He's absolutely right about printer ink. If anything would drive us to the paperless office, you'd think it'd be that.
Since the eighties I've been hearing about that-there paperless office, but strangely, my cube is still piled high with paper. Email has not eliminated paper -- it's just supplemented it. We use both Wiki and Sharepoint, (often with different versions of the same doc in each) and still our cubicles drown in paper.
There is a drive in many companies to eliminate paper in the office space -- at my company part of this effort is to insist that people use on-line reference documentation instead of physical paper. This increases PC desktop requirements if you have the kind of job where you do operations online and now have to refer to docs online as well. IT, of course, fights these new requirements because they're expensive. So you end up on a 1024X768 screen flipping through reference, entry, tickets, and email, unable to see enough of any two objects at the same time, a process not unlike building a ship in a bottle. You'll see people look up something in one screen, then *write it down* on a notepad, then bring up another screen to use the information. Where's the "paperless office" in that?
There is a BIG difference between "I don't need to use Word anymore" and "Word should die a swift death". One may agree with both statements, but they are separate issues.
It is true that Word isn't well suited for the electronic world. You can use it as a half-assed html editor, but last time I checked the code it produces is extremely messy and difficult to maintain. There are many better ways to produce web content. Word isn't really useful here.
As far as wiki is concerned, what I've observed is that wiki tends to be an out-of-date online copy of information on a word document which... is also online... Therein lies madness. The tools are there -- it's a social, not technical problem.
So, his general conclusion, that Word is less relevant in the digital world, is accurate. I don't think it's demise is any time soon. Whole paradigms must change, (IT needs to give me a bigger monitor, for starters) and that probably won't happen until a lot of people retire.
I loved the "endless stream of toilet paper" remark. That's an apt description of so many reports...
The odd thing is, we're only talking about Apple here. Is software piracy common on the iPhone but the whole world has decided to play nice on Rim, M$, Symbian and Palm based phones? None of those platforms need to be jailbroke -- you just install willy-nilly whatever damned application you want to run.
If having the capability to install applications from any source opening the door to rampant piracy, how come this is only an issue on the iPhone?
I think we're seeing a pattern here -- (a) Jailbreak a phone and the terrorists win. (b) Jailbreak a phone and the software pirates win. But apparently neither of these are issues on any platform except Apple's. Why?
A company icon is representative of a company's philosophy -- their actions over a long period of time. Under Gates, the borg symbol doesn't stop being germane simply because time has passed.
Parenthetically, it's not the age of the reference, but how well it's stayed in the collective mind. You could say "I'll get you, my pretty!" and most people would get it, even though the reference is over 70 years old.
Ballmer's tantrums are well known, and not confined just to the single chair incident. But the chair is a reference that most people in the geek world would get, so as long as he's in office and exhibits those characteristics, it fits.
Personally, I'd use a 1" #8 wood screw, shown actual size, but I'm willing to compromise on a flying chair.
So, how about every time an RIAA rep makes a profoundly stupid remark like this one, we all, every one of us who still occasionally buys corporately produced music, declare a moratorium on new purchases for, say, one week. The effect is cumulative. Three stupid statements is an automatic three weeks. See if we can cause a dip in sales. I mean, more than it's currently dipping.
> They're out of things to cut and any attempt to raise taxes has been shot out of the water by the legislature. The final compromise sends the tax hike to the voters so the legislature doesn't get their political hands dirty with it.
Reminds me of our family budget. A year ago I took a cut in pay and benefits in order to remain employed, and somehow I had to make it work because nobody was going to give me any more money. Not grousing, that's just the way it is, and I'm glad to be still employed.
I cut discretionary expenses to the bone, over protests from the rest of the family, and then started in on what most people would consider essentials -- canceling medications, selling vehicles and furniture, opting out of discretionary medical and dental procedures. Whatever it took to bring outgo in line with income.
These are the things regular people need to do in a down economy. Similarly, governments can only spend the money they have, and they're going to be short in a down economy just like the rest of us.
In this case, they're not out of things to cut -- they're out of less painful things to cut. Now they have to make more painful cuts.
