By The Angry Drunk
Today I ran across another entry in the growing list of refutations of Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price. This time it’s an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education featuring the story of Berkley Physics professor Richard A. Muller. In a nutshell, Anderson uses Muller as an example in Free of a case where web exposure (in this case YouTube videos of professor Muller’s lectures) has translated into commercial success (in this case a book deal).
The problem is, Muller doesn’t agree with Anderson’s conclusions. Muller is quoted in The Chronicle:
“That is wishful thinking from someone who is trying to conclude that Webcasts lead to money,” said Mr. Muller. “But correlation is not causation. What Anderson says may be ‘easy to see,’ but it just ain’t so. He is letting his hoped-for conclusion drive his analysis of events.”
The Journal then goes on to detail how Muller performed a quasi–scientific experiment to attempt to confirm Anderson’s hypothesis:
“I have been personally contacted by about 1,000 people who saw my Webcasts,” said the professor. “When the book came out, I arranged to e-mail all of them (using Norton’s account)
Continue reading More on Free
By The Angry Drunk
Full disclosure: I have not read, and have no intention of reading Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” This is mainly because I think that Anderson is a deluded cybertopian freetard, and I have no intention of giving money to someone who is exhorting the rest of us to give our work away for free. I’ll read Chris’s tripe the very day he decides to post it online free of charge.
Even though I don’t recommend reading Anderson’s babble, I do highly recommend reading Malcom Gladwell’s evisceration of Anderson’s “logic” in his review of the book in The New Yorker. Gladwell does an excellent job of exposing Anderson’s cybertopian fantasy for the garbage that it is.
hat tip to Daring Fireball for the link
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Update: I just found out that Anderson is releasing a free edition of Free. Fuck it, it’s still tripe.
By The Angry Drunk
A few days ago my esteemed comrade John Welch wrote up a very insightful post about the issues surrounding the Amazon Kindle’s text to speech features and Author’s Guild response. I’m not going to revisit the specifics of the situation. If you’re unaware of them go and read John’s post, but I did want to add some of my thoughts in the form of a historical parallel that seems to be getting missed in the discussion so far.
By The Angry Drunk
In order to avoid confusion, I will henceforth refer to “Free” in the sense of the Free Software Foundation means it as “Fwee.” For a guide to pronunciation, see the scene in Lord of The Rings where Smeagol represses Gollum. The Elmer Fudd variation is also acceptable.
By The Angry Drunk
Mainly because the only reporting I’ve seen on it was from the losers at Lifehacker. And what tripe am I writing about? Well, another “Don’t buy an iPhone” shit-piece from none other than the unwashed freetards at the Free Software Foundation. You know, your go-to neckbeards for opinions on consumer electronics. So, let’s take a quick belt of The Gin, fire up the Ranto-Matic 5000 and take a look at what I’m sure will be a reasonable essay.
iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.
Really? I guess it sucks to be in the iPhone hacking community. I mean, I don’t like you dorks and you don’t like me; but I at least acknowledge that you exist. Right off the bat these dolts conflate the iPhone, with the App Store. More to the point (and this is entirely in keeping with these zealots narrow ass world view) they dismiss the hundreds, if not thousands of developers who a) don’t give a shit about “free” software and b) might actually like getting paid for
Continue reading How Did I Miss This Tripe?
By The Angry Drunk
Good lords I just had an aneurysm. I just noticed via MacNN that the nimrods over at Psystar are shipping “servers” with Leopard as an option. What sort of rampaging moron would actually run a hackintosh as a proper server? I can understand the impetuous for the average freetard to build a hackintosh for personal use. They’re cheap bastards, and I suppose there is a certain enjoyment in the process of shoe-horning OS X onto unsupported hardware. But a fucking 1U server? Quick question for anyone seriously considering blowing a minimum of $2,000 on one of these turds. Who, exactly, do you think is going to provide support for this abomination. I can guaran-fucking-tee it won’t be Apple. If I was a CIO and found one of these things sitting in my racks the shit-cannnings would happen so fast that space-time itself would break.
By The Angry Drunk
In response to the whiny fucknuts who pissed an moaned over Apple serving up a side of Safari along with the latest iTunes update on Windows (see my rant here), Apple updated their Software Update client for Windows to distinguish between “new” and “updated” software. So, there you go, Apple bows to the community and everybody wins.
Apparently, not if your Asa Dotzler. If you’re Asa, then Apple doing the very gods damned thing that you asked for is not good enough. Apparently Apple needs to also not check the box to install Safari by default. Again, the take home message here is that Windows users are so fucking confused by a checkbox that they can’t be trusted with the horrible responsibility of installing a browser. What’s next Asa, do I need a note from my mommy to assure that I weally weally wanted to install Safari. You know, for a bunch of people who expound on the virtues of “choice,” freetards sure do seem to have an issue with users making the choice to use something that isn’t theirs.
Here’s a suggestion for you Asa. When a someone with a vested interest
Continue reading Oh for the Love of God!
By The Angry Drunk
This tickles me. The maroons at Linux.com felt compelled to write an in-depth article about how the iPhone developer program is not compatible with “Free Software.” Ignoring the biggest flaw in their article, which is assuming that the NDA restrictions currently being imposed on the developers in the beta program will also apply to developers once the program is out of beta, is anyone actually surprised that the iPhone Developer program doesn’t play well with the GPL? And more importantly, does anyone other than freetards give a rat’s ass. You want to develop “free” software for a phone, go develop for OpenMoko. I’m sure the neck-beards will sing your praises.
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Brother, can you spare a dime?
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