Love Wikipedia, and especially the folks who put the content together!
One thing though, it get's damn slow sometimes.
Wikipedia should either hook up with google on some webserving or
Google should grab a nightly dump and set up pedia.google.com
Ignore the idiotic slashdot articles about google trying to take things over and lock things up. Wikipedia is licensed to prevent that, but also to allow sharing, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed they take google up on their hosting offer sooner rather then later.
Tuesday, 22 February 2005 Enlightenment the experimental toolkit
Well it seems the XDevConf has produced some interesting blogs and discussion. I'm a bit sad I was not able to attend (no funding at all), as there seems to have begin a lot of discussion and moves in directions we in Enlightenment land have been going for years, and are likely far ahead in. I guess this means we haven't been able to share our experience in this. Maybe next year. Anyway the point is that this has started up some musings from Seth Nickell and Havoc Pennington related to this. This is great - finally people are beginning to take seriously what the Enlightenment crowd have been talking about for years.
What I'll go into is some of the things Seth and Havoc talk about that we have already done and are well under way or very mature. Things we have advocated for years and have already solved - quite optimally. Our designs are forward-looking and just WAITING for drivers to catch up and stop "sucking". I could write essays about the many ways to address this issue alone (XRender), but I won't go there this time. I've been there before.
First let me talk about Seth's blog. He discusses "Next-Generation Rendering For the Free Desktop". This is great. this is just what we need... oh wait. it's just what we've been DOING for years!:) He mentions "A sophisticated drawing layer" (read his blog for the full text). We have that - Evas. it can accelerate via OpenGL, it's got a FAST software renderer. It can render to the Linux Framebuffer. It can render to memory. It can render using DirectFB. It can render using *GASP*... Cairo! It can display in Qtopia. We can add new engines for new targets with little effort. Evas scales down to rendering at usable speeds on embedded devices (100-600Mhz ARM CPU's, limited RAM etc.). He discusses a toolkit that aggressively takes advantage of this - we have been working on EWL and Edje. Edje is a lower layer theme/layout system, with EWL being a full widget set on top of this, giving you whiz-bang themes with widget layout built on top of an Evas canvas with everything punting down to the rendering layer at the bottom there. We are doing our own Window Manager - and the day Xrender stops sucking, we will add compositing to it too - re-using all the layers we already have to do this. We have a low level acceleration mechanism (OpenGL) but its too unstable for use IMHO. This is a problem that needs fixing and is something that needs to be addressed.
Now he goes on to say what this will enable: "Toolkit themes that draw with layer blending effects" - Done. EWL, Evas, Edje. "Indiana Jones buttons that puff out smoothly and animated clouds of smoke when you click on them". OK - we don't have the smoke - but we have all the animation, glinting in the light, fading, glowing, sliding, etc. etc. etc. We have an entire engine devoted to just this (Edje), a theme description language, compiler, scripting engine, compressed theme format usable "live" without installation etc. He goes on to talk of "Alpha transparency whenever you want" - Done. Evas. Live window thumbnails - XRender has to improve something WICKED for this to be sane.:) Hundreds of snowflakes driving down the screen... E17 has a toy module for just this... and flames to burn them up as they hit the bottom of the screen. All with glorious alpha blending. He speaks of animated background desktops with things like grass blowing in the breeze - We do that already in E17. The desktop BG is an Edje file - and thus is capable of all the animation and effects Edje and Evas offer. In fact take a look at the following 2 video files (they are jerky because xvidcap is jerky and thats just how it is - in real life they are smooth as a babies bottom - you just have to see these things "live" to believe it. Also note - this has NO hardware acceleration. I am hoping one day to have acceleration available that is good enough for production use).
This story is unsurprising somewhat mischarachterized. The call to action is simply for the french to get on board and make their works available, to keep a diversity of ideas out there.
