Jeebus, Masnick, you really are a one-note symphony sometimes. Who wants a locked-down device that limits what you can do? No one, of course -- except consumers of iPhones and iPods. A negligible market, really -- millions upon millions of people. Hardly anyone. Easy to overlook.
Consumers don't always crave "openness." Sometimes -- actually, most of the time -- they want something that works, on the first try, and makes life a little easier or more enjoyable. Apple is rolling in money because they're good at creating that sort of device. By hooking their portable devices into iTunes they create an end-to-end experience that, in most cases, is superior to the available alternatives. People seem to like what they're doing. Apple is never going to run their business the way you want them to. Get over it.
But what fun would that be? Instead you'd rather predict ad nauseum the imminent decline and fall of Apple. Sooner or later they'll go into a tailspin -- as every company does -- and then you'll tell us all how you were right all along. Have fun with that.
Easy: it will strip French heritage because Google is an American company. Once French entrepreneurs dick around long enough to come up with a viable competitor, there will be no problem at all with digitizing French works.
"Despite Port's claims that the founding fathers wanted to preserve her right to privacy, this legal mud-wresting contest is probably not what they had in mind."
If this were a case involving two men, would you have used the mud-wrestling metaphor? That was pointlessly misogynistic and demeaning to women. Set a higher standard.
Yes, you understand the digital music business better than Steve Jobs. Why doesn't he listen to you? If he listened to you, maybe Apple would be a successful company.
"Yahoo! management ought to be excited by the idea of a deal where shareholders get paid a big premium for their shares."
What planet do you live on, where executives of large companies give each other high-fives when--and only when--they maximize shareholder value? You're either the most naive "analyst" in the country, or you're being deliberately obtuse.
Of course that's how Comcast responded. Comcast's response to every input is to raise prices. When they bought out ATT's cable modem service, their first announcement was to the effect that high-speed internet is a premium service, and that customers needed to get used to paying extra for it. Their second action was to raise prices. It's gotten so bad that even their own marketing department realizes that customers would be alienated by the company's pricing scheme, so now they inundate us with advertising promoting "introductory" rates, and won't say what the rate is afterwards.
I was a Comcast customer for years and hated them for that entire period. I have yet to speak with a single Comcast customer who doesn't hate them. Month after month they regularly raised prices on basic cable until I found myself paying nearly $50/month for no premium stations, no digital cable, no set-top box, nothing but the basics. The outcome is I left the market entirely; I'm living without cable, getting my TV by way of Netflix, and loving the fact that I never have to give Comcast another dime.
Remember, this is the same "intelligent and thoughtful guy" who, in an interview some years back, said "there are two types of people in the world: the ones who are creative and become engineers, and everyone else, who go into the service industry." No doubt that sort of observation requires a special form of cognitive dissonance that Scott Adams can call his own.
I enjoy the strip and read it to this day, but I learned a long time ago not to pay much attention to what comes out of Adams' mouth.
1. In a huge public display, remove your videos from a popular website that does what it does well.
2. Have one of your own most popular shows mock your decision to do so.
3. See a video of that mockery go up on YouTube, where it's available for millions to see.
4. Get your lawyers to have the video taken down, preventing fans (and potential fans) from seeing it.
5. Proudly host the same video on your own much less convenient site and then watch your infrastructure fail, effectively preventing everyone from watching the video (unless, of course, someone else has re-uploaded it to YouTube).
It's a little ironic that people still tend to think of Microsoft as a company that develops end-user products. The cash cows in that space are still the Office suite, which has been around for how many years now? In the meantime Microsoft's strategy has consistently been to court big partners, rather than end-users. Thus the Zune pays a tax to a content holder for every unit sold, the wifi capability was restricted to the point that no one cared about it anymore, Soapbox is being hamstrung, Windows Media dives deeper and deeper into the DRM morass -- the litany goes on. That's Microsoft's vision: to partner with huge conglomerates, rather than building products that people want to use. It's a strategy that I think would have failed years ago if it wasn't for the company's market dominance, which ironically was built on end-user software. Twenty years from now we might be looking back at the Ballmer era and shaking our heads at the monumentally poor business decisions that were made under that man's watch.