I could go to my boss and insist he pay me more money so I could meet my bills. He would reply that the company is making less money, and if they're going to stay in business, they can't afford the money to pay me what I used to make. If they go out of business, I make no money, and that would be a lot worse than the current situation.
The government works for us, and as we're making less money, we can not afford to pay them what they used to make. They just have to deal with it, as do we. Nobody said it was easy. After paring down the discretionary expenses, cutting further is probably the most difficult thing one has to do.
Raising taxes in a down economy is insane. It pushes into bankruptcy the people tetering on the edge, which increases the number of people the state has to support, in a positive feedback loop that does not end well.
The thing that worries me about selling the buildings and leasing them back, is that it only saves money in the short term. Over the long term, it's revenue positive for the investment firm who buys the buildings -- that's why they call it an "investment". This pushes the financial load into the future, which means they'll be looking for additional revenue later to pay for this decision. If things are bad when "later" comes, they're going to have some hard decisions to make. Harder decisions.
> So if I buy a book from a favorite author, said author has the authoritay to come onto my private property and confiscate his copyrighted book from me at any time?
I appreciate your opinion, and share it. I personally think that the only parts of the music industry that will survive will be the parts delivering DRM-free content.
That doesn't stop people from trying to develop a DRM technique which they hope that significant numbers of users (yourself and perhaps myself excluded...) would accept. I'm just saying that comments like this tend to defeat those efforts.
I have some DRM-encumbered music. I bought it from iTunes awhile back, before I switched to buying used CDs and DRM-free downloads instead. But I can play my DRM-encumbered music on all three ipods and from instances of itunes on three different computers, and that's all I need right now. So the fact that the songs contain DRM is, so far, and in this particular instance, not a practical issue. (Although it remains a philosophical issue.)
This is a perfect example of why the music industry is going in the crapper. I don't know if there is even a word for such a high degree of misguided arrogance. This is in the same order of proclaiming "We are victorious! The enemy is defeated and scattered! Their women wail and gnash their teeth!"...while your position is being overrun.
It's almost like they want to fail. While cooler heads are trying (with varying degrees of success) to find an implementation of DRM that isn't too onerous, this guy comes by and makes a statement like this, which serves no purpose but to strengthen their opponents' resolve.
So, let's say that the great majority of people who jailbreak their iPhone are doing so to be able to install and run apps that haven't been blessed by Apple through the app store. Techniques to jailbreak the phone have the unfortunate side-effect of allowing other, more nefarious exploits, which a small minority may be taking advantage of.
If Apple's concern is that the actual jailbreaking exposes parts of the technology that could be dangerous, and that the great majority are jailbreaking their phones in order to run Google Voice or some other app that Apple has not blessed, that they could fix the majority of the problem by creating an official way to install an application from an arbitrary source (IE, not just from the app store), which, incidentally, is what every other smartphone of which I am aware allows. Such a move would also serve to considerably weaken the arguments of the EFF on this issue. It's easy to argue that an iPhone user should be able to run Google Voice, fer catssake. I'd be honored to stand with iPhone users on that issue. It would be a much more difficult argument that users should be able to jailbreak their phones so they can dink around with the baseband processor.
Caveat: I understand the summary is flat wrong, the AP isn't trying to DRM the news, but some points are still interesting and should be explored.
> Hey I am all for blogging and the idea of the citizen reporter but they supplement not replace professionals.
I would normally agree, if not for there being, of late, too many examples of the professionals not being, I dunno, very professional. Citizen reporters may not be an adequate replacement, but I understand the frustration that might lead one to make the experiment.
An interesting dynamic is one already active -- for every controversial story, there's a thousand geeks out there with sophisticated tools trying to prove it wrong, be it telling the difference between a bird and a missile, or checking the font of a document against typewriters available at the time. It's possible that mob vetting will compensate for mob reporting. That seems a bit too volatile to me, but hey, I'm not a social expert, even on TV.
But what's clear is that the massive physical brick-and-mortar infrastructure that is "the news" (in all it's forms) is rapidly becoming irrelevant, for several reasons, not the least of which is, we don't trust them anymore. But this doesn't necessarily mean there will no longer be professional reporters. It may mean that they work for a much smaller, more loosely defined organization.
