But the "it's a load of rubbish" sensationalism - which no doubt we will now get, which of course is terribly easy to "predict" after the fact - is just as bad as the original sensationalism.
People were queuing up to ask him to dismiss the concerns as sensationalism, which is what he often does so well, and you know what? He doesn't. Just because some media sources might have made ludicrous claims doesn't mean the risks didn't exist. Just because it turned out not to be as bad as we feared doesn't mean the risks didn't exist.
"They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is."
Jumping on the bandwagon to claim that these risks never existed, and that we should never do anything to protect ourselves from such risks, is as sensalist and dangerous as making false sensationalist claims in the first place.
"Just" the flu? Whatever the effects if this particular case, flu can and has killed millions. We're not talking about "flu" in the sense of "cold" which is what people commonly conflate it with.
So let's get this straight - when an epidemic is averted, and far fewer deaths result, instead of saying "Isn't it good that we had all these procedures in place, and started vaccinating people, and educating people about the risks of spreading flu", you say "What a load of sensationalism that was, we should have sat back and do nothing".
Yet, if there's an epidemic when we had done nothing - whether this one, or a later one - I bet you'd be first in line moaning about how inept the Government was.
Of course it's impossible to know if earlier actions led to a reduction in death, but it's also absurd to suggest that what we do had no effect - especially if when there is an epidemic, people moan about how something should have been done. Why bother with vaccination at all, if you think it has no effect?
Even if this epidemic would never have happened, even without any action, sometimes there are epidemics. Can you predict which ones will happen, and which ones won't?
It's "Y2K was just a myth, honest" all over again.
Apple is a "raging success" or "far more impressive", simply because they've been doing it for less? That makes no sense. We judge companies by their absolute success, and they don't get excuses simply because they've been doing it for less. But anyhow, I'm glad you agree that Apple are nowhere near as good as Nokia - as you say, they haven't been in it look, so what can we expect.
It's not like Apple are some teeny start-up - they've got billions of dollars at their disposal, and a trademark/brand that plenty of fans and media will give hype and free advertising to. On top of that, the phone industry is fast moving, and crosses over a large amount with computer technology, so playing catchup is easy (although it still took ages with Apple - 3G, and all the other features that were bog standard on phones for years before, yet for some reason it's the Iphone which is classed as a smartphone...)
If you actually look at everything in scale, the iPhone is far more impressive than just about anything Nokia has ever released in terms of sales numbers.
No, even in a given period of time, Nokia's sales are far greater, about an order of magnitude in fact. But let me guess, you've redefined "sales numbers" to mean something other than what it usually means.
Its rather retarded to compare a 4 year old product line to a 40 year old product line and use the word 'scale' so loosely.
Right, so if you concede that the 40 year old product line must be much better, why do we hear nothing about the Iphone?
These people aren't saying "Well the Iphone is nowhere near as good as Nokia, but hey, it's not bad considering it's only Apple"! They're claiming that the Iphone is the best ever. Claiming that by "best" you mean "not the best, but they would be if they'd been doing it as long, honest" makes no sense.
Okay I'll bite - which definition of "redefined the market" are we using today?
and everybody wants to do a phone like the iPhone.
Really. So what features make a phone "like the iPhone" exactly?
They also don't need to own the market to be a success
The claim was that Nokia waited until the Iphone was a "raging success". So we have the classic Apple fan trick of redefining "success" in the market to mean something far weaker. I've seen this a million times before.
And does this mean that Apple weren't making a profit when the Iphone was first released? I mean, according to you, "raging success" just means making a profit, yet according to the OP, Nokia waited until they were a "raging success" (making a profit) before suing them. So which is it?
There were tons of digital media players that used high capacity microdrives rather than the then low capacity flash drives.
"Less space than a nomad" - I thought there were pre-existing mp3 players that had the same capacity or more?
And of course toms of phones that were connected to app stores and music not controlled by the telco.
