In practical terms, however, the seizure of the laptop is what can freeze a traveller. Obviously, if I have sensitive information, I will probably not keep it on my laptop at all, but in either a small storage device or on a network, encrypted and secure. But if I'm a business or academic traveller, the seizure of a laptop can paralyze my work. If I'm important and wealthy enough to either be given or buy a new laptop immediately on the other end of security, that's fine. But many of us are neither. And we often need specialized software to work.
If they are looking for an excuse to hang you, they've made it clear that they don't even need data any more.
A unity of experience is the feeling that you are running one system, instead of a machine that is running hundreds of little tools. Your car is actually hundreds of little machines, yet you have the experience of operating only one: the car. The elements of the interface: the steering wheel, the clutch, the brake, the dashboard - we perceptually integrate them into a single device.
That is not the unix experience.
What you are complaining about is an application bug. It is so far removed in nature and scale from the aspects of the user experience that I'm talking about, it's buggers belief.
None of those issues are the real obstacle to the mainstream adoption of Linux, at least not directly.
These are the main obstacles:
1. a lack of unity of experience. The unix way is great for system admins and people who like "a lot of little tools doing well-defined small things well". That is exactly what a desktop user, generally, doesn't want. An end-user is interested in their work, not the computer's work: they (and since I left IT, that includes me) want my components to integrate smoothly. This means an address book that intelligently talks to my mail client, which is aware of my calendar. It means not only that the menu navigations are both consistent across applications and let me do what I want to do with information that is only one or two clicks away from being revealed to me, but that default settings generally work and that any customizations I do are unlikely to be harmful.
2. "the Linux community" is not a unified development team. There is no final decision maker. There is no unifying vision. This make Linux a great place to a. learn stuff, b. experiment, c. scratch unusual and idiosyncratic itches. There are, of course, distributions that try to introduce more discipline and restraint, but then they run afoul of the fact that 3rd parties are developing for "Linux," not so much for this or that flavor of Ubuntu or what-have-you. In short, distros are small neighborhoods.
3. Advertised and guaranteed hardware support. I have a MacBook. While not every peripheral in the world supports Mac, I can look at the packaging of a peripheral and see a "Mac" logo on it, and buy it without breaking a sweat. In Linux, not only do I need to Google, but I should probably check SKUs, versions, warnings, etc.
There have been militant and aggressive variants of Buddhism for hundreds of years. Some of the monasteries of Heian Japan were virtual fortresses, and were ultimately destroyed after getting involved in dynastic conflicts.
I see the Apple aficionados are starting to repeat this. It's not so:
From the article -
For permanent digital downloads, NMPA is proposing a rate of 15 cents per track because the costs involved are much less than for physical products. The RIAA has proposed the outrageous rate of approximately 5 - 5.5 cents per track, and DiMA is proposing even less.
For permanent digital downloads, NMPA is proposing a rate of 15 cents per track because the costs involved are much less than for physical products. The RIAA has proposed the outrageous rate of approximately 5 - 5.5 cents per track, and DiMA is proposing even less.
The problem with taxing consumption over income is that it puts a heavier burden on the poor. The poor have little choice but to spend most of their income on goods, almost as soon as they earn it. The middle classes are usually not much better off, though they can sometimes squirrel away savings. The wealthy have a lot more flexibility with their money, and can defer consumption indefinitely, move money off-shore or into other currencies, etc. It is also easier to adjust an income tax so that the poor don't have to pay it: this kind of adjustment is nearly impossible with consumption-based taxes.
This is the other deal-breaker for me, as well. I travel internationally a great deal, spending as much as 3 to 4 months outside the country. I set up call-forwarding, and have a couple different pay-as-you-go SIMs from different countries. Like a lot of heavy travelers, SIM-swapping is a basic requirement.
Can't do this on an iPhone without breaking the warranty.
The problem for Apple is that there is probably a pretty big overlap between people who would otherwise be interested in an iPhone and people who travel internationally a great deal.
Where did you get that information? T-Mobile owns most of its own network, and in fact, in some markets, provides connection services to AT&T. AT&T may cover more square miles of in-between space, but in terms of the major population centers, T-Mobile has the edge. (Incidental pun unintended.)
Neither of those elements - multi-touch nor a full-function web browser on a mobile device - are new. Opera has been running on mobile devices for years now. Putting multi-touch into a phone may be (though there's a cost - those of us who dial without looking at the screen lose that tactile feedback.) But you seem to be taking Apple's PR too literally.
It isn't that I don't care for it. I just don't think it is that big an advance in core usability. Because a mobile communications device is, first and foremost, about communications, particularly voice communications, and about the service experience. Apple doesn't control that. AT&T does.
