But doesn't this just validate that the patent system albeit a little broken generally works.
Surely everyone has to realise that patent officers can't be geniuses in their respective fields, because the genuieses are off inventing and discovering things.
Hence the onus should be on making it easy to revoke granted patents the minute prior art is discovered. Otherwise it could take patent officers years to validate each patent.
This has nothing to do with apple, itunes, or ipod. This is all fair use vs. DMCA.
Exactly. But unfortunately the digital world is nothing like the real world. It is unprecented that ordinary people have the potential to be mass distributors of illegal content.
Previously the cost of posting CD/Video/DVD/whatever to mass groups of people was prohibitive. Now its practically free.
Even DeCSS is not the same, as it is still not practical to mass distribute 4.7GB of data. It is VERY easy to distribute 4MB.
So I think the Slashdot community needs to come to the understanding that DRM is here to stay. Apple deserves to be commended by having a DRM policy that is "fair".
The coder(s) of this tool are the type of people the Slashdot community should differentiate itself from.
The point is not to stick it to Apple or "the Man", but remove DRM from the music. What is so hard to understand about that?
Because without this DRM you wouldn't have the music to begin with. And the status quo is already non-DRM: Audio CDs.
Hence we all have to VERY careful about legitimising such a tool like this. Because this tool is NOT about fair use and the behaviour of the coder(s) to continue to promote this tool from another country is something that should not be condoned.
How about playing the files on non apple hardware such as a portable mp3 player?
Burn the iTMS music to a CD then rip again to MP3. Oh but the quality drops.. hello MP3 is lossy to begin with. And I'm sure if your a true audiophile you would be buying normal CDs to begin with.
Or even to burn it to cd and play it in your car?
Have you even used iTMS ? You can do that now already.
What if you were searching for hidden messages and wanted to play it backwards?
See first point.
Or play it on your network-enabled-but-not-approved-by-apple-home-ste reo.
Suppose your main computer (that you play music on) runs Linux but you have a spare Windows machine or Mac that you can use with iTunes. Gee, that scenario was terribly hard to think up.
Fair enough. But seriously put yourself in Steve Job's shoes and please enlighten us all with an alternative.
The fact is it is because of Apple that we have the recording industries coming on board with a DRM policy that is about as unrestrictive as it gets.
The percentage of people with two computers, one with Linux another with Windows or Mac has to pale into insignificance compared to the broader general music buying population.
I agree with the PlayFair author: "I want to be able to play the music I buy wherever I want to play it without quality loss, since I PAID FOR that quality."
How about burning your bought music to a CD.
Oh wait you want it without the DRM.. please do explain why ?
The DRM in Apple's case seems only to stop mass distribution of the music, which seems quite fair to me.
You have to remember there is an alternative if you don't like Apple's rules, don't play by them: BUY A CD FROM A SHOP.
Nevertheless, moving PlayFair to another country to escape the domination of the rich, government-corrupting interests in this country shows one of the issues of outsourcing.
Umm.. if people are using Fairplay to remove the DRM from their iTMS bought songs then guess which format they'll end up with: AAC.
Now imagine if those said people start distributing those AAC across the P2P networks. Guess which player is commonly associated with reading AAC files: iTunes.
Which may in turn drive those people to use iTMS for those songs they can't get off the networks. Now these people have all these AAC files, which device is commonly associated with AAC support: iPod.
copy (a reference to (get view of front window)) to thisPlaylist
-- if no tracks are selected, use them all if selection is {} then copy every file track of thisPlaylist to allTracks else copy selection to allTracks end if
repeat with aTrack in allTracks copy (get aTrack's genre) to temp1 copy (get aTrack's album) to aTrack's genre copy temp1 to aTrack's album end repeat
That's a fairly easy way to understand how to copy a file in dos. But in the gui world, a person has to remember to right click and say copy (or ctrl+c) and then right click on the destination and say paste (or ctrl+v). Or remember that if dragging files between folders not on the same drive, the file is copied by default but if dragging between folders on the same drive move is the default in windows
To copy a file on OSX you simply drag and drop. If the file is from one drive to another, a little green (+) icon appears next to the file icon indicating the file is going to be copied.
that would be pretty easy and friendly. But no os does that AFAIK
OSX. Applescript.
tell application "iTunes"    copy (a reference to (get view of front window)) to thisPlaylist
   -- if no tracks are selected, use them all    if selection is {} then       copy every file track of thisPlaylist to allTracks    else    60;   copy selection to allTracks    end if
   repeat with aTrack in allTracks       cop y (get aTrack's genre) to temp1       cop y (get aTrack's album) to aTrack's genre       cop y temp1 to aTrack's album    end repeat end tell
Re:Designs cast in Stone
on
UML Fever
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Parent is exactly right:
UML is perfect for HUGE projects where you have a large number of developers, designers and managers all of whom must understand what is going to be delivered.
