I think the core argument here is that if the majority of the users don't understand the implementation details of the software/hardware they're using, then selling them new stuff might actually involve spelling out the benefits in practical terms that users can relate to. I really can't see the problem with that.
I also can't see why the Car analogy is somehow invalid because cars only do one thing. For years having a car was essential for living in many (not all) modern cities, without a car you couldn't get to work, visit family or buy groceries. It was an essential tool for living in much the same way as computer will be in coming decades. People did not generally understand the inner workings of fuel injection, anti-lock brakes or catalytic converters, but that didn't mean engineers weren't able to introduce those things. They just had to articulate the performance/safety/economy/environmental benefits in terms that people understood and cared about. The same will be true for computers.
You have a contract directly with the borrowers, not with the institution. If the borrowers don't pay up, you loose that money. Zopa doesn't pretend that you have money sitting in a vault somewhere that you can take out whenever you like.
To be fair to banks they don't really try to push that vault myth either, but that is the mental model people still use when interacting with banks.
Good point. I think Microsoft have failed to spot that the computer market is going the same way as the car market. You can buy a car very cheaply if you just need to get from A to B. But people who have more money choose to buy BMWs or Mercedes. It's an aspirational purchase.
I don't think the argument is that "you're bad anyway". Regardless of who you are, how you got into that situation and whether the protesters have a point, with a protest movement that big and motivated your options are same: crush the protests, re-run the election or form a unity government. If you choose to crush the protest then you give up the "government by consent of the people" type contract that you have with society. I think it's that fact that will drive western opinion more than the actual legitimacy of the result.
exactly. It matters little anyways because it seems that Ahmadinejad and Yazdi were just going to prepare a coup anyways -- http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-279948
At this point I can't sincerely pick any side as the good guys. On one hand, I'm already sick of cookie-cutter "color revolutions" where "nonviolent" protestors oh-so-conveniently invite the support of Western nuclear superpowers to topple regimes unfavorable to the latter. On the other hand, I'm already sick of the only offered alternative, the emerging "multipolar world" fraternity of Ahmadinejad, Putin, Chavez et al.
I kind of envy you Westerners. You have a simple moral principle that tells you which side to pick, a never-failing axiom: democracy is always best. But the recent history of my country (Russia) has given me a huge and readily observable data point against your axiom. So I can't honestly share your faith, even though I'd like to.
So what's your point? That the people who want a say in how they're governed shouldn't express a view because the people who don't like to have a say are sick of hearing it?
I assume you're referring to the second sentence of my comment.
The idea of protesting against bad governments, all the way to armed rebellion, is perfectly okay with me. But I intensely dislike the idea of appealing to a foreign power to settle an internal dispute, especially if the appeal gets prompted by same foreign power. The classical conception of sovereignty, now sadly defunct, had an apt name for this technique: treason. Today it's called "color revolution".
So protest is right if people go to kill their government by themselves?
And when they can't do it by themselves and call for help, this is treason even when they didn't wanted the government that rules them in the first place?
Now that's black and whit simplistic view of world.
Is the concept of treason even relevant when you live in a your country and somebody rules it without your (and other people living there) agreement?
I mean - I live in Poland, after WW2 Soviet Union ruled here (ok, not directly but by proxy:), is treason of such proxy government really treason? For me it's heroism, because people in Poland didn't wanted that government in the first place.
Also - for me peaceful revolution is better than blood bath revolution any time.
From here, it seems like Russia hasn't quite gotten how democracy works yet. Which is fine--maybe democracy doesn't work for Russia. But Iran's a more promising case.
I hope you'll agree that there's another moral principle at play here: don't shoot peaceful people to death in the streets. I couldn't care less about elections when a government stoops to that.
I agree. Facebook's data on me is not of a particularly good quality. Most of my "friends" are former colleagues or school friends. I wouldn't trust any of them to recommend a restarunt any more then I would trust 300 anonymous reviews on an independant restarunt listings site.
If true, this strengthens the case that Google's monopoly is dangerous. The defence of Google's market dominance has always been that users are not locked in to Google and would switch the moment something better arrived. If Google have built a brand loyalty that transcends that then they would be virtually impossible to challenge.
Just because you can't compete with them it doesn't make them bad guys. When google came into the market it didn't go to the government to say, hey Micrsofot is too big and that msn search engine is too good, if only you guys could disadvantage our competition!
True. I'm not passing judgement or using subjective terms like "bad guys", I'm just saying that the OP highlights what a robust monopoly Google has and that the counter arguments that some have offered are wrong.
Give the guy a break, he clearly does now how to code, he writes well crafted blog entries in which he humbly explains some of the mistake's he's made for the benefit of others. If he's being voted up in news aggregator then a lot of people must appreciate what he's doing. Why is that so bad?
I'm a fan of his and I think a lot of what he writes about is pretty poor. I don't mind because he is a good writer and he doesn't pretend to be an expert about most of what he writes about. I do mind that he thinks it's not important a lot of the time. I can't fault his record though, he's a successful in his field, and his latest ventures have been really wonderful. I disagree on his views (I don't know C well but I understand why you might want to learn it Jeff!) and I don't think we should see every article of his here, but he's hardly the worst pundit out there.
It's annoying because it's been going on for a long time now, and he hasn't seemed to have taken a break to really bring himself up to speed despite having been shown, repeatedly, to have a need for it.
EC was chock-full of smart engineers but suffered from the "too many mad scientists, not enough hunchbacks" problem and had a management team grafted on from Creative Labs (which seemed like a smart move at the time since they had brought SoundBlaster to market dominance.) The real tragedy is that the company founders were fixated on the idea that they were creating a mall-like "virtual world" and remainded completely oblivious to the fact that they were sitting on a working scalable, secure MMORPG engine at least five years before anyone else was even close.
It's all about network effects. I think the hype is bad for Twitter, it makes people aware of the service before any of their friends are on there, so they try it, subscribe to Stephen Fry and Jeff Atwood and then give up.
Me and a few of my friends in the UK .net development world are on there but we go days between tweets because that's what everyone else is doing. There's no conversation for me at the moment. At this point I'm just sitting on my user account and waiting for the network to become worth being a part of.
I also can't see why the Car analogy is somehow invalid because cars only do one thing. For years having a car was essential for living in many (not all) modern cities, without a car you couldn't get to work, visit family or buy groceries. It was an essential tool for living in much the same way as computer will be in coming decades. People did not generally understand the inner workings of fuel injection, anti-lock brakes or catalytic converters, but that didn't mean engineers weren't able to introduce those things. They just had to articulate the performance/safety/economy/environmental benefits in terms that people understood and cared about. The same will be true for computers.