Jobs has, at least since he shoved Woz off to the side, been about one thing - total vertical control of Apple's platforms.

Apple has the money and the size now that they've been expanding that vertical control upward deeper into the application level of their machines via their appstore. It's not surprising to me at all that they would want to expand that vertical control down as well into controlling more and more of the hardware. That strikes me as a very Jobs/Apple thing to do.

If you don't understand the equivalence, you might just be a religious extremist.

Your religion might say killing a doctor who performs abortions is acceptable. Their religion might say killing a cartoonist who mocks their prophet is acceptable. In both cases you're saying murder is acceptable because your religion says so. That's pretty much textbook religious extremist.

Welcome to slashdot.

No, he's saying that if you have an immersive game without points or rules, in his mind it ceases to have the the characteristics that make it a "game" and becomes something that is not-a-game and could perhaps then be considered art. An interactive play where one actor is a human player and the rest are scripted AI could be art in his mind, but if the interactive play has a scoring mechanism that ranks the human player based on how well they perform then it ceases to be worthy of the label of "art" and becomes "game" again.

This is, in my mind, a silly argument too. But not as silly as the one I think you've read into it.

No. People love to take sides and root for favorite teams and have their personal choices validated. That's what's at the root of "my giant corporation can beat up your giant corporation" disputes. And once fans pick a team they generally stick with that team until they are personally affected by the stupid/evil/ugly decisions made by the "team owners".

As for this - Apple's policy is douche-tastic. Anyone who can step outside their bubble of Apple-love or Apple-hate and view it objectively can see that whether they can legally do this or not, the actual decision to pre-emptively ban any app that "ridicules public figures" is being a douche. Being able to mock our leaders is actually one of the great things about America, and the fact that Apple feels that such freedom is a threat to their consumer electronics device that is being touted as the great savior platform for newspapers and magazines is irritating at best. How the hell does this jibe with their desire to publish ebooks and whatnot for this device? Will owners only be able to buy books that don't "ridicule public figures"? Or are they going to just arbitrarily decide that some apps are okay and others aren't and you're at their whims about where the "edge" is?

And this policy is likely a direct result of their decision to have a top-down, totally controlled app store model. That makes Apple potentially liable in a lawsuit for the apps they sell. If they had an open model this wouldn't be a problem - people could self publish and take the legal onus on themselves for their own words. But Apple has chosen to act as a censor for their device - what impact that has down the road will be seen.

Refuse to play the game. Playing "My Giant Corporation Can Beat Up Your Giant Corporation" may be a common pastime on the Internet, but that doesn't make it anything other than stupid.

If you own stock in Adobe, root for Adobe. If you own stock in Apple, root for Apple. If you own stock in both, ask your financial adviser if he has any advice on the matter. Otherwise what the hell do you care? They're corporations. It's not like they care what you think about it. And neither one has your best interests at heart so no matter which one "wins" they're going to do something that pisses you off or makes your life difficult eventually anyway.

Sometimes in a democratic country it's easier to switch a government than it is to switch an ISP.

Take away people's cat videos and you might just see chaos in the streets...

Who does he owe the debt to?

Such is the magic of Apple - Steve Jobs knows how to whet an appetite. You don't announce your product at a generic trade show and hope that the tech press picks it up, you let rumors grow for months - sometimes years - allowing the momentum behind your product to build a life of its own. Then you have the big reveal and everyone in the tech media (and often, the mainstream media) picks up on it and talks about it.

Jobs is an excellent showman - he knows how to get people excited about products. He knows how to work the press and work public opinion to his advantage. In another universe he might have been a very successful politician (the skillset is comparable for the best pols), but in this one he can take a 10-year-old product (tablets) slip some minor improvements into it (multitouch) and sell it as revolutionary. All the while convincing customers and developers both that a sales model that involves Apple taking a cut of everything they buy/produce is in their best interest.

He's a phenomenal businessman. I may not like his vision of the world, but he's certainly good at what he does.

A conference call with Kotick was the inspiration for the penny arcade comic - a different conference call than the one Ars talked about in your link. So apparently he really likes that word "exploited".

Same reason you pay more to go in the evening than in the morning - perceived value. As long as there are enough people who think that the 60% markup on 3d vs. 2d is worth it to them, the theaters will charge the markup. When enough people decide that it isn't worth it, ticket prices will either start to drop off or theaters will stop doing the 3d altogether.

3d is going to live or die by the home theater, not by the movie theater. If TV manufacturers can convince people that they want 3d tv in their homes, 3d will thrive no matter what happens in the theater market. If they can't, 3d will idle for a while until someone comes up with a 3d technology people want in their homes. I don't know how popular 3d TV will be (I can't see shelling out the money for it myself, but I've long come to terms with the fact that I'm not in many people's "demographic target"), but that's where success will be measured - long term sales to home viewers, not opening weekend ticket sales.

Of course, if it were truly modeled after our tax code, that 47% wouldn't get nearly as much use out of it as the other 53% either. Rich people have more need for police than poor folks do. Folks who can afford to buy a car have more need for roads. The military is much more useful to people who actually own resources that an invasion force might want. And that's before getting into quality of life issues.

Amusingly enough, Murdoch's media empire includes MySpace. Which could have been the social media giant if it weren't so freaking horrible.

Actually today she'd be able to answer back: "Kids don't read comics anymore - we're targeting this at the 30-something adult male demographic" and be dead-on.

If that's what he wanted he could set up his sites to do that. It actually wouldn't be that hard to do.

What he wants is for Google to give him money to "syndicate" his content. That's what this is about. He's still on old-media model mode and doesn't get that the rug was pulled out from under that model a decade ago. Google is probably one of the few things keeping a steady stream of eyeballs pointing at his lesser-known rags (though the WSJ, the Times and FOX News would probably do okay without Google, they probably do slightly better with Google than they would without it).