NTP simply wants RIM to give them a big cut out of the worldwide sales of Blackberries, for a patent that they hold in the US. It's extortion, pure and simple.
If I were the President of RIM, I would bankrupt the company, right after cutting off every single Blackberry account worldwide, just to spite the US, which (I would guess) has most of the users of the Blackberry. I'd make them regret allowing a company, whose only asset is IP, to be able to do this.
The Patent system is completely broken, and unless something like this happens, nothing will ever be done to fix it.
But the Microsoft chairman on Tuesday said his company remains the overall industry leader, and he compared the current rivalries to legendary ones with Lotus, Novell and WordPerfect -- situations in which the Redmond company ultimately overcame steep odds to prevail.
Situations in where Microsoft was allowed to do whatever the hell they pleased (secret API calls, exclusionary contracts, aggressive hiring, etc) to stomp these other companies out of existence. This is not the case today. If they do some of the incredibly underhanded and (what are now considered) illegal things, they'll end up back in court with preliminary injunctions thrown at them so fast they won't know what hit them.
On top of all that, you have users who are becoming more and more unhappy with Microsoft's software. I see it more and more every day - users who will shun MSN Messenger for Yahoo! Messenger, Outlook Express for GMail, Open Office for MS Office, and even Windows for Mac OS X (I did, you should too;-)).
You better believe it's a different world, Bill, or you're going to have a rude awakening.
American workers are lazy. And creative. I think it takes one to drive the other. I for one will spend 2 hours creating a script to do something for me in an automated fashion that takes me 5 minutes to do manually, just so that I don't have to do it manually any more!
What's creative about it is that what I learn from writing the script can be used in other places, and I can spend some time later trying to find better ways to be even more lazy in the future:-)
I have a Dell workstation (dual Xeon, 2GB of RAM, RAID0, etc) that is less than 1 year old running Windows XP SP2. I booted it up this morning and the "press ctrl-alt-del" window didn't look right -- it looked flat and had a white frame -- it isn't even supposed to have a frame at all!
So viewing this as "just" a visual "glitch", I tried to log in. I gave it the 3 finger salute and received the (also flat and white framed) login window. After entering my credentials, it tried to log in. 15 minutes later it was STILL trying to log in!
I eventually tried to shut it down, but nothing would work... so I had to turn the computer off.
At home, I've had my PowerMac G5 for almost 2 years and I've had 0 problems with it. No weird "visual glitches", no instances of not being able to log in, nothing. And it's not just a workstation -- it hosts mail, file, print, and web servers as well... which have also been extremely solid and perform very well. And no, this is not Mac OS X "Server"... it's just the workstation version of Tiger. It runs 24/7 while my Dell workstation is turned off every night.
As far as Microsoft goes, respect must be earned. I have no respect for a company that operates as illegally and reprehensibly as they do.
So I call BULLSHIT, Mr. Dubey. Windows is STILL buggy, the Mac is not only far more stable, but also far more capable.
What am I doing? Voting. I voted for the people that vowed to get us the hell out of Iraq, and didn't support the war before it started. I voted for the people who believe in level-headed negotiations to resolve differences. For the people who would be honest with me. It's really the only thing I can do, considering that I have to support my wife and child, and I don't want to die at the hands of some insurgent's blade.
We attacked Iraq pre-emptively, which China has now taken to heart and vowed to do if we clash with them over Taiwan. They've vowed to "nuke hundreds of American cities, pre-emptively if they feel it necessary", according to Zhu Chenghu, a high ranking general in the Chinese army. They are not stupid, they know that the rest of the world now sees America as a violent, bullying nation, and they know that if they nuked us they'd be no less in the wrong than we are now. This is Bush's fault, pure and simple. And if you haven't been paying attention, Bush is a brutal, murdering, torturing president, who is suppressing/oppressing American civilians. The only difference from a dictator is that he'll be replaced by another brutal, murdering, torturing president, who will be suppressing/oppressing American civilians in 2008. 51% of the American people have spoken, and they value oppression of gays and the killing of foreign citizens over level headed negotiations and honesty.
