Yes, but did they understand what the papers they signed meant, before they took the accounting classes?
This is so true. Most people don't understand what the difference between 6.3% and a 6.5% rate is, and even if they have a concept of what "compound interest" means, they probably can't do the math on it. Further, they're under a time-crunch to get the funding lined up. You have a month between when you're accepted and you have to choose. Which means you're likely to have to make the decision to go to the more expensive school without having a final loan answer. And either way, it takes a lot of self-discipline to give up going to to your first choice (that you got into) of colleges in exchange for a different (implicitly lesser) one. It's a crushing blow to students when that decision is made for them by admission boards, but it'd be even harder to say "I'm going to the public school instead of the Ivy because I don't like the loan interest rate".
I declare that: "students are a credit-unworthy lot who should thank their lucky stars that rates aren't 12% or higher."
Is basically nonsense.
It makes no more sense than saying "30 year olds are an uncreditworthy lot."
It's credit history that relates to creditworthiness, not being a student or not.
Students (and I am an undergraduate) have no credit history or employment history. Further, you don't even know that they'll graduate, and they'll likely change their intended major once they get to college. This means the loaner has exactly no history or information to go on, excepting possible co-signers.
tuition prices are so high because kids keep getting approved for loans.
No, they're high because so many kids are trying to get into schools. Supply and demand.
Student loans are enabling/helping it, but it isn't the root cause.
And what do you think makes so many kids want to go to college? The fact that student loans make it possible to go to college at those prices. In theory, demand for college would fall as tuition rises. In reality, the inability of many people to comprehend how much the loans actually cost causes them to continue to apply for expensive schools even when the economically rational thing to do might be a public school.
So I'm wondering.. what is the difference - if any - in, say, workflow and capabilities between how the iPod/iPhone(/Pre, for now) sync, and when syncing through such a plugin API?
The only real problem is that you'd need to write a program that opened when the device was connected, and then automatically synced user-selected playlists. So the user has to select which playlists to sync once and then the rest is in the background (this selection would otherwise be performed in the iPod tab in iTunes).
Performance would be slightly worse, since you're parsing this XML file twice (in iTunes and in your third party program) and iTunes Library files get pretty big when you have 30,000 song libraries, but that's only really going to be noticeable on really slow computers (and they'd notice the problem in iTunes first, not in your program). There are also file lock issues (if iTunes is changing stuff while you're syncing), but those are pretty manageable for competent engineers.
You open and read the iTunes Library XML file. This lets you see all the song and playlist information. Then you copy song files from a predictable directory structure (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist Name/Album Name/Song Name.fileextension) onto your machine. You can also directly edit the XML file to (for instance) update play counts and when it was most recently played. This method has been unchanged for a few years, and is officially supported. It does require a 3rd party application, but since Mac and Windows have triggers to launch an application if the relevant device connects, you can sync auto-magically on device connect, and all the end user has to do is determine initially which playlists they'd like to sync.
Didn't I just see a post [slashdot.org] suggesting that Apple's API has been stable for years and that the problem was that Palm wasn't actually using the API?
Yes. Palm has never used the above described API. Instead, they're trying to trick iTunes by claiming to be an iPod. The controversy is that the current version of iTunes checks that the device is both an iPod, and made by Apple. To pass that second check, Palm would have violate the USB standard (and possibly their USB licensing agreement).
How much would a pair of USB "speecs" cost?
The specification is free, but getting a Vendor ID costs between $1000 and $4000 per year. It would be the Vendor ID license that Palm would be violating.
That only applies in instances where compatibility is otherwise impossible. In this case, a second or third year CS student can write a Java program to (1) read the iTunes Library XML file, and (2) copy song files from predictable directories. They'd be using a public API that requires no license and is officially supported.
Pre owners, you know the people who paid for it, should at least get the choice to fake their USB ID. Why not? Its their equipment! Have we reached the point where we cant even humor the idea of modifying stuff we own so it works better with our own equipment?
