It seems if all interested countries could pool their resources and knowledge, we'd get a lot further a lot faster as a species. Of course, nobody wants to do that because it's all about owning the technologies that emerge - as usual short term monetary considerations trump long term scientific endeavours.
Well the US and USSR governments can take some of the blame here. In their race to outdo each other, they associated having a strong space programme with being a strong nation, so it's only natural that, when the US announces it's cutting funding for space just as other nations are expanding it, some people will question what that says about the countries themselves.
[...] the best bet is to send non meatsacks, as robots can take much more stress, don't need pesky things like air and toilets, and don't mind spending decades on one way trips.
Just so long as you don't tell them it's a one way trip.
Plenty of human endeavours have been colossal money sinks, few have given us the ability to make a claim so bold, that we left this little planet of ours under our own speed, even for just a tiny fraction of our history. Even if the universe is teeming with life, I have to believe that spaceflight is still a monumental accomplishment. Certainly one I'd rather leave as our epitaph than "we killed a bunch of people for something as tawdry as resources or religious differences". If the fact that, in evolutinary terms, we were barely out of the trees before we got our kind into space doesn't embiggen the soul, I don't know what will.
Well, much as AT&T seems to be generally clueless, I'd expect even they would get suspicious if you called and the only identifiable details you had were your email (even if you can use that to get the name) and the SIM number. When I wanted to cancel my (UK so not AT&T admittedly) mobile phone contract, I was asked for my account number, name, address, date of birth and the answer to my security question before they'd even think about taking action.
Not only that, and I'm certainly not defending their actions, but how many times have we seen it in the past that people with good intentions alert the owners of the code to the flaw and it just gets sat on or ignored for years. It seems the only way to get these companies to respond is to show them the consequences rather than just warn them. It's a sad state of affairs, but all too common.
I personally preferred the one description of 'a picture of a man stretching his anus to 'olympic' proportions'. Just calling it 'olympic' proportions is a bad mental image enough.
Brings a new meaning to the Olympic rings, definitely.
A big database of already public information. Balance the cost of them writing something to go crawl and index this info against the cost of setting up and maintaining it and I'd hardly say they're gaining a massive benefit from this. Do you think they're going to somehow be able to use this information to somehow serve more appropriate adverts to inventors? Or that people paying for ads will somehow care that they're offering a free, short term database facility to a public body?
Indeed, pretty much the only games I still regularly play on PC are Valve games, some of those I've been playing in various iterations for over 10 years. Similarly I've never really had a problem using Steam, from the early days to present. I don't like the idea that I can't just install my game anywhere and not have to validate, etc, but of all the schemes game companies have devised, it seems to be the most usable and least disagreeable.
This is interesting, because this kind of impression tracking is at the core of modern analytics. In ye olde days of TV advertising, the only way to know if an ad was successful was if you got increased sales right after it aired. Now advertisers can say "The customer bought this product after seeing the ad three times on slashdot, twice on digg, so we're going to split the ad revene 3:2 between them", whereas under the old click-through model, neither would have got anything. This is why analytics is important to content providers as well as advertisers, prevent your competitors from gathering the same analytics detail and you'll effectively massively decrease their potential customer base.
This is about whether [Company B] is leveraging their huge advantage in the Apps space to try and drive out [Company A]'s product, though. If they are, we call that "anti-competitive behaviour" and it's generally frowned upon because it goes against the principles of a free market. That's a whole world of difference to [Company B] made a better product than [Company A] who now feel threatened they will be outsold.
As these are 3rd party apps, the analogy GP should have used is that Apple telling developers what they can do in terms of advertising within their own app is like Google telling you what you can do in terms of advertising on your webpage before you can appear in their listing. They don't do this, hence the hypcritical accusation is false.
Hmm, I couldn't find any information on this, could you cite the source of your information that states Apple don't intent to lock out any ad solution provider unless they're also in the phone business? Not that I doubt your word or anything, but I was under the impression that this specifically did exclude everyone (and that if they only cared about not giving Google an unfair advantage, they could manage that much more simply by having an Apple-ads solution on Android phones to keep things open and competitive).
Well the point is it's not just Apple vs Google, it's Apple vs Everyone Who Has An Interest In Advertising/Developing on/Using the Platform. If I'm writing an app and my users say "We don't like Google's data collection policies", I could previously respond to that by serving my ads through a more transparent or less data collection intensive ad company. With these changes in effect, I can only serve my ads through Apple and I and my users are totally at their whim as to whether they play nice or not.
