Of course, if you poll automatically, and often enough, you effectively have 'push' anyway. Perhaps this is what the iphone does. I've never had direct experience of using email on an ordinary cell phone or on a Treo or similar device. I was under the impression that you had to explicitly retrieve your email. Is that correct, or does a Treo poll as well?
The point is that when you turn the phone 'off' it should not go to standby. That is the design error. It's an error in the UI, not in the operational characteristics of the device. The BlackBerry device, by comparison, turns the radio off when you turn the device off.
Not at all. The BlackBerry network 'pushes' the email to your device when the device is active and on. That is it's key advantage - you don't have to explicitly retrieve your email.
It would appear (I don't have one so I don't really know) that the 'iphone' has some kind of push system as well. This report is not a small problem - it would appear to be an egregious design error in Apple's push system.
Buy a BlackBerry. Their servers hold the e-mails until you turn your device back on. The Apple 'ethos' will never work for phones. It's not the device, it's the network, stupid. This is too much for Apple to handle, clearly.
Interesting and insightful response. Glad you posted it; this thread has been well worth reading.
One issue I do have with Google, Yahoo, et al. is that they are quick to assert their 'editorial' rights when they refuse an advertiser (and I agree that not only should they have the right, but that they should exercise it). However, when they do publish something egregious - be it child porn, whatever, they are as quick to assert that they - like a telephone company - have no control of what passes through their search engine.
There's an inconsistency between their advertising and content policy that I'm not totally comfortable with. I can see why each exists, but is this for the best?
Interesting link. There's also the BlackBerry of course, and - anything left of Palm? But my point - that the best man may not always win, esp when Microsoft is busy working on the rules.
This sabre rattling against Linux has potential adverse effects for the entire economy, if Microsoft is able to push Windows into every corner. Windows is just terrible in certain situations, such as ATMs and aruably, pocket PCs and handheld devices.
Perhaps the government should be looking into anti-trust; we need to see competition in the market place for operating systems.
NBC advertising their own shows is quite a different thing from Google advertising their products. No-one would object to Google ads touting themselves as the best search index or telling us about other search index features. Your analogy of NBC to Google would only apply if NBC sold items other than TV shows. For example, if NBC sold books, advertised them on their stations and used Oprah to promo them (I don't know - is Oprah on NBC? assume she is). That would put Simon & Shuster and other publishers at a distinct disadvantage in launching their own product as best sellers.
Now can you see why software companies might not like Google advertising its own software products?
Whether you should or should not work with a competitor depends on how much harm extends from doing so. The examples you cite aren't very good ones. Years ago in our town you had to drive an American car to do business with auto suppliers - which was nonsense. Similarly with Microsoft employees using iPods. It does no harm to Microsoft for them to do so.
But your example of the "word processing company" is a quite different matter. There's no question that Wordperfect for Windows could not compete against Word and that was the end of WordPerfect. Unfortunately, there was no operating system alternative for WordPerfect to work with so they were done for dinner at the moment Microsoft decided to develop a word processor.
The whole business of alliances and who works with who is complicated and interesting and does not come down to the best deal or the best alternative winning out in any given situation.
Companies tend to work within one layer in an industry in order to avoid competing with their customers. It happens all the time. I once worked for a software company that was bought by a hardware vendor. They had to withdraw some of their software offerings to avoid competing with the hardware vendor's dealers (who wrote and sold competing software).
The companies that go 'vertical', do so when they think they can knock out everyone else in the layer. Take Microsoft going into Accounting software. They make enemies (okay, competitors) out of Accounting software vendors that used to support them. So if Microsoft is going to move into another layer - they better do it in a big way.
Selling a service to customers who compete with you in other areas is always a dicey strategy. It's also known as vertical integration - controlling multiple levels in the supply chain. The risk with that strategy is that lower levels in the supply chain which you control may have difficulty selling their product to your competitors. If I was a spreadsheet or mapping software company (Microsoft), would I use Google to advertise? If I had currency handling (Paypal) software would I use Google to advertise? Not if I could help it - why help the competition. Unless the competition has a monopoly, then you have to deal with them.
If Google becomes a major software player they may have to divest the search business and set it up as a wholly owned subsidiary working at arm's length.
No. There's a huge difference between a fair exchange of your labour for a reasonable wage, and performing an act you don't want to do as a last resort in order to obtain just enough money to survive. That could be working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage because you don't have even basic language skills to do anything else, or making a fast buck acting in a porn flick. Neither of these situations is necessarily exploitative, but sometimes they are.
