When your password rules have a net effect of disallowing people from using their familiar pneumonic systems for remembering passwords, you force them to write the passwords down.
I assume this is when someone uses a captive bolt gun to threaten you to reveal your password...
And having written-down passwords negates the benefit of all those special characters
This is a misconception. Forcing the user to write down a password allows the password to be much longer, and probably much more impervious to attack over the network. The fact that it's written down makes the password as insecure as the place where it's written down. If that place is behind a locked door, perhaps in the room containing the protected machine itself, then the password is about as secure as you could expect, since if someone can get into that room they're going to have access to everything that password protects, password or no. A sheet of paper in a wallet is also valid, since people keep extremely valuable bits of information that can be easily changed and cancelled in their wallet as well.
Encryption keys require a different sort of discipline, but again just because something is memorizable doesn't mean it absolutely better than something written down, or contained in a separate, secure place.
You have to ask, "what is this password protecting?" If it's protecting a box from network attack, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE BIG PASSWORDS AND WRITE THEM DOWN! If you're protecting data from more, ah, physical or intimate incursion, a memorized password is a start, but it had better not be the only part of the puzzle. Since network attacks are a much bigger problem these days than someone breaking into your house, the first solution is probably going to be much more practical and effective.
Weasel words can be completely factual objective statements with the intention of making people believe something false, and in this case they most certainly were.
This is another way of arguing that people are incapable of thinking critically, or shouldn't be expected to, and I completely reject this. It's an evil thing to believe. Besides, you were able to apply your deductive genius and come up with the 100% number all by yourself using only the information at hand, so how much of a weasel job could it possibly have been? And, couldn't some member of the "mindless mass" see your argument and believe that the iPhone drops 100% of calls? Wouldn't you be responsible for that, given your assertion of Job's responsibility?
The problem with your re-characterization of the numbers is that it posits a misleading statistical trial, wherein someone makes 100 phone calls and is seeing if 99 of them go through-- the probability of him failing with an iPhone 4G is 50% to 100% greater than with a 3GS. The problem is that the trial is completely unrealistic, and nobody makes a hundred calls and keeps track of wether 1 or 2 of them fail, and the outcome of such a trial has pretty much zero practical bearing on wether a phone is considered unusable or not. The annoyance factor of a dropped call is on a call-by-call basis, and in this realistic use case, the difference between the 3GS and the 4G is, well, the difference between.4% and 1.4%.
I'd happily have a dropped call out of every 100 (or out of every 20, really) if I had a phone that never required a reboot and lasted all day. It's more than just a phone, after all -- if we were talking about a RAZR or a simple Nokia it'd be a different matter.
"the iPhone 4 only drops 1 more call per 100 than the iPhone 3GS" ?
This is an objective statement, something known technically as a statement of fact. Something which is falsifiable. Notice the numbers and the unequivocal voice.
I don't have statistics, but they are pretty common sense claims.
This is a subjective statement, something known technically as a statement of an opinion. Something which is not falsifiable. Notice the appeal to "common sense." I'm not refuting your claims because you make none, you just riff on your folk knowledge of cellphone reception, 90% of which you've acquired over the past week from sensationalist websites.
Steve knew very well that most people would interpret that as only 1% more dropped calls, or perhaps statistical noise based on the amount of available data.
Nobody said that it was, but since you suggested it, are you able to characterize the difference as anything more than statistical noise? Or, even more to the point, are you able to characterize this statistic as being meaningful in an actual purchasing decision? That it's a problem I'm happy to concede, but is it enough of a problem that someone would rather buy a different phone, given the iPhone's other features? That's the criteria in question here, and it's much more to-the-point than "100% more dropped calls."
I am struggling to recall RIM selling a million of anything in a weekend.
I don't think there's any debate that many, many people prefer an iPhone to a Blackberry. It's no skin off RIM's nose, of course: before the iPhone, these people simply used feature phones, because the Blackberry was more expensive and didn't have compelling features, like multimedia, a good web browser, etc. It still doesn't, for the most part. So what if your Pearl has 5 bars if the web browser doesn't have teh snappy and there is no app store?
It is like Starbucks getting into the light bulb industry and telling GE they're doing it wrong.
Strangely enough, there were people from time to time that argued that GE was doing it wrong, mainly by building planned obsolescence into the bulbs, and tried to bring competing solutions to market. Luckily for GE they had a cartel that allowed them to not "in-dignify" themselves with a market response.