There's a difference between Pre owners altering the USB ID and Palm violating its USB license by shipping with a fake ID.
The larger issue here is the pro-corporatist attitude so many people have and how they are bending over backwards for the companies that just want to control and lockdown their hardware for one end: profit
The issue here isn't favoring one corporation over another, it's that Palm has announced that it intends to violate the USB standard (and it's USB license).
Apple has an API that allows you to sync a third party device. The library is available as an XML file. You read it, pick the songs you want, and copy them from a predictable file structure. Those aren't particularly difficult hoops.
How do I do that? I don't even know where the song files reside, and even if I did take time to figure it out, I suspect most Itunes users have no clue.
Well, people who want to use iTunes with an alternate player can just pick up a player that supports reading non-DRM'd files out of your iTunes library. The fact that you don't know how to implement that function isn't really all that important - someone like Palm does know how*. If iTunes sync is an important feature to you, then buy a player which supports iTunes sync legally. Heck, a college student could throw together a java app like that in a week, so it's not like the legal way is an undue burden.
* - or at least, one hopes a multi-million dollar electronics company can manage to find a folder that's in a fairly predictable position (~\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music), and then copy files from it.
Large numbers of pre-orders are not an indication that a game will be successful in the MMO market. Lots of games get massive amounts of pre-orders, but few people who subscribe past the first month. Unlike console games or games without a monthly subscription, MMO business plans commonly depend on having subscription revenue, so pre-orders (while nice) are not guaranteed sales (because the preorderer might bail a month in). Further, if a lot of pre-order people bail, you wind up having to do server consolidation, which is both embarrassing to the company and disruptive to gameplay.
While I generally agree with you, it's important to note that ASCAP covers songwriters, not musicians. While you've defined a musician's performance, under your standards, a songwriter should only get paid once for writing the song, since that was the only time he actually did anything.
Well, if they're filing an amicus curiae brief, those tend more towards telling than asking. It's literally an outside party interjecting its opinion as to the law and the facts. With the court's permission, Microsoft is telling the court its opinion as to relevant facts or legal arguments not covered by the court. Strictly speaking, they're not asking the court for a specific ruling unless they're an original party or an intervener. Officially, they're telling the court what standards they think the court should apply to patents, but they have no official standing to ask the court to implement those standards, they can only offer input. Yeah, that's a technicality, but "telling" is the correct word, even if the summary isn't great.
Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?
In fact...my outrage is that the school is actively encouraging these shit for brains to go forth and share their idiocy. Writing a paper about this crap is one thing
To be fair, it's possible to construct a paper on that topic which isn't anti-science. One could simply argue that the relationship between evolution and eugenics mirrors the relationship between Christianity and the KKK - groups of people either looking for a cover under which to advance their hateful agenda, or alternatively, genuinely evil people who use an otherwise innocent system as a basis for their insanity. Simply argue that anything misapplied and used out of context causes issues.
How such a paper would be graded would be a fair indication of bias. Probably get an F, but I'd love to watch the professor's face as he reads it.
Oh no, the 'middle ground' of Google text ads came well after advertisement escalation had reached the point of flashing animated gifs, flash ads, and every form of javascript abuse imaginable. Net advertisers were already engaged in "total war" before Google came around. Google text ads were a total breath of fresh air in the middle of that shitstorm, not a 'middle ground' abandoned.
I'm sorry, I misspoke. I didn't specifically mean that Google ads pre-dated the crazy ads, I meant that text ads in general predated the crazy ads and were a middle ground. If the Internet had stayed at that level, there wouldn't be nearly the impetus to block ads.
There's also the fact that a non-trivial fraction of ads link to scams, viruses, or malware. Exactly how large that fraction is, I don't know, but the perception is that that's a danger of advertisements on all but the most respectable of sites.
