There should be a way to mod this up to Score: 6; Insightful. Well said.

... I would like to hear about how some brilliant hacker took control of 3 million computers and used to all that computing power to, say, find a cure for cancer instead of just pissing everybody off.

Hi! I'm Clippy! Microsoft Bob is not available. You could leave him a message if you like. Just hold down the #, *, 7, and 3 keys. It looks like you are trying to make a call. Would you like me to help with that? I see you've dialed a 9. There is an area code "978", can I finish dialing that for you? Oh, I see you've now dialed a "1". You might be trying to make an emergency call. I could... ** REBOOT ** Hi! I'm Clippy! Microsoft Bob is not available right now...

"You mean like a cult?" No. Like a start-up. There are engineers who thirst to make a very cool thing, something they can look back upon with pride and the knowledge that "I did that." It isn't about the money (though thinking about the potentially big payday helps keep you going when things get tough or weird); it is about the chance for that sense of accomplishment. I never had an opportunity to work on something as cool as the iPad. I wish I had. Most of us will work 40+ years and never have the sense of triumph that the iPad team now enjoys.

One lament heard repeatedly is, "Why doesn't America BUILD anything anymore?" Americans used to be known for Yankee ingenuity, innovation, and know-how. There seems precious little of that anymore except, perhaps, in software and aircraft. We still write code and build airplanes. It is difficult to thing of much else. The love of building things is best acquired young, I believe. I have it. I learning how things work. I also like to build things. Ham radio is an outlet for me on all these fronts. In an era where so many electronic components are, by necessity, nearly microscopic or monolithic, fully-formed, and impenetrable, you can still build radios from discrete parts, understand each of their functions, and have the joy of using something you made. I cringed when I first heard that freshly graduated EEs may have never picked up a soldering iron! How can one gain that intuition about the physical world without experiencing it?! Ham radio in the 21st century isn't a replacement for the internet, cell phones, video games, or anything else. It is a really fun way to learn about electronics, wave propagation, digital signal processing, and a bunch of other stuff in a hands-on, practical, inexpensive way. Perhaps if fewer were embarrassed about their desire to learn and do things (you won't be one of the COOL kids if you do!) we would have more engineers, more things designed and maybe even built here, and a brighter future.

... is it?

If this posting looks familiar, it is. With a minimum of effort I found these three (including the latest). "The worst Apple products of all time", Feb 15, 2010 [posted by timothy]. "Apple's first flops", May 17, 2005 [posted by timothy]. "Top 10 Apple Flops", Jan 31, 2005 [posted by timothy]. Um, "timothy", can we stop rehashing stuff that happened 25 years ago?

I believe I said the opposite; I said a failure to have standards will cause problems.

They reviewed the advertisements with their clients directly. There were a few hundred per day and it was a manageable problem. Now, advertisements may be served by proxies and selected from among tens of thousands of potential ads, designed to be targeted to readers in specific geographic regions, income levels, purchasing habits, interests, age categories, gender, education level, or other factors.

The point of my post was that the combinatorial explosion of possible advertisement choices to be served-up on my specific page load may not be easily reviewable by NYT staff a priori.

The concern I have over the long term is that sites like the NYT may not know what advertisements will appear because they are placed by bulk-buying proxies that dispense them at page-load time, probably based on evil-cookie trails or other demographic markers. So, the question becomes: how should a presumably high-integrity site such as a major news outlet ensure quality when they've outsourced advertisement delivery?

Review of each possible advertisement would be onerous, but failure to have some standards in place will eventually lead to malware (or worse) injected into unsuspecting reader's machines. I just chuckled when it popped up. I run Macs at home. But, when things like this happen to family members running PCs (and we get the phone call) it stops being funny pretty quickly.

Is there a business case for reviewing advertisements (and the associated mobile code whether it be FLASH, etc.) for a 21st century "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval"? After all, the NYT and others are just one virus (or porn advertisement) away from a PR nightmare.

"Collage" project? Like what? A mural? Quilt? Mobile? Or is it a "College" project, something students might assist with? Since it was marked, "Insightful", I think I'd like to see the artwork produced...

The problem with this story is that it isn't clear where the sale has taken place. I click a button in Massachusetts, paid for the object with money from a Connecticut bank, the company hosting the web site is in New York, the headquarters of the company is in Arkansas, the shipment is made from New Hampshire, my mom receive the materials in Illinois (I dropped shipped her a gift). Where was the sale? I don't know what the right answer is... but I'm certain that state legislatures rushing to get something passed will end up making a mess bigger than the one they find themselves in now. I don't blame Amazon for pushing back. If I were Amazon management I'd be doing the same thing.

Debates over the "feel of paper" or "convenience of electronic delivery" aside, and assuming you could live with either, the economics are interesting. If you're committed to getting the paper, even the very expensive Kindle DX pays for itself in about a year (plus or minus). The difference, of course, is the paper delivery bleeds you a little week-by-week so you don't notice it. The Kindle DX is a big purchase outlay of nearly $500 to get started. But, again, after about a year things are close to break-even, depending on your usage. (Note this assumes home delivery prices won't go up!)

Here are the numbers for delivery in my area:

New York Times Home Delivery (paper)
14.80 (per week) Daily (769.60 yearly)
10.40 (per week) "Weekender" Fri-Sun (540.80 yearly)
7.50 (per week) Sunday only (390.00 yearly)
7.40 (per week) Weekdays Mon-Fri (384.80 yearly)

Kindle Daily Edition $13.99/mo (167.88 yearly)
Year of NYT + 489.00 Kindle DX = $656.88 (vs $769.60 for paper)

Sunday single issue NYT ($0.75/wk) $39
Year of Sunday NYT + 489.00 Kindle DX = $528 (vs $390 for paper)
Two years of Sunday NYT + Kindle DX = $567 (vs $780 for paper)

Boston Globe Home Delivery (paper)
9.00 (per week) Daily (468.00 yearly)

9.99 (per month) Boston Globe Kindle Edition ($119.88 yearly)
Year of the Globe + 468.00 Kindle DX = $608.88 (vs $468.00 for paper)
Two years of the Globe + Kindle DX = $728.76 (vs $936.00 for paper)

The funny thing is the Boston Globe probably loses money on the $9.00/week paper subscription but makes good profits on the 33-cents per day Kindle edition. If true, electronic delivery of the paper might be the only thing that could save it. Imagine that...