Here's the philosophy: if I make the sale and lose X dollars, then I'm just losing X dollars. For every sale I don't make, I'm effectively losing 2X dollars, because I'm not only not making the sale, but also giving my competitors additional capital which they may use to compete against me.
If they're not in a market, then they think that they are "losing" twice the entire revenue for that entire industry because any of the players in that market could rise to power and bite them. Of course, they're right, to some degree: Google rose to dominance in search while Microsoft barely had an offering.
Right or wrong, love it or hate it, this is one of those places where Apple has chosen to do things differently in a manner that not everyone will agree with. Every phone I've had included little rubber dongle thingies to cover the power port, headphone jack, etc. Until my iPhone 4, which had none of them.
I was talking to a friend while walking through the rain, and thinking, "Gee, it's good I have the headphones, or I'd get some severe water damage to this thing." While I initially started to curse Apple for apparently putting aesthetics over functionality, thinking back, most of those crap phones I've had in the past would lose their rubber pluggies within a few months anyway.
That being said, those were all replaceable for $50 or so, which isn't the case for the iPhone. Anyone out there know if other high-end smartphone manufacturers plug up the various ports (SIM, flash RAM, power, USB, etc?), or if they're all open to the elements?
Also, don't forget, Betamax survived as a pro format well into the start of the decline of VHS. Before HD video got cheap enough, but after DVDs began to replace tapes, it was still commonplace to see news crews carrying around Betamax cameras for on-location reporting.
Your question was, shouldn't an investment pay off? And I pointed out a simple example of one that has. Maybe not in terms of the government's ledger sheet, but in value to the nation and its populace. The government isn't run like a for-profit entity; the payoff from road-building, war-waging, education-investment and so on is longer term and less tangible than cash in the pocket.
My understanding is that the banks are paying off the TARP bail-out loans with interest, and the fed has made some billions off of the deal. Fat lot of good it did them, as the general perception is that it was money wasted when--for once--they did actually get some profit out of it.
Anyway, all I'm suggesting is that you're doing two things: first, you're asking the wrong question, and then you're ridiculing the answers as if you had asked a different question.
Sorry, but you appear to live in a fantasy world. The corporations who most decry government control and tout the advantages of a free market economy don't compete in a free market. They are the first to suckle at the teat of various government entities.
Like it or not, in a real world environment, the government is always involved in some way with the pillars of its economy. If they want to provide some reasonable incentives and directions, that's fine with me. If private industry wants to take a different route and absolutely kill the companies that toe up to that line, that's fine, too.
But the Apples of the world are few and far between. The "free market" you speak of is dominated by the Comcasts and the AT&Ts and the BPs of the world, who get massive subsidies and protected market regulation, and still manage to scream bloody murder when their "free market" is under attack.
You're joking, right? Without Facebook as a soapbox on which to stand, the great majority of copy-paste-statuses slacktivists would just roll over and watch TV.
Strawman argument. Nobody is forcing anything to happen. They are setting a goal, defining the agenda and even incentivising the outcome. And they're doing it based on research by educated people whom they believe know what they are doing. So you're not convinced; what are your credentials? Why should I care? Does your lack of conviction on the matter balance out against someone else's who is extremely supportive of the proposition?
You realize, don't you, that the Internet--and all the gains in the private sector that have come along with it--was originally a government investment? I'd say it's paid off handsomely.
I guess I'm just a couple of years older than you (based on the grade you were in when the event happened), but I think of that as the second JFK moment of my generation. The first was the assassination of John Lennon. I remember being on the bus home from 6th grade, and I thought the person telling me was joking. My grandfather had died a year earlier, and to be honest, hearing John Lennon had been shot was much, much more shocking to me.
it gives you the sense that he truly believes Wikileaks is important, more so perhaps than even himself.
Although some other stories--like the one about him having two one-night-stands in a night--make you wonder about his priorities. And of course the extra hygiene angle, that two-bang night sounds all the more randy. Or funky. Or something.
Here's what he really means: many millions of teenagers, instead of buying their own computers for playing video games go to cyber cafes. Those cafes have chosen to purchase Windows Home Edition instead of something for business. The business version allows for multi-user environments, and the home edition doesn't. So if the ratio of cyber cafe computers to their users is 1:10, then he's counting that as all of the users pirating the software since they didn't pay for the full license.
