Man I fucking love using market share as metric! Since it is a unitless number it can be used to say anything you want. So under the old model, Amazon controlled 90% of the [market for eBooks]. After publishers instituted their new pricing scheme Amazons market share fell to 60% of [the market for eBooks]. That sounds absolutely terrible!

Unless of course you realize market share is a unitless number that doesnt tell us jack shit. Before publishers changed their prices we dont know what the size of the eBook market was so we dont know what Amazons unit sales or dollar sales were for that time period. After publishers changed their prices we still dont know what the size of the eBook market was so were still unable to tell what Amazons unit or dollar sales were.

Without knowing Amazons unit or dollars sales it is impossible to know if they were materially affected by the change in publisher prices. With Apple entering the eBook retailer arena and thus bringing an eBook store to many tens of millions of iPhones, iPods, and iPads they very likely increased the overall size of the eBook market. Google also entered the fray selling books and magazines in this period of time.

Google and Apple selling eBooks likely increased the total size of the eBook market which means unless Amazons sales grew in that same period at the same rate as the total market their share of that market could only decrease. This isnt rocket surgery. Market share simply cannot show that competitors ate Amazons market share or if their share decreased from market growth. As such market sahre cant possibly be used to show that publishers changing their pricing model positively or negatively affected Amazon. This isnt about defending megacorporations but about not using stupid numbers to make definitive arguments.

The major use case of tablets is casual consumption of content, they are the tool that allows that consumption to be casual. A tablet lets me browse Slashdot and reply to your comment while comfortably laying in bed. I don't need to be hunched over a laptop or sitting up at a desk to casually browse the Internet. I've also got some music playing and I may go back to the book I was reading. I'm able to do all these relaxing things very casually and from a comfortable position. It's not about sexiness but my desire to be comfortable while I do low key activities.

Consuming content is not some automatic sign of societal corruption. I read a lot of academic/technical papers and books, a tablet with a high DPI screen makes this much easier than a laptop or even in many cases paper versions of the same. Work might require a traditional computer but my leisure time rarely does. It's ok for tablets to be better for consuming because that's often what I want to do in my leisure time.

The ergonomics of a tablet and especially a touch interface make some types of content creation nearly impossible. Futurist commercials and futurists in general are wrong as often or more often tan they are right. Decades ago AT&T told me that I would have video pay phones to call video landline receivers. Instead I use my wireless video capable handset to call other wireless video handsets. Just because some fanciful advertiser sad you could type a novel on a touch screen or have flawless voice dictation doesn't mean that it can or will exist. Futurists don't have to consider ergonomics/physics/psychology when they come up with blue sky ideas.

Look up Project Orion. It turns out that making that kind of shock absorber is actually quite technically feasible. Somewhat ironically, riding to orbit on a stream of nuclear fireballs is a lot simpler than how we're doing it now. One big advantage is that you are no longer mass-limited and so you don't need to make as many compromises to the system design to keep things light.

...exploit the free labor of hobbyists...

The free labor or hobbyists meme might have been true a decade and a half ago and maybe not even then. A good portion of open source software is written by people gainfully employed by otherwise closed sourced organizations. They're paid to accomplish X and use an open source solution and contribute code back to the project. Other times they are students or faculty of universities. Increasingly they're paid by an ISV that is selling support/features built on some OSS. Of course there are some hobbyists write code that scratches an itch but to suggest all OSS is written by these types of developers is intellectually dishonest.

It's also intellectually and factually dishonest to suggest that they're "exploiting" these mythical hobbyist developers in some fashion. Apple's been on the level with all of the OSS projects they use, submitting patches back to those projects when changes are made and making changes that are conditionalized for Apple's platforms. No hobbyist developer has been abused or tortured because Apple shipped some software with an OSS license underneath their proprietary UI.

Huh. So colonialism and fascism got bumped from the top by annoying busy-bodies that occasionally result in people losing their jobs...

Sit down and take a damn chill pill man. Passive aggressive people getting offended over stupid shit is nothing new and isn't going to go away. Deal.

Code.org doesn't have a messaging problem, they've got a core conceptual problem. Trying to teach more people to program, especially by making it part of a core academic curriculum, is amazingly foolish. Anyone that's taken an introductory programming class at a university can tell you it is foolish. Jeff Atwood pointed out this paper seven years ago that expands on this idea. The skinny is that 30-60% of computer science students fail at introductory programming classes and consistently do so despite changes in languages, IDEs, and teaching methodologies. Some students simply could not form mental models needed to be able to program effectively. Keep in mind this was a self-selected group of students, ones who had chosen to take up computer science as a major.

