You should ask the BBC to give you free advertising for your application. I mean, they did it for a spinning logo application, so I think your farting application is far more notable.
Just remember to say that it's "On The Iphone" - that turns any boring trivial non-notable or unimportant scrap of information into front page national news.
Many people have been at the helm of Apple, and only one has driven it to success. Twice. Is that luck? Would just anyone have made the same choices? Would just anyone have had the same insights? Would just anyone have the same vision and commitment and drive?
If you've got fans and the media giving free advertising to your products (but not your larger competitors), and spinning myths to pretend that you were first in a whole load of areas. Yeah, I think one could make a success with that head start.
I mean just look at this article - another day, another Apple article (or ten).
Apple takes a cut on them all with almost no risk.
Is this true? *googles* God, you're right. I had no idea - combined with the fact that you have no choice but to host with Apple, it dismays me that any developer touches them with a bargepole.
Any other platform, you host where you like, for how much you like. And plenty of websites offer hosting for free.
And it's not like it's a small cut - according to this, it's a whopping 30%.
The "app (sic) store" is yet another Mythical Apple First - the media are hyping it as if selling or offering applications via the web is somehow new.
Well, welcome to the early 1990s.
Anyone one can offer or sell via the web, on any platform. There are vast numbers of "app stores", for both desktop and mobile platforms.
The only thing notable about Apple's is that they have made their platform such that you can only run applications installed from their store, giving them complete control over who can release software for it.
To be honest, if everyone clueless about computers just deleted emails with attachments (and didn't send their 20MBs of holiday photos to everyone in the first place), it'd be better than now, where people click attachments from their "friend" without thinking...
Indeed - there are some attempts to allow compatibility between servers/systems, most notably OpenID. Sort of like Jabber is trying to do for IM. Although mention OpenID here, and you get people foaming at the mouth about how it's somehow flawed because you couldn't use it for your bank account (does anyone use email or Jabber as the only means of security for their bank?)
Sadly this is true. And note the hype is independent of market sales. Worldwide at least, Apple are a niche player, the market being dominated by the likes of Nokia.
But do you remember when there was last a Nokia story on Slashdot?
Instead they spin this tale as if it was dominated by Apple (with daily Iphone stories - sometimes more), with occasional mention of Android or Blackberry to create the false illusion of "Look we do cover other phones, and the Iphone is doing better than them" which conveniently ignores the phones that are actually doing better than all of these.
Even in the UK, and among mainstream media such as the BBC, prominent space is given to Apple, advertising the Iphone, whilst other phones are only occasionally mentioned. I remember when the Iphone 3G came out, it was on the newspaper billboards I saw in London - and there I was, with my cheap 3G phone in my pocket that I'd bought years earlier! Astonishing.
So in other words, the hype precedes any actual success. And my fear is it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And surely you'd expect Slashdot to be the last place to be supporting single companies becoming dominant, along with closed platforms? So when the hype means that Apple have a monopoly in 10 years' time, people here will only have themselves to blame...
Nokia dwarf Apple in the mobile phone market - they don't need anything to compete, and they have more significant companies to worry about than that niche. If they're adopting Android, I suspect it's because they see it as an improvement.
I love how when Apple innovate, it's "Look, only Apple innovates!" but when another company does it, it's "Well they need to to compete with Apple".
Companies moving to open and compatible standards is a good thing - we should be embracing such moves.
They are Internet devices that happen to have phones in them.
These days, that's what a mobile phone is. A phone is an Internet device that happens to have a phone in it. And it was that way for a few years before the Iphone was thought of (2005 at least, and probably several years before that). The only exception is the "dumb" phones at the most low end of the market.
The Iphone may have a better market share than Android, but this isn't Windows to Mac, it's more like Mac to Linux, or I dunno, AmigaOS to RISC OS.
There are a vast range of companies in the phone market - none of them have a Windows like share, but for the larger companies, look at someone like Nokia.
I'm astonished at the sheer ignorance of the reality of the mobile market here - that people continue to propagate this myth that Apple are not only in the lead, but have a monopoly, when neither is true. Slashdot was once a place to come where people knew about the tech industry - sadly not anymore.
