FYI, this is how Apple's rentals/"streaming" work. They may refer to it as streaming, but it's not. You get a copy of the file, and it's DRMed with an expiration. You do not have to wait for the whole file to download to being watching, but that doesn't make it the same as streaming. Heck, once you've got the whole file, you can watch offline.
It's also how XBox Live video rentals used to work before that got corrupted with all the "Zune Marketplace" crap. Again, once you got the whole file, you could watch offline.
I like this model considerably better than streaming. I hate streaming.
However, some service providers don't. If you're streaming, they not only know "so-and-so rented such-and-such on date X, expiring on date Y", they also know exactly when you hit play, or pause, or which segments you re-watched, or which segments you skipped over.
I do not want them to gather that information on a massive scale, but they really want to. That plus lack of confidence in DRM is what I think makes so many people push literal streaming (instead of file delivery), when to my thinking that's not actually in consumer's best interests.
If you think of C++ as an object-oriented extension to C, you're already influenced by that problem. Templates are at least as important in modern C++, and less common in other languages. It started as a version of C with something like Simula 67 objects, yes, but that's not been its reason for existence for well over a decade now.
I find this pretty interesting -- is there any chance you could elaborate?
If I'm currently completely happy with C for some things, Ruby for some other things, Objective-C for some other things, and I'm mostly happy with Java for some other things, under what circumstances might I want to give C++ another look?
I stated as a C programmer in the 1980s. I've used three different object-oriented extensions to C, and C++ was neither the first nor the best of them. I'm not in an industry (like video gaming) that pushes me toward C++ with any pressure at all. Every few years I take a look at C++ and conclude that it's safe for me to continue ignoring it.
Is there anything different this time around that would change this, that's easy to explain to someone who's not already a C++ programmer, and doesn't have the context/history of one? Could someone please summarize?
(Genuine and sincere question there, FWIW.)
To answer his mother's burning question...
on
The Iceman's Last Meal
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· Score: 3, Funny
I am reminded of the day when Microsoft's server OS was changed so that unverified third-party video card drivers were run in ring 0. It didn't used to be that way, and it doesn't make sense in a server OS, but they did it anyway.
It's one of the reasons I consider Windows NT 3.51 to be the last decent server OS to come out of Microsoft.
Is there a reason not to use WebDAV for this? I know there's a WebDAV server (optionally) built into Tomcat, and I expect that there are others out there. I know there's terrific WebDAV client access from MacOS, Windows, and iOS, and the last time I checked (many years ago) there was adequate client access from Linux if you went looking for it -- I assume the situation on a modern desktop is completely adequate now?
Soooo, you use a $650 SMARTphone like it was a DUMBphone.
Actually, not at all. Quite the opposite.
There's a lot of smarts in the phone itself. There's a lot of apps, a lot of storage, a lot of data, a lot of compute power. Most of it doesn't require any connectivity at all to be useful.
If your phone is merely a web browser, merely a thin client for apps that live out on "the cloud", that's less smart-phone-ish than a powerful personal device that can operate standalone.
That may be what you want, and that's fine, but don't confuse that with what a "smart phone" is.
And again, most of the connected stuff works even on slower networks. And when our phones are within range of wifi -- which for some of us is almost always the case -- we have no bandwidth limits.
Maybe that's a better way to think of it -- for people who have nearly constant access to wifi, opting for a very slow (or possibly even no) data plan is a lot like a cell-phone user eliminating their landline. To folks without a cell phone, getting rid of a landline may seem inconceivable. To folks without constant, good wifi, who want to use connected applications, settling for a poor dataplan may seem inconceivable.
Do I think 4G speeds would be nice? Sure, if they didn't cost me anything. Am I willing to pay anything, either financially, in terms of battery life, or in terms of compromised features, for 4G speeds over 2G speeds? No, as it happens I am not.
The main factor is the frequency band, yes, but T-Mobile also typically uses HSPA+ instead of just HSPA. It is not my understanding that the iPhone can currently use HSPA+, regardless of frequency.
