There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.
Come on, NYT! Why on God's conservative, 10,000-year old earth would legislators consult so-called experts? F*cking New Yorkers have no common sense.
If people enjoy using Facebook, and their enjoyment of Facebook with all its banalities doesn't affect me, why do I care what they do? I have my own ways of wasting time, they have theirs.
Not really. Microsoft in the early days turned a blind eye to rampant piracy of its software in order to gain marketshare. The entire Microsoft model of creating software than runs on everyone else's hardware is not about control, it's about network effects.
Microsoft obviously has bullied hardware OEMs and other companies, engaged in FUD, and so on. But from its sloppy user experience to its "slap this OS on any hardware you can" mentality, Microsoft's idea of control is not the same as Apple's.
One of Guy Kawasaki's [bio] marketing mantras is that it pays off to pick a fight. In this case they didn't pick a fight with a competitor, but they did compare themselves favorably to Brooks. Everyone in computing knows about The Mythical Man-Month. What better way to get yourselves in front of the tech crowd than to point out that you grok the lessons of The Mythical Man-Month, but you've found a way around them?
"If you are providing a channel to sell content then you can only go so far in restricting it, and you better be consistent about it."
I agree. The inconsistency in Apple's approach has been annoying, to say the least. As the line between app and content becomes meaningless, Apple isn't doing enough to be clear and consistent. Sure, there will always be people who will try to weasel through gaps in any content policy, but making such a policy available so everyone knows the rules would be far better than what Apple is doing right now, which is opaque to those of us outside Apple.
Apple has always been about tightly controlling the user experience and the overall brand for their products. Developers are not their customers. Developers are useful to Apple only if they advance Apple's goals. Those developers who have been successful in the iPhone OS and Mac markets understand this and have adapted accordingly.
One could make the case that developers were Microsoft's primary market for years. Look where that led Microsoft. Their products gave developers and users all kinds of options, but the end result was bloat and annoyance. Customers are voting with their wallets and embracing products that just work.
The tightly controlled Apple brand and user experience gives developers less freedom, and that annoys the hell out of developers. But until someone else can find a way to give developers the independence they desire while still delivering a tightly focused, elegant user experience, the choices seem to be: Take the constrained Apple route with its flaws, or take the more flexible Microsoft/Nokia/et. al. route with its flaws.
The new mission needs to be: Kill Windows.
Until Microsoft does this, they'll be doomed by all of their legacy support issues.
If Microsoft creates an OS that kicks the crap out of Windows, they'll be making money from Windows and from the new OS, until gradually the Windows user base shifts.
But the problem is that Microsoft is unwilling to kill the goose, even though it's obvious that it is no longer laying golden eggs.
I've been using a pilates ball for several months. Got used to it immediately, and it really does make a difference. Found it online for $10 (discontinued model). Beats the cost of a hifalutin' ergo chair.
Oh, that's beautiful. The world's largest and most powerful software company is complaining that the competitive force it fears the most uses a system that is unfair.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some excellent information about how Americans use Internet and mobile technology. Despite Slashdot, Twitter, MySpace, et. al., a huge slice of America only uses modern communications technology when they need to, while a smaller slice tries to avoid it.
For many people, technology is something they struggle to adapt to, rather than rush to embrace. It can be frustrating for these people, and very time-consuming. There's only so much time in the day, and if I weren't keeping up on the latest geekery, I could be using that time to read more history, ride my bike more, become a karate black belt, or whatever.
Most people are not technology-obsessed, and there will always be a certain percentage of the population that is too old to care about the latest new thing that makes it easier to hook up with barhopping friends or more easily consume huge libraries of P2P pr0n.
I always have a tough time getting my mind around the numbers bandied about in these human tragedies, but just imagine if 5,000 people died in the United States from something like this.
The 1989 quake that hit Northern California caused a lot of economic damage and freaked the hell out of people. It took years for the areas hit to fully recover from it. That incident killed 67 people.
I really do hope that the numbers turn out to be lower than expected. Major suckage.
I hate all made up words. Database, modem, gigabyte, daemon, ethernet... they all suck. And the word suck sucks, too. Bring me back to the days when we all communicated with grunts, before all of this linguistic b.s. started.
They lost in the French Nazi auction case, which established the precedent that even big American Internet companies have to abide by national laws. The excuse that the Internet is some sort of separate place, or that national laws have no clout in the Internet Age died right then and there, in 2000.
Gee, that sure sounds like the government sold the companies the spectrum, and now the companies own it. (Litmus test: can the companies that won a bid on a spot sell it to third parties?)
The government sold the rights to use the spectrum, which are transferrable, but the government also has the power to impose restrictions on that use. The common fallacy of expansive interpretations of "ownership" of statutorily-created rights in intangibles such as intellectual property and spectrum is that these rights are like those of a landowner. The bundle of rights provided is much smaller.
