Re:My experience with Apple...
on
The Apple Two
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· Score: 1
I think you are the first person I have ever seen describe iTunes as "labyrinthine." Far more often I've seen people insult it for being too simple.
I don't think I could describe something that requires three extra services to be running to start up as simple. Or one that keeps trying to install Safari for some reason. I can't think of any other piece of software on my home PC that has that requirement. But, hey, my PC's ready to sync up to the iPhone I'll never buy.
I try to avoid iTunes now, so maybe it's gotten better in recent versions, but generally the non-computer people I know have problems using it without help. They may be able to get songs onto their iPod, but they end up with three copies of half of them and none of others. How they manage that, I couldn't even tell you.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it doesn't agree with how I remember things to have actually occured.
Shit, it took years for IE to even catch up with what Netscape could do, and you're crazy if you think everything Netscape could do at that point followed any kind of web standard other than the "this is the most popular browser, so what it does is the standard" standard.
I'm not all that sure even Mosaic was all that standards compliant.
Uh... the article you're referencing has a diagram showing that IE had over 80% of the market for about 7 years and around 90% for several of them. During those years when Netscape had pretty much died and Firefox wasn't going (or later, gaining traction yet), IE was, from a pragmatic web developer's standpoint, the standard.
I'm not sure what in this article you think refutes anything I said.
You make the incorrect inference that because someone is enticed into buying an Apple product that they have plenty of discretionary income, and that will result in an impacting influence in that and other markets well beyond that of what the rest of the world's purchasing influence would be.
Well, let's be clear here:
1) This isn't a logical proof. I'm not trying to demonstrate that everyone who buys an iPad has discretionary income to burn. I am trying to say that, probably, if you as an advertiser are trying to get people who have discretionary income to burn to see your ads, you'd be much smarter to put your ad in front of someone who just bought an iPad than some random person you know nothing about.
2) While I'm sure there's some person out there for whom the iPad is exactly the tool they need to get their job done, for the vast majority of purchasers it's a fun toy that they don't genuinely need. Probably, most people who are out of work or who are afraid of losing their house are not buying an iPad.
If you don't think those are fair statements, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
What's especially interesting is that if Microsoft hadn't stopped working on IE for years, probably there would be no market reason for them to do anything involving web standards today.
You can't legitimately bash IE6 for being incompatible, though -- in its day, it had so much of the browser market (largely by default) that whatever IE6 did was the standard for anyone with a pragmatic bone in their body.
Maybe you just have to get some crossover between guys who just spent 10 hours raiding in WoW with girls who just spent ten hours raking hay in Farmville.
I'm sad to say my first thought in response was: Maybe there's some way to skin WoW so that you can get women paying to gold farm for you. You would also sell the gold. I can't see how this could possibly go wrong.
Anyone who voices dissent with Obama administration policies on radio/TV and even on the internet should be prepared. There will be a campaign launched to demonize you, painting you as "dangerous" and "promoting violence" and attempting to smear you by conflating voicing your dissent with a few nutjobs (which exist on both sides) who may commit some violent act.
That's not entirely unfair.
I mean, if you tell people often enough that Obama is just the same as Hitler and he'll take away all your freedom if he isn't stopped, and someone who watched/listened to your show tries to shoot him, what responsibility do you bear for that? It's not 100%, it's not even over 50%, but it's sure as hell not 0% either.
Alternate non-hypothetical example: Bill O'Reilly and the murder of George Tiller.
Of course, if 99% of the time your day's work is just good enough, but it results in serious problems for your product on the other 1% of working days, your real world employment is precarious.
That's really only true if you're not doing testing of any kind, in which case I would argue you have much bigger problems.
A pragmatic programmer comes up with a solution that seems good enough, then verifies that it is. If it's not, they replace or refine it from there. If it is, they move on to the next task.
A programmer who instead ruthlessly examines everything they do to make sure it's optimally efficient is probably wasting a lot of time. That guy's going to have much more trouble staying employed in the real world.
For some things, efficiency means a lot. For most things, it doesn't. There are projects where this isn't the case, but they're in the minority. A good programmer can tell where the extra effort is important and where it's a waste of his time and therefore his employer's money.
