Apple, AT&T and other cell phone companies have yet to realize that imposing unreasonable restrictions on your own customers -- on a physical object your customers *bought* -- defies common sense.
People who own a physical piece of equipment should be able to use their equipment in any way that doesn't break the law or hurt others.
Some protections of the manufacturer are understandable, but they must be within reason. The more unreasonable the restrictions, the less legitimate they seem in the eyes of customers. The less legitimate they seem, the less guilt people feel for breaking the restrictions. The less guilty people feel, the more the "undesired" actions become mainstream (hence the jailbroken iPhone App Store). Plus, if they're extremely unreasonable, the FCC might just step in and void them.
In short, when dealing with consumers, being draconian as a company (a.) makes your product less valuable and (b.) reduces or eliminates goodwill customers have towards you. Apple needs to realize that you simply can't force people to do exactly what you want.
Exactly. I love the idea of GPL and am glad it exists. I use GPL software whenever possible. This post however, is not about the merits of GPL, but to drive home this point: it's difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to make a living by relying on GPL software. Finding a "balance" between the GPL model and complete closure is something worth pursuing. It's not like GPL couldn't still be used by those who wanted to use it.
The GPL is simply not for every developer. It does not allow for trade sectrets, and trade secrets are legally protected for a legitimate reason: the opportunity to be rewarded for innovation. Without it, there would be *less* incentive to invent and innovate.
Clearly, some are willing to invent and develop technology without this protection, but many such as Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, the average person with a Computer Science degree, will demand some of this protection when they really want to earn a living from their software.
As someone who's worked for software companies, it's hard to imagine those companies GPLing their products, and easy to imagine the company losing half its profits or going under altogether if any company with an IT department could legally recompile the source code and use the software without payment.
After all, companies do have the right to act in their own self-interest, even if you feel they are misguided.
The incredibly slow, huge and intrusive Adobe Acrobat Reader updates are the main reason I (and I'm sure many others) switched to FoxIt.
That aside, to this day, the innovations created by the Adobe of twenty years ago rivals that of any company of any time: TrueType, PostScript, the PDF standard, Photoshop (which is just as much a verb as "Google")... Adobe in the 1980s almost single-handedly created the desktop publishing industry. They made the software, technologies and tools achievable for individuals and small businesses.
Adobe Updates are Exhibit A of how they've fallen from one of the great software companies ever, to the punchline of a joke.
As a computer programmer with an MBA (please don't burn me at the stake -- I'm a coder, not a manager, and have no desire to be a manager), I understand both sides of the story, and it isn't pretty. Meetings are crucial, but they need to follow these general rules:
(a.) As much as possible, have a single "meeting day". This article explains why -- programming is not a "stop-and-pick-up-where-you-left-off" profession. So, in other words, as much as possible, ensure all "administrative overhead" tasks, such as meetings, are blocked together.
(b.) Meetings must be limited to information that *everyone* *needs* to know.
If you follow these rules, meetings are a Good Thing.
Problem is, no one follows those rules, because following them is much more easily said than done.
Companies have already discovered that too many people are willing to provide information for free to charge for it online.
With very few exceptions (professional journals and professional necessities like Lexis Nexis), sites who force users to pay for their content condemn themselves to irrelevancy.
Two easy examples of "Paid vs. Free" web sites:
Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia
Classmates vs. Facebook
Also, think about Experts Exchange. There were popular Firefox extensions created for the express purpose of blocking expertsexchange.com results in Google.
They now provide their answers on the bottom of every page. Good or bad, almost no one will pay for news stories online.
I started as a web developer in the mid-90s.
I know how hard it is to develop for multiple browsers and versions. When Netscape and Internet Explorer 4.0 came out, they quickly gained the majority of market share. Many colleagues did not want to keep their sites compatible with 3.x browsers because they felt it was a pain. I would always hear the sentence, "They only have a 5% market share."
To me this was and still is a ridiculous attitude. You're OK randomly raising your middle finger to 1 in 20 potential customers visiting your site? What if that 1 in 20 is the wrong person? Obviously, in this case, they definitely raised their middle finger to the wrong people.
But this gets even worse, because Opera is not obsolete and is fairly standards-compliant. To top it off, the vendor specifically broke the web site for the browser they were too lazy to design for, rather than doing something that makes sense -- like investing time and money to reach a small but tech-savvy segment of the population.
All told -- shamefully -- it makes me feel a little Schadenfreude that it bit them in the rear.
In the sports world, there are many instances of coaches and players using strategies that, although effective, are bad for the game for one reason or another. Sports leagues that deal with this effectively, like the NBA, are doing OK. Leagues that do not, such as the NHL (sorry Canada), are circling the drain.
Once upon a time in basketball, teams started holding the ball for minutes at a time as soon as they got a lead. So, the NBA instituted a shot clock forcing the team to shoot the ball within 24 seconds.
As players got taller, coaches started camping 7-footers under the basket. So, a 3-second lane was added to forbid any player from standing under the basket for more than 3 seconds at a time. Years later, the 3-point line was introduced to increase the value of long-range shooting and encourage players not to all crowd around the basket.
The NHL started going down the tubes when teams like the New Jersey Devils used the horrendously boring "neutral zone trap" and "clutch-and-grab" defense to win Stanley Cups over more skilled and exciting teams. The NHL waited too long to do something about it, and as a result the Stanley Cup finals are now shown on a basic cable bicycle racing channel.
If legal play can ruin the game, the rules need to be changed. Pure and simple. You can't trust the players to "be nice."
It probably has something to do with your internet connection. I have a home theater PC using MyNetflix and there's no discernable difference between watching it online and on a DVD, and is often better than the signal I get from Comcast.
Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if Netflix streamed all movies ever known to mankind... but I humbly disagree.
To me, the main competitors to Netflix streaming are pay-per-view, HBO, Showtime, etc. A limited selection of movies that can be played on demand for ~$8/month beats the hell out of (and is cheaper than) premium cable channels and pay-per-view.
Computer Science A is designed to be a three-credit course, equivalent to introductory programming. Computer Science AB is the equivalent of the first two CS programming courses. As a CS graduate, stacks and queues were not introduced to me until my Data Structure course. So, this does make sense. Data structures, at least when I was in high school, was rightfully out of scope for AP Computer Science A.
To anyone who plays the game, it's very obvious the lawyer is Jack Thompson. That said, Rockstar made sure the character was just ambiguous enough that if Thompson ever suggested the lawyer was him, he would look like a paranoid moron. Of course, he took the bait and provided tons of free advertising for the new GTA. Brilliant!
Slashdot Mirror
It's just a bit disingenuous to change the definition of a word to meet your own needs. Here's to hoping the FCC sees through it.
Apple, AT&T and other cell phone companies have yet to realize that imposing unreasonable restrictions on your own customers -- on a physical object your customers *bought* -- defies common sense.
People who own a physical piece of equipment should be able to use their equipment in any way that doesn't break the law or hurt others.
Some protections of the manufacturer are understandable, but they must be within reason. The more unreasonable the restrictions, the less legitimate they seem in the eyes of customers. The less legitimate they seem, the less guilt people feel for breaking the restrictions. The less guilty people feel, the more the "undesired" actions become mainstream (hence the jailbroken iPhone App Store). Plus, if they're extremely unreasonable, the FCC might just step in and void them.
In short, when dealing with consumers, being draconian as a company (a.) makes your product less valuable and (b.) reduces or eliminates goodwill customers have towards you. Apple needs to realize that you simply can't force people to do exactly what you want.
Duh.
The GPL promotes one type of "open" source model.
Exactly. I love the idea of GPL and am glad it exists. I use GPL software whenever possible. This post however, is not about the merits of GPL, but to drive home this point: it's difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to make a living by relying on GPL software. Finding a "balance" between the GPL model and complete closure is something worth pursuing. It's not like GPL couldn't still be used by those who wanted to use it.
The GPL is simply not for every developer. It does not allow for trade sectrets, and trade secrets are legally protected for a legitimate reason: the opportunity to be rewarded for innovation. Without it, there would be *less* incentive to invent and innovate.
Clearly, some are willing to invent and develop technology without this protection, but many such as Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, the average person with a Computer Science degree, will demand some of this protection when they really want to earn a living from their software.
As someone who's worked for software companies, it's hard to imagine those companies GPLing their products, and easy to imagine the company losing half its profits or going under altogether if any company with an IT department could legally recompile the source code and use the software without payment.
After all, companies do have the right to act in their own self-interest, even if you feel they are misguided.
The incredibly slow, huge and intrusive Adobe Acrobat Reader updates are the main reason I (and I'm sure many others) switched to FoxIt.
That aside, to this day, the innovations created by the Adobe of twenty years ago rivals that of any company of any time: TrueType, PostScript, the PDF standard, Photoshop (which is just as much a verb as "Google")... Adobe in the 1980s almost single-handedly created the desktop publishing industry. They made the software, technologies and tools achievable for individuals and small businesses.
Adobe Updates are Exhibit A of how they've fallen from one of the great software companies ever, to the punchline of a joke.
How long until he told you to knock it off?
As a computer programmer with an MBA (please don't burn me at the stake -- I'm a coder, not a manager, and have no desire to be a manager), I understand both sides of the story, and it isn't pretty. Meetings are crucial, but they need to follow these general rules:
(a.) As much as possible, have a single "meeting day". This article explains why -- programming is not a "stop-and-pick-up-where-you-left-off" profession. So, in other words, as much as possible, ensure all "administrative overhead" tasks, such as meetings, are blocked together.
(b.) Meetings must be limited to information that *everyone* *needs* to know.
If you follow these rules, meetings are a Good Thing.
Problem is, no one follows those rules, because following them is much more easily said than done.
Companies have already discovered that too many people are willing to provide information for free to charge for it online.
With very few exceptions (professional journals and professional necessities like Lexis Nexis), sites who force users to pay for their content condemn themselves to irrelevancy.
Two easy examples of "Paid vs. Free" web sites:
Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia
Classmates vs. Facebook
Also, think about Experts Exchange. There were popular Firefox extensions created for the express purpose of blocking expertsexchange.com results in Google.
They now provide their answers on the bottom of every page. Good or bad, almost no one will pay for news stories online.
This nonsense would never happen.
I started as a web developer in the mid-90s. I know how hard it is to develop for multiple browsers and versions. When Netscape and Internet Explorer 4.0 came out, they quickly gained the majority of market share. Many colleagues did not want to keep their sites compatible with 3.x browsers because they felt it was a pain. I would always hear the sentence, "They only have a 5% market share."
To me this was and still is a ridiculous attitude. You're OK randomly raising your middle finger to 1 in 20 potential customers visiting your site? What if that 1 in 20 is the wrong person? Obviously, in this case, they definitely raised their middle finger to the wrong people.
But this gets even worse, because Opera is not obsolete and is fairly standards-compliant. To top it off, the vendor specifically broke the web site for the browser they were too lazy to design for, rather than doing something that makes sense -- like investing time and money to reach a small but tech-savvy segment of the population.
All told -- shamefully -- it makes me feel a little Schadenfreude that it bit them in the rear.
The best games never are.
In the sports world, there are many instances of coaches and players using strategies that, although effective, are bad for the game for one reason or another. Sports leagues that deal with this effectively, like the NBA, are doing OK. Leagues that do not, such as the NHL (sorry Canada), are circling the drain. Once upon a time in basketball, teams started holding the ball for minutes at a time as soon as they got a lead. So, the NBA instituted a shot clock forcing the team to shoot the ball within 24 seconds. As players got taller, coaches started camping 7-footers under the basket. So, a 3-second lane was added to forbid any player from standing under the basket for more than 3 seconds at a time. Years later, the 3-point line was introduced to increase the value of long-range shooting and encourage players not to all crowd around the basket. The NHL started going down the tubes when teams like the New Jersey Devils used the horrendously boring "neutral zone trap" and "clutch-and-grab" defense to win Stanley Cups over more skilled and exciting teams. The NHL waited too long to do something about it, and as a result the Stanley Cup finals are now shown on a basic cable bicycle racing channel. If legal play can ruin the game, the rules need to be changed. Pure and simple. You can't trust the players to "be nice."
It probably has something to do with your internet connection. I have a home theater PC using MyNetflix and there's no discernable difference between watching it online and on a DVD, and is often better than the signal I get from Comcast.
Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if Netflix streamed all movies ever known to mankind... but I humbly disagree. To me, the main competitors to Netflix streaming are pay-per-view, HBO, Showtime, etc. A limited selection of movies that can be played on demand for ~$8/month beats the hell out of (and is cheaper than) premium cable channels and pay-per-view.
Computer Science A is designed to be a three-credit course, equivalent to introductory programming. Computer Science AB is the equivalent of the first two CS programming courses. As a CS graduate, stacks and queues were not introduced to me until my Data Structure course. So, this does make sense. Data structures, at least when I was in high school, was rightfully out of scope for AP Computer Science A.
To anyone who plays the game, it's very obvious the lawyer is Jack Thompson. That said, Rockstar made sure the character was just ambiguous enough that if Thompson ever suggested the lawyer was him, he would look like a paranoid moron. Of course, he took the bait and provided tons of free advertising for the new GTA. Brilliant!