It might create more barrier for an indie developer to entry the market because they have to test their software on all the supported devices and make adjustments, but for studios it's not so much work.
Indeed, but to add to that, it's far less work that porting to another platform such as the Iphone.
A developer can pick whatever phone they like to develop for. If it turns out that some of those share a common platform (such as Windows, Android, etc) that make it relatively easy to run on other devices, in no way is that a bad thing. It makes it a lot easier to port than it would if you'd picked the Iphone - and even if you don't care about that, you're certainly not worse off...
Once again, Apple fans spin a negative point (every phone being incompatible with it) into somehow being something good.
Personally I'd rather not return to the bad old days where every phone was incompatible with each other, but:
Apple has the advantage of controlling both the platform and the device. So you know that whatever you develop for the iPhone it will work.
There's nothing stopping you from developing for one specific brand of phones. Indeed, this is precisely why such a comparison is ludicrous - and what about all the other phones out there? Even if you stick to one brand, there are plenty of others, that sell more than Apple (e.g., Nokia, Blackberry).
And this version obviously isn't editable by other people anyway, so this poor criticism (there's plenty more examples of false facts in other media, it's just you can't see the edit history) is irrelevant.
But that's what you and everyone else does now - say something to people in the pub, that actually is likely crap you "heard from someone", but they go on believing it, and propagating it.
Now you can see exactly where the information is coming from, including references.
By the same reasoning, mp3 players are a solution looking for a problem, because you could just use a phone?
There's still a market for separate devices. The most important point being battery life - you can check this, without having to worry about an Internet connection draining your phone battery, and then you can't make calls.
And consider how prices will quickly drop with time, so it'll be a lot cheaper than phone + contract.
It's a useful gift for children, who you might not want to be giving expensive phones and data plans to. And even in places like the UK with good coverage, it's far from ubiquitous.
Indeed - and it's a usage I find a bit annoying, given that "boi" is also used (in a positive sense) in some gay and transgender circles. I have no idea if the usage for Apple stems from this (and therefore it's relying on homophobia) or if it's just coincidental.
On a similar note, I can't help noticing that both fanboy and fanboi often have negative connotations, where as fangirl is something that a lot more women seem to happily identify with, without it being used as an insult.
Optimizing your driver to get inflated scores specifically in a benchmark is cheating.
I still don't see how. I mean, if the industry decides that measuring performance is best done by this benchmark software rather than a particular game, then what do you think they're going to decide to try to improve?
The point is that optimising can't be done blindly - you can't just tweak things and think they'll get better, you have to actually see whether that improves the performance. So how precisely do you suggest they measure their performance, and which of these methods constitute cheating?
Yes, it's a problem that benchmarking software causes only those things to be targeted, but that's a fault with the benchmark producers, and everyone else for relying on them. Maybe we should stick with real world tests instead?
It also leaves out conglomerates, such as Sony, parent of Sony Music, who happens to be responsible for BluRay technology. He also neglects the DVD, which was developed by a consortium of companies including Sony and TimeWarner. Maybe he has never heard of the Sony Music division, but how could he not have heard of TimeWarner?
Well that's cheating - just because Sony does something else, doesn't make this come from the "copyright industry". It just means that some companies are in several different markets.
Okay - let's see your evidence that a greater number (either in numbers, or as a proportion of population) were musicians in the past, compared with now?
Just because most of your friends at school are "in a band" doesn't mean that's typical of the whole population.
And just because you have some anecdotes of your friends given up after school doesn't mean that's evidence. So let's see your evidence that people are more likely to give it up today as they grow up, compared with in the past?
Indeed, and note it's not legal in the UK either:) But there was a recent story where artist Lily Allen was publically lobbying for the three strikes law, then it was discovered she'd been illegally sharing these "mix tapes" herself in order to promote her career. But most the mainstream media seem to be ignoring that aspect, and I don't see her getting sued...
still....a "poke" on facebook is synonymous to a wave in a public place.
