Only an apple zombie would keep a defective product when they could return it for a full refund. Are people really this stupid? Seriously, are they?
Not to defend the Apple Zombie mindset, but I figure for many people who bought an iPhone 4 and aren't happy with it, the situation is:
- They previously owned an earlier generation iPhone.
- They got rid of that phone for their iPhone 4.
- They are unwilling to consider a phone that is not an iPhone. (Hey, it's got the WiFis. And probably they're already invested in iPhone apps.)
If you take all of these things to be true for a given person, is it more rational to keep their iPhone 4 and pray that Apple makes it all right some day, or enter a new 2 year contract on a 'new' older model iPhone?
So... yeah. In a sense, yes, you can just return the phone, but you can't necessarily undo what amounts to the full transaction that involved dumping your previous phone.
I agree as long as that person has innocent intent. Consumer Reports clearly created this article to sell copies rather than push factual information. Also, the reality is that a good amount of this type of "information" that was on the newsgroups was being put there by marketing firms who are being paid to push a certain agenda. The article "Is the Iphone 4 Apple's Vista" comes to mind here...
Lets cut to the chase... If Apple is so concerned about negative information on the iPhone 4, do you honestly think that there would be a 3 week lead time on shipping the of the phone? No, they would not. Also, the antenna issue is completely overblown, and I am sure Consumer Reports knows this internally...
Wow that must be great Kool-Aid. Clearly, a review that essentially says "We love this phone, but we can't recommend it until Apple fixes it so it can actually make phone calls." can only be a slanted hack-job to drive up circulation. Other than that one important detail, they all but gush over the greatness of the iPhone4. At this point, can you even remember what it was like to have a relationship with reality?
Cue the obligatory Penny Arcade "I'm the guy who gives hand jobs to Steve Jobs" strip. Seriously.
I have seen companies start up with no employees, a whole lot of spare time and a $80/month dedicated server by people who have expenses like families with Children.
Lies! People with children never have a whole lot of spare time.
It's a pretty good way to keep in touch with people that you don't see in person very often, probably because they don't currently live very near to you. For example:
- Most of my family still lives in the area where I grew up, which is about a hundred miles from where I live now. Facebook makes it easy to share bits of news with them, pictures of our kids, etc. Obviously there are other ways to do this; I won't tell you that Facebook is the only way to do this or even the best way to do this, just a decent one.
- One of my old roommates now lives ~2000 miles away. However, he's still back in this area a couple times a year and really likes to see his old friends when he's here. It's easy for him to post to Facebook when his visits will be, and friends of his that are free can get in touch with him about getting together in person. Again, there are other ways to accomplish this, but Facebook is a pretty easy/convienient one.
Although I'm sure that what you're saying about your situation is true (and, for the record, I think it's a perfectly reasonable position), I don't think it's an anecdote that holds a lot of weight in terms of popular opinion.
Gathering information about technology adoption on Slashdot, and especially on any issue relating to keeping electronic information private, is even less helpful or accurate in terms of representing the average user as watching who goes in and out of the nearest men's room and concluding that nearly all humans are male.
Kind of a belated reply, but I'm not convinced that's true -- my experience is that just about every office worker who's using Office is using one or two of the arcane/obscure features of Office -- and not the same arcane/obscure features as the next person.
Now, are there other ways to accomplish the same goals in another way using, say, OpenOffice? I think probably 80% of the time there is, but probably said office worker isn't going to figure out how without either a lot of time or some training. Are those things cheaper than another Office license? Maybe, but I'm not sure it's as an easy of a decision as you think.
So rather than spend that $2K on advertising, you'd rather spend it on tools when you have the option of free? I'd say it's you who have no business sense, and no business in a start up.
If you assume that the tools and the documentation for them are of equal quality, then what you say is true. (Or if you assume your time is worthless.)
The documentation in particular is something that's almost always ass on the FOSS side. (Yes, it's also sometimes ass on the unfree software side.) Can you waste $2000 worth of time dealing with missing, misleading, or out-of-date documentation? Depending on the project, that might or might not be possible.
A question of what's a better IDE is always kind of like asking which is the better religion, or maybe who has the best kids. Everyone thinks theirs is awesome and its shit doesn't stink.
I recall part of the argument at the time being that the Windows (File system) Explorer and Internet Explorer had converged / were intertwined / had more or less become two parts of the same thing.
But I can't remember the details or if it was even a valid argument at the time, so maybe someone who was paying more attention can fill that in.
