There doesn't seem to be any real interest now, so there definitely wouldn't be any then, in the with-us-or-against-us environment in the years immediately after 9/11. So how would a newspaper or media outlet gain by breaking the story?
If US media actually reported stories like this one, I would read US newspapers. They don't, which is why anybody with a brain goes to overseas media like The Guardian, The Independent, or BBC News. Which, in turn, is why US newspapers are going bust.
No, there's no device-side software involved in Mark/Space's solutions. Or at least, not their BlackBerry products. If Palm have been dumb enough to require a special protocol rather than USB storage, well, that's Palm's fault...
An XML file that only ever gets updated when the app feels like it (mostly, on quit) isn't useful.
As a quick test, I dragged an MP3 into iTunes and waited a couple of seconds. The XML file was updated immediately.
Mark/Space make a sync product for the Pre using the supported APIs. Why can't Palm? 'Cause they were too lazy and decided to rely on a crude hack. Well, I don't see why Apple should be required to support crude hacks.
Seriously though, if Apple were smart, they wouldn't wait for the courts to do something about it - they'd allow Palm (and others) to access itunes.
They already do. The problem is, Palm didn't bother to use the supported public APIs.
Mark/Space have a sync product for the Pre (and BlackBerry and old Palm OS devices and WinCE) that uses supported methods. Apple hasn't attempted to shut them out.
For one, not many people really -like- iTunes, it just happens to be the easiest way of syncing your iPod, if you could do the same thing in VLC, WMP, etc most people would.
If people hated iTunes as much as you think, the iPod wouldn't be the #1 MP3 player. People would buy a Zune instead, so they didn't have to use iTunes. Think about it--all the functionality of an iPod, and it's cheaper, and they'd be able to use WMP instead of iTunes. If people didn't like iTunes, they'd leap at that.
And before the Zune there were plenty of other MP3 players, using other software (or no special software) to load 'em up. They all died away, because the average person likes iTunes just fine.
Mark/Space's product The Missing Sync will sync music from iTunes to a Palm Pre.
The difference is, it does it using a supported API, rather than by trying to fool iTunes into thinking the Pre is an iPod.
Apple haven't tried to shut down Mark/Space, even though they've made similar products for years to sync Palm, BlackBerry and WinCE devices with your iTunes library.
So no, I don't think Apple are trying not to let a non-Apple device sync with iTunes.
I'm a Skypeout and Skype number paying customer but I'm searching for something more responsive to my needs and I'll gladly say to hell with them when I find it.
Gizmo5 and any standard VoIP client? I use Twinkle on Linux.
Zed's had a lot of clients, and has some really good references from them. I think they'd be more interested in those than what he does in his personal time.
Except he crosses a line: his rants are about his work, and about people who are potential or actual business contacts.
Maddox can rant about movies because he's not a movie director. If he ranted the same way about people working in his industry, he might find his rants a bit more career limiting.
(Actually, there are a few careers where you can be a total asshole and still do quite well, and movie director is probably one of them, but the point still stands I think.)
Wow. I just decided to try OSS4 in the hope it would solve some sound performance issues in Ubuntu 9.04, and suddenly my sound is dramatically improved. Thank you.
With the Mono infection and the reliance on GTK, the best thing would be for GNOME to go away. It started because Qt wasn't LGPL. That no longer applies, so let it die.
It only breaks implementations that only support short names, if you write files with long names to the filesystem and rely on them ending up with LONGNA~1 type filenames.
If your filenames are all 8.3 and you write them to a disk for your implementation that only understands 8.3, everything still works. If your filenames are long, you write them to a disk for your implementation that only understands 8.3, but you don't make any assumptions about what the filenames will be when converted to 8.3, everything still works.
I still buy DVDs, even when the Blu-ray disc is available, because Blu-ray isn't enough of a quality upgrade (compared to a DVD player with a good upscaler) to be worth the functionality loss.
I would suggest that you try to track down the cause of the bug and report it to the maintainer of rsync, as I have never, ever seen it fail that way, in years of daily use.
You don't need to MD5 if you're using rsync. The rsync algorithm already uses checksums to ensure the files are bit-for-bit identical. In fact, rsync 3.x uses MD5.
I have a feeling Gimp development would get quite a boost as a result. So many people use Photoshop over alternatives just because it's so easy to get a pirate copy.
I suspect that 99% of the people using pirated copies of Photoshop would be able to do everything they need using the $80 Photoshop Elements. They just pirate the full program out of some misguided belief that they need it.
I mean, I do web design for a living and photography as an enthusiastic amateur, and I don't need or use the full version of Photoshop. Until you start doing CMYK separations and the like, you really don't need it.
Reality is that there is a lot of software out there that only runs on a variant of MS Windows. To stop using Windows, people would have to stop using that software.
So start migrating gradually. Each time you are about to upgrade a piece of software you use, consider whether you could migrate instead, to something that's multiplatform. After a couple of years you'll have migrated all your key apps, and you'll be ready to switch. Then you just call the vendors and ask to switch your license to the new platform; most of them are glad to do so.
This seems ripe for arbitrage. Why wouldn't someone just buy a metric (of course!) shitton of licenses in the US, then sell them in the EU at less than the minimum-advertised price (MAP), but still greater than the price they bought them for?
Because Microsoft will refuse support for those licenses so as not to annoy their EU distributors.
It's called "gray market". It's been going on since the 80s. Anyone smart buys their software via mail order from the USA.
If I could pay a few dollars a month to have access to History, A&E, Biography, Discovery, etc on the web or via podcast, I'd do it, and really wouldn't even WANT cable any more.
