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Richard Stallman's Dissenting View of Steve Jobs
Garabito writes "Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has posted his not-so-fond memories of Steve Jobs on his personal site, saying, 'As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.' His statement has spurred reaction from the community; some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice."
Look, I know no one likes to speak ill of the dead and all, but geez, last week's lovefest got WAY WAY WAY out of hand. Jobs was an important figure, no doubt, but the over-the-top platitudes were often more humorous and bizarre than heartfelt or touching. There were "expert" commentators on CNN calling Jobs the "most important person in the history of technology" with straight faces. People who didn't even KNOW the guy were crying like their daddy had just died. At one point I think I saw Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper make a teary-eyed pledge to throw themselves on his funeral pyre.
I doubt Jesus' apostles were as upset after the crucifixion as some of the supposedly objective "experts" and "journalists" I saw last week. It's not like I expected them to get into the more negative and tawdry aspects of his past with his body still warm, but I didn't expect such unabashed hero-worship and hagiography either. It was just shameful.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He specifically states he was not happy to see Jobs die.
I see you trollin'.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do.
Because we'd clearly be most free, when there are absolutely no restrictions on what people do. For example, if you stop me from assaulting you, then I'm clearly not free at all am I?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Stallman wants exactly one thing: visbility for FOSS. He doesn't care about anything else. So if he has to make some pseudo-controversial statement about a generally well-liked public figure in order to get some air time, he will. Personally, I elect to pay him little attention.
My other sig is clever.
my account of Stallman's appearance at the Yorktown HS computer club.
Meh. Stalman only cares about "sustainable" freedom. Apple, and Jobs, were NO champions of that cause. We all know the very good things about Apple, but Stalman keeps in mind the BAD things, such as extreme vendor lock-in, anti-privacy instances, market lock-in (closed app-store, anyone), extreme censorship against FLOSS, hostile behavior towards other companies and hostile behavior towards competing products...
We are already screwed if people take Stalman as the corporate image of Linux. But that doesn't mean the guy is wrong.
Jobs and his company are based entirely on control of other people's property. You can't put the OS on your own hardware, you can't run your own apps on the iPod Touch / iPhone without hacking it, you can't use products which directly compete with Apple's offering on either either (heh). Are you all forgetting iTunes prior to the catalogue being converted to DRM-free MP3s?
Horrible people can do good things just as good people can do horrible things, and a lot of the things Jobs did in computing were horrible. Pretty, and king of usability, but all a thing veneer on something fundamentally malign.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I'm not exactly fan of Apple, but Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
There is no merit (see what I did there? In case you didn't, I used the word correctly) to the assertion that someone who has said they are not glad someone is dead is glad that they are dead. I am not glad that Jobs died either, but I am glad he won't be at the helm of Apple Computer, Inc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
He didn't say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
Linux geeks ... are happy to see people die.
He did not say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
apart from the a few geeks, people in the real world really don't care about his views or what he is trying to promote.
Maybe you don't know what web site this is.
Ubuntu has tried to fix that with Linux, but it's still far from Mac OSX or even Windows. ... I'm not exactly fan of Apple
Again, I think you're not on the right web site, and you probably really are an Apple fan.
I'm not exactly fan of Apple, but Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
I'm all for a bit of Stallman bashing but he never said THAT or even anything close to THAT.
You don't have to have liked him, but you could have at least shown some respect rather than making the GNU (And by association, Linux, even though we hate you) community look like tools, instead of just yourself as you usually do.
Jobs may have helped bring about some significant technologies. But Apple, and Jobs, come no where near what the fanboys think. And in many respects, Jobs was just another scam artist.
http://techrights.org/2011/10/07/steve-jobs/
that makes me glad that I do not have a television. It is easy to ignore the stupid on the internet. There is plenty of stupid on the internet, but it is easy to ignore it.
The link given on /. and latimes leads to a bullet point list of posts. The anchor jumps you to Stallman's Oct 6 bullet point, but I can't find the a link to the full article?!
http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html#06_October_2011_(Steve_Jobs)
What did I miss?
... but I agree with stallman. Jobs figured out that you can make aesthetically pleasing stuff and make a lot of profit off simplifying hardware design for everyday people BUT this has a negative effect on those who actually use computers and computing devices as something beyond a toaster or glorified television. Jobs just turned computing devices into consumer items. The downside is that his companies success with walled gardens is giving a lot of other companies and developers the same idea of creating walled gardens where you never own anything, can't modify it, etc. A kind of kind of feudalistic computing.
I've watched gaming go downhill over the last 10 years with the rise shit like world of warcraft showing everyone the path to walled garden land because there are enough stupid people who don't give a shit about gaming that will just take it up the ass because they aren't passionate about games. So we get things like Starcraft 2 chained to online, no LAN, we get permanent online DRM being pushed and crap like onlive. At this point I really want to burn down the software industry. I remember a time when blizzard wasn't as evil as it is today and you actually were treated like a customer rather then a magpie with a wallet.
In the same way, people who work in computing, and do computing and are passionate about computing need freedom from corporate tyranny to innovate. Each generation of tinkering kids becomes the next set of developers/entrepreneurs/innovators. To lock everything behind a walled garden just creates a big mess and ensures solutions are suffocated or co-opted for someones personal greed with a net negative for humanity as a whole.
All great innovations are built upon mountains of others that came before them, locking them down is just a surefire way to suffocate progress.
Flamebait? If my comment is flamebait, then this whole story is flamebait, and it should never have reached the main page. Moderation by Apple shill, or Big Media shill? You decide.
Either way, I can afford the karma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It got a bit pathetic with people running around talking about how Steve Jobs invented the mouse, the personal computer, the smartphone, the media player, the tablet, and practically sliced bread. The guy was an excellent product designer with a good eye for where the market was going to go next. He was no more instrumental in shaping 21st century society than any other fashion designer. And yay, he was yet another ruthless capitalist, yawn!
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I was repulsed by the sickening display of sycophancy and arse-licking hagiography that spewed out of every orifice of the media last week and was glad to see someone redress the balance.
I'm not Jobs' defender, but it seems to me that, as a society, we seem to want our heroes to be perfect (or at least to conform to our ideas of "right"-ness), and a lot of contention about legacy revolves around discussion of whether these folks "deserve" to be lauded. There was a book last year that implied that Ghandi was a homosexual. Which, of course, caused a real outcry in India, but to my point: who cares? Mr. Jobs had a child that he allegedly denied for many years; as a family man, that offends me much more than his complicity in the Foxconn suicides. Now there I am, projecting my values on him; but as far as I can tell, he wasn't required to follow my guidelines for living. Can we agree that those of us who use computers or portable music players or smartphones, or those of us who take our kids to see CG movies have been influenced by his work? I personally think I would have hated working for him, but I used products from his company every day.
Steve Jobs, inventor of the color white and creator of minimalist design died last week. Steve was reported to have conceived, designed and personally build every piece of hardware produced by Apple. Good night sweet prince.
for ReadWriteWeb to find a new editor, one that doesn't pander to fanboys
Steve Jobs was also in part responsible for a lot of bad, remember the Foxconn worker 'suicide'? Or how about suing journalists? Or hiring security that pretended to be police? Or requiring employees submit to searches or be fired?
Tact is unfortunately overrated.
Stallman is an asshole.
With that out of the way, he speaks true. I abandoned everything Apple for exactly the reasons he pointed out and I hope, as Stallman does, that Apple will become less anally retentive in the future.
Stallman is that guy who takes his job way to seriously. He loses touch with reality, he loses friends, his only friends are those with the same goals, but he even dismisses them for not being as committed as he is. In the end Stallman does the real work needed by the FOSS movement, he benefits the movement greatly, however he's like the overnight shift in a 24 hour production facility. Often the very best workers are on the overnight shift, not because you don't want the secrets to their efficiency accidentally leaked to someone passing through, but because the most talented people are often such eccentric weirdo's you only want the results of their work seen, not the workers themselves.
That last article condemning Stallman was just completely out of tune with the man himself. He wasn't hateful towards Job's himself, Stallman has a goal in mind and he wont rest until it's accomplished. He will never accomplish it. His goal of all software being 100% open source, patent free, and free in every way will never happen, and it's one of the places I differ with him. I support someones right to make money off of software, I do agree FOSS is the way to go and I do think even closed source software should eventually become open, but I do support someone closing source for a time to make a profit, and this is where I disagree with Stallman, who I see as an Old Testament Prophet of the Open Code.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Just because Jobs was innovative, popular and successful doesn't mean he was a saint. Considering his closed hardware platforms, Jobs showed us that his views were perhaps even more the antithesis of the FOSS movement than those of Mr. Bill.
Stallman wants people to provide software in the way he and his flock want it provided. How people use it is irrelevant. His point is that in an open ecosystem, people can choose to use software however they like, whether it's by connecting to monolithic vertically integrated software stacks or by striking out on their own. Apple didn't provide the choice; if you wanted Apple UI, you had to buy into Apple's whole product line, because you had no other options, particularly on their mobile devices.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Agreed! With the last part of your posting, that is: emacs, hands down. :)
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
But if that happens because of this particular outspokenness, that might be yet another correct course of action taken for completely the wrong reason.
Not only is there wisdom in knowing precisely what to say, there is also wisdom in knowing when not to say it.
The time to make the statement is while it is relevant. You wait until the initial storm dies down, and then you start your own. And it is critical that we receive this message — not you and I, maybe, but as many of the wide-eyed legions of Apple as can be reached. Because what Apple represents is precisely the same thing that Microsoft or Sony represents: a dearth of choice. Stallman might be an egotistical ass, but he is certainly the foremost champion of the rights of the user. Some programmers don't like that, so they don't like the GPL, and they don't like Free Software. They call it a virus and they would prefer to stamp it out rather than have to deal with something so confusing.
Other people can make the same point in a month, and a year, and reach other audiences, but this point needs to be made now and it needs to be made well. Stallman has done both.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> His statement has spurred reaction from the community; some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice.
I agree with them. Furthermore, I propose that anyone making fun of Steve Jobs in a cartoon should be stoned with bricked iPhones. Don't let the Infidels smear the name of The Prophet. Inch' Apple.
lucm, indeed.
Stallman does, and always has, define freedom as that which most benefits him. He is or was a programmer and he demands the freedom to program and modify the software and devices he uses. Which is great for him.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple? Apart from your not being able to buy a tablet that apes an ipad in countries that don't allow products to ape one another. Also other than getting angry enough to click reply on every Apple/Jobs story.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
What is it about FOSS that inspires such blind arrogance that they shoot themselves in the foot? Stallman is hurting his cause, just as a Mozilla employee recently hurt their cause -- by feeling and expressing contempt for those who don't share their vision, and by lacking respect, decency, maturity, and basic business sense.
Unfortunately it raises doubts about the competency of some FOSS organizations. If they don't have the understanding to respect other points of view, or the sense to do simple things in their own self-interest, who can rely on them?
I strongly support FOSS. It depresses me that so many leaders needlessly damage the cause.
Stallman helped the free software movement and a lot, and 30 years ago, was perhaps one of the best people who could be at the forefront of it all. Today, with everyone using computers in some form, everything software-related receives publicity and attention. This is why Stallman, in the 21st century, is one of the worst possible mouthpieces for the free software movement.
Most things he says reinforce the strange nerd stereotype. RMS doesn't care, of course. But his speeches and articles are somewhat "out there", he tends to ignore social norms and customs. And to the world's non-nerd population, it just gives the impression that free software is for socially inept bearded types.
Stallman's ideal vision of a world where every user is a programmer that reprograms their devices at will isn't happening for too many reasons to list. And in today's reality, for free software to advance, the movement could really do with another mouthpiece. Someone who can speak to the masses in a way that suits them, showing how free software is superior for practical reasons (not ideological ones), and someone who can break the perception that only big multibillion companies produce software that are fit for the average person to use.
That's absurd. I'm not saying that Stallman is right on everything, in fact I think he can be kind of a nut most of the time, but this criticism has absolutely no basis in anything that has actually been said by Stallman. Richard Stallman wants us to be able to do what we want to do on our own machines. He wants freedom, unrestricted use. AUTHENTIC freedom, not that "freedom from apps that trash your phone" nonsense. All the while Steve Jobs was constantly looking for new ways to restrict the user. How on earth do you go from that to "Stallman wants us to do it his way, Jobs wants us to do it his way, they're just two different sides of the same coin"? My gosh, on your reasoning, every single revolution, every single political change is completely trivial.
it helps expressing yourself better
aaaaaaa
LA Times says "some critics" but really only link to one guy, former Slashdot editor, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier. Another one of Stallman's critics who doesn't have the balls to actually state what really bothers him about Stallman, but sleazily uses any fake controversy as an excuse to launch a discrediting smear against RMS. If you really want to know why RMS gets attacked by some of these so-called FOSS advocates, just examine RMS's other political postings on his website. It'll become apparent.
Used to be we at least pretended to be respectful of the dead for a little while...
Crocodile tears only impress lunch.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
affordable, functional, desirable
Two out of three ain't bad.
(I'm a reasonably well paid programmer who owns a Mac Mini, and would rather enjoy having a grown-up Mac but can't justify the cost.)
that Stallman is correct, living in freedom requires that we use free software. On the other hand, this is being written on a Mac iBook.
It's almost as crazy as suggesting that constitutional democracies were more free than unlimited dictatorships.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Not one bit different, down to the careless, unempathic, arrogant perspective he has of the rest of the world and those who don't share his belief. JUST like an Apple Zealot.
FTFY
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I would agree with most of the people who are upset with RMS over this if it weren't for the way in which the media overreacted to Jobs' passing. I know it's typical to focus on the positive aspects of a person's life after they die, but the media rose Steve Jobs to the level of a god. They focused on his revival of Apple while ignoring the fact that he had a big part in its original downward spiral. They exalted Jobs' focus on good design principles while ignoring the fact that he created a corporate culture of trying to sue all of the competition out of the market. They trumpeted the success of the iPhone and iPad while ignoring the walled gardens they created. It's not my place to say whether or not Jobs' presence in the market was a net positive or negative, but I think it's fair for the media to cover both sides of a person's life as long as it is done with tact.
Richard Stallman is unfortunate. Being correct but not politically correct is a tough equation.
Not that I want to agree with what is basically a trolling comment, but he didn't actually say anything about RMS's intellect, just his personal hygiene. Which, let's be honest, isn't too far from the truth - http://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ?t=1m46s
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
What's Jobs guilty of? Making products that people want to buy, at prices they want to pay. Leading a company (or really a bunch of companies) that did some outstanding engineering that led to some incredible products that people really want to buy at prices that were on the high side, but people still willingly paid them. You (and the free software movement in general), with the help of the Unholy St. IGNUcius, of the Church of Emacs, are welcome to try to produce a product that people like better. However, if Emacs is any indication, I think you have a ways to go.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
http://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ?t=1m46s
I love the idea of free software, I love open-source, but my god, this man is too much.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I made a joke on Facebook when Steve Jobs died. Something about how God was mad at him because iPhone 4S was just a minor upgrade to iPhone 4, rather than the long-awaited iPhone 5, etc etc. Some of the flames I got were seriously crazy; one girl compared Steve Jobs dying to *her two miscarriages*. I couldn't believe it.
I'm sorry Steve Jobs is dead. Really. He was a human being, and he had hopes, dreams, feelings and ambitions just like the rest of us.
But to put Steve Jobs in the same league as people like Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage seems... very wrong. He was imperfect in life, like all of us, and remains imperfect in death. He was just a man. 150,000 other people I hadn't met died that day too, but nobody gave a shit about them. 150,000 people I've never met died today too. If I broke down crying and sobbing for each and every one of them, I'd be a wreck.
We as a society idolize the dead. I don't believe in extolling the virtues of the recently deceased. Given a long enough time the life expectancy of all Humans drops to 0; we all die some time, and when my time comes I would much, much rather people tell the truth about me and maybe even have a bit of a laugh, even at my expense. It's not like I'm going to care, I'll be dead.
I find it completely disrespectful that people think the best way to remember and "respect" someone who's recently died is to gloss over their flaws and essentially tell lies about how grand they were.
When I die I just want people to remember the truth about me, whatever that was, not some kind of warped 1984-ish false memory of a person who never was.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
he was a greedy businessman that ran a multi-national corporation...
Apple contracts to build a laptop in the far east for $100 using slave labor, and manipulated currencies
Then Apple Caymans, who owes no taxes of any kind, is a corp controlled by Apple USA. Apple Caymans then buys the laptop for $100 from the far east and sells it to Apple USA for $1000. The $900 profit is all profit, they pay no taxes on it.
Apple USA retails the laptop for $1100 for a $100 profit that they pay some US corporate income tax on.
So as you see, of the true $1000 profit on the laptop, they are only paying US taxes on $100 of it.
This applies to everything imported, drills, tools, electronics, everything.
This is just another reason why US based manufacturers are screwed by the world market. They have to pay full US taxes on their full profits, the other businesses don't.
it is the globalst/multi-national businesses like this that makes exorbitant profits while the USA hemorrhages jobs to third-world state owned sweatshops, they have no loyalty to anyone except making as much money as possible at the expense of everything else, even their own countrymen, fuck globalism, i hope it crashes, i would gladly do without all that "made in china" dreck to see a level playing field in the economy again
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... is wholly good or wholly evil. Can we leave it at that?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
How much of this is about what he said and how much of this is just antipathy for Richard Stallman's status as an ideologue and Ayatollah of Free Software?
For the record, I think he has something of a point about Jobs, at least relative to the ideology of free software. Jobs was about control, and the iPhone/iPad are really tightly controlled platforms with highly regulated applications and a single-source application marketplace.
That being said, I like to think I agree with Stallman in many ways, yet I own an iPhone and an iPad and really haven't felt constrained in any of the ways I should be constrained. I can only think off the top of my head of one app I wish Apple would allow (a Wifi scanning utility) and one other thing that makes me crazy, the arbitrary and unchangeable list of alert sounds.
My overall sense is that people look at these devices for what they do for them and don't consider, don't care or don't understand the philosophical concepts that go into them.
I also think that some of Stallman's Free Software concepts while philosophically sound are becoming somewhat practically irrelevant in a modern world with so many computerized devices. Even assuming I have the technical skill as a programmer, I have neither time nor inclination to access, modify or even wrap my head around all the software I interact with and more than I have the time or inclination to wrap my head around the chemistry or engineering of all the man-made items in my life.
I think Stallman's free software philosophies seem more relevant to a smaller computing universe of the 1970s and 1980s when software was less complicated and the idea that you had the time and ability to actually modify it.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/apple-scratch-app/
Not one bit different, down to the careless, unempathic, arrogant perspective he has of the rest of the world and those who don't share his belief. JUST like a fundamentalist nutcase.
Not quite.
A true fundamentalist would damn his followers to eternal hell torture, blame their parents for not raising them properly, promote social shunning of his followers, claim some old book proves the fundamentalist correct, swear the nations founders were all fundamentalists despite all evidence to the contrary, accuse the followers of a vast conspiracy to discredit the reputation of the fundamentalists, and have a problem solving strategy focused solely on prayer for deliverance.
Not just, in summary, say its too bad the guy died before he his opinions could have been corrected.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Wow - equating odour with intellect.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
For all of you logic-challenged commenters out there: saying bad things about RMS does not turn Jobs into a saint, no matter how much you wish it would.
The GPLv3 takes issue with the statement "How people use it is irrelevant."
RMS has never been one to hold back his opinion and he is just saying what a lot of us have felt for a long time.
I am extremely sad that Jobs died. I would never have wished this on him.
OTOH, I am happy that his personal influence on Apple is done. Perhaps Apple will loosen up a bit on some of its product policies.
I'm all for OSS. I ran Linux for about a decade as my desktop. I still use OSS on my Mac and Solaris today, but as far as desktops go - I went Mac OS X. I just got tired of the GUI inconsistencies, recompiling kernels, fixing one thing only to have another break, etc. Mac OS X might be a semi-walled garden, but at least I can plug in what I need to get my work done, and have it work out of the box. The interface is a true joy to boot.
What has all this "freedom" gotten us that Stallman espouses? 500 different distros, all slightly different. Still no real GUI consistency. Maintenance of a Linux system is still a very hands-on affair. And forget trying to compile something; first you have to install every dependency, then hope the "make all" actually completes without errors. It really gets interesting trying to compile something on another palatform (e.g. Solaris).
I don't want to sound like a Mac fanboi, but c'mon. Drag an app to your desktop and it's installed. Drag it to the trash and it's not. Software updates are generally just as easy. Just because I go through all these machinations on a server, doesn't mean I want to do this on my desktop too. I have work to do.
As for Stallman; is he even still relevant? He thinks he speaks for OSS, and that may arguably be the case. But he doesn't speak for me. Steve Jobs might have been arrogant or mercurial at times, but what he's created as far as the user experience and end-to-end computing across all my devices? Better than I ever got out of Linux, that's for shit-sure.
Well, I know some of the answer. That there is something along the lines of device freedom, though we don't ask that of the microprocessors in the microwave. (Though some clever folks have put the os of their choice on appliances.) This is an elite freedom, in that most of the world could not make use of the freedom if it was available. The ironic thing: people are putting their own code onto their iPhones and iPads, so I guess this is about Apple having to support customizations. That doesn't make sense to me.
The FSF and Apple had a kerfuffle over Objective-C and gcc over a decade ago. The FSF won and Apple became a well-behaved licensee, meeting the terms of the license. Apple didn't start talking about Communism and if they needed functionality under a different license, they got the code or wrote it. Exactly what we tell those folks who pop up now and then and try to exploit work that is available through the GPL.
Should the FSF distance itself from Stallman because of this tasteless compulsion to express a polemic with the thinnest veneer of humanism? No. Why start now?
Indeed. And that, as far as I can see, is the only point on which RMS has missed the mark. We all die, whether we want to or not, and "deserving" to die doesn't even come into it, since there's no other option.
Dammit! I have no mod points!
Indeed. "People want their computers to just work".
RMS and all the other Open Sores fanatics:
YOU are NOT the target audience for the iPod/iPad/iPhone.
YOU have NEVER been the target audience for the iPod/iPad/iPhone.
YOU WILL NEVER BE the target audience for the iPod/iPad/iPhone.
The majority of Apple users don't care a fat rat's ass about RMS, Open Sores, Linux, Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. They don't care that the POS Chinese plastic digital music player you bought from Hong Kong via eBay plays Ogg Vorbis files. They don't care that it shows up as a USB storage device.
What they care about is this:
One click, music is paid for, it's on the computer and in their iDevice. Seamlessly, problem free.
They care about the same experience when adding an app to their iPhone. They care that when they drop the iPhone into the cradle at night, everything syncs automatically.
They do not care what that hairy buffoon in Cambridge thinks. If the App Store's "Walled Garden" helps to keep malicious software off their iPhone, they see that as a GOOD thing.
They do not lament that they cannot run FOO.EXE on their iPhone, much in the same way that I do not lament that I cannot get DOOM to run on my microwave oven, nor Angry Birds to run on my old landline desk telephone.
Finally, they do not care about YOU or your opinions. And that, in the end, is what really pisses you all off. For all your posturing and bleating and chest thumping, you are ignored by the very people you deride as fanboys and mindless followers.
Funny how that works.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
..by always saying warm and cuddly things. I find myself agreeing with Stallman. Job's products were marketed towards those who liked to fantasize about how close to Star Trek TNG their lives were. All the while they were designed to restrict software, media and content choices. What he did wouldn't be much different than Comcast throttling all sites but their preferred sites to their customers and marketing themselves as the great library of the world, yet everyone hates the idea of corporations so much as tainting net neutrality. If the consumer technology industry needs the likes of Steve Jobs to advance, then it's just a matter of time before the world looks like one of my favorite childhood sci-fi novels.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
It's true, it's not... Just xenophobe.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
We all know the very good things about Apple, but Stalman keeps in mind the BAD things,
Like the Apple III?
"Stallman who?"
Stallman who made Linux possible. No I won't call it FNU/Linux or whatever.
Stallman who made Steve Jobs mac OS possible... Without the GPL license, and applied in a dual license, a lot of the MacOS show-offs wouldn't have been there... Have you ever hurd of Safari, just to mention one.
Still, Stallman has made is an enormous impact on planet Earth, quite possibly much larger than that of Jobs. Stallman is just the unhurd of version of Jobs, and w/o turtle-neck. The GPL (which has Linux as a subset) made it for a hurd of other free software licenses as well.
Stallman's contributions stand on their own, whether or not correct and/or not politically correct.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'?
Some "freedoms" which involve the sacrifice of a particular freedom are not permitted. For example, you are not allowed to sell yourself into slavery. Whether you think that walled gardens are heinous enough to merit such disapproval or not is a personal thing. Many persons considered slavery to be quite acceptable - for others.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple?
In much the same way as properly paid workers are affected by a slave labor force. Some occupations are thus priced out of the market, as they can't compete with subsistence-level workers (there would be openings in other occupations, such as slave driver). Becoming locked into a walled garden is generally a one-way trip, so the walled garden tends to expand to the detriment of the open market. You appear to think that this is harmless; it is not, largely due to the degree of control and squelching of competition that occurs in Apple's walled garden.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
All due respect to the deceased, and his family. But that company is/was horrible from an ethical standpoint. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but they put a lot of people out of business for trivial copycatting. From the cookie shop in NY ( if I recall) being sued for making iPhone cookies, to the carpenter sued for making decorative wooden iPhone plaques. I don't know if any of those cases made it to court, but that's not the point. They sued the living hell out of anybody that even looked at them wrong without permission. Not to mention the ongoing suits against the rest of the technology world, so many lawsuits open right now I cant even recall. Jobs was a huge proponent of defending his copyrights, but he very often took it WAY to far. For example, attempting to enforce patents on touch screen gestures? Really? I actually like a lot of Apple hardware, they certainly have their place in the industry, but they will never be more than a niche marketing firm until they pull their heads out of their asses. RIP jobs, despite all his failings as a ethical human being he was a brilliant marketeer and business man. I give respect where respect is due but otherwise; while am certainly not happy that he is dead, I AM glad that there is now somebody else at the Apples helm. Hopefully Mr Cook, has a bit more common sense with the company going forward.
I thought the same thing, who is RMS to speak of freedom? Unlike the GPL, Apple stuff isn't viral .
RMS's stuff isn't viral unless you want to use his stuff for no monetary cost. Stallman uses copyright (which protects one man's ideas at the expense of everybody else's property rights) to build free communities. He sacrifices the individual's rights for the rights of a collective. I don't really agree with his implicit use of force to better software (he's buying into the copyright argument), but since nobody is compelled to used GPL'ed software, I'm not going to get too upset about it either. I do wish GPL had a fixed time limit on its copyright - author's life plus 70 years is just as bad in software as it is for Mickey Mouse.
Apple doesn't give the individual or community any rights (for its closed software, thank you for CUPS, et. al), it mostly files lawsuits about it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What I have always found interesting is how people react when someone has a different option of someone / something. My experience is many people , no I won't give a percentage because I am being a generalist about this, reacted as if they were just insulted by any disagreement no matter how simple it may be. Shockly enough it's even worse on the internet. If I disagree with anyone I get to do that since I am unique. Not everyone has to agree with everything and if someone disagrees with you that is just fine. Now let's all put our big boy and girl panties on and use what little God given common sense exists among us to understand there are things in the world that are just wrong. But since people go rabid foaming at the mouth mad when someone says "I really don't get two rat farts about Steve Jobs, don't get me wrong it is a sad time for the family and I send my honest condolences and respect their privcy in this personal matter, but I really don't give a frack about his life or the products he touted."
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion. Like him or not, Stallman has been highly consistent for decades in his take on all things software freedom.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
Jobs returned to Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest in or knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.
^ Letters – General Questions Answered, Woz.org
Wozniak, Steven: "iWoz", a: pages 147–148, b: page 180. W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN 978-0-393-06143-7
Kent, Stevn: "The Ultimate History of Video Games", pages 71–73. Three Rivers, 2001. ISBN 0-7615-3643-4
"Breakout". Arcade History. June 25, 2002. Retrieved April 19, 2010.
"Classic Gaming: A Complete History of Breakout". Classicgaming.gamespy.com. Retrieved April 19, 2010.
Check it out on Wikipedia. Steve Jobs was an asshole, end of story--and his model was remove choice from consumers. It's brilliant because if you can't do things you're not supposed to do, shit probably won't break. The real trouble is, it also means you get people like the MPAA telling you what you are allowed to do--or whoever else is in bed with Apple.
but I mostly agree with him on this.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Compare emacs with the shiny toys Jobs made and I think we see who comes out on top.
Way to cherry-pick facts to back up your bias. Compare GCC with the Lisa and see who comes out on top.
But now that I re-read your post, perhaps you were being ironic. Emacs was plainly more innovative than any of Apple's "shiny toys". Less popular, of course, but why would we nerds care about that?
Yes, because protecting the devices from malware and bad apps by only allowing purchases via app store is equivalent to slavery.
You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
Let me clarify. Even though I disagree with Stallman over the necessity of all things being user accessible, I appreciate the point and believe that his is an important voice to hear. It's just there's a time and place for everything and clumsy formulations such as Jobs as Mayor Daley or "malign influence on computing" are counter-productive as he tries to build the world he wants. That's his problem and I don't believe the FSF has to respond to what he says as an individual.
What Stallman needs is perspective. He lives in a world of absolutes. "They are the devils, we are the holy warriors!" logic does not apply to anything and everything, including software. There are no rights or wrongs in the way Apple, Microsoft and GNU do business/provide their services/software. They are just different in their approach. GNU, and Stallmans philosophy, could not have sold the number of machines Apple has been able to sell in the last decade, just because of the fact that a normal person in the street does not care if iPhone was scam to surround them in a walled garden. A normal person in the street wants stuff to work, and look pretty, which the iPhone did. Apple is successful because Jobs related to the general public, providing them with what they thought was cool. Nothing wrong in that. General public doesn't give a damn about deeper philosophy, about openness, and about walled gardens until they get a raid from RIAA for piracy or they get sued. In this world, you make a living not by uplifting people, but by selling people what they want and need.
Freedom doesn't mean "anything goes". Freedom means recognition of the fact that a person owns their own body, and that a person is entitled to exclusive use of his own property. All freedoms stem from those two axioms, and all tyrannies stem from the violation of those two axioms.
1. Attempt to view porn on iPhone app
Two methods:
1a. open mobile browser
1b. surf to pr0n page
--or--
1a. import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes via one of dozens of video codec convertors
1b. view pr0n movie on iPhone
This isn't exactly rocket science, and amazingly, aside from the "import to iTunes" step, is exactly like any other phone on the planet.
Or are you just mad that you can't buy T&A in their store?
(...who the hell actually pays for the stuff these days anyway?)
-sent from my crappy Blackberry curve.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Stallman's worst defect (other than his nonconformist appearance and manner -- which are both fine by me, but not great qualities in a spokesman) is his faith in the general intelligence of the world at large.
He leaves things unsaid, because he assumes that the audience is paying proper attention, and reading between the lines.