I'm not sure how controlled by Apple is any better, especially when you can only download from that store, where as every other platform you don't need an app store, as you download from wherever you like and it Just Works. Yes, I concede that Apple were first with this particular innovation on control and locking down platforms.
And of course we do have tons of tablet PCs
There are tablet computers. There's no tablet Apple computer, unless you count vaporware and rumour.
It's interesting how with Apple, we have stories and comments that are nothing more than pure speculation on what it would be cool if Apple did such and such.
Why Apple? We could make the same comments and hopes about any company doing it. "Wouldn't it be great if Nokia released a phone with the power of a supercomputer, and took input directly from your brain? Aren't Nokia so great that they can think ahead like this!"
I don't think there was any change - games were using mice long before Doom came along, and 3D games were making use of them on platforms where mice were available (flight simulators being the obvious example).
Well said. I'm in the UK, and it depresses me when I hear the xenophobic rants about how immigrants are "stealing" "British" jobs. Heaven forbid that someone try to do an honest day's work, get paid, and then use their wages to create more demand in the economy. Perhaps they should go off and live on an island somewhere - population 1, it should be no trouble getting a job, by their logic...
But even if you rent, you still indirectly pay those property taxes - what do you think the landlord does to the rent each year if his taxes have gone up? So yes, it's true to say that you're not immune to inflation, but property tax applies to both home owning and renting, and as long as he gets salary increases with inflation too, he'll still be better off.
Admittedly I'm in the UK though, where evidently things are better - my property tax (council tax) is lower than your figures, and about 10% of my mortgage repayments.
Yes, my desktop computer is for more purposes good enough - in the 1990s it seemed like a continual struggle to upgrade, and still not be as good as I'd want. Now I upgrade the desktop when something breaks.
But at the same time, in the last few years I've been buying a laptop, flat screen monitor, mp3 player, two phones. Other possible purchases include netbooks, media players, ebook readers. Add to that the continual income generated by broadband, mobile broadband and phone contracts.
Like any market, technology will mature, and growth in new areas are needed. But there's plenty of growth in "tech" yet. When these markets mature, there'll be yet new areas of technology. It's a bit like someone in the 70s asking if it's a real tech growth, because his TV and record player is good enough...
Perhaps - I guess there's the difference between nerd and geek - but even the most nerdyish nerds don't seriously believe that the stories they memories are true. I think.
The problem is we're just conflating two different definitions of the same word. There's that definition ("Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."), but the one that we should criticise is the one that is often supported by many religious people: "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." (or also "The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.")
Faith should depend on evidence and reason - it should not simply be something to have for the sake of it.
Which isn't bullshit? Are some of them true? I mean, I'm assuming we're talking "bullshit" in the sense of "a load of rubbish" as opposed to harmful or whatever?
we'd have had a flurry of posts talking about how the iPhone is an overpriced and inferior option.
To be fair, we'd have a flurry of posts dismissing the article as "grumpy featurism" or handwaving it away with "it doesn't matter it looks bad in a test, you have to use it to see how it's better".
Posts like yours a reasonable, but we never seem to have these honest admissions about Iphone flaws any other time...
The problem is more that we have an article everytime there's something that shows the Iphone come out top compared with a hand picked selection of competitors - yet we never seem to have articles that point out the ways that other phones do better, such as the things you list (I was astonished when I heard about copy/paste - surely it's meant to be a smart phone? Even non-smart phones can do that), or any other area they do better.
why don't you just admit that it has a flaw and deal with it
Well indeed, we could just copy and paste (if you're able) the standard boilerplate reponse for any Iphone criticisms: "It doesn't matter that my phone doesn't look as good on paper, it still works better, even though I can't explain why". If necessary, dismiss the claims in this article as "grumpy featurism".
Then you lose iPhone and iPod Touch due to Apple's developer program restrictions.
Who cares - that's their fault. Won't run on an Amiga too. Perfectly good cross-platform strategies shouldn't be ignored just because they don't include a minority of the market. It worries me that Apple's policies will end up dictating how games are written, even when they have little share in these markets...