Patent examiners don't generalize, but judges and juries and lawyers do. That's actually the problem - patents are awarded based on whether the strictest construction of the claims is a legitimate invention, but frequently litigated on the loosest possible construction. That's how a patent for a mix-tape kiosk winds up applying to half the internet.
I'll worry about planned obsolescence from Blizzard the day they shut down Diablo II multiplayer. My same Starcraft and Diablo II and Warcraft III are still a lot of fun on Blizzard's multiplayer servers, and are still patched and maintained. Blizzard went back and re-wrote their installers for Starcraft and Diablo II so it'd work on Intel Macs. Starcraft was (at the time) 8 years old, and Diablo II was 6 years old. Blizzard still supports them. So let's talk about planned obsolescence when Blizzard actually obsoletes a game.
The problem is that we already had a middle ground and then dumped it. The middle ground was that websites have non-invasive, relevant ads. I wouldn't go out of my way to block Google text ads, or even non-flashy image ads. But in the inevitable quest to maximize revenues, we got distracting ads, Flash ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, page-peels, random ads disguised as links that pop up when you mouse-over them, and other crazy stuff. We went from 2 ads on a page of content to 2 paragraphs on a page of ads.
People get AdBlock Plus because of the annoying ads, and then blocking the decent ads is no extra effort. The default block lists for ABP already block Google ads, just because it's an extra line on a page.
I don't mind an ad that's like "hey, you're on a computer hardware blog. Why don't you try this game?" in text, or even with a picture, over on the side. That's the middle ground. But I am gonna block a 1MB Flash ad that blocks all the content until I click it off and flashes boobies at me when I'm reading a news website (I'm looking at you, Evony).
The canonical example of this is the Ford autobiography. A 300-word-excerpt from a lengthy book was ruled not to be fair use, because it severely reduced the market for the book. The only reason anyone would buy Gerald Ford's autobiography/memoirs (no offense) was to find out "Why'd you pardon Nixon?". Since the 300 excerpted words included the answer to that question, the use was not found to be fair.
Now, that's US law, not EU law, but that's the principle involved - an excerpt that's short but captures "the heart of the work." "Luke, I am your father" does not encompass the heart of "Empire Strikes Back". It spoils a major twist, but doesn't really satisfy the desire to watch the movie.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that if a short excerpt destroys the demand for your work, then obviously your work wasn't worth a whole book or movie or article in the first place.
Rephrased, their independent claims are for the combination of (i) treating condition X with drug Y, in which (ii) the dose of drug Y is adjusted based on the inferred level of drug Y in the bloodstream. Given that treating condition X with drug Y was already known, the step of adjusting the dose would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in that art (gastro-intestinal medicine).
I would imagine this sort of information isn't just obvious to someone of ordinary skill in gastrointestinal medicine, but I would hope "What factors (list 5) could affect a recommended drug dosage?" would be a entry-level med school question, and "levels of the drug in the patient's bloodstream" seems like one of the more obvious answers (after weight, age, side effects, etc, so maybe not in the top 5).
If he were really smart, he'd be ogling bikinis at the local pool. One day he'll be old and wish he hadn't wasted the best years of his life at Morgan Stanley.
If he were really, really smart, he'd be interning now, get himself a great job post-college, make a truckload of money, and then spend his 30s ogling C-list celebrities and teen models at his pool.
I'm normally as disparaging of teenagers as they come, having recently left that "I know everything there is to know" stage of my life (I'm 22).
I think you may still have some more more moments in the future where you realize how little you knew as a teenager and how, at 22, you vastly underestimated the amount you didn't know as a teen.:)
And doubtless someday in the future I'll realize how little I knew and understood at 22. If you don't have that feeling every so often, it's a sign that you haven't learned a lot recently, so having that feeling is a very good thing, even if it makes you face-palm at your younger self.:)
I'm trying to figure out why Morgan Stanley is the place for this kind of article.