Yeah, how dare anyone make students more employable by making it easier for them to have access to / learn the by far dominant software used in the business world.
Seriously, you can hate Microsoft, you can hate Office, you can hate the Office UI, you can hate the closed standards on which Office is based, (and all those things have their share of validity) but at least make an argument that doesn't bury its head in the sand and try to ignore the fact that damn near everyone who gets a job in an office will end up using Office in some way.
So, when Apple uses BSD and GPL code, somehow it is "abuse"? Come on! You are either for the idea of OSS, or you are against it.
To be fair, there are people (and I'm not saying I'm one of them) who are strongly pro-GPL and anti-BSD because of precisely this kind of case -- a corporation profiting from using open source code to create something that lacks the degree of openness they prefer.
It's not a position you or I agree with, but it's not inconsistent of hypocritical.
A problem with the New Testament in general, I think, and with proscriptions of homosexuality in it in specific, is that what Jesus has to say about how you should live and what Paul has to say are pretty different.
I don't know what to tell you -- maybe it's just my market, but there's lots of both Java and.NET experience on my resume, and I get a *lot* more calls about.NET jobs.
Come on. "America Speaking Out" is not about getting wisdom from people, any more than the White House's solicitation of ideas for the oil spill was. It's about allowing people to feel like they have a voice. Don't spoil the illusion!
I'd take that a half step further: it's also about the illusion that that voice matters, and that when the entity soliciting feedback takes actions in some way in line with that voice, that it's because the entity is obedient to the will of the masses.
Really, this kind of phenomena is not new or unique to the Internet -- for example, my congressman recently (snail) mailed out a survey to his constitutents, in theory to solicit their opinions. It consisted solely of multiple choice questions that weren't even really questions (or simplified complex issues to the point of stupidity), along the lines of "Do you think that A) we should make government smaller and eliminate regulations or B) we should give government all of our money and let it control every aspect of our lives?" Great, you spent a bunch of taxpayer money creating, distributing, and collecting a survey so that you could assert that your constitutents want you to spend less money.
I'd like to think that we can both praise an administration for doing better than previous administration(s), while simultaneously demanding that it do better still.
No, what should be done first is set term limits on congress seats. Its ridiculous that we have elected officials in the same seat for so many years.
In the general sense, I think there are about as many good arguments against term limits as for them. (And to be clear, I don't deny that there are good arguments for them.)
If I'm having heart surgery, I don't want to be told that they have a new guy doing it for the first time because all their experienced surgeons had been at it for X years already. Someone has to put the time in to understand policy and law enough to make good decisions on complex issues that most people don't have the time or inclination to dig deeply into; (also note... I'm not arguing that all or even most congressmen do this) why is someone with less experience better than someone with more experience.
That's mostly a rhetorical question; I could argue the other side of it as well. Like most things in politics, there's not a clear cut right answer of the best way to do it.
While I agree that there are many things the Democrats could do if they all agreed (but don't all agree), you seem to be either ignorant of the concept of a filibuster or purposefully ignoring its implications.
To me this is just another example of how much people will try to cling to old ways of doing things and subvert rules that prevent it.
According to the NYTimes article referenced in TFA that kicked off this whole discussion, indicates that the administration has a policy of posting all White House visits and pressures staff to minimize contact with lobbyists. In response, rather than obey the spirit of those directives, the staff instead meets with lobbyists off the record.
This is a story older than government, going back to whenever a parent first told their kids not to do something or earlier: someone makes a rule, people impacted by that rule try to find a loophole, the rule is revised, repeat. Government is an inherently iterative process.
That being said, if doing an investigation speeds up this iteration of the feedback loop, I'm all for it.
They didn't have a choice in the matter. AT&T was the only one willing to let them do what they wanted with the phone, and without that freedom it wouldn't have been the iPhone.
Respectfully, freedom doesn't seem to be the appropriate word.
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Only an apple zombie would keep a defective product when they could return it for a full refund. Are people really this stupid? Seriously, are they?
Not to defend the Apple Zombie mindset, but I figure for many people who bought an iPhone 4 and aren't happy with it, the situation is:
- They previously owned an earlier generation iPhone.
- They got rid of that phone for their iPhone 4.
- They are unwilling to consider a phone that is not an iPhone. (Hey, it's got the WiFis. And probably they're already invested in iPhone apps.)
