yeah but you could fork it and build an entire OS around it(WebOS) or you could fork it and base your supposedly open mobile OS's browser on it.
Linus said recently that open to him wasn't that hardware was open, but you could run out and build your own thing that did what you wanted with the software provided. I couldn't believe it when Linus was basically praising the Apple mindset towards open source.
Contrast Apple open sourcing darwin and webkit over Andy Rubin flipping 180 and saying, "If you want the source for Honeycomb, please ask nicely."
well, my code worked, it wasn't the most elegant or efficient code, but we needed it now, now, now and now.
I can do fast(produced quickly that is; I'm pretty sure that while my code wasn't completely inelegant, I know of lots of cases where I took short cuts just to save my own ass and make deadlines), tested and cheap, what made me feel like some sense of scale was lost was when we were held to the same standards our internal ticketing system that tracked everything from cancellations to field maintenance work was held to. While I don't mind having my shoulder checked over, After IT's structural changes occurred, I'd be spending twice the time i spent coding wrangling our change management process. I'd write a module, be done an hour after lunch and spend the next day and a half tracking down approvals so I could deploy it live.
I was lucky in that the area i worked in was pretty much creatively free form and I had a lot of control over how projects went. I feel that there are different levels of impact work can have in software. If you're writing the back end handler for say, the online ordering management system that ties into the CRM and spits tickets out all over, sure, let's make sure that there's a lot of red tape there to make sure nothing breaks. This breaks, entire business work flow goes POOF.
But if you were doing the junior level shit i was doing, like writing or enhancing a CMS built for a handful of users where, the worst case scenario is that you're spending the next hour chain smoking while waiting for a tar ball to unroll while restoring a DB dump taken prior to roll out late at night when the user load is down to zilch.
I didn't mind having to abide by a process, but my point was, I felt like scale was being lost. Mine wasn't the only team that had this same complaint.
For instance our database access policies when we were integrated into the larger IT infrastructure was the same as the guys who were dealing with PCIDSS data, and we were held to the same standards, so I couldn't just log in and just run a few simple reports. In our working environment management constantly demanded new and ever changing reporting. Usually a one off data pull to prove some point in a powerpoint slide. Having to say, "this is going to take three weeks because the guy who IT operations trusts with DB access is currently so swamped he's not going to see the light of day until well after the sun has burnt out and turned into a lump of coal roughly the size of a golf ball" to a manger who needed that data 2 hours from now wasn't acceptable.
I worked basically in the skunkworks for an ISP's call center. We developed the CMS that handled all of our policy and procedure documentation, we developed neat tools that interacted with our IVR for outages, displayed coverage maps with said outage data, and various little tools here and there.
When we started, we weren't bound by our IT department's change management process. As our tools grew and as their usefulness permeated our business, we started to get noticed and before we knew it, we were being held to the same standards for process as teams who developed tools like our CRM and our internal ticketing system.
The whole point of our skunkworks was to be nimble, efficient, and effective on smaller projects those teams didn't have the ability to take on due to commitment to other projects. Yet, as IT's demands for compliance grew, all of our advantages went away. Soon, i found myself having to answer, "Why is late?" and invariably the answer would be, "Oh, it's held up by IT's Process. It'll be three weeks." Managers weren't happy. I REALLY wasn't happy and stressed and my user base wasn't happy either(Although my user base had a certain degree more sympathy than management did).
It sucked the life and effectiveness out of our team.
When layoff time came a month ago, on paper, we looked like were banging rocks together, and bunch of us were laid off, with those teams that didn't have the time or resources to build these tools in the first place having to absorb yet more work.
(note: I didn't mind the particular IT policies, they made sense, but, I felt like a sense of scale was lost when it came to our projects. Oh well.)
I mean, the joystick as an input device, not joypad, joystick, has evolved significantly.
From leaf switches, to microswitches, then branching off between Euro style joysticks(Suzo brand), American style(Happ brand), Korean(Crown, etc), Japanese(Sanwa brand, etc)... then optical, then hall effect, inductive...
Not only that but hardy arcade quality parts are now showing up in Consumer goods! Finally!