Morgan Stanley is an investment bank. They offer investment advice. In this case, they're providing a counter-opinion to the general media "OMG Twitter is the greatest thing since sliced bread" analysis. It's a very different kind of market analysis from what we conventionally see, and something potentially interesting to someone who might be looking at tech stocks. Twitter stock isn't sold publicly, but it's still relevant to the potential future of the sector.
Honestly, it's just a 15 year old kid with some views of his life. I highly doubt he's actually got anything revolutionary to say.
I'm normally as disparaging of teenagers as they come, having recently left that "I know everything there is to know" stage of my life (I'm 22). But whereas the average teenager is working retail or ogling bikinis at the local pool, this kid's interning at one of the most powerful companies in the world, and wrote something that sufficiently impressed them that they published it under their name. Sounds like a smart kid.
I'm assuming HTML5 adoption will be swift, because unlike HTML4, the browser vendors are writing the spec. Many features in HTML5 are being supported already in the browsers. It's not like past specs, where the committee writes the spec and tries to get people to go along with it. Instead, as this debate illustrates, all the non-Microsoft browser vendors are coming to consensus on the HTML5 draft spec. Implementation will be swift(ish). The video tag itself works today in Firefox and Safari.
When HTML5 is finalized, support will come with the next major version of every browser, such that within 12-18 months of finalization, the only people not using a HTML5 browser will be using an un-updated browser or Internet Explorer.
Oh it will still be worth winning. Even if HTML5 provides a "rich web experience," applet based approaches like Flash are already very well established and will not go away overnight. The desktop application market never vanished even after web apps became popular, so why assume that plugins and applets will not be worth fighting for?
Because the number of new applications for plugins will shrink. If I'm making a website and have a choice between two plug-in that not all my customer base will have and using straight HTML5 that anyone can access, I'm skipping the plugin unless it's much more poweful. HTML5 might take a while to replace legacy Flash sites, but when people do get around to migrating them, they won't move to Silverlight if HTML5 is easier for their viewer base.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but did they understand what the papers they signed meant, before they took the accounting classes?
This is so true. Most people don't understand what the difference between 6.3% and a 6.5% rate is, and even if they have a concept of what "compound interest" means, they probably can't do the math on it. Further, they're under a time-crunch to get the funding lined up. You have a month between when you're accepted and you have to choose. Which means you're likely to have to make the decision to go to the more expensive school without having a final loan answer. And either way, it takes a lot of self-discipline to give up going to to your first choice (that you got into) of colleges in exchange for a different (implicitly lesser) one. It's a crushing blow to students when that decision is made for them by admission boards, but it'd be even harder to say "I'm going to the public school instead of the Ivy because I don't like the loan interest rate".
I declare that: "students are a credit-unworthy lot who should thank their lucky stars that rates aren't 12% or higher."
Is basically nonsense.
It makes no more sense than saying "30 year olds are an uncreditworthy lot."
It's credit history that relates to creditworthiness, not being a student or not.
Students (and I am an undergraduate) have no credit history or employment history. Further, you don't even know that they'll graduate, and they'll likely change their intended major once they get to college. This means the loaner has exactly no history or information to go on, excepting possible co-signers.
tuition prices are so high because kids keep getting approved for loans.
No, they're high because so many kids are trying to get into schools. Supply and demand.
Student loans are enabling/helping it, but it isn't the root cause.
And what do you think makes so many kids want to go to college? The fact that student loans make it possible to go to college at those prices. In theory, demand for college would fall as tuition rises. In reality, the inability of many people to comprehend how much the loans actually cost causes them to continue to apply for expensive schools even when the economically rational thing to do might be a public school.
So I'm wondering.. what is the difference - if any - in, say, workflow and capabilities between how the iPod/iPhone(/Pre, for now) sync, and when syncing through such a plugin API?
The only real problem is that you'd need to write a program that opened when the device was connected, and then automatically synced user-selected playlists. So the user has to select which playlists to sync once and then the rest is in the background (this selection would otherwise be performed in the iPod tab in iTunes).
