I find this article and the associated thread fascinating in that I am not a developer and until this moment, had no idea who Will Shipley was.
Coming at it from that angle, I found him to be a childish potty-mouthed sort of fellow who seems to be crying "Sour Grapes" really loudly. I imagine that he has some kind of techie internet-based fame that allows him to write this kind of thing and come across as insightful? As an article on it's own however, discovered without reference to background or source, it reads like a bunch of juvenile whining.
At best it seems only to state some very well-known "wrongs" and then just add a (mostly unspoken) OMG! at the end of each point.
I am guessing that this article is really a developers expression of personal frustration, that a lot of folks here (also developers) can identify with and thus nod your heads in unison, but to the uninitiated it just reads like a bad rant.
I was struck by how stupid most of the 15 things listed in the ComputerWorld article were and how the list seemed to be a big confabulation of every complaint we have ever heard about the iPhone. Don't we know enough already to steer clear of any article that starts with "15 things..." or "10 great ways..."?:-)
Several of these "things to fix" are things that only third parties can accomplish, several more require entirely new hardware, and most of the rest are already slated to appear when Leopard comes out. At the very least, the article could differentiate between things requiring new hardware, and things that could be 'fixed" on the original iPhone.
For software related issues, it's hardly worth talking about until Leopard is out as it's pretty clear at this point that the iPhone was originally intended to be released in a post-Leopard world and is not "all that it was meant to be" at the moment. For hardware related stuff, GPS, G3, better camera, and second camera are too obvious to really mention (over and over again).
It says up front that the article is about tariff comparison and that comparing the prices of the handsets are not fair because "you can't get an iPhone on the other networks." Yet each comparison ends up with a "total price" for each tariff where the O2 one includes the retail price of the iPhone and the other one does not. Either they are comparing tariff and handset cost together or they are not. Which is it?
In the three comparisons, it's 585, 360, or 585 pounds for the non-iPhone tariffs vs. 899 for the iPhone one. It should be 630 for the O2 iPhone tariff not 899.
Sun seems to be doing a workman-like job on moving the basics of the project forward, but at the end of the day, whether it's Sun or IBM or a host of independent developers, Open Office will remain as it always has been which is basically a clone of Microsoft Office for Windows as it was in the 90's.
For those commenting on how "someone needs to be in charge" in order for true innovation to happen (esp. around the GUI), I would point out that it hasn't worked so far. IMO open source programming is good for copying an existing software concept or for advancing technical details and bugs, but not for innovation, and esp. not for innovation in GUI's. For a true alternative to MS Office you need something new, not just a copy.
As lame as the current version of iWork is, I would look to Apple for the "next Office," or maybe to some as yet unknown high-school student imagining what that "next Office" could be like in their last period computer class.:-)
I find this an interesting article for the most part, but it's really kind of "preaching to the choir" isn't it?
The author talks about not taking advantage of this small window of opportunity to attack Vista. He also goes into great lengths about all the fabulous things Apple has already done to position itself as an alternative to Vista including the transition to intel processors, the fantastic ad campaigns, and the refinement of OS-X. Although he only says that "the official Mac line is that it has gone swimmingly" which seems imply falsehoods, he does manage to mention that sales are up over 30% across the board!
To me this sounds like unprecedented growth and execution, not a failure. He then answers his own unproven assumption (that Apple isn't doing enough) by expressing "what could be done" as:
- ramping up their retail presence - offering more for corporations.
But these two things are exactly what Apple *has* been doing for the last couple of years. In fact, Apple's focus has been so intent in these areas that it's on the verge of dropping the ball this year on a number of other issues as a result. How could Apple could ramp up the retail expansion any faster than they already have lately without stumbling? How could they focus any more on their high end and back-end server stuff for corporate environments with Leopard? Being certified as UNIX this year doesn't give them enough cred? Coming out with a fully exchange compliant server and simultaneously offering it's own end to end solution to compete with exchange server based on open formats and open source code is not enough? Coming out with a brand new corporate smart phone to challenge RiM is not enough?
Apple is already going through intense, rapid expansion on all fronts probably more than at any time in it's history and the very issues he mentions are already already major focii of their expansion plan.
I'm not saying it's a stupid article, but it's kind of pointless in that all it really does is restate some recent history, (MS took five years off and OS-X has come in from the cold), add some overly obvious business advice, (expand retail, expand markets, consolidate marginal markets), and then it just kind of wrings it's hands and worries about how far Apple can get before the "giant flywheel" of Vista gets it.
I'm worried about the flywheel too, but I fail to see what more Apple can do on any of these fronts that it isn't already doing. In particular, expanding retail locations any faster than it already is, would be a dangerous course for Apple and in the end probably bad business advice.
