I made the foolish assumption that since I wasn't a developer, and I had a copy that it would be ok if I shared it with 5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics.
It was suggested that I used MTKA, an invite-only bittorrent community to share it. Since the community was invite only, and the majority of the people who frequent the boards were hardcore mac fans I couldn't see harm in uploading the file.
It sounds to me like notions of whether the software was open source or not didn't even enter his mind. Issues of legality certainly didn't enter his mind either (if we take his statement at face value).
I'm dying to know what daily newspaper in the United States provides as much depth and breadth of coverage as the NYT without running afoul of your political orientation.
Overcharging their customers by giving half the performance at twice the price.... Wow, that's simply amazing. Apple has been able to survive (barely) for all these years and they've managed to deliver only 50% of the value and half of the capabilities of products from competing companies.
I think it's because all Mac users are artists, and artists are all very emotional and tend to be poor with numbers. So even though they're spending more, they don't even realize it. Silly artists!
What I don't understand is why the universities and government agencies that are using Macs for clustering and other uses are buying computers that are twice as expensive and half as capable. It must be that these purchasers are part of the loyal "Apple fan base," sort of like Milwaukee Brewers fans. They hang tough and spend the money only because they feel a special attachment to Apple, rather than because Apple products have any real worth.
You're right about Apple dumping on their customers and fans too. Did you hear about the time Steve Jobs cancelled the second day of his concert in Boston, and nobody who bought tickets even got a refund? What an arrogant bastard!
Personally I'll stick with the alternatives. IE 6 kicks ass, my Windows XP system never gives me any security problems, and I like buying new hardware every two years, because it guarantees I'll be able to brag about the CPU speed of my computer to my buddies.
One of the central messages of Clarke's book Against All Enemies is that for several years he and many other people worked hard to make the system work better, but institutional politics made it practically impossible. In particular, cooperation between US government agencies was atrocious. FBI/CIA coordination was horrible, for example.
The framework established for the Cold War is not suited to the current realities. But knowint that is different than moving the huge icebergs that government agencies become as they expand and atrophy.
Reminds me of "Wired" in the late '90s?
on
'Make' Premier Issue
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· Score: 3, Funny
At one point the mag was so thick that police officers in major cities were subscribing, just so they could use 'em as hillbilly personal armor. I used to use my back issues to reinforce deterioriating sections of the basement walls in my house.
But seriously, those things were huge. It was a giddy era. Negroponte was waxing philosophical about digital this and digital that. Articles about crazy new technology abounded. Everyone walked around wearing shades because the future was so damned bright.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with virtual desktops. While handy, they still present the necessity for "shifting" which is the very element that I find distracting in using a reference for an extended period of time while working on a project.
For me the biggest advantage is that books eliminate annoyances.
I can have the book out next to me (and if it's perfect-bound like O'Reilly's books, they'll generally flat when opened) and I don't have to devote screen space to a website. I often find that even when referring to ALA or other sites, I'll print out the article and keep the hard copy next to my keyboard, so that my screen doesn't get too cluttered.
For some people, keeping a bunch of windows open and cycling through them is easy, but I find that a bit overwhelming and certainly distracting. Also, reading dense information on screen for a protracted period of time is simply more difficult.
Books provide easily accessed information that I can read anywhere (on the bus, in the waiting room at the dentist's office, and so on), whether I'm online or not. I find this particularly important because there are times when I want to *not* be jacked in, but I still want to absorb information having to do with development.
The great thing about the profusion of websites and books is that they offer choice. Get what you need for this project from a website, and get what you need for the next project from a book. Whatever works is good.
Indeed, it's certainly not time to get giddy just yet.
From the "about the author" blurb at the bottom of the article:
"Caroline Gabriel is Research Director of Rethink Research Associates and Editor of WiMAX Watch, a newsletter providing in-depth analysisof the WiMAX market. She is a featured columnist for Trendsmedia's WiMAX Trends, and is a leading industry analyst on wireless and wireless broadband technologies. She recently authored WiMAX Business Models 2004-2007: How to Make Money in WiMAX, published in the US/Canada by Trendsmedia."
So to end this completely offtopic rant, it is sad to see the media, and most people's view of the most recognised scientist in the world (then again it was only in 50's/60's that the media formats allowed him to be recognisable) is shown as the mad, old scientist, and not the man who really did the work.