If you take all of these things to be true for a given person, is it more rational to keep their iPhone 4 and pray that Apple makes it all right some day, or enter a new 2 year contract on a 'new' older model iPhone?
So... yeah. In a sense, yes, you can just return the phone, but you can't necessarily undo what amounts to the full transaction that involved dumping your previous phone.
I agree as long as that person has innocent intent. Consumer Reports clearly created this article to sell copies rather than push factual information. Also, the reality is that a good amount of this type of "information" that was on the newsgroups was being put there by marketing firms who are being paid to push a certain agenda. The article "Is the Iphone 4 Apple's Vista" comes to mind here...
Lets cut to the chase... If Apple is so concerned about negative information on the iPhone 4, do you honestly think that there would be a 3 week lead time on shipping the of the phone? No, they would not. Also, the antenna issue is completely overblown, and I am sure Consumer Reports knows this internally...
Wow that must be great Kool-Aid. Clearly, a review that essentially says "We love this phone, but we can't recommend it until Apple fixes it so it can actually make phone calls." can only be a slanted hack-job to drive up circulation. Other than that one important detail, they all but gush over the greatness of the iPhone4. At this point, can you even remember what it was like to have a relationship with reality?
Cue the obligatory Penny Arcade "I'm the guy who gives hand jobs to Steve Jobs" strip. Seriously.
I have seen companies start up with no employees, a whole lot of spare time and a $80/month dedicated server by people who have expenses like families with Children.
Lies! People with children never have a whole lot of spare time.
Speaking only for myself:
It's a pretty good way to keep in touch with people that you don't see in person very often, probably because they don't currently live very near to you. For example:
- Most of my family still lives in the area where I grew up, which is about a hundred miles from where I live now. Facebook makes it easy to share bits of news with them, pictures of our kids, etc. Obviously there are other ways to do this; I won't tell you that Facebook is the only way to do this or even the best way to do this, just a decent one.
- One of my old roommates now lives ~2000 miles away. However, he's still back in this area a couple times a year and really likes to see his old friends when he's here. It's easy for him to post to Facebook when his visits will be, and friends of his that are free can get in touch with him about getting together in person. Again, there are other ways to accomplish this, but Facebook is a pretty easy/convienient one.
Although I'm sure that what you're saying about your situation is true (and, for the record, I think it's a perfectly reasonable position), I don't think it's an anecdote that holds a lot of weight in terms of popular opinion.
Gathering information about technology adoption on Slashdot, and especially on any issue relating to keeping electronic information private, is even less helpful or accurate in terms of representing the average user as watching who goes in and out of the nearest men's room and concluding that nearly all humans are male.
99% of offices could probably drop MS Office
Kind of a belated reply, but I'm not convinced that's true -- my experience is that just about every office worker who's using Office is using one or two of the arcane/obscure features of Office -- and not the same arcane/obscure features as the next person.
Now, are there other ways to accomplish the same goals in another way using, say, OpenOffice? I think probably 80% of the time there is, but probably said office worker isn't going to figure out how without either a lot of time or some training. Are those things cheaper than another Office license? Maybe, but I'm not sure it's as an easy of a decision as you think.
with the enormous hidden 'call back home' shit sp3 and on brings, majority of users and sysadmins will not upgrade to it. they are not stupid.
Because the majority of users and sysadmins are aware of any of that? Get real.
I'm sure a lot of people won't upgrade, but seriously, a majority of users probably can't even change their screen resolution without help.
So rather than spend that $2K on advertising, you'd rather spend it on tools when you have the option of free? I'd say it's you who have no business sense, and no business in a start up.
If you assume that the tools and the documentation for them are of equal quality, then what you say is true. (Or if you assume your time is worthless.)
The documentation in particular is something that's almost always ass on the FOSS side. (Yes, it's also sometimes ass on the unfree software side.) Can you waste $2000 worth of time dealing with missing, misleading, or out-of-date documentation? Depending on the project, that might or might not be possible.
A question of what's a better IDE is always kind of like asking which is the better religion, or maybe who has the best kids. Everyone thinks theirs is awesome and its shit doesn't stink.
I recall part of the argument at the time being that the Windows (File system) Explorer and Internet Explorer had converged / were intertwined / had more or less become two parts of the same thing.
But I can't remember the details or if it was even a valid argument at the time, so maybe someone who was paying more attention can fill that in.
Yeah, how dare anyone make students more employable by making it easier for them to have access to / learn the by far dominant software used in the business world.
