Forget SCO for a moment. Suppose party X owns copyrights on something (no, I mean they really own them...I said forget about SCO). They notice party Y is infringing. What is the logic in saying that X can't say that Y is infringing?
Whenever I'm infringing someone else's copyright, I want them to tell me so I can stop or buy a license. I don't want them to keep silent until they are ready to sue me.
you know, if Nintendo can patent a gamepad with a cross-shaped directional button (check it out, no other gamepad has it), I guess Apple can very well patent their scroll wheel
That would be an interesting comment if Apple were trying to patent their scroll wheel. However, this patent application has nothing to do with that. Go look at the claims--they are fairly clearly written and not hard to read.
You are right, gcc has been optimized for x86 performance for years
And it's been better optimized for PPC, if you judge by how close it gets to the best compilers available for each architecture.
The point your are missing is that gcc for x86 and gcc are PPC are not the same compiler. They have the same front end. The part that matters for performance, however, is different.
Please don't read the summary. The summary doesn't get any legal protection and is just there to give a general idea what the patent is about. If you want to know what they are trying to patent READ THE CLAIMS!!
Although he read the summary rather than the claims, he did get the right idea as to what they are trying to claim. Here's the first claim:
1. A method of assisting user interaction with a multimedia asset player by way of a hierarchically ordered user interface, comprising: displaying a first order user interface having a first list of user selectable items; receiving a user selection of one of the user selectable items; and automatically transitioning to and displaying a second order user interface based upon the user selection.
There's no doubt that some sort of element like the scroll wheel came out of his head, even if he had no direct role in it's implementaiton
Perhaps...but click the link in the article, which takes you right to the patent application, and read the claims. They aren't trying to patent the scroll wheel (at least, with this patent). With this patent application, they are trying to patent things that were done before on other players, or that were done on other kinds of devices and all Apple did was copy them for use on the iPod.
Their broadest claims cover any media player that has a menu that brings up another menu (or even a dialog, for that matter), for example.
OOo can export any of its documents to PDF, MS Office can not do that by itself
On the other hand, OOo needs to be able to export to PDF, so that you can print. On my Linux box at work, I didn't have the problems ESR ran into setting up CUPS, but OOo refuses to recognize that I have a printer available. Every other application I've tried can print with no problem, but not OOo. So, I have to save as PDF and print with any of the four PDF viewers I have (they all see the printer).
Try comparing the two for organizing and composing your document, instead of just typing it, and then you'll sing a different tune. Word's outline view is way better than anything OO.org has.
When you make a fair comparison with both machines using gcc
Whoa...that's not a fair comparison. gcc isn't the same on both machines.
A fair comparision is to use the best compiler available on each machine.
IBM's best published official SPEC results for integer are with a Xeon, and for floating point are with a POWER4, which beats the P4 by 3% (and is trounced by Itanium2).
BTW, official SPEC results aren't limited to the CPU manufacturers. Dell has plenty of published results, for example. There is nothing stopping Apple from getting the best compiler they can find, doing the benchmarks, and submitting them.
Is there some organized group of Slashdot Mac fans who go around trying to moderate down anything that shows Apple doing something wrong? I see a LOT higher fraction of incorrect "troll" and "flamebait" moderation in the Apple section compared to other sections of Slashdot.
Go compare Apples SPEC results to the offical results for other systems. G5 is OK, but P4, Xeon, and Opteron all beat it.
Which were run on benchmarks set up by Windows people mostly using Microsoft products (gee, I wonder how they won in a windows environment). What's your fucking point?
Anyone else noticed how perfectly reasonable comments that are in some way not Apple-friendly tend to get improperly moderated as flamebait or troll in most Apple threads?
I don't see this amount of mismoderation in other Slashdot areas. What's going on?
The impressive fact is not the overall performance of the VT G5 cluster, but that the price-performance ratio was better if they bought G5s at the standard Apple educational price (not some insane 1-time giveaway deal cooked up just for VT) than if they bought systems from HP, IBM, Intel, or AMD
On the other hand, were HP, IBM, Intel, and AMD offering systems that did not support ECC RAM, and so would be limited on the problems they could work on to ones where errors could be detected in software and corrected? That would have cut the PC price quite a bit.
Did HP, IBM, Intel, and AMD know that the cluster would only be used for benchmarks, and then have all its systems replaced?
At the time the ads were published Apple's G5 WAS the fastest PC on the planet
Only on benchmarks run by Apple. On everyone else's benchmarks, the dual G5 didn't beat the fastest single processor P4 on most tests. Only those tests that could actually take significant advantage of dual CPUs came out ahead on the Apple G5.
