I sometimes wonder if you are yourself a part of twitter's multi-faceted personality, posting to draw attention to his posts. Sort of like Norman's mother in Psycho.
Your commitment to fighting the injustice which is twitter using several accounts on Slashdot is awesome, and unrelenting, but the best thing to do with someone like that is to ignore them when they say something stupid, not to give them more attention.
People game accounts on sites like this all the time, some of them are scripts, some looking for notoriety in some small way, some just bored, but it really doesn't matter; because it's just a website.
If phishing becomes too common it impacts their image and reputation as a safe way to shop.
Paypal is not a safe way to shop, and they certainly don't have a reputation for being safe or protecting their users. If the phishers don't steal your money, paypal will, so the real solution to this problem is to avoid paypal transactions. I'd never leave money with them or trust them with my card details.
It is of course legal to demand users use a certain browser, if a bit stupid. There are many safer ways to secure the transaction - require local certificates to sign in, two factor authentication, don't sent out emails to your users, etc etc. If Paypal send out emails, they should be signed and verifiable - they could easily provide a small application to verify emails were real, or use the stuff already built in to some email clients.
Briefly, if you will, the few people who do hate Apple, don't hate it for its perfection, they hate for the unrelenting annoyance that Apple's hype and Apple's fanboys can be.
At this point I'm beginning to hate long rants about 'apple fanboiz' which inevitably follow any story about Apple. There don't even need to be any positive comments before everyone just piles on telling us how they don't use Apple stuff because it's evil (why should we care?) and OMG the fanbois and oh my the hype, I can't take it - the comment you responded to wasn't even positive about Apple, it was just whining about Apple stories not being all peaches and cream (personally I disagree, but hey, it's hardly saying Apple == perfection, just pointing out that Slashdot groupthink is trending towards irrational hatred of all things Apple).
To turn around your statement about the 'few people' who hate Apple, the only thing I hate about many Windows users on Slashdot is their constant need to justify their decision by denigrating other operating systems - I wonder why that need is so strong? So, in your own words :
Oh, ffs, not again. Go fuck yourself with a cactus already.
You can start whining again when you actually see an Apple fanboy in the wild, instead of attacking straw men whenever the opportunity presents.
Re the actual exploit; it sounds serious so I hope Apple has a fix out soon - surfing with Safari is not safe right now as there are several exploits out there which are unpatched - the iPhone Safari is probably in a worse state as it'll be slightly behind. It's a great browser (IMO) but they obviously need to put someone on to fuzzing it full-time in house to check for vulnerabilities.
Re:Banks is not a good author
on
Matter
·
· Score: 1
Sorry I meant Discworld, not ringworld; I was talking about Terry Pratchett, whom I don't rate highly I'm afraid.
Re:Banks is not a good author
on
Matter
·
· Score: 1
He generally gets his own shelf and you'll only see people who've never read him pick up one of his books and its rare to see them make the same mistake twice.
I'm curious as to how you know this?
While his books might take a little more effort than most run of the mill sci-fi, I think they're worth it because of the thought that goes into constructing the back story and motivations of the characters - also, which is unusual in sci-fi, the characters are not exclusively male proxies for the author, there's even thinking women and (gasp) thinking machines. If you're not willing to put the effort in though, they won't be rewarding.
You want a good British author read Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman is definitely worth a read. Terry Pratchett is not even in the same league - he should have stopped after about 3 of those Ringworld novels, and frankly the writing is trash, vaguely amusing perhaps but not something I'd recommend someone else pick up, and certainly not a good representation of British writing. What about Ian McEwan, Rachel Seiffert, Margaret Atwood, Graham Swift etc. ?
Just an observation here, no flaming intended...but can you name me another group of folks in the electronics industry who are more rabid, more fanatical, and more defensive about their choice of product than Apple users?
Well, I don't know, I'm half way through, never having used LISP before, and it seems like a nice introduction to me - surely it's best to start with the stuff that makes it worth learning? After all much of the whole point of learning another language is to absorb the culture which comes with it. Haven't read the other book you're recommending though so will take a look.
Wow, OSX.Macarena, a trojan probably created by an AV vendor (or proxy) to sell more of their software and spread FUD. Nice. It also requires windows on the machine to execute, forgive me if I don't run to the nearest AV vendor and pay through the nose for insecure software which bogs down my machine.
To address the original point, of course there are, or will be, viruses on OS X, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to run AV software to try to combat them - other methods are far more effective (download all updates, avoid malware, avoid dodgy sites, firewall, etc).
Add to this that AV is almost entirely reactive and usually based on a list of older exploits, and it's pointless to run it in the background all the time if you already have a firewall and keep up to date with your software. In fact running another program as a background process makes you vulnerable to other exploits in the AV itself, while failing to protect against new or unknown ones.
If you're looking for books on LISP, another book to consider is On Lisp. It's free to download from the following link as it's inexplicably out of print.