Hmm. The Blackberry app store (called "App World") became available recently (last week, I think) and I haven't yet run into a prohibition against downloading some arbitrarily-large app over wireless vs wifi. In fact, I don't see in the current version of app world where we even have a choice whether to use wifi or wireless. Same carrier (AT&T) so I guess if app world gets popular, we may see the same restrictions in the future. I dunno, it's stuff like this that makes me want to change carriers. But to what? They all have their disadvantages.
But again, if AT&T is making Apple do this (which is sounding more and more likely), it seems that Apple would garner good karma amongst users by saying "we're sorry, but AT&T is making us do this". Instead of making embarrassing statements like (in effect) "make jailbreaking legal and the terrorists win".
Caveat: My understanding of "jailbreaking" is that this allows people to run applications not available in the app store. IE, applications that haven't been blessed by Apple. This is different from unlocking the phone, which allows you to change carriers.
Given that, what is the difference between an iPhone running arbitrary apps and any other smartphone doing the same thing? I'm trying to get my mind around this. Is Apple saying that the fact I could install some third party app on my Treo 750 back when I had it, or can on my Blackberry now, does *not* present a threat to cell towers, but installing a non-blessed 3rd party app on the iPhone does? If so, what makes the iPhone different?
Or is it that this is a danger with all smartphones, and Apple is trying to be responsible with the platform under their control? If so, why haven't we seen widespread reports of people crashing cell towers willy-nilly with some poisonous app running on a Curve?
By this notice, is Apple saying that they have done a thorough security analysis of each and every one of the 65,000 apps available on the app store, and is offering assurance that none of these apps have the ability, say some hidden easter egg, of bringing down a cell tower? Is Apple thereby assuming liability for any cell tower damage that might incur from an app available from the app store? Apple's statement "The technological protection measures were designed into the iPhone precisely to prevent these kinds of pernicious activities, and if granted, the jailbreaking exemption would open the door to them" seems to infer an assumption of liability for non-jailbroken phones. I wonder if Apple has thought through the legal ramifications of these statements.
And finally, is Apple saying that "a local or international hacker" intent on "initiat[ing] commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data" would be stopped in his nefarious (and extremely illegal) deeds by the (mild, in comparison) legal prohibition against jailbreaking the phone?
Is that what Apple is saying? I just want to be clear on this.
Or, could the real issue be that Apple has in their contract with AT&T (as RIM does also, unfortunately) that certain capabilities will not be available through the app store that could be used to side-step carrier fees? Is it possible that this is the real issue, and the security issue is a rather weak smoke screen? Mind you, if that really is the case, then fine. It's their product, they can assume any position they want. But have the intellectual honesty to cop to it.
Anything can be done badly. I've noticed that establishments who hadn't already wired for internet are trying to make do with wireless, with varying results. The difference seems to be whether they've hired professionals to do a site survey and put in the proper number of repeaters, or just bought a consumer wireless router and put it in the office. Some places do better than others, but they all work better than a service you can't use at all.
My Blackberry tends to collect networks as I travel. Sometimes I'll find myself surprised that my phone has joined a network at a hotel or restaurant, forgetting that I'd added it several months back.
We are FIOS customers. Mobile devices have gotten good enough that we prefer to leave the laptops at home in favor of a pair of wifi-enabled smartphones and an iPod Touch. This "service" is therefore useless to us.
It occurs to me that there is, therefore, still a market for hotspots at mom-n-pop establishments, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as the big monolithic companies keep shooting themselves in the foot like this, we'll continue to have choices, even though coverage may be somewhat spotty.
A few years ago. They're considered a liability now.
The only pool in our area that still has a diving board is a local parks and rec pool, and you can only use it (the board) if you're enrolled in a diving class.
Slashdot Mirror
Urban legend.
Actually, no. They know to try next door where there's a chance that the owner is not armed.
To test, put this sign on your lawn: "No guns in the house" Get back to us.
He's absolutely right about printer ink. If anything would drive us to the paperless office, you'd think it'd be that.
Since the eighties I've been hearing about that-there paperless office, but strangely, my cube is still piled high with paper. Email has not eliminated paper -- it's just supplemented it. We use both Wiki and Sharepoint, (often with different versions of the same doc in each) and still our cubicles drown in paper.