Everything smaller should be interface driven. That is, you do storyboards and interface mockups as the next step after the requirements specs. THEN you give those mockups to the programmers and tell them to implement it.
This tends to result in the best quality programs because it comes from a user-centred point of view rather than a programming point of view.
This is how you explain the difference between OSX (top down) versus Linux (bottom up) approach to developing the OS.
Surely having everything on the motherboard would increase security, stability and performance simply because AMD can guarentee that all of the parts of the system work optimally together.
One of the biggest problems with PCs is that the huge number of vendors means incompatibility between components becomes a factor impacting overall system stability and performance.
Apple would have always known that at SOME point, Fairplay would have been cracked. Thats WHY iTunes has such lax DRM restrictions.
In all intensive purposes Fairplay was irrelevant to begin with.. since you can always burn to CD and rip again. Sure you lose some quality, but as everything in life: being good enough is good enough.
iTMS will always remain in business as long as iPods are profitable and selling.
Seriously, with approximately sixty billion dollars in the bank, exactly what prevents M$ from producing a secure OS ?
But if Windows becomes secure.. what are all the MSCE's going to do with their time ?
Perhaps Microsoft needs to release an upgraded version of Solitaire with SP2.
Re:The REAL security problem in '04
on
Gates on Winsecurity
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You troll.. and to the mods your no better.
I think most people will agree most security problems boil down to one simple thing, the stupidity of the user
Your missing the whole point. The users aren't stupid - they don't care. Computers are not an integral part of their life as they are probably are for you. Hence implying they are stupid because they can't spot a virus is just plain rude.
I have to ask if you know exactly what happens and what to do if your car suddenly stops for no reason. Does it make you an idiot if you have to ask for help ? No because for most cars are a tool not a lifestyle - just like computers.
Apple computers are created for, and solely used by people who know, and want to know nothing about computers, the "proudly ignorants".
Now that Apple is *nix based I find this kind of statement quite suprising. What a bunch of proudly ignorant people.
Apple computers yes do have the obscurity security benefit, however they also have intelligent default settings. Windows with XP SP2 will finally set the defaults to what they should have been from the start.
You are the ignorant one not the non-techie users.
Come on Spinner .. i mean Linux
on
Gates on Winsecurity
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
With Longhorn only coming out in 2006, hopefully Linux will make a huge push over the next couple of years to cement itself as a serious 'business desktop' platform.
Because the fact remains that many businesses will be reluctant to upgrade their existing systems to Longhorn if there isn't some huge productivity increases. Hence Linux can be promoted as the solution for business's existing systems. Dump Windows. Install Linux.
In order for this to happen there needs to be a lot more education to the pointy-haired people of this world. These are the ones that control the purse strings and most of them don't know what Linux is or what benefits it provides over Windows.
Someone/some company needs to take the initiative and educate the non-Slashdot readers about the security issues that Windows currently has and the benefits that Linux provides.
I find quite a bit.. the reason being there is a substantial difference in the metaphors between Windows and OSX.
Windows seems to encourage you to stay in one application at a time. Which is great for certain types of jobs e.g. architect who just uses Autocad.
OSX seems to manage better the process of having a stack of applications open and moving between them.
Concepts such as the following are what makes OSX better for multi-app use:
- Drag and drop files onto the application icon - Expose (and being able to drag and drop files using Expose) - The dock which almost encourages you to have heaps of applications open at one time. - Spring loaded folders which allows you to navigate through directory structures without takingyour hand off the mouse button
So it is my IMHO that if you:
- Work with one application e.g. Photoshop/Autocad ONLY get a PC. It'll generally run that application heaps faster than a Mac. - Work with multiple applications e.g. DTP designer get a Mac. Expose/proper drag and drop will significantly improve your productivity.
Macs on X86 boxes (in whatever form) will NEVER succeed. Why ? because Macs real competitive advantage is that things just work. This is because Apple knows exactly what hardware OSX will run on. Even better. Apple makes the hardware or is intimately involved with the companies that do (e.g. ATI, IBM).
