Now looking at the BHO I am wondering why you think using FireFox on Linux is safer than IE? Someone else could just as easily (Anything is possible, so don't say it can't be done) program a plug-in for FireFox/Mozilla that does the same as BHO and people can just as easily download this plug-in and experience the same issues on FireFox/Mozilla as any Windows user using IE.
Someone could just as easily program a plug-in for Mozilla/Firefox/whatever that does the same thing as BHO? Do you also think that all operating systems are equally secure inherently? Is it just as easy to program in Python as it is to program in Pascal? Microsoft has a long history of creating application environments that offer extensibility through plug-ins that are inherently prone to security exploits. This makes it easier to create exploits for their products.
IE is the target because a high per cent of people uses it. If it was 50% IE and 50% Mozilla I'm sure we would see a lot more activity on trying to create ad/spy/trojan-ware for all browsers.
Like back in the day, when Netscape ruled the browser market? Yep, there were a lot of adware/spyware/trojan-ware apps back then.
Maybe you should be happy that IE is used by so many.
Actually, no. I think most people would be a lot happier not to have to deal with such a crappy browser that is always introducing security problems, isn't standards-compliant, and doesn't have any of the most recent "must have" features that so many other browsers share. It would be easier for web developers, users, and security managers if IE weren't such a piece of crap.
According to this article, in the proposed 2005 budget, "The Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, which distributed information about the Blaster worm and SoBig virus, would receive $80 million."
"The Justice Department's spending on cybercrime would leap from the $157 million allocated by Congress for the 2003 fiscal year to $265 million. The agency's Internet Crimes Against Children program, which investigates child pornography and "enticement" cases, would receive a $2 million increase, to reach $14.5 million."
Even if the Justice Department "only" had $157M in 2003, you'd think there would be a bit more to show for it. But this is the US government we're talking about. There are doubtless a good number of motivated and competent people in the US government who are dilligently working to combat cybercrime.
The problem is that US government agencies are notoriously slow to adapt to change. Having worked in one before, I can attest to how frustrating it can be to try and get even simple, obvious tasks completed when groupthink prevails. It must be incredibly frustrating for the folks working in those departments who are trying to go after cybercriminals.
Extremely cool. Sit on the capitol lawn (if you can still do that any more) and watch the fireworks go off behind the Washington Monument. Talk about sound and fury. You get the various armed services bands, plus truly amazing fireworks going off above the monuments. It's a lengthy and breathtaking set. There's nothing quite like it.
It seems to me that you're picking and choosing your points of comparison here. Apple has a rather focused approach to designing computers, which emphasizes the overall interaction between user and computer. Their intention has never been to cover all potential markets.
They've never offered a bargain-basement computer because they want their brand to be associated with quality hardware. While sometimes their products suffer defects, in general I have found their hardware to be far above the industry average in longevity and ease of use.
According to your comment, the G5 has speed you might have to pay half as much to get in a PC. This is one of those price comparisons that is of course impossible to refute. Sure, there's a PC out there that runs as fast as a G5 and costs half as much. But the problem with such comparisons is that you can use whatever PC you want to represent the price point. Are all PCs truly created equal? Of course not. If you want to compare price based solely on processor speed, you're simply ruling out all of the other factors that go into selecting a computer.
For example, you take Apple to task because you don't want to buy and eMac or iMac, and you want something that the PC world provides in abundance - a box that lets me mix & match to get the features I want at a reasonable price. You're comparing the entire PC market against one company. Does Dell offer every single variation you'd like? Does Gateway? Does HP?
You also mention that Macs really are far more hassle-free.. I assume you're referring to the operating system. So even the top-end PCs suffer from more hassles. How do those hassles translate in terms of overall cost? That's tough to estimate, but consider that Mac users have truly insignificant security and malware problems when compared to Windows users.
Your comment about Jobs being overly concerned about the G5's noise is a bit odd. If he hadn't insisted on making a nice quiet new G5, would you have gotten on him for not fixing it? Apple doesn't always succeed in making the best overall user experience, but it's truly at the core of how they see themselves in the market. Of course they're going to try hard to make a quieter machine.
It seems to me that you're frustrated most of all with Apple's philosophy. Apple doesn't want to make low-cost, commodity boxes, because they know that in the long run that's an extremely dangerous game. Look at all of the "cheapest" PC companies that have come and gone over the years. Macs will never dominate the computer market, but Apple has never been in better shape and is continuing to innovate and expand into new markets. Just look at their forays into digital hub software, niche professional software, online music retailing, portable music players, server systems, and supercomputer projects.
They are very much a design-driven company. To them, and to a lot of their customers, a computer isn't just a tool. This is in Apple's DNA, just like sacrificing all to achieve marketshare is in Microsoft's DNA.
If you're willing to pay a bit less in order to get the PC configuration you want, you're forgoing ease of use, hardware longevity, far fewer malware and security problems, an extremely stable OS, all of the iApps, peripheral ease of use, and better overall design. That's your choice. But don't blame Apple because you can't get all of the benefits of a Mac at the super low-low price of $299. R&D costs money, and the bargain-basement PC vendor isn't spending any money on R&D or design.
