Jobs was an egomaniac ass who made more harm to the industry than anyone else and contributed to basically nothing. Hopefully when Apple finally sinks, as it certainly will, we won't even remember of him anymore.
RMS is an egomaniac ass who makes more harm to the industry than anyone else and contributed about the same as Jobs. Hopefully when GNU finally sinks, as it certainly will, we won't even remember him anymore.
See? Content-less assertions of hyperbole can work for all sides of an argument!
In the very long run we will not have USB / Firewire / SATA / PATA / Displayport / HDMI we'll have just one connector and protocol to run them all. Plug your keyboard, mouse, LAN adapter and monitor into your hub connected to your phone and be done with it. The only question is which standard will win. Probably USB.
That was the hope with Thunderbolt/LightPeak, which is on all Macs these days and works well. One cable carries two full-duplex 10Gb channels (10Gb each way simultaneously per channel). But "docks" have been slow in coming and expensive. And because the USB group refused to integrate the standard or allow them to use the connector, they switched to the DisplayPort interface which is nice and compact. Now we have a slower standard coming much later for which existing cables may or may not work but look the same as the current ones... fun.
Certainly. Google is just getting around to reducing the fragmentation in the OS levels on the myriad of devices out there, and now there is going to be a proprietary (Google) SDK as well as a fully open (Replicant) SDK. This isn't exactly going to help thin the fragmentation herd.
Besides, Google has always prided itself in the fact that Android is open source. The new wording doesn't quite seem to hold the same theme as Andy Rubin's snarky twitter entry: "the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"
I like Android. I prefer it over the proprietary shut-up-take-my-money alternative but this is a stupid move by Google to try and keep Ubuntu/HTC/Samsung from gutting Android and creating a competing product.
It's funny, when Apple released WebKit under that identical definition of "open", there was screaming from all corners until they opened up the whole process as well. Until you can download nightlies of Android and see the current bug list, it's not "open" source, it's "source available". Development is all in secret and you need to sign away all your rights to get anything before it's shipped to users, meaning that while the license is technically open you can't actually use that freedom effectively. Yes, it's more "open" than iOS, but that's not saying much.
If it's mostly free-form crap that doesn't or won't ever have to be analyzed based on the actual content (Blogs, posts, etc) then yes.
I'm going to pretend you weren't trolling to address a good point here. NoSQL is very valuable for human-to-human data. I've seen it be hugely successful in cases when you only need a "human" level of precision about ordering, consistency, and detail. It eliminates single points of failure, global locks, offline operation problems, write contention, etc. It introduces problems for indexing and absolute consistency. But without widespread indexing you tend to get brute-force (Map-Reduce) or narrow-focus (offline indexes on specific field) searches. And that's okay for most humans.
The lifetime of a CFL also seems to depend heavily on the quality of your electricity source. The power lines in our area has a lot of fluctuations, and CFLs don't last much longer than incandescents in that environment.
The Curse of the Network Effect is obvious enough in real estate that there is an entire school of political economy geared toward a single tax on land value -- a school most identified with the 19th century political economics author, Henry George.
The proposal you link to essentially removes all control anyone has over their own property. Everyone is, in effect, required to sell any property at any time to the highest bidder. That may be economically efficient, but it sucks on a day-to-day basis for real people. It's the "infinite frictionless plane" type of economist thought problem, not an actual solution to anything. The law would last about as long as it would take for grandma to be kicked out of her house.
Expansion Headers MK802: N/A RPi: Yes. Provide access to GPIO, I2C, SPI, etc DSI (for LCD display) and CSI-2 (for camera) interfaces are also available
In addition, the MK802 runs the "source available, but developed in secret" Android OS, while the RPi runs the truly open source Debian by default and a zillion other true open source Linux distros with easy download.
The RPi is for the tinkerer. The MK802 is for someone who wants pre-packaged plastic to do one of a limited number of preordained things.