And from my perspective it's going to be fully functional. I'd personally take cheap 1xRTT over expensive 4G any day, and EDGE is better than 1xRTT. I'll still be able to check my email, use IMs, browse the web, that'll all be fine. I won't be able to stream, but I don't stream (except on wifi), so I won't notice that.
Heck, even on AT&T's network I sometimes disable 3G speed in order to conserve battery life. Anyone who wants to see if they could tolerate this can test it by going into the "Settings" app and turning off 3G.
Honestly, know the only feature I'd lack that I believe I'd miss? Visual voicemail.
It will work on T-Mobile's network since both are GSM phones. But since T-Mobile uses a different technology for 3G speeds, it will only work at Edge (2G) networking speeds. But for many people that will be fine.
It will not work on Sprint's network because only GSM phones are being sold unlocked, and Sprint uses a CDMA network, like Verizon. (But there is every chance that next year a dual-mode phone will exist instead of two different single-mode phones, and an unlocked version of that could well work on Sprint.)
Seriously, no shit. It's packed with WP7 advertisements and promotions and tutorials.
It's annoying as all get-out. If Microsoft takes this crap further, I may yank out my XBox's ethernet cable whenever I'm not downloading fresh content. (I mostly only do multiplayer with people in the same room as me, so I wouldn't be losing out on that.)
I just did the normal install from visiting Microsoft's web site. I didn't do anything unusual. I've got a very normal OS 10.6 install, completely up-to-date with Apple's patches, and with no strange kernel extensions or "hacks" installed, on modern hardware.
If that's a broken install, it's not my fault, and I'm not the one that needs to fix something. What the hell is this, Linux?
Actually, on OS X, Netflix uses Silverlight. I remember when that changed.
There are of course non-Silverlight "native clients" for Netflix out in the world as well. The iOS, Wii, and PS3 Netflix clients aren't Silverlight-based to my knowledge. And then there's other set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players and stuff, doubt there's Silverlight on 'em. But they're also not really portable.
What the hell are you talking about? Netflix and all of silverlight works perfectly fine on Mac OS X, which pretty much covers all the market they care to support.
No, it does not. It works, but it does not work perfectly fine. It has performance problems that don't show up on Windows, and it has stability issues that don't show up on Windows. (For me, using an up-to-date Macintosh as my desktop, it's been crashing so much that I just disabled it instead of continuing to wrestle with it.)
Let me rephrase: it works "perfectly fine" on MacOS the way iTunes works "perfectly fine" on Windows. Same basic dynamic I guess.
This sounds like another example of lock-in turning into lock-out.
Microsoft has sometimes done things in a proprietary or different way as a tool for creating "lock-in" to their ecosystem. So folks adopt things like.Net and Silverlight and WMA format audio files.
The other day I heard someone who I knew was a Microsoftie complaining that they couldn't upload their music to either Google's or Amazon's clouds and they couldn't figure out what was wrong. Well, if your music is in either MP3 or AAC format, it'll all work fine, as those are open enough. But if your music is in WMA format... Microsoft has tried to lock you in to Windows, and the result is that if you're not sophisticated enough to deal, you're being locked out of Google and Amazon and, basically, the future.
Sounds like the folks who bought in to Silverlight are getting hit by the same phenomenon. It's interesting to me that it's happening at about the same time.
I guess the lesson is to give up on drinking Microsoft's kool-aid, and go for standards-based interoperability wherever you can. It might be a little more work in the short term, but it will be less in the long term.
(Prediction: Outlook/Exchange and SharePoint will suffer the same kinds of fates within 18 months, at least on a small scale.)
It is simply part of Apple culture not to supply software to older OSes. It forces the user to upgrade (i.e. spend money), and I'm not surprised Apple applies the same tactic to PCs that has worked so well for Macs.
That "i.e. spend money" part is misleading, IMHO. Apple does not make a ton of money on OS upgrades. 10.6 was incredibly cheap and 10.7 is looking to be even cheaper.