Seriously, you can hate Microsoft, you can hate Office, you can hate the Office UI, you can hate the closed standards on which Office is based, (and all those things have their share of validity) but at least make an argument that doesn't bury its head in the sand and try to ignore the fact that damn near everyone who gets a job in an office will end up using Office in some way.
So, when Apple uses BSD and GPL code, somehow it is "abuse"? Come on! You are either for the idea of OSS, or you are against it.
To be fair, there are people (and I'm not saying I'm one of them) who are strongly pro-GPL and anti-BSD because of precisely this kind of case -- a corporation profiting from using open source code to create something that lacks the degree of openness they prefer.
It's not a position you or I agree with, but it's not inconsistent of hypocritical.
Five months is impressive?
In the US it's not bad.
My wife gets something like six weeks paid and can opt to take another six unpaid. As a father I'm not entitled to any time off at all.
A problem with the New Testament in general, I think, and with proscriptions of homosexuality in it in specific, is that what Jesus has to say about how you should live and what Paul has to say are pretty different.
I don't know what to tell you -- maybe it's just my market, but there's lots of both Java and .NET experience on my resume, and I get a *lot* more calls about .NET jobs.
Attempt at taking over the web with .Net: FAIL
I'm not sure .NET was ever supposed to be what you seem to be saying, but there's certainly no small amount of .NET development being done even today.
Come on. "America Speaking Out" is not about getting wisdom from people, any more than the White House's solicitation of ideas for the oil spill was. It's about allowing people to feel like they have a voice. Don't spoil the illusion!
I'd take that a half step further: it's also about the illusion that that voice matters, and that when the entity soliciting feedback takes actions in some way in line with that voice, that it's because the entity is obedient to the will of the masses.
Really, this kind of phenomena is not new or unique to the Internet -- for example, my congressman recently (snail) mailed out a survey to his constitutents, in theory to solicit their opinions. It consisted solely of multiple choice questions that weren't even really questions (or simplified complex issues to the point of stupidity), along the lines of "Do you think that A) we should make government smaller and eliminate regulations or B) we should give government all of our money and let it control every aspect of our lives?" Great, you spent a bunch of taxpayer money creating, distributing, and collecting a survey so that you could assert that your constitutents want you to spend less money.
We'll have to agree to disagree -- as far as I can see, neither the history of the last year and a half nor simple math support your conclusions.
Exactly! Good tech analogy.
I'd like to think that we can both praise an administration for doing better than previous administration(s), while simultaneously demanding that it do better still.
No, what should be done first is set term limits on congress seats. Its ridiculous that we have elected officials in the same seat for so many years.
In the general sense, I think there are about as many good arguments against term limits as for them. (And to be clear, I don't deny that there are good arguments for them.)
If I'm having heart surgery, I don't want to be told that they have a new guy doing it for the first time because all their experienced surgeons had been at it for X years already. Someone has to put the time in to understand policy and law enough to make good decisions on complex issues that most people don't have the time or inclination to dig deeply into; (also note... I'm not arguing that all or even most congressmen do this) why is someone with less experience better than someone with more experience.
That's mostly a rhetorical question; I could argue the other side of it as well. Like most things in politics, there's not a clear cut right answer of the best way to do it.
While I agree that there are many things the Democrats could do if they all agreed (but don't all agree), you seem to be either ignorant of the concept of a filibuster or purposefully ignoring its implications.
Yes, but this is "the most transparent administration in history"
Don't forget that being the best at transparency does not mean being good at something. It just means being less terrible than the other guy(s).
To me this is just another example of how much people will try to cling to old ways of doing things and subvert rules that prevent it.
According to the NYTimes article referenced in TFA that kicked off this whole discussion, indicates that the administration has a policy of posting all White House visits and pressures staff to minimize contact with lobbyists. In response, rather than obey the spirit of those directives, the staff instead meets with lobbyists off the record.
This is a story older than government, going back to whenever a parent first told their kids not to do something or earlier: someone makes a rule, people impacted by that rule try to find a loophole, the rule is revised, repeat. Government is an inherently iterative process.
That being said, if doing an investigation speeds up this iteration of the feedback loop, I'm all for it.
They didn't have a choice in the matter. AT&T was the only one willing to let them do what they wanted with the phone, and without that freedom it wouldn't have been the iPhone.
Respectfully, freedom doesn't seem to be the appropriate word.
Unless this is 1984. :)
Alas. I haven't had a landline since the 1900s. :(