This is a terrible argument that relies on poor treatment of average figures.
If this really were the case, everybody in the urban stretches of New York or Chicago would have awesome internet access since they have the population density and wealth to support such a thing (most small businesses don't even have that kind of net access). The real issue is clearly with the regulations and/or the ISPs...
Sure, I will accept that the average should be lower than a country with a small, dense population, but I will not accept that the average of the center of a major city should be worse than the average of other entire countries.
That's the thing. Watching Castle and seeing that Rick Castle has an iPhone, or that Detective Beckett has a Palm Pre? Eh, whatever. They're probably going to have a cell phone, like most of the people in the US. As long as you're not throwing that device into my face really obnoxiously, I don't care what it is. It's just a prop, and I can focus on the story. Seeing that Shawn on 'Psych' carries an iPhone, again, not terribly jarring. None of them make a big deal about their phones, they just use them on screen.
I always wonder if these things are product placement or not. Of course Rick Castle has an iPhone...he is a wealthy dude who is at peace with his inner child. He is going to have a smart phone and if someone with loads of money who is not at all focused on the tech itself wants a smart phone...they are going to buy an iphone.
Maybe it is just that the set designers appreciate the fact that the apple products often look better. They also seem to look less dated. That picture of the powerbook in Austin Powers stuck out to me--an ancient powerbook that was used as a prop in that movie basically looks identical to a macbook pro to the casual observer. Even the old black powerbooks look relatively modern.
Also, any time a vintage product is used (like an old mac plus in the background), I like to think that it is not product placement but rather set design...it is such an iconic item that you feel it just *needs* to be in the background of a shot in Tron (and its not like it really gives apple a chance to say "look how pretty our shiny new product is")
I guess what I am saying is that I like the product placement that apple does (whether or not it is actually placement). It tends to feel natural and it is nice to see real things rather than random fake-props (or like MTV where they have started blurring the logo on your t-shirt unless someone is giving them sponsor dollars).
There is a whole school of people in literary criticism that don't care what the author intended--they care what the author produced. Georgia O'Keeffe consistently denied painting vaginal imagery but whether it happened accidentally, sub-consciously, or intentionally (and she just lied about it), there is tons of work that has been influenced by this interpretation.
Once you have published a work, you can still give pointers as to how you interpreted it...but people are going to interpret it their own way and many of them will read far more deeply into it than you ever expected. Nobody wants to end up like George Lucas running around going "No guys, I swear I meant it to be this way"
Shareholders don't have a ton of tools available to them and waging a proxy fight is pretty much the way to do what these guys want. Usually you try go get your director nominees elected (over the current guys) so that you can make your changes as this is far more effective than trying to get all of your changes passed as a ballot measure.
They will have to disclose ownership if they meet a threshold..and since they have not, we can assume they don't own a ton of shares. Also, I am not sure how they plan to pay for this...proxy fights are really expensive (you have to keep mailing letters and ballots to every single shareholder...you have to pay lawyers to write these things...you have to buy shares to vote with).
The key thing to note however...is that proxy fights are rarely successful. The current executives and directors probably own a lot of shares...they aren't going to vote for these guys. A lot of the shares are owned by large institutional investors who may not vote their shares or may vote them based on recommendations from somebody like ISS (who will probably recommend the status quo over "9 young shareholders")
Nah, this system is kind of cool (and he notes it is for one desktop...presumably someones laptop would operate with individual accounts while a shared family unit can do this).
Imagine in a windows environment (if such a thing were actually feasible), basically having a start menu for each of the 4 members of your family. If Johnny wants to check his email while Mom is editing the volunteer newsletter, he just has to launch the email program from the "Johnny" start menu and it will load up with his server settings and files already in place. Then if Suzie wants to show off a website she found, she can just open the browser from the "Suzie" start menu and her bookmarks will be there waiting.
First, if you are interested in getting good photos, you take dozens of the same subject and then choose the best. Why only take 2 when you can take 12...its not like you are wasting film. Just because they took dozens, doesn't mean they uploaded each individual photo to facebook or printed a copy for grandma.
Second, as a consultant paid to back up the hard drives of home users, why are you at all concerned with the content? Why are you even looking at their photos? If they want you to back up their photos, you take everything in the directory (or recover every file that is recoverable) and let them sort out their own personal files. What are you...one of those best buy 15 year olds who digs through every customer's computer hoping to find a stash of "home movies"?