How do I know this? I read the article through Google: http://tinyurl.com/4gyex
- gmail scans my email (ignoring the fact the tons of other companies, scan and attach ads to inbound and outbound email).
- google toolbar has optional smart links (that default to off and the user must enable).
- google print will make knowladge more available.
The world will be ending shortly.
I like france actually, lived there for a year when I was younger. The librarian makes some interesting and I think valid points. The conclusion I draw is not that google is at fault, they are just ahead of the game on this and will likely get the libraries in france to open things up sooner then they would have otherwise.
From the client perspective you can use as many or few programs as you want. Five IMAP clients on one computer? No problem. Sunbird (standalone cal) support is in the roadmap.
On the server side folks are looking for an exchange replacement that scales way up.
They are not looking for an openserver cobled togther set of scripts / programs / configuration directives.
I don't think the limited combo is going to be a huge problem in the marketplace.
And you'll be surprised at how enterpise admin folks like server / program consolidation, especially in 200+ computer offices. People have been trained on MS admin interfaces. Cobbled together scripts to 100 different configutation places is just not appealing to them.
I see lot's of posts complaining about having to pay for wiki content etc.
The Davorak column and this story are total and complete FUD. Please highlight this fact, would be great if someone from the wiki could post something along these lines more officially.
In the hosting offer being considered there isn't even the requirement to show ads, Google could take the content and show ads alongside it already if they wanted to.
Further, Google may not "lock up" wiki, it is generally under GNU FDL which was written to handle all this sort of stuff.
The speech is simply along the lines of, how do we pay people to create content. Somewhat innocuous I think.
Not CentOS's fault, but redhat is somewhat justified in their concern on this issue was my point. I personally don't care much one way or another, as long as the software is available in open source form plus a patent pledge behind it, and redhat has been really solid on this.
I love centOS personally, would use it personally over a RHEL subscription any day. But for a client install I do care to do the RHEL thing, and from a client perspective there is a difference.
This topic caught me on a day where I was just irked at discovering folks passing off CentOS as RHEL twice, not CentOS fault, but reminded me that chances for confusion are real.
Finally, if CompUSA marketed it's monitors as basically identical to Sony's, but when you tried to return it they jerked you around (when Sony wouldn't), you'd realize that equivelent involves more then just bits. Costs for RHEL at this point are basically for a "nice feeling" and a way to support linux dev. Most folks actually don't report bugs against distro, and CentOS is timely in their distribution handling.
Fair point about CentOS though, and I wasn't clear enough in my original post.
Twice now I've picked up hosting plans for myself or others that claim they come with RHEL (aka, a subscription to redhat's network of up2date servers, and redhat software).
In these two cases when I actually run up2date I've noticed they are picking up packages from centOS. My complaint is simply that I want to be the one to deceide between centOS and RHEL, and am capable of evaluatiing their similarities and differences.
Redhat gives away in open source form a really solid product. The one thing they ask is that folks not connect their derivative products back to them. Given their generally clean playing in the open source world, I don't begrudge them this that much actually.
One issue identified, which I think is legit, is the question of WHERE is the best place to buy a desktop for open source software from a Tier 1 or other larger provider.
Recommendations?
I actually don't care if it comes with windows installed, my interest is that the hardware is available under linux, no fighting my wireless USB adapter into submission. That and that the cost is good.
Would be great to see a listing, one probably exists somewhere already...
In some cases as the article points out, it may be cheaper to get a copy of windows installed, and then switch.
A: In.NET you can write code that harms a computer and deletes files. B: In Java you can write code that harms a computer and deletes files.
A: You can write code in C#, in which case it is managed and helps prevent you from making stupid mistakes. B: You can write code in Java in which case it is somewhat managed and helps prevent you from stupid mistakes.