Having worked for marketing companies I can tell you that analytics definitely are seen as critical. Oh, sure, if nobody offered them advertising wouldn't die out, but while ever one company offers them they will continue to be seen as a must have. If only one company offers them, they will be the go to company for everyone who is serious about advertising.
Make no mistake, we'll get ads no matter what, this is about the quality/relevancy of ads. If I have to put up with an ad I'd prefer it to be at least something that has a marginal chance of being relevant (actually, I don't care since my brain seems to have attuned itself to autofiltering out all ads, I don't even need to use an ad blocker any more, they just don't register, but the average person would rather have relevant than irrelevant ads).
How many times do people need reminding that Apple doesn't have a monopoly of the smartphone market? A monopoly of a company's own product doesn't count. All companies have that.
Please remind us of that just one time less than we remind you that Apple has a monopoly of the app market (and yes, that's taking all other app markets into account), where it has effectively set itself up as distributor/gatekeeper of that content, and that that market is the relevant one, more than the hardware/os considerations. Sure you can write your app for any handset, but if you want to get access to the vast majority of the market you have to go through Apple.
Apple will happily share your data with Google, so long as they go via the iAd route that everyone else has to. This isn't about one company protecting your privacy from another, this is about one company wanting a share of the profits from that other company accessing your private details, that's all. Ultimately if Google can't get this information for free through the courts, they'll buy it like everyone else because it's too valuable to them to do anything but.
Exactly the point, whether they need location data it is irrelevant (and to be fair, it's not always superfluous, sometimes it's highly relevant - a person in a big city will have different needs to one in the country or by the beach and may respond better to different ads, just as someone from a poor neighbourhood will want to see different ads to someone from a rich neighbourhood). The key thing is they want it, and if you're not supplying it, they'll go to someone who is.
Am I missing something on the privacy front, here? You say "The main block Apple has put up is that user location can't be given out to advertisers outside of the iAd system [...] I have location awareness turned off so this doesn't really apply much to me, but the idea is the same." It is clearly not the same. Saying "We won't give out your location" is in no way the equivalent of saying "We'll only give out your location to people who pay us", in which case you're afforded precisely zero more privacy by this move than you would be if Google had access to the analytics, or do you somehow think that the people buying ads through Apple are in some way favourible to the people buying ads through Google? (The answer, of course, is that they're the same people).
28% of the smartphone market, but close to 80% of the app market, which is where the ad solutions are most relevant. As the effective gatekeeper of that market they certainly could leverage that advantage in a way which was considered an abuse of monopoly (there's not enough substance in either TFS or TFA to say definitively if that's the case). Don't be confused by hardware share - technically MS had a zero share of the hardware market, but could still leverage their dominance as gatekeepers to the desktop OS to put pressure on both hardware and software vendors.
There's nothing stopping the same company from offering a subscription model if they want repeat payments (perhaps to support some additional service they're providing such as remote storage of information required to use the app). They'd be crazy to risk losing customers to a competitor by throwing in ads against their wishes, the market will find a level for this, if ads suffciently annoy people that they'd rather pay a subscription then that model will come to dominate, or vice versa. Based on the web experience, I'd say people tend to prefer the annoyance of ads in return for free content, but ads are much more intrusive on mobile devices (and much harder to disable), so a whole new paradigm might appear.
And what you're missing is that the dictionary definition of monopoly has little to do with the legal definition. Now I'm not saying either party is right or wrong, but to just read out a dictionary definition and say Apple are in the right because of this strict interpretation ignores the fact that that's not how monopoly law works. There are many complexities to consider in both establishing, first, if there is an effective monopoly (and this doesn't mean you have to control the entire market, just enough of it to give you the ability to shut down competition, ala MS insisting in the past that hardware vendors had to buy a license for each machine they sold, even if it wasn't going to run windows, effectively negating the zero price point of open source alternatives - sure there were alternative OS vendors the hardware manufacturers could use, but they'd be shutting themselves out of the biggest market, ergo effective monopoly), and second, if there is an actual abuse of that monopoly. It's by no means not as clear cut as either side is claiming it to be.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems if all interested countries could pool their resources and knowledge, we'd get a lot further a lot faster as a species. Of course, nobody wants to do that because it's all about owning the technologies that emerge - as usual short term monetary considerations trump long term scientific endeavours.
