My point is that Notification Center seems to be an aberration due to its implementation details and it does not seem to be an indicator of some sort of trend. I think it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that Apple is on a path to remove the ability of 3rd party developers to directly distribute to users.
Will Apple recommend to users that that they go through the App Store because of its screening of developers and apps and the reduced likelikhood of malware? Yes. I just don't see them requiring it.
are you sure? LGPL says, you need to redistribute the changes on the project itself. So its not "viral" when you link dynamically. But if you link statically, your project becomes part of the lib/the lib becomes part of the project, so its one project as result. Then you may be required to give access to the source.
I *think* you can distribute object code, not source code, so that a user can relink your code with a LGPL library.
Even now, non-appstore apps can't access certain APIs, such as Notification Center. As far as I'm concerned, the writing is on the wall for OS X.
Notification Center is a very specialized API and it requires Apple to have servers serving developer requests and notifications. Its not something where a 3rd party directly interacts with a user, the 3rd party is asking Apple to interact with the user on the 3rd party's behalf. It is not unreasonable for Apple to expect that such 3rd party developers identify themselves and obtain certain security credentials in order to interact with Apple Notification servers.
Not by default. You have to go into settings to allow non app store apps in the latest version of OS X.
No. I am running the latest version of Mac OS X and earlier today I dragged software from 3rd party media and dropped it into the system application folder. Since I was running from a user login rather than an admin login I was prompted for a password to allow the installation. Things seem the same as they always have been outside the App Store.
And you can bet based on their current path that that option will go away in a few releases.
Doubtful. That would essentially require 3rd party developers to give 30% of their revenue to Apple. Apple would lose the big established companies that have the infrastructure to do their own online stores, Adobe, Blizzard, etc.
What about the GPL? If you statically link a GPL library to your code, I believe you must release source code for the whole shebang. Game developers aren't going to go for that.
That is why many key libraries are LGPL, so there is no such requirement when statically linking.
Because most Linux users don't want to be subjected to Apple's control of what you can and cannot do on your computer.
Mac users are not subject to such control. Mac OS X is an open platform. You are free to get apps straight from the developer, the Apple App Store is not required.
If a person is primarily interested in games then a Windows PC is probably the best choice. Hence the popularity of dual boot Windows/Linux rigs among Linux enthusiasts.
However games are sometimes a secondary consideration. A person may have chosen their computer and operating system for some non-gaming reason and that person may still want to play games. This is just as true for Linux as it is for Mac OS X.
Wine and Crossover are doable but they have a cost, an overhead. A fully native port will yield a better experience.
That said, the economics of a fully native Linux port has yet to be proven. If Linux game sales merely cannibalize Windows game sales then the developer will not really see a benefit. Valve may be in a unique position in that Steam for Linux will subsidize their ports.
No. The assets that a company owns may help define a floor for its stock price but its price is heavily influence by expectations of future earnings.
Would I rather buy stock of a company that is doubling and tripling its worth,...
Note that this is an example of price being heavily influenced by expected future earnings.
Such growth is temporary. During such high growth phases it is common to not offer a dividend. However as a company moves from a "growth" phase to a "value" phase such increases in stock price stop. A company will typically offer a dividend to help compensate for this and help keep the stock attractive. Note that by attractive the company is thinking in terms of a large number of investors and these investors are not necessarily the same as before. Some investors prefer growth phase companies, high reward high risk, and others prefer value companies, low reward low risk.
... or a stock that is offering dividends but actually dropping the value of the company?
The value of the company is not dropping. Dividends typically come out profits. In Apple's case they merely slow the growth of the the cash horde by a small amount.
Yes because they are so short of cash they need to conserve it right?
Promising such a dividend, such a dividend being a reasonable thing to do, and speculators expecting such a dividend by year end to avoid a tax increase are entirely different things.
Besides, such a cash horde helped them get through a bad *decade* in the past. If they were not so fiscally conservative they might not be here now. Plus they are in the position of being able to make massive strategic purchases or investments without going into debt. That puts them in a pretty strong position with respect to whatever comes "next". The engineer in me likes to see such flexibility and options rather than managing according to wall street expectations and norms.
