Let's stop with the "don't know what I'm talking about but I'm going to rant anyway" stuff for a minute and consider some nice honest technical facts: let's take the "big" iPad for example. It's got 256 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor - and everything has to fit in that 256 MB. The OS, the running app, any cached data, the screen buffer, everything. The flash memory is only used for stable storage; anything dynamic has to be in RAM. The Apple engineers have done an amazing job of making it all fit and many have commented how fast the iPad is.
Using Safari is a little awkward already - there's not much room to store cached pages as it is. And you guys are SCREAMING about multitasking - sure, no problem. They'll just wave their magic wands and - well, you should be able to see why the way they're going to implement "multitasking" has to be the way it is. Now - how much memory does Flash need to run in? And when we want to task swap, will it gracefully save state and quit when it's asked to? If there's any coders with a clue out there - you guys must understand just a little bit why having Flash on the iPad isn't necessarily a good thing?
Unfortunately, there's too many people beating the same old dead horses. For those who cry "antitrust!" and "restraint of trade!" - get a clue. All of the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad devices are clearly marketed and sold as "everything comes from the app store". It's also common knowledge that Apple tests / approves all third party submissions and their decision is final. Don't like it? Don't buy one. And for any third party that thinks they have the legal right to force Apple to approve their app store submission - well, they're welcome to take their chances in a court of law. I really doubt that Adobe would try; they're smarter than that. They'll try to use the "court of public opinion" though, and their minions are well represented here.
And let's not overlook something that seems elusive: I've got a first generation iPod Touch. It'll never multitask because it's only got 128 MB of RAM. But that's OK; it works great. How great? It never gets turned off; it's running (at some level) 24/7 and it's done that for YEARS already. That's the kind of software quality that Adobe (or MS) can only dream about. Adobe isn't even in the same league - and they know it and know perfectly well why Flash isn't approved by Apple. Their Flash for Mac is a real mess and they haven't bothered to fix it - why trust them on another platform? They're not the only third party outfit to be refused approval - they're just one of the only ones to make a big noise about it.
And about that closed platform thing - my Touch is loaded with MP3 files that did not come from Apple. There's a couple of videos that didn't come from Apple, too. They don't want me to mess with the OS and I'm OK with that, but they don't tell me what kind of music to listen to or where to get it from. That way we're both happy; I get to listen to my tunes and they don't have to worry about having to support some FrankenTouch when it screws up.
Something else that I've been wondering about: the vast majority of personal computers are running Windows and I really doubt that very many of their users are recompiling their TCP/IP stack or adjusting the kernel to suit their desires. Instead, the people here are touting the "new" Windows 7 as being much better - even though it's locked down even more than Vista was. What's wrong with this picture?
Some of the clowns parading around this issue with their horns tooting seem to have forgotten something important. The world doesn't revolve around any of us and this whole business of whining because you don't get what you feel you're entitled to is a bit distressing to watch. But here comes another clown car and look at what just popped out: some random Adobe spokesperson is pissed off and ranting on the internet because Apple has declined to dance to Adobe's tune. The reasons why are really unimportant - Apple designs their devices to meet Apple's goals. What they're doing seems to be pretty darned successful, too. They have no obligation to adjust their designs to suit some other company's wishes.
That's the way it's always been and this shouldn't be news to anyone. Everyone gets the same choice: buy it or don't buy it. But some of these whiners should really do something about their wardrobe. That orange wig, big red rubber nose and floppy shoes make them look silly. Almost as silly as their whining makes them look.
Never mind how dense or how long it'll be until we have these devices in our gadgets. How about something about how long it'll be until they can show a functional part? There's a HUGE difference between "proof of concept" in a lab and an actual manufacturable part. Most companies wouldn't even dream of announcing their partly baked research this early.
Since we were discussing the iPad, experience with the multi-touch interface is relevant. What we're seeing far too much of is people trashing a product that they don't know anything about. And it'd make it more real to have people who know the product trashing it, right?
What is really troublesome to me (and many others) is that some of these wank-fests are being started by shills from competing corporations. So somebody posting from an IP address assigned to HP said that the iPad has an overheating problem - and another from Microsoft says the Wi-Fi doesn't work right. There's undoubtedly more of them out there and they're using Slashdot and other forums to do a little ratfu(king. Convince people to "wait and see" and maybe X corp will get their competing product out the door and it'll score a sale instead.
What the iPad is - it's the multi-touch interface on a bigger screen. The OS and apps are designed to work by touch - it's hard to describe the experience but it's pretty slick. It's a little frustrating, too and after I've had some more time with the iPad I'll discuss it honestly. I wish others could do the same...
Here's a bunch more talk about "locked down" from people who don't own and have never used one of these devices. Let's go back to the days when iPod wasn't out yet - but there were dozens of personal music players on the market. There were players that had a one or two line display and up / down buttons to select a tune. Fine if there's only one album on there but almost useless for larger collections. There were players that only handled ATRAC files, some only handled WMA files. And the software that you had to use to load music onto them - remember Music Match jukebox?
That's the market that the iPod entered. With it's click wheel and big (for a PMP) display it was tons better for finding a tune in a library. The iTunes software was miles better than anything else and the way they worked together was previously unheard of. And while people speak of "locked down" now, iTunes and iPod happily load and play bog-standard MP3 files. That's where all those big music libraries came from - most owners bought one or two tracks from iTunes and then ripped a bunch of CDs and downloaded a bunch of MP3s. Those evil encrypted iTunes downloads were necessary to get the music companies to play along - but you can make a playlist of those encrypted files and burn them to a CD and end up with unencrypted tunes. That feature was built in.
What made the iPod a winner was more than it's elegant design and the way it worked with iTunes - it was also that Apple didn't tie you to one music supplier (MP3s from anywhere) and included a method for removing the encryption from purchased files. And this is why I bought an iPod - because it did what I wanted a portable music player to do and didn't prevent me from using the files I wanted to use. Much better than one of those ill-fated players that were tied to MSN music and had that silly "Plays For Sure" label on them. That didn't work out too well, did it?
