One of the predictable responses to my recent writings on the smartphone market and the rise of Android has been a deluge of scornful invective by Apple fans confidently predicting that Android’s 1Q2010 surge in unit share represented a bubble that would pop under pressure from Apple’s “superior user experience”. Then came the flap over… Continue reading Apple gets egg on its face — single platform = single doom
After the McDonald decision: what next?
Monday’s decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago is a major victory for civil rights. Yes, it was 5-4 and the ruling was weaker than it could have been, but the basic holding that the Second Amendment is incorporated against states and all lower levels of government can be a powerful tool for positive change… Continue reading After the McDonald decision: what next?
Reports of PC’s Impending Death Greatly Exaggerated
One Farhad Manjoo has attracted some attention by projecting in an article written for Slate that desktop PCs are headed for extinction, outcompeted by laptops and netbooks. I have seen the future and I say “Balderdash!” It is undoubtedly true that computers will continue to get smaller and lighter and more portable. Indeed, I’m expecting… Continue reading Reports of PC’s Impending Death Greatly Exaggerated
A Specter is Haunting Genetics
Had my life gone a little differently, I might have been a molecular geneticist and hip-deep in what is now called bioinformatics. When I was twelve or thirteen or so I came to intellectual grips with the fact that I have congenital cerebral palsy; shortly thereafter I dove into the science of congenital defects, developmental… Continue reading A Specter is Haunting Genetics
Hanging nicely: a practical tip for pistol-wearers
I made a minor but useful discovery about pistol holsters this morning. It may be something a million shooters have figured out sooner, but since it took me over a year of constant carry to notice there are probably at least as many who haven’t. Therefore the following tip. I use several carry methods depending… Continue reading Hanging nicely: a practical tip for pistol-wearers
Missing the point: The real stakes in the smartphone wars
The responses to my last several posts on the smartphone wars (The iPhone 4: Too little, too late; More dispatches from the smartphone wars; Steve Jobs’ Snow Job; Flattening the Smartphone Market; Now’s a bad time to be an Apple fanboy…; Android Rising) demonstrate that many of my readers continue to miss the real stakes… Continue reading Missing the point: The real stakes in the smartphone wars
The iPhone 4: Too little, too late
As I write, the announcement of the iPhone 4 at WWDC is just a few hours old. See the Engadget coverage for details. The bottom line? This is too little, too late to stop the Android deluge. There are some very cool individual features on this phone, no doubt. The two that stand out the… Continue reading The iPhone 4: Too little, too late
More dispatches from the smartphone wars
Well, it was fun carrying the most advanced smartphone on the planet. For a whole 32 days. But the Sprint EVO 4G launched today and its specs – especially the larger OLED display and WiMAX capability – put the Nexus One in the shade. The bigger story today, though, is the ripple effects of AT&T… Continue reading More dispatches from the smartphone wars
Steve Jobs’ Snow Job
One of my predictions in Flattening The Cellphone Market came true today. It suggests that the iPhone’s Android-induced troubles are about to get much worse.
AIS “security” considered harmful
One Kelly Sweeney is publicly advocating that public access to AIS ship information should be prohibited in order to foil pirates and terrorists. I must respectfully disagree with the premise of this article. I’m the lead of GPSD, a widely-used open-source GPS/AIS monitor daemon, and I am thus both a domain expert on AIS and… Continue reading AIS “security” considered harmful
I am twitter-enabled, mainly for gaming purposes
Those of you who wish to follow me on Twitter can now do so. You’ll find much of my Twitter content a bit strange, as I am using it mainly to play an on-line game called EchoBazaar. All the tweets labeled #ebz are game stuff. EchoBazaar has an interesting business model: you play for free,… Continue reading I am twitter-enabled, mainly for gaming purposes
The Iron Laws of Network Cost Scaling
The shape of the cost curves that show up as we build and run communications networks have properties that seem counterintuitive to many people, but that have been surprisingly consistent across lots of different technologies since at least the days of the telegraph, and probably further back than that. Herewith, the Iron Laws of Network… Continue reading The Iron Laws of Network Cost Scaling
Flattening the Smartphone Market
Common cellphone operating systems like Android, WebOS, and Maemo are depriving cellphone carriers of one of their most treasured means of keeping customers in the dark and feeding them bullshit. They’re making smartphones comparable to each other, and by doing so brutally intensifying the competitive pressure on the carriers. Before these common platforms, one of… Continue reading Flattening the Smartphone Market
Now’s a bad time to be an Apple fanboy…
It’s an unhappy day for Apple fanboys. Dan Lyons Newsweek’s tech correspondent just ditched the iPhone for Android, slamming the phone and Steve Jobs’s control-freak strategy in very harsh terms. It might be tempting to dismiss this on the grounds that Dan Lyons is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fool… Continue reading Now’s a bad time to be an Apple fanboy…
New music update
I’ve written before about what a revelation Pandora Radio has been for me. Following, in no particular order, some capsule reviews of new bands I’ve discovered and old bands I’ve rediscovered through this resource.
Software licenses as conversation
An article published yesterday, I could license you to use this software, but then I’d have to kill you calls out some odd outliers in the open-source licensing space – odder, actually, than any I ever reviewed when I was the founding president of the Open Source Initiative. I wonder, though, if the author actually… Continue reading Software licenses as conversation
Android Rising
The news comes to us today that in 1Q 2010 Android phones outsold Apple’s iPhone by a significant 7%. As it said on the gunslinger’s gravestone, “I was expecting this, but not so soon.” Business Week and the Wall Street Journal are on the story, but the most interesting version is from the story they’re… Continue reading Android Rising
Summer sword training is coming up
This year I will once again be going to Michigan for summer sword training. I wrote about this back in 2008 in a series of posts beginning with “And So, It Begins…”. Should you make the opportunity for it, this is an amazing summer adventure vacation that will teach you much and probably leave you… Continue reading Summer sword training is coming up
How many ways can you get Android wrong in one article?
One of my regulars pointed me at Is Android Evil?, an article by one Andreas Constantinou which purports to be a brave and hardhitting contrarian take on Android. I read this, and I’m asking myself “Wow. How many different ways can one guy be wrong in the same article?” Particularly entertaining, and the main reason… Continue reading How many ways can you get Android wrong in one article?
G-1 to Nexus One: an informal comparison
It’s been an eventful week here at Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs, what with robot submarines busting out all over and a “Disruptive Innovation Award” from the Tribeca Film Festival (!) landing on my somewhat bemused head (possible topic of a later post). And I’m writing from Penguicon, where in about an hour I’m going to… Continue reading G-1 to Nexus One: an informal comparison