A: Under.NET you can write code in C++ (which very few folks developing for.net do) and you take the risk of stupid mistakes. B: Under Java you read Sun's document on "Integrating Native Methods into Java Programs" and write you code in C++ in which case you run risks of stupid mistakes
I fail to see the point of this article. Developers can write imperfect code if they want to. This is true in Java and.NET, though.NET makes it a bit easier with plenty of warnings.
I'm a long time slashdot user with plenty of karma and I normally don't post this type of stuff.
Roland Piquepaille has been submitting warmed over articles that link to his blog for ages now, and an INCREDIBLE number of them get posted. The usual suspects are timothy and michael (two of the weaker slashdot editors in my opinion).
The details of all of this I'll leave to others that care more, but it'd be nice to see slashdot get a grip on this. Worth a laugh at this point though.
Assume you have a superior tech, but only a few providers can use it. So you have better tech, but it's only in 40% of possible cell sites.
Then you have the inferior tech, but it is in 80% of possible cell sites. The perceived performance of the inferior tech starts to look pretty good.
CDMA is technically superior, but GSM has got something like a million users. Worldwide, if you traveled, you would likely be able to use your same GSM phone in Europe, but your CDMA phone wouldn't get much coverage.
Some interesting lessons here in standards one pays for.
You'll all remember the cell phone wars. While the rest of world used GSM, american carriers, looking for a competitive advantage and patent royalities, and certainly unwilling to pay royalties to their competitors, got going with CDMA and TDMA to name a few of the schemes. While technically superior perhaps, one ends up with a fragemented market. What's interesting to see is the recent moves to GSM even in the US.
Memory cards, the same thing. If there was a true, open standard without payments (but with optional certification) a la USB, I don't think you'd see the number of flash memory formats poping up that we have been. Instead, sony pulled another ATRAC stunt with their memory stick, and other manufacturers and devices developers played in their own camps.
Short term gain for long term pain, my computer must have 5 or six slots for flash memory!
Here's the Ahha moment for USB (after the HCI/OHCI stuff). "On the second version of USB, we looked at how we could learn from the first round, and we decided that it was better for the industry for there to be one spec that was available to everybody," said Jason Ziller, an Intel technology initiatives manager.
I think you are bit naive with your focus on the RIAA needing to avoid anti-trust issues.
Though it really would have been nice had Apple not caved on the issue. Had Apple said we want to sell MP3s, period. I'd have loved to see the RIAA hang on anti-trust conspiracy, for imposing a Windows only market, and for abusing their copyright monopoly to control formats.
If apple said we want to sell MP3's, then Microsoft / Real etc simply sell WMA or other DRM protected music on the Mac platform. End result? NO itunes music store, and NO "anti-trust conspiracy" charged.
I love folks complaining about "crippled" iTunes songs.
They forget that Apple has SET THE STANDARD for sensible DRM that is reasonable for the consumer.
I've been around a long time, and have seen plenty of stupid stuff. Divx (in the DVD space) moved things back, lawsuits and claims about the mp3 format itself, a joke.
But I've also got a sense of history. Before apple came along legal online music was GHASTLY.
You think iTunes is "laden" and "crippled" with DRM? People have forgotten that before apple came along there was a fragmented music space with DRM that meant you couldn't move songs between computers, burn them to CD's, and stores run by companies that were no fun to do business with. Subs, if you canceled, your music vanished.
For most folks, fairplay is actually fair. Most people don't end up playing on more then five computers. Unlimited burns of a song, and seven burns of a specific CD are reasonably fair. The authorization process isn't terribly painful.
Remember, the RIAA used to claim on their dumb soundbyting site that making a tape copy of a CD was copyright infringment. And they were probably right, it was.
The one big issues with iTunes are lack of open source support (tricky, but they should do better here) and the lock-in to iPods as the portable music player for the service. The issue is that software needs to provide the DRM. Luckily for apple they've got a reasonable ipod product. This lockin will have to evolve though of course, open source and linux are not supported so far.
But from a DRM perspective, they really moved the industry forward. If the media companies had their way we'd be stuck with Sony's ATRAC format.