Yes, math is important for the really interesting stuff.
It depends on what you consider to be interesting stuff.
Working my current contract, I deal with what I would consider to be interesting business problems most days. None of them have a thing to do with math. (Yes, you can make an argument that computer science is basically math or that everything has to do with math somehow, but... no, not really.) Resolving these problems well does take skills that I didn't have as a fresh-out-of-college programmer, but I wouldn't call any of them math-related.
You might want to research the astroturfing and insurance industry money behind some (not all) of it. It's clever, but appalling.
We've gotten to a point in American political history where most grass roots movements (for any cause/party/philosophy) are likely to be manufactured. Pay a few people to spread some FUD and embolden others by yelling shit and pretty soon it's self-perpetuating and you've convinced people it's their own idea.
Personally, I've become convinced that he's like a Stephen Colbert playing the act more straight. I'm completely serious about this.
I just can't believe that anyone could believe as many obviously, demonstrably, factually false and contradictory things as he says. It's GOT to be a grand experiment in comedy.
The question is, who do the Republicans have to run against Obama that can win?
I think the passage of health care pretty much guarantees it can't be Mitt Romney, who a year ago I probably would have pointed out as one of the stronger candidates. He's in a shitty position now where Republican voter opinion on health care essentially forces him to run against his own record. A semi-competent opponent (and love him or hate him, Obama is certainly that) will tear him to shreds on that enormous flip-flop.
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
Well, let me be clear: I don't think your position (you owe society nothing) is correct, and I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything) is correct, either. The truth, for me, is somewhere in between.
If I start a business in America (for example) and it's successful, that's in part due to my hard work, willingness to take a risk, and intelligence/savvy to forsee what has market value. Some of the fruits of that logically should belong to me; I did something successful where others with similar resources and opportunities didn't.
But neither I or my business exist in a vacuum.
Probably it's important that no one's robbing my business, extorting me, or shooting me in the head, and that in general a safe enough environment exists for me to do business and others to be willing to buy my product. I owe government in the form of law enforcement some amount of debt for that, which I pay in the form of taxes. (If I were living in Somalia or someplace where there isn't the same kind of law enforcement, either I'm probably paying local thugs for protection, or I'm buying a rifle and hoping to do it myself and devoting time and energy that way -- no matter what I can't get this security for myself and my potential customers "for free.") Here we could also include other 'basic security' that society/government provides -- I generally don't have to worry that my house will burn down while I'm working, if something goes seriously wrong with my sewage someone will take care of it, the chances that half of my workers will be out sick for a month due to eating unsafe meat is low, etc.)
Does my business need to use mail or the internet or highways? Those ultimately come from other people in the form of the government as well.
I didn't grow up in the woods raised by wolves; probably my relatively safe and nurturing upbringing in some way contributed to my success. I owe my parents/family something for that.
Does my business employ others? Obviously I owe some kind of debt to them for my success, and they to me for as much of it as they share in, possibly only via their salary. We need each other.
Did I hire skilled workers of some kind, or do I have specialized knowledge of some kind? Probably it helped me that society/government provides (to varying degrees depending on the specifics) for education. Directly or indirectly, it probably helped me that unemployment benefits help skilled workers to find work that utilizes their specialized skills, even if that means it takes them a month to find a good fit job instead of taking the first job they can to survive.
My business couldn't be viable at all without customers. I owe some kind of debt to them, although if you argued that I discharge that debt fully in the form of the good or service I provide to them I probably wouldn't disagree.
In all these ways and many more, my success is to some degree dependent on the foundation the government has provided and on the other people I interact with. If other people were somehow universally able to strike against me or withdraw all of their support for my endeavors (the reverse John Galt, if you will), my business would almost certainly instantly fail. I don't owe society everything for that, but I don't owe it nothing, either. As humbling as it is and as hard as it can be to admit, people need each other and there's almost no decision we can make that doesn't affect other people for better or worse.
And, yeah. Non-screeching debate is a nice change.
