Very nice, except that you don't prove the negative case - you hypothesize about and examine what exists.
Seriously, there's been tons of scientific work done to establish whether such barriers exist - and, surprise, surprise, evidence of absence abounds. The fossil record backs up evolution, lab experiments back it up; basically, everything backs it up except conspiracy theorists and bibles.
He's not putting forth a theory - it's a clarification of the definitions involved. You're claiming that micro and macro evolution refer to two separate, distinct processes, and he's telling you that that's not what those words mean. What's more, he's correct.
Also, argument by analogy doesn't prove anything. All it shows is that you can structure an example so that it doesn't have an internal flaw; it doesn't say anything about the actual topic at hand. This is why analogies aren't used for proof - they're only used to explain complex and/or unfamiliar concepts.
If you want to disprove his statement, show either A)Authoritative text showing definitional difference between micro and macro evolution that shows them to be different mechanisms/incompatible, or B)Produce documented evidence that one or the other doesn't work. Anything else is just wind.
My question would be "Why is this specific frontend stuff being done?"
Integrating closely with external websites is stupid; yes, twitter and facebook have large user bases and aren't going away, but they're not guaranteed functionality; and if you're trying to take something as basic as the "Home" button off the taskbar, why add something complex AND not universally used to it?
Flock has an abysmal share of the browser market. This is because it's a stupid idea - browser chrome makes, by and large, a worse interface to social media than the browser PANE.
I'd really like to know where these ideas come from, and what the vetting/decision process is.
Note - this is coming from someone who is relatively happy with firefox 4, modulo the status-bar UI decisions. Great job speeding it up.
Hooookay there. There may very well be problems with OpenGL and DirectX, but saying that it's actually a plot to kill hobbyist game development is just a little crackers.
For the broadest-base possible reality check, note that indie games have actually been RISING in prominence over the past ten years. Also note that, really, there's nothing stopping you from using a different abstraction, non-openGL libraries, etc, etc. There are a number of low-end intermediate libraries to make OpenGL coding simpler for people not needing the complexity - SDL comes to mind.
I could see that - what I was mostly reacting to the "you can dump IE6" thing. It's just not that simple.
Also, what Windows version are you on? Because for corporate or institutional environments standardized on WinXP, IE-9 is literally not an option, and I imagine that a large portion of the IE6 holdouts are also WinXP holdouts.
IE9 is a good step, but it's not going to kill IE6 any faster than existing options (IE7, IE8) have. IE6 is still around largely because of institutional and business users with intranets, with a small "gramma" contingent who CAN'T upgrade to 9 because they don't upgrade ever. It will likely cut swathes in IE7/8 deployment, and could legitimately reduce the burden of support for 7/8-specific quirks.
The only solution to IE6 is time... so now we continue playing the waiting game.
Oh, I'm not arguing against the "Old Man Murray" article, or even necessarily the "Pidgey" article, although I find it less obviously correct. I'm not even saying that the current Wikipedia mod community isn't broken - I mean, they put a freaking Moonie in charge of the Sun Young Moon page.
All I'm saying is that the "infinite space" argument isn't a particularly good one, nor is the "it's inherently censorship to say that something doesn't belong on Wikipedia." Plenty of things don't belong on Wikipedia, for various reasons.
And, again, I've NEVER said that 5TB/3.6TB/WHATEVER THE HELL WIKIPEDIA IS ACTUALLY SERVING is an excessive amount to store. I'm saying that storage is the easiest problem they deal with, that they serve a huge number of requests on a shoestring budget, and that their search requirements are likely complex and scale non-linearly over their data.
I will concede that space probably isn't the biggest consideration they have, although for a donation-maintained web service, 5TB (and appropriate backup and maintenance) isn't insignificant either. But the limiting factor they'll hit first is probably either bandwidth or search efficiency problems. I'm not by any means an expert on Wikimedia internals, but I would guess that they could probably blow up their search-space without necessarily blowing up their content-space.
And, yes, some Wikipedians are dicks. But the argument that minutia of pop-culture is better located elsewhere, with a general description on Wikipedia isn't necessarily a valueless one.
I get what you're going for here, but there are alternate tensions at work. Wikipedia doesn't actually have infini-space (or infini-bandwidth), it has a large-but-finite space, which is subject to both technical and organizational concerns . To address your example directly, libraries get rid of books all the time - the process is called weeding, and it's where a large portion of those books with plastic jackets at library book sales come from.
