Dec 14, 2012
pablo commented on What He Said: The Internet Feels Like a Ghost Town.
I think it's a mix of this:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/20…
and this:
http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-w…
which is to say, when the Internet multiplied in size, most of the new users went to the controlled walled gardens, and content creators followed (think AOL in the early days, where ads would say "go to *URL* or AOL keyword: *WORD*". Now it's Follow Us On Twitter and Like Us On Facebook).
The "noisier" Internet you remember was the one reminiscent in Anil Dash's post, where we were all just figuring this thing out, and a greater proportion of Internet users were more proactive in their information-seeking and generating. Now giant swaths of people get their day's entertainment from Facebook and Reddit.
Also, a lot of enthusiasm for generating content just died out. There was a time when everyone had to have a blog because we were so excited to publish and be public, until we realized generating compelling content was hard, and we weren't actually that interesting. Statuses on Facebook and Twitter have made anything but short text bursts (Blogspot, Livejournal) useless. The most successful "blogging" platform is Tumblr, and it does it by being terrible at traditional blogging.
All this to say, it's not that it's quieter, just that it's more efficient at satisfying the less-curious masses :-p
More...
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/20…
and this:
http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-w…
which is to say, when the Internet multiplied in size, most of the new users went to the controlled walled gardens, and content creators followed (think AOL in the early days, where ads would say "go to *URL* or AOL keyword: *WORD*". Now it's Follow Us On Twitter and Like Us On Facebook).
The "noisier" Internet you remember was the one reminiscent in Anil Dash's post, where we were all just figuring this thing out, and a greater proportion of Internet users were more proactive in their information-seeking and generating. Now giant swaths of people get their day's entertainment from Facebook and Reddit.
Also, a lot of enthusiasm for generating content just died out. There was a time when everyone had to have a blog because we were so excited to publish and be public, until we realized generating compelling content was hard, and we weren't actually that interesting. Statuses on Facebook and Twitter have made anything but short text bursts (Blogspot, Livejournal) useless. The most successful "blogging" platform is Tumblr, and it does it by being terrible at traditional blogging.
All this to say, it's not that it's quieter, just that it's more efficient at satisfying the less-curious masses :-p
Jun 19, 2012
pablo commented on Microsoft "Surface" Sucks.
Hot damn, Goldy, I know you put a disproportionate amount of your self-worth in the fact that you prefer Apple products to Microsoft's, but you still find ways to surprise me.
Feb 28, 2012
pablo commented on How Charter School Advocates Are Like Southern Segregationists.
I know right! To disagree with how the union does its job is the same as disagreeing with its purpose and existence! Also, EVIL RACISM.
Feb 8, 2012
pablo commented on "The law at the time required a prosecution.".
I'm only 90% sure of my pedantry, but shouldn't
"one of the father's of the computer age"
lose the apostrophe?
Shameful though, about Turing. While the government issuing a pardon would be purely symbolic and won't affect anything day-to-day, Turing is one of the country's national historic treasures. The failure to pardon him (and other homosexuals who were prosecuted by this law) shows an ignorance of IMPERIAL proportions (geddit?).
"one of the father's of the computer age"
lose the apostrophe?
Shameful though, about Turing. While the government issuing a pardon would be purely symbolic and won't affect anything day-to-day, Turing is one of the country's national historic treasures. The failure to pardon him (and other homosexuals who were prosecuted by this law) shows an ignorance of IMPERIAL proportions (geddit?).
Nov 9, 2011
pablo commented on Mobile Flash is Dead.
A few points...
Flash technology, as a whole, isn't dead for mobile, they're just backing out of the Flash Plugin in mobile browsers. Developers who make content for Flash can still put it on iPhones, Android, Blackberry tablets &etc. with AIR apps. The top-selling iPad game game of September was built this way:
http://thenextweb.com/?p=122755
As for Flash being dead (this is in part to @6), there's still lots of places where it'll be around and thrive. Can you do this in your browser with HTML5?
http://youtu.be/CeYCsBIK3uE
Or this?
http://rhizopods.com/
WebGL is going in that direction, but by the time all the standards line up, and the browser vendors implement them (not to mention incompatibilities, like in the early days of CSS)... there's still a large place for Flash, though mostly on the Desktop.
