I think you are wrong about that. Social networking sites have a huge amount of "stickyness" because of the network. In the end, the value of a social networking site to the user is the size of the network. Social Networks are tricky things, there is no way that me and all of my facebook friends will collectively decide that facebook isn't doing it anymore and we'll move to twitter. For example, I signed up for twitter cause the concept and feature set seemed cool, but I never went back after more than two times because I only had two friends on it.
On the other hand, I think maybe one example of a social networking app falling is AOL Instant Messenger. AIM used to be the way everyone I knew IMed. around 1998 it exploded. However, in the past two years I have noticed that more and more of my friends are depending on GChat, and aren't signing on to IM anymore. About 25% of my friends now have abandoned AIM and moved onto GChat. I think the two reasons this happened are 1) the horribly bloated AIM software that is just unpleasent to use. 2) GChat sort of snuck in as an automatically activated feature of GMail and people started seeing their friends just showing up on their list. Remarkably though, AIM still, after 9 years, has three quarters of my IM contacts.
I think all the mobile phone providers are known for shitty service. I have to disagree. I have had nothing but excellent service from T-Mobile, and I mean truly excellent. Their phone reps are not only friendly and helpful, but WELL TRAINED. They understand the different models, the plans, SIM cards, unlocking, and will help you with anything. I even called T-Mobile once lost in Salt Lake City, looking for a wi-fi hotspot. I read them the name of the street I was on and the rep gave me step-by-step directions, and stayed with me on the phone. It was awesome. I really want an iPhone, but I am loathe to leave T-Mobile for this reason.
Hearing stories like this makes me even more reluctant to buy an iPhone. Good customer service is so rare these days. Why didn't apple go with T-Mobile? Or rather, why did they have an exclusive deal with anyone the great thing about gsm is that it is interoperable. AT&T isn't subsidizing the price, or so I hear, so what possible advantage does apple get from the relationship? "Innovative Network features like visual voicemail." Fine, I would be happier with an iPhone without visual voicemail that I could put my T-Mobile SIM into.
We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.
On the one hand, it is easy to say faceboook was just obeying the law and it is the patriot act that is flawed. On the other hand, facebook seems to have noo qualms about this sort of stuff.
There are Conspiracy Theories claiming that Facebook's initial funding was from DOD connected venture capital, and that it is a remenant of Total Information Awareness.
Great write up. Yes, we already have a moderation system, but even moderating at +5 you often have to wade through repeats, jokes, etc. Thank you Timothy.
If you think teenagers have little buying power you are crazy. Parents buy so much crap for their kids these days. The First result for 'teen market' in google says:
Teens (13-19) spend $94.7 billion per year, $3,309 per person.
37 percent of teens' income comes from parents, the rest from jobs.
Online spending projections show teen expenditures are on the rise:
o 2003: $1.7 billion
o 2004: $2.6 billion
o 2005: $3.6 billion
o 2006: $4.8 billion
It's not a small market. When teens get jobs, more often than not what they earn is 100% discretionary, they aren't paying rent or buying their own food. I think it is unfortunate that teen culture is so consumption-driven, but that is the way it is.
Dude, Jon Peterson! If you read the Financial Times today (Friday June 16) page 10, under "Life without Bill: Nerds react" (the observer column) YOUR comment is quoted. Kudos. I think we have found finally found a comment moderated higher than +5, Insightful:-p
"How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"?"
From the Wired article:
Steve Jobs' Think Different campaign celebrated labor leaders like Gandhi, who used strikes as a form of civil protest, and Ceasar Chavez, who organized poor, migrant farm workers.
OK So here is the problem. There are two qualities to every good that economists look at to catagorize them. The first is rivalry. Something like the apple industry has the property of rivaly. If I buy an apple, it takes one apple away from society, no one else can have that apple. The second quality is that it is expensive to exclude non-payers. It is easy to exclude non-payers from having the computer you just produced - you don't give it to them unless they buy it. On the other hand, it is hard to exclude non-payers from something like street lighting. If I were to buy street lighting for my street, all my neighbors would benefit and there wouldn't really be anything I could do about it.
Goods that satisfy both these qualities are known as public goods and fall under a whole different set of rules and economic models. Usually the Government is involved in providing these services since they can, through taxes, force everyone to pay for them. Most public goods that economists talk about these days are information. Basic scientific research, for example, is funded by the government.
Recorded Music has rapidly become a public good with the advent of the digital age. It is non-rivalrous, if we are listening to a CD in the same room, your listening of the CD doesn't make my listening less enjoyable, and it is very difficult to exclude non-payers since it is so easy to make perfect copies of them.