I realize that these are still in the realm of sci-fi at the moment, but until the private companies start working on these solutions there is no future for tourism in space. Period.
'No wireless, less space than a nomad, Lame.'
Tourists won't care about orbital flight, they just want to see the world from space, and experience weightlessness - from the bookings for Virgin Galactic etc, it seems there are enough people interested to make it viable. Orbital will come much later because it's much more expensive, but will probably be paid for with the proceeds of this kind of thrill ride.
Small time coders don't need protection in a world without patents (so long as you also prevent cartels and monopolies), because it's very easy to break into a market
There was once this company called 'Netscape'...
Netscape was killed by an abusive monopoly leveraging its dominance in the OS market to choke off a competitor by bundling IE, that and their lack of direction in the later years. Patents would not have saved them from that, and would in fact have killed the browser market dead if they were effective. In fact they were themselves victims of patent trolls : http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2068266,00.htm, or the gif patent.
And once the small guys break into a market, or more correctly, create a market by building a customer base and finding a sustainable way to generate revenue profitably, the big guys will copy the idea wholesale
To address your more general point, this doesn't happen very often if at all - more often the big guys buy out a small company (flickr, iTunes, Hotmail etc), or try to copy it and fail because they didn't understand it (MSN, Zune, Google Video). Patents are no protection anyway, because the big companies have huge armies of lawyers, and a whole portfolio of patents with which to bludgeon smaller players into submission.
The real threat to smaller players comes from bundling and abusive monopolies, both of which are supposed to be controlled by other laws (which frequently are not enforced).
What would have happened if this patent was issued 9 years ago? or even just the year before the iPod came out? Would it be the ZapMediaPod that everyone was playing thier music on?
I think what you meant to ask was - what would have happened if these guys had actually made a store and tried to make deals with media companies for distribution? I might have a bit more sympathy for them if they'd actually done something with the idea, they might have made it big, been chosen by media companies who are desperate for an Apple alternative, or been bought out.
You will see that these guys worked closely with Apple, and then Apple cut them out of the loop, EXACTLY what patent law was originally designed to prevent.
Doesn't say that anywhere in the press release you link to, which is in fact direct from the company suing in any case, so I'd take it with a pinch of salt. If they could claim they were in negotiations or actually working with Apple, they would have. Probably they just pitched to lots of companies in the hope of taking them to court later.
Patents shouldn't apply to software... maybe. How do you protect the small time coder from the big business that takes thier ideas, makes billions, and then doesn't return a dime, without patents?
You don't. Small time coders don't need protection in a world without patents (so long as you also prevent cartels and monopolies), because it's very easy to break into a market - all you need is one computer, one programmer and the right idea to make it big, or nowadays perhaps a server if you want to do web apps. A big company is not agile enough to react to rapid changes in features etc - you could run rings round them as a small company if you have good ideas and talent because with software you don't have to manufacture, pay up front for materials etc etc. In a world with software patents this is virtually impossible as a larger competitor can crush you like a bug with some ridiculous 'One Click' patent or a patent on tabs in a user interface as soon as you begin to threaten them. Software patents work exclusively in favour of the big guys, and offer no protection to smaller companies. They were intended for physical inventions, and that's where they should have stayed - even there they're open to abuse and should require a physical prototype.
Quite apart from anything else the US Patent Office obviously can't handle the workload, so they need to restrict the number applications as a matter of practicality - that should have been done years ago because as it is they're becoming the laughing stock of the world.
There would be no dupes (auto-check on urls within stories) There would be no obvious spelling mistakes (auto-spell check) There would be no annoying and inflammatory 'commentary' attached to stories.
Unless of course they were shell scripts cleverly designed to appear human, like me.
That's funny, because very little you said responded to it - in fact you're more guilty of using his posts as a springboard for tangential rants than he is.
Your arguments didn't even recognize the points I made, that I just made again. My arguments addressed your points specifically.
Not from where I'm standing - your points are orthogonal to his central argument, and mostly to do with how great Java is for everything.
You don't have any good ideas, even when they're given to you over and over.
eh?
The only people asking for Java on the iPhone will be phone developers who want to make a quick buck with a port of their existing J2ME app, and corporate developers who follow the religion - customers will avoid it like the plague because it will suffer from the same mediocre mongrel interface as Java on the desktop does on every platform, and the apps won't feel like they belong, because there won't be proper integration with things like the touch screen, native UI transitions etc etc.
Java on phones is not dead, it just deserves to die, and roping J2ME to the new hot platform is not going to make it magically better. There's an interesting post further up this thread about the mediocrity which is Java as a language, but all that doesn't matter to the users; the ultimate arbiters in this matter, all they care about is the UI and user experience, which is historically Sun's weakest point.
For one, I didn't say that Java is the native iPhone environment. I said that it's native to those other devices I mentioned, DVB/ATSC/BDP/phones.