As the news of the Made in the US concept spread, AAPL lost $30 billion in market capitalization.
To put $30B in context Apple's stock lost 6%. The "Made in USA" story was not really cited in the mainstream financial press. One of the things that were cited was a report claiming that orders for components that go into devices are down, suggesting they are slowing manufacturing of devices. Also cited were changes in margin rules for owning Apple stock.
They pay *regular* dividends. They did not announce a *special* dividend to get around the upcoming tax increases that will go into effect on Jan 1. When did they promise to do so?
Environmental causes have long been seen as a very liberal thing...
Not really. The National Park system was vastly expanded by a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. The Environmental Protection Agency was established by a Republican, Richard Nixon. Hunting organizations, whose members tend to lean right, do far more land conservation than any other type of private organizations.
Certain environmental causes may seem liberal but that has more to do with a specific cause being politicized by liberals not because conservatives are inherently anti-environment. Regrettably both parties tend to automatically contest whatever the other party embraces, it does not matter if the other party embraces something worthwhile.
Yes, but if you don't specify that your wishes are contrary, you will have trouble winning a court case based on non-specified wishes.
I'm sorry but I'm not following. Your wishes being contrary do not change the original author's wishes. The original author's wishes move to the fork with his code. There could only be contrary wishes in the code that you contribute. People would be free to re-use source from you contributions if your allow but the original code remains off limits wrt re-use.
Well other than individuals may download and privately use, but not redistribute, the forked version rather than the original version.
It is unlikely that any court will interpret the terms of service to mean that you can fork it, but not allow others to fork a forked version. It's unlikely that any court would stop redistribution.
Who said anything about not allowing the fork to be forked? By redistribution I mean something *other* than the source being available on github as part of the original author's hierarchy. Such *other* methods of distribution remain subject to the authors' wishes.
Since the original author is essentially publishing the code it would seem that an individual downloader would have the right to use the code on a personal basis. This individual would merely not be allowed to redistribute or otherwise share the code.
Of course if the individual wants to share the work with someone else they merely have to refer that person to the original author's github repository.
So if someone creates a useful a utility program, decides to license it in a non-FOSS manner, the author can still share it with any interested parties. If so that seems a pretty legit role for github.
Just so you know, in the terms-and-services you clicked on when you signed up for github, you actually gave permission to everyone in the world to download, view, and fork your stuff.
True. However the original copyright remains intact. Maybe you could add your copyright to code that you add. The original author doesn't seem to lose anything by forking. Well other than individuals may download and privately use, but not redistribute, the forked version rather than the original version.
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. However, by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.
If you use source code found on github, it's going to be hard for the author to win a copyright lawsuit. This is a non-issue. They've basically allowed you to fork the code (with the implication that you're going to modify it). I don't see them in any way being able to recover punitive or even statutory damages.
Forking doesn't remove copyright. All that seems to have been accomplished by forking is adding someone else's possibly copyrighted work to the original author's copyrighted work.
... people who don't have degrees, or have rather unemployable ones like History...
I was a CS major but I would often take a history class each quarter for fun. I once saw a presentation titled something like "Careers for History and Political Science Majors" announced on the history department's bulletin board. I sat in for fun. The short version is these people are employable, just not in their field of study. We were told that many corporations require a 4 year degree for manager trainee positions. Similarly I believe any 4 year degree qualifies a person for officer candidate school in the military.
Keep in mind that 4 year college graduates, irrespective of degree, have demonstrated an ability to complete a long, complicated and boring process in a bureaucratic environment. That counts for something.
... its the fact that not enough people want the engineering or science education to begin with thats the problem.
This sounds like a solution that does not need any external power input
That is only true for a moving object, a runner, vehicle, boat, etc. For stationary objects a fan is needed for air flow, the article mentions solar or battery. I suppose a good wind might work too but that limits where and when you can collect water.
Windtraps could also work using condensation techniques like refrigeration, or a regenerative moisture absorber. Of course, those techniques require power.