There is a drive in many companies to eliminate paper in the office space -- at my company part of this effort is to insist that people use on-line reference documentation instead of physical paper. This increases PC desktop requirements if you have the kind of job where you do operations online and now have to refer to docs online as well. IT, of course, fights these new requirements because they're expensive. So you end up on a 1024X768 screen flipping through reference, entry, tickets, and email, unable to see enough of any two objects at the same time, a process not unlike building a ship in a bottle. You'll see people look up something in one screen, then *write it down* on a notepad, then bring up another screen to use the information. Where's the "paperless office" in that?
There is a BIG difference between "I don't need to use Word anymore" and "Word should die a swift death". One may agree with both statements, but they are separate issues.
It is true that Word isn't well suited for the electronic world. You can use it as a half-assed html editor, but last time I checked the code it produces is extremely messy and difficult to maintain. There are many better ways to produce web content. Word isn't really useful here.
As far as wiki is concerned, what I've observed is that wiki tends to be an out-of-date online copy of information on a word document which... is also online... Therein lies madness. The tools are there -- it's a social, not technical problem.
So, his general conclusion, that Word is less relevant in the digital world, is accurate. I don't think it's demise is any time soon. Whole paradigms must change, (IT needs to give me a bigger monitor, for starters) and that probably won't happen until a lot of people retire.
I loved the "endless stream of toilet paper" remark. That's an apt description of so many reports...
The odd thing is, we're only talking about Apple here. Is software piracy common on the iPhone but the whole world has decided to play nice on Rim, M$, Symbian and Palm based phones? None of those platforms need to be jailbroke -- you just install willy-nilly whatever damned application you want to run.
If having the capability to install applications from any source opening the door to rampant piracy, how come this is only an issue on the iPhone?
I think we're seeing a pattern here -- (a) Jailbreak a phone and the terrorists win. (b) Jailbreak a phone and the software pirates win. But apparently neither of these are issues on any platform except Apple's. Why?
A company icon is representative of a company's philosophy -- their actions over a long period of time. Under Gates, the borg symbol doesn't stop being germane simply because time has passed.
Parenthetically, it's not the age of the reference, but how well it's stayed in the collective mind. You could say "I'll get you, my pretty!" and most people would get it, even though the reference is over 70 years old.
Ballmer's tantrums are well known, and not confined just to the single chair incident. But the chair is a reference that most people in the geek world would get, so as long as he's in office and exhibits those characteristics, it fits.
Personally, I'd use a 1" #8 wood screw, shown actual size, but I'm willing to compromise on a flying chair.
I saw that in Men in Black. I thought they were kidding.
Seriously, that would be perfect.
So, how about every time an RIAA rep makes a profoundly stupid remark like this one, we all, every one of us who still occasionally buys corporately produced music, declare a moratorium on new purchases for, say, one week. The effect is cumulative. Three stupid statements is an automatic three weeks. See if we can cause a dip in sales. I mean, more than it's currently dipping.
> You don't live in Arizona do you?
I did, for several years.
> They've already cut everything they can.
They haven't, if spending still exceeds income.
> They're out of things to cut and any attempt to raise taxes has been shot out of the water by the legislature. The final compromise sends the tax hike to the voters so the legislature doesn't get their political hands dirty with it.
Reminds me of our family budget. A year ago I took a cut in pay and benefits in order to remain employed, and somehow I had to make it work because nobody was going to give me any more money. Not grousing, that's just the way it is, and I'm glad to be still employed.
I cut discretionary expenses to the bone, over protests from the rest of the family, and then started in on what most people would consider essentials -- canceling medications, selling vehicles and furniture, opting out of discretionary medical and dental procedures. Whatever it took to bring outgo in line with income.
These are the things regular people need to do in a down economy. Similarly, governments can only spend the money they have, and they're going to be short in a down economy just like the rest of us.
In this case, they're not out of things to cut -- they're out of less painful things to cut. Now they have to make more painful cuts.
I could go to my boss and insist he pay me more money so I could meet my bills. He would reply that the company is making less money, and if they're going to stay in business, they can't afford the money to pay me what I used to make. If they go out of business, I make no money, and that would be a lot worse than the current situation.