I'm not an elist stuck on myself artist, and I'm not a designer. But I really prefer using a machine that works for me instead of against me and saves me time and money over the long haul.
As for Apple dying inside a decade, just remember what these other fine prognosticators said in their day:
"Stick a fork in 'em - this Apple is cooked."
Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/2003
"The iPod, with its backward-looking feature set and dramatica
Questions, not demands
on
War Kayaking
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I apologize if I sounded like I was coming down on you for war-kayaking. I'm not trying to tell you what to do or not to do. The real point of my comment was to raise a question about how our use of technology changes our relationship to nature, even when we're out in it.
I wonder if in bringing so much of our technology with us as we explore nature, we're failing to appreciate what is around us. As a kayaker you probably appreciate nature quite a bit. Maybe you don't. Maybe I don't appreciate it enough. I don't know. But what will happen if we keep bringing our leisure technology with us, even to the most remote corners of the globe? How will it affect our relationship with nature, if there really is nowhere to go that isn't permeated with technology?
Car camping is already an entrenched part of American culture. People drive their huge vehicles into a state park, get out the lawn chairs, hook up the TV, and turn an outdoor environment into an extended living room.
I'm not saying that your war-kayaking experiment was anything like this. But I think that the extension of the communications grid into environments that used to be relatively free of overt technology should cause us to think about its long-term effect.
I read about this in a book and thought it was an overrated suggestion. Then I tried it in my own office and was amazed. When you're sitting down at a desk and your desk does not face a wall, you don't automatically feel like you're.. well, up against a wall.
It takes more space to implement - sometimes a lot more space. But it's a great way to alter the psychological effect of an office.
I read about this in a book and thought it was an overrated suggestion. Then I tried it in my own office and was amazed. When you're sitting down at a desk and your desk does not face a wall, you don't automatically feel like you're.. well, up against a wall.
It takes more space to implement - sometimes a lot more space. But it's a great way to alter the psychological effect of an office.
This is a lot like the surfboard-camera thing. Sometimes the object of being outside immersed in nature is to...
be in nature.
I know, it's a weird thought, but war-hiking, war-kayaking, war-spelunking, and so on are essentially removing you from the environment you're ostensibly in. Think of it this way: If you are in an art museum talking on your cell phone to a friend, are you really able to immerse yourself in the art? If you're out on the water or in the forest, or climbing a rock formation, and you're too attached to the network, you lose the experience of being out in nature.
I'm sure it was fun to go war-kayaking, and it's an interesting technology exercise. But I also wonder if it's becoming so difficult for geeks to pull ourselves out of the network that we're losing our ability to appreciate and enjoy the physical world that surrounds us.
Agreed. WebMonkey has pretty much outlived its usefulness to professional Web developers. I find the stuff on O'Reilly Net and A List Apart to be a lot more up to date (obviously) and relevant.
Ah, the irony! If anyone thinks that technology decisions are immune to international politics, this development should serve as a wakeup call. Whatever the stated reasons, a desire to avoid dependence on an American company is at least partially behind this move.
I suspect that a great many European Slashdot readers are happy about the French plan not only because it could be a victory for Open Source, but also because it sends the message that America and American companies have come to expect blind acquiescence from the rest of the world.
With this board, the camera is sitting right on the water. If the supposed benefit of this camera/board is to give people a feeling of what it's like to surf the world's best waves, yada yaya, it seems that the best perspective would be on the surfer's body, as close to the eyes as possible.
This is an interesting stunt, but the best surfing photography is a form of artistic expression. I doubt very much that it will function well when limited to one camera position. Surfers and surf photographers will likely realize this and avoid this thing in droves.
Don't forget that boards often get pretty severely thrashed. Most of the surfers I know wouldn't want to put a very expensive board in peril on the best, and therefore also most dangerous, waves (particularly when it's not the best-performing board).
I may be completely wrong in my predictions on this thing, but surfing is really about getting as close to the water and the waves as you can. It's a form of recreation and sport that relies on technology, but only so long as it doesn't get in the way of the fundamental experience of being out in the ocean, waiting for the next big wave.
Geeks who get excited about the latest toys may find it hard to believe, but the surfing crowd is on the whole motivated by desires that are sometimes almost diametrically opposed to those of the geek crowd. That's not to say that there aren't surfer geeks, but when you're out in the water, the surfer takes over and the geek goes into hiding.
Many web designers are not very aware of CSS and how it can be effectively used to create more flexible pages. But let's not get carried away. Many web design teams are incorporating CSS for positioning rather belatedly because in the early days CSS was more trouble than it was worth for positioning. While it was fine for typographic controls, in the real world environment where the client is breathing down your neck and doesn't give a rat's ass about standards-compliance, getting the job done is more important than doing it perfectly.
