> On the other hand, it's really about Apple's control over their own hardware, and what ships on it.
No, the hardware is owned by whoever bought it, once Apple sells you something they don't own it anymore.
> Adobe are the only people who can supply a Flash player to run on the iPad, because it's a nasty little piece of undocumented junk.
This is true, and Adobe is as much of a control freak as Apple, and Adobe certainly wishes they could be as good as Apple at controlling others.
Just as Apple controls and locks users and developers of the iPhone/iPad 'ecosystem', Adobe tries to control and lock users and developers in the Flash ecosystem, the only reason Adobe doesn't exert quite as much power as Apple is because they have not been able to, but they sure would like to.
It encourages them to try to control the market not by providing the best services to their consumers but instead by exploiting the patent systems to squash their competition and lock in consumers.
> Also: Jabber is now called XMPP, as far as I know. (I would have preferred it to be lightweight EBML instead of overhead monster XML.)
Jabber and XMPP are absolutely horrible, probably one of the most insanely byzantine protocols ever conceived, and they keep expanding it all the time (by now there are *hundreds* of extensions to the protocol).
The inept use of XML is just the tip of the iceberg, and it is not even real XML, but *streamed* XML, which means parsers need to be even more complicated (as if parsing XML was not enough of a pain already).
And all this for a functionality that after ten years still barely matches IRC (most jabber clients have trouble doing group chat and file transfer, or if they do they use different protocol extensions that are not compatible with other servers and clients).
People trading on patents are trading on government granted monopolies which only benefit those holding the patent and harm the rest of society as a whole.
Markets are good at allocating rivalrous goods where there is real scarcity, artificial scarcity created by the government means that people spends their resources lobbying the government to create even more scarcity.
For a more general and accessible description of the cpu command see the main Plan 9 paper. In particular the paragraph immediately preceding the "Configurability and administration" section, but the whole paper is an excellent read.
> This is a HUGE shift for the medical industry, and frankly, if people knew just how bad security was, they would call for heads. It's starting to change, but it will take time
Security is a joke almost everywhere, not just in the medical industry.
Although I admit there it is slightly more scary than usual, but not more than other industries we depend on all the time like utilities and transportation.
But none of this will change unless software starts to suck less and becomes simpler, and the trend has been in the opposite direction for a long time now.
And the problem is that the bad publicity of a security disaster has been nullified by how widespread they are.
> There are at least a lot of open source h.264 encoders, why not just use one of them?
Because if you are a business, you are opening yourself to getting sued all the way into bankruptcy.
Anyone can implement any patented algorithm and release the code as open source (hell, we all know it is impossible to write even "Hello World" without infringing on patents), but just because somebody wrote the code and it is out there, and maybe nobody has not been sued yet, that doesn't mean anyone using or distributing the code are not open themselves to being sued whenever the patent holders feel like it.
This shows how the only way the world manages to deal with the insanity that is so called "intellectual property" is by ignoring the law, but that is not a very good long term solution to the problem.
> It is a preemptive move against Google's VP8 in particular and open source in general. Basically they are creating a problem for Firefox (which has stated that they won't support H.264) and trying to stop Google's VP8 before it can be successful.
They are also creating a problem for Opera, Linux distributions, and other minor browser vendors that can't afford the hefty license fees or the risk of being sued.
And most importantly, it creates problems for content producers and distributors that are forced to use a format with a license that could change any moment the patent holders feel like it. People keeps saying that you are not charged for serving H.264 on the web, but that is now, and this could change any moment and anyone building a business knows that kind of uncertainty is a *big* problem.
AFAIK recent PS2 systems do no support Linux or other OSes. But I must admit that I have not kept up with the homebrew community.
I do know that the PSP has a cpu similar to that of the PS2, and that it has been hacked and has a healthy homebrew community, but still, it is not the same as a really open and documented system.
I'm aware that MIPS is alive and well in the embedded world, but it has pretty much disappeared from the server market where it used to have a very strong presence.
Also, for somebody just interested in playing around with alternative architectures, it has become harder and harder to find cheap MIPS systems to play around with (the PS2 was a mips system, but the PS3 is PPC, the PSP is probably the only easily 'hackable' MIPS hardware still being produced in considerable quantities).
And yes, I'm aware of the Chinese MIPS laptops, but they not easy to find and at least outside china they seem overpriced given their specs. But maybe there is still hope...