So does this device. From the article: "The self-filling bottle can operate using a battery or solar cell to collect and filter the water."
I'm not sure how things work in Boston, but in areas where gas is provided by a regulated public utility, there is little cost to the company for infrastructure improvements. They identify infrastructure that needs to be replaced/upgraded, go to the PUC with the list of improvements and petition for a rate increase to pay for them. Then, in theory, the company is supposed to make the improvements, but that doesn't always happen,...
My grandfather worked for such a regulated public gas utility in the north east and that is how it worked. The cast iron pipes described in Boston sound like the gas lines he dug up and replaced in the 1950s-70s. They were originally installed around 1900. Such cast iron gas lines were considered troublesome and dangerous many decades ago.
So you are saying that nothing, absolutely nothing can be done to lower the costs of digging a hole that was already dug once before and patching or replacing a pipe that was already laid in the hole at some point in time where all the engineering and studies were already done at one time. I say hogwash. Some thing could be done if they wanted to that could reduce the costs of maintaining the pipes.
My grandfather spent decades (1950s-70s) replacing the sort of pipes described, old cast iron gas lines. These lines were probably installed around 1900. The lines were not necessarily well documented back in those days. Plus some documentation from 100 years ago probably got lost, especially if the work was originally done by a private company. Also in the 100 years since the original installation other things may have been installed over these lines. In certain areas it was common for my grandfather (representing the gas company) to coordinate with counterparts from the electric company, water department and/or phone company and share what they knew and their guestimates before someone could start digging to get at a gas line, water line, power cable, phone cable, etc needing repair or replacement. This stuff could get pretty complicated in the 1970s, I'm sure its not getting less complicated as time passes.
Slashdot Mirror
My point is that Notification Center seems to be an aberration due to its implementation details and it does not seem to be an indicator of some sort of trend. I think it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that Apple is on a path to remove the ability of 3rd party developers to directly distribute to users.
Will Apple recommend to users that that they go through the App Store because of its screening of developers and apps and the reduced likelikhood of malware? Yes. I just don't see them requiring it.
are you sure? LGPL says, you need to redistribute the changes on the project itself. So its not "viral" when you link dynamically. But if you link statically, your project becomes part of the lib/the lib becomes part of the project, so its one project as result. Then you may be required to give access to the source.
I *think* you can distribute object code, not source code, so that a user can relink your code with a LGPL library.
See Q2a: What is the implication of static linking?
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/439136.html
Even now, non-appstore apps can't access certain APIs, such as Notification Center. As far as I'm concerned, the writing is on the wall for OS X.
Notification Center is a very specialized API and it requires Apple to have servers serving developer requests and notifications. Its not something where a 3rd party directly interacts with a user, the 3rd party is asking Apple to interact with the user on the 3rd party's behalf. It is not unreasonable for Apple to expect that such 3rd party developers identify themselves and obtain certain security credentials in order to interact with Apple Notification servers.
Not by default. You have to go into settings to allow non app store apps in the latest version of OS X.
No. I am running the latest version of Mac OS X and earlier today I dragged software from 3rd party media and dropped it into the system application folder. Since I was running from a user login rather than an admin login I was prompted for a password to allow the installation. Things seem the same as they always have been outside the App Store.
And you can bet based on their current path that that option will go away in a few releases.
Doubtful. That would essentially require 3rd party developers to give 30% of their revenue to Apple. Apple would lose the big established companies that have the infrastructure to do their own online stores, Adobe, Blizzard, etc.
What about the GPL? If you statically link a GPL library to your code, I believe you must release source code for the whole shebang. Game developers aren't going to go for that.
That is why many key libraries are LGPL, so there is no such requirement when statically linking.
So you promise to update your application forever whenever a problem with such a library is found?
Do you promise not to complain when an update to the library breaks the game? Or when the game fails to run on your favored niche distro?
Because most Linux users don't want to be subjected to Apple's control of what you can and cannot do on your computer.