Case in point:
Stallman's ideal vision of a world where every user is a programmer that reprograms their devices at will isn't happening for too many reasons to list
You don't need to be a programmer to program a computer. My boss isn't a programmer, yet he can program a computer simply by paying me money and telling me what to do. My mum isn't a programmer, but she can program a computer by asking me a favour. Stallman assumes people realise that.
Used to be we at least pretended to be respectful of the dead for a little while....
I believe three days is the accepted convention. Sorry, we're a little past that now. The truth can now be spoken.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
If i think somebody is a complete tosser and Ive made my views public when asked should I change my stance when asked directly and make a liar of myself just because they are dead?
if your not going to like what you know I will say dont ask and I wont say.
Your assertion that Stallman has made the point well -- you're incorrect. That isn't intended as a value-judgment, but as an observation. You can tell by paying attention to the effects.
If your assertion is that the point needed to be made to as many of the wide-eyed legions of Apple as can be reached, then Stallman's declaration was counterproductive at this time. It's effect is going to be the closing of more minds than it opens.
I'm speaking purely from the standpoint of rhetoric or "PR tactics" here. I'm sure he felt what he was saying was true, and I'm sure many people here think so as well, but if the goal is to persuade (and not just to say something he thought was true for its own sake, or to "preach to the converted"), then it was downright counterproductive.
(Which -- and this is very important -- is not the same thing as "wrong".)
Which is not exactly an unusual thing for RMS. He is not a rhetorical genius. (Yes, he's an actual genius, I agree that's true, but not in the realm of rhetoric.)
Stallman is the anti-Jobs in many ways. But they"re both brilliant, driven, uncompromising geniuses. And to say that Stallman hasn't had as much impact on the world as Jobs is wrong on it's face, in my opinion. I reckon more devices have Linux installed than any Apple OS. How many startups would have been crushed by server OS costs without GNU/Linux as an option, even just by driving down the price of competitors? How many pieces of software that started as hobby hacking wouldn't exist with a free C compiler? App store? Linux had this years before the iPhone? Safari's engine started in KDE. Mac interface descended from X. Super-computing, internet plumbing, all dominated by Linux and GNU for a reason. Then there's Android.
If you don't like him, Stallman gives you plenty of ammunition. The same could be said about Jobs (personal emails to disgruntled users?) He spoke his mind, and a lot of people may not like what he said. In his mind, the world of software is a secret war for the freedom of billions of people. He believes proprietary software is a precursor to real live Soviet style oppression. He thinks Jobs is/was creating the world that appeared in the iconic 1984 Mac commercial. And if he believes that, blunting his words would be a disservice to history and posterity.
Steve Jobs was one to the most powerful on the planet. He's gonna have enemies. He knew that and didn't much care. I doubt his family is surfing Stallman's website looking for an epitaph.
As for the spokesman thing, I don't see RMS as that. He's the visionary. He's supposed to be unbending, uncompromising, theory based. He's not supposed to sugercoat. He's a coder, not a CEO.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
extreme censorship against FLOSS
Err... doesn't OSX contain fairly substantial amounts of FLOSS, and isn't Apple known as a reasonably responsible licensee and even contributor for most projects they use? I recall a few instances where they were accused of a license violation, but they seem to respond to most of these accusations by correcting whatever they've done wrong. Granted, not always instantly, but they do fix it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Had one guy on a graphic design mailing list claim, ``Without Steve Jobs there wouldn't have have programs like InDesign.'' --- displaying an apparently willful ignorance of the existence of page layout programs on the Xerox Alto, back from the days when Apple was still making the Apple ][, and another guy claim Steve Jobs ``never designed anything'' (counter-example would be the Apple Macintosh Calculator Desktop Accessory: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt ).
He was an early pioneer (among many other pioneers) who worked as leadership to a lot of teams which did some amazing work (Apple ][, Macintosh, NeXT, iMacs, iPod, Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad), and had some bad moments (Apple III, Apple Macintosh Portable, closing down the Newton). It's sad that he has passed away, and while it's appropriate to remember the good things which he has achieved (getting California to directly ask about organ donor status at the DMV was huge), and the good aspects of his character, he was a man like other men, and it's important not to lose sight of that.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I had one encounter with Mr. Jobs, and I'll never forget how gratuitously rude he was to me. Maybe he was having a bad day and his real personality was very different, but I never bought any Apple products after that, and when he died I didn't bother to read the obit.
I'm not arguing for or against Apple, but I do see your point. I do still believe Stallman's emotions got involved, and his anger, as usual got the better of Stallman. Choice or not, Stallman still wants all of his followers to use FOSS strictly, and only FOSS. Nothing else. It comes out heavily in his thoughts on this man's death. This sort of purism is borderline "software racism" in my mind and leads to a sort of negativity that is unwarranted and out of line. Jobs didn't care if people bought or did not buy his software and hardware. Jobs did place rules on using his goods; tons of them. Stallman will hate you until the universe folds in on itself if you even touch proprietary software. To me it is the same difference. Two views, and use the users trapped in the middle.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion.
I see that as beyond obvious, if not necessarily simple: Stallman is the head of a "dangerous" (read: influential) movement which confronts people's sensibilities and challenges the status quo. A lot of people have significant personal and economic investments which are threatened by the movement that Stallman represents, and as its figurehead he must be discredited or his words must be considered and both financial empires and carefully crafted illusions designed to permit ongoing behavior harmful to society and self will disintegrate.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
Yeah, it's almost like he's interested in Software Freedom or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How is it bad for someone with no programming knowledge that they aren't free to, for example, look at the source code of iOS or distribute modified versions?
Human beings are social animals. It's natural for us to wish the best for our fellow beings. So, yes, I am not the target demographic for about anything, but that doesn't mean I don't give a damn about the well-being of those who are the target demographic. On the obverse, there's nothing less human than only caring about the target demographic. That's what companies do: Insurers target the rich and healthy, Pharmaceutical companies target the rich and chronically ill (as opposed to terminal), and Apple targets rich corporate tools who have ceased to care about anything but target demographics.
You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
This depends on how long the kid was locked up in the walled garden.
Your assertion that Stallman has made the point well -- you're incorrect. That isn't intended as a value-judgment, but as an observation. You can tell by paying attention to the effects.
The effects are massive discussion. When facts are permitted to thrive, discussion can lead to positive change. I am paying attention to the effects.
It's effect is going to be the closing of more minds than it opens.
Its effect is going to be open discussion, which will reach more people than doing nothing.
I'm sure he felt what he was saying was true, and I'm sure many people here think so as well, but if the goal is to persuade (and not just to say something he thought was true for its own sake, or to "preach to the converted"), then it was downright counterproductive.
But one goal of discussion, or polemic, or rhetoric, is to foster further discussion.
Which is not exactly an unusual thing for RMS. He is not a rhetorical genius. (Yes, he's an actual genius, I agree that's true, but not in the realm of rhetoric.)
Unfortunately, not many of us are. But is that really what matters most?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes
Why do people think this shit is acceptable?
First of all, I do not agree or disagree with Mr. Stallman. However, as a "Spokesman for FOSS" this is definately not what I would expect.
We here generally use some other flavor of Operating System that is a given. And that other flavor does not at all meet with what the public wants. WE want our freedom with our computers. But WE are not every computer user out there. I am not being an elitist here but the fact is that most people want to go to their local computer outlet store, purchase a big black box or laptop and plug it in to surf the web and play Angry Birds. We choose to be different.
But we must also respect those that want to have their computers spoon fed to them else our freedom will mean nothing in the end. Yes Linux installations on both servers and desktops have gone up in the past decade. However, so has the installed base of Windows and OS X. What Steve Jobs did was provide a medium for the average user to have and enjoy a computing experience. He did it well and with many innovations that others failed at (why is the iPhone so big but Blackberry loosing market for example).
Mr. Stallman may be a huge advocate of FOSS and for that I thank him deeply and sincerely. And when our "Spokesman for FOSS" compares Steve Jobs who did what his customers wanted him to do, to a corrupt mayor, it does nothing but shine US, the FOSS users in a negative light. I personally would much rather be associated with the positive side of FOSS than the negative.
What you call a walled-garden is just a trading platform. Apple as a provider of that trading platform, controls what can be traded, but not what you in fact trade.
This is no difference to drug laws or other laws that prevent "free trade" of certain goods.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I saw a report like that too, and was about to get angry until they showed the patent for that idiotic round mouse (ie: directionless pointing device) that came out with the iMac G3's about 11~12 years ago. Some cub reporter comes across a Steve Jobs patent for a mouse, and assumes he invented the entire industry. Never mind that it was the single biggest FAIL in the history of pointing devices.
I (mostly) like Apple products, and am thankful for Jobs's contribution to the industry. But I also empathize with RMS's point of view.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
A DJ on sirus-xm said he was the "Thomas Edison of our generation" wtf are these folks smoking?
I believe the argument goes that the people who will assault you are going to assault you no matter what. Making a law against it has not eliminated crime. In fact laws do absolutely nothing to deter crime - changing the socioeconomic conditions of society has a far greater effect on crime. However if there is no law, then you are also free to defend yourself as you please without having to worry if a court will take your self defense argument seriously or not.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, The problem is that software is not in the same league as human rights and freedoms. Software choices don't kill or enslave people. Individuals developers have always had the right to publish their work any way they want regardless of any licensing. Stallman has been consistent but the problem is he has been a consistent asshole who thinks he is saving the world with his software development model. Of course he already has the financial resources that enable him to totally ignore how his theories effect those actually working for a living.
Seriously? He said he was not glad Jobs is dead.
Personally I agree with RMS (for once, must be a layer of frost in hell). I too, am not happy to see Jobs dead, however, I believe he has had a lot of negative influences in the business world of computers. I am very glad to see his influences there removed, and I hope the results of his actions are diminished with time. However, countering that - he has also had many great influences, and I hope those stand the test of time. I hope that in 20 years, unbiased individuals can look at the changes he made and say "that is a man who made computers better than they would have otherwise been." without having to add ", but damn did he fuck up the way computer companies act."
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Becoming locked into a walled garden is generally a one-way trip, so the walled garden tends to expand to the detriment of the open market.
No, I have an Apple phone and an Apple laptop, my servers run BSD. I have a DVR that runs Linux. The day a non-Apple phone or laptop, or non BSD server OS, or non-Linux running DVR, becomes available that suits my needs better than what I have, I'll use them instead.
Tell me specifically how the degree of control and squelching of competition specific to Apple's walled garden affects things outside the walled garden. Tell me about something with enough scale to justify you being able to deny my freedom to choose Apple.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Do you know who makes that profit? Shareholders. Jobs paid himself $1 a year. Apple is widely-held stock, and its owners include pension funds and individual stockholders like myself. Where else do you think individual wealth comes from, pots of gold that people take from leprechauns? It is amazing to me how many people do not understand who really owns and benefits from corporate profits and growth. The purpose of a corporation is to make shareholders like me money, not to be a jobs program. I'm a small investor - and one of those "countrymen" you refer to - and I've held Apple for almost 20 years and it's made me financially secure.
I don't understand people who bitch about their jobs and being "wage slaves," then hate on those who find a way to make money outside of a paycheck, like investing in successful companies like Apple.
And of course Apple outsources it's labor. If it manufactured iPhones in California they'd cost $2500.
The time for respect was a long time ago, and we showed plenty enough of it back then.
People who want personal computers to not just be video game consoles, were complaining about Jobs' influence on the industry up until the last minute of his life. The reality of what's happening didn't magically stop the instant Jobs died, so why should people stop complaining about it? Lots of people die every day, and those who remain can't (and shouldn't) all just shut up about what's left behind, out of some desire to not offend a former adversary's shade. (And, BTW, look at what RMS really says. He doesn't talk shit about Jobs personally; he really does seem to limit the comment to Jobs' exit from the industry.)
The media went totally overboard with all the Jobs-love and they didn't just talk about his personal life; some praised his business, and I don't just mean Apple in general but even the IOS devices. That especially puts the topic on the table.
If Jobs' death means you shouldn't talk frankly about IOS' evil and the person who is likely most responsible for it, then Jobs' death means you also shouldn't misrepresent IOS evil and the person who is likely most responsible for it. So if anyone criticizes RMS' lack of "respect" here, I wonder where's their anger about how the rest of the media disrespected the living last week, with their you're-not-allowed-to-rebut-this deification.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There shouldnt be a moderation item like flamebait. In ANY charged subject, there WILL be flaming. that is a given. forcing views to be expressed as if they do not mean what they intend to mean by allowing a moderation item like flamebait, does nothing but to discourage opinion that others may fervently oppose, rightfully, or wrongfully.
Read radical news here
Stallman is the foremost champion of the rights of Stallman. I'm really surprised it isn't that blatantly obvious to people. He calls his movement "free" and yet the restrictions he wants to impose on people can be just as limiting as any proprietary software.
Everything he says is from the eyes of someone who wants to tinker with everything. He does not think about things from the perspective of people actually wanting technology and software as a tool to actually go about their daily lives.
Looks like we could do with some memristors planted in our heads.
Jobs was the man who gave us reasonable, workable, and fair DRM when everyone else was tyring to shaft us with drm-wrapped wmv files that stopped working when the company you bought it from decided to up sticks and bugger off.
He was also the man who hated drm, and said so: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/02/steve_jobs_hate/
I'm a little scared about the long term implications of a walled garden approach too - but you can't have it both ways. His solution allowed iphones to have more freedom than an any other phone on release, remember, when iPhones came out carriers were still dictating what functions you could run on your phone. If Sprint didn't want you to have bluetooth, you couldn't have it - then the iPhone came along, and pretty much obliterated that bullshit - if you bought an iphone or not, it has changed your experience of mobile phones.
On top of that the walled garden means that I can download any app out of thousands without so much as considering the possibility of a trojan or virus - and if im feeling lucky, I can jailbreak and do whatever I want. If I don't like it, I can choose not to buy an iPhone. Will someone explain whats so bad about having this choice? Or are you pithy nerds simply scared that, gasp, the greater public might abandon the idea that all devices need to be completely hackable - security concerns be damned.
It seems extraordinary that people crying and whining about a walled garden are in fact trying to inflict their opinion regarding ideal software ecosystems on others, crowing from the rooftops about freedom as if they just HAVE to buy an iphone.
I'm not an apologist for apple - im not saying this is all going to be hunky dory down the road, it's just that I watched morons argue the Microsoft v Mac debate for 10 fucking years, and now we have to repeat this shit with apple on the other side? This whole idolising/evangelising of tech companies/philosophies shit was tired 10 years ago, and its tired now.
Nice troll there, you got me to bite and at least one moderator to upmod you. Start off with complete and utter flaming bullshit that only a troll or someone who's not used FOSS would spew ("interfaces and user experience has always been horrible with FOSS software") followed by a twisted putting words in someone's mouth they didn't say ("Stallman's glad Jobs is dead").
My beef with Stallman is if he felt that way he shouldn't have waited until Jobs died (If I'm wrong about him waiting someone please correct me).
Your opening "It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do. This is also why I like BSD license more than GPL" was especially stupid. GPL keeps people from screwing you over.
Free Martian Whores!
There is a fundamental difference between a computer and a microwave oven. A computer executes code which is Turing-complete, whereas a microwave cooks stuff.
Many people think about their computer (and tablet, and phone, and music player) as an appliance. However, they are wrong: the potential of these devices is effectively unlimited, therefore, selling them sealed/closed/walled is effectively robbing you of a potentially infinite value.
The effective value of the devices is the capabilities of the hardware. That people do not realise that is a failure of education, not an endorsement of the walled garden strategy. Yes, FOSS geeks are not the target market of apple, but apple needs them more (safari, gcc, their OS) than they need apple (ie not at all). So now that the human face of apple, Jobs, is gone, and only the nasty business practises are left, apple will either open up or die a slow death.
At least MS has their own OS...
The funny thing is, though, that Steve Jobs is not a parent to anyone here. He is a complete stranger, but has been elevated to such a messiah like stature that people that didn't even know him outside of his press releases literally went out of their way to buy fucking flowers and leave them at the Apple Store.
I think the lack of perspective most of these mourners display is the most discouraging thing. I read a few "Man, that sucks" comments and didn't have a problem, but when people call him the most important man of our time I get a little incredulous. The man made consumer goods for crying out loud, and what did he pioneer? Devices that look nice? It's bad enough when people say idiotic things like "Steve Jobs invented the personal computer/tablet/pda/smartphone/internet/{insert any modern convenience here}" but now that he's gone people are actually comparing him to Edison or Tesla in their grief. It's embarrassing to those of us with a brain.
...is not that Stallman is wrong, or that he had an opinion about it, or that he expressed his opinion about it. It is that he offered his opinion, without being asked, while the corpse was still warm. It is just not nice to tell grieving people that they are stupid, even if maybe they are, a little, about one thing. Of course, he has the freedom to express his hurtful opinion. But what should be protected is only his right to say it. He is not protected from being called a dick.
Stallman has ZERO credibility with me. He mooches off whatever computer science neckbeards fall under his sway, he has bad personal habits which he has no issues sharing (my kid with Asperger's has more modesty than Stallman), and he's notable for... what, a fucking text editor? The guy is one step away from that crazy homeless person begging for cash on the street corner, and if it weren't for the abovementioned compsci idiots, that's exactly what he would be. Say what you want about Jobs - people came out in droves to Apple Stores to show their respect and admiration, tons of blogs and news sites wrote articles about his passing - meaning he had profound influence on consumer and pop culture, whatever its nature. Who the fuck is Stallman? A guy who eats his toejam in front of a class while a camera captures it all. Yeah... hobo.
If RMS and the FSF protested at Jobs' funeral... ... *that* would be like Fred Phelps and the scum from the Westboro Baptist Church protesting at Jobs' funeral.
And anyone who's stumbled across old DEC hardware knows that the round mouse long pre-dated the iMac.
Stallman has done many things to help the free software movement, and I appreciate those efforts. HOWEVER, the more I learn about the man and the more he talks, the more I wish he'd just shut up. He's sounding more and more like those church kooks who try to bait people (I don't wish to give them more press so am omitting their name).
And how is that different than Church of Apple?
Oh wait, it's different because RMS actually wants you to have freedom, while Church of Apple wants pretty much the opposite.
I know which one I would choose.
I remember a time when blizzard wasn't as evil as it is today and you actually were treated like a customer rather then a magpie with a wallet.
that was before vivendi bought it.
Read radical news here
i posted i cant use mod points.
Read radical news here
As usual, Mr. Stallman is right. Pay attention to the message, not the delivery.
The more proper question is, "Why do people think this shit is unacceptable?" Hey, it's my phone. If I choose to look at gun porn, I'll do so. If I choose to look at motorhead porn, I'll do that too. Geek porn? Got it covered. Phatbroad porn? Well - I'll take a pass on that, but it seems some guys like phat chicks. Just leave them alone, alright?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
He will never accomplish it. His goal of all software being 100% open source, patent free, and free in every way
i like the sound of that. one has to aim as high as s/he can, in order to achieve the best possible result. that means, we all should follow that example.
Read radical news here
Is a walled garden better than a wide open desert? I think Stallman doesn't realize not everyone is a camel herder.
I thought Henry Ford was the best comparison, to be honest.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...don't say anything at all.
I won't say I disagree with Stallman, but times of grieving are definitely one of those times where this rule applies.
enough. if you had been, you could see that the future holds 4 major companies in every aspect of computing from software to internet to distribution to gsm holding major control of everything, and deciding what you can and cannot do. it is what internet should NOT have been from the start, and which is fortunately what internet has not actually been. but jobs, in all his profit-making glory and user friendliness, had set the momentum towards that direction, thanks to apple's phenomenal profit success. and media loves him, naturally, because he basically pushed computing in the way media wanted it from the start - that internet be a glorified cable television clone with minimum freedom on user part.
Read radical news here
Really RMS? Sorry but this was nothing but grandstanding.
For criticism to have any value it must be constructive. Steve Jobs can not change anything he has done so this is in now way constructive.
Is this hurt full.
Yes.
People have lost their friend, husband, father, and mentor.
This makes RMS a small petty man that puts his ideology above his humanity. It would be far better to wait and criticize after some time has passed.
As to your post I disagree.
Jobb's founded Apple which is the only hardware company from the early days of personal computing that is still making personal computers. Not even IBM is still in that market much less Commodore, Atari, Sinclair, TI, RadioShack, Heathkit, Altar, Osbourne, or any number of other companies that started around the same time.
He helped make the GUI mainstream. Yes Xerox invented but they didn't do anything with it. Apple traded Xerox a bunch of stock and too the GUI and put into the hands of the public.
He also showed that Unix could be used be user friendly when he started NeXT.
He also turned around Pixar.
He went back to Apple and turned that company around. He changed the way that the music industry sold music and pushed for them to drop DRM.
While CEO Apple redefined what a smartphone was and how it should work.
While CEO Apple made tablets a viable option for the public at large.
He took Apple from the brink of death to become the most valuable company on the stock exchange.
Let's not forget that Apple employees on the whole are happy and well paid. Apple even did respond when it's subs where not treating their employee's well. One can say they didn't do enough but you better jump down the throats of everyone else that uses Foxconn which is about everybody and they did even less.
Yes he really is in the same category as Edison and Ford. Far from perfect but with accomplishments that will be historical on scope. Had he lived to ripe old age and passed away long after his retirement you would see this display. Thing is that he didn't die at 80 he died at the young age of 56. he had at least ten more years before retirement.
At this point anything really negative is just being cruel and petty.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice."
Fuck those people. I'm surprised anyone can both worship Apple and pretend to care about Free Software.
Jobs was a successful manager, but an abrasive, unashamed misanthrope who treated people who worked with him like shit. He and Gates came up with some good UI ideas between them in the 70s and 80s (which they then mostly stole from each other), but pretty much everything he's done with Apple done in the past ten years or more is pure evil. He was likely a genius, and had a passionate and magnetic personality. But he was not a good person. Accomplishing great things does not excuse being evil.
Wow you are a moron, were taking about *software* here, not human rights.
Jesse Jackson Sr. did this exact thing... When asked, he called Steve Jobs 'peoples people' and glorified him in the moment. Obviously, only because he's dead and Jackson will do anything to capitalize on anything. Before the death, his son spoke in front of congress about how terrible Steve/Apple is for American jobs and society in general.
The big difference is that Apple is a private entity and is controlling what can and can't be sold via a store that they own. They do not control what you can buy in other stores, as would a government.
If you dislike what is available in Apple's store or you have some philosophical disagreement with the way they do things, you are free to buy some other device.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
Then it's a good thing he made the comments to adults who understand the difference.
On OS X sure, because they're already having a hard time competing with... everything else. The only reason developers (a fairly large OS X market) continue to use it is because they can freely run lots of FLOSS (Homebrew and MacPorts help a lot here). On iOS it's another story entirely. I wouldn't call it "extreme censorship", but they do reject FLOSS apps for no other discernible reason (granted, not all, but it appears to be arbitrary). Also, now that you MUST use Obj-C and nothing else, that may be a prohibitively high learning curve for people trying to port a FLOSS program over. Of course, if it's C, it shouldn't be hard, but anything else would need a full port (since X to Obj-C compilers are also forbidden). Almost the whole ToS of the developer kit is against FLOSS.
The downside is that his companies success with walled gardens is giving a lot of other companies and developers the same idea of creating walled gardens where you never own anything, can't modify it, etc. A kind of kind of feudalistic computing.
Feudalistic home computing began in the mid-1980s, long before the iPhone. Think Atari 7800, which used RSA-signed binaries, and Nintendo Entertainment System, which used a cryptographic handshake between matching microcontrollers in the console and the Game Pak.
If anyone wants to know just how disconnected from reality much of the "free" software world is, all he has to do is pat attention to Stallman's idiocy about this. Stallman certainly looks like a fool, as he frequently does, but the real news is that some of his supporters are so clueless and blind that they support him on this. If you're too stupid to understand why this statement was absurd and guaranteed to make you look foolish, then you're not bright enough to even try to influence popular opinion.
Interesting choice of words. I'm not sure if "Mr. Bill" is a reference to Bill Gates or Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live. Because I actually think SNL's Mr. Bill does deserve to die. Have you seen what they do to that guy? Every episode they're either running him over or chopping off some body part... they should just let him rest in peace. And in pieces, in his case.
Of course, now this makes me wonder if SNL's Mr. Bill started out as someone's sick commentary on Mr. Gates. Perhaps the creator's computer blue-screened when Office tried to load Clippy, and he started composing these skits while he waited for the reboot. "It looks like you're trying to write a letter. What you do is-- OH NOOO... I got a paper cut and it severed my arm! Oh NOOOOO...."
Which shit is that? Spelling porn as pr0n? Importing it? Importing into iTunes?
"However, they are wrong"
And you wonder why people don't care about your opinion?
Why not add "stupid" and "dress funny" while you're at it.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
We disagree. IMHO, the main effect is going to be fewer people being willing to give what he says a fair listen, even when they'd otherwise have been persuaded by what he says. Over time, fewer people will have been reached because of this. There are times when the right tactic is to stay silent, and this moment was one of those.
Just wait, you'll see.
When did Home Economics graduates get let in here?
You can't do anything with iOS (for example), you can't even look at it.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Jobs wasn't a great innovator in technology, but he was a pretty great salesman and marketer. One of his greatest marketing campaigns was convincing people that he was some sort of fantastic technological innovator.
His second great achievement was having a pretty plastic shell designed for a bucket of computer innards and then charging double over the nearest competing product, and actually making sales.
Third, he recognized the power of good design in both the interface and the a fore mentioned pretty plastic shell. While I've listed this third, it is probably his greatest, longest lasting, and closest to technical innovation. Apple, as a company, really gets design. It shows in every single one of their products, and often times has won out over functionality. I wish more companies got design at the same fundamental level, but integrated it better with function.
Fourth, Steve Jobs managed to get a whole generation to believe that they were thinking differently by purchasing the same computer.
RMS talks about greed and freedom. But this is the man who insists on renaming somebody else's operating system, Linux, to GNU/Linux because they used his free shit to make it. So what is it Dick, is your shit not really free? Linux owns the trademark for Linux, the and GNU is owned by your cronies.
Does that mean that if I come up with my own kernel, lets call it Assfuck, using your GNU shit, calling it GNU/Assfuck is appropriate?
Job was a visionary, zealot, and a control freak who demanded things his way. That made him a dick. But RMS is also a visionary, zealot, control freak who demands things his way as well; that makes him just as big a dick as Jobs.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Apache. Don't be a total douche.
You seem to be confused about what the parent was talking about. The parent in no way suggested that you be denied the freedom to choose Apple. He suggested that Apple's walled garden with consistently anticompetitive practices was bad for the overall market and becomes increasingly bad as it's popularity grows.
It's bad because YOU DON'T NEED PROGRAMMING KNOWLEDGE TO PROGRAM A COMPUTER (indirectly).
You can pay, or otherwise persuade, someone with programming knowledge to do it for you. But if *they* don't have access to the source code, they can't help you.
So basically, less is more and freedom is slavery.
Jobs changed after his return to Apple, it became less about enabling people and more about his vision and only his vision. Enable people as long as it's within Apple's rules, and when the rules change, you better agree with Apple.
Exactly what restrictions do you think Stallman wants to impose on you?
I don't think he's ever proposed to forbid non-free software.
He's only ever sought to persuade you that it's not in your interest to buy it.
The only restriction he's ever imposed on *anyone*, is, through the GPL, to restrict you from removing the freedom from code that is free.
It's not the end : Jobs is gone, RMS still there... and his battle isn't lost.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
Actually, according to Stallman it is "GNU/LINUX".
If we ever hear him say "linux", we know something is wrong.
Or he's just talking about the kernel. I recall that's happened just recently.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
What a friggin' dump. There are no rights to restrict others' freedoms. Your subsequent pedantry is necessary because your logic is missing.
In fact, our assertion is exactly what you just said.
Yes, so I'm rather surprised that it got modded down so much. It's quite obvious that restricting some activities leads to more freedom. I struggle to imagine how my statement was taken as a troll, is there anyone out there who would argue that I was incorrect?
I think freedom is maximized by restricting people from distributing binaries without source. You think freedom is maximized by restricting people from having source to their programs. In both cases freedoms are restricted to maximize freedom from a particular point of view.
How is that controversial?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do.
It's almost as crazy as suggesting that constitutional democracies were more free than unlimited dictatorships.
While I disagree with just about all of the grandparent's post, his point on licenses may actually have merit. BSD style licenses are truly free. GPL is a very strange license, and in at least one sense, is actually restrictive. It makes fairly specific demands on how implementers and extenders of GPL technologies need to handle propogation of the technology (among other things). Yes, this is done with the intention of making the software free and open in perpetuity. However, it doesn't change the fact that GPL has many strings attached.
I'm an info-anarchist, so in my perfect world, everything would be automatically BSD licensed. However, given what I consider to be a flawed system of patents, copyrights, and other "intellectual property", GPL is a solution that uses rules and restrictions to explicitly enforce a level of software openness that I appreciate.
Damn and it's a anonymous coward who write this? It's a waste!
Exactly my thought anyway.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
Censorship, not compliance[duh]
which is totally what she said
> It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do. ...a specious argument.
The problem with computing, the real problem with computing, is that it is prone to tolerate only one option. The reign of MS-DOS was ample demonstration of this. It's not like cars, or soup, or burgers, or even web search engines where it is pretty trivial to avoid a market leader. What morons allow to happen to the computing market impacts everyone's choices.
Free Software is one thing that is able to effectively resist the effects that destroy commercial competitors to the monopoly du jour.
Once you take away end user freedom just run what they want (never mind the source code), then something like Free Software becomes impossible.
The problem with the "user choice" mantra of yours is that it is unlikely that consumers are screaming "put me in chains". They simply don't understand the bargain they are making.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Oh jeez :-O###
I'm mostly supportive of Stallman but I really wish he would improve his personal hygiene a little. Dress decently (glad to see he's not wearing a poncho there), keep his hair and beard tidy, wear closed shoes and not eat things stuck to his foot x_x
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oh bullcrap. There are plenty of us slashdotters who use Apple, and we vary from pleased users to Apple fanatics.
Anyhow, you are completely missing the main point: However much you may or may not choose to dislike Steve Jobs, his company has always been pushing towards making computing grandma-friendly.
On the other hand, FOSS software sadly focuses too much on the feedback from the already-clued-in people. That way, we've created a separate reality in which we thrive - but only until we encounter that other reality. The dreaded user who just don't get it!
Stop the brainwash
Were you around in the early days of DOS, Apple II+, Apple IIe, the 1984 era, etc? Steve Jobs did more than anybody to bring computing usability to the masses. For people who stubbornly commit to the "but ALL shall use the CLI", they'll never get it, and I realize that. For those who aren't stuck in some ivory tower, it really was ground breaking.
It's embarrassing to those of us with a brain.
Not really. Putting a friendly face on a heretofore esoteric and impenetrable tool so that people could start to get past the interface and look at the potential was huge. He didn't do it by himself, but he leverage existing work and popularized it. That was the key to his fame.
There's a reason why SO many people equate MP3 player with iPods. Granted, there are people who will buy shiny more expensive stuff just because...but Apple goes way beyond that.