In my opinion, there isn't very much that the recorded music industry can do about this. Their industry has changed into a public good. Recordings now are more usefull for artists as marketing for their concerts than they are as actual revenue generators. Concerts they can still exclude non-payers from easily buy selling tickets and having ticket checkers at the gates. The same is true for the movie industry. The movies they produce are a public good. The "movie theater experience" is still very profitable, but they need to figure out a way to make money of these DVDs that are hard to exclude non-payers from enjoying. They need to totally change their model, you can't beat the masses.
your TOS does not say anything about using such keyboards. Even manufacturers say that their keyboards are usable for World of Warcraft; see the Logitech page for their G15 keyboard for example ( http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details /US/EN,CRID=2166,CONTENTID=10717 ). However, I have not even gotten an explanation for why I have been banned. All it says is "Witnessed and confirmed use of third party software".
Logitech does advertise that their keyboard works with WoW. If Blizzard is banning its use, than Logitech made false claims about its product.
1. He wasn't using the LCD functioning of his programmable keyboard, he was using macros, it is far less clear if that is against the WoW tos, since programmable macro-keys do not involve "intercepting data" being sent from the WoW application.
2. But you are right, it was the Keyboard that brought this on. He was wathing movies and just casually pressing his macro key every now and then. Since he wasn't paying attention and doing the same thing over and over again, it looked like he was botting. Blizzard may have been right to ban him. Though I tend to think that since they have no clear programmable keyboard policy, they should have warned him.
3. Nonetheless, after reading his website, I have sympathy for the guy. Blizzard's communication with him really sucked. Getting sent those form letters must have been so frustrating. He asked specific questions to his accuser and they were replied to by generic form letters. He went into great detail explaining what his (somewhat unique) situation was. Even if Blizzard had replied and said "We have no problem with your running Wine, but using those programmable keyboards are against our ToS." Then that would be fine. But Blizzard was vague in their responses, which is unfair, and if they were a government (which they sort of are in this online world) for a developed, democratic, nation, this guy would have the right to at least SEE the evidence against him. It sounds like here somebody reported him as not responding to messages. They should tell him WHEN and WHERE it happened. Explain what showed up in their logs for them to conclude that he was botting.
The true problem here isn't lack of Wine support or Programmable Keyboards. The problem is that Blizzard makes decisions behind a closed curtain and doesn't tell you what evidence they used to support their decision.
One of the reasons, imho, that Blizzard's games are always so good, is that they are not afraid to delay them. They test and test and tweak and tweak and when they game comes out, it is of the highest quality. Blizzard is admirable because they respect that programming is an art that can't be rushed. Most companies rush their products so they can start generating revenue.
Patience is a virtue. Ubuntu has no need to generate revenue, and if it takes six more weeks to make the release more usable for human beings, that can only be a good thing.
I agree, updates suck which is why you need to hire someone especially for keyserver maintenance. Our keyserver guy came up with the same solution yours did for some applications (most notably acrobat for os x) where you do the install and then replace the executable. Pretty troublesome and lame. No experience with sassafras support so I can't comment on how well it works, but their client list on their website is impressive.
However, the ability to flexibly distribute licenses on the fly is a great one. I am not aware of any other applications that do that. Do you know of a better way to that than with sassafras?
My college uses Sassafras Keyserve to handle campus wide licenses. Any student can download photoshop from our servers, but a special patched version of it. Each student also installs a keyserve client, and then when they launch photoshop, their keyserve cient talks to our keyserve server. Lets say we own 20 photoshop licenses. Every time a student launches photoshop it takes up a license, and when they close it a license is freed. If we find that we have 20 people on photoshop all the time, then we buy more licenses from adobe. there is also a "check out" system where you can download a key to your computer for up to a week in case you will be off campus. The program is cross platform for mac and pc.
The only challenge is that programs patched by keyserve won't work with regular software updates. The administrator has to patch his copy of photoshop or whatever and generate a whole new keyserved version for the populous to download. A real pain in the neck, and you would probably have to hire at least.5 FTE to manage just that system. Its cheaper than thousands of photoshop and final cut licenses though.
I have said it before and I will say it again. Don't be so quick to discredit cold fusion. The problem with Cold Fusion was that two competing teams rushed each other to be the first to release the results to the press. When other universities tried to reproduce the results, they were all observed excess heat being generated, just in inconsistent quantities. MIT even saw positive results, they just covered it up. The original CF researchers hadn't had time to look into or explain these inconsistencies.
