Steam is DRM all right. As far as DRMs go it is fairly innocuous and transparent when you stay on its good books. But we've seen numerous stories where people have been shut out of their own accounts containing hundreds of dollars of purchases for alleged transgressions.
Amazon can do anything they like with Android 2.x because the source is out there. They can roll out a device which is certified as a compatible device and get the Android Marketplace app, or they could just ignore compatibility entirely and ship their own apps. They could do this right now. I suspect if they did release that they wouldn't bother with certification at all. They have their own app store and services for books, videos & music too. Maybe they'd even partner up with Bing to augment their system with apps equivalent to those that Google denied them such as Hotmail, search, maps etc.
I think Google realises they can't stop this happening with 2.x but they can stop it with 3.x. So they're withholding source and using it as a stick to get some concessions out of Amazon. Clearly Amazon would like to be running the latest and greatest OS because its purpose built for tablets. Clearly Google want their apps and marketplace on the device because that's how they make money. Perhaps some bargain can be struck to mostly satisfy both parties. If not, there is going to be war.
I think it's clear that this all coming to a head and soon.
>As for DNS names being sold - it doesn't make the slightest difference. People buy the domain name not the the private SSL cert which still resides with the original site operator.
Which is the problem, now the old owner can use the cert to pretend that he owns the domain in a MITM, with 1-2 years expiry in the certs this attack can be contained
That Firefox supports a certificate system that was in wide usage before Firefox existed should not come as a shocker. Atleast with the video-tag there is no legacy system so that fight can be won (and don't forget that SSL was invented by Firefoxs ancestor, Netscape).
So you're saying that in the unlikely event that I purchase a website from a precog, who buys an SSL cert to attack the site owner coming after, that they'd only be able to perform a man in the middle attack on them for a mere 2 years? Seems like you are imposing a massive amount of hassle and financial burden on every cert owner for an unlikely event where the attacker can still do a huge amount of damage. And furthermore if it *did* happen, there is a perfectly functional revocation mechanism that could nullify his cert.
I'm also not saying Firefox should dump what it has. I am proposing they extend it (with support of other browsers). Recognize the obvious fact that personal / site keys are virtually worthless as items of trust and allow operators to generate their own certs and attach their own trust.
As for the video tag, the issue of which codec to use is ongoing and a well publicized disaster. IE9 & Safari have gone one way, Chrome, Opera and Firefox have gone another. It's completely avoidable. Firefox could ship with WebM but still reach into the media framework (quicktime, directshow, gstreamer) to play other sanctioned formats.
Irony? You do realize that Firefox doesn't want to use patented codecs due to their inability to afford to license the patents (and not even considering the implications such a license would have on the open source license of Firefox itself) and that this is an issue complete unrelated to the CA model?
Firefox never had to licence h264 in the first place. Every desktop OS has a perfectly functional media framework to play content with.
As for why I mentioned it, it is because Firefox took a stand against h264 seemingly because it wasn't free and open yet here is a certification system which is anything but free and open too. It costs money / needless hassle to secure websites, even personal communication and there is no need for it to. And while the cost and hassle remain people won't bother using it to secure their sites and so security and privacy suffers - proxies can sniff traffic and so forth.
As for DNS names being sold - it doesn't make the slightest difference. People buy the domain name not the the private SSL cert which still resides with the original site operator.
Probably lots. It affected me personally because I loved the Amiga and wanted it to succeed but could see things slipping away. Last straw for me was ringing up to buy an A4000 and discovering Commodore jacked up the price by £100. I bought a PC instead and installed OS/2 instead. I can't imagine where my career would have gone if I'd stuck with the Amiga but I doubt it would have been very nice so for that I guess I can thank Commodore.
I think it's fairly obvious who Google are trying to stop here. They don't want Amazon producing a Kindle running Android 3.0 with its own app store, videos, books etc and directing people away from the equivalent Google apps. They don't want other manufacturers being poached into some competing services platform run by Amazon. Amazon are clearly working something up since their app store makes no sense in any other context.
So the nocompete clause is likely to stop that happening. I expect if the parties can find a way to amicably split the business (e.g. apps to Google, vids / music to Amazon, books shared) everything will blow over, but if it doesn't, expect fireworks.
I was actually thinking of signing up to the Amazon app store as a developer and then I saw they want $99 annually (waived the first year). What the fuck? You don't compete with the defacto store by charging devs more money for the privilege.