That said, the reason I said "misleading" instead of "wrong" is that it does force hardware upgrades. My old Macintosh that's got a Core Duo CPU instead of a Core 2 Duo CPU will not be able to run Lion at all -- it's going to be 64-bit-only with no 32-bit CPU support. If I could upgrade the OS on it, doing so would be cheap, but I cannot, so the hardware will have to be replaced. And Apple is a hardware company.
If you don't use anything else from Apple, then you wouldn't want to use iCloud. It's a supplement to their other products and services, and doesn't really have any value if you don't otherwise use any of those products or services.
That help?
Now, if you use their other products or services... let's say you have an iPhone. If you set up iCloud on your Windows box, the photos you snap on the iPhone will automatically appear in a folder on your computer without an explicit sync step or USB connection, and you can sync the bookmarks in Safari on the iPhone to IE on the Windows machine. Similarly, there are benefits for iPad users, iTunes users, people who switch between Windows and MacOS sometimes...
Heck, there are even benefits for people who want to use an iPhone but don't want to load iTunes or any other Apple software on their PC. You can set up the iPhone so that iCloud is the thing it backs up to and syncs with, instead of any PC. So you'd be able to use an iPhone without buying into iTunes or QuickTime and without installing anything on your PC at all. (This is true even if you're an XP user. Or a Linux user, for that matter.)
But the service has no value on its own in isolation. If you don't touch anything else in the Apple ecosystem, best just ignore it completely.
Some people will choose a sustainable economic model. Other people will allow collapse to overtake them. I think it's inevitable that some of both will happen.
A zillion do. But I care more about "multiple static IP addresses and an agreement that permits me to run servers" than about "sports". (Haven't found a sport I enjoy watching yet.)
I hope the system-wide search lets me disable particular video sources.
My ISP does not provide ESPN3, I do not use "Zune Video", and I do not have a "Hulu Plus" account. I won't want searches to ever show me content from those three sources.
...I don't want to have to remember which keywords to say.
If you have to remember keywords, it's not the sort of system I think Woz is ultimately talking about. How many years until IBM's Watson will fit entirely within your cell phone? Imagine something that you could chat with under your breath as if it were a person, not something like the voice command software of the 1990s.
Imagine being able to mutter under your breath "now how do I get to the doctor's office?", and your phone presenting a little notification that it heard you and has an answer if you're interested, and then you tap on that and see a map with three routes plotted out and ranked.
People joke about the Newton's user interface and handwriting recognition, but if you programmed them, they had features that modern handhelds (including iPhone) still don't have.
They had this "routing" infrastructure that had something in common with NeXTstep/MacOS X "services". Basically you defined "stuff" you could do for specific datatypes. Like you could set up "routing" that let you register things like "if you can convert what you have to text, then I can fax it for you" with the system. Then the little "envelope" icon in the corners of documents would dynamically update with whatever operations were available for whatever datatypes. It's a bit like the iPhone's "Open in..." system, but richer, especially since you could do the equivalent of Unix pipelines ("hm, you've got a vector image, and that can be converted to GIF, and I know how to fax a GIF, so, let's show the user a fax option").
Data was also stored as objects in databases (instead of in a filesystem), and there was a way for software to add attributes to the objects of other software without creating namespace collisions. So pieces of software could add arbitrary rich attributes to the built-in contact list app or calendar app, and it all worked, and the data was preserved, and nothing broke.
The alarm system... the device ran on a bytecode interpreter, a precursor of sorts to today's JVM or CLR. But it was simpler. And when you registered an "alarm" with the system, you could not only make it pop up a message, and you could not only attach the equivalent of a URL (both of which you can do today on iOS)... you could embed a lambda in it that would get executed when the alarm fired. So, like, you had a combination of "cron" and "at" in there, accessed the same way as simple alarms.
Sigh, I should stop right now before I get depressed.
