Category: Technology

Biden’s true colors

Here’s a clip of VP Joe Biden giving his views on the intellectual property at a recent copyright summit. His view is surprisingly unnuanced. He speaks a great deal about the “stealing” and “theft” of intellectual property, without acknowledging that the content of many in attendance builds on works of the past. One wonders how such a hard line view can possibly accomodate for “Remix culture,” much less keep up with what has become a common practice of sharing on the Internet. The genie is already out of the bottle.

Google phone – revolutionary business model, not technology

New Google Phone would challenge US carrier model

Ars hits the nail right on the head with their assessment of why the Google Phone is a “big deal.” Technologically, it’s nothing new. Yet their decision to sell the phone without an exclusive carrier. They point out something I also found remarkable about travel in Europe–advertisements for cell phones. Hopefully this will loosen some of the stranglehold the cellular companies have on manufacturers.

A great slam on AT&T

Is AT&T to Blame for Poor iPhone Experience and Is Non-Exclusivity the Answer? | The iPhone Blog

This quote, allegedly from the “fake Steve Jobs …describing an entirely fictional, frighteningly plausible conversation between his character and an equally fake AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson” was too good not to share (the entire original post is worth a chuckle or two):

And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it — and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.

I stopped, then. There was nothing on the line. Silence. I said, Randall? He goes, Yeah, I’m here. I said, Does any of that make sense? He says, Yeah, but we’re still not going to do it. See, when you run the numbers what you find is that we’re actually better off running a shitty network than making the investment to build a good one. It’s just numbers, Steve. You can’t charge enough to get a return on the investment.

The sad thing about this is it might just be true–building a better network might not make good short-term financial sense for AT&T, though one might argue that taking a longer view and using the iPhone as a means to build the best network would be in their best interest.

It’s also possible that, had cellular carriers been forced to standardize on one technology or if the tower building and renting business was unbundled from the carriers, we might no be in this situation.