Most of the perceived issues with Windows are due to the fact that there are infinitely many configurations around. Hence often it is dodgy drivers or cheap ass components that are the problem.
If Apple had licensed its technologies way back when, we would be sitting here whinging about Apple and parading Windows around as the easy to use, stable OS.
Regardless, it is pretty sad that there are people who think that OSX is a competitor to Linux. OSX and Linux are inherently complimentary - you only have to look at Apple's contributions to KHTML (and by extension KDE) to see the benefits that collaboration between the two platforms can have.
If I'm not using the cursor, I'd like it to disappear
You know you could just move the mouse to the side of the screen. But maybe thats a little too simple.
Will MacOS X allow me to easily set up the combination of ctrl-j + l to switch to my web browser, and if that web browser doesn't exist, launch it?
You can set hotkeys to launch applications. Just not ones that involve multiple key presses. For example, I map the F* keys to launch applications.
Also I use Launchbar.. which allows you to type the first few letters of the application to open it. Both useful and elegant.
But I don't think you've ever used OSX have you ?
Don't think everyone who uses the Unix-like OSes are a bunch of twiddling geeks who are content to fiddle with the OS while Mac users end up getting real work done.
Guess what.. OSX IS a Unix-like OS. Hence with OSX you can both fiddle AND get real work done. You do realise that OSX is just *BSD with a pretty front end dont you ?
OSX is and will probably remain for the medium term a shining example of what KDE/Gnome should have been.
I'm from Curtin University and after extensive evaluation of other content management solutions we ended up doing it ourselves.
The main reason ?
It reduces the money and time needed to customise the off the shelf product to the specific needs of the organisation.
We ended up using Apple's WebObjects which is actually a fantastic product. So now, we have a CMS tailored specifically for the university that meets only the universities needs.
Total cost ? 15000 US for hiring someone (im in Australia) + 100 US for WebObjects.
Considerably cheaper than something which may not necessarily do what we want.
One of the most wonderful example of elegant but poor code is the recursive method for generating Fibonacci numbers. O(n!).
The iterative method whilst looking so much slower runs so much faster. O(n).
Remember kids good code is ANSI C code:)
Naden.
Slashdot Mirror
But doesn't this just validate that the patent system albeit a little broken generally works.
Surely everyone has to realise that patent officers can't be geniuses in their respective fields, because the genuieses are off inventing and discovering things.
Hence the onus should be on making it easy to revoke granted patents the minute prior art is discovered. Otherwise it could take patent officers years to validate each patent.
This has nothing to do with apple, itunes, or ipod. This is all fair use vs. DMCA.
Exactly. But unfortunately the digital world is nothing like the real world. It is unprecented that ordinary people have the potential to be mass distributors of illegal content.
Previously the cost of posting CD/Video/DVD/whatever to mass groups of people was prohibitive. Now its practically free.
Even DeCSS is not the same, as it is still not practical to mass distribute 4.7GB of data. It is VERY easy to distribute 4MB.
So I think the Slashdot community needs to come to the understanding that DRM is here to stay. Apple deserves to be commended by having a DRM policy that is "fair".
The coder(s) of this tool are the type of people the Slashdot community should differentiate itself from.
The point is not to stick it to Apple or "the Man", but remove DRM from the music. What is so hard to understand about that?
Because without this DRM you wouldn't have the music to begin with. And the status quo is already non-DRM: Audio CDs.
Hence we all have to VERY careful about legitimising such a tool like this. Because this tool is NOT about fair use and the behaviour of the coder(s) to continue to promote this tool from another country is something that should not be condoned.
How about playing the files on non apple hardware such as a portable mp3 player?
.. hello MP3 is lossy to begin with. And I'm sure if your a true audiophile you would be buying normal CDs to begin with.
e reo.
Burn the iTMS music to a CD then rip again to MP3. Oh but the quality drops
Or even to burn it to cd and play it in your car?
Have you even used iTMS ? You can do that now already.
What if you were searching for hidden messages and wanted to play it backwards?
See first point.
Or play it on your network-enabled-but-not-approved-by-apple-home-st
Fair enough. But again see first point.
Suppose your main computer (that you play music on) runs Linux but you have a spare Windows machine or Mac that you can use with iTunes. Gee, that scenario was terribly hard to think up.
Fair enough. But seriously put yourself in Steve Job's shoes and please enlighten us all with an alternative.
The fact is it is because of Apple that we have the recording industries coming on board with a DRM policy that is about as unrestrictive as it gets.