There is a big difference between the IBM and SUN patent pledges.
IBM listed a broad range of software licenses, importantly including the GPL, which means linux is covered.
Sun's license so far is limited to Solaris, or at least it looks that way, where they have contributed code under the CDDL. This means if you take a method (or read about a method) that they use in Solaris and apply it elsewhere you can still get slammed.
Not a black and white issue though, as the discerning reader will note that the GPL has not patent clause at all, so the CDDL is stronger in one sense there. Not sure if Linux is any worse off.
But it will be interesting to see how Solaris comes out as open source, incredibly it has gotten to this point for those who remember the Sun of the past (and even some of the current ranting). Losing market share is an incredible motivator it seems:) Fun stuff though, and I think pragmatism will win the day if there good stuff is delivered.
RIM was the first out the gate with patent lawsuits against just about everyone. (Palm, Handspring, even MS etc). For a company that tried to shut down its competitors using patent litigation, there is a certain irony here. A taste of their own medicene perhaps?
When Redhat first started up Fedora (to much noise everywhere) I spent a fair amount of time poking around with an eye towards getting involved.
In particular, for folks creating their own internal RPM's for packages (for a long time php-devel was not packaged for example), the idea of being able to mainline packages was very appealing, and similar to other open projects (gentoo though debian etc).
But going to the site, nothing like this was there. Pretty dissapointing. In other words, it was existing bug reporting every distro and many commercial packages have plus some marketing (this omits other things that were offered, but was my feeling at the time).
Finally, it looks like they will be making some efforts to really create an enviroment folks are able to contribute in. A shame they weren't able to harness the initial energy and interest, but these are the right types of moves, though coming a little late perhaps.
Also useful to note that a fair number of places showed up filling in gaps in redhat's offering. Freshrpms and friends come to mind for example. But with some more creativity I think redhat could have really put together something exciting.
Here is the copy of the legal document where Infinium admits that the article "does not constitute unfair competition under.. or an unfair business practice, trade disparagement, trade libel...".
I want to be crystal clear here. Fondue commented "Well, it's not exactly ambiguous that Infinium were libelled [sic] - it should be obvious to all but the most credulous observer...". Fondue is flat out wrong.
I don't automatically assume. I've made a reasoned judement call, one I suspect which is far more accurate then yours.
No matter, bookmark this comment, and come back in a year or two. I think you will find infinium singularly unsuccessful in their litigation for $20 million. And if you're willing to put some cash in place of your opinions and insults, happy to do that as well.
And stop with the red herrings as well. No one has said anything about needing to be rich or swinging millions in marketing.
Not one to normally go the activist route, but in this case felt like throwing my hat in the ring.
Probably older then you are if I don't miss my guess given the personal nature of your attacks.
The questions is whether Infinium was really libeled or if they are simply trying to use the legal system to threaten someone publishing accurate information that is unflattering. Given the cases cost money, this is the old SLAPP lawsuit type stuff all over again.
What's interesting is that in this case, we'll get to see how the case ends up. You willing to put your money where your mouth is and bet on the outcoming? Given my "pre-formed opinion from puerile comic strips" you should be able to make easy money.
There are bogus lawsuits in this world, to think otherwise is incredibly naive. Until you've paid some attention to the way litigation works (from slip and falls / union disability claims / slapp style suits) and the costs in the system I'd hold your comments.
Slashdot Mirror
Love Wikipedia, and especially the folks who put the content together!
One thing though, it get's damn slow sometimes.
Wikipedia should either hook up with google on some webserving or
Google should grab a nightly dump and set up pedia.google.com
Ignore the idiotic slashdot articles about google trying to take things over and lock things up. Wikipedia is licensed to prevent that, but also to allow sharing, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed they take google up on their hosting offer sooner rather then later.
Good luck!