Well the US and USSR governments can take some of the blame here. In their race to outdo each other, they associated having a strong space programme with being a strong nation, so it's only natural that, when the US announces it's cutting funding for space just as other nations are expanding it, some people will question what that says about the countries themselves.
[...] the best bet is to send non meatsacks, as robots can take much more stress, don't need pesky things like air and toilets, and don't mind spending decades on one way trips.
Just so long as you don't tell them it's a one way trip.
Plenty of human endeavours have been colossal money sinks, few have given us the ability to make a claim so bold, that we left this little planet of ours under our own speed, even for just a tiny fraction of our history. Even if the universe is teeming with life, I have to believe that spaceflight is still a monumental accomplishment. Certainly one I'd rather leave as our epitaph than "we killed a bunch of people for something as tawdry as resources or religious differences". If the fact that, in evolutinary terms, we were barely out of the trees before we got our kind into space doesn't embiggen the soul, I don't know what will.
Well, much as AT&T seems to be generally clueless, I'd expect even they would get suspicious if you called and the only identifiable details you had were your email (even if you can use that to get the name) and the SIM number. When I wanted to cancel my (UK so not AT&T admittedly) mobile phone contract, I was asked for my account number, name, address, date of birth and the answer to my security question before they'd even think about taking action.
Not only that, and I'm certainly not defending their actions, but how many times have we seen it in the past that people with good intentions alert the owners of the code to the flaw and it just gets sat on or ignored for years. It seems the only way to get these companies to respond is to show them the consequences rather than just warn them. It's a sad state of affairs, but all too common.
I personally preferred the one description of 'a picture of a man stretching his anus to 'olympic' proportions'. Just calling it 'olympic' proportions is a bad mental image enough.
Brings a new meaning to the Olympic rings, definitely.
It also explains the leakage...
A big database of already public information. Balance the cost of them writing something to go crawl and index this info against the cost of setting up and maintaining it and I'd hardly say they're gaining a massive benefit from this. Do you think they're going to somehow be able to use this information to somehow serve more appropriate adverts to inventors? Or that people paying for ads will somehow care that they're offering a free, short term database facility to a public body?
Indeed, pretty much the only games I still regularly play on PC are Valve games, some of those I've been playing in various iterations for over 10 years. Similarly I've never really had a problem using Steam, from the early days to present. I don't like the idea that I can't just install my game anywhere and not have to validate, etc, but of all the schemes game companies have devised, it seems to be the most usable and least disagreeable.
The metaphorical cake (duke nukem forever) is a lie!
Duke Nukem's not really like cake. It's more like bubblegum. And Valve're all outta gum.
This is interesting, because this kind of impression tracking is at the core of modern analytics. In ye olde days of TV advertising, the only way to know if an ad was successful was if you got increased sales right after it aired. Now advertisers can say "The customer bought this product after seeing the ad three times on slashdot, twice on digg, so we're going to split the ad revene 3:2 between them", whereas under the old click-through model, neither would have got anything. This is why analytics is important to content providers as well as advertisers, prevent your competitors from gathering the same analytics detail and you'll effectively massively decrease their potential customer base.
This is about whether [Company B] is leveraging their huge advantage in the Apps space to try and drive out [Company A]'s product, though. If they are, we call that "anti-competitive behaviour" and it's generally frowned upon because it goes against the principles of a free market. That's a whole world of difference to [Company B] made a better product than [Company A] who now feel threatened they will be outsold.
As these are 3rd party apps, the analogy GP should have used is that Apple telling developers what they can do in terms of advertising within their own app is like Google telling you what you can do in terms of advertising on your webpage before you can appear in their listing. They don't do this, hence the hypcritical accusation is false.
Hmm, I couldn't find any information on this, could you cite the source of your information that states Apple don't intent to lock out any ad solution provider unless they're also in the phone business? Not that I doubt your word or anything, but I was under the impression that this specifically did exclude everyone (and that if they only cared about not giving Google an unfair advantage, they could manage that much more simply by having an Apple-ads solution on Android phones to keep things open and competitive).