I think the reason it is selling so well is that it is being bought as a fashion item that happens to play music, rather than as a music player.
As a music player, it is not that impressive. For only $50 more, you can get the 15 gig regular iPod, which is better in every technical way except size/weight, and for most places people need/want more than a few hours worth of music, the size/weight of the regular iPod is fine.
For most situations where size/weight is an important factor, you don't need more than a few hours of music, and a much cheaper flash player is fine.
So, to reuse a comparison I used the last time this thing was mentioned, it is kind of like Rolex is in the watch world--not anywhere near worth the cost as a watch, but people who buy Rolexes are buying them as jewelry.
Well, for one thing, it is not FrameMaker. A huge fraction of professional publishing work is done using FrameMaker, which means that a lot of people have to use it. If Adobe kills it on the Mac, those people will have to switch to Windows, unless they can convince that huge fraction of the publishing world to switch to LaTeX.
Well, so far, after a brief look, there are two things I like about them, compared to the iTunes Music Store.
First, it is platform-neutral for browsing. I was able to look at the selection and search from Linux. iTMS rquires iTunes, which is only for Mac and Windows. BuyMusic.com is brower-based, but stupidly checks specifically for IE.
Second, they seemed to have a better selection than iTMS. I've got 5 of the iTMS/Pepsi winning bottle caps, and have had a surprisingly hard time finding stuff I want to download from Apple. I'm looking for things where I like an individual song from an artist enough to want that song, but I am not enough of a fan to ever buy a whole album from them. iTMS was missing everything I could think of. Wal-Mart was missing most of them, but did have a couple.
Now if the RIAA, or anyone else, tries writing a bot to search the network, they either get encrypted data, or they break the encryption... DMCA ALERT
And so all they have to do is replace the bot with a person using the client software. Since the vast majority of stuff on the major file sharing networks is stuff that violates copyrights, this would have a negligible impact on their ability to find violators.
Plus, a simple reward program could be offered to get third parties to turn in violators for them. E.g., turn in someone who is sharing more than 500 songs that violate copyrights of RIAA memebers and you get a free iTMS download.
Seriously, if you absolutely *need* to carry your DVD player, mp3 player and PDA with you *all* the time...then you're life is pretty gosh darn boring then
Even if you only occasionally need a couple of those, that's still a lot of pocket space on those occasions (especially when you consider cell phone, which probabably is an all-the-time item).
This is why, long term, I think everything will merge into cell phone. As cellular internet gets cheaper, and eventually becomes a standard part of all plans, and as bandwidth goes up, so that 128kbit/second is widespread, and as more and more people get broadband at home, so they have an always-on connection, then the MP3 player can be replaced by the cell phone streaming your MP3s from your home computer.
Same goes for the PDA. The cell phone can have a simple PDA that just stores the next few days events, synced to your PIM on your computer via cellular internet.
Look at the huge sales of the ridiculously overpriced iPod Mini - the market wants smaller and sleeker and good looking, not huge, bulky and with too many features
I suspect that the iPod Mini is selling as a fashion item that happens to double as a music player, rather than selling on its merits as a music player.
Yeah, and the Archos has sold fewer in the year or so it's been on the market than the iPod Mini has sold in the few weeks it's been on the market. Not least because it's heavy, bulky, has a horrible interface, and it's UGLY
Gosh, a $900 video player sells less than a $250 audio player? Who would have expected that? Wow!
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Whenever I'm infringing someone else's copyright, I want them to tell me so I can stop or buy a license. I don't want them to keep silent until they are ready to sue me.
That would be an interesting comment if Apple were trying to patent their scroll wheel. However, this patent application has nothing to do with that. Go look at the claims--they are fairly clearly written and not hard to read.
And it's been better optimized for PPC, if you judge by how close it gets to the best compilers available for each architecture.
The point your are missing is that gcc for x86 and gcc are PPC are not the same compiler. They have the same front end. The part that matters for performance, however, is different.
Although he read the summary rather than the claims, he did get the right idea as to what they are trying to claim. Here's the first claim:
Perhaps...but click the link in the article, which takes you right to the patent application, and read the claims. They aren't trying to patent the scroll wheel (at least, with this patent). With this patent application, they are trying to patent things that were done before on other players, or that were done on other kinds of devices and all Apple did was copy them for use on the iPod.
Their broadest claims cover any media player that has a menu that brings up another menu (or even a dialog, for that matter), for example.