It is nice to see some alternatives to the x86-monoculture coming along, but I wish MIPS was still around, it is a beautiful architecture with the same efficiency advantages of Arm but an even cleaner design.
> PGP was bloatware before. Now that the most talented producer of bloatware in the world (Symantec) bought it, the PGP software will might soon win the bloatware of the year award.
If Adobe bought Symantec I suspect the massive concentration of bloat would cause the creation of a super massive black hole that would eat instantaneously eat up the whole solar system.
> Meanwhile, hackers will make Flash on iPhone the preferred target just for bragging rights.
In fairness OS X and the iPhone OS are not much more secure, and people have been able to easily break into the iPhone easily enough despite its lack of Flash, but I agree Flash would make things even worse.
> Flash is a CPU hog on *any* platform, it has to either go on a diet or go away.
I thought this was only true on Linux, but then I started to use Windows on a bran new Thinkpad, and I was amazed at how ridiculously broken Flash is, it makes a dual core 2Ghz with 4Gb of ram that is running little else than a web browser painfully crawl to a halt, it is beyond appalling. (And that is running Chrome because Firefox is a huge hog too.)
> PS:Can't wait for the annoying HTML5 ads to replace the annoying Flash ads. Is a HTML5-blocker add-ons in the works?
It exists, it is called NoScript, and it is the most wonderful invention the web has seen in the last fifteen years.
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> On the other hand, it's really about Apple's control over their own hardware, and what ships on it.
No, the hardware is owned by whoever bought it, once Apple sells you something they don't own it anymore.
> Adobe are the only people who can supply a Flash player to run on the iPad, because it's a nasty little piece of undocumented junk.
This is true, and Adobe is as much of a control freak as Apple, and Adobe certainly wishes they could be as good as Apple at controlling others.
Just as Apple controls and locks users and developers of the iPhone/iPad 'ecosystem', Adobe tries to control and lock users and developers in the Flash ecosystem, the only reason Adobe doesn't exert quite as much power as Apple is because they have not been able to, but they sure would like to.
It is all about control.
Apple's control over users, over developers, over content providers...
> Well I'm glad the US government never granted Microsoft a monopoly then
Er, way to completely miss the point: the government did precisely that! Microsoft's whole business model is 100% based on government granted monopolies: copyright and patents.
When you allow the government to grant monopolies to private corporations.
It encourages them to try to control the market not by providing the best services to their consumers but instead by exploiting the patent systems to squash their competition and lock in consumers.
> Also: Jabber is now called XMPP, as far as I know. (I would have preferred it to be lightweight EBML instead of overhead monster XML.)
Jabber and XMPP are absolutely horrible, probably one of the most insanely byzantine protocols ever conceived, and they keep expanding it all the time (by now there are *hundreds* of extensions to the protocol).
The inept use of XML is just the tip of the iceberg, and it is not even real XML, but *streamed* XML, which means parsers need to be even more complicated (as if parsing XML was not enough of a pain already).
And all this for a functionality that after ten years still barely matches IRC (most jabber clients have trouble doing group chat and file transfer, or if they do they use different protocol extensions that are not compatible with other servers and clients).
Exactly!
People trading on patents are trading on government granted monopolies which only benefit those holding the patent and harm the rest of society as a whole.
Markets are good at allocating rivalrous goods where there is real scarcity, artificial scarcity created by the government means that people spends their resources lobbying the government to create even more scarcity.
For a more general and accessible description of the cpu command see the main Plan 9 paper. In particular the paragraph immediately preceding the "Configurability and administration" section, but the whole paper is an excellent read.
Another illustration of how the cpu command works is provided in the paper on private namespaces in Plan 9.
and think of the children!!!!!
Now that Apple is spreading FUD against open source projects their transformation into the next Microsoft seems to be almost complete.
If you think there is no risk that Europe will get software patents some day you are either incredibly optimistic or incredibly naive.
> For Linux, there's gstreamer etc.
Except that gstreamer and co can't *legally* be distributed without a license if they include h.264 playback.
Yes we all know there are opensource implementations of h.264, but people that use them are in most cases breaking the law.
And again, this does not address the even bigger problem of content producers that are still at the mercy of the patent holders.
