You know the world has come to an end when you have a staunch conservative agreeing with liberals that people are too stupid to make their own decisions.

2/11/2012 8:27:03 PM

only because that's what the public education system was designed to do: make the vast majority of America dumb as shit.

better?

2/11/2012 8:29:19 PM

Says the product of the public education system.

2/11/2012 8:32:00 PM

pretty sure moron identifies himself as a liberal.

this has nothing to do with party lines.

2/11/2012 8:59:25 PM

I'll be interested in hearing all about how Phil Knight changed the world after he dies.

2/11/2012 9:02:05 PM

Quote :

" all they did was copy what others already had, put in less features, and blast the public with marketing. "

I'm going to assume you're trolling here...

But just think of how mp3 players were before the iPod.

And Apple barely even advertised the iPod for the first year+ of its life (largely because it was Mac-only at the time). Windows users clamored for it still, using hacks to make it work on Windows. The dancing silhouette commercials weren't used until the 3rd gen iPod IIRC. You're deluding yourself and are ignorant of history (history you LIVED through), if you think the iPod rose to the top because of marketing.

The iPhone's history is similar. Just google some screen shots of what Android was before iphone. COunt the phones on the market that had GPUs pre-iPhone and then post iPhone.

It doesn't take an Apple fanboy to see that they definitely have revolutionized their markets, because these are the facts of history (that you LIVED through).

It's amazing to me that you can't even remember these things in the recent past... it makes sense though why you don't grasp how our social and political systems evolved how they have. You seem to just assume things are the way you hope they are, rather than looking at what the truth is.

2/11/2012 9:43:03 PM

Quote :

"The iPhone's history is similar."

bull fucking shit. people were jizzing over the iPhone from day minus one thousand because it had the Apple name on it. They didn't want it because it was revolutionary. they wanted because it was Apple. that's marketing, pure and simple, dude. they didn't revolutionize a thing. they just marketed the hell out of them and relied on fanboys to jizz over it.

2/11/2012 9:49:14 PM

^^All that might be true. I don't really care to verify it.

Apple still didn't change the world. That is literally the only thing that has bothered me about this discussion.

Arguing about mac/windows is as pointless as arguing about mcdonalds/burger king, coke/pepsi, playstation/xbox, nike/adidas. They're companies focused on profits, and the differences between competitors are usually pretty slim. So let's not go around deifying the CEOs as revolutionaries just because they got a group of people to buy product X instead of product Y.

Rosa parks had more of an influence on the world when she told everyone her feet hurt than Steve Jobs has ever done. Steve Jobs is never going to be a fill in the blank question for some history class 40 years in the future, so let's drop the act that this moment in consumer history is monumental. It isn't.





[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 10:11 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2012 9:52:13 PM

^^... but why was that?

Look in tech talk before the iPhone and find anyone who didn't point out how terrible all phones were on the market at that time. Keep in mind that up until Apple released a phone, they pretty much denied even working on a phone.

I had a black berry storm, it was terrible. I had a Handspring, also terrible, i stayed away from Windows phones, because they too were terrible. Their UIs were slow and clunky, and even though they had internet connections, the web browsers were pretty much useless.

There was a lot of hype pre iPhone, because people were disgusted with phones, and were hoping Apple could do what they did with mp3 players. And they did.

^ history could look at Jobs like Ford, so i could see him being a fill-in-the-blank.

BUt you have a fair point about Parks vs Jobs. What Parks stood for was more significant and monumental.

[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 9:57 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2012 9:54:28 PM

History looks favorably at Ford because he mastered the assembly line which changed labor and production. He was also a supporter of a minimum wage. So until Apple makes an app for that, I don't think Jobs is going to secure his position. Jobs is a testament to consumerism, not labor/production. Again, that's not necessarily bad. He made money giving people something they wanted. Good for him. It just didn't change the world.

Ford also really hated Jews. Not really sure what all that was about.


