I seem to remember from high school anatomy and physiology that there was evidence to support the claim that a higher proportion of brain mass to body mass was linked to increased intelligence. For example, there are some animals that have larger brains than humans, but their bodies are proportionately even bigger, which explains why they're not as smart as humans.
Anyone remember that study that came out a few years ago saying that men had more brain cells than women? (I do remember that bitch Jane Pauley saying that men needed billions of extra brain cells just to "keep up") Anyway, the researchers who discovered this also thought that it made little difference, as women generally have smaller bodies then men, so the brain/body mass proportion is still roughly equal.
Apple had a terrible strategy the first time they licensed the operating system to the clone makers. They did what Microsoft did and said, "well, the system has to have these parts for the OS to run. Put those in and you'll be fine." And, as we all know, the quality was awful.
If Apple were to even consider clones this time, they would probably insist on manufacturing everything but the case, and they'd probably have some pretty stringent requirements on what those have to look like.
The beauty of Apple computers, other than whatever Jonathan Ive comes up with, is that the hardware and software are perfectly matched, and the result is a very comfy, harmonious system. Apple's gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that Macs work beautifully with OS X and vice-versa. And the only way they can maintain that level of integration is to control the hardware.
Dell would never agree to the kind of contract Apple would offer if they were going to discuss clone-making. So that's why it's never going to happen.
That's an interesting idea. Perhaps a better strategy would be to use your personal ratings like a spam filter on your email inbox. While you search, if you accidentally visit a spam site, when you back out, click a "Good/No Good" checkbox so that Google "learns" what you think are good sites and can form a basis for comparison.
I like the idea, but I think there are a couple of reasons why Google hasn't done it:
Google's always aimed for a kind of simplicity, and that would be lost in such a system.
The algorithm would probably become much more convoluted and power-hungry to do a secondary comparison with the hyperspace of spam documents you've encountered.
Well, maybe something like this will make it into a Google research project one day -- if it hasn't already.
Well, I'm not going to agree with you on socialism being the way to go; in fact, I'd say that I genuinely believe that true capitalism (which has also never been done) is preferable.
I take exception to democracy as such. The idea here is that we can make a law about anything, so long as enough of our duly elected representatives agree, even if that law is objectively harmful. In a truly capitalistic (or socialistic) society, a country's constitution is written not with a ten amendment bill of rights saying what the government can't legislate, but you get ten amendments or so that determine what the government can regulate, and no more.
In America, congress has gotten to the point where they'll legislate anything. They think they're this big altruistic organization which has everyone's best interests at heart, but the fact of the matter is that they're drunk with power, and when they have nothing better to do, they write and vote on laws.
The founding fathers wanted a decentralized government. They wanted the US to be more like a confederation than a republic in its own right. And this is exactly why. Don't like the laws in State A? Well, they don't have those in State B. Under the uber-national government, if you don't like the laws, uh, well, Canada doesn't guard their border.
The problem that I see is a real moral crisis. Many legislators, for their own reasons, think that laws like the Patriot Act are perfectly justifiable because they believe that people are corrupt and need careful policing. In the past 100 years or so, we've seen a governmental attitude of "people are crooks". Well, guess what? When you treat people like crooks, pass legislation that tells people you think they're crooks, and when legislators become crooks themselves, what do you suppose happens over time? That's right, they become crooks.
So there are two possibilities: either the world is not ready for a "trusting" political system like capitalism, or the time at which the world was ready has passed. I tend toward believing the latter. Much as I'd like to think that people, on the whole, have the moral decency to do the right thing even without being watched, we've seen enough evidence of this lately to make me think that's no longer the case.
What is really needed is a serious reevaluation of the philosophical basis of government and legislation. The first step toward that is to abandon these ridiculous religious notions of looking to someone else to determine what's right, and to cultivate the notion of individual responsibility and that the individual has the ability -- and the right -- to determine right and wrong himself. If that happens, people will take a far different view of the current government.