I don't have a problem with the fact that his views differ from mine. I have a problem with dishonesty of a Nobel prize winning economist who misuses his column to push his own political agenda. It's easy to google many instances of deliberate twisting of facts and outright lies ("ACA will decrease rather than increase the deficit"), all without exemption leaning in the same political direction. If he was on MSNBC or Fox News it would be no problem. It is the pretense that his writing is a serious economic analysis distilled for popular reading rather than obvious and automatic pushing of a political agenda regardless of the facts that bothers me.
If you weren't completely wrong you'd have a point. His economic analysis is actually pretty spot-on, happens to agree pretty closely with the Democrats, and you just disagree with it. It's basic on sound economic theory (which differs from yours). And the ACA does decrease the deficit compared to the previous status quo.
Re:I've felt like this for years, too
on
Has Lego Sold Out?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually, that's probably just selective memory...
Q: I would like to know why they are using so many specialized pieces in their sets now instead of using more "basic" bricks that allow for greater building outside the set the pieces came in. Why have Lego sets for the latest few generations been dummied down?
A: This is an impression that many people have but, in fact, the piece count has been reduced drastically and there's a move back to roots in Lego, not only for creativity but to save money. Lego went from 12,000 different pieces to 6,800 in the last few years-a number that includes the color variations.
Sorry.... I would consider something $5 or less for this for a downloadable copy, or even as a donation, but anything above that is annoyingly too much.
Know your audience!!!
If they were asking $3, I'd give it to them in a heartbeat (my son is big into Minecraft, and would enjoy watching this). The pricing is probably a limitation of their distributor, "Redux", but if they were going to distribute this via Pirate Bay, why not just ask for a donation via PayPal? I'm sure they would make a lot more money doing that than with this scheme.
If you're not willing to pay $8 for an hour and a half documentary that's fine. It'll probably be on sale in a month or two anyway. I think they have a right to ask for what they think their work is worth, and you have a right not to watch it and keep your kids from watching it in the meantime.
So you want me to (1) buy a new Xbox 360 (2) pay for a month of XBL gold [i previously owned a 360] just to *not* be called a pirate for downloading an otherwise *free* movie? Howboutno.
No, just go buy it from their site and download it in MP4 or MKV format.
Raspberry Pi has never been a $35 computer. You always need the peripherals and those will cost more than a bit. This guy choose expensive peripherals. Probably intent on writing the article at the same time.
The Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer. Yes, you need peripherals, but if you're not the type that have the appropriate peripherals lying around you're probably not the target audience.
Yes, they have custom chips. [Citation needed] that they're "designed to prevent" copying. Near as I can tell, the best guess is those chips are there because the 8+1 copper lines are completely configurable and thus need active logic. Considering there are already unofficial Chinese reverse-engineered cables around, I don't think this is insurmountable technically. It's just that Apple isn't going to put their official stamp on it-- and I'm surprised these people expected them to.
If you're still comparing yourself to an Arduino, then you really need to get your head out of your ass and see what's available. Of course that's assuming you're not in the same demographic that finds using $30 boards to blink some LEDs empowering.
For what it's worth, my 7 year old does indeed find programming flashing LEDs from a Python script incredibly empowering. And he's exactly the target audience for Raspberry Pi, too.
REALLY? Rounded corners? Who are you kidding? There's no "maybe, maybe not" about it. Get real.
Really? Repeating the lie about Apple patenting "rounded corners" to justify defending a patent troll?
Hint: Apple has never claimed to have a patent on rounded corners. That's an invention of the internet. They have a design patent on the overall iPhone design and have only sued the one company that blatantly (and admitted doing so in their own internal correspondence) copied it.
Yes and no. The general public will largely see this the way you describe, but you are missing one key component. The demands Apple did not want to "give in to" were customer data and privacy demands specified in the Apple TOS. To get Google Maps in the App store, Google had to comply with those standards. So Google did not get everything they wanted. Apple has the features Android had in Google Maps without having to concede on the privacy standards they have set. So, in actuality, Apple did "win," just not in public opinion.