Tuesday, 22 February 2005
:) He mentions "A sophisticated drawing layer" (read his blog for the full text). We have that - Evas. it can accelerate via OpenGL, it's got a FAST software renderer. It can render to the Linux Framebuffer. It can render to memory. It can render using DirectFB. It can render using *GASP* ... Cairo! It can display in Qtopia. We can add new engines for new targets with little effort. Evas scales down to rendering at usable speeds on embedded devices (100-600Mhz ARM CPU's, limited RAM etc.). He discusses a toolkit that aggressively takes advantage of this - we have been working on EWL and Edje. Edje is a lower layer theme/layout system, with EWL being a full widget set on top of this, giving you whiz-bang themes with widget layout built on top of an Evas canvas with everything punting down to the rendering layer at the bottom there. We are doing our own Window Manager - and the day Xrender stops sucking, we will add compositing to it too - re-using all the layers we already have to do this. We have a low level acceleration mechanism (OpenGL) but its too unstable for use IMHO. This is a problem that needs fixing and is something that needs to be addressed.
:) Hundreds of snowflakes driving down the screen... E17 has a toy module for just this... and flames to burn them up as they hit the bottom of the screen. All with glorious alpha blending. He speaks of animated background desktops with things like grass blowing in the breeze - We do that already in E17. The desktop BG is an Edje file - and thus is capable of all the animation and effects Edje and Evas offer. In fact take a look at the following 2 video files (they are jerky because xvidcap is jerky and thats just how it is - in real life they are smooth as a babies bottom - you just have to see these things "live" to believe it. Also note - this has NO hardware acceleration. I am hoping one day to have acceleration available that is good enough for production use).
Enlightenment the experimental toolkit
Well it seems the XDevConf has produced some interesting blogs and discussion. I'm a bit sad I was not able to attend (no funding at all), as there seems to have begin a lot of discussion and moves in directions we in Enlightenment land have been going for years, and are likely far ahead in. I guess this means we haven't been able to share our experience in this. Maybe next year. Anyway the point is that this has started up some musings from Seth Nickell and Havoc Pennington related to this. This is great - finally people are beginning to take seriously what the Enlightenment crowd have been talking about for years.
What I'll go into is some of the things Seth and Havoc talk about that we have already done and are well under way or very mature. Things we have advocated for years and have already solved - quite optimally. Our designs are forward-looking and just WAITING for drivers to catch up and stop "sucking". I could write essays about the many ways to address this issue alone (XRender), but I won't go there this time. I've been there before.
First let me talk about Seth's blog. He discusses "Next-Generation Rendering For the Free Desktop". This is great. this is just what we need... oh wait. it's just what we've been DOING for years!
Now he goes on to say what this will enable: "Toolkit themes that draw with layer blending effects" - Done. EWL, Evas, Edje. "Indiana Jones buttons that puff out smoothly and animated clouds of smoke when you click on them". OK - we don't have the smoke - but we have all the animation, glinting in the light, fading, glowing, sliding, etc. etc. etc. We have an entire engine devoted to just this (Edje), a theme description language, compiler, scripting engine, compressed theme format usable "live" without installation etc. He goes on to talk of "Alpha transparency whenever you want" - Done. Evas. Live window thumbnails - XRender has to improve something WICKED for this to be sane.
files/e17_movie-02.avi
files/e17_mov
This story is unsurprising somewhat mischarachterized. The call to action is simply for the french to get on board and make their works available, to keep a diversity of ideas out there.
How do I know this? I read the article through Google: http://tinyurl.com/4gyex
I'll see if I can post it to a following message.
Oh no!
- gmail scans my email (ignoring the fact the tons of other companies, scan and attach ads to inbound and outbound email).
- google toolbar has optional smart links (that default to off and the user must enable).
- google print will make knowladge more available.
The world will be ending shortly.
I like france actually, lived there for a year when I was younger. The librarian makes some interesting and I think valid points. The conclusion I draw is not that google is at fault, they are just ahead of the game on this and will likely get the libraries in france to open things up sooner then they would have otherwise.
