walterkim

You're somewhat mistaken, here. The system of checks and balances was very much designed to prevent the abuse of power. The Federalist No. 68, however, argues that the tiered electoral process is designed so that only the best, or the "right leaders", would attain the Presidency:

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"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue."

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa68.htm

I don't personally find achievements motivating, but a lot of people do. That same mechanism can be a powerful force for motivating people to learn and gain mastery over software that they might never otherwise have gained.

I'm occasionally frustrated that I don't know how to do lots of things in Photoshop and Illustrator, for example, but don't have enough incentive to learn how to do them. While I don't think achievements would work for me, there are undoubtedly many people in a similar situation for many kinds of software that it would work for.

Not sure if you can get that specific effect, but Cathode for Mac has lots of options:

http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

I get synchronous 200mbps from Webpass for $450 a year. They don't provide content or services on top of that, which means they don't have incentives to analyze my data, nor will they attain perverse infrastructural advantages over other online services. It is the proverbial "dumb pipe" many here wish they had. And I'm very happy with that.

I don't want a world where Google runs my internet connection any more than I want a world where Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Amazon or Facebook does.

> No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative

This is decidedly backwards. From the start, Apple's focus was creating great products (by their definition of great product), and only later did they learn how to maximize their profit from them. There's a pretty good and influential taxonomy of "value disciplines": product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy. Historically, Apple was good at the first and not so great at the other two. Since Jobs' return, they've really ramped up on all three.

A classic way in which companies undermine themselves is by pursuing profit through cost-cutting rather than improving product/service quality. I don't have any hard data on this, but I suspect that's what happens to intiially innovative tech companies that have non-engineer/designer business types that take over.

On the flipside, we humans have spent centuries convincing ourselves that we are fundamentally different from animals and assuming that our experiences are unique to us. Social animals are much closer to us than we give them credit for, particularly with respect to emotions, given the evolutionary role they play in making kinds of sociality possible.

> a message appeared on his phone saying the AirPlay display couldn't be trusted

I got that when trying to mirror to my AppleTV when the TV wasn't set to the right input. Like eridius said, there is likely a problem with the HDCP protection being broken.

I like the article, but yeah, price anchoring is the real issue here. App prices on mobile devices is largely a result of the race to the bottom, hence why there's a large disparity between price for the same app on mobile and desktop. (Assume equivalent functionality and difficulty of development.)

The coffee cup analogy is about putting the price of mobile apps back into perspective, getting people to not feel ripped off because just they're paying $1.99 instead of $.99.