Yeah, but for most people there are pretty practical reasons why they don't host their own services, and that's why they go running off to the Government to try to get some redress for their grievances.
You're not signing your rights away, you never had rights to begin with. You have no right to post on slashdot, you have no right to post on Gawker, tumblr, facebook, twitter, xanga, livejournal or bash.org. You're allowed the use of those services, but right? No.
I'm all for legislation stating that if EULAs that are double binding. You give your personal data over to some entity, they have to protect it, and your user details.
A show like the daily show attracts millions per episode in advertising revenue. Jon's not only the host, he's also the head writer and executive producer. You don't think the guy who's sticking his neck out 4 nights a week doesn't deserve a nice slice of that? Jeez. What a tightwad. Who else should get that money? Executives at Viacom who had nothing to do with the show other than not cancel it that particular week? Guys who would consider guys like Jon and Stephen, "Fly over people?" Give me a break.
My whole point here is, is that even if the costs are low, for Netflix it makes very little sense for them to bear not only the costs but the force of effort to produce content, because that is a huge effort. Not just producing the film, but also running the scripts through legal, getting MPAA rating, getting the film into the hands of a distributor, etc.
Besides, if you've got a film that's going to gross $100 million over it's life time, why not throw a little bit more coin to the actors, unions, directors, producers, cinematographers, etc?
Besides, Bruce Willis is a pretty bad example. Kevin Smith is one of many who've got really bad shit to say about guys like Bruce.
On the other end, if you're a good guy and a decent director, you could get talent like Matt Damon and pay them scale when in other films they'd be pulling bigger numbers just to work with you(Again, Kevin Smith's Dogma is a testament to this; huge names, all working for scale; most of whom have worked with him since or said good things about him).
So? I don't care where you've worked. Experts are wrong ALL THE TIME. Experts with years of experience were on the Deep Water Horizon rig.
Even if you get the average budget down from let's say $20 million to $500k, that's still a lot of money, and you're still not addressing the point that putting together a film or a tv show is still hard work for the production team. Sure the software and hardware might be easier to come by, but that still doesn't eliminate all of that hard creative stuff. You know, writing, directing, acting, cinematography, sound, scoring...
For the Disney crowd, "accidentally broken" is probably an inevitability, not a conspiracy theory.
Given that most adult Disney fans tend to be collectors, those grabbing older Disney discs from Netflix are probably trying to satiate children on long trips, etc.
You do know that there are many other costs that go into making a film other than the actors right? The reason why actors get paid so much is that compared to the rest of the production, their outlays are pretty small.
That still doesn't make the production any less difficult either. You make it sound like you could just throw a couple of decent cameras out there, shoot for a few hours in a few weeks and have a film.
It's not that simple. Takes, retakes, edits, filming permits, taxes, etc.
Sure, the industry needs a shakeup, but it's not in production values, and the current way that films are produced isn't wrong either; it's that what gets green lit needs to change.
It's not the talent, it's the camera crews, it's the writing, the production, the locations, the permits, etc.
I know there are lots of wonderful films that are made for relatively cheap, but that doesn't mean that it's still not cheap AND the production aspect is still a huge pain in the ass.
Netflix is producing their own new content, but it's not on the scale of competition against Comcast compared to what Viacom's putting out.
this isn't about bandwidth and network caps, this is about challenging cable companies where they're most visible.
Cable TV and TV content.
He's right in not going after cable companies in the content field. After all, they and satellite companies are basically subsidizing the content creation with their dues to cable channels(Well, in Comcast's case, they outright own a lot of channels).
Sure, Netflix is venturing into new content, but, I'm pretty sure Comcast isn't seeing that as big of a threat as say, Viacom, who are producing way more shows and run many channels that show up in traditional retail markets.
Plus, even with Netflix's own content, they're not doing live content like news or sports either.
Basically instead of having to produce content he's letting cable companies pay up front so cable and network channels produce content and he reaps the benefits later on when the DVDs ship.
Producing content is an expensive and painful business. Why fight the guys who are in essence subsidizing his business plan?
Forgive the line numbers, I grabbed it from the webkit Trac
Here's the license.