I wish I could figure out a way to keep every kook and asshole from coming near me but it's impossible. Why is it any different on the internet?
Please. You mean to tell me you've encountered as many kooks and assholes in your entire life as you have in one day of reading c|net comments, Digg, and Slashdot?
It would be like a librarian asking for censorship.
No, it would be like the librarian asking for quiet in the reading room. It's not the dissemination of ideas or the idea of anonymous communication that bothers him. It's the disruption of discourse by people who refuse to adhere to simple rules.
there is a nice lot on a lake, and if it sells for above certain amount, the buyer would have to provide right of way across his property.
There's this stuff called "spectrum" and it is not really "owned" by anyone. The government, acting on behalf of the people collectively, sells the rights to proscribed use of that spectrum in the interests of maximizing competition and creating the most benefit to citizens.
So, someone that has absolutely no intention of buying this property, but wants to get to walk across to the lake anytime (which he could not currently do as the property is not developed) bids it up until the price is right.
One of the many interested parties who wants to make use of that spectrum lobbies for certain restrictions to be put into place on the use of the spectrum. These restrictions work to the advantage of that interested party, but many other parties see this as broadly advantageous to competition. So this interested party's enlightened self-interest results in meaningful changes being injected into the bidding process.
You like the place and buy it anyway, but now you presumably have to let the other guy visit and hang around on your private beach whenever he likes. Wouldn't you try to either remove or limit such right of way from your property?
Knowing that these restrictions have been accepted as serving larger policy goals by the auctioning party, you bid for use of that portion of the spectrum. Again, you bid for it knowing that there would be restrictions on its use, because those restrictions had been placed there by the seller of the spectrum.
Because you won a bid for *use* of that portion of the spectrum, you do not own it. You have limited rights to use that portion of the spectrum to do particular things. In trying to renege on the terms under which you engaged in bidding, you are merely trying to assert more rights than you have purchased.
If you didn't want that other party to benefit, you shouldn't have bid, because you already knew they had the potential to benefit under the terms that governed the auction.
Slashdot Mirror
There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.
Come on, NYT! Why on God's conservative, 10,000-year old earth would legislators consult so-called experts? F*cking New Yorkers have no common sense.
it seems like a massive waste of time to...
If people enjoy using Facebook, and their enjoyment of Facebook with all its banalities doesn't affect me, why do I care what they do? I have my own ways of wasting time, they have theirs.
So does Microsoft...
Not really. Microsoft in the early days turned a blind eye to rampant piracy of its software in order to gain marketshare. The entire Microsoft model of creating software than runs on everyone else's hardware is not about control, it's about network effects.
Microsoft obviously has bullied hardware OEMs and other companies, engaged in FUD, and so on. But from its sloppy user experience to its "slap this OS on any hardware you can" mentality, Microsoft's idea of control is not the same as Apple's.
One of Guy Kawasaki's [bio] marketing mantras is that it pays off to pick a fight. In this case they didn't pick a fight with a competitor, but they did compare themselves favorably to Brooks. Everyone in computing knows about The Mythical Man-Month. What better way to get yourselves in front of the tech crowd than to point out that you grok the lessons of The Mythical Man-Month, but you've found a way around them?
"If you are providing a channel to sell content then you can only go so far in restricting it, and you better be consistent about it."
I agree. The inconsistency in Apple's approach has been annoying, to say the least. As the line between app and content becomes meaningless, Apple isn't doing enough to be clear and consistent. Sure, there will always be people who will try to weasel through gaps in any content policy, but making such a policy available so everyone knows the rules would be far better than what Apple is doing right now, which is opaque to those of us outside Apple.
Apple has always been about tightly controlling the user experience and the overall brand for their products. Developers are not their customers. Developers are useful to Apple only if they advance Apple's goals. Those developers who have been successful in the iPhone OS and Mac markets understand this and have adapted accordingly. One could make the case that developers were Microsoft's primary market for years. Look where that led Microsoft. Their products gave developers and users all kinds of options, but the end result was bloat and annoyance. Customers are voting with their wallets and embracing products that just work. The tightly controlled Apple brand and user experience gives developers less freedom, and that annoys the hell out of developers. But until someone else can find a way to give developers the independence they desire while still delivering a tightly focused, elegant user experience, the choices seem to be: Take the constrained Apple route with its flaws, or take the more flexible Microsoft/Nokia/et. al. route with its flaws.
... seek out a practicing attorney, rather than a full-time law professor.
It's gonna be voice recognition that's gonna kill off the mouse. Really. Any day now.
The new mission needs to be: Kill Windows. Until Microsoft does this, they'll be doomed by all of their legacy support issues. If Microsoft creates an OS that kicks the crap out of Windows, they'll be making money from Windows and from the new OS, until gradually the Windows user base shifts. But the problem is that Microsoft is unwilling to kill the goose, even though it's obvious that it is no longer laying golden eggs.