They mention that it's not in EPUB or other ebook formats yet because it's difficult to make a good-looking book out of LaTeX source. They also say the book is under a CC license. Anyone manage to find the LaTeX source yet? I'd like to take a stab at ebook conversion for them, and the closer I get to the original source (the LaTeX files), the more flexibility I ought to have in doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI, this is how Apple's rentals/"streaming" work. They may refer to it as streaming, but it's not. You get a copy of the file, and it's DRMed with an expiration. You do not have to wait for the whole file to download to being watching, but that doesn't make it the same as streaming. Heck, once you've got the whole file, you can watch offline.
It's also how XBox Live video rentals used to work before that got corrupted with all the "Zune Marketplace" crap. Again, once you got the whole file, you could watch offline.
I like this model considerably better than streaming. I hate streaming.
However, some service providers don't. If you're streaming, they not only know "so-and-so rented such-and-such on date X, expiring on date Y", they also know exactly when you hit play, or pause, or which segments you re-watched, or which segments you skipped over.
I do not want them to gather that information on a massive scale, but they really want to. That plus lack of confidence in DRM is what I think makes so many people push literal streaming (instead of file delivery), when to my thinking that's not actually in consumer's best interests.
I find this pretty interesting -- is there any chance you could elaborate?
If I'm currently completely happy with C for some things, Ruby for some other things, Objective-C for some other things, and I'm mostly happy with Java for some other things, under what circumstances might I want to give C++ another look?
...if I'm not a C++ programmer today?
I stated as a C programmer in the 1980s. I've used three different object-oriented extensions to C, and C++ was neither the first nor the best of them. I'm not in an industry (like video gaming) that pushes me toward C++ with any pressure at all. Every few years I take a look at C++ and conclude that it's safe for me to continue ignoring it.
Is there anything different this time around that would change this, that's easy to explain to someone who's not already a C++ programmer, and doesn't have the context/history of one? Could someone please summarize?
(Genuine and sincere question there, FWIW.)
...did he at least have clean underwear?
I am reminded of the day when Microsoft's server OS was changed so that unverified third-party video card drivers were run in ring 0. It didn't used to be that way, and it doesn't make sense in a server OS, but they did it anyway.
It's one of the reasons I consider Windows NT 3.51 to be the last decent server OS to come out of Microsoft.
Is there a reason not to use WebDAV for this? I know there's a WebDAV server (optionally) built into Tomcat, and I expect that there are others out there. I know there's terrific WebDAV client access from MacOS, Windows, and iOS, and the last time I checked (many years ago) there was adequate client access from Linux if you went looking for it -- I assume the situation on a modern desktop is completely adequate now?
Soooo, you use a $650 SMARTphone like it was a DUMBphone.
Actually, not at all. Quite the opposite.
There's a lot of smarts in the phone itself. There's a lot of apps, a lot of storage, a lot of data, a lot of compute power. Most of it doesn't require any connectivity at all to be useful.
If your phone is merely a web browser, merely a thin client for apps that live out on "the cloud", that's less smart-phone-ish than a powerful personal device that can operate standalone.
That may be what you want, and that's fine, but don't confuse that with what a "smart phone" is.
And again, most of the connected stuff works even on slower networks. And when our phones are within range of wifi -- which for some of us is almost always the case -- we have no bandwidth limits.
Maybe that's a better way to think of it -- for people who have nearly constant access to wifi, opting for a very slow (or possibly even no) data plan is a lot like a cell-phone user eliminating their landline. To folks without a cell phone, getting rid of a landline may seem inconceivable. To folks without constant, good wifi, who want to use connected applications, settling for a poor dataplan may seem inconceivable.
Do I think 4G speeds would be nice? Sure, if they didn't cost me anything. Am I willing to pay anything, either financially, in terms of battery life, or in terms of compromised features, for 4G speeds over 2G speeds? No, as it happens I am not.
The main factor is the frequency band, yes, but T-Mobile also typically uses HSPA+ instead of just HSPA. It is not my understanding that the iPhone can currently use HSPA+, regardless of frequency.