The iPad is doing the e-book thing right, too. It uses the common EPUB format for books and there's thousands of those floating around the net. If you have a book in some other format you might want to check out Calibre - it's a very nice open-source e-book manager and format converter. It'll even turn a PDF into an EPUB file; very neat trick. The iPad still follows the iPod on music files - load up your pirate MP3s and listen away. That's the killer feature right there: you can have a huge music library and a huge e-book library without buying anything from iTunes (or anyone else, if that's your style).
It's still early days for digital media - only a very few albums or books are released exclusively as digital downloads now. You don't need one of these gadgets - yet.
A corporation is a legal construct that has many of the same rights as a human being. It, however isn't subject to the same penalties for breaking the law (or promises). This isn't news to anyone here, is it? So why is it when IBM gives a "promise" you act surprised when IBM finds it expedient to ignore that promise?
A thoughtful person would realize that you can't depend on anything a corporation promises you. Even if you have a contract with the corporation you'll find that it's hard if not impossible to enforce. Either bow down for your corporate overlords or get out of their way - but don't whine when you get some deep corporate attention from behind.
Yelp has been around for quite a while now. They turn up pretty highly listed when you search for businesses (at least in the Silicon Valley area). Their reviews are written by people like you and I who have visited these businesses and wish to let others know what their experiences were. When I'm trying to figure out where to eat I sometimes hit Google for suggestions and Yelp is always right there in the top listings.
Do those Yelp reviews affect where I'm going to go (and take others)? You bet it does. There's good and bad restaurants out there and I'm always interested in any clue I can find to avoid a "meh" dining experience.
But there's other sources of information I draw upon - and I've NEVER found a situation where what the Yelp review said was significantly different from what others had to say. What is out there are a lot of businesses being run by people with no business knowledge at all which provide lousy service and substandard food. When someone like Yelp publishes reviews from people who have had bad experiences at that restaurant - the business decides to use the legal system to suppress those bad reviews rather than deal with the problems in their businesses.
Is it possible that some Yelp advertising salesman decided to adjust the ratings to make a sale? Yup, it's possible and it's probably happened. But that doesn't invalidate the larger number of well-deserved bad ratings. There's some really crappy restaurants out there and nothing anyone can say is going to make them acceptable. One SLAPP suit doesn't invalidate what Yelp is trying to do - they could do it better but they're providing a valuable service.
In the interest of truth, how about the commenters in this thread start by telling us if they own or have used at length an iPhone, Ipod Touch, or an iPad. I think that if we pay more attention to the people who have something that they know to add we might discover something useful here.
I mean, sheesh - if you want to see people holding forth on things they know nothing about you can always tune in the Fox channel. We're better than that here, aren't we? This "I heard it was bad so it must be" nonsense isn't doing anyone any good. It's a product, not a philosophical statement - so get down off of those high horses and let's discuss this like men and women.
Re:While you're bemoaning the closed Ipad
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I think you might have mistaken me for someone other than who I am. I see that you say you're a security professional but I'd like to point out that I was working with hardware and writing code while you were still in diapers. I've been on the internet since it was called DARPANET and there were only 8 systems on the net. I won't quote job titles or list employers; you can fill in the rest for yourself.
To discuss these issues honestly requires actually thinking about what you are saying. Trotting out labels like "Apple fanboi" or "Microsft troll" usually indicates a certain level of intellectual dishonesty. It's typical these days to choose a trendy position and search out / manufacture evidence to support that position but while the pages here are full of this kind of wankery, I'd expect something better from a security professional.
So let's talk about security for a bit here. You've listed some reasons for the current mess on the net and I'd like to suggest you add another one to your list: Microsoft wanted to make your web browsing experience to be richer and filled with multimedia. Out of that choice of direction came ActiveX and a host of other "services" that download and execute code from remote machines automatically. This was done intentionally - I can't imagine how they thought that this wouldn't create opportunities for the bad guys to exploit those systems. When you hear about "drive by downloads" then this is what makes it possible. Some (like you) would place the blame for malware / viruses on the inexperienced users but it doesn't matter who you are when you visit CNN or some other very reputable site and one of the ads on the page (served by a third party) contains exploit code that Windows helpfully executes for you. In fact, every part of the internet is a dangerous place - even for security professionals like you.
You're absolutely right that the choice of browser makes a big difference in security. Like you, I use Firefox along with some extensions to block some of the worst offenses out there. I get my email through Gmail these days; they do a good job and since I'm not using Thunderbird or Outlook (or some other similar program) my exposure is a little less. But even if you get every hole patched up, every exploit neutralized, every bad thing firewalled - somebody will see an email message that says something like I Love You and they'll open it right up and launch the attachment to see a picture of their secret lover. Since I browse with Flash blocked I'm very aware of what the web might look like on a machine that doesn't have Flash. And when you speak of "locked down" and blame Apple - I'd like to submit that I'm writing this on my laptop which is running Vista. Look up "protected media path" and see what you think - and keep well in mind that Windows 7 has all the same "protections" baked right in. My "big" computer runs XP Pro and my Asterix box is running Linux; the only Apple device I own right now is an iPod Touch. I guess I'm not a very good fanboi.
So let's get back to security for a moment and see how it relates to an iPad. Your description of a denial of service attack - well, that's true of any network connected device, isn't it? I'd submit that someone who wanted to run that kind of attack (very hard to get away with long-term) would be going after a system that's important or valuable in some way. I can't imagine some script kiddie crowing about how he pwned an iPad. It's going to be very hard to slip some executable code onto an iPad; that application lockdown is beneficial when you look at it this way. Even those "I Love You" attacks go nowhere because their attached executable can't run. One other benefit from the lockdown / app store that you as a professional might appreciate: those programs are tested by and sold to you by Apple. That's important to the corporate types - someone to take responsibility for the problems that the code they sold you might cause. And even if worse comes to worse, plug it into the computer and in iTunes hit the "reset t
I don't know what is wrong with America these days. Are the elderly less able to deal with unexpected events while they're driving a car? Yes. Now how does that Toyota PR spin when you consider the way things actually are. Sure, Audi got a bad deal and some of the Toyota "unexplained acceleration" incidents were "less than factual". But that doesn't explain many other situations where someone's Toyota malfunctioned and took them on a frightening ride.