The government works for us, and as we're making less money, we can not afford to pay them what they used to make. They just have to deal with it, as do we. Nobody said it was easy. After paring down the discretionary expenses, cutting further is probably the most difficult thing one has to do.
Raising taxes in a down economy is insane. It pushes into bankruptcy the people tetering on the edge, which increases the number of people the state has to support, in a positive feedback loop that does not end well.
The thing that worries me about selling the buildings and leasing them back, is that it only saves money in the short term. Over the long term, it's revenue positive for the investment firm who buys the buildings -- that's why they call it an "investment". This pushes the financial load into the future, which means they'll be looking for additional revenue later to pay for this decision. If things are bad when "later" comes, they're going to have some hard decisions to make. Harder decisions.
I'm not sure what "low" means in this context.
> So if I buy a book from a favorite author, said author has the authoritay to come onto my private property and confiscate his copyrighted book from me at any time?
Um... Apparently.
The next step will be to count humming a tune in a public place as a performance.
The step after that will be to consider the memory of a tune as an unauthorized copy.
I wonder if this is what Don McLean meant?
I appreciate your opinion, and share it. I personally think that the only parts of the music industry that will survive will be the parts delivering DRM-free content.
That doesn't stop people from trying to develop a DRM technique which they hope that significant numbers of users (yourself and perhaps myself excluded...) would accept. I'm just saying that comments like this tend to defeat those efforts.
I have some DRM-encumbered music. I bought it from iTunes awhile back, before I switched to buying used CDs and DRM-free downloads instead. But I can play my DRM-encumbered music on all three ipods and from instances of itunes on three different computers, and that's all I need right now. So the fact that the songs contain DRM is, so far, and in this particular instance, not a practical issue. (Although it remains a philosophical issue.)
This is a perfect example of why the music industry is going in the crapper. I don't know if there is even a word for such a high degree of misguided arrogance. This is in the same order of proclaiming "We are victorious! The enemy is defeated and scattered! Their women wail and gnash their teeth!" ...while your position is being overrun.
It's almost like they want to fail. While cooler heads are trying (with varying degrees of success) to find an implementation of DRM that isn't too onerous, this guy comes by and makes a statement like this, which serves no purpose but to strengthen their opponents' resolve.
It's just incredible.
Well, to hell with the lot of them. Go indie. http://thinkindie.com/
I was thinking the same thing. Some would read the statement "a jailbroken iPhone could take out a cell tower" and see a challenge.
Ok. Now we're getting somewhere.
So, let's say that the great majority of people who jailbreak their iPhone are doing so to be able to install and run apps that haven't been blessed by Apple through the app store. Techniques to jailbreak the phone have the unfortunate side-effect of allowing other, more nefarious exploits, which a small minority may be taking advantage of.
If Apple's concern is that the actual jailbreaking exposes parts of the technology that could be dangerous, and that the great majority are jailbreaking their phones in order to run Google Voice or some other app that Apple has not blessed, that they could fix the majority of the problem by creating an official way to install an application from an arbitrary source (IE, not just from the app store), which, incidentally, is what every other smartphone of which I am aware allows. Such a move would also serve to considerably weaken the arguments of the EFF on this issue. It's easy to argue that an iPhone user should be able to run Google Voice, fer catssake. I'd be honored to stand with iPhone users on that issue. It would be a much more difficult argument that users should be able to jailbreak their phones so they can dink around with the baseband processor.
Caveat: I understand the summary is flat wrong, the AP isn't trying to DRM the news, but some points are still interesting and should be explored.
> Hey I am all for blogging and the idea of the citizen reporter but they supplement not replace professionals.
I would normally agree, if not for there being, of late, too many examples of the professionals not being, I dunno, very professional. Citizen reporters may not be an adequate replacement, but I understand the frustration that might lead one to make the experiment.
An interesting dynamic is one already active -- for every controversial story, there's a thousand geeks out there with sophisticated tools trying to prove it wrong, be it telling the difference between a bird and a missile, or checking the font of a document against typewriters available at the time. It's possible that mob vetting will compensate for mob reporting. That seems a bit too volatile to me, but hey, I'm not a social expert, even on TV.