(to be absolutely clear though, HTML5 + JS is almost always the better choice. Just not always :-p)
More...
Flash technology, as a whole, isn't dead for mobile, they're just backing out of the Flash Plugin in mobile browsers. Developers who make content for Flash can still put it on iPhones, Android, Blackberry tablets &etc. with AIR apps. The top-selling iPad game game of September was built this way:
http://thenextweb.com/?p=122755
As for Flash being dead (this is in part to @6), there's still lots of places where it'll be around and thrive. Can you do this in your browser with HTML5?
http://youtu.be/CeYCsBIK3uE
Or this?
http://rhizopods.com/
WebGL is going in that direction, but by the time all the standards line up, and the browser vendors implement them (not to mention incompatibilities, like in the early days of CSS)... there's still a large place for Flash, though mostly on the Desktop.
(to be absolutely clear though, HTML5 + JS is almost always the better choice. Just not always :-p)
Oct 13, 2011
pablo commented on Microsoft: Windows Users Are Stupider than Mac Users.
Oh, just realized that the article I linked about OS X being insecure was recently updated to say that as of Lion, Apple did patch many of their vulnerabilities that he pointed out. Good on them ^_^
Many of the points I originally made still stand, however, and there are still many vulnerabilities in OS X, and countless more that we don't know because (comparatively) nobody is attacking it.
I'd wager that many of the people who misunderstand the security of myths of OS X had no idea that the security got a major upgrade in Lion, and would have said the same thing 6 months ago.
All that said, sorry for the harsh tone :-p
Many of the points I originally made still stand, however, and there are still many vulnerabilities in OS X, and countless more that we don't know because (comparatively) nobody is attacking it.
I'd wager that many of the people who misunderstand the security of myths of OS X had no idea that the security got a major upgrade in Lion, and would have said the same thing 6 months ago.
All that said, sorry for the harsh tone :-p
Oct 13, 2011
pablo commented on Microsoft: Windows Users Are Stupider than Mac Users.
Wow... this post and the comments are so full of ignorance.
@1 in particular -- Windows doesn't employ open system directories, and prompts the user every time a change is made to the registry or system files. If I even copy executable files (including virtual machine formats, like JAR or SWF) to my Desktop the system warns me. It's pretty clear you haven't used a Windows machine anytime since 95.
@27 makes similar assertions, saying "The security model on Unix-based systems is much more robust than on windows systems from a purely technical standpoint" without anything to back it up. From a technical perspective, OS X (and Unix in general) are much more insecure than the standard Windows model, but as Goldy mentions in the article, they are safer as a consequence of lower market share and less profits for hackers.
And hey, did you know Lion Server shipped with a bug that let anybody log in to any account, without a password?:
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/29/os-x-lion…
_This was shipped to paying customers, from Apple._
Even if you don't read the linked article, how would Unix systems (mostly unchanged in security/ownership models) designed in the 70's compete with a much newer system that's under constant development, with security as a prime focus for many of the last 10 years? And how could you meaningfully compare them, given that hundreds of thousands of man-years have gone into attacking one model, and many orders of magnitude fewer have gone into attacking the other?
Finally, on to the post: Goldy, taking Microsoft's statement and insinuating that a consumer's worst choice is choosing Windows is like a dentist saying tooth decay is caused by the patient eating too much sugar and you saying "Is the dentist saying that their patients shouldn't eat sugar? And shouldn't the dentist just learn to fix teeth?"
Your little endnote ("shouldn't M$ just make their products better rather than blame users?")... well, I'm sure they've never thought of that before! This is an instance of yelling Fix it! to a problem you don't understand. When you have all the world's hackers attacking you, while supporting and maintaining compatibility with the various versions of the most popular operating system of the past 20 years, and only have a finite supply of engineering effort (that doesn't scale well, so you just can't throw money at it)... sometimes you can't make things awesome, immediately, just because you want to, no matter how smart you are or how much money you have.
And yes, many computer users are completely moronic. Even if you fix a change, it means squat unless your users update, and worse if they give permission to programs without checking what they are doing.
[to round this out -- I own and use OS X on most of my computers, run Windows and Linux on another. I do most of my work on OS X. I'm not a fanboy of any platform (they all suck, for various reasons) but get a little too agitated when I read such partisan, uninformed discussion about it :-p]
More...
