I'd be shocked if there isn't clear prior art for the patent as written.
Slightly different, but I think dating even back to the PowerBook days, many Apple laptops have a combined headphone jack (3.5mm) / toslink port. Plug in headphones, they work fine. Plug in an optical audio cable, it works fine.
On the other hand, art does not exist in a vacuum and I really do have a hard time separating Card's homophobic views from his works; especially since, in retrospect they do creep into his books at least occasionally.
Just out of curiosity, where do you see this? For full disclose, I enjoy the works of plenty of artists, actors, and musicians whose personal views I find abhorrent. I enjoy Card's books (Enchantment is one of my favorite novels), and I'll leave it at that.
It's been quite some time since I've read many of Card's books, but if I recall the extended Ender universe has non-evil and non-stereotypical gay characters. The Earthfall books had at least one gay character who was good. One of the characters in that series (a scientist) even explained that homosexuality had to do with conditions in the womb and wasn't a choice (it's been a long time since I've read this, so I could be slightly off).
I've never read it, but Card's book Songmaster apparently deals with homosexuality to a large extent. I remember a friend of mine called it the "gayest" book he had ever read (she meant that in a positive way).
Where do you see Card's negativity towards homosexuality?
I do, incidentally, feel that 10.4 was the pinnacle of OSX GUI. We still have one PPC 10.4 (dual 1.25ghz G4--tells you how old the machine is!) running 24/7 for a server app that has some PPC-only extensions -- so no rosetta. I VNCed in the other day and it has such a pleasant appearance compared to flat monochrome grey crap in post-Lion OSX.
It seems you're really arguing that some of the releases had some deprecations that you didn't like (nothing you listed affected our company at all--I applauded deprecation of AppleTalk!) and some that effected a relatively small number of users (I'd never heard of anything you mentioned). Every Apple point release I've ever used has had some bugs--hardly unique to post-Tiger.
I would argue that OSX 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2 were effectively betas that lacked critical features and were not usable in production environments. 10.3 is the first version I felt comfortable rolling out to our users in even a trial basis. By your standards, 10.3 was the pinnacle of OSX?
I don't disagree at all with the main thrust of your post, but in nitpicking pedantic mode, I do disagree about versions of OSX.
Tiger was a questionable update, and every OSX update since has been a load of shit. Mountain Lion makes the UI really annoying, and OSX Server is now completely useless.
Tiger -- OSX 10.4 -- was released in 2005 and was a great update. Two of the biggest features were Spotlight (an every day usage feature) and I believe the Dashboard.
Leopard -- 10.5 -- was another good release. In addition to full x86 support, Leopard added Time Machine, Spaces (virtual desktops), Boot Camp, etc.
Snow Leopard -- 10.6 -- 2009. my favorite release. SL was largely a refinement release with a new rewritten Finder and general speed increases. I still run 10.6 ln my laptop and many users (myself included) would argue it was the best OSX release.
Lion -- 10.7 -- no idea what is supposed to be new or good in Lion. Resize windows from any border is the only thing I can think of. I use it at work on an old macpro and hate it compared to SL.
Mountain Lion -- 10.8 -- Again, really not sure what improvements there are supposed to be. I would say a better release than LIon, with some real interface improvements (to expose/mission control) but still crap compared to SL.
So in short, I don't think it is at all fair to say that all releases since Tiger have been crap. Maybe you meant Lion, in which case I 100% agree!
I see others questioning your statement, so I thought I'd add in. I thought season 4 was great. I thought seasons 1+5 were the weakest. I can barely watch season 1...
I love the plot, the writing, and the universe, and consider myself a fan, but there are some times--and certain actors--where the acting just kills me.
Talk about the missing the point. Good for you, you don't like Christians and think they're ignorant and mean--fine, I don't care at all about that. I don't think they like you very much either. The point is--who gives a crap about such semantics? Are you going to get worked up and in a pedantic lather over ever slight you can possibly imagine? Over every allusion that doesn't pass your muster? Are you to be the culture police, who judges over all acceptable and unacceptable references?
You seem to really enjoy talking about others' insecurities, and yet it seems pretty apparent to everyone reading your comments just where the real wellspring of insecurity lies.
