Hate to say it, but Mozilla was not the original. There was a little program written by a student at UIUC named Marc called Mosaic, and it was AWESOME! With the possible exception of Cyberdog, that was the best browser ever.
How is this going to be anti-competetive? As long as they continue to allow companies to sell software to mac users via other means than the app store, then this is just yet another software channel.
Do you think Adobe would ever be interested in giving up 30% of their sales to Apple for Photoshop? No way. They won't even try to go on the store for their flagship applications.
Your final statement is just right; as long as devs have the option of continuing to do what they do today, how could their introduction of an app store be considered anti-competetive?
Well, yes and no. I think that, from a market perspective, Jobs honestly feels that the iPhone model has a much wider potential audience, and that this is why he thinks the iPhone will stand on its own against Android in the coming quarters.
The question is, does Android's fragmentation affect end users, directly or indirectly (e.g. because of purported development burdens) more than, less than, or similarly to iOS's walled garden approach? Jobs' gamble is that the walled garden approach makes the iPhone and related devices more accessible by the great majority of consumers.
To me, it really doesn't matter. There's room enough for both approaches. The only thing I know for certain is that my Blackberry sucks, and I want to replace it with something much, much better as soon as I can.
I wonder if they're going to do the same thing with Google Voice. That would suck. I've given out my GV number to hundreds of people. Well, dozens. Well, my mom, pretty much.
Tell that to my wife's Saturn. She won't get her AC belt fixed, so not only does it make terrible noise, but it puts more load on the alternator than it can handle when the it's running. So on a hot day, she's actually depleting the battery as she drives.
They could do it in a way that it's less distracting. But the display they have contains all sorts of data that the driver doesn't need. It's a total mess and an invitation to disaster.
I think a HUD that shows just an arrow of which way you need to turn, along with a distance indicator could be fine. Maybe both could start out as fairly low-contrast and get to be higher contrast (or brighter/ more saturated colors) as you're getting closer, but there's no reason to show the top-down view of your car on a map so that you have to read the frickin' map while you're trying not to kill your family and other innocent bystanders as you hurtle down the road in your two-ton death-mobile.
My gut reaction is that this is entirely different from the iPhone 4 debacle. But thinking about it for a second, there's definitely overlap, and in that overlap zone, the "reasonable effort" thing definitely applies. If I was over at a friend's house and $500 cash fell out of my pocket, I'd certainly hope that my friends would have the integrity to call recent visitors rather than say, "finder's keepers". Find a GPS that doesn't belong to you on your car? Report it to the police. Photograph it, blog about it, get yourself a frickin' lawyer, but report it and allow the gov't to publicly take it back.
The problem with the gov't taking the low road (warrantless surveillance via GPS) is that it encourages the populace to follow suit and devolve to childish behavior. I think you're totally right that, in these situations, unless you're willing to commit to being a revolutionary--which may be right in some situations, but certainly not all--the best path is to take the high road.
But again, I think it's a great idea to be very public about stuff like that. Like Obama said, the best disinfectant is sunlight.
What I like is that statistic about 69% not getting a raise in the last 6 months. Most companies I know do pay raises as part of an annual review cycle, so excepting those getting a mid-cycle promotion, I would be completely unsurprised if at any given time of the year, very close to 50% of people would not have gotten a raise in the last 6 months.
And right now it's October. My employer finalizes reviews at the end of Q1, so my last adjustment was (two weeks) more than six months ago... I'll be others have review cycles which allow for adjustments at other times of the year; maybe others from that 69% will be getting their raises later this month.
Actually, my post was somewhat of a joke; I'm not a glennbeckian teabagger.
However, your post is not entirely accurate because supply and demand aren't the only factors. There is also a (relatively high) base cost of production. Power plants powered by gas turbines, coal, hydroelectric, they all cost millions of dollars to build and more millions to maintain. It is certainly possible that, if the transition to greener fuel sources is not well managed, the supply/demand relationship will hit a point where lower demand means higher cost, because the remaining customers will have to shoulder the burden of a system which was built to handle much greater demand.
If it were up to me--and I warn you, I'm NOT an expert--I'd make sure that any new power generation facilities were extremely modular so that if power demand suddenly drops by 50% because everyone is powering their AC units with solar on the hottest days of the year, 50% of the generation equipment can be shelved with minimal maintenance cost, so that the cost per kilowatt hour doesn't suddenly reflect more of the cost of unused equipment than the actual cost of power generation.
And while I'm at it, if it were up to me, the power companies would be required to have a vested interest in these greener technologies so that they would have a reason to push them over greater centralized generation capacities. I'm not a huge fan of that sort of regulation, but if we don't do it, the end result will be that too-big-to-fail power companies will either demand high rates from those who can't afford them or huge government subsidies to continue operations. Or they'll shut down leaving thousands of people who couldn't afford alternative technologies in the dark.
Slashdot Mirror
(not)
I'm posting from there right now. So... very...cold...
Hate to say it, but Mozilla was not the original. There was a little program written by a student at UIUC named Marc called Mosaic, and it was AWESOME! With the possible exception of Cyberdog, that was the best browser ever.
You write like you actually heard the AC speaking.
How is this going to be anti-competetive? As long as they continue to allow companies to sell software to mac users via other means than the app store, then this is just yet another software channel.
Do you think Adobe would ever be interested in giving up 30% of their sales to Apple for Photoshop? No way. They won't even try to go on the store for their flagship applications.