@1 in particular -- Windows doesn't employ open system directories, and prompts the user every time a change is made to the registry or system files. If I even copy executable files (including virtual machine formats, like JAR or SWF) to my Desktop the system warns me. It's pretty clear you haven't used a Windows machine anytime since 95.
@27 makes similar assertions, saying "The security model on Unix-based systems is much more robust than on windows systems from a purely technical standpoint" without anything to back it up. From a technical perspective, OS X (and Unix in general) are much more insecure than the standard Windows model, but as Goldy mentions in the article, they are safer as a consequence of lower market share and less profits for hackers.
And hey, did you know Lion Server shipped with a bug that let anybody log in to any account, without a password?:
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/29/os-x-lion…
_This was shipped to paying customers, from Apple._
Even if you don't read the linked article, how would Unix systems (mostly unchanged in security/ownership models) designed in the 70's compete with a much newer system that's under constant development, with security as a prime focus for many of the last 10 years? And how could you meaningfully compare them, given that hundreds of thousands of man-years have gone into attacking one model, and many orders of magnitude fewer have gone into attacking the other?
Finally, on to the post: Goldy, taking Microsoft's statement and insinuating that a consumer's worst choice is choosing Windows is like a dentist saying tooth decay is caused by the patient eating too much sugar and you saying "Is the dentist saying that their patients shouldn't eat sugar? And shouldn't the dentist just learn to fix teeth?"
Your little endnote ("shouldn't M$ just make their products better rather than blame users?")... well, I'm sure they've never thought of that before! This is an instance of yelling Fix it! to a problem you don't understand. When you have all the world's hackers attacking you, while supporting and maintaining compatibility with the various versions of the most popular operating system of the past 20 years, and only have a finite supply of engineering effort (that doesn't scale well, so you just can't throw money at it)... sometimes you can't make things awesome, immediately, just because you want to, no matter how smart you are or how much money you have.
And yes, many computer users are completely moronic. Even if you fix a change, it means squat unless your users update, and worse if they give permission to programs without checking what they are doing.
[to round this out -- I own and use OS X on most of my computers, run Windows and Linux on another. I do most of my work on OS X. I'm not a fanboy of any platform (they all suck, for various reasons) but get a little too agitated when I read such partisan, uninformed discussion about it :-p]
Aug 2, 2011
pablo commented on Matt Damon Defends Teachers; Wins the Day!.
As much as I'm a liberal, atheist progressive... I didn't find Matt Damon to be particularly persuasive in this. While there are many teachers who are talented, hard-working, and passionate, this only means that the system should reward them much more (he references this with "long hours/shitty pay"), NOT maintain the current system which protects lemons.
Because while he brings up the good teachers, there are also undeniably shitty teachers who can't get fired, to which hundreds of children are subjected to because we can't be grown-ups about it and fire them.
Intelligent teacher reform doesn't consist of simply penalizing and demonizing teachers as a whole -- many of us who wish for the union's end desperately want it to reward the excellent teachers he's referring to.
Because while he brings up the good teachers, there are also undeniably shitty teachers who can't get fired, to which hundreds of children are subjected to because we can't be grown-ups about it and fire them.
Intelligent teacher reform doesn't consist of simply penalizing and demonizing teachers as a whole -- many of us who wish for the union's end desperately want it to reward the excellent teachers he's referring to.
Apr 29, 2011
pablo commented on How's Bing Doing?.
Good call @7 and @11, though I don't think it entirely undermines the whole of my argument (the statement "owns the market with Sony" was wrong, I now see).
The bigger point I was trying to make was that there is precedent for Microsoft spending heaps of money and incurring losses while trying to enter a competitive market, and that it's not entirely irrational/a sign of bad business as the article suggests.
The bigger point I was trying to make was that there is precedent for Microsoft spending heaps of money and incurring losses while trying to enter a competitive market, and that it's not entirely irrational/a sign of bad business as the article suggests.
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http://www.amazon.com/Why-Romney-Lost-eb…
Funny, because Frum endorsed the Romney campaign, but apparently knew it was a hopeless cause and started writing a book on why it lost seemingly as he was supporting it.
It's almost like David Frum is some kind of opportunistic shill...