[I]f I was at a dinner party with any of them and the subject of the name came up I would absolutely point out how ridiculous and annoying and even passively-condoning-of-evil it was.
Jobs knew how to manipulate people into wanting what he had to sell them. He was an excellent salesman.
He was an excellent salesman, certainly fallible, and with a well-earned reputation for his RDF. However, he did a damn good job of knowing what people did want!
I guess a bad sense is still a sense, so, ok.
So if you're saying Jobs had a bad sense of taste, yours--by comparison--is better? Why should we believe you? The corpus of Jobs' legacy is in front of us.
For at least two thousand years of European history until the late nineteenth century hysteria referred to a medical condition thought to be particular to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus (from the Greek "hystera" = uterus)
And you think it's reasonable for the average person to read and understand a 325 page EULA [apple.com]? You can try foisting the blame back on the user, but I think it is, at best, misrepresenting the situation to suggest that people know "exactly" what they are getting into when they purchase an iPhone.
I really think the onus is on you for this point. I think you will struggle to find iPhone users who are not aware of the App Store and what it entails. Furthermore, most users just really don't care. At all. If they did, Apple wouldn't keep selling so many phones and have such a high retention rate amongst customers. Check out the retention rates if you don't believe me. They're easy to find.
The average person thinks they're getting a phone. A phone that they own, and can use without unreasonable restriction, and that they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now, this isn't true, not by a long-shot, but that's what the average person thinks.
No, your confusion arises from the fact that most people don't care about the restrictions. You're again being hysterically disingenuous. Even jailbreakers are a TINY minority of iOS users.
Privacy-wise, exactly what issue are you complaining about?
The average person is, afterall, a rather trusting, and stupid, sort.
I won't address the rest of your post, other than to say SARCASM! Anyone who hasn't had their sense of humor surgically removed and replaced with a floating point coprocessor can see that my entire previous post contained generous helpings of it.
Are you joking now? Your "sarcasm" was painfully obvious. It was the inanity behind the point you were trying to make that I am commenting on.
I have owned an iPhone 3GS and currently an iPhone5. I have jailbroken both of them. I was very happy when evasi0n was released, and immediately downloaded biteSMS and several other great Cydia apps.
Everyone who buys an iPhone knows exactly what they are getting in to. Nobody is conned or tricked or forced to buy an iPhone.
Apple has every right to patch security holes in their OS and software. Even as a jailbreaker, I expect nothing less. Should Apple have left a PDF rendering buffer exploit that allowed the easiest jailbreak in history (jailbreakme.com) open just so people could jailbreak? Obviously not. That's an easy example, but just which security holes should Apple leave open for jailbreakers?
I wish Apple would allow easy legitimate rooting. But, they don't. I made the choice that I still like the iOS world and hardware. I might feel differently in 2 years, but that's where I am now. Furthermore, Apple does give you some pretty granular control over tracking, ads, location services, etc. You're really getting offtrack on to tangential issues what that tack.
No need for the disingenuous hysterics about "morally inferior" people, etc. One can imagine that you would be complaining if Apple was NOT patching security holes... Keep it straight--attack the walled garden and Apple's choice to lockdown directly. Don't coat it in a guise of outrage over bug patching.
I work for a small academic publisher and I've seen the Edwin Mellen press at some academic conventions. Nice people, but they totally come across as carnival hucksters. They get their business knowing full well how important "publish or perish" is in academia. Their reps will literally ask every single person who walks by in the exhibit hall: "Do you want to get published?" (including me, on multiple occasions, wearing my vendor badge!) They basically make their money from minimal production values (look at their covers or insides of their books to see what I mean), small print runs, and very high prices. They sell a limited number of books to libraries, to the author, and maybe a handful elsewhere, and then they're done. They claim to be subsidy-free (i.e., not a vanity press) but I don't know if this is true or not.
Arbitrary is not the same as not necessary. The grammer rules of any language are absolutely arbitrary.