The percentage of people with two computers, one with Linux another with Windows or Mac has to pale into insignificance compared to the broader general music buying population.
I agree with the PlayFair author: "I want to be able to play the music I buy wherever I want to play it without quality loss, since I PAID FOR that quality."
.. please do explain why ?
How about burning your bought music to a CD.
Oh wait you want it without the DRM
The DRM in Apple's case seems only to stop mass distribution of the music, which seems quite fair to me.
You have to remember there is an alternative if you don't like Apple's rules, don't play by them: BUY A CD FROM A SHOP.
Nevertheless, moving PlayFair to another country to escape the domination of the rich, government-corrupting interests in this country shows one of the issues of outsourcing.
WTF does this have to do with anything ?
Umm .. if people are using Fairplay to remove the DRM from their iTMS bought songs then guess which format they'll end up with: AAC.
Now imagine if those said people start distributing those AAC across the P2P networks. Guess which player is commonly associated with reading AAC files: iTunes.
Which may in turn drive those people to use iTMS for those songs they can't get off the networks. Now these people have all these AAC files, which device is commonly associated with AAC support: iPod.
So it seems like either way Apple wins ?
Lets try that again:
tell application "iTunes"
copy (a reference to (get view of front window)) to thisPlaylist
-- if no tracks are selected, use them all
if selection is {} then
copy every file track of thisPlaylist to allTracks
else
copy selection to allTracks
end if
repeat with aTrack in allTracks
copy (get aTrack's genre) to temp1
copy (get aTrack's album) to aTrack's genre
copy temp1 to aTrack's album
end repeat
end tell
That's a fairly easy way to understand how to copy a file in dos. But in the gui world, a person has to remember to right click and say copy (or ctrl+c) and then right click on the destination and say paste (or ctrl+v). Or remember that if dragging files between folders not on the same drive, the file is copied by default but if dragging between folders on the same drive move is the default in windows
To copy a file on OSX you simply drag and drop. If the file is from one drive to another, a little green (+) icon appears next to the file icon indicating the file is going to be copied.
that would be pretty easy and friendly. But no os does that AFAIK
OSX. Applescript.
Parent is exactly right:
UML is perfect for HUGE projects where you have a large number of developers, designers and managers all of whom must understand what is going to be delivered.
Everything smaller should be interface driven. That is, you do storyboards and interface mockups as the next step after the requirements specs. THEN you give those mockups to the programmers and tell them to implement it.
This tends to result in the best quality programs because it comes from a user-centred point of view rather than a programming point of view.
This is how you explain the difference between OSX (top down) versus Linux (bottom up) approach to developing the OS.
This seems a little counterintuitive.
Surely having everything on the motherboard would increase security, stability and performance simply because AMD can guarentee that all of the parts of the system work optimally together.
One of the biggest problems with PCs is that the huge number of vendors means incompatibility between components becomes a factor impacting overall system stability and performance.
Have you any clue ?
.. since you can always burn to CD and rip again. Sure you lose some quality, but as everything in life: being good enough is good enough.
Apple would have always known that at SOME point, Fairplay would have been cracked. Thats WHY iTunes has such lax DRM restrictions.
In all intensive purposes Fairplay was irrelevant to begin with
iTMS will always remain in business as long as iPods are profitable and selling.
Seriously, with approximately sixty billion dollars in the bank, exactly what prevents M$ from producing a secure OS ?
.. what are all the MSCE's going to do with their time ?
But if Windows becomes secure
Perhaps Microsoft needs to release an upgraded version of Solitaire with SP2.
You troll .. and to the mods your no better.
I think most people will agree most security problems boil down to one simple thing, the stupidity of the user
Your missing the whole point. The users aren't stupid - they don't care. Computers are not an integral part of their life as they are probably are for you. Hence implying they are stupid because they can't spot a virus is just plain rude.
I have to ask if you know exactly what happens and what to do if your car suddenly stops for no reason. Does it make you an idiot if you have to ask for help ? No because for most cars are a tool not a lifestyle - just like computers.
Apple computers are created for, and solely used by people who know, and want to know nothing about computers, the "proudly ignorants".
Now that Apple is *nix based I find this kind of statement quite suprising. What a bunch of proudly ignorant people.
Apple computers yes do have the obscurity security benefit, however they also have intelligent default settings. Windows with XP SP2 will finally set the defaults to what they should have been from the start.
You are the ignorant one not the non-techie users.