Maybe that's why phone UIs almost universally suck - I know the ones using Java for apps that I have used do, not really because of Java the language, but because of the libraries and UI conventions used, which are presumably closely tied in with the framework itself. I'm sure it's *possible* to do anything, but developers will tend to do what is easiest with a given framework.
once again proving you're not reading my posts, you don't notice the remote device UI use case I mentioned, which is of course just one possible application.
Maybe he just felt it was irrelevant and of more interest to Java aficionados than anyone else. Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me - I'm sure it would be neat and all, but ultimately as a user I don't really care if you use the same objects on several different interfaces, it _might_ even end up a horrible kludge if they have different screen sizes and UI control schemes and the views aren't appropriately tailored. By the by, this facility (distributed objects) has been available in Objective C since the mid 90s, even if it's not available on the iPhone. Java really isn't as original as you seem to think it is. It's just as derivative as Objective-C for example, and if it ever was visionary, it isn't now.
iPhone Java is coming, bringing along...Just don't pretend that you're qualified to talk anyone out of it.
Well the future will tell all (including maybe even telling you you're wrong, if you're willing to listen), but if it's anything like the acceptance by consumers of Java on desktop OS X, you'll have a hard time convincing someone to use your J2ME app over a native one, that's if Sun even manages to get a credible solution supported on the iPhone.
Frankly I find his arguments more convincing that yours, because they're grounded in an understanding of what the *user* wants, not a Java developer's hopes.
That's exactly what you were suggesting. Reread your comment, what you are suggesting wouldn't work, unless you're talking about devs making apps for other devs who happen to have paid for a certificate.
Even if they have to pay $99, is that so terrible?
It's not terrible, and I see why they did it (to discourage frivolous apps), but if Apple want to do the Right Thing, and encourage open source development for their platform, they should give these certificates to selected open source projects for free - it would mean nothing to Apple and a lot to the developers.
Would you want to commit to paying $99 every year and give away your time for free to develop an open-source app?
You may still distribute your app for FREE if you want and it will be free for your "customers". You can even distribute your source code and your customers can modify and compile and run your code for FREE - they just need to download the FREE SDK - kinda like the "real world" where you have to have the FREE gcc compiler and dependent resources on your computer to compile OSS code.
This is not true. You cannot put apps on the device without a developer key, and the legalese which accompanies the SDK forbids its use for apps distributed outside the iTunes store. I'm hoping Apple lift that restriction, as it does limit the possibilities a bit for open source apps. While I agree that it can get tiresome to hear people bleating about wanting stuff for free, and am really pleased with the announcement from Apple, some perspective is in order - this will limit open-source efforts on the iPhone, and it is valid to criticise the fee *when applied to open-source projects*, it is a yearly fee, and is enough to put off small open-source or hobbyist developers.
I'd love to see Apple give out free certificates to verified open-source projects - say start up something in collaboration with MacPorts, and tell people if they host their iPhone app there under a selection of licenses, they'll get a free certificate for distribution, and it will be offered for free on the store, so long as their app is vetted and approved not to contain malware or abuse the network. That would keep everyone happy and earn Apple a lot of kudos. They saw the light with webkit eventually and opened up somewhat, so here's hoping they do the same with this SDK.
that requires applications to be installed exclusively through third-party servers (iTMS) that they have absolutely no control over.
Would that be as bad as using an email solution that requires all sensitive email to be sent via third party servers in Canada?
Would that be as crazy as using one operating system and browser from a SINGLE VENDOR and locking all your in-house apps, and even your web-apps, to that platform. Forget it. Medium-to-Large companies will NEVER go for this.
Exactly, developers will love this for the chance of exposure it brings, and the possibility of making a lot more money than they would on their own. While Apple are taking slightly more than a payment processor, they're also providing a lot of free marketing, free hosting and free update download hosting - that's not much to ask for 10% more than a payment processor would take. Compare it to what authors, photographers or musicians make on their offerings, and you'll see the margins really aren't that bad.
Now that they have a mobile apps store, I wonder if minds at Apple will be turning to another possibility - a store for desktop OS X apps, which provides a central distribution system for OS X apps (and perhaps over time for mobile apps too, which don't really sit happily in the iTunes Media store app). It wouldn't have to be exclusive like the one for the iPhone, but everyone would benefit if there was a central place to download apps and updates, rather than the fragmented system of websites for new software we have just now. At the moment one of the nice advantages of Linux over OS X is that you have package management systems to manage all the software you install, which are now pretty easy for the average user to install software with - they mean users can trust the packages they're installing, rather than just downloading stuff from an internet search, and it makes it dead simple to find new software.