Why did I have to scroll so far down to find this comment?
Storage is dirt cheap...why on earth would you delete photos? Sure, don't post-process them or include the outtakes in your album of best photos from the trip, but never delete them. Maybe one day you will want to see something in the background or reuse someone's face (even though the person next to them was blinking).
Sure the photos with the lens cap on are useless (but it probably isn't even worth your time to delete them)...but everything else might as well be kept around somewhere.
expertsexchange results are actually pretty good (or well they used to be...have not used them in a while).
The key is realizing that if you scroll to the very bottom of the page...all of the answers they are asking you to sign up and pay for are already there. Maybe they have changed it but you used to be able to get the full text of the answers by just scrolling down or using google cache (or a user agent switcher to pretend you are google)
Of course if you want to see a British show in the USA, instead of waiting to be a season behind, you have to wait for them to completely remake the show with the same script and worse acting.
There are many many choices out there for what to learn.
Perhaps instead of buying an apple device in order to learn how to develop for that platform...you prefer to learn how to develop for android/webos/symbian/$smartphoneOS so that it works on hardware you own.
Of course it depends on what you are learning: being an experienced developer in touchscreen apps for the iphone is more than just the language and api calls. If the iphone goes away and you are going to develop for android phones...you may be making different calls but you can still apply all of those skills you learned in dealing with touchscreen input (assuming you are a small team and not doing some enterprise phone app where they just hand that off to the "touchscreen UI coordinator").
If you are learning ruby to implement the exact same things you implemented before in another language on the same platform...when the world decides that it doesn't want ruby anymore, the time you spent learning it is much less valuable.
It would depend if the offer was "We are going to make somewhat of a commitment to maintaining an iPhone project and would like you to learn how to program for iOS on company time"
or
"We are going to throw out some gimmicky junk for the iPhone that we will give up on soon after realizing it has nothing to do with our companies core...and while we will pay you to do the work, we would like you to read this iOS for dummies book on your own time"
While the second option would never match the exact words coming out of your manager's mouth...it is the kind of project where even if you were intellectually curious, it might make sense to hold off. If you weren't curious enough to learn how to make an app prior to this (maybe you prefer android and didn't want to learn something you wouldn't ever use by choice) and the project you would be stuck with doesn't have much of a future...you would definitely want someone *else* to end up with the dead-end iphone project.
Sure, I could post photos of my friends--but I couldn't conveniently tag people from an already compiled list of friends (and let them tag anyone I have forgotten). I couldn't easily navigate between sets of photos posted months or years apart with nothing more than the left and right arrow keys. I couldn't click on someones picture to see more pictures of them.
Photos are probably facebook's biggest killer feature when combined with the social networking aspect (I may have had an account before you could even make photo albums...but it is what brought my parents and their friends to facebook). There are plenty of other features that make facebook far more useful than something like blogspot for what the OP was describing.
Facebook is really good--but I completely agree with the article. Zuckerberg and the early employees wish to cash out on their masterpiece. Maybe it will appreciate a ton, maybe it won't--but it is going to maintain a large chunk of value for the next several years no matter what happens. When the next group comes along (and they will), facebook will still charge forward as their most inelastic users keep them going. There are still aol and myspace users and there will still be facebook users--Zuckerberg and co just wants to transfer the risk of when that will happen to a bunch of eager investors.
If I could buy straight into their IPO, I'd seriously consider it--but I would hope to dump them at the first opportunity for profit taking.
Of course...a bogus facebook profile is actually pretty useful.
If they are trying to advertise to you based on your habits, they don't really care if you fill in your home town as Chicago and fill in a fake name. If they see that you spend most of your time on facebook looking at concert dates in NYC while you tag photos with and post on the walls of your friends in brooklyn.
On websites that grab your demographic data just to sell it (you register to read an article and then get a package of info sold), fake info will be misleading but the only useful functions of facebook are demographically linked. You can make up as much info as you want but unless you also use it in a fake way (talk with friends you don't know, read about books you don't like, watch movie trailers you aren't interested in), you will be revealing plenty of data.