Your final statement is just right; as long as devs have the option of continuing to do what they do today, how could their introduction of an app store be considered anti-competetive?
Cory Doctorow was a child actor in the 80s. I think he was in The Goonies or something. I forgot which Cory he was.
Anyway, if anyone should know about obscurity, it's him. Most people aren't even sure if he's alive or if he OD'ed on heroin a few years back.
Wish I had mod points. That was funny.
Somehow I sense that Steve Jobs was responsible.
Totally! Just like some guy told me that Obama's administration isn't eating babies... I reminded him that they're not doing it *YET*! Just you wait!
When will /. readers acknowledge...
I think I speak for us all when I say... NEVER!
Well, yes and no. I think that, from a market perspective, Jobs honestly feels that the iPhone model has a much wider potential audience, and that this is why he thinks the iPhone will stand on its own against Android in the coming quarters.
The question is, does Android's fragmentation affect end users, directly or indirectly (e.g. because of purported development burdens) more than, less than, or similarly to iOS's walled garden approach? Jobs' gamble is that the walled garden approach makes the iPhone and related devices more accessible by the great majority of consumers.
To me, it really doesn't matter. There's room enough for both approaches. The only thing I know for certain is that my Blackberry sucks, and I want to replace it with something much, much better as soon as I can.
I agree partially, but it wouldn't be completely open if they exerted their control over what the carriers did with it.
Yeah, using the Sabre cats might cause people to start making jokes about OS X being long in the tooth.
I wonder if they're going to do the same thing with Google Voice. That would suck. I've given out my GV number to hundreds of people. Well, dozens. Well, my mom, pretty much.
Or when you "go Tahoe" and you find you've "got a hoe". I couldn't believe that ad campaign. GOTAHOE.com indeed.
Tell that to my wife's Saturn. She won't get her AC belt fixed, so not only does it make terrible noise, but it puts more load on the alternator than it can handle when the it's running. So on a hot day, she's actually depleting the battery as she drives.
and infrared sensors.
They could do it in a way that it's less distracting. But the display they have contains all sorts of data that the driver doesn't need. It's a total mess and an invitation to disaster.
I think a HUD that shows just an arrow of which way you need to turn, along with a distance indicator could be fine. Maybe both could start out as fairly low-contrast and get to be higher contrast (or brighter/ more saturated colors) as you're getting closer, but there's no reason to show the top-down view of your car on a map so that you have to read the frickin' map while you're trying not to kill your family and other innocent bystanders as you hurtle down the road in your two-ton death-mobile.
My gut reaction is that this is entirely different from the iPhone 4 debacle. But thinking about it for a second, there's definitely overlap, and in that overlap zone, the "reasonable effort" thing definitely applies. If I was over at a friend's house and $500 cash fell out of my pocket, I'd certainly hope that my friends would have the integrity to call recent visitors rather than say, "finder's keepers". Find a GPS that doesn't belong to you on your car? Report it to the police. Photograph it, blog about it, get yourself a frickin' lawyer, but report it and allow the gov't to publicly take it back.
The problem with the gov't taking the low road (warrantless surveillance via GPS) is that it encourages the populace to follow suit and devolve to childish behavior. I think you're totally right that, in these situations, unless you're willing to commit to being a revolutionary--which may be right in some situations, but certainly not all--the best path is to take the high road.
But again, I think it's a great idea to be very public about stuff like that. Like Obama said, the best disinfectant is sunlight.
Agreed. In other news, 99.6% of people have not gotten a raise in the last 24 hours!
What I like is that statistic about 69% not getting a raise in the last 6 months. Most companies I know do pay raises as part of an annual review cycle, so excepting those getting a mid-cycle promotion, I would be completely unsurprised if at any given time of the year, very close to 50% of people would not have gotten a raise in the last 6 months.
And right now it's October. My employer finalizes reviews at the end of Q1, so my last adjustment was (two weeks) more than six months ago... I'll be others have review cycles which allow for adjustments at other times of the year; maybe others from that 69% will be getting their raises later this month.
Statistics, misused, are useless.
Actually, my post was somewhat of a joke; I'm not a glennbeckian teabagger.
However, your post is not entirely accurate because supply and demand aren't the only factors. There is also a (relatively high) base cost of production. Power plants powered by gas turbines, coal, hydroelectric, they all cost millions of dollars to build and more millions to maintain. It is certainly possible that, if the transition to greener fuel sources is not well managed, the supply/demand relationship will hit a point where lower demand means higher cost, because the remaining customers will have to shoulder the burden of a system which was built to handle much greater demand.
If it were up to me--and I warn you, I'm NOT an expert--I'd make sure that any new power generation facilities were extremely modular so that if power demand suddenly drops by 50% because everyone is powering their AC units with solar on the hottest days of the year, 50% of the generation equipment can be shelved with minimal maintenance cost, so that the cost per kilowatt hour doesn't suddenly reflect more of the cost of unused equipment than the actual cost of power generation.
And while I'm at it, if it were up to me, the power companies would be required to have a vested interest in these greener technologies so that they would have a reason to push them over greater centralized generation capacities. I'm not a huge fan of that sort of regulation, but if we don't do it, the end result will be that too-big-to-fail power companies will either demand high rates from those who can't afford them or huge government subsidies to continue operations. Or they'll shut down leaving thousands of people who couldn't afford alternative technologies in the dark.
I totally agree. I was being silly in my tea-party-esque rhetoric.
Oh, man, this is funny. I wish I could moderate, but it's a comment on a branch I started.