The only missing piece in the puzzle is distribution of open-source apps, however I suspect Apple will feel the pressure on this and eventually cave (as they did with the SDK) - perhaps giving out certificates to certain verified open source organisations or individuals for free. I understand why they're asking for the $99 fee, at least initially, but at some point they might want to open up a program where they certify apps as open-source and allow them on to the store with no fee. That said the fee wouldn't be a problem for people like Mozilla, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.
For developers, it'd provide hosting, reliable merchandising and a big boost in marketing. Throw in an auto-update system like sparkle, and a crashreporter system for bugs (all things that Apple should have addressed with system frameworks a long time ago, but never mind), and you have a very attractive proposition for app developers. They'd get much more exposure in a central store, and have the trust which comes from the backing of Apple, plus they wouldn't have to worry about processing credit cards etc via their website.
For users, it'd provide app downloads and updates they could trust, a commenting and feedback system on apps so that they could share their experiences with other users on the store, and an easy way to search for apps - the experience would be like that on say Ubuntu, but commercial apps would be available as well as free ones, and the store would be far more enticing graphically than the slightly geeky package managers we have on Linux.
A store for desktop apps would be great for developers, great for users, and great for Apple, so I hope they expand the idea to cover it.
PS Anyone managed to download the SDK yet? Keeps timing out for me.
The real question is what is sensitive information like that doing being sent over email without encryption. If they're sending things like flight plans and military tactics via plain email, it should be considered a security breach no matter who the recipient is. Anyone could easily read it on the way between the two servers, it might get forwarded to someone who shouldn't see it, it can be changed by servers en-route or bogus data inserted etc etc. I imagine most security services would find it easy to infiltrate an ISP here and there and watch traffic as it goes through, and no one would be any the wiser.
I think the series is scripted to provoke exactly the kind of conflictual emotions you have mentioned - it's an old trick and it works well for retaining viewer interest. The interesting thing is that you feel the writers haven't considered these issues - I don't think they show the humans in an uncritical light at all, in fact many of the worst acts in the war are committed by humans (rape, torture, etc), I think you're feeling exactly what you're supposed to feel - i.e. 'Hang on a minute, that's not right'.
By showing both sides of the conflict, they're shedding light on the tricks we play on ourselves to make warfare acceptable. Rather cleverly, they've cast the robots as more human than the humans in many ways (religious, questioning, constantly seeking resolution), and difficult for the viewer to tell apart from humans. People are being tortured right now in the name of the US and the UK, so I think it's rather apposite that they show humans trying to justify this by dehumanising their enemy - now perhaps they still show torture working sometimes, and they fail to show the effects it has on the torturers in terms of twisting their moral sense, but torture does happen in most wars, and they're right to show it. Nicknames like toaster etc are very common in times of war (see names for Germans or Japanese used in the states in WWII)- it's the first step in preparing to wipe out an enemy; suppress empathy. I'm sure you could find people who applauded the fire-bombing of Dresden, because of being dehumanised by war.
Now the scripts are far from perfect, and in many ways it's a standard sci-fi pot-boiler, but there are elements which are definitely interesting, and I don't believe for a minute that the writers are not aware of the buttons they are pushing, or that they somehow feel all the actions of the humans are justified. Much time is spent discussing whether in fact these actions are correct or acceptable in any circumstances, and the introduction of several cylon characters into the human fleet is designed to bring home this distinction - personally I don't agree with their justification of torture, but it's not as naive as something like '24' at least, where jack gets out his pistol and whacks evil super-villains on the head with it a few times till they give up the secret code to their nuclear weapons. They've also played with insurrection and when/whether it is justified, which I thought was a very useful topic to examine right now in the west.
I agree the politics can be caricatured at points, though the revolt of workers was not unusual in its outcome - If you look at the history of industrialised nations, you will see many cases of exactly this behaviour - the 1848 revolutions in several other european countries fizzled out before they got going, and the earlier frame breakers/luddites have even become a byword for stupidity, even though their grievances were real and their movement brutally repressed. When workers are not organised or allied with the middle classes they're going to have a hard time fighting a heavily armed government determined to impose order, and often the best option is to give up and bide their time.
I just wish they based more of their scripts on historical events, to give it a bit more grit and a bit less of the trite pablum which passes for political discourse in America at the moment - at times I felt like I was watching the first episode of the West wing, particularly when that president opens her mouth, or they had that journalist woman being defused by being allowed access to the military (a nice idea, and stylistically quite fun with the grainy footage, but again came out a bit trite). I finally got bored with it all after the 3rd series, and gave up on it - it turned into a soap opera, and not a very good one, and the mixture of shallow political/social analysis and faith was just too much for me. There's a lot there that could be good, but unfortunately they went for the easy options too many times, and felt it necessary to add lots of trite filler and romantic stuffing that didn't really belong. But perhaps that's why they didn't get cancelled and Firefly did.
I don't feel the show is encouraging xenophobia though, quite the opposite, it's encouraging you to think about it.
Gzip cannot recompress GIF, JPEG, and PNG images at reduced quality and file size, which I'm suspecting that some proxies do.