1 2 Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. 3 4 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6 are met: 7 8 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 9 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 10 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 11 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 12 documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 13 3. Neither the name of Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") nor the names of 14 its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived 15 from this software without specific prior written permission. 16 17 THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY APPLE AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY 18 EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED 19 WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE 20 DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL APPLE OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY 21 DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES 22 (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; 23 LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND 24 ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT 25 (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF 26 THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 27 28
In other words, "We'll release the source when we're damn well good and ready."
Good list. Most of it I agree with or see why that particular title was chosen. Happy that MGS showed up twice.
However, I really wish they consulted some sort of gaming history expert. Or even a big name enthusiast. The lack of Street Fighter 2 or beatmania on that list makes me sad somehow.
My last job was as a JavaScript/php dev for a call center. We needed to have work flow scripting and now.
Another team got tasked with doing it visually.
I got tasked with having it done now.
Guess who's still working on their solution?
The problem is the tasks themselves aren't that simple. When we broke down some of our more common calls, the resulting prototyped visios turned horribly complicated.
Apple is one of the, if not THE richest tech companies out there, shipping millions upon millions of units and one of the most profitable OEMs out there. In fact, iPhone sales year over year grew 110%.
I want to fail like that.
The iPhone isn't a failure. Tech geeks need to realize that being #1 isn't everything. Being market leader is. Apple puts out touch screen based phone, market shifts in that direction. Apple puts out touch screen based tablet, market shifts in that direction.
Apple's leading the industry. Not Nokia, not HTC, not Google.
Linus' specialty is in managing the kernel development process, not the finer points of English. Besides, I think everyday everyone gets confused with the finer lines between ethics, morals and character. if we didn't, we wouldn't be human.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah but you could fork it and build an entire OS around it(WebOS) or you could fork it and base your supposedly open mobile OS's browser on it.
Linus said recently that open to him wasn't that hardware was open, but you could run out and build your own thing that did what you wanted with the software provided. I couldn't believe it when Linus was basically praising the Apple mindset towards open source.
Contrast Apple open sourcing darwin and webkit over Andy Rubin flipping 180 and saying, "If you want the source for Honeycomb, please ask nicely."
Apple makes good on their open source promise.
I guess this is what they mean when they say Android is open and Apple is closed.
well, my code worked, it wasn't the most elegant or efficient code, but we needed it now, now, now and now.
I can do fast(produced quickly that is; I'm pretty sure that while my code wasn't completely inelegant, I know of lots of cases where I took short cuts just to save my own ass and make deadlines), tested and cheap, what made me feel like some sense of scale was lost was when we were held to the same standards our internal ticketing system that tracked everything from cancellations to field maintenance work was held to. While I don't mind having my shoulder checked over, After IT's structural changes occurred, I'd be spending twice the time i spent coding wrangling our change management process. I'd write a module, be done an hour after lunch and spend the next day and a half tracking down approvals so I could deploy it live.
I was lucky in that the area i worked in was pretty much creatively free form and I had a lot of control over how projects went. I feel that there are different levels of impact work can have in software. If you're writing the back end handler for say, the online ordering management system that ties into the CRM and spits tickets out all over, sure, let's make sure that there's a lot of red tape there to make sure nothing breaks. This breaks, entire business work flow goes POOF.
But if you were doing the junior level shit i was doing, like writing or enhancing a CMS built for a handful of users where, the worst case scenario is that you're spending the next hour chain smoking while waiting for a tar ball to unroll while restoring a DB dump taken prior to roll out late at night when the user load is down to zilch.
I didn't mind having to abide by a process, but my point was, I felt like scale was being lost. Mine wasn't the only team that had this same complaint.
For instance our database access policies when we were integrated into the larger IT infrastructure was the same as the guys who were dealing with PCIDSS data, and we were held to the same standards, so I couldn't just log in and just run a few simple reports. In our working environment management constantly demanded new and ever changing reporting. Usually a one off data pull to prove some point in a powerpoint slide. Having to say, "this is going to take three weeks because the guy who IT operations trusts with DB access is currently so swamped he's not going to see the light of day until well after the sun has burnt out and turned into a lump of coal roughly the size of a golf ball" to a manger who needed that data 2 hours from now wasn't acceptable.