I strongly disagree with this statement. Prescriptivist grammarians have in many cases formalized--or even created entirely new rules--language rules according to some set of logic or principles. This has gone on for thousands of years and is not a new phenomenon. Now, you or I may not agree with these principles or selected logic (an example I personally like is the invented rule against splitting infinitives in English), but in most cases I would hardly call these rules random or arbitrary.
This kind of argument comes right down to the core of the grammar debate, though. It's an old debate!
I'll give you 2 (nimble), and 4+5 (local pride), but how does (e.g.) Foxconn exemplify less greed and proper labor relations and management? I guess for certain values of "proper labor relations" you could be right, but probably not what most people think of!
I stand by my statement. I've (or, my company) has been on the receiving end of more than one similar letter, and as far as legal letters go, that one was extremely mild.
For any interested in a little background, I highly recommend the book "The War Against Grammar" (Amazon link).
The basic gist of the book is that starting roughly 30 years ago, linguists and educational theorists decided that teaching grammar and prescriptive rules (arbitrary rules, they might say!) is not necessary. After all, people learn to speak without formally being taught grammar. As long as you can be understood by others, what does it matter? Communication is the key, not formal grammar. Thus being able to diagram a sentence or know the difference between a direct and indirect object became an archaism. The emergence of described (and accepted) phenomenon like Ebonics is part of this movement.
Ask college kids today how many of them had to diagram sentences in elementary school? I have asked many current college students and very, very few even knew what diagramming a sentence means. Even ten years ago, many more students would have had this emphasis on grammar in early educational.
The end results--college students who can't write to save their lives. (And no, I don't blame texting and Instant Messaging.)
To be fair, while Piriform's request might be considered obnoxious, there's really not a threat involved. As far as letters go, it was pretty mild.
That's not to say that threats (legal or otherwise!) won't be forthcoming, but they're not here yet. I hope slashdot follows up; will be interesting to see what happens next.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be shocked if there isn't clear prior art for the patent as written.
Slightly different, but I think dating even back to the PowerBook days, many Apple laptops have a combined headphone jack (3.5mm) / toslink port. Plug in headphones, they work fine. Plug in an optical audio cable, it works fine.
On the other hand, art does not exist in a vacuum and I really do have a hard time separating Card's homophobic views from his works; especially since, in retrospect they do creep into his books at least occasionally.
Just out of curiosity, where do you see this? For full disclose, I enjoy the works of plenty of artists, actors, and musicians whose personal views I find abhorrent. I enjoy Card's books (Enchantment is one of my favorite novels), and I'll leave it at that.
It's been quite some time since I've read many of Card's books, but if I recall the extended Ender universe has non-evil and non-stereotypical gay characters. The Earthfall books had at least one gay character who was good. One of the characters in that series (a scientist) even explained that homosexuality had to do with conditions in the womb and wasn't a choice (it's been a long time since I've read this, so I could be slightly off).
I've never read it, but Card's book Songmaster apparently deals with homosexuality to a large extent. I remember a friend of mine called it the "gayest" book he had ever read (she meant that in a positive way).
Where do you see Card's negativity towards homosexuality?
So basically, what you're saying is--you don't like change. You're a conservative :)
I do, incidentally, feel that 10.4 was the pinnacle of OSX GUI. We still have one PPC 10.4 (dual 1.25ghz G4--tells you how old the machine is!) running 24/7 for a server app that has some PPC-only extensions -- so no rosetta. I VNCed in the other day and it has such a pleasant appearance compared to flat monochrome grey crap in post-Lion OSX.
It seems you're really arguing that some of the releases had some deprecations that you didn't like (nothing you listed affected our company at all--I applauded deprecation of AppleTalk!) and some that effected a relatively small number of users (I'd never heard of anything you mentioned). Every Apple point release I've ever used has had some bugs--hardly unique to post-Tiger.
I would argue that OSX 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2 were effectively betas that lacked critical features and were not usable in production environments. 10.3 is the first version I felt comfortable rolling out to our users in even a trial basis. By your standards, 10.3 was the pinnacle of OSX?
I disagree!
I don't disagree at all with the main thrust of your post, but in nitpicking pedantic mode, I do disagree about versions of OSX.