Damn. I feel like an idiot. Thanks for pointing that out. Now I have to go find a good Einstein biography. Do you know any?
There's an entire thread devoted to discussion of how much Stallman needs to "get a haircut," since of course how you wear your hair is an indicator of the worth of your ideas.
Imagine if Einstein hadn't worn a crewcut his entire life. Where would we be then?
"One risk of that is that people don't get paid for their content, which is clearly a problem. I'd personally like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month and get access to the world. Somebody else needs to figure out how to reward all the people who create the things that you use."
It seems to me that they're talking about copyrighted content here. Rather than concocting a plan to bundle up free content and make people pay Google for access, it looks to me like Page was actually talking about reasonable means of access to copyrighted information.
According to Media Metrix, Google controls less than half of all searches, so Google is hardly a monopoly.
Microsoft is not a monopoly because anyone on Slashdot says so, but because it has been proven to be a monopoly in federal court.
So Google is not a monopoly, but Microsoft is a monopoly. That seems logical to me, given the facts.
As for your assertion that all companies do this (pay for ancilary products with the main product), that's not the case. Many public companies run divisions as separate profit centers, which must sink or swim on their own.
I've tried to put logic into my argument, and hope that it meets with your approval.
I also think its funny how people bash Microsoft for being anti competitive in the PC world and then bash them for being HIGHLY competitive in the Console world.
The thing that bothers me is that Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the PC world directly affects their ability to be so competitive in the console world. Microsoft makes use of monopoly rents to subsidize the losses they accrue with the XBox.
It's a lot easier to spread into new markets when you can siphon profits from a monopoly you hold in another market.
Oh, cummon you can't seriously and with a straight face say that having to wear panties and have naked photos taken of you constitures torture, no matter how strong your religous convictions.
Let me put it to you this way. How would you feel if these sorts of things were going on with American detainess in some future war? We'd all be outraged and appalled, and we'd quickly point to the barbarism of the captors.
It's also important to note that the US military knows full well what the definition of "torture" is and that several of the things that went on in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo fit the international definitiion of "torture." That is precisely why our new Attorney General, the man who is supposed to be the highest officer of the law in the US, spent so much effort coming up with creative legal interpretations of the law. He, and the Administration, knew that they wanted to torture people, and they wanted a legal loophole to exploit.
You can say whatever you want about this being a new war, a different kind of war, a war without end, etc. But America did not resort to systematic torture in WWII, even in the midst of tremendous, wide-scale mechanized warfare. We engaged in a fair number of violations of the Geneva and Hague Conventions during the Vietnam War, and that certainly didn't win any hearts and minds.
To me this is not just about whether something is torture or isn't torture. The semantics of it don't matter if the result is the same: Iraqis see it as barbaric and evil, and people around the world look at it the same way. It is unsettling that our national leaders (in particular our Secretary of Defense) have such a one-dimensional view of the global fight against Islamic terrorists that they established such a counterproductive system for dealing with detainees.
The bottom line is that Abu Ghraib has made the fight in Iraq and around the world much more difficult, by further radicalizing Islamic populations and weakening support among our allies.
To me the real question is why, even after so many years of being in a wide variety of markets, Microsoft's only reliably profitable divisions are still Office and Windows. The Mac division is really an extension of the Office division.
Your comments about the XBox, directory services, games, PDA, and so on are valid, but from a business point of view that really only matters if they are profitable. The Home & Entertainment division is now profitable but is expected to go red next quarter, and the Tools division is profitable. The real money earners for MS are still Office and Windows.
Add to this the fact that Microsoft maintained profitability by cutting their R&D *in half* and I can't help but wonder if Microsoft is mortaging its future in order to please the stock market today.
They do have a boatload of cash in reserve, and they won't be going away any time soon, but the famously long Microsoft quality cycle (v1 sucks, v2 sucks less, v3 is ok, v4 is good) just isn't going to cut it any more. Smaller, more nimble competitors abound, and they're getting smarter. They're attacking Microsoft at the edges and playing against Microsoft's weaknesses (user experience, security, price, reliability).
Microsoft may be going after the long-term bucks with the XBox, but they can't leverage their OS dominance in that battle, and Sony definitely isn't going to take it lying down. What happens when MS can no longer rob from the Windows and Office divisions in order to keep the Home division going?