WRT #1: It's reasonable to assume that manufacturers would also have access to cheaper, more flexible tools. This means that instead of Nissan building specialized machinery for Maximas, Altimas, and er... their other models, they'd just buy a whole bunch of generalized machinery and adapt it as orders demand. The end result: efficiency! Which means: cheaper cars for everyone (I hope).
The point I'm circuitously trying to reach? That manufacturing will become cheaper for your average enthusiast at a faster rate than it will for big manufacturers, but it's still going to be cheaper for them, too.
You're right when you say that there's a lot of red tape involved in running a business. And I say that the very idea of that is wrong. Lest I go off on a prolonged rant, I'd like to point out that taxes are extortion, pure and simple. The gun may be pointed from far away, but it's still there. It's the legal equivalent of protection money.
Anywho, what gets me is that the only person who doesn't pay for the filtering software is the person who requests it. The ISP either has to buy it, or the government buys it. Either way, the person who receives the software is not the person who really pays for it. It just seems so unfair to me that people have to pay to protect other peoples' children.
Toqueville called that "The Tyranny of the Majority". In a just society, the laws are written to protect you from those who would exploit you or force their arbitrary will on you. But when the laws are written to protect them from you -- or when the legislators become exploiters themselves, you can know you're in trouble.
The point is that any definition of obscenity is arbitrary. And furthermore, you won't get a consensus on what that definition means, in practical terms. You'd have some people say that no one has the right to view obscenity. Others would say that it's mainly harmful to kids. And still others would say that it's harmful to no one. Who's right, and how do you decide that? And remember, each of those three groups probably has some pretty compelling arguments. Plus, there are probably dozens of other compelling arguments I haven't considered.
Point is, you can't even get people to agree that it's a bad thing. So you're never going to get an agreeable definition, and you're never going to get agreement on what effect that definition has. So what part, exactly, is reasonable to legislate?
I guess I was under the mistaken impression that the government was supposed to punish people for taking unfair advantage of others, not legislate unfairness into law. My bad.
And more often than not, when wage standards increase, companies lay off employees. Companies simply aren't willing to give everyone a raise just because the minimum wage increases. So which is worse, everyone making less money, or some people making more and some people making nothing at all?
What is most objectionable is that the direct beneficiaries of this law don't have to pay for services (in the form of software) rendered. So, that either increases everyone's ISP bill, whether you use content-blocking software or not, or it raises everyone's tax bill, whether you even have an Internet connection or not.
What it boils down to is this: peoples' children are their own responsibility, not the state's, and not mine.
You say "the state" like it's some sort of automaton going around doing things. "The state", like Soylent Green, is people. So when parents force the state to take over their responsibility, they're really forcing the cost, and responsibility, onto other people like me.
I'm not the one who gave birth to their kids. They're not my responsibility. This sort of thing forces people to pay, literally, for other peoples' ineptitude as parents. Basically, I don't think parents have any claim on my salary just because they're too lazy to monitor their kids' Internet use.
Plus, parents who still want to take responsibility for their kids are now stuck with a difficult choice: do I use what the government provides, which I've already paid for but isn't really what I want, or do I pay for what I really want and pay twice?
Example: My parents sent me to private school. And they'd very much like to know why they couldn't have applied the money that the state would have spent on my education toward a different school. Either way, their taxes, and everyone else's are the same, but they had to pay twice for my education, because the government discouraged them from taking responsibility in the way they saw fit. These kinds of things make it harder for parents who want to do the right thing to be able to do it.
The government has all sorts of regulations on how businesses are run. There are many types of additives that restaurants are barred from adding to their food because they're considered harmful.
And that is also wrong. It's a funny pattern to watch. Laws that force businesses to do things they don't want to do and don't think they should have to do encourages them to get creative and find elaborate ways to cheat. And the effects of the cheating, of course, become much more harmful than the original behavior. For example, people come up with all kinds of perfectly legitimate ways to dodge taxes, given enough resources and time.