I never understood why the iPod became so immensely popular compared to other personal players in the first place. The iPod is immensely popular and is the best music player on the market because it's well-designed both as an device and as a software/device combination. It's the best designed product in it's category. It's really just that simple.
All that this long, boring (and mostly emotional) thread proves is that your average geek does not understand basic design principles (which is hardly news).
- The fact that a music player doesn't support a particular encoding or file format is not a "design-flaw" unless the market for the device is asking for it. They aren't. The iPod supports all popular file formats.
- The fact that a music player makes you install a particular software to use it is not a "design-flaw" unless there is some other kind of popular software that the people who buy the thing want to use that they are being locked out of. There isn't. There simple is no army of users clamoring to use another software product to fill their iPod.
- The fact that audio quality may be less than some hypothetical ideal is only a "design-flaw" if people (the "market" again), can detect it with their own ears. They cannot. Despite many opinions to the contrary, it has been proven time and again that even the average audiophile cannot always tell the difference between lossless and lossy formats, let alone the difference between audio chips used in a device. You may think you can, but it's an illusion.
- The fact that the battery is not replaceable is only a "design-flaw" if the average user needs to replace the battery before they are finished with the device. They don't. The vast majority of the time the battery in an iPod lasts longer than the lifetime of the iPod.
In short, the iPod is an extremely well-designed hardware/software combination that sells gangbusters because it's simply the best design out there.
I also find this entire thread to be a complete pissy rant in that all that we actually *know* at this point is that the format of the DB has changed and that it's temporarily locking out other software. The thread however seems wholly based on the unspoken assumption that Apple has certain (necessarily "evil") motivations for this. People are posting all over the place about what they "know" about Apple's motivations when in fact they know nothing at all about them.
Most people also seem to be getting ridiculously emotional about things not yet even proven as fact. You don't know why Apple has done this, or if it's at the behest of their partners or anything at all really beyond the simple technical discovery mentioned. It's just wild and very emotionally based speculation from a small minority of Linuxy geeks about things not even really in evidence.
In addition, the people complaining here are not the people who buy the iPods in the first place so how valid are their complaints? It's like someone who has never owned, bought or driven a car complaining about Volkswagon's use of a certain fuel injector in their latest model.
How about we wait more than ten seconds after the discovery of the technical reality, before we start attributing motivations and conspiracies to people we don't even know, who made decisions that we are not party to?
Actually from the article it sounds like Apple would be fine with the removal of the meters and making the spaces a no parking zone. Unless they physically concrete the area over by extending the sidewalk however, there is no such thing as a "no parking zone." It just becomes a "rich people and cops only" parking zone.:-)
I agree though, that the main point is that the less curb-side parking the better (for the city and for people in general, not for the businesses).
This is a great start to estimating the contribution of fair use to the economy, but it misses two issues. First, fair use will only occur if original works are created and original works will only be created if people have some chance of earning a living from them. Saying that the contribution of fair use exceeds that of copyright should imply more fair use and less copyright is like saying we don't need to pay Boeing and Airbus, because flying (not making planes) contributes more to the economy. Some of your argument about the model is very interesting, but this part is really a classic straw-man argument isn't it?
Nowhere do the authors suggest (or even intimate IMO), that copyright should be eliminated or that fair use is "better" than copyright. Their argument is that fair use *does* add significant value to the economy and should not be denigrated the way it often is lately, or worse, eliminated altogether.
I think they may also be arguing that if we merely restored the (old) status quo, where fair use was perfectly legal again, and the length of copyright was returned to a more reasonable length of time that we would all be better off economically.
At least that's the most reasonable inference to make from this study IMO.
As a Canadian I find this article and half the comments about it kind of offensive.
In the first place this is Quebec, which is... well let's just say it is "unique" and quite different from the rest of Canada so you are tarring all of Canada with a brush that should be meant only for a small minority. It's also offensively implies that "Canada is doing something wrong here" or that we are unimaginative, backward etc. when in fact the reverse is the case.
The fact that a company could not bribe a municipal government to go against it's own bylaws and provide special treatment to a high-end retail establishment is something to celebrate, not berate.
I am a big Apple fan, but this is really a kind of outrageous request. If this kind of stuff is common in the United States, well then I feel sorry for you. Horay for any government that is above the petty manipulations of the business community I say.
Lastly, as others have mentioned, how much more of a boring non-story could there be?
Shouldn't someone start work on whether or not it's even possible to make an intelligent machine before we get into discussing when these things will begin to be smarter than us?
As far as I recall, no-one anywhere has yet made a machine that can think or even proposed a theoretical framework for such a thing. All available evidence currently indicates that it's probably not possible.