If the iPhone were available on T-Mobile, I would probably get the next iteration of it, or at least consider it. But it isn't a usability miracle, neither as a phone nor as a PDA. Apple is a design company first and foremost: they aren't a service company, and I don't believe they yet know how to integrate with communications services a la Blackberry.
What do you need to get done on an iPhone that you couldn't easily get done before? Unlike the PC, where sometimes I felt iI was struggling against the interface, with the mobile phone, I first and foremost felt I was struggling with the vendor.
I am using a MacBook. I have an iPod. The first is a significant improvement over the alternatives in usability, the second an incremental one. The iPhone, in the context of the existing use skills of its market, has an interesting UI. But it is more entertaining and fun, than it is a real usability improvement.
The way a Mac enthusiast uses the phrase "getting it" strikes me as somewhat cultish.
Brand loyalty is a funny thing. I'm not going with the iPhone because T-Mobile earned my loyalty, by providing excellent service over the past several years, and offering me a lot of good phones. I have given them more money than I have given any single computer software or hardware manufacturer (and I am writing this on a MacBook.)
I know that I'm not alone in placing a service-provider over a hardware-manufacturer in terms of customer loyalty priorities. If I have problems with my hardware, T-Mobile will help me with it and replace it if need be - that option is not transitive (in that Apple will not help me with a problem with an AT&T account.)
Talk to T-Mobile customers, I think you'll hear similar remarks. They aren't perfect, but after 4 - yes, 4 - other wireless carriers, they're an order of magnitude better.
What may have been valid for the PC market may not apply to the phone market. Cell phones do not face resistance from the marketplace for being difficult to use or complicated, and the iPhone is not really a usability improvement over its competitors.
Doesn't logically follow. If I need medical care and I'm getting bad medical care, the solution is not necessarily less medical care. It's the right medical care.
A lot of screwed-up "public/private partnerships" are cases of trying to fix a problem with too little government, as was the response to Katrina.
With agriculture, I was thinking more of the FDA and other standards-producing bodies which mandate sanitary conditions. Of course, not every regulation is good, and many are either bad or corrupt. But that's different from the blanket presumption that things would be better without them.
I don't like corporate welfare, but the more you look at the airline bailout after 9/11, the more you'd understand how disastrous it would have been for the economy to have let that industry just collapse. Which proves my point: people move away from ideological libertarianism when they get more information about specific sectors and circumstances, which erodes the coherence of libertarianism as a principle.
And yes, when there is a regulatory mechanism, there is the possibility of the interested parties being involved. Sometimes, that's helpful, too: outdated regulations are often cleared because the industries involved make a case for removing them. The corporations have influence over the government, but so does everyone else: the government is part of the domain of public space, and is constantly and indefinitely being contested. This is a good thing.
The contrasting problem that libertarians have is that you can't just have "daddy" government (which does things like prosecuting theft and managing property rights) without some "mommy" government (providing services). The realization that government is a mechanism by which we as a society administer both rights and public services, rather than being some bizarre, alien force, is the beginning of the political maturity of a civilization.
Well, no. There are charismatic leaders who rely on division and antagonism. Obama is often awkward, though likable.
This really is a change of vision. It isn't about him per se, though he's the representative of this shift of perspective in the context of this election. The popular term of art seems to be "political realignment", but it also is an evolution of attitude, and it explains why he's popular among younger voters.
Consider this: during the Republican primaries in Florida, the lead delegates took such pains to paint their opponents as "liberals," and themselves as "true conservatives." What that tells me is that neither of them really want to be the president for that substantial percentage of the population that is, indeed conservative. They're happy with carving out a thin plurality that lets the squeak into office, and then let us sink into our national rancor. HRC is no different in this regard - she wants to be president based on her position with a coalition of interests she hobbles together: witness her attack on Obama's observation that the Republicans have, since Reagan, really been the "party of ideas."
This isn't to say that there aren't real divisions of interest and of viewpoint, but the way that those divisions are exploited, exaggerated and turned into fundamental sociocultural categories has been corrosive. It's not even partisanship per se, because there is so much cultural and identity baggage with it.
Don't you think it's telling that the one sector of the economy on which you have the most knowledge and interest is, for you and many libertarians, the one place where you conceive of an "exception" to the presumption of the optimality of non-intervention?
Perhaps if you had as abiding an interest in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation, for example, you would see more "exceptions" to the idea that regulation is bad.
Slashdot Mirror
In practical terms, however, the seizure of the laptop is what can freeze a traveller. Obviously, if I have sensitive information, I will probably not keep it on my laptop at all, but in either a small storage device or on a network, encrypted and secure. But if I'm a business or academic traveller, the seizure of a laptop can paralyze my work. If I'm important and wealthy enough to either be given or buy a new laptop immediately on the other end of security, that's fine. But many of us are neither. And we often need specialized software to work.