I mean WTF is wrong with you so-called techies when you think that cars with "drive by wire" throttles, brakes, and steering (yes, steering) are a good idea. You know how reliable computers are (not "can be") and I'm sure you would be quite nervous to trust your life to a computer controlled car. But in the same breath you jump to the defense of Toyota who build cars just like I've described - and apparently didn't even see the need to include some fail-safe routines into their systems.
I see this kind of stuff every day on Slashdot; people arguing both sides of an issue "just because". They never consider that one or both of those "sides" are nothing more than political or marketing spin. It makes me sad to see that this is the kind of discourse my fellow man is capable of.
Anyway, go on with your beating on people who claim to have been taken on a full throttle ride by their Toyota. You probably won't experience this kind of thrill yourself so you can feel safe and justified with your attacks. And if the worst happens and your Toyota freaks out and runs you full-throttle into a bridge abutment - well, we won't hear about what happened to you so it's all OK here in Slashdot land.
While you're bemoaning the closed Ipad
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Let me take a few moments to describe what causes so many malware and virus attacks - something that the Slashdot crowd has complained about time and time again. All those Windows machines out there which are "open" and "unsecured".
So many words have been written about machines running with administrator access being the cause of so many botnets and other problems on the web. Each time this comes up, the solution is always to lock down the machines and only allow users to run with limited access.
So here you are: a tablet that is locked down and only allows users to run with limited access. It's what you security freaks have been dreaming about for years - but somehow this isn't a solution - it's a problem. Do you realize how this makes you look? I suspect not.
So you want it to be open and unsecured - but only for you because you're special. All the other folks should have it locked down instead. Yeah, right - why don't you wish for a pony, too? You don't get it both ways so figure out what's really important to you before you mash your big hairy finger down on the "reply" button.
"The more profitable businesses there are, the more jobs available"
Not in the real world. Labor is the biggest expense in most corporations and the quickest way to increase profits is to reduce the number of workers.
You've been drinking the conservative koolaid - there's more to this issue than you've heard about. Study and learn...
The guys at Apple undoubtedly know that they could just buy this information all neatly sorted and packaged from Google for much, much less than it'd cost to capture it themselves.
Any talk of "competitive advantage" from being able to see what smartphone users search for is overrated. This is a market where things change quickly; look at your cell carrier's current crop of offerings and you'll see phones with capabilities that weren't common or even available a year or two ago. Most important: this information by it's nature is a measurement of where things were in the past.
Any competent businessman knows that when you're trying to hit a moving target you need to aim for where it's going to be, not where it is now. And Apple is a very good example of this kind of thinking - they've made a lot of money defining new markets and even now have things cooking in their labs that will define more markets in the future. Consider the iPod; many here blew it off as a useless also-ran. How about the iPhone? These pages were full of people saying that it was a failure. Now it's the iPad that's getting described as a failure - the early sales figures seem to say otherwise and we'll just have to wait and see. I wouldn't bet against Apple knowing what the market wants.
I don't understand the way people on this site behave either. If we're talking about iPad then the fact that it is locked down and only runs "certified" programs is a horrible, evil thing. But if we're talking about viruses and malware the same people will tell you that the answer is to lock things down and only run certified programs.
I've already got an iPad on order - there's a wish list of functions that I've wanted for many years and this device fulfills those wants. I bought a first-generation iPod Touch and my experience with it has been very, very good.
I'm OK with my desire for an iPad - but I'm not the person that they seem to think. I'm typing this on a 3.8GHz Core I7 machine I built for myself; it's liquid cooled and - well, I'm into this stuff just like the rest of the crowd here. This is the machine I use for compiling code and other "intense" stuff. But if what I want is to kick back on the sofa and read a book or listen to some tunes this machine isn't the right tool to use. My dual core laptop is nice and I use it every day, too - but it's not the right tool either. I've been using the iPod Touch for those moments and it's a very useful device. I think that most who denigrate these devices have never used one. The biggest problem the iPod Touch has is that while it plays videos and browses the web the screen is too small. If the iPad was nothing more than a Touch with a bigger screen it'd be a worthwhile investment. Adding books and productivity apps made it a "must have" for me.
I'm getting the 64GB iPad - plenty of room for 300+ albums and 20,000+ books and lots of space left over for some videos and such. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else in it's market. That market doesn't include "tablet" PCs, netbooks, PCs, Macs, notebooks, etc. Those who compare it to those things will find those comparisons to be no better than comparing apples to oranges. The one thing I wish the haters would do is just stop by an Apple store and play with one of these things for a few minutes. I suspect many of them would change their tune once they realized what they were holding.
Where were you when the iPhone came out? It doesn't support Flash either. And neither do many of the other smartphones that have come out in recent times. This "issue" that you're whining about is nothing new - it's been going on for years now. I have a Blackberry - it doesn't support Flash either.
What nobody seems to consider is that while the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch along with many, many other small web-enabled devices don't support Flash. That's not a political thing; there's some basic incompatibilities that make Flash a bad fit. Let's consider the iPad for this discussion - the same can be said for many, many other devices but this is the current poster boy so - think about the Apple multi-touch interface for a moment (if you've ever used it). There's no cursor and the concept of "hover" or "click" doesn't make sense either. Flash expects to have a mouse (or touchpad) attached with a cursor that can hover and click. This isn't just an Apple issue - there's a whole world of small screen portable devices that don't behave in the way that Flash expects.