Is it? The article also claims "It's the digital equivalent of waving at someone from across a crowded room.", but I disagree, in this context. The only reason we might think it wrong if she was arrested for a wave is because it's far less clear - a wave might be misinterpretted, perhaps she did it automatically seeing someone she knew, before remembering, or perhaps it was directed at someone else nearby.
None of these things apply to a Facebook "poke" - it's quite intentional, and quite clearly directed. There's no gray area here, and so doesn't have the same cause for concern as someone being arrested over a wave.
Besides...don't we have bigger fish to fry?
Well, we don't know the circumstances of the restraining order.
Even according to the UK Government's recent consultation, about restricting Internet access of suspected filesharers, the figures of estimated damages due to software piracy is a staggering 144 times that of music, TV and films from filesharing:
The BPI claim P2P file-sharing costs the UK music industry £180m pa (2008) while IPSOS gives a loss in the UK for TV and films of £152m (2007).... Figures for software - the biggest of the creative industries - are difficult to obtain, but it is estimated by the Business Software Alliance that the global business software industry suffers annual losses of some US$48 billion out of a total market of US$450 billion due to piracy. The bulk of these losses is caused by unauthorised copying of software within businesses, rather than by P2P.
So even though the Government has no reason to speak favourably of filesharing in this document, it still acknowledges that most software piracy is within businesses. So why does the BSA now focus on individuals and filesharing?
Note that even if we assumed every download was a lost sale(!), that means the upper bound for damages is $974 million for a six month period, according to the figure in the article, a fraction of the BSA's own estimate for commercial piracy damages, at $24 billion over six months.
the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware
Oh, and Government plans to reduce the bandwidth of suspected downloaders - thus making it hard or impossible to download the large Windows security updates - won't effect the spread malware at all...
Slashdot Mirror
You should ask the BBC to give you free advertising for your application. I mean, they did it for a spinning logo application, so I think your farting application is far more notable.
Just remember to say that it's "On The Iphone" - that turns any boring trivial non-notable or unimportant scrap of information into front page national news.
Many people have been at the helm of Apple, and only one has driven it to success. Twice. Is that luck? Would just anyone have made the same choices? Would just anyone have had the same insights? Would just anyone have the same vision and commitment and drive?
If you've got fans and the media giving free advertising to your products (but not your larger competitors), and spinning myths to pretend that you were first in a whole load of areas. Yeah, I think one could make a success with that head start.
I mean just look at this article - another day, another Apple article (or ten).
Apple takes a cut on them all with almost no risk.
Is this true? *googles* God, you're right. I had no idea - combined with the fact that you have no choice but to host with Apple, it dismays me that any developer touches them with a bargepole.
Any other platform, you host where you like, for how much you like. And plenty of websites offer hosting for free.
And it's not like it's a small cut - according to this, it's a whopping 30%.
Hear hear.
The "app (sic) store" is yet another Mythical Apple First - the media are hyping it as if selling or offering applications via the web is somehow new.
Well, welcome to the early 1990s.
Anyone one can offer or sell via the web, on any platform. There are vast numbers of "app stores", for both desktop and mobile platforms.
The only thing notable about Apple's is that they have made their platform such that you can only run applications installed from their store, giving them complete control over who can release software for it.
And people think that's a good thing? Right.
To be honest, if everyone clueless about computers just deleted emails with attachments (and didn't send their 20MBs of holiday photos to everyone in the first place), it'd be better than now, where people click attachments from their "friend" without thinking...
I agree it would be silly to use Facebook for corporate info, just as most companies run their own email servers instead of using an ISP's. But:
Yes, technically, email can be intercepted.
Yes, but more than that, you have to trust your ISP.
So I take it you either don't use email for talking about those things, or you run your own server, right?
Indeed - there are some attempts to allow compatibility between servers/systems, most notably OpenID. Sort of like Jabber is trying to do for IM. Although mention OpenID here, and you get people foaming at the mouth about how it's somehow flawed because you couldn't use it for your bank account (does anyone use email or Jabber as the only means of security for their bank?)
Sadly this is true. And note the hype is independent of market sales. Worldwide at least, Apple are a niche player, the market being dominated by the likes of Nokia.