With Longhorn only coming out in 2006, hopefully Linux will make a huge push over the next couple of years to cement itself as a serious 'business desktop' platform.
Because the fact remains that many businesses will be reluctant to upgrade their existing systems to Longhorn if there isn't some huge productivity increases. Hence Linux can be promoted as the solution for business's existing systems. Dump Windows. Install Linux.
In order for this to happen there needs to be a lot more education to the pointy-haired people of this world. These are the ones that control the purse strings and most of them don't know what Linux is or what benefits it provides over Windows.
Someone/some company needs to take the initiative and educate the non-Slashdot readers about the security issues that Windows currently has and the benefits that Linux provides.
I find quite a bit .. the reason being there is a substantial difference in the metaphors between Windows and OSX.
Windows seems to encourage you to stay in one application at a time. Which is great for certain types of jobs e.g. architect who just uses Autocad.
OSX seems to manage better the process of having a stack of applications open and moving between them.
Concepts such as the following are what makes OSX better for multi-app use:
- Drag and drop files onto the application icon
- Expose (and being able to drag and drop files using Expose)
- The dock which almost encourages you to have heaps of applications open at one time.
- Spring loaded folders which allows you to navigate through directory structures without takingyour hand off the mouse button
So it is my IMHO that if you:
- Work with one application e.g. Photoshop/Autocad ONLY get a PC. It'll generally run that application heaps faster than a Mac.
- Work with multiple applications e.g. DTP designer get a Mac. Expose/proper drag and drop will significantly improve your productivity.
What will Slashdotters find to bitch about next?
Probably how expensive beer is in the 22nd century.
OSX ya fool.
When will people learn.
Macs on X86 boxes (in whatever form) will NEVER succeed. Why ? because Macs real competitive advantage is that things just work. This is because Apple knows exactly what hardware OSX will run on. Even better. Apple makes the hardware or is intimately involved with the companies that do (e.g. ATI, IBM).
Most of the perceived issues with Windows are due to the fact that there are infinitely many configurations around. Hence often it is dodgy drivers or cheap ass components that are the problem.
If Apple had licensed its technologies way back when, we would be sitting here whinging about Apple and parading Windows around as the easy to use, stable OS.
Regardless, it is pretty sad that there are people who think that OSX is a competitor to Linux. OSX and Linux are inherently complimentary - you only have to look at Apple's contributions to KHTML (and by extension KDE) to see the benefits that collaboration between the two platforms can have.
If I'm not using the cursor, I'd like it to disappear
.. which allows you to type the first few letters of the application to open it. Both useful and elegant.
.. OSX IS a Unix-like OS. Hence with OSX you can both fiddle AND get real work done. You do realise that OSX is just *BSD with a pretty front end dont you ?
You know you could just move the mouse to the side of the screen. But maybe thats a little too simple.
Will MacOS X allow me to easily set up the combination of ctrl-j + l to switch to my web browser, and if that web browser doesn't exist, launch it?
You can set hotkeys to launch applications. Just not ones that involve multiple key presses. For example, I map the F* keys to launch applications.
Also I use Launchbar
But I don't think you've ever used OSX have you ?
Don't think everyone who uses the Unix-like OSes are a bunch of twiddling geeks who are content to fiddle with the OS while Mac users end up getting real work done.
Guess what
OSX is and will probably remain for the medium term a shining example of what KDE/Gnome should have been.
Here's a link you can actually click on: http://physicsweb.org/article/world/15/4/7 Now come on show me the karma love ;)
I'm from Curtin University and after extensive evaluation of other content management solutions we ended up doing it ourselves.
The main reason ?
It reduces the money and time needed to customise the off the shelf product to the specific needs of the organisation.
We ended up using Apple's WebObjects which is actually a fantastic product. So now, we have a CMS tailored specifically for the university that meets only the universities needs.
Total cost ? 15000 US for hiring someone (im in Australia) + 100 US for WebObjects.
Considerably cheaper than something which may not necessarily do what we want.
HTH,
Naden.
Well that's fine and all I'll just remember to use my Protection Layer to stop me from using the new version.
One of the most wonderful example of elegant but poor code is the recursive method for generating Fibonacci numbers. O(n!). The iterative method whilst looking so much slower runs so much faster. O(n). Remember kids good code is ANSI C code :)
Naden.
Well my god look out ... BeOS invents popups.
Please take a look at a few shareware Mac programs:
a) Now Menus
b) PopupFolders
both of which enabled popups to hierarchially browse the hard disk.
Naden.
it-guys.com/naden/