To put the shoe on the other foot, look at the code generated by Slashdot. While the window does flex as the screen is opened wider, Slashdot doesn't even bother with CSS at all. It's a completely table-based layout. I'm not bashing on Slashdot at all, because it does what it needs to do. But I am pointint out that in a real world environment, using the latest techniques is sometimes just not feasible.
If Slashcode were to be completely rewritten so that it generates nice clean XHTML (or XML that is transformed) with CSS, would the time and effort required to make it cutting-edge compliant really be worth it? Taking the idea to other venues, should every desktop appliction written with a series of kluges in C++ be rewritten in Java so it has a more elegant structure?
Things are improving. Web designers are getting better at using CSS. Some of them are still hanging on to their "best viewed using Internet Explorer 6.0" mentality, but those are the same people who would be arguing for homogeneous computing environments if they were LAN administrators. In every field there are people who try to stay informed, and there are those who only change when forced.
It's also important to remember that clients can often dictate to a very large degree the final design. Ask any designer (print or Web) and they'll relate horror stories related to clients who think they know about design, and refuse to listen to professionals. Yes, yes, the designers should walk away in such a situation. But when someone gives you a Dilbertesque task at your job, do you tell them to fuck off, or do you do the task, hoping you can do it in a way that minimizes damage?
Some designers have the luxury of being able to implement their projects with minimal intervention from clients. But those situations are coveted by designers because they are so rare. Just keep that in mind the next time you see a website and start to think it's automatically screwed up because the designer didn't know what they were doing.
In a coldly Darwinian sense, nurses, firemen, and teachers contribute very little to mankind.
I could see how someone could argue from that perspective, and I understand that you're advancing this case for the sake of arugment, but such an opinion is easily dismissed:
FDR suffered from polio. Whether he was a good President or bad, he did sit in the White House longer than any President in U.S. history. The docs and nurses who kept him from dying helped America's Commander in Chief stay alive during WW II.
Were the teachers of Robert Goddard or Margaret Thatcher or Neil Armstrong helping someone who would otherwise have been culled from the gene pool at an earlier age? It seems to me that the contributions of teachers affect everyone who is taught, be they intrinsically capable or otherwise. But all benefit from their teaching.
The term "Darwinian" is often used to justify the notion that "survival of the fittest" means survival of the strongest individuals, when it really refers to the adaptability of an entire species. In this sense, members of a species (humans) that contribute to the overall strength of the species are quite valuable indeed.
I don't disagree that musicians, athletes, and actors can be valuable members of a society and the species as a whole. The notion that an individual can be a representative of an ideal can be a very compelling motivator for those who wish to emulate that individual, as any cyclist who watches the Tour de France can attest.
I live in a part of Northern California that still doesn't have cable broadband. Apparently it's going to be rolled out by Comcast within the next two or three months, but I'll believe it when I see it.
A few years ago I signed up for residential DSL with Covad. Since I already had two phone lines into the residence, it was fine to just make one of them the dedicated DSL line.
Unfortunately when the situation changed and I needed to use DSL and voice on the same line, SBC told me it was impossible to do so unless I switched my DSL over to SBC. Needless to say, this pissed me off to no end, because I had three static IP addresses with Covad and their service had been fantastic.
After several hours of screwing around, mistakes, and general incompetence on the part of SBC, I finally got my new account set up. This was immediately prior to SBC's rollout of their wonderful goat rodeo known as SBC/Yahoo service, so at least I avoided that nightmare.
So last year I move to a new house. There is no broadband cable here, and I can't use another DSL provider with my SBC land line service, so I have to go with SBC. SBC is so incompetent that it takes me six weeks to get DSL installed, because their billing system doesn't think that I'm a customer with them. After over a half-dozen lengthy phone calls with tech support, billing, et. al., I finally get them to realize the problem and initiate my service. Needless to say, all of the time I wasted during my work day with this crap is essentially money down a hole.
SBC is a classic example of a local monopoly that is flourishing simply because of a tilted playing field. In the early days of DSL they buried Covad in the residential market by overpromising so that customers would sign up for service with SBC, then wait for months before SBC had the capacity to initiate service.
Splitting phone and DSL service is going to help shake at least some of their complacence in the DSL market, and hopefully real competition from Comcast cable broadband will help as well. SBC is badly in need of a wake up call, and consumers should really benefit from this, provided SBC's competition takes advantage of it.
... the U.S. Congress has the Constitutional authority to make copyright laws.
Very true. But Lessig's point is that Congress does not have the *unlimited* right to continually expand copyright protections to the point that they harm the nation. That's the central message of Free Culture, Lessig's latest attempt to get people to wake up to the detrimental effect current copyright law is having on our society.
The book can be downloaded for free, and it provides plenty of examples of how the original intent of copyright has been warped almost beyond recognition in the past few decades.
The recent history of the Supreme Court does indicate that they're not going to interfere with something that is within Congressional purvue. However, it may be that the best way to attack the current copyright regime is to point out that Congress has overstepped the bounds of its authority by failing to properly take into account the negative effects of practically indefinite copyright extension.