Tiger was a questionable update, and every OSX update since has been a load of shit. Mountain Lion makes the UI really annoying, and OSX Server is now completely useless.
Tiger -- OSX 10.4 -- was released in 2005 and was a great update. Two of the biggest features were Spotlight (an every day usage feature) and I believe the Dashboard.
Leopard -- 10.5 -- was another good release. In addition to full x86 support, Leopard added Time Machine, Spaces (virtual desktops), Boot Camp, etc.
Snow Leopard -- 10.6 -- 2009. my favorite release. SL was largely a refinement release with a new rewritten Finder and general speed increases. I still run 10.6 ln my laptop and many users (myself included) would argue it was the best OSX release.
Lion -- 10.7 -- no idea what is supposed to be new or good in Lion. Resize windows from any border is the only thing I can think of. I use it at work on an old macpro and hate it compared to SL.
Mountain Lion -- 10.8 -- Again, really not sure what improvements there are supposed to be. I would say a better release than LIon, with some real interface improvements (to expose/mission control) but still crap compared to SL.
So in short, I don't think it is at all fair to say that all releases since Tiger have been crap. Maybe you meant Lion, in which case I 100% agree!
I see others questioning your statement, so I thought I'd add in. I thought season 4 was great. I thought seasons 1+5 were the weakest. I can barely watch season 1...
I love the plot, the writing, and the universe, and consider myself a fan, but there are some times--and certain actors--where the acting just kills me.
Londo+G'kar? Awesome.
Sinclair...? *wince*
Talk about the missing the point. Good for you, you don't like Christians and think they're ignorant and mean--fine, I don't care at all about that. I don't think they like you very much either. The point is--who gives a crap about such semantics? Are you going to get worked up and in a pedantic lather over ever slight you can possibly imagine? Over every allusion that doesn't pass your muster? Are you to be the culture police, who judges over all acceptable and unacceptable references?
You seem to really enjoy talking about others' insecurities, and yet it seems pretty apparent to everyone reading your comments just where the real wellspring of insecurity lies.
[I]f I was at a dinner party with any of them and the subject of the name came up I would absolutely point out how ridiculous and annoying and even passively-condoning-of-evil it was.
I bet you're awesome at dinner parties.
Jobs knew how to manipulate people into wanting what he had to sell them. He was an excellent salesman.
He was an excellent salesman, certainly fallible, and with a well-earned reputation for his RDF. However, he did a damn good job of knowing what people did want!
I guess a bad sense is still a sense, so, ok.
So if you're saying Jobs had a bad sense of taste, yours--by comparison--is better? Why should we believe you? The corpus of Jobs' legacy is in front of us.
You're being hysterical.
OR ARE YOU??
I agreed with your statement.
And you think it's reasonable for the average person to read and understand a 325 page EULA [apple.com]? You can try foisting the blame back on the user, but I think it is, at best, misrepresenting the situation to suggest that people know "exactly" what they are getting into when they purchase an iPhone.
I really think the onus is on you for this point. I think you will struggle to find iPhone users who are not aware of the App Store and what it entails. Furthermore, most users just really don't care. At all. If they did, Apple wouldn't keep selling so many phones and have such a high retention rate amongst customers. Check out the retention rates if you don't believe me. They're easy to find.
The average person thinks they're getting a phone. A phone that they own, and can use without unreasonable restriction, and that they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now, this isn't true, not by a long-shot, but that's what the average person thinks.
No, your confusion arises from the fact that most people don't care about the restrictions. You're again being hysterically disingenuous. Even jailbreakers are a TINY minority of iOS users.
Privacy-wise, exactly what issue are you complaining about?
The average person is, afterall, a rather trusting, and stupid, sort.
You, of course, are bright, savvy, and an extra special snowflake.
I won't address the rest of your post, other than to say SARCASM! Anyone who hasn't had their sense of humor surgically removed and replaced with a floating point coprocessor can see that my entire previous post contained generous helpings of it.
Are you joking now? Your "sarcasm" was painfully obvious. It was the inanity behind the point you were trying to make that I am commenting on.
LOL, the few, the proud--N900 fanboys. Great slapdown :)
Allow me to introduce you to evasi0n, the subject of this (RTF)Article.
http://evasi0n.com/
I think you will be pleased!