And from my perspective it's going to be fully functional. I'd personally take cheap 1xRTT over expensive 4G any day, and EDGE is better than 1xRTT. I'll still be able to check my email, use IMs, browse the web, that'll all be fine. I won't be able to stream, but I don't stream (except on wifi), so I won't notice that.
Heck, even on AT&T's network I sometimes disable 3G speed in order to conserve battery life. Anyone who wants to see if they could tolerate this can test it by going into the "Settings" app and turning off 3G.
Honestly, know the only feature I'd lack that I believe I'd miss? Visual voicemail.
It will work on T-Mobile's network since both are GSM phones. But since T-Mobile uses a different technology for 3G speeds, it will only work at Edge (2G) networking speeds. But for many people that will be fine.
It will not work on Sprint's network because only GSM phones are being sold unlocked, and Sprint uses a CDMA network, like Verizon. (But there is every chance that next year a dual-mode phone will exist instead of two different single-mode phones, and an unlocked version of that could well work on Sprint.)
(And, I fail at correctly editing quote tags. Oops.)
They have some small experience with scanning in paper documents, storing them on the web, and making them indexable and searchable.
Fix what's wrong with your install.
I just did the normal install from visiting Microsoft's web site. I didn't do anything unusual. I've got a very normal OS 10.6 install, completely up-to-date with Apple's patches, and with no strange kernel extensions or "hacks" installed, on modern hardware.
If that's a broken install, it's not my fault, and I'm not the one that needs to fix something. What the hell is this, Linux?
...if you don't care about software, and you don't care about the design of the hardware, sure.
Alas, I do.
Actually, on OS X, Netflix uses Silverlight. I remember when that changed.
There are of course non-Silverlight "native clients" for Netflix out in the world as well. The iOS, Wii, and PS3 Netflix clients aren't Silverlight-based to my knowledge. And then there's other set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players and stuff, doubt there's Silverlight on 'em. But they're also not really portable.
No, it does not. It works, but it does not work perfectly fine. It has performance problems that don't show up on Windows, and it has stability issues that don't show up on Windows. (For me, using an up-to-date Macintosh as my desktop, it's been crashing so much that I just disabled it instead of continuing to wrestle with it.)
Let me rephrase: it works "perfectly fine" on MacOS the way iTunes works "perfectly fine" on Windows. Same basic dynamic I guess.
This sounds like another example of lock-in turning into lock-out.
Microsoft has sometimes done things in a proprietary or different way as a tool for creating "lock-in" to their ecosystem. So folks adopt things like .Net and Silverlight and WMA format audio files.
The other day I heard someone who I knew was a Microsoftie complaining that they couldn't upload their music to either Google's or Amazon's clouds and they couldn't figure out what was wrong. Well, if your music is in either MP3 or AAC format, it'll all work fine, as those are open enough. But if your music is in WMA format... Microsoft has tried to lock you in to Windows, and the result is that if you're not sophisticated enough to deal, you're being locked out of Google and Amazon and, basically, the future.
Sounds like the folks who bought in to Silverlight are getting hit by the same phenomenon. It's interesting to me that it's happening at about the same time.
I guess the lesson is to give up on drinking Microsoft's kool-aid, and go for standards-based interoperability wherever you can. It might be a little more work in the short term, but it will be less in the long term.
(Prediction: Outlook/Exchange and SharePoint will suffer the same kinds of fates within 18 months, at least on a small scale.)
It is simply part of Apple culture not to supply software to older OSes. It forces the user to upgrade (i.e. spend money), and I'm not surprised Apple applies the same tactic to PCs that has worked so well for Macs.
That "i.e. spend money" part is misleading, IMHO. Apple does not make a ton of money on OS upgrades. 10.6 was incredibly cheap and 10.7 is looking to be even cheaper.
That said, the reason I said "misleading" instead of "wrong" is that it does force hardware upgrades. My old Macintosh that's got a Core Duo CPU instead of a Core 2 Duo CPU will not be able to run Lion at all -- it's going to be 64-bit-only with no 32-bit CPU support. If I could upgrade the OS on it, doing so would be cheap, but I cannot, so the hardware will have to be replaced. And Apple is a hardware company.