[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 10:15 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2012 10:00:41 PM

Quote :

" AN APP FOR THAT "

2/11/2012 10:13:48 PM

Quote :

"Apple still didn't change the world. That is literally the only thing that has bothered me about this discussion. "

Do you not realize that there are 1000s of new companies and 10s of thousands of developers that have been started because there is such an insatiable demand of mobile apps? It's like the one bright spot of the economy. Before 2006 smartphones were something clunky only a nerd would use, and now house wives and everyone else under creation has to have them. That demand changes the market dynamic substantially for people in tech and creates a hell of a lot of opportunity. The iPod even enabled smaller musicians to sell direct to consumer. I know those things were possible before, but it wasn't until the wide adoption that it was truly feasible.

Quote :

"Arguing about mac/windows is as pointless as arguing about mcdonalds/burger king, coke/pepsi, playstation/xbox, nike/adidas. "

Most of those things don't enable people to create new businesses and industries. The playstation xbox does of course.

2/11/2012 10:41:49 PM

yes, because no one was creating any applications for mobile phones before the iPhone. yep

2/11/2012 10:46:15 PM

^^that's attributing an awful lot of credit to one company/man. I still think it's silly to give Jobs so much credit while ignoring the context of the entire tech industry.

I'd sooner give Mark Zuckerburg credit for enabling revolutions (actual revolutions) before bragging about housewives playing farmville on their phone. -- I'm not explicitly giving captain Facebook credit for the Arab Spring. Just saying, some things have a bigger impact on a much larger scale than others.

[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 10:56 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2012 10:51:48 PM

Facebook is also pretty revolutionary.

It was basically like MySpace, except it severely restricted people's self-expression, but this model obviously worked better.

It speaks volumes about humanity that Facebook is our most popular website. This is something i think is important for governments to understand when trying to determine public policy...

2/11/2012 11:01:43 PM

^^^

Mobile development has increased by orders of magnitude since the iPhone. Google fucking acquired Android and made it core to their strategy for fuck sakes. Windows Phone 6 sure as hell didn't do it with it's tiny icons and plastic screens.

iPhone developers here make $150K+ if they are any good and a lot of the contract rates are in the $100s/hr. That sure as hell wasn't the case before the iPhone.

[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 11:02 PM. Reason : a]

2/11/2012 11:01:54 PM

And that's super...for a small group of people in those fields, and for the consumers who have access to those products. It doesn't change the world, though.

Revolutions do, though.

Again, I'm not denying Apple's influence in the tech industry. I just refuse to say he "changed the world." Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi....these people changed the world.

Jobs made bank selling people slick designed phones and mp3 players. Good for him. He's influential, no doubt. But he's still not a revolutionary.



[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 11:18 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2012 11:05:32 PM

embed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuDS8u9buJU

2/11/2012 11:23:03 PM

^^

I think this is a semantics argument. No he didn't revolutionize a political movement by fighting guerrilla war in the jungles, but he revolutionized quite a few industries (meaning changed fundamentally how business is done--mostly for the better).


Tech on the surface for the past 10 years has been about enabling people to cut out the middle man and reduce artificial barriers to entry--if you are a good signer you don't have to whore yourself to an executive to get a shitty record deal, just be honest and do your art. The iPod does it by enabling the artists to dictate their own terms and sell direct to consumer. Apple has tried to do the same with publishing to a lesser success, which obviously the Kindle has done better. It does have much broader implications than what you're trying to insinuate. It's more than just the tech workers that see the benefit of what they've done.

There are people working on ways to do it in education and many other industries and Apple has helped in those industries at least with giving people comfort with tech that can set them free.

[Edited on February 11, 2012 at 11:29 PM. Reason : a]

2/11/2012 11:28:49 PM

^

After reading that last post I need to get off the silicon valley kool-aid and take money

2/12/2012 2:36:33 AM

We have a man running for president who thinks government can't make coffee in the morning. HELLO ?! Government made the coffee the president is drinking right now! I witnessed a lady on his staff pick it up from Starbucks like 15 mins ago! Ok so the govt didn't technically produce anything but it did find a way to employ someone to transfer it to his desk!