The resources psent on this would be far better spent on other courses of action...
I'm not sure that you're wrong, but at the same time, I wonder if anyone would pay any attention to a public education campaign. With so many other vital issues on the plate right now, I doubt that most Americans would truly understand the need to reform copyright. It's just too ephemeral an issue, when you stack it next to Afghanistan, Iraq, interest rates, unemployment, Olympic athletes on drugs, and so on.
Lessig may be tilting at windmills, but at least he's trying.
The fact that the RIAA is now pissing off the broadcasters may turn out to be the splinter that finally demands attention. The broadcasters have clout of their own, both economic and political. The RIAA is not just rounding up 12 year olds any more. They're now about to come into direct conflict with another industry group.
While the NAB doesn't exactly have the best interests of you and me in mind, the RIAA's desire to regulate every single intersection of music and commerce might cause the NAB to recognize that if they espouse the cause of less restrictive copyright, they could gain tremendous political and economic benefit.
Then again, the NAB might simply form some kind of cooperative scheme with the RIAA. But I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. Look at the good will IBM has generated by fighting SCO. Sure, IBM was forced into it by a suicidal Darl McBride, but others are likely watching how much goodwill IBM is garnering by their actions in the SCO/Linux struggle.
I know, profits are more powerful than goodwill, but goodwill can lead to profits. Maybe the NAB will grok this and take the fight to the RIAA.
They're building the app *before* getting funding. That's not how the dot-coms did it, for the most part.
I have this vivid recollection of going to visit a Silicon Valley dot-com in 2000. They were bidding to provide the backend for an ecommerce project I was working on for another dot-com (see how incestuous the whole thing was?).
We talked for a while about their underlying technology. I noticed a couple of dozen people scurrying around in the open bay of the converted light industrial warehouse, so I asked the CTO what all of those people were doing. "They're in marketing and sales," he replied confidently.
"So who are your current customers?" I couldn't help but ask.
"Well, our infrastructure is still being rolled out," he answered.
"Umm.. you mean, your datacenter is still in the works?"
"Well, yes, but the application itself is still evolving."
I could tell where this was headed. "What percentage of this functionality we've been talking about is actually available right now, today?"
He at least had enough shame to avert his gaze as he admitted, "Well, we're almost there. I'd say 75% of the functionality is there right now, but by the time we finish you're project, we'll have all of the desired functionality for our product."
These guys had over $10M in funding, and had been in business for four months before we spoke with them. Their revolutionary new technology was essentially an Object Perl framework for building websites. They had no customers. They had no product. They had lots of money. All of their managers were under 30 years old.
"... it certainly isn't a case of abandoning something proprietary for something standard as you are painting it."
I left myself open to that one. Actually my intention was to point out that although Google "acquired" Atom in a sense, and might simply try to bury RSS, Google may be actually trying to figure out which technology is best.
It's not that either standard is proprietary, it's that Google seems to be coming at this not from the perspective of, "It's gonna be Atom, and dammit, we're gonna ram it down your throat," but more from the perspective of, "We recognize that both Atom and RSS have promise, and we're going to take an approach that will not rule out good technology in the pursuit of market dominance."
There may be other much more important underlying reasons for Google's decision, but this sort of behavior appears to be thoughtful. Based on past behavior, that's one of the big differentiators (for me) between Google and Microsoft.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but it would be nice if the clout of the company that dominates search could be used to help a standard rather than hinder it.
Quit with the anti-American bullshit. Yep, the problem is here.
Whoa, sorry for pointing out that demand for spamming services is coming from inside the United States.
I simply intended to point out that while we're busy pointing the finger at Russia and China, the demand is being drummed up here in the States. The Russian and Chinese criminal organizations that deliver spam should be stopped, no question about it. But as an American, I think it's appropriate to bring up the fact that we can still do more to stop spam here in America.
I'm not sure how that makes me anti-American, but given the current domestic political climate I guess everyone is suspect.
This book is not really just about comics. There's a lot to it, but it's also very fun to read. One of Scott's key points is that the less photorealistic the representation of a human character, the easier it is for the reader to identify with that character. You, the reader, can essentially fill in the face and make it your own.
Often times the suggestion of something is more emotionally powerful than the detailed representation of it. This is something Hitchcock used to great effect in his films, and is part of the reason why the most truly frightening movies are often the ones that don't show much gore.
in both cases there is plenty of demand from within the States. If it ain't rich kids experimenting, it's poor kids escaping with drugs from South America or Asia. If it's not a "bulk emailer" in California, it's a "clever marketer" in Florida sending millions of unsolicited email via servers in Russia or China.
I'll connect the dots:
Demand for spamming services is akin to demand for illegal drugs, in that demand from the United States fuels supply from other countries.
It's the damned Columbians making all that cocaine! The friggin' Afghans are selling opium again!