But do you remember when there was last a Nokia story on Slashdot?
Instead they spin this tale as if it was dominated by Apple (with daily Iphone stories - sometimes more), with occasional mention of Android or Blackberry to create the false illusion of "Look we do cover other phones, and the Iphone is doing better than them" which conveniently ignores the phones that are actually doing better than all of these.
Even in the UK, and among mainstream media such as the BBC, prominent space is given to Apple, advertising the Iphone, whilst other phones are only occasionally mentioned. I remember when the Iphone 3G came out, it was on the newspaper billboards I saw in London - and there I was, with my cheap 3G phone in my pocket that I'd bought years earlier! Astonishing.
So in other words, the hype precedes any actual success. And my fear is it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And surely you'd expect Slashdot to be the last place to be supporting single companies becoming dominant, along with closed platforms? So when the hype means that Apple have a monopoly in 10 years' time, people here will only have themselves to blame...
Nokia dwarf Apple in the mobile phone market - they don't need anything to compete, and they have more significant companies to worry about than that niche. If they're adopting Android, I suspect it's because they see it as an improvement.
I love how when Apple innovate, it's "Look, only Apple innovates!" but when another company does it, it's "Well they need to to compete with Apple".
Companies moving to open and compatible standards is a good thing - we should be embracing such moves.
How does it compare to Nokia? Or even Blackberry?
I mean sure, maybe AmigaOS outsells RISC OS, but it wouldn't be much to shout about.
They are Internet devices that happen to have phones in them.
These days, that's what a mobile phone is. A phone is an Internet device that happens to have a phone in it. And it was that way for a few years before the Iphone was thought of (2005 at least, and probably several years before that). The only exception is the "dumb" phones at the most low end of the market.
Are you serious?
The Iphone may have a better market share than Android, but this isn't Windows to Mac, it's more like Mac to Linux, or I dunno, AmigaOS to RISC OS.
There are a vast range of companies in the phone market - none of them have a Windows like share, but for the larger companies, look at someone like Nokia.
I'm astonished at the sheer ignorance of the reality of the mobile market here - that people continue to propagate this myth that Apple are not only in the lead, but have a monopoly, when neither is true. Slashdot was once a place to come where people knew about the tech industry - sadly not anymore.
It might create more barrier for an indie developer to entry the market because they have to test their software on all the supported devices and make adjustments, but for studios it's not so much work.
Indeed, but to add to that, it's far less work that porting to another platform such as the Iphone.
A developer can pick whatever phone they like to develop for. If it turns out that some of those share a common platform (such as Windows, Android, etc) that make it relatively easy to run on other devices, in no way is that a bad thing. It makes it a lot easier to port than it would if you'd picked the Iphone - and even if you don't care about that, you're certainly not worse off...
Once again, Apple fans spin a negative point (every phone being incompatible with it) into somehow being something good.
Personally I'd rather not return to the bad old days where every phone was incompatible with each other, but:
Apple has the advantage of controlling both the platform and the device. So you know that whatever you develop for the iPhone it will work.
There's nothing stopping you from developing for one specific brand of phones. Indeed, this is precisely why such a comparison is ludicrous - and what about all the other phones out there? Even if you stick to one brand, there are plenty of others, that sell more than Apple (e.g., Nokia, Blackberry).
*yawn*
And this version obviously isn't editable by other people anyway, so this poor criticism (there's plenty more examples of false facts in other media, it's just you can't see the edit history) is irrelevant.
It's called a Motorola V980 :)
(Come on everyone, line up - let's list every model of phone in a separate post.)
But that's what you and everyone else does now - say something to people in the pub, that actually is likely crap you "heard from someone", but they go on believing it, and propagating it.
Now you can see exactly where the information is coming from, including references.
How much for a pocket Britannica device, btw?
By the same reasoning, mp3 players are a solution looking for a problem, because you could just use a phone?
There's still a market for separate devices. The most important point being battery life - you can check this, without having to worry about an Internet connection draining your phone battery, and then you can't make calls.
And consider how prices will quickly drop with time, so it'll be a lot cheaper than phone + contract.