Well the point is it's not just Apple vs Google, it's Apple vs Everyone Who Has An Interest In Advertising/Developing on/Using the Platform. If I'm writing an app and my users say "We don't like Google's data collection policies", I could previously respond to that by serving my ads through a more transparent or less data collection intensive ad company. With these changes in effect, I can only serve my ads through Apple and I and my users are totally at their whim as to whether they play nice or not.
Having worked for marketing companies I can tell you that analytics definitely are seen as critical. Oh, sure, if nobody offered them advertising wouldn't die out, but while ever one company offers them they will continue to be seen as a must have. If only one company offers them, they will be the go to company for everyone who is serious about advertising.
Make no mistake, we'll get ads no matter what, this is about the quality/relevancy of ads. If I have to put up with an ad I'd prefer it to be at least something that has a marginal chance of being relevant (actually, I don't care since my brain seems to have attuned itself to autofiltering out all ads, I don't even need to use an ad blocker any more, they just don't register, but the average person would rather have relevant than irrelevant ads).
How many times do people need reminding that Apple doesn't have a monopoly of the smartphone market? A monopoly of a company's own product doesn't count. All companies have that.
Please remind us of that just one time less than we remind you that Apple has a monopoly of the app market (and yes, that's taking all other app markets into account), where it has effectively set itself up as distributor/gatekeeper of that content, and that that market is the relevant one, more than the hardware/os considerations. Sure you can write your app for any handset, but if you want to get access to the vast majority of the market you have to go through Apple.
Apple will happily share your data with Google, so long as they go via the iAd route that everyone else has to. This isn't about one company protecting your privacy from another, this is about one company wanting a share of the profits from that other company accessing your private details, that's all. Ultimately if Google can't get this information for free through the courts, they'll buy it like everyone else because it's too valuable to them to do anything but.
Exactly the point, whether they need location data it is irrelevant (and to be fair, it's not always superfluous, sometimes it's highly relevant - a person in a big city will have different needs to one in the country or by the beach and may respond better to different ads, just as someone from a poor neighbourhood will want to see different ads to someone from a rich neighbourhood). The key thing is they want it, and if you're not supplying it, they'll go to someone who is.
Am I missing something on the privacy front, here? You say "The main block Apple has put up is that user location can't be given out to advertisers outside of the iAd system [...] I have location awareness turned off so this doesn't really apply much to me, but the idea is the same." It is clearly not the same. Saying "We won't give out your location" is in no way the equivalent of saying "We'll only give out your location to people who pay us", in which case you're afforded precisely zero more privacy by this move than you would be if Google had access to the analytics, or do you somehow think that the people buying ads through Apple are in some way favourible to the people buying ads through Google? (The answer, of course, is that they're the same people).
28% of the smartphone market, but close to 80% of the app market, which is where the ad solutions are most relevant. As the effective gatekeeper of that market they certainly could leverage that advantage in a way which was considered an abuse of monopoly (there's not enough substance in either TFS or TFA to say definitively if that's the case). Don't be confused by hardware share - technically MS had a zero share of the hardware market, but could still leverage their dominance as gatekeepers to the desktop OS to put pressure on both hardware and software vendors.
There's nothing stopping the same company from offering a subscription model if they want repeat payments (perhaps to support some additional service they're providing such as remote storage of information required to use the app). They'd be crazy to risk losing customers to a competitor by throwing in ads against their wishes, the market will find a level for this, if ads suffciently annoy people that they'd rather pay a subscription then that model will come to dominate, or vice versa. Based on the web experience, I'd say people tend to prefer the annoyance of ads in return for free content, but ads are much more intrusive on mobile devices (and much harder to disable), so a whole new paradigm might appear.
And what you're missing is that the dictionary definition of monopoly has little to do with the legal definition. Now I'm not saying either party is right or wrong, but to just read out a dictionary definition and say Apple are in the right because of this strict interpretation ignores the fact that that's not how monopoly law works. There are many complexities to consider in both establishing, first, if there is an effective monopoly (and this doesn't mean you have to control the entire market, just enough of it to give you the ability to shut down competition, ala MS insisting in the past that hardware vendors had to buy a license for each machine they sold, even if it wasn't going to run windows, effectively negating the zero price point of open source alternatives - sure there were alternative OS vendors the hardware manufacturers could use, but they'd be shutting themselves out of the biggest market, ergo effective monopoly), and second, if there is an actual abuse of that monopoly. It's by no means not as clear cut as either side is claiming it to be.