It would be such a shame if every time a potential scientific preview got covered in the media before the scientific review process (as the media tends to do) it was axed. How much potential good would be lost?
Most cable companies, in their TOS, specify that you are only allowed ONE connection with your account, that is one computer. If you want 4 computers in your house to have internet, you need to pay for more.
What most families due, usually clueless to the fact that they are breaking a TOS, is buy a spiffy looking linksys or netgear WAP, which has NAT enabled by default, and share their single connection amongst all 4 of their computers. Because of NAT, comcast, or whatever cable ISP they use, is never the wiser.
With Ip v6 there would be no need for NAT, and comcast could see how many IPs are coming through each cable line, and charge accordingly.
I downloaded the Battlestar miniseries from iTunes for a plane ride, and I was immediately hooked. Over the next two weeks I downloaded from iTunes every episode, and I am now eagerly anticipating Friday night''s new episode.
There have been several comments here I want to address:
Video Quality: The resolution is only 320x240, but that is the resolution of standard television! Apple's encoding is very very good. Saturday morning I was losing patience waiting for the latest B*G to show up on iTunes so I turned to BitTorrent. The quality was awfull! I got the "big" 320 MB version. The colors were washed and faded, it was clearly a video capture from a broadcast, and it just looked crappy. I couldn't take it and I downloaded the iTunes version, and the colors were strong and the contrast was sharp. I have never had a problem getting the movies to play full screen in iTunes, you just click a button, and since my Powerbook has built in S-Video or TV Out, I just plug the laptop right into the television and it looks better than a cable broadcast (Note: I do not have an HDTV)
Price: The Battlestar season 2.0 DVD is 10 episodes for $30. Through iTunes I pay only $20 for those 10 episodes. I pay $10 less and lose the convenience of portability, I can't loan the DVD to a friend (and I want everyone I know to watch B*G, it is that good) and I geuss I lose a little quality as well, but since I have no HDTV, I don't feel like I am losing quality.
Services like iTunes are the future, pretty soon advertisers will be cut out of Television, and the ad agencies will have to get creative for delivering ads. The Internet, but also things like little screens on Gas Pumps or other "captive audience" situations will become big hits in that industry.
Though calling the scientific community the catholic church fighting against galileo is somewhat inflammatory, the whole thing stinks of conspiracy.
Most scientists and techies and as we have seen, a lot of Slash-dotters, are very dismissive of Cold Fusion. Why? Because renowned universities like MIT have discredited the results.
When MIT reproduced Pons and Fleishmann's original Utah experiment, they claimed that it hadn't work. However, evidence has surfaced that they _doctored the data_. Eugene Mallov, who was the chief science writer at MIT at the time resigned over this issue, (link) he was so upset at MIT for publishing doctored data to discredit another institution's work. This would have been in MIT's financial interest since Pons and Fleishmann had applied for Department of Energy funding for their projects. MIT does a lot of research in Hot Fusion, and recieved millions of dollars in DOE grants every year, Cold Fusion would have competed with that. Also, and probably more importantly, it was a huge blow to their pride - if Cold Fusion is real it means the changing of geopolitics and the end of our dependency on oil. How is it possible that some dinky Utah University would discover this, and not the prestigious MITs or Stanfords? Cold Fusion could be a reality if people would stop laughing at it. more info here .
One of the coolest moments of.hack// sign (for those of you not in the know, hack sign is an anime that takes places in a MMORPG) is when you find out that one of the main characters and leaders in the virtual world is, in real life, handicapped. She has a very interesting monologue explaining how going onto the virtual world was the only way she could feel free.
I think that one of the great things about technology is that it is the great equalizer. As technology advances, fewer and fewer people will have to live with a "disabled" status since we can build machines to help them.
If I were disabled, I would spend all day's in the MMORPGs. I can only imagine how liberating it would be to be equal with everybody else, and not have people immediately take pity on you upon sight. This man, who now has lost his access to this world that had once been a major part of his life, has my sympathies, and I urge the galaxies people to find out a way to accommodate him.
From the LA Times: Indeed, the image quality is not quite as good as that achieved by the iChatAV system that Apple Computer Inc. debuted in 2003. But iChatAV was a marginal development because it works only on Macintosh machines, meaning it can be enjoyed by only a relatively small number of computer users.
We mac users have an amazing video chat system already. What apple needs to do is to port iChat to windows like they did iTunes. Although, I wonder how much the LA Times reviewer's comments have to do with the camera he used and the software. The iSight is an excellent camera, and it would probably fare pretty well with Skype.