It's a useful gift for children, who you might not want to be giving expensive phones and data plans to. And even in places like the UK with good coverage, it's far from ubiquitous.
Indeed - and it's a usage I find a bit annoying, given that "boi" is also used (in a positive sense) in some gay and transgender circles. I have no idea if the usage for Apple stems from this (and therefore it's relying on homophobia) or if it's just coincidental.
On a similar note, I can't help noticing that both fanboy and fanboi often have negative connotations, where as fangirl is something that a lot more women seem to happily identify with, without it being used as an insult.
Optimizing your driver to get inflated scores specifically in a benchmark is cheating.
I still don't see how. I mean, if the industry decides that measuring performance is best done by this benchmark software rather than a particular game, then what do you think they're going to decide to try to improve?
The point is that optimising can't be done blindly - you can't just tweak things and think they'll get better, you have to actually see whether that improves the performance. So how precisely do you suggest they measure their performance, and which of these methods constitute cheating?
Yes, it's a problem that benchmarking software causes only those things to be targeted, but that's a fault with the benchmark producers, and everyone else for relying on them. Maybe we should stick with real world tests instead?
It also leaves out conglomerates, such as Sony, parent of Sony Music, who happens to be responsible for BluRay technology. He also neglects the DVD, which was developed by a consortium of companies including Sony and TimeWarner. Maybe he has never heard of the Sony Music division, but how could he not have heard of TimeWarner?
Well that's cheating - just because Sony does something else, doesn't make this come from the "copyright industry". It just means that some companies are in several different markets.
Okay - let's see your evidence that a greater number (either in numbers, or as a proportion of population) were musicians in the past, compared with now?
Just because most of your friends at school are "in a band" doesn't mean that's typical of the whole population.
And just because you have some anecdotes of your friends given up after school doesn't mean that's evidence. So let's see your evidence that people are more likely to give it up today as they grow up, compared with in the past?
Indeed, and note it's not legal in the UK either :) But there was a recent story where artist Lily Allen was publically lobbying for the three strikes law, then it was discovered she'd been illegally sharing these "mix tapes" herself in order to promote her career. But most the mainstream media seem to be ignoring that aspect, and I don't see her getting sued...
still....a "poke" on facebook is synonymous to a wave in a public place.
Is it? The article also claims "It's the digital equivalent of waving at someone from across a crowded room.", but I disagree, in this context. The only reason we might think it wrong if she was arrested for a wave is because it's far less clear - a wave might be misinterpretted, perhaps she did it automatically seeing someone she knew, before remembering, or perhaps it was directed at someone else nearby.
None of these things apply to a Facebook "poke" - it's quite intentional, and quite clearly directed. There's no gray area here, and so doesn't have the same cause for concern as someone being arrested over a wave.
Besides...don't we have bigger fish to fry?
Well, we don't know the circumstances of the restraining order.
Even according to the UK Government's recent consultation, about restricting Internet access of suspected filesharers, the figures of estimated damages due to software piracy is a staggering 144 times that of music, TV and films from filesharing:
The BPI claim P2P file-sharing costs the UK music industry £180m pa (2008) while IPSOS gives a loss in the UK for TV and films of £152m (2007). ... Figures for software - the biggest of the creative industries - are difficult to obtain, but it is estimated by the Business Software Alliance that the global business software industry suffers annual losses of some US$48 billion out of a total market of US$450 billion due to piracy. The bulk of these losses is caused by unauthorised copying of software within businesses, rather than by P2P.
( http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file51703.pdf )
So even though the Government has no reason to speak favourably of filesharing in this document, it still acknowledges that most software piracy is within businesses. So why does the BSA now focus on individuals and filesharing?
Note that even if we assumed every download was a lost sale(!), that means the upper bound for damages is $974 million for a six month period, according to the figure in the article, a fraction of the BSA's own estimate for commercial piracy damages, at $24 billion over six months.
the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware
Oh, and Government plans to reduce the bandwidth of suspected downloaders - thus making it hard or impossible to download the large Windows security updates - won't effect the spread malware at all...