On the other hand, OOo needs to be able to export to PDF, so that you can print. On my Linux box at work, I didn't have the problems ESR ran into setting up CUPS, but OOo refuses to recognize that I have a printer available. Every other application I've tried can print with no problem, but not OOo. So, I have to save as PDF and print with any of the four PDF viewers I have (they all see the printer).
Try comparing the two for organizing and composing your document, instead of just typing it, and then you'll sing a different tune. Word's outline view is way better than anything OO.org has.
Whoa...that's not a fair comparison. gcc isn't the same on both machines.
A fair comparision is to use the best compiler available on each machine.
IBM's best published official SPEC results for integer are with a Xeon, and for floating point are with a POWER4, which beats the P4 by 3% (and is trounced by Itanium2).
BTW, official SPEC results aren't limited to the CPU manufacturers. Dell has plenty of published results, for example. There is nothing stopping Apple from getting the best compiler they can find, doing the benchmarks, and submitting them.
Go compare Apples SPEC results to the offical results for other systems. G5 is OK, but P4, Xeon, and Opteron all beat it.
Take a look at SPEC, moron.
I don't see this amount of mismoderation in other Slashdot areas. What's going on?
On the other hand, were HP, IBM, Intel, and AMD offering systems that did not support ECC RAM, and so would be limited on the problems they could work on to ones where errors could be detected in software and corrected? That would have cut the PC price quite a bit.
Did HP, IBM, Intel, and AMD know that the cluster would only be used for benchmarks, and then have all its systems replaced?
Only on benchmarks run by Apple. On everyone else's benchmarks, the dual G5 didn't beat the fastest single processor P4 on most tests. Only those tests that could actually take significant advantage of dual CPUs came out ahead on the Apple G5.
SHA1, which you can use via the sha1sum command in the GNU core utilities, probably already installed on most Linux systems.
As a music player, it is not that impressive. For only $50 more, you can get the 15 gig regular iPod, which is better in every technical way except size/weight, and for most places people need/want more than a few hours worth of music, the size/weight of the regular iPod is fine.
For most situations where size/weight is an important factor, you don't need more than a few hours of music, and a much cheaper flash player is fine.
So, to reuse a comparison I used the last time this thing was mentioned, it is kind of like Rolex is in the watch world--not anywhere near worth the cost as a watch, but people who buy Rolexes are buying them as jewelry.
Well, for one thing, it is not FrameMaker. A huge fraction of professional publishing work is done using FrameMaker, which means that a lot of people have to use it. If Adobe kills it on the Mac, those people will have to switch to Windows, unless they can convince that huge fraction of the publishing world to switch to LaTeX.
First, it is platform-neutral for browsing. I was able to look at the selection and search from Linux. iTMS rquires iTunes, which is only for Mac and Windows. BuyMusic.com is brower-based, but stupidly checks specifically for IE.
Second, they seemed to have a better selection than iTMS. I've got 5 of the iTMS/Pepsi winning bottle caps, and have had a surprisingly hard time finding stuff I want to download from Apple. I'm looking for things where I like an individual song from an artist enough to want that song, but I am not enough of a fan to ever buy a whole album from them. iTMS was missing everything I could think of. Wal-Mart was missing most of them, but did have a couple.
And so all they have to do is replace the bot with a person using the client software. Since the vast majority of stuff on the major file sharing networks is stuff that violates copyrights, this would have a negligible impact on their ability to find violators.
Plus, a simple reward program could be offered to get third parties to turn in violators for them. E.g., turn in someone who is sharing more than 500 songs that violate copyrights of RIAA memebers and you get a free iTMS download.
Even if you only occasionally need a couple of those, that's still a lot of pocket space on those occasions (especially when you consider cell phone, which probabably is an all-the-time item).
This is why, long term, I think everything will merge into cell phone. As cellular internet gets cheaper, and eventually becomes a standard part of all plans, and as bandwidth goes up, so that 128kbit/second is widespread, and as more and more people get broadband at home, so they have an always-on connection, then the MP3 player can be replaced by the cell phone streaming your MP3s from your home computer.
Same goes for the PDA. The cell phone can have a simple PDA that just stores the next few days events, synced to your PIM on your computer via cellular internet.
Separate DVD player, MP3 player, PDA take up a hell of a lot more pocket space.
No he didn't.
OK, if it is designed to be used 25 times...I sure wouldn't want to be on flight 25.
I don't think YaST's appeal comes from its installer aspects, but rather from its system management aspects after you get installed and running.
I suspect that the iPod Mini is selling as a fashion item that happens to double as a music player, rather than selling on its merits as a music player.
Think of it as the Rolex of music players.
Gosh, a $900 video player sells less than a $250 audio player? Who would have expected that? Wow!