Fortunately for my soul, I am part of the 49% minority who believe that we should be better than this.
The problem is that large amount of Americans don't care about the innocent civillians that get killed by all their wars, as long as they are not American.
*thwack* Right on the nail's head. Very well said. Send 1700 soldiers back from Iraq in body bags and Americans get all bent out of shape - the government knows this and quietly supressed the display of all of the flag draped coffins from mass media (and they say the media is "free" here... what a crock). But put 25,000 Iraqis in their graves and Americans sit in their lazy boy's and go "*tsk tsk*, what a shame" quickly followed by "What's on TV tonight, honey?"
What really gets me is that in a few years some other super power (likely China) will nuke the shit out of America and Americans will look all indignant and wonder "why?".
All they have to do is look at what we're doing right now to know exactly why. But hey, if it's not on American Idiot^H^H^Hol, most Americans don't know that it's even happening... and that's the way the current administration likes it.
America is violent, barbaric, and 2 minutes out of the stone age.
It makes me wonder who is more barbaric: Sadam for torturing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians or Bush for torturing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Unfortunately, show me a country that doesn't rely on war to keep the peace and I'll show you a country that is ripe for the taking by one that does.
Yeah, those pesky Macs can sure light up a discussion board! Why, just last night I caught my PowerMac G5 posting some flamebait on WinSuperSite.com... for shame! Bad Mac!
If you have a PC that is infested with Viruses and Spyware, take it to the nearest Apple Store and buy a new Macintosh to replace it. The gurus at the "Genius Bar" (not kidding, that's what it's called) will help you (for free) move your documents to your new Mac -- leaving the spyware and viruses behind, of course.
We need a hundred of these types of losses -- where patents directly affect the public. Let the public get comfortable using a very necessary and nice technology, and then let some crappy company come out of nowhere and extort their way into an injunction and removal of the widget from the marketplace. The company (RIM in this case) should then perform a recall on all devices that infringe on that patent - notifying the users of their equipment exactly WHY they are being forced to give up their Blackberries.
Then we'll see how long it takes to reform the patent system!
As a long time Mac developer, originally as a hobbyist and then a professional, I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies
You are extremely lucky to be developing Mac applications for a living. I envy you.
Apple is still going to be making incredibly well designed computers. They'll still be named "Macintosh". The Macintosh will still have a great looking case. The OS will still be called "Mac OS X" and will have code names based off of large cats. What will change is that the CPU inside the Macintosh will be named something else. That's it. You will still have to buy it from Apple, and you will not be able to put your Mac OS X installation DVD into a Dell or Gateway PC and expect it to install. Hackers may come up with a way, but it will be unsupported, since anyone who installs the OS onto a non-Apple certified machine will be breaking their license agreement. No company in their right mind will run PCs with a hacked OS X installed -- they'll just buy Macintosh computers and be done with it... and they'll be better off for it as well.
So program away, and feel good about yourself, you are doing what others only wish that they could do.
Unless Apple opens up "Mac OSX" to be "PC OSX", there will be no affect at all to Linux... other than being ported to another platform on which to run it instead of the intended OS.
It's not official until Steve Jobs casts his distortion field over the WWDC attendees on Monday and tries to explain to them why going with the Itanic is a good idea.
AMD would have been a MUCH better partner, IMHO, as Apple will be "just another partner" to Intel, and the center of attention at AMD.
Anyways, Apple needs to stop complaining about chip problems and fix their P.O.S. kernel. Did you see the benchmarks from this article?
So now the RIAA will have to not only subpoena the names of the people sharing files, but the actual logs of the ISPs to be able to prove that someone actually downloaded the file.
How likely are the RIAA to get these logs? Do the ISPs by law have to keep these logs?
