HTC routinely violates the GPL by not releasing kernel source for their new phones until months after the hardware is released (and until big community pressure).
And they often don't release source for the drivers they ship linked to the kernel, ever.
When hundreds of tablets and "eReaders" are being released with Android, Busybox, and of course the Linux kernel itself in violation of the GPL by companies who disclaim responsibility for the devices they sell, why should we be surprised to see application developers doing the same?
Quite. I wrote to HTC asking for the source for the Bluetooth kernel drivers they shipped linked with the Linux kernel on my Android phone.
They replied that the drivers are proprietary, and source will not be released.
Seems pretty clearly a GPL violation to me, but since Linus has said he doesn't give a crap about such violations, I don't imagine anything will ever happen.
Apple can't lock down MacOS X even if they wanted to.
First, how do you develop apps for it?
In my hypothetical scenario, OS X Pro. Runs on Pro model Macs, costs $500. Regular Macs like most users buy have regular OS X, which is locked down.
Next issue, how does Apple keep a user from running these apps?
OS X Pro runs all apps no matter what the source. This also allows graphics professionals to carry on using Adobe CS apps even though they're not available from the App Store.
Finally, how does Apple prevent jailbreaking?
Using the new DRM hardware in the new Intel Sandy Bridge chipset.
But even if they can't completely prevent jailbreaking, they can still make it a pain in the ass, enough to stop most users from bothering. And you'd still be supporting that by buying a Mac, which is a deal-breaker for me.
It depends on what you mean by evil. I've been a Mac user since what feels like forever and I can definitly see that something have changed over the passed few years starting about the same time Apple started to become really popular.
I blame Steve Jobs. He always wanted the Mac to be a closed proprietary appliance, but the Mac wasn't his project at the start, and he was kicked out of Apple before his vision could dominate.
I've been a Mac user for 20+ years, but I absolutely refuse to give my financial support to iOS. It is the absolute antithesis of everything the Mac stands for. Closed, proprietary, non-interoperable, with a cryptic and non-discoverable UI. I want to see it die in a fire.
I still fear that Apple will start to boil the OS X frog. They have code signing and an app store in place. They have a warning dialog if you try to run software downloaded from anywhere else. They're clearly repositioning OS X server versus the regular version in Lion. My fear is that the regular version of Lion (or perhaps the version after it) will have lock-in, and you'll have to buy a $500 pro version with the server stuff in order to get an open Mac. If that happens, I'll shed a tear and jump ship to Linux.
The whole Y2K problem thing amazed me. It was obvious to me when I was a kid in school, yet so many people hadn't thought about the problem, even in the 1990s?
It's important to remember that when he did this, he was essentially fighting against the mandated monopoly on domain registration held by Network Solutions. At that time, the domain registration process had all the speed efficiency, charm, and conscientiousness as the DMV on a bad day.
Still does, if you get your domains from Network Solutions.
Hmm. We've got an old iPod classic with dock connector and touchwheel, a previous-generation Nano, and a shuffle. The Nano is OK, but the shuffle and the classic iPod both suck as far as audio output. Maybe I should consider getting a newer classic.
I just checked, and The Beatles catalog isn't available in lossless or 24 bit, let alone both. And I know the digital masters are available, because The Beatles USB Apple comes with 24 bit lossless audio. So I think Apple don't sell any lossless at present.
Lossless would pretty much eliminate my last reservations about buying music from the iTunes store. I've already bought albums from bleep.com in lossless format...
I don't own a dedicated portable music player, but it's hard for me to imagine that companies like Apple would use poor quality amps.
Depends what you mean by quality. The amp in an iPod may or may not have good linearity, frequency response and so on, but I know for sure that it's barely capable of driving a pair of headphones. Even with earbuds, you get a major improvement by using a headphone amp.
Apple also uses pretty wretched amps in their computers; you can get a major improvement from using an external USB audio interface.
Basically, anything beyond current iTMS quality is a waste of time if you're using raw iPod amplification or the built-in sound on a Mac.