To me this is just more futurist junk-science. Like when they publish a report on "the future of improved natural language interfaces" for computers, and neglect to mention that no one has yet made a natural language interface that even works! At best this is speculation based on a series of unproven assumptions (machines can think, the brain is only a machine, etc.). i.e. - classic "Futurism" and not science at all.
I am all in favour of freedom of religion, but let's call it what it is and not try to disguise our "hopes for the future" as scientific discourse. This conference could have been held in 1925 as far as the currency of the idea goes and there was about as much evidence in favour of the underlying assumptions available then, as there is today.
This is a funny story and all, but isn't anyone worried by this part?
The Summary Proceedings Act, which covers tracking devices, says a warrant should be obtained for a tracking device but an officer can install one without a warrant if there is not time and the officer believes a judge would issue a warrant. I mean that puts Australia more towards the Fascist end of the scale than even the US doesn't it? (and that's hard to do)
Since when is surveillance ever an issue of immediacy? You usually engage in it over a protracted period in order to slowly gather evidence. Also a warrant hardly ever takes more than a day or even a few hours to get in any country I ever heard of. Anyhow, what Judge is going to refuse a warrant for a bugging device considered so important by the Police that they have already installed it?
This seems to be a deliberate loop-hole in the law to allow for warrant-less surveillance. The very fact that a regular police force investigating a fairly low-level crime uses this tactic kind of implies that this is fairly widespread or typical behaviour as well.
What happens to our favorite childhood toys is definitely "stuff that matters" to any (male) nerd, but one look at the front page of the site this story comes from immediately begs the question as to why this inflammatory, hate site should be taken seriously by anyone at all and why it's posted on slashdot.
Unless it's satire (that I missed because I left in disgust too soon), the author of this piece is a raving loon and the site seems angled towards the gun-toting, "bunker in the basement" crowd. I mean he (and I feel 100% safe in assuming this is a "he"), manages to refer to Hollywood liberals, Socialists, and "Femi-Nazi's" before he even gets out of the first paragraph. Do you think he might have a bit of a bias there?
I would expect to find a link to such a site as backup to a Digg story, but as entertaining as the raving might be to some, it doesn't belong here. Free speech is a great thing, but allowing crazy people to have their own web-site, and promoting that craziness as "news" and trying to engage the lunatics in a debate on a science related news site are two totally different things. I wouldn't ban it, but the very fact that this kind of tripe can be posted to slashdot and commented on as if it's just another web site is distasteful at best.
Kudos for the (aprox. 20% of) posters that recognise this hate-speech drivel for what it is and a big thumbs down for the other 80% that think this garbage is worthy of engaging in a debate.
This statement is the same boiler-plate reply they gave in the Spring when the whole thing came up for the first time. This is not even anything *new* let alone any real news AFAIK.
The UK government position is (and has been for a while now), that because the BBC has agreed to support all platforms "somewhere down the road" that the principal of universal access has been saved, and that there is no problem. As foolish a dodge as this is, they have been saying this since the first protest about it.
Well, you can call it that if it makes you feel better, but the rest of us just call that "wishful thinking".
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict. This comment is hardly insightful. The author either deliberately, (or perhaps just foolishly), is avoiding the whole point of the original article being linked to.
I am an atheist myself, so I can empathise with the distasteful nature of coming across a post by a religious believer trying to argue for his faith, but that doesn't mean that in some cases there might be a valid argument presented.
The poster was merely pointing out (quite rightly), that "belief" is not a logical process (almost the same point the article makes), so to come back with "that's just wishful thinking" is both rude and stupid IMO. The entire point of what we are discussing here is that what people believe emerges from a mixture of logical analysis and emotionally/subjectively based beliefs and patterns of thought. It can be argued that the evidence so far actually supports the notion that logic in fact has the smaller role to play in determining what we see, what we believe, and what we know as human animals.
I too, was a bit turned off by the "religiousy" nature of some of the remarks, but how about we leave our hatred of religion at home and try to discern the actual argument being made? Ironically, responding to that argument is the logical thing to do, not having an emotional reaction to the religious guy.
I come from England, but I live in Canada, and I can tell from your comments that you must be American.:-)
Seriously, the US is one of the *only* places where anyone makes a big deal about this.
A lot of countries, like Canada for instance, do not have a law that requires you to carry ID with you wherever you go, but they do have a law that requires you to produce ID if asked for it. The effect is basically the same though. Smart anarchists merely leave their ID at home, or carry crappy, inconclusive ID to present to the officer if asked.:-)
I find it especially funny the people that have come back with some kind of variation on me being "okay with living in a police state." I am about as "anti-police" as one can get and have seen enough police brutality, live and up close both in Canada and the US to curl the hair on your toes. To me, the police are a band of (mostly) untrained thugs, hardly to be differentiated from the local gangs.