Mac users are not subject to such control. Mac OS X is an open platform. You are free to get apps straight from the developer, the Apple App Store is not required.
Why would you want to game on Linux
If a person is primarily interested in games then a Windows PC is probably the best choice. Hence the popularity of dual boot Windows/Linux rigs among Linux enthusiasts.
However games are sometimes a secondary consideration. A person may have chosen their computer and operating system for some non-gaming reason and that person may still want to play games. This is just as true for Linux as it is for Mac OS X.
Wine and Crossover are doable but they have a cost, an overhead. A fully native port will yield a better experience.
That said, the economics of a fully native Linux port has yet to be proven. If Linux game sales merely cannibalize Windows game sales then the developer will not really see a benefit. Valve may be in a unique position in that Steam for Linux will subsidize their ports.
A company's stock price is driven by its worth.
No. The assets that a company owns may help define a floor for its stock price but its price is heavily influence by expectations of future earnings.
Would I rather buy stock of a company that is doubling and tripling its worth, ...
Note that this is an example of price being heavily influenced by expected future earnings.
Such growth is temporary. During such high growth phases it is common to not offer a dividend. However as a company moves from a "growth" phase to a "value" phase such increases in stock price stop. A company will typically offer a dividend to help compensate for this and help keep the stock attractive. Note that by attractive the company is thinking in terms of a large number of investors and these investors are not necessarily the same as before. Some investors prefer growth phase companies, high reward high risk, and others prefer value companies, low reward low risk.
... or a stock that is offering dividends but actually dropping the value of the company?
The value of the company is not dropping. Dividends typically come out profits. In Apple's case they merely slow the growth of the the cash horde by a small amount.
Yes because they are so short of cash they need to conserve it right?
Promising such a dividend, such a dividend being a reasonable thing to do, and speculators expecting such a dividend by year end to avoid a tax increase are entirely different things.
Besides, such a cash horde helped them get through a bad *decade* in the past. If they were not so fiscally conservative they might not be here now. Plus they are in the position of being able to make massive strategic purchases or investments without going into debt. That puts them in a pretty strong position with respect to whatever comes "next". The engineer in me likes to see such flexibility and options rather than managing according to wall street expectations and norms.
Assembly jobs, just robot repair and janitors.
Even if so it still keeps more of the revenue in the US, less trade deficit.
Plus where are those robots made, maybe they are US made?
As the news of the Made in the US concept spread, AAPL lost $30 billion in market capitalization.
To put $30B in context Apple's stock lost 6%. The "Made in USA" story was not really cited in the mainstream financial press. One of the things that were cited was a report claiming that orders for components that go into devices are down, suggesting they are slowing manufacturing of devices. Also cited were changes in margin rules for owning Apple stock.
They didn't pay a dividend as promised ...
They pay *regular* dividends. They did not announce a *special* dividend to get around the upcoming tax increases that will go into effect on Jan 1. When did they promise to do so?
Environmental causes have long been seen as a very liberal thing ...
Not really. The National Park system was vastly expanded by a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. The Environmental Protection Agency was established by a Republican, Richard Nixon. Hunting organizations, whose members tend to lean right, do far more land conservation than any other type of private organizations.
Certain environmental causes may seem liberal but that has more to do with a specific cause being politicized by liberals not because conservatives are inherently anti-environment. Regrettably both parties tend to automatically contest whatever the other party embraces, it does not matter if the other party embraces something worthwhile.
Yes, but if you don't specify that your wishes are contrary, you will have trouble winning a court case based on non-specified wishes.
I'm sorry but I'm not following. Your wishes being contrary do not change the original author's wishes. The original author's wishes move to the fork with his code. There could only be contrary wishes in the code that you contribute. People would be free to re-use source from you contributions if your allow but the original code remains off limits wrt re-use.
Well other than individuals may download and privately use, but not redistribute, the forked version rather than the original version.
It is unlikely that any court will interpret the terms of service to mean that you can fork it, but not allow others to fork a forked version. It's unlikely that any court would stop redistribution.
