stuff & things

some good quotes that are wrongly attributed to abraham lincoln.
they were actually coined by the reverend william john henry boetcker.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

i have noticed, as i’m sure many (read: the two) of you have, that the comments section of any blog, website, or what-have-you is often rife with drivel coming from uneducated trolls. i not sure if it is done just for fun or because that is their nature (perhaps both); but the comments section merely serves as a soapbox for those aforementioned trolls to shout out their trollisms because they have nothing better to do and have never taken a debate or logic course and could not argue their way out of a paper bag.

a quote about comments from one of my favorite blogs, Daring Fireball

Comments, at least on popular websites, aren’t conversations. They’re cacophonous shouting matches. DF is a curated conversation, to be sure, but that’s the whole premise.

i’m not an apple fanboy, nor am i an apple hater. i recently came across an article (http://j.mp/cwT1xw) discussing the growing backlash from app store developers that are upset at the terms and conditions that apple imposes on said developers. there were some good points made, especially in the comments. rather than write copious amounts of commentary, i figured i would rather write a rebuttal here (it really doesn’t matter because i’m pretty sure that no one but me reads this thing anyway).

firstly, it was mentioned that, as a consumer, i’m giving up the freedom of choice because i own an iphone and apple is very choosy about which apps make it onto the store. i do think that apple has some very ridiculous rules that they impose on apps in the app store. however, i don’t believe that i’m giving up any freedom by owning an iphone. the freedom of choice is something that we always have. we may not like the choices we are presented with, but we always have a choice. the simple example is: if you don’t like apple’s restrictive policies, then don’t buy and/or develop for an iphone.

another point someone made was that geeks like to tinker with things and don’t like being told what they can and cannot do with things that they own. i think that this generalization is inaccurate. i consider myself a geek. i love to build my own computers and install software and write simple little utilities that are used (pretty much exclusively) by me and my friends. but there are some things i don’t feel the need to tinker with and my phone happens to be one of them. included in that list are my ps3, wii, camera, and music device (an ipod in this case). in the case of my phone and ipod, i use them in my daily work activities and i don’t want to have to fiddle too much. as for the gaming consoles, i really enjoy not having to update drivers and install directx9 for the billionth time because i can’t just tell the game that i already have it installed. it’s just easier that way.

and lastly, it was said that (also mentioned in the previous paragraph) that geeks don’t like being told what they can and can’t do with things after they buy them. i’m gonna go out on a limb here (and make a generalization) and say that this covers most people and not just those who are geeks. the RIAA and the MPAA are telling me that i can’t make copies of a CD or movie that i’ve purchased. microsoft and other software developers are telling me how many machines i can install their software on. blizzard licenses your world of warcraft account and the characters contained within to you. it states this fact in their EULA (at least it used to). they can (and have) taken back user accounts and/or characters. so, it’s not just apple that tries to retain control of something after the end user has purchased it, and this seems to be a business model that a lot of companies have.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. it all comes down to using what you like. if you like to use a particular product, and don’t mind any restrictions that may be placed upon that product then, by all means, use it. if you don’t like something about a product, feel free to voice your opinion about it, but please don’t call me names or tell me that i’m giving up my freedoms by using some device that is more restrictive than what you prefer. that’s just not nice.