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
Well, let me be clear: I don't think your position (you owe society nothing) is correct, and I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything) is correct, either. The truth, for me, is somewhere in between.
If I start a business in America (for example) and it's successful, that's in part due to my hard work, willingness to take a risk, and intelligence/savvy to forsee what has market value. Some of the fruits of that logically should belong to me; I did something successful where others with similar resources and opportunities didn't.
But neither I or my business exist in a vacuum.
Probably it's important that no one's robbing my business, extorting me, or shooting me in the head, and that in general a safe enough environment exists for me to do business and others to be willing to buy my product. I owe government in the form of law enforcement some amount of debt for that, which I pay in the form of taxes. (If I were living in Somalia or someplace where there isn't the same kind of law enforcement, either I'm probably paying local thugs for protection, or I'm buying a rifle and hoping to do it myself and devoting time and energy that way -- no matter what I can't get this security for myself and my potential customers "for free.") Here we could also include other 'basic security' that society/government provides -- I generally don't have to worry that my house will burn down while I'm working, if something goes seriously wrong with my sewage someone will take care of it, the chances that half of my workers will be out sick for a month due to eating unsafe meat is low, etc.)
Does my business need to use mail or the internet or highways? Those ultimately come from other people in the form of the government as well.
I didn't grow up in the woods raised by wolves; probably my relatively safe and nurturing upbringing in some way contributed to my success. I owe my parents/family something for that.
Does my business employ others? Obviously I owe some kind of debt to them for my success, and they to me for as much of it as they share in, possibly only via their salary. We need each other.
Did I hire skilled workers of some kind, or do I have specialized knowledge of some kind? Probably it helped me that society/government provides (to varying degrees depending on the specifics) for education. Directly or indirectly, it probably helped me that unemployment benefits help skilled workers to find work that utilizes their specialized skills, even if that means it takes them a month to find a good fit job instead of taking the first job they can to survive.
My business couldn't be viable at all without customers. I owe some kind of debt to them, although if you argued that I discharge that debt fully in the form of the good or service I provide to them I probably wouldn't disagree.
In all these ways and many more, my success is to some degree dependent on the foundation the government has provided and on the other people I interact with. If other people were somehow universally able to strike against me or withdraw all of their support for my endeavors (the reverse John Galt, if you will), my business would almost certainly instantly fail. I don't owe society everything for that, but I don't owe it nothing, either. As humbling as it is and as hard as it can be to admit, people need each other and there's almost no decision we can make that doesn't affect other people for better or worse.
Or, maybe more people will be entrepreneurs now because striking out on your own and trying to start a business isn't gambling with the life of your family, should you have one. To what degree would that happen vs. what you're saying happen?
Anecdotally, one of my friends seriously looked at starting his own business last year and ultimately did not because he realized that there was no way he would be able to afford health insurance comparable to what his current (private sector, incidentally) job provided. Faced with a choice between trying to innovate and get rich (in theory, what the free market encourages) he chose being able to take care of his family.
It's not hard to simply a complex issue, but it's hard to do so honestly.
So, I'm supposed to forfeit my own life because I might impact someone else?
No; just grow up a little and accept life for what it actually is, not what reading Atlas Shrugged too many times would make it out to be. Society doesn't deserve or own 100% of what you accomplish, but equally, neither do you. Nothing occurs in a vacuum; there is nothing of worth that you or anyone has accomplished that didn't require other people to happen.
Then move whatever direction you wish, just leave me alone.
The thing is, unless you live alone in the wilderness like some kind of mountain man, that isn't possible. What you do or don't do affects others in your society. Pretending otherwise is just that, pretending.
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I think you are the first person I have ever seen describe iTunes as "labyrinthine." Far more often I've seen people insult it for being too simple.
I don't think I could describe something that requires three extra services to be running to start up as simple. Or one that keeps trying to install Safari for some reason. I can't think of any other piece of software on my home PC that has that requirement. But, hey, my PC's ready to sync up to the iPhone I'll never buy.
I try to avoid iTunes now, so maybe it's gotten better in recent versions, but generally the non-computer people I know have problems using it without help. They may be able to get songs onto their iPod, but they end up with three copies of half of them and none of others. How they manage that, I couldn't even tell you.