Who said anything about not allowing the fork to be forked? By redistribution I mean something *other* than the source being available on github as part of the original author's hierarchy. Such *other* methods of distribution remain subject to the authors' wishes.
Since the original author is essentially publishing the code it would seem that an individual downloader would have the right to use the code on a personal basis. This individual would merely not be allowed to redistribute or otherwise share the code.
Of course if the individual wants to share the work with someone else they merely have to refer that person to the original author's github repository.
So if someone creates a useful a utility program, decides to license it in a non-FOSS manner, the author can still share it with any interested parties. If so that seems a pretty legit role for github.
Just so you know, in the terms-and-services you clicked on when you signed up for github, you actually gave permission to everyone in the world to download, view, and fork your stuff.
True. However the original copyright remains intact. Maybe you could add your copyright to code that you add. The original author doesn't seem to lose anything by forking. Well other than individuals may download and privately use, but not redistribute, the forked version rather than the original version.
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. However, by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.
If you use source code found on github, it's going to be hard for the author to win a copyright lawsuit. This is a non-issue. They've basically allowed you to fork the code (with the implication that you're going to modify it). I don't see them in any way being able to recover punitive or even statutory damages.
Forking doesn't remove copyright. All that seems to have been accomplished by forking is adding someone else's possibly copyrighted work to the original author's copyrighted work.
... people who don't have degrees, or have rather unemployable ones like History ...
I was a CS major but I would often take a history class each quarter for fun. I once saw a presentation titled something like "Careers for History and Political Science Majors" announced on the history department's bulletin board. I sat in for fun. The short version is these people are employable, just not in their field of study. We were told that many corporations require a 4 year degree for manager trainee positions. Similarly I believe any 4 year degree qualifies a person for officer candidate school in the military.
Keep in mind that 4 year college graduates, irrespective of degree, have demonstrated an ability to complete a long, complicated and boring process in a bureaucratic environment. That counts for something.
... its the fact that not enough people want the engineering or science education to begin with thats the problem.
Agreed.
This sounds like a solution that does not need any external power input
That is only true for a moving object, a runner, vehicle, boat, etc. For stationary objects a fan is needed for air flow, the article mentions solar or battery. I suppose a good wind might work too but that limits where and when you can collect water.
The article mentions that the bottle needs power.
Windtraps could also work using condensation techniques like refrigeration, or a regenerative moisture absorber. Of course, those techniques require power.
So does this device. From the article: "The self-filling bottle can operate using a battery or solar cell to collect and filter the water."
I'm not sure how things work in Boston, but in areas where gas is provided by a regulated public utility, there is little cost to the company for infrastructure improvements. They identify infrastructure that needs to be replaced/upgraded, go to the PUC with the list of improvements and petition for a rate increase to pay for them. Then, in theory, the company is supposed to make the improvements, but that doesn't always happen, ...
My grandfather worked for such a regulated public gas utility in the north east and that is how it worked. The cast iron pipes described in Boston sound like the gas lines he dug up and replaced in the 1950s-70s. They were originally installed around 1900. Such cast iron gas lines were considered troublesome and dangerous many decades ago.
So you are saying that nothing, absolutely nothing can be done to lower the costs of digging a hole that was already dug once before and patching or replacing a pipe that was already laid in the hole at some point in time where all the engineering and studies were already done at one time. I say hogwash. Some thing could be done if they wanted to that could reduce the costs of maintaining the pipes.
My grandfather spent decades (1950s-70s) replacing the sort of pipes described, old cast iron gas lines. These lines were probably installed around 1900. The lines were not necessarily well documented back in those days. Plus some documentation from 100 years ago probably got lost, especially if the work was originally done by a private company. Also in the 100 years since the original installation other things may have been installed over these lines. In certain areas it was common for my grandfather (representing the gas company) to coordinate with counterparts from the electric company, water department and/or phone company and share what they knew and their guestimates before someone could start digging to get at a gas line, water line, power cable, phone cable, etc needing repair or replacement. This stuff could get pretty complicated in the 1970s, I'm sure its not getting less complicated as time passes.