This particular beauty is easy enough to set (you can go forwards or backwards..so not of that scrolling past the time business) and has 2 separate alarms. I have one that goes off on weekdays in time to get me to work--I never turn it off. The other one is set to work on any day; I leave it turned off most of the time and turn it back on when I need to get up early for some reason (or wake up on the weekend at some time other than the nebulous "the sun is now too bright-o'clock").
It always works, sets itself to the atomic clock, adjusts for DST, and cost a whopping $10 at target back when I left home for college. As an added bonus, I can look across the room and know what time it is.
This means I am free to to plug in my phone at night to charge on the counter (where my other chargers live), don't have to worry about a low battery dying in the middle of the night, and don't have a problem if I managed to forget my phone on my desk at work. I'll use the phone alarm if I travel or sleep somewhere else but when $10 gets you a perfect tool built for the job...why wouldn't you use it?
Of course, the fact that a better tool exists doesn't really excuse apple for making an alarm clock that doesn't work right. Especially since one-off alarms are the only thing you would use if you used a "real" alarm clock most days (and since New Years morning probably results in a lot of people waking up on couches/beds that are not their own)
What if you really quickly take 3 shots and then go drive around the block.
If you aren't drinking on an empty stomach, you could be under the limit by the time you reach your destination. Seems a little bit shady to give you a reading that is estimated on what your BAC will be in an hour...they have zero proof that you were going to be still driving past the next exit on the highway.
At most, an estimated reading would be something like "driving with the intent of being under the influence"
There was a (longish) comcast DNS outage in the chicago area not that long ago (maybe it was even more widespread). The only reason I know this happened is that I signed on to facebook and saw dozens of people who would never touch a network control panel spreading messages with concise instructions on how to "get the internet back" by changing to the google DNS servers.
It is highly unlikely that these people went back in and changed back to the automatic comcast DNS servers once service was restored...now you have a bunch of people who could run into this akamai problem but have no idea what it really means to change your DNS settings (and who will be loads of fun for the iTunes support staff when they call to ask why netflix plays instantly but itunes wants 2 hours to start a streaming movie)
Oh it would certainly suck...but I can see some shop wanting to stop people from using them as a physical playground for an online discounter (whether it be by jamming phone service or charging for physical access or something else).
At the same time, I often find myself wishing I had a smart phone when I am in a thrift store...I'll come across some vintage item that looks interesting but I can't remember if it was made by XYZ awesome company or by the similarly named company that made inferior knockoffs. With a smartphone, I could do a quick google and discover "oh this is an awesome item...it just needs a new part which can be found on ebay for $5" or "oh, these guys made cheap knockoffs of the real thing...if its broken, it is probably not repairable)". In that case, I suppose the smart phone use would benefit the store as I would be more likely to purchase.
I don't know if you have amazon prime down under...but we do up in the US (free 2-day shipping on everything...in my area orders almost always arrive next day if you order before 2-3PM).
At that point...I could really see the advantage of going to try an item on in a store, seeing which size fits, scanning the barcode into amazon and having it show up in my office the next day (its not like I was going to wear it out of the store 99 times out of 100).
This is abusive of the retailers since I would expect that some of the markup is paying for the fact that they have a retail storefront where I can see/touch/try the goods without having to worry about return shipping--how long until a store tries charging for entry to the changing rooms?
Yeah, I have those and use them at concerts...They sound pretty neutral but I wouldn't want to wear them in a theater. Only annoying thing about them at concerts is that if you try to sing along, it all sounds messed up (but it is better than losing your hearing)
I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who works at a company that was working on sort of an adjustable hearing aid (not called a hearing aid since that requires FDA aproval though). It was supposed to be something like a maximum isolation earplug with a microphone on the outside and a speaker on the inside. It was designed for military applications so you could set the computer to amplify all sounds (giving you better hearing) but cut off anything above a certain threshold (bombs, gunshots, etc). I would use them with a program that cut down all sounds and then streamed them back to me at a reasonable volume (but that would require me to spend a lot of money compared to earplugs...)
I was in a nearly empty theater last weekend (less bodies to absorb the sound maybe?) and it was the loudest in a string of increasing volume theatrical experiences.