You're shortchanging Mosaic a fair bit there, but we'll have to just agree to disagree on this whole topic.
What monopoly does Apple have on smart phones?
100% of the hipster douchebag market. :)
(Note: not everyone who has an iPhone is a hipster douchebag.)
You're entitled to your opinion, but it doesn't agree with how I remember things to have actually occured.
Shit, it took years for IE to even catch up with what Netscape could do, and you're crazy if you think everything Netscape could do at that point followed any kind of web standard other than the "this is the most popular browser, so what it does is the standard" standard.
I'm not all that sure even Mosaic was all that standards compliant.
I disagree; Netscape became a stinking pile of crap all on its own.
Sadly.
Uh... the article you're referencing has a diagram showing that IE had over 80% of the market for about 7 years and around 90% for several of them. During those years when Netscape had pretty much died and Firefox wasn't going (or later, gaining traction yet), IE was, from a pragmatic web developer's standpoint, the standard.
I'm not sure what in this article you think refutes anything I said.
You make the incorrect inference that because someone is enticed into buying an Apple product that they have plenty of discretionary income, and that will result in an impacting influence in that and other markets well beyond that of what the rest of the world's purchasing influence would be.
Well, let's be clear here:
1) This isn't a logical proof. I'm not trying to demonstrate that everyone who buys an iPad has discretionary income to burn. I am trying to say that, probably, if you as an advertiser are trying to get people who have discretionary income to burn to see your ads, you'd be much smarter to put your ad in front of someone who just bought an iPad than some random person you know nothing about.
2) While I'm sure there's some person out there for whom the iPad is exactly the tool they need to get their job done, for the vast majority of purchasers it's a fun toy that they don't genuinely need. Probably, most people who are out of work or who are afraid of losing their house are not buying an iPad.
If you don't think those are fair statements, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
What's especially interesting is that if Microsoft hadn't stopped working on IE for years, probably there would be no market reason for them to do anything involving web standards today.
You can't legitimately bash IE6 for being incompatible, though -- in its day, it had so much of the browser market (largely by default) that whatever IE6 did was the standard for anyone with a pragmatic bone in their body.
That I utterly disagree with. Not even close. It's misleading, almost laughable.
Really? I would think "Everyone buying an iPad has some disposable income to burn" is just about a tautology.
Maybe you just have to get some crossover between guys who just spent 10 hours raiding in WoW with girls who just spent ten hours raking hay in Farmville.
I'm sad to say my first thought in response was: Maybe there's some way to skin WoW so that you can get women paying to gold farm for you. You would also sell the gold. I can't see how this could possibly go wrong.
In a sense you're both right.
The nature of the game really punishes a team with a bad player, and good players understandably don't want to put up with it.
However, that also gives you an environment that most new players won't want to play in.
Anyone who voices dissent with Obama administration policies on radio/TV and even on the internet should be prepared. There will be a campaign launched to demonize you, painting you as "dangerous" and "promoting violence" and attempting to smear you by conflating voicing your dissent with a few nutjobs (which exist on both sides) who may commit some violent act.
That's not entirely unfair.
I mean, if you tell people often enough that Obama is just the same as Hitler and he'll take away all your freedom if he isn't stopped, and someone who watched/listened to your show tries to shoot him, what responsibility do you bear for that? It's not 100%, it's not even over 50%, but it's sure as hell not 0% either.
Alternate non-hypothetical example: Bill O'Reilly and the murder of George Tiller.
Of course, if 99% of the time your day's work is just good enough, but it results in serious problems for your product on the other 1% of working days, your real world employment is precarious.
That's really only true if you're not doing testing of any kind, in which case I would argue you have much bigger problems.
A pragmatic programmer comes up with a solution that seems good enough, then verifies that it is. If it's not, they replace or refine it from there. If it is, they move on to the next task.
A programmer who instead ruthlessly examines everything they do to make sure it's optimally efficient is probably wasting a lot of time. That guy's going to have much more trouble staying employed in the real world.