Based on this it seems apparent that if "everyone" was required to take programming courses then a majority of them would simply fail to learn the skill and only pass because schools don't like to fail students. No greater number of students would learn to program and they would have no deeper understanding of how computers or software works. Computer programming is a fine elective and is something that should be available to high school students but it is simply absurd to think that trying to teach everyone to program would lead to everyone magically enriching their lives.

Teaching advanced mathematics to students is unlike teaching programming despite the two being advanced skills. With mathematics there's a consistent domain specific language that can be used. The language of calculus builds on the languages of algebra and geometry which themselves build on simple arithmetic. If someone learns calculus (and continues to use it) it will be applicable for the rest of their lives. The language used for theory is the same one used for applications.

In computer science there's the theoretical topics where "language is an implementation issue" and then more practical topics where the language and platform is paramount. Teaching high school students high level computer science topics isn't going to leave them with practical skills since it is often non-trivial to apply those theoretical concepts (which back practical topics) to a specific language and platform. Teaching more practical programming is going to leave them in a lurch when the school's choice of language and platform doesn't end up the future of the industry. There's thousands if not millions of kids that learned BASIC on Apple ][s and C64s that have not only never used those skills since but have absolutely no conception of how to apply the core concepts learned in this classes to more modern languages and platforms.

If the goal of a programming curriculum is to teach critical thinking, problem solving, or logic there's much better ways to teach those things. Limited school budgets shouldn't be trying to cover programming for everyone. Kids would be much better off being taught how to balance a check book, plan a household budget, and if you want to use computers some basics like don't send naked pictures to your boyfriend or girlfriend because shit stays on the internet forever.. Kids interested in programming will take programming electives and focus in that area. Trying to get everyone to program simply is not going to work and it a waste of time and money that could both be better spent.

Equating market share to success is short-sighted and ultimately foolish. The Android segment of the market is dominated by low power phones and tablets that have out of date OS versions and no upgrade path. The people buying them don't buy much in the way of third party apps. To the Android platform these buyers are a black hole.

The iPhone may have a smaller share of the quarter-over-quarter market but the platform is far healthier. People that buy iPhones and iPads buy apps and actually use their devices every day.

Apple doesn't need to sell a billion iPhones to be successful in the market. There's no need to dominate in raw numbers if that domination is doesn't bring with it platform health.

The mobile site is absolutely terrible and it has gotten no better for as long as you've been bugging me to use it. Do any of the slashdot web people even have a fucking smartphone? Have you tried using the damned site? These questions are completely rhetorical as I know the answer is "no". The abomination that is the mobile site is caused by the same systemic failure in leadership and programming skill that's made the "Web 2.0" slashdot homepage such a clusterfuck.

It is really not difficult to make a website that loads well and looks good on both desktop and mobile browsers. You don't need fancy JavaScript, CSS3, or buzzwords. Shit you've already got the state of the art Palm optimized homepage. Update the HTML template in that spaghetti code and you'll have yourself a nice workable mobile site.

I know a terrible user experience is part and parcel of the Slashdot experience but I really expect a little more out of the site. I'll keep using aggregators that just slurp the RSS feed so I can avoid the UI vomit that is modern day Slashdot.

I just wanted to say that I fervently hope that Ferric Fang goes by the nickname 'Iron'.

What would you do if you wanted to kill a bunch of people in an incredibly short amount of time? Get handguns? No, you will get a gun that can shoot as fast as possible with the largest capacity magazine you can buy.

You're making a poor argument from a point of extreme ignorance. A rifle like the one used in the CT shooting fires no faster than any semi-automatic handgun you can buy. There's no magic fairy dust in a civilian AR-15 clone that makes it shoot any faster than a Glock 19, both will fire a single round with every pull of the trigger. You can get high capacity magazines for the Glock just as you can for the AR-15 clone. A crazed shooter can go on a killing spree just as easily with a Glock as they can with an AR-15 clone, easier actually since the Glock is easier to conceal.

At the ranges seen in "spree" shootings there's very little advantage a rifle offers over a pistol. Rifles are harder to conceal, weigh more, and high capacity magazines are bulky. Those features might not be a detriment to a soldier on a battlefield but they are a major detriment to someone wanting to get their weapon into a public space unnoticed to go on a rampage. A pistol would allow the shooter to carry way more rounds on their person than a rifle with detachable box magazines. Banning "assault rifles" and high capacity magazines wouldn't do a damn thing to stop a deranged person from going on a killing spree.

That's some real deep throat shit right there, man. My eyes are like friggin' open now.
And I don't like what I see!

(i.e. your posts)

If this isn't APK, then why are you double posting, anon?
I know of only one net kook who double-posts with slight changes in the follow up when he thinks of a new burn...

Wow, I've gotten used to running into worthless shitpiles on the internet but I honestly hope you go die in a fire.

If he was in a coma, I'd think that'd be the part he missed.