For years the web has been restricted to machines with WIMP interfaces and Flash is useful in that environment. But recently more and more mobile devices have become web enabled and they don't or can't support Flash for various reasons. This is the future - more and more portable and pocket devices will become web enabled and they will have various (small) screen sizes / resolutions, various types of CPUs, various amounts of memory, various forms of connectivity and various forms of "keyboard" and "pointer" interfaces. Flash doesn't work here. It's because Flash was designed to serve in a different world but things are changing now. Apple saw this coming and made the choice to drop Flash - but others will make the same choice in the future. Technology isn't static, and no matter how Adobe would wish otherwise, Flash will become a technology of the past. It'll take it's place next to Real Player in the "glad it's gone" hall of fame.
If the "Icontrolpad" people would have purchased a license to use the iPod dock connector then things might be different. Instead, the Icontrolpad people chose to use Apple's patented iPod dock technology without a license. And their product only works with jailbroken iPhones - so after infringing on two (or more) of Apple's patents / copyrights they decide to complain when Apple patents technology similar to theirs.
So what shall we as Slashdotters choose as our position on this issue? One one side we have a large (and getting larger) corporation that turns out some pretty popular devices. On the other side we have a small company whose product violates the big corporation's patents and copyrights. It's tempting to beat on the big corporation but it's not Microsoft and we're not quite sure how. And while it may feel good to support the underdog - in this case, the underdog's hands are dirty and their product can't be legally sold. I'm sure this will get bent all kinds of ways and I'm going to enjoy seeing how the trolls work this one...
A friend built one. Pretty cool machine - well designed and it worked very well. I waited and built a SOL machine for myself and it was lots of fun, too. I was "lucky" enough to have an ASR-33 to hook to it and loaded programs from paper tape. With a 32K expansion board I could run 32K Basic and there were many evenings when I started the machine up, loaded the OS from tape then put the 32K Basic tape in the reader, hit start, and went out for dinner. Assuming nothing went wrong it'd be at a READY prompt in a little over 1/2 hour.
What's kind of funny in a strange way is that 32K Basic was a Bill Gates project. I remember having a problem one day, calling for help and speaking with him on the phone about it. He solved my problem for me - and I never imagined that things would turn out the way they have. The days are long gone when you'd toggle in the bootloader from the front panel - or get technical support from Bill Gates.
Things have changed a lot since then - I'm still quite amused by the current crop of "hackers" who think they're all that but never built their own computer from chips and raw PC boards. Building a PC these days is something grade school kids can do.
The multiple comments saying that the pirates weren't going to buy or pay to see these movies anyway - this doesn't make any sense, either. If they don't cost anything (the information was "free") and they're not a source of income then why should the studios bother with them? What they're really trying to do is to set an example - and they'll accomplish that very well with this level of attack. I don't think they realize what example they're setting, though - and what it'll mean for their companies going forward. In the business world being known for the number of lawsuits you file against people is the kiss of death. Nobody wants to do business with a company that might turn around and sue them next.
I'm still unclear on the business benefit to the MPAA companies that comes from suing their customer base. This isn't going to win them any friends and is even less likely to increase their profits. It was stupid when they were suing dozens of people - but stepping this lunacy up to 50,000 lawsuits looks more like a death wish than "monetizing the alternate channel".
Your post sounds quite reasonable on its surface - but I've been using FlashBlock for quite some time now and it's given me a very good idea of what I'd be giving up if Flash disappeared one day. The answer: not very much at all. The sites where I've whitelisted Flash are video sites - other than that, I don't see a lot of annoying ads and cutesy bouncing BS that some web designer thought made his site look impressive. It doesn't, you know - design for usability for a change, would you?
For now, Flash is still necessary for *a few* things. Much as RealPlayer was a necessary plugin for many years; it's gone, good riddance. For me, if my browser supports video then I'll uninstall Flash and I won't miss it either. You'll notice I haven't said anything about Steve Jobs here - that's not the issue no matter how some would like to make it one. If he's guilty of anything it's seeing the future and that it doesn't include Flash plugins in the browser. Heck, the iPhone has been out for how many years now and viewing web pages without Flash? How about all those other smartphones? How many of them have Flash? The list of portable devices with web capability is growing every day and for many valid reasons they don't support Flash. No mouse, tiny screen, not even a standard aspect ratio much less any kind of standard resolution. Flash as it is just isn't useful for these devices. How were you going to get your Flash game to work on a 320x320 screen anyway? Slow network connections and various processors of varying capability make targeting a player to these devices impractical - even Adobe would refuse this task.
In a world where virtually everyone was browsing the web on a Intel based computer running Windows - Flash works pretty doggone well here. It could be better but I digress; the world is changing. It's already started changing and the change continues. More and more people will be accessing the web from their cell phones, tablets, cars, and in other new and interesting ways that haven't hit the street yet. Flash may still be around (much as RealPlayer was) but the real question you're going to have to ask yourself is if you're going to keep on making your fancy 3D presentations in Flash and ignore the rapidly growing number of web browsers that don't support your favorite toy? What will you tell the designers when they ask why the page looks like crap when they view it on their PDA / phone / tablet / whatever?
The writing is on the wall for those who wish to see it...
Successfully filtering the net is impossible - that's been proven time and time again. If either one of them realized this simple truth then they'd know that their statements are somewhat nonsensical.
You'll note that the adults on the scene - the school administrators and teachers who knew what was happening and did nothing to prevent these crimes - are not being given the legal penalties that they so richly deserve. If the attacks were felonies, then in many states those school employees would be co-conspirators and charged accordingly. What the kids did was very wrong - but they're kids and aren't held to the same standards as adults are. But what the school staff did (or didn't do) is just plain wrong. Any functioning adult that would stand by and watch a child be abused isn't fit to work at a school.
If you can't trust or train your users, then use thin client machines. When the OS is in ROM it's hard for a virus to do anything; then all you have to do is secure the servers adequately and you're golden.
