I apologize for this post.  This is so far out of the scope of this blog it's not even funny.  If I could stop myself from posting it I would.

But I can't let this stand and I had to put my reaction somewhere.  For those who don't know Senator Ted Kennedy has died.  Many are posting blog entries mourning his death.  Even some conservative sources, whose politics were the complete opposite of his, are chiming in with condolences.

None of this mourning is deserved.  This has nothing to do with politics.  This has everything to do with the fact that he killed a woman.  That shouldn't be forgotten.  She shouldn't be forgotten.  So I'm going to tell the story and for those who think it's crass to speak badly of the dead I apologize in advance.  But I can't let this man be lionized and no say anything.

For those who don't already know what I'm talking about here's the story.  At age 37 Ted Kennedy was running for re-election to his senate seat.  He offered to give one of the young women on his staff, Mary Jo Kopechne, a ride. 

I'm going to tell the story through quotes from here on out.  These quotes are from the Wikipedia entry on the incident. 

According to his own testimony at the inquest into Kopechne's death, Kennedy left the party at "approximately 11:15 p.m." When he announced that he was about to leave, Kopechne indicated "that she was desirous of leaving, if I would be kind enough to drop her back at her hotel".

...

Christopher "Huck" Look was a deputy sheriff working as a special police officer at the Edgartown regatta dance that night. At 12:30 am he left the dance, crossed over to Chappaquiddick in the yacht club's launch, got into his parked car and drove home. He testified that between 12:30 and 12:45 am he had seen a dark car containing a man driving and a woman in the front seat approaching the intersection with Dike Road. The car had gone first onto the private Cemetery Road and stopped there. Thinking that the occupants of the car might be lost, Look had gotten out of his car and walked towards it. When he was 25 to 30 feet away, the car started backing up towards him. When Look called out to offer his help, the car took off down Dike Road in a cloud of dust.^[5] Look recalled that the car's license plate began with a "L" and contained the number "7" twice, both details true of Kennedy's 1967Oldsmobile Delmont 88.

So Sen. Kennedy was clearly disoriented after coming from a party.  If you ask me it sounds a lot like he was drunk.

According to his inquest testimony, Kennedy made a wrong turn onto Dike Road, an unlit dirt road that led to Dike Bridge (also spelled Dyke Bridge). Dike Road was unpaved, but Kennedy, driving at "approximately twenty miles an hour", took "no particular notice" of this fact, and did not realize that he was no longer headed towards the ferry landing.

Again, have you ever seen a sober person not realize they'd gone from a paved road to an unpaved road? 

Dike Bridge was a wooden bridge angled obliquely to the road with no guardrail. A fraction of a second before he reached the bridge, Kennedy applied his brakes; he then drove over the side of the bridge. The car plunged into tide-swept Poucha Pond (at that location a channel) and came to rest upside down underwater. Kennedy later recalled that he was able to swim free of the vehicle, but Kopechne was not. Kennedy claimed at the inquest that he called Kopechne's name several times from the shore, then tried to swim down to reach her seven or eight times, then rested on the bank for around fifteen minutes before returning on foot to Lawrence Cottage, where the party attended by Kopechne and other "Boiler Room Girls" had occurred. Kennedy denied seeing any house with a light on during his journey back to Lawrence Cottage.

In addition to the working telephone at the Lawrence Cottage, according to one commentator, his route back to the cottage would have taken him past four houses from which he could have telephoned and summoned help; however, he did not do so. The first of those houses, referred to as "Dike House", was only 150 yards away from the bridge, and was occupied by Sylvia Malm and her family at the time of the incident. Malm later stated that she had left a light on at the residence when she retired for that evening.

So this woman is drowning and he decides to walk back to the party passing several houses that he could have stopped at to call the police.  He instead chose to go get two friends.  After they could not help he assured them he would call the authorities.  This is what he did instead...

According to his own testimony, Kennedy swam across the 500-foot channel, back to Edgartown and returned to his hotel room, where he removed his clothes and collapsed on his bed. Hearing noises, he later put on dry clothes and asked someone what the time was: it was something like 2:30 a.m., the senator recalled. He testified that, as the night went on, "I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room ... I had not given up hope all night long that, by some miracle, Mary Jo would have escaped from the car."