Not saying that RIM and Nokia are a cartel or anything, but if they want to assert their superiority it's not reasonable for them to do it on the back of their "reputation" or any such nonsense. Nokia makes phones with OK reception -- their OS's suck, however, and smartphones require both.
but based on some AT&T statements in the past, it's probably between 1 and 2%, meaning that 1 additional dropped call per 100 *calls* is a good 50 to 100% increase.
This is a bit like being stuck on the roadside arguing with your girlfriend about how much gas you put in the tank at the last stop: "We had half a gallon left, and I put in half a gallon! I INCREASED OUR FUEL BY 100%!"
As long as no one is arguing over numbers and talking about anecdotes and "priorities" or whatever, this should be maximally annoying...
One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity.
It must be particularly galling to RIM that a lot of people prefer even an iPhone that drops calls to a Blackberry that doesn't, even when people are given the option to return their iPhone at no cost to them.
I thought it had more to do with the fact that the closer to the equator you get, the easier it is to launch into orbit.
Note well, this only explains KSC, and even then, the US does have territorial possessions in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. What Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands lack is congressmen.
Slashdot has for a long time had a way of filtering the trolls out,
What system would that be, homeslice? The moderation only works on posts that are of the generic-troll or meme-troll variety -- like "HOT GRITS" or "OBAMA is a N1&&3r" or somesuch. When trolls troll from a point of view, then it becomes much more subjective. Meta-moderation is very much a crapshoot and not evenly applied.
Obviously slashdot has its own cultural norms and when you come here you simply have to be aware that there's going to be some verbal abuse. A newspaper, on the other hand, doesn't really want that and doesn't want to dedicate its services and infrastructure to hosting shouting matches. The draw for a newspaper is the story, not the argument itself; this is where a newspaper and a forum are different. Any conversation on the article should facilitate understanding, perspectives, and critique of the article, and not be a sort of vanity contest.
Societies use the allocation of resources to quell dissent and foster solidarity!
Not to piss on NASA or anything, but its makeup has alway been highly pork-y. There's a reason that NASA had most of its infrastructure built in the Southern US in the mid 1960s, when the Democratic party (such as it was at the time) was splitting between segregation-oriented southerners and northern labor constituencies, and the southern congressmen were always happy to side with Republicans on labor law X unless they were able to bring home a big contract, particularly after CRA '64. Johnson and Humphrey was frantic to keep their southern constituents, who'd FDR had successfully bought off with the TVA, REA and farm subsidies, from bolting, and NASA+defense spending was the way they did it, until Nixon and southern whites swung decisively Republican.
Mission control in Houston? Engine test facility in a backwater arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama? (And Space Camp too, for heaven's sakes!) Major components built in Louisiana? Green Bank observatory in West Virginia?
Talent best case -- you sue the studio and win more than the nothing you knew you were going to get, putting up large sums of money for large risks in the legal system to get paid.
I might have been too broad in asserting that all net deals never make money. Some do, but almost never on films that cost $300 million to make and market -- they use a net kicker because occasionally it does pay off, but it's really nothing serious on huge films. Net kickers are most likely to pay on indie/genre films that breakout and get mass audience. Think more like Paranormal Activity. And that's the sort of project we really want to encourage, right? The studios give writers and actors a net kicker because that's considered the LEAST they can do, and actors and writers won't accept less; they're just as complicit in the arrangement as anyone else.
I don't find anybody's argument here that a defined net deal is some sort of fraud, used to sucker in unwitting dupes, at all convincing. Anyone who has had any modicum of interest in the film industry knows it, and people that get into the film industry are all huge movie buffs who have been reading Variety since they were ten. Hell, I was a 13-year-old growing up in Minnesota when I first learned about "Hollywood Net."
PS. I am a small guy working his ass off and I get straight salary, deferred salary with priority over gross participants, or gross. Those are my terms, and if producers don't want to pay them I don't work for them. Works for me.
In other words, it's a contract deal where one of the parties has a comprehensive ability to screw you over if they so choose. Yeah, I suppose you're stupid if you sign such a deal, but that doesn't mean it's honest or that it should be legal to make such a deal.
I'd remind you that writers do get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to write screenplays up front, they aren't dependent on the kicker to put food on the table or live in their house in Laurel Canyon. The screwing-over happens uniformly to all players and in a fully-informed way; it only seems like screwing-over to outsiders.