Seems like you weren't in computing in the '90s. Without Steve, Apple was in pretty bad shape, and slowly working it's way towards irrelevance. Apple was losing ground to Wintel, the clones were on the market, and the company seemed to be fated to fade into a beige oblivion.
And yet... Apple's slide to irrelevance was a direct result of Steve Jobs, and his decision in 1985 not to license Mac OS, and to try to out-compete an entire industry.
Steve returned, and with him brought the iMac, OS X replaced the obsolete and horrible OS 9.
And yet... Steve's vision of computing, NeXT, had been a dismal failure. It wasn't until the Jobs vision was forced to engage again with the Apple reality he had left behind that OS X began to take form and become a success.
And then he repeated the exact same mistake he made with Mac OS, with the iPhone OS. Decided to try and out-compete an entire industry. Only this time he also decided to lock down the platform, intentionally cripple its functionality, and charge people royalties on all software sales. So I think that again, his arrogance will come back to hurt Apple.
The proper response to a Dr M attack is to grovel in fear, because even if he leaves, another Dr M might be created some day. The squid ending has the logical conclusion of forcing countries together to fight the outside enemy
So you're saying the changed ending wasn't exactly squid pro quo?
Amazon is so intent on opposing commoditization, that they stop authors from selling their work at low prices. I'm acquainted with an author who is trying to build some audience by not-quite-giving-away a couple of his novels at impulse-purchase prices on Kindle, but Amazon insists on selling his ebooks for a higher price.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I had no idea it was supposed to cost money either.
HTC routinely violates the GPL by not releasing kernel source for their new phones until months after the hardware is released (and until big community pressure).
And they often don't release source for the drivers they ship linked to the kernel, ever.
When hundreds of tablets and "eReaders" are being released with Android, Busybox, and of course the Linux kernel itself in violation of the GPL by companies who disclaim responsibility for the devices they sell, why should we be surprised to see application developers doing the same?
Quite. I wrote to HTC asking for the source for the Bluetooth kernel drivers they shipped linked with the Linux kernel on my Android phone.
They replied that the drivers are proprietary, and source will not be released.
Seems pretty clearly a GPL violation to me, but since Linus has said he doesn't give a crap about such violations, I don't imagine anything will ever happen.
Apple can't lock down MacOS X even if they wanted to.
First, how do you develop apps for it?
In my hypothetical scenario, OS X Pro. Runs on Pro model Macs, costs $500. Regular Macs like most users buy have regular OS X, which is locked down.
Next issue, how does Apple keep a user from running these apps?
OS X Pro runs all apps no matter what the source. This also allows graphics professionals to carry on using Adobe CS apps even though they're not available from the App Store.
Finally, how does Apple prevent jailbreaking?
Using the new DRM hardware in the new Intel Sandy Bridge chipset.
But even if they can't completely prevent jailbreaking, they can still make it a pain in the ass, enough to stop most users from bothering. And you'd still be supporting that by buying a Mac, which is a deal-breaker for me.
It depends on what you mean by evil. I've been a Mac user since what feels like forever and I can definitly see that something have changed over the passed few years starting about the same time Apple started to become really popular.
I blame Steve Jobs. He always wanted the Mac to be a closed proprietary appliance, but the Mac wasn't his project at the start, and he was kicked out of Apple before his vision could dominate.
I've been a Mac user for 20+ years, but I absolutely refuse to give my financial support to iOS. It is the absolute antithesis of everything the Mac stands for. Closed, proprietary, non-interoperable, with a cryptic and non-discoverable UI. I want to see it die in a fire.
I still fear that Apple will start to boil the OS X frog. They have code signing and an app store in place. They have a warning dialog if you try to run software downloaded from anywhere else. They're clearly repositioning OS X server versus the regular version in Lion. My fear is that the regular version of Lion (or perhaps the version after it) will have lock-in, and you'll have to buy a $500 pro version with the server stuff in order to get an open Mac. If that happens, I'll shed a tear and jump ship to Linux.
It's sad that he killed his family.
Every time I have to dick with systems because of DST, I get one step closer to doing exactly that with everything I use.
Same here, but I started in 1983. Really.
