Apple is partially right. Their closed business model has lead to the success of the iPhone. (Happy now?)
Seriously. The tight control on the user experience is what maintains the appeal of the device. For most people.
However, where they're wrong is in thinking that they need to prevent jailbreaking in order to maintain this. The people jailbreaking their phones aren't in the majority who bought the phone for the slick and stylish integration. They're a harmless minority, and Apple should be grateful for the extra revenue that a little bit of hacking has brought in.
Also, the part about being a risk to networks is nonsense.
This new requirement is just posturing. It's a waste of time, effort, and money. It also contributes to the growing problem of federal law being vast and un-knowable by any single individual.
Mold disclosure laws may actually make the problem worse. There's even more incentive to cover-up a mold problem, since the occurrence of mold once will end up on-file and hurts the value of the home forever. So a homeowner is more likely to do a crappy cover-up job and sell the house than get the issue properly taken care of.
Not only that, but such laws generally cover all kinds of mold, and most mold is essentially harmless to the majority of people.
Most musicians throughout history have made money by performing the work. (Musicians, not composers).
Alternately, if you want to go back that far, then recording anything is a "recent innovation". Fact is, almost shortly after recording was invented, selling recordings came on the scene.
Go back how far? You conveniently ignored an important part of my comment, even though you quoted it.
Most musicians still don't earn a very good living selling recordings. Most successful musicians earn their living by performing their music. Not in the 18th century. Not in 1920. Now.
A tax incentive or tax credit isn't government funding. The government may call it funding... But they also call reducing the amount a department's funding is scheduled to increase a budget cut, which is also not true except by their broken definition.
Taking less of money that doesn't belong to you yet is *not the same* as funding something. Not even close. 100% of the invested capital still has to come from somebody other than the government.
Selling recordings is a recent innovation in business models for musicians. (And only a small percentage of musicians make any significant amount of money that way.)
Most musicians throughout history have made money by performing the work. (Musicians, not composers).
You don't need copyright protection at all in that case, since you're the only person who can possibly be you playing your music.
Our current copyright system retards that process. Copyright assignment to recording distributors means that many musicians have to pay somebody for the right to play their own songs.
The blame should be placed solely on "D'Nealian" script. If you teach a kid how to write three different ways before teaching them the "right" way, their hadwriting is going to look like ass when they finally start doing it the right way. Until D'Nealian came along, kids went straight from learning to print to learning cursive script. Then somebody decided that this was too hard for kids (despite working fine for centuries).
It's amazing how many of our ills come from assuming that kids aren't as capable as they really are.
He's thinking in terms of the southwestern United States. There are plenty of other areas in the US that have more than enough fresh water. People from the southwest tend to be pretty self-centered when it comes to regional issues, and assume everybody has the same problems. The rest of us tend to ignore them.
The same regions of the world that lack access to adequate health facilities are, paradoxically, well-served by mobile phone networks.
Mobile phone infrastructure is incredibly cheap to provision. You can put up a single tower and cover literally hundreds of square miles. Access to adequate health facilities need equipment, which costs much more than a cell tower, staff (also more expensive than the tower), transit (roads, ambulances, vehicles).
It's not a paradox that these areas get good cell coverage before other "modern" conveniences. It only makes sense. It's cheap and easy to provide cell service, and the low hanging fruit is always picked first.
Obama was pro-Nuclear early in his campaign, but he slowly downplayed it until he removed it from his platform entirely. The only thing you'll ever see him talk about regarding anything nuclear now is disarmament.
Don't be silly. Our current president is much smarter than that.
He understands that opposing nuclear technology is much more valuable to him politically than using the technology to reduce our carbon emissions in a significant fashion. And maintaining power is more important than the environment.
Shared key doesn't have anything to do with this. It doesn't matter if the encryption is symmetric, or asymmetric. I have no idea which they use.
The fact of the matter is that a key which needs to remain secret for the security of the data needs to be provided to the customer in order to decrypt the data. However the customer cannot be trusted to maintain the secrecy of the key. Since the key isn't secret, how the key works is obfuscated.