> This is a HUGE shift for the medical industry, and frankly, if people knew just how bad security was, they would call for heads. It's starting to change, but it will take time
Security is a joke almost everywhere, not just in the medical industry.
Although I admit there it is slightly more scary than usual, but not more than other industries we depend on all the time like utilities and transportation.
But none of this will change unless software starts to suck less and becomes simpler, and the trend has been in the opposite direction for a long time now.
And the problem is that the bad publicity of a security disaster has been nullified by how widespread they are.
> There are at least a lot of open source h.264 encoders, why not just use one of them?
Because if you are a business, you are opening yourself to getting sued all the way into bankruptcy.
Anyone can implement any patented algorithm and release the code as open source (hell, we all know it is impossible to write even "Hello World" without infringing on patents), but just because somebody wrote the code and it is out there, and maybe nobody has not been sued yet, that doesn't mean anyone using or distributing the code are not open themselves to being sued whenever the patent holders feel like it.
This shows how the only way the world manages to deal with the insanity that is so called "intellectual property" is by ignoring the law, but that is not a very good long term solution to the problem.
QuickTime in Windows is an exercise in masochism.
This is a good time to remember Perry Barlow's wonderful Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
Somebody should send a copy to the Australian Christian Lobby ;)
I honestly fear that the only hope for some sanity is if the Supreme Court of the US abolishes the insanity that are software patents.
> It is a preemptive move against Google's VP8 in particular and open source in general. Basically they are creating a problem for Firefox (which has stated that they won't support H.264) and trying to stop Google's VP8 before it can be successful.
They are also creating a problem for Opera, Linux distributions, and other minor browser vendors that can't afford the hefty license fees or the risk of being sued.
And most importantly, it creates problems for content producers and distributors that are forced to use a format with a license that could change any moment the patent holders feel like it. People keeps saying that you are not charged for serving H.264 on the web, but that is now, and this could change any moment and anyone building a business knows that kind of uncertainty is a *big* problem.
AFAIK recent PS2 systems do no support Linux or other OSes. But I must admit that I have not kept up with the homebrew community.
I do know that the PSP has a cpu similar to that of the PS2, and that it has been hacked and has a healthy homebrew community, but still, it is not the same as a really open and documented system.
Maybe the parent post thought the gallbladder is part of the heart... never underestimate people's anatomical illiteracy ;)
I'm aware that MIPS is alive and well in the embedded world, but it has pretty much disappeared from the server market where it used to have a very strong presence.
Also, for somebody just interested in playing around with alternative architectures, it has become harder and harder to find cheap MIPS systems to play around with (the PS2 was a mips system, but the PS3 is PPC, the PSP is probably the only easily 'hackable' MIPS hardware still being produced in considerable quantities).
And yes, I'm aware of the Chinese MIPS laptops, but they not easy to find and at least outside china they seem overpriced given their specs. But maybe there is still hope...
It is nice to see some alternatives to the x86-monoculture coming along, but I wish MIPS was still around, it is a beautiful architecture with the same efficiency advantages of Arm but an even cleaner design.
If you added SAP and Oracle, it would eat up the whole galaxy.
Just a thought, but why not switch to a sane OS, like OpenBSD or Plan 9? ;)
> PGP was bloatware before. Now that the most talented producer of bloatware in the world (Symantec) bought it, the PGP software will might soon win the bloatware of the year award.
If Adobe bought Symantec I suspect the massive concentration of bloat would cause the creation of a super massive black hole that would eat instantaneously eat up the whole solar system.
> Meanwhile, hackers will make Flash on iPhone the preferred target just for bragging rights.
In fairness OS X and the iPhone OS are not much more secure, and people have been able to easily break into the iPhone easily enough despite its lack of Flash, but I agree Flash would make things even worse.
> Flash is a CPU hog on *any* platform, it has to either go on a diet or go away.
I thought this was only true on Linux, but then I started to use Windows on a bran new Thinkpad, and I was amazed at how ridiculously broken Flash is, it makes a dual core 2Ghz with 4Gb of ram that is running little else than a web browser painfully crawl to a halt, it is beyond appalling. (And that is running Chrome because Firefox is a huge hog too.)
> PS:Can't wait for the annoying HTML5 ads to replace the annoying Flash ads. Is a HTML5-blocker add-ons in the works?
It exists, it is called NoScript, and it is the most wonderful invention the web has seen in the last fifteen years.