Even if this passes, it won't make a lick of difference. Which agency is going to step up and field all those reports? Is the FBI going to drop its investigations of real crimes so they can track down ne'er-do-well blog posters? The bill will pass amid a slew of patriotic flag-waving, and then it will hit with a thud and no one will ever do anything about it. Then, 50 years from now, someone will write one of those columns about weird laws that are still on the books and will mention this as one of them -- "Hey, did you know that every time someone posts something that might be illegal in an online forum you're supposed to file a report with the government? Who knew?!"
One of the lesser-known bulwarks of democracy is indifference. Politicians didn't start being stupid recently; they've pretty much always had their share of morons. But when they do something that the rest of us find stupid, we ignore it. That's the way it's always been, and so it shall remain.
In a moment of frustration, while waiting for an obviously non-disabled person who demanded that the city bus we were riding put down its assisted boarding ramp so she could drive her scooter aboard, I started calling such devices "fat wagons." It's a self-fulfilling term; if you're not fat when you start using that scooter, you will be soon.
Of course, as with traditional political mudslinging, you have to wonder if people are really convinced by these types of extremely negative ads that are clearly outright lies, exaggerations or statements taken out of context.
Ultimately the buck here stops, not with the politicians, but with the voters. If they just stopped voting for candidates who cook up vicious lies on the campaign trail, the mudslinging would stop. As long as it's a successful strategy, the democratic process will just sink deeper and deeper into the mud.
Another possible application would be stadium screens -- instead of spending tons of dough installing a screen for one-time big ticket events, the stadium authority could just rent a video blimp or two and park them in strategic locations. Also I could see how these could be useful at outdoor music venues.
Actually, the more I think about this, the more applications it has. This company might not be the one to bring them to market, but there's real potential here.
How can anyone blog on this topic without mentioning "Blade Runner"? I thought that overhead commercial-playing blimp was firmly situated in our zeitgeist.
The brands that intruded on my adolescent consciousness -- Nike, Taco Time, Coca Cola, the NFL -- are still knocking around in my head today, thirty years later. Leaving an imprint during the formative years can foster a lifelong devotion (or at least a guilty pleasure fondness, as with my taste for Taco Time's crispy meat burritos ... mmmm....). It's maybe a little sinister and manipulative, but it's much less evil than Joe Camel.
This is the same guy who recently defended warrantless wiretaps on American citizens on the grounds that it was too much trouble to follow due process. He's a dutiful flunky; when he weighs actual legal principles against orders from higher-ups, the orders always win.
And to think, for a while there he looked like he was destined for the Supreme Court. Maybe we dodged a bullet there.
politicians and policy makers should already know that these groups aren't particularly legitimate -- so why do they still listen to them and use their information as the basis for legislation?
Are you really looking for an answer to that question? The answer, in case anyone is wondering, is colored green and crinkles when you put it in your wallet.
As a longtime Mac user, I'm all for low market share. Sure, I want Apple to do well enough in the marketplace to bring a reliable profit, but the last thing I want is for them to grow as big as Microsoft and, as a direct consequence, have to deal with the sort of legacy issues that forces Microsoft to take five-plus years developing a next-generation operating system. Small, lean, and mean is much better, at least for us consumers.
I actually had a nightmare last night about voting machines. I dreamed that newspapers were carrying the story that Hillary Clinton had been defeated in a Senate race, and that she officially had received only about 600 votes compared to several thousand for her Republican opponent. Diebold machines were used in the election, and my dream self was very upset that no one was asking whether they might have been used to commit election fraud.
Stories like the above are the sort that lead to further nightmares along these lines.
That used to be my remedy for unwanted telephone solicitations: I'd put down the phone as soon as I realized it was a telemarketer and come back a few minutes later. At the time I thought it was fair recompense for their tactic of bombarding me with so many words at once that I couldn't get a word in edgewise to say, "Sorry, not interested." Ultimately, though, I started to feel guilty about it and stopped. Now I have caller ID and just don't answer the phone in the first place.
Beat that horse!
Jeebus, Masnick, you really are a one-note symphony sometimes. Who wants a locked-down device that limits what you can do? No one, of course -- except consumers of iPhones and iPods. A negligible market, really -- millions upon millions of people. Hardly anyone. Easy to overlook.