This is one reason I use Google Voice on my iPhone. When people text me, I get a notification via the GVoice app, and the text never comes to my phone's SMS setup. Google voice isn't the only such option, but it's the only one I know of which provides me with a phone number people can call as well and reach me on my mobile or land line.
Of course, sometimes things can be misinterpreted. When I was in college, my girlfriend and I took a day off to help out her mother, who was a kindergarten teacher. We spent the morning reading to and playing with the little ones, and during the art part of the day, one little girl decided to confide in me that she and her father "do a secret dance when mommy goes to work."
As you suggest above, I knew it wasn't my place to investigate, but that sounded pretty serious, so I told my GF's mother, who immediately went to the principal and school counselor, and they took the girl out to question her right away.
In the retelling later, my GFM said that the little girl clammed right up, refused to talk, until finally, out of exasperation, she explained that her mother is a dancer at a club, and doesn't want her little girl to follow her career path, so she forbids her to dance. At all. But she (the little one) loves to dance, so as soon as mommy goes to work in the evenings, she and daddy put on a record and dance all over the house. Clothes on, no touching.
One point you're overlooking which might make Google think they have some leverage: sheer numbers of Android users. If they're dropping support for H.264 in Chrome, it makes sense that they'll probably drop it in the mobile version, and if they've been encouraging hardware vendors to include H.264 accelerators in their hardware, they may instead push for them to include the newly minted WebM reference designs.
Of course, those Android users would then have to rely on mobile Flash to watch H.264 video, and--at least in a Google fantasy, but maybe also in reality--the gazillions of new Android users (300,000 per day?) would push their favorite sites to switch to WebM because they think that H.264 (wrapped in Flash, running without hardware acceleration) is crappy quality and runs down their batteries.
It's so crazy it just might work! Unless those volumes of Android activations drop off precipitously because of the introduction of a CDMA iPhone, or unless the majority of new Android users are non-savvy users upgrading from their "classic" cell phones to their first smart phones. In that latter case, they won't really care about H.264 vs. WebM; they'll just wonder why their phones don't do video as well as their friends' iPhones.
I remember the Macworld keynote where Jobs first talked about H.264; I think that OS X was still in its early days (2000, 2001 or so?), and it's become fairly ubiquitous since then. The question is, is it good enough to withstand this sort of pressure from Google/Mozilla? Or will it go the way of everything that preceded it?
To my mind, the solution is for Google to continue using H.264 alongside WebM, and for Mozilla to do the same. Then, they should build into the WebM license that vendors who use it are indemnified from any patent lawsuits (i.e. they'll take all challenges as their own responsibility) and Apple and Microsoft should build it into Safari and IE. Future hardware on all platforms should support acceleration for both, and lo and behold, the <video< element will actually start to act like the <img> element, allowing content vendors choose from a number of supported options without worrying about whether or not their site's visitors will be able to see it.
In short, I think this is all a dick move by Google, but it's a similar level of dick-ish-ness to what Apple and MS are doing.
Last but not least, for anyone who is annoyed by my leaving Opera out of the discussion, get over it. Opera fans are the same people who use green Sharpies on their CDs and refuse to let go of OS/2. It's a great browser and all, if you're a browserphile. You may as well suggest that iCab on the Mac or the Wollongong Group's browser for Windows is as important.
I do have the same complaints against MS and Apple browsers. I'm typing this in Chrome right now. If they want to set the bar high, they should retain support for H.264 and add WebM, but instead they're trying to use the popularity of Chrome to push a new standard. I just hope this doesn't mean that Flash is going to spin up twice as often.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the philosophy: if I make the sale and lose X dollars, then I'm just losing X dollars. For every sale I don't make, I'm effectively losing 2X dollars, because I'm not only not making the sale, but also giving my competitors additional capital which they may use to compete against me.
If they're not in a market, then they think that they are "losing" twice the entire revenue for that entire industry because any of the players in that market could rise to power and bite them. Of course, they're right, to some degree: Google rose to dominance in search while Microsoft barely had an offering.