Evil Russian spammers! Chinese spammers want to take down America!
And yet, in both cases there is plenty of demand from within the States. If it ain't rich kids experimenting, it's poor kids escaping with drugs from South America or Asia. If it's not a "bulk emailer" in California, it's a "clever marketer" in Florida sending millions of unsolicited email via servers in Russia or China.
I checked out the site pretty thoroughly and it looks like professionals aren't going to jump on this bandwagon.
As Edward Tufte points out in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations, the meaningful display of information is about removing visual clutter, not introducing it.
Just as a PowerPoint presentation doesn't really increase our ability to grok the quarterly sales figures, the visual fluff of metaphorical buildings and busses doesn't help us understand traffic data. Simple bar graphs do not introduce the distortion of perspective. They're not sexy, but they do not make it more difficult to discern relationships between data elements, the way a 3d urban representation does.
I'm also reminded of good old Microsoft Bob, and some of the more antiquated websites from the 1990s that forced a metaphor onto something that didn't need one in the first place. Back in those days, Web designers felt that people wanted an "experience" when what they really wanted was an attractive and clean interface to information, organized in a way that would be useful.
Professional web developers and marketers (I know, they're all stupid, they all want dumbed-down visual information, blah blah blah) need information they can drill down into quickly and easily without a lot of superflous distraction. There are already several good tools, like Summary and FunnelWeb, on the market. I don't think this experiment will make it in an already saturated market.
You're missing the point. Those eight links all go to pages that have content specifically oriented toward helping the user apply security patches or otherwise deal with the inherent security weaknesses of Microsoft products.
That's vastly different from the primary product page, which is intended to tell customers what they're going to get when they buy a product. Microsoft doesn't make any security claims on the Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 product pages, while the Open BSD and Mac OS X pages specifically discuss how important security is to the foundation of the OS. Microsoft doesn't make security claims because they know they're vulnerable in this area, and because in spite of their new "focus on security" they are still far more interested in milking their primary cash cow than in making it more secure.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone could just as easily program a plug-in for Mozilla/Firefox/whatever that does the same thing as BHO? Do you also think that all operating systems are equally secure inherently? Is it just as easy to program in Python as it is to program in Pascal? Microsoft has a long history of creating application environments that offer extensibility through plug-ins that are inherently prone to security exploits. This makes it easier to create exploits for their products.
IE is the target because a high per cent of people uses it. If it was 50% IE and 50% Mozilla I'm sure we would see a lot more activity on trying to create ad/spy/trojan-ware for all browsers.
Like back in the day, when Netscape ruled the browser market? Yep, there were a lot of adware/spyware/trojan-ware apps back then.
Maybe you should be happy that IE is used by so many.
Actually, no. I think most people would be a lot happier not to have to deal with such a crappy browser that is always introducing security problems, isn't standards-compliant, and doesn't have any of the most recent "must have" features that so many other browsers share. It would be easier for web developers, users, and security managers if IE weren't such a piece of crap.
"The Justice Department's spending on cybercrime would leap from the $157 million allocated by Congress for the 2003 fiscal year to $265 million. The agency's Internet Crimes Against Children program, which investigates child pornography and "enticement" cases, would receive a $2 million increase, to reach $14.5 million."
Even if the Justice Department "only" had $157M in 2003, you'd think there would be a bit more to show for it. But this is the US government we're talking about. There are doubtless a good number of motivated and competent people in the US government who are dilligently working to combat cybercrime.
The problem is that US government agencies are notoriously slow to adapt to change. Having worked in one before, I can attest to how frustrating it can be to try and get even simple, obvious tasks completed when groupthink prevails. It must be incredibly frustrating for the folks working in those departments who are trying to go after cybercriminals.
They've never offered a bargain-basement computer because they want their brand to be associated with quality hardware. While sometimes their products suffer defects, in general I have found their hardware to be far above the industry average in longevity and ease of use.
According to your comment, the G5 has speed you might have to pay half as much to get in a PC. This is one of those price comparisons that is of course impossible to refute. Sure, there's a PC out there that runs as fast as a G5 and costs half as much. But the problem with such comparisons is that you can use whatever PC you want to represent the price point. Are all PCs truly created equal? Of course not. If you want to compare price based solely on processor speed, you're simply ruling out all of the other factors that go into selecting a computer.
For example, you take Apple to task because you don't want to buy and eMac or iMac, and you want something that the PC world provides in abundance - a box that lets me mix & match to get the features I want at a reasonable price. You're comparing the entire PC market against one company. Does Dell offer every single variation you'd like? Does Gateway? Does HP?
You also mention that Macs really are far more hassle-free.. I assume you're referring to the operating system. So even the top-end PCs suffer from more hassles. How do those hassles translate in terms of overall cost? That's tough to estimate, but consider that Mac users have truly insignificant security and malware problems when compared to Windows users.