To address your other example (Pidgey), well, there's still a Pokemon entry, and that Pokemon entry has links to a number of specialist Poke-resources. They're not censoring or destroying information - they're saying that the information isn't desirable to house locally, and that it's outside the scope of their function as a general purpose encyclopedia. Where and how that line gets drawn is, of course, is an incredibly sensitive and complex issue, but the line needs to be drawn - if I just copypasta the full Apache documentation into the Wikipedia entry for Apache, I'm not producing any value for anyone - I'm just adding to Wikipedia's storage and organization burdens.
You're perfectly allowed to express that opinion - it's just stupid, and easily torn apart. Libraries (and their close cousins, archives) serve more purposes, and more importantly, serve the purposes you describe in an accountable, reliable manner, which the internet does not. "The internet will do it" is almost always a stupid-ass thing to say - the internet is a communications channel, linking disparate resources and data collections. It's not a magic "information locker" where everything is remembered forever.
There are two positions that are currently relevant in terms of political debate, because the issue isn't actually "evolution versus other theories," it's "theories based on science, or God did it!"
It's a question of principle - will science be allowed to be, you know, science? Or do we have to run a theology class during every half hour where the science would be inconvenient for various religions. Except, wait, it's simpler than that (in the US), because this whole shebang is just run and arranged by fundie Christianity, so we only have to really worry about one.
People aren't being close-minded (ok, some most likely are, but it's not relevant right now) - people are discussing the concrete, existing problem. There aren't more than two dogs in this particular fight.
Making decisions based on abstracted data is still a decision process bound to reason. No, I haven't crunched the raw numbers, and couldn't - but I did do a survey of the literature that was available, I do read the articles critically for consistency. I also choose to believe that an overwhelming majority of expert opinions, while not a guarantee, does have more weight than the minority opinion, particularly when the minority opinion is largely connected to religious motivation, rather than any sort of rigorous study.
Tax refunds? Since when do churches pay taxes? Oh, wait, they don't.
I mean, I certainly don't think that anyone who is religious should be prevented from working on science. But anyone who's trying to push their religious views in the guise of science, well, yes, they need firing. Because they're not doing the job, son. And, frankly, most creationists (or, rather, the proselytizing-by-any-means variety, which is what people mean when they say "creationists" in this context) are, in fact, farther out than most religious people - it's a minority position.
What they're using to make these claims falsifiable are things like pre-industrial numbers, and observations from items and environments that have existed since before industry. They're also using, oh, I don't know, comparative numbers from periods with varying pollutant output.
Soooooo.... ever considered that maybe it turns out that the overwhelming majority of professional climate scientists DO understand how science research works? And maybe you haven't actually discovered a secret religion from your armchair there?
The real issue is that the people using faith-based evidence demand that their view be taught in all contexts; and really, the end goal is to be taught exclusively. And that's a problem, especially if we want to have any functional biologists in the future.
Also, you're confusing indoctrination sense 1 and sense 2. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indoctrination . At no point does teaching science actually call for or require or involve the ridicule of religion, because it's NOT RELATED. God doesn't exist in a scientific context - he isn't observable or describable, so he's not relevant.
Teach science in science class and hold church in church.
But... that "Mercury laden sediment" question isn't some sort of magic paradox that means we sit on our ass forever, contemplating how haaaard it is to decide things. You do studies, make models, and figure out what the best course of action is based on available evidence.
Available evidence says we should do something about emissions, because, barring extreme and unlikely deviations of our current models from reality, they're fucking things up. Also, oil is a scarce resource. Also, a resource largely held by nations inimical to us politically, if you're in the US.
It's not faith, because on some level, you're either judging which set of scientists are, to the best of your judgment, respected and reasonable. You're not pre-judging the answer because your religion or politics says "THIS ANSWER SUITS ME."
Furthermore, even if you're reading materials at second hand, rather than doing original research, you can still judge on the logic and consistency of those materials - your understanding may not be as perfect as someone qualified to do original research, but it's still reasonable to make a judgment on which account hangs together.