Apple doesn't require much privacy from app store apps. I suspect using Google's branded iOS Maps app will subject you to just as many privacy violations as any typical Google service (they'll monitor everything you do and everywhere you go and sell it to advertisers). But now there are real alternatives. NavTeq/Nokia, Apple, Google, and many city-specific apps are all thriving in a competitive marketplace.
nokia already has a free mapping/nav app on iOS. there is also navigon which uses navteq maps and has full offline capability
And whose interface is really, really awful. Reinforcing the point that Apple's design plus NavTeq's data could be a world-leading solution. At this point Nokia's actual handset business is probably worth less than the NavTeq acquisition... Apple could divest it to Microsoft or kill it without much problem. They've probably lost more market cap over maps than Nokia is worth in its entirety.
If Google would have bothered to keep the iOS version even close to what they offered in Android
Google never wrote the old Maps app for iOS. Google supplied map data and Apple wrote the app; that was the arrangement from the beginning. Ditto for the Youtube app: Google never even saw the source code for it, much less wrote any of it.
You're both right, according to the best public information available... Apple wrote the app, but was only licensed to use the raster data and forbidden from doing turn-by-turn directions or other modern features by the license. Google refused to renew the license without adding all kinds of tracking into iOS, which Apple refused to allow. Since the license was set to expire before the next major version of iOS would have come out, Apple was forced to switch maps in this version.
And it mostly succeeded. It's hard to argue that the new map imagery isn't way, way better than what Google previously licensed Apple. Map imagery is crisper, faster, caches better, and is generally more readable. And routing directions are actually pretty good, taking into account traffic, etc. It's really just the geo-location that Apple dropped the ball on, and the public transit that Apple needlessly complicated.
Geo-location is quickly being fixed, but is the biggest glaring problem and really the crux of the matter. Public transit has a million other alternatives in most metropolitan areas and does link directly from Maps, but is less convenient... hopefully Apple will revamp this in iOS 7 and allow integrated plugins for Maps.
In the meantime, it's nice to see Google bringing an alternative to the platform, for anyone willing to trade their privacy for better geolocation.
One barrier to entry could conceivably be (of course!) patents. The first company to do large-scale 3D printing I'm aware of was Align Technology, Inc., maker of Invisalign plastic braces (I'm a former employee). They've been printing positive molds for the aligners using stereolithography for over a dozen years, and have a lot of patents in the "mass customization" industry. When you start printing tens of thousands of unique objects a day like they've been doing for years there are certain methods that give you economies of scale despite each piece being different. It's not applicable to low-volume home printing, but when you get to a warehouse of 3D printers things could get interesting. There are probably other companies out there with additional work in this space that will crop up if it gets lucrative enough. (And hey, many aren't even software patents.)
I'm more concerned that if step 1 in responding to any privacy violation is a complete boycott, it means FOSS doesn't actually have a very good governance model to deal with these things.
Nitpick: Apple bans apps that explicitly download code, not interpret code. There are LUA, Python, and other development environments, as well as tons of embedded JS and other scripts running many apps for iOS.
He has a point about the iPhone 3G. It had too little memory and the upgrade to iOS 4.x went badly for many who tried it until Apple released a patch several months later. Of course, that was years ago and hasn't happened since, and the rest of what he says is inaccurate FUD. As is obvious from Slashdot's own public statistics, iPhone owners are not hesitant to upgrade, with almost 70% on the latest version. And the upgrade works quite well for 3GS and 4 owners.
Linux is the major kernel written with and for GNU. I'm sure there are non-GNU OSs that use Linux (is Android GNU?), but Linux is all but officially part of GNU.
Linux wasn't written for GNU, with GNU, by GNU, and has even explicitly rejected the latest GNU license. They aren't even close to being "officially" part of GNU. As for the greater Linux operating system, it might as well be called MIT/BSD/GNU/Linux if you want to start assigning credit. Simpler and more accurate to just call the whole OS "Linux", like Linus Torvalds does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy
Slashdot Mirror
Jobs was an egomaniac ass who made more harm to the industry than anyone else and contributed to basically nothing. Hopefully when Apple finally sinks, as it certainly will, we won't even remember of him anymore.