The whole Y2K problem thing amazed me. It was obvious to me when I was a kid in school, yet so many people hadn't thought about the problem, even in the 1990s?
... makes him both pedantic and trollish for arguing minutiae instead of the OP's point..
Welcome to Slashdot!
Still though, I hope the next time somebody claims the 'leaks' are coming from Apple's marketing dept remember the not-retina-display of the iPad 2.
Let's face it, the rumor-believers didn't learn from about two years of monthly "iPhone on Verizon" rumors...
Open-source porn. Wide open. Closeup. Juicy.
Linux Journal Swimsuit Issue.
And when's the last time you created a set of RARs with 7-Zip? Hint: Never.
Why would you create RAR files when you can create 7z archives that are smaller, and aren't in a proprietary archive format?
I wish I had mod points.
It's important to remember that when he did this, he was essentially fighting against the mandated monopoly on domain registration held by Network Solutions. At that time, the domain registration process had all the speed efficiency, charm, and conscientiousness as the DMV on a bad day.
Still does, if you get your domains from Network Solutions.
Hmm. We've got an old iPod classic with dock connector and touchwheel, a previous-generation Nano, and a shuffle. The Nano is OK, but the shuffle and the classic iPod both suck as far as audio output. Maybe I should consider getting a newer classic.
Headphones or earbuds, the iPod doesn't drive them well, and a headphone amp improves things greatly.
I just checked, and The Beatles catalog isn't available in lossless or 24 bit, let alone both. And I know the digital masters are available, because The Beatles USB Apple comes with 24 bit lossless audio. So I think Apple don't sell any lossless at present.
Lossless would pretty much eliminate my last reservations about buying music from the iTunes store. I've already bought albums from bleep.com in lossless format...
I don't own a dedicated portable music player, but it's hard for me to imagine that companies like Apple would use poor quality amps.
Depends what you mean by quality. The amp in an iPod may or may not have good linearity, frequency response and so on, but I know for sure that it's barely capable of driving a pair of headphones. Even with earbuds, you get a major improvement by using a headphone amp.
Apple also uses pretty wretched amps in their computers; you can get a major improvement from using an external USB audio interface.
Basically, anything beyond current iTMS quality is a waste of time if you're using raw iPod amplification or the built-in sound on a Mac.
Apple already sells Apple Lossless files so that's a non-issue.
They do? Must be for a pretty small subset of the available catalog, as I've never seen them offered.
Seems like you weren't in computing in the '90s. Without Steve, Apple was in pretty bad shape, and slowly working it's way towards irrelevance. Apple was losing ground to Wintel, the clones were on the market, and the company seemed to be fated to fade into a beige oblivion.
And yet... Apple's slide to irrelevance was a direct result of Steve Jobs, and his decision in 1985 not to license Mac OS, and to try to out-compete an entire industry.
Steve returned, and with him brought the iMac, OS X replaced the obsolete and horrible OS 9.
And yet... Steve's vision of computing, NeXT, had been a dismal failure. It wasn't until the Jobs vision was forced to engage again with the Apple reality he had left behind that OS X began to take form and become a success. And then he repeated the exact same mistake he made with Mac OS, with the iPhone OS. Decided to try and out-compete an entire industry. Only this time he also decided to lock down the platform, intentionally cripple its functionality, and charge people royalties on all software sales. So I think that again, his arrogance will come back to hurt Apple.
The proper response to a Dr M attack is to grovel in fear, because even if he leaves, another Dr M might be created some day. The squid ending has the logical conclusion of forcing countries together to fight the outside enemy
So you're saying the changed ending wasn't exactly squid pro quo?
And Total Recall has 150% of a pair of titties...
Amazon is so intent on opposing commoditization, that they stop authors from selling their work at low prices. I'm acquainted with an author who is trying to build some audience by not-quite-giving-away a couple of his novels at impulse-purchase prices on Kindle, but Amazon insists on selling his ebooks for a higher price.
Clearly that depends on the author.
I recommend kijiji to sell video games.
That's eBay, so not really competition with eBay.
No, but every citizen has a Feckle Freezer.