If they are looking for an excuse to hang you, they've made it clear that they don't even need data any more.
The thing is, that's useful advice if you want to prevent the TSA from easily looking at the data on your hard drive.
It does nothing to prevent them from seizing your laptop to begin with, which is the issue at hand right now.
There isn't a technical fix for this. The fix is political.
You missed the point of the article completely. Rather than walk you through it, I invite you to read it again, slowly.
A unity of experience is the feeling that you are running one system, instead of a machine that is running hundreds of little tools. Your car is actually hundreds of little machines, yet you have the experience of operating only one: the car. The elements of the interface: the steering wheel, the clutch, the brake, the dashboard - we perceptually integrate them into a single device.
That is not the unix experience.
What you are complaining about is an application bug. It is so far removed in nature and scale from the aspects of the user experience that I'm talking about, it's buggers belief.
They were considered the equivalent of terrorists at the time, although the term, and to some extent the concept, of a terrorist is of recent vintage.
However, many have started to identify the ultra-nationalists of Sri Lanka as Buddhist terrorists, insofar as Buddhism is very much part of the national project there. Also, there are Buddhist vigilante squads generally identified as "terrorist" operating in Thailand.
None of those issues are the real obstacle to the mainstream adoption of Linux, at least not directly.
These are the main obstacles:
1. a lack of unity of experience. The unix way is great for system admins and people who like "a lot of little tools doing well-defined small things well". That is exactly what a desktop user, generally, doesn't want. An end-user is interested in their work, not the computer's work: they (and since I left IT, that includes me) want my components to integrate smoothly. This means an address book that intelligently talks to my mail client, which is aware of my calendar. It means not only that the menu navigations are both consistent across applications and let me do what I want to do with information that is only one or two clicks away from being revealed to me, but that default settings generally work and that any customizations I do are unlikely to be harmful.
2. "the Linux community" is not a unified development team. There is no final decision maker. There is no unifying vision. This make Linux a great place to a. learn stuff, b. experiment, c. scratch unusual and idiosyncratic itches. There are, of course, distributions that try to introduce more discipline and restraint, but then they run afoul of the fact that 3rd parties are developing for "Linux," not so much for this or that flavor of Ubuntu or what-have-you. In short, distros are small neighborhoods.
3. Advertised and guaranteed hardware support. I have a MacBook. While not every peripheral in the world supports Mac, I can look at the packaging of a peripheral and see a "Mac" logo on it, and buy it without breaking a sweat. In Linux, not only do I need to Google, but I should probably check SKUs, versions, warnings, etc.
The funny thing about secular liberal humanism, is that it dispenses with Christian metaphysics but keeps Christian morality.
Also, if I had a quarter for every instance of the True Scotsman fallacy, this entire thread would make me a millionaire.
There have been militant and aggressive variants of Buddhism for hundreds of years. Some of the monasteries of Heian Japan were virtual fortresses, and were ultimately destroyed after getting involved in dynastic conflicts.
Look at the Board of Directors for the Digital Media Association (DiMA) and tell me that Apple isn't involved.
iTunes is by far the biggest internet-based music vendor, and the number-two (eMusic) isn't part of DiMA.
Just who do you think the DiMA is? Apple is by far its biggest backer, just like the BSA is first and foremost backed by Microsoft.
From the article -
The problem with taxing consumption over income is that it puts a heavier burden on the poor. The poor have little choice but to spend most of their income on goods, almost as soon as they earn it. The middle classes are usually not much better off, though they can sometimes squirrel away savings. The wealthy have a lot more flexibility with their money, and can defer consumption indefinitely, move money off-shore or into other currencies, etc. It is also easier to adjust an income tax so that the poor don't have to pay it: this kind of adjustment is nearly impossible with consumption-based taxes.
This is the other deal-breaker for me, as well. I travel internationally a great deal, spending as much as 3 to 4 months outside the country. I set up call-forwarding, and have a couple different pay-as-you-go SIMs from different countries. Like a lot of heavy travelers, SIM-swapping is a basic requirement.
Can't do this on an iPhone without breaking the warranty.
The problem for Apple is that there is probably a pretty big overlap between people who would otherwise be interested in an iPhone and people who travel internationally a great deal.
Where did you get that information? T-Mobile owns most of its own network, and in fact, in some markets, provides connection services to AT&T. AT&T may cover more square miles of in-between space, but in terms of the major population centers, T-Mobile has the edge. (Incidental pun unintended.)
In any case, T-Mobile isn't as AT&T reseller.
Neither of those elements - multi-touch nor a full-function web browser on a mobile device - are new. Opera has been running on mobile devices for years now. Putting multi-touch into a phone may be (though there's a cost - those of us who dial without looking at the screen lose that tactile feedback.) But you seem to be taking Apple's PR too literally.