RMS is an egomaniac ass who makes more harm to the industry than anyone else and contributed about the same as Jobs. Hopefully when GNU finally sinks, as it certainly will, we won't even remember him anymore.
See? Content-less assertions of hyperbole can work for all sides of an argument!
I like to think of iOS as "rails" not "jails". A train doesn't have a steering wheel, but the rail gives it different efficiencies and protections.
In the very long run we will not have USB / Firewire / SATA / PATA / Displayport / HDMI we'll have just one connector and protocol to run them all. Plug your keyboard, mouse, LAN adapter and monitor into your hub connected to your phone and be done with it. The only question is which standard will win. Probably USB.
That was the hope with Thunderbolt/LightPeak, which is on all Macs these days and works well. One cable carries two full-duplex 10Gb channels (10Gb each way simultaneously per channel). But "docks" have been slow in coming and expensive. And because the USB group refused to integrate the standard or allow them to use the connector, they switched to the DisplayPort interface which is nice and compact. Now we have a slower standard coming much later for which existing cables may or may not work but look the same as the current ones... fun.
Seriously, does that impact anyone?
Certainly. Google is just getting around to reducing the fragmentation in the OS levels on the myriad of devices out there, and now there is going to be a proprietary (Google) SDK as well as a fully open (Replicant) SDK. This isn't exactly going to help thin the fragmentation herd.
Besides, Google has always prided itself in the fact that Android is open source. The new wording doesn't quite seem to hold the same theme as Andy Rubin's snarky twitter entry: "the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"
I like Android. I prefer it over the proprietary shut-up-take-my-money alternative but this is a stupid move by Google to try and keep Ubuntu/HTC/Samsung from gutting Android and creating a competing product.
It's funny, when Apple released WebKit under that identical definition of "open", there was screaming from all corners until they opened up the whole process as well. Until you can download nightlies of Android and see the current bug list, it's not "open" source, it's "source available". Development is all in secret and you need to sign away all your rights to get anything before it's shipped to users, meaning that while the license is technically open you can't actually use that freedom effectively. Yes, it's more "open" than iOS, but that's not saying much.
If it's mostly free-form crap that doesn't or won't ever have to be analyzed based on the actual content (Blogs, posts, etc) then yes.
I'm going to pretend you weren't trolling to address a good point here. NoSQL is very valuable for human-to-human data. I've seen it be hugely successful in cases when you only need a "human" level of precision about ordering, consistency, and detail. It eliminates single points of failure, global locks, offline operation problems, write contention, etc. It introduces problems for indexing and absolute consistency. But without widespread indexing you tend to get brute-force (Map-Reduce) or narrow-focus (offline indexes on specific field) searches. And that's okay for most humans.
The lifetime of a CFL also seems to depend heavily on the quality of your electricity source. The power lines in our area has a lot of fluctuations, and CFLs don't last much longer than incandescents in that environment.
The Curse of the Network Effect is obvious enough in real estate that there is an entire school of political economy geared toward a single tax on land value -- a school most identified with the 19th century political economics author, Henry George.
Again, the real solution is to stop taxing economic activity (capital gains, income, sales, value added, etc) and instead tax market-assessed liquid value of assets.
And, again, of course, not many people are going to really understand this idea so it must be demonstrated by those who do get it.
That's why we need Sortocracy.
The proposal you link to essentially removes all control anyone has over their own property. Everyone is, in effect, required to sell any property at any time to the highest bidder. That may be economically efficient, but it sucks on a day-to-day basis for real people. It's the "infinite frictionless plane" type of economist thought problem, not an actual solution to anything. The law would last about as long as it would take for grandma to be kicked out of her house.
indeed... from the comparison:
Expansion Headers
MK802: N/A
RPi: Yes. Provide access to GPIO, I2C, SPI, etc DSI (for LCD display) and CSI-2 (for camera) interfaces are also available
In addition, the MK802 runs the "source available, but developed in secret" Android OS, while the RPi runs the truly open source Debian by default and a zillion other true open source Linux distros with easy download.
The RPi is for the tinkerer. The MK802 is for someone who wants pre-packaged plastic to do one of a limited number of preordained things.