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I've got Opera Mini on my BlackBerry. I've "used" it quite a few times and it's never been less than frustrating. Mobile Safari is light years ahead.
Let's stop with the "don't know what I'm talking about but I'm going to rant anyway" stuff for a minute and consider some nice honest technical facts: let's take the "big" iPad for example. It's got 256 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor - and everything has to fit in that 256 MB. The OS, the running app, any cached data, the screen buffer, everything. The flash memory is only used for stable storage; anything dynamic has to be in RAM. The Apple engineers have done an amazing job of making it all fit and many have commented how fast the iPad is.
Using Safari is a little awkward already - there's not much room to store cached pages as it is. And you guys are SCREAMING about multitasking - sure, no problem. They'll just wave their magic wands and - well, you should be able to see why the way they're going to implement "multitasking" has to be the way it is. Now - how much memory does Flash need to run in? And when we want to task swap, will it gracefully save state and quit when it's asked to? If there's any coders with a clue out there - you guys must understand just a little bit why having Flash on the iPad isn't necessarily a good thing?
Unfortunately, there's too many people beating the same old dead horses. For those who cry "antitrust!" and "restraint of trade!" - get a clue. All of the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad devices are clearly marketed and sold as "everything comes from the app store". It's also common knowledge that Apple tests / approves all third party submissions and their decision is final. Don't like it? Don't buy one. And for any third party that thinks they have the legal right to force Apple to approve their app store submission - well, they're welcome to take their chances in a court of law. I really doubt that Adobe would try; they're smarter than that. They'll try to use the "court of public opinion" though, and their minions are well represented here.
And let's not overlook something that seems elusive: I've got a first generation iPod Touch. It'll never multitask because it's only got 128 MB of RAM. But that's OK; it works great. How great? It never gets turned off; it's running (at some level) 24/7 and it's done that for YEARS already. That's the kind of software quality that Adobe (or MS) can only dream about. Adobe isn't even in the same league - and they know it and know perfectly well why Flash isn't approved by Apple. Their Flash for Mac is a real mess and they haven't bothered to fix it - why trust them on another platform? They're not the only third party outfit to be refused approval - they're just one of the only ones to make a big noise about it.
And about that closed platform thing - my Touch is loaded with MP3 files that did not come from Apple. There's a couple of videos that didn't come from Apple, too. They don't want me to mess with the OS and I'm OK with that, but they don't tell me what kind of music to listen to or where to get it from. That way we're both happy; I get to listen to my tunes and they don't have to worry about having to support some FrankenTouch when it screws up.
Something else that I've been wondering about: the vast majority of personal computers are running Windows and I really doubt that very many of their users are recompiling their TCP/IP stack or adjusting the kernel to suit their desires. Instead, the people here are touting the "new" Windows 7 as being much better - even though it's locked down even more than Vista was. What's wrong with this picture?
Some of the clowns parading around this issue with their horns tooting seem to have forgotten something important. The world doesn't revolve around any of us and this whole business of whining because you don't get what you feel you're entitled to is a bit distressing to watch. But here comes another clown car and look at what just popped out: some random Adobe spokesperson is pissed off and ranting on the internet because Apple has declined to dance to Adobe's tune. The reasons why are really unimportant - Apple designs their devices to meet Apple's goals. What they're doing seems to be pretty darned successful, too. They have no obligation to adjust their designs to suit some other company's wishes.
That's the way it's always been and this shouldn't be news to anyone. Everyone gets the same choice: buy it or don't buy it. But some of these whiners should really do something about their wardrobe. That orange wig, big red rubber nose and floppy shoes make them look silly. Almost as silly as their whining makes them look.
Never mind how dense or how long it'll be until we have these devices in our gadgets. How about something about how long it'll be until they can show a functional part? There's a HUGE difference between "proof of concept" in a lab and an actual manufacturable part. Most companies wouldn't even dream of announcing their partly baked research this early.
Since we were discussing the iPad, experience with the multi-touch interface is relevant. What we're seeing far too much of is people trashing a product that they don't know anything about. And it'd make it more real to have people who know the product trashing it, right?
What is really troublesome to me (and many others) is that some of these wank-fests are being started by shills from competing corporations. So somebody posting from an IP address assigned to HP said that the iPad has an overheating problem - and another from Microsoft says the Wi-Fi doesn't work right. There's undoubtedly more of them out there and they're using Slashdot and other forums to do a little ratfu(king. Convince people to "wait and see" and maybe X corp will get their competing product out the door and it'll score a sale instead.
What the iPad is - it's the multi-touch interface on a bigger screen. The OS and apps are designed to work by touch - it's hard to describe the experience but it's pretty slick. It's a little frustrating, too and after I've had some more time with the iPad I'll discuss it honestly. I wish others could do the same...
Here's a bunch more talk about "locked down" from people who don't own and have never used one of these devices. Let's go back to the days when iPod wasn't out yet - but there were dozens of personal music players on the market. There were players that had a one or two line display and up / down buttons to select a tune. Fine if there's only one album on there but almost useless for larger collections. There were players that only handled ATRAC files, some only handled WMA files. And the software that you had to use to load music onto them - remember Music Match jukebox?
That's the market that the iPod entered. With it's click wheel and big (for a PMP) display it was tons better for finding a tune in a library. The iTunes software was miles better than anything else and the way they worked together was previously unheard of. And while people speak of "locked down" now, iTunes and iPod happily load and play bog-standard MP3 files. That's where all those big music libraries came from - most owners bought one or two tracks from iTunes and then ripped a bunch of CDs and downloaded a bunch of MP3s. Those evil encrypted iTunes downloads were necessary to get the music companies to play along - but you can make a playlist of those encrypted files and burn them to a CD and end up with unencrypted tunes. That feature was built in.