Performance would be slightly worse, since you're parsing this XML file twice (in iTunes and in your third party program) and iTunes Library files get pretty big when you have 30,000 song libraries, but that's only really going to be noticeable on really slow computers (and they'd notice the problem in iTunes first, not in your program). There are also file lock issues (if iTunes is changing stuff while you're syncing), but those are pretty manageable for competent engineers.
How does one "snyc" with iTunes?
You open and read the iTunes Library XML file. This lets you see all the song and playlist information. Then you copy song files from a predictable directory structure (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist Name/Album Name/Song Name.fileextension) onto your machine. You can also directly edit the XML file to (for instance) update play counts and when it was most recently played. This method has been unchanged for a few years, and is officially supported. It does require a 3rd party application, but since Mac and Windows have triggers to launch an application if the relevant device connects, you can sync auto-magically on device connect, and all the end user has to do is determine initially which playlists they'd like to sync.
Didn't I just see a post [slashdot.org] suggesting that Apple's API has been stable for years and that the problem was that Palm wasn't actually using the API?
Yes. Palm has never used the above described API. Instead, they're trying to trick iTunes by claiming to be an iPod. The controversy is that the current version of iTunes checks that the device is both an iPod, and made by Apple. To pass that second check, Palm would have violate the USB standard (and possibly their USB licensing agreement).
How much would a pair of USB "speecs" cost?
The specification is free, but getting a Vendor ID costs between $1000 and $4000 per year. It would be the Vendor ID license that Palm would be violating.
That only applies in instances where compatibility is otherwise impossible. In this case, a second or third year CS student can write a Java program to (1) read the iTunes Library XML file, and (2) copy song files from predictable directories. They'd be using a public API that requires no license and is officially supported.
Pre owners, you know the people who paid for it, should at least get the choice to fake their USB ID. Why not? Its their equipment! Have we reached the point where we cant even humor the idea of modifying stuff we own so it works better with our own equipment?
There's a difference between Pre owners altering the USB ID and Palm violating its USB license by shipping with a fake ID.
The larger issue here is the pro-corporatist attitude so many people have and how they are bending over backwards for the companies that just want to control and lockdown their hardware for one end: profit
The issue here isn't favoring one corporation over another, it's that Palm has announced that it intends to violate the USB standard (and it's USB license).
Apple has an API that allows you to sync a third party device. The library is available as an XML file. You read it, pick the songs you want, and copy them from a predictable file structure. Those aren't particularly difficult hoops.
How do I do that? I don't even know where the song files reside, and even if I did take time to figure it out, I suspect most Itunes users have no clue.
Well, people who want to use iTunes with an alternate player can just pick up a player that supports reading non-DRM'd files out of your iTunes library. The fact that you don't know how to implement that function isn't really all that important - someone like Palm does know how*. If iTunes sync is an important feature to you, then buy a player which supports iTunes sync legally. Heck, a college student could throw together a java app like that in a week, so it's not like the legal way is an undue burden.
* - or at least, one hopes a multi-million dollar electronics company can manage to find a folder that's in a fairly predictable position (~\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music), and then copy files from it.
Large numbers of pre-orders are not an indication that a game will be successful in the MMO market. Lots of games get massive amounts of pre-orders, but few people who subscribe past the first month. Unlike console games or games without a monthly subscription, MMO business plans commonly depend on having subscription revenue, so pre-orders (while nice) are not guaranteed sales (because the preorderer might bail a month in). Further, if a lot of pre-order people bail, you wind up having to do server consolidation, which is both embarrassing to the company and disruptive to gameplay.
While I generally agree with you, it's important to note that ASCAP covers songwriters, not musicians. While you've defined a musician's performance, under your standards, a songwriter should only get paid once for writing the song, since that was the only time he actually did anything.
