So here's what I don't get (and maybe a lawyer or wannabe-lawyer can explain it to me). We have the first amendment which protects us from government interference in speech. If I criticize a government official or policy the government is not allowed to retaliate in any way. Yet for some reason.... the private sector can? We've seen this before (Scientology, Streisand, etc.), and it never fails to boggle my mind that what the constitution protects from government interference, it doesn't protect from private sector lawyers.
In Soviet America criminal court acquit you and civil court convict you!
Microsoft did exactly this when they created iPOD support for the XBOX 360. Apple never gave them the permission or ability to do it, but they reverse engineered the way music is stored on the iPOD and such. It was actually something they were advertising when the 360 came out -- iPOD support.
Of course, M$ is too easy to ridicule.
Of course, reverse-engineering is completely legal, it's completely acceptable, and does not go against any business ethics. So, I would say this not count as a work-around.
Oh my gawd I have to read these things more carefully. You have got to be kidding me "discriminate against customers" of another product. Do you actually even live in this universe, what color is the sky where you are.
Actually what I said was discriminate against consumers, but whatever. I guess your vote has been cast for the "White's Only" drinking fountain.
Actually if you read the application for a Vendor ID Palm is the one who is using the Apple Vendor ID without authorization and Apple is using it in a perfectly reasonable way. incidentally there is nothing stopping you from buying tunes with iTunes, but there is no reason that Apple should be forced to enhance a direct competitors product by allowing you to Manage the music on a device that was not manufactured by or for Apple.
Admittedly I know very little of Apple products as I have no use for them. However, I find it suspicious that iTunes only offers support for iPods/iPhones. In fact, I actually won't believe that until someone links to the apple.com page that says specifically you can only use iTunes with Apple mp3 players.
Do you have any examples of a large and successful company wasting resources on development, by developing an exact clone of another company's product, rather than spending practically nothing to write a simple work-around?
I'd actually be curious to hear of some, because I would like to ridicule them for being so stupid.
the company is called Microsoft, and the rip-off product is called windows.
check and mate.
Is saying Microsoft the new Godwin reference? Microsoft is Hitler so the longer the thread goes on the more probable a reference to Microsoft is made? What a pathetic attempt at a citation. In your words, exactly what did Microsoft rip-off to produce Windows? I know the answer to this as I've had to sit through many hours of computer history classes to earn my degree. HINT: your bias is clearly displayed here by your lack of including Apple and Mac OS.
Stupid? I would agree with you if and only if iTunes was the only application to manage your Pre's music library. I do not own a Pre yet, so I cannot confirm this, howerver, I highly doubt the Pre only syncs with iTunes.
In other words, do you honestly believe that success stifles progress?
No, but monopolies do.
Citation needed. Especially since the most famous monopoly split up in US history did exactly that; stifled communication progress for 30 years. Also, I do not think that word means what you think it means, monopoly. Aside from your citation, please also explain how Microsoft is actually a monopoly, and not just some company you love to hate. IMHO dominating the market place is different than running the marketplace.
Are you sure of that? If it weren't for Windows' stranglehold, OS design would be probably a decade ahead of where it is now, millions of man-hours would not have been lost to fixing/cleaning up malware/etc, and we'd all probably be a little bit richer. Is one multi-billionaire philanthropist worth a thousand multi-millionaire philanthropists?
Do you also think that Billavius Gatus the axe-maker's axe market domination prevented the advancement of the axe for 3000 years? In other words, do you honestly believe that success stifles progress?
Not to be overly sexist here... but human females tend to believe the exact opposite of nature, in this case that they are the more attractive sex. This is of course, despite the piles of scientific evidence to the contrary. I'm not saying that there aren't strange species where the females actually are the more attractive sex, but sorry ladies, when it comes to attractiveness; Mother Nature has stacked the deck with overwhelming odds going against your attractiveness.
I should add that a) of course I didn't RTFA, and b) there are women out there that have lied to themselves so convincingly that they actually believe their shit doesn't stink and that women don't fart, etc.
I'm selling off my Palm stock. First Palm doesn't bother to do their own engineering and decides it's OK to be a parasite on other people's work. Then when those people fix it so that Palm isn't able to steal their work, Palm fixes it so that they masquerade and someone else's product. Then files a complaint that Apple is abusing the USB Vendor ID code to affect interoperability even though there are far better ways to do what they are doing even using iTunes to buy music. And then it turns out that they actually are violating the USB Vendor ID code themselves by not reporting themselves as the vendor of their own product. These guys are pathetic, they should just bite the bullet and license iTunes connectivity, like Apple did for Exchange.