I merely pointed out that unless he had a record, (and perhaps even if he did), the simple act of showing the cop his ID would have made him 100% right. The fellow *chose* to go to jail. Perhaps he thought he was Rosa Parks or something but most of the rest of the world would probably just think him (somewhat) foolish.
If the same guy was stopped by a local Gansta and given you a choice of handing over his kicks or being sliced up, would you advise him to stand up for what was right and say no? Same thing. Cops do things all day long that are neither legal nor moral, but they have guns and they are the cops. The practical thing to do is keep your head down, gather evidence and witnesses and hit em in court when your wearing your nicest suit.
The way I understand it, the "Kleer" thing is an extra. There is nothing to stop people from using earbuds as well or instead of this.
It would conceivably allow Apple to produce an iPod with wireless like capabilities for sharing tunes and "squirting the social" (a la Zune), but not necessarily introduce the complexity of wireless and browsers and skype and so on. With Kleer, each iPod would be a broadcasting station and multiple wireless listeners could listen to the same iPod simultaneously. This would also figure in with the rumoured iPod "kiosks" that are said to be going up at Starbucks for selling iTunes to patrons.
I find it kind of believable because the technology is bleeding edge (typical Apple), it would instantly turn iPods into the highest quality audio devices out there (also typical Apple), and make it possible to do all those social things that were the Zune's only real innovation ("the social"), without all the DRM and legal complications. It's such a perfect solution, that if Apple doesn't use this technology or something very similar, the next Zune could run rings around them just by implementing it.
because radio is SO 1985 and jobs looks towards the future, not the past (and for what's playing on radio, it's not like it's a loss) I think this is spot on.
iTunes is about music, and iPods are about quality.
Why would Apple put AM or FM radio on the thing? So you can catch up on the pig farmer reports? So you can "catch the game" or listen to those annoying morning DJ's? Howard Stern?
Wow, what a cool, trendy image *that* projects.:-)
Radio is junk, and it's what we now refer to as "ad-supported streaming media." Why would Apple go near that with a ten foot pole?
I think it's pretty much a certainty also for many different reasons. But to be accurate, there have actually been no iPod photos released.
The "photos" in question was a single snapshot of a computer screen that had a PhotoShop file displayed on it. The PhotoShop file was a crude mock up, of an advertisement for *one* of the rumoured new iPods. Apple asked for it to be taken down as it had *some* Apple IP in it. Best bet is still that it was 9to5mac.com (the site that posted the image), or their Chinese informant, that created this image.
Probably I am being picky, these could of course be direct mock-ups of the new iPods, but the facts are different from saying "(actual) iPod photos (have) appeared which Apple promptly issued a take-down for."
You are certainly right about the first part. The idea that people think it's perfectly okay to be searched by a department store when they don't even have the minimal probable cause that a police officer would have to have to do similarly, is scary to say the least.
WalMart also doesn't have the right to staple or tape up your bags received from other stores before you enter their store either. Most of these kinds of requests should be completely ignored by any law abiding citizen.
The second part about the ID I think is wrong though, and *that* is the point where the guy gets into trouble. He gets arrested for his troubles, traumatizes his own family and puts any juicy lawsuit he might have against Circuit City at risk.
I realise the US has a different history than most places, but in almost any country you want to name throughout most of the 20th and now 21st centuries, showing some kind of identification on demand by the local authorities is pretty standard stuff. This is also what he is eventually charged with, because not showing your ID (when pretty much everyone carries some form of ID), is indeed suspicious, and does indeed interfere with the officers ability to do his or her job. It all depends on the situation and specifically *how* the guy is asked of course, but I don't see it as unreasonable to be able to produce ID.
The cop probably shouldn't have asked him for ID in this situation because he was already cleared of any wrong-doing at that point. Once he did ask him though, the guy should have either shown it, or claimed not to have it. By choosing instead to stand on an idealistic, technical point of law, he chose to go to jail.
I think there is something missing in this story as well. It seems odd to me that the guy would be so casual about going to jail. Unless he is a young guy who is used to being arrested and has been in trouble before, the idea of being dragged off to jail in front of one's family should be a horrific thing. I mean weighed in the balance, it seems like most people would have just shown their ID.
Does this guy maybe have a record and is not giving his ID to the cop for that reason?
Your overstating things yourself here and assuming stuff not in evidence to support your (essentially) emotionally arrived at point of view.
Where I live, most of these shows are not "free over the air" until years after they debut. Same goes for DVD's. The OP's point about if it's not available digitally and if the user does not have cable, then the only other realistic option is stealing is completely realistic, whereas your alternative suggestions are not.