You basically paraphrased Justice Potter Stewart when he said, "I can't define pornography (actually I think he said obscenity), but I know it when I see it." Not to be too facetious, but a web site with information for breast cancer patients probably has lots of pictures of topless women, too. And we could go back and forth all day trying to refine the definition of pornography and never reach a specific, objective definition that doesn't cover some non-pornographic material as well. Plus, someone could easily come along and disagree with both of us, saying that our definition is too strict or too loose. And there's no proof that any one of us is right or wrong.
And it costs nothing for the ISP to provide, right?
It's a freedom/responsibility argument. In my experience, when people argue for governmental control, it's usually because they wish to abdicate themselves of some responsibility. It's not the ISP's responsibility to watch your kids. That's not what you pay them for, and they shouldn't have to provide a free babysitting service for you if they don't want to.
I never saw any porn when I lived with my parents, and we never had porn-blocking software. It's because I knew there would be hell to pay if they caught me, and they kept a close eye on what I looked at on the web. That was much more effective than any content-blocking software. So for parents, the choice is really simple: have an Internet connection and take whatever steps we think are necessary to make sure our kids don't see what we don't want them to see, or don't have an Internet connection at all.
They're saying that the Utah state government is forcing ISP's to shell out for a copy of NetNanny or equivalent blocking software every time a customer asks for it. The fact is, whenever they're required to comply with this law, at the customer's request or otherwise, it costs them money. Why should it be the ISP's responsibility to filter content? It's like saying that a window manufacturer has to provide blinds if you ask for them, because kids might look into the sun.
Oops... I mean, "please God, won't someone think of the children? We're only their parents. That's not our responsibility."
The ACLU doesn't restrict what state governments can leglislate, the U.S. Constitution does. The argument is that forcing a company to make censorship available is a tacit endorsement of censorship by that government. So is that unconstitutional or not? The ACLU certainly thinks so, but that doesn't make them right.
(As an aside, I realize that it's a bit pointless to argue that we should even consider what the Constitution says in a country where the Patriot Act can exist.)
From what I've gathered, the ACLU's objection is, of course, motivated by the fact that they reject censorship in any form. But the argument is legitimate.
Their argument is that the state is requiring ISP's to provide a particular service whether they like it or not. They are dictating how ISP's are "permitted" to do business, asserting that they need the state's blessing to run that particular type of business. I guess what really gets me is the government's attitude that ISP's are allowed to do business by the grace and goodwill of the government, not because it's one of the founding principles of this nation.
It's like if you ran a restaurant, and the government came along and said, "I see you serve cheeseburgers. Some people don't like to eat meat, and most people agree that eating cheeseburgers all the time is downright harmful. You'd better start serving some healthy vegetarian entrees or we'll close you down."
If the state of Utah still insists on making porn-blocking more widely available, the better approach would have been to make money available to the ISP's in the form of tax breaks or low-interest loans to encourage them to offer porn-blocking services to their customers. I'd still object on the grounds that the government is promoting censorship, but at least they wouldn't be forcing ISP's to do it at gunpoint like they are now.
The most daming question, though, is this: who gets to determine what constitutes a naughty web site? For some, a place like/. would be considered pretty taboo because people use bad language here. Any form of censorship necessarily imposes some person's view of morality on others.
Do you think Wal-Mart will stand for that? I don't. They've made a career out of destroying upstarts in any directly competitive area.
But then again, so has Microsoft.
If Wal-Mart is making any money whatsoever on their music store, you can bet that they'll fight MS tooth and nail to keep what market share they have. If Steve Jobs' figures from last week are accurate, Wal-Mart, Napster, the existing Microsoft store and Yahoo! have about 18% of the download business market share combined. They're fighting over a very small slice of the pie to begin with, so you can bet it's gonna be a battle royale.
Also, what's the point of offering free re-downloads in WMA format? You can't play protected WMA on an iPod, and you can only play protected AAC on an iPod. Does Microsoft really think they're going to get people to buy a second music player?
The front door won't unlock for sixty seconds while you stand outside in the rain staring at a nag screen telling you about the terrible plight of the builder (me).