From the client perspective you can use as many or few programs as you want. Five IMAP clients on one computer? No problem. Sunbird (standalone cal) support is in the roadmap.
On the server side folks are looking for an exchange replacement that scales way up.
They are not looking for an openserver cobled togther set of scripts / programs / configuration directives.
I don't think the limited combo is going to be a huge problem in the marketplace.
And you'll be surprised at how enterpise admin folks like server / program consolidation, especially in 200+ computer offices. People have been trained on MS admin interfaces. Cobbled together scripts to 100 different configutation places is just not appealing to them.
I see lot's of posts complaining about having to pay for wiki content etc.
The Davorak column and this story are total and complete FUD. Please highlight this fact, would be great if someone from the wiki could post something along these lines more officially.
In the hosting offer being considered there isn't even the requirement to show ads, Google could take the content and show ads alongside it already if they wanted to.
Further, Google may not "lock up" wiki, it is generally under GNU FDL which was written to handle all this sort of stuff.
The speech is simply along the lines of, how do we pay people to create content. Somewhat innocuous I think.
Not CentOS's fault, but redhat is somewhat justified in their concern on this issue was my point. I personally don't care much one way or another, as long as the software is available in open source form plus a patent pledge behind it, and redhat has been really solid on this.
I love centOS personally, would use it personally over a RHEL subscription any day. But for a client install I do care to do the RHEL thing, and from a client perspective there is a difference.
This topic caught me on a day where I was just irked at discovering folks passing off CentOS as RHEL twice, not CentOS fault, but reminded me that chances for confusion are real.
Finally, if CompUSA marketed it's monitors as basically identical to Sony's, but when you tried to return it they jerked you around (when Sony wouldn't), you'd realize that equivelent involves more then just bits. Costs for RHEL at this point are basically for a "nice feeling" and a way to support linux dev. Most folks actually don't report bugs against distro, and CentOS is timely in their distribution handling.
Fair point about CentOS though, and I wasn't clear enough in my original post.
This issue of centOS and RHEL confusion is real.
Twice now I've picked up hosting plans for myself or others that claim they come with RHEL (aka, a subscription to redhat's network of up2date servers, and redhat software).
In these two cases when I actually run up2date I've noticed they are picking up packages from centOS. My complaint is simply that I want to be the one to deceide between centOS and RHEL, and am capable of evaluatiing their similarities and differences.
Redhat gives away in open source form a really solid product. The one thing they ask is that folks not connect their derivative products back to them. Given their generally clean playing in the open source world, I don't begrudge them this that much actually.
Curious what you'd estimate google's overall bandwidth usage is across all their servers and including their crawling operations.
I think the number would be surprisingly high.
Google:
- Nice company
- Cool services
- Sweet interfaces
That is a rocking combination.
The fact that they seem to be making stuff available under Firefox as well is also great.
Given that TCO is significantly less for windows than linux[1], are the folks at google morons for using linux?
They use a LOT of computers, and TCO has got to be important in that enviroment.
[1] See MS advertising and "Get the Facts" literature.
One issue identified, which I think is legit, is the question of WHERE is the best place to buy a desktop for open source software from a Tier 1 or other larger provider.
Recommendations?
I actually don't care if it comes with windows installed, my interest is that the hardware is available under linux, no fighting my wireless USB adapter into submission. That and that the cost is good.
Would be great to see a listing, one probably exists somewhere already...
In some cases as the article points out, it may be cheaper to get a copy of windows installed, and then switch.
He is.
.NET you have a choice, managed or unmanager code.
In
Of course, in Java you can also throw it out the window if you want to. Somehow that was missed in his writeup.
A: .NET you can write code that harms a computer and deletes files.
.NET you can write code in C++ (which very few folks developing for .net do) and you take the risk of stupid mistakes.