Call me naive, but where does it say for iTunes that it will only sell music/sync to iPod/iPhone owners? Also, if Palm is correct about the improper usage of the Vendor ID, why do you think it is acceptable for Apple to abuse the standard? I guess in your eyes (fanboi?) it's ok for Apple to discriminate against consumers, and the last I checked that is illegal. To me the next logical step is something along the lines of:
"Apple has developed a rigorous algorithm to determine the color of skin of it's userbase by their iTunes library. Using this new technology Apple has determined you are: Black. As such, we do apologize for the inconvenience but you are no longer allowed to purchase downloads or sync to your music device."
And if Palm would grow a few braincells then they would write their own damn software
Do you have any examples of a large and successful company wasting resources on development, by developing an exact clone of another company's product, rather than spending practically nothing to write a simple work-around?
I'd actually be curious to hear of some, because I would like to ridicule them for being so stupid.
Well, as a person who has worked retail, the easy answer is because you, as a consumer, are dumb. You as a person might even be dumb, but if I'm in the business of retail sales, I'd be more concerned with you being a dumb consumer.
The smartass answer would be: it's a phone first and foremost, and both it and the iPhone are a "trying-to-be-everything-that-a-web-enabled-PC-is" second and last.
I never said you had to kiss any asses. If you really think that this guy's panicky, emotional, ad hominem response does anything but embolden his opponents, I'd like to hear your explanation. As someone who does eat weak people for breakfast for a living, I speak from personal experience when I say that this guy could have told them all to go fuck themselves a lot more effectively than he did. No ass-kissing necessary.
Let me get this straight, your real point is that no matter what we regular citizens do/say, you legalese speaking assholes are going to eat us for breakfast for a living? There is nothing in any law that I've ever read that says I must be polite to anyone, nor for that matter any law that says lawyers and judges are allowed to fuck us over for doing so...
The other part of the story is that his letter is going to end up in front of the federal judge. He might be entitled to sanctions to compensate him for the wasted time and expense in responding to a lawsuit that was brought against him with no basis in reality, but federal judges tend to disdain juvenile responses to serious matters. Like many things in life, there is a right way and a wrong way to respond to a ridiculous lawsuit - this guy chose the wrong way and it will most likely end up costing him.
So the moral of your story: "Kiss all legal representatives asses because they have the legal right (and authority) to destroy you emotionally and financially."
I think I'd like to agree with the CityWare guy and say FUCK YOU. I would also say that cowering to them when they take an attack posture like this emboldens them, and promotes a undue fear of being litigated against amongst the general populous.
The only idea I have for straightening out the legal mess that lawyers and judges have entangled the people of the US in is this: Kill all the lawyers and judges, re-write all laws that the average citizen can't easily understand, appoint new judges, and ban lawyers and "legalese" from our judicial system.
Capitalism is a form of government, which is a societal regulatory system.
Capitalism is not a form of government--it is an economic system. The two may or may not be connected, but they're not the same thing.
Sorry for that, I meant to say democracy but I fell into the trap of mixing up the form of economy with the form of government. La Menita is back in season so at least for a few more months now I should have functional levels of caffeine in my bloodstream:)
Which would by definition kinda not be capitalism after all right?
It doesn't matter if the "government" is really the government or not. If anyone's bossing the economy around, it's not capitalism.
No I think that's wrong. Capitalism allows for regulation and restriction. I think you misinterpreted the "restricted" part about government intervention with "prohibited."
Why are they mutually exclusive? Maybe I'm missing an epic troll here, but I'm thinking you don't understand the word anonymous, nor any of the concepts/methods involved in creating that status on the net. The service isn't really the VPN, it's the not keeping (or anonymizing -speel) transaction records for your VPN connection. Having a bill for a service doesn't mean the service provider keeps a log of my usage.
If every capitalist system eventually needs to be brought under control because of human conditions, isn't that kinda the same as capitalism never works? I mean, what you're saying is that it would work fine if people weren't involved. Capitalism is a method of humans interacting together, so if you take out the humans it isn't anything at all.
I'm not following your logic. Are you suggesting that control over your own actions, or over man made systems is unnecessary? Perhaps you are instead suggesting that capitalism was supposed to be a system free of controls or regulations?
Capitalism is a form of government, which is a societal regulatory system. So I definitely disagree with your last statement.
Financial collapse happened because capitalism doesn't work, not because we had too much regulation.
Correction, it happened precisely because capitalism works. The problem is that capitalism doesn't care about greed, or really any other human condition. That's why we had regulations, but I think that the regulations were relaxed in favor of a self governing policy. The problem is that when you have greedy bastards running the show, they do very little self governing.
Slashdot Mirror
So here's what I don't get (and maybe a lawyer or wannabe-lawyer can explain it to me). We have the first amendment which protects us from government interference in speech. If I criticize a government official or policy the government is not allowed to retaliate in any way. Yet for some reason.... the private sector can? We've seen this before (Scientology, Streisand, etc.), and it never fails to boggle my mind that what the constitution protects from government interference, it doesn't protect from private sector lawyers.
