down. Does Apple let you change your iPhone battery without having to send it back to Apple? There is a big market for aftermarket parts for the PC, in part because enthusists are willing to pay a premium for 'advanced' replacement products. I don't think this will be going away any time soon.
But I think this is a feature of Apple as a company rather than the "mobile computing appliance" in general. For instance, compare the iPhone to other smartphones, and the current Mac laptops to other laptops. Apple's products have non-replaceable batteries, which Apple claims allows them to get much longer life out of them, and certainly allows them to improve the aesthetics of the machine. It's a tradeoff (one which some people feel is not worth it, which is, again, fine with me).
Once the market for iPad-like devices is well-established, as the consumer smartphone market is now, I'm sure you'll see plenty of competing devices that are much more open in the hardware, and together they may well outsell the iPad itself. Though, judging from recent times, not many of them will likely gain as much individual marketshare as the iPad.
Dan Aris
Let's face it. We are geeks. We are always going to like the freedom and power to do whatever we want with our computers.
But we are not the majority.
Most people don't really care if their operating system allows them to recompile their kernel, write a new text editor, or even install arbitrary software. They would be happy enough to be able to install the stuff their friends have, not have to worry about viruses, and surf the web and chat with the aforementioned friends. And do some occasional work.
Some of this stuff is still Not There Yet on the iPad. And maybe the iPad itself will not be the dominant device of its type once things settle down in a few more years. But I think it's foolish to expect that the completely-open, easily breakable, general-purpose PC is going to be the only, or even the primary, computing device that most ordinary people use in 10 years.
PCs will certainly still be around. Business applications, by and large, will always be a poor fit for the iPad and similar devices. So will programming. So will some types of games (but not all!). And, heck, at least for the time being, the iPad requires a computer with iTunes on it for managing it.
But for the vast majority of people, a fully-featured PC is overkill for what they want to do. We're entering a period of transition—and, I would say, moving further toward the maturity of the computer age. As many people have pointed out in previous discussions, in the 1950s, if you owned a car, you more or less had to know how to do a bunch of basic maintenance tasks. Now, many of the parts you had to maintain no longer exist (such as the carburetor, as I understand it—I'm not a car person), and most of the others you can't maintain on your own: you have to take it to the dealer or an authorized service center, or void your warranty. Computers today are just starting to move past where cars were in the 1950s. It's no longer absolutely necessary to know how to perform maintenance tasks, but it still makes things run much more smoothly. And with the iPad, not only do you not need to do those tasks—you can't.
For some people, that will always be a dealbreaker. And you know what? That's OK. Apple doesn't care if everyone buys an iPad, any more than they've ever cared that not everyone buys Macs. The world will go on, but changed: instead of just computers, we'll have computers and "curated computing" devices.
Dan Aris
Oh, the poor victimized game publishers. Weep for them! Pity them! Because of rampant, unstoppable, evil piracy, they're only making billions and billions of dollars every year!
Start blaming the actual perpetrators—the smug rich bastards with all the power to do something about this rather than just trying harder and harder to control everything and rake in more money! MORE!
Dan Aris
You can't easily upgrade an OS out from under itself.
The standalone version of OSX manages it. I don’t see why the dumbed-down version on the iPad can’t.
I don't know if there are specific technical reasons for it, but it seems to me that since
Dan Aris
Actually, all of the devices in the platform do allow app upgrades over their own connection. You *can* use iTunes and USB, but apps 10MB or you don't have carrier data you can upgrade them over wifi. The app store icon will even notify you when there are upgrades available.
Yes, for apps. Not for the OS itself, which is what was being talked about.
Dan Aris
Note that there’s no legitimate reason that you’d ever need to connect the iPad to a second computer to update it. It has its own internet connection.
Now, I don't have an iPad, so I don't know how they're updated, but the iPhone and iPod touch, which also have their own internet connections, get software updates through iTunes, over USB.
This is how it's always been done.
Dan Aris
The reality is that the closer you are to the money, the more you'll make. It doesn't make sense
Sure, it does. You have more visibility, more negotiating power, and being "closer to the money" means it takes less effort to redirect some of that money in your direction.
No, it doesn't even work that way. The sales guys don't even have to expend effort to redirect money in their direction: they get obscene commissions on the sales they make, sometimes on top of high salaries.
The engineers (or whatever job it is) who make it all possible are seen by management—which is usually made up of former salesmen, or people in the same social circles as the salesmen—as interchangeable cogs, who can simply be swapped out if they start to get too uppity about pay. Because it's not them who will have to work three times as hard to both pick up the slack of the work not getting done because they let go someone who had been there for 10 years, and train that person's replacement, while still getting all your own work done...
