Ad Hominem and false humility

Warned: This post contains what some consider offensive language.

Oh here we go:

Me calling the anticommentarian arguments, by and large, pretentious bullshit is not Ad Hominem. Me calling MG Siegler, Matt Gemmell, and Gruber pretentious idiots, vapid hipsters, or <pick your pejorative, it really doesn’t matter> is not Ad Hominem. Calling people you disagree with names is not “Ad Hominem”. It is not nice, and is probably being an Asshole, but it’s not Ad Hominem. For it to be Ad Hominem, I’d have to say something like “MG Siegler is a hipster, therefore, he’s wrong”. THAT is Ad Hominem. Stop using that fucking concept to cover people being foulmouthed rantmavens.

[and later -Ed.]

If I could ban one thing from human discourse, it would be the false humilty we require of people when it comes to opinions. “In my humble opinion”. Oh bullshit. If you’re offering an opinion, it’s not humble. You’re taking a fucking stand on an issue. Could be a minor issue, could be a major issue, but an opinion is inherently not humble. If you want to have a humble opinion, shut the fuck up and stop blathering about it. People can be humble. Opinions cannot be humble. Who the fuck cares about an opinion if the person giving it is being a vacillating wussy about it?

[I aspire to be a foulmouthed rant maven. I may never get there, but a man can dream. (oh hush, I know.) About the second paragraph I quoted… I can have a opinion without belief that it is highly important to anyone but me. You might be able to argue about the precision of the phrase “humble opinion,” but that doesn’t make me a vacillating wussy. Other things might, but I doubt it.]

Source: bynkii.com

Gorilla Glass 2 will allow same strength at 80 percent of size

Gorilla Glass 2 will allow same strength at 80 percent of size, likely to end up in iOS devices:

Corning Gorilla Glass 2 enables up to a 20 percent reduction in glass thickness, while maintaining the industry-leading damage resistance, toughness, and scratch resistance customers have come to expect from the world’s most widely deployed cover glass. The thinner Gorilla Glass 2 enables slimmer and sleeker devices, brighter images, and greater touch sensitivity. These benefits can provide electronics manufacturers with superior design flexibility as they address consumer demand for increasingly high-performing, touch-sensitive, and durable mobile devices.

[Another US company doing good work. And of course, all things being equal you can’t be too thin…]

Source: 9 to 5 Mac – Apple Intelligence

Tim Cook’s Compensation for Fiscal 2011 Revealed

Tim Cook’s Compensation for Fiscal 2011 Revealed:

Apple’s (AAPL) 2012 proxy statement filed on Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that Tim Cook, who took over the helm at the tech giant when Steve Jobs resigned at the end of August, was rewarded handsomely for taking over as CEO, with a compensation package totaling an impressive $376 million.
According to the filing posted online by Apple, Cook’s 2011 compensation included $900K in salary — a figure that far outstrips Jobs’ $1 a year — $900K in incentive pay and 1 million restricted shares of  Apple valued at $376,180,000, the closing price of the co.’s stock on August 24, 2011, which corresponds with the date the award was granted.

[Must be nice… OTOH…]

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t really make $378 million in 2011:

On paper, the shares were worth more than $376 million when the grant was made. But in 2011, they were worthless. Half of them will vest in 2016, five years after they were granted. The other half will vest in 2021 — “subject to Mr. Cook’s continued employment with the Company.”

[snip -Ed.]

For the record, Cook — who was Apple’s chief operating officer before he succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO last August — is a hands-on manager who makes Apple’s supply chains run on time. In fiscal 2011, his company generated $108 billion in revenue. In calendar 2011, its market value grew by more than $70 billion. As of September, it had $81.57 billion in cash and marketable securities in the bank and zero debt.

If Tim Cook had been paid $378 million in 2011, you could argue that he was worth it.

[Meaning, they might be worth a bundle in a few years, or a lot in many years, or maybe not. But it does give him incentive to hang around which is the point.]

iOS Multitasking in Detail

iOS Multitasking in Detail:

I received a lot of feedback on my recent post on iOS multitasking. I’m sorry I can’t respond to everyone who emailed – there were dozens. I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the process in more detail. I used Instruments (part of the Xcode package) to inspect the free memory on the iPad as I ran and suspended various apps.

If I can summarise my point: killing apps manually is fine as a troubleshooting step but it shouldn’t be part of your daily routine.

[It’s worth checking out the video he posted. ]

Source: Fraser Speirs

Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users « Clay Shirky

Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users « Clay Shirky:

To understand newspapers’ 15-year attachment to paywalls, you have to understand “Everyone must pay!” not just as an economic assertion, but as a cultural one. Though the journalists all knew readership would plummet if their paper dropped imported content like Dear Abby or the funny pages, they never really had to know just how few people were reading about the City Council or the water main break. Part of the appeal of paywalls, even in the face of their economic ineffectiveness, was preserving this sense that a coupon-clipper and a news junkie were both just customers, people whose motivations the paper could serve in general, without having to understand in particular.

The article threshold has often been discussed as if it was simply a new method of getting readers to pay, to which the reply has to be “Yes, except for most of them.” Calling article thresholds a “leaky” or “porous” paywall understates the enormity of the change; the metaphor of a leak suggests a mostly intact container that lets out a minority of its contents, but a paper that shares even two pages a month frees a majority of users from any fee at all. By the time the threshold is at 20 pages (a number fast becoming customary) a paper has given up on even trying to charge between 85% and 95% of its readers, and it will only convince a minority of that minority to pay.

The Believer – Haterade

The Believer – Haterade:

When I think of the coiners of the term haterade, those young, mean/smart, media-obsessed bloggers on mean/smart, media-obsessed websites who seem to be able to whip up five hundred words of clever commentary in the time it takes people my age to think of an opening sentence, I wonder if their brains are wired in such a way that the slings and arrows of free-flowing obloquy don’t inflict quite as much pain on them as they might on their elders. The fact that they’ve developed several playful iterations of the word hate—you can hate on someone, show some hatitude, or simply be a hater—suggests that they’ve found a way to laugh at and therefore defang (reappropriate?) the whole gestalt. But I also wonder how often they get to experience the thrill of clueless abandon. I wonder if they’ve ever really been able to express anything—in print, on a blog, on Facebook, wherever—without on some level bracing themselves for mockery or scorn or troll-driven pestilence. I wonder if they could write something as controversial as “Safe-Sex Lies” (even in a more coherent form) and expect anything less than a full-blown assault from an electronic lynch mob and a lifetime of damning search-engine results.

[(Emphasis is mine) There is a age/generational aspect to this that I find in other venues as well. Anyone 10 years or so younger than I care to comment?]

Source: True_BS