Interesting comments. My eyes glaze over when I start to read about the ins and outs of DRM - I'm not referring to your post here - just to say that I'm not knowledgeable on the subject and I think most consumers don't care a lot about it either as long as they can do most of the things they want to do. And they tend to learn by trial and error. That's why allowing someone to keep a copy of a song for only 3 days (or whatever the condition was) is a bad idea. First you give someone a song and then take it away. This will just annoy users and provide a quick exit for the Zune to the electronic toy graveyard most people have in a dresser somewhere.
Personally, I only buy CDs, but I have observed that my adult children don't mind the 'itunes' restrictions because they can still burn a number of copies of their downloaded songs for mix CDs - as many as they'd ever want to. But their preferred method of song acquisition for the 'ipod' is still to buy a CD and rip the songs. 'itunes' is a secondary source.
With regards to the 'verticality' of Apple's and MS's solution, I would think that that's why we have anti-trust, competition review, et al. To my ethical sense (not a legal opinion), 'itunes' should be required to publish a connection standard for their site that could be used by other player manufacturers, but that's just me.
This article gets my vote for the most unconvincing column of the year. One seemingly small point is that the ipod works with a Windows PC, but a Zune won't work with a Mac. Part of Microsoft's problem is that they're glasses are always coloured Microsoft, which may help when you're in a monopoly position, but not here.
On a potential market share basis it doesn't matter that Zune won't work with a Mac. But from a perception point of view it leaves Microsoft standing out in left field. Ipod and itunes are a 'de facto' standard, and for the Zune to sell, it should work with itunes and it should work with a Mac. And an ipod be supported by MS's new music service. If you can't bring on the device with that kind of interchangeability, the consumer won't buy it because the device is making life too complicated.
I don't disagree with what you're saying. The stats I cite don't refute his stats. My objection is to the hyperbole, "Sony is in charge and is the sole driving force in the console industry". The WSJ article suggests that this claim isn't tenable.
When you read this post and a few that follow, it sounds like we're trying to find out who is number 1. Who is winning? Is this an answerable question? Can you even compare the 360 to the PS/2? Do sales matter, or does net income matter more?
For the game companies, it's an interesting dynamic. Coming up with a sales winner doesn't guarantee that you survive. It just lets you roll the dice one more time for the next round; your last success lets you load the dice more. I like the way Nintendo has hung in there. The big problem is getting playable and interesting games, which is a question that almost depends more on corporate culture than how much capital you have to work with.
Your post sounds suspicious so I ran a search on the WSJ. An article posted on 28 July 2006, states:
"The games division, Sony Computer Entertainment, reported a 26.8 billion yen operating loss in the April-June quarter due to research-and-development costs for the PlayStation 3. Division sales fell 29% as fewer consumers bought PlayStation 2 consoles in anticipation of the next model."
I'm not a teen, I'm in my fifties. The poll implies that teens don't know any better; more silly ad campaigns are needed. I give teens more credit: they understand the record industry position, but don't agree with it. Most teens have MP3s they've copied, and MP3s they've paid for, CDs they've copied AND CDs they've paid for. Typically teens have only so much money to spend, and they will purchase CDs and downloads of their very favourite artists.
The solution for the music industry is to see CD and MP3 copying as a new kind of radio. Leverage the trend instead of fighting it. How about a web site that provides free copies of every song commercially available but at a lower bit rate, or with a 5 second commercial on its tail! The net effect of such a free site will be that teens, and others, will discover more music and buy more CDs and downloads of the songs they like the most. For a critical mass of music listeners, the convenience and enjoyment of using such a site will outweigh the tedious process of copying CDs or downloading using peer-to-peer software. But only if the free downloads work reasonably WELL and the site is interesting.
Was I being ironic or sarcastic? Is sarcasm simply a sub-class of irony? I believe dramatic irony involves a statement where the intended meaning is opposite or different from the literal meaning of the words. So I think I was being ironic.
As opposed to the kind of irony imputed to the pres of Iran. Irony in an action occurs when an effect is different from what one would expect given the cause, or where a characteristic is incongruent with its context or situation. Irany, as you mention, would be Iranic irony.
Let's see. A tyranny that restricts others' use of communication media while at the same time fully exploiting it's potential for propoganda purposes. That is unusual.
I agree with almost everything you say except that Lumines is an inferior version of Tetris with disco music and the rounded back of the PSP makes for a lousy paperweight.