2/13/2012 8:00:48 AM

That coffee got to that Starbucks because of a comprehensive national roads system that makes distribution (as well as commutes) relatively easy.

2/13/2012 11:00:51 AM

and there's no way that anyone would have wanted to create roads ever. nope, had to be the government that did that. I don't know how roads ever got built before the US gov't

2/13/2012 1:47:02 PM

Well, before the US goverment they were built by European monarchies, before then by the Roman government, before then by Pharaohs.

Unless you count dirt paths, then the deer behind my house been making their own roads without the government for years.

[Edited on February 13, 2012 at 2:34 PM. Reason : .]

2/13/2012 2:31:53 PM

I would be down for having a civil road building program implemented. Where highways between cities get built and paid for by the cities it links. Federal government can operate the interstate system and that's all.

2/13/2012 9:31:14 PM

your proposal is to have the federal government pay for the beltline around Raleigh, and Warrenton and Atlantic Beach will be responsible for paying for NC-58?

2/13/2012 10:16:31 PM

I'm working on the detailed proposals. I'll have them on your desk in 3 weeks, sir.

But in essence, yes. Are roads not simply links between two places? Let the end points pay for the the connection that benefits them. Cities could even band together and pay for roads that hit all their communities.

2/13/2012 10:30:32 PM

How do you think food gets to cities? Not from other cities. In order to *have* cities you have to have a well-connected network of rural food suppliers. Rural areas can't afford their own roads, outside of dirt paths. Not everyone can live in the city proper either, so you need to link up the suburbs as well if you want business to be done in the city itself.

So now you have cities paying to link each other, and cities paying to link themselves to rural areas, and cities paying for the very roads in these rural areas just to keep those local economies functional enough to keep producing food. Oh and the interstate system. Not every state has rural areas either. Sorry, but it just works best if we all chip in to get a decent road system that benefits literally every single person in the country except hermits. It makes every chain of the market more efficient, and it's a way to lower costs for businesses and individuals that can't be taken advantage of outside the country.

Quote :

"Are roads not simply links between two places?"

No, they're not. Your digestive tract is something that links two places, your mouth and your ass. Your brain is made up a network of nodes that works so well because of the extensive inter-connectivity and multiplicity of connections. Roads link many, many places into a single system. If City A and City B pay for a mutual road between them, then City B and City C do the same, then City A and City C just got a free connection to each other. Every additional node benefits all other nodes.


[Edited on February 21, 2012 at 10:10 AM. Reason : .]

2/21/2012 9:55:37 AM

too bad no one was saying that there should be no roads

2/21/2012 10:25:40 PM

Quote :

" I love how the conservative response to any female liberal is to insult her physical appearance. "

Presenter Scarlett Johansson poses in the press room during the 83rd Annual Academy Awards held at the Kodak Theatre on February 27, 2011 in Hollywood, California. Scarlett is an active promoter for the Democratic party and has been involved in several political and social campaigns.

http://www.zimbio.com/Famous+Democrats



[Edited on February 22, 2012 at 12:19 AM. Reason : .......]

2/22/2012 12:14:49 AM

2/22/2012 12:46:39 AM

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand, the prydoucheri is back

[Edited on February 22, 2012 at 1:01 PM. Reason : ]

2/22/2012 1:01:17 PM

Quote :

"too bad no one was saying that there should be no roads"

Too bad I wasn't arguing for the mere existence of roads, moreso establishing the should-be-obvious fact that they're a common good whose value extends way past what a toll would capture.

2/22/2012 1:13:05 PM

sure sounded like you were arguing there should be roads. you've failed to show that roads would not exist if the gov't didn't build them, and then you've gone to an argument about toll roads which, surprise surprise, again no one was talking about.

[Edited on February 22, 2012 at 10:39 PM. Reason : ]

2/22/2012 10:36:59 PM