.NET, though .NET makes it a bit easier with plenty of warnings.
In
B:
In Java you can write code that harms a computer and deletes files.
A:
You can write code in C#, in which case it is managed and helps prevent you from making stupid mistakes.
B:
You can write code in Java in which case it is somewhat managed and helps prevent you from stupid mistakes.
A:
Under
B:
Under Java you read Sun's document on "Integrating Native Methods into Java Programs" and write you code in C++ in which case you run risks of stupid mistakes
I fail to see the point of this article. Developers can write imperfect code if they want to. This is true in Java and
OK,
I'm a long time slashdot user with plenty of karma and I normally don't post this type of stuff.
Roland Piquepaille has been submitting warmed over articles that link to his blog for ages now, and an INCREDIBLE number of them get posted. The usual suspects are timothy and michael (two of the weaker slashdot editors in my opinion).
The details of all of this I'll leave to others that care more, but it'd be nice to see slashdot get a grip on this. Worth a laugh at this point though.
Assume you have a superior tech, but only a few providers can use it. So you have better tech, but it's only in 40% of possible cell sites.
Then you have the inferior tech, but it is in 80% of possible cell sites. The perceived performance of the inferior tech starts to look pretty good.
CDMA is technically superior, but GSM has got something like a million users. Worldwide, if you traveled, you would likely be able to use your same GSM phone in Europe, but your CDMA phone wouldn't get much coverage.
Some interesting lessons here in standards one pays for.
You'll all remember the cell phone wars. While the rest of world used GSM, american carriers, looking for a competitive advantage and patent royalities, and certainly unwilling to pay royalties to their competitors, got going with CDMA and TDMA to name a few of the schemes. While technically superior perhaps, one ends up with a fragemented market. What's interesting to see is the recent moves to GSM even in the US.
Memory cards, the same thing. If there was a true, open standard without payments (but with optional certification) a la USB, I don't think you'd see the number of flash memory formats poping up that we have been. Instead, sony pulled another ATRAC stunt with their memory stick, and other manufacturers and devices developers played in their own camps.
Short term gain for long term pain, my computer must have 5 or six slots for flash memory!
Here's the Ahha moment for USB (after the HCI/OHCI stuff). "On the second version of USB, we looked at how we could learn from the first round, and we decided that it was better for the industry for there to be one spec that was available to everybody," said Jason Ziller, an Intel technology initiatives manager.
I think you are bit naive with your focus on the RIAA needing to avoid anti-trust issues.
Though it really would have been nice had Apple not caved on the issue. Had Apple said we want to sell MP3s, period. I'd have loved to see the RIAA hang on anti-trust conspiracy, for imposing a Windows only market, and for abusing their copyright monopoly to control formats.
If apple said we want to sell MP3's, then Microsoft / Real etc simply sell WMA or other DRM protected music on the Mac platform. End result? NO itunes music store, and NO "anti-trust conspiracy" charged.
I love folks complaining about "crippled" iTunes songs.
They forget that Apple has SET THE STANDARD for sensible DRM that is reasonable for the consumer.
I've been around a long time, and have seen plenty of stupid stuff. Divx (in the DVD space) moved things back, lawsuits and claims about the mp3 format itself, a joke.
But I've also got a sense of history. Before apple came along legal online music was GHASTLY.
You think iTunes is "laden" and "crippled" with DRM? People have forgotten that before apple came along there was a fragmented music space with DRM that meant you couldn't move songs between computers, burn them to CD's, and stores run by companies that were no fun to do business with. Subs, if you canceled, your music vanished.
For most folks, fairplay is actually fair. Most people don't end up playing on more then five computers. Unlimited burns of a song, and seven burns of a specific CD are reasonably fair. The authorization process isn't terribly painful.
Remember, the RIAA used to claim on their dumb soundbyting site that making a tape copy of a CD was copyright infringment. And they were probably right, it was.