Not sure why you were modded right down. Well, I am sure of course - you criticised Apple.
TFA starts "The success of the iPhone" - what success is that? Okay success, but let's not forget who are still 40% of the market (Nokia). But as you say, the article conveniently ignores them. TFA continues:
"has triggered the adoption of touchscreen systems in a wide range of mobile devices"
Yeah right. No one would want touchscreens, unless Apple produced one with a whopping few per cent of the market(!) I keep rereading that sentence, and I fail to see how it has any grasp in reality.
Yet another article engulfed by the RDF - can we have some unbiased reports instead?
Indeed. It's easy for people to demand totally original games, but you can bet they've never tried writing them. Game development forums like Gamedev.net are flooded with beginner "I've got an idea for a totally original game, who wants to help me make it!" posts (bonus points if it's a MMORPG).
And it's a good practice to learn game development by starting off recreating simpler games (space invader or tetris would be the usual examples, but the idea extends to more complex games too). It allows you to focus on the game development, understand how games work, and it means you don't have the risk of spending years on a game only to find your great original idea isn't fun to play at all.
Even top commercial games take ideas off each other, and there's good reasons for that.
The problem is that any project also has some risk that someone might decide to sue you.
So with that attitude, the answer is "If you're that worried, get a lawyer or don't release any code at all."
Not to mention that this applies to real life all the time - anyone could sue you for anything that you might do. So it's surely a question of assessing the risks, and then assessing whether any of those risks might need professional advice or not (unless you're so rich you can have a lawyer check everything you do in life).
Slashdot Mirror
it was always fear mongering.
Citation needed - otherwise you're just mongering yourself.
But the "it's a load of rubbish" sensationalism - which no doubt we will now get, which of course is terribly easy to "predict" after the fact - is just as bad as the original sensationalism.
Here's an interesting read from Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/parmageddon/
People were queuing up to ask him to dismiss the concerns as sensationalism, which is what he often does so well, and you know what? He doesn't. Just because some media sources might have made ludicrous claims doesn't mean the risks didn't exist. Just because it turned out not to be as bad as we feared doesn't mean the risks didn't exist.
"They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is."
Jumping on the bandwagon to claim that these risks never existed, and that we should never do anything to protect ourselves from such risks, is as sensalist and dangerous as making false sensationalist claims in the first place.
"Just" the flu? Whatever the effects if this particular case, flu can and has killed millions. We're not talking about "flu" in the sense of "cold" which is what people commonly conflate it with.
So let's get this straight - when an epidemic is averted, and far fewer deaths result, instead of saying "Isn't it good that we had all these procedures in place, and started vaccinating people, and educating people about the risks of spreading flu", you say "What a load of sensationalism that was, we should have sat back and do nothing".
Yet, if there's an epidemic when we had done nothing - whether this one, or a later one - I bet you'd be first in line moaning about how inept the Government was.
Of course it's impossible to know if earlier actions led to a reduction in death, but it's also absurd to suggest that what we do had no effect - especially if when there is an epidemic, people moan about how something should have been done. Why bother with vaccination at all, if you think it has no effect?
Even if this epidemic would never have happened, even without any action, sometimes there are epidemics. Can you predict which ones will happen, and which ones won't?
It's "Y2K was just a myth, honest" all over again.
Apple is a "raging success" or "far more impressive", simply because they've been doing it for less? That makes no sense. We judge companies by their absolute success, and they don't get excuses simply because they've been doing it for less. But anyhow, I'm glad you agree that Apple are nowhere near as good as Nokia - as you say, they haven't been in it look, so what can we expect.
It's not like Apple are some teeny start-up - they've got billions of dollars at their disposal, and a trademark/brand that plenty of fans and media will give hype and free advertising to. On top of that, the phone industry is fast moving, and crosses over a large amount with computer technology, so playing catchup is easy (although it still took ages with Apple - 3G, and all the other features that were bog standard on phones for years before, yet for some reason it's the Iphone which is classed as a smartphone...)
