All these people moaning that Amazon have pulled out of it, yet none of them seem to have made any moves to step in and take over...

It's not just fanboys. It's also people who see something super new and amazing and can't ask "but does it actually make my life better". A lot of technology is flashy, does something new and amazing technologically, but actually doesn't improve your life as a tool.

I can look at an iPad and see that it's an amazing engineering achievement, but I can't look and it and say "and it would improve my life because...". It's like all the problems of a phone (smaller screen, limited UI, restrictive functionality) with all the problems of a laptop (doesn't fit in my pocket, doesn't double as a phone).

What happens with amazing yet impractical technology is that it doesn't last for long. I remember the fad over sandwich toasters. People bought lots of them for a couple of years and then they pretty much disappeared off the market. Reason being that people realised that they never used them. I can't think of anyone I know who's been convinced to buy one by seeing someone else's. That simply wasn't the case with the iPod or the iPhone.

It's so that you can't stop to think about what you're watching. It's amazing to watch British TV from the 1970s. It was probably a cost thing, but they used to have a shot with a man standing in front of a painting, talking about it for a minute or 2. But because of that, they made sure that what he said was interesting, rather than just filling time or making some vague, glib statement.

I think most of this is about repeat viewings and dissection later by critics and people who study film about why a film or a scene works. Take the tracking shot in Goodfellas (a film I've seen a dozen or more times). It's really important because it tells you just how far Henry has reached, how much wealth and power he has. He pays someone to park the car, bypasses the queue and goes right to the table through the kitchen. Everyone knows him, no-one stops to question what he's doing in the kitchen. It's not just Scorsese showing off, it's an important part of telling that story.

But it's not about the negative impact to the public at large. It's about the impact on individuals. Society isn't just about the sum of happiness, it's also about how the weakest and least able in society are treated. We could just say "well, tough, you're in a wheelchair", but I'm pretty much in favour of society actually trying to improve the lives of people who can't do anything about their situation, to give them a more comfortable life.

And yes, businesses aren't charities, but they are part of society. That means that they, for instance, get various legal protections (regardless of how much tax they pay). A fire breaks out and a fire engine will be there quickly to put it out. There isn't a sensible alternative to private enterprise providing access to private businesses. You can't do it through more benefits, so it's straightforward and fair on all businesses to just implement accessibility.

Personally, I'm thankful that I'm not the guy in the wheelchair. And I'm happy for my coffee shop to stick a couple of extra pennies on the price of my mocha so that the guy in the wheelchair to come in.

I'd say that eBay is pretty much a monopoly as well, and for similar reasons to Microsoft, which are network effects. If you want to auction something, you go where the buyers are. And you then become part of the problem because you get more buyers to use eBay.

Facebook and other social networks don't have the same power because you can exist on many networks.

The key thing here is that you need far less than 1% of people doing anything with the platform (beyond consuming) to make it thrive. Take Wordpress... there used to be an extension to allow you to select a page as the starting point rather than the blog. 1 guy wrote that and it was used by tens of thousands of people. So WP then added it in to the default install.

The alternative model (with closed) is to guess what features customers want, or to do surveys, that sort of thing. But it doesn't work as well, in the same way that managed economies don't work as well as market ones.

Something that kinda backs taht up: If you're a company with less than 10 people, you can now get Visual Studio 2010 Professional + Sql Server Web Edition for $100. They're losing their grip to people building stuff in PHP and Rails.

I was working on a site that had a Sharepoint problem and there was a bug which was reported to Microsoft and open for like 6-9 months.

This "corporate support" thing is nonsense. Some of the best support I've ever had has been on Wordpress, because you hit the forum and find someone who has had the problem before, delved into the code and worked out a fix. If I got stuck with something from Microsoft, I'd post soemthing on superuser.com or stackoverflow.com before I started talking to Microsoft.

Exactly. The "Android fragmentation" story is a mix of FUD and ignorance.

The key thing is that you have to actually learn how to develop Android apps properly. You have to query features, you have to learn how to develop for resolution independence. And most of the OS fragmentation thing is nonsense. There's some extra features in versions since 1.6, but most apps are building for 1.6. And of course, if you specify an app as being 2.1, it doesn't appear in the store for 1.6 phones anyway.

But actually, the theatre and broadcasting unions, by virtue of the fact that they'll use their power to walk out if someone hires non-union staff create the equivalent of a closed shop. Try and get a job on the West End stage without an Equity card.

Of course, the effect of unions in the US is that a lot of productions are done elsewhere. Tarantino shot most of Kill Bill in China. The crew worked 6 days a week rather then 5 (so production could be quicker) and the crew cost was about half of the US.

But it only actually benefits people who are already in the union. What about the poor guy who's a talented actor who can't get work because he chooses not to be in a union, or can't get into the union because he has no experience (the bizarre situation in the UK)

I think the whole thing is going to blow wide open. Anyone can make a reasonable movie with $10K of equipment now. They'll hire who they damn well please and if the union tells people not to work for them, then they'll find some people who will.

A lot of that is also good business. I do work for a few clients. One of my clients almost treats me like part of the team. They pay me quickly, offer to pay for any bits of software I need and don't expect miracles. The other client I have to hassle for payment, and they'll do stuff like email me saying "put the code live this weekend", but then be completely uncontactable, then get stroppy because I didn't put it live (because I needed to check something first).

Guess which one got priority when 2 requests for work came in soon after each other?

Your boss drives a better car because he has more responsibility than you do. Your boss is ultimately going to take a kicking if your code screws up. He should also know how to manage plans, motivate staff, manage client expectations and have enough knowledge of what you're doing to manage what you're doing.

Good managers are worth the money. I've seen guys take a failing project and turn it around because they were brought the whole thing under control, worked out the problems with the project and got it running smoothly again. They aren't just parasitic pen-pushers. That said, I really hate managers who are nothing but parasitic pen-pushers. They aren't really managers, they're just producing pieces of paper that make it look like they are. They often have no understanding of the work being done, and so struggle to respond when required. One reason I don't like working in large corporations is that they're stuffed full of parasitic pen-pushers.

Luck is a factor. I know someone who started a small business doing the bill printing. Because a cellphone company was nearby (and this is when they were still the size of bricks), they gave him a call about doing their billing. He was doing their billing on a single PC with 1 other staff member from a garage with a single HP laserjet. Within a few years, he was doing millions of bills, and sold the company for millions. If they'd phoned someone else, he'd have never made a fortune.

On the other hand, there's a saying "it's funny, the harder I work, the luckier I seem to get". The more times you throw 2 dice, the more double sixes you get. I work for myself, and when I'm without work for a few days, I spend it on training, contacting clients to explain some interesting new technology or some sort of marketing. Sometimes, the work that comes from those things can be a huge fluke. I was doing a presentation to a local business group about RSS feeds and a guy collared me, we started talking, and it turned out that he had a whole bunch of broken systems, he'd fired the programmer the day before, and I was in the right place at the right time.