The garage has two stalls, but only access to one is allowed.
The second floor is "disabled"
The bathroom has "limited functionality" (whatever that means)
Every thirty minutes, the house kicks you out and makes you reenter.
Remember how Microsoft said that Internet Explorer is a fundamental part of the operating system and cannot be removed? Well, this is what happens when you integrate the most security-vulnerable software on any OS (the browser) directly with the OS, then have everyone run as a full-privilege account by default.
See, what makes it so bad is that IE has such deep hooks into the OS that cracking into IE is effectively the same as getting a root shell. Now we've seen that Microsoft's insistence on forcing a web browser into the OS at any cost is having detrimental effects on security.
There are, of course, security exploits for lots of other browsers, but since IE has such tight integration with the rest of the OS, the stakes are much higher. Breaking into IE is to breaking into Firefox as breaking into a house is to breaking into a tool shed.
I had the same revelation myself this morning. I was so angry yesterday, then once I slept on it and realized that Apple would still support my G5 for years to come, I calmed down.
The fact of the matter is that an Intel chip does not a PC make. Macs were not the only computer based on a PowerPC, but only Macs run OS X. I'm sure the same will be true of the Intel Macs.
I guess the main source of my disappointment at this point is that I think the Pentium 4 represents a technological step backward in terms of raw performance. But, most of Apple's product line still uses G4's, and the Pentium is surely speedier than a G4, so I think it will be a win for Apple in a shorter term than we realize.
Yesterday, I was cursing The Steve, now today, I'm thinking he might be brilliant again. And you can be damn sure that no Mac will ever have an "Intel Inside" sticker, nor will any Apple ad feature that obnoxious five-note Intel chime.
My dad used to have one of those HPC Jornadas. It was pretty slick. The keyboard was big enough that you could actually use all five fingers on each hand, but the thing folded up into about the size of a checkbook.
He finally replaced it with a laptop because he needed to do some serious typing, and his software needs also expanded. I wonder what he ever did with it, because it was a cool little device.
Re:if you don't want the features just don't use '
on
Just a Phone?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Artists and architects talk about the concept of "negative space". An English professor of my acquaintance actually wrote a book (not yet published) with a subtitle of "Absences, gaps, and other sexy spaces".
Let me give you an example: my mom hates sunroofs/moonroofs on cars. I don't know why, but she does. When she bought a new car a few years ago, it worked out that there were two nearly identical models, one with the sunroof and one without for the same price. She chose the one without, because for her, not having a sunroof was a feature.
That's the point of this phone. The two phones I've had in the past three years both have features that clutter the interface. The feature I really want is fewer features. For that, I would be willing to pay a premium.
I wore a uniform for 13 years of my life. From kindergarten until I graduated high school, I got the distinct pleasure of wearing uncomfortable polyester pants and scratchy polyester shirts.
I didn't go to school to be part of a team. I went to learn. (Truth be told, I went because I had no other choice) There was not a kid in the school who didn't recognize that, on some level, the uniforms were simply an arbitrary form of social control. The "official reason" was to prevent some form of coutoure-based class warfare, but the rich kids always had ways of looking better than the "poor kids". Diamond earrings were a favorite among girls and boys alike. And, when you go to a $2000/year fully private school, you can bet that the poor kids ain't so poor.
That's not to say that I'm opposed to a dress code. There's nothing wrong with drawing the line at how much cleavage a girl can show, or saying that guys' pants must cover their asses at all times. That is a matter of trying to teach kids the danger of objectifying themselves, and that what you choose to wear reflects upon your self-image.
Oh, and the PE uniforms? You've never been so hot and sweaty in all your life. Whose genius idea was it to make them out of unbreatheable polyester?
Here's what I learned from wearing a uniform: every time you strictly enforce a rule for which you can provide no convincing rationale, you inspire otherwise well-behaved individuals to rebel against it. I know I rebelled, and I honestly haven't thought about wearing anything simply to be offensive since then.