Right or wrong, love it or hate it, this is one of those places where Apple has chosen to do things differently in a manner that not everyone will agree with. Every phone I've had included little rubber dongle thingies to cover the power port, headphone jack, etc. Until my iPhone 4, which had none of them.
I was talking to a friend while walking through the rain, and thinking, "Gee, it's good I have the headphones, or I'd get some severe water damage to this thing." While I initially started to curse Apple for apparently putting aesthetics over functionality, thinking back, most of those crap phones I've had in the past would lose their rubber pluggies within a few months anyway.
That being said, those were all replaceable for $50 or so, which isn't the case for the iPhone. Anyone out there know if other high-end smartphone manufacturers plug up the various ports (SIM, flash RAM, power, USB, etc?), or if they're all open to the elements?
Also, don't forget, Betamax survived as a pro format well into the start of the decline of VHS. Before HD video got cheap enough, but after DVDs began to replace tapes, it was still commonplace to see news crews carrying around Betamax cameras for on-location reporting.
Your question was, shouldn't an investment pay off? And I pointed out a simple example of one that has. Maybe not in terms of the government's ledger sheet, but in value to the nation and its populace. The government isn't run like a for-profit entity; the payoff from road-building, war-waging, education-investment and so on is longer term and less tangible than cash in the pocket.
My understanding is that the banks are paying off the TARP bail-out loans with interest, and the fed has made some billions off of the deal. Fat lot of good it did them, as the general perception is that it was money wasted when--for once--they did actually get some profit out of it.
Anyway, all I'm suggesting is that you're doing two things: first, you're asking the wrong question, and then you're ridiculing the answers as if you had asked a different question.
Sorry, but you appear to live in a fantasy world. The corporations who most decry government control and tout the advantages of a free market economy don't compete in a free market. They are the first to suckle at the teat of various government entities.
Like it or not, in a real world environment, the government is always involved in some way with the pillars of its economy. If they want to provide some reasonable incentives and directions, that's fine with me. If private industry wants to take a different route and absolutely kill the companies that toe up to that line, that's fine, too.
But the Apples of the world are few and far between. The "free market" you speak of is dominated by the Comcasts and the AT&Ts and the BPs of the world, who get massive subsidies and protected market regulation, and still manage to scream bloody murder when their "free market" is under attack.
You're joking, right? Without Facebook as a soapbox on which to stand, the great majority of copy-paste-statuses slacktivists would just roll over and watch TV.
Strawman argument. Nobody is forcing anything to happen. They are setting a goal, defining the agenda and even incentivising the outcome. And they're doing it based on research by educated people whom they believe know what they are doing. So you're not convinced; what are your credentials? Why should I care? Does your lack of conviction on the matter balance out against someone else's who is extremely supportive of the proposition?
You realize, don't you, that the Internet--and all the gains in the private sector that have come along with it--was originally a government investment? I'd say it's paid off handsomely.
I guess I'm just a couple of years older than you (based on the grade you were in when the event happened), but I think of that as the second JFK moment of my generation. The first was the assassination of John Lennon. I remember being on the bus home from 6th grade, and I thought the person telling me was joking. My grandfather had died a year earlier, and to be honest, hearing John Lennon had been shot was much, much more shocking to me.
All I'm suggesting is that maybe he's not being purely selfless.
it gives you the sense that he truly believes Wikileaks is important, more so perhaps than even himself.
Although some other stories--like the one about him having two one-night-stands in a night--make you wonder about his priorities. And of course the extra hygiene angle, that two-bang night sounds all the more randy. Or funky. Or something.
Here's what he really means: many millions of teenagers, instead of buying their own computers for playing video games go to cyber cafes. Those cafes have chosen to purchase Windows Home Edition instead of something for business. The business version allows for multi-user environments, and the home edition doesn't. So if the ratio of cyber cafe computers to their users is 1:10, then he's counting that as all of the users pirating the software since they didn't pay for the full license.
Funny that the AC thinks that it's better to do nothing in this scenario. I fear for your children, sad, lonely little man.
This is one reason I use Google Voice on my iPhone. When people text me, I get a notification via the GVoice app, and the text never comes to my phone's SMS setup. Google voice isn't the only such option, but it's the only one I know of which provides me with a phone number people can call as well and reach me on my mobile or land line.