Sony is nowhere close to dead, but they've got a few challenges. Plus, I think it's fairly obvious that Apple has a lot of momentum right now in an area that Sony would love to dominate, but can't.
If you tell a lie that is big enough for a long enough period of time, people will start to believe it. Perhaps Microsoft thinks that the strategy of grudgingly admitting to previous mistakes hasn't worked, so they're shifting to The Big Lie strategy.
I honestly can't believe you're saying this! 200 researchers are saying that the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is not a private organization, has told them change findings to match an agenda that lies outside of science. Don't you think that's hideous?
If the public doesn't believe the system can ever work properly, it's all that much easier to manipulate it. This seems to be a recurring theme with the current administration. If you screw up, screw up big and everyone will let it slide:
1) Hey, this strategic intelligence stuff is difficult, how could we know there weren't WMDs there?
2) Wars are complicated. Taking control of a nation is complicated. Of course there are bound to be a lot of really, really serious screw-ups in our planning.
3) What is "torture?" I mean, really. Aren't we really just splitting hairs here? One man's "brutal interrogation" is another man's "questioning session." Besides, this sort of thing has always happened throughout history, but in previous American wars there weren't nosy reporters snooping around all over the place.
4) Everyone knows government is inefficient. We're trying to cut the size of the government. If we cut domestic spending, we can slice out the deficit and shrink government. And we all know that the military and government are two totally different things, which is why $8 billion in missing funds in Washington demands outrage, while $8 billion missing in Iraq is just the fog of war.
5) It's impossible to estimate the cost of war in Iraq before we go in. It's impossible to estimate the cost of the war once we're in it. Therefore it is obviously impossible to estimate its cost in the future, which is why it's not in the budget package.
Desensitize the public to gross incompetence by convincing them that it is to be expected, and over time the public will come to expect it. Those who are outraged will be promptly marginalized as hopelessly romantic idiots.
While it is true that the iPod is the cash cow at this stage of the game, I'm not sure that it will always remain so. I think a lot of people are stuck on the whole "Apple makes money on the blades, not the razor" notion we've all learned from Gillette.
But there's no reason Apple couldn't make money off of both hardware and a music service. If I were Steve Jobs, I'd be downlplaying the long-term profitability of the iTMS every chance I could get, for the sole purpose of scaring competitors away. Look at Real, for example. With no hardware to sell, they're still trying to compete with the iTMS, and so far with limited success.
If Apple can outlast competitors in the online music store arena, it could start making a healthy profit at it. From there, migration into an online video download service seems like a natural progression (when the labels and consumers are ready for it).
Apple seems to be moving into the place Sony would like to be - the nexus of the consumer digital lifestyle. If that's the case, the old, "Repeat after me: Apple is a hardware company" mantra may not hold up for long.
Let's not forget that the study tested performance under pressure in an academic setting. Real life is seldom like a standardized test, with clearly defined parameters. Testing responses in an academic environment is almost by definition easier, but these sorts of tests bother me because people make assumptions like, "smart people choke under pressure" based on the results of a test that uses a very precise definition of "smart" under very specific circumstances.
It says a lot about the current state of the Apple/Microsoft relationship that Microsoft would be concerned about beating Apple to the punch. Before OS X in general and Panther specifically, not many people outside of the Mac sphere of interest gave the MacOS much attention. Now you read articles about MacOS in IT magazines, on Slashdot, and even in the mainstream press quite frequently.
I'm sure Microsoft isn't going to say a word about Tiger, but my guess is they're no longer considering Apple the 98-lb. weakling as they once did.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you implying that you actually have to learn stuff at your high school? Damn, I was cheated!
Quite true. But I'd consider an abacus to be a pretty damned effective mobile computing device. It's certainly a better mobile PC than, say, a taser.
The PowerBook 100 was a great machine and all, but let's be serious.
I made the foolish assumption that since I wasn't a developer, and I had a copy that it would be ok if I shared it with 5 or 6 fellow mac fanatics.
It was suggested that I used MTKA, an invite-only bittorrent community to share it. Since the community was invite only, and the majority of the people who frequent the boards were hardcore mac fans I couldn't see harm in uploading the file.
It sounds to me like notions of whether the software was open source or not didn't even enter his mind. Issues of legality certainly didn't enter his mind either (if we take his statement at face value).