I've been using a pilates ball for several months. Got used to it immediately, and it really does make a difference. Found it online for $10 (discontinued model). Beats the cost of a hifalutin' ergo chair.
How appropriate.
"...a basic principle of economic fairness."
Oh, that's beautiful. The world's largest and most powerful software company is complaining that the competitive force it fears the most uses a system that is unfair.
How 'bout some cheese with that whine?
headline... evar. How about this instead: NASA Employee Suspended for Violating Hatch Act
goatse, goatse!
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some excellent information about how Americans use Internet and mobile technology. Despite Slashdot, Twitter, MySpace, et. al., a huge slice of America only uses modern communications technology when they need to, while a smaller slice tries to avoid it.
For many people, technology is something they struggle to adapt to, rather than rush to embrace. It can be frustrating for these people, and very time-consuming. There's only so much time in the day, and if I weren't keeping up on the latest geekery, I could be using that time to read more history, ride my bike more, become a karate black belt, or whatever.
Most people are not technology-obsessed, and there will always be a certain percentage of the population that is too old to care about the latest new thing that makes it easier to hook up with barhopping friends or more easily consume huge libraries of P2P pr0n.
I always have a tough time getting my mind around the numbers bandied about in these human tragedies, but just imagine if 5,000 people died in the United States from something like this.
The 1989 quake that hit Northern California caused a lot of economic damage and freaked the hell out of people. It took years for the areas hit to fully recover from it. That incident killed 67 people.
I really do hope that the numbers turn out to be lower than expected. Major suckage.
grok is just the beginning.
I hate all made up words. Database, modem, gigabyte, daemon, ethernet... they all suck. And the word suck sucks, too. Bring me back to the days when we all communicated with grunts, before all of this linguistic b.s. started.
They lost in the French Nazi auction case, which established the precedent that even big American Internet companies have to abide by national laws. The excuse that the Internet is some sort of separate place, or that national laws have no clout in the Internet Age died right then and there, in 2000.
Gee, that sure sounds like the government sold the companies the spectrum, and now the companies own it. (Litmus test: can the companies that won a bid on a spot sell it to third parties?)
The government sold the rights to use the spectrum, which are transferrable, but the government also has the power to impose restrictions on that use. The common fallacy of expansive interpretations of "ownership" of statutorily-created rights in intangibles such as intellectual property and spectrum is that these rights are like those of a landowner. The bundle of rights provided is much smaller.
I wish I could figure out a way to keep every kook and asshole from coming near me but it's impossible. Why is it any different on the internet?
Please. You mean to tell me you've encountered as many kooks and assholes in your entire life as you have in one day of reading c|net comments, Digg, and Slashdot?
It would be like a librarian asking for censorship.
No, it would be like the librarian asking for quiet in the reading room. It's not the dissemination of ideas or the idea of anonymous communication that bothers him. It's the disruption of discourse by people who refuse to adhere to simple rules.
there is a nice lot on a lake, and if it sells for above certain amount, the buyer would have to provide right of way across his property.
There's this stuff called "spectrum" and it is not really "owned" by anyone. The government, acting on behalf of the people collectively, sells the rights to proscribed use of that spectrum in the interests of maximizing competition and creating the most benefit to citizens.
So, someone that has absolutely no intention of buying this property, but wants to get to walk across to the lake anytime (which he could not currently do as the property is not developed) bids it up until the price is right.
One of the many interested parties who wants to make use of that spectrum lobbies for certain restrictions to be put into place on the use of the spectrum. These restrictions work to the advantage of that interested party, but many other parties see this as broadly advantageous to competition. So this interested party's enlightened self-interest results in meaningful changes being injected into the bidding process.
You like the place and buy it anyway, but now you presumably have to let the other guy visit and hang around on your private beach whenever he likes. Wouldn't you try to either remove or limit such right of way from your property?
Knowing that these restrictions have been accepted as serving larger policy goals by the auctioning party, you bid for use of that portion of the spectrum. Again, you bid for it knowing that there would be restrictions on its use, because those restrictions had been placed there by the seller of the spectrum.
Because you won a bid for *use* of that portion of the spectrum, you do not own it. You have limited rights to use that portion of the spectrum to do particular things. In trying to renege on the terms under which you engaged in bidding, you are merely trying to assert more rights than you have purchased.
If you didn't want that other party to benefit, you shouldn't have bid, because you already knew they had the potential to benefit under the terms that governed the auction.
I'd love to find a way to separate the Intellectually Challenged Wealthy among us from some of their petty cash. Musk just beat me to it.
5... 4... 3...
As the author of the blog post, I totally agree :)
My intention was not to deride your blog post, of course. I thought it was well-presented and intriguing.