For some things, efficiency means a lot. For most things, it doesn't. There are projects where this isn't the case, but they're in the minority. A good programmer can tell where the extra effort is important and where it's a waste of his time and therefore his employer's money.
Yes, math is important for the really interesting stuff.
It depends on what you consider to be interesting stuff.
Working my current contract, I deal with what I would consider to be interesting business problems most days. None of them have a thing to do with math. (Yes, you can make an argument that computer science is basically math or that everything has to do with math somehow, but... no, not really.) Resolving these problems well does take skills that I didn't have as a fresh-out-of-college programmer, but I wouldn't call any of them math-related.
Of course, for 99% of real world problems, just about any of those sorts is good enough.
Re: Town hall meetings:
You might want to research the astroturfing and insurance industry money behind some (not all) of it. It's clever, but appalling.
We've gotten to a point in American political history where most grass roots movements (for any cause/party/philosophy) are likely to be manufactured. Pay a few people to spread some FUD and embolden others by yelling shit and pretty soon it's self-perpetuating and you've convinced people it's their own idea.
Personally, I've become convinced that he's like a Stephen Colbert playing the act more straight. I'm completely serious about this.
I just can't believe that anyone could believe as many obviously, demonstrably, factually false and contradictory things as he says. It's GOT to be a grand experiment in comedy.
The question is, who do the Republicans have to run against Obama that can win?
I think the passage of health care pretty much guarantees it can't be Mitt Romney, who a year ago I probably would have pointed out as one of the stronger candidates. He's in a shitty position now where Republican voter opinion on health care essentially forces him to run against his own record. A semi-competent opponent (and love him or hate him, Obama is certainly that) will tear him to shreds on that enormous flip-flop.
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
Well, let me be clear: I don't think your position (you owe society nothing) is correct, and I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything) is correct, either. The truth, for me, is somewhere in between.
If I start a business in America (for example) and it's successful, that's in part due to my hard work, willingness to take a risk, and intelligence/savvy to forsee what has market value. Some of the fruits of that logically should belong to me; I did something successful where others with similar resources and opportunities didn't.
But neither I or my business exist in a vacuum.
Probably it's important that no one's robbing my business, extorting me, or shooting me in the head, and that in general a safe enough environment exists for me to do business and others to be willing to buy my product. I owe government in the form of law enforcement some amount of debt for that, which I pay in the form of taxes. (If I were living in Somalia or someplace where there isn't the same kind of law enforcement, either I'm probably paying local thugs for protection, or I'm buying a rifle and hoping to do it myself and devoting time and energy that way -- no matter what I can't get this security for myself and my potential customers "for free.") Here we could also include other 'basic security' that society/government provides -- I generally don't have to worry that my house will burn down while I'm working, if something goes seriously wrong with my sewage someone will take care of it, the chances that half of my workers will be out sick for a month due to eating unsafe meat is low, etc.)
Does my business need to use mail or the internet or highways? Those ultimately come from other people in the form of the government as well.
I didn't grow up in the woods raised by wolves; probably my relatively safe and nurturing upbringing in some way contributed to my success. I owe my parents/family something for that.
Does my business employ others? Obviously I owe some kind of debt to them for my success, and they to me for as much of it as they share in, possibly only via their salary. We need each other.
Did I hire skilled workers of some kind, or do I have specialized knowledge of some kind? Probably it helped me that society/government provides (to varying degrees depending on the specifics) for education. Directly or indirectly, it probably helped me that unemployment benefits help skilled workers to find work that utilizes their specialized skills, even if that means it takes them a month to find a good fit job instead of taking the first job they can to survive.
My business couldn't be viable at all without customers. I owe some kind of debt to them, although if you argued that I discharge that debt fully in the form of the good or service I provide to them I probably wouldn't disagree.
In all these ways and many more, my success is to some degree dependent on the foundation the government has provided and on the other people I interact with. If other people were somehow universally able to strike against me or withdraw all of their support for my endeavors (the reverse John Galt, if you will), my business would almost certainly instantly fail. I don't owe society everything for that, but I don't owe it nothing, either. As humbling as it is and as hard as it can be to admit, people need each other and there's almost no decision we can make that doesn't affect other people for better or worse.