Also, I am sure that when they get beyond beta that they will release an OS X skype 2 client.
I do tech support for my school, and a senior was having a problem where if she accessed files off of our network server, whenever she saved word would crash and she lost the file. It turned out that the problem was just a loose network cable, and office 2001 or whatever was just deciding to crash when it couldn't find the network connection. Out of nowhere she says while we are working on her computer "I heard that Apples are a lot better - is that true?" and I told her that it was true but that Dell had better warrantees, and if she was going to buy a new computer and would be graduating soon and not have access to our campus tech support than she might be better off going with Dell. I did however confirm that Macs don't have spyware/adware/virus problems, usually I'm a rabid apple fan-boy but I was genuinely worried that applecare would treat her like crap, so I didn't play of the Apple aspect at all.
Two weeks later she walked in with a brand new iBook and wanted help transferring all her old files over:-).
I have two friends who all throughout high school were ardent PC users. Now they both have Powerbook G4s, saying it was the best laptop on the market.
It is incredible to me that the company that people were saying was going to go bankrupt is now doing so well. I credit OS X, the iPod, and apple hardware engineering. Oh yeah, and steve jobs!
Whenever Steve Jobs shows all those media quotes at his keynotes praising apple products, there is always one from the new york times, and the writer is always David Pouge. He is highly qualified to write articles on the Mac beat, he used to edit macworld (I think, or was it macuser) and he wrote Macs for Dummies and many other books.
He is probably the most extreme example of what DVORAK is talking about. But, his articles are generally good, they aren't fan-boy by any strech, he explains why the apple experience is better for the end user, but he does often have a lot of complaints about apple products.
Now, I work in a newsroom myself, for a very small newspaper, we are mac based. Every time somebody new comes on they are like "Oh, I don't get macs" and spend the first couple weeks complaining about them, but within a year, 90% of them have bought Macs for themselves, after experiencing OS X, they want it for themselves. It makes sense to me that editors would have no problem with pro-apple articles, nor should they. Yes, they use macs, but they use them for a reason: they are better.
It has got to be bigger than minor upgrades to the current iPods.
The invitations to this event seemed to suggest something big: "One more thing..." and if that one more thing is just a hard drive upgrade to the iPods than a lot of journalists are going to be mad that they made the trip out to california. By calling media events like this, Steve Jobs spends a lot of his social capital, the press is willing to come because they expect something awesome. If he dissapoints, he will be limited in his ability to do this in the future. I do not think he will disappoint. These upgraded iPods he may announce, yes, but there will be something bigger, it may not be an iPod, but it will be something cool.
- Geddes
does anyone actually use google talk? Or did you give it up like I did after downloading it the first time and realizing though everyone may have a google talk account through gmail, that they use thier AIM accounts anyway
Point well taken. When I said that I had the phone lines themselves in mind, if they get blown down, then phone service goes out. I didn't know they worked submerged in water though, that is way cool!
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are wrong about that. Social networking sites have a huge amount of "stickyness" because of the network. In the end, the value of a social networking site to the user is the size of the network. Social Networks are tricky things, there is no way that me and all of my facebook friends will collectively decide that facebook isn't doing it anymore and we'll move to twitter. For example, I signed up for twitter cause the concept and feature set seemed cool, but I never went back after more than two times because I only had two friends on it. On the other hand, I think maybe one example of a social networking app falling is AOL Instant Messenger. AIM used to be the way everyone I knew IMed. around 1998 it exploded. However, in the past two years I have noticed that more and more of my friends are depending on GChat, and aren't signing on to IM anymore. About 25% of my friends now have abandoned AIM and moved onto GChat. I think the two reasons this happened are 1) the horribly bloated AIM software that is just unpleasent to use. 2) GChat sort of snuck in as an automatically activated feature of GMail and people started seeing their friends just showing up on their list. Remarkably though, AIM still, after 9 years, has three quarters of my IM contacts.
There are Conspiracy Theories claiming that Facebook's initial funding was from DOD connected venture capital, and that it is a remenant of Total Information Awareness.
Facebook links to eTrust from their privacy policy. Would it be effective if all of slashdot lodged complaints using the eTrust form? https://www.truste.org/pvr.php?page=complaint
Great write up. Yes, we already have a moderation system, but even moderating at +5 you often have to wade through repeats, jokes, etc. Thank you Timothy.
o 2003: $1.7 billion
o 2004: $2.6 billion
o 2005: $3.6 billion
o 2006: $4.8 billion
It's not a small market. When teens get jobs, more often than not what they earn is 100% discretionary, they aren't paying rent or buying their own food. I think it is unfortunate that teen culture is so consumption-driven, but that is the way it is.