Also, let's NOT agree not to call this a "Republican" position. Because active SCIENCE DENIAL is a Republican phenomenon. It's Texas, not Massachusetts, who has people going through the school books and filtering them through a political lens. Hell, it's not limited to science - last I heard, they were going after the history books, too. http://www.aolnews.com/2010/03/12/texas-removes-thomas-jefferson-from-teaching-standard/
Cause and effect, dude. People are worried about putting up banners BECAUSE people motherfscking HATED being told "YOU UPGRADE/SWITCH BROWSERS OR YOU'RE NOT WELCOME!"
Also, I'd like to see the qualifier "non-accidentally" attached to the "copied a few sentences" - people do occasionally leave off attribution accidentally, particularly if the quotations are small, and it technically would fall under that category. Note that all of the "FOR DEFS CHEETIN" categories are much, much smaller than "Copied a Few Sentences."
If one person is making statements, and the other says "No one can find out," that says to me "Second person couldn't get access."
Of course, it's not unfeasible (or even unlikely) that it's the other way around, and NYT is making it up out of sound bites. But the first scenario would be my initial assumption.
I am mistaken on AAC - I was remembering the DRM-AAC issues as generic AAC issues.
"Thoughts on Music" hit in 2007. Not exactly "from the get-go," there. Keep in mind, the iTunes music store opened four years previously.
Also, the issue I was discussing wasn't whether Apple had DRM or not, or whether they licensed the other DRM schemes - it's that Apple REFUSED TO LICENSE FAIRPLAY. Thus, if you wanted to buy music from iTunes, you had to own an iPod, or else circumvent their DRM. Which was easy (if you were willing to spend CDs and sacrifice quality), but which was still illegal, and thus out of scope as far as Apple's business plan.
Just like anyone could always sell DRM free music and video that worked on the iPod, anyone can sell DRM free books that work on the iPad.
Not in an App, they can't - at least if they aren't a direct publisher. At least not without essentially adding 30% to their prices.
Now, as to whether you can buy it online and drag-and-drop, etc, well, that's probably not covered; but that's an extra layer of inconvenience, introduced by Apple. And why are they introducing it?
Apple is demanding no such thing. Apple is demanding that if you allow outside purchases of content, you also must allow in-app purchases. They are not forbidding outside purchases.
Annnnnnd, since Apple demands that their content partners agree not to charge more for e-Books outside the Apple Store than inside, and since Amazon isn't actually direct publisher, but a distributor/retailer who operates their own online store...
Connect the dots here, seriously. Unless Apple stops enforcing one of the two rules, it does, in fact, mean exactly what I said it means.
Here, let's try something - you tell me what you think Apple's motivation is for this decision. Because I can't see a reason for it that's not anti-competitive.
What stores allowed you to buy singles at 99c before iTunes?
Well, maybe the several music stores that were cheaper on a per-song basis than the iTunes store, at the time of the iTunes store? Granted most of them were subscription-based, but come on. iTunes pricing isn't actually revolutionary - if you look at it by album, it's pretty well matched up with previous offerings, and if you look at it by song, it's matched up with other e-Stores. This isn't to say that the iTunes store itself isn't revolutionary, just that price isn't their Sunday punch.
Also, iTunes opened as a pure DRM shop - and yes, it was largely due to vendor concerns. They ALSO refused to license their DRM scheme across platforms, using their dominant position in the e-music market to sell iPod hardware. Hell, that's largely why they settled on AAC in the first place - and why they spent so long fighting community efforts to build AAC transcoders, before their change of heart.
Right now as far as "shutting out competitors", there is a Rhapsody client available for iOS that competes directly with iTunes for music Hulu and Netflix both compete with iTunes for movies and TV shows. Netflix is even available for the AppleTV.
People are saying that this decision, which is specifically targeted at e-Book Apps, is shutting out competition in the area of e-Book Apps. If they aren't being anticompetitive toward music Apps, awesome, but it doesn't change what's going on over here in e-Book land.
But on the other hand, where else can I buy e-books that work on the Kindle?
Webscriptions.net. Hell, anywhere that sells non-DRM eBooks and handles mobi format, which is basically everywhere that handles non-DRM e-Books. My example even has functionality to use the Kindle's push functionality, to send the book directly to your Kindle.
Now, riddle me this - once Apple demands that every book on the iPad/iPhone come through their store, where else will I be able to buy books for my iPhone?
Look, I'm far from being a Mac-hater - I'm typing this on my Macbook pro, while listening to my iPod. But seriously - Apple's control issues are not news, and shouldn't be news to anyone who's done even cursory research.
