http://disqus.com/people/moskowitz/enSun, 01 Feb 2009 11:51:11 -0000http://louisgray.disqus.com/louisgraycom_who_does_apple_think_they_are/#comment-5747723lesson - where or who is the "mensch" ... then again, this seems to be a pervasive issue that exists on any number of layers/levels of society today ... integrity, accountability, caring about your fellow "person", et al. Mona, you are awesome for taking a stand! <br><br>btw, since when is everything viewed through the lens of legal liability? <br><br>Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Address (June 8, 1978) (excerpt):<br><br>"I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.<br><br>And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.<br><br>The Direction of Freedom<br><br>Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints."<br><br>AmenmoskowitzSun, 01 Feb 2009 11:51:11 -0000http://benmyles.disqus.com/look_its_a_mindstream0153_twitter_is_a_commodity/#comment-504593commodity? no, bandwidth is the commodity and people *do* pay for text (sms) in a very "un"commodity-like fashion. think about that again, people have a "willingness to pay" for text - even if it is a very peculiar granularity of datum / bandwidth / computation. compare that with a willingness to pay for snippets of music - ringtones, say - and you can see very different values & willingness to pay for different granularity of data ($2.99 for a ringtone and 99 cents for the mp3 and 10 bucks for the WAV on a CD) ...<br><br>that twitter can deploy a system which truncates the size of a message text to 140 characters and take a split with the carrier is *building* a business ... they reduced the size that a user has traditionally identified as being a message text and added features to build the business of tweet ...<br><br>in this case "relevance" "reputation" "recognition" - the concept of "universal time" - the wide cast of alleged "twitter" personality-types or characters that are quite simply just like you & me ... it is all very interesting but alas just another way to communicate ... to internet<br><br>far from a commodity and unlike blogging in general ... the business will survive because it replaces in a succinct and effective manner the notion of "location location location" - even though it is a "network" platform in every sense of the word ...<br><br>with due respect, you missed the very important issue that twitter must maintain to survive - trust ... <br><br>some questions per chance<br><br>what do you think the split with the carrier on the text is? what percentage of users would prefer a different split (say i want more money to go to twitter than the carrier & am willing to pay in lieu of advertising? - my at&t dsl service doesn't get that yet - i say "no" to at&t marketing since i already pay for the service that i want - send the "spam"/"marketing promotion" bandwidth waste to those willing to tolerate it - twitter may face this at some point soon as they seek to scale)? how would you compare this to how apple & att worked out their platform & splits for both hardware and use?<br><br>don't discount the signal (or signal callers) for the noise of the message and the medium ... nice article!moskowitzWed, 21 May 2008 14:05:03 -0000