It's very credible to think that if Comcast offered $5/mo for you to download any songs you wanted onto your ComcastRio, a lot of people would do it. Probably similar with cell phones.
I agree. That's the reason for the success of cable company PVRs. TiVos are actually much nicer, but the cable company can offer you a device with like capability for about $10/month. Plus, you don't have to buy anything
(By the way, I own two TiVos:-)
This is a somewhat different situation, though, since we're talking about portable music players. I don't think cable companies will want to get involved with them -- it's more of a marketing problem than technological.
I also don't the the cell phone is the right place for a music player. Cell phones derive their usefulness from their small size. To make a MP3 player that's any good, the current technology would just make the phone too big to be useful.
I really just don't see the subscription model ever working well in the long run for music. Unless the service provider supplies the device along with the service (unlikely), people will always worry that some day their expensive music player will become useless.
And beyond all of that, I think, particularly with the iPod, people are finally starting to embrace devices that only try to do one thing well. Carrying around a plethora of devices is never much fun, but carrying around one big monolithic device sounds even less appealing. Plus, you can always leave your iPod at home, but if you need your cell phone, can you leave just the music player part behind?
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That's what I said when Miss Cleo went bankrupt!
Anyone remember that study that came out a few years ago saying that men had more brain cells than women? (I do remember that bitch Jane Pauley saying that men needed billions of extra brain cells just to "keep up") Anyway, the researchers who discovered this also thought that it made little difference, as women generally have smaller bodies then men, so the brain/body mass proportion is still roughly equal.
Or is this all just a load of crap?
If Apple were to even consider clones this time, they would probably insist on manufacturing everything but the case, and they'd probably have some pretty stringent requirements on what those have to look like.
The beauty of Apple computers, other than whatever Jonathan Ive comes up with, is that the hardware and software are perfectly matched, and the result is a very comfy, harmonious system. Apple's gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that Macs work beautifully with OS X and vice-versa. And the only way they can maintain that level of integration is to control the hardware.
Dell would never agree to the kind of contract Apple would offer if they were going to discuss clone-making. So that's why it's never going to happen.
I like the idea, but I think there are a couple of reasons why Google hasn't done it:
Well, maybe something like this will make it into a Google research project one day -- if it hasn't already.
Well, I'm not going to agree with you on socialism being the way to go; in fact, I'd say that I genuinely believe that true capitalism (which has also never been done) is preferable.
I take exception to democracy as such. The idea here is that we can make a law about anything, so long as enough of our duly elected representatives agree, even if that law is objectively harmful. In a truly capitalistic (or socialistic) society, a country's constitution is written not with a ten amendment bill of rights saying what the government can't legislate, but you get ten amendments or so that determine what the government can regulate, and no more.
In America, congress has gotten to the point where they'll legislate anything. They think they're this big altruistic organization which has everyone's best interests at heart, but the fact of the matter is that they're drunk with power, and when they have nothing better to do, they write and vote on laws.
The founding fathers wanted a decentralized government. They wanted the US to be more like a confederation than a republic in its own right. And this is exactly why. Don't like the laws in State A? Well, they don't have those in State B. Under the uber-national government, if you don't like the laws, uh, well, Canada doesn't guard their border.
The problem that I see is a real moral crisis. Many legislators, for their own reasons, think that laws like the Patriot Act are perfectly justifiable because they believe that people are corrupt and need careful policing. In the past 100 years or so, we've seen a governmental attitude of "people are crooks". Well, guess what? When you treat people like crooks, pass legislation that tells people you think they're crooks, and when legislators become crooks themselves, what do you suppose happens over time? That's right, they become crooks.
So there are two possibilities: either the world is not ready for a "trusting" political system like capitalism, or the time at which the world was ready has passed. I tend toward believing the latter. Much as I'd like to think that people, on the whole, have the moral decency to do the right thing even without being watched, we've seen enough evidence of this lately to make me think that's no longer the case.