I have owned an iPhone 3GS and currently an iPhone5. I have jailbroken both of them. I was very happy when evasi0n was released, and immediately downloaded biteSMS and several other great Cydia apps.
Everyone who buys an iPhone knows exactly what they are getting in to. Nobody is conned or tricked or forced to buy an iPhone.
Apple has every right to patch security holes in their OS and software. Even as a jailbreaker, I expect nothing less. Should Apple have left a PDF rendering buffer exploit that allowed the easiest jailbreak in history (jailbreakme.com) open just so people could jailbreak? Obviously not. That's an easy example, but just which security holes should Apple leave open for jailbreakers?
I wish Apple would allow easy legitimate rooting. But, they don't. I made the choice that I still like the iOS world and hardware. I might feel differently in 2 years, but that's where I am now. Furthermore, Apple does give you some pretty granular control over tracking, ads, location services, etc. You're really getting offtrack on to tangential issues what that tack.
No need for the disingenuous hysterics about "morally inferior" people, etc. One can imagine that you would be complaining if Apple was NOT patching security holes... Keep it straight--attack the walled garden and Apple's choice to lockdown directly. Don't coat it in a guise of outrage over bug patching.
I work for a small academic publisher and I've seen the Edwin Mellen press at some academic conventions. Nice people, but they totally come across as carnival hucksters. They get their business knowing full well how important "publish or perish" is in academia. Their reps will literally ask every single person who walks by in the exhibit hall: "Do you want to get published?" (including me, on multiple occasions, wearing my vendor badge!) They basically make their money from minimal production values (look at their covers or insides of their books to see what I mean), small print runs, and very high prices. They sell a limited number of books to libraries, to the author, and maybe a handful elsewhere, and then they're done. They claim to be subsidy-free (i.e., not a vanity press) but I don't know if this is true or not.
Check out the history of the company (a real quality page, lolz): http://www.mellenpress.com/newhistory.cfm
Apparently named after a grandfather.
Arbitrary is not the same as not necessary. The grammer rules of any language are absolutely arbitrary.
I strongly disagree with this statement. Prescriptivist grammarians have in many cases formalized--or even created entirely new rules--language rules according to some set of logic or principles. This has gone on for thousands of years and is not a new phenomenon. Now, you or I may not agree with these principles or selected logic (an example I personally like is the invented rule against splitting infinitives in English), but in most cases I would hardly call these rules random or arbitrary.
This kind of argument comes right down to the core of the grammar debate, though. It's an old debate!
I'll give you 2 (nimble), and 4+5 (local pride), but how does (e.g.) Foxconn exemplify less greed and proper labor relations and management? I guess for certain values of "proper labor relations" you could be right, but probably not what most people think of!
I stand by my statement. I've (or, my company) has been on the receiving end of more than one similar letter, and as far as legal letters go, that one was extremely mild.
For any interested in a little background, I highly recommend the book "The War Against Grammar" (Amazon link).
The basic gist of the book is that starting roughly 30 years ago, linguists and educational theorists decided that teaching grammar and prescriptive rules (arbitrary rules, they might say!) is not necessary. After all, people learn to speak without formally being taught grammar. As long as you can be understood by others, what does it matter? Communication is the key, not formal grammar. Thus being able to diagram a sentence or know the difference between a direct and indirect object became an archaism. The emergence of described (and accepted) phenomenon like Ebonics is part of this movement.
Ask college kids today how many of them had to diagram sentences in elementary school? I have asked many current college students and very, very few even knew what diagramming a sentence means. Even ten years ago, many more students would have had this emphasis on grammar in early educational.
The end results--college students who can't write to save their lives. (And no, I don't blame texting and Instant Messaging.)
It's a good book!
I hope you are joking!
To be fair, while Piriform's request might be considered obnoxious, there's really not a threat involved. As far as letters go, it was pretty mild.
That's not to say that threats (legal or otherwise!) won't be forthcoming, but they're not here yet. I hope slashdot follows up; will be interesting to see what happens next.
Well there's Orkut...
Oh wait.