Back at his hotel, Kennedy complained at 2:55 am to the hotel owner that he had been awoken by a noisy party.

So again, having not called the authorities he had the presence of mind to complain to the Hotel management about a noisy party keeping him awake.  Which brings us to the next morning.

By 7:30 am the next morning he was talking "casually" to the winner of the previous day's sailing race, with no indication that anything was amiss.  At 8 a.m., Gargan and Markham joined Kennedy at his hotel where they had a "heated conversation." According to Kennedy's testimony, the two men asked why he hadn't reported the accident. Kennedy responded by telling them "about my own thoughts and feelings as I swam across that channel ... that somehow when they arrived in the morning that they were going to say that Mary Jo was still alive".^[The three men subsequently crossed back to Chappaquiddick Island on the ferry, where Kennedy made a series of phone calls from a payphone by the crossing to his friends for advice; he again did not report the accident to authorities.

So by the next morning not only has he not contacted the authorities but  he's going on with his normal daily routine as if nothing happened.  When confronted by the friends who he told he'd contact the authorities he still doesn't do it but instead chooses to call around asking for "advice" on whether he should contact the authorities at all.

The truth is we'll never know if he would have ever contacted the authorities because...

Earlier that morning, two amateur fishermen had seen the overturned car in the water and notified the inhabitants of the nearest cottage to the pond, who called the authorities at around 8:20 am.A diver was sent down and discovered Kopechne's body at around 8:45 am.

So had these fisherman not found the body who knows what would have happened.  But this last quote is the most important one of all.

The diver, John Farrar, later testified at the inquest that Kopechne's body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He interpreted this to mean that Kopechne had survived for a while after the initial accident in the air bubble, and concluded that...

"Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim's side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car"

So had Kennedy immediately contacted the authorities there's a good chance the girl would have lived.  Given all that you have to ask how this man is still a Senator.  The answer: He has a powerful family.  In the end he was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and was given the minimum (a 2 month prison sentence) that was then suspended by the judge (so he essentially wasn't punished at all). 

One final note.  An independent inquest into the incident took place afterward and was presided over by Judge James Boyle.  He determined that what Kennedy did fit the charge of manslaughter (at the least).  But...

Under Massachusetts law Boyle, having found "probable cause" that Kennedy had committed a crime, could have issued a warrant for his arrest, but he did not do so.  District Attorney Dinis chose not to pursue Kennedy for manslaughter, despite Judge Boyle's conclusions.

The Kopechne family did not bring any legal action against Senator Kennedy, but they did receive a payment of $90,904 from the Senator personally and $50,000 from his insurance company. The Kopechnes later explained their decision to not take legal action by saying that "We figured that people would think we were looking for blood money."

Again, I apologize for this post.  But I just couldn't let this "outpouring of grief" for the man stand.  No matter how you feel about his politics, his legislative record, etc... it shouldn't make a difference.  No amount of good deeds makes you entitled to one free killing of an innocent person. 

Normally I like to think I’m above saying “I told you so” but I think this deserves an exception.  In a post on August 9th I said…

The situation with the Google Voice app is the perfect example.  Most people are ignoring the evidence and assuming Apple denied the Google Voice App because AT&T didn't want the competition in the phone space.  But I'm almost sure that wasn't the case (AT&T denies the claim).  More likely Apple didn't want Google grafting an inferior voice mail experience onto their phone.  So just like the painter who would never change a color in his painting Apple refused to let the app onto the iPhone.

Now from TechCrunch today (in regards to Apple’s response to the FCC claim of unfairness against the Google Voice iPhone App)…

On the Google Voice rejection:

Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail.

Apple has a problem with Google Voice’s phone icon, voicemail functionality and SMS functionality:

Apple spent a lot of time and effort developing this distinct and innovative way to seamlessly deliver core functionality of the iPhone. For example, on an iPhone, the “Phone” icon that is always shown at the bottom of the Home Screen launches Apple’s mobile telephone application, providing access to Favorites, Recents, Contacts, a Keypad, and Visual Voicemail. The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail. Similarly, SMS text messages are managed through the Google hub—replacing the iPhone’s text messaging feature.

This is an important point in understanding Apple.  Their passionate about experience more than they are about technology.  I have no doubt they’d have the same controls on the Mac if they weren’t still the underdog. 