What is really needed is a serious reevaluation of the philosophical basis of government and legislation. The first step toward that is to abandon these ridiculous religious notions of looking to someone else to determine what's right, and to cultivate the notion of individual responsibility and that the individual has the ability -- and the right -- to determine right and wrong himself. If that happens, people will take a far different view of the current government.
The point I'm circuitously trying to reach? That manufacturing will become cheaper for your average enthusiast at a faster rate than it will for big manufacturers, but it's still going to be cheaper for them, too.
You're right when you say that there's a lot of red tape involved in running a business. And I say that the very idea of that is wrong. Lest I go off on a prolonged rant, I'd like to point out that taxes are extortion, pure and simple. The gun may be pointed from far away, but it's still there. It's the legal equivalent of protection money.
Anywho, what gets me is that the only person who doesn't pay for the filtering software is the person who requests it. The ISP either has to buy it, or the government buys it. Either way, the person who receives the software is not the person who really pays for it. It just seems so unfair to me that people have to pay to protect other peoples' children.
I never said that it did. I'm saying that the ACLU is right for the wrong reason.
Toqueville called that "The Tyranny of the Majority". In a just society, the laws are written to protect you from those who would exploit you or force their arbitrary will on you. But when the laws are written to protect them from you -- or when the legislators become exploiters themselves, you can know you're in trouble.
The point is that any definition of obscenity is arbitrary. And furthermore, you won't get a consensus on what that definition means, in practical terms. You'd have some people say that no one has the right to view obscenity. Others would say that it's mainly harmful to kids. And still others would say that it's harmful to no one. Who's right, and how do you decide that? And remember, each of those three groups probably has some pretty compelling arguments. Plus, there are probably dozens of other compelling arguments I haven't considered.
Point is, you can't even get people to agree that it's a bad thing. So you're never going to get an agreeable definition, and you're never going to get agreement on what effect that definition has. So what part, exactly, is reasonable to legislate?
I guess I was under the mistaken impression that the government was supposed to punish people for taking unfair advantage of others, not legislate unfairness into law. My bad.
And more often than not, when wage standards increase, companies lay off employees. Companies simply aren't willing to give everyone a raise just because the minimum wage increases. So which is worse, everyone making less money, or some people making more and some people making nothing at all?
What is most objectionable is that the direct beneficiaries of this law don't have to pay for services (in the form of software) rendered. So, that either increases everyone's ISP bill, whether you use content-blocking software or not, or it raises everyone's tax bill, whether you even have an Internet connection or not.
What it boils down to is this: peoples' children are their own responsibility, not the state's, and not mine.
I'm not the one who gave birth to their kids. They're not my responsibility. This sort of thing forces people to pay, literally, for other peoples' ineptitude as parents. Basically, I don't think parents have any claim on my salary just because they're too lazy to monitor their kids' Internet use.
Plus, parents who still want to take responsibility for their kids are now stuck with a difficult choice: do I use what the government provides, which I've already paid for but isn't really what I want, or do I pay for what I really want and pay twice?
Example: My parents sent me to private school. And they'd very much like to know why they couldn't have applied the money that the state would have spent on my education toward a different school. Either way, their taxes, and everyone else's are the same, but they had to pay twice for my education, because the government discouraged them from taking responsibility in the way they saw fit. These kinds of things make it harder for parents who want to do the right thing to be able to do it.
And that is also wrong. It's a funny pattern to watch. Laws that force businesses to do things they don't want to do and don't think they should have to do encourages them to get creative and find elaborate ways to cheat. And the effects of the cheating, of course, become much more harmful than the original behavior. For example, people come up with all kinds of perfectly legitimate ways to dodge taxes, given enough resources and time.
You basically paraphrased Justice Potter Stewart when he said, "I can't define pornography (actually I think he said obscenity), but I know it when I see it." Not to be too facetious, but a web site with information for breast cancer patients probably has lots of pictures of topless women, too. And we could go back and forth all day trying to refine the definition of pornography and never reach a specific, objective definition that doesn't cover some non-pornographic material as well. Plus, someone could easily come along and disagree with both of us, saying that our definition is too strict or too loose. And there's no proof that any one of us is right or wrong.