In Soviet America criminal court acquit you and civil court convict you!
The noscript author is an assclown who silently enables ads (And disables noscript) for his own financial advantage.
Sounds like someone doesn't keep current on events, as this problem was worked on some months ago.
Have you ever heard of IE6?
Have you never heard of all the Fortune companies that run/ran their billion dollar industries on IE6? If you need a citation I can name at least one.
Microsoft did exactly this when they created iPOD support for the XBOX 360. Apple never gave them the permission or ability to do it, but they reverse engineered the way music is stored on the iPOD and such. It was actually something they were advertising when the 360 came out -- iPOD support. Of course, M$ is too easy to ridicule.
Of course, reverse-engineering is completely legal, it's completely acceptable, and does not go against any business ethics. So, I would say this not count as a work-around.
Blackberry.
Ok, so that's a company name, but how about some details on this product they supposedly cloned from scratch rather than writing a simple work around?
Oh my gawd I have to read these things more carefully. You have got to be kidding me "discriminate against customers" of another product. Do you actually even live in this universe, what color is the sky where you are.
Actually what I said was discriminate against consumers, but whatever. I guess your vote has been cast for the "White's Only" drinking fountain.
Actually if you read the application for a Vendor ID Palm is the one who is using the Apple Vendor ID without authorization and Apple is using it in a perfectly reasonable way. incidentally there is nothing stopping you from buying tunes with iTunes, but there is no reason that Apple should be forced to enhance a direct competitors product by allowing you to Manage the music on a device that was not manufactured by or for Apple.
Admittedly I know very little of Apple products as I have no use for them. However, I find it suspicious that iTunes only offers support for iPods/iPhones. In fact, I actually won't believe that until someone links to the apple.com page that says specifically you can only use iTunes with Apple mp3 players.
Yes I do, actually. Virtually every Microsoft product in the whole of history.
That's a rather vague "example." Please detail.
Do you have any examples of a large and successful company wasting resources on development, by developing an exact clone of another company's product, rather than spending practically nothing to write a simple work-around?
I'd actually be curious to hear of some, because I would like to ridicule them for being so stupid.
the company is called Microsoft, and the rip-off product is called windows. check and mate.
Is saying Microsoft the new Godwin reference? Microsoft is Hitler so the longer the thread goes on the more probable a reference to Microsoft is made? What a pathetic attempt at a citation. In your words, exactly what did Microsoft rip-off to produce Windows? I know the answer to this as I've had to sit through many hours of computer history classes to earn my degree. HINT: your bias is clearly displayed here by your lack of including Apple and Mac OS.
Stupid? I would agree with you if and only if iTunes was the only application to manage your Pre's music library. I do not own a Pre yet, so I cannot confirm this, howerver, I highly doubt the Pre only syncs with iTunes.
Arj, please enlighten us as to the most polite way to say "FUCK YOU." Until then, FUCK YOU.
In other words, do you honestly believe that success stifles progress?
No, but monopolies do.
Citation needed. Especially since the most famous monopoly split up in US history did exactly that; stifled communication progress for 30 years. Also, I do not think that word means what you think it means, monopoly. Aside from your citation, please also explain how Microsoft is actually a monopoly, and not just some company you love to hate. IMHO dominating the market place is different than running the marketplace.
Are you sure of that? If it weren't for Windows' stranglehold, OS design would be probably a decade ahead of where it is now, millions of man-hours would not have been lost to fixing/cleaning up malware/etc, and we'd all probably be a little bit richer. Is one multi-billionaire philanthropist worth a thousand multi-millionaire philanthropists?
Do you also think that Billavius Gatus the axe-maker's axe market domination prevented the advancement of the axe for 3000 years? In other words, do you honestly believe that success stifles progress?
Not to be overly sexist here... but human females tend to believe the exact opposite of nature, in this case that they are the more attractive sex. This is of course, despite the piles of scientific evidence to the contrary. I'm not saying that there aren't strange species where the females actually are the more attractive sex, but sorry ladies, when it comes to attractiveness; Mother Nature has stacked the deck with overwhelming odds going against your attractiveness.
I should add that a) of course I didn't RTFA, and b) there are women out there that have lied to themselves so convincingly that they actually believe their shit doesn't stink and that women don't fart, etc.
I'm selling off my Palm stock. First Palm doesn't bother to do their own engineering and decides it's OK to be a parasite on other people's work. Then when those people fix it so that Palm isn't able to steal their work, Palm fixes it so that they masquerade and someone else's product. Then files a complaint that Apple is abusing the USB Vendor ID code to affect interoperability even though there are far better ways to do what they are doing even using iTunes to buy music. And then it turns out that they actually are violating the USB Vendor ID code themselves by not reporting themselves as the vendor of their own product. These guys are pathetic, they should just bite the bullet and license iTunes connectivity, like Apple did for Exchange.
