But hey, maybe it's not a causal universe!
Dang. I was really looking forward to Causal Friday.
Nah, everyone gets casual everyday. I'm sitting here, at work, in jeans and a t-shirt. I'm the center of the universe, and master of all in it. Therefore, it is a casual universe. Feel free to use this excuse when you come to work on not so casual Monday in jeans and a t-shirt.
The ship does not actually move itself, but, using the Dark Matter Accelerator, it moves the universe around it as stated by Professor Farnsworth, and later realized by Cubert Farnsworth.
Your first three paragraphs are well written and smack of good, rational thinking. The second two paragraphs are well written, but are a different narrative than the first three. It is important to note that crazy people are still well versed in being crazy even in nations where compulsory weapons training is endemic. You effectively say this in your second paragraph, even though you make the point about being lone.
the problem comes when the guy carrying a dozen handguns is the only guy like that in a crowded place when he snaps and decides to go all murder-happy.
It's also important to note that even in well versed and trained military scenarios, when a lot of people start shooting, innocent people start dying (e.g. Pat Tillman, the many civilian deaths in Irag/Afghanistan/etc...). I would argue that there is no credible evidence or example scenarios for the "give everyone a gun and some training" to make us all safer postulate. Imagine the carnage if everyone was shooting back on the south side of Chicago these days. Plus, the Aurora, CO shooting should prove that making it legal to carry weapons isn't a solution (to an extent). In CO, it's legal to carry concealed firearms, but no one in the theater was, or they didn't want to use them. And to be honest, the last place I want to be is where it's entirely possible that there are multiple shooters in a dark room with lots of noise and confusion. I think it can be argued it's at least possible that a lone shooter resulted in fewer deaths than otherwise may have happened.
The biggest problem here is that most of this is assumption and based on personal feelings. In the end, nothing really changes one way or another. So like all the deaths due to drunk driving (we certainly aren't going to give up alcohol, and most don't really care that much), we should just accept that people are going to die like this every now and then, let it happen, and move on.
Well, in the past, lots of people have pointed out that Comcast is essentially a monopoly in places, so, it's not like they're competing with anybody.
They simply have no incentive to spend money. They've got all of these customers now, and spending money on infrastructure isn't going to make them any more money, so why do it? Upgrading is just straight cost, and without a benefit to them, why do it?
The very cynical answer is that until they're more or less forced to upgrade, they have no incentive to. They make money by overselling a service -- the closer to maxed out the service is, the more money they make. They don't really care about you, they care about their profits -- they're not gonna spend profits just so some people have a faster connection.
And, they're not going to give up on the revenue of having people co-locate with them, so they're doubly uninterested in fixing their capacity issues.
Welcome to the "free" market, it isn't really about customer choice and value -- it's abut maximizing profits and giving you the least amount of service they can get away with. This is a perfectly logical situation when you look at it from their point of view.
This is very true. It's effectively how Capitalism and the free market are supposed to work. Comcast isn't doing anything wrong from that standpoint. However, another poster noted that they have what is effectively a granted monopoly of duopoly, as there can usually be only a limited number of cable cos in one area. But, there are choices. In chicago, I can get ATT, RCN, Comcast, or DirecTV. RCN is my choice, but they certainly aren't perfect. And Comcast in my area isn't even locking you in with a contract, so after reading this, everyone in Chicago *could* just leave in droves. We're a lazy consumer population is what is the biggest problem.
I don't think this is about making money directly. My guess is that Apple's real money will come from selling them new and shiny iPhones every 2 years that perform better and better and have that perpetual upgrade path.
No, this is specifically about controlling how Apple can make money now that they own a very large walled garden. I think it is interesting that Apple clearly created a natural monopoly. Steve must thank whatever deity he believes in for Android, or he would own a near complete monopoly in the mobile space right now. The iPhone was timed perfectly, with hardware and software built to exacting standards. Apparently, now it's time to find new revenue streams out of that. To me, it's fairly obvious where Apple is going now that iAd is being shopped (and from what I've read, at fairly steep costs to users). It seems that Apple just needs to own all the mechanisms for getting ad content into their devices. Adobe would be a competitor here, with a mechanism for delivering ads outside of Apples direct control. And the ad market using Flash is huge, so the effort for moving into the Apple space would be minimal. Plus, even if the profit is meager, Apple doesn't want to lose revenue generated by the app store.