(Except iTunes. iTunes is horrible, and in no way represents a shining piece of usability.)
I'm glad to see this go from flamebait to insightful. I agree with most of what was said here. Presentation, can be as important as functionality, as engineers we sometimes forget that. People like Jobs has made computers a LOT easier for users to use. I believe that the thing he did best was make computer become transparent and the task at hand be most important. Yes apples turn on and just work. and that is a very very good thing.
yeah FOSS would be better off without richard making embarrassing statements when we mourn for Steve Jobs.
Two methods:
1a. open mobile browser
1b. surf to pr0n page
Well, have fun watching internet porn without flash. Most porn sites don't use html5 video tags. It works on other smartphone OSs, so everything else but surfing and instant viewing is an unacceptable workaround. As an apple fan, you should despise workarounds.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
> Err... doesn't OSX contain fairly substantial amounts of FLOSS,
If Apple were about nothing but MacOS, then you would have a point.
However, MacOS is now the minority part of Apple's business.
The problem that people have with RMS is that he points out all of the things that people would like to ingore for the sake of expediency. People don't like being exposed as foolish. People don't appreciate enlightenment. People can't handle being confronted with the things they try to hide from themselves.
Those that try to tell others how they are harming themselves tend to get set out in the desert sun.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I guess it's "Importing into iTunes", meaning it's unacceptable to use such crude workarounds while all the cool kids just browse to motherless.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Dear Sir, I am not sure you have understood the point behind RMS' argument. Over the years, Jobs went from being the rebel against the big brother to become to new big brother with sugar coating and lot of fluff. Many people like those fluff and I also see that his designs also had value for a vast majority of them, people who like things to work. But to me the point is simple, I like to do things my way, just as he wanted to do, I want my freedom. His clout and person changed a lot a people into voluntarily giving away that freedom and accepting his view as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. >The fact is, apart from the a few geeks, people in the real world really don't care about his views or what he is trying to promote. I don't care if if anybody cares or not, but that doesn't take away his right to be part of the world and have his freedom.
Exactly. It's the old power vs freedom problem. Pursuing absolute freedom is stupid: when you increase someone's freedom at the expense of the freedom of someone else, you are not increasing freedom globally.
The freedom to harm others (physically or, in Stallman's view, by depriving them of the right to change the software they use) is better called "power", and that is not desirable in itself.
Ok. So now fanboys are Steve's illegitmate children.
That's a great rhetorical corner you've painted yourself into there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Apple can do whatever they want with their commercial store. But I wish Jobs never thought of the concept of walled garden applied to computing. Walled gardens are harmful and people should not line up to get confined into them. If Jobs had stopped innovating when he got windows and mouses on the screens and desks of everybody (even if much of it was because he scared MS so much they had to copy what he got from Xerox) I would say he made a big contribution to humankind. He also basically invented the modern smartphone, so he was twice as great as many other famous inventors. But the innovation of the walled garden ruined it all. No computer scientist or engineer or programmer should welcome a cage being put around his/her favorite tool.
Apple is a company with a fanbase, not a person. The death of one man won't change the way they do business, nor dissolve the crowd of zealots.
That said, someone had say something against the annoying personal cult of him. What happened in the news was completely blown out of proportion. He was not the most important person in technology, and was not an innovator. He was a businessman and a designer, who got most of his "innovative" ideas from the other Steve at Apple.
Edison is not a bad comparison either. You just have to understand that Edison wasn't what Americans pretend him to be either.
Tomorrow's bullshit history is being written right here and now.
100 years from now geeks will be arguing about Jobs and Gates just like they argue about Edison and Tesla now.
The masses will believe the nonsense. A little depressing really...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Stallman was just voicing his long and honestly held beliefs that a free and open software environment is a major benefit to society, and that closed systems such as promulgated by Jobs is not in people's best interests, but is only in the best interest of those who own the system - Jobs/Apple in this case. Yes, Jobs was a brilliant visionary and executor of his vision, but that vision was to limit people's choices to those he approved of. If our government were to do that (oops, they must have read his book) we would be up in arms...
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
There are actually tons of porn sites that work with iPhone, and all the usual webmaster scripts support it. If you search for mobile porn and go to such site, it will give iPhone version of the site with HTML5 video.
This article did not need attention from /. ; It is very unfortunate to read how emotion-driven the comments are, here and there. Not to mention the anti-racist comment which generalizes on european english accents; Or the taliban comparison to RMS (on readwriteweb).
Talk about the mote in RMS's eye! (Or Job's for that matter.)
It's a shame everyone posts there with their guts instead of their brains, and quite the shame on /. !
Choice will always exist. Most people CHOOSE not to use open source products. So respect that choice and move on with your life.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
lkamlkasc
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
I don't believe Stallman would dispute your freedom to make that choice.
He would just regret that you have done so.
He would also contend that most people sleepwalk into that choice without knowing the ins and outs of the factors.
This is something I've been thinking about lately with the iTuned movie rentals versus the "free" with advertising internet model. If people actually pay for something, the producer has an incentive to actually produce something people would want to watch. Moreover, there is still incentive to produce quality material for niche markets because you can charge more and make up for having fewer viewers. Not to mention, it's a simpler model so less of that money gets lost in the overhead.
On the other hand, having advertisers means only shows that a large number of people want to see can find the money to do a quality job. And not only that, but only shows that advertisers will want associated with their products will get produced.
I can't see any wide open desert out here.
I think your comment is a little dated. I didn't have any trouble the last time I tried, anyway.
I'm not exactly fan of Apple, but Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
So that's why Stallman quoted somebody to say "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."?
English. Do you speak it? Obviously not.
So I should say your statements are the one without merits.
You might as well admit you did not RTFA.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Were you around in the early days of DOS, Apple II+, Apple IIe, the 1984 era, etc? Steve Jobs did more than anybody to bring computing usability to the masses.
Yes I was, but that Steve Jobs, and the Steve Job's we've been seeing over the past 10 years or so are so different it's like they're not the same person. I have a feeling Young Steve Jobs would not have cared much for Old Steve Jobs. Young Steve Jobs would have been jailbreaking iPhones, Old Steve Jobs would have called him a thief and tried to destroy him.
Okay, I'm not upset he's gone in the least, but he did spurn a massive change in mobile computing.
We had nice phone hardware for years before the iPhone came out, but the OSes sucked. The features were there, but they weren't anywhere near as nice to use as on current phones.
The first iPhone actually sucked on both hardware and software features (I don't think you could even send SMS messages?), but it used the first OS ever that actually had a good touch interface. All other interfaces before that you really needed a stylus to use effectively (well, I used the tip of my nail somewhat successfully on my Windows Mobile devices, but it wasn't anywhere near as nice as using a modern capacitive screen with large buttons).
I was very thankful that the iPhone came out, even though I never had a desire to own one. It forced the telephone industry to stop being so lazy.
which is totally what she said
It's a bad idea for a number of reasons. Here are a few:
The purchasing side has historically tended to head straight into abusive behavior.
The purchasing side has no way of guaranteeing they remain liquid and able to provide for your long term care after you are no longer able to work.
People selling themselves rarely have the leverage to ensure they get a fair deal, and typically have the least leverage they will ever have at the time of sale (this is the fundamental problem with most of libertarian theory, btw).
People selling themselves rarely have the education to compute a fair $SOMESUM, and historically buyers have tended to grossly underpay.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Problem is... Stallman isn't bad with speech if you listen to his whole speeches. But he says what he think, so it's easy to find pseudo controversial out of context quote. Plus it seems lots of people find it offensive just because he refuses to "round the angles".
I guess if your going to advertise freedom, it make sense if your spoke person feel free to speak without censuring himself.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
Most people want function. That seems to require a "walled garden." Considering these people won't be developing their own apps, do we worry about freedom in that context? It's like demanding that Burger King make you a filet mignon. For convenience, we trade off a lot of flexibility.
Why do people think it's unacceptable? Why do you care what others do when it doesn't affect you at all?
Free Martian Whores!
That is interesting. In 100 years surely some older versions of GPLed software will be in the public domain?
which is totally what she said
He was careful not to celebrate death. Steve Jobs was a real human, and we should care about our fellow human beings, considering every death with sadness. However, Steve Jobs was not a great man, and the effects of him and the company he co-founded on the computer industry have not generally been positive.
As in Portal 2, we may not want him dead, but we can be happy he's not part of the computer industry anymore, and regret that he ever had as much influence as he did.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
OSX is built on a BSD variant, and to my best knowledge Apple did not violate the license terms. But they were not all that eager to contribute to the further develoment of BSD. Apple offered some of its OSX code for download, but never all of it. And the available part dwindled over the years.
For instance, several years ago when Linux drivers for ATI were in a deplorable state, Apple was offering the ATI 9600 series and obviously had OS X drivers for them. Out of curiosity, I looked at the Apple website if those drivers were available as Open Source. Might have been worthwhile to port them over - but I found nothing.
Behavior like that is the reason the GPL exists. Some people will just leech but not share, unless you add a bit of pressure ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Maybe we would be where we are now.
We would certainly have the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell, and we certainly have powered flight without the Wright brothers, and I could go on.
Apple did not invent: the personal computer, the gui, the online music store, the portable mp3 player, the smart phone, or tablet computing. Oh sure, Apple made contributions, but can we definitively say that only Apple could have made those contributions? I don't think so.
free food foundation and the free house foundation
Yeah... Those don't exist anywhere... It's like free knowledge through libraries or something! Communist pigs!
come on, Jobs wasn't the nicest guy, he wasn't the best programmer, he wasn't someone who was known for his charities, (I know he had some charities, but they were few), he wasnt an innovator. For me he was a really good businessman, nothing else. He just knew who to get associated with, like what he did with Steve Wozniak. As a person he didn't seem like nice guy. After some point when you start accumulating the amount of money he had it doesnt seem really ethic. One person having so much when others have so little. He (and Apple) sue everyone they could for patents or copyrights for everything that resembled an ipod, iphone, or had an "I" on front of their name , stopping innovation. From my point of view, the way Apple stays ahead of everyone because they basically control the chip market and distributors, and not because they come up with new Ideas that no one thought of before. I never read anything that Jobs said that "opened my eyes" or thought what incredible guy he was. ( and i spend most of my time on the internets ) I read a lot of bullshit over the Internet, FB, an other places about Steve Jobs, and incredible person that pass away. It seems like people are more interested in idolizing people that make money.
No such corporation. Apple dropped "Computer" from its name years ago.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Actually, Apple has no problem accepting GPL software either on the iOS App Store or the MacOS X App Store. However, the VLC port for the iPhone was removed by Apple, because one of the copyright holder threatened to sue Apple.
The store terms are quite clear: If any software provides its own license (like the GPL license), then the customer receives it with that license. Apple _also_ requires that any customer has the right to the minimum license terms provided by Apple, like installing the same software on all Macs you own for private use. And a slight problem is that on the App Store, payment is _for the license_, not for the software, and since GPL doesn't allow charging _for the license_, GPL licensed software on the App Store must be free (as in beer).
And Apple fanboys are his children?
but now that he's gone people are actually comparing him to Edison or Tesla in their grief. It's embarrassing to those of us with a brain.
Why? Pure technology is never everything. Making good user interfaces and good usability takes intelligence and knowledge. This is the same kind of elitist "what I do is much more harder and requires more intelligence than what others do" bullshit. It's on the edge of narcissism.
Your product or technology might be hundreds of times better than the competitors, but it still needs to have good usability and all the other things. This is the same thing about marketing - even if your product is in every way superior to others, it doesn't help if no one knows about it.
These are the two things geeks seem to ignore and just act like they're better than anyone else.
>You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
Oh, man, I thought I had heard it all from Apple fanbois, but this takes the cake.
Is Steve Jobs the Holy Father?
Not only that but for the one person for whom Steve Jobs actually was a father in the 80's, he denied he was the father, going so far as to call himself sterile in court.
Steve Jobs can fairly be described as an American hero an innovator, but don't make him out to be a saint, too.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Bad for who? The developers who make over 17x more money on the Apple app store than the Google app market (which has also pulled apps such as emulators etc.)
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/
Just maybe, people prefer Apple's approach to Google's....
There's no one today in the tech world who can easily claim he's not been affected by RMS's works. It's funny that Apple's Xcode uses FSF's GCC.
But he's a lot like super fanboys of Apple: blind about their own choice and thinking that others who don't use what they use have a problem. Calling others fool because they use Apple products is not a great way of achieving any constructive goal.
What saddens me is seeing people who think that liking one of these good things also means hating others. I'm a big fan of Apple, but I'm also a big fan of FSF, Google, and others too.
Today I spent most of time using Emacs on a MacBook Air.
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
But the deification of Jobs has begun. He will become an "iCon for the 21st Century" (even though we still have 90 more years to go and something just might happen to eclipse his contribution). People will forget that he was difficult to work for and not a particularly pleasant person to be around. They'll forget that he didn't invent the things that he became known for (the mouse, MP3 players, smart phones, etc.). Forget the bad; embellish the good.
Of course, there are the fanbois who talk about Jobs death just because it's "the thing" to do. Then there seems to be a large percentage of the population that enjoy the collective public grief experience: they have no real relationship to the deceased, but they leave flowers and pictures and hold vigils and weep and wail. Then there are those that see this as an opportunity to become "part" of something bigger that they will ever be. And then there are those, like Stallman, that see it as an opportunity to advance their own agenda.
Steve Jobs had good business and design sense, had success with a particular business model that had failed for many others (including Tandy, Yahoo and AOL) and led a creative team to achieve something notable. But he offered little, if anything, that was truly original. Even the keynote phrase of his famous Stanford speech was borrowed (with attribution from the Whole Earth Catalog).
Gave us "Better Stuff"? Certainly, but nothing new there. Nothing original to see. Move along citizen. Move along.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Some of us tried the freedom and realized it got us no where.
I was a unix enthusiast for 20 years. I set up a BSD box on a 486 and then later a linux one. I still run a business off of 4 linux boxes I had colocated somewhere, now they are emulated in the cloud...probably everywhere. At the time, it gave me all the tools I wanted...20 years later...those same tools are pretty much exactly where they were when I started.
I was a FOSS enthusiast for years. I got sick of dealing with the personalities when I'd make a package simpler to use, I'd get shit on for doing so...my background is in psychology, and its not hard to pare these things down to something that the average person can use -- while still giving the same power to the nerds. I got kicked out of one project for making a wrapper app that allowed non-nerds to use it. I regularly released software as public domain -- because I felt the freedom of the person with the software should be more important that telling them what they needed to do with it after it was out of my hands. I got crapped on by several people in the community when I did this...one of my projects ended up forking with people acting like I was an asshole -- and I fully agreed with them forking it. It wasn't my project any more, so they could do what they wanted...however, I was still treated like crap by these people that could only see past their own zealotry.
All in all, the Stallman view of freedom is slavery IMHO. I can't stand his perspective. It is too absolute and demanding.
As for Apple, I don't really like the walled garden idea...but when I see whats on the other side of the walled garden, I don't complain too much. I have jailbroken my apps, only to find that the jailbroken apps that were supposed to be currated by others are completely shitty, they 'leak' info to servers oversea, they waste battery, and screw with the stability of the system...there are two jailbroken apps I use and have paid for...one I know does shitty things, but I use it because it is useful for me. The other? Makes life simpler and gets around some of the things the phone company thinks I should pay for. Maybe I should...
Either way, the Apple way seems to be far better than the alternatives -- even if I disagree with a lot of this in principle.
Most people aren't aware that they're making a choice.
Many people wish their computers would work in trivially different ways (such that a coder with access to the source would hack it in for a $5 tip) but can't conceive of a software ecosystem in which 'take it or leave it' isn't the model.
Steve Jobs and Richard Stallman are not diametric opposites. Both visionaries have inspired and promoted a lot of individual freedom and creativity, but both leaders have very strong ideas about the environment and ecosystem in which those freedoms should be expressed. Both men do not fully trust the communities that they have created and want to retain control by imposing various restrictions in the name of preserving and protecting freedom. Neither trusts "the market" and believes that consumers will act in their own, best, long-term interest. They both have been very successful, in their own way, leveraging that theme. The animosity stems from not wanting to admit how similar they are in their approach.
RMS is allowed to be sobering about his point of view.
I think RMS is wrong. I think that Steve didn't restrict people's freedom. You're still free to buy Android, winmo, meego, etc. Other than freedom and openness, I don't see a compelling reason.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The issues might not be as dire or important, but that doesn't mean that the situation doesn't scale - otherwise good ideas and morals only become a matter of severity.
Punching a someone in the face isn't nearly on the same scale as beating an entire village to death - the events aren't even on the same scale. That doesn't mean that the same principles don't make both wrong though.
Realistically, freedom is about the a balanced view that everyone be as free as possible. Freedom - as weird as it sounds - REQUIRES that limits be placed on people. Freedom for one man to live means that another must have his "freedom" to murder removed. Freedom for people to go where they wish requires that you remove the "freedom" of others to stop them.
Too many tend to confuse Freedom with Anarchy. Freedom needs laws to maintain it, and those laws are by definition limitations. That fact holds true whether you're discussing genocide or software.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
except you totally missed the point. The point the OP made was you cannot view porn with iPhone apps Now explain exactly how do you do that?
Yes the GPLv3 closed loopholes you could use to completely go against the spirit of the GPLv2 and lock down open source software. OH NOES!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Great. The wold would greatly benefit from non IP encumbered blueprints, technical specifications, publications of farming practices and food industry knowledge.
Especially true since blueprints are for the most part wrapped up in iron clad license agreements, technical specifications are usually paywalled by orgs like the ASME, complex publications on farming practices through academic paywalls, and food industry knowledge by trade secrets.
What, you thought people openly talk about such things like they do about software at places like freenode on IRC, or through public repositories like sourceforge?
Rest assured that if they did, those respective industries and players would amass an army of lawyers and lobbyists to crush not only the infrastructure of such sharing, but also the sharers themselves, and would whine to government about all the jobs that would be "lost" due to the loss of their slice of the IP pie.
Oh wait, you were just being a facetious troll weren't you? You do realize that the gpl does more for your freedom than you could ever imagine, right?
All visionaries are arseholes. It's in the job description.
Doesn't mean they have to be a dick though.
Too soon.
Find a more accurately delineated group than "americans" to describe people who think Edison was a visionary inventor. Most technically literate americans I know are aware of exactly what Edison was.
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Does Apple not add any restrictions on what you can do with apps you buy from the App Store? Yes, they absolutely do.
The GPL doesn't allow you to add any restrictions past what it specifies, so it's fairly clear that you can't distribute GPL'd binaries on the App Store. See http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2010-November/077486.html for the FSF's official position. It does not matter if you charge or not, there are conflicts in the ToS even for free apps. For example, "(i) You may download and sync a Product for personal, noncommercial use on any device You own or control." Again, the GPL doesn't allow further restrictions to be placed, and that is a pretty big restriction. Ergo, you have to either ignore the GPL (which is fine if you wrote all of the GPL'd code), or you can't distribute the app.
I wish people didn't eat at McDonald's, or drink Starbucks coffee, but I prefer to live in a world where choices that seem suboptimal to me are possible for other people to make.
Mainly because I know the choice police would eventually get around to taking away something I like.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
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Stallman's comments remind me of fundamentalist religious zealots' view on other people's beliefs, i.e. that people with other views than themselves are evil.
Seriously, is there not a chance that computing has room for OpenSource AND proprietary, and that both a buttoned down approach and an open approach have their merits?
I don't see open source tools as being particularly nice to use in general, and I don't see Apple products as being a hacker's paradise. Apple and Microsoft products generally tend to support my work and play much better, yet I also use open source stuff
Jobs could get away with being a bit of an asshole sometimes because he was really good at his job. Stallman seems just to be an asshole who used to do pretty clever and good stuff but has become embittered that his work hasn't taken off in the way that Jobs' work did. Stallman, just put your money where your mouth is and make open source stuff that can compete on quality, because it is obvious that only competing on price (even at a zero price point) isn't enough. And please don't do any more to mark the open source community as a bunch of religious zealots who believe that open=good and proprietary=evil. That only makes open source into a cult which gets shunned by the rest of the computing world.
So he is pro-slavery?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
FWIW, I own a MacBook Air and an iPhone 3GS.
People who view Apple as an enabler of freedom are those who think the same thing of their EZpass for road tolls. Someday, they will see their "internal passport" as an enabler of travel.
The fact is, that the "1984" campaign was a propaganda ruse. Jobs and Hertzfeld and crew were already working with DARPA and the spooks.
Read all of the following - including the links - and understand that it is no exaggeration to understand that with the introduction of "Siri", George Orwell's "Telescreen" is on the verge of reality - in your pocket.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=25289
http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/shadowy-government-project-spins-off-siri-to-help-direct-your-affairs/
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do.
Conversely to what you might think that is pretty much part of the definition of what "freedom" means since Kant wrote about it. Restricting the freedom of some persons to guarantee the freedom of other persons (without prejudices or inequality in front of the law) is also the cornerstone of all modern democratic societies.
Sorry, but it looks as if RMS knows a lot more about freedom than you. (Oh, and before you ask: Yes, I do have a Ph.D. in philosophy.)
Regarding the second part of your post, RMS is not a FOSS fanatic. In fact, he's not a fanatic at all. Nobody forces anyone to use FOSS products and everybody has the right and the freedom to put his code under GPL. If you don't like the GPL, don't apply it.
RMS is just hated by many people for stating the truth (or, at least pretty convincing arguments) without being diplomatic about it -- he's very similar to Socrates in that respect (and, funny enough, also in physical aspects, hehehe). People that like to suppress and dominate other people hate such persons for obvious reasons. (If RMS would be as wrong as they claim, nobody would care about what he says...)
Please illuminate us and tell us why Stallman's statement was absurd.
I like Free Software. I even call it that because I understand and appreciate the "moral" position they take. I see the GPL as a way to protect free exchange of ideas from the greedy hands of corportations trying to make a buck off our hard work. I've put plenty of my own work under the GPL.
But I don't think Stallman has thought two minutes of his life about product usability. People like me buy Macs and accept the compromise to software freedom because we're tired of growing gray hairs fighting bad Free Software.
I really enjoy computer science, but damnit, I hate computers. And by that, I mean personal computers as they are programmed for us to use. I lose way too much of my time trying to get the damn things to work and do stuff that in the 21st century should be completely automatic and self-correcting. More than any other company, Apple makes usability a priority, so at the end of the day, Macs make me feel a little less worn out.
It's not like that in general at all. The difference between a tool that works and a tool that works easily for children that have never seen it before it a lot of hard and boring work that requires a lot of dedication or a paycheck. Typically it's done by very different people which is why in highly polished commercial software there are sometimes serious disconnections between the underlying tool and it's interface, or a nice interface to a very poor tool.
Then of course there are some things where text or some other machine accessable method is the best interface instead of pretty pictures to point at. It's hard to script mouse movements and GUI button presses for anything you want to run many times, then there's the concept of piping input from one little program to the next. In such situations it would be nice to have a secondary GUI but that is extra work and it may be impractical anyway (eg. far too many options to present clearly without a cluttered and confusing GUI). With piping you'd end up with something like LabView which would be best avoided.
As for your last comment, RMS is not a "Linux geek." He has his own projects and goals which are separate from linux even if he hinted at ownership with the LiGnuX and gnu/linux sillyness. He was involved with various tools used with linux and drafted the licence linux uses but not a single line of the kernel.
If there was a neighboring country comparable to the US right now with an unlimited dictatorship for government, and the dictator was (currently) reasonably benevolent, and ran the nation efficiently and prosperously, and it had an open immigration policy, would you care to guess how many people would move there to get away from what we have that passes fo a democratic system right now, in spite of the danger that the dictator would die and be replaced by an evil despot?
I would guess it would be tens of millions, maybe more.
He would no doubt describe my choosing an Apple product over...well I can't think of any real FOSS smartphones that exist...as sleepwalking. That is a tenent of people like Stallman, they always think they know what I need better than I do.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
If you dislike what is available in Apple's store or you have some philosophical disagreement with the way they do things, you are free to buy some other device.
And therein lies the rub. So Joe Public goes and buys a car, Takes it to the gas station to fill up and discovers that the pump at the gas station does not fit his car so he has to go to the dealer to fill up. Well he can just purchase another car right?. In the mean time people are running out to purchase these fancy new cars in droves, lines around the dealership and all. This fancy car is getting very popular. Eventually the Apple car company controls the marketplace and sells more mobile cars than any other single manufacturer. They influence the marketplace and the price of gas goes up up up. And your recourse is "You are free to buy some other vehicle" This is ridiculous.
I have no problem with what Apple restricts from being sold in their store. The problem is locking the device to only work with Apple's store and there is no other way to get content on the device without going through Apple's store.
The things I see mindless Apple drones fighting over themselves to defend Apple for are the same things they would bitch and scream about if say car companies did that with refueling. Double standard much?
Wow you are a moron, were taking about *software* here, not human rights.
you are a moron if you don't understand analogy
Since Android has more free and ad-supported apps and fewer commercial developers, inevitably the total revenue for the entire market is going to be lower. To look at which platform is more profitable for developers, you need to look at actual profit figures for individual developers. Some developers now make more money on Android than on iOS.
I mean, it's like saying that the Windows software market is 100x bigger than the Mac software market, therefore Windows developers must make 100x more profit than Mac developers. It just doesn't follow.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Once again, Stallman says something controversial, dissenting and even offensive in staunch defense of his personal world view. How dare he do just the sort of thing that Jobs was known to do!
Stallman and Jobs are/were opposing sides of the same coin. Polar opposites in view of all things computing but both are viewed as mavericks who have been passionate and driven and I would argue they both had an equal degree of impact on the world's computing technology.
Cut the guy some slack. You don't have to like the guy but his ideas and works are the foundation of free software. I don't think we would grow as a society without some tolerance for people who speak their mind with little restraint. Can you imagine where we would be without the contributions of Jobs, Stallman, Torvalds, de Raadt and so many others who have offended or stirred controversy? Passion cannot come from those who strive to be inoffensive.
Ignorance is not, and has never been a valid point of view. Being wrong is not a character flaw. However, any culture where being wrong is not only OK, but where there is a taboo about informing your interlocutors for fear that they might feel that they were wrong is going down the crapper pretty fast (see anti-intellectualism, science-religion "debates", etc.).
If you think that your computer is an appliance, you are wrong, and that is all there is to it. Your computer can, amongst the infinite number of things it can do, also work as an applicance. Thinking that it is the only state of things is simply not correct. Thinking it good that it be an appliance while simultaneously marveling at the limitless number of "apps" is not wrong, however, it is stupid [1].
To use the car analogy: choosing opensource vs the walled garden is not like choosing a DIY kit vs a car from the salesman. It is more akin to believing that a car cannot ever be repaired, because it is a magical self-contained entity vs realising that oil needs to be changed, and that you could do it yourself. Could, not should. If you think your car is a magical device, and repairmen are magicians from another realm of existance, you are wrong.
[1] I" like that my computer has a well-defined set of functions" (an appliance). "Oh, look, it can also do that, and that, and that" (obviously, anything can be done, ie, not an appliance). You hold that both A and non-A are simultaneously true: you are stupid.
Freedom means that your own evaluation of the situation should be the only factor for your decision.
This means four things:
a) You can get all relevant information to evaluate the situation.
b) You can get all relevant education to work with that information.
c) You get reasonable time to form your opinion.
d) You are not pressured to change the decision into one you consider wrong.
All freedoms stem from this axiom, and all tyrannies stem from the violation of this axiom.
When working for wages, in theory, you have the freedom to quit one job and pursue another, freedom from emotional or physical abuse from your employer (at the very least by exercising your right to quit), and you can negotiate for better treatment - fewer work hours, better pay, better benefits, nicer working environment. You cannot do any of those things as a slave.
There's no one today in the tech world who can easily claim he's not been affected by RMS's works. It's funny that Apple's Xcode uses FSF's GCC.
Used to use. It's still installed for people who don't want to change, but the default compiler is clang. And thanks heavens for that.
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Yes, because protecting the devices from malware and bad apps...
Or apps that point out the exploitative basis from which all cell phones are produced.
Or comic adaptations of James Joyce's Ulysses because of some extremely minor incidental nudity.
But don't worry, there are still plenty of Bible apps chock full of rape, sodomy, incest, murder...
I don't use any Apple products for the same reasons Stallman mentioned in his tiny little opinion post on his personal blog. The fact that some want to cast out the founder of the "free software movement", for having an expression of free speech, really makes me laugh. Good luck getting them to fire him for practicing free speech.
Extremists on either side, be they freedom/proprietary, left/right politics, etc always fail to realize that the middle ground is usually best.
Just yesterday /. had the story about a WIPO spokesman saying the web would've been better if it had been patented and licensed. Utter bullshit, we all know it exploded in use *because* it wasn't patented or licensed, but okay the shill is paid to say it.
Stallman at least is pure in his convictions, but he, like the IP special interest groups, fails to realize the world cannot work in the respective extremes that they desire.
Software choices don't . . . enslave people.
I don't agree. I know many people who don't feel they have any choice in office software - it's Microsoft Office. There is no alternative, and not buying it isn't an option for them. The business world is being held captive by Microsoft, and has developed a form of Stockholm Syndrome. The wikipedia article on vendor lock-in has a whole section dedicated to well-known players in the software industry and their efforts to prevent their customers from moving to another vendor.
As another example of software slavery, have you ever seen a large company transition from SAP to CA or vice versa? The difficulty and cost of doing so are prohibitive, so many stay with what they have despite huge known problems. For ERP systems just bringing forward your customizations from one major release to another is painful enough to require months for a dedicated IT crew to complete, and as a result I've seen companies adjust their business practices to the software to avoid that problem in the future. That employee time isn't producing anything that will give the company a return on investment, it's just a sunk cost. And no, the software vendor isn't going to send out an associate to help with the transition, they'll instead sell you training on how to do it yourself. From my perspective, the time I spent on version transitions for Computer Associates software weren't spent working for my employer, I was working for CA.
Captive, forced to work for others instead of yourself, and the only way out is difficult, dangerous, and painful? Sounds like slavery to me.
Of course [Stallman] already has the financial resources that enable him to totally ignore how his theories effect [sic] those actually working for a living.
Are you suggesting that the Free Software movement is putting programmers out of work? Like, right now? Or is it somehow stopping people from using Microsoft Office or SAP's ERP software? On the contrary, I'm pretty sure RMS is aware of the impact he's having and I agree with him that it's beneficial, not harmful. The LibreOffice suite is giving people options other than paying ridiculous prices for tools they need for their jobs. For those people (who work for a living) it's a benefit, not a problem. For others that doesn't work for, there's still Microsoft; no programmers have been fired in Redmond because too many people are using Free Software.
And if Stallman's fantasy world ever does come about and Microsoft has to close its doors, the reason will be because the world will be full of useful, freely available tools for doing useful work. There will still be programmers being paid, but it'll be by people who need new tools or improvements to existing tools. And once the tools are built they won't need to be imitated elsewhere, the work once done will benefit everyone. Even if this world requires fewer programmers, they'll be all working on new projects or improvements rather than wasting their time imitating someone else's work. That sounds more like actually working to me.
tl;dr: Asshole or not, RMS has a point about proprietary software enslaving you, and I'd rather live in the world he's trying to build than the ones Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spent their lives building.
P.S. - There's a rant to be made here about how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's goal "to help all people lead healthy, productive lives" apparently only applies to poor Africans, not Microsoft competitors, but I'll leave that for another post.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
The cult of jobs needs to think and act for themselves, and stop deifying the dead.
Steve was a human being, with human interests. Creating a walled garden appealed to both his own financial interests, and the interests of consumers for simpler (eg, "easier to use") devices.
I don't need to point out the deleterious effects of that compromise, as others have already done a fantastic job of pointing that out. What I will point out instead is that jobs's "vision" for the future of mobile and desktop devices is a sterile, gleaming desert, with only one kind of sand, and only approved forms of cactus.
The metaphorical counterpart in foss is not a lush garden. It is instead a disordered plot of ground covered in every species of plant, both flower and weed, that can be imagined, sprouting up without rhyme or reason other than the emergent order created by group collaboration, and spreading over the countryside.
Each has some desirable qualities:
The desert has an austere stillness and regularity to it, and you don't have to worry so much about stickers. It gleams in the setting sun of the evening, and sparkles during the day.
The feral patch of vegetation clawing all over the countryside has its own perks. You can look, look again, and each place you look you will find something unique and special. Wildflowers mix with cockleburrs. Green grass and stickers. Roses, cactus, lillies and orchids. All of the good, and all of the bad vying with each other in the eternal struggles of life.
Given the choice, I would choose the weed patch. It has everything you could ask for, and only requires you to pay attention to where you step.
I don't appreciate Steve's use of herbacide, transforming my patch of weeds into sterile desert, regardless of the utility and simplicity it offers. I don't like that vision.
Even the stickers aren't wholly ugly, or without merit or use. You simply have to understand them to see it.
For those that don't want to watch where they put their feet, ow what plants they grasp, the desert is good. For those the desire diveristy and don't mind a few prickles for their freedoms, the weed patch is king.
Steve's sin was to loudly and boustroisly start fumigating the weeds, and insisting it was better. Like all visions held by visionary men, it is faulted.
Steve was a man, not a god, nor a titan.
He is dead now. Move on.
Hello, Blue boxes.
You are willing to praise a thief? You're a fucking fool.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
People should learn about freedom of speech and Stallman should accept the diversity of the world (the computing world included).
It is true that RMS serves an important role as a vocal advocate. The trouble is that he has little political or social grace. For example, his description of Steve Jobs - "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom".
If you're trying to convince people, you need to avoid out-right insulting them and mocking them. The kind of sentiment expressed above can be loved by people of a similar outlook, but for anyone else, the harsh, mightier-than-thou attitude is a huge turnoff.
The trouble isn't his message, it is how he tries to deliver it. For most people, who don't have a technical background, he just comes across as a crazy, ranting lunatic, which probably hurts his cause more than it helps.
To make linux really take off, there needs to be someone with the charisma and vision of Steve Jobs, with the philosophical ideals of Stallman. Now *that* would be great.
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Your assertion that Stallman has always hated capitalism is completely false: Stallman sold copies of his Emacs editor on disc for $150. His reasoning for this price is that it's Free as in Speech, not free as in "free beer".
Also, your comparison of Steve Jobs to Henry Ford is way off the mark. Ford never told anybody who bought one of his products that they were not free to take it apart to see how it worked.
Virtucon, perhaps someday you'll realize that walled gardens breed mediocrity, such as your own.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Really? Where have you been, under a rock? Then there is the weird hatred for Flash which has caused thousands of sites to have to build IOS specific versions, then those of us in the streaming video world also had to build specific streaming solutions just for IOS devices when Android, Windows, and Linux devices can all use the same streams.
Trying to say developers make more money in one walled garden versus another doesn't really counter the argument presented that walled-gardens are bad ideas anyway. Then there is the reality that only a few developers make a lot of money from the app store and that's provided they don't violate secret app approval rules that have shown to be rather arbitrary.
I'll also note that both I and the GP I was referring to were talking about the market as a whole and not Apple or the developers that actually make money selling their apps.
Additionally, Google's App market only pulls apps which either violate copyright or are malicious, you will be hard pressed to use that as an argument that Google is equally as anticompetitive as Apple as it's simply not true. The only thing that has protected Apple so far is that there is plenty of healthy competition otherwise they would have been found guilty of abusing their monopoly in all of the same ways as Microsoft of the 90's.
Lastly, you'll please note that no one said Apple's approach was bad for everybody, if it was it wouldn't make any money.
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But to put Steve Jobs in the same league as people like Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage seems... very wrong.
Why? You don't know any more about Turing, Lovelace or Babbage than you do about Jobs. You're engaging in the same sort of hero worship you seem to be railing against. All of them did important work on different pieces of the technology puzzle. You might be more interested in the work of Turing (which is fine) but that doesn't make him more or less worthy of admiration. Jobs couldn't do what Turing did and Turing couldn't have done what Jobs did. Most of us only have the vaguest third-person idea of what sort of people they were so we can only really judge them by their works.
Your divination skills are lacking, and so are the GP's communication skills. Why do you think it is acceptable that you are required to use iTunes to populate your iDevice, whereas all other devices on the market seem to cope just fine with just about every file manager in existence? And do you think it is acceptable that iTunes cannot be installed onto a Windows system without installing an additional networking protocol (Bonjour) that only OS/X seems to use? Do you think it is acceptable that the apple software updater (also mandatory of course) tries to sneak additional software (Safari) onto your machine without asking?
I'm probably going to get flamed for this but at the time linux started the GNU stuff was mostly just free rewrites of the tools that came with SunOS. It also wasn't the only free software available at the time. The GPL licence was impressive but with linux we can't really give RMS credit for more than inspiration about how to share the thing. Comparing hurd or emacs and linux you can see a major contrast between a tightly closed group that is very hard to enter and a more collaborative project. As shown with the attempted ownership of the name with the silly LiGnuX and gnu/linux renaming it is just reflected glory, which is pathetic really because GNU have had some major achievements of their own they should have been shouting about (eg. gcc is far more impressive now than it was).
You are outdated: The "pure ObjC" clause was dropped months ago, i.e. MonoTouch and that Adobe thing are perfectly legal: Your app just cannot download executable code for non-Apple runtimes from the net (so emulators that ship with the binaries inside are OK).
And why should Objective-C give "a prohibitively high learning curve"? It's relatively straightforward as C-family languages go, as a Java dev I would have far more problems with e.g. modifying an open-source C++ program, but I don't go around blaming the language for it.
From slavery to sexism exercising traditions unquestioningly has no justification. Appeal to tradition is a logical fallacy as well.
If people want to attack you because you are breaking their silly traditions, forget them- they are not acting rationally!
I hate it when people only speak well of the dead, even when they are bastards. Its not as if you are protesting against civil rights at funerals in the face of the people trying to morn... Being unkind to those who feel bad is a different matter. People who are touchy shouldn't be digging around the internet to find people they do not know saying things they do not like and condemning them for allowing somebody to hunt for it... or to shame them for disregarding their silly beliefs.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
RMS will never contribute anything of anywhere near as much value to society as Apple has.
He's a zealot and is willing to compromise any level of technological progress for his personal ideals.
Seriously, if RMS had his way, we'll all still be running 80 column green screens with EMACS, no real security, no real hardware driver support for anything more complex than a serial TTY, etc.
News flash, old hippy: people want to use their computers, etc to do tasks. Not for the sake of using/programming the device. The average joe is WILLING TO PAY someone to make it easy to use. Apple capitalised on this idea. As has Microsoft.
The free software world hasn't even managed to get to where windows 98 was 13 years ago, either in terms of user interface, 3d hardware support, hardware plug and play, etc.
And I say this as someone who was waiting for the year of the Linux desktop since 1996. I believe a large part of this not happening is due to the GPL.
Whilst the GNU zealots in the linux camp are rejecting things such as binary drivers, DTRACE, ZFS, CLANG/LLVM, Grand Central, etc, FreeBSD and others are jumping on board.
I suspect that in the next couple of years Linux on the desktop as an idea is going to get left in the dust by everyone else while they remain squabbling over licensing issues and NIH syndrome rather than actually getting things done.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And to the world's non-nerd population, it just gives the impression that free software is for socially inept bearded types.
99.99% of the world's non-nerd population is probably entirely unaware of his existence, so he has no influence, negative or positive, upon them.
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Well, duh.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
So has anyone sent RMS an iPod for his birthday? :)
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What if I'm okay with people seeing the source, so they can audit it and make sure that it is what it says it is, and combine it with any other code they have kicking around, and even selling the result, but not of modifying it (including in too many cases "filing off" the copyright notices) ... you know, like a book?
The GPL isn't the only license out there, and it imposes more restrictions on programmers than the non-copyleft licenses (licenses where you're not obliged to distribute your source), such as BSD.
Stallman has more in common with Bill Gates than he'd care to admit. No style, a history of questionable personal hygiene, and (by requiring copyright assignment instead of just a license for 3rd-party gnu code), a "gotta own it all" mentality.
I think Edison and Westinghouse is a more appropriate comparison.
I had a DECStation 5000 for years, complete with the giant Big-Mac sized round mouse.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Who are you to say that Slashdot can't be a website for Apple fans? Or Microsoft fans? Or fans of any company whose policies you may personally disagree with? Software freedom? Or only your brand of software freedom?
or: It's the UI, stupid!
It's unfortunate that Stallman has allowed his ideology to blind him for Jobs' accomplishments. Yes, you can moan about walled gardens, but Steve Jobs made computing accessible to the masses. Without that, you can have all the openness you want, but only a small number of people will be able to enjoy it.
I remember the bad old days. Before 1984, computers were inscrutable and required lots of training to use. The Macintosh changed all that; it made it obvious that there was a better way than the 'everyone invents their own interface' hell that existed before. This, much more than the iPhone and what have you is Jobs's lasting legacy. Those who dismiss Jobs' contribution to society as eye candy are missing the point.
Maybe Stallman's sour grapes are due to the realization that Jobs' contribution is impossible in a FOSS-only world. It's been 30 years since computers became affordable to the general public. I haven't seen much in the way of user interface innovation from the FOSS world.
You need a dictator to decide on a uniform user interface, and you need a dictator to enforce that against everyone's objections.
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My apologies. As I've said, I haven't touched the iOS development platform in a while.
Please re-read my comment, and not pluck out random bits without context. I said "may be a prohibitively high learning curve for people trying to port a FLOSS program over". Yes, it's a superset of C. That being said, how easy do you really think it is to port a C++ (or $FAVORITE_LANG) program to Obj-C? Never mind the wildly different syntaxes for working with classes and objects, but the whole responder methodology is vastly different as well. And let's not forget about the lack of the C++ STL and C++ Standard Library. I'm willing to bet you'll never see "cin" or "cout" (for oversimplified examples) in Obj-C.
Obj-C isn't necessarily hard to learn on its own, but porting from anything but C (since you'd only have to add on syntax, not change things around, but it also compiles as Obj-C as well) isn't fun. I never blamed the language for this, as my context indicates.
It's essentially different on all the points I made. I really can't see how that's unclear. Having the freedom to walk away from the situation at any time negates all of the issues I posed with slavery.
Or to answer your other question, it can be claimed that the government's purpose is not to protect people from their own poor decisions, but instead to protect them from being forced into those poor decisions by their lack of power, which is what actually happens in nearly every case. The idea of the 'poor decision maker' is a strawman, which is perhaps the essential point you are missing. Yes, there are a few people who tend to poor decisions, but most of the poor decisions that you're thinking of are ones made under duress, not due to stupidity.
And furthermore, while there can be a separate debate about the rightness of government provided education, so long as government provided education is in fact the norm, the government clearly bears responsibility if they educate you so poorly you cannot make effective decisions.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
As far as your link. Google also pulled an app for allowing a third party in-app payment solution....
http://phandroid.com/2011/02/25/google-pulls-popular-voicemail-app-for-in-app-payment-violation/
They didn't have to build a "custom solution". All they had to do was stream H.264 using a standard HTML 5 video tag (like Vudu did). They chose to use an app for DRM. Hulu and Netflix also use a custom app for Android and WM.
Windows Phones also don't support Flash.
If you mean by "secret", one that is clearly spelled out when you sign the developers agreement....
So was this malicious?
http://phandroid.com/2011/02/25/google-pulls-popular-voicemail-app-for-in-app-payment-violation/
Silly me for thinking it is actually good to be able to get paid for your work.....
I'll wager that the bits of your personal rant above passed through multiple network devices and servers running GPL'd code to get to Slashdot's server. While you obviously do not like or understand RMS, he's probably contributed more function, both technically and philosophically, to the computing world than Mr. Jobs.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
No, the Apple IIc.
You know, the one where the serial clock was derived from the timing for the TV out, so the baud rates on European models were all just that little bit wrong.
Cheap bastards.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Foss is not a desert.
It is a crawling field of weeds. Big difference.
Apple's walled garden is the desert, with its insistence upon conformity, regularity, and compliance. It lacks diversity, and openly segregates. Compared to the diveristy of the wild meadow, the walled garden is barren desert.
I think you have your analogies backwards, friend.
I never understood why Apple and Google get a pass from the same Microsoft hating people who claim to give a rats ass about freedom and openness. I hope fanboyism for all platforms dies. We are all better off in a world where operating systems are viewed as commodities and companies are judged on actual merit rather than sports teams.
Is developing a closed ecosystem where all applications require central approval (Subject to arbitrary corporate value judgements) before they can execute open or free?
Is explicitly denying competing applications a market share open or free?
What about controlling the hardware? Godsake the battery is not even user replacable.
It is a false choice to have to choose between malware and a closed ecosystem. It is quite possible to create a secure fenced environment for every app.
It is impossible for a central authority to vett every application with 100% degree of certainty. If Apple can't stop all security bugs in their own software how do they intend to be able to do the same for the half million apps in its appstore? Judging by a number of revocations after approval the answer is they obviously they can't.
You mean, apart from voluntarily releasing CLANG/LLVM/libdispatch/zeroconf/darwin/objective-C/core foundation/webkit/launchd, they do nothing to contribute to open source. Absolutely nothing.
You seriously think it is in their interests to release the source to the OS X ui?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
the influence of Jobs. Beyond that if you heard a radio piece about Henry Ford inventing the car, you'd scoff. Jobs, and Ford before him, were sharp people who were able to recognize when a product could be repackaged in a way that would make them the main purveyor of that product. I'd say Ford was actually quite a bit more influential, but in both cases the things they did would have been done anyway by someone. Perhaps tablets wouldn't have become popular until 2015 and maybe cars would have taken 5 more years to get cheap and affordable, but it still would have happened. Honestly I don't put a lot of stock on the whole 'Great Man' theory of history. Individuals may well influence the details of what happens and maybe change the timing slightly, but tablets existed before Jobs, and someone would have made one like the iPad (I'd consider Amazon for instance) eventually.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
So don't you think there would be more commercial developers if Android users actually paid for stuff?
As far as the free versus paid....
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/05/distimo-june-2010/
28% of iOS apps are free versus 58% of Android apps -- which doesn't count for the 1750% difference in revenue.
Do you have statistics showing Windows users buy 1750% more software than Mac users?
The one trolling was Stallman. He was, , ""I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."
So, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, a bullet to the head that left him a vegetable, a mental degenerate disease, or even something that just left him physically too debilitated to continue to do his, job, would have been fine with Stallman. Read the entirety of what he wrote, and you'll see that there's no other interpretation.
Stallman is no longer relevant, and his latest whining just underlines that.
Steve Jobs is your dad?
Exactly how many unacknowledged kids did the guy have?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
In the case of OS X or Windows, you spend money.
In the case of Free software, you spend time.
I used to have more time than money. Now, this situation is significantly reversed. I started with Linux in 1995. I still run FreeBSD on servers that I need to face the internet. But to get things done in other situations, i use my Mac.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Yeah, that original Macintosh was such a wide open design.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
...but I have to agree with the blog linked at the end of the story: His abrasive form of Free Software evangelism has become more of a liability than an asset to the very cause he seeks to promote.
I thought Henry Ford was the best comparison, to be honest.
Ah yes, the iPhone 4s, so cheap even a Foxconn worker can afford one.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Can you please point me to somewhere that references Steve Jobs being pissed at people jail breaking their iPhone?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Jobs + Stallman have at least some history together.
wasn't Objective C, which is what all OSX is based on and uses,... wasn't that developed jointly with GNU?
Where Jobs took it.. Stallman might be a little miffed
In addition to all the other stuff
Does anyone know the real background of it?
>> Linux geeks ... are happy to see people die.
>He did not say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
He (tech4) did not say that. Effective use of ellipses there to intentionally misquote someone. He said "Now people will think of Linux geeks as those lunatics who are happy to see people die." He (tech4) KNOWS that he (Stallman) didn't say that, but it's certainly true that "people" are likely to think "... of Linux geeks as those lunatics who are happy to see people die." That's what some people will think *regardless* of what Stallman actually said.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Which is why every mac either ships with a free copy of Xcode, or is available for Free off apple's developer site? Why apple are releasing most of their new core technologies as open source?
The success of small developers getting their shit on everybody's devices via the app store would kinda disagree with your dystopian vision of the future.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Indeed. Steve Jobs used to make blue boxes to steal from the phone company. Not 'steal' in quotes, actual theft of service. Using actual long distance lines without paying for them.
A lot of people did it for fun, which is somewhat reasonable, I guess. It's one thing to hack on the phone system for fun. I can shrug at that.
But Jobs actually manufactured blue boxes and sold them to others, people less interested in 'phone hacking' and more interested in 'free long distance calls'. Well, Woz built them and Jobs packaged and sold them. That was his first 'user interface', making blue boxes usable and affordable for random non-hacker people. Probably with nice curved corners and a shuffle version that didn't allow you to pick the number to dial. ;)
I.e., he was the equivalent of a hacker selling script kiddie tools.
And, years later, Steve Jobs also sold fucking phones that people couldn't install whatever software they wanted on them. Not even something illegal, not something harmful, just people who wanted to play ScummVM games or whatever on their phone.
I don't know exactly what happened in the years between those two Steve Jobs, but I'd also be glad he was gone from Apple if I suspected he was the cause of the walled garden in iPhones. (However, I have actually no evidence this is the case, and I'm not sure why RMS thinks it is. And he was pretty much 'gone from Apple' already from what I understand.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Apple did not invent: the personal computer, the gui, the online music store, the portable mp3 player, the smart phone, or tablet computing.
No, but they turned those ideas into systems that ordinary people could use and then marketed them (add to that list: local area networking, laser printers and, indirectly, DTP). They've even managed to turn Unix into a widely used desktop operating system (something that others had been failing to do since the 1980s).
The Apple II wasn't the first microcomputer, by a long chalk, but it was certainly one of the first that you could just buy, plug in like an electrical appliance and use without owning a soldering iron and a second-hand Teletype.
The GUI was sitting in prototype limbo at Xerox PARC before Apple actually had the cojones to market the idea - and then to try again when the first attempt failed.
MP3 players were happening without Apple, but the record companies were too busy suing Napster into the stone age to think of setting up a legal music store, especially one with prices that threatened CD sales.
Did you ever try using a pre-iPhone smartphone? They were horrible! I had a Windows Mobile phone and although it was theoretically pretty capable, it was as much use as a chocolate teapot because the UI sucked.
Without Apple, the industry would have probably spent several more years trying to push desktop OSs shoehorned into expensive stylus-driven "tablets" because nobody else would risk producing a tablet that couldn't run MS Office.
Invention is only one part of innovation - contrary to popular belief, if you build a better mousetrap then the world won't beat a path to your door: you need someone to invest in it and market it. Typically, you also need someone to stop the inventor from building in a can opener, digital watch, kitchen sink, email client and implementation of Eliza, and to get the bloody thing to market...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Wow. I actually own an iPhone, and I know I love it BECAUSE it has a walled garden. It prevents me from the hurdle to check every app I install for malware. I don't have the temptation to tinker, so I am less prone to brick my phone.
Of course this also applies to my wife and family and friends. I'm grateful that Apple checks all apps getting into the App Store. I AM GRATEFUL. because it is less risks for my wife to do something stupid (because she doesn't know what she's doing when it comes to computers) like installing an untrusted app from an untrusted chinese website.
Sure, some apps aren't there for little good reason. It is a tradeoff I am allowed to make. I AM ALLOWED, I AM NOT RESTRICTED.
Other friends want to develop, rootkit, and more generaly they want a computing platform, not just a phone. They go with Android.
The difference is that I RESPECT people going with Android. I respect YOUR choice. YOU don't respect the choices of others, you are the jerk in this story. So please shut up.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
After all, a smartphone uses the closed cell phone networks, and forget Android, because the Linux kernel's GPLv-only licensing is (according to the FSF) a risk.
Nope - the GNU/HURD.phone would be as big as a fridge (not counting the 60-foot antenna), because it would have to combine the abilities of a phone with the ability to act as it's own cell tower, so you can talk to the 2 others who use GNU/HURDphones. And its command interface would be EMACS.
Didn't you watch the latest keynote? Apple has 5% of the overall cellphone market. What are you talking about????
All your rant is prefectly legitimate whenever a company is in a position of monopoly. UIS law has provisions for this. Your rant is just not applicable to Apple.
Double standard my ass. Check your facts. People like iOS. Others like Android. Some like WP7. So what? Some are stupider than others? Give people some credit.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I'm guessing the people that don't understand Jobs' influence are probably recent college grads that didn't grow up in the 80s. Jobs influence doesn't just extend to iPad and iPhone made by Apple, but to pretty much every tech company and everyone that has ever used a computer since the beginning of the personal computer age.
Here's a statement that will cause your head to explode: Steve Jobs was responsible for a large percentage of the world's GDP and America's status over the last quarter century.
Would anyone use a computer today without the mouse-based GUI? Maybe the nerds, but no one else. Steve made the connection that the GUI would be the way the average person would use a computer. The inventors certainly didn't make that connection. So now Microsoft Windows exists because of Steve Jobs. Bill Gates certainly wouldn't have made it had it not been for Steve Jobs promoting the GUI concept to the public, starting with an ad on the Superbowl no less.
He got rid of instruction manuals from computers. Would anyone use computers if they had to read 500 pages of instruction manuals? The idiots back in the 80's got into pissing matches to compete over which computers had a bigger instruction manual! Stallman is one of those morons. He wanted everyone to be an expert on computers to use them, which is the opposite of good.
Meanwhile, as Jobs got rid of instruction manuals, he created Desktop Publishing. That alone puts him on the level of Johannes Gutenberg. The Xerox PARC guys certainly didn't care about it enough to find it usable.
The World Wide Web was invented on a NeXT computer that Steve Jobs made, because it had an easier development platform than other systems. Would the web exist without NeXT? Actually, would the web exist without HyperCard being promoted everywhere by Apple years before the Tim Berners Lee made the first web browser? (on a GUI?) Do you REALLY think the web would be invented without Steve Jobs? The non-GUI Gopher already existed, but no one used that.
Just the fact that we're talking alternative what-if scenarios indicate Job's success, since regardless of what-ifs, Jobs actually DID IT.
(would Facebook exist without the web? Would the Arab spring revolution have happened without that?)
Even the most pissy people about Steve Jobs actually uses his products every day. The low-power ARM CPU that all the Android fanboys love these days was designed by a company co-founded by ... you guessed it: Apple. This was to implement the Newton PDA, the overall concept which was described in detail by Steve Jobs in the early 80's.
His influence goes right up to today, with Siri for example. In fact, here's an interview with Steve Jobs from 1984, talking about Siri: http://newsweek.tumblr.com/post/11109366062/steve-jobs-basically-introduces-siri-in-1984
There is absolutely NO reason to underrate him, he really was THE guy that shaped modern society and brought about a true change in the world unlike anyone else over the last 30 years. There were plenty of technologists that brought about single point ideas, and in fact, Jobs didn't invent many of these ideas, but had such a string of success stories like him.
His actual brilliance was as a designer, the art-director type of person that took the complex tools, and simplified them, because he understood humanity, and understood artistic meaning behind an invention that often even the inventors didn't even understand. Other technologists would be dumbfounded if they were presented with a person that didn't give a crap about a higher-speed processor - they just wouldn't know what to do with that type of person that's more interested in how things look than the numbers behind it, because they think numbers are what matters. Billions more people care about how things look than numbers. This recognition allowed Jobs to reach those billions of people.
No politician, no other technologist, no other wealthy person changed global society as much as he did. (name one?)
So, really, let's end this debate. Steve Jobs won these last 30 years.
agreed, get over Jobs people.. he was a figure head nothing more.. don’t credit him for all the apps people written for the iPods like i have seen people doing in the last few weeks. That would be like saying the CEO of Post was like Steve because he said to put Two Scoops of raisins in the box.. guess what.. it wasn’t his idea.. no one credited him for it. so why credit Steve with the work his company did?
Jobs gave the world what it wanted. RMS did not. End of story.
That may be true, but there's a parallel to be made with the aphorism about politics, that every people deserve the government they chose. Just because Apple's way is more popular doesn't make it better.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
walled-gardens are bad ideas anyway.
Even my 10 year old know that you can say "I don't like it" lightly, but "it is bad" must be really weighted before proclaimed. Fact is, many people like it. So, is it really that bad?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
So don't you think there would be more commercial developers if Android users actually paid for stuff?
I've yet to see any statistics to say that they don't.
...which doesn't count for the 1750% difference in revenue.
...which is (a) obsolete data from 2010, and (b) aggregate revenue, not average revenue per paid app. Keep on ignoring those points, however.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
First of all, if Jobs was really the definition of a "greedy businessman", he would have done at least some of the following things:
1. Start selling a generic PC version of OS X, since the cost of licensing an OS is next to nothing, meaning 99% pure profit on each one after the initial costs of development are recouped.
2. Eliminate all the free workshops and classes offered in Apple retail stores, since they don't contribute anything concrete or measurable to the company's bottom line and it costs money in salaries (AND in training people to give such classes).
3. Focus on selling a low-cost machine in high volumes, for sale in major retail channels like WalMart.
Instead, I think Jobs was simply driven by a desire to see his dreams become reality. He was a very opinionated person with constant ideas on what he'd like to see happen in the personal computing world, and unlike most people, he made them into shipping products. He made it clear that he was perfectly ok with the company only having a 10% market-share in computers, too. He wasn't on a mission to outsell Microsoft or Dell, or anyone else. He simply wanted to offer people an alternative, made his way.
The international tax issue is one that needs reviewing, but it's an issue for ALL U.S.A. based companies doing business overseas. Apple themselves recently pushed for a change in U.S. tax law, because currently, you're charged a fairly high tax on all the money you earn overseas and then transfer into a U.S. based bank. For that reason, companies making money outside the U.S. wind up encouraged to SPEND it there (on such things as expanding their overseas operations), rather than take a tax hit for investing it back home in the U.S.
I think the question then is how would the person enforce the terms they negotiated when they sold themselves into slavery? If they are able to terminate the agreement if the other party doesn't uphold their side of the agreement, I don't think most people would consider that slavery, but rather a long term contract.
I think a lot of people are missing the point - nobody will remember steve jobs for Mac OSX.
They will remember him for the ipod, macbook air, mac mini, ipad series etc.
Whatever your views on their corporate behaviour, you have to admit it: mac laptops are shiny! ;)
None of this makes him a better or worse person, but all the talk about Apple's legal disputes and software derived from UNIX is missing the point. OSX is great to use, in a dull sort of way, but I much prefer debian. However, I have seen nothing as good for its size as a mac mini - even my 2008 model is better than non-apple models.
There is this http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/koolu/
With a 30% gross toll per purchase, and strict development guidelines.
Right because the Android market has become such a developers paradise in the past year.....
http://makingmoneywithandroid.com/2011/05/google-android-marketplace-vs-apple-app-store-latest-report/
"With so many free applications on the Android Market, itâ(TM)s clear that consumers are becoming more accustomed to free (potentially ad-supported) apps. As developers, this creates a bigger challenge if we want to sell apps to generate revenue"
http://wmpoweruser.com/angry-birds-developers-paid-content-just-doesnt-work-on-android/
"Paid content just doesn't work on Android"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/212772/id_softwares_john_carmack_ios_vs_android.html
RMS needs to lick on these n-ts, suck the d--k.
Natural to want the best, or is it because there are plenty of closet sociopaths amongst us who don't want to see people get things done with the minimal hassle possible?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Some of my best friends are assholes. Sometimes I think I'm one too.
Apple of today reminds me of the Microsoft of 1999, the big difference is Apple actually churns out a good product.
The level of lock-in Apple is capable of, and the hipsters that lap it up, astound me.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I am definitely not an Apple fanboy, but I was deeply moved by Jobs' death. For better or for worse, Steve Jobs made a big difference in personal computing. As I reflected on my feelings, I said to myself "the only death of a figure in the tech field that I would find more moving than Jobs would probably be RMS". I'm not the biggest fan of what RMS has said about Steve Jobs here, but similar to my non-Apple-fanboyism, that won't change in the slightest my deep respect for RMS and his contribution to FOSS.
You don't get it. They don't care. They bought it to do X, Y and Z with the option to safely and painlessly upgrade it with purchased software to do A B C D E F G, etc.
lol. this is why apple has ditched GCC (it's shite) and wrote CLANG, re-wrote KHTML and created webkit, which is the basis for basically every open source browser out there now bar Mozilla, and their OS is written in-house. If you think apple is somehow dependent on FOSS, and would be stuck without it, you're mistaken.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Taking shots at the dead guy. Stay classy Mr. Stallman.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
I have a hard time feeling bad for a guy who buys a car that no one has ever tried to conceal will work with only the dealer's pump, then gets mad that it works with only the dealer's pump.
In your analogy, why do people want to buy these cars 'in droves'?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
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How many startups would have been crushed by server OS costs without GNU/Linux as an option, even just by driving down the price of competitors?
To be fair, probably zero. Nature hates an empty "ecological niche". BSD would probably have fulfilled that role. BSD would have simply used a different compiler as well.
The technology and technological options would most likely be the same, merely the politics of open source would be different.
And free distribution to a few hundred million IOS users. What's your point? Its cheaper than shipping boxed copies.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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What seems to be the problem with Stallman (and indeed, many people on this site) is that he can't imagine anyone else having a different viewpoint from him. He thinks people are being bamboozled when they buy an iPhone or iPad or $APPLE_PRODUCT, and that they will be instantly unhappy once they find out they can't do $COOL_GEEKY_THING.
Problem is, even if most people do "sleepwalk" into it, the vast majority of them don't ever see a problem with their choice. To them, the walled garden gives them exactly what they need. For everyone who complains about needing to use iTunes to drop files onto their phone, there are ten who don't care. This goes with a lot of the things people on this site complain about.
Most people who don't know the "ins and outs of the factors" couldn't care less. If you want statistics, look at the customer satisfaction for the iPhone and Apple in general, which are both higher than any other manufacturer or product in its class.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
The point was lack of diversity, through arbitrary restrictions.
Lack of diversity = desert.
Look at your single example for a dev kit. One flavor. One color of sand.
Look outside the garden. GCC, and its associated IDEs, like Bloodshed. The borland compiler, if that is your thing. Intel's compiler, on and on.
If you want something other than white sand, (with perfectly beveled, square grains) or approved cacti, you have to pay a fee to get it in. Yoy want roses? Sorry, this is the iDesert.
The same approach will soon be in full effect on desktop devices as well.
That was the point.
You could write whatever software you wanted on it, it's more open.
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Jobs was the master of the locked-down platform, and he repeatedly got away with crap that would've had people screaming if Bill Gates had tried it.
But you're not allowed to say nasty things at a funeral! No, you're not allowed to say nasty things about Jobs ever, under any circumstances.
I never drank the Apple kool-aid. I used a Mac once, back in the mid 1980's, and after a week, it started to piss me off - it treated me as if I was a computer imbecile, that didn't need to know what was going on behind the flashy interface. To those that believe in the cult of Jobs - that Apple produces were the pinnacle of what technology could offer - I'm sorry, but they were just another computer, running just another point and drool interface.
About time someone realized that the emperor has no clothes.
I bet there were NDA agreements between ATI and Apple that prevented the release of the drivers.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Steve Jobs was a very good salesman and micromanager, who revolutionized the field of packaging gadgets, made some wise investments in 3D cinema, and did not believe in sharing his incredible wealth. He will be sorely missed by greedy Apple stockholders and his family, and apparently by a billion people who really like their iPhone and think Steve Jobs "invented" it and was a "genius" inventor like Thomas Edison because they have no idea what anything means.
...NDA Agreements...
*facepalm*
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
...and I'll say it here. Richard Stallman is an asshole who never learned proper manners.
I'm not a Mac person, wasn't ever an Apple person back in the day of the ][+, but I'm willing to let Jobs die with a bit of dignity and recognition of his good.
None of us are perfect people, and I imagine most of us would rather people didn't stand up at our funeral to say "he was a cheap jerk who stiffed me for twenty bucks."
RMS and ESR are embarrassing themselves and those who associate with them.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Take a drive down Route 99 on the iOS platforms, and we'll see the problem is not about Android or iOS or WP7. It's about mobile users not wanting to pay that much for apps and the markets making it worse.
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Free software is not about price, it's about freedom as in free speech. Nobody is saying you can't sell your work.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/10/stallman_glad_jobs_gone/
So, if there was not Steve Jobs, do you really think we had now afordable music for download?
I don't know that, and neither do you. I understand what you are trying to say, and I agree with your disagreement (no pun intended) towards "Have Blue"'s post. But that sentence of yours right there is quickly approaching a "gambler's fallacy" (not quite, but similar in nature.) I would also argue that the gates of affordable music got open with Napster (or sites like mp3.com back in the day), the ability to publish stuff on the Internet in conjunction with P2P clients, and MP3 technology in general.
It is hard to imagine affordable music downloads to exist at all haven't there being companies and *underground* groups with the technology that brings ripping, publication and sharing of musical content to anyone with an internet connection.
iTunes, and Amazon Music among others, simply capitalized on the market opportunity (with iTunes being the best implementation.)
06 October 2011 (Steve Jobs)
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.
That was a incredibly poorly thought remark. The FOSS movement is a political movement as much as a technological movement. In politics, what you say and how you say it matters. FOSS already have the drawback that is composed mostly from nerds lacking social skills, to have the most visible mouthpiece of the movement expressing himself so poorly is another unnecessary obstacle. He could have said:
"Despite his death and economical success, I still believe that the vision of Steve Jobs in computing is a menace to fundamental freedoms now an in the future. I have sympathy for his family in this moments of loss, but I can't ignore the dangerous effects of his work."
Instead, what he wrote is more akin a what a teen would post to twitter after doing a tantrum. It is simply too low for the man that wrote the GPL and "The right to read".
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
xerox actually invented both the mouse
Umm, no; that was Doug Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute.
still, it's a good way to contrast the current environment to the one back then. if something similar happened today, xerox would of initiated a multi-year lawsuit against them. with the end result being something far worse for everyone.
People who do not want their computers to be video game consoles should create their own computers. They should not expect the rest of the computer buying public to pay (either through higher prices, more bugs, lower usability or any combination of these) for features that are only useful to a minority of users.
Dang it, if the public wants video game consoles, then the public should get video game consoles. Those unhapy with that state of affairs can go to Best Buy or similar, buy the required components, install Linux on said machines and enjoy their freedoms.
See, everyone happy!
Uh-huh, so you think there is no such thing as freedom, then? There is no method by which anyone, or any group of people can get all "relevant" information. Further, the fact that your "axiom" includes such vague language means that it is not an axiom. You have to define "relevant", or there can be no freedom (supposedly).
Further, opinions aren't the same as freedoms. A gulag slave can have all the opinions they want, but it doesn't change the fact that their right to self ownership has been severely violated, and that any objective person would recognize that that person is not free.
Ok, responses on a few points.
While employers have had abuses, very few have had abuses on the level of slavery. And evidence (like Stanford Prison Study) even suggests that the level of authority granted to slaveholders actually encourages abuse. As an institution, government has a key responsibility to promote more responsible models of interaction that account for the deficiencies of human nature. You bring up child labor, which you'll note we have also banned as another area that was fraught with abuse. Rather than look at sexual harassment as evidence that at-will employment is no better than slavery, you should note that in slavery it was in fact chronic rape that was the norm, and sexual harassment is a big step up. Further, government has continued to push the employer/employee relationship in a more positive direction, such that sexual harassment is largely not acceptable today, and I think this is a very appropriate role for government.
Suggesting that you can't walk away from your job because of responsibilities, while a slave can run away from slavery has to be disingenuous at best. They can't legally do that, and could have faced execution for doing so. Your worst case outcome from walking away from your job is likely to be better than 99% of the outcomes for slaves running away from slavery.
I do have to admit that there are many stupid people in this world, but I would again come back to government responsibility for that, given their role in education. There's no great solution there, yet, though I have hope that may change given the successes of things like Khan academy. The future could be a vastly better place if we can figure out the education problem.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion. Like him or not, Stallman has been highly consistent for decades in his take on all things software freedom.
Simple. Because to refute his statements, you need an equally sound argument. And lets be totally honest here. The same phenomena is apparent when ever GPL gets argued against by the hoards of people who seem to suddenly believe in freedom being a context free word. Unless it applies to their code, which is the only code that is allowed to be kept secret.
What you are seeing is feigned confusion, character assassination, and wilful ignorance.
Reality.. In RMS's world view. They are out of business. And have no way of selling a product to people based on lock ins and artificial exclusivity.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
He took the name of the holy one in vain. He said unpositive things about Apple. What more do you want.
Walk into a fundamentalist church service with a "Jesus was Gay" tee shirt, and you get a similar reaction.
Surely you have noticed how poorly pod people take any criticism of the precious? Or the precious's daddy..
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Reasonable me don't change the world unreasonable men do. Keep in mind Job's was not know for being especially kind in his words and demeanour himself.
... and won't be in tears after Jobs death
Also, being a remarkable jerk when talking about a guy who died a few days ago.
Yes, yes it was.
I love the two-handed pointer, with dedicated modifier keys (which resemble piano keys in their size and pivoting movement) under the left hand, and the pointer itself under the right.
It might be said that this layout was copied, much later, as the common control mechanism for PC-based first-person games (ASFW keys under left hand, mouse in right).
Kid-proof tablet..
DRM was insisted upon by the Music companies--Apple eventually talked them out of it. Before Apple, for all intents and purposes there wasn't legal online music.
GE doesn't let you put your own software on your microwave--because it is an appliance. Do you own a microwave? then you are a hypocrite.
The first article doesn't address developer profit with any actual figures.
The rest are more 2010 articles.
It's also odd that you pick Rovio, given that they make a million dollars a month on Angry Birds, even though the Android port had horrible performance problems.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'd rather have Emacs than any Apple stuff any-day. Apple just sucks.
Fuck Apple and all their fan-boys.
iTunes doesn't add DRM to music ripped from your own CDs, and never has.
DRM was at the insistence of the music companies--Apple eventually convinced them to drop it. Apple's contracts with the music companies effectively prevented them from licensing Fairplay because those contracts made Apple responsible for hiding the necessary secrets for implementing Fairplay. There was one lawsuit by Real, but they lost it.
and I chose an iPhone. I don't care that I can't easily modify the software on it; just like I don't care that I can't easily modify the software on my microwave.
So should I trust the assessment of the Random_Slashdot_User_202216 or John Carmack and Rovio?
I have to respect you for sharing your opinion. And pardon but your opinion seems to be of the weak willed / spineless ilk. I chose Android BECAUSE it's not limited to one look, one hardware set, one ANYTHING I AM GRATEFUL for choice I AM ALLOWED to treat my device as my own I AM NOT RESTRICTED to what 1 provider thinks is best for me I RESPECT the innovation of others YOUR choice was to hide behind the walled garden YOU chose to hide from the "Big Bad Malware" while WE play in the fields every day.
Seems to me it's a little like the pot calling the kettle black. Yes, Jobs liked his closed-platform and saw computers and other gadgets as "appliances" to sell to people in closed boxes where you can't even change the battery. But he never said he was doing anything different, and he was very successful at it. In the end, his legacy will include his personal treatment of people, the "culture" he inspired, and the commoditization of computer-related technology.
The part RMS never seemed to understand is that not everyone views software as some kind of grail to protect. I do see his point, but most people don't, and if they did, most wouldn't care. It is a conspicuously self-centered and unyielding technologist's view of the universe.
And so I think it's a little silly to see a man who has contributed little more than his opinions to the world, maligning the reputation of a much more successful man. He may not be wrong, but who cares? Just one more opinion.
What I did is a tradeoff, as I said. I chose to delegate some of my work to Apple, nothing else. Because frankly, I already maintain 7 machines at home, a few servers in the cloud, so I don't have time to maintain a fleet of ipads, ipods and iphones.
Of course, by delegating, I let Apple decide which apps are good for me. But if you're not a complete Jackass, you'll admit that they pretty much let everything in (there was exceptions) unless it's really buggy, porn or offensive. If I want those things, I have 7 PCs at home. I'm not really restricted as you guys put it.
So yes, my free time is restricted because I have three kids and I'd rather play with them than reinstall all my Android fleet with the latest CyanogenMod. That's my choice and I sincerely fuck you for not respecting it. And looking at the words you chose to capitalize, it looks like we're both getting the same deal, so you can take your superior attitude and shove it up your tight ass up to your throat.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I don't understand how criticizing a highly vocal opponent of free software disqualifies him to be the voice of free software.
You are mixing freedom and rights. You are perfectly free to murder someone, but you will probably end up facing some consequences because you don't have the right to murder someone.
Well, some of the libraries are in C, like Core Graphics and Core Audio; and you can write most of your own code in C++ if you like, but usually have a naming convention where Objective-C++ code (to access objects from the Objective-C world) goes in .mm files instead of .m; you will need a thin-ish Objective-C wrapper since the application lifecycle use those calls; the rest can be done in C/C++ on a graphics context. I think most games that use e.g. the Unreal engine are done primarily in C/C++.
But, yes, Apple make no secret that they prefer you stick to and port to Objective-C for most of the code...
The vast majority of people see their computer as an appliance. It gets them funny videos of Maru jumping in boxes. It gets them email and pictures from their grandkids.
It streams audio and video and pr0n.
It lets people pay bills online and buy stuff online.
It is not wrong for them to see and use a computer as an appliance.
They are only "wrong" because you and your elitist attitude think so.
Whatever works for an individual is the "right" solution, no matter what you or I may think.
Yes, the computer is a marvelous thing. I have an apartment full of them.
I've been involved in this whole digital racket since before the Altair. I've programmed in just about all the common languages and some of the uncommon ones, as well.
I'm constantly downloading MIT's OpenCourseWare files and expanding my knowledge about almost everything I ever wanted to know more about.
I KNOW what a computer can do. I've made enough of them jump through hoops and dance to whatever tune I wanted.
And the simple fact is this:
The vast majority of computer users DO NOT CARE what you think of their opinion of what a computer "is".
And that attitude of "YOU'RE WRONG!", and talking down to people, will not help you convert them to your way of thinking about computers.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
My understanding of the slavery thing is that it comes not out of any moral philosophy, but a practical response to historical occurrences. Imagine just after the Civil War if voluntary slavery were still allowed. What practical manner could you use to determine if a slave were voluntarily a slave or involuntarily? Even today, how could you? A slave is, by definition, in an incredibly vulnerable position. Even if he says he went into the contract willingly and yes, that is his signature, how can you be sure he isn't being coerced somehow? Or wasn't coerced prior? Look at indentured servitude and the abuses that spawned historically.
And of course, once slavery was outlawed, there was simply no political will to reintroduce it even in a very limited form.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
This has been said before in this thread, but here is is a great quote:
Georges Bernard Shaw, "man and superman", 1903.
This applies to both Jobs and Stallman. We can all learn from both.
Ah, argument by authority. So you're resorting to simple fallacies now? My work here is done...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Damn you Apple/GNU fan boys. This is worse than Vi/Emacs.
assignment != equality != identity
This is not a story about Steve Jobs being evil or Richard Stallman being "right"
Richard Stallman, for all the good work he does, damages his movement by belittling people. And to do this when people
are mourning Steve Jobs, is classless. Mourning is NOT for the deceased, it is for the bereaved. It is a healing process. To come out
on this occasion to belittle Steve Jobs, is ineffective and just not nice.
If Richard Stallman wants his movement to succeed, he should be a little more classy.
And no, being right doesn't entitle you to be a jerk. What he did was wrong and not amount of "good programming" can excuse this sort of behavior
And several people have said that Steve Jobs (and bill gates) can be "hard" to work for.
A friend of mine that worked with Richard Stallman, said he was a petulant child.
He may be right, but that doesn't excuse his behavior.
Other people are right too, and they don't insult me while they are teaching me.
Yes, it's call trusting expert opinions more than non-expert opinions. That's how things work outside of Wikipedia.....
Ridiculous. Freedom means nothing at all if it doesn't encompass your right to make faulty decisions.
We all know that the Apple walled garden has many deleterious effects and quite possibly will have many more in the future. This is not a surprise as as much has been said by many people here and elsewhere, not just or even primarily Richard Stallman. Yes, Steve Jobs and company had bad as well as good effects on personal computing. Does anyone really deny this?
To the proprietary game vendors you ARE a magpie with a wallet, but that is your choice. They aim their powerful marketing cannons and blast away. Consumers just eat it up and pay pay pay only to find that whatever they buy becomes obsolete in fairly short order. Repeat cycle over and over again. You play "their game".
Well perhaps you should just stop playing "their game". If you have a decent computer, then download/get a copy of BZFlag and go with that. It is a great game and is totally free to install and use. You can even design your own boards for it if you want to. BZFlag is free as in GPL and costs nothing to obtain and use and it is loads of fun. It beats any proprietary game out there.
Sorry to get into this... I also suck at this car analogy thing but I'll give it a go.
I was given a car as a present (iPod Nano).
The car manufacturer is stopping me from choosing the type of fuel I can use - my private browser is full of another brand of fuel (flac). I am told that the car cannot take advantage of the higher octane anyway so there is no point in using it. There is apparently another type of high octane fuel that does work on the car though and this is okay to use.
It is also possible to convert all my existing fuel to the type that works with the car but I will lose the benefit of the increased performance that the fuel gives with my other car (home stereo) or, alternatively, end up with two fuel tanks in the same station and this process does take a lot of time and effort.
I do appreciate the gift, the person knows how much I enjoy driving, they do not know much about different fuel types, or how this manufacturer limits your choice of fuel depots. They know it is a popular brand and that it looks lovely though.
My first thought is to sell or exchange the gift but I would feel guilty as it was a gift that was given some thought, the only issue was a lack of knowledge in the person giving the gift, so I tried to use it. I found out that some models apparently can be made to accept the fuel, not mine though.
I have also considered converting all the fuel and tried a sampling, I was not happy.
The car - it is a lovely thing to look at - is now parked, has not been refueled (synced) for a while. It has some fuel in it as I did have some compatible fuel but as lovely as it is, I would have loved a car that would at least accept the high octane.
It is a present so I will keep it till my next birthday -who knows, someone might come up with a way to get the high octane fuel to work with my model too (I know the manufacturer does not like this though).
BM3
Stallman does, and always has, define freedom as that which most benefits him. He is or was a programmer and he demands the freedom to program and modify the software and devices he uses. Which is great for him.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple? Apart from your not being able to buy a tablet that apes an ipad in countries that don't allow products to ape one another. Also other than getting angry enough to click reply on every Apple/Jobs story.
In a capitalist system the expenditure of every dollar inflects and alters the value and trajectory of all other dollars. One could also point out that dollars given to Apple in some (not small) part go directly to lobbying governments and fighting absurd legal trench warfare to convince countries to "not allow products to ape one another". I find it astonishing after so many years of reading Slashdot that so many readers fail to grasp the way in which computers and IT are utterly in the grip of the capitalist mode of production, and resort to abstractions about "letting the people do what they want" instead of facing the unpleasant truth of an ever-more-pervasive curtailment of technological freedom. Stallman may be impolitic, is certainly eccentric, but he has firm principles, and sticks to them, while Gates, Jobs, et al. have only capital (including the human capital of their apologists, the cynical and the easily duped.) To put it another way, free software is for the ages, while the accomplishments of capitalist IT will last only until your MacBook breaks, your Windows is no longer supported, your Google is tool of the government, and the next crisis erupts.
The ability to monopolize an industry is insignificant, next to the power of the source.
So you agree. they are wrong. Saying to someone "you are wrong" is not talking down to them. If you think it is, I am sorry for whatever culture you come from, because it will not last long.
It will be a long time until CLANG replaces gcc. Especially for c++ (if ever). I am ready to bet it will be too hard for them. They precisely did not rewrite KHTML, they forked and rebranded it -- KHTML still lives independantly. And they were forced go have webkit become a community project again (I guess they were not capable of maintaining it alone.). As for their OS, well, they could not do it from scratch (they would have been incapable of it). And now they can only hope they can stay with it, because if a major rewrite were necessary, they could not pull it off.
Apple: not very capable engineers, but genius re-branders!
I don't like MS, but at least they can do stuff on their own.
Finally someone is not afraid to speak the truth.
The VLC app was not removed by Apple; it was removed by the VLC app developers.
100% agree with you.
I agree with you 100%. I love Free Software too.
Seriously? He said he was not glad Jobs is dead.
Still, it's like saying "I don't mean to sound insulting" right before saying something that couldn't be taken any other way than an insult.
RMS is just hated by many people for stating the truth (or, at least pretty convincing arguments) without being diplomatic about it -- he's very similar to Socrates in that respect
Actually he's like a lot of geeks who don't understand human behavior and emotion and the importance of the nuances of communication. I swear the man has Asperger's Syndrome sometimes.
The FSF is plainly not an objective observer. As demonstrated by Stallman, they f***ing hate the App Store.
Fact is: If you download a non-cost application from the App Store, and someone else you know wants the same application, then they can get it without any problems by downloading it as well. So any complaints about DRM are just plain idiotic.
The FSF's statement that there are restrictions on use are a plain misinterpretation of the store terms. Here's how the App Store rules work: If your product has its own license, then you can distribute it through the App Store with that license, but you must also, _in addition_, give the customer the rights that Apple promises. If you sold your product with a license that allows three installations on any computers of the buyer's choice, then a buyer would be allowed to install it on three computers of their choice (even if not owned or controlled by the buyer) because your license says so, even though Apple's promise doesn't cover it. But the buyer can also install it on ten computers that the buyer owns and controls (because you agreed to allow this by distributing the app through the App Store), beyond the three that you allowed. The App Store rules give the buyer rights, possibly beyond those planned by the licensor. It doesn't restrict whatever the license allows.
Now if the goal of the FSF had been to get properly licensed GPL software into as many hands as possible, they would have written to Apple to make clear that Apple's store rules don't clash with the GPL license, as I explained. But that isn't their goal. The original App Store rules were _not_ compatible with the GPL, so Apple changed them. But after the VLC situation, I think Apple had enough of it.
The FSF not being objective doesn't automatically mean they're wrong. They may be fanatics, but they're fanatics with lawyers. And in this case, they have common sense too.
I never brought up DRM. That would be relevant if we were talking about GPLv3 (with its anti-tivoization clause), but we're not.
Saying "non-commercial" is not a right, it's a restriction. They say "You may", but earlier in the ToS clearly states "you shall use Products in compliance with the applicable usage rules established by Apple and its principals ('Usage Rules')" So yes, the ToS does include restrictions.
The FSF doesn't care about how many people use GPL software; they care if it turns proprietary. But that's entirely irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that the GPL and App Store ToS are mutually exclusive.
If Apple has changed the ToS in a meaningful way (that removes all further restrictions), please do let me know, and I apologize in advance if that's the case. I don't have an iPhone/iDevice, so I'm going from what I've found around the 'nets.
Freedom and functionality are not mutually exclusive, you know? What would have changed if iOS or OSX were free software? Nothing. The code is the same, but now it's available. Most won't use it, but some will, and in the process, it might make for a more robust system. Really, why not just make it free software? Is there anything really limiting about it?
The smartphone and tablet markets were essentially non-existent until iOS came along. Whatever success Android devices ultimately enjoy will be because Apple created both markets - and Android followed.
Go ask Nokia (smartphones) and Ballmer (tablets) what the market for those devices wee before iOS showed up.
Android fanboys should get on their knees and thanks Jobs that he made the mass production of those devices possible.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
1) Safari is an "iPhone app"
2) So is the movie viewer
3) So is any other generic video or image app that uses HTML5, or can read from the local hard disk.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You clearly don't actually listen to what rms says. He doesn't hate people that use proprietary software, he usually tries to educate them on its evils, of which there are plenty. And he doesn't want everyone to use free software other than the fact that he wants all software to be free software. Photoshop, Windows, etc. Those could all be licensed under the GPL today (probably not) and they would be right in Stallman's eyes. Why not? They respect user freedom, and they would have the functionality that everyone wants. He only wants the developer to respect user freedoms. He doesn't care to force users to do anything.
Software does begin to enslave when people depend on it. We as a species, depend on software heavily now and it will only increase in the future.
In other words: electricity isn't essential for your survival, but try living without it for few days. Software (and computing in general) is slowly getting to this point.
"Apple is widely-held stock, and its owners include pension funds and individual stockholders like myself.
Nice weasley phrasing there. Yes, "normal" people do hold some stock. But guess what proportion of the value of stocks is concentrated in what proportion of society.""
70% of Americans own stock directly or through some retirement fund.
I don't understand people who bitch about their jobs and being "wage slaves," then hate on those who find a way to make money outside of a paycheck
That is quite literally the most stupid argument I've ever heard. I guess you can't understand people who criticize bank robbers, either?
Your reply is totally incomprehensible. So, lawfully investing in a publicly held and regulated company is analogous to a bank robber? I think you need to re-read what you wrote out loud so you can literally hear the stupidest argument ever. Now, go back to being a wage slave and grumbling about greedy corporations. Apple is up $15 today, and I have to go count my ill-gotten gains.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
For all those who say Jobs wasn't the innovator, just the marketing Svengali, Woz sat in front of some HP execs with his early Apple PC and they looked at him like he shit on their desk. Woz wanted to give the things away to his geek buddies. Instead, he's worth hundreds of millions.
Jump ahead to PARC and their GUI. Same thing, Xerox had no vision.
Jump ahead to Apple in the mid-90's. Jony Ive sat at his desk, largely ignored. Jobs returned to Apple and immediately recognized Ive as a design genius and promoted and utilized him.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Xerox was paid millions in Apple stock for sharing their IP with Apple. But wait, I thought you open-sourcers didn't believe you could "steal" ideas?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
A GULAG slave is not free to decide to go home, even when it would be the best decision given the circumstances, so my axiom still stands.
And yes, if you are lacking information or understanding how to handle them, your decision is not free, but biased. You are a prisoner where your ability to make sense of the world limits your freedom.
On the other hand, someone betrayed by somebody else into agreeing in a onesided contract has full ownership of his body and his properties, otherwise he wouldn't be able to make a contract where his property or his body is part of the agreement, and still his decision wasn't free, because he was missing relevant information, or he was lacking education to understand the contract, or he didn't get enough time to think through the contract.
How many you got?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Steve Jobs was not an inventor, an engineer, an innovator, or any of these outlandish labels being applied to him
How many patents do you hold?
Steve Jobs was a business man. A man who spent his life making, largely, second-class products.
That's funny, for such shoddy products, Apple leads every year in customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, my Dell laptop and my GF's HP laptop are PoS paperweights. I've got a 20-year-old Mac that still boots and works great.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
You having a right to say something doesn't mean I can't call you out as a total asshole for saying it.
"The law often allows what honor forbids." -- Bernard-Joseph Saurin.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I didn't say anything about your decision being objectively right or wrong, I only talked about decisions you consider right or wrong.
Of course you can make mistakes. Of course you can err in the assesment of the possibilities. To know how it is to fail is a very important part of every education. You can't learn from your mistakes if you are not free to fail. Freedom means also giving you the room to make those mistakes, because education is a precondition to freedom.
When he showed them the early Apple PC prototype? A visionary sees what other people don't.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"Steve Wozniak designed the Apple 1 while he was employed at HP".
And he showed them the early Apple I and they looked at him like he'd shit on their desk. No vision whatsoever. Just like Xerox ignoring PARC employees. Or a Jobs-less Apple in the mid-90's ignoring Jony Ive's genius.
HP is currently the #1 computer manufacturer in the world.
Who just announced they are getting out of the PC business.
Learn your history and current events. Other than that, lots of information in your brain.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Seriously, what was he thinking? Now people will think of Linux geeks as those lunatics who are happy to see people die.
What?
With FOSS software the author just throwns in together quickly, with some menu items or buttons sometimes just as a placeholder that do nothing!
Yes, you're right ... no software written for the Mac could ever be coded by a second-rate author. A computer manufacturer and an operating system do not a quality application make: a quality developer does that.
Apart from the fact that it is completely stupid thing to say, he just seems jealous that people like Jobs' products and ideas better.
What? That's hysterical considering that under the hood, OSX and iOS are nothing but Unix distros with an Apple-developed GUI layer, and in no way can Richard Stallman be considered a competitor to Apple Computer.
but Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
He didn't. He said he was glad that Job's influence is gone, and you know what? As a software engineer of some thirty years, I'm glad too. And that has nothing to do with his being dead: I was perfectly happy to see him retired. So, I'm sure, was Richard Stallman. As businessmen, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are pretty much cut from the same cloth, poured from the same mold: the more success they achieved, the less they were able to tolerate competition in what they came to consider as "their" private markets. Steve Jobs' remarks when Android was announced were telling:
We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there's no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don't be evil mantra: "It's bullshit." Audience roars.
So, because Apple chose not to compete with Google in search, Google therefore has no right to compete in the mobile market. That's arrogance in the extreme, and Jobs was perfectly aware when he said that that mobile was a space that Google not afford to ignore, regardless of Jobs' opinion on the matter. He was just mad that he hadn't been able to lock down the smartphone market totally before Google came in and took it away from him. Maybe if he hadn't made that exclusive with AT&T he'd have had a chance to marginalize Android on smartphones, but he failed miserably at that.
Running only free software really does not concern them and never will.
And that's too bad. There are a lot of things that people should care about but don't. That doesn't make them smart. It makes them ignorant, and likely to walk off cliffs.
It would be good if Stallman and other FOSS fanatics understood that and stop acting like jerks, because that will only have negative effect on their image.
So in other words, the specifics of Richard Stallman and the FOSS "fanatics" position and values are irrelevant, it only matters that they are properly charismatic? Okay. Reality distortion field at maximum output.
I'm not exactly fan of Apple,
Yes, you most certainly are.
The rest of you, I apologize for feeding the troll.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Jobs created the PC market in the late 70's (Woz wanted to give them away), then created a market to put one in every person's pocket (smartphones, another non-existent market before the iPhone, and no, Nokia doesn't count), then told everyone, "hey, the PC is dead, now we're using tablets," and everyone - including Android - dutifully followed.
So yeah, I'm calling Jobs the "most influential" if the metric is how many people and markets he influenced.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Nokia's smartphones and Microsoft's tablets were just flying off the shelves, then iOS came along?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
walled-gardens are bad ideas anyway.
Even my 10 year old know that you can say "I don't like it" lightly, but "it is bad" must be really weighted before proclaimed. Fact is, many people like it. So, is it really that bad?
It comes down to whether those people truly understand the long-term consequences of what it is that they are buying into. I can guarantee you that 99.9999% of the iOS-using market does not. Lots of people like McDonald's and religion too. Contrary to popular belief, the number of believers (or wilfully ignorant) people you have following you has nothing to do with whether you are good or right.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I think the question then is how would the person enforce the terms they negotiated when they sold themselves into slavery? If they are able to terminate the agreement if the other party doesn't uphold their side of the agreement, I don't think most people would consider that slavery, but rather a long term contract.
We all have only the rights enforceable by law, and if your legal system happens to support slavery ... pretty much by definition you don't have any. Rights, that is.
That's because slaves are property, and have no more "rights' than your iPhone.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
So, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, a bullet to the head that left him a vegetable, a mental degenerate disease, or even something that just left him physically too debilitated to continue to do his, job, would have been fine with Stallman.
Aside from the fact that he was quoting someone, I don't see how you can possibly interpret his comments this way.
It seems simple enough. He doesn't particularly wish ill of Steve Jobs. He'd much prefer, say, a quiet retirement to death or degeneration. But one good consequence of this is that Steve Jobs is not still working to turn every generic computing device into an iOS-style, approved-apps-only device.
Now, granted, this is almost certainly the wrong thing to say as a political movement, but I don't see anything wrong with the contents of the remark. It just could've been stated a little bit more tastefully.
And frankly, I'm sick of every even mildly relevant person becoming a saint when they die -- we remember the good and forget the bad. I have to imagine that if Glenn Beck had died while he was still an anchor, it would've immediately become politically incorrect to criticize him.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What seems to be the problem with Stallman (and indeed, many people on this site) is that he can't imagine anyone else having a different viewpoint from him.
That may or may not be correct. I don't know the man personally. But my take on Stallman's position is more along the lines of trends. He (rather correctly, I believe) perceives walled gardens as being seductive traps that snare the user and eventually restrict him in ways that he wouldn't have thought possible, to the considerable profit of others. The most impressive aspect to Apple's garden is the spirited defense mounted by its residents, who seem unable to acknowledge any of the very real problems involved. That blows me away on a regular basis.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
All well and good, but how would any of the above be threatened by allowing you to download third-party apps?
No one would care if it weren't for the fact that you have to "jailbreak" your phone in order to do so, and that Apple has expressed that it wants jailbreaking to be illegal, and short of that, they tend to do everything in their power to prevent jailbreaking from working with every update.
Or, take android. I could stay within the official Google store, though I agree that it doesn't seem to be as well-policed as Apple's App Store. But I can also install third-party apps, even entire third-party app stores. I can even download third-party remixes of the OS itself. The fact that Google's app store isn't as well-policed as Apple's has nothing to do with the fact that Apple forces you to use their app store or hack your own fucking phone, while Google gives you a choice.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If rms had his way, you'd have the source code the the software you use now and the freedom to do what you want with it, that is all. That is all he has ever asked for.
I'm not arguing that Jobs "invented" the mouse, or the PC, or the GUI, or the media player, or the tablet. I'm not saying that his business practices weren't dickish, possibly monopolistic and against all the merits of freedom in software we here hold so dear.
But that's kind of like saying Edison didn't invent electricity - he just had the vision to understand how electricity could be brought to the masses and used by everyone to make their lives better. A million people and companies used his ideas and technology, but before him it didn't happen. Henry Ford didn't invent the car - but he brought it to the masses and made it a way-of-life. Not to say that there aren't other and better car companies.
Same thing with Jobs. Someone else invented the Mouse and GUI, and the media player, etc. Jobs saw the vision for the implementation, the packaging, the aesthetic, and how to bring it into the world. This was the important part.
I spent the first 30 years of my life believing that Wozniak was the "real genius" behind it all. After all, he was "the engineer" - "the designer". He "did all the work". But no, there are a million engineers that can execute a plan like that (granted, Woz *IS REALLY GOOD* at the low-level digital stuff). It's just like saying there were workstations with mice and GUIs before Jobs. and MP3 players before Jobs. And music retailers before Jobs. and PDAs and Smartphones before Jobs.
He brought a design, and aesthetic, and a standard to the world. And unless you're reading this message from a text terminal or teletype machine, your working with stuff that was heavily inspired by his vision, whether it has an Apple logo on it or not.
He wasn't "just quoting someone." He picked that particular quote because it expressed his own personal sentiment.
And to paraphrase you, frankly, I'm sick of everyone who lies by claiming that we suddenly portray someone as a saint when they die, as yet another way to "excuse" the continued rude and stupid behavior of Stallman. The man hasn't done anything relevant in 20 years, unlike Jobs.
I really adore the fact that none of the people who contested my comment have the courage of their convictions necessary to log in.
A conspiracy involves two or more people agreeing to bone a third. Your proposal that conspiracy theories are grounds to declare illusionment is in stark contrast to reality.
I give your troll a 2 out of 10.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You don't need to be a programmer to program a computer. My boss isn't a programmer, yet he can program a computer simply by paying me money and telling me what to do. My mum isn't a programmer, but she can program a computer by asking me a favour. Stallman assumes people realise that.
There right there. Even fewer people want to ask/pay other people to program their computers for them. People want to buy a product that does what it says on the tin, maybe a bit more, but no less. They are happy for Apple (or whatever other company) to provide new features in an update, preferably for free, as in beer. The flexibility of free software is mostly useful to corporations, who have deep enough pockets to pay for modifications to the software they use, and to software geeks, who find coding enojyable. For everyone else, the flexibility is not even worth the cost, and is probably lowest on their list of needs.
So your assertion that you don't need to be a progammer is completely true, but also completely besides the point.
Yes yes, I have seen that video multiple times. However, I have also read Woz's book, and watched countless speeches and talks he's given. It's very evident when you listen to how he words things that there's a hint of bitterness of the past, as well as an acknowledgement that he was the one who designed everything from the start. He's simply too humble and kind of a man to ever start any kind of crap over it.
Seriously, would you not have at least a small grudge against someone who you later found out basically lied to you and ripped you off on occasions, when you're the person who made him mega rich later on? You can't hardly blame the guy.
The vast majority of people don't care about much but dinner and the weeks TV line up, Susies recital and next weeks pay cheque. Does the fact that these people are not overly concerned about news in general make economic meltdowns and other recent events meaningless as well? Stallman is weird and sort of a jerk, most people are either stupid of largely uninterested in the bigger picture for one reason or another. These things have very little to do with one another.
It would be good if Stallman and other FOSS fanatics understood that and stop acting like jerks, because that will only have negative effect on their image.
Stallman has always been at (or somewhat past) the extreme end of the scale of the FOSS movement, sort of the loony left of OSS against which everyone else gets benchmarked. So while I don't pay too much attention to him, he does provide a convenient fencepost against which you can measure other people's positions. Conversely, he makes others seem moderate and reasonable in comparison. So he does serve a useful purpose, as long as you don't take some of the more extremist stuff he says too seriously.
You don't need to be a programmer to program a computer. My boss isn't a programmer, yet he can program a computer simply by paying me money and telling me what to do. My mum isn't a programmer, but she can program a computer by asking me a favour. Stallman assumes people realise that.
And I, despite having a Y chromosome, can give birth to a baby by paying a surrogate mother. :-)
A better way to state the point in question is "...a world where every user can have their device reprogrammed at will" (whether they're the ones who actually do the reprogramming or not - most probably won't).
The most impressive aspect to Apple's garden is the spirited defense mounted by its residents, who seem unable to acknowledge any of the very real problems involved. That blows me away on a regular basis.
Are you also blown away by the fact that most people choose to pay a mechanic to service their car, rather than doing it themselves? Do you, personally avoid all brand-name cars with their "walled garden" components and instead drive a car with Open and completely modular components?
I'm also interested in why you think that people who choose Apple products are unaware of the disadvantages. To continue the car analogy, even the most inexperienced of car owners are aware that they are paying extra to have someone service their car.
I think you have it backwards. It's not that people are unaware of the disadvantages of the "walled garden" but more that you seem to be unaware of the advantages, such as the frolicking women, the protection from harsh wind and sun, and the pleasant pond with water lilies to while away the hours reading great literature beside.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Which is why every mac either ships with a free copy of Xcode, or is available for Free* off apple's developer site? Why apple are releasing most of their new core technologies as open source?
The success of small developers getting their shit on everybody's devices via the app store would kinda disagree with your dystopian vision of the future.
* For definitions of "free" costing $5, anyway.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
+1 Insightful With Signature.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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Actually, nothing much changed between the BlueBox Jobs and the iThing Jobs. Jobs was always first and foremost a sales guy for The Steve Jobs Ego. What he was selling along with that primary product certainly changed over the years (and there were some very good products in there along with some horrendously bad), but his own ego stroking remained pretty constant throughout. He'd quite happily flip-flop once he discovered his current pet project was a failure and suddenly he'd be a big driver for stuff he'd tried to steamroll previously. And he certainly had no issue with taking credit for others accomplishments when it suited promotion of The Steve Jobs Ego.
ehintz
I was referring to the importing into itunes. I assure you I have no objections to pornography. In fact I dare say you would be hard-pressed to find a more dedicated connoisseur than I.
I'm appalled, but not surprised. There are two possibilities here. Either Stallman is so socially incompetent that he does not realize how profoundly offense his comments are, on so many levels, and he has nobody to inform him how to be considerate and gracious towards others; or, he is aware of the offensiveness of his remarks, and does not give a damn about how petty, childish, trite, and irresponsible they show him to be, as he pisses away his opportunity of a lifetime to win support and positive regard for his movement.
Either possibility - the clueless lack of empathy, or the intentional hostility towards those who do not think identically to him - disqualifies him as legitimate moral leader of anything, let alone a revolution to change the world into following his ethical high ground.
I've been sympathetic to his cause for decades, but I've now had it with him. I would now no longer even be willing to join his parade to honor the local dogcatcher.
Some might say, if you criticize, let's see you do better. All right. Here is the statement Stallman should have made, as official position of the EFF. I retain copyright to this statement, and explicitly forbid any use of my words to benefit the EFF.
What Stallman should have said:
Steve Jobs died at an age while many expect, and receive, further decades of opportunity to make their mark on the world. Let us share our sympathy with his family, friends, and colleagues, as they mourn someone close and dear to them. Despite his life being cut short early by tragic illness, Steve made a mark on the world that has profoundly affected and inspired millions, whether or not they are in the computer technology field. He combined his own ideas with many of the best, most original, creative ideas, discoveries and inventions of many others, starting with Steve Wozniak in the 1970's and continuing through to leadership of what became the world's highest-valued company.
Because he passionately felt certain about his visions, Jobs was relentless and sometimes confrontational in driving himself and others towards their fulfillment. As a consequence, many technological developments were commercialized, brought to market, and promoted in a way that appealed to millions of customers worldwide.
The original successes of Apple Computer were based on marvelous wonders of technical efficiency that were just starting to become widely known and widely affordable: more highly integrated computer chips, and more user-friendly software. Wozniak combined these in an ingenious way to make a little machine that delighted the Homebrew Computer Club. Woz continued these developments with a machine more accessible to the masses, the Apple II, complete with its own self-contained keyboard, case, power supply, and programming language.
A major part of this machine's success was that both hardware and software were completely documented and customizable. Hardware was available for others to customize through building accessory hardware that plugged into the open slots of the machine, without any need to pay a royalty fee, work around a patent, or send a portion of the revenue to Apple after signing a non-disclosure agreement. Software was also available to be understood and built upon. Hardware schematics and source code were both published as part of the standard package of manuals that came with the initial generations of the Apple II.
Jobs had the opportunity to learn about leading research being done in a large corporate setting, at Xerox, where many ingenious, visionary, inventive people integrated existing research ideas from industry and from higher education research into computers. The Xerox team then went beyond these past ideas to new concepts about how computers could be user friendly, fun, interactive, collaborative, and understandable.
A key ingredient of the Xerox research was complete publication of the source code, accessible to any user to read and modify and extend. In this way, the Xerox researchers worked wit
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I've made no such assertion about Jobs being a failure. I never said anything about competition, or capitalism being bad. It seems you fail at one argument so you magically craft another.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
If by 'drag, drop, done' you mean
1. Install bloated music player, pulling in half of OSX.
2. Drag, drop into itunes.
3. Drag, drop onto portable device.
4. Hit sync.
I omitted possible additional steps for hunting down a plugin so that the music library software developed by one of the largest tech companies in the world will actually read flac and ogg, like nearly every other music player compiled since 2007.
Thanks that comment made my day! :)
Well I certainly credit him as a business man, and obviously without Jobs pushing Woz, he would have stayed at HP making calculators and possibly never become very successful (other than having a cushy job at HP). I also don't disregard the fact that Jobs would have had some amount of influence over products at Apple, even if he never invented them. Although as I originally said, much of that influence was rather.. harsh.
But I think it's both absurd and even unfair to his history to credit him with things he simply did not do (especially when others deserve that credit), just the same as it is to make him out as a saint when he was obviously a very difficult individual to deal with. In fact, if he were alive to see all this wishy-washy and outlandish coverage of him, I bet that he'd tell everyone to stop being such a bunch of saps and get on with it. That's Steve Jobs. Short and blunt. That's how he should be remembered, for better or for worse.
Walled garden is still a choice. If you don't like it go to another providers open system, or someone else that manages their garden the way you like it etc. Apple is pretty good at enforcing UI standards on developers. That is a very good thing in that it provides consistency across the platform. Some people will give up so ad hoc innovation in exchange for being able to pick up a random app and know how it works.
How so? This is like arguing MS is bad because as more people use it they get more power. That is getting things backwards. People chose the platform because it meets their needs whether because it has the apps they need, or the number of users that they want to sell to and the tooling support. Regardless we shouldn't be considering a business model bad because it is successful. Terminals were popular for a while until people found a need for something different, if workstations stop being useful people will move on to a different type of device etc.
That is interesting. In 100 years surely some older versions of GPLed software will be in the public domain?
Not based on past legislative evidence.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Nobody bought one of those to surf the Web or use apps.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
1158 comments in 13 hours. All on a story about a crabby old whiner whining about a popular, dead egomaniac. Is that all we have to talk about? Geeeeez, come on slashdot. There ARE things that matter still going on you know, even though your god of all technology has passed on. We can do better than this discussion, can't we? Apple has not died with its visionary/task-master/sideshow, and Stallman is still kind of a turd.
P.S. Just because you bought 4 different devices to do mostly the same things doesn't mean you knew Steve Jobs as a personal friend. And maybe you should look into the conditions in which Jobs' company employed foactory workers (via Foxconn), and all of their suicides. And cheaper competing devices with equivalent functionality.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Wow. I had no idea I was so close to touching a nerve there. Based on your response I think we may be talking past each other. There's a lot of rhetorical chaff in there, though, so let me see if I can pick out the correct thread of reasoning you're trying to express:
The problem is that software is not in the same league as human rights and freedoms. . . There is nothing stopping you form developing your own software. No government raids or corporate security officers are going to be raiding your house because you are writing you own word processor. . . And unlike software rights my 2nd amendment rights are actually defined quite clearly in the Bill of Rights with little room for misunderstanding.
I think I see where you're coming from there. I agree that the rights afforded in the U.S. Constitution are indeed important, and I'm impressed by your enthusiasm for your right to defend yourself. I'd like to remind you, however, that the philosophical basis of the U.S. revolution was the notion of "natural rights"; notably life, liberty, and property (referring to Locke, not Jefferson here).
Based on your devotion to the 2nd amendment I see you value your natural right to life. Is it too much of a stretch to say that if a software company's products cause 30,000 days worth of wasted time that they have taken a life (in a distributed fashion)? Steve Jobs reportedly thought this way. It's hard to read whether your tone was serious or mocking when you suggested that everyone dissatisfied with MS Office should re-implement it themselves; I hope you'll agree, however, that having everyone who wants to write build their own word processor first would be a waste of everyone's time and many people's talents. Even if you don't agree that it's an effective loss of life, it's clearly a loss of quality of life for everyone involved.
As far as liberty goes (software slavery in our discussion here), I see clear parallels in today's software market to the company stores of yesteryear's mining towns. They didn't send Feds/corporate goons to force the mine workers to buy from the company, they were just cheaper than driving out to the next store; they charged what the market would bear, and knowingly bled their customers dry. What they did was legal (consumer protection laws had not yet been implemented), but morally wrong. Software companies take advantage of the high barrier of entry to the market and leverage their market position to prevent competitors for emerging, Free or otherwise.
Unfortunately, there are corporate goons ready to take on those who step away from the Microsoft Office. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Word vs WordPerfect wars, but in those days it was common for Microsoft to "audit" businesses and schools, threatening to enforce extortionate fines if the auditors found even one instance of Word that the organization couldn't produce a license for. Of course, purchasing a site license for the full office suite covering every employee (at a cost conveniently lower than the fines) would stop the inquisition. Since these tactics were all legal they carried the implied threat of government enforcement (time to make fun of myself for a moment: "Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!") You may not be shackled with these chains, or perhaps you find the software yoke's burden to be light, but RMS and many others find it intolerable.
Finally, the clearest fundamental right that RMS is trying to defend here is property. He truly believes that your software should be your property, not licensed or rented from a company hostile to your interests. All of the rights detailed in the free software definition are essential property rights: (0) run it for any purpose, (1) change it to suit your needs, (2) give it away unchanged, and (3) give awa
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I'd have to say I'd agree with Stallman.
I'm glad Anakin Jobs is gone....not dead...but gone.... he did much to make Apple into the evil it is today. MS was bad, under-handed, but compared to Apple, they were a push-over.
Now much of that might be because the government trained it's sights on MS,
as did the EU, while Apple gets a free pass....
They've never been 'nice'...always suing the little guy...anyone who tries to make ...if Samba had been a compat layer for Apple, it'd be a dead project by now. Cleanroom design didn't matter...the fact that it was compatible violated their patents on compatibility!...
a compatible machine or OS...Apple's lawyers have been there much more so than MS ever did
Bleh...
Wozniak was the only good thing about Apple....Jobs...more akin to Ballmer. Though I think Ballmer is human. There were many times I wasn't certain about Jobs.
Jobs gets poor grades for his steerage of Apple into constantly CLOSING up all interfaces -- that was the battle ...
Jobs was ANTI-OPEN anything....Wozniak wanted an open PC like system...
Jobs wanted something with proprietary, patented screws, that no one could open so the systems were sealed.
That ANYONE in the open source community WOULDN'T agree with Stallman, is pathetic!
Gawd...is slashdot really turning into a 'tech-wanna-be place completely?...'...
He might have said that but it's still a fucking stupid thing to say as the founder of free software.
I've said it before in my past comments on previous threads and this just plainly highlights that this man, regardless of his accomplishments is not fit to be leader of the free software foundation. His constant dick moves holds back the adoption of free software and makes all of us look like assholes.
He hasn't even done anything lately. He wasn't involved at all in the GPL 3 license process. All he does is run around the world charging to give talks about free software. Step down and let someone who knows how to lead take over because all he does is draw people away from free software with poor PR.
Whilst I agree with your comments re UI design, I dont think its restricted to FOSS.
This may also come as a shock, but OSX is not the pinnacle in UI design.
The problem with UI is that what some regard as perfectly usable, others regard as horrible. Few UI guidelines will acknowledge this.
Windows has a huge marketshare - and most people do regard it as somewhat user-friendly, but of all mainstream OS's, Windows is the one with no formal UI guidelines, and a GUI toolkit that lets you pretty much do as you please.
OSX has a set of UI/usability guidelines, as do GNOME and KDE. Even the GUI toolkits encourage you to do things in certain ways, and enforce sizing rules etc.
Windows has traditionally had only a simple GUI toolkit that allows you to place widgets at any location in the respective window. There are no containers, no auto-sizing rules, and no guidelines other than to follow Microsoft's general example...but even that is not necessary to be accepted as good UI design. People are divided over the ribbon interface that Microsoft consider to be their best UI ever.
As for OS's, people will force themselves to use whatever they want to use. With enough motivation, people will adapt to any reasonable workflow. There is no such thing as the one true UI.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Stallman wrote: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died."
Stallman wouldn't know freedom if someone gave him a buckshot of it in the ass. He belongs soliciting on Craigslist where trying to get something for nothing is the M.O. "Entitled" twit.
The pre 4 versions are still free.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hate to break it to you, but clang has already replaced GCC as the OS X development compiler, and FreeBSD are moving towards it as fast as possible.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
i think this is the appropriate link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
I still don't see it. Calling it a "seductive trap" seems nothing more than hyperbole. The reason you see such spirited defense is because people's devices actually do what people want them to. The only way in which I have ever felt restricted by my iPhone is that I can't freely develop my own apps for my own use, which is a genuine complaint--that doesn't affect 99% of users.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Hey, yet another person who doesn't understand that one can compare relative impact without comparing the absolutes!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
used a printer much lately? i'm pretty sure one company's cartridges don't fit another company's printers.
that said, car analogies don't work unless a car costs the same as an iToy, and occupies a similar amount of space. you can't shove an unwanted car in your drawer and forget about it. you don't need a license to use a phone. iPhone use while drunk might annoy, but is not likely to kill anyone.
Because you assert it? Well, since it's "assertions are facts" day I'll assert that all tyrannies stem from axiomatic ideologies, tyrant.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I'm glad Bill Gates is gone. Does that mean I'm dancing on his grave? One can be both gone and alive, so stop looking for things to be offended off.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
What fucking long term consequence is there in buying a commodity that you'll trow away in a year or two?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Not at all, unless you are talking about a version of AGPL.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
My response was over the top but I am just frustrated when I hear people complaining about losing thier rights. Political and societal rights do not include software rights. I have yet to see any supporting evidence that that the rights specified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are being ed. Freedom of speech is intact, justice system rights are still in force, and even the right to bare arms is still in place. The one argument I always here concerning freedom of speech revolves around the government defining "free speech zones" in certain situations. Those protesting for Freedom of Speech never seem to acknowledge the very real security concerns when allowing large groups of protesters to get close to the President and other high placed politicians in public. Protest permits also exist so the civil authorities can plan ahead for protests that have the capability to disrupt civil behavior. In addition the Freedom of Speech has never been absolute. Software choices are not civil rights. I have never seen a public demonstration about the proper uses of C++, run time engines, or OS platforms.
The guy who enabled NeXT to get on with writing an OS instead of wasting time on writing their Objective-C compiler from scratch. So no one you'd care about.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I'm sure Stallman would have preferred if Jobs didn't die or get debilitated in those ways and instead would have started living up to his stated ideals of openness, creativity, and competition.
All well and good, but how would any of the above be threatened by allowing you to download third-party apps?
Invariably, if there is a way to screw up your phone, my users will do, because they'll stumble on a website giving instructions on how to put this "marvelous" app on their phone.
It is generally accepted that the biggest security hurdle in computing is the user. AFAIK, Apple is the only company that has addressed this point so far.
No one would care if it weren't for the fact that you have to "jailbreak" your phone in order to do so, and that Apple has expressed that it wants jailbreaking to be illegal, and short of that, they tend to do everything in their power to prevent jailbreaking from working with every update.
Ways to jailbreak your phone are security issues, nothing less, nothing more. Can you blame Apple from closing security vulnerabilities?
Or, take android. I could stay within the official Google store, though I agree that it doesn't seem to be as well-policed as Apple's App Store. But I can also install third-party apps, even entire third-party app stores. I can even download third-party remixes of the OS itself. The fact that Google's app store isn't as well-policed as Apple's has nothing to do with the fact that Apple forces you to use their app store or hack your own fucking phone, while Google gives you a choice.
You must be joking here. Where I live, every single Android phone has to be rootkitted in order to reinstall another kernel. This is EXACTLY the same as jailbreaking an iPhone. Ok, Google is not responsible for this, it's the carriers / manufacturer. Except they let them do it, so they are responsible.
And for god's sake, Apple doesn't force anyone to do anything!!!! Nobody prevents anyone from using Android or WP7!!!! And if I choose to delegate to Apple the responsibility to make sure my users don't install a stupid app, I want to be able to do so. So I buy them iPhones.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Steve Jobs hasn't done anything relevant since NeXT either, and that was almost 20 years ago too. Technologically relevant that is.
iTunes: Not his - bought from someone else and had an "OSX" gui slapped onto it.
iPod: Again, not his, the tech (including patents) was bought from another company and put into an Apple case.
Repeat ad naseum for basically everything since he returned to Apple.
The man was a genius marketer, period. He was excellent at marketing these products as the talking head of Apple. This is why Apple survived though, because he was smart enough to see where there was consumer demand and a lack of "premium" status products to fill that demand.
At the time, we had relatively crappy MP3 players using AA batteries and small storage space, we had to rely on Sony for the high-end laptop market (UGH), and we had our choice of Windows, Windows, or...Windows (no, Linux was not a choice, it was essentially worthless on the desktop at the time).
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
He would also contend that most people sleepwalk into that choice without knowing the ins and outs of the factors.
I accuse Bill Gates for crimes against humanity for "setting the default encoding of audio CDs to encrypted .wma in windows XP". I have been in pain for his decision way to many times while trying to help out friends and family.
-- no sig today
I'm an info-anarchist, so in my perfect world, everything would be automatically BSD licensed.
In a perfect world everything would be public domain.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
More open than what? The iPhone, yes. The Apple ][, no.
Where are the slots? Why do I need a special screwdriver to open the box?
Hardware can be hacked on too.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
1a Just get the pron directly. Site, torrent, USB, CIFS/NFS share, whaterver.
There are no other steps.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's pretty bizarre. I hope the **AAs don't find a way to make a similar license (though their massive extension of copyright is about the same thing for most of those execs - they probably don't care what happens to things after they die).
which is totally what she said
Stallman's idea of computing is to cater to the programmer. That will always gain the most sympathy on /.
Jobs's idea of computing was to cater to the end user. That will always gain the most sympathy with the 99% of the world that isn't on /.
import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes
Why do people think this shit is acceptable?
I agree,
I shouln't have to waste time importing and transcoding media I want to consume on the go, I should just be able to copy it straight to the device and have done with.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
He showed up to a wake and badmouthed the deceased in a spineless manner.
Now all ya all are barking about it.
Pay your respects or GTFO.
Same to you Mr. Stallman.
What you call a walled-garden is just a trading platform.
OK then, Where is the alternate trading platform where I can get the things Apple wont sell me...
Still waiting....
BTW, Jailbreaking is not good enough, it needs to "just work" right out of the box.
You can try to call it a trading platform all you want but you're only fooling yourself because in reality iTunes is vendor lock in that forces you to be in Apple's walled garden by removing features if you try to disobey. It is a restriction despite your attempt to gloss it over.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Before reading any replies, I'm betting to myself that Stallman is compared directly with Hitler before Jobs.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I believe the argument goes that the people who will assault you are going to assault you no matter what. Making a law against it has not eliminated crime. In fact laws do absolutely nothing to deter crime - changing the socioeconomic conditions of society has a far greater effect on crime. However if there is no law, then you are also free to defend yourself as you please without having to worry if a court will take your self defense argument seriously or not.
Your forgot (a) Heinlein's quote about "an armed society is a polite society", (b) a link to the court decision about the police not having a legal duty to protect you from criminals, and (c) something random about how taxes are weakening the red blood of true Americans AT GUNPOINT.
So you lose three bonus Slashdot Libertarian points.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you're trying to convince people, you need to avoid out-right insulting them and mocking them
I don't remember the Apple fanboys criticising Steve Jobs for mocking and insulting Microsoft.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
I think the reason is that on places like slashdot, a lot of people still think of Apple as they were ten years ago, pre-iPod and everything, that is as a cool computer company providing an alternative to Teh Evil Micro$oft
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
Stallman wasn't exactly writing a letter of condolence to Jobs's parents you know.
It's not about him as a person.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I thought Henry Ford was the best comparison, to be honest.
Because he made a previously elite and luxurious item available to the masses at the cheapest price possible and without worrying about design or style? I think your comparison needs some working on.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Motorhead porn?
*reaches for mind-bleach to remove unwanted mental image involving Lemmy*
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
It's not all about the money. It's an ethical issue.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
While I agree with you, I don't *need* Linux to take off. In fact, it is sometimes better for us to have our OSes. Generally, when something very good hits the masses, a big portion of the masses are idiots or just not experienced on the subject. This means that this "very good something" starts adapting itself to the masses and leaving us, first adopters, behind. I fear that if Linux starts getting used by too many people who don't know anything about it or its ideology, then these values will become distorted and all there will be left of them is a small minority of people who still use "oldschool" because "it was before the masses got to it". I'm not sure if I made my point.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Dude, sorry, you started this "walled garden" discussion.
I'm not interested in "defending" it, I only point out: take it or leave it.
If you call iTunes a vendor lock in ... then there is no real point in discussing anyway.
I'm a Mac owner, not an iPad or iPhone owner. My Mac is in any way superior to any other platform, except it does not run Windows games, cry :-/
I have a BSD Unix as base, a journaling filesystem, a superb backup system, all unix tools like dtrace etc. networking, Java and a nearly every open source or FOSS software I want. And yes I use iTunes to buy music. WTF what should be wrong with that?
If you want a mobile phone that works out of the box as computing device then get an Android, as simple as that. But don't wonder of you get Viruses or when google remotely disables or removes one of your Apps.
The reason why I don't have an iPhone / iPad is simple: I can not install my own code (at least not easy ... ), the reason I don't have an Android is also simple: to unsecure right now.
It amazes me that so many people here complain about "walled garden", what a stupid term, btw. while in RL nearly everything they do is restricted by the same rules. The question is not how many "trading platforms" or "gardens" there are, the question is: what is offeren in them. As long as I can get everything I need for a reasonable price why should I even think about going to another "AppStore"?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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well in your case a printer analogy won't work either. And no you don't need a license to drive a car either. You only need a license to drive a car on public roads And yes you can even drive drunk on you own private property. You are clawing really hard to defend Apple here but keep trying. This constant stream of non-thinking Apple drones is amazing. Its very Scientology like.
Stallman is a blowhard and it is time that the FSF gets somebody else to speak for the whole movement.
The obvious candidate being...Natalie Portman.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
LOL, good candidate but I think RMS may object to her because she once worked for Lucas and all of his Video Games are not Free Software.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
objective reality says steve jobs and apple make good products, because fact: people *choose* to buy them!
now, people like stallman can go into denial about that, slag off steve jobs, fail to analyse the success of apple, fail to acknowledge that there might be some deeper intelligence driving apple's customers purchase decisions
or it could say - what can we learn from this?
i've had linux on my desktop since the 90's, i have noticed how in that time it has never gone mainstream. why?
stallman is, in my opinion, part of a dying worldview. he thinks people buy specifications, want swiss-army knives of technology with "more" = "better"
i think there is a new worldview appearing right now (based on something called Integral thinking) which puts human meaning-making at the centre of the system and uses technology to create a "space" which will provide human experiences and empowerment that people will pay for. i think apple is one of the few tech companies awake to this worldivew. in my opinion, this worldview is about to make an impact of the scale the rational worldview did in the age of the enlightenment.
this new way of looking at things turns the old worldview inside out, instead of putting a beige box specification at the centre of the equation, it puts a living breathing human being at the centre of the equation. as a worldview, it's more productive, more fulfilling, more empowering. and yes - people want it, lust after it, pay money for it, radical and powerful newness has that effect on humans, evolution is sexy and irresistible.
i'd love to see linux sail into a radical new future! yes there are problems with what apple are doing but it's totally facile just to dismiss the human enthusiasm that emerges around their products and around steve job's work.
inside that human passion there is a voice, and as apple's bottom line demonstrates, there are rational reasons to pay attention to it's message.
Apple is the the master at herding sheep. They have a way of making people believe they invented everything cool. They are like Coors Light, people are willing to pay a premium price for a not so good beer, because its the "cool" beer. They even convinced the government to attack MicroSoft for being a monopoly because they had no competitors, as they were running ads like the Mac vs PC guys. None of their products are new inventions, they are masters at taking what exists, making it work better, and convincing people that its the "coolest".
You might want to check out Apple's opensource contributions, which include extensive work taking khtml and turning it into webkit - the same webkit that is used in Chrome.
Job also invited the KHTML people on-stage to thank them for their work, and when the KHTML project complained that the patch dumps they were receiving were not fine-grained enough to be usable to port back into KHTML, put the code in an svn repo for them. That's well beyond the requirements of the license.
As a business, Apple can't open everything and survive. That's the way it is, and people like RMS don't "get it". REad the comments here, particularly the one that begins
There's both the room and the need for both closed and open source. Stallman is (literally) too stupid to realize this. Then again, he's shown time and again that he lacks maturity and can't learn from his mistakes, so why would anyone expect differently now?
Stallman did not say he was happy about Jobs death, but that he was happy to see Jobs influence diminished. Most people don't understand the politics in the computer world, but easily understand that fringe public interest groups can often have disagreements with big corporations.
This isn't high school philosophy. There are going to be a limited number of systems, perhaps one. The freedom to choose is a collective responsibility which as a society will make it much more difficult for other people to choose in the future.
One can argue the advantages of a train system system over a highway system. But once the vast majority of the housing in your country is in suburbs which one you should have chosen is a moot point.
-- All well and good, but how would any of the above be threatened by allowing you to download third-party apps?
You are allowed to download third-party apps. What you can't do is run an application without a provisioning file. And all that requires is that you have communicated with the developer and let him know what iPhone / iPod/ iPad you intend to install it on.
The issue is not one of not being able to install applications. The issue is that developers can't use a model where they compile software and distribute it themselves to a bunch of people they don't know freely without anyone checking it out first.