What made the iPod a winner was more than it's elegant design and the way it worked with iTunes - it was also that Apple didn't tie you to one music supplier (MP3s from anywhere) and included a method for removing the encryption from purchased files. And this is why I bought an iPod - because it did what I wanted a portable music player to do and didn't prevent me from using the files I wanted to use. Much better than one of those ill-fated players that were tied to MSN music and had that silly "Plays For Sure" label on them. That didn't work out too well, did it?
The iPad is doing the e-book thing right, too. It uses the common EPUB format for books and there's thousands of those floating around the net. If you have a book in some other format you might want to check out Calibre - it's a very nice open-source e-book manager and format converter. It'll even turn a PDF into an EPUB file; very neat trick. The iPad still follows the iPod on music files - load up your pirate MP3s and listen away. That's the killer feature right there: you can have a huge music library and a huge e-book library without buying anything from iTunes (or anyone else, if that's your style).
It's still early days for digital media - only a very few albums or books are released exclusively as digital downloads now. You don't need one of these gadgets - yet.
A corporation is a legal construct that has many of the same rights as a human being. It, however isn't subject to the same penalties for breaking the law (or promises). This isn't news to anyone here, is it? So why is it when IBM gives a "promise" you act surprised when IBM finds it expedient to ignore that promise?
A thoughtful person would realize that you can't depend on anything a corporation promises you. Even if you have a contract with the corporation you'll find that it's hard if not impossible to enforce. Either bow down for your corporate overlords or get out of their way - but don't whine when you get some deep corporate attention from behind.
Yelp has been around for quite a while now. They turn up pretty highly listed when you search for businesses (at least in the Silicon Valley area). Their reviews are written by people like you and I who have visited these businesses and wish to let others know what their experiences were. When I'm trying to figure out where to eat I sometimes hit Google for suggestions and Yelp is always right there in the top listings.
Do those Yelp reviews affect where I'm going to go (and take others)? You bet it does. There's good and bad restaurants out there and I'm always interested in any clue I can find to avoid a "meh" dining experience.
But there's other sources of information I draw upon - and I've NEVER found a situation where what the Yelp review said was significantly different from what others had to say. What is out there are a lot of businesses being run by people with no business knowledge at all which provide lousy service and substandard food. When someone like Yelp publishes reviews from people who have had bad experiences at that restaurant - the business decides to use the legal system to suppress those bad reviews rather than deal with the problems in their businesses.
Is it possible that some Yelp advertising salesman decided to adjust the ratings to make a sale? Yup, it's possible and it's probably happened. But that doesn't invalidate the larger number of well-deserved bad ratings. There's some really crappy restaurants out there and nothing anyone can say is going to make them acceptable. One SLAPP suit doesn't invalidate what Yelp is trying to do - they could do it better but they're providing a valuable service.
In the interest of truth, how about the commenters in this thread start by telling us if they own or have used at length an iPhone, Ipod Touch, or an iPad. I think that if we pay more attention to the people who have something that they know to add we might discover something useful here.
I mean, sheesh - if you want to see people holding forth on things they know nothing about you can always tune in the Fox channel. We're better than that here, aren't we? This "I heard it was bad so it must be" nonsense isn't doing anyone any good. It's a product, not a philosophical statement - so get down off of those high horses and let's discuss this like men and women.
I think you might have mistaken me for someone other than who I am. I see that you say you're a security professional but I'd like to point out that I was working with hardware and writing code while you were still in diapers. I've been on the internet since it was called DARPANET and there were only 8 systems on the net. I won't quote job titles or list employers; you can fill in the rest for yourself.
To discuss these issues honestly requires actually thinking about what you are saying. Trotting out labels like "Apple fanboi" or "Microsft troll" usually indicates a certain level of intellectual dishonesty. It's typical these days to choose a trendy position and search out / manufacture evidence to support that position but while the pages here are full of this kind of wankery, I'd expect something better from a security professional.
So let's talk about security for a bit here. You've listed some reasons for the current mess on the net and I'd like to suggest you add another one to your list: Microsoft wanted to make your web browsing experience to be richer and filled with multimedia. Out of that choice of direction came ActiveX and a host of other "services" that download and execute code from remote machines automatically. This was done intentionally - I can't imagine how they thought that this wouldn't create opportunities for the bad guys to exploit those systems. When you hear about "drive by downloads" then this is what makes it possible. Some (like you) would place the blame for malware / viruses on the inexperienced users but it doesn't matter who you are when you visit CNN or some other very reputable site and one of the ads on the page (served by a third party) contains exploit code that Windows helpfully executes for you. In fact, every part of the internet is a dangerous place - even for security professionals like you.
You're absolutely right that the choice of browser makes a big difference in security. Like you, I use Firefox along with some extensions to block some of the worst offenses out there. I get my email through Gmail these days; they do a good job and since I'm not using Thunderbird or Outlook (or some other similar program) my exposure is a little less. But even if you get every hole patched up, every exploit neutralized, every bad thing firewalled - somebody will see an email message that says something like I Love You and they'll open it right up and launch the attachment to see a picture of their secret lover. Since I browse with Flash blocked I'm very aware of what the web might look like on a machine that doesn't have Flash. And when you speak of "locked down" and blame Apple - I'd like to submit that I'm writing this on my laptop which is running Vista. Look up "protected media path" and see what you think - and keep well in mind that Windows 7 has all the same "protections" baked right in. My "big" computer runs XP Pro and my Asterix box is running Linux; the only Apple device I own right now is an iPod Touch. I guess I'm not a very good fanboi.