During the previews, my friend was making a comment to his neighbor in what sounded a lot more like a shouting voice than the whisper that is normally sufficient in a theater. Of course they are pushing it louder to cover for the jackasses who can't shut up for 90 minutes and to make up for the over-volumed ipod listeners who no longer have good hearing.
If I owned a pair of those super expensive musicians earplugs (that have almost transparent spl reduction)...I would consider wearing them in a theater like that.
You used to have to go to a library to do your research on weird case-law...now if curiosity gets the better of you, it is right at your fingertips. Also, if you are on a newsworthy case (most are not) it is much easier to just not read the newspaper or watch the evening news for a week than it is to avoid seeing things online where it can pop up in completely unrelated ares.
You are also losing tons of money by living in a country that wants income taxes. If you are unwilling to pay your dues to your country...please leave.
Also, judges for the most part are understanding of hardship exemptions. In your average court in your average week, there are far more potential jurors than will be needed...if I trial is expected to be long , they usually ask if it would pose an undue hardship on you to be in court for 3 weeks or whatever (such as having an employer who won't compensate you for the time). You can't really lie about this but if it is true, the judge will release you if there are enough other potentials.
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This is a terrible argument that relies on poor treatment of average figures.
If this really were the case, everybody in the urban stretches of New York or Chicago would have awesome internet access since they have the population density and wealth to support such a thing (most small businesses don't even have that kind of net access). The real issue is clearly with the regulations and/or the ISPs...
Sure, I will accept that the average should be lower than a country with a small, dense population, but I will not accept that the average of the center of a major city should be worse than the average of other entire countries.
I always wonder if these things are product placement or not. Of course Rick Castle has an iPhone...he is a wealthy dude who is at peace with his inner child. He is going to have a smart phone and if someone with loads of money who is not at all focused on the tech itself wants a smart phone...they are going to buy an iphone.
Maybe it is just that the set designers appreciate the fact that the apple products often look better. They also seem to look less dated. That picture of the powerbook in Austin Powers stuck out to me--an ancient powerbook that was used as a prop in that movie basically looks identical to a macbook pro to the casual observer. Even the old black powerbooks look relatively modern.
Also, any time a vintage product is used (like an old mac plus in the background), I like to think that it is not product placement but rather set design...it is such an iconic item that you feel it just *needs* to be in the background of a shot in Tron (and its not like it really gives apple a chance to say "look how pretty our shiny new product is")
I guess what I am saying is that I like the product placement that apple does (whether or not it is actually placement). It tends to feel natural and it is nice to see real things rather than random fake-props (or like MTV where they have started blurring the logo on your t-shirt unless someone is giving them sponsor dollars).
There is a whole school of people in literary criticism that don't care what the author intended--they care what the author produced. Georgia O'Keeffe consistently denied painting vaginal imagery but whether it happened accidentally, sub-consciously, or intentionally (and she just lied about it), there is tons of work that has been influenced by this interpretation.
Once you have published a work, you can still give pointers as to how you interpreted it...but people are going to interpret it their own way and many of them will read far more deeply into it than you ever expected. Nobody wants to end up like George Lucas running around going "No guys, I swear I meant it to be this way"
Shareholders don't have a ton of tools available to them and waging a proxy fight is pretty much the way to do what these guys want. Usually you try go get your director nominees elected (over the current guys) so that you can make your changes as this is far more effective than trying to get all of your changes passed as a ballot measure.
They will have to disclose ownership if they meet a threshold..and since they have not, we can assume they don't own a ton of shares. Also, I am not sure how they plan to pay for this...proxy fights are really expensive (you have to keep mailing letters and ballots to every single shareholder...you have to pay lawyers to write these things...you have to buy shares to vote with).
The key thing to note however...is that proxy fights are rarely successful. The current executives and directors probably own a lot of shares...they aren't going to vote for these guys. A lot of the shares are owned by large institutional investors who may not vote their shares or may vote them based on recommendations from somebody like ISS (who will probably recommend the status quo over "9 young shareholders")
Imagine in a windows environment (if such a thing were actually feasible), basically having a start menu for each of the 4 members of your family. If Johnny wants to check his email while Mom is editing the volunteer newsletter, he just has to launch the email program from the "Johnny" start menu and it will load up with his server settings and files already in place. Then if Suzie wants to show off a website she found, she can just open the browser from the "Suzie" start menu and her bookmarks will be there waiting.