If there is a flaw in the OP's argument it is one of volume. The number of folks without cable nowadays is very very small indeed. This is probably where Universal is coming from actually. They still somehow see digital downloads as a value added extra to their programming and have yet to get behind the idea that digital downloads are for many people the preferred medium now and the broadcast shows are the "extra."
Slashdot Mirror
Is that like a PC, Christian American way of saying "crap"?
Why not just say crap?
(or "stuff" for that matter)
sounds like a Bushism.
I find this article and the associated thread fascinating in that I am not a developer and until this moment, had no idea who Will Shipley was.
Coming at it from that angle, I found him to be a childish potty-mouthed sort of fellow who seems to be crying "Sour Grapes" really loudly. I imagine that he has some kind of techie internet-based fame that allows him to write this kind of thing and come across as insightful? As an article on it's own however, discovered without reference to background or source, it reads like a bunch of juvenile whining.
At best it seems only to state some very well-known "wrongs" and then just add a (mostly unspoken) OMG! at the end of each point.
I am guessing that this article is really a developers expression of personal frustration, that a lot of folks here (also developers) can identify with and thus nod your heads in unison, but to the uninitiated it just reads like a bad rant.
I was struck by how stupid most of the 15 things listed in the ComputerWorld article were and how the list seemed to be a big confabulation of every complaint we have ever heard about the iPhone. Don't we know enough already to steer clear of any article that starts with "15 things..." or "10 great ways..."? :-)
Several of these "things to fix" are things that only third parties can accomplish, several more require entirely new hardware, and most of the rest are already slated to appear when Leopard comes out. At the very least, the article could differentiate between things requiring new hardware, and things that could be 'fixed" on the original iPhone.
For software related issues, it's hardly worth talking about until Leopard is out as it's pretty clear at this point that the iPhone was originally intended to be released in a post-Leopard world and is not "all that it was meant to be" at the moment. For hardware related stuff, GPS, G3, better camera, and second camera are too obvious to really mention (over and over again).
Ho-hum (yawns)
Did anyone notice that this comparison of the tariff pointed to here:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49292876-1,00.htm
is purposely misleading?
It says up front that the article is about tariff comparison and that comparing the prices of the handsets are not fair because "you can't get an iPhone on the other networks." Yet each comparison ends up with a "total price" for each tariff where the O2 one includes the retail price of the iPhone and the other one does not. Either they are comparing tariff and handset cost together or they are not. Which is it?
In the three comparisons, it's 585, 360, or 585 pounds for the non-iPhone tariffs vs. 899 for the iPhone one.
It should be 630 for the O2 iPhone tariff not 899.
Sun seems to be doing a workman-like job on moving the basics of the project forward, but at the end of the day, whether it's Sun or IBM or a host of independent developers, Open Office will remain as it always has been which is basically a clone of Microsoft Office for Windows as it was in the 90's.
:-)
For those commenting on how "someone needs to be in charge" in order for true innovation to happen (esp. around the GUI), I would point out that it hasn't worked so far. IMO open source programming is good for copying an existing software concept or for advancing technical details and bugs, but not for innovation, and esp. not for innovation in GUI's. For a true alternative to MS Office you need something new, not just a copy.
As lame as the current version of iWork is, I would look to Apple for the "next Office," or maybe to some as yet unknown high-school student imagining what that "next Office" could be like in their last period computer class.
I find this an interesting article for the most part, but it's really kind of "preaching to the choir" isn't it?
The author talks about not taking advantage of this small window of opportunity to attack Vista. He also goes into great lengths about all the fabulous things Apple has already done to position itself as an alternative to Vista including the transition to intel processors, the fantastic ad campaigns, and the refinement of OS-X. Although he only says that "the official Mac line is that it has gone swimmingly" which seems imply falsehoods, he does manage to mention that sales are up over 30% across the board!
To me this sounds like unprecedented growth and execution, not a failure.
He then answers his own unproven assumption (that Apple isn't doing enough) by expressing "what could be done" as:
- ramping up their retail presence
- offering more for corporations.
But these two things are exactly what Apple *has* been doing for the last couple of years. In fact, Apple's focus has been so intent in these areas that it's on the verge of dropping the ball this year on a number of other issues as a result. How could Apple could ramp up the retail expansion any faster than they already have lately without stumbling? How could they focus any more on their high end and back-end server stuff for corporate environments with Leopard? Being certified as UNIX this year doesn't give them enough cred? Coming out with a fully exchange compliant server and simultaneously offering it's own end to end solution to compete with exchange server based on open formats and open source code is not enough? Coming out with a brand new corporate smart phone to challenge RiM is not enough?