I don't have a problem with the fact that his views differ from mine. I have a problem with dishonesty of a Nobel prize winning economist who misuses his column to push his own political agenda. It's easy to google many instances of deliberate twisting of facts and outright lies ("ACA will decrease rather than increase the deficit"), all without exemption leaning in the same political direction. If he was on MSNBC or Fox News it would be no problem. It is the pretense that his writing is a serious economic analysis distilled for popular reading rather than obvious and automatic pushing of a political agenda regardless of the facts that bothers me.
If you weren't completely wrong you'd have a point. His economic analysis is actually pretty spot-on, happens to agree pretty closely with the Democrats, and you just disagree with it. It's basic on sound economic theory (which differs from yours). And the ACA does decrease the deficit compared to the previous status quo.
Actually, that's probably just selective memory...
From a Q&A with LEGO:
Q: I would like to know why they are using so many specialized pieces in their sets now instead of using more "basic" bricks that allow for greater building outside the set the pieces came in. Why have Lego sets for the latest few generations been dummied down?
A: This is an impression that many people have but, in fact, the piece count has been reduced drastically and there's a move back to roots in Lego, not only for creativity but to save money. Lego went from 12,000 different pieces to 6,800 in the last few years-a number that includes the color variations.
Sorry.... I would consider something $5 or less for this for a downloadable copy, or even as a donation, but anything above that is annoyingly too much.
Know your audience!!!
If they were asking $3, I'd give it to them in a heartbeat (my son is big into Minecraft, and would enjoy watching this). The pricing is probably a limitation of their distributor, "Redux", but if they were going to distribute this via Pirate Bay, why not just ask for a donation via PayPal? I'm sure they would make a lot more money doing that than with this scheme.
If you're not willing to pay $8 for an hour and a half documentary that's fine. It'll probably be on sale in a month or two anyway. I think they have a right to ask for what they think their work is worth, and you have a right not to watch it and keep your kids from watching it in the meantime.
So you want me to (1) buy a new Xbox 360 (2) pay for a month of XBL gold [i previously owned a 360] just to *not* be called a pirate for downloading an otherwise *free* movie? Howboutno.
No, just go buy it from their site and download it in MP4 or MKV format.
Raspberry Pi has never been a $35 computer. You always need the peripherals and those will cost more than a bit. This guy choose expensive peripherals. Probably intent on writing the article at the same time.
The Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer. Yes, you need peripherals, but if you're not the type that have the appropriate peripherals lying around you're probably not the target audience.
Yes, they have custom chips. [Citation needed] that they're "designed to prevent" copying. Near as I can tell, the best guess is those chips are there because the 8+1 copper lines are completely configurable and thus need active logic. Considering there are already unofficial Chinese reverse-engineered cables around, I don't think this is insurmountable technically. It's just that Apple isn't going to put their official stamp on it-- and I'm surprised these people expected them to.
If you're still comparing yourself to an Arduino, then you really need to get your head out of your ass and see what's available. Of course that's assuming you're not in the same demographic that finds using $30 boards to blink some LEDs empowering.
For what it's worth, my 7 year old does indeed find programming flashing LEDs from a Python script incredibly empowering. And he's exactly the target audience for Raspberry Pi, too.
Maybe, maybe not.
REALLY? Rounded corners? Who are you kidding? There's no "maybe, maybe not" about it. Get real.
Really? Repeating the lie about Apple patenting "rounded corners" to justify defending a patent troll?
Hint: Apple has never claimed to have a patent on rounded corners. That's an invention of the internet. They have a design patent on the overall iPhone design and have only sued the one company that blatantly (and admitted doing so in their own internal correspondence) copied it.
Yes and no. The general public will largely see this the way you describe, but you are missing one key component. The demands Apple did not want to "give in to" were customer data and privacy demands specified in the Apple TOS. To get Google Maps in the App store, Google had to comply with those standards. So Google did not get everything they wanted. Apple has the features Android had in Google Maps without having to concede on the privacy standards they have set. So, in actuality, Apple did "win," just not in public opinion.