I got an AppleTV for exactly that reason.
Sure, it's not perfect, but it does the job for me.
Slashdot Mirror
If US media actually reported stories like this one, I would read US newspapers. They don't, which is why anybody with a brain goes to overseas media like The Guardian, The Independent, or BBC News. Which, in turn, is why US newspapers are going bust.
If it's impossible, why is NoScript so popular?
And not downloading images makes for a bad web experience, but Firefox still has an option for that.
Of course, Mozilla won't add a NoScript-like UI to Firefox, as it would make it convenient to block scripting, and hence annoy advertisers.
No, there's no device-side software involved in Mark/Space's solutions. Or at least, not their BlackBerry products. If Palm have been dumb enough to require a special protocol rather than USB storage, well, that's Palm's fault...
As a quick test, I dragged an MP3 into iTunes and waited a couple of seconds. The XML file was updated immediately.
Mark/Space make a sync product for the Pre using the supported APIs. Why can't Palm? 'Cause they were too lazy and decided to rely on a crude hack. Well, I don't see why Apple should be required to support crude hacks.
They already do. The problem is, Palm didn't bother to use the supported public APIs.
Mark/Space have a sync product for the Pre (and BlackBerry and old Palm OS devices and WinCE) that uses supported methods. Apple hasn't attempted to shut them out.
If people hated iTunes as much as you think, the iPod wouldn't be the #1 MP3 player. People would buy a Zune instead, so they didn't have to use iTunes. Think about it--all the functionality of an iPod, and it's cheaper, and they'd be able to use WMP instead of iTunes. If people didn't like iTunes, they'd leap at that.
And before the Zune there were plenty of other MP3 players, using other software (or no special software) to load 'em up. They all died away, because the average person likes iTunes just fine.
Mark/Space's product The Missing Sync will sync music from iTunes to a Palm Pre.
The difference is, it does it using a supported API, rather than by trying to fool iTunes into thinking the Pre is an iPod.
Apple haven't tried to shut down Mark/Space, even though they've made similar products for years to sync Palm, BlackBerry and WinCE devices with your iTunes library.
So no, I don't think Apple are trying not to let a non-Apple device sync with iTunes.
Gizmo5 and any standard VoIP client? I use Twinkle on Linux.
Except he crosses a line: his rants are about his work, and about people who are potential or actual business contacts.
Maddox can rant about movies because he's not a movie director. If he ranted the same way about people working in his industry, he might find his rants a bit more career limiting.
(Actually, there are a few careers where you can be a total asshole and still do quite well, and movie director is probably one of them, but the point still stands I think.)
Wow. I just decided to try OSS4 in the hope it would solve some sound performance issues in Ubuntu 9.04, and suddenly my sound is dramatically improved. Thank you.
The X server is the program on the local machine that displays the pixels.
The program you run on some other system via the net is the client, even if the thing it's running on is called a server.
The X server traditionally runs as root. You are likely unaware of this because it's started automatically as part of the init process.
The X server running as root is independent of whether the X client is running as root.
Now, if only we can get Chrome to have a simple UI for per-site cookie and script preferences, maybe they'll finally add that feature to core Firefox.
Linux was started as a replacement kernel for Minix, so Linus could learn about 386-specific opcodes. BSD wouldn't have been a sensible alternative.
And 386BSD was released in 1992, which was still later than 1991 when Linux development started.
My reason for commenting on GNOME is that someone commented that GNOME should adopt Qt. i.e. I didn't raise the subject.
FreeBSD 1.0 was 1993. Linux started in 1991. Fail.
With the Mono infection and the reliance on GTK, the best thing would be for GNOME to go away. It started because Qt wasn't LGPL. That no longer applies, so let it die.
It only breaks implementations that only support short names, if you write files with long names to the filesystem and rely on them ending up with LONGNA~1 type filenames.
If your filenames are all 8.3 and you write them to a disk for your implementation that only understands 8.3, everything still works. If your filenames are long, you write them to a disk for your implementation that only understands 8.3, but you don't make any assumptions about what the filenames will be when converted to 8.3, everything still works.
I have a Blu-ray player and HDTV.
I still buy DVDs, even when the Blu-ray disc is available, because Blu-ray isn't enough of a quality upgrade (compared to a DVD player with a good upscaler) to be worth the functionality loss.
I would suggest that you try to track down the cause of the bug and report it to the maintainer of rsync, as I have never, ever seen it fail that way, in years of daily use.
You don't need to MD5 if you're using rsync. The rsync algorithm already uses checksums to ensure the files are bit-for-bit identical. In fact, rsync 3.x uses MD5.
I suspect that 99% of the people using pirated copies of Photoshop would be able to do everything they need using the $80 Photoshop Elements. They just pirate the full program out of some misguided belief that they need it.
I mean, I do web design for a living and photography as an enthusiastic amateur, and I don't need or use the full version of Photoshop. Until you start doing CMYK separations and the like, you really don't need it.
So start migrating gradually. Each time you are about to upgrade a piece of software you use, consider whether you could migrate instead, to something that's multiplatform. After a couple of years you'll have migrated all your key apps, and you'll be ready to switch. Then you just call the vendors and ask to switch your license to the new platform; most of them are glad to do so.
Yeah, BlackBerry is mini-USB, so there's lots of competition, hence the cables and chargers are cheap.
Because Microsoft will refuse support for those licenses so as not to annoy their EU distributors.
It's called "gray market". It's been going on since the 80s. Anyone smart buys their software via mail order from the USA.
I got an AppleTV for exactly that reason.
Sure, it's not perfect, but it does the job for me.