Apple is already going through intense, rapid expansion on all fronts probably more than at any time in it's history and the very issues he mentions are already already major focii of their expansion plan.
I'm not saying it's a stupid article, but it's kind of pointless in that all it really does is restate some recent history, (MS took five years off and OS-X has come in from the cold), add some overly obvious business advice, (expand retail, expand markets, consolidate marginal markets), and then it just kind of wrings it's hands and worries about how far Apple can get before the "giant flywheel" of Vista gets it.
I'm worried about the flywheel too, but I fail to see what more Apple can do on any of these fronts that it isn't already doing. In particular, expanding retail locations any faster than it already is, would be a dangerous course for Apple and in the end probably bad business advice.
All that this long, boring (and mostly emotional) thread proves is that your average geek does not understand basic design principles (which is hardly news).
- The fact that a music player doesn't support a particular encoding or file format is not a "design-flaw" unless the market for the device is asking for it. They aren't. The iPod supports all popular file formats.
- The fact that a music player makes you install a particular software to use it is not a "design-flaw" unless there is some other kind of popular software that the people who buy the thing want to use that they are being locked out of. There isn't. There simple is no army of users clamoring to use another software product to fill their iPod.
- The fact that audio quality may be less than some hypothetical ideal is only a "design-flaw" if people (the "market" again), can detect it with their own ears. They cannot. Despite many opinions to the contrary, it has been proven time and again that even the average audiophile cannot always tell the difference between lossless and lossy formats, let alone the difference between audio chips used in a device. You may think you can, but it's an illusion.
- The fact that the battery is not replaceable is only a "design-flaw" if the average user needs to replace the battery before they are finished with the device. They don't. The vast majority of the time the battery in an iPod lasts longer than the lifetime of the iPod.
In short, the iPod is an extremely well-designed hardware/software combination that sells gangbusters because it's simply the best design out there.
I also find this entire thread to be a complete pissy rant in that all that we actually *know* at this point is that the format of the DB has changed and that it's temporarily locking out other software. The thread however seems wholly based on the unspoken assumption that Apple has certain (necessarily "evil") motivations for this. People are posting all over the place about what they "know" about Apple's motivations when in fact they know nothing at all about them.
Most people also seem to be getting ridiculously emotional about things not yet even proven as fact. You don't know why Apple has done this, or if it's at the behest of their partners or anything at all really beyond the simple technical discovery mentioned. It's just wild and very emotionally based speculation from a small minority of Linuxy geeks about things not even really in evidence.
In addition, the people complaining here are not the people who buy the iPods in the first place so how valid are their complaints? It's like someone who has never owned, bought or driven a car complaining about Volkswagon's use of a certain fuel injector in their latest model.
How about we wait more than ten seconds after the discovery of the technical reality, before we start attributing motivations and conspiracies to people we don't even know, who made decisions that we are not party to?
Or is that too mature?
I agree though, that the main point is that the less curb-side parking the better (for the city and for people in general, not for the businesses).
Nowhere do the authors suggest (or even intimate IMO), that copyright should be eliminated or that fair use is "better" than copyright. Their argument is that fair use *does* add significant value to the economy and should not be denigrated the way it often is lately, or worse, eliminated altogether.
I think they may also be arguing that if we merely restored the (old) status quo, where fair use was perfectly legal again, and the length of copyright was returned to a more reasonable length of time that we would all be better off economically.
At least that's the most reasonable inference to make from this study IMO.
As a Canadian I find this article and half the comments about it kind of offensive.
... well let's just say it is "unique" and quite different from the rest of Canada so you are tarring all of Canada with a brush that should be meant only for a small minority. It's also offensively implies that "Canada is doing something wrong here" or that we are unimaginative, backward etc. when in fact the reverse is the case.
In the first place this is Quebec, which is
The fact that a company could not bribe a municipal government to go against it's own bylaws and provide special treatment to a high-end retail establishment is something to celebrate, not berate.
I am a big Apple fan, but this is really a kind of outrageous request. If this kind of stuff is common in the United States, well then I feel sorry for you. Horay for any government that is above the petty manipulations of the business community I say.
Lastly, as others have mentioned, how much more of a boring non-story could there be?
My apologies to Australia, I misread that part.
Shouldn't someone start work on whether or not it's even possible to make an intelligent machine before we get into discussing when these things will begin to be smarter than us?
As far as I recall, no-one anywhere has yet made a machine that can think or even proposed a theoretical framework for such a thing. All available evidence currently indicates that it's probably not possible.
To me this is just more futurist junk-science. Like when they publish a report on "the future of improved natural language interfaces" for computers, and neglect to mention that no one has yet made a natural language interface that even works! At best this is speculation based on a series of unproven assumptions (machines can think, the brain is only a machine, etc.). i.e. - classic "Futurism" and not science at all.