Dan Aris
No, that's not how they'll get away with it. (Well, partly.) Mostly, they'll get away with it because they've carefully written their contracts so that it is a violation—or at least so that they are perfectly within their rights to throttle you or charge you extra if you so much as look at them funny.
In other words, they will make quite certain that all this is completely legal. Don't like it? Maybe all that deregulation wasn't such a great idea after all... *glares at the nearest Republican*
Dan Aris
So in other words this is the opinion of someone who read an article which quotes someone as saying that he was told to do something suspicious. Good stuff.
While the original source (an unnamed Google engineer at a conference) isn't ironclad, it's a good starting point for investigative journalism.
That said, the article has since been updated with the comment that Google has now conceding that it does provide access to the US government on request.
...Where by "on request," you mean "when we're presented with a lawful warrant or court order."
So, in other words, they comply with the law and follow the same procedures everyone else does (at least, everyone who doesn't want to end up in contempt of court).
Dan Aris
Sure, but if you wanted to show that the GSM patents were not meant to be available under RAND terms to non-members, why the hell did you quote that passage? All it says is, "Usually when you patent something and get it added to a standard, you have to license it under RAND terms."
That would be like being asked for evidence that the grass outside your window was red, and saying, "Well, usually, grass is green."
Dan Aris
Balancing effort and reward doesn't interest most employers. They're interested in getting the most effort out of their employees for the least possible reward.
If they were to balance effort and reward, they might actually have to (for instance) pay overtime to the programmers who put in 80-hour weeks to meet the deadline...
(Score: -1, Overly Cynical) ;-)
Dan Aris
Good God, did you even read what you pasted?
The normal case is that when joining the standardization body , companies agree that if they receive any patents on technologies which become essential to the standard then they agree to allow other groups attempting to implement the standard to use those patents and they agree that the charges for those patents shall be reasonable. RAND licenses allow a competitive market to develop between multiple companies making products which implement a standard.
That paragraph says what diamondsw and I were saying. Not what GuyFawkes was trying to say.
Dan Aris
That goes counter to how I've always understood the whole point if RAND to be. If you're correct, then no company that ever wanted to use a GSM chip, but was unable to have participated in the creation of the standard due to, oh, I don't know, not having existed at the time or some other equally lame reason would be effectively excluded from being able to make use of this standard in any practical way.
I suspect you're thinking of more normal cross-licensing agreements. Because that's what you've described. If not...extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Dan Aris
Now, someone else may have more recent information that contradicts this, but...
My understanding was that Apple tried to license these patents from Nokia. They are part of the GSM specification, which no GSM phone can function without. Because they are part of the standard, they must be licensed under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms.
But Nokia wanted more from Apple for these patents than they did from anyone else.
What, exactly? I don't know. Either the articles I've read didn't say, or I've since forgotten. I think it was cross-licensing with some of the specific patents on the iPhone, but as I say, I'm not sure.
Either way, if Nokia isn't licensing the original patents under RAND terms to Apple, then they should be burned to hell and back for this. They knew the price when they put patents of theirs into the GSM spec, and now they have to live with it.
Dan Aris
Can you in any way deny that President Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior? Do you think Bush II was more tech-savvy than Obama? Clinton? Bush I? I very much doubt it.
We have had Presidents who held engineering degrees and Carter joined the damned Navy Nuclear program when it was just starting.
"Tech-savvy" isn't generally held to have anything to do with engineering or nuclear physics. I know some nuclear physicists who are not at all tech-savvy. No one asked if previous Presidents were smarter than Obama.
Dan Aris
I know that Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior and is trying to do everything he can to boost the current US economy
Your naivette is refreshing, but I would not like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Could you maybe read what he actually said (and if you want to use the word, learn to spell "naïveté", good grief!)?
Can you in any way deny that President Obama is more tech-savvy than any President prior? Do you think Bush II was more tech-savvy than Obama? Clinton? Bush I? I very much doubt it.
Dan Aris
There's a serious problem with your analogy, though:
The game publishers are making money. They're raking it in hand over fist. It's an incredibly lucrative industry.
Which is why they can afford to keep throwing money down the drain alienating their customers and making it more difficult for legitimate purchasers to use their own games: because those same people will keep coming back to buy the next Halo, or Mass Effect, or Sims, or whatever their next game is, whether it be a glorious diamond or a piece of cheap glass.
Dan Aris