Personally I'd rather not see degraded versions of images (if this is even being done) just to get the file size down, I'd rather use a better device which doesn't suck at displaying the real images. Typically images are already compressed on the web anyway, so reducing the quality further is going to lead to massive drops in quality, unless your display is some 120x160 monstrosity and you can't tell the difference. The reason gzip isn't used for images is that they're typically already compressed (often almost to their limit), so adding another layer of compression isn't worth the trade-off of using up more CPU on the device to decode it; it can compress them, it's just not worth it.
A lot of servers don't compress responses out of the box.
And a lot do - nowadays more and more are doing it. I think pretty soon every website will use mod_deflate (this one already does for example), it's even built in to Apache 2.
As mobile CPUs and bandwidth improve, this will become less and less of an issue anyway. It's so much better to have an all-you-can-eat plan than one which charges per KB - I wouldn't even consider using one which charges per KB for general browsing, as it would get very expensive very fast.
Have you read the Bible (old testament) or Talmud? If not I suggest you look for approval of atrocities and genocide in there - there are plenty of examples.
Slashdot Mirror
I sometimes wonder if you are yourself a part of twitter's multi-faceted personality, posting to draw attention to his posts. Sort of like Norman's mother in Psycho.
Your commitment to fighting the injustice which is twitter using several accounts on Slashdot is awesome, and unrelenting, but the best thing to do with someone like that is to ignore them when they say something stupid, not to give them more attention.
People game accounts on sites like this all the time, some of them are scripts, some looking for notoriety in some small way, some just bored, but it really doesn't matter; because it's just a website.
Paypal is not a safe way to shop, and they certainly don't have a reputation for being safe or protecting their users. If the phishers don't steal your money, paypal will, so the real solution to this problem is to avoid paypal transactions. I'd never leave money with them or trust them with my card details.
It is of course legal to demand users use a certain browser, if a bit stupid. There are many safer ways to secure the transaction - require local certificates to sign in, two factor authentication, don't sent out emails to your users, etc etc. If Paypal send out emails, they should be signed and verifiable - they could easily provide a small application to verify emails were real, or use the stuff already built in to some email clients.
At this point I'm beginning to hate long rants about 'apple fanboiz' which inevitably follow any story about Apple. There don't even need to be any positive comments before everyone just piles on telling us how they don't use Apple stuff because it's evil (why should we care?) and OMG the fanbois and oh my the hype, I can't take it - the comment you responded to wasn't even positive about Apple, it was just whining about Apple stories not being all peaches and cream (personally I disagree, but hey, it's hardly saying Apple == perfection, just pointing out that Slashdot groupthink is trending towards irrational hatred of all things Apple).
To turn around your statement about the 'few people' who hate Apple, the only thing I hate about many Windows users on Slashdot is their constant need to justify their decision by denigrating other operating systems - I wonder why that need is so strong? So, in your own words :
Oh, ffs, not again. Go fuck yourself with a cactus already.
You can start whining again when you actually see an Apple fanboy in the wild, instead of attacking straw men whenever the opportunity presents.
Re the actual exploit; it sounds serious so I hope Apple has a fix out soon - surfing with Safari is not safe right now as there are several exploits out there which are unpatched - the iPhone Safari is probably in a worse state as it'll be slightly behind. It's a great browser (IMO) but they obviously need to put someone on to fuzzing it full-time in house to check for vulnerabilities.
Sorry I meant Discworld, not ringworld; I was talking about Terry Pratchett, whom I don't rate highly I'm afraid.
I'm curious as to how you know this?
While his books might take a little more effort than most run of the mill sci-fi, I think they're worth it because of the thought that goes into constructing the back story and motivations of the characters - also, which is unusual in sci-fi, the characters are not exclusively male proxies for the author, there's even thinking women and (gasp) thinking machines. If you're not willing to put the effort in though, they won't be rewarding.
Philip Pullman is definitely worth a read. Terry Pratchett is not even in the same league - he should have stopped after about 3 of those Ringworld novels, and frankly the writing is trash, vaguely amusing perhaps but not something I'd recommend someone else pick up, and certainly not a good representation of British writing. What about Ian McEwan, Rachel Seiffert, Margaret Atwood, Graham Swift etc. ?
People who hate Apple users?
Well, I don't know, I'm half way through, never having used LISP before, and it seems like a nice introduction to me - surely it's best to start with the stuff that makes it worth learning? After all much of the whole point of learning another language is to absorb the culture which comes with it. Haven't read the other book you're recommending though so will take a look.
Wow, OSX.Macarena, a trojan probably created by an AV vendor (or proxy) to sell more of their software and spread FUD. Nice. It also requires windows on the machine to execute, forgive me if I don't run to the nearest AV vendor and pay through the nose for insecure software which bogs down my machine.