Your comment about Jobs being overly concerned about the G5's noise is a bit odd. If he hadn't insisted on making a nice quiet new G5, would you have gotten on him for not fixing it? Apple doesn't always succeed in making the best overall user experience, but it's truly at the core of how they see themselves in the market. Of course they're going to try hard to make a quieter machine.
It seems to me that you're frustrated most of all with Apple's philosophy. Apple doesn't want to make low-cost, commodity boxes, because they know that in the long run that's an extremely dangerous game. Look at all of the "cheapest" PC companies that have come and gone over the years. Macs will never dominate the computer market, but Apple has never been in better shape and is continuing to innovate and expand into new markets. Just look at their forays into digital hub software, niche professional software, online music retailing, portable music players, server systems, and supercomputer projects.
They are very much a design-driven company. To them, and to a lot of their customers, a computer isn't just a tool. This is in Apple's DNA, just like sacrificing all to achieve marketshare is in Microsoft's DNA.
If you're willing to pay a bit less in order to get the PC configuration you want, you're forgoing ease of use, hardware longevity, far fewer malware and security problems, an extremely stable OS, all of the iApps, peripheral ease of use, and better overall design. That's your choice. But don't blame Apple because you can't get all of the benefits of a Mac at the super low-low price of $299. R&D costs money, and the bargain-basement PC vendor isn't spending any money on R&D or design.
I'm not an elist stuck on myself artist, and I'm not a designer. But I really prefer using a machine that works for me instead of against me and saves me time and money over the long haul.
As for Apple dying inside a decade, just remember what these other fine prognosticators said in their day:
"Stick a fork in 'em - this Apple is cooked."
Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/2003
"The iPod, with its backward-looking feature set and dramatica
I wonder if in bringing so much of our technology with us as we explore nature, we're failing to appreciate what is around us. As a kayaker you probably appreciate nature quite a bit. Maybe you don't. Maybe I don't appreciate it enough. I don't know. But what will happen if we keep bringing our leisure technology with us, even to the most remote corners of the globe? How will it affect our relationship with nature, if there really is nowhere to go that isn't permeated with technology?
Car camping is already an entrenched part of American culture. People drive their huge vehicles into a state park, get out the lawn chairs, hook up the TV, and turn an outdoor environment into an extended living room.
I'm not saying that your war-kayaking experiment was anything like this. But I think that the extension of the communications grid into environments that used to be relatively free of overt technology should cause us to think about its long-term effect.
I read about this in a book and thought it was an overrated suggestion. Then I tried it in my own office and was amazed. When you're sitting down at a desk and your desk does not face a wall, you don't automatically feel like you're.. well, up against a wall.
It takes more space to implement - sometimes a lot more space. But it's a great way to alter the psychological effect of an office.
It takes more space to implement - sometimes a lot more space. But it's a great way to alter the psychological effect of an office.
be in nature.
I know, it's a weird thought, but war-hiking, war-kayaking, war-spelunking, and so on are essentially removing you from the environment you're ostensibly in. Think of it this way: If you are in an art museum talking on your cell phone to a friend, are you really able to immerse yourself in the art? If you're out on the water or in the forest, or climbing a rock formation, and you're too attached to the network, you lose the experience of being out in nature.
I'm sure it was fun to go war-kayaking, and it's an interesting technology exercise. But I also wonder if it's becoming so difficult for geeks to pull ourselves out of the network that we're losing our ability to appreciate and enjoy the physical world that surrounds us.
I suspect that a great many European Slashdot readers are happy about the French plan not only because it could be a victory for Open Source, but also because it sends the message that America and American companies have come to expect blind acquiescence from the rest of the world.
Action, meet Reaction.
This is an interesting stunt, but the best surfing photography is a form of artistic expression. I doubt very much that it will function well when limited to one camera position. Surfers and surf photographers will likely realize this and avoid this thing in droves.
Don't forget that boards often get pretty severely thrashed. Most of the surfers I know wouldn't want to put a very expensive board in peril on the best, and therefore also most dangerous, waves (particularly when it's not the best-performing board).
I may be completely wrong in my predictions on this thing, but surfing is really about getting as close to the water and the waves as you can. It's a form of recreation and sport that relies on technology, but only so long as it doesn't get in the way of the fundamental experience of being out in the ocean, waiting for the next big wave.
Geeks who get excited about the latest toys may find it hard to believe, but the surfing crowd is on the whole motivated by desires that are sometimes almost diametrically opposed to those of the geek crowd. That's not to say that there aren't surfer geeks, but when you're out in the water, the surfer takes over and the geek goes into hiding.
To put the shoe on the other foot, look at the code generated by Slashdot. While the window does flex as the screen is opened wider, Slashdot doesn't even bother with CSS at all. It's a completely table-based layout. I'm not bashing on Slashdot at all, because it does what it needs to do. But I am pointint out that in a real world environment, using the latest techniques is sometimes just not feasible.
If Slashcode were to be completely rewritten so that it generates nice clean XHTML (or XML that is transformed) with CSS, would the time and effort required to make it cutting-edge compliant really be worth it? Taking the idea to other venues, should every desktop appliction written with a series of kluges in C++ be rewritten in Java so it has a more elegant structure?
