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Slashback: Rebuttal, Satellite, Patents
RTFPrint An Anonymous Coward writes: "As I'm sure is true of many others among the Slashdot faithful, I was ecstatic to see the culmination of this story earlier in the week. It seemed that Comcast's leadership had experienced a sudden and uncharacteristic attack of common sense. As a former @Home subscriber being moved to Comcast's network, I'd balked at the new terms of service Comcast required (particularly the part about giving Comcast permission to track my browsing). So, if Comcast swears that it won't track users' browsing anymore, why does it still ask for permission to? Exhibit 1: Comcast's "Subscriber Agreement". May I direct your attention to section 5, entitled "Collection, Use and Disclosure Of Information On Subscriber Use", in which Comcast requests that you give permission for them to track (and sell) information about your browsing habits. I particularly like the part about how collecting information on users' browsing is "necessary to provide the Service". Note also that this exact "Subscriber Agreement" is required for ex-@Home users to move to Comcast's network. How fortunate that I just last week got notified about the avaiability of DSL in my area...."
It's not as simple as averaging "W" and "Y." marktwain writes: "Gene Steinberg probably has the most sensible rebuttal on his website http://www.macnightowl.com/ to Robert Cringely's recent article which Slashdot linked to, commented about, and which deserves a rebuttal. The whole idea of porting OS X is not only inane but is an idea which was flogged to death a year ago. And if Cringely's article wasn't bad enough, Slashdot kicked off with the equally inane "but Apples are so expensive" garbage. In today's world, dominated by the Wicked Wizard of Redmond, the penguins and the mac heads need to hang together and understand each other."
Getting the most of sky-high satellite costs. Jason Nunnelly sent in a note that he's updated his information on connecting a home network to the Net using satellite, a feat that can be difficult and expensive. Of course, when all your options are difficult and expensive, it might look like a pretty good idea. Read this information if you want to know how to save money on the connection and the hardware required, and some sobering words about technical support. (Check those hourly rates, too.)
Novel idea: require patents to have one. Cecil Bumfluff writes: "An update to a recent /. story regarding European proposals for software patents. It seems that unlike the US system, the vendor must prove they have made a "technical contribution to the state of the art". This seems a lot tougher than current US patent law. Check out the story at The Register"
Judge Dredd, or Judge Milquetoast? spellcheckur writes: "Remember the ACME Rent-a-car and GPS fiasco? The Boston Globe is reporting that ACME has been ordered to cease the practice and refund the money. One of the interesting conclusions in the article, they say the increased liability of a speeding car amounts to about $0.37 in insurance cost, not the $150 they were charging. Why is it then that my insurance gets to jack my rates two hundred bucks a year when I get one lousy ticket?"
The courts in Anchorage, AK threw out unmanned radar, probably on the same grounds as this.
No harm, no foul, I guess.
$129.
Mac OS X was derived from NeXTStep, which did run on Intel as well as Motorola hardware. A number of the earlier Developer Releases, back when it was still only known as "Rhapsody", still ran on Intel hardware.
No, there's something seriously disturbed in your code - it's written for OS 9 and running on OS X. As has been documented all over the web, the way you did things in OS 9 is not nessecarily the way to do it in OS X as the OS has different strengths and weaknesses.
Apparently, ask and you shall receive:
7 22 1
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/21/232
However there were licensees which is a whole 'nother thing. Clones just rip off the product, licensees have an arrangement with the owner, contracts, payment schedules, etc.
In Apple's case they were having production, inventory & cost-control issues so they figured let some other folks into the pool, expand the market. Apple would keep the mid and upper-end NA & European markets for itself, others could service the super-premium, budget, Asian, educational, and gamer markets. Unfortunately many of these companies soon stopped expanding the market and just went for the low-hanging fruit: Apple's own sales.
Instead of bringing in lots of new Mac users from markets Apple wasn't strong in (or not particularly profitable) instead Apple found itself competing with their own licensees on their own turf with their own technologies and own their compatibility assurances etc. It was cannibalism and Apple was the one getting eaten. Every time Power Computing sold one of their Macs it was at the cost of Apple selling one, and instead of that sale bringing in $$$ it was bringing in $, all while Apple was hemorrhaging money.
Did they shut down the licensees? Damn right - if they hadn't Apple'd have been bled dry pretty darn quick. Sure no Apple would have meant no Mac market but that wasn't the licensees concern, they'd gotten contracts allowing them to buy MacOS ROMs and sell MacOS 7.0 at a great price and they were busy undercutting Apple and making super money.
So finally Apple took advantage of the contracts, refused to write a new license for the new MacOS 7.5 and then used the buy-out clause to shut the licensees down. Did they scream? Sure, they'd been milking an expensive cow for cheap, who wouldn't scream to see that taken away. But was it shutting down "clones"? No, it was all legal, no cloning there.
Wintel PCs on the other hand: IBM never locked wily Bill Gates into an exclusive for DOS. Bill was happy to sell a custom version to anyone who ponied up and when the plethora of versions became too great released the generic and soon to be standard MS DOS.
Later the subtly-incompatible-in-different-ways BIOS issue was surmounted when the IBM PC BIOS was legally reverse-engineered and at that point the cat was out of the bag. IBM had never wanted clones, never expected them, and fought long and mightily against them but was never able to eradicate them.
Clever strategy? No, awful mistake. While the market wouldn't have grown as explosively most folks agree that had IBM kept control of their PC design they'd have made multiples of what they did off of it, would likely have "owned" the market. Anyway, IBM came out with MicroChannel and the PS/2 design and OS/2 which were all attempts to redefine the "IBM PC" back to something IBM controlled but to no avail - and trust me Apple had watched and learned and made sure those MacOS ROMs were crucial.
Now - the ROMs are gone. They're a file loaded like any other. You can even download the core of MacOS X and Apple has kindly ported it to x86. They've kept the upper levels to themselves but Darwin (and particularly with X on top) is a usable OS with some nifty architectural features. After flirtations with standardized PowerPC platforms (PREP, CHRP, etc - at one point there was such compatibility it is rumored that it was possible to boot a legit MacOS on an IBM RS-6000) Apple has instead gone to industry standard hardware with IDE, PCI, AGP, etc - just their own North & South Bridges and Open Firmware instead of the ancient BIOS.
What keeps folks from producing PowerPC-based Mac clones? Well the non-embedded PowerPC motherboard market is pretty small and somewhat pricey. There are also the legions of rabid Apple lawyers. Finally while Darwin is a start on MacOS X it's certainly not the whole thing and without Quartz/Aqua/Carbon/Cocoa/Etc. nobody is going to even try to label the thing "Mac". Apple probably does lose some sales to folks running QuickTime servers on Darwin but hey, it gets QuickTime more exposure, likely results in some outside development on Darwin that can be rolled back into MacOS X and it's not all that big a loss. Besides - that's not a clone either.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.