Dude, Jon Peterson! If you read the Financial Times today (Friday June 16) page 10, under "Life without Bill: Nerds react" (the observer column) YOUR comment is quoted. Kudos. I think we have found finally found a comment moderated higher than +5, Insightful :-p
You asked:
From the Wired article:Goods that satisfy both these qualities are known as public goods and fall under a whole different set of rules and economic models. Usually the Government is involved in providing these services since they can, through taxes, force everyone to pay for them. Most public goods that economists talk about these days are information. Basic scientific research, for example, is funded by the government.
Recorded Music has rapidly become a public good with the advent of the digital age. It is non-rivalrous, if we are listening to a CD in the same room, your listening of the CD doesn't make my listening less enjoyable, and it is very difficult to exclude non-payers since it is so easy to make perfect copies of them.
In my opinion, there isn't very much that the recorded music industry can do about this. Their industry has changed into a public good. Recordings now are more usefull for artists as marketing for their concerts than they are as actual revenue generators. Concerts they can still exclude non-payers from easily buy selling tickets and having ticket checkers at the gates. The same is true for the movie industry. The movies they produce are a public good. The "movie theater experience" is still very profitable, but they need to figure out a way to make money of these DVDs that are hard to exclude non-payers from enjoying. They need to totally change their model, you can't beat the masses.
2. But you are right, it was the Keyboard that brought this on. He was wathing movies and just casually pressing his macro key every now and then. Since he wasn't paying attention and doing the same thing over and over again, it looked like he was botting. Blizzard may have been right to ban him. Though I tend to think that since they have no clear programmable keyboard policy, they should have warned him.
3. Nonetheless, after reading his website, I have sympathy for the guy. Blizzard's communication with him really sucked. Getting sent those form letters must have been so frustrating. He asked specific questions to his accuser and they were replied to by generic form letters. He went into great detail explaining what his (somewhat unique) situation was. Even if Blizzard had replied and said "We have no problem with your running Wine, but using those programmable keyboards are against our ToS." Then that would be fine. But Blizzard was vague in their responses, which is unfair, and if they were a government (which they sort of are in this online world) for a developed, democratic, nation, this guy would have the right to at least SEE the evidence against him. It sounds like here somebody reported him as not responding to messages. They should tell him WHEN and WHERE it happened. Explain what showed up in their logs for them to conclude that he was botting.
The true problem here isn't lack of Wine support or Programmable Keyboards. The problem is that Blizzard makes decisions behind a closed curtain and doesn't tell you what evidence they used to support their decision.
Patience is a virtue. Ubuntu has no need to generate revenue, and if it takes six more weeks to make the release more usable for human beings, that can only be a good thing.
However, the ability to flexibly distribute licenses on the fly is a great one. I am not aware of any other applications that do that. Do you know of a better way to that than with sassafras?
The only challenge is that programs patched by keyserve won't work with regular software updates. The administrator has to patch his copy of photoshop or whatever and generate a whole new keyserved version for the populous to download. A real pain in the neck, and you would probably have to hire at least .5 FTE to manage just that system. Its cheaper than thousands of photoshop and final cut licenses though.
It would be such a shame if every time a potential scientific preview got covered in the media before the scientific review process (as the media tends to do) it was axed. How much potential good would be lost?
Most cable companies, in their TOS, specify that you are only allowed ONE connection with your account, that is one computer. If you want 4 computers in your house to have internet, you need to pay for more.
What most families due, usually clueless to the fact that they are breaking a TOS, is buy a spiffy looking linksys or netgear WAP, which has NAT enabled by default, and share their single connection amongst all 4 of their computers. Because of NAT, comcast, or whatever cable ISP they use, is never the wiser.
With Ip v6 there would be no need for NAT, and comcast could see how many IPs are coming through each cable line, and charge accordingly.
There have been several comments here I want to address:
Most scientists and techies and as we have seen, a lot of Slash-dotters, are very dismissive of Cold Fusion. Why? Because renowned universities like MIT have discredited the results.