A satellite broadcaster has, for the most part, a one-way stream. If the encryption was completely open, all you would need to do to pirate the signal is to share a valid key with as many people as you'd like.
Paying customers need to be able to decrypt the stream, but they are not trustworthy credential holders.
As sombody who writes device drivers for a living, I think I might be able to offer some of Apple's perspective on this.
A lot of hardware isn't very interesting without the driver. When a company develops a product, they sell the whole package, hardware+software. Apple is doing this with the iPod. It's a fairly generic device at this point. It's the whole package of the iPod and iTunes and the music store that makes it an interesting device.
What Apple is doing is the same as what, say, a Bluetooth dongle manufacturer, or a modem manufacturer, or to some extent a video card manufacturer does; and exactly what camera and scanner and printer companies used to do (and printer companies still do).
Apple's 'driver' for the iPod is their own software, and they are understandably unwilling to allow their competitor to sell their work as part of a competing solution.
Now, if what we want is a standard method of synchronizing music players, what we should do is exactly what happened with digital cameras, and come up with a standard method to synchronize, implement it everywhere, and wait a generation of products for consumers to begin to expect support of the standard. In other words, replace iTunes.
Something like "I would not want to work with that person again" is a statement about you, and cannot be mistaken as a false statement about somebody else.
The last two "clever" statements you provided, however, could be.
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So what you're saying is that Apple should create two versions
No, what I'm saying is that they should ignore hacking. Thanks for trying to put words in my mouth though.
In their current business model, the people in the latter group are just going out and buying WinMos, Androids
This is so untrue that it's laughable.
Apple is partially right. Their closed business model has lead to the success of the iPhone. (Happy now?)
Seriously. The tight control on the user experience is what maintains the appeal of the device. For most people.
However, where they're wrong is in thinking that they need to prevent jailbreaking in order to maintain this. The people jailbreaking their phones aren't in the majority who bought the phone for the slick and stylish integration. They're a harmless minority, and Apple should be grateful for the extra revenue that a little bit of hacking has brought in.
Also, the part about being a risk to networks is nonsense.
Texting while driving is already illegal in all 50 states.
It's called reckless driving.
This new requirement is just posturing. It's a waste of time, effort, and money. It also contributes to the growing problem of federal law being vast and un-knowable by any single individual.
Go congress!
Mold disclosure laws may actually make the problem worse. There's even more incentive to cover-up a mold problem, since the occurrence of mold once will end up on-file and hurts the value of the home forever. So a homeowner is more likely to do a crappy cover-up job and sell the house than get the issue properly taken care of.
Not only that, but such laws generally cover all kinds of mold, and most mold is essentially harmless to the majority of people.
How many rat deaths exactly is a person walking again worth?
How many can we sustainably produce? As long as we're not killing 'em faster than we can breed 'em, I'm OK with it.
There isn't some magic number where it becomes evil.
This one seems as good to respond to as the 100 others asking the same question.
The accounts with a high gamer score sell well because they typically have a credit card or lots of downloadable content associated with them.
In other words, you're not buying the account for the score. You're buying it for the stolen (content|credit card number).
Most musicians throughout history have made money by performing the work. (Musicians, not composers).
Alternately, if you want to go back that far, then recording anything is a "recent innovation". Fact is, almost shortly after recording was invented, selling recordings came on the scene.
Go back how far? You conveniently ignored an important part of my comment, even though you quoted it.
Most musicians still don't earn a very good living selling recordings. Most successful musicians earn their living by performing their music. Not in the 18th century. Not in 1920. Now.
a lot of people want good music recordings which can't be produced unless the producers can be paid for the recording itself.
Once. They can't be made unless the produced can be paid for the recording once.
I'm playing the bullshit card on your comment.
A tax incentive or tax credit isn't government funding. The government may call it funding... But they also call reducing the amount a department's funding is scheduled to increase a budget cut, which is also not true except by their broken definition.
Taking less of money that doesn't belong to you yet is *not the same* as funding something. Not even close. 100% of the invested capital still has to come from somebody other than the government.
Selling recordings is a recent innovation in business models for musicians. (And only a small percentage of musicians make any significant amount of money that way.)