Slashdot Mirror
Very nice, except that you don't prove the negative case - you hypothesize about and examine what exists.
Seriously, there's been tons of scientific work done to establish whether such barriers exist - and, surprise, surprise, evidence of absence abounds. The fossil record backs up evolution, lab experiments back it up; basically, everything backs it up except conspiracy theorists and bibles.
He's not putting forth a theory - it's a clarification of the definitions involved. You're claiming that micro and macro evolution refer to two separate, distinct processes, and he's telling you that that's not what those words mean. What's more, he's correct.
Also, argument by analogy doesn't prove anything. All it shows is that you can structure an example so that it doesn't have an internal flaw; it doesn't say anything about the actual topic at hand. This is why analogies aren't used for proof - they're only used to explain complex and/or unfamiliar concepts.
If you want to disprove his statement, show either A)Authoritative text showing definitional difference between micro and macro evolution that shows them to be different mechanisms/incompatible, or B)Produce documented evidence that one or the other doesn't work. Anything else is just wind.
Fair enough; I should have done further diligence in looking for public records ;-)
Is there any more feature-oriented way of looking at these? I'd like to see the arguments for dropping the status bar content, for example.
My question would be "Why is this specific frontend stuff being done?"
Integrating closely with external websites is stupid; yes, twitter and facebook have large user bases and aren't going away, but they're not guaranteed functionality; and if you're trying to take something as basic as the "Home" button off the taskbar, why add something complex AND not universally used to it?
Flock has an abysmal share of the browser market. This is because it's a stupid idea - browser chrome makes, by and large, a worse interface to social media than the browser PANE.
I'd really like to know where these ideas come from, and what the vetting/decision process is.
Note - this is coming from someone who is relatively happy with firefox 4, modulo the status-bar UI decisions. Great job speeding it up.
Hooookay there. There may very well be problems with OpenGL and DirectX, but saying that it's actually a plot to kill hobbyist game development is just a little crackers.
For the broadest-base possible reality check, note that indie games have actually been RISING in prominence over the past ten years. Also note that, really, there's nothing stopping you from using a different abstraction, non-openGL libraries, etc, etc. There are a number of low-end intermediate libraries to make OpenGL coding simpler for people not needing the complexity - SDL comes to mind.
IE8 is supported on XPsp3, but 9 isn't coming to XP at all.
Once the holdouts jump ship to a modern OS, that will make a difference, but I just can't see IE 9 being a deciding factor in speeding that up.
I could see that - what I was mostly reacting to the "you can dump IE6" thing. It's just not that simple.
Also, what Windows version are you on? Because for corporate or institutional environments standardized on WinXP, IE-9 is literally not an option, and I imagine that a large portion of the IE6 holdouts are also WinXP holdouts.
IE9 is a good step, but it's not going to kill IE6 any faster than existing options (IE7, IE8) have. IE6 is still around largely because of institutional and business users with intranets, with a small "gramma" contingent who CAN'T upgrade to 9 because they don't upgrade ever. It will likely cut swathes in IE7/8 deployment, and could legitimately reduce the burden of support for 7/8-specific quirks.
The only solution to IE6 is time... so now we continue playing the waiting game.
By correct in the previous post, I mean that the OMM article is obviously notable.
Oh, I'm not arguing against the "Old Man Murray" article, or even necessarily the "Pidgey" article, although I find it less obviously correct. I'm not even saying that the current Wikipedia mod community isn't broken - I mean, they put a freaking Moonie in charge of the Sun Young Moon page.
All I'm saying is that the "infinite space" argument isn't a particularly good one, nor is the "it's inherently censorship to say that something doesn't belong on Wikipedia." Plenty of things don't belong on Wikipedia, for various reasons.
And, again, I've NEVER said that 5TB/3.6TB/WHATEVER THE HELL WIKIPEDIA IS ACTUALLY SERVING is an excessive amount to store. I'm saying that storage is the easiest problem they deal with, that they serve a huge number of requests on a shoestring budget, and that their search requirements are likely complex and scale non-linearly over their data.
I will concede that space probably isn't the biggest consideration they have, although for a donation-maintained web service, 5TB (and appropriate backup and maintenance) isn't insignificant either. But the limiting factor they'll hit first is probably either bandwidth or search efficiency problems. I'm not by any means an expert on Wikimedia internals, but I would guess that they could probably blow up their search-space without necessarily blowing up their content-space.
