People get confused with the various ways that you can define "open".
Apple has lowered everyone's expectations so you're no longer talking about open access to source code. Now the problem is that you can't even install the binaries of your own choosing.
This is much more restrictive than any other general computing platform ever. It's more restrictive than Microsoft and it's more restrictive than the old Apple.
You've got to get the basic data processing right before any of the voice controlled hype means anything.
Can ANY Apple interface manage what you are asking of it now? Using ANY available input?
3rd parties are great sometimes in how they can provide a little bit of creative chaos so that useful new features get developed. You don't have to wait for the local monopoly to finally get interested.
> Patent law is not central planning but quite the opposite: it's how we allow innovators in a free market to profit from their innovation.
Patent has nothing to do with that.
What patents allow for is to claim ownership of something and then prevent anyone else from doing anything else vaguely similar.
In their current form, it allows companies to stake claims on the current state of the art and suppress competitors. In it's current form, the patent system doesn't really encourage the disclosure of useful trade secrets. The nature of the system actively discourages anyone from using patent filings as source of knowledge.
Patents only encourage disclosure. In the current system, that disclosure usually has absolutely no value. This isn't just restricted to software. Software is just what we know. So we can recognize BS in a patent when we see it.
The patent system is not meant to "protect innovators".
This is a bad bit of pro-corporate rhetoric that sends everyone down a philosophical dead end. Patents exist to encourage disclosure of useful inventions so that everyone can use them.
If something can be easily replicated by 10 companies in parallel, then the value of disclosing that information is miniscule. The harm caused by not allowing 9 out of 10 companies to independently move forward gravely outweighs the value of allowing the 10th company to claim ownership on something.
The basic idea of what the patent system should be and how individual patents should be treated is wrong. If judges are perpetrating those fundementally wrongful ideas then perhaps the whole system needs to be scrapped.
You make it sound like we've always had software patents.
This isn't about "software being special". This is about new forms of patent being created essentially out of thin air and contrary to previously adjudicated precedents.
Patents exist to serve a public policy objective. If they are harmful, then they need to go. The system does not have an inherent justification. It has no right to exist. You don't have a natural right to a patent.
The "null hypothesis" here is that NO patents deserve to exist. Any class of patents needs to justify itself or be abolished.
Software patents are a recent invention. It is THAT change to the status quo that needs to be justified.
He also says that it's a "bad idea" to dump certain types of patents. This is despite the fact that such patents are clearly harmful and are themselves "recent inventions".
I read the article too.
I think the judge is an idiot.
When production blows up in your face, one of the first things you consider doing is rolling back recent changes.
Clearly this authority figure is too invested in the system and can't bare to see the scope of his power diminished. He's like any other beaurocrat.
> Yes, because EA and Oracle are representative of all commercial users
They aren't just representative of all commercial users. They are representative of THE MOST DEMANDING commercial users when it comes to things like licensing. They don't merely "use" Free Software. They build their own PROPRIETARY products off of it.
They are both posessive and paranoid.
If they can manage it, then anyone can.
You're the one that's dull. You are blinded by religious zealotry.
Of all of the things I could dabble with on Linux, this is something I've just never managed to get around to. Beyond the cost and bother of having and extra GPU and monitor to try it with, the ability to manage windows with virtual desktops has kind of made the point moot.
There are window managers from the early 90s that still do it better than anything Windows or MacOS has to offer even now.
> FreeBSD has commercial users, and the new GCC just wouldn't have been an option for them.
What commercial users? If the likes of EA and Oracle can manage fine using a Free Software toolchain then it clearly isn't the politics of the Free Software crowd.
You like to pretend that Free Software is incompatible with commercial usage when it is quite clearly otherwise. Your lie would be more convincing if Oracle didn't plaster all of the CAT busses with an armoured Tux at OpenWorld time.
Libertarians love to pine for a sort of Mad Max style of anarchy believing themsleves to be on the top of the food chain. The truth is that they will be the first ones to be run down by the road gangs or crushed into green crackers when the time comes.
They're mostly peasants that like to think they're robber barons.
It's great for limiting the amount of information you need to sift through at any given level of the tree. A flattened organizational structure just gives the user information overload and makes them flee to inappropriate and archaic means of storing their information just so they can get some control over it.
Actually, just because the underlying tech of the old icons is gone doesn't mean they don't have value. People who love to pretend to be UI experts also love to pretend that previously acquired knowledge and old habits don't matter.
A good trademark doesn't need to be descriptive.
An anachronism may be perfectly fine for a UI element.
You've got to first prove the alternative (Unity,MacOS) is actually any better.
That simply would never happen if competent bankers were managing risk in a responsible and professional manner. They are the "adults" in the transaction. They should know better and have more severe negative consequences when things go wrong.
The fact that these bankers never had to be responsible for these loans is why they were made.
Understanding physics is useful for anyone that ever gets into a car or steps foot onto some sort of sporting arena. Rational analysis and the scientific method are just useful generally. There's plenty of stuff that seems purely academic but is really basic survival skills for a modern world.
The "simple facts" are a pre-requisite for the rest. How can you whine about being unable to teach anything else but the basics when you clearly haven't even covered the basics?
It's not just "survivor bias". How often can you recall ANY couch being destroyed? I tried to take apart a Basset once because we couldn't get any charity to take it away from a 2nd story apartment. The thing was old and abused and it still took a lot of dedicated effort with a hatchet to get it apart.
I've seen and used a lot of old hand-me-down furniture. Never seen anything just fall apart until I bought something recently at a discount furniture retailer. A toddler destroyed the thing within 6 months.
Never seen anything like that ever despite growing up in the sort of household that would likely buy the cheap crap out of necessity.
I just had my own garage door serviced. I'm sure you could find a repairman for your garage door if you really looked. In some places, you can find a welder just by going into the country side and paying attention.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense.
They all run the same kernel and libraries.
You can "install" an app on Linux just by decompressing a tarball. Windows style "installers" run on any version of Linux you want.
It doesn't matter if Ubuntu fades. It doesn't matter if Red Hat fades. Software made for either will run on any other Linux out there.
Linux is like an aisle full of soda that differs only in the shape, size, and mechanics of the containers.
People get confused with the various ways that you can define "open".
Apple has lowered everyone's expectations so you're no longer talking about open access to source code. Now the problem is that you can't even install the binaries of your own choosing.
This is much more restrictive than any other general computing platform ever. It's more restrictive than Microsoft and it's more restrictive than the old Apple.
Something like Plex becomes "rogue software".
No. Jobs was a snake oil salesman and you are just trying to repeat his sales pitches.
Chances are it was an outside agencies that wrote the sales pitch and that Jobs can't even really take credit for that either.
You've got to get the basic data processing right before any of the voice controlled hype means anything.
Can ANY Apple interface manage what you are asking of it now? Using ANY available input?
3rd parties are great sometimes in how they can provide a little bit of creative chaos so that useful new features get developed. You don't have to wait for the local monopoly to finally get interested.
An Apple branded TV won't solve that problem.
It will just cost more money today and then even more money tomorrow when it becomes obsolete and isn't supported anymore.
That's the problem with "smart" TVs generally.
> Patent law is not central planning but quite the opposite: it's how we allow innovators in a free market to profit from their innovation.
Patent has nothing to do with that.
What patents allow for is to claim ownership of something and then prevent anyone else from doing anything else vaguely similar.
In their current form, it allows companies to stake claims on the current state of the art and suppress competitors. In it's current form, the patent system doesn't really encourage the disclosure of useful trade secrets. The nature of the system actively discourages anyone from using patent filings as source of knowledge.
Patents only encourage disclosure. In the current system, that disclosure usually has absolutely no value. This isn't just restricted to software. Software is just what we know. So we can recognize BS in a patent when we see it.
The patent system is not meant to "protect innovators".
This is a bad bit of pro-corporate rhetoric that sends everyone down a philosophical dead end. Patents exist to encourage disclosure of useful inventions so that everyone can use them.
If something can be easily replicated by 10 companies in parallel, then the value of disclosing that information is miniscule. The harm caused by not allowing 9 out of 10 companies to independently move forward gravely outweighs the value of allowing the 10th company to claim ownership on something.
The basic idea of what the patent system should be and how individual patents should be treated is wrong. If judges are perpetrating those fundementally wrongful ideas then perhaps the whole system needs to be scrapped.
Sometimes, the patient can't be saved.
You make it sound like we've always had software patents.
This isn't about "software being special". This is about new forms of patent being created essentially out of thin air and contrary to previously adjudicated precedents.
Patents exist to serve a public policy objective. If they are harmful, then they need to go. The system does not have an inherent justification. It has no right to exist. You don't have a natural right to a patent.
The "null hypothesis" here is that NO patents deserve to exist. Any class of patents needs to justify itself or be abolished.
Software patents are a recent invention. It is THAT change to the status quo that needs to be justified.
He also says that it's a "bad idea" to dump certain types of patents. This is despite the fact that such patents are clearly harmful and are themselves "recent inventions".
I read the article too.
I think the judge is an idiot.
When production blows up in your face, one of the first things you consider doing is rolling back recent changes.
Clearly this authority figure is too invested in the system and can't bare to see the scope of his power diminished. He's like any other beaurocrat.
> Yes, because EA and Oracle are representative of all commercial users
They aren't just representative of all commercial users. They are representative of THE MOST DEMANDING commercial users when it comes to things like licensing. They don't merely "use" Free Software. They build their own PROPRIETARY products off of it.
They are both posessive and paranoid.
If they can manage it, then anyone can.
You're the one that's dull. You are blinded by religious zealotry.
Anti-GPL zealots are funny.
Of all of the things I could dabble with on Linux, this is something I've just never managed to get around to. Beyond the cost and bother of having and extra GPU and monitor to try it with, the ability to manage windows with virtual desktops has kind of made the point moot.
There are window managers from the early 90s that still do it better than anything Windows or MacOS has to offer even now.
The "need" to keep a C complier closed is a highly dubious one.
This is about Apple being neurotic and ant-consumer. It isn't about any real limitatoins of GCC or the GPL.
> FreeBSD has commercial users, and the new GCC just wouldn't have been an option for them.
What commercial users? If the likes of EA and Oracle can manage fine using a Free Software toolchain then it clearly isn't the politics of the Free Software crowd.
You like to pretend that Free Software is incompatible with commercial usage when it is quite clearly otherwise. Your lie would be more convincing if Oracle didn't plaster all of the CAT busses with an armoured Tux at OpenWorld time.
Libertarians love to pine for a sort of Mad Max style of anarchy believing themsleves to be on the top of the food chain. The truth is that they will be the first ones to be run down by the road gangs or crushed into green crackers when the time comes.
They're mostly peasants that like to think they're robber barons.
Of course the GPL will be brought up sooner or later as a sort of bogeyman.
I never did get why any sort of freeware community would shill for corporate abusers.
If you need to care about something like the GPL then you are violating basic modularity principles taught in the first year of any CS program.
It's great for limiting the amount of information you need to sift through at any given level of the tree. A flattened organizational structure just gives the user information overload and makes them flee to inappropriate and archaic means of storing their information just so they can get some control over it.
You might actually want to control what the savepoint is since the computer can't read your mind and determine if you've changed it.
Rolling back every single change seems like a collosal bother.
Pretty retarded design concept really. In truth all of our modern Apple worshipers have nothing on the guys that built the VMS shell.
Actually, just because the underlying tech of the old icons is gone doesn't mean they don't have value. People who love to pretend to be UI experts also love to pretend that previously acquired knowledge and old habits don't matter.
A good trademark doesn't need to be descriptive.
An anachronism may be perfectly fine for a UI element.
You've got to first prove the alternative (Unity,MacOS) is actually any better.
That simply would never happen if competent bankers were managing risk in a responsible and professional manner. They are the "adults" in the transaction. They should know better and have more severe negative consequences when things go wrong.
The fact that these bankers never had to be responsible for these loans is why they were made.
Understanding physics is useful for anyone that ever gets into a car or steps foot onto some sort of sporting arena. Rational analysis and the scientific method are just useful generally. There's plenty of stuff that seems purely academic but is really basic survival skills for a modern world.
It's the 21st century out there.
...and it's like: standardized.
You may want to bitch and moan about "teaching to the test" but it's clearly possible to prepare. I am sure all of us did it for our college boards.
Certainly for any geek household, this test is likely to be viewed as a very low bar not to be flunked for any reason.
The "simple facts" are a pre-requisite for the rest. How can you whine about being unable to teach anything else but the basics when you clearly haven't even covered the basics?
It's not just "survivor bias". How often can you recall ANY couch being destroyed? I tried to take apart a Basset once because we couldn't get any charity to take it away from a 2nd story apartment. The thing was old and abused and it still took a lot of dedicated effort with a hatchet to get it apart.
I've seen and used a lot of old hand-me-down furniture. Never seen anything just fall apart until I bought something recently at a discount furniture retailer. A toddler destroyed the thing within 6 months.
Never seen anything like that ever despite growing up in the sort of household that would likely buy the cheap crap out of necessity.
I just had my own garage door serviced. I'm sure you could find a repairman for your garage door if you really looked. In some places, you can find a welder just by going into the country side and paying attention.
Someone decided to cop an attitude and pretend that they're better than everyone else. It just deteriorated from there.
Kind of like wars and sports rivalries really.