I decided to byte the bullet, so to speak, and went to the site. The widget did automagically download, but because I run Speed Download 3, it was simply placed in my download folder.
I don't work or have any affiliation with yazsoft (whoever they are, heh), but I can tell you that if you are running a Mac on a broadband connection, this is MUST HAVE SOFTWARE! I have a fast download connection to the 'net via Time Warner Cable and Earthlink, and I can max the line almost every time I download something (which is about 600KB/sec) with Speed Download 3. It's pretty cool.
So what you're saying here is that you don't like Apple because we're making your job obsolete?;-)
That's a pretty close interpretation, and yeah, I think Apple plans on making a lot of jobs obsolete. I feel that it's a good thing, as the technology that obsoletes 1 job opens the door for another one that is more interesting.
Who'd want to boot off of backup tapes and fix inittab, for cryin' out loud? I have better things to do with my time, and my employer should be pissed at me for botching that inittab in the first place;-)
If a company hires the developer (whether "lead developer" or not) of a project and that developer takes the GPL'd source code and creates a new closed source project out of it for this new company he works for, he can't distribute the new program without also adhering to the GPL... his program is based off of an older version of itself that contains GPL'd code.
I've actually been using the 3 finger interface for some time now. It involves 2 on the left hand, and 1 on the right hand, and is usually preceded by lots of swearing and gnashing of teeth, followed by long trips to the breakroom as the machine recovers from the swift but all too frequent action.
But hey, if Microsoft wants to reduce this to 1 or 2 thumbs, so be it. Who am I to argue with the great minds from Redmond?
Slashdot Mirror
NTP simply wants RIM to give them a big cut out of the worldwide sales of Blackberries, for a patent that they hold in the US. It's extortion, pure and simple.
If I were the President of RIM, I would bankrupt the company, right after cutting off every single Blackberry account worldwide, just to spite the US, which (I would guess) has most of the users of the Blackberry. I'd make them regret allowing a company, whose only asset is IP, to be able to do this.
The Patent system is completely broken, and unless something like this happens, nothing will ever be done to fix it.
But the Microsoft chairman on Tuesday said his company remains the overall industry leader, and he compared the current rivalries to legendary ones with Lotus, Novell and WordPerfect -- situations in which the Redmond company ultimately overcame steep odds to prevail.
;-)).
Situations in where Microsoft was allowed to do whatever the hell they pleased (secret API calls, exclusionary contracts, aggressive hiring, etc) to stomp these other companies out of existence. This is not the case today. If they do some of the incredibly underhanded and (what are now considered) illegal things, they'll end up back in court with preliminary injunctions thrown at them so fast they won't know what hit them.
On top of all that, you have users who are becoming more and more unhappy with Microsoft's software. I see it more and more every day - users who will shun MSN Messenger for Yahoo! Messenger, Outlook Express for GMail, Open Office for MS Office, and even Windows for Mac OS X (I did, you should too
You better believe it's a different world, Bill, or you're going to have a rude awakening.
American workers are lazy. And creative. I think it takes one to drive the other. I for one will spend 2 hours creating a script to do something for me in an automated fashion that takes me 5 minutes to do manually, just so that I don't have to do it manually any more!
:-)
What's creative about it is that what I learn from writing the script can be used in other places, and I can spend some time later trying to find better ways to be even more lazy in the future
I have a Dell workstation (dual Xeon, 2GB of RAM, RAID0, etc) that is less than 1 year old running Windows XP SP2. I booted it up this morning and the "press ctrl-alt-del" window didn't look right -- it looked flat and had a white frame -- it isn't even supposed to have a frame at all!
So viewing this as "just" a visual "glitch", I tried to log in. I gave it the 3 finger salute and received the (also flat and white framed) login window. After entering my credentials, it tried to log in. 15 minutes later it was STILL trying to log in!
I eventually tried to shut it down, but nothing would work... so I had to turn the computer off.