I think it's because all Mac users are artists, and artists are all very emotional and tend to be poor with numbers. So even though they're spending more, they don't even realize it. Silly artists!
What I don't understand is why the universities and government agencies that are using Macs for clustering and other uses are buying computers that are twice as expensive and half as capable. It must be that these purchasers are part of the loyal "Apple fan base," sort of like Milwaukee Brewers fans. They hang tough and spend the money only because they feel a special attachment to Apple, rather than because Apple products have any real worth.
You're right about Apple dumping on their customers and fans too. Did you hear about the time Steve Jobs cancelled the second day of his concert in Boston, and nobody who bought tickets even got a refund? What an arrogant bastard!
Personally I'll stick with the alternatives. IE 6 kicks ass, my Windows XP system never gives me any security problems, and I like buying new hardware every two years, because it guarantees I'll be able to brag about the CPU speed of my computer to my buddies.
The framework established for the Cold War is not suited to the current realities. But knowint that is different than moving the huge icebergs that government agencies become as they expand and atrophy.
But seriously, those things were huge. It was a giddy era. Negroponte was waxing philosophical about digital this and digital that. Articles about crazy new technology abounded. Everyone walked around wearing shades because the future was so damned bright.
The future just ain't what it used to be, eh?
Yes, I'm quite familiar with virtual desktops. While handy, they still present the necessity for "shifting" which is the very element that I find distracting in using a reference for an extended period of time while working on a project.
I can have the book out next to me (and if it's perfect-bound like O'Reilly's books, they'll generally flat when opened) and I don't have to devote screen space to a website. I often find that even when referring to ALA or other sites, I'll print out the article and keep the hard copy next to my keyboard, so that my screen doesn't get too cluttered.
For some people, keeping a bunch of windows open and cycling through them is easy, but I find that a bit overwhelming and certainly distracting. Also, reading dense information on screen for a protracted period of time is simply more difficult.
Books provide easily accessed information that I can read anywhere (on the bus, in the waiting room at the dentist's office, and so on), whether I'm online or not. I find this particularly important because there are times when I want to *not* be jacked in, but I still want to absorb information having to do with development.
The great thing about the profusion of websites and books is that they offer choice. Get what you need for this project from a website, and get what you need for the next project from a book. Whatever works is good.
From the "about the author" blurb at the bottom of the article:
"Caroline Gabriel is Research Director of Rethink Research Associates and Editor of WiMAX Watch, a newsletter providing in-depth analysisof the WiMAX market. She is a featured columnist for Trendsmedia's WiMAX Trends, and is a leading industry analyst on wireless and wireless broadband technologies. She recently authored WiMAX Business Models 2004-2007: How to Make Money in WiMAX, published in the US/Canada by Trendsmedia."
Damn. I feel like an idiot. Thanks for pointing that out. Now I have to go find a good Einstein biography. Do you know any?
There's an entire thread devoted to discussion of how much Stallman needs to "get a haircut," since of course how you wear your hair is an indicator of the worth of your ideas.
Imagine if Einstein hadn't worn a crewcut his entire life. Where would we be then?
It seems to me that they're talking about copyrighted content here. Rather than concocting a plan to bundle up free content and make people pay Google for access, it looks to me like Page was actually talking about reasonable means of access to copyrighted information.
Microsoft is not a monopoly because anyone on Slashdot says so, but because it has been proven to be a monopoly in federal court.
So Google is not a monopoly, but Microsoft is a monopoly. That seems logical to me, given the facts.
As for your assertion that all companies do this (pay for ancilary products with the main product), that's not the case. Many public companies run divisions as separate profit centers, which must sink or swim on their own.
I've tried to put logic into my argument, and hope that it meets with your approval.
The thing that bothers me is that Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the PC world directly affects their ability to be so competitive in the console world. Microsoft makes use of monopoly rents to subsidize the losses they accrue with the XBox.
It's a lot easier to spread into new markets when you can siphon profits from a monopoly you hold in another market.
Let me put it to you this way. How would you feel if these sorts of things were going on with American detainess in some future war? We'd all be outraged and appalled, and we'd quickly point to the barbarism of the captors.