I think Microsoft’s dominance has gotten people into the mindset of “everyone loves developers” but that just isn’t true.  Steve Jobs is famous for making Bill Gates himself wait in the lobby of NeXT for a half an hour in an attempt to prove to Gates how NeXT didn’t need software developers.  Obviously Jobs was much younger then and people do change but in looking at the iPhone app store you can see the same mentality at work. 

If you want to use Apple products you have to resign yourself to doing things Apple’s way.  Whether you’re a developer, user or whatever.  That has always been the case and likely always will be.  The reward for sticking it out is you get some pretty great products.  The cost is you sometimes get dirt kicked in your face. 

That’s how Apple rolls.  Accept it or go PC (or in the phone case Android/Symbian/Windows Mobile)

I'm going to spend very little time on this because this blog isn't the ZDNet corrections dept.  But this is the second time in as many days that I've come across a ZDNet article that was just laughable in it's very premise and as I think back I'm realizing it's kind of a pattern with ZDNet these days.

In an article entitled "CDs still sell: Who are these people?" Larry Dignan says this...

Great, then we’ll all get to ask who is still buying CDs all over again.

So who are these CD lovers?

• They’re the same bunch still subscribing to AOL dial-up.
• They’re the same folks that still like albums.
• They’re the same people that read liner notes.
• They’re also a lot like me once in a while—People that would rather have the source material instead of screwing around with various formats (I also buy from Amazon’s MP3 store).

Perhaps  he should do a quick Google search under the term "bitrate". 

As in, "even Tom who is not an audiophile by any standard can hear the difference between 256kbps and lossless" (and true audiophiles claim to be able to hear the difference between low end lossless (around 500kbps) and CD quality (around 1400kbps))

That doesn't even take into account technologies like DTS-CD and DualDisc which allow CDs to be played in 5.1 surround sound (both are floundering sadly but it's my hope that falling CD sales might change that)

Back to my original point.  What the heck is going on down there at ZDNet?  Have they fired all the editors?  Are they pushing writers to create "controversial headlines" at all cost?  I don't know.  But it's sad to see a brand whose name is linked to the likes of Mary Jo Foley and Dennis Howlett fall so short in other places.

Addendum: For the record Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider brings up the same point and even when faced with a bunch of comments pointing out the bitrate difference he says...

I love that my audiophile readers love the lossless stuff, but if you were the ones buying most of the CDs out there, America's music charts would probably look a lot different!

Now, as I pointed out above it doesn't take an audiophile to notice the difference on a home audio system.  But I wanted to point out a few other factors. 

First, for those who think "everyone is on iTunes" I'd point to the April 2009 Pew Research Study that found only 63% of Adult Americans have broadband access.  I have to doubt many dial-up users are getting their music via online download.  Second, another group who might buy CDs in large numbers are a group I like to call "Those who like getting the most value".  Let me explain.  This week George Strait's Twang is expected to top the Billboard 200 chart.  That CD costs $9.99 on Amazon while on iTunes it costs...$9.99. So why wouldn't you get the physical copy with the better quality music, linear notes, pictures, etc...?

(For the record the last CD I bought was from Darius Rucker of Hottie and the Blowfish fame which cost $7.99 on Amazon and $9.99 on iTunes)

In an article entitled “Mozilla pushes out .NET incompatible Firefox 3.5” ZDNet’s Dana Blakenhorn says…

Firefox users got a surprise when they booted up this morning, a software update box for Firefox 3.5, “the most advanced Firefox yet.”

A warning sticker at the bottom of the box notes that it will cause “some of your extensions and/or themes to stop working until they are updated.”

…

But this list of incompatibilities carries just one name — Microsoft .Net Framework Assistant 1.0.

Interesting. Everything else is expected to work with the new Firefox except .Net, so it’s ready not just for download but ready to be pushed out with notes to all clients urging them to get it?

Now as I say with any article like this my aim is not to attack but simply to embarrass the author just enough to get him to do a little research in the future.  If Mr. Blakenhorn had done a simple Google search for “.Net Framework Assistant” it would have pointed him to a Wikipedia article named “Clickonce” that says…

Prior to .NET 3.5 SP1, ClickOnce worked only with Internet Explorer, although the FFClickOnce extension allowed Firefox to support it. Starting with .NET 3.5 SP1 and Firefox 3, a Firefox extension is silently installed by Microsoft when an update of the .NET framework is installed.