(The dynamics are different in Windowsville.)
If you don't use anything else from Apple, then you wouldn't want to use iCloud. It's a supplement to their other products and services, and doesn't really have any value if you don't otherwise use any of those products or services.
That help?
Now, if you use their other products or services... let's say you have an iPhone. If you set up iCloud on your Windows box, the photos you snap on the iPhone will automatically appear in a folder on your computer without an explicit sync step or USB connection, and you can sync the bookmarks in Safari on the iPhone to IE on the Windows machine. Similarly, there are benefits for iPad users, iTunes users, people who switch between Windows and MacOS sometimes...
Heck, there are even benefits for people who want to use an iPhone but don't want to load iTunes or any other Apple software on their PC. You can set up the iPhone so that iCloud is the thing it backs up to and syncs with, instead of any PC. So you'd be able to use an iPhone without buying into iTunes or QuickTime and without installing anything on your PC at all. (This is true even if you're an XP user. Or a Linux user, for that matter.)
But the service has no value on its own in isolation. If you don't touch anything else in the Apple ecosystem, best just ignore it completely.
The key is to understand how "we" is scoped.
Some people will choose a sustainable economic model. Other people will allow collapse to overtake them. I think it's inevitable that some of both will happen.
A zillion do. But I care more about "multiple static IP addresses and an agreement that permits me to run servers" than about "sports". (Haven't found a sport I enjoy watching yet.)
I hope the system-wide search lets me disable particular video sources.
My ISP does not provide ESPN3, I do not use "Zune Video", and I do not have a "Hulu Plus" account. I won't want searches to ever show me content from those three sources.
Think Microsoft will accommodate me?
If you have to remember keywords, it's not the sort of system I think Woz is ultimately talking about. How many years until IBM's Watson will fit entirely within your cell phone? Imagine something that you could chat with under your breath as if it were a person, not something like the voice command software of the 1990s.
Imagine being able to mutter under your breath "now how do I get to the doctor's office?", and your phone presenting a little notification that it heard you and has an answer if you're interested, and then you tap on that and see a map with three routes plotted out and ranked.
Some day.
People joke about the Newton's user interface and handwriting recognition, but if you programmed them, they had features that modern handhelds (including iPhone) still don't have.
They had this "routing" infrastructure that had something in common with NeXTstep/MacOS X "services". Basically you defined "stuff" you could do for specific datatypes. Like you could set up "routing" that let you register things like "if you can convert what you have to text, then I can fax it for you" with the system. Then the little "envelope" icon in the corners of documents would dynamically update with whatever operations were available for whatever datatypes. It's a bit like the iPhone's "Open in..." system, but richer, especially since you could do the equivalent of Unix pipelines ("hm, you've got a vector image, and that can be converted to GIF, and I know how to fax a GIF, so, let's show the user a fax option").
Data was also stored as objects in databases (instead of in a filesystem), and there was a way for software to add attributes to the objects of other software without creating namespace collisions. So pieces of software could add arbitrary rich attributes to the built-in contact list app or calendar app, and it all worked, and the data was preserved, and nothing broke.
The alarm system... the device ran on a bytecode interpreter, a precursor of sorts to today's JVM or CLR. But it was simpler. And when you registered an "alarm" with the system, you could not only make it pop up a message, and you could not only attach the equivalent of a URL (both of which you can do today on iOS)... you could embed a lambda in it that would get executed when the alarm fired. So, like, you had a combination of "cron" and "at" in there, accessed the same way as simple alarms.
Sigh, I should stop right now before I get depressed.
They mention that it's not in EPUB or other ebook formats yet because it's difficult to make a good-looking book out of LaTeX source. They also say the book is under a CC license. Anyone manage to find the LaTeX source yet? I'd like to take a stab at ebook conversion for them, and the closer I get to the original source (the LaTeX files), the more flexibility I ought to have in doing so.