So let's get back to security for a moment and see how it relates to an iPad. Your description of a denial of service attack - well, that's true of any network connected device, isn't it? I'd submit that someone who wanted to run that kind of attack (very hard to get away with long-term) would be going after a system that's important or valuable in some way. I can't imagine some script kiddie crowing about how he pwned an iPad. It's going to be very hard to slip some executable code onto an iPad; that application lockdown is beneficial when you look at it this way. Even those "I Love You" attacks go nowhere because their attached executable can't run. One other benefit from the lockdown / app store that you as a professional might appreciate: those programs are tested by and sold to you by Apple. That's important to the corporate types - someone to take responsibility for the problems that the code they sold you might cause. And even if worse comes to worse, plug it into the computer and in iTunes hit the "reset t
I mean WTF is wrong with you so-called techies when you think that cars with "drive by wire" throttles, brakes, and steering (yes, steering) are a good idea. You know how reliable computers are (not "can be") and I'm sure you would be quite nervous to trust your life to a computer controlled car. But in the same breath you jump to the defense of Toyota who build cars just like I've described - and apparently didn't even see the need to include some fail-safe routines into their systems.
I see this kind of stuff every day on Slashdot; people arguing both sides of an issue "just because". They never consider that one or both of those "sides" are nothing more than political or marketing spin. It makes me sad to see that this is the kind of discourse my fellow man is capable of.
Anyway, go on with your beating on people who claim to have been taken on a full throttle ride by their Toyota. You probably won't experience this kind of thrill yourself so you can feel safe and justified with your attacks. And if the worst happens and your Toyota freaks out and runs you full-throttle into a bridge abutment - well, we won't hear about what happened to you so it's all OK here in Slashdot land.
Let me take a few moments to describe what causes so many malware and virus attacks - something that the Slashdot crowd has complained about time and time again. All those Windows machines out there which are "open" and "unsecured".
So many words have been written about machines running with administrator access being the cause of so many botnets and other problems on the web. Each time this comes up, the solution is always to lock down the machines and only allow users to run with limited access.
So here you are: a tablet that is locked down and only allows users to run with limited access. It's what you security freaks have been dreaming about for years - but somehow this isn't a solution - it's a problem. Do you realize how this makes you look? I suspect not.
So you want it to be open and unsecured - but only for you because you're special. All the other folks should have it locked down instead. Yeah, right - why don't you wish for a pony, too? You don't get it both ways so figure out what's really important to you before you mash your big hairy finger down on the "reply" button.
"The more profitable businesses there are, the more jobs available" Not in the real world. Labor is the biggest expense in most corporations and the quickest way to increase profits is to reduce the number of workers. You've been drinking the conservative koolaid - there's more to this issue than you've heard about. Study and learn...
The guys at Apple undoubtedly know that they could just buy this information all neatly sorted and packaged from Google for much, much less than it'd cost to capture it themselves.
Any talk of "competitive advantage" from being able to see what smartphone users search for is overrated. This is a market where things change quickly; look at your cell carrier's current crop of offerings and you'll see phones with capabilities that weren't common or even available a year or two ago. Most important: this information by it's nature is a measurement of where things were in the past.
Any competent businessman knows that when you're trying to hit a moving target you need to aim for where it's going to be, not where it is now. And Apple is a very good example of this kind of thinking - they've made a lot of money defining new markets and even now have things cooking in their labs that will define more markets in the future. Consider the iPod; many here blew it off as a useless also-ran. How about the iPhone? These pages were full of people saying that it was a failure. Now it's the iPad that's getting described as a failure - the early sales figures seem to say otherwise and we'll just have to wait and see. I wouldn't bet against Apple knowing what the market wants.
I don't understand the way people on this site behave either. If we're talking about iPad then the fact that it is locked down and only runs "certified" programs is a horrible, evil thing. But if we're talking about viruses and malware the same people will tell you that the answer is to lock things down and only run certified programs.
I've already got an iPad on order - there's a wish list of functions that I've wanted for many years and this device fulfills those wants. I bought a first-generation iPod Touch and my experience with it has been very, very good.
I'm OK with my desire for an iPad - but I'm not the person that they seem to think. I'm typing this on a 3.8GHz Core I7 machine I built for myself; it's liquid cooled and - well, I'm into this stuff just like the rest of the crowd here. This is the machine I use for compiling code and other "intense" stuff. But if what I want is to kick back on the sofa and read a book or listen to some tunes this machine isn't the right tool to use. My dual core laptop is nice and I use it every day, too - but it's not the right tool either. I've been using the iPod Touch for those moments and it's a very useful device. I think that most who denigrate these devices have never used one. The biggest problem the iPod Touch has is that while it plays videos and browses the web the screen is too small. If the iPad was nothing more than a Touch with a bigger screen it'd be a worthwhile investment. Adding books and productivity apps made it a "must have" for me.
I'm getting the 64GB iPad - plenty of room for 300+ albums and 20,000+ books and lots of space left over for some videos and such. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else in it's market. That market doesn't include "tablet" PCs, netbooks, PCs, Macs, notebooks, etc. Those who compare it to those things will find those comparisons to be no better than comparing apples to oranges. The one thing I wish the haters would do is just stop by an Apple store and play with one of these things for a few minutes. I suspect many of them would change their tune once they realized what they were holding.
Where were you when the iPhone came out? It doesn't support Flash either. And neither do many of the other smartphones that have come out in recent times. This "issue" that you're whining about is nothing new - it's been going on for years now. I have a Blackberry - it doesn't support Flash either.
What nobody seems to consider is that while the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch along with many, many other small web-enabled devices don't support Flash. That's not a political thing; there's some basic incompatibilities that make Flash a bad fit. Let's consider the iPad for this discussion - the same can be said for many, many other devices but this is the current poster boy so - think about the Apple multi-touch interface for a moment (if you've ever used it). There's no cursor and the concept of "hover" or "click" doesn't make sense either. Flash expects to have a mouse (or touchpad) attached with a cursor that can hover and click. This isn't just an Apple issue - there's a whole world of small screen portable devices that don't behave in the way that Flash expects.