Things are improving. Web designers are getting better at using CSS. Some of them are still hanging on to their "best viewed using Internet Explorer 6.0" mentality, but those are the same people who would be arguing for homogeneous computing environments if they were LAN administrators. In every field there are people who try to stay informed, and there are those who only change when forced.
It's also important to remember that clients can often dictate to a very large degree the final design. Ask any designer (print or Web) and they'll relate horror stories related to clients who think they know about design, and refuse to listen to professionals. Yes, yes, the designers should walk away in such a situation. But when someone gives you a Dilbertesque task at your job, do you tell them to fuck off, or do you do the task, hoping you can do it in a way that minimizes damage?
Some designers have the luxury of being able to implement their projects with minimal intervention from clients. But those situations are coveted by designers because they are so rare. Just keep that in mind the next time you see a website and start to think it's automatically screwed up because the designer didn't know what they were doing.
I could see how someone could argue from that perspective, and I understand that you're advancing this case for the sake of arugment, but such an opinion is easily dismissed:
FDR suffered from polio. Whether he was a good President or bad, he did sit in the White House longer than any President in U.S. history. The docs and nurses who kept him from dying helped America's Commander in Chief stay alive during WW II.
Were the teachers of Robert Goddard or Margaret Thatcher or Neil Armstrong helping someone who would otherwise have been culled from the gene pool at an earlier age? It seems to me that the contributions of teachers affect everyone who is taught, be they intrinsically capable or otherwise. But all benefit from their teaching.
The term "Darwinian" is often used to justify the notion that "survival of the fittest" means survival of the strongest individuals, when it really refers to the adaptability of an entire species. In this sense, members of a species (humans) that contribute to the overall strength of the species are quite valuable indeed.
I don't disagree that musicians, athletes, and actors can be valuable members of a society and the species as a whole. The notion that an individual can be a representative of an ideal can be a very compelling motivator for those who wish to emulate that individual, as any cyclist who watches the Tour de France can attest.
A few years ago I signed up for residential DSL with Covad. Since I already had two phone lines into the residence, it was fine to just make one of them the dedicated DSL line.
Unfortunately when the situation changed and I needed to use DSL and voice on the same line, SBC told me it was impossible to do so unless I switched my DSL over to SBC. Needless to say, this pissed me off to no end, because I had three static IP addresses with Covad and their service had been fantastic.
After several hours of screwing around, mistakes, and general incompetence on the part of SBC, I finally got my new account set up. This was immediately prior to SBC's rollout of their wonderful goat rodeo known as SBC/Yahoo service, so at least I avoided that nightmare.
So last year I move to a new house. There is no broadband cable here, and I can't use another DSL provider with my SBC land line service, so I have to go with SBC. SBC is so incompetent that it takes me six weeks to get DSL installed, because their billing system doesn't think that I'm a customer with them. After over a half-dozen lengthy phone calls with tech support, billing, et. al., I finally get them to realize the problem and initiate my service. Needless to say, all of the time I wasted during my work day with this crap is essentially money down a hole.
SBC is a classic example of a local monopoly that is flourishing simply because of a tilted playing field. In the early days of DSL they buried Covad in the residential market by overpromising so that customers would sign up for service with SBC, then wait for months before SBC had the capacity to initiate service.
Splitting phone and DSL service is going to help shake at least some of their complacence in the DSL market, and hopefully real competition from Comcast cable broadband will help as well. SBC is badly in need of a wake up call, and consumers should really benefit from this, provided SBC's competition takes advantage of it.
Very true. But Lessig's point is that Congress does not have the *unlimited* right to continually expand copyright protections to the point that they harm the nation. That's the central message of Free Culture, Lessig's latest attempt to get people to wake up to the detrimental effect current copyright law is having on our society.
The book can be downloaded for free, and it provides plenty of examples of how the original intent of copyright has been warped almost beyond recognition in the past few decades.
The recent history of the Supreme Court does indicate that they're not going to interfere with something that is within Congressional purvue. However, it may be that the best way to attack the current copyright regime is to point out that Congress has overstepped the bounds of its authority by failing to properly take into account the negative effects of practically indefinite copyright extension.
The resources psent on this would be far better spent on other courses of action...
I'm not sure that you're wrong, but at the same time, I wonder if anyone would pay any attention to a public education campaign. With so many other vital issues on the plate right now, I doubt that most Americans would truly understand the need to reform copyright. It's just too ephemeral an issue, when you stack it next to Afghanistan, Iraq, interest rates, unemployment, Olympic athletes on drugs, and so on.
Lessig may be tilting at windmills, but at least he's trying.
While the NAB doesn't exactly have the best interests of you and me in mind, the RIAA's desire to regulate every single intersection of music and commerce might cause the NAB to recognize that if they espouse the cause of less restrictive copyright, they could gain tremendous political and economic benefit.