It's also important to note that the US military knows full well what the definition of "torture" is and that several of the things that went on in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo fit the international definitiion of "torture." That is precisely why our new Attorney General, the man who is supposed to be the highest officer of the law in the US, spent so much effort coming up with creative legal interpretations of the law. He, and the Administration, knew that they wanted to torture people, and they wanted a legal loophole to exploit.
You can say whatever you want about this being a new war, a different kind of war, a war without end, etc. But America did not resort to systematic torture in WWII, even in the midst of tremendous, wide-scale mechanized warfare. We engaged in a fair number of violations of the Geneva and Hague Conventions during the Vietnam War, and that certainly didn't win any hearts and minds.
To me this is not just about whether something is torture or isn't torture. The semantics of it don't matter if the result is the same: Iraqis see it as barbaric and evil, and people around the world look at it the same way. It is unsettling that our national leaders (in particular our Secretary of Defense) have such a one-dimensional view of the global fight against Islamic terrorists that they established such a counterproductive system for dealing with detainees.
The bottom line is that Abu Ghraib has made the fight in Iraq and around the world much more difficult, by further radicalizing Islamic populations and weakening support among our allies.
To me the real question is why, even after so many years of being in a wide variety of markets, Microsoft's only reliably profitable divisions are still Office and Windows. The Mac division is really an extension of the Office division.
Your comments about the XBox, directory services, games, PDA, and so on are valid, but from a business point of view that really only matters if they are profitable. The Home & Entertainment division is now profitable but is expected to go red next quarter, and the Tools division is profitable. The real money earners for MS are still Office and Windows.
Add to this the fact that Microsoft maintained profitability by cutting their R&D *in half* and I can't help but wonder if Microsoft is mortaging its future in order to please the stock market today.
They do have a boatload of cash in reserve, and they won't be going away any time soon, but the famously long Microsoft quality cycle (v1 sucks, v2 sucks less, v3 is ok, v4 is good) just isn't going to cut it any more. Smaller, more nimble competitors abound, and they're getting smarter. They're attacking Microsoft at the edges and playing against Microsoft's weaknesses (user experience, security, price, reliability).
Microsoft may be going after the long-term bucks with the XBox, but they can't leverage their OS dominance in that battle, and Sony definitely isn't going to take it lying down. What happens when MS can no longer rob from the Windows and Office divisions in order to keep the Home division going?
If the public doesn't believe the system can ever work properly, it's all that much easier to manipulate it. This seems to be a recurring theme with the current administration. If you screw up, screw up big and everyone will let it slide:
1) Hey, this strategic intelligence stuff is difficult, how could we know there weren't WMDs there?
2) Wars are complicated. Taking control of a nation is complicated. Of course there are bound to be a lot of really, really serious screw-ups in our planning.
3) What is "torture?" I mean, really. Aren't we really just splitting hairs here? One man's "brutal interrogation" is another man's "questioning session." Besides, this sort of thing has always happened throughout history, but in previous American wars there weren't nosy reporters snooping around all over the place.
4) Everyone knows government is inefficient. We're trying to cut the size of the government. If we cut domestic spending, we can slice out the deficit and shrink government. And we all know that the military and government are two totally different things, which is why $8 billion in missing funds in Washington demands outrage, while $8 billion missing in Iraq is just the fog of war.
5) It's impossible to estimate the cost of war in Iraq before we go in. It's impossible to estimate the cost of the war once we're in it. Therefore it is obviously impossible to estimate its cost in the future, which is why it's not in the budget package.
Desensitize the public to gross incompetence by convincing them that it is to be expected, and over time the public will come to expect it. Those who are outraged will be promptly marginalized as hopelessly romantic idiots.
But there's no reason Apple couldn't make money off of both hardware and a music service. If I were Steve Jobs, I'd be downlplaying the long-term profitability of the iTMS every chance I could get, for the sole purpose of scaring competitors away. Look at Real, for example. With no hardware to sell, they're still trying to compete with the iTMS, and so far with limited success.
If Apple can outlast competitors in the online music store arena, it could start making a healthy profit at it. From there, migration into an online video download service seems like a natural progression (when the labels and consumers are ready for it).
Apple seems to be moving into the place Sony would like to be - the nexus of the consumer digital lifestyle. If that's the case, the old, "Repeat after me: Apple is a hardware company" mantra may not hold up for long.
I'm sure Microsoft isn't going to say a word about Tiger, but my guess is they're no longer considering Apple the 98-lb. weakling as they once did.