First, if you are interested in getting good photos, you take dozens of the same subject and then choose the best. Why only take 2 when you can take 12...its not like you are wasting film. Just because they took dozens, doesn't mean they uploaded each individual photo to facebook or printed a copy for grandma.
Second, as a consultant paid to back up the hard drives of home users, why are you at all concerned with the content? Why are you even looking at their photos? If they want you to back up their photos, you take everything in the directory (or recover every file that is recoverable) and let them sort out their own personal files. What are you...one of those best buy 15 year olds who digs through every customer's computer hoping to find a stash of "home movies"?
Storage is dirt cheap...why on earth would you delete photos? Sure, don't post-process them or include the outtakes in your album of best photos from the trip, but never delete them. Maybe one day you will want to see something in the background or reuse someone's face (even though the person next to them was blinking).
Sure the photos with the lens cap on are useless (but it probably isn't even worth your time to delete them)...but everything else might as well be kept around somewhere.
The key is realizing that if you scroll to the very bottom of the page...all of the answers they are asking you to sign up and pay for are already there. Maybe they have changed it but you used to be able to get the full text of the answers by just scrolling down or using google cache (or a user agent switcher to pretend you are google)
I'm looking at you MTV's Skins
Perhaps instead of buying an apple device in order to learn how to develop for that platform...you prefer to learn how to develop for android/webos/symbian/$smartphoneOS so that it works on hardware you own.
If you are learning ruby to implement the exact same things you implemented before in another language on the same platform...when the world decides that it doesn't want ruby anymore, the time you spent learning it is much less valuable.
or
"We are going to throw out some gimmicky junk for the iPhone that we will give up on soon after realizing it has nothing to do with our companies core...and while we will pay you to do the work, we would like you to read this iOS for dummies book on your own time"
While the second option would never match the exact words coming out of your manager's mouth...it is the kind of project where even if you were intellectually curious, it might make sense to hold off. If you weren't curious enough to learn how to make an app prior to this (maybe you prefer android and didn't want to learn something you wouldn't ever use by choice) and the project you would be stuck with doesn't have much of a future...you would definitely want someone *else* to end up with the dead-end iphone project.
Sure, I could post photos of my friends--but I couldn't conveniently tag people from an already compiled list of friends (and let them tag anyone I have forgotten). I couldn't easily navigate between sets of photos posted months or years apart with nothing more than the left and right arrow keys. I couldn't click on someones picture to see more pictures of them.
Photos are probably facebook's biggest killer feature when combined with the social networking aspect (I may have had an account before you could even make photo albums...but it is what brought my parents and their friends to facebook). There are plenty of other features that make facebook far more useful than something like blogspot for what the OP was describing.
Facebook is really good--but I completely agree with the article. Zuckerberg and the early employees wish to cash out on their masterpiece. Maybe it will appreciate a ton, maybe it won't--but it is going to maintain a large chunk of value for the next several years no matter what happens. When the next group comes along (and they will), facebook will still charge forward as their most inelastic users keep them going. There are still aol and myspace users and there will still be facebook users--Zuckerberg and co just wants to transfer the risk of when that will happen to a bunch of eager investors.
If I could buy straight into their IPO, I'd seriously consider it--but I would hope to dump them at the first opportunity for profit taking.
If they are trying to advertise to you based on your habits, they don't really care if you fill in your home town as Chicago and fill in a fake name. If they see that you spend most of your time on facebook looking at concert dates in NYC while you tag photos with and post on the walls of your friends in brooklyn.
On websites that grab your demographic data just to sell it (you register to read an article and then get a package of info sold), fake info will be misleading but the only useful functions of facebook are demographically linked. You can make up as much info as you want but unless you also use it in a fake way (talk with friends you don't know, read about books you don't like, watch movie trailers you aren't interested in), you will be revealing plenty of data.
This particular beauty is easy enough to set (you can go forwards or backwards..so not of that scrolling past the time business) and has 2 separate alarms. I have one that goes off on weekdays in time to get me to work--I never turn it off. The other one is set to work on any day; I leave it turned off most of the time and turn it back on when I need to get up early for some reason (or wake up on the weekend at some time other than the nebulous "the sun is now too bright-o'clock").