That’s what the .Net Framework Assistant does, it enables Clickonce (a technology that allows desktop apps to be installed with “one click” of a hyperlink).  It does not enable .Net itself.  Removing it will not disable any .Net applications either on the server side via ASP.NET or the client side via Silverlight. 

So what Mozilla really did was temporarily disable a feature that almost no one uses and which is easily worked around for anyone who would want to use it (just distribute an install file like every other app in the world).  In fact, the real irony is that Clickonce DIDN'T officially work in Firefox until about a year ago when .NET 3.5 SP1 was released (it's been around since 2005)

This is not a political post.  But it does concern a political movement.  A couple days ago John Mackey, CEO of Wholefoods (an organic grocery chain) wrote an editorial for the WSJ entitled "The Whole foods Alternative to ObamaCare".  In it he very respectfully laid out why he disagrees with the Obama administration and how his own business experience points to an alternative solution.  Which led many progressive groups (who may or may not be Wholefoods customers) to start a boycott.

A blog post on The Moderate Voice supporting the protestors makes this statement...

I am all for freedom of speech. Mr. Mackey had every right to express his views on health care in the WSJ, even as anathema as those views might be to progressives. Similarly, we progressives have every right to decide whether or not we want to spend our food dollars in a store whose CEO clearly doesn’t support the most important progressive cause of the moment.

So basically "I support freedom of speech unless you ever dare express an opinion that is different from mine at which point I'll do everything I can to destroy you"

Very enlightened...

I've said this before and will continue to say it as many times as people will listen.  You can't have freedom of speech in a world where someone can lose their livelihood for expressing themselves.  These protestors clearly want to get the CEO of Wholefoods fired for expressing an opinion and that is an anathema to the idea of being free to speak your mind. 

One caveat here.   The speech must be respectful.  I have no problem with people going after Glen Beck for calling President Obama a racist because that's an attack on Mr. Beck's part which makes Obama supporters more than justified in making a counter attack. 

But Mr. Mackey's editorial was completely respectful and he didn't attack anyone he simply disagreed with an idea.

How is this technology related?  Because you can't create a world based around the free exchange of ideas without allowing people the freedom to express their ideas.  You can't go on and on about blogs, social media, Twitter, and all the other technology that empowers people to express themselves and then turn around and hate them for that very expression. 

It's time for these protestors (and those like them) to discover the concept of maturity and start accepting those who don't agree with them.  Moreover it's time for them to realize the best way to deal with those who disagree with you is to GIVE THE COUNTER ARGUMENT.  Rather than try to destroy a person for disagreeing with you how about you try changing his mind?   How about you spend your time refuting his ideas rather than assailing his character? 

Put your effort into promoting the ideas you do support rather than attacking those you don't.   

Addendum: I missed a point.  That point being “Why should the protestors keep giving their money to a company run by someone who doesn’t support their ideals”

I love Bradley Whitford (most widely known for his role as Josh Lyman on the West Wing).  He’s probably my favorite working actor today.  But I don’t agree with a lot of his politics.  Yet that has never stopped me from making a point of supporting his work (I think I own everything he’s ever done on DVD)

Being a mature adult means accepting people will disagree with you and that those who do so respectfully aren’t your enemy.  In fact, maturity means accepting you could be wrong and inviting those who disagree with you to speak their mind so that you know you’re getting both sides of the story.

Finally, someone who has provided a good service to you (like a great actor or the CEO of a successful organic grocery chain) should be given even more leeway to express their ideas because they’ve given you something of great value in the past.

The owner of favstar.fm posted an item on Hacker News asking for advice on monetization.  In checking out his site I found this quote and it just cracked me up...

"I was halfway through the appendectomy when I realized that Wikipedia was full of shit."  -  fireland

A lot of talk in the tech world has been focused on the new Palm Pre ads.  The Ads are clearly trying to be ethereal as the actress goes on about “everything going right”,  “the world working without even trying”, etc…  The problem is many people don’t seem to like them.  The term “creepy” has been tossed around more than once. 

Clearly this is starting to worry Sprint because they’ve hired a “communications research” company to test the ad among viewers…

A new national media study among 305 viewers of a new controversial ad by Sprint promoting their new Palm Pre phone revealed that the majority of viewers reported that “inspiration” and “happiness” were the emotions they felt most while watching the commercial.

The study was conducted by HCD Research using its MediaCurves.com® website during August 7-9, to obtain viewers’ perceptions of a new Palm Pre Sprint commercial, which has generated much controversy due to the nature of the ad.

The study also revealed that the majority of viewers (67%) reported that the ad was either somewhat effective or extremely effective, while 16% of viewers indicated that the ad was confusing.

Now before I get into the claims of people being “inspired” and made “happy” by the ads I’d like to address it’s effectiveness.  The company put up a neat little video that shows "audience interest" as the Ad plays.  A red line floats between “interested” and “not interested” telling us how those 305 people were feeling at any given moment.  Here’s how it looked…

Now that looks promising.  But lets take that picture and mark off two important points of the Ad.

You’ll note people seem to like the Ad more before it even said anything.  To make the point even clearer I put a black box over the part of the screen above the first peak (which was before the actress had even turned around or anyone had said anything). 

You’ll note the first peak is well above just about all the rest of the Ad.  At that point the audience was just “diggin’ the music”  if you will.  So to claim the Ad itself is effective based on this is ridiculous.  What they’ve proven is (a) their scale was off since people were already showing major interest before anything ever happened and (b) they spent way too much time NOT SHOWING THE PRODUCT (the point where the highest peak falls again is when they switch back to the actress and it then goes up again when the logo featuring the product comes on).

As far as the “inspiration” factor I’d argue the audience, while trying to be truthful, are giving a false picture.  Two points to consider here…

1.  More and more advertising studies are being done using Functional MRI machines because people have proven they can’t accurately judge their own emotional state.  For those who aren’t familiar with it a Functional MRI (or fMRI) can measure neural activity in the brain and by doing so can tell what people are actually feeling.  This has led to several discoveries in the field of Advertising.  One of the best examples of this is anti-smoking ads.  The ads were always thought to be effective but fMRI research has revealed they make smokers crave cigarettes even more.  But those smokers swear the ads make them want to smoke less in research groups because they aren’t aware of what is actually being done to them.  Which brings me to point #2…

2.  People have an innate desire to give others what they want.  If you watch the ad above it's clearly trying to inspire its audience.  So is it surprising that an ad audience being employed by the company using the ad will respond in a way that gives the questioner what the ad is asking for?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s very likely they're telling the questioner what they want to be feeling (because of that innate desire to please) and not what they actually feel. 

In the end it’s not enough to ask people how they feel anymore because all those fMRI studies have shown "what people say" isn’t an accurate indicator of "how people feel".  Moreover this is a conclusion that’s been clear via anecdotal evidence for years.  As a kid I loved OS/2 and I remember clearly IBM running OS/2 ads that included two nuns talking about it in a foreign language.  I HATED those ads because they didn’t even show the product.  But IBM swore up and down that the ads tested well among focus groups (and the campaign itself won several awards).

Where’s OS/2 now in the consumer market?  Completely gone.  So tell me again how effective focus groups are?

I've resisted this particular topic all weekend because as a technology person and someone who handles the technology for an agency that's one part school I really want digital textbooks.  But there's a misperception here that needs to be addressed. 

From the New York Times...

With California in dire straits, the governor hopes free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

From Tech Blorge....

This is not something that will happen over night, but the move is inevitable.  California alone spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on printed textbooks, and with the state in financial crisis, it is going to have to do something to start saving money, and it’ll have to do it soon.

Let's do the Math here.  1 Student going through 4 years of High School will use about 32 text books in their school career.  This is based on 4 years with Math, English and Science classes that run a whole year plus 2 periods of electives which change mid-year (most High School students have 6 periods but one of those can be attributed to a non-text book class like P.E. or Shop).  That gives us 4 Math books, 4 English books, 4 Science books, and 16 elective books (2 periods a year with 8 books a piece overall).

Now text books have high cover prices but they're bought in bulk by school districts.  I checked with a friend of mine who works for one of the school districts we deal with and he said the average price of a text book is around $35.  So that gives us $1,120 in textbooks.  But keep in mind textbooks are usually kept for about 5 years (often times even longer).  That puts the actual per-student total for print at about $224 when you consider all those books are being used by 5 other students.

On the other end of the spectrum the Kindle DX costs $489.  Now we can assume Amazon would give school districts a huge break on cost if they order in bulk but the Kindle's also an electronic device which is much easier to break than a physical book so I'd think that would probably be a wash (a 20% fail/break rate would wipe out the 25% discount) .   Just to make it fair we'll also disregard the additional IT support personnel that would be required to maintain the Kindles (the maintenance would probably be minimal but you still need someone to deal with RMAs and such). 

So being generous the cost for a Kindle is about $489 per student (assuming a reasonable 4 year life span the kindle could be used by one student all the way through)

But we still need books.  I'm writing off the pipe dream of "open source" textbooks because schools could do that now simply by printing books out and they don't.  Parents aren't going to go for kids learning from a wiki-like textbook.  Education's just too important to leave it to chance.

That said I looked at about 10 programming books on Amazon and found e-books for the kindle are discounted by about 34% over their paper counterparts.  If the same holds true for textbooks you'll be looking at a cost of $147.84 over 5 years.  But just to be ULTRA fair lets assume the schools cut an incredible licensing deal and cut that number in half to $73.92.  That brings the grand total for a Kindle DX + books to about $562.92.  

And again I was very generous to the Kindle, the cost would almost certainly be more.  You have hardware costs for broken ones, you have the extra ones you have to stock because you'll need to provide replacements should one fail, you have phone support which needs to be provided for students who might have problems, you have protective covers you'd probably have to buy (to minimize damage), you have to buy a kindle for every teacher you have (which factors into the cost per student) and so on.  

My numbers are VERY rough but no amount of cajoling is going to erase such a disparity. There are many advantages to e-books in schools but cost is simply not one of  them and I think we need to start being honest about that.

I'm glad Jason Calacanis has started posting his e-mail newsletter to the web.  I subscribed to the newsletter but often found they'd sit in my inbox unread.  But his web postings always get read by me (I don't know why that is exactly).  Today he posted on his decision to stop using Apple products and move back over to the PC.  That decision is largely based on the sentiment expressed in this one sentence...

Steve Jobs is on the cusp of devolving from the visionary radical we all love to a sad, old hypocrite and control freak–a sellout of epic proportions.*

He then goes on to list his grievances with Apple.  But the thing is...nothing's really changed with Apple.  Steve Jobs has always been a control freak.  It's inherent in his philosophy of seeing Apple as "artists" more than as "technologists."

Here's a helpful action you can take to understand Apple better.  Go to your local art gallery and find the next time they'll be having an exhibit featuring a single painter.  Go to that exhibit and find that painter.  Take him over to one of his paintings and focus on his face.  Then say "I love this painting but it would be much better if you put a little red around the edges and changed that color in the middle to blue." 

The expression on that painter's face will tell you why Apple will never willfully comply with Mr. Calacanis' requests in a way my words never could. 

Like an artist, Apple has a singular vision that they won't let outsiders change.

The situation with the Google Voice app is the perfect example.  Most people are ignoring the evidence and assuming Apple denied the Google Voice App because AT&T didn't want the competition in the phone space.  But I'm almost sure that wasn't the case (AT&T denies the claim).  More likely Apple didn't want Google grafting an inferior voice mail experience onto their phone.  So just like the painter who would never change a color in his painting Apple refused to let the app onto the iPhone.

Which leads to the big problem.

Apple's products are great because Apple has that singular vision.  Like an artist Apple's vision is sacrosanct to them.  If you force them to change that vision in a way they find unacceptable the whole vision will fall apart.  It's the missing tile syndrome.   A missing tile in your bathroom has almost no negative effect on you.  But if you want a perfect bathroom you'll fixate on that tile.  It will be all you see when you walk into the bathroom and eventually it will make the room itself look ugly to you because you fixated on it.

Force Apple to start doing things they can't accept and I suspect you'll find the quality of their products starts to drop significantly.

There are pragmatic companies out there.  Companies that do all kinds of market research and try everything they can to obey their customers.  If that's what you want you need only walk over to the PC side of the aisle.  But if you want Apple you have to buy into their vision and suck it up.  To change them would be to deprive the world of what Apple is in the first place and I think most people wouldn't want that.

One Last Unrelated Note...

I didn't reprint the whole article so I didn't feel the need to put this at the top.  But I had something to say about it so I'm putting it here.  At the beginning of the linked to article Mr. Calacanis writes...

Note: You’re welcome to republish this piece provided you include the following note at the top: “Reprinted with permission from Jason Calacanis (www.calacanis.com), CEO of Mahalo.com and co-founder of the TechCrunch50.com conference taking place on September 14-15th in San Francisco.” With three links to calacanis.com, mahalo.com and techcrunch50.com if you would be so kind. Looking forward to an open discussion of these issues.

I've disagreed with things that Jason Calacanis has said in the past and will surely do so again.  but I'll always think the world of him for stuff like this.  I can't tell you what I'd give for a world of people who were brave enough to just say what they want and ask for it.  Not worrying if people called them a self-promoter or whatever else.  The fact that Mr. Calacanis is willing to openly do that which most people are afraid to makes him infinitely admirable in my book.

The was originally posted on Hacker News but it got deleted for reasons I don't entirely understand.  Despite what the title says I was neither suggesting we accept unjust laws or get rid of HN as you'll see below.  But it was killed none the less and I can accept that.

It's funny how, after we've aged a bit, we choose to let certain things go.  A younger me probably would have been all over the site demanding an explanation for the perceived censorship while the older me simply sees it as someone keeping their house in order as they see fit.

But not even the older me would want to see the work go to waste.  So I'm posting it here. 

(NOTE: Seconds after I posted this it came back so maybe it was just a triage sort of thing.  But now as I'm looking it didn't really because I can't reply to the people who replied to me (which I can do even when an article's been killed).  I don't know.  It's all very weird.  I'm choosing to go with the flow)

This all came about after I commented on an article where a 17 year old got put on the sexual predators watch list for having sexual relations with a 15 year old at her high school (since she was considered an adult at 17 and he was not). The majority opinion of the other comments was this was a disgusting abuse (I don’t disagree) but I made this point in response…

Let me explain my point. Politicians often aren’t the brightest bulbs in the set. They are people who can convince a lot of other people to like them which makes most the equivalent of good con men. So after they’re elected they tend not to think things through and make simplistic laws like “Any adult performing any sex act on a minor is guilty” (which of course ignores the 17 year old having consensual sex with the 15 year old in high school). But there are checks on a law’s power. Cops and Judges both have discretion for this very reason. But sometimes the system fails and you get lazy cops, a lazy judge and a lazy prosecutor who all don’t care enough to do their job. Then you end up with the situation quoted in the first part of this article.

 

But here’s the thing: Yes, I think it’s unjust and I think the politicians, lawyer, judge, cops, etc... in this story are all deplorable fools. But the world will always have deplorable fools and only when someone’s burned by them do the rest of us realize something’s wrong so we can fix it. As the article points out the law that got this woman into trouble no longer exists because people saw the abuse and demanded it be changed.

But as I looked at it I think I was wrong. In the end unjust laws ARE inherent in a democratic system. As long as our elected officials are judged more on likability than they are on intelligence there will be poorly conceived laws that hurt innocent people. But is that a necessary evil? It isn’t like Politicians are the only ones who can convince the masses of anything.

Which brings me back to Hacker News.

I love Hacker News. When I say it “might hurt society” I’m not suggesting it go anywhere. If it did I’d be devastated. But I think everyone here has to ask themselves if we’re part of the problem. More and more you see the intelligent people of the world seeking refuge with the likeminded. I think most of us who visit HN regularly are here because we’ve been turned off by the idiots in other forums. But those idiots have a vote in our election system and if those idiots can be made to see that certain laws are ill-conceived than maybe…just maybe…no one will have to have their life ruined by a stupid law.

To me HN, and sites like it, are like alcohol. They're a wonderful release that make life tolerable. But just as you can’t stay drunk all the time I think we all need to accept we can’t hide in here (or in other places with likeminded individuals). I think it’s our duty to go out and preach “rationality to the heathens” if you will. Only then will we be fulfilling our responsibility to society.

Or at least, that’s my 2 cents.