Yes bloated. It's an 80MB download that people are forced to install on their PCs to sync any files. And it runs like crap on Windows with slug like performance on large lists and rotten non-native painting. By contrast most other rival media players / phones / tablets only require you to plug them into the computer and they show up as folder, drive or MTP device. No registration / activation, it just works. Doesn't stop you using sync software on those devices but you aren't forced to.
As for background processes, no I don't especially like them running all the time. There precious little reason to do this at all and its as annoying to see iTunes do it as other apps which have flirted with "turbo" modes (i.e. load everything up at startup modes). An iPhone has a USB hardware ID. A small driver could fire up anything it needs on demand rather than running continuously.
Windows works fine thanks for asking. Works great in its latest incarnation on desktops and netbooks. Of course a number of geeks may be using Linux and therefore have an affinity for Android (or WebOS). Personally I like Android because it's a highly usable smart phone / tablet OS not for the kernel under it.
It doesn't boil down to that at all. It boils down to Apple producing stylish hardware and then forcing you to tether it to an 80MB piece of bloatware, bloatware which runs like a slug on Windows.
How can you have a "web of trust" when there are known to be bad actors using the system? All such a web needs is a single person abusing the system and it completely breaks down.
Of course, the CAs aren't doing their job which is what they are being paid to do. That problem is somewhat simpler to solve - Microsoft, who is likely the biggest stick in the game, simply revokes CA authorization for any CA that isn't in fact doing their job of validation. You can't tell me that Firefox or Chrome are going to trust a CA that Microsoft has revoked.
It doesn't break down any more than CAs - anyone can buy a cert with a stolen credit card, or stolen / fake ID. So how is it any worse to just generate certs that rely on a web of trust? I'm also not proposing that it may be suitable in every case. Individuals and small businesses would benefit most. Banks and major sites might find value in the cert because they pay a shitload of money to Verisign to actually audit them... well that's the assumption Comodo's fuckup notwithstanding.
As for key / signature revocation, it would work the way it does in PGP - issue the revocation, upload the keyblock to a key server.
Why do I need to get a CA to issue me a signed cert (and then do the same every 2 years thereafter) in order to facilitate encrypted traffic with visitors? The cert bestows minimal trust, costs me money and causes administrative and support hassle when it expires and needs to be replaced. It's basically a tax on security and not one which is justifiable for individuals or small businesses. I'm paying for trust which doesn't actually exist.
The irony is that browsers like Firefox & Chrome make a big song and dance of not using a patented video codec, and yet here is a security model which arguably has had a far more chilling effect on the internet.
Firefox et al, really should offer a way for sites to issue their own certs. Not a self signed cert, but a cert that implements a web of trust. The obvious way would be to allow an SSL cert to be signed by a PGP key. When the browser encounters such a cert it fetches the web of trust from a PGP key server and displays that to the user. If the user says they trust the site, their choice is stored in a list which is used for future reference. It could be seen as a kind of key which sits between self-signed and CA signed.
I'm sure non geeks don't care until it bites them on the ass, either by denying them the ability to copy a file, or just by being a burdonsome piece of crap they have to fire up on their PC to do anything.
As for geeks, well there are enough of them that the benefits of NOT having to run sync software should speak for themselves in terms of sales. It certainly happened for Android on smart phones and I see no reason not to expect the same for tablets.
Anyone who sells something that connects to itunes and is about the size of a book will win. Anyone whom sells a similar sized piece of glass and plastic with some computer chips will not win.
I should hope that people would like a tablet that DOESN'T connect to iTunes. That NOT having to continuously run iTunes software (or helpers) is actually a selling point. It's kind of ironic that people buy svelte wafers to play music / vids and then are forced to sync them with a piece of bloatware. Not only that, but said bloatware deliberately obstructs users and limits what files they're allowed to copy to their own device.
By all means tablets should bundle sync software but there should be no compulsion to use it.
There are lots of networks of stores which would be delighted to sell tablets - phone networks. In the UK virtually every small size town & above has not one but multiple phone outlets - Vodafone, TMobile, Three, Orange, O2, Carphone Warhouse, Phones4U. On top of that the likes of Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda etc also sell phones and computer kit. And Dixons / Currys / Comet etc. Then all the online stores Amazon.co.uk, Play.com etc.
If tablet manufacturers can't find a way to distribute their products there is something seriously wrong with them. In truth I reckon they'll do okay and in aggregate Android 3.0 tablets will sell more eventually than the iPad. I also expect that most of the major tablet models will individually sell in the millions too, assuming they're competitively priced.