If you actually look at everything in scale, the iPhone is far more impressive than just about anything Nokia has ever released in terms of sales numbers.
No, even in a given period of time, Nokia's sales are far greater, about an order of magnitude in fact. But let me guess, you've redefined "sales numbers" to mean something other than what it usually means.
Its rather retarded to compare a 4 year old product line to a 40 year old product line and use the word 'scale' so loosely.
Right, so if you concede that the 40 year old product line must be much better, why do we hear nothing about the Iphone?
These people aren't saying "Well the Iphone is nowhere near as good as Nokia, but hey, it's not bad considering it's only Apple"! They're claiming that the Iphone is the best ever. Claiming that by "best" you mean "not the best, but they would be if they'd been doing it as long, honest" makes no sense.
Apple have redefined the mobile market
Okay I'll bite - which definition of "redefined the market" are we using today?
and everybody wants to do a phone like the iPhone.
Really. So what features make a phone "like the iPhone" exactly?
They also don't need to own the market to be a success
The claim was that Nokia waited until the Iphone was a "raging success". So we have the classic Apple fan trick of redefining "success" in the market to mean something far weaker. I've seen this a million times before.
And does this mean that Apple weren't making a profit when the Iphone was first released? I mean, according to you, "raging success" just means making a profit, yet according to the OP, Nokia waited until they were a "raging success" (making a profit) before suing them. So which is it?
Not tons, but the OP didn't claim that.
There were tons of digital media players that used high capacity microdrives rather than the then low capacity flash drives.
"Less space than a nomad" - I thought there were pre-existing mp3 players that had the same capacity or more?
And of course toms of phones that were connected to app stores and music not controlled by the telco.
I'm not sure how controlled by Apple is any better, especially when you can only download from that store, where as every other platform you don't need an app store, as you download from wherever you like and it Just Works. Yes, I concede that Apple were first with this particular innovation on control and locking down platforms.
And of course we do have tons of tablet PCs
There are tablet computers. There's no tablet Apple computer, unless you count vaporware and rumour.
It's interesting how with Apple, we have stories and comments that are nothing more than pure speculation on what it would be cool if Apple did such and such.
Why Apple? We could make the same comments and hopes about any company doing it. "Wouldn't it be great if Nokia released a phone with the power of a supercomputer, and took input directly from your brain? Aren't Nokia so great that they can think ahead like this!"
I don't think there was any change - games were using mice long before Doom came along, and 3D games were making use of them on platforms where mice were available (flight simulators being the obvious example).
Maybe the robots will run Linux, thus making them cheaper to build.
Well said. I'm in the UK, and it depresses me when I hear the xenophobic rants about how immigrants are "stealing" "British" jobs. Heaven forbid that someone try to do an honest day's work, get paid, and then use their wages to create more demand in the economy. Perhaps they should go off and live on an island somewhere - population 1, it should be no trouble getting a job, by their logic...
But even if you rent, you still indirectly pay those property taxes - what do you think the landlord does to the rent each year if his taxes have gone up? So yes, it's true to say that you're not immune to inflation, but property tax applies to both home owning and renting, and as long as he gets salary increases with inflation too, he'll still be better off.
Admittedly I'm in the UK though, where evidently things are better - my property tax (council tax) is lower than your figures, and about 10% of my mortgage repayments.
There's more to tech than Intel x86 CPUs!
Yes, my desktop computer is for more purposes good enough - in the 1990s it seemed like a continual struggle to upgrade, and still not be as good as I'd want. Now I upgrade the desktop when something breaks.
But at the same time, in the last few years I've been buying a laptop, flat screen monitor, mp3 player, two phones. Other possible purchases include netbooks, media players, ebook readers. Add to that the continual income generated by broadband, mobile broadband and phone contracts.