When MIT reproduced Pons and Fleishmann's original Utah experiment, they claimed that it hadn't work. However, evidence has surfaced that they _doctored the data_. Eugene Mallov, who was the chief science writer at MIT at the time resigned over this issue, (link) he was so upset at MIT for publishing doctored data to discredit another institution's work. This would have been in MIT's financial interest since Pons and Fleishmann had applied for Department of Energy funding for their projects. MIT does a lot of research in Hot Fusion, and recieved millions of dollars in DOE grants every year, Cold Fusion would have competed with that. Also, and probably more importantly, it was a huge blow to their pride - if Cold Fusion is real it means the changing of geopolitics and the end of our dependency on oil. How is it possible that some dinky Utah University would discover this, and not the prestigious MITs or Stanfords? Cold Fusion could be a reality if people would stop laughing at it. more info here .
I think that one of the great things about technology is that it is the great equalizer. As technology advances, fewer and fewer people will have to live with a "disabled" status since we can build machines to help them.
If I were disabled, I would spend all day's in the MMORPGs. I can only imagine how liberating it would be to be equal with everybody else, and not have people immediately take pity on you upon sight. This man, who now has lost his access to this world that had once been a major part of his life, has my sympathies, and I urge the galaxies people to find out a way to accommodate him.
From the LA Times:
Indeed, the image quality is not quite as good as that achieved by the iChatAV system that Apple Computer Inc. debuted in 2003. But iChatAV was a marginal development because it works only on Macintosh machines, meaning it can be enjoyed by only a relatively small number of computer users.
We mac users have an amazing video chat system already. What apple needs to do is to port iChat to windows like they did iTunes. Although, I wonder how much the LA Times reviewer's comments have to do with the camera he used and the software. The iSight is an excellent camera, and it would probably fare pretty well with Skype. Also, I am sure that when they get beyond beta that they will release an OS X skype 2 client.
How many programs have "fat" binaries, with intel versions?
I do tech support for my school, and a senior was having a problem where if she accessed files off of our network server, whenever she saved word would crash and she lost the file. It turned out that the problem was just a loose network cable, and office 2001 or whatever was just deciding to crash when it couldn't find the network connection. Out of nowhere she says while we are working on her computer "I heard that Apples are a lot better - is that true?" and I told her that it was true but that Dell had better warrantees, and if she was going to buy a new computer and would be graduating soon and not have access to our campus tech support than she might be better off going with Dell. I did however confirm that Macs don't have spyware/adware/virus problems, usually I'm a rabid apple fan-boy but I was genuinely worried that applecare would treat her like crap, so I didn't play of the Apple aspect at all. Two weeks later she walked in with a brand new iBook and wanted help transferring all her old files over :-).
I have two friends who all throughout high school were ardent PC users. Now they both have Powerbook G4s, saying it was the best laptop on the market.
It is incredible to me that the company that people were saying was going to go bankrupt is now doing so well. I credit OS X, the iPod, and apple hardware engineering. Oh yeah, and steve jobs!
Whenever Steve Jobs shows all those media quotes at his keynotes praising apple products, there is always one from the new york times, and the writer is always David Pouge. He is highly qualified to write articles on the Mac beat, he used to edit macworld (I think, or was it macuser) and he wrote Macs for Dummies and many other books. He is probably the most extreme example of what DVORAK is talking about. But, his articles are generally good, they aren't fan-boy by any strech, he explains why the apple experience is better for the end user, but he does often have a lot of complaints about apple products. Now, I work in a newsroom myself, for a very small newspaper, we are mac based. Every time somebody new comes on they are like "Oh, I don't get macs" and spend the first couple weeks complaining about them, but within a year, 90% of them have bought Macs for themselves, after experiencing OS X, they want it for themselves. It makes sense to me that editors would have no problem with pro-apple articles, nor should they. Yes, they use macs, but they use them for a reason: they are better.
It has got to be bigger than minor upgrades to the current iPods. The invitations to this event seemed to suggest something big: "One more thing..." and if that one more thing is just a hard drive upgrade to the iPods than a lot of journalists are going to be mad that they made the trip out to california. By calling media events like this, Steve Jobs spends a lot of his social capital, the press is willing to come because they expect something awesome. If he dissapoints, he will be limited in his ability to do this in the future. I do not think he will disappoint. These upgraded iPods he may announce, yes, but there will be something bigger, it may not be an iPod, but it will be something cool. - Geddes
does anyone actually use google talk? Or did you give it up like I did after downloading it the first time and realizing though everyone may have a google talk account through gmail, that they use thier AIM accounts anyway
Point well taken. When I said that I had the phone lines themselves in mind, if they get blown down, then phone service goes out. I didn't know they worked submerged in water though, that is way cool!