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Comment: There's not much of an Android tablet market (Score 1, Insightful) 134

The framing here is that the Kindle Fire has more than half of the "Android tablet market," but that's a framing that only makes sense to those who follow technology closely and care heavily about Android. This says less about the strength of the Kindle Fire than it does about the fact that there isn't much of an Android tablet market. There's an iPad market. And there's a market for specialized devices such as the Kindle. But that's about it. The vast majority of Kindle Fire owners wouldn't even think of themselves as owning an Android tablet. They simply own a Kindle. There just aren't that many people who want a non-iPad tablet unless it's a specialized device (as they see the Fire), IMO. Unless you're an Android enthusiast, there's no reason to specifically look at an Android tablet.

Comment: Re:Very few linear narratives are literature (Score 1) 208

by DavidinAla (#39159175) Attached to: Is Hypertext Literature Dead?
Whether there's a narrative story or not, the decisions that are made about getting from A to B to C to D and all the way through Z are the heart of what makes it literature. Whatever the form is, it's those decisions that make it art. Just creating the world and turning it over to the reader changes all that. It's no longer literature, regardless of the form -- narrative story, poetry, whatever.

Comment: Making those decisions is the writer's job (Score 4, Insightful) 208

by DavidinAla (#39158887) Attached to: Is Hypertext Literature Dead?
It's really very simple. When you're reading literature, you WANT the writer to have made those decisions. That's the writer's job. The story decisions are the heart of what makes a collection of stories into literature. Otherwise, you're just creating a world and throwing a reader into it to do the work of building his own story. There's nothing wrong with it for the tiny minority who want to do it, of course, but for the vast majority of people, having someone else make those artistic decisions and give them a satisfying story -- with interesting twists along the way before arriving at an interesting end -- is what makes reading literature worth doing. The people who favor the reader-driven plots don't really understand what literature is. As others have pointed out, hypertext stories are simply games. There's nothing wrong with that format, but it's neither fish nor fowl. People who want a good linear narrative story are best served by a traditional book. Those who want an interactive game are best served by graphics-heavy games. Hypertext stories serve a tiny niche that will never grow, IMO.

Comment: People are so short-sighted (Score 4, Insightful) 290

by DavidinAla (#39095085) Attached to: Google Chrome: the New Web Platform?
People who worship Google as a paragon of virtue are no smarter than people who worship any other company, whether it's Apple of Microsoft or Red Hat or whoever. Every company's agenda is to compete and win, gaining power and making money. I have no problem with that. That's just the way the market works. The problem comes when gullible people believe a company's PR rhetoric about peace, love and freedom -- or whatever they're selling that day. Google isn't your friend. Google is a huge corporation that provides services in its effort to win more dollars in the long run. Those who think that Google is doing "open" things out of the goodness of their hearts in order to make the world a better place are either stupid or naive. They're a huge company that's competing to own as much as it can. If you like its services, use them. But understand this. When you are using "free" services, the company is making money some other way -- and it's almost always the case that YOU have become the product that they're selling to someone else. If that's OK with you, fine. But you need to understand reality instead of thinking you're getting something free. You pay in one way or another. With Google, you pay by giving up your information and privacy. But that's your choice.

Comment: Re:Interesting but wrong (Score 0) 239

by DavidinAla (#38947467) Attached to: A5 Mystery Solved (Why Siri Won't Run On iPhone 4)
I think you're missing the point that what Siri on the iPhone 4S does IS DIFFERENT from what other manufacturers provide. Yes, others do voice recognition, but it's not nearly as good under as many circumstances as what Siri does. Have you seen the various video comparisons (on YouTube) between Siri and Android phones interpreting the same commands? There's no comparison between the two.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

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