It always works, sets itself to the atomic clock, adjusts for DST, and cost a whopping $10 at target back when I left home for college. As an added bonus, I can look across the room and know what time it is.
This means I am free to to plug in my phone at night to charge on the counter (where my other chargers live), don't have to worry about a low battery dying in the middle of the night, and don't have a problem if I managed to forget my phone on my desk at work. I'll use the phone alarm if I travel or sleep somewhere else but when $10 gets you a perfect tool built for the job...why wouldn't you use it?
Of course, the fact that a better tool exists doesn't really excuse apple for making an alarm clock that doesn't work right. Especially since one-off alarms are the only thing you would use if you used a "real" alarm clock most days (and since New Years morning probably results in a lot of people waking up on couches/beds that are not their own)
If you aren't drinking on an empty stomach, you could be under the limit by the time you reach your destination. Seems a little bit shady to give you a reading that is estimated on what your BAC will be in an hour...they have zero proof that you were going to be still driving past the next exit on the highway.
At most, an estimated reading would be something like "driving with the intent of being under the influence"
There was a (longish) comcast DNS outage in the chicago area not that long ago (maybe it was even more widespread).
The only reason I know this happened is that I signed on to facebook and saw dozens of people who would never touch a network control panel spreading messages with concise instructions on how to "get the internet back" by changing to the google DNS servers.
It is highly unlikely that these people went back in and changed back to the automatic comcast DNS servers once service was restored...now you have a bunch of people who could run into this akamai problem but have no idea what it really means to change your DNS settings (and who will be loads of fun for the iTunes support staff when they call to ask why netflix plays instantly but itunes wants 2 hours to start a streaming movie)
At the same time, I often find myself wishing I had a smart phone when I am in a thrift store...I'll come across some vintage item that looks interesting but I can't remember if it was made by XYZ awesome company or by the similarly named company that made inferior knockoffs. With a smartphone, I could do a quick google and discover "oh this is an awesome item...it just needs a new part which can be found on ebay for $5" or "oh, these guys made cheap knockoffs of the real thing...if its broken, it is probably not repairable)". In that case, I suppose the smart phone use would benefit the store as I would be more likely to purchase.
At that point...I could really see the advantage of going to try an item on in a store, seeing which size fits, scanning the barcode into amazon and having it show up in my office the next day (its not like I was going to wear it out of the store 99 times out of 100).
This is abusive of the retailers since I would expect that some of the markup is paying for the fact that they have a retail storefront where I can see/touch/try the goods without having to worry about return shipping--how long until a store tries charging for entry to the changing rooms?
What' the status on blu-rays?
I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who works at a company that was working on sort of an adjustable hearing aid (not called a hearing aid since that requires FDA aproval though). It was supposed to be something like a maximum isolation earplug with a microphone on the outside and a speaker on the inside. It was designed for military applications so you could set the computer to amplify all sounds (giving you better hearing) but cut off anything above a certain threshold (bombs, gunshots, etc). I would use them with a program that cut down all sounds and then streamed them back to me at a reasonable volume (but that would require me to spend a lot of money compared to earplugs...)
During the previews, my friend was making a comment to his neighbor in what sounded a lot more like a shouting voice than the whisper that is normally sufficient in a theater. Of course they are pushing it louder to cover for the jackasses who can't shut up for 90 minutes and to make up for the over-volumed ipod listeners who no longer have good hearing.
If I owned a pair of those super expensive musicians earplugs (that have almost transparent spl reduction)...I would consider wearing them in a theater like that.
Don't worry, I'll just use the TSA key.
You used to have to go to a library to do your research on weird case-law...now if curiosity gets the better of you, it is right at your fingertips. Also, if you are on a newsworthy case (most are not) it is much easier to just not read the newspaper or watch the evening news for a week than it is to avoid seeing things online where it can pop up in completely unrelated ares.
Also, judges for the most part are understanding of hardship exemptions. In your average court in your average week, there are far more potential jurors than will be needed...if I trial is expected to be long , they usually ask if it would pose an undue hardship on you to be in court for 3 weeks or whatever (such as having an employer who won't compensate you for the time). You can't really lie about this but if it is true, the judge will release you if there are enough other potentials.