My thoughts exactly.
I worked basically in the skunkworks for an ISP's call center. We developed the CMS that handled all of our policy and procedure documentation, we developed neat tools that interacted with our IVR for outages, displayed coverage maps with said outage data, and various little tools here and there.
When we started, we weren't bound by our IT department's change management process. As our tools grew and as their usefulness permeated our business, we started to get noticed and before we knew it, we were being held to the same standards for process as teams who developed tools like our CRM and our internal ticketing system.
The whole point of our skunkworks was to be nimble, efficient, and effective on smaller projects those teams didn't have the ability to take on due to commitment to other projects. Yet, as IT's demands for compliance grew, all of our advantages went away. Soon, i found myself having to answer, "Why is late?" and invariably the answer would be, "Oh, it's held up by IT's Process. It'll be three weeks." Managers weren't happy. I REALLY wasn't happy and stressed and my user base wasn't happy either(Although my user base had a certain degree more sympathy than management did).
It sucked the life and effectiveness out of our team.
When layoff time came a month ago, on paper, we looked like were banging rocks together, and bunch of us were laid off, with those teams that didn't have the time or resources to build these tools in the first place having to absorb yet more work.
(note: I didn't mind the particular IT policies, they made sense, but, I felt like a sense of scale was lost when it came to our projects. Oh well.)
I'd also say he left off some newer stuff too.
I mean, the joystick as an input device, not joypad, joystick, has evolved significantly.
From leaf switches, to microswitches, then branching off between Euro style joysticks(Suzo brand), American style(Happ brand), Korean(Crown, etc), Japanese(Sanwa brand, etc)... then optical, then hall effect, inductive...
Not only that but hardy arcade quality parts are now showing up in Consumer goods! Finally!
Yeah, but for most people there are pretty practical reasons why they don't host their own services, and that's why they go running off to the Government to try to get some redress for their grievances.
You're not signing your rights away, you never had rights to begin with. You have no right to post on slashdot, you have no right to post on Gawker, tumblr, facebook, twitter, xanga, livejournal or bash.org. You're allowed the use of those services, but right? No.
I'm all for legislation stating that if EULAs that are double binding. You give your personal data over to some entity, they have to protect it, and your user details.
Also, I'd hate to work for you ever.
A show like the daily show attracts millions per episode in advertising revenue. Jon's not only the host, he's also the head writer and executive producer. You don't think the guy who's sticking his neck out 4 nights a week doesn't deserve a nice slice of that? Jeez. What a tightwad. Who else should get that money? Executives at Viacom who had nothing to do with the show other than not cancel it that particular week? Guys who would consider guys like Jon and Stephen, "Fly over people?" Give me a break.
My whole point here is, is that even if the costs are low, for Netflix it makes very little sense for them to bear not only the costs but the force of effort to produce content, because that is a huge effort. Not just producing the film, but also running the scripts through legal, getting MPAA rating, getting the film into the hands of a distributor, etc.
Besides, if you've got a film that's going to gross $100 million over it's life time, why not throw a little bit more coin to the actors, unions, directors, producers, cinematographers, etc?
Besides, Bruce Willis is a pretty bad example. Kevin Smith is one of many who've got really bad shit to say about guys like Bruce.
On the other end, if you're a good guy and a decent director, you could get talent like Matt Damon and pay them scale when in other films they'd be pulling bigger numbers just to work with you(Again, Kevin Smith's Dogma is a testament to this; huge names, all working for scale; most of whom have worked with him since or said good things about him).
So? I don't care where you've worked. Experts are wrong ALL THE TIME. Experts with years of experience were on the Deep Water Horizon rig.
Even if you get the average budget down from let's say $20 million to $500k, that's still a lot of money, and you're still not addressing the point that putting together a film or a tv show is still hard work for the production team. Sure the software and hardware might be easier to come by, but that still doesn't eliminate all of that hard creative stuff. You know, writing, directing, acting, cinematography, sound, scoring...
For the Disney crowd, "accidentally broken" is probably an inevitability, not a conspiracy theory.