Most musicians throughout history have made money by performing the work. (Musicians, not composers).
You don't need copyright protection at all in that case, since you're the only person who can possibly be you playing your music.
Our current copyright system retards that process. Copyright assignment to recording distributors means that many musicians have to pay somebody for the right to play their own songs.
Sounds like the episode of Food Detectives about MSG.
The blame should be placed solely on "D'Nealian" script. If you teach a kid how to write three different ways before teaching them the "right" way, their hadwriting is going to look like ass when they finally start doing it the right way. Until D'Nealian came along, kids went straight from learning to print to learning cursive script. Then somebody decided that this was too hard for kids (despite working fine for centuries).
It's amazing how many of our ills come from assuming that kids aren't as capable as they really are.
I hope you're joking about me being joking, 'cause otherwise, wow, you need to get out and experience more of the world.
He's thinking in terms of the southwestern United States. There are plenty of other areas in the US that have more than enough fresh water. People from the southwest tend to be pretty self-centered when it comes to regional issues, and assume everybody has the same problems. The rest of us tend to ignore them.
Mobile phone infrastructure is incredibly cheap to provision. You can put up a single tower and cover literally hundreds of square miles. Access to adequate health facilities need equipment, which costs much more than a cell tower, staff (also more expensive than the tower), transit (roads, ambulances, vehicles).
It's not a paradox that these areas get good cell coverage before other "modern" conveniences. It only makes sense. It's cheap and easy to provide cell service, and the low hanging fruit is always picked first.
Where do you think the second guy coming down the ladder stepped?
The first footprint on the moon lasted less than 20 minutes.
Those are broken links.
Obama was pro-Nuclear early in his campaign, but he slowly downplayed it until he removed it from his platform entirely. The only thing you'll ever see him talk about regarding anything nuclear now is disarmament.
An attitude like that probably has FDR spinning in his grave. Oh, the sorry state of the modern Liberal.
I feel sick at the idea that somebody like you may have a mainstream view.
Don't be silly. Our current president is much smarter than that.
He understands that opposing nuclear technology is much more valuable to him politically than using the technology to reduce our carbon emissions in a significant fashion. And maintaining power is more important than the environment.
Shared key doesn't have anything to do with this. It doesn't matter if the encryption is symmetric, or asymmetric. I have no idea which they use.
The fact of the matter is that a key which needs to remain secret for the security of the data needs to be provided to the customer in order to decrypt the data. However the customer cannot be trusted to maintain the secrecy of the key. Since the key isn't secret, how the key works is obfuscated.
A satellite broadcaster has, for the most part, a one-way stream. If the encryption was completely open, all you would need to do to pirate the signal is to share a valid key with as many people as you'd like.
Paying customers need to be able to decrypt the stream, but they are not trustworthy credential holders.
As sombody who writes device drivers for a living, I think I might be able to offer some of Apple's perspective on this.
A lot of hardware isn't very interesting without the driver. When a company develops a product, they sell the whole package, hardware+software. Apple is doing this with the iPod. It's a fairly generic device at this point. It's the whole package of the iPod and iTunes and the music store that makes it an interesting device.
What Apple is doing is the same as what, say, a Bluetooth dongle manufacturer, or a modem manufacturer, or to some extent a video card manufacturer does; and exactly what camera and scanner and printer companies used to do (and printer companies still do).
Apple's 'driver' for the iPod is their own software, and they are understandably unwilling to allow their competitor to sell their work as part of a competing solution.
Now, if what we want is a standard method of synchronizing music players, what we should do is exactly what happened with digital cameras, and come up with a standard method to synchronize, implement it everywhere, and wait a generation of products for consumers to begin to expect support of the standard. In other words, replace iTunes.
Most (the vast majority) Open Source software never has its source code looked at by anybody but the original developer.
You don't have to be obtuse.
Something like "I would not want to work with that person again" is a statement about you, and cannot be mistaken as a false statement about somebody else.
The last two "clever" statements you provided, however, could be.
On the other hand, folks that go down with a sinking ship are idiots.
Why would you want to work with somebody who's an idiot?