To address the original point, of course there are, or will be, viruses on OS X, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to run AV software to try to combat them - other methods are far more effective (download all updates, avoid malware, avoid dodgy sites, firewall, etc).
Add to this that AV is almost entirely reactive and usually based on a list of older exploits, and it's pointless to run it in the background all the time if you already have a firewall and keep up to date with your software. In fact running another program as a background process makes you vulnerable to other exploits in the AV itself, while failing to protect against new or unknown ones.
If you're looking for books on LISP, another book to consider is On Lisp. It's free to download from the following link as it's inexplicably out of print.
http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
'No wireless, less space than a nomad, Lame.'
Tourists won't care about orbital flight, they just want to see the world from space, and experience weightlessness - from the bookings for Virgin Galactic etc, it seems there are enough people interested to make it viable. Orbital will come much later because it's much more expensive, but will probably be paid for with the proceeds of this kind of thrill ride.
Netscape was killed by an abusive monopoly leveraging its dominance in the OS market to choke off a competitor by bundling IE, that and their lack of direction in the later years. Patents would not have saved them from that, and would in fact have killed the browser market dead if they were effective. In fact they were themselves victims of patent trolls : http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2068266,00.htm, or the gif patent.
To address your more general point, this doesn't happen very often if at all - more often the big guys buy out a small company (flickr, iTunes, Hotmail etc), or try to copy it and fail because they didn't understand it (MSN, Zune, Google Video). Patents are no protection anyway, because the big companies have huge armies of lawyers, and a whole portfolio of patents with which to bludgeon smaller players into submission.
The real threat to smaller players comes from bundling and abusive monopolies, both of which are supposed to be controlled by other laws (which frequently are not enforced).
I think what you meant to ask was - what would have happened if these guys had actually made a store and tried to make deals with media companies for distribution? I might have a bit more sympathy for them if they'd actually done something with the idea, they might have made it big, been chosen by media companies who are desperate for an Apple alternative, or been bought out.
Doesn't say that anywhere in the press release you link to, which is in fact direct from the company suing in any case, so I'd take it with a pinch of salt. If they could claim they were in negotiations or actually working with Apple, they would have. Probably they just pitched to lots of companies in the hope of taking them to court later.
You don't. Small time coders don't need protection in a world without patents (so long as you also prevent cartels and monopolies), because it's very easy to break into a market - all you need is one computer, one programmer and the right idea to make it big, or nowadays perhaps a server if you want to do web apps. A big company is not agile enough to react to rapid changes in features etc - you could run rings round them as a small company if you have good ideas and talent because with software you don't have to manufacture, pay up front for materials etc etc. In a world with software patents this is virtually impossible as a larger competitor can crush you like a bug with some ridiculous 'One Click' patent or a patent on tabs in a user interface as soon as you begin to threaten them. Software patents work exclusively in favour of the big guys, and offer no protection to smaller companies. They were intended for physical inventions, and that's where they should have stayed - even there they're open to abuse and should require a physical prototype.
Quite apart from anything else the US Patent Office obviously can't handle the workload, so they need to restrict the number applications as a matter of practicality - that should have been done years ago because as it is they're becoming the laughing stock of the world.
Think about it, if editors were shell scripts :
There would be no dupes (auto-check on urls within stories)
There would be no obvious spelling mistakes (auto-spell check)
There would be no annoying and inflammatory 'commentary' attached to stories.
Unless of course they were shell scripts cleverly designed to appear human, like me.
That's funny, because very little you said responded to it - in fact you're more guilty of using his posts as a springboard for tangential rants than he is.
Not from where I'm standing - your points are orthogonal to his central argument, and mostly to do with how great Java is for everything.
eh?
The only people asking for Java on the iPhone will be phone developers who want to make a quick buck with a port of their existing J2ME app, and corporate developers who follow the religion - customers will avoid it like the plague because it will suffer from the same mediocre mongrel interface as Java on the desktop does on every platform, and the apps won't feel like they belong, because there won't be proper integration with things like the touch screen, native UI transitions etc etc.
Java on phones is not dead, it just deserves to die, and roping J2ME to the new hot platform is not going to make it magically better. There's an interesting post further up this thread about the mediocrity which is Java as a language, but all that doesn't matter to the users; the ultimate arbiters in this matter, all they care about is the UI and user experience, which is historically Sun's weakest point.
Maybe that's why phone UIs almost universally suck - I know the ones using Java for apps that I have used do, not really because of Java the language, but because of the libraries and UI conventions used, which are presumably closely tied in with the framework itself. I'm sure it's *possible* to do anything, but developers will tend to do what is easiest with a given framework.
Maybe he just felt it was irrelevant and of more interest to Java aficionados than anyone else. Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me - I'm sure it would be neat and all, but ultimately as a user I don't really care if you use the same objects on several different interfaces, it _might_ even end up a horrible kludge if they have different screen sizes and UI control schemes and the views aren't appropriately tailored. By the by, this facility (distributed objects) has been available in Objective C since the mid 90s, even if it's not available on the iPhone. Java really isn't as original as you seem to think it is. It's just as derivative as Objective-C for example, and if it ever was visionary, it isn't now.