As an aside I strongly suspect Amazon will launch a tablet soon too. They sold something like 10 million Kindles and it's not hard to imagine that figure being matched by a Kindle / tablet model. Even B&N sold 3 million Color Nook tablets so there is a huge market. Biggest question is whether a Kindle tablet would have Android 3.0. I would not be surprised if all the open source / not open source shenanigans isn't directly related to what Amazon is up to and trying to head them off.
Well, I never claimed that the Amiga was perfect by modern standards- we're talking 25 years ago after all!- only that it was miles ahead of the ST and DOS.
If only it were 25 years ago. One could understand why the Amiga never got VM in its original 68000 form but when the 68030 & 68040 models turned up with HDD and high end spec / price they damned well should have. The AmigaOS was a very advanced OS when it first appeared but it squandered its advantage. By the end of its life the lack of VM and the graphics were major impediments to the platform.
Operating systems like Windows & Mac OS were still stuck in preemptive multitasking and both had limitations (e.g. all the GDI segment shit in Windows & dirty addresses in Mac OS), but they still managed to get VM in MMU enabled processors while the Amiga was still extant. It makes one wonder what could have been if Commodore had been a bit more competent in selling their machine and pushing features that kept it ahead of its rivals.
The ST did eventually get multitasking but way too late to make a difference. MiNT was an alternative kernel which allowed multitasking and AES was a multitasking version of GEM. The Atari Falcon offered them up as MultiTOS. By then it really didn't matter much though. Anyone interested in multitasking probably owned an Amiga anyway, and both computer families were ultimately doomed by the incompetence of their respective parent companies.
No, it's reality. In science, reputation is largely irrelevant. Oh, sure, other scientists are more likely to listen to an expert in the field, but if he's making ridiculous claims without providing any evidence they'll call him on it and/or dismiss him.
Quite so. Even Nobel prize winners have managed to utterly ruin their reputation by pursuing some harebrained notions. For example Luc Montagnier (a nobel prize winning virologist) has become a laughing stock for self publishing some papers that detected electromagnetic resonances in homeopathic level dilutions of DNA.
Unless, of course, the angels and demons seen in history actually were aliens.
Yes they could be but in the absence of evidence it is not possible to reach that conclusion. And given that the mind plays tricks on people (e.g. pareidolia, hallucination etc.) especially people with underlying mental problems there are far more likely explanations.
Probably none assuming someone produce a decent C++ compiler that spat out Dalvik bytecode and whatever changes were made to the runtime to accomodate unmanaged languages like C++. I mention LLVM purely because it actually exists, has two C++ compilers that support it (gcc & clang) and is relatively mature tech. Google already use it for Renderscript in Android 3.0 so clearly they like the concept too. It's clearly not optimal to have two runtimes doing more or less the same thing to serve different development languages. I wonder how much separates Dalvik in LLVM, if there is scope to merge both concepts.
The NDK is great. It's too bad Google haven't gone that extra inch and allowed / encouraged apps to target LLVM bitcode instead of native instructions. Even ARM processors have differences in their instruction sets and who's to say all tablets are running ARM anyway? Apps could be compiled natively from the bitcode when they're first installed meaning no loss of speed. It's even possible the Marketplace itself could compile the app natively for the target device based on which device was asking for it.
Funnily enough Google are using LLVM (and Clang) for Renderscript (a CUDA / OpenCL / DirectCompute like API) in Android 3.0 which makes me wonder what's going on. They recognize the benefits for one area but not where it would make most use.
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Steam is DRM all right. As far as DRMs go it is fairly innocuous and transparent when you stay on its good books. But we've seen numerous stories where people have been shut out of their own accounts containing hundreds of dollars of purchases for alleged transgressions.
Actually they had a huge part in its success. The apps didn't just develop themselves you know.
I think Google realises they can't stop this happening with 2.x but they can stop it with 3.x. So they're withholding source and using it as a stick to get some concessions out of Amazon. Clearly Amazon would like to be running the latest and greatest OS because its purpose built for tablets. Clearly Google want their apps and marketplace on the device because that's how they make money. Perhaps some bargain can be struck to mostly satisfy both parties. If not, there is going to be war.
I think it's clear that this all coming to a head and soon.
>As for DNS names being sold - it doesn't make the slightest difference. People buy the domain name not the the private SSL cert which still resides with the original site operator. Which is the problem, now the old owner can use the cert to pretend that he owns the domain in a MITM, with 1-2 years expiry in the certs this attack can be contained
That Firefox supports a certificate system that was in wide usage before Firefox existed should not come as a shocker. Atleast with the video-tag there is no legacy system so that fight can be won (and don't forget that SSL was invented by Firefoxs ancestor, Netscape).
