(Disclaimer: Not actually seeking to argue against your broader thesis, just noticed a possible hole in this piece.)

To some extent, yes, we can measure everything. But we have to be looking.

If a hypothetical God were to influence the world in manners both subtle and far-reaching (because the world is a chaotic system, and tiny inputs can, in the right places and times, have huge effects), how would we be able to prove that it was, in fact, the doing of God?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand's car takes a wrong turn down a side street, and World War I breaks out. The Vienna Academy of Fine Arts accepts a young aspiring artist named Adolf Hitler, and he never goes on to start the Third Reich.

Unless we can be observing every event—which means, every aspect of every cubic millimeter of the earth, inside and out, including things we currently have no good way to measure, and to a wide radius around it, for events that are initiated in space—we cannot possibly carry out such proof that no outside force acts upon events here.

Dan Aris

Fixed that for you.

I mean, seriously, what is with the focus on Apple, when every single reputable report shows that Apple is among the very best when it comes to how they get people treated at the factories producing their stuff?

And honestly, I wouldn't mind too much (though admittedly I don't fully grasp the economics and practicalities of it) if penalties of this sort were applied fairly and reasonably to American companies who have their products produced in factories that adhere to standards lower than what would be legal in America. That would lead pretty quickly to improvement of conditions in China, to the extent that such is possible there.

Dan Aris

I think that it's less a reflection on the games themselves, as on the attitudes of the gamers. They expect to buy the game, beat it in a week, and bring it back to get a little money back.

The only games that are immune to this are the type that you can't just "beat"—mostly the primarily-online ones.

I find myself a bit boggled by the idea myself, but then, a big part of that is that I don't have 80+ hours over the course of a week to dedicate solely to playing a single video game.

Dan Aris

So, um, what the crap are OLTP and OLAP?

(And yes, this marks me as hopelessly undereducated, and obviously a fool who doesn't know anything about Real Programming. So sue me. Just tell us what they are, too, please?)

Dan Aris

Well, in general, I agree with your post, but for this, I have to say: if I didn't put my phone in the pocket with my keys or the pocket with my spare change, it would have to go into one of the pockets I sit on.

I don't think that's really all that good for it, either.

However, I have an Otterbox Defender case for mine, since I have known for years that I tend to be hard on my devices, not through conscious uncaring, but through clumsiness and carelessness.

Dan Aris

"It's the first article in the constitution. 'Access to information shall not be abridged.'" - Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold

Of course, it would have to be supported by language indicating that this means all people must have access without charge or limit (beyond reasonable "you can't surf porn at the internet cafe 24/7" measures) to the means of accessing said information. But Cerf is right, the point shouldn't be Internet access; it should be access to information. The Internet is just our current incarnation of that access, and someday, it will be supplanted by a better or different technology. (Or it will be destroyed in the human-initiated apocalypse. One way or the other.)

Dan Aris

But what you're suggesting would almost certainly have led to Jobs never returning to Apple. Apple bought NeXT because they were desperate. The Apple Renaissance happened precisely because Apple "nearly [went] bankrupt in the 90's as Windows surged."

So if Apple had gone the Microsoft route in 1989, taken over the lion's share of the OS market, and been in Microsoft's position throughout the 1990s, which do you think is more likely—that they would still have fired Gil Amelio, bought NeXT, and given Steve Jobs total control of the company? Or that they would have ended up in a pattern very similar to Microsoft, with businessmen rather than visionaries running the company, and making sure to avoid putting out any highly risky new products?

I mean, obviously your scenario's not impossible. We're talking pure hypotheticals here to begin with. But looking at the reasons things happened the way they did in our timeline, we can make some good guesses as to what would happen in the alternate timeline created by Apple opening the Mac in 1989—and I just don't think it's likely that some of the key events would happen the same.

Dan Aris

So, what you're saying is, you think Apple is (or should be) regretting their decision then, because if they had done what you suggest, they could be in Microsoft's position today?

A dying dinosaur, desperately trying to remain cool and relevant?

Dan Aris

Barlgewhat?

Do you listen to yourself? "It's supported out of the box on most GNU/Linux software" is approximately equivalent in the utility expressed to "all the geeks I know know how to use it." In other words, pretty damn useless for practical purposes, and a long, long way away from "most email clients support it by default", at least if you take the "most" by volume of usage, and not simply by number of different clients.

Sorry, I'd like it to be the year of Linux on the desktop as much as the next guy, but it's just not realistic.

Dan Aris

I have to wonder if Google would agree with this. It's entirely possible (given that we do not have access to the agreement in question) that by one interpretation, it does allow UMG to do exactly that—but that this was never Google's intention.

It would be really fun to watch Google bring out the actual agreement and show how it doesn't, by a reasonable reading, permit this.

(And yeah, I know it's also possible that Google did, in fact, intend this, but in general, that seems unlikely, as it would be simply stupid for Google to allow something of that nature without heavy, heavy restrictions on it.)

Dan Aris