Consumers don't always crave "openness." Sometimes -- actually, most of the time -- they want something that works, on the first try, and makes life a little easier or more enjoyable. Apple is rolling in money because they're good at creating that sort of device. By hooking their portable devices into iTunes they create an end-to-end experience that, in most cases, is superior to the available alternatives. People seem to like what they're doing. Apple is never going to run their business the way you want them to. Get over it.
But what fun would that be? Instead you'd rather predict ad nauseum the imminent decline and fall of Apple. Sooner or later they'll go into a tailspin -- as every company does -- and then you'll tell us all how you were right all along. Have fun with that.
Viva la France
Easy: it will strip French heritage because Google is an American company. Once French entrepreneurs dick around long enough to come up with a viable competitor, there will be no problem at all with digitizing French works.
poor metaphor
"Despite Port's claims that the founding fathers wanted to preserve her right to privacy, this legal mud-wresting contest is probably not what they had in mind."
If this were a case involving two men, would you have used the mud-wrestling metaphor? That was pointlessly misogynistic and demeaning to women. Set a higher standard.
Poor Steve
Yes, you understand the digital music business better than Steve Jobs. Why doesn't he listen to you? If he listened to you, maybe Apple would be a successful company.
Touchingly naive
"Yahoo! management ought to be excited by the idea of a deal where shareholders get paid a big premium for their shares."
What planet do you live on, where executives of large companies give each other high-fives when--and only when--they maximize shareholder value? You're either the most naive "analyst" in the country, or you're being deliberately obtuse.
Comcast's prices go only one way
Of course that's how Comcast responded. Comcast's response to every input is to raise prices. When they bought out ATT's cable modem service, their first announcement was to the effect that high-speed internet is a premium service, and that customers needed to get used to paying extra for it. Their second action was to raise prices. It's gotten so bad that even their own marketing department realizes that customers would be alienated by the company's pricing scheme, so now they inundate us with advertising promoting "introductory" rates, and won't say what the rate is afterwards.
I was a Comcast customer for years and hated them for that entire period. I have yet to speak with a single Comcast customer who doesn't hate them. Month after month they regularly raised prices on basic cable until I found myself paying nearly $50/month for no premium stations, no digital cable, no set-top box, nothing but the basics. The outcome is I left the market entirely; I'm living without cable, getting my TV by way of Netflix, and loving the fact that I never have to give Comcast another dime.
"Intelligent and thoughtful"
Remember, this is the same "intelligent and thoughtful guy" who, in an interview some years back, said "there are two types of people in the world: the ones who are creative and become engineers, and everyone else, who go into the service industry." No doubt that sort of observation requires a special form of cognitive dissonance that Scott Adams can call his own.
I enjoy the strip and read it to this day, but I learned a long time ago not to pay much attention to what comes out of Adams' mouth.
Re:
Could Viacom have planned it any better?
1. In a huge public display, remove your videos from a popular website that does what it does well.
2. Have one of your own most popular shows mock your decision to do so.
3. See a video of that mockery go up on YouTube, where it's available for millions to see.
4. Get your lawyers to have the video taken down, preventing fans (and potential fans) from seeing it.
5. Proudly host the same video on your own much less convenient site and then watch your infrastructure fail, effectively preventing everyone from watching the video (unless, of course, someone else has re-uploaded it to YouTube).
Really, that's comedy gold.
MS is not a consumer product company
It's a little ironic that people still tend to think of Microsoft as a company that develops end-user products. The cash cows in that space are still the Office suite, which has been around for how many years now? In the meantime Microsoft's strategy has consistently been to court big partners, rather than end-users. Thus the Zune pays a tax to a content holder for every unit sold, the wifi capability was restricted to the point that no one cared about it anymore, Soapbox is being hamstrung, Windows Media dives deeper and deeper into the DRM morass -- the litany goes on. That's Microsoft's vision: to partner with huge conglomerates, rather than building products that people want to use. It's a strategy that I think would have failed years ago if it wasn't for the company's market dominance, which ironically was built on end-user software. Twenty years from now we might be looking back at the Ballmer era and shaking our heads at the monumentally poor business decisions that were made under that man's watch.
Doesn't matter
Even if this passes, it won't make a lick of difference. Which agency is going to step up and field all those reports? Is the FBI going to drop its investigations of real crimes so they can track down ne'er-do-well blog posters? The bill will pass amid a slew of patriotic flag-waving, and then it will hit with a thud and no one will ever do anything about it. Then, 50 years from now, someone will write one of those columns about weird laws that are still on the books and will mention this as one of them -- "Hey, did you know that every time someone posts something that might be illegal in an online forum you're supposed to file a report with the government? Who knew?!"
One of the lesser-known bulwarks of democracy is indifference. Politicians didn't start being stupid recently; they've pretty much always had their share of morons. But when they do something that the rest of us find stupid, we ignore it. That's the way it's always been, and so it shall remain.
Fat wagons
In a moment of frustration, while waiting for an obviously non-disabled person who demanded that the city bus we were riding put down its assisted boarding ramp so she could drive her scooter aboard, I started calling such devices "fat wagons." It's a self-fulfilling term; if you're not fat when you start using that scooter, you will be soon.
mudslinging
Of course, as with traditional political mudslinging, you have to wonder if people are really convinced by these types of extremely negative ads that are clearly outright lies, exaggerations or statements taken out of context.
Ultimately the buck here stops, not with the politicians, but with the voters. If they just stopped voting for candidates who cook up vicious lies on the campaign trail, the mudslinging would stop. As long as it's a successful strategy, the democratic process will just sink deeper and deeper into the mud.
Stadium screens
Another possible application would be stadium screens -- instead of spending tons of dough installing a screen for one-time big ticket events, the stadium authority could just rent a video blimp or two and park them in strategic locations. Also I could see how these could be useful at outdoor music venues.
Actually, the more I think about this, the more applications it has. This company might not be the one to bring them to market, but there's real potential here.
Yeah
How can anyone blog on this topic without mentioning "Blade Runner"? I thought that overhead commercial-playing blimp was firmly situated in our zeitgeist.
Makes sense
The brands that intruded on my adolescent consciousness -- Nike, Taco Time, Coca Cola, the NFL -- are still knocking around in my head today, thirty years later. Leaving an imprint during the formative years can foster a lifelong devotion (or at least a guilty pleasure fondness, as with my taste for Taco Time's crispy meat burritos ... mmmm....). It's maybe a little sinister and manipulative, but it's much less evil than Joe Camel.
Gonzalez
This is the same guy who recently defended warrantless wiretaps on American citizens on the grounds that it was too much trouble to follow due process. He's a dutiful flunky; when he weighs actual legal principles against orders from higher-ups, the orders always win.
And to think, for a while there he looked like he was destined for the Supreme Court. Maybe we dodged a bullet there.
Astroturf
politicians and policy makers should already know that these groups aren't particularly legitimate -- so why do they still listen to them and use their information as the basis for legislation?
Are you really looking for an answer to that question? The answer, in case anyone is wondering, is colored green and crinkles when you put it in your wallet.
market share
As a longtime Mac user, I'm all for low market share. Sure, I want Apple to do well enough in the marketplace to bring a reliable profit, but the last thing I want is for them to grow as big as Microsoft and, as a direct consequence, have to deal with the sort of legacy issues that forces Microsoft to take five-plus years developing a next-generation operating system. Small, lean, and mean is much better, at least for us consumers.
Diebold and fraud
I actually had a nightmare last night about voting machines. I dreamed that newspapers were carrying the story that Hillary Clinton had been defeated in a Senate race, and that she officially had received only about 600 votes compared to several thousand for her Republican opponent. Diebold machines were used in the election, and my dream self was very upset that no one was asking whether they might have been used to commit election fraud.
Stories like the above are the sort that lead to further nightmares along these lines.
Put down phone, walk away
That used to be my remedy for unwanted telephone solicitations: I'd put down the phone as soon as I realized it was a telemarketer and come back a few minutes later. At the time I thought it was fair recompense for their tactic of bombarding me with so many words at once that I couldn't get a word in edgewise to say, "Sorry, not interested." Ultimately, though, I started to feel guilty about it and stopped. Now I have caller ID and just don't answer the phone in the first place.