So you're saying that in the unlikely event that I purchase a website from a precog, who buys an SSL cert to attack the site owner coming after, that they'd only be able to perform a man in the middle attack on them for a mere 2 years? Seems like you are imposing a massive amount of hassle and financial burden on every cert owner for an unlikely event where the attacker can still do a huge amount of damage. And furthermore if it *did* happen, there is a perfectly functional revocation mechanism that could nullify his cert.
I'm also not saying Firefox should dump what it has. I am proposing they extend it (with support of other browsers). Recognize the obvious fact that personal / site keys are virtually worthless as items of trust and allow operators to generate their own certs and attach their own trust.
As for the video tag, the issue of which codec to use is ongoing and a well publicized disaster. IE9 & Safari have gone one way, Chrome, Opera and Firefox have gone another. It's completely avoidable. Firefox could ship with WebM but still reach into the media framework (quicktime, directshow, gstreamer) to play other sanctioned formats.
Irony? You do realize that Firefox doesn't want to use patented codecs due to their inability to afford to license the patents (and not even considering the implications such a license would have on the open source license of Firefox itself) and that this is an issue complete unrelated to the CA model?
Firefox never had to licence h264 in the first place. Every desktop OS has a perfectly functional media framework to play content with.
As for why I mentioned it, it is because Firefox took a stand against h264 seemingly because it wasn't free and open yet here is a certification system which is anything but free and open too. It costs money / needless hassle to secure websites, even personal communication and there is no need for it to. And while the cost and hassle remain people won't bother using it to secure their sites and so security and privacy suffers - proxies can sniff traffic and so forth.
As for DNS names being sold - it doesn't make the slightest difference. People buy the domain name not the the private SSL cert which still resides with the original site operator.
Probably lots. It affected me personally because I loved the Amiga and wanted it to succeed but could see things slipping away. Last straw for me was ringing up to buy an A4000 and discovering Commodore jacked up the price by £100. I bought a PC instead and installed OS/2 instead. I can't imagine where my career would have gone if I'd stuck with the Amiga but I doubt it would have been very nice so for that I guess I can thank Commodore.
So the nocompete clause is likely to stop that happening. I expect if the parties can find a way to amicably split the business (e.g. apps to Google, vids / music to Amazon, books shared) everything will blow over, but if it doesn't, expect fireworks.
I was actually thinking of signing up to the Amazon app store as a developer and then I saw they want $99 annually (waived the first year). What the fuck? You don't compete with the defacto store by charging devs more money for the privilege.
Sounds neat though it really needs several major browsers to have builtin support to make a compelling case for adoption.
As for background processes, no I don't especially like them running all the time. There precious little reason to do this at all and its as annoying to see iTunes do it as other apps which have flirted with "turbo" modes (i.e. load everything up at startup modes). An iPhone has a USB hardware ID. A small driver could fire up anything it needs on demand rather than running continuously.
Windows works fine thanks for asking. Works great in its latest incarnation on desktops and netbooks. Of course a number of geeks may be using Linux and therefore have an affinity for Android (or WebOS). Personally I like Android because it's a highly usable smart phone / tablet OS not for the kernel under it.
It doesn't boil down to that at all. It boils down to Apple producing stylish hardware and then forcing you to tether it to an 80MB piece of bloatware, bloatware which runs like a slug on Windows.
How can you have a "web of trust" when there are known to be bad actors using the system? All such a web needs is a single person abusing the system and it completely breaks down.
Of course, the CAs aren't doing their job which is what they are being paid to do. That problem is somewhat simpler to solve - Microsoft, who is likely the biggest stick in the game, simply revokes CA authorization for any CA that isn't in fact doing their job of validation. You can't tell me that Firefox or Chrome are going to trust a CA that Microsoft has revoked.
It doesn't break down any more than CAs - anyone can buy a cert with a stolen credit card, or stolen / fake ID. So how is it any worse to just generate certs that rely on a web of trust? I'm also not proposing that it may be suitable in every case. Individuals and small businesses would benefit most. Banks and major sites might find value in the cert because they pay a shitload of money to Verisign to actually audit them... well that's the assumption Comodo's fuckup notwithstanding.
As for key / signature revocation, it would work the way it does in PGP - issue the revocation, upload the keyblock to a key server.
The irony is that browsers like Firefox & Chrome make a big song and dance of not using a patented video codec, and yet here is a security model which arguably has had a far more chilling effect on the internet.
