jopt

Okay, so how much less likely?

I enjoy narrow genres myself, but I haven't actually done the math to see how this would affect artists etc. Have you?

> less likely to like their stuff

Quantified this? Or is this something you hope is the case, without really knowing?

It's debatable whether that's unacceptable.

Is it unacceptable to remember something you've read? To tell a friend? To write down and sell it? If you turn a profit? If you don't? If you write by hand, 1 character per second? If you use a machine to do it, 1 million characters per second? Are we allowed to quote? To teach? To paraphrase? To back up?

These are hard questions, and you're reducing them to moral absolutes. Make your case without shouting about how you're right.

>like we have to do with every other product?

That's not a very progressive spirit. It might seem unfair, but technology has changed the rules of the game. The consumption of many goods has become non-rivalrous.

Whereas taking goods off shelves without paying is covered by other laws, copyright is about forbidding you from sharing what you bought with others who didn't buy it. That's much more debatable.

Reducing this issue to "let's do what we do with every other product" would undo some of the achievements of the technology and hold us back. Copyright has to stand on its own, it can't be justified by analogy to rivalrous goods.

Meanwhile, the people who sell you the lottery ticket act completely rationally. Funny---it's still lottery tickets, but when the odds are in your favour the hope is no longer needed.

With insurance, you're already subject to the risk. With lottery you choose it.

That's just crazy. Whether or not cheaters should be exposed, I hope that mistakes bit is not your general policy for anything.

Late reply, sorry. There's some among the data provided to the court. IIRC Apple submitted an internal report done by Samsung, which indicated Galaxy Tabs are often returned because users thought they were buying iPads.

> countries like Africa

Hopefully a typo. For reference Africa comprises ≈54 countries depending on who's counting and who counts.

But yes, infrastructure will pose a problem. Will it be specifically so for facebook though? The argument should apply equally to competitors.

502, or is that just me?

So if he cries, it's because he's a witch trying to trick us?

Let's not pretend there's reason or justice in how the US treats those people. That's part of a larger conflict, and has little value as an example of individual responsibility.

It's a ripoff, and strange that Apple didn't license the design, assuming they did their homework and find the IP belonged to someone.

It's not going to confuse anyone. Zero iPads will be returned because the customers thought this was the famous Swiss wall clock they'd heard so much about.

So it doesn't have much to do with Apple v. Samsung. Let's not try so hard to make everything about that; high-resolution thinking should allow for similar but separate conflicts to exist.

False negative. Has since been fixed.

And you think that principle applies well to... keyboard layouts?

Great insight; nice to see something that's not just Gruber-bashing.

I think we can expect Apple to do unsafe things in the future, but outside the realm of iPhone. The iPod (classic) was in a fairly safe place when Apple started disrupting with iPhone. The iPhone and iPad are coupled tighter than the iPod and the iPhone, but there's a hint of the same thing here; the iPhone is refined, and the newer iPad disrupts.

I think iPad, not iPhone, is where we should look for unsafe. Or perhaps something else altogether.

The latest iCal stepped back the ugly. I think they have an okay idea what they're doing.

I get this a lot with my since discontinued MBP 17". Placing my iPhone on the empty space beside the trackpad will black the laptop out. Never knew it was to do with magnets.

> I don't see anything similar except standard design choices

How do you classify design choices as standard?

What. Slight? What could be more inaccurate?

Right. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to, but it does mean you can.

This is little more than a new round of the CSR debate.

I find it hard to fault Apple for cashing in on the ridiculous legal system.

Again with this. There's no reason everyone has to compete with Facebook. Should pg even keep running hacker news? I mean, it's great for nerds but the vast majority of people won't ever use it.

I hate this attitude. "If my grandma isn't on the service, it can't possibly be a good idea." Suddenly everything has to be everyone-scale from day one, never mind how long it took Facebook to reach beyond college students.

I think you're taking a huge leap in your reasoning. Sure, I want lots of people I know on the network. But beyond the roughly 200 of those, I don't care if the network has a hundred thousand users or a hundred million.

Before facebook, social networks could provide a lot of value by saturating small demographics. Example: If all Swedish teenagers are on playahead.se and can all talk to each other there, they don't gain much from network expansion. The reason those networks need to grow beyond the clique where they're successful is that their business model can't sustain itself on a small number of paying users.

If app.net saturates the demographic of "people who care enough about Twitter's new API to chance $50 away," I could talk to 50% of my Twitter circle even if the total number of users on app.net is only 1% of Twitter's.

Of course that's they way the platform pushers market it, and you're right to be skeptical. But I wouldn't call it a lottery just because very few people win.

It's a marketplace; why would anyone expect the profits to be shared among the vendors? Saying there is a lot of money changing hands is not dishonest.

I never experienced that. Seems a little far fetched.

Is that really all there is to it? Are all apps equal provided they have CRUD?

I don't follow this reasoning. Social networks do tend to rely on network effects, but must they?

It sounds cyclic. Social networks need lots of users because they can't charge their users directly, and they can't charge their users directly because they need so many users.

I don't know that app.net has to replace Twitter for everyone. Can't they be smaller and yet successful, precisely because they charge users directly?

Betteridge's, anyone?

Backing your opinions up with studies is great. There sure are plenty of reasons (other than quality, which is the elephant in the room IMHO) that Gruber might sometimes find himself on HN.

But your analysis is more about why any article of his can qualify. Wouldn't it be better to judge this individual piece on its merits instead of pleading the general case?

If you label each of his articles as "Controversial; Pro-Apple" you run a risk of forgetting to read them. Today's piece should count against that label, not reaffirm it.

That's fair I suppose.