While I think it is predictably over the top, I think Maddox did a good job of deflating some of the iPhone puffery.
It isn't that I don't care for it. I just don't think it is that big an advance in core usability. Because a mobile communications device is, first and foremost, about communications, particularly voice communications, and about the service experience. Apple doesn't control that. AT&T does.
If the iPhone were available on T-Mobile, I would probably get the next iteration of it, or at least consider it. But it isn't a usability miracle, neither as a phone nor as a PDA. Apple is a design company first and foremost: they aren't a service company, and I don't believe they yet know how to integrate with communications services a la Blackberry.
What do you need to get done on an iPhone that you couldn't easily get done before? Unlike the PC, where sometimes I felt iI was struggling against the interface, with the mobile phone, I first and foremost felt I was struggling with the vendor.
I am using a MacBook. I have an iPod. The first is a significant improvement over the alternatives in usability, the second an incremental one. The iPhone, in the context of the existing use skills of its market, has an interesting UI. But it is more entertaining and fun, than it is a real usability improvement.
The way a Mac enthusiast uses the phrase "getting it" strikes me as somewhat cultish.
Brand loyalty is a funny thing. I'm not going with the iPhone because T-Mobile earned my loyalty, by providing excellent service over the past several years, and offering me a lot of good phones. I have given them more money than I have given any single computer software or hardware manufacturer (and I am writing this on a MacBook.)
I know that I'm not alone in placing a service-provider over a hardware-manufacturer in terms of customer loyalty priorities. If I have problems with my hardware, T-Mobile will help me with it and replace it if need be - that option is not transitive (in that Apple will not help me with a problem with an AT&T account.)
Talk to T-Mobile customers, I think you'll hear similar remarks. They aren't perfect, but after 4 - yes, 4 - other wireless carriers, they're an order of magnitude better.
What may have been valid for the PC market may not apply to the phone market. Cell phones do not face resistance from the marketplace for being difficult to use or complicated, and the iPhone is not really a usability improvement over its competitors.
I'm surprised they didn't include the Japanese automaton dolls from the Edo period, the karakuri ningyo.
Doesn't logically follow. If I need medical care and I'm getting bad medical care, the solution is not necessarily less medical care. It's the right medical care.
A lot of screwed-up "public/private partnerships" are cases of trying to fix a problem with too little government, as was the response to Katrina.
With agriculture, I was thinking more of the FDA and other standards-producing bodies which mandate sanitary conditions. Of course, not every regulation is good, and many are either bad or corrupt. But that's different from the blanket presumption that things would be better without them.
I don't like corporate welfare, but the more you look at the airline bailout after 9/11, the more you'd understand how disastrous it would have been for the economy to have let that industry just collapse. Which proves my point: people move away from ideological libertarianism when they get more information about specific sectors and circumstances, which erodes the coherence of libertarianism as a principle.
And yes, when there is a regulatory mechanism, there is the possibility of the interested parties being involved. Sometimes, that's helpful, too: outdated regulations are often cleared because the industries involved make a case for removing them. The corporations have influence over the government, but so does everyone else: the government is part of the domain of public space, and is constantly and indefinitely being contested. This is a good thing.
The contrasting problem that libertarians have is that you can't just have "daddy" government (which does things like prosecuting theft and managing property rights) without some "mommy" government (providing services). The realization that government is a mechanism by which we as a society administer both rights and public services, rather than being some bizarre, alien force, is the beginning of the political maturity of a civilization.
Well, no. There are charismatic leaders who rely on division and antagonism. Obama is often awkward, though likable.
This really is a change of vision. It isn't about him per se, though he's the representative of this shift of perspective in the context of this election. The popular term of art seems to be "political realignment", but it also is an evolution of attitude, and it explains why he's popular among younger voters.
Consider this: during the Republican primaries in Florida, the lead delegates took such pains to paint their opponents as "liberals," and themselves as "true conservatives." What that tells me is that neither of them really want to be the president for that substantial percentage of the population that is, indeed conservative. They're happy with carving out a thin plurality that lets the squeak into office, and then let us sink into our national rancor. HRC is no different in this regard - she wants to be president based on her position with a coalition of interests she hobbles together: witness her attack on Obama's observation that the Republicans have, since Reagan, really been the "party of ideas."
This isn't to say that there aren't real divisions of interest and of viewpoint, but the way that those divisions are exploited, exaggerated and turned into fundamental sociocultural categories has been corrosive. It's not even partisanship per se, because there is so much cultural and identity baggage with it.
Don't you think it's telling that the one sector of the economy on which you have the most knowledge and interest is, for you and many libertarians, the one place where you conceive of an "exception" to the presumption of the optimality of non-intervention?
Perhaps if you had as abiding an interest in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation, for example, you would see more "exceptions" to the idea that regulation is bad.