The one big issues with iTunes are lack of open source support (tricky, but they should do better here) and the lock-in to iPods as the portable music player for the service. The issue is that software needs to provide the DRM. Luckily for apple they've got a reasonable ipod product. This lockin will have to evolve though of course, open source and linux are not supported so far.
But from a DRM perspective, they really moved the industry forward. If the media companies had their way we'd be stuck with Sony's ATRAC format.
So, complaints and props to apple.
There is a big difference between the IBM and SUN patent pledges.
:) Fun stuff though, and I think pragmatism will win the day if there good stuff is delivered.
IBM listed a broad range of software licenses, importantly including the GPL, which means linux is covered.
Sun's license so far is limited to Solaris, or at least it looks that way, where they have contributed code under the CDDL. This means if you take a method (or read about a method) that they use in Solaris and apply it elsewhere you can still get slammed.
Not a black and white issue though, as the discerning reader will note that the GPL has not patent clause at all, so the CDDL is stronger in one sense there. Not sure if Linux is any worse off.
But it will be interesting to see how Solaris comes out as open source, incredibly it has gotten to this point for those who remember the Sun of the past (and even some of the current ranting). Losing market share is an incredible motivator it seems
There is an irony here.
RIM was the first out the gate with patent lawsuits against just about everyone. (Palm, Handspring, even MS etc). For a company that tried to shut down its competitors using patent litigation, there is a certain irony here. A taste of their own medicene perhaps?
When Redhat first started up Fedora (to much noise everywhere) I spent a fair amount of time poking around with an eye towards getting involved.
In particular, for folks creating their own internal RPM's for packages (for a long time php-devel was not packaged for example), the idea of being able to mainline packages was very appealing, and similar to other open projects (gentoo though debian etc).
But going to the site, nothing like this was there. Pretty dissapointing. In other words, it was existing bug reporting every distro and many commercial packages have plus some marketing (this omits other things that were offered, but was my feeling at the time).
Finally, it looks like they will be making some efforts to really create an enviroment folks are able to contribute in. A shame they weren't able to harness the initial energy and interest, but these are the right types of moves, though coming a little late perhaps.
Also useful to note that a fair number of places showed up filling in gaps in redhat's offering. Freshrpms and friends come to mind for example. But with some more creativity I think redhat could have really put together something exciting.
The results are in sooner then I expected.
.. or an unfair business practice, trade disparagement, trade libel ...".
Here is the copy of the legal document where Infinium admits that the article "does not constitute unfair competition under
I want to be crystal clear here. Fondue commented "Well, it's not exactly ambiguous that Infinium were libelled [sic] - it should be obvious to all but the most credulous observer...". Fondue is flat out wrong.
The rest of their rant is similarly misguided.
I don't automatically assume. I've made a reasoned judement call, one I suspect which is far more accurate then yours.
No matter, bookmark this comment, and come back in a year or two. I think you will find infinium singularly unsuccessful in their litigation for $20 million. And if you're willing to put some cash in place of your opinions and insults, happy to do that as well.
And stop with the red herrings as well. No one has said anything about needing to be rich or swinging millions in marketing.
Not one to normally go the activist route, but in this case felt like throwing my hat in the ring.
Probably older then you are if I don't miss my guess given the personal nature of your attacks.
The questions is whether Infinium was really libeled or if they are simply trying to use the legal system to threaten someone publishing accurate information that is unflattering. Given the cases cost money, this is the old SLAPP lawsuit type stuff all over again.
What's interesting is that in this case, we'll get to see how the case ends up. You willing to put your money where your mouth is and bet on the outcoming? Given my "pre-formed opinion from puerile comic strips" you should be able to make easy money.
There are bogus lawsuits in this world, to think otherwise is incredibly naive. Until you've paid some attention to the way litigation works (from slip and falls / union disability claims / slapp style suits) and the costs in the system I'd hold your comments.