I am all in favour of freedom of religion, but let's call it what it is and not try to disguise our "hopes for the future" as scientific discourse. This conference could have been held in 1925 as far as the currency of the idea goes and there was about as much evidence in favour of the underlying assumptions available then, as there is today.
(and that's hard to do)
Since when is surveillance ever an issue of immediacy? You usually engage in it over a protracted period in order to slowly gather evidence. Also a warrant hardly ever takes more than a day or even a few hours to get in any country I ever heard of. Anyhow, what Judge is going to refuse a warrant for a bugging device considered so important by the Police that they have already installed it?
This seems to be a deliberate loop-hole in the law to allow for warrant-less surveillance. The very fact that a regular police force investigating a fairly low-level crime uses this tactic kind of implies that this is fairly widespread or typical behaviour as well.
Yet another reason never to go to Australia.
What happens to our favorite childhood toys is definitely "stuff that matters" to any (male) nerd, but one look at the front page of the site this story comes from immediately begs the question as to why this inflammatory, hate site should be taken seriously by anyone at all and why it's posted on slashdot.
Unless it's satire (that I missed because I left in disgust too soon), the author of this piece is a raving loon and the site seems angled towards the gun-toting, "bunker in the basement" crowd. I mean he (and I feel 100% safe in assuming this is a "he"), manages to refer to Hollywood liberals, Socialists, and "Femi-Nazi's" before he even gets out of the first paragraph. Do you think he might have a bit of a bias there?
I would expect to find a link to such a site as backup to a Digg story, but as entertaining as the raving might be to some, it doesn't belong here. Free speech is a great thing, but allowing crazy people to have their own web-site, and promoting that craziness as "news" and trying to engage the lunatics in a debate on a science related news site are two totally different things. I wouldn't ban it, but the very fact that this kind of tripe can be posted to slashdot and commented on as if it's just another web site is distasteful at best.
Kudos for the (aprox. 20% of) posters that recognise this hate-speech drivel for what it is and a big thumbs down for the other 80% that think this garbage is worthy of engaging in a debate.
Someone needs to go back and do some research.
This statement is the same boiler-plate reply they gave in the Spring when the whole thing came up for the first time. This is not even anything *new* let alone any real news AFAIK.
The UK government position is (and has been for a while now), that because the BBC has agreed to support all platforms "somewhere down the road" that the principal of universal access has been saved, and that there is no problem. As foolish a dodge as this is, they have been saying this since the first protest about it.
Not news at all.
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict. This comment is hardly insightful.
The author either deliberately, (or perhaps just foolishly), is avoiding the whole point of the original article being linked to.
I am an atheist myself, so I can empathise with the distasteful nature of coming across a post by a religious believer trying to argue for his faith, but that doesn't mean that in some cases there might be a valid argument presented.
The poster was merely pointing out (quite rightly), that "belief" is not a logical process (almost the same point the article makes), so to come back with "that's just wishful thinking" is both rude and stupid IMO. The entire point of what we are discussing here is that what people believe emerges from a mixture of logical analysis and emotionally/subjectively based beliefs and patterns of thought. It can be argued that the evidence so far actually supports the notion that logic in fact has the smaller role to play in determining what we see, what we believe, and what we know as human animals.
I too, was a bit turned off by the "religiousy" nature of some of the remarks, but how about we leave our hatred of religion at home and try to discern the actual argument being made? Ironically, responding to that argument is the logical thing to do, not having an emotional reaction to the religious guy.
This is why we have to elect Kucinich. :-)
I come from England, but I live in Canada, and I can tell from your comments that you must be American. :-)
:-)
Seriously, the US is one of the *only* places where anyone makes a big deal about this.
A lot of countries, like Canada for instance, do not have a law that requires you to carry ID with you wherever you go, but they do have a law that requires you to produce ID if asked for it. The effect is basically the same though. Smart anarchists merely leave their ID at home, or carry crappy, inconclusive ID to present to the officer if asked.
I find it especially funny the people that have come back with some kind of variation on me being "okay with living in a police state." I am about as "anti-police" as one can get and have seen enough police brutality, live and up close both in Canada and the US to curl the hair on your toes. To me, the police are a band of (mostly) untrained thugs, hardly to be differentiated from the local gangs.
I merely pointed out that unless he had a record, (and perhaps even if he did), the simple act of showing the cop his ID would have made him 100% right. The fellow *chose* to go to jail. Perhaps he thought he was Rosa Parks or something but most of the rest of the world would probably just think him (somewhat) foolish.