Well the future will tell all (including maybe even telling you you're wrong, if you're willing to listen), but if it's anything like the acceptance by consumers of Java on desktop OS X, you'll have a hard time convincing someone to use your J2ME app over a native one, that's if Sun even manages to get a credible solution supported on the iPhone.
Frankly I find his arguments more convincing that yours, because they're grounded in an understanding of what the *user* wants, not a Java developer's hopes.
That's exactly what you were suggesting. Reread your comment, what you are suggesting wouldn't work, unless you're talking about devs making apps for other devs who happen to have paid for a certificate.
YOU CANNOT DEPLOY ON ANY PHONE WITHOUT A CERTIFICATE.
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/07/dude-wheres-my-iphone-sdk-remote-debug-mode/
It's not terrible, and I see why they did it (to discourage frivolous apps), but if Apple want to do the Right Thing, and encourage open source development for their platform, they should give these certificates to selected open source projects for free - it would mean nothing to Apple and a lot to the developers.
Would you want to commit to paying $99 every year and give away your time for free to develop an open-source app?
This is not true. You cannot put apps on the device without a developer key, and the legalese which accompanies the SDK forbids its use for apps distributed outside the iTunes store. I'm hoping Apple lift that restriction, as it does limit the possibilities a bit for open source apps. While I agree that it can get tiresome to hear people bleating about wanting stuff for free, and am really pleased with the announcement from Apple, some perspective is in order - this will limit open-source efforts on the iPhone, and it is valid to criticise the fee *when applied to open-source projects*, it is a yearly fee, and is enough to put off small open-source or hobbyist developers.
I'd love to see Apple give out free certificates to verified open-source projects - say start up something in collaboration with MacPorts, and tell people if they host their iPhone app there under a selection of licenses, they'll get a free certificate for distribution, and it will be offered for free on the store, so long as their app is vetted and approved not to contain malware or abuse the network. That would keep everyone happy and earn Apple a lot of kudos. They saw the light with webkit eventually and opened up somewhat, so here's hoping they do the same with this SDK.
Would that be as bad as using an email solution that requires all sensitive email to be sent via third party servers in Canada?
Would that be as crazy as using one operating system and browser from a SINGLE VENDOR and locking all your in-house apps, and even your web-apps, to that platform. Forget it. Medium-to-Large companies will NEVER go for this.
Exactly, developers will love this for the chance of exposure it brings, and the possibility of making a lot more money than they would on their own. While Apple are taking slightly more than a payment processor, they're also providing a lot of free marketing, free hosting and free update download hosting - that's not much to ask for 10% more than a payment processor would take. Compare it to what authors, photographers or musicians make on their offerings, and you'll see the margins really aren't that bad.
Now that they have a mobile apps store, I wonder if minds at Apple will be turning to another possibility - a store for desktop OS X apps, which provides a central distribution system for OS X apps (and perhaps over time for mobile apps too, which don't really sit happily in the iTunes Media store app). It wouldn't have to be exclusive like the one for the iPhone, but everyone would benefit if there was a central place to download apps and updates, rather than the fragmented system of websites for new software we have just now. At the moment one of the nice advantages of Linux over OS X is that you have package management systems to manage all the software you install, which are now pretty easy for the average user to install software with - they mean users can trust the packages they're installing, rather than just downloading stuff from an internet search, and it makes it dead simple to find new software.
The only missing piece in the puzzle is distribution of open-source apps, however I suspect Apple will feel the pressure on this and eventually cave (as they did with the SDK) - perhaps giving out certificates to certain verified open source organisations or individuals for free. I understand why they're asking for the $99 fee, at least initially, but at some point they might want to open up a program where they certify apps as open-source and allow them on to the store with no fee. That said the fee wouldn't be a problem for people like Mozilla, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.
For developers, it'd provide hosting, reliable merchandising and a big boost in marketing. Throw in an auto-update system like sparkle, and a crashreporter system for bugs (all things that Apple should have addressed with system frameworks a long time ago, but never mind), and you have a very attractive proposition for app developers. They'd get much more exposure in a central store, and have the trust which comes from the backing of Apple, plus they wouldn't have to worry about processing credit cards etc via their website.
For users, it'd provide app downloads and updates they could trust, a commenting and feedback system on apps so that they could share their experiences with other users on the store, and an easy way to search for apps - the experience would be like that on say Ubuntu, but commercial apps would be available as well as free ones, and the store would be far more enticing graphically than the slightly geeky package managers we have on Linux.
A store for desktop apps would be great for developers, great for users, and great for Apple, so I hope they expand the idea to cover it.