Call me naive, but where does it say for iTunes that it will only sell music/sync to iPod/iPhone owners? Also, if Palm is correct about the improper usage of the Vendor ID, why do you think it is acceptable for Apple to abuse the standard? I guess in your eyes (fanboi?) it's ok for Apple to discriminate against consumers, and the last I checked that is illegal. To me the next logical step is something along the lines of:
"Apple has developed a rigorous algorithm to determine the color of skin of it's userbase by their iTunes library. Using this new technology Apple has determined you are: Black. As such, we do apologize for the inconvenience but you are no longer allowed to purchase downloads or sync to your music device."
And if Palm would grow a few braincells then they would write their own damn software
Do you have any examples of a large and successful company wasting resources on development, by developing an exact clone of another company's product, rather than spending practically nothing to write a simple work-around?
I'd actually be curious to hear of some, because I would like to ridicule them for being so stupid.
Well, as a person who has worked retail, the easy answer is because you, as a consumer, are dumb. You as a person might even be dumb, but if I'm in the business of retail sales, I'd be more concerned with you being a dumb consumer.
The smartass answer would be: it's a phone first and foremost, and both it and the iPhone are a "trying-to-be-everything-that-a-web-enabled-PC-is" second and last.
I never said you had to kiss any asses. If you really think that this guy's panicky, emotional, ad hominem response does anything but embolden his opponents, I'd like to hear your explanation. As someone who does eat weak people for breakfast for a living, I speak from personal experience when I say that this guy could have told them all to go fuck themselves a lot more effectively than he did. No ass-kissing necessary.
Let me get this straight, your real point is that no matter what we regular citizens do/say, you legalese speaking assholes are going to eat us for breakfast for a living? There is nothing in any law that I've ever read that says I must be polite to anyone, nor for that matter any law that says lawyers and judges are allowed to fuck us over for doing so...
The other part of the story is that his letter is going to end up in front of the federal judge. He might be entitled to sanctions to compensate him for the wasted time and expense in responding to a lawsuit that was brought against him with no basis in reality, but federal judges tend to disdain juvenile responses to serious matters. Like many things in life, there is a right way and a wrong way to respond to a ridiculous lawsuit - this guy chose the wrong way and it will most likely end up costing him.
So the moral of your story: "Kiss all legal representatives asses because they have the legal right (and authority) to destroy you emotionally and financially."
I think I'd like to agree with the CityWare guy and say FUCK YOU. I would also say that cowering to them when they take an attack posture like this emboldens them, and promotes a undue fear of being litigated against amongst the general populous.
The only idea I have for straightening out the legal mess that lawyers and judges have entangled the people of the US in is this: Kill all the lawyers and judges, re-write all laws that the average citizen can't easily understand, appoint new judges, and ban lawyers and "legalese" from our judicial system.
Capitalism is a form of government, which is a societal regulatory system.
Capitalism is not a form of government--it is an economic system. The two may or may not be connected, but they're not the same thing.
Sorry for that, I meant to say democracy but I fell into the trap of mixing up the form of economy with the form of government. La Menita is back in season so at least for a few more months now I should have functional levels of caffeine in my bloodstream :)
Which would by definition kinda not be capitalism after all right?
It doesn't matter if the "government" is really the government or not. If anyone's bossing the economy around, it's not capitalism.
No I think that's wrong. Capitalism allows for regulation and restriction. I think you misinterpreted the "restricted" part about government intervention with "prohibited."
Why are they mutually exclusive? Maybe I'm missing an epic troll here, but I'm thinking you don't understand the word anonymous, nor any of the concepts/methods involved in creating that status on the net. The service isn't really the VPN, it's the not keeping (or anonymizing -speel) transaction records for your VPN connection. Having a bill for a service doesn't mean the service provider keeps a log of my usage.
Greed corrupts; absolute greed corrupts absolutely. Welcome to capitalism, comrade.
You must be naive. Welcome to life, friend.
If every capitalist system eventually needs to be brought under control because of human conditions, isn't that kinda the same as capitalism never works? I mean, what you're saying is that it would work fine if people weren't involved. Capitalism is a method of humans interacting together, so if you take out the humans it isn't anything at all.
I'm not following your logic. Are you suggesting that control over your own actions, or over man made systems is unnecessary? Perhaps you are instead suggesting that capitalism was supposed to be a system free of controls or regulations?
Capitalism is a form of government, which is a societal regulatory system. So I definitely disagree with your last statement.
Financial collapse happened because capitalism doesn't work, not because we had too much regulation.
Correction, it happened precisely because capitalism works. The problem is that capitalism doesn't care about greed, or really any other human condition. That's why we had regulations, but I think that the regulations were relaxed in favor of a self governing policy. The problem is that when you have greedy bastards running the show, they do very little self governing.
Nice try, though.