Apple doesn't require much privacy from app store apps. I suspect using Google's branded iOS Maps app will subject you to just as many privacy violations as any typical Google service (they'll monitor everything you do and everywhere you go and sell it to advertisers). But now there are real alternatives. NavTeq/Nokia, Apple, Google, and many city-specific apps are all thriving in a competitive marketplace.
nokia already has a free mapping/nav app on iOS. there is also navigon which uses navteq maps and has full offline capability
And whose interface is really, really awful. Reinforcing the point that Apple's design plus NavTeq's data could be a world-leading solution. At this point Nokia's actual handset business is probably worth less than the NavTeq acquisition... Apple could divest it to Microsoft or kill it without much problem. They've probably lost more market cap over maps than Nokia is worth in its entirety.
Google never wrote the old Maps app for iOS. Google supplied map data and Apple wrote the app; that was the arrangement from the beginning. Ditto for the Youtube app: Google never even saw the source code for it, much less wrote any of it.
You're both right, according to the best public information available... Apple wrote the app, but was only licensed to use the raster data and forbidden from doing turn-by-turn directions or other modern features by the license. Google refused to renew the license without adding all kinds of tracking into iOS, which Apple refused to allow. Since the license was set to expire before the next major version of iOS would have come out, Apple was forced to switch maps in this version.
And it mostly succeeded. It's hard to argue that the new map imagery isn't way, way better than what Google previously licensed Apple. Map imagery is crisper, faster, caches better, and is generally more readable. And routing directions are actually pretty good, taking into account traffic, etc. It's really just the geo-location that Apple dropped the ball on, and the public transit that Apple needlessly complicated.
Geo-location is quickly being fixed, but is the biggest glaring problem and really the crux of the matter. Public transit has a million other alternatives in most metropolitan areas and does link directly from Maps, but is less convenient... hopefully Apple will revamp this in iOS 7 and allow integrated plugins for Maps.
In the meantime, it's nice to see Google bringing an alternative to the platform, for anyone willing to trade their privacy for better geolocation.
One barrier to entry could conceivably be (of course!) patents. The first company to do large-scale 3D printing I'm aware of was Align Technology, Inc., maker of Invisalign plastic braces (I'm a former employee). They've been printing positive molds for the aligners using stereolithography for over a dozen years, and have a lot of patents in the "mass customization" industry. When you start printing tens of thousands of unique objects a day like they've been doing for years there are certain methods that give you economies of scale despite each piece being different. It's not applicable to low-volume home printing, but when you get to a warehouse of 3D printers things could get interesting. There are probably other companies out there with additional work in this space that will crop up if it gets lucrative enough. (And hey, many aren't even software patents.)
I'm more concerned that if step 1 in responding to any privacy violation is a complete boycott, it means FOSS doesn't actually have a very good governance model to deal with these things.
Nitpick: Apple bans apps that explicitly download code, not interpret code. There are LUA, Python, and other development environments, as well as tons of embedded JS and other scripts running many apps for iOS.
...and has been criminally convicted for anti competitive behavior...
Not to nitpick too much, but the court decision was not criminal and therefore not a "conviction". It was a civil anti-trust suit.
He has a point about the iPhone 3G. It had too little memory and the upgrade to iOS 4.x went badly for many who tried it until Apple released a patch several months later. Of course, that was years ago and hasn't happened since, and the rest of what he says is inaccurate FUD. As is obvious from Slashdot's own public statistics, iPhone owners are not hesitant to upgrade, with almost 70% on the latest version. And the upgrade works quite well for 3GS and 4 owners.
Linux is the major kernel written with and for GNU. I'm sure there are non-GNU OSs that use Linux (is Android GNU?), but Linux is all but officially part of GNU.
Linux wasn't written for GNU, with GNU, by GNU, and has even explicitly rejected the latest GNU license. They aren't even close to being "officially" part of GNU. As for the greater Linux operating system, it might as well be called MIT/BSD/GNU/Linux if you want to start assigning credit. Simpler and more accurate to just call the whole OS "Linux", like Linus Torvalds does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy