Posts from — October 2008

Daniel Eran Dilger
Scandalous accusations are so hard to process without a smattering of numerical context. Here’s a look at brewing scandals by the numbers for each ticket in the 2008 Presidential Election: Barack Obama and Joe Biden vs. John McCain and Sarah Palin.
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Daniel Eran Dilger
After hearing about the “brick,” supposedly an Apple code-name for an unreleased something, the web has gone wild with pundits trying to attach their personal visions for the future with Apple’s capacity to deliver them. These visions make it clear why Apple does not use focus groups to create its products.
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Daniel Eran Dilger
I’ve been invited to give the presentation “Surviving Software Platform Disruption” at Øredev, a conference ‘for developers by developers’ taking place for the forth consecutive year November 19-21, 2008 in Malmö, Sweden.

The conference, including the pre-conference workshop day, will host more than 150 seminars and workshops plus a Scrum Certification Course. I’ll be in the shadows of around a hundred internationally renowned speakers including as James Bach, Ted Neward, and Robert C.Martin.

For more information the event and how to participate, visit: www.oredev.org

If you’re at the conference or in the area, it would be great to meet you, so don’t be afraid to say hi!

Daniel Eran Dilger
Continuing upon the previous eight iPhone myths, this one insists that Apple will be wholly unable to find a market for the iPhone platform in Europe because of the strength of Nokia’s Symbian platform, which currently leads smartphones in worldwide market share. That’s wrong, here’s why.

iPhone Myths
Five More iPhone Myths
Myth 6: iPhone Developers will Flock to Android
Myth 7: iPhone Buyers will Flock to Android
Myth 8: iPhone will lose out to Steve Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 in 2010
Myth 9: iPhone Unable to Penetrate Europe Due to Symbian Dominance [Read more →]

Google Video is hosting Adam Curtis’ “The Trap,” a powerful BBC documentary examining the idea of freedom and how societies frequently away freedom in their attempts to further it. Part one looks at the cynical, paranoid view of game theory developed by John Nash at RAND to calculate how to keep nuclear war in a stalemate during the Cold War. Nash’s ideas fueled the emerging concepts that government public interest must be an inherently hypocritical idea, because it theorized that everyone only ever acted in their own selfish interest. Efforts by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to minimize government and transfer all power to the rational free market were based on Nash’s ideas, who himself was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

The Trap – 1 – F*k You Buddy

Part two considers the effects of market driven efforts to improve society by examining the behavior of individuals and comparing it to checklists of normalcy, which resulted in an explosion in the diagnosis of mental health problems, and the cure of these through drugs such as Prozac in efforts to make everyone conform to a definition of correct mental health. The same numbers-driven efforts to quantify productivity in government have resulted in efforts to game the system rather than actually being reformed. While all these efforts to quantify progress were being attempted, the gap between classes grew and social mobility shrank.

The Trap – 2 – The Lonely Robot

The third segment culminates in an examination of the ideas of positive and negative liberty formulated by Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s to explain why attempts to deliver “positive” utopian freedoms in the French Revolution and in Russia had resulted in horrific suffering at the hands of totalitarians. It also examines the intent of Reagan to spread “negative liberty” or freedom from external control, an effort which itself relied upon violent oppression through terrorism in Central America. It also resulted in a nominal form of corporate-friendly democracy in Chile and the Philippines, where dictators were replaced with elected officials but nothing else changed to equalize society or create a functional middle class.

This neocon effort to deliver a version of democracy that provides freedom for corporations rather than for people was also applied to help rebuild Russia under Clinton, but resulted in a direct transfer of the socialist power held by the failing state to a privatized but corrupt elite oligarchy. The same failure has been perpetuated in Iraq, by the tearing down of a dictator and the installation in its place of an unelected government with ostensibly utopian free market on top. Three fascinating segments you should watch.

The Trap – 3 – We Will Force U 2 Be Free

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

The European Union is preparing new directives that could have an impact on Apple’s future products, including “the New Batteries Directive,” which proposes to mandate that batteries in electronic appliances be “readily removed” for replacement or disposal.

New EU directive pushes toward replaceable iPhone batteries

Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl podcast invited me to join David Biedny and intellectual property attorney Arthur Shaffer on his weekly show this week. I talked about Microsoft’s Vista ads and whatever else fell out of my mouth. You can hear for yourself and subscribe to the Tech Night Owl RSS feed at:

The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg

Oct 2, 2008 episode:

Oct 2 08

Earlier episodes I’ve participated on:

July 31 08
June 12 08
May 1 08
Mar 20 08
Jan 31 08
Jan 3 08
Nov 8 07
Sep 20 07
Aug 9 07
Jun 14 07
Apr 26 07
Mar 1 07
Jan 11 07

Daniel Eran Dilger
Unflattering associations between a presidential candidate and terrorist activities have cast a fog over an election where campaign issues have regularly taken a back seat to negative personality attacks. What’s really going on?
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Daniel Eran Dilger
Continuing upon the previous seven iPhone myths, this one insists that Apple will lose its iPhone platform to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 as Steve Ballmer rears his head and comes into the airspace of Apple’s mobile platform. That’s wrong, here’s why.

iPhone Myths
Five More iPhone Myths
Myth 6: iPhone Developers will Flock to Android
Myth 7: iPhone Buyers will Flock to Android
Myth 8: iPhone will lose out to Steve Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 in 2010
Myth 9: iPhone Unable to Penetrate Europe Due to Symbian Dominance
[Read more →]

Google Video is hosting Adam Curtis’ “The Century of the Self,” a powerful BBC documentary on the use of psychoanalysis to perfect propaganda under the term “public relations,” both to control the crowds in democracies, sell products to the emerging consumer class, and to pander to populist political ideals. Four fascinating segments you should watch.

The Century of the Self – Google Video

If you have a shorter attention span, try the four minute: “The Rise and Fall of the Television Journalist”

Daniel Eran Dilger
America is torn between two identities. We like to think of ourselves as smart when laughing at the foolish behavior of others, but we also express disdain for the smug elite. We like to think of ourselves as fair and compassionate team players while also being rugged free market individualists. What exactly are we, apart from being wildly contradictory? The carefully prepared vice presidential debates highlighted and mirrored our nation’s identity. Was it flattering?
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Daniel Eran Dilger
Continuing upon the previous six iPhone myths, this one insists that Apple will lose its iPhone platform to Android as iPhone users defect to non-Apple phones seeking freedom and openness. That’s wrong, here’s why.

iPhone Myths
Five More iPhone Myths
Myth 6: iPhone Developers will Flock to Android
Myth 7: iPhone Buyers will Flock to Android
Myth 8: iPhone will lose out to Steve Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 in 2010
Myth 9: iPhone Unable to Penetrate Europe Due to Symbian Dominance [Read more →]

Daniel Eran Dilger
Continuing upon the five iPhone myths in the previous segment, another myth relates to idea of Apple losing its iPhone platform to Android as developers defect to Google’s more open mobile platform. That’s wrong, here’s why.

iPhone Myths
Five More iPhone Myths
Myth 6: iPhone Developers will Flock to Android
Myth 7: iPhone Buyers will Flock to Android
Myth 8: iPhone will lose out to Steve Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 in 2010
Myth 9: iPhone Unable to Penetrate Europe Due to Symbian Dominance [Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider
Apple has filed a motion with U.S. District Court seeking to dismiss the claims of Psystar, which allege that Apple has used a monopoly position as the manufacturer of Mac computers to cause restraint of trade, unfair competition, and other violations of antitrust law.

Apple files motion for dismissal of Psystar counterclaims

Daniel Eran Dilger
After a hard rumor rain, it’s time to break out the myth mower and buzz down the noise to a lower threshold. Here’s five myths of the iPhone that need a fierce clipping.

iPhone Myths
Five More iPhone Myths
Myth 6: iPhone Developers will Flock to Android
Myth 7: iPhone Buyers will Flock to Android
Myth 8: iPhone will lose out to Steve Ballmer’s Windows Mobile 7 in 2010
Myth 9: iPhone Unable to Penetrate Europe Due to Symbian Dominance [Read more →]