Well, if they're filing an amicus curiae brief, those tend more towards telling than asking. It's literally an outside party interjecting its opinion as to the law and the facts. With the court's permission, Microsoft is telling the court its opinion as to relevant facts or legal arguments not covered by the court. Strictly speaking, they're not asking the court for a specific ruling unless they're an original party or an intervener. Officially, they're telling the court what standards they think the court should apply to patents, but they have no official standing to ask the court to implement those standards, they can only offer input. Yeah, that's a technicality, but "telling" is the correct word, even if the summary isn't great.
Changing the code doesn't protect one against past infringement.
Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?
In fact...my outrage is that the school is actively encouraging these shit for brains to go forth and share their idiocy. Writing a paper about this crap is one thing
To be fair, it's possible to construct a paper on that topic which isn't anti-science. One could simply argue that the relationship between evolution and eugenics mirrors the relationship between Christianity and the KKK - groups of people either looking for a cover under which to advance their hateful agenda, or alternatively, genuinely evil people who use an otherwise innocent system as a basis for their insanity. Simply argue that anything misapplied and used out of context causes issues.
How such a paper would be graded would be a fair indication of bias. Probably get an F, but I'd love to watch the professor's face as he reads it.
Oh no, the 'middle ground' of Google text ads came well after advertisement escalation had reached the point of flashing animated gifs, flash ads, and every form of javascript abuse imaginable. Net advertisers were already engaged in "total war" before Google came around. Google text ads were a total breath of fresh air in the middle of that shitstorm, not a 'middle ground' abandoned.
I'm sorry, I misspoke. I didn't specifically mean that Google ads pre-dated the crazy ads, I meant that text ads in general predated the crazy ads and were a middle ground. If the Internet had stayed at that level, there wouldn't be nearly the impetus to block ads.
There's also the fact that a non-trivial fraction of ads link to scams, viruses, or malware. Exactly how large that fraction is, I don't know, but the perception is that that's a danger of advertisements on all but the most respectable of sites.
Patent examiners don't generalize, but judges and juries and lawyers do. That's actually the problem - patents are awarded based on whether the strictest construction of the claims is a legitimate invention, but frequently litigated on the loosest possible construction. That's how a patent for a mix-tape kiosk winds up applying to half the internet.
I'll worry about planned obsolescence from Blizzard the day they shut down Diablo II multiplayer. My same Starcraft and Diablo II and Warcraft III are still a lot of fun on Blizzard's multiplayer servers, and are still patched and maintained. Blizzard went back and re-wrote their installers for Starcraft and Diablo II so it'd work on Intel Macs. Starcraft was (at the time) 8 years old, and Diablo II was 6 years old. Blizzard still supports them. So let's talk about planned obsolescence when Blizzard actually obsoletes a game.
The problem is that we already had a middle ground and then dumped it. The middle ground was that websites have non-invasive, relevant ads. I wouldn't go out of my way to block Google text ads, or even non-flashy image ads. But in the inevitable quest to maximize revenues, we got distracting ads, Flash ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, page-peels, random ads disguised as links that pop up when you mouse-over them, and other crazy stuff. We went from 2 ads on a page of content to 2 paragraphs on a page of ads.
People get AdBlock Plus because of the annoying ads, and then blocking the decent ads is no extra effort. The default block lists for ABP already block Google ads, just because it's an extra line on a page.
I don't mind an ad that's like "hey, you're on a computer hardware blog. Why don't you try this game?" in text, or even with a picture, over on the side. That's the middle ground. But I am gonna block a 1MB Flash ad that blocks all the content until I click it off and flashes boobies at me when I'm reading a news website (I'm looking at you, Evony).
The canonical example of this is the Ford autobiography. A 300-word-excerpt from a lengthy book was ruled not to be fair use, because it severely reduced the market for the book. The only reason anyone would buy Gerald Ford's autobiography/memoirs (no offense) was to find out "Why'd you pardon Nixon?". Since the 300 excerpted words included the answer to that question, the use was not found to be fair.
Now, that's US law, not EU law, but that's the principle involved - an excerpt that's short but captures "the heart of the work." "Luke, I am your father" does not encompass the heart of "Empire Strikes Back". It spoils a major twist, but doesn't really satisfy the desire to watch the movie.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that if a short excerpt destroys the demand for your work, then obviously your work wasn't worth a whole book or movie or article in the first place.
Rephrased, their independent claims are for the combination of (i) treating condition X with drug Y, in which (ii) the dose of drug Y is adjusted based on the inferred level of drug Y in the bloodstream. Given that treating condition X with drug Y was already known, the step of adjusting the dose would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in that art (gastro-intestinal medicine).
I would imagine this sort of information isn't just obvious to someone of ordinary skill in gastrointestinal medicine, but I would hope "What factors (list 5) could affect a recommended drug dosage?" would be a entry-level med school question, and "levels of the drug in the patient's bloodstream" seems like one of the more obvious answers (after weight, age, side effects, etc, so maybe not in the top 5).
If he were really smart, he'd be ogling bikinis at the local pool. One day he'll be old and wish he hadn't wasted the best years of his life at Morgan Stanley.
If he were really, really smart, he'd be interning now, get himself a great job post-college, make a truckload of money, and then spend his 30s ogling C-list celebrities and teen models at his pool.
I'm normally as disparaging of teenagers as they come, having recently left that "I know everything there is to know" stage of my life (I'm 22).
I think you may still have some more more moments in the future where you realize how little you knew as a teenager and how, at 22, you vastly underestimated the amount you didn't know as a teen. :)
And doubtless someday in the future I'll realize how little I knew and understood at 22. If you don't have that feeling every so often, it's a sign that you haven't learned a lot recently, so having that feeling is a very good thing, even if it makes you face-palm at your younger self. :)
I'm trying to figure out why Morgan Stanley is the place for this kind of article.
Morgan Stanley is an investment bank. They offer investment advice. In this case, they're providing a counter-opinion to the general media "OMG Twitter is the greatest thing since sliced bread" analysis. It's a very different kind of market analysis from what we conventionally see, and something potentially interesting to someone who might be looking at tech stocks. Twitter stock isn't sold publicly, but it's still relevant to the potential future of the sector.
Honestly, it's just a 15 year old kid with some views of his life. I highly doubt he's actually got anything revolutionary to say.
I'm normally as disparaging of teenagers as they come, having recently left that "I know everything there is to know" stage of my life (I'm 22). But whereas the average teenager is working retail or ogling bikinis at the local pool, this kid's interning at one of the most powerful companies in the world, and wrote something that sufficiently impressed them that they published it under their name. Sounds like a smart kid.
I'm assuming HTML5 adoption will be swift, because unlike HTML4, the browser vendors are writing the spec. Many features in HTML5 are being supported already in the browsers. It's not like past specs, where the committee writes the spec and tries to get people to go along with it. Instead, as this debate illustrates, all the non-Microsoft browser vendors are coming to consensus on the HTML5 draft spec. Implementation will be swift(ish). The video tag itself works today in Firefox and Safari.
When HTML5 is finalized, support will come with the next major version of every browser, such that within 12-18 months of finalization, the only people not using a HTML5 browser will be using an un-updated browser or Internet Explorer.
Oh it will still be worth winning. Even if HTML5 provides a "rich web experience," applet based approaches like Flash are already very well established and will not go away overnight. The desktop application market never vanished even after web apps became popular, so why assume that plugins and applets will not be worth fighting for?
Because the number of new applications for plugins will shrink. If I'm making a website and have a choice between two plug-in that not all my customer base will have and using straight HTML5 that anyone can access, I'm skipping the plugin unless it's much more poweful. HTML5 might take a while to replace legacy Flash sites, but when people do get around to migrating them, they won't move to Silverlight if HTML5 is easier for their viewer base.