For years the web has been restricted to machines with WIMP interfaces and Flash is useful in that environment. But recently more and more mobile devices have become web enabled and they don't or can't support Flash for various reasons. This is the future - more and more portable and pocket devices will become web enabled and they will have various (small) screen sizes / resolutions, various types of CPUs, various amounts of memory, various forms of connectivity and various forms of "keyboard" and "pointer" interfaces. Flash doesn't work here. It's because Flash was designed to serve in a different world but things are changing now. Apple saw this coming and made the choice to drop Flash - but others will make the same choice in the future. Technology isn't static, and no matter how Adobe would wish otherwise, Flash will become a technology of the past. It'll take it's place next to Real Player in the "glad it's gone" hall of fame.
If the "Icontrolpad" people would have purchased a license to use the iPod dock connector then things might be different. Instead, the Icontrolpad people chose to use Apple's patented iPod dock technology without a license. And their product only works with jailbroken iPhones - so after infringing on two (or more) of Apple's patents / copyrights they decide to complain when Apple patents technology similar to theirs.
So what shall we as Slashdotters choose as our position on this issue? One one side we have a large (and getting larger) corporation that turns out some pretty popular devices. On the other side we have a small company whose product violates the big corporation's patents and copyrights. It's tempting to beat on the big corporation but it's not Microsoft and we're not quite sure how. And while it may feel good to support the underdog - in this case, the underdog's hands are dirty and their product can't be legally sold. I'm sure this will get bent all kinds of ways and I'm going to enjoy seeing how the trolls work this one...
A friend built one. Pretty cool machine - well designed and it worked very well. I waited and built a SOL machine for myself and it was lots of fun, too. I was "lucky" enough to have an ASR-33 to hook to it and loaded programs from paper tape. With a 32K expansion board I could run 32K Basic and there were many evenings when I started the machine up, loaded the OS from tape then put the 32K Basic tape in the reader, hit start, and went out for dinner. Assuming nothing went wrong it'd be at a READY prompt in a little over 1/2 hour.
What's kind of funny in a strange way is that 32K Basic was a Bill Gates project. I remember having a problem one day, calling for help and speaking with him on the phone about it. He solved my problem for me - and I never imagined that things would turn out the way they have. The days are long gone when you'd toggle in the bootloader from the front panel - or get technical support from Bill Gates.
Things have changed a lot since then - I'm still quite amused by the current crop of "hackers" who think they're all that but never built their own computer from chips and raw PC boards. Building a PC these days is something grade school kids can do.
The multiple comments saying that the pirates weren't going to buy or pay to see these movies anyway - this doesn't make any sense, either. If they don't cost anything (the information was "free") and they're not a source of income then why should the studios bother with them? What they're really trying to do is to set an example - and they'll accomplish that very well with this level of attack. I don't think they realize what example they're setting, though - and what it'll mean for their companies going forward. In the business world being known for the number of lawsuits you file against people is the kiss of death. Nobody wants to do business with a company that might turn around and sue them next.
I'm still unclear on the business benefit to the MPAA companies that comes from suing their customer base. This isn't going to win them any friends and is even less likely to increase their profits. It was stupid when they were suing dozens of people - but stepping this lunacy up to 50,000 lawsuits looks more like a death wish than "monetizing the alternate channel".
Your post sounds quite reasonable on its surface - but I've been using FlashBlock for quite some time now and it's given me a very good idea of what I'd be giving up if Flash disappeared one day. The answer: not very much at all. The sites where I've whitelisted Flash are video sites - other than that, I don't see a lot of annoying ads and cutesy bouncing BS that some web designer thought made his site look impressive. It doesn't, you know - design for usability for a change, would you?
For now, Flash is still necessary for *a few* things. Much as RealPlayer was a necessary plugin for many years; it's gone, good riddance. For me, if my browser supports video then I'll uninstall Flash and I won't miss it either. You'll notice I haven't said anything about Steve Jobs here - that's not the issue no matter how some would like to make it one. If he's guilty of anything it's seeing the future and that it doesn't include Flash plugins in the browser. Heck, the iPhone has been out for how many years now and viewing web pages without Flash? How about all those other smartphones? How many of them have Flash? The list of portable devices with web capability is growing every day and for many valid reasons they don't support Flash. No mouse, tiny screen, not even a standard aspect ratio much less any kind of standard resolution. Flash as it is just isn't useful for these devices. How were you going to get your Flash game to work on a 320x320 screen anyway? Slow network connections and various processors of varying capability make targeting a player to these devices impractical - even Adobe would refuse this task.
In a world where virtually everyone was browsing the web on a Intel based computer running Windows - Flash works pretty doggone well here. It could be better but I digress; the world is changing. It's already started changing and the change continues. More and more people will be accessing the web from their cell phones, tablets, cars, and in other new and interesting ways that haven't hit the street yet. Flash may still be around (much as RealPlayer was) but the real question you're going to have to ask yourself is if you're going to keep on making your fancy 3D presentations in Flash and ignore the rapidly growing number of web browsers that don't support your favorite toy? What will you tell the designers when they ask why the page looks like crap when they view it on their PDA / phone / tablet / whatever?
The writing is on the wall for those who wish to see it...
Successfully filtering the net is impossible - that's been proven time and time again. If either one of them realized this simple truth then they'd know that their statements are somewhat nonsensical.
You'll note that the adults on the scene - the school administrators and teachers who knew what was happening and did nothing to prevent these crimes - are not being given the legal penalties that they so richly deserve. If the attacks were felonies, then in many states those school employees would be co-conspirators and charged accordingly. What the kids did was very wrong - but they're kids and aren't held to the same standards as adults are. But what the school staff did (or didn't do) is just plain wrong. Any functioning adult that would stand by and watch a child be abused isn't fit to work at a school.
If you can't trust or train your users, then use thin client machines. When the OS is in ROM it's hard for a virus to do anything; then all you have to do is secure the servers adequately and you're golden.
Here's the link to the bluetooth keyboard. It's not listed under the accessories for iPad, but it clearly says in the keyboard description that it's compatible. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC184LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA1Mg&mco=MTMzNzg5MDM