-- there is no other way to get content on the device without going through Apple's store.
There are of course 2 ways to get content on the device without going through the Apple store sold by Apple:
a) Use the developer SDK and create provisioning files for yourself and friends
b) Repoint your device to any set of servers running the enterprise SDK and then they play the role of Apple in terms of securing software.
Just wait, you'll see.
I have already seen. If he'd waited, no one would have noticed, and his word would have reached no one that doesn't already read his blog.
SILENCE == DEATH
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Jobs never claimed to be an engineer. As he pointed out, his job was not just to decide what should be done, but more importantly, to decide the thousands of competing things that should NOT be done.
He was doing something right - as he pointed out after his return, when he was turning Apple around, competitors were offering 2 and 3 times as much to Apple workers to jump ship, and yet they stayed. Why? What kept Apple from bleeding out it's devs, except the hope that Jobs could turn it around?
So he wasn't just a genius at marketing, but at motivating and keeping talent.
The same goes with the switch to Intel cpus. A gutsy move that could have killed the company for any number of reasons, there were all sorts of nay-sayers at the time. Today, we see in retrospect that it was inevitable if the company were to remain competitive.
He rejected the first two iPhone prototypes. Want to bet Microsoft would have shipped either of them and called it good?
That's entirely antithetical to what RMS is trying to accomplish. I see what you're saying, and I don't even entirely disagree with you (there's something to be said for "Linux is a server/development OS stop trying to make otherwise"); but given that we're talking in the context of how RMS contributes to or detracts from his own cause, I don't think your comment is entirely relevant. The fact is that RMS's goal is the widespread adoption and perhaps eventual dominance of Free Software as a paradigm. He wants to see Free Software succeed to the point where companies like Apple and Microsoft either open up their code or become irrelevant. He's not really accomplishing that goal, nor making any real progress.
Most of the progress that FOSS has made in the last 20 years has been in spite of Stallman rather than because of him. The rise of LAMP, Mozilla, etc... All that has been dragging him behind it as much as he's been moving it forward. Don't get me wrong. It's entirely possible that none of it would have happened had he not gotten the ball rolling, and his early contributions were critical (Without gcc and the GNU toolchain Linux would have never gotten off the ground). Unfortunately the type of personality that can have the obsession necessary to found a movement is often not the type personality that can move it forward into widespread acceptance. GP is right, Stallman's lack of social and political acumen are making him his own worst enemy.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The power of the Smalltalk-80 desktop is what we all are using today. Xerox failed completely. Steve was the one that got the GUI found on the it rolling. True The X-windows system was close second (what I use), and the true open source version. The Lisa followed by the Mac was way ahead of the game, long in advance of MS.
I did get a change to use the Tektronix version of the Smalltalk machine back in the day, but that was hardly a main stream device.
My Kudo's to Steve Jobs for that.
But at least DEC's round mouse had 3 prominent buttons that told your hand immediately what orientation it was in. So you only had to hold it to know you were holding it wrong. Apple's really was a puck, and you had to move it to know you were holding it wrong.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Well, that's a problem with the fanboys, which shows that childish name calling isn't the providence of one group of people.
We should stop tolerating ANY kind of name calling and derision, especially when it comes from someone we agree with. Unfortunately, it is a widespread issue that goes way beyond the discussion at hand.
I think the legal enforcement / authority aspect of it is essentially different, and that is what creates all of the differences you are labeling nonessential.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
How does shipping jobs to India, pressuring workers to make huge concessions in benefits even as you rake in record profits, and providing the shittiest products you get away with at the highest price you can get a way with "make society wealthy"? I'm not saying that Jobs has done these things, but that these are the exact sort of things done by your "ruthless capitalists".
Or maybe you're just trolling.
He specifically states he was not happy to see Jobs die. I see you trollin'.
But it's clear that the only reason he DIDN'T say exactly that is because even he realizes that he'd better keep that thought to himself.
Actually, if you think about Jobs in the 70s and 80s, he DID make something available to the masses that previously had been stuck in universities and corporations. I also make this comparison because of their marketing abilities, and because he didn't personally design the most famous things his company made.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Just like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hidalgo, Bonaparte, Bolivar, de Gaulle and well, like what has been claimed by almost every political leader in human history.
Stallman is far more a politician than a coder. He is the head of the Free -as in Freedom- Software Fundation. Freedom is a political term. I doubt that Stallman devotes more than 2% of his time to code, but I'm pretty sure that he devotes most of his time to promote his political views. Now, try in a democracy to tell the people that everyone that doesn't agree with you is a fool and see how well you will do in the polls.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
He can work in the FSF as VP of travel and evangelization. The President should be a new person. Someone fresh and young, with vision.
Using the hate as a way to force people to think like you is not good.
Also, a person with fresh memory will too. RMS forgot that the most used browser in mobile is webkit, an Apple product.
gcc -pedantic rms.c -o - > /dev/null
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Didn't you watch the latest keynote? Apple has 5% of the overall cellphone market. What are you talking about????
All your rant is prefectly legitimate whenever a company is in a position of monopoly. UIS law has provisions for this. Your rant is just not applicable to Apple.
Double standard my ass. Check your facts. People like iOS. Others like Android. Some like WP7. So what? Some are stupider than others? Give people some credit.
Skewing facts much?
5% worldwide cell phone market share is not the same thing as mobile OS market share in the US market which is what I was referring to. Here are the facts if you even care to see them. And if you want to see what it was around a year ago you can look here. Failure to do one's own research while faithfully swallowing keynote speeches is one sure way to be in the dark.
(If, empirically, every time you open your mouth, the result is for other people's minds to shut, then it's better not to speak. Have someone else speak for you instead, if you must.)
Or are you just mad that you can't buy T&A in their store?
BTW, where are the Android porn apps we were promised?
Fandroids hate facts.
I concur with the OP. You did follow the easiest route, and it does seem the feeble willed attitude. You both overestimate the work to maintain an Android install (similar to iOS), the existing malware (again, similar) and underestimate the evil that lurks in Apple's management of the market (removal of apps competing with Apple itself, namely).
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing", Edmund Burke
Now, you either: a) Disagree with Burke; b) Defend that Apple is not evil in any way; c) Defend that you can make business with Apple and still pressure towards betterment, or; d) Concede that you don't care and then it's perfectly OK to say fuck you all to those people that took the high road and are now expressing their feelings towards your position (but at least man up and really assume your position).
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
I totally agree: there is room for both open and closed source, but that's not what this is about at all. Steve Jobs didn't just produce closed source software, he moved the industry towards censorship and business models that enormously restrict choice and freedom, as well as towards a model of "innovation" that relies on stealing other people's ideas instead of investing in new ideas. Jobs didn't have to do that; other companies have shown that they can make money with innovation and openness.
L. Ron Hubbard is an excellent analogy... for Steve Jobs. It describes exactly what Jobs did: he created a religion based on ridiculous premises and promises that sucks large amounts of money out of people's pockets, and he even managed to manipulate them to rush to his defense; and like L. Ron Hubbard, Jobs misused intellectual property rights to support his scheme.
As for Stallman, nobody gives a shit whether you like him or what you think about him. Apple has a billion dollar marketing budget to spread their propaganda and lies. Stallman is an activist with almost no money. The only way he is going to be heard is by being controversial.
That argument is a double edged sword. If the developers make 17x more, and Apple does not have 17x the market, then consumers are hurting by paying 17x more for the same content. You know, fixed high prices is a sign of a non-efficient market.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
"Stallman is no longer relevant, and his latest whining just underlines that." You know about once every month for the past five years people have been saying that. Whining about the whining of Stallman seems like the latest geek hobby.
Bonjour is embedded into gaim and pidgin as well, but ya, iTunes is quite restrictive and is meant to lock users in.
If you find yourself in locked a garden, you're probably going to turn into a giant beetroot. The device becomes a method of having a captive audience serving the interests of Apple at the expense of your own. How can you be affected by the robbery of your neighbor if nothing in your house was stolen? Culture and environment effect everyone. A culture where it viewed as okay and normal not to control you computing devices (tools and instruments that are absolutely indespensible today) is a culture that is much less likely and much less able to assert it's freedom.
For the record? (pardon the pun :-) It was the music industry, not Apple, that demanded the DRM restrictions.
As for "creating a religion based on ridiculous premises", the same could be said with Stallman's economic model for software. To cast programmers as unethical if they don't release source code is to take away the freedom of programmers to decide how their work can be used.
The simple fact is that for most developers, the only way they're going to be able to pay the bills is to produce closed software. If they can, at the same time, contribute to open software, so much the better, but they should be free to decide, and not to have their choices cast as some ethical failure.
Stallman has no dog in this fight, since he hasn't written code in years. It's simply beyond him now. It happens ... some programmers reach a certain age, and they lose the ability to code consistently.
If I were the only one who thought this way, you'd be 99.99999% right. However, this time IS different. His latest eruption of crassness has provoked a LOT of debate, and as more people speak out against Stallman, this encourages still others to voice their reservations. It's no longer possible to dismiss this as "some over-sensitive women who can't take a joke" or "opponents of free software".
That same tactic is working really well for Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist. They certainly get their message out! People sure are flocking to his church in droves ... oops, they're not.
But you're right - it takes loads of money to be heard. Ghandi must have been richer than Bill Gates. Nelson Mandella, the Kent State students, the Mothers Against Drunk Driving - all richer than Croesus and Midas combined.
No, you're wrong. Stallman's juvenile attention-seeking behaviour is ultimately just as self-defeating as Fred Phelps, and "getting the message out" is no excuse for being rude and crude. He "got the message out" all right - that he's a total dick. He's forced everyone to choose to either condemn his actions publicly or tacitly condone them with their silence.
He was free to write what he wrote, and he's free to suffer the consequences.
It's because more people are becoming aware of it.
Just like more people are aware that Stallman did not "invent" the idea and practice of free software (Bill Joy was distributing BSD 1 back in the '70s).
And that Stallman lies and FUDs so that he can push his own agenda, which is more along the lines of attention-seeking than promoting the interests of free software.
Of course, having videos on youtube of him eating his foot cheese during a talk adds a further dimension to all the stories of his questionable personal hygiene, adding credence to the multiple reports of eating stuff from his hair and nose, B.O. (maybe be because most soap and shampoo a proprietary closed-source formula), sexist attitude towards women, hatred of children, and hypocrisy in demanding that others put up with his behaviour when he is so thin-skinned himself.
Even if I had mod points, I couldn't use them.
Still... +1
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not the same thing as mobile OS market share in the US market which is what I was referring to but failed to mention entirely in my post.
There. Fixed it for you.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I "agree" to no such thing.
And yes, YOU are indeed talking down to everyone who does not share your elitist attitude.
As ably demonstrated by your last sentence.
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I am in agreement with your comments.
As an old Commodore hand, I am quite taken with your user number.
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Hmmm. Let's see.
A) No
B) Well, it depends how you define evil. Every company above a certain size is spending inane amounts of money to create walled gardens for its employees. Employees not being administrators of their workstations, internet ports closed, proxies filtering which websites are "acceptable", etc. Are they all "evil" by your definition?
C) No
D) Nope, either.
You see, if there was no competition in the mobile OS space, I'd feel uncomfortable. But I'm glad to have a choice. I can either maintain all my phones by myself or let Apple do it. I see it as a win-win situation.
If the situation was "I can get a crappy phone or get into Apple's walled garden", I'd certainly react differently.
So the answer B applies. Apple provides a different model to manage your phone. As long as they don't get the biggest part of the market (and seeing Android numbers I think it's already the case), then all is well. Competition will rule, and Apple is no evil. Because it hasn't got any monopoly.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Pathetic anonymous coward, who is too pathetic and cowardly to put its real name to a comment, says what?
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
That's a ridiculous thing to say. A much fairer interpretation of Stallman's words would be "I would not wish for any physical harm to come to Jobs, but his influence was bad for society and it is good for society that his influence has been removed." His retirement was sufficient to remove that influence. You should not be putting words into Stallman's mouth that he would have been happy for Jobs to become physically debilitated.
What are you supposed to say when a bad person dies? Yes, it is sad for that person and their family. Yes, you do not wish for harm to come to that person. But when a bad person dies and millions of people around the world hold mourning sessions, newspapers plaster their front pages and websites with his face, and the big players begin posting inspirational quotes from the bad person, what are you supposed to say? I think someone needs to say: "wait a minute, guys. Just because he is dead does not exonerate him from the bad things he has done. Let's not forget those things."
You may not agree with Stallman and myself that he did bad things. But there must be some world figure in a position of power who you disagree with, who if they fell off the face of the planet tomorrow, you would say to yourself, "Oh. That's kind of unexpected and sad -- but I can't forgive the things he's done, and frankly, it is probably better that he isn't in a position of power."
I'm actually making a second response with an analogy. I'd have liked to find a car analogy, but I failed on that count... :-)
If a contractor comes home to do some electrical work to my house, and he refuses to install the latest el-cheapo gear I bought from eBay China (invoking some "quality" issues) then he is doing in a way the same thing you claim Apple does that makes them evil. He is creating his own walled garden. Because he knows how to work with GE's equipment (and some other vendors) and he doesn't want to take the risk to work with other stuff.
And I am glad that he will apply this critical thinking for me, because I can't make this kind of thinking by myself, because I don't know his job. To each his own.
What is evil in this man?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
So basically,
1. Stallman writes a license designed to ensure that if I write software, you can use it but as long as you don't lock down other people's freedoms.
2. VLC writes software and chooses that license, because they like the idea that people would be able to use it as long as they don't lock down other people's freedoms.
3. Apple creates a device designed exclusively to run software in a way that locks down everybody's freedoms.
4. Applidium releases VLC's software for Apple devices. Apple distributes the software, profiting (indirectly, by the fact that their platform now includes this software) from VLC despite the fact that they are locking down everyone's freedoms to modify and redistribute the software.
5. VLC complains that Apple are not respecting the license.
6. VLC are the bad guys, because Apple was totally fine with it until they complained.
?
Of course Apple has no problem with the GPL. The GPL (rightly) has a problem with Apple. Because when you mix the GPL and Apple, you get a fully-functioning Apple app, and effectively no GPL.
If Stallman had wanted to say what you wrote, he could have. Instead, he chose to use a quote about corrupt Chicago Mayor Daly. Also, Stallman doesn't believe that Jobs death is an occasion for sadness any more than he believes that children are a source of happiness. From telling mothers to remove their "spawn" from his presence to telling coders that contributing to emacs is something more worthy than their own children, the guy is the whole package - if the package you're looking for is rude, crude, and totally self-centered.
He effectively said the same thing as I said, just more tersely.
He said: "Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs"
I said: "I would not wish for any physical harm to come to Jobs"
Surely it is reasonable that when somebody says "A person does not deserve to have to die" we can extrapolate that they would not also wish any physical harm to come to that person, unless they explicitly state otherwise?
He said: "we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing"
I said: "his influence was bad for society and it is good for society that his influence has been removed"
That's basically the same thing.
Stallman is, by the way, absolutely rude and crude -- I agree. Self-centered? He has never acted in any interest other than that of the computer-using public. He isn't campaigning for what the public wants. He's campaigning for what he thinks they need. Perhaps he's wrong about what they need, but he is acting in their interests all the same, not his own.
Oh, don't you worry about consequences for Stallman: he's been at this longer than you have likely been alive.
Worry instead about the long term reputation of your favorite company and the legacy of your favorite monopolist. People may say nice things about Jobs out of politeness right now, but that's going to wear off. And the company is in already trouble for the same reasons it was in trouble 10 years ago: it's all marketing flash and no substance.
That's pretty bizarre. I hope the **AAs don't find a way to make a similar license (though their massive extension of copyright is about the same thing for most of those execs - they probably don't care what happens to things after they die).
I think "Not based on past legislative evidence was referring to said massive extension of copyright. Mary Bono asserted that the (deceased) former Mr. Cherilyn Sarkisian wanted copyright to last forever, assuming that wasn't just a sarcastic outburst:
...and that would have been better, because next time, more people might have listened to what he had to say, instead of just writing him off as a nutjob.
Why would they have done that? What's changed since the last time he told us something true and was called a nutjob? Oh yeah, nothing.
The simple truth is that no one who would be turned off by this message NOW would be turned on by it LATER, which is why all your statements about "too soon" are ignorant at best.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Assertion: it's not the fundamental content of the message that's turning people off. There are certainly at least elements of non-insanity to that. It's the completely tactless delivery, and that is strongly affected by timing concerns.
The idea that it is ever "too soon" is one of those things that's dying with the old generation. It is never too soon to start talking about the issues. If you don't want to discuss them, stay home and keep the blinds drawn and let the adults among us have the conversation while you weep over the loss of a brilliant marketer who convinced the world that he was a nicer person than he really was.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You are correct, sir. Thanks for that quote, too; I'm fairly certain she wasn't being sarcastic as she evidenced poor understanding of the Constitution, and still wants to push her (Sonny's) agenda through.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Also,
So, it's in the interest of the computer-using public for the FSF, of which he is president, to spread FUD about Linux and Android licensing because the GPLv3 is not getting any love? Or for him to get his jollies by publicly demeaning women? Or by telling people that their time would be better spent working on patching emacs (his baby) than with their baby?
I'm not buying it. The man's actions speak very loudly - he is self-centered in the extreme - to the point where he is not able to consider any point of view other than his own as having any validity. A paranoid narcissist. In other words, a whack-pack who did NOT invent the "free software movement", contrary to his shameless self-promotion - Bill Joy was compiling and distributing BSD alsmost a decade before he even started. Bill Joy - the guy who wrote ex and vi. So it really is a vi vs emacs thing.
Stop trying to defend the indefensible - it shows the same lack of class and inability to acknowledge new information that Stallman has.
My favorite company? It's neither Apple (I have never owned any of their products) nor Microsoft (I only boot into Windows when I need to do compatibility testing), so I don't know who you could be referring to. Suse? RedHat? Slackware?!!! Or maybe FreeBSD with its' near-monopoly and ease of use (at least for me - I *like* being able to ssh into a box to fix it quickly, and most FreeBSD fixes are quick - if yours aren't, you're doing it wrong).
I'll assume you were referring to Apple ... they're not in trouble because they know their customers. Case in point, I found out this weekend that my daughter's computer finally gave up the ghost a few months ago. She hasn't bothered to ask me to look at it. Instead, she uses her iPhone. And if she ever wants another computer, you can bet she's going to buy Apple, especially since the cost difference isn't what it used to be (and at the high end, Apple is often the same or cheaper).
That's the sort of enabling/disruptive technology and marketing that everyone else is now following.
I feel your pain. Having been raised by conservative parents and educated in liberal schools I often find myself conflicted on issues of civil rights. When police perform a factually correct but procedurally illegal murder investigation how does declaring the murderer "innocent" benefit society? I know the answer is that it discourages corrupt police from manufacturing evidence against the truly innocent, but it feels wrong.
Meanwhile, I can still respect RMS for taking on these less-important issues. To him these issues are just as important philosophically, even if they aren't codified by our Founding Fathers. I think RMS realizes that these "software rights" aren't inherent, which is why he's working within the legal system to construct them for us. Please remember that the GPL is designed only to grant the rights outlined in the Free Software definition, not to take anything away from people who don't want or see the need for those rights. The ACLU is covering 1st amendment issues, the NRA is covering 2nd amendment issues, and the FSF has every right to spend its resources championing property issues in software. We're not living in anarchy yet, so they have the luxury and privilege of striving to give all of us these extra rights they would like us to have. As long as he's not trying to take away your guns or right to freely assemble, you might want to cut RMS a little slack.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
If you have a "serious issue with the phrasing" then you're reading too much into it. I'm not going to get into an argument about intellectual dishonesty when you take a statement "I didn't wish for him to die" and interpret it as "I would have been happy with grievous bodily harm." That is a complete troll.
I'm not going to get into an argument about software licensing, but Stallman is free to promote his new license. The reason he promotes GPLv3 is because he believes it is better for, ultimately, everybody. I quote myself from above: "He's campaigning for what he thinks they need. Perhaps he's wrong about what they need, but he is acting in their interests all the same, not his own."
The other links you provide are more evidence of Stallman's rudeness and poor social skills. Which I totally agree he exhibits. This Steve Jobs post exhibits his poor social skills too, but in all of these cases he is not doing anything other than promoting open computing and free software. Bill Joy distributed BSD a decade earlier but you are conflating "open source" and "free software" -- something which Stallman has spend much of his life trying to distinguish between. BSD is open source (as was a lot of software before Stallman's time), but he started the "free software" movement, which is the idea of the GPL -- that not only is the source code available, but if you redistribute it, you must keep sharing the code to make sure that the software remains free. Again, it sounds like you disagree with this ideology. But that doesn't give you the right to pretend it doesn't exist or deliberately blur it with open source.
That doesn't excuse him using the FSF to promote lies about Linux and Android being a risk because they are not GPLv3. It also doesn't excuse his lies about there being a back door in OSX.
Stallman's initial stated goal was to create a free unix
That sure worked out well, didn't it? HURD anyone using it?
And you are still being intellectually dishonest by ignoring the actual complete text of the quote, and how it originated.
Daley had just kicked the bucket. The obvious interpretation, in both cases is, "if him dying is what it took, it's worth it."
As far as Stallman is concerned, Jobs was evil. As far as most observers are concerned, zealotry is the greater evil.
But since Stallman likes to dish it out, let's see how much he and his zealots can take it when the shoe's on the other foot ...
The "risk" of Android and other non-GPLv3 software is that someone can take it and wrap it up in DRM and make sure you don't have control over your computing. That is not a lie: it is quite clearly true that that is possible, as it happens all the time. If you don't think this is a problem, then you are not required to listen to Stallman, but that does not make what he said a lie.
As an analogy, what if I told you that there was a risk that if you walk down the street, a homeless person may ask you for money? You may think, "big deal, if that happens I'll either give them money or ignore it -- that does not concern me." Fair enough, but that is still a true statement from me.
Why would you bring up HURD? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? "Stallman said twenty eight years ago that he was going to make a free operating system. And he DID make a free operating system, but contrary to his original statement, he did so using a component written by someone else who licensed it to him freely. Therefore he is a liar." ??? What are you trying to prove? Have you accomplished everything you set out to achieve in the last twenty eight years?
I am not going to continue arguing about intellectual dishonesty when you take someone's one line quotation and read from it that the quoter had a desire to see another human being killed or brutally maimed.
First, it does not "happen all the time". And if it did, really, who cares. Stallman has already gone on record that it's okay to steal software and violate licenses because those developers are doing evil and deserve it. So what's good for the goose ... (and you're going to have a hard time complaining that your rights are violated when you publicly say that others should have their same rights violated). The man is a big stinking steaming pile of hypocrisy.
Second, let's take a little test.
Do you believe that you should control your own data? Yes or no?
If yes, then how do you justify your wanting the right to manage your digital information, whilst condemning others (such as programmers) for wanting the same rights for their work product?
In the future, we're all going to demand that we have complete DRM over our own data. There's a market for that, and the first one to offer it will be rich. Privacy legislation isn't enough.
I'm sorry? What I was referring to was people taking free software and wrapping it up with signed DRM to prevent the end user from modifying it. This happens all the time: TIVO was a very early example. Android phones that don't let you modify the firmware and install your own operating system. iOS apps build from GPL sources (VLC, Wesnoth, etc). It happens all the time. "Who cares?" Clearly not you. But you seem to have a very strange style of arguing which consists of "I don't care, therefore I expect nobody else does." Throughout this entire exchange, I have been quite reasonable I think, in saying "I understand that you don't agree with Stallman's position, and that is fine, but he is still entitled to have his position." I understand that you don't care. I am not trying to convince you to care. If you are happy with DRM, then I am happy for you to use DRM products. But you must understand that not everybody is happy with DRM as you are. If you don't understand that other people may have different opinions to you, then there is no point in you having any argument about anything. The statement "who cares" is a very stupid thing to say in any argument, because it shows a complete lack of respect for anyone else's point of view.
Ok, that was a pretty dumb thing to say, I agree. (When you cite someone going on record, and give a link to an 11,000 word transcript, it doesn't hurt to include a quote, but I found it: "Once you are in that situation, you should choose the lesser evil. The lesser evil is to give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program.") I agree -- this is going way too far. I don't agree with everything Stallman says. But then I don't agree with everything anyone says. This does not change the fact that I agree with his main message.
Okay.
Absolutely. Control of one's data comes to two forms: a) do I have control of my own data as it is stored on my own private computing devices? and b) do I have control of my own data as it is stored on remote servers (e.g., Gmail, Facebook).
For (a), the answer is an absolute resounding "yes". What I do on my own computer is my own business and nobody should be spying on me or telling me what I can and cannot do with my own data. That is why Steve Jobs' iPhone is totally unacceptable to me, because he is telling me what I can do with my own data. For (b), it is a much trickier area. Does Google have a right to do anything with my data because I uploaded it to Gmail? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think I have some control over my own data even when it's stored remotely. But I think it is more a matter of market forces (if Google leaked my Gmail data, they would become unpopular) than DRM (I physically prevent Google from giving away my data).
However, I know where you're going with this, and let me just say that I am talking about my data in a private sense. My documents on my computer. My emails. My medical records, etc. Once I share data publicly, then it is no longer mine to control. Once I post a photo to Facebook, I understand that it can be shared, and it would be wrong for me to say to my friends "you can see this photo but you can't share it." (I could ask them not to share it, and trust them as friends, but I can't control their actions, nor would it be acceptable for me to do so, as that would imply installing severe locks into their operating systems to prevent them from screen capturing, etc.) Once I post this to Slashdot, it will be public forever, and I won't have the right to ask Slashdot to dele
A gulag slave can decide whatever he wants, but is physically restrained. A person might not know that a lightening bolt is about to strike them. Does that mean they aren't free? If he isn't free, then who is oppressing him? The sky?
Nope, you can walk away from one sided contracts under common law. Further, involuntary slavery is not allowed in a free society. If you agree to be a slave and sign a contract, then decide you want to be free, you can walk away. If there was some payment at the end of some term of VOLUNTARY servitude, you might lose that, but you can' always walk away from any contract. Try again.
For the quote, sorry - I should have directed you to this quiz.
For the violations? Well, lets see... VLC is not available as an iOS app - it was pulled by Apple for violating the terms of the App Store. The Wesnoth developers, on the other hand, gave explicit permission for the program to be ported to the App Store. The firmware on Android phones is not gpl code, same as the firmware on your computer isn't.
Tivo? Linus himself has said that it is appropriate for TiVo to use digital signatures to limit what software may run on the systems that they sell. Torvalds has stated that he believes the use of private digital signatures on software is a beneficial security tool, and believes that software licenses should attempt to control only software, not the hardware on which it runs. So, as long as one has access to the software, and can modify it to run on some other hardware, Torvalds believes there is nothing unethical about using digital signatures to prevent running modified copies of Linux. I happen to agree with Linus. I wish the world were different, but it's not ...
So again, who cares? You said it was "happening all the time", but it clearly isn't. When it happens, then let's look at it, and if they're in the wrong, I'll be squawking right there with you. However, Stallman has been making the rounds for 2 months throwing up boogieman scenarios that don't currently exist. In his own way, he's just as bad as Florian Mueller. When I first read the FSF fud about linux and android being a risky platform because of the version of the GPL license they use, I thought it was more Mueller crap. I was shocked to find that it was from the FSF. The more I looked into it, the less respect I had for the FSF and Stallman - to the point where I'm ashamed I ever defended the man, because the warning signs have been there for years, and I ignored them. I'm usually not THAT stupid.
As Freud said "I don't have problems with my enemies. My friends, on the other hand ..." Stallman has become, if possible, increasing erratic. He needs to step down asap, or we need to disavow him forcefully or be tarred with the same brush. In the meantime, instead of hiding the problem or being in denial, we need to expose it.
Now, on the issue of DRM, rootkits and stuff like that is clearly wrong. DRM should not be invasive, and should be under the control of the creator or owner of the data (programs are also data, at least for the sake of this discussion), without harming any system it runs on. In the case of your data, that would be you. This would include anything such as your photo posted on Facebook. They should not be able to use it for whatever they want, any more than you should be allowed to take someone else's work and do the same without their permission.
Now, if you agreed to let them do what they wanted, that's another kettle of fish. Don't like their ToS? Then be careful of what you stick on there, or boycott it. The same goes for gmail. I was using gmail before it went public, and quickly got bored with it (and had privacy concerns) and went back to using my own email on a few of my domains instead. When G++ came out, I logged in (after recovering the password - it's been years), used it, started using gmail again, stopped using gmail again for the same reasons (privacy concerns), and don't use G++ very much either.
When a domain is less than $10 a year, and hosting is dirt cheap, there's no reason why people can't have their own email accounts independent of the freemail providers. You can even have web access. If you think your privacy isn't worth ten cents a day, then you have a very low self-worth. But that's just me. Lots of people must disagree, since they depend on freemail for everything.
Hi, I don't have time to reply to all those points, but I read them all, and you're sounding much more reasonable now :)
The issue of Android is not about a "risk" as in a patent risk that should scare off hardware manufacturers. It is a warning to users: if you care about being able to run arbitrary code on your own device, this doesn't let you do that. Again, it is a fair and valid warning (for some Android devices, not others). Of course, Android is a lot better than iOS (and Stallman does acknowledge this). iOS doesn't let you run any unsigned code on your device. The basic Android is completely open; many Android devices restrict your ability to modify the firmware but it still lets you install your own apps on the base operating system.
I think there should be statutory rights for software and hardware just as there is for toasters and cars. Why should Ford tell me where I can and can't drive? Well they can't because of these statutory rights you're telling me about. Why is there no statutory right that says "if you buy an operating system, the seller cannot restrict what software you are allowed to run on it," or "if you buy a computer, the seller cannot restrict what operating system you are allowed to run on it," or "if you buy a game, the seller cannot render your copy of the game unplayable at their discretion." Obviously it would have to tease out details like if the code is wired in hardware then it is unreasonable to make it user-modifiable, but
the GPLv3 makes that distinction so I see no reason why the law couldn't.
Oh absolutely. As a store, the App Store is great for developers, great for consumers. But it isn't just a store. It is a distribution platform and the only distribution platform for iOS. If I write software for, say, Windows, I have a couple of choices. I can try to sell it in a brick and mortar store, but as you say, that might have insane markups. But that's okay, because I have many other options. I can sell it on my website -- that requires me to set up e-commerce and market it myself, but if I want to, I can. Or I could go with a third party distributor like Steam (for games), and they'll market it for me, and take a cut. Or I could just release the damn thing for free on my website. The choices are limitless. There's perhaps nothing as powerful or with such generous conditions as the Apple App Store, but at least the choices are open.
On iOS, yes the App Store terms may be "more reasonable" for developers, but it is literally the only way to distribute software. I cannot sell it in a brick and mortar store. I cannot set up my own e-commerce site. I cannot use a third party to sell the software for me. And I cannot release it for free on my own website. In fact, I cannot release it at all without Apple's permission, and then I need to get their permission each time I want to release an update. This may seem good for developers, but it is a huge trap. Apple is in total control of the entire platform. So yes, I complain about Apple's terms -- not its store per se, but the fact that the iOS operating system doesn't allow any other form of distribution.