If the same guy was stopped by a local Gansta and given you a choice of handing over his kicks or being sliced up, would you advise him to stand up for what was right and say no? Same thing. Cops do things all day long that are neither legal nor moral, but they have guns and they are the cops. The practical thing to do is keep your head down, gather evidence and witnesses and hit em in court when your wearing your nicest suit.
The way I understand it, the "Kleer" thing is an extra. There is nothing to stop people from using earbuds as well or instead of this.
It would conceivably allow Apple to produce an iPod with wireless like capabilities for sharing tunes and "squirting the social" (a la Zune), but not necessarily introduce the complexity of wireless and browsers and skype and so on. With Kleer, each iPod would be a broadcasting station and multiple wireless listeners could listen to the same iPod simultaneously. This would also figure in with the rumoured iPod "kiosks" that are said to be going up at Starbucks for selling iTunes to patrons.
I find it kind of believable because the technology is bleeding edge (typical Apple), it would instantly turn iPods into the highest quality audio devices out there (also typical Apple), and make it possible to do all those social things that were the Zune's only real innovation ("the social"), without all the DRM and legal complications. It's such a perfect solution, that if Apple doesn't use this technology or something very similar, the next Zune could run rings around them just by implementing it.
This is all wild rumour at this point however.
iTunes is about music, and iPods are about quality.
Why would Apple put AM or FM radio on the thing? So you can catch up on the pig farmer reports? So you can "catch the game" or listen to those annoying morning DJ's? Howard Stern?
Wow, what a cool, trendy image *that* projects.
Radio is junk, and it's what we now refer to as "ad-supported streaming media." Why would Apple go near that with a ten foot pole?
I think it's pretty much a certainty also for many different reasons. But to be accurate, there have actually been no iPod photos released.
The "photos" in question was a single snapshot of a computer screen that had a PhotoShop file displayed on it. The PhotoShop file was a crude mock up, of an advertisement for *one* of the rumoured new iPods. Apple asked for it to be taken down as it had *some* Apple IP in it. Best bet is still that it was 9to5mac.com (the site that posted the image), or their Chinese informant, that created this image.
Probably I am being picky, these could of course be direct mock-ups of the new iPods, but the facts are different from saying "(actual) iPod photos (have) appeared which Apple promptly issued a take-down for."
Someone please mod this flamebait down and then fire the moderator who called it "insightful."
You are certainly right about the first part. The idea that people think it's perfectly okay to be searched by a department store when they don't even have the minimal probable cause that a police officer would have to have to do similarly, is scary to say the least.
WalMart also doesn't have the right to staple or tape up your bags received from other stores before you enter their store either. Most of these kinds of requests should be completely ignored by any law abiding citizen.
The second part about the ID I think is wrong though, and *that* is the point where the guy gets into trouble. He gets arrested for his troubles, traumatizes his own family and puts any juicy lawsuit he might have against Circuit City at risk.
I realise the US has a different history than most places, but in almost any country you want to name throughout most of the 20th and now 21st centuries, showing some kind of identification on demand by the local authorities is pretty standard stuff. This is also what he is eventually charged with, because not showing your ID (when pretty much everyone carries some form of ID), is indeed suspicious, and does indeed interfere with the officers ability to do his or her job. It all depends on the situation and specifically *how* the guy is asked of course, but I don't see it as unreasonable to be able to produce ID.
The cop probably shouldn't have asked him for ID in this situation because he was already cleared of any wrong-doing at that point. Once he did ask him though, the guy should have either shown it, or claimed not to have it. By choosing instead to stand on an idealistic, technical point of law, he chose to go to jail.
I think there is something missing in this story as well. It seems odd to me that the guy would be so casual about going to jail. Unless he is a young guy who is used to being arrested and has been in trouble before, the idea of being dragged off to jail in front of one's family should be a horrific thing. I mean weighed in the balance, it seems like most people would have just shown their ID.
Does this guy maybe have a record and is not giving his ID to the cop for that reason?
There is a rumour that instead of wi-fi, the new iPod will use this technology:
r .html
http://lunchat.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/klee
thus it may not have any skype/wireless capabilities.
Your overstating things yourself here and assuming stuff not in evidence to support your (essentially) emotionally arrived at point of view.
Where I live, most of these shows are not "free over the air" until years after they debut. Same goes for DVD's.
The OP's point about if it's not available digitally and if the user does not have cable, then the only other realistic option is stealing is completely realistic, whereas your alternative suggestions are not.
If there is a flaw in the OP's argument it is one of volume. The number of folks without cable nowadays is very very small indeed. This is probably where Universal is coming from actually. They still somehow see digital downloads as a value added extra to their programming and have yet to get behind the idea that digital downloads are for many people the preferred medium now and the broadcast shows are the "extra."