But what's clear is that the massive physical brick-and-mortar infrastructure that is "the news" (in all it's forms) is rapidly becoming irrelevant, for several reasons, not the least of which is, we don't trust them anymore. But this doesn't necessarily mean there will no longer be professional reporters. It may mean that they work for a much smaller, more loosely defined organization.
Gawd, that's funny!
Hmm. The Blackberry app store (called "App World") became available recently (last week, I think) and I haven't yet run into a prohibition against downloading some arbitrarily-large app over wireless vs wifi. In fact, I don't see in the current version of app world where we even have a choice whether to use wifi or wireless. Same carrier (AT&T) so I guess if app world gets popular, we may see the same restrictions in the future. I dunno, it's stuff like this that makes me want to change carriers. But to what? They all have their disadvantages.
But again, if AT&T is making Apple do this (which is sounding more and more likely), it seems that Apple would garner good karma amongst users by saying "we're sorry, but AT&T is making us do this". Instead of making embarrassing statements like (in effect) "make jailbreaking legal and the terrorists win".
Caveat: My understanding of "jailbreaking" is that this allows people to run applications not available in the app store. IE, applications that haven't been blessed by Apple. This is different from unlocking the phone, which allows you to change carriers.
Given that, what is the difference between an iPhone running arbitrary apps and any other smartphone doing the same thing? I'm trying to get my mind around this. Is Apple saying that the fact I could install some third party app on my Treo 750 back when I had it, or can on my Blackberry now, does *not* present a threat to cell towers, but installing a non-blessed 3rd party app on the iPhone does? If so, what makes the iPhone different?
Or is it that this is a danger with all smartphones, and Apple is trying to be responsible with the platform under their control? If so, why haven't we seen widespread reports of people crashing cell towers willy-nilly with some poisonous app running on a Curve?
By this notice, is Apple saying that they have done a thorough security analysis of each and every one of the 65,000 apps available on the app store, and is offering assurance that none of these apps have the ability, say some hidden easter egg, of bringing down a cell tower? Is Apple thereby assuming liability for any cell tower damage that might incur from an app available from the app store? Apple's statement "The technological protection measures were designed into the iPhone precisely to prevent these kinds of pernicious activities, and if granted, the jailbreaking exemption would open the door to them" seems to infer an assumption of liability for non-jailbroken phones. I wonder if Apple has thought through the legal ramifications of these statements.
And finally, is Apple saying that "a local or international hacker" intent on "initiat[ing] commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data" would be stopped in his nefarious (and extremely illegal) deeds by the (mild, in comparison) legal prohibition against jailbreaking the phone?
Is that what Apple is saying? I just want to be clear on this.
Or, could the real issue be that Apple has in their contract with AT&T (as RIM does also, unfortunately) that certain capabilities will not be available through the app store that could be used to side-step carrier fees? Is it possible that this is the real issue, and the security issue is a rather weak smoke screen? Mind you, if that really is the case, then fine. It's their product, they can assume any position they want. But have the intellectual honesty to cop to it.
Anything can be done badly. I've noticed that establishments who hadn't already wired for internet are trying to make do with wireless, with varying results. The difference seems to be whether they've hired professionals to do a site survey and put in the proper number of repeaters, or just bought a consumer wireless router and put it in the office. Some places do better than others, but they all work better than a service you can't use at all.
My Blackberry tends to collect networks as I travel. Sometimes I'll find myself surprised that my phone has joined a network at a hotel or restaurant, forgetting that I'd added it several months back.
I don't get it. All those modules and wires and heads-up display and stuff, so I can see the Windows desktop wherever I go? This is a good thing how?
We are FIOS customers. Mobile devices have gotten good enough that we prefer to leave the laptops at home in favor of a pair of wifi-enabled smartphones and an iPod Touch. This "service" is therefore useless to us.
It occurs to me that there is, therefore, still a market for hotspots at mom-n-pop establishments, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as the big monolithic companies keep shooting themselves in the foot like this, we'll continue to have choices, even though coverage may be somewhat spotty.
A few years ago. They're considered a liability now.
The only pool in our area that still has a diving board is a local parks and rec pool, and you can only use it (the board) if you're enrolled in a diving class.