Like any market, technology will mature, and growth in new areas are needed. But there's plenty of growth in "tech" yet. When these markets mature, there'll be yet new areas of technology. It's a bit like someone in the 70s asking if it's a real tech growth, because his TV and record player is good enough...
Be glad he didn't say Iphones too (I have seen people use phrases like "Iphone-like device" to refer to a phone).
Still, I'll be amused when Apple lose their trademarks due to them becoming generic terms.
Perhaps - I guess there's the difference between nerd and geek - but even the most nerdyish nerds don't seriously believe that the stories they memories are true. I think.
The problem is we're just conflating two different definitions of the same word. There's that definition ("Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."), but the one that we should criticise is the one that is often supported by many religious people: "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." (or also "The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.")
Faith should depend on evidence and reason - it should not simply be something to have for the sake of it.
I'd love to reject bug report or complaint if they returned it for repairs - "User Error - didn't pray hard enough"...
Which isn't bullshit? Are some of them true? I mean, I'm assuming we're talking "bullshit" in the sense of "a load of rubbish" as opposed to harmful or whatever?
we'd have had a flurry of posts talking about how the iPhone is an overpriced and inferior option.
To be fair, we'd have a flurry of posts dismissing the article as "grumpy featurism" or handwaving it away with "it doesn't matter it looks bad in a test, you have to use it to see how it's better".
Posts like yours a reasonable, but we never seem to have these honest admissions about Iphone flaws any other time...
The problem is more that we have an article everytime there's something that shows the Iphone come out top compared with a hand picked selection of competitors - yet we never seem to have articles that point out the ways that other phones do better, such as the things you list (I was astonished when I heard about copy/paste - surely it's meant to be a smart phone? Even non-smart phones can do that), or any other area they do better.
why don't you just admit that it has a flaw and deal with it
Well indeed, we could just copy and paste (if you're able) the standard boilerplate reponse for any Iphone criticisms: "It doesn't matter that my phone doesn't look as good on paper, it still works better, even though I can't explain why". If necessary, dismiss the claims in this article as "grumpy featurism".
OOI - how does one access a link on a web page, with this interface?
Then you lose iPhone and iPod Touch due to Apple's developer program restrictions.
Who cares - that's their fault. Won't run on an Amiga too. Perfectly good cross-platform strategies shouldn't be ignored just because they don't include a minority of the market. It worries me that Apple's policies will end up dictating how games are written, even when they have little share in these markets...
Not sure why you were modded right down. Well, I am sure of course - you criticised Apple.
TFA starts "The success of the iPhone" - what success is that? Okay success, but let's not forget who are still 40% of the market (Nokia). But as you say, the article conveniently ignores them. TFA continues:
"has triggered the adoption of touchscreen systems in a wide range of mobile devices"
Yeah right. No one would want touchscreens, unless Apple produced one with a whopping few per cent of the market(!) I keep rereading that sentence, and I fail to see how it has any grasp in reality.
Yet another article engulfed by the RDF - can we have some unbiased reports instead?
Indeed. It's easy for people to demand totally original games, but you can bet they've never tried writing them. Game development forums like Gamedev.net are flooded with beginner "I've got an idea for a totally original game, who wants to help me make it!" posts (bonus points if it's a MMORPG).
And it's a good practice to learn game development by starting off recreating simpler games (space invader or tetris would be the usual examples, but the idea extends to more complex games too). It allows you to focus on the game development, understand how games work, and it means you don't have the risk of spending years on a game only to find your great original idea isn't fun to play at all.
Even top commercial games take ideas off each other, and there's good reasons for that.
The problem is that any project also has some risk that someone might decide to sue you.
So with that attitude, the answer is "If you're that worried, get a lawyer or don't release any code at all."
Not to mention that this applies to real life all the time - anyone could sue you for anything that you might do. So it's surely a question of assessing the risks, and then assessing whether any of those risks might need professional advice or not (unless you're so rich you can have a lawyer check everything you do in life).