Month: January 2012

Value | The Cynical Musician

Value | The Cynical Musician:

Google’s greatest fear, however, is that the content that draws the biggest audiences might be placed beyond its reach. It has seen this happen with Facebook. That’s why Google lobbies against copyright enforcement and for and “open internet” – with the special Googley meaning that “open” has here. It doesn’t mean open, as in “open market”(where anyone can set up shop, for fun or profit), it means open as in “you cannot shut Google out”.

[snip -Ed]

Apple, on the other hand, as Andrew points out: “hasn’t spent one cent on lobbying against intellectual property”.

Apple doesn’t need other people’s property to make money. For Apple, consumers aren’t the means to an end. They are the end. Apple creates valuable consumer products and charges a pretty penny for them. Guess what? People are buying. Not just the “atoms” (devices) either; the iTunes Music and App stores are doing pretty well, too. Apple sees value in intellectual property and is prepared to pay for it in order to sell it to its customers, increasing the value of its devices in the process. Apple’s thoughts are for the consumer and how it can provide the greatest value, that it will then charge for. Unlike Google, it has no interest in decreasing the perception of value, because that would mean that it would need to charge less. To Google, the value of what it provides is simply in how many eyeballs it gets. It doesn’t need to be great, just good enough.

[I don’t agree with everything here but there are lots of good points and even more in the comments. You can argue the various monitory theories, and for example Apple does make a fortune by owning its markets (iTunes, App Stores, iBooks, etc.) which do you require other people’s property. The bottom line, is that it is not easy to convince a large group of people that your art is valuable. It’s gonna take hard work and not a small amount of luck.]

Tweets still must flow

Tweets still must flow:

Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

Source: Twitter Blog

Sandi Metz: SOLID Design Principles – Dependency Injection

Sandi Metz: SOLID Design Principles – Dependency Injection:

Because of the style of coding in Job, it contains dependencies that effect my ability to refactor and reuse it in the future.

[An excellent example of something that was hard to think through in the last significant codebase I worked on. There are always tradeoffs in style, testing, and time spent. We managed as best we could, but I think we should have done more of this (easy to say now.)]

Source: brynary

Cars Kill Cities « Progressive Transit

Cars Kill Cities « Progressive Transit:

Contrary to how it may sound, I do not want to rid the earth of cars.  I just want to use them smarter.  Do you really need a 2-ton vehicle to pickup your dry-cleaning?  Probably not.  Although I do see the appeal in loading a family of 6 into an SUV and traveling to Florida for vacation.  That is a totally reasonable use of an automobile.  What I really want  is clean, walkable, safe, affordable, and family-friendly cities and towns.

[I was just talking to my wife about the impact of living far from work and school. We have no easy solutions at the moment, but we’re thinking about what we can do…]

Source: Dave WIner

ExtremeTech: “Google is FUBAR”

ExtremeTech: “Google is FUBAR”:

Google’s “one thing well” has historically been indexed search. While they’ve had “sticky” web applications like Gmail for years, their main focus has been enabling you to get off their site as fast as possible. Google still needs to be able to do that, but now they’ve also declared that they want to keep you on their site as much as possible. I don’t see how this can be reconciled.

[They are creating quite a mess now aren’t they? I disagree with FUBAR though. SNAFU? Sure. TARFU? Possibly.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

The promise of iCloud

There’s an app on my mac called Notational Velocity. It’s a simple note taking app, that has two critical features. It’s searchable in a “that’s how you use it” kinda way. the second is that it stores your notes on Simplenote. So what’s the big deal?

I started using Simplenote because I wanted a dead simple way to share a food shopping list with my wife. And it was good. Then I got an iPhone and there was an app, so now I could add something on the fly and vice versa. And then I looked for a Mac app because it seemed like that would be an easy to capture thoughts as well. Other “To do” lists worked well in the past, but this felt different and better. Somehow less pressured and achievement oriented. There are some things that require rumination not action, and “to do” by nature is an action.

And so like that the circle was complete. Web access, device access, desktop access to all my notes. And that is the promise of iCloud. No, Simplenote doesn’t rely on iCloud. But iCloud is a system(s) service and it will become more and more common to live in the cloud in all things. Apple hit the basics for now. Music, mail, photos, calendars, contacts… these are things we desire to have on all our devices minus the bother of syncing. And it feels right. Just as right as it does for my notes.

Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright

Franklin Veaux’s Journal – Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright:

People who hold these ideas can not, I think, be persuaded otherwise. A person who feels entitled to something will construct rationalizations about why his entitlement is justified, whether it’s by imagining creativity as some inborn thing like race or sex, or inventing a moral system whereby anyone who does something that could make another person’s life better like create a painting or, I don’t know, haul away garbage is ethically obligated to do so for free. Such people will often spout platitudes like “True artists do it for the love of art, not for money,” setting up a false dichotomy that ignores the fact that creative people also have to eat. This argument also creates a system whereby an artist’s merits are judged not on her technical proficiency or her ability to illuminate the human condition, but rather on how much stuff she gives the speaker for free.

[It’s not easy, but this legislation was deeply flawed. Fortunately (ahem) we can count it on it being back in some form or other. Maybe we can figure out a better idea in the meantime.]

d: Why making an effort is a failure

I made an effort.

I made an extraordinary effort.

I made an “all in”, once in a lifetime effort.

They’re all a failure. Why? Because you make an effort, even an extraordinary one, and not attain your goal. I can cheat myself out of achieving a goal I desire by making an effort. We make efforts all the time, and many of us are good at making them. But it isn’t the goal.

The goal is the goal, atmo.