Besides, why is a writer entitled to a percentage of a film's receipts anyways? Good writing doesn't sell tickets; star's names and franchise recognition are the main things that draw people to theaters. When was the last time you decided to go see a movie because Kurt Wimmer or David Goyer wrote it, instead of a movie written by David Hayter or Tony Gilroy? It really doesn't make that much of a difference, in terms of how much the movie makes. (Which is something of a sad state of affairs, but it's how the market works.)
Wow, "narrow definition of net profit" = "murder". False equivalency much?
If you read the Wikipedia article, you'll discover that in Buchwald the court actually decided that the definition of "net" in the contract was unconscionable, which is what you're talking about; however, when it became clear that a ruling on the matter would completely eviscerate the payment structure of Hollywood, and potentially suck a lot of money away from financiers (you know, the people who actually pay to make the things?), everyone and their mother got Paramount to offer Buchwald a deal in exchange for the court to not make a ruling on the fairness of the "defined net" language.
And later, in Batfilm Productions v. Warner Bros. the court ruled that the customary Hollywood definition of "defined net" was conscionable, and the issue hasn't really come up since then.
Warner Bros. nominally borrowed money to pay for the production of the film, thus they pay interest on the notes they took out to fund the production, and those interest payments are counted against the total negative cost of the production. The borrowed the money at a high rate of interest, probably from an organization that isn't at arms'-length, like her parent, AOL Time Warner. That's how they keep the film unprofitable for tax purposes, but profits still can move to the parent under a more favorable tax regime. People should use the most favorable tax regime possible for their work, yes?
Without debating the merits of pirating copyright material, I'd point out that the people who sign on the dotted line for "net" deals know exactly what they're getting, which is nothing -- writers, actors, directors and "staff" (of which I guess I'm one) sign their contracts with the advice of a lawyer and a manager, and all of these people know exactly what "defined net" is, and how it's defined is completely clear in the contract. We should respect contracts, right? I can assure you whoever is complaining about their deal in TFA isn't J.K. Rowling, she's getting gross points.
The only revenue sharing deals that ever pay off are "first-dollar gross" or "dollar breakeven" deals, where the money directly from the box office is split. Net deals have always been a fantasy -- it was true when Art Buckwald sued Paramount over to Coming to America in 1990 and it's still true now. In this particular case of Harry Potter, what WB appears to have done is borrowed the money to make Order of the Phoenix at a high rate of interest, and is paying off its note so slowly that the negative cost of the film keeps going up relative to the revenue. What isn't mentioned is that Warner Bros. probably borrowed the money from AOL Time-Warner, it's parent, in the first place.:)
A lot of these features I get for free with google/android
As with all of these things, when you pay for something it means that the party you're buying from has an actual interest in delivering what they say they will, as opposed to the other model, where they let you sharecrop a corner of their server in order to funnel your eyeballs to the highest bidder.
The nice thing about paying directly for things is it eliminates that fundamental conflict of interest that the service provider has between the end users, who want all their data completely private, and his revenue-generating partners, the advertisers, who want as much timely and specific information about the end users as possible.
I am reliably informed that it is shrill and partisan to suggest that George W. Bush did anything wrong, or that any of the problems that the United States presently faces can be attributed to his or his party's consistent and passionately adopted decisions and policies. I am also informed that anyone who ever criticizes the consistent and passionately adopted policies and decisions of conservative politicians are merely criticizing George W. Bush, who was not in fact a conservative. Keep that in mind, smart guy.
There's this unfortunate bias in the language here, which I've seen other places, where a failure on the part of human beings to behave predictably and rationally is framed as a "fuck-up" or a mistake or as undesirable and destructive.
IMHO, unpredictability and unreliability is merely an aspect of being human, and is probably a long-term desirable trait. All of the analytical economic models and "efficent market" theorizing that people indulge in is really just a way for powerful, influential, and ideologically-motivated people to obliterate the individual and free will, and is just a new kind of determinism.
Generally speaking when an investment banker says "I lost money to a fuckup," what they're really saying is "I bet that people would do the same goddamn stupid thing today that they did yesterday, and goddamn it they didn't." Who's the fool?
why they released this product in the first place? Is their management really so out of touch they thought this had potential?
They paid a small fortune to buy Danger and the Sidekick platform, and couldn't admit that they got taken and bought something that was obsolete, if transiently popular at the time they bought it. Notice that Robbie Bach, MS VP of entertainment and devices, the guy who made the call to buy Danger, was eased out of the company a few weeks ago.