PS Anyone managed to download the SDK yet? Keeps timing out for me.
The real question is what is sensitive information like that doing being sent over email without encryption. If they're sending things like flight plans and military tactics via plain email, it should be considered a security breach no matter who the recipient is. Anyone could easily read it on the way between the two servers, it might get forwarded to someone who shouldn't see it, it can be changed by servers en-route or bogus data inserted etc etc. I imagine most security services would find it easy to infiltrate an ISP here and there and watch traffic as it goes through, and no one would be any the wiser.
I think the series is scripted to provoke exactly the kind of conflictual emotions you have mentioned - it's an old trick and it works well for retaining viewer interest. The interesting thing is that you feel the writers haven't considered these issues - I don't think they show the humans in an uncritical light at all, in fact many of the worst acts in the war are committed by humans (rape, torture, etc), I think you're feeling exactly what you're supposed to feel - i.e. 'Hang on a minute, that's not right'.
By showing both sides of the conflict, they're shedding light on the tricks we play on ourselves to make warfare acceptable. Rather cleverly, they've cast the robots as more human than the humans in many ways (religious, questioning, constantly seeking resolution), and difficult for the viewer to tell apart from humans. People are being tortured right now in the name of the US and the UK, so I think it's rather apposite that they show humans trying to justify this by dehumanising their enemy - now perhaps they still show torture working sometimes, and they fail to show the effects it has on the torturers in terms of twisting their moral sense, but torture does happen in most wars, and they're right to show it. Nicknames like toaster etc are very common in times of war (see names for Germans or Japanese used in the states in WWII)- it's the first step in preparing to wipe out an enemy; suppress empathy. I'm sure you could find people who applauded the fire-bombing of Dresden, because of being dehumanised by war.
Now the scripts are far from perfect, and in many ways it's a standard sci-fi pot-boiler, but there are elements which are definitely interesting, and I don't believe for a minute that the writers are not aware of the buttons they are pushing, or that they somehow feel all the actions of the humans are justified. Much time is spent discussing whether in fact these actions are correct or acceptable in any circumstances, and the introduction of several cylon characters into the human fleet is designed to bring home this distinction - personally I don't agree with their justification of torture, but it's not as naive as something like '24' at least, where jack gets out his pistol and whacks evil super-villains on the head with it a few times till they give up the secret code to their nuclear weapons. They've also played with insurrection and when/whether it is justified, which I thought was a very useful topic to examine right now in the west.
I agree the politics can be caricatured at points, though the revolt of workers was not unusual in its outcome - If you look at the history of industrialised nations, you will see many cases of exactly this behaviour - the 1848 revolutions in several other european countries fizzled out before they got going, and the earlier frame breakers/luddites have even become a byword for stupidity, even though their grievances were real and their movement brutally repressed. When workers are not organised or allied with the middle classes they're going to have a hard time fighting a heavily armed government determined to impose order, and often the best option is to give up and bide their time.
I just wish they based more of their scripts on historical events, to give it a bit more grit and a bit less of the trite pablum which passes for political discourse in America at the moment - at times I felt like I was watching the first episode of the West wing, particularly when that president opens her mouth, or they had that journalist woman being defused by being allowed access to the military (a nice idea, and stylistically quite fun with the grainy footage, but again came out a bit trite). I finally got bored with it all after the 3rd series, and gave up on it - it turned into a soap opera, and not a very good one, and the mixture of shallow political/social analysis and faith was just too much for me. There's a lot there that could be good, but unfortunately they went for the easy options too many times, and felt it necessary to add lots of trite filler and romantic stuffing that didn't really belong. But perhaps that's why they didn't get cancelled and Firefly did.
I don't feel the show is encouraging xenophobia though, quite the opposite, it's encouraging you to think about it.
Personally I'd rather not see degraded versions of images (if this is even being done) just to get the file size down, I'd rather use a better device which doesn't suck at displaying the real images. Typically images are already compressed on the web anyway, so reducing the quality further is going to lead to massive drops in quality, unless your display is some 120x160 monstrosity and you can't tell the difference. The reason gzip isn't used for images is that they're typically already compressed (often almost to their limit), so adding another layer of compression isn't worth the trade-off of using up more CPU on the device to decode it; it can compress them, it's just not worth it.
And a lot do - nowadays more and more are doing it. I think pretty soon every website will use mod_deflate (this one already does for example), it's even built in to Apache 2.
As mobile CPUs and bandwidth improve, this will become less and less of an issue anyway. It's so much better to have an all-you-can-eat plan than one which charges per KB - I wouldn't even consider using one which charges per KB for general browsing, as it would get very expensive very fast.
HTML - you can view multimedia including video without flash or silverlight (which is not fully or officially available on Linux or bsd anyway).
Have you read the Bible (old testament) or Talmud? If not I suggest you look for approval of atrocities and genocide in there - there are plenty of examples.