And it costs nothing for the ISP to provide, right?
It's a freedom/responsibility argument. In my experience, when people argue for governmental control, it's usually because they wish to abdicate themselves of some responsibility. It's not the ISP's responsibility to watch your kids. That's not what you pay them for, and they shouldn't have to provide a free babysitting service for you if they don't want to.
I never saw any porn when I lived with my parents, and we never had porn-blocking software. It's because I knew there would be hell to pay if they caught me, and they kept a close eye on what I looked at on the web. That was much more effective than any content-blocking software. So for parents, the choice is really simple: have an Internet connection and take whatever steps we think are necessary to make sure our kids don't see what we don't want them to see, or don't have an Internet connection at all.
They're saying that the Utah state government is forcing ISP's to shell out for a copy of NetNanny or equivalent blocking software every time a customer asks for it. The fact is, whenever they're required to comply with this law, at the customer's request or otherwise, it costs them money. Why should it be the ISP's responsibility to filter content? It's like saying that a window manufacturer has to provide blinds if you ask for them, because kids might look into the sun.
Oops... I mean, "please God, won't someone think of the children? We're only their parents. That's not our responsibility."
(As an aside, I realize that it's a bit pointless to argue that we should even consider what the Constitution says in a country where the Patriot Act can exist.)
From what I've gathered, the ACLU's objection is, of course, motivated by the fact that they reject censorship in any form. But the argument is legitimate.
Their argument is that the state is requiring ISP's to provide a particular service whether they like it or not. They are dictating how ISP's are "permitted" to do business, asserting that they need the state's blessing to run that particular type of business. I guess what really gets me is the government's attitude that ISP's are allowed to do business by the grace and goodwill of the government, not because it's one of the founding principles of this nation.
It's like if you ran a restaurant, and the government came along and said, "I see you serve cheeseburgers. Some people don't like to eat meat, and most people agree that eating cheeseburgers all the time is downright harmful. You'd better start serving some healthy vegetarian entrees or we'll close you down."
If the state of Utah still insists on making porn-blocking more widely available, the better approach would have been to make money available to the ISP's in the form of tax breaks or low-interest loans to encourage them to offer porn-blocking services to their customers. I'd still object on the grounds that the government is promoting censorship, but at least they wouldn't be forcing ISP's to do it at gunpoint like they are now.
The most daming question, though, is this: who gets to determine what constitutes a naughty web site? For some, a place like /. would be considered pretty taboo because people use bad language here. Any form of censorship necessarily imposes some person's view of morality on others.
Do you think Wal-Mart will stand for that? I don't. They've made a career out of destroying upstarts in any directly competitive area.
But then again, so has Microsoft.
If Wal-Mart is making any money whatsoever on their music store, you can bet that they'll fight MS tooth and nail to keep what market share they have. If Steve Jobs' figures from last week are accurate, Wal-Mart, Napster, the existing Microsoft store and Yahoo! have about 18% of the download business market share combined. They're fighting over a very small slice of the pie to begin with, so you can bet it's gonna be a battle royale.
Also, what's the point of offering free re-downloads in WMA format? You can't play protected WMA on an iPod, and you can only play protected AAC on an iPod. Does Microsoft really think they're going to get people to buy a second music player?
Hey, I build shareware houses.
Remember how Microsoft said that Internet Explorer is a fundamental part of the operating system and cannot be removed? Well, this is what happens when you integrate the most security-vulnerable software on any OS (the browser) directly with the OS, then have everyone run as a full-privilege account by default.
See, what makes it so bad is that IE has such deep hooks into the OS that cracking into IE is effectively the same as getting a root shell. Now we've seen that Microsoft's insistence on forcing a web browser into the OS at any cost is having detrimental effects on security.