And, yes, some Wikipedians are dicks. But the argument that minutia of pop-culture is better located elsewhere, with a general description on Wikipedia isn't necessarily a valueless one.
I get what you're going for here, but there are alternate tensions at work. Wikipedia doesn't actually have infini-space (or infini-bandwidth), it has a large-but-finite space, which is subject to both technical and organizational concerns . To address your example directly, libraries get rid of books all the time - the process is called weeding, and it's where a large portion of those books with plastic jackets at library book sales come from.
To address your other example (Pidgey), well, there's still a Pokemon entry, and that Pokemon entry has links to a number of specialist Poke-resources. They're not censoring or destroying information - they're saying that the information isn't desirable to house locally, and that it's outside the scope of their function as a general purpose encyclopedia. Where and how that line gets drawn is, of course, is an incredibly sensitive and complex issue, but the line needs to be drawn - if I just copypasta the full Apache documentation into the Wikipedia entry for Apache, I'm not producing any value for anyone - I'm just adding to Wikipedia's storage and organization burdens.
You're perfectly allowed to express that opinion - it's just stupid, and easily torn apart. Libraries (and their close cousins, archives) serve more purposes, and more importantly, serve the purposes you describe in an accountable, reliable manner, which the internet does not. "The internet will do it" is almost always a stupid-ass thing to say - the internet is a communications channel, linking disparate resources and data collections. It's not a magic "information locker" where everything is remembered forever.
There are two positions that are currently relevant in terms of political debate, because the issue isn't actually "evolution versus other theories," it's "theories based on science, or God did it!"
It's a question of principle - will science be allowed to be, you know, science? Or do we have to run a theology class during every half hour where the science would be inconvenient for various religions. Except, wait, it's simpler than that (in the US), because this whole shebang is just run and arranged by fundie Christianity, so we only have to really worry about one.
People aren't being close-minded (ok, some most likely are, but it's not relevant right now) - people are discussing the concrete, existing problem. There aren't more than two dogs in this particular fight.
Making decisions based on abstracted data is still a decision process bound to reason. No, I haven't crunched the raw numbers, and couldn't - but I did do a survey of the literature that was available, I do read the articles critically for consistency. I also choose to believe that an overwhelming majority of expert opinions, while not a guarantee, does have more weight than the minority opinion, particularly when the minority opinion is largely connected to religious motivation, rather than any sort of rigorous study.
Tax refunds? Since when do churches pay taxes? Oh, wait, they don't.
I mean, I certainly don't think that anyone who is religious should be prevented from working on science. But anyone who's trying to push their religious views in the guise of science, well, yes, they need firing. Because they're not doing the job, son. And, frankly, most creationists (or, rather, the proselytizing-by-any-means variety, which is what people mean when they say "creationists" in this context) are, in fact, farther out than most religious people - it's a minority position.
But... you're wrong.
What they're using to make these claims falsifiable are things like pre-industrial numbers, and observations from items and environments that have existed since before industry. They're also using, oh, I don't know, comparative numbers from periods with varying pollutant output.
Soooooo.... ever considered that maybe it turns out that the overwhelming majority of professional climate scientists DO understand how science research works? And maybe you haven't actually discovered a secret religion from your armchair there?
The real issue is that the people using faith-based evidence demand that their view be taught in all contexts; and really, the end goal is to be taught exclusively. And that's a problem, especially if we want to have any functional biologists in the future.
Also, you're confusing indoctrination sense 1 and sense 2. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indoctrination . At no point does teaching science actually call for or require or involve the ridicule of religion, because it's NOT RELATED. God doesn't exist in a scientific context - he isn't observable or describable, so he's not relevant.
Teach science in science class and hold church in church.
But... that "Mercury laden sediment" question isn't some sort of magic paradox that means we sit on our ass forever, contemplating how haaaard it is to decide things. You do studies, make models, and figure out what the best course of action is based on available evidence.
Available evidence says we should do something about emissions, because, barring extreme and unlikely deviations of our current models from reality, they're fucking things up. Also, oil is a scarce resource. Also, a resource largely held by nations inimical to us politically, if you're in the US.
It's not faith, because on some level, you're either judging which set of scientists are, to the best of your judgment, respected and reasonable. You're not pre-judging the answer because your religion or politics says "THIS ANSWER SUITS ME."