Given that most adult Disney fans tend to be collectors, those grabbing older Disney discs from Netflix are probably trying to satiate children on long trips, etc.
uh
You do know that there are many other costs that go into making a film other than the actors right? The reason why actors get paid so much is that compared to the rest of the production, their outlays are pretty small.
That still doesn't make the production any less difficult either. You make it sound like you could just throw a couple of decent cameras out there, shoot for a few hours in a few weeks and have a film.
It's not that simple. Takes, retakes, edits, filming permits, taxes, etc.
Sure, the industry needs a shakeup, but it's not in production values, and the current way that films are produced isn't wrong either; it's that what gets green lit needs to change.
It's not the talent, it's the camera crews, it's the writing, the production, the locations, the permits, etc.
I know there are lots of wonderful films that are made for relatively cheap, but that doesn't mean that it's still not cheap AND the production aspect is still a huge pain in the ass.
Netflix is producing their own new content, but it's not on the scale of competition against Comcast compared to what Viacom's putting out.
this isn't about bandwidth and network caps, this is about challenging cable companies where they're most visible.
Cable TV and TV content.
He's right in not going after cable companies in the content field. After all, they and satellite companies are basically subsidizing the content creation with their dues to cable channels(Well, in Comcast's case, they outright own a lot of channels).
Sure, Netflix is venturing into new content, but, I'm pretty sure Comcast isn't seeing that as big of a threat as say, Viacom, who are producing way more shows and run many channels that show up in traditional retail markets.
Plus, even with Netflix's own content, they're not doing live content like news or sports either.
Basically instead of having to produce content he's letting cable companies pay up front so cable and network channels produce content and he reaps the benefits later on when the DVDs ship.
Producing content is an expensive and painful business. Why fight the guys who are in essence subsidizing his business plan?
Forgive the line numbers, I grabbed it from the webkit Trac
Here's the license.
1
2 Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.
3
4 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
6 are met:
7
8 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
9 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
10 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
11 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
12 documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
13 3. Neither the name of Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") nor the names of
14 its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
15 from this software without specific prior written permission.
16
17 THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY APPLE AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY
18 EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
19 WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
20 DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL APPLE OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
21 DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
22 (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
23 LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
24 ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
25 (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
26 THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
27
28
In other words, "We'll release the source when we're damn well good and ready."
For a tiny integrated machine, it matters.
If you're running it headless and need it as small as possible, having the display double as something else is huge.
Good list. Most of it I agree with or see why that particular title was chosen. Happy that MGS showed up twice.
However, I really wish they consulted some sort of gaming history expert. Or even a big name enthusiast. The lack of Street Fighter 2 or beatmania on that list makes me sad somehow.
Well. I thought he was talking about character, which is what you are when no one's looking.
He may have applied the same standard to ethics. Which makes sense. Ethical systems are only valid to yourself.
My last job was as a JavaScript/php dev for a call center. We needed to have work flow scripting and now.
Another team got tasked with doing it visually.
I got tasked with having it done now.
Guess who's still working on their solution?
The problem is the tasks themselves aren't that simple. When we broke down some of our more common calls, the resulting prototyped visios turned horribly complicated.
Apple is one of the, if not THE richest tech companies out there, shipping millions upon millions of units and one of the most profitable OEMs out there. In fact, iPhone sales year over year grew 110%.
I want to fail like that.
The iPhone isn't a failure. Tech geeks need to realize that being #1 isn't everything. Being market leader is. Apple puts out touch screen based phone, market shifts in that direction. Apple puts out touch screen based tablet, market shifts in that direction.
Apple's leading the industry. Not Nokia, not HTC, not Google.
Apple.
Have you ever migrated a Mail.app mailbox from a 10.3 install to a 10.6 install? It works like a snap.
Linus' specialty is in managing the kernel development process, not the finer points of English. Besides, I think everyday everyone gets confused with the finer lines between ethics, morals and character. if we didn't, we wouldn't be human.
Unlike the grey beards, I think machine generated code producing crappy code is an engineering problem, not an inherent one.
By and large though, I don't think anyone is going to put in the raw effort it takes to produce good code. I mean for one job security...
What about prototyping?
Then again machine generated code generally sucks, necessitating a sane rewrite anyway.