If someone makes money by selling a good phone they'll continue making good phones. If someone can't make money by selling good phones, but can only make money through adsense, they'll primarily focus on improving adsense. If remotely installing and deleting software pisses off the customer, the first guy probably won't do it, but the second guy probably will as long as it doesn't significantly affect ad revenues, since that's who pays him.
Google didn't open-source Android because they like you or because they are cool, they did so in order to spread the reach of their advertising platform and services. That's it's purpose. Apple (or Palm or RIM for that matter) has a lot more to lose from an angry end user than Google.
Slashdot Mirror
I assume this is when someone uses a captive bolt gun to threaten you to reveal your password...
This is a misconception. Forcing the user to write down a password allows the password to be much longer, and probably much more impervious to attack over the network. The fact that it's written down makes the password as insecure as the place where it's written down. If that place is behind a locked door, perhaps in the room containing the protected machine itself, then the password is about as secure as you could expect, since if someone can get into that room they're going to have access to everything that password protects, password or no. A sheet of paper in a wallet is also valid, since people keep extremely valuable bits of information that can be easily changed and cancelled in their wallet as well.
Encryption keys require a different sort of discipline, but again just because something is memorizable doesn't mean it absolutely better than something written down, or contained in a separate, secure place.
You have to ask, "what is this password protecting?" If it's protecting a box from network attack, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE BIG PASSWORDS AND WRITE THEM DOWN! If you're protecting data from more, ah, physical or intimate incursion, a memorized password is a start, but it had better not be the only part of the puzzle. Since network attacks are a much bigger problem these days than someone breaking into your house, the first solution is probably going to be much more practical and effective.
This is another way of arguing that people are incapable of thinking critically, or shouldn't be expected to, and I completely reject this. It's an evil thing to believe. Besides, you were able to apply your deductive genius and come up with the 100% number all by yourself using only the information at hand, so how much of a weasel job could it possibly have been? And, couldn't some member of the "mindless mass" see your argument and believe that the iPhone drops 100% of calls? Wouldn't you be responsible for that, given your assertion of Job's responsibility?
The problem with your re-characterization of the numbers is that it posits a misleading statistical trial, wherein someone makes 100 phone calls and is seeing if 99 of them go through-- the probability of him failing with an iPhone 4G is 50% to 100% greater than with a 3GS. The problem is that the trial is completely unrealistic, and nobody makes a hundred calls and keeps track of wether 1 or 2 of them fail, and the outcome of such a trial has pretty much zero practical bearing on wether a phone is considered unusable or not. The annoyance factor of a dropped call is on a call-by-call basis, and in this realistic use case, the difference between the 3GS and the 4G is, well, the difference between .4% and 1.4%.
Having to be rebooted every day
Four-hour battery life
I'd happily have a dropped call out of every 100 (or out of every 20, really) if I had a phone that never required a reboot and lasted all day. It's more than just a phone, after all -- if we were talking about a RAZR or a simple Nokia it'd be a different matter.
This is an objective statement, something known technically as a statement of fact. Something which is falsifiable. Notice the numbers and the unequivocal voice.
This is a subjective statement, something known technically as a statement of an opinion. Something which is not falsifiable. Notice the appeal to "common sense." I'm not refuting your claims because you make none, you just riff on your folk knowledge of cellphone reception, 90% of which you've acquired over the past week from sensationalist websites.
Nobody said that it was, but since you suggested it, are you able to characterize the difference as anything more than statistical noise? Or, even more to the point, are you able to characterize this statistic as being meaningful in an actual purchasing decision? That it's a problem I'm happy to concede, but is it enough of a problem that someone would rather buy a different phone, given the iPhone's other features? That's the criteria in question here, and it's much more to-the-point than "100% more dropped calls."
Keep in mind that RIM's smartphone market share, though greater, isn't insanely greater than Apple's market share -- last we saw it was 35% versus 27 %, with RIM falling and Apple rising in Q1 2010 (who knows where it is now), and even given that disparity Apple still takes a greater share of the profits and has higher customer satisfaction. The iPhone solution is simply more profitable to the producer and more beneficial to more buyers than Blackberrys.
I am struggling to recall RIM selling a million of anything in a weekend.
I don't think there's any debate that many, many people prefer an iPhone to a Blackberry. It's no skin off RIM's nose, of course: before the iPhone, these people simply used feature phones, because the Blackberry was more expensive and didn't have compelling features, like multimedia, a good web browser, etc. It still doesn't, for the most part. So what if your Pearl has 5 bars if the web browser doesn't have teh snappy and there is no app store?
Strangely enough, there were people from time to time that argued that GE was doing it wrong, mainly by building planned obsolescence into the bulbs, and tried to bring competing solutions to market. Luckily for GE they had a cartel that allowed them to not "in-dignify" themselves with a market response.
Not saying that RIM and Nokia are a cartel or anything, but if they want to assert their superiority it's not reasonable for them to do it on the back of their "reputation" or any such nonsense. Nokia makes phones with OK reception -- their OS's suck, however, and smartphones require both.
This assertion is not captured in the statistic. It's merely truthy unless you can find support for it.
Watch your weasel words: "tend to," "likely."
This is a bit like being stuck on the roadside arguing with your girlfriend about how much gas you put in the tank at the last stop: "We had half a gallon left, and I put in half a gallon! I INCREASED OUR FUEL BY 100%!"
As long as no one is arguing over numbers and talking about anecdotes and "priorities" or whatever, this should be maximally annoying...
It must be particularly galling to RIM that a lot of people prefer even an iPhone that drops calls to a Blackberry that doesn't, even when people are given the option to return their iPhone at no cost to them.
Note well, this only explains KSC, and even then, the US does have territorial possessions in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. What Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands lack is congressmen.
What system would that be, homeslice? The moderation only works on posts that are of the generic-troll or meme-troll variety -- like "HOT GRITS" or "OBAMA is a N1&&3r" or somesuch. When trolls troll from a point of view, then it becomes much more subjective. Meta-moderation is very much a crapshoot and not evenly applied.
Obviously slashdot has its own cultural norms and when you come here you simply have to be aware that there's going to be some verbal abuse. A newspaper, on the other hand, doesn't really want that and doesn't want to dedicate its services and infrastructure to hosting shouting matches. The draw for a newspaper is the story, not the argument itself; this is where a newspaper and a forum are different. Any conversation on the article should facilitate understanding, perspectives, and critique of the article, and not be a sort of vanity contest.
Boston.com did a very interesting article recently on the average anonymous poster. And to be honest, I don't see why these people spout off about half the crap they do. They just want attention, and it isn't a newspapers job to host vanity projects.
Societies use the allocation of resources to quell dissent and foster solidarity!
Not to piss on NASA or anything, but its makeup has alway been highly pork-y. There's a reason that NASA had most of its infrastructure built in the Southern US in the mid 1960s, when the Democratic party (such as it was at the time) was splitting between segregation-oriented southerners and northern labor constituencies, and the southern congressmen were always happy to side with Republicans on labor law X unless they were able to bring home a big contract, particularly after CRA '64. Johnson and Humphrey was frantic to keep their southern constituents, who'd FDR had successfully bought off with the TVA, REA and farm subsidies, from bolting, and NASA+defense spending was the way they did it, until Nixon and southern whites swung decisively Republican.
Mission control in Houston? Engine test facility in a backwater arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama? (And Space Camp too, for heaven's sakes!) Major components built in Louisiana? Green Bank observatory in West Virginia?
I might have been too broad in asserting that all net deals never make money. Some do, but almost never on films that cost $300 million to make and market -- they use a net kicker because occasionally it does pay off, but it's really nothing serious on huge films. Net kickers are most likely to pay on indie/genre films that breakout and get mass audience. Think more like Paranormal Activity. And that's the sort of project we really want to encourage, right? The studios give writers and actors a net kicker because that's considered the LEAST they can do, and actors and writers won't accept less; they're just as complicit in the arrangement as anyone else.
I don't find anybody's argument here that a defined net deal is some sort of fraud, used to sucker in unwitting dupes, at all convincing. Anyone who has had any modicum of interest in the film industry knows it, and people that get into the film industry are all huge movie buffs who have been reading Variety since they were ten. Hell, I was a 13-year-old growing up in Minnesota when I first learned about "Hollywood Net."
PS. I am a small guy working his ass off and I get straight salary, deferred salary with priority over gross participants, or gross. Those are my terms, and if producers don't want to pay them I don't work for them. Works for me.
People who sign deals are entitled to what is described on the contract, and not some slashdotter's vague and uninformed concept of equity.
I'd remind you that writers do get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to write screenplays up front, they aren't dependent on the kicker to put food on the table or live in their house in Laurel Canyon. The screwing-over happens uniformly to all players and in a fully-informed way; it only seems like screwing-over to outsiders.