I think Apple is attempting to build a not so subtle monopoly. They saw Microsoft get away with it, and realized the regulatory control and potential punishment is minimal any may not impact the bottom line short term in any meaningful way. Why not do it? They built some wonderful devices that make an extraordinary profit. Why not insulate themselves from competition?
The real reason is the last one he gives: stuff made through Flash is made to the lowest common denominator between mobile platforms...
No, the real reason is to control ad and app revenue. Apple now owns the ad revenue stream into their devices with iAd in 4.0 and later. If you allow flash, then iAd becomes a non factor and has to compete for dev interest. With flash, it's simple enough to add a web view to an app that can be used to display a small bit of ad content without issue, thus bypassing Apple altogether. And if you can run flash apps on the phone, then it's easy enough to build web delivered flash apps that Apple can't easily stop. Make no mistake, this is about money first and control of that money second. Apple uses the lack of flash to make sure they own all the entries into their device. The ad stream and the app delivery mechanism. No matter what Steve might say, it's simply about controlling who can generate revenue from their device in mass quantities.
do people think they might need it later, or something?
Yes.
Yeah, my view is US centric, but I can tell you that Motorola will tailor it's UI's for any vendor who asks. In the US, Verizon and Sprint are the big abusers here. Motorola's inability to say no to anyone ever means that a Sprint RAZR looks and acts different than a AT&T RAZR and a Verizon RAZR. The service providers still have a lot of pull both here in the US, and maybe to a lesser extent, in other parts of the world. But for me, the big problem is still the apps. Does Google have enough muscle and the desire to make sure it all just works out? I'm not so sure.
Skype is a good example, but I wonder if Skype won't make a bigger difference for small MID's running a WiMAX/LTE stack or something. They would also likely not have as big a problem with tethering (hopefully). I think things will change quite a bit for service providers when mobile wireless internet service isn't tied to a cellular connection. My hope is that this means the device becomes the most important piece of the connection, not the service provider.
I won't argue the open source nature, but to be honest, most people just don't care. If I were to ask 10 of my friends what they know about how their phone does what it does, 9 of them wouldn't even understand the question, and the 10th wouldn't care. Sad, but true. This also makes distribution and platform ownership so important. How easy is it to use, and do things work the same across different implementations? This is where Apple and Google may be much different. That's my point.
I hope Android does make a go. Motorola is making a big Android push, and same for other vendors I know less about. But letting vendors make many implementation decisions could be a big negative. I give Apple credit in that even though there is only one way to do things, it's a very streamlined and easy way focused on the user. If Google can force certain common design paradigms on vendors, then Android stands a very real chance. And, since it's open source, then development takes a pretty interesting turn for the users who are what really matters in the equation. But there are a lot of ways Google can fail here. And simply relying on being "open" is one of those ways.
OK, so toy might be a bit harsh, but really, the G1 is a non factor for 99% of the worlds phone users. Again, to almost everyone, it doesn't matter what ideologies went into building the platform, but
I guess it can do 1 and 2, but it hasn't really cracked 3 yet. And this is where my point from above comes into play. Google is the platform provider, and owns the app distribution channel. But it doesn't own the implementation. Will device vendors make the implementation of the platform common enough? Will a really cool app for the G1 also work the same and well with Motorola's new wiz bang Android flip phone? Or for FTC's mini slide out keyboard phone? I'm not convinced you'll get all the phone vendors to *do the right thing*.
While all that is true, it's not all that helpful to most, even many developers. I'm an iPhone developer right now, and hate that there are so many restrictions on my apps. But I have consumers for my apps, and to be honest, I can live with the issues (though don't always like them). The G1 is still a toy, so until there are more devices, all the openness doesn't mean as much. To some extent, it's open source nature is irrelevant to most. Unfortunate, but the phone is just a tool, not an ideology. It needs to work and be useful. And if someone makes money from making it useful, then so be it.
Yes, Android is more open, but Google still owns the platform for effectively everyone (not everyone will own a dev phone). The grandparent post is right, Google might not be all that much better than Apple when it all comes down to it. And I still don't know one person who is sporting an Android based phone.
HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!