There are, of course, security exploits for lots of other browsers, but since IE has such tight integration with the rest of the OS, the stakes are much higher. Breaking into IE is to breaking into Firefox as breaking into a house is to breaking into a tool shed.
The fact of the matter is that an Intel chip does not a PC make. Macs were not the only computer based on a PowerPC, but only Macs run OS X. I'm sure the same will be true of the Intel Macs.
I guess the main source of my disappointment at this point is that I think the Pentium 4 represents a technological step backward in terms of raw performance. But, most of Apple's product line still uses G4's, and the Pentium is surely speedier than a G4, so I think it will be a win for Apple in a shorter term than we realize.
Yesterday, I was cursing The Steve, now today, I'm thinking he might be brilliant again. And you can be damn sure that no Mac will ever have an "Intel Inside" sticker, nor will any Apple ad feature that obnoxious five-note Intel chime.
My dad used to have one of those HPC Jornadas. It was pretty slick. The keyboard was big enough that you could actually use all five fingers on each hand, but the thing folded up into about the size of a checkbook.
He finally replaced it with a laptop because he needed to do some serious typing, and his software needs also expanded. I wonder what he ever did with it, because it was a cool little device.
Artists and architects talk about the concept of "negative space". An English professor of my acquaintance actually wrote a book (not yet published) with a subtitle of "Absences, gaps, and other sexy spaces".
Let me give you an example: my mom hates sunroofs/moonroofs on cars. I don't know why, but she does. When she bought a new car a few years ago, it worked out that there were two nearly identical models, one with the sunroof and one without for the same price. She chose the one without, because for her, not having a sunroof was a feature.
That's the point of this phone. The two phones I've had in the past three years both have features that clutter the interface. The feature I really want is fewer features. For that, I would be willing to pay a premium.
I wore a uniform for 13 years of my life. From kindergarten until I graduated high school, I got the distinct pleasure of wearing uncomfortable polyester pants and scratchy polyester shirts.
I didn't go to school to be part of a team. I went to learn. (Truth be told, I went because I had no other choice) There was not a kid in the school who didn't recognize that, on some level, the uniforms were simply an arbitrary form of social control. The "official reason" was to prevent some form of coutoure-based class warfare, but the rich kids always had ways of looking better than the "poor kids". Diamond earrings were a favorite among girls and boys alike. And, when you go to a $2000/year fully private school, you can bet that the poor kids ain't so poor.
That's not to say that I'm opposed to a dress code. There's nothing wrong with drawing the line at how much cleavage a girl can show, or saying that guys' pants must cover their asses at all times. That is a matter of trying to teach kids the danger of objectifying themselves, and that what you choose to wear reflects upon your self-image.
Oh, and the PE uniforms? You've never been so hot and sweaty in all your life. Whose genius idea was it to make them out of unbreatheable polyester?
Here's what I learned from wearing a uniform: every time you strictly enforce a rule for which you can provide no convincing rationale, you inspire otherwise well-behaved individuals to rebel against it. I know I rebelled, and I honestly haven't thought about wearing anything simply to be offensive since then.
I agree. That's the reason for the success of cable company PVRs. TiVos are actually much nicer, but the cable company can offer you a device with like capability for about $10/month. Plus, you don't have to buy anything
(By the way, I own two TiVos :-)
This is a somewhat different situation, though, since we're talking about portable music players. I don't think cable companies will want to get involved with them -- it's more of a marketing problem than technological.
I also don't the the cell phone is the right place for a music player. Cell phones derive their usefulness from their small size. To make a MP3 player that's any good, the current technology would just make the phone too big to be useful.
I really just don't see the subscription model ever working well in the long run for music. Unless the service provider supplies the device along with the service (unlikely), people will always worry that some day their expensive music player will become useless.
And beyond all of that, I think, particularly with the iPod, people are finally starting to embrace devices that only try to do one thing well. Carrying around a plethora of devices is never much fun, but carrying around one big monolithic device sounds even less appealing. Plus, you can always leave your iPod at home, but if you need your cell phone, can you leave just the music player part behind?