PS. G++ is a compiler. G+ is a social networking service.
The thing is, most people really don't want to run arbitrary code on their devices. They're not you or me, and they're not Apple's target market. They actually are happier when arbitrary code cannot be run - they don't like it when they get p0wned in a drive-by.
They have the right to prefer that, and while it would drive ME crazy, I don't have the right to say "no, you're wrong, that walled garden is a trap", because for them, it's not a trap.
Look at a somewhat comparative situation wrt linux and bsd compared to windows. Linux has a simple one-stop updater for all your installed software. zypper -dup and everything gets upgraded (when you have 5,000 packages installed, it's a lot better than having to visit each web site :-). FreeBSD is even better - the ports collection is always consistent, because they exert much more control. Updating a FreeBSD box makes updating a Linux box look like the patched-together system that it is, in large part because FreeBSD is much better controlled, and much better integrated. I had to ssh into old BSD boxes that hadn't been upgraded in 18 releases to upgrade them, and it went fine. Can you imagine doing that with a linux box? Doing a remote in-place upgrade from, say, the first release of Ubuntu to the latest? Or a pre-9 version of opensuse to todays? Things would break.
Windows, of course, is even worse. You simply wouldn't be able to update everything remotely from some ancient version to Win7 - just finding all the update packages for each piece of non-Microsoft product you have installed will kill your week. You just know some driver is going to barf up a hairball, and you're looking at a 500-mile road trip each way.
So, if you were going to build an OS from another one, the best one to go with is one of the BSDs, because it's more stable to begin with and more mature as far as the underpinnings are concerned. That the license is more flexible is just an added bonus.
As an admin, which would you rather deal with? It's the same for end users. They try something where everything "just works" and they do not want to even hear about alternatives any more. It's like "Windows, you're cursing at your computer. Linux, you're cursing at yourself. Apple, you're cursing that you didn't make the switch earlier." That's a very powerful incentive.
(Then there are people like me who, confronted with an iMac, keep going "why do I have to do it this way - it's so much easier under linux/bsd" - so I'm not the target Apple customer).
And if you want to sell Apple customers software apps, they simply don't want to go through the hassle of dealing outside the store, of wondering if it's going to work properly, of having to track you down in the first place to even see what you have to offer. It's like someone who's been to West Edmonton Mall (largest shopping center in N. America, used to be the largest in the world, complete with submarine rides and indoor skating rink, NHL hockey rink, largest indoor water park in the world, etc). You have your store located miles away - people are going to the mall anyway, it's going to be the first place they look for anything. Your shop is just not going to do any business unless it's REALLY unique and caters to a special clientele.
It's the same thing with linux. When I'm looking for software, I look in my distros' repo first. If there's something there that I think will do the job, it gets first pick. That's "my" default app store. If it isn't in the repo, it simply stands much less chance of getting installed.
One of the problems with phones is that Apple doesn't get to control the whole experience. They have to make darn sure that the phones work no matter what, and that includes crappy carriers, areas of bad coverage, etc. They can't have iPhone customers flooding the carriers with complaints about how phones stopped working properly after some app was installed by the customer. Lose a carrier contract, you lose billions a year, and you also ha
I thought Henry Ford was the best comparison, to be honest.
Ford was an industrialist and in one sense an economic populist. His company built crazy amounts of cheap cars than almost anyone could afford, in the process employing a vast army of skilled (and decently paid) workers. The development of FoMoCo, the infrastructure and subcontrators the served it, was an important component in the overall development of America's industrial base.
Jobs on the other hand was a product design/marketing guy, and an overt economic elitist. His company designs slick consumer electronics, totally separate Chinese companies actually manufacture them, and then Apple retails them. The company's products are premium priced, and targeted primarily at an affluent demographic. Apple directly employs only a handful of highly skilled designers, engineers, & marketers; and a large number of low skill/wage retail employees.
Both Ford & Jobs were good at running large, highly profitable companies which ultimately sold products to consumers. Both were great managers, but not themselves technical innovators. The resemblance ends there.
No, The problem is that software is not in the same league as human rights and freedoms.
Not yet.
Software is different from many other technologies, because it augments the mind rather than the body. The reasoning capacity of the typical modern person (of even modest education) is hugely enhanced by the use of complex software tools. Imagine trying to make business (or governmental) decisions without access to an internet search engine, spreadsheets, databases, modeling software, etc. You would be at a huge disadvantage compared to an equally intelligent person possessing those tools.
As more and more powerful software tools come into popular use, humanity's ability to make decisions about things like human rights, traditional freedoms, war, economic policy, business planning, etc will become increasingly dependent on them. Those who control the software, in a sense control others' ability to reason effectively. That's why software freedom is important - because it will in turn effect so many other areas of human life.
The concept of "Human Rights and Freedoms" has existed well before the advent of computers. Sure you could use software to build a database of dissidents, trouble makers, and other undesirables to make the next pogrom more efficient but it's the software user not the software itself capable of threatening your rights. I can't see where an Open Source versus Closed Source database system would make a bit of difference in a situation like this. And there are a lot of software choices available today and you are certainly free to write your own if you feel like it.
You're obviously someone who has way too much money to waste and doesn't need to bother checking the facts. Apple's phones, tablets, and laptops continue to be way more expensive than functional equivalents from other companies. They are luxury niche products. And they only thing disruptive about Apple these days is their lawsuits; iOS 5 and iCloud are not even catching up with Android and Google.
The 11" macbook air is within a dollar of the hp, but the hp uses a hard drive.
The fact is that once you get out of the bargain basement, they're very price competitive. Why do you think people run linux on apple gear?
Invariably, if there is a way to screw up your phone, my users will do, because they'll stumble on a website giving instructions on how to put this "marvelous" app on their phone.
Ah, so you're responsible for some people who you presumably have no real authority over, but you're allowed to choose their technology for them.
Why not allow your users to do what they want after promising (in writing) not to bother you about it? Some users get hand-held, some get to do what they want. Or why not simply factory-reset their phones if they screw them up?
Or, if you must lock them down, is it really the case that Android provides no such security here? After all, these are presumably the same people who, if not you, then some IT department somewhere lets them use PCs. Surely, then, even if it's by locking it down yourself, an open platform is manageable.
Ways to jailbreak your phone are security issues, nothing less, nothing more. Can you blame Apple from closing security vulnerabilities?
Nope, but I can blame them for setting up a situation in which a security vulnerability is what's required to "jailbreak" (read: liberate) my own device.
Where I live, every single Android phone has to be rootkitted in order to reinstall another kernel.
And where is that, exactly?
Motorola, among others, has pledged to ship unlocked bootloaders on new phones. You plug the phone in, run one command from the dev kit on a PC -- which will even work from a Linux PC -- to install an entire new copy of the OS.
Also, since when were we talking about kernels? I was talking about additional software. On iPhone, you have to jailbreak just to download an app that isn't from Apple's own app store. Not all Android devices require even the procedure I described above -- some allow you to download apps from a web browser the way PCs (and Macs) have for, well, forever. So, on some brand-new Android phones, I can take the phone out of the box, navigate to a competitor's app store website, and I'm good -- at worst, I download their app store client.
And for god's sake, Apple doesn't force anyone to do anything!!!! Nobody prevents anyone from using Android...
That's a bit like an abusive husband telling his battered wife that she didn't have to marry him. Yes, it's true that Apple can't stop me from buying Android, and no one was suggesting that they can. However, if I were to buy Apple, then I'd have these restrictions.
Furthermore, the more people who buy Apple, the more of a market there is for iOS apps, and the less of a market there is for Android apps. This affects me as a developer -- I don't want to be forced to publish through Apple, to submit every patch to their capricious review process. And before you say "Nobody is forced to..." Sure, it's not the case yet, but the smaller the iOS market, the more opportunities there will be for me to find employment, or for me to sell a solo killer app, to non-iOS platforms.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Invariably, if there is a way to screw up your phone, my users will do, because they'll stumble on a website giving instructions on how to put this "marvelous" app on their phone.
Ah, so you're responsible for some people who you presumably have no real authority over, but you're allowed to choose their technology for them.
Why not allow your users to do what they want after promising (in writing) not to bother you about it? Some users get hand-held, some get to do what they want. Or why not simply factory-reset their phones if they screw them up?
I think you got me completely wrong. My users are my family. My wife and my kids. Making my wife promise me that she won't bother me? She already has another document with my signature that makes sure I owe her assistance. Plus, I have some dignity ;-)
Or, if you must lock them down, is it really the case that Android provides no such security here? After all, these are presumably the same people who, if not you, then some IT department somewhere lets them use PCs. Surely, then, even if it's by locking it down yourself, an open platform is manageable.
I'm pretty sure I could lock down an Android phone down to the exact level I want, catered to the millimeter for every one of my users. But then, I'll have no time to enjoy my users. I'd rather play with my kids than lock down their phone or to keep resetting them. Especially since there is a company out there that does just that for me.
Ways to jailbreak your phone are security issues, nothing less, nothing more. Can you blame Apple from closing security vulnerabilities?
Nope, but I can blame them for setting up a situation in which a security vulnerability is what's required to "jailbreak" (read: liberate) my own device.
If you want a phone "liberated", don't buy an iPhone. There are myriads of phones out there that are already liberated. Why focusing on the one handset that doesn't fit your need and keep bashing it as if Apple removes some of your freedom, when you're not a user?
Where I live, every single Android phone has to be rootkitted in order to reinstall another kernel.
And where is that, exactly?
Motorola, among others, has pledged to ship unlocked bootloaders on new phones. You plug the phone in, run one command from the dev kit on a PC -- which will even work from a Linux PC -- to install an entire new copy of the OS.
Ok, I didn't know that. I haven't been paying much attention to the Android news lately.
Also, since when were we talking about kernels? I was talking about additional software. On iPhone, you have to jailbreak just to download an app that isn't from Apple's own app store. Not all Android devices require even the procedure I described above -- some allow you to download apps from a web browser the way PCs (and Macs) have for, well, forever. So, on some brand-new Android phones, I can take the phone out of the box, navigate to a competitor's app store website, and I'm good -- at worst, I download their app store client.
Carriers (and manufacturers for that matter) can go pretty far as far as locking is concerned. They've been spotted more than enough time removing the marketplace altogether. That said, I'm glad you found a platform that fit your need. Why keep bashing the one that fit my need because it doesn't fit yours? Must ALL phones meet your standard for you to be happy?
And for god's sake, Apple doesn't force anyone to do anything!!!! Nobody prevents anyone from using Android...
That's a bit like an abusive husband telling his battered wife that she didn't have to marry him.
I hope you're joking, and by re-reading your sentence you will realize you haven't jumped the
Write boring code, not shiny code!
My users are my family. My wife and my kids.
Then I find it really hard to understand your attitude... I mean...
Plus, I have some dignity ;-)
Well, let's start here. You have too much dignity to tell your wife that you won't fix her phone if she breaks it? That seems like just the opposite, to me. Frankly, someone I plan to spend the rest of my life with is at least going to learn the concept of re-imaging a device -- even if I'm the one to do it, that's how infections get dealt with.
I'd rather play with my kids than lock down their phone or to keep resetting them. Especially since there is a company out there that does just that for me.
It resets them? Really? And you must be very lucky to have exactly the same set of values that Apple pushes, if your claim is that the iPhone is exactly as locked-down as it needs to be for your purposes.
If you want a phone "liberated", don't buy an iPhone.
It affects me whether or not I buy it, as I discussed elsewhere...
Have you looked at some numbers about marketshare lately? It looks as if Android is catching up, and fast. In other words, it looks like you don't have a point.
Android's actually ahead, but that's irrelevant. Every person who buys an iPhone is, effectively, part of the problem of availability of iPhone jobs vs Android jobs. It's true that I'm much less concerned now than before:
Why focusing on the one handset that doesn't fit your need and keep bashing it as if Apple removes some of your freedom, when you're not a user?
Apple doesn't so long as they don't control a majority of the market, but since when is that less of a threat? Also, where in my posts are you getting that I'm "focused" on the iPhone?
For that matter, what about DRM in games? I do still comment on this, and try to keep up with it, and work against it, because it does affect me. It's true that I don't buy games with excessive DRM, but that's because I pay attention. For brief windows of time, it really did look like the industry was about to be taken over by DRM -- developers were either entirely going to consoles because consoles provide sufficient DRM, or applying so much on the PC that it took a massive Amazon rating campaign to get EA to back down.
Because of the persistent bitching of people like me, there are more games with fewer DRM, and there are at least a few decent games which are designed to fully exploit the PC as a platform, rather than being pathetic console ports.
But following your logic, I should just not buy DRM'd games, and otherwise shut up about it. Nobody's forcing me to use it, after all. (Where in the above rant about DRM did I mention anyone "forcing" me to do anything?)
Actually, no, it's worse than that:
Apple is a sovereign company that does whatever the fuck they want with their products. I wouldn't live in a world where that wouldn't be the case.... It looks as if their philosophy on iOS pleases users.
At the expense of developers, and look at this same logic applied to the console vs PC debate. Microsoft is a sovereign company that does whatever the fuck it wants with its products. I wouldn't want to live in a world where they couldn't make the Xbox. It looks like their philosophy on Xbox pleases users.
Yet, even so, I would prefer DRM-free games, and I would prefer developers to actually target the PC, and people who get an Xbox instead of a PC, and only play games on the Xbox, are effectively working against that.
Now, would I tell someone not to get an Xbox? No, not really. Once they ask, I might tell them why I think they should get a PC. But if you look at my original post to you here, I think it applies -- Microsoft controls what you can and can't buy on the Xbox. It's therefore a walled garden. You may well
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So you completely ignore what I was actually saying and constructing your own version of what a Sique in a parallel universe might have said.
Fine, that's ok with me, you are free to do so.
And now you understand why in common law it is possible to walk away from one sided contracts - because one sided contracts are not free. At least one point I made you understood. Good for you.
And a restrainment in a GULAG is not necessarily physical. The GULAG slave is not chained. There is just a fence around, and there are people who will make sure that once you manage to flee the GULAG, you will die in the Tundra. And there are people around who will make sure that once you flee the GULAG, your loved ones will no longer be able to work in the jobs they like, will no longer be able to rent an appartement in the city they call home, will no longer be served at the local store, will not be admitted to anything else than elementary school, will not get necessary treatment in the hospital...
I have the impression that people who never have endured an unfree life have no idea what freedom really consists of. They live under the impression that as long as no one does them physical harm or steals their properties, they are somehow protected from all evils of the world. This is naive.
I hope you're joking, and by re-reading your sentence you will realize you haven't jumped the fence, but you've jumped the whole city there. Please, let's be civilized and let's use analogies that have some credibility.
Is the issue that my analogy was too harsh, or that it was actually inaccurate? In what way does this not apply? Seems to me the only issue is knowing about it up front...
For that matter...
The first time, I though you wrote that lightly. But insisting? By trying to compare buying a phone to being battered by one's husband, you have discredited yourself as a human being. Go die someplace where it won't disturb anyone please.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
By trying to compare buying a phone to being battered by one's husband, you have discredited yourself as a human being.
And by not being willing to consider it, you've shown yourself to be irrational and emotional.
Look, I am not trying to say that a business practice is anywhere near as bad as actually, physically hurting another human being. I'm even willing to leave the sweatshops out of this discussion. The point was not about severity, but kind.
Aside from the fact that being beaten and restricted in who you can talk to is far, far worse than being restricted in what you can install, the only other difference I see is what I said: The woman didn't necessarily know she was marrying crazy, whereas a person buying an iPhone should know what they're getting into.
And for what it's worth, I'm not done here. You could certainly convince me that I'm wrong. But writing me off as a human being, rather than even trying to explain where I'm wrong? That's cold, and a bit unfair.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Instead of talking nonsense for the mere pleasure of doing it, you should consider the harm your words can do to another human being. That's probably a consideration that is well over your head. Warning the general population that the iPhone is bad for them, when it's really bad for you and your kind is a far more important task. Who cares about other's feelings?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Ah, and since you will bash me for refusing to refute you stupidly arrogant and careless analogy, here it is:
- Wedding is a real life lifetime commitment. It has implications in every aspect of your life.
- Buying a phone is buying a fucking toy you can throw away whenever you please.
Do you see how your analogy is completely and utterly flawed? You'll never see how it can be hurtful because you don't care. How old are you? 15?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Instead of talking nonsense for the mere pleasure of doing it, you should consider the harm your words can do to another human being.
They really can't. Words are just words. You're the one who gives them power.
Who cares about other's feelings?
Of course I care about others' feelings. Just because you could have a thicker skin (or ignore me altogether) doesn't mean I deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible.
I think some context is in order, though -- in philosophical discussions, when we talk about morality, hyperbole is common. For example, a frequent hypothetical is, "What would you do if someone held a gun to your head and ordered you to rape a child? Ok, what if they told you that if you don't do it, they're going to kill the child?" To read the literature, it almost seems like philosophers really like guns.
So, even if my analogy is inaccurate, it's still hyperbole. Judging by your reply, it looks like the difference is still one of scale. It's like the difference between, say, stealing $5 and stealing someone's home -- yes, one's trivial and one's catastrophic, but they're still analogous.
Moving on to that...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
- Wedding is a real life lifetime commitment. It has implications in every aspect of your life.
- Buying a phone is buying a fucking toy you can throw away whenever you please.
That's a decent response, but that's also entirely a matter of attitudes. For example:
Wedding is a commitment for a long time. It's not necessarily a lifetime -- even ignoring divorce, there are places where weddings are (at least legally) contracts which occasionally come up for renewal, say, every 5 years or so. And it does have implications in most of your life, but that depends on your relationship. For example, if the wife was an avid painter before the marriage, her work might be influenced by her marriage, but it's not like her ability to paint is entirely contingent on that marriage.
In fact, some people think that the key to a healthy marriage, especially after retirement age, is to have parts of your life it doesn't affect as much -- to have hobbies which don't involve your spouse.
And some people, sadly, marry for the wrong reasons. To some women, a man is a fucking toy she can throw away whenever she pleases.
Now, consider a phone.
I don't know about you, but my phone -- it's not even a smartphone -- already affects nearly every aspect of my life, in all kinds of subtle ways. I recently managed to get myself locked into a room, late at night, with no way to get out and go home -- there were people to call, even before I managed to brute-force my own way out. I will find out, on a moment's notice, when my friends are about to do something I'd be interested in, wherever I am -- we can be far more spontaneous this way. I never have to worry about getting lost -- worst case, I call someone, but I usually have a map or two, and more modern phones have GPS. I'm significantly safer just walking across town at night, knowing 911 is a call away, and potential attackers know that too. Or I'll be in an interesting discussion, and someone will say "Hey, you should read this book," and I have somewhere I can save the title -- pencil and paper would work, if I always brought it, and if I wouldn't lose the scrap of paper later. I'm about to start learning a language, and being able to pull out my phone and some earbuds anywhere and listen to a lesson will be incredibly useful.
Now, if your point is that I could throw away my phone and get another one whenever I please, that might be valid. A newer, better phone would probably improve on all of the above. But I couldn't simply throw it away, and even that upgrade is going to be tricky. I have a large contact list that needs to be transferred, I'd need to set up an account somewhere for the new phone, I have tons of photos and podcasts on the memory card that I'd want transferred somewhere.
And there's the contract -- the new phone would have to be able to play nice with my current network, or I'd have to break up with it and pick a new network, and I might not be able to keep my phone number, which would be very disruptive. Or I could pay a fair amount extra to buy a phone without the contract, but I still need some sort of contract to connect it to, otherwise it really is a toy -- so yes, there is a commitment, if only temporary.
And perhaps I'm foolish, but I don't think I'm the only one who gets a little bit attached to their phone -- it's been with me every moment of every day, the screen has a tragically beautiful webbing of cracks, I've upgraded it a bit and learned every quirk of it...
So... both of these things are describing a long-term commitment measured in years (at least), both can affect every aspect of your life, both involve some sort of attachment (perhaps emotional), both can be tricky to get out of (divorce vs contract termination), and both impose certain restrictions while you're in that relationship. And yes, an abusive husband is analogous to some of the things cell companies do -- changing the rules on you while you're already committed (but y
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If for you the difference between a smartphone and a wife is just a matter of degree, then I can do nothing for you. Sorry.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Of course I care about others' feelings. Just because you could have a thicker skin (or ignore me altogether) doesn't mean I deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible.
Why not? Since words can't harm others what refrains you from "deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible"? It is not fun?
So, even if my analogy is inaccurate, it's still hyperbole. Judging by your reply, it looks like the difference is still one of scale. It's like the difference between, say, stealing $5 and stealing someone's home -- yes, one's trivial and one's catastrophic, but they're still analogous.
Well, destroying my iPhone does no harm to anyone (assuming I didn't break it by hitting someone with it). That is because it is an object, and not a human. The damage done is only mechanics and by buying another phone I can replace it 100%. Slapping my wife will hurt her. Not physically (it might though), but emotionally. Hurting her might actually cause damage to her that might not be reparable. Not mentioning my kids that might hear me hitting her. They too will be affected, and it might taint their entire lives from a negative standpoint.
So, your analogy is basically saying it's comparable to be locked in to a marriage with a violent husband and to be locked in an iPhone. You are basically trying to relate the relationship between two human beings with the relationship to your phone? And you say it's comparable? But you OWN your phone, you can part with it anytime you want with NO impact whatsoever to anyone but yourself in case you fell in love with it. And don't talk to me about contacts list and such, it is a technicality and there are numerous ways to back them up anyways. Getting out of a marriage is not harder, it's completely different. It's not parting with property!! How can you not see that? The ramifications and implications are just ... there. It's not that there's more of them, it's just that trowing your phone away has no implications whatsoever to anyone else but yourself.
Moving on to that...
Write boring code, not shiny code!
That's not what I said.
I said the difference between buying a locked-down smartphone and marrying an abusive husband seems to be one of degree, at least to the point where it makes a good analogy.
I mean, I wrote you a detailed reply, and rather than even try to tell me where I'm wrong, you've basically asserted "If you don't agree with me, you're crazy!" That's the least logical thing I've heard all week, and I've spent the past several days debating a travelling preacher, so the bar isn't exactly high.
And to top it all off, in your one-line dismissal of my thousand-word argument, you still strawman me. Bravo.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Since words can't harm others what refrains you from "deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible"?
Because that'd make me a bit of an asshole, and because I actually do want to have a conversation.
Put another way, I could walk up to random people on the street, whisper "Remember when the narwhal bacons" in their ear, and walk away. Does that hurt anyone? Even if words could hurt them, no. At worst, it's mildly irritating. But I still wouldn't do it.
It is not fun?
Seriously? How did you get from my claim that words can't hurt people to the assumption that I'm a hedonist?
Well, destroying my iPhone does no harm to anyone (assuming I didn't break it by hitting someone with it). That is because it is an object, and not a human. The damage done is only mechanics and by buying another phone I can replace it 100%. Slapping my wife will hurt her. Not physically (it might though), but emotionally....
So you'd say it's possible to hurt someone emotionally. Surely destroying my phone would hurt me emotionally?
And frankly, if you've got an iPhone and it has no data on it worth recovering, you're either doing it very wrong or very right. I wonder which it is...
So, your analogy is basically saying it's comparable to be locked in to a marriage with a violent husband and to be locked in an iPhone.
I'm saying it's analogous. This is not a hard concept.
You are basically trying to relate the relationship between two human beings with the relationship to your phone?
Quite successfully, apparently...
But you OWN your phone,
Dingdingdingding! For all the bullshit you've been spewing about "how dare I compare these things that are incomparable" without telling me why they're incomparable, you finally made a good point.
Yes, I do own my phone, and I can therefore treat it however I want. But does that mean that my phone manufacturer should be able to treat me however they want? If your answer is "yes, you bought the phone," then that takes us right back to "yes, you married the bastard."
you can part with it anytime you want with NO impact whatsoever to anyone but yourself...
Well, and anyone who actually wants to get in touch with me.
And don't talk to me about contacts list and such, it is a technicality
So, I made a valid point, and it's a "technicality"? How so?
there are numerous ways to back them up anyways.
If I have them backed up already, sure. And that battered wife, she could've developed better self-esteem and worked on some self-defense classes, and thrown some money in a savings fund.
If you're talking about after I've decided I need a new phone, then the point stands. There are a significant number of people who I communicate with mostly via text message. A new phone implies transferring the contact list over, and learning all the quirks of using the new phone. Imagine trying to talk on Novacaine, but for a month. It implies syncing calendars, and learning to use the new one, making sure my alarm clock is set up... Pretty much every aspect of my life is going to be interrupted with "Oh, how do I do that with this phone again?" until I learn it as well as I know my current phone.
Just like, with a divorcee, pretty much every aspect of my life would be "Oh, how do I do that without this person again?" Or, "How do I do that? This person always did it..."
Getting out of a marriage is not harder, it's completely different. It's not parting with property!! How can you not see that?
That's true, it's not parting with property. That's a difference. I wonder what the significance is, though? Because that's all you've said of substance...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ok, I won't answer to both threads, so I'll keep only that one alive. And let's put emotions aside. I think our misunderstanding is simple really:
I was comparing being in an abusive relationship with a spouse to being in an abusive contract with a phone
It is just in the definition of good and bad. You talked about philosophy, so let's dive in. There are no absolutes when it comes to good and bad, it is all dependent on your point of view. However, a battered wife *is* a bad thing, and by this I mean that it is universally recognized as being a bad thing.
Now, before going any further, I'll put some context onto that sentence. I am talking about western culture (say, north america and western Europe) which is the only culture I really know. We could go into other stuff, but I'm not interested really, nor am I competent. So by universally, I mean universally in western culture.
So, a battered wife could be made to believe she deserves what she gets. This is for me nothing else than a form of indoctrination, much like you can make people believe it's a good idea to hijack a plane and crash it into a tower. I don't know how it works, but it is obviously possible since it does exist.
The point being that an overwhelming majority of people consider battling your wife a bad thing. There are even laws for this.
Buying a phone with a walled-garden type app store *is not* considered to be a bad thing by most people. By most, it is considered a choice that may or may not fit one's needs. There is a minority of people that consider it a bad thing, much like everything else really, and this community is over-represented on Slashdot. But it is not the norm.
And even by explaining to people what exactly happens into the App Store (namely the approval process and the mandatory status of said process in order to get into the store), you'll realize that many people find that as being an *interesting* thing. Something of value.
Indeed, I consider the walled-garden app store a service with added value over the Google app store where anyone with a PC and 30 minutes to waste can write a piece of crap and get it into the store. The most ridiculously pathetic and useless apps on the Apple app store are nothing compare to the pile of shit you can find in the bottom of the Google Android app store. This is just one example of how I consider the Apple app store superior to Google's, for my specific needs. As I said, yes, there are drawbacks. So it is all a matter of setting your priorities straight and realizing what has the most value. Once that's done, you can weight the good and bad of each store *as applied to your situation* and then decide which best fit your needs.
So in my view, this is why you fail in your analogy, because you're trying to generalize the fact that Apple's walled garden is a bad thing - by comparing it to something universally bad -, when it is not. And it's not that it is not in my view. It is not by any stretch of the imagination. So no, it is not a matter of degree, it is a matter of those two thing being almost opposite things.
And to go back to your quote:
I was comparing being in an abusive relationship with a spouse to being in an abusive contract with a phone
The problem is that the relation to your phone is not abusive. At least, it's not perceived to be an abusive relationship by an overwhelming majority of the people out there.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I did.
Therefore, the iPad is a lot more expensive than the Asus. (Sony and Blackberry both make shitty, overpriced hardware, so they are not good reference points.)
And the 11" Macbook Air is about twice as expensive as a functionally equivalent netbook.
Because Linux geeks often have money to burn and like shiny things. I was tempted to get a Macbook to run Linux myself. I would have been willing to pay somewhat of a premium, but concluded Apple hardware was just way too overpriced.
$120 on a $500 purchase is not "a lot more expensive", not when the Asus has only a crappy 640x480 camera. a $60 throw-away cell phone gets you better than that nowadays.
And comparing a Macbook air with 64gig ssd and an i5 processor with a crapbook^netbook is really an apples vs oranges comparison.
And let's put emotions aside.
Agreed.
Well, not entirely. I've noticed your signature for awhile, and I agree wholeheartedly with that! Planning to do something like that the next time I build a website myself.
There are no absolutes when it comes to good and bad, it is all dependent on your point of view.
Maybe. I agree, but a moral objectivist would disagree.
However, a battered wife *is* a bad thing, and by this I mean that it is universally recognized as being a bad thing.
Well, not universally, but...
I am talking about western culture (say, north america and western Europe) which is the only culture I really know.
Mostly. There are certainly subcultures who disagree, but I would agree with your premise, and I'd even apply it beyond that -- while it is not recognized by most islamic countries as a bad thing, I would argue that it is still a bad thing there.
So, a battered wife could be made to believe she deserves what she gets. This is for me nothing else than a form of indoctrination, much like you can make people believe it's a good idea to hijack a plane and crash it into a tower. I don't know how it works...
As an armchair psychologist, I'd guess Stockholm syndrome at least, probably coupled with low self-esteem. Even when they get out of these relationships, these women will internalize the abuse to the point that they will subconsciously seek out abusers, and end up in another abusive relationship. At least, that's my best guess as to why battered wives tend to go from one abusive relationship to the next, while there are many women who will never be abused at all.
Note that I'm not trying to place the blame with the victim here. I'm only pointing out that this cycle exists, and that if she wants to break the cycle, it's not enough to divorce the abuser, or even to jail him. (Of course, the ideal solution is for the abuser to stop abusing...)
Buying a phone with a walled-garden type app store *is not* considered to be a bad thing by most people.
I think the point you continue to miss here is that the analogy is not that it is bad for a person to buy a phone. To stretch the analogy further, that would be blaming the victim. It is not the wife's fault she got hurt, even if she "should've known" that the husband was going to hurt her.
Your point is a good one, but you probably want to word it like this:
Selling a phone with a walled-garden type app store *is not* considered to be a bad thing by most people.
Still, that's a weaker point, because I do consider it to be a bad thing, and I'm not the only one. I can also offer an actual argument for this, and I think it's a good argument. I certainly wouldn't argue that it should be a legal matter -- Apple should be allowed to sell iPhones -- I just think they are morally wrong to do so.
One reason I think this is that it is Apple's goal -- they've made no secret of this -- to expand this model everywhere they can. Macs now include an App Store, though they also allow (for now) traditional apps to be installed by third parties. The iPad was an entry into the tablet space, which was previously occupied mostly by machines running a full desktop version of Windows.
And because they do so well with this model, others follow suit. The next version of desktop Windows will include a mode with an exclusive app store. It's really looking like, in the very near future, general-purpose computers on which I can download an app from anywhere (or program my own) will be expensive hobbyist items, and the computers everyone uses every day will only be able to run approved apps.
And even by explaining to people what exactly happens int
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
maybe we can find some common ground in the browser wars?
IE sucks? Can we universally agree on that one then?
Write boring code, not shiny code!