"The bottom line is that the place we need to be concentrating our efforts for voter reform is on the process rather than the specific technologies used to tally votes."
I agree with this statement and nothing else you've said. The burden of proof is on you (or Diebold, actually) to show why these machines are 'better', not 'as good', in comparison to a paper ballot. Because they are complicated and expensive. If they're only 'as good' as the old way, why bother.
Further, my fear is that electronic voting systems will make us lazy. Paper systems require manual counting. They require scrutiny. And if as a country, America doesn't have the guts or resilience or principle to prevent ballot stuffing or fraud, they don't deserve democracy. I trust paper ballots because I trust, not in every circumstance, but by and large, in the will of the people. Electronic fraud is much more surreptitious and more difficult for ordinary people to prevent. The irony is that the more secure the electronic voting process is made, the less open it is, the less scrutinizable it is, and the less it is trusted by ordinary people.
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Of course, if you poll automatically, and often enough, you effectively have 'push' anyway. Perhaps this is what the iphone does. I've never had direct experience of using email on an ordinary cell phone or on a Treo or similar device. I was under the impression that you had to explicitly retrieve your email. Is that correct, or does a Treo poll as well?
The point is that when you turn the phone 'off' it should not go to standby. That is the design error. It's an error in the UI, not in the operational characteristics of the device. The BlackBerry device, by comparison, turns the radio off when you turn the device off.
Your cell phone is not set up to have emails pushed to it. It looks like a major design snafu to me.
Not at all. The BlackBerry network 'pushes' the email to your device when the device is active and on. That is it's key advantage - you don't have to explicitly retrieve your email. It would appear (I don't have one so I don't really know) that the 'iphone' has some kind of push system as well. This report is not a small problem - it would appear to be an egregious design error in Apple's push system.
Buy a BlackBerry. Their servers hold the e-mails until you turn your device back on. The Apple 'ethos' will never work for phones. It's not the device, it's the network, stupid. This is too much for Apple to handle, clearly.
Ahh! So I should actually be washing my hands in my urine.
A special case of the LIFO stack is the FISH stack. First in stays here.
Interesting and insightful response. Glad you posted it; this thread has been well worth reading. One issue I do have with Google, Yahoo, et al. is that they are quick to assert their 'editorial' rights when they refuse an advertiser (and I agree that not only should they have the right, but that they should exercise it). However, when they do publish something egregious - be it child porn, whatever, they are as quick to assert that they - like a telephone company - have no control of what passes through their search engine. There's an inconsistency between their advertising and content policy that I'm not totally comfortable with. I can see why each exists, but is this for the best?
Interesting link. There's also the BlackBerry of course, and - anything left of Palm? But my point - that the best man may not always win, esp when Microsoft is busy working on the rules.
This sabre rattling against Linux has potential adverse effects for the entire economy, if Microsoft is able to push Windows into every corner. Windows is just terrible in certain situations, such as ATMs and aruably, pocket PCs and handheld devices. Perhaps the government should be looking into anti-trust; we need to see competition in the market place for operating systems.
NBC advertising their own shows is quite a different thing from Google advertising their products. No-one would object to Google ads touting themselves as the best search index or telling us about other search index features. Your analogy of NBC to Google would only apply if NBC sold items other than TV shows. For example, if NBC sold books, advertised them on their stations and used Oprah to promo them (I don't know - is Oprah on NBC? assume she is). That would put Simon & Shuster and other publishers at a distinct disadvantage in launching their own product as best sellers. Now can you see why software companies might not like Google advertising its own software products?
But your example of the "word processing company" is a quite different matter. There's no question that Wordperfect for Windows could not compete against Word and that was the end of WordPerfect. Unfortunately, there was no operating system alternative for WordPerfect to work with so they were done for dinner at the moment Microsoft decided to develop a word processor.
The whole business of alliances and who works with who is complicated and interesting and does not come down to the best deal or the best alternative winning out in any given situation.
Companies tend to work within one layer in an industry in order to avoid competing with their customers. It happens all the time. I once worked for a software company that was bought by a hardware vendor. They had to withdraw some of their software offerings to avoid competing with the hardware vendor's dealers (who wrote and sold competing software).
The companies that go 'vertical', do so when they think they can knock out everyone else in the layer. Take Microsoft going into Accounting software. They make enemies (okay, competitors) out of Accounting software vendors that used to support them. So if Microsoft is going to move into another layer - they better do it in a big way.