Then again, the NAB might simply form some kind of cooperative scheme with the RIAA. But I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. Look at the good will IBM has generated by fighting SCO. Sure, IBM was forced into it by a suicidal Darl McBride, but others are likely watching how much goodwill IBM is garnering by their actions in the SCO/Linux struggle.
I know, profits are more powerful than goodwill, but goodwill can lead to profits. Maybe the NAB will grok this and take the fight to the RIAA.
I have this vivid recollection of going to visit a Silicon Valley dot-com in 2000. They were bidding to provide the backend for an ecommerce project I was working on for another dot-com (see how incestuous the whole thing was?).
We talked for a while about their underlying technology. I noticed a couple of dozen people scurrying around in the open bay of the converted light industrial warehouse, so I asked the CTO what all of those people were doing. "They're in marketing and sales," he replied confidently.
"So who are your current customers?" I couldn't help but ask.
"Well, our infrastructure is still being rolled out," he answered.
"Umm.. you mean, your datacenter is still in the works?"
"Well, yes, but the application itself is still evolving."
I could tell where this was headed. "What percentage of this functionality we've been talking about is actually available right now, today?"
He at least had enough shame to avert his gaze as he admitted, "Well, we're almost there. I'd say 75% of the functionality is there right now, but by the time we finish you're project, we'll have all of the desired functionality for our product."
These guys had over $10M in funding, and had been in business for four months before we spoke with them. Their revolutionary new technology was essentially an Object Perl framework for building websites. They had no customers. They had no product. They had lots of money. All of their managers were under 30 years old.
THAT was a dot-com.
I left myself open to that one. Actually my intention was to point out that although Google "acquired" Atom in a sense, and might simply try to bury RSS, Google may be actually trying to figure out which technology is best.
It's not that either standard is proprietary, it's that Google seems to be coming at this not from the perspective of, "It's gonna be Atom, and dammit, we're gonna ram it down your throat," but more from the perspective of, "We recognize that both Atom and RSS have promise, and we're going to take an approach that will not rule out good technology in the pursuit of market dominance."
There may be other much more important underlying reasons for Google's decision, but this sort of behavior appears to be thoughtful. Based on past behavior, that's one of the big differentiators (for me) between Google and Microsoft.
Microsoft, are you watching?
Whoa, sorry for pointing out that demand for spamming services is coming from inside the United States.
I simply intended to point out that while we're busy pointing the finger at Russia and China, the demand is being drummed up here in the States. The Russian and Chinese criminal organizations that deliver spam should be stopped, no question about it. But as an American, I think it's appropriate to bring up the fact that we can still do more to stop spam here in America.
I'm not sure how that makes me anti-American, but given the current domestic political climate I guess everyone is suspect.
Often times the suggestion of something is more emotionally powerful than the detailed representation of it. This is something Hitchcock used to great effect in his films, and is part of the reason why the most truly frightening movies are often the ones that don't show much gore.
I'll connect the dots:
Demand for spamming services is akin to demand for illegal drugs, in that demand from the United States fuels supply from other countries.
Evil Russian spammers! Chinese spammers want to take down America!
And yet, in both cases there is plenty of demand from within the States. If it ain't rich kids experimenting, it's poor kids escaping with drugs from South America or Asia. If it's not a "bulk emailer" in California, it's a "clever marketer" in Florida sending millions of unsolicited email via servers in Russia or China.
As Edward Tufte points out in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations, the meaningful display of information is about removing visual clutter, not introducing it.
Just as a PowerPoint presentation doesn't really increase our ability to grok the quarterly sales figures, the visual fluff of metaphorical buildings and busses doesn't help us understand traffic data. Simple bar graphs do not introduce the distortion of perspective. They're not sexy, but they do not make it more difficult to discern relationships between data elements, the way a 3d urban representation does.
I'm also reminded of good old Microsoft Bob, and some of the more antiquated websites from the 1990s that forced a metaphor onto something that didn't need one in the first place. Back in those days, Web designers felt that people wanted an "experience" when what they really wanted was an attractive and clean interface to information, organized in a way that would be useful.
Professional web developers and marketers (I know, they're all stupid, they all want dumbed-down visual information, blah blah blah) need information they can drill down into quickly and easily without a lot of superflous distraction. There are already several good tools, like Summary and FunnelWeb, on the market. I don't think this experiment will make it in an already saturated market.
You're missing the point. Those eight links all go to pages that have content specifically oriented toward helping the user apply security patches or otherwise deal with the inherent security weaknesses of Microsoft products.
That's vastly different from the primary product page, which is intended to tell customers what they're going to get when they buy a product. Microsoft doesn't make any security claims on the Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 product pages, while the Open BSD and Mac OS X pages specifically discuss how important security is to the foundation of the OS. Microsoft doesn't make security claims because they know they're vulnerable in this area, and because in spite of their new "focus on security" they are still far more interested in milking their primary cash cow than in making it more secure.