At home, I've had my PowerMac G5 for almost 2 years and I've had 0 problems with it. No weird "visual glitches", no instances of not being able to log in, nothing. And it's not just a workstation -- it hosts mail, file, print, and web servers as well... which have also been extremely solid and perform very well. And no, this is not Mac OS X "Server"... it's just the workstation version of Tiger. It runs 24/7 while my Dell workstation is turned off every night.
As far as Microsoft goes, respect must be earned. I have no respect for a company that operates as illegally and reprehensibly as they do.
So I call BULLSHIT, Mr. Dubey. Windows is STILL buggy, the Mac is not only far more stable, but also far more capable.
What am I doing? Voting. I voted for the people that vowed to get us the hell out of Iraq, and didn't support the war before it started. I voted for the people who believe in level-headed negotiations to resolve differences. For the people who would be honest with me. It's really the only thing I can do, considering that I have to support my wife and child, and I don't want to die at the hands of some insurgent's blade.
We attacked Iraq pre-emptively, which China has now taken to heart and vowed to do if we clash with them over Taiwan. They've vowed to "nuke hundreds of American cities, pre-emptively if they feel it necessary", according to Zhu Chenghu, a high ranking general in the Chinese army. They are not stupid, they know that the rest of the world now sees America as a violent, bullying nation, and they know that if they nuked us they'd be no less in the wrong than we are now. This is Bush's fault, pure and simple. And if you haven't been paying attention, Bush is a brutal, murdering, torturing president, who is suppressing/oppressing American civilians. The only difference from a dictator is that he'll be replaced by another brutal, murdering, torturing president, who will be suppressing/oppressing American civilians in 2008. 51% of the American people have spoken, and they value oppression of gays and the killing of foreign citizens over level headed negotiations and honesty.
Fortunately for my soul, I am part of the 49% minority who believe that we should be better than this.
Offtopic or not, here I go! :-)
The problem is that large amount of Americans don't care about the innocent civillians that get killed by all their wars, as long as they are not American.
*thwack* Right on the nail's head. Very well said. Send 1700 soldiers back from Iraq in body bags and Americans get all bent out of shape - the government knows this and quietly supressed the display of all of the flag draped coffins from mass media (and they say the media is "free" here... what a crock). But put 25,000 Iraqis in their graves and Americans sit in their lazy boy's and go "*tsk tsk*, what a shame" quickly followed by "What's on TV tonight, honey?"
What really gets me is that in a few years some other super power (likely China) will nuke the shit out of America and Americans will look all indignant and wonder "why?".
All they have to do is look at what we're doing right now to know exactly why. But hey, if it's not on American Idiot^H^H^Hol, most Americans don't know that it's even happening... and that's the way the current administration likes it.
America is violent, barbaric, and 2 minutes out of the stone age.
It makes me wonder who is more barbaric: Sadam for torturing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians or Bush for torturing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Unfortunately, show me a country that doesn't rely on war to keep the peace and I'll show you a country that is ripe for the taking by one that does.
I guess this means that the hunter doesn't like to become the hunted. Somehow, I don't feel sorry for them.
Yeah, those pesky Macs can sure light up a discussion board! Why, just last night I caught my PowerMac G5 posting some flamebait on WinSuperSite.com... for shame! Bad Mac!
If you have a PC that is infested with Viruses and Spyware, take it to the nearest Apple Store and buy a new Macintosh to replace it. The gurus at the "Genius Bar" (not kidding, that's what it's called) will help you (for free) move your documents to your new Mac -- leaving the spyware and viruses behind, of course.
Wow, so you're the 1.
Buy a lottery ticket.
Ok! That's it! You're fired!
The video was well done, but really lacking actual information.
I think that was the point -- so was the WWDC!
64bit? Dunno.
Comparable speed? Dunno.
Steve should have been more forthcoming.