Besides, why is a writer entitled to a percentage of a film's receipts anyways? Good writing doesn't sell tickets; star's names and franchise recognition are the main things that draw people to theaters. When was the last time you decided to go see a movie because Kurt Wimmer or David Goyer wrote it, instead of a movie written by David Hayter or Tony Gilroy? It really doesn't make that much of a difference, in terms of how much the movie makes. (Which is something of a sad state of affairs, but it's how the market works.)
Wow, "narrow definition of net profit" = "murder". False equivalency much?
If you read the Wikipedia article, you'll discover that in Buchwald the court actually decided that the definition of "net" in the contract was unconscionable, which is what you're talking about; however, when it became clear that a ruling on the matter would completely eviscerate the payment structure of Hollywood, and potentially suck a lot of money away from financiers (you know, the people who actually pay to make the things?), everyone and their mother got Paramount to offer Buchwald a deal in exchange for the court to not make a ruling on the fairness of the "defined net" language.
And later, in Batfilm Productions v. Warner Bros. the court ruled that the customary Hollywood definition of "defined net" was conscionable, and the issue hasn't really come up since then.
Warner Bros. nominally borrowed money to pay for the production of the film, thus they pay interest on the notes they took out to fund the production, and those interest payments are counted against the total negative cost of the production. The borrowed the money at a high rate of interest, probably from an organization that isn't at arms'-length, like her parent, AOL Time Warner. That's how they keep the film unprofitable for tax purposes, but profits still can move to the parent under a more favorable tax regime. People should use the most favorable tax regime possible for their work, yes?
Without debating the merits of pirating copyright material, I'd point out that the people who sign on the dotted line for "net" deals know exactly what they're getting, which is nothing -- writers, actors, directors and "staff" (of which I guess I'm one) sign their contracts with the advice of a lawyer and a manager, and all of these people know exactly what "defined net" is, and how it's defined is completely clear in the contract. We should respect contracts, right? I can assure you whoever is complaining about their deal in TFA isn't J.K. Rowling, she's getting gross points.
The only revenue sharing deals that ever pay off are "first-dollar gross" or "dollar breakeven" deals, where the money directly from the box office is split. Net deals have always been a fantasy -- it was true when Art Buckwald sued Paramount over to Coming to America in 1990 and it's still true now. In this particular case of Harry Potter, what WB appears to have done is borrowed the money to make Order of the Phoenix at a high rate of interest, and is paying off its note so slowly that the negative cost of the film keeps going up relative to the revenue. What isn't mentioned is that Warner Bros. probably borrowed the money from AOL Time-Warner, it's parent, in the first place. :)
As with all of these things, when you pay for something it means that the party you're buying from has an actual interest in delivering what they say they will, as opposed to the other model, where they let you sharecrop a corner of their server in order to funnel your eyeballs to the highest bidder.
The nice thing about paying directly for things is it eliminates that fundamental conflict of interest that the service provider has between the end users, who want all their data completely private, and his revenue-generating partners, the advertisers, who want as much timely and specific information about the end users as possible.
A modeled person is no person at all. When someone models your behavior, they turn you into a thing.
I am reliably informed that it is shrill and partisan to suggest that George W. Bush did anything wrong, or that any of the problems that the United States presently faces can be attributed to his or his party's consistent and passionately adopted decisions and policies. I am also informed that anyone who ever criticizes the consistent and passionately adopted policies and decisions of conservative politicians are merely criticizing George W. Bush, who was not in fact a conservative. Keep that in mind, smart guy.
/s
There's this unfortunate bias in the language here, which I've seen other places, where a failure on the part of human beings to behave predictably and rationally is framed as a "fuck-up" or a mistake or as undesirable and destructive.
IMHO, unpredictability and unreliability is merely an aspect of being human, and is probably a long-term desirable trait. All of the analytical economic models and "efficent market" theorizing that people indulge in is really just a way for powerful, influential, and ideologically-motivated people to obliterate the individual and free will, and is just a new kind of determinism.
Generally speaking when an investment banker says "I lost money to a fuckup," what they're really saying is "I bet that people would do the same goddamn stupid thing today that they did yesterday, and goddamn it they didn't." Who's the fool?
They paid a small fortune to buy Danger and the Sidekick platform, and couldn't admit that they got taken and bought something that was obsolete, if transiently popular at the time they bought it. Notice that Robbie Bach, MS VP of entertainment and devices, the guy who made the call to buy Danger, was eased out of the company a few weeks ago.
Google didn't open-source Android because they like you or because they are cool, they did so in order to spread the reach of their advertising platform and services. That's it's purpose. Apple (or Palm or RIM for that matter) has a lot more to lose from an angry end user than Google.