PS: WTF is it with Slashdot's broken support for paste? Trying to recreate the goodness of iOS 1?
Works fine on my Mac/Safari. And last I checked, iOS has cut/paste. You must be thinking of Windows Phone 7.
Of course, sometimes things can be misinterpreted. When I was in college, my girlfriend and I took a day off to help out her mother, who was a kindergarten teacher. We spent the morning reading to and playing with the little ones, and during the art part of the day, one little girl decided to confide in me that she and her father "do a secret dance when mommy goes to work."
As you suggest above, I knew it wasn't my place to investigate, but that sounded pretty serious, so I told my GF's mother, who immediately went to the principal and school counselor, and they took the girl out to question her right away.
In the retelling later, my GFM said that the little girl clammed right up, refused to talk, until finally, out of exasperation, she explained that her mother is a dancer at a club, and doesn't want her little girl to follow her career path, so she forbids her to dance. At all. But she (the little one) loves to dance, so as soon as mommy goes to work in the evenings, she and daddy put on a record and dance all over the house. Clothes on, no touching.
I was soooo relieved to hear that it was nothing.
Won't someone PLEASE think of the kudzoo?!
One point you're overlooking which might make Google think they have some leverage: sheer numbers of Android users. If they're dropping support for H.264 in Chrome, it makes sense that they'll probably drop it in the mobile version, and if they've been encouraging hardware vendors to include H.264 accelerators in their hardware, they may instead push for them to include the newly minted WebM reference designs.
Of course, those Android users would then have to rely on mobile Flash to watch H.264 video, and--at least in a Google fantasy, but maybe also in reality--the gazillions of new Android users (300,000 per day?) would push their favorite sites to switch to WebM because they think that H.264 (wrapped in Flash, running without hardware acceleration) is crappy quality and runs down their batteries.
It's so crazy it just might work! Unless those volumes of Android activations drop off precipitously because of the introduction of a CDMA iPhone, or unless the majority of new Android users are non-savvy users upgrading from their "classic" cell phones to their first smart phones. In that latter case, they won't really care about H.264 vs. WebM; they'll just wonder why their phones don't do video as well as their friends' iPhones.
I remember the Macworld keynote where Jobs first talked about H.264; I think that OS X was still in its early days (2000, 2001 or so?), and it's become fairly ubiquitous since then. The question is, is it good enough to withstand this sort of pressure from Google/Mozilla? Or will it go the way of everything that preceded it?
To my mind, the solution is for Google to continue using H.264 alongside WebM, and for Mozilla to do the same. Then, they should build into the WebM license that vendors who use it are indemnified from any patent lawsuits (i.e. they'll take all challenges as their own responsibility) and Apple and Microsoft should build it into Safari and IE. Future hardware on all platforms should support acceleration for both, and lo and behold, the <video< element will actually start to act like the <img> element, allowing content vendors choose from a number of supported options without worrying about whether or not their site's visitors will be able to see it.
In short, I think this is all a dick move by Google, but it's a similar level of dick-ish-ness to what Apple and MS are doing.
Last but not least, for anyone who is annoyed by my leaving Opera out of the discussion, get over it. Opera fans are the same people who use green Sharpies on their CDs and refuse to let go of OS/2. It's a great browser and all, if you're a browserphile. You may as well suggest that iCab on the Mac or the Wollongong Group's browser for Windows is as important.
They don't need to; Adobe already did, and it's called Flash.
Dude, a 5 year old ANYTHING running XP doesn't even come out of sleep mode reliably.
I was thinking the same thing. The case in the pictures in TFM even looks like the Square dongle.
How come my version of Chrome is 9.0.597.47? Am I in the future, or did this article sit in the stack for several weeks?
Yeah, I was thinking something similar: "GFY".
Wow. You are a poet.
I do have the same complaints against MS and Apple browsers. I'm typing this in Chrome right now. If they want to set the bar high, they should retain support for H.264 and add WebM, but instead they're trying to use the popularity of Chrome to push a new standard. I just hope this doesn't mean that Flash is going to spin up twice as often.