We need a hundred of these types of losses -- where patents directly affect the public. Let the public get comfortable using a very necessary and nice technology, and then let some crappy company come out of nowhere and extort their way into an injunction and removal of the widget from the marketplace. The company (RIM in this case) should then perform a recall on all devices that infringe on that patent - notifying the users of their equipment exactly WHY they are being forced to give up their Blackberries.
Then we'll see how long it takes to reform the patent system!
As a long time Mac developer, originally as a hobbyist and then a professional, I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies
You are extremely lucky to be developing Mac applications for a living. I envy you.
Apple is still going to be making incredibly well designed computers. They'll still be named "Macintosh". The Macintosh will still have a great looking case. The OS will still be called "Mac OS X" and will have code names based off of large cats. What will change is that the CPU inside the Macintosh will be named something else. That's it. You will still have to buy it from Apple, and you will not be able to put your Mac OS X installation DVD into a Dell or Gateway PC and expect it to install. Hackers may come up with a way, but it will be unsupported, since anyone who installs the OS onto a non-Apple certified machine will be breaking their license agreement. No company in their right mind will run PCs with a hacked OS X installed -- they'll just buy Macintosh computers and be done with it... and they'll be better off for it as well.
So program away, and feel good about yourself, you are doing what others only wish that they could do.
Unless Apple opens up "Mac OSX" to be "PC OSX", there will be no affect at all to Linux... other than being ported to another platform on which to run it instead of the intended OS.
It's not official until Steve Jobs casts his distortion field over the WWDC attendees on Monday and tries to explain to them why going with the Itanic is a good idea.
AMD would have been a MUCH better partner, IMHO, as Apple will be "just another partner" to Intel, and the center of attention at AMD.
Anyways, Apple needs to stop complaining about chip problems and fix their P.O.S. kernel. Did you see the benchmarks from this article?
Good Lord does OS X suck as a server.
So now the RIAA will have to not only subpoena the names of the people sharing files, but the actual logs of the ISPs to be able to prove that someone actually downloaded the file.
How likely are the RIAA to get these logs? Do the ISPs by law have to keep these logs?
I decided to byte the bullet, so to speak, and went to the site. The widget did automagically download, but because I run Speed Download 3, it was simply placed in my download folder.
I don't work or have any affiliation with yazsoft (whoever they are, heh), but I can tell you that if you are running a Mac on a broadband connection, this is MUST HAVE SOFTWARE! I have a fast download connection to the 'net via Time Warner Cable and Earthlink, and I can max the line almost every time I download something (which is about 600KB/sec) with Speed Download 3. It's pretty cool.
So what you're saying here is that you don't like Apple because we're making your job obsolete? ;-)
;-)
That's a pretty close interpretation, and yeah, I think Apple plans on making a lot of jobs obsolete. I feel that it's a good thing, as the technology that obsoletes 1 job opens the door for another one that is more interesting.
Who'd want to boot off of backup tapes and fix inittab, for cryin' out loud? I have better things to do with my time, and my employer should be pissed at me for botching that inittab in the first place
I knew something didn't smell right about what I was saying, but to my sleep deprived, caffeine riddled mind, it made perfect sense ;-)
Thanks for the clarification!
-Steven
If a company hires the developer (whether "lead developer" or not) of a project and that developer takes the GPL'd source code and creates a new closed source project out of it for this new company he works for, he can't distribute the new program without also adhering to the GPL... his program is based off of an older version of itself that contains GPL'd code.
Isn't that correct?
Here is some prior art, in case Microsoft moves to patent such a terrific idea....
I've actually been using the 3 finger interface for some time now. It involves 2 on the left hand, and 1 on the right hand, and is usually preceded by lots of swearing and gnashing of teeth, followed by long trips to the breakroom as the machine recovers from the swift but all too frequent action.
But hey, if Microsoft wants to reduce this to 1 or 2 thumbs, so be it. Who am I to argue with the great minds from Redmond?
I laughed so hard at this I almost wet myself.
Good job!
-Steven