Selling a service to customers who compete with you in other areas is always a dicey strategy. It's also known as vertical integration - controlling multiple levels in the supply chain. The risk with that strategy is that lower levels in the supply chain which you control may have difficulty selling their product to your competitors. If I was a spreadsheet or mapping software company (Microsoft), would I use Google to advertise? If I had currency handling (Paypal) software would I use Google to advertise? Not if I could help it - why help the competition. Unless the competition has a monopoly, then you have to deal with them. If Google becomes a major software player they may have to divest the search business and set it up as a wholly owned subsidiary working at arm's length.
No. There's a huge difference between a fair exchange of your labour for a reasonable wage, and performing an act you don't want to do as a last resort in order to obtain just enough money to survive. That could be working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage because you don't have even basic language skills to do anything else, or making a fast buck acting in a porn flick. Neither of these situations is necessarily exploitative, but sometimes they are.
Personally, I only buy CDs, but I have observed that my adult children don't mind the 'itunes' restrictions because they can still burn a number of copies of their downloaded songs for mix CDs - as many as they'd ever want to. But their preferred method of song acquisition for the 'ipod' is still to buy a CD and rip the songs. 'itunes' is a secondary source.
With regards to the 'verticality' of Apple's and MS's solution, I would think that that's why we have anti-trust, competition review, et al. To my ethical sense (not a legal opinion), 'itunes' should be required to publish a connection standard for their site that could be used by other player manufacturers, but that's just me.
On a potential market share basis it doesn't matter that Zune won't work with a Mac. But from a perception point of view it leaves Microsoft standing out in left field. Ipod and itunes are a 'de facto' standard, and for the Zune to sell, it should work with itunes and it should work with a Mac. And an ipod be supported by MS's new music service. If you can't bring on the device with that kind of interchangeability, the consumer won't buy it because the device is making life too complicated.
When you read this post and a few that follow, it sounds like we're trying to find out who is number 1. Who is winning? Is this an answerable question? Can you even compare the 360 to the PS/2? Do sales matter, or does net income matter more?
For the game companies, it's an interesting dynamic. Coming up with a sales winner doesn't guarantee that you survive. It just lets you roll the dice one more time for the next round; your last success lets you load the dice more. I like the way Nintendo has hung in there. The big problem is getting playable and interesting games, which is a question that almost depends more on corporate culture than how much capital you have to work with.
The solution for the music industry is to see CD and MP3 copying as a new kind of radio. Leverage the trend instead of fighting it. How about a web site that provides free copies of every song commercially available but at a lower bit rate, or with a 5 second commercial on its tail! The net effect of such a free site will be that teens, and others, will discover more music and buy more CDs and downloads of the songs they like the most. For a critical mass of music listeners, the convenience and enjoyment of using such a site will outweigh the tedious process of copying CDs or downloading using peer-to-peer software. But only if the free downloads work reasonably WELL and the site is interesting.
If you can't beat them, join them.
Thanks for clearing that up...
Was I being ironic or sarcastic? Is sarcasm simply a sub-class of irony? I believe dramatic irony involves a statement where the intended meaning is opposite or different from the literal meaning of the words. So I think I was being ironic. As opposed to the kind of irony imputed to the pres of Iran. Irony in an action occurs when an effect is different from what one would expect given the cause, or where a characteristic is incongruent with its context or situation. Irany, as you mention, would be Iranic irony.
Let's see. A tyranny that restricts others' use of communication media while at the same time fully exploiting it's potential for propoganda purposes. That is unusual.
I was Hungary so I went to Burgerlaria to eat a Turkey but it had way too much Greece.
I agree with almost everything you say except that Lumines is an inferior version of Tetris with disco music and the rounded back of the PSP makes for a lousy paperweight.
I agree with this statement and nothing else you've said. The burden of proof is on you (or Diebold, actually) to show why these machines are 'better', not 'as good', in comparison to a paper ballot. Because they are complicated and expensive. If they're only 'as good' as the old way, why bother.
Further, my fear is that electronic voting systems will make us lazy. Paper systems require manual counting. They require scrutiny. And if as a country, America doesn't have the guts or resilience or principle to prevent ballot stuffing or fraud, they don't deserve democracy. I trust paper ballots because I trust, not in every circumstance, but by and large, in the will of the people. Electronic fraud is much more surreptitious and more difficult for ordinary people to prevent. The irony is that the more secure the electronic voting process is made, the less open it is, the less scrutinizable it is, and the less it is trusted by ordinary people.
Schumacher lives!