Firefox et al, really should offer a way for sites to issue their own certs. Not a self signed cert, but a cert that implements a web of trust. The obvious way would be to allow an SSL cert to be signed by a PGP key. When the browser encounters such a cert it fetches the web of trust from a PGP key server and displays that to the user. If the user says they trust the site, their choice is stored in a list which is used for future reference. It could be seen as a kind of key which sits between self-signed and CA signed.
As for geeks, well there are enough of them that the benefits of NOT having to run sync software should speak for themselves in terms of sales. It certainly happened for Android on smart phones and I see no reason not to expect the same for tablets.
Anyone who sells something that connects to itunes and is about the size of a book will win. Anyone whom sells a similar sized piece of glass and plastic with some computer chips will not win.
I should hope that people would like a tablet that DOESN'T connect to iTunes. That NOT having to continuously run iTunes software (or helpers) is actually a selling point. It's kind of ironic that people buy svelte wafers to play music / vids and then are forced to sync them with a piece of bloatware. Not only that, but said bloatware deliberately obstructs users and limits what files they're allowed to copy to their own device.
By all means tablets should bundle sync software but there should be no compulsion to use it.
If tablet manufacturers can't find a way to distribute their products there is something seriously wrong with them. In truth I reckon they'll do okay and in aggregate Android 3.0 tablets will sell more eventually than the iPad. I also expect that most of the major tablet models will individually sell in the millions too, assuming they're competitively priced.
As an aside I strongly suspect Amazon will launch a tablet soon too. They sold something like 10 million Kindles and it's not hard to imagine that figure being matched by a Kindle / tablet model. Even B&N sold 3 million Color Nook tablets so there is a huge market. Biggest question is whether a Kindle tablet would have Android 3.0. I would not be surprised if all the open source / not open source shenanigans isn't directly related to what Amazon is up to and trying to head them off.
39 million for the oracle license.
Well, I never claimed that the Amiga was perfect by modern standards- we're talking 25 years ago after all!- only that it was miles ahead of the ST and DOS.
If only it were 25 years ago. One could understand why the Amiga never got VM in its original 68000 form but when the 68030 & 68040 models turned up with HDD and high end spec / price they damned well should have. The AmigaOS was a very advanced OS when it first appeared but it squandered its advantage. By the end of its life the lack of VM and the graphics were major impediments to the platform.
Operating systems like Windows & Mac OS were still stuck in preemptive multitasking and both had limitations (e.g. all the GDI segment shit in Windows & dirty addresses in Mac OS), but they still managed to get VM in MMU enabled processors while the Amiga was still extant. It makes one wonder what could have been if Commodore had been a bit more competent in selling their machine and pushing features that kept it ahead of its rivals.
The ST did eventually get multitasking but way too late to make a difference. MiNT was an alternative kernel which allowed multitasking and AES was a multitasking version of GEM. The Atari Falcon offered them up as MultiTOS. By then it really didn't matter much though. Anyone interested in multitasking probably owned an Amiga anyway, and both computer families were ultimately doomed by the incompetence of their respective parent companies.
This and Flight Simulator. MS should be on the terrorist watch list.
No, it's reality. In science, reputation is largely irrelevant. Oh, sure, other scientists are more likely to listen to an expert in the field, but if he's making ridiculous claims without providing any evidence they'll call him on it and/or dismiss him.
Quite so. Even Nobel prize winners have managed to utterly ruin their reputation by pursuing some harebrained notions. For example Luc Montagnier (a nobel prize winning virologist) has become a laughing stock for self publishing some papers that detected electromagnetic resonances in homeopathic level dilutions of DNA.
Unless, of course, the angels and demons seen in history actually were aliens.
Yes they could be but in the absence of evidence it is not possible to reach that conclusion. And given that the mind plays tricks on people (e.g. pareidolia, hallucination etc.) especially people with underlying mental problems there are far more likely explanations.
Apple lift their ideas from all over the place so they're not angels by any measure whatsoever.
Probably none assuming someone produce a decent C++ compiler that spat out Dalvik bytecode and whatever changes were made to the runtime to accomodate unmanaged languages like C++. I mention LLVM purely because it actually exists, has two C++ compilers that support it (gcc & clang) and is relatively mature tech. Google already use it for Renderscript in Android 3.0 so clearly they like the concept too. It's clearly not optimal to have two runtimes doing more or less the same thing to serve different development languages. I wonder how much separates Dalvik in LLVM, if there is scope to merge both concepts.
Funnily enough Google are using LLVM (and Clang) for Renderscript (a CUDA / OpenCL / DirectCompute like API) in Android 3.0 which makes me wonder what's going on. They recognize the benefits for one area but not where it would make most use.