And, yeah. Non-screeching debate is a nice change.
How can you justify your position? You've just stated that a man lives his life at the behest of society, and owes that society - is that what you really believe?
Well, let me be clear: I don't think your position (you owe society nothing) is correct, and I don't believe a pure Communist position (you owe society everything) is correct, either. The truth, for me, is somewhere in between.
If I start a business in America (for example) and it's successful, that's in part due to my hard work, willingness to take a risk, and intelligence/savvy to forsee what has market value. Some of the fruits of that logically should belong to me; I did something successful where others with similar resources and opportunities didn't.
But neither I or my business exist in a vacuum.
Probably it's important that no one's robbing my business, extorting me, or shooting me in the head, and that in general a safe enough environment exists for me to do business and others to be willing to buy my product. I owe government in the form of law enforcement some amount of debt for that, which I pay in the form of taxes. (If I were living in Somalia or someplace where there isn't the same kind of law enforcement, either I'm probably paying local thugs for protection, or I'm buying a rifle and hoping to do it myself and devoting time and energy that way -- no matter what I can't get this security for myself and my potential customers "for free.") Here we could also include other 'basic security' that society/government provides -- I generally don't have to worry that my house will burn down while I'm working, if something goes seriously wrong with my sewage someone will take care of it, the chances that half of my workers will be out sick for a month due to eating unsafe meat is low, etc.)
Does my business need to use mail or the internet or highways? Those ultimately come from other people in the form of the government as well.
I didn't grow up in the woods raised by wolves; probably my relatively safe and nurturing upbringing in some way contributed to my success. I owe my parents/family something for that.
Does my business employ others? Obviously I owe some kind of debt to them for my success, and they to me for as much of it as they share in, possibly only via their salary. We need each other.
Did I hire skilled workers of some kind, or do I have specialized knowledge of some kind? Probably it helped me that society/government provides (to varying degrees depending on the specifics) for education. Directly or indirectly, it probably helped me that unemployment benefits help skilled workers to find work that utilizes their specialized skills, even if that means it takes them a month to find a good fit job instead of taking the first job they can to survive.
My business couldn't be viable at all without customers. I owe some kind of debt to them, although if you argued that I discharge that debt fully in the form of the good or service I provide to them I probably wouldn't disagree.
In all these ways and many more, my success is to some degree dependent on the foundation the government has provided and on the other people I interact with. If other people were somehow universally able to strike against me or withdraw all of their support for my endeavors (the reverse John Galt, if you will), my business would almost certainly instantly fail. I don't owe society everything for that, but I don't owe it nothing, either. As humbling as it is and as hard as it can be to admit, people need each other and there's almost no decision we can make that doesn't affect other people for better or worse.
Do so many in the US really think their system is great?
Yes; most Americans believe they have the best healthcare in the world.
(I'm not asserting that we actually do.)
Or, maybe more people will be entrepreneurs now because striking out on your own and trying to start a business isn't gambling with the life of your family, should you have one. To what degree would that happen vs. what you're saying happen?
Anecdotally, one of my friends seriously looked at starting his own business last year and ultimately did not because he realized that there was no way he would be able to afford health insurance comparable to what his current (private sector, incidentally) job provided. Faced with a choice between trying to innovate and get rich (in theory, what the free market encourages) he chose being able to take care of his family.
It's not hard to simply a complex issue, but it's hard to do so honestly.
Socialized medicine is a complete and utter failure everywhere that it has been implemented.
What are you basing that on?
So, I'm supposed to forfeit my own life because I might impact someone else?
No; just grow up a little and accept life for what it actually is, not what reading Atlas Shrugged too many times would make it out to be. Society doesn't deserve or own 100% of what you accomplish, but equally, neither do you. Nothing occurs in a vacuum; there is nothing of worth that you or anyone has accomplished that didn't require other people to happen.
Then move whatever direction you wish, just leave me alone.
The thing is, unless you live alone in the wilderness like some kind of mountain man, that isn't possible. What you do or don't do affects others in your society. Pretending otherwise is just that, pretending.