Furthermore, even if you're reading materials at second hand, rather than doing original research, you can still judge on the logic and consistency of those materials - your understanding may not be as perfect as someone qualified to do original research, but it's still reasonable to make a judgment on which account hangs together.
Also, let's NOT agree not to call this a "Republican" position. Because active SCIENCE DENIAL is a Republican phenomenon. It's Texas, not Massachusetts, who has people going through the school books and filtering them through a political lens. Hell, it's not limited to science - last I heard, they were going after the history books, too. http://www.aolnews.com/2010/03/12/texas-removes-thomas-jefferson-from-teaching-standard/
Cause and effect, dude. People are worried about putting up banners BECAUSE people motherfscking HATED being told "YOU UPGRADE/SWITCH BROWSERS OR YOU'RE NOT WELCOME!"
Agreed.
Also, I'd like to see the qualifier "non-accidentally" attached to the "copied a few sentences" - people do occasionally leave off attribution accidentally, particularly if the quotations are small, and it technically would fall under that category. Note that all of the "FOR DEFS CHEETIN" categories are much, much smaller than "Copied a Few Sentences."
If one person is making statements, and the other says "No one can find out," that says to me "Second person couldn't get access."
Of course, it's not unfeasible (or even unlikely) that it's the other way around, and NYT is making it up out of sound bites. But the first scenario would be my initial assumption.
I am mistaken on AAC - I was remembering the DRM-AAC issues as generic AAC issues.
"Thoughts on Music" hit in 2007. Not exactly "from the get-go," there. Keep in mind, the iTunes music store opened four years previously.
Also, the issue I was discussing wasn't whether Apple had DRM or not, or whether they licensed the other DRM schemes - it's that Apple REFUSED TO LICENSE FAIRPLAY. Thus, if you wanted to buy music from iTunes, you had to own an iPod, or else circumvent their DRM. Which was easy (if you were willing to spend CDs and sacrifice quality), but which was still illegal, and thus out of scope as far as Apple's business plan.
Not in an App, they can't - at least if they aren't a direct publisher. At least not without essentially adding 30% to their prices.
Now, as to whether you can buy it online and drag-and-drop, etc, well, that's probably not covered; but that's an extra layer of inconvenience, introduced by Apple. And why are they introducing it?
Annnnnnd, since Apple demands that their content partners agree not to charge more for e-Books outside the Apple Store than inside, and since Amazon isn't actually direct publisher, but a distributor/retailer who operates their own online store...
Connect the dots here, seriously. Unless Apple stops enforcing one of the two rules, it does, in fact, mean exactly what I said it means.
Here, let's try something - you tell me what you think Apple's motivation is for this decision. Because I can't see a reason for it that's not anti-competitive.
Well, maybe the several music stores that were cheaper on a per-song basis than the iTunes store, at the time of the iTunes store? Granted most of them were subscription-based, but come on. iTunes pricing isn't actually revolutionary - if you look at it by album, it's pretty well matched up with previous offerings, and if you look at it by song, it's matched up with other e-Stores. This isn't to say that the iTunes store itself isn't revolutionary, just that price isn't their Sunday punch.
Also, iTunes opened as a pure DRM shop - and yes, it was largely due to vendor concerns. They ALSO refused to license their DRM scheme across platforms, using their dominant position in the e-music market to sell iPod hardware. Hell, that's largely why they settled on AAC in the first place - and why they spent so long fighting community efforts to build AAC transcoders, before their change of heart.
People are saying that this decision, which is specifically targeted at e-Book Apps, is shutting out competition in the area of e-Book Apps. If they aren't being anticompetitive toward music Apps, awesome, but it doesn't change what's going on over here in e-Book land.
Webscriptions.net. Hell, anywhere that sells non-DRM eBooks and handles mobi format, which is basically everywhere that handles non-DRM e-Books. My example even has functionality to use the Kindle's push functionality, to send the book directly to your Kindle.
Now, riddle me this - once Apple demands that every book on the iPad/iPhone come through their store, where else will I be able to buy books for my iPhone?
Look, I'm far from being a Mac-hater - I'm typing this on my Macbook pro, while listening to my iPod. But seriously - Apple's control issues are not news, and shouldn't be news to anyone who's done even cursory research.