apple advertised itself as 'open source', and darwin is based off of BSD, windows off of Xerox, the mouse off of Xerox, etc etc etc. apple owes everything it is to other people's work and inventions, and the open intellectual culture of places like Berkeley.
Apple takes from and gives back to open source as an excellent model for a "good" open source player that understands the benefits of contributing back to areas that are not their core competence. As a contributor myself, I take umbrage with the idea that obeying licenses and in fact going beyond the requirements of the licenses for copyleft works, somehow invalidates one's right to avail oneself of copyright and other intellectual property law.
for it to get all anally draconian about IP law is the height of lunacy. its like watching a building implode its own foundation and expect to go floating off into space.
BSD, Apache, GPL, and other copyleft licenses rely upon enforcement of copyright law to work. Utilizing them is supporting copyright law and making use of it, not undermining it.
They'd be much more convincing if Apple wasn't out there suing everybody else as the 'creator' and 20-year owner of the 'pinch to zoom' gesture...
Which would be a valid argument if they were, but Apple doesn't have a patent on "pinch to zoom". They have a patent on a very specific function where "pinch to zoom" is applied multiple times sequentially on a touchscreen and the first one clues the OS into the fact that other gestures within a preset amount of time are likely to be the same UI input even if the normal algorithm for determining it is a "pinch to zoom" would not have detected it as such. That was a real innovation and it was an innovation that was copied by the Android OS makers without license. If you can find prior art for that, well it would be awesome and an excellent thing for Android going forward. Please do present it.
I won't go into your other points because I don't feel like doing the research, but YOU should do the research before making these kind of claims in future. Just reading a superficial summary by a magazine looking to get more hits will not result in being informed about a topic. Talking points don't make for understanding an issue.
How can Samsung be copying Apple when Samsung had a similar looking device out before the ipad?
You might have a point if Apple were suing because Samsung made a similar looking device. Maybe you should read the actual filing so you know what it is you're talking about. The design patents are about many, many elements of appearance all being used in a way that can confuse users. It includes device shape, color, user interface, icons, packaging, and even marketing. On top of that are specific software patents (mapping elliptical regions to capacitive touches) and hardware patents (Apple's new type of rocker switch).
Ok google you are making money of me , then I want my cut. I think 80% of every dollar you make sounds fair. Oh and don't try and tell me your "free" products are my payment because those are making you money not costing.
You seem a little unclear on the concept. Google offers services so they can serve ads. If you want to use the services, you get the ads. If you don't want the ads, don't use the services. It is pretty simple. The services Google runs cost them money, which is recouped by serving ads. The services are your cut and if you don't like the cut, go somewhere else and pay for the services without ads.
ALL are targeting us. They are all selling to us and our information. Google does sell access to us. However, you can not get specific information about us. OTH, I CAN go to MS or Apple and get any of our information.
Hmm, I thought Apple's talks with publishers were hung for quite a while because Apple refused to give them the credit card and personal details of people making purchases. When does Apple sell your information and to whom?
That said, I agree that your distinction is important. Personally, I rather prefer that Google sells access to me in a targeted way as it means the ads that do make their way to me are at least moderately tailored to things of interest to me.
That's disingenuous. Also before the iPad were things like the Nokia N700 (Maemo) and the SmartQ series (Ubuntu/Wince/Android). The SmartQ devices, in particular, look a lot like the Samsung design, yet predate the iPad by years.
I think you should read the actual filing. Apple isn't filing suit based upon the fact that the devices look very similar, but upon that fact coupled with the fact that the user interface is also very similar (and in fact violated both trademarks on the art and software patents on the interface), the packaging in very similar, and the hardware uses patented Apple designs. It's all these things in combination that Apple is claiming is misleading users (well and the regular patent claims). It's one thing to have a device that looks sort of like an iPhone or iPad. It's another to do that and design an interface with the same elements right down to cloning a dozen of the icons.
There is NOTHING unique about the iPad, certainly nothing unique that other manufacturers do. Shape and size? The natural results of designing a case around a screen, CPU, RAM, battery etc.
Yes, clearly if you use off the shelf batteries your icons will be the same color foreground and background, have the same image and the same color gradient in the background. That's obvious; surely no one at Samsung looked at an iPhone/iPad and copied it without considering the copyright ramifications.
Seriously though, if you actually read the text of the claims and go through them (here's a link to an analysis of the phone claims) there is a whole lot of very similar design and styling and advertising and packaging that may well be enough to confuse less savvy consumers.
On top of that there are real, technical patents that Samsung seems to have willfully infringed (like Patent #7,812,828) or the new type of rocker switch used for the volume on both devices (but invented and patented by Apple). Regardless of how you feel about these patents or patents in general, your claim that there is nothing unique about the iPad is both wrong (in terms of patented hardware) and missing a big part of the point. Even if no one element is unique, combining so many of them in the exact same way violates trade dress infringement because it confuses and misleads consumers looking to buy one device into thinking another device is the same thing.
For example, Apple seems to have done a great job of keeping this out of the news, but "generic" mp3 players now hold 4 gigs...
Apple has never been competing using disk space as a differentiator. They weren't the largest mp3 player, nor the largest per $ when they came out and they never have been since. Apple won and has kept their lead in that market based on a coherent user experience, from ripping CDs, to buying new music online, to synching, to organizing and rating, to playing easily with one hand. The fact that you think Apple has ever won on disk space just shows you haven't been paying attention.
It's bene out for a few months now and nothing that interesting has come out of it. People aren't moving there from Facebook, nothing interesting is happening there (compared to Facebook), and like the article states they missed some really great opportunities.
It is interesting to see other people's perspective on this. Like many of us here, I'm a geek. I've seen more than one person I know post a countdown on Facebook with a link to their Google+ account and then, kill off their Facebook account entirely. I haven't gotten rid of my account, but I also got an e-mail from Facebook the other day reminding me I haven't logged in in more than 30 days. I did not plan that or anything, I've just been using it less and less. I've been using Google+ much more than I ever used Facebook. Partly this is because Huddles on the mobile app are an unbelievably easy way to do free group chats with people I actually want to talk to on a regular basis. My co-worker informed me via a Google+ Huddle, late last night, that she was not going to be in this morning. I have about the same number of friends on Google+ as I do on Facebook, but fewer of them are old high school classmates and more have things to say I actually care about. Oh, and being able to view public comments in my locality is an extra entertainment and occasionally even useful.
So I'd say Circles, Huddles, and Nearby are great additions that are better than Facebook. The other big advantage being the things Google+ doesn't have, namely a million notifications from games and boring people that I have to wade through.
Honmestly[sic], the fact that Google+ is aiming for HTML5 games is by and large the reason it'll end up getting and keeping mindshare in the long run. Flash is reliant on Adobe's good graces to get fixes et al, but putting it into the HTML standard means that the FOSS mantra "all bugs are shallow to many eyes" starts having meaning.
I agree to some extend, although the argument is a bit amusing in light of Google only supporting Flash for movies uploaded through the Google+ Web interface.
(you need all sorts of development tools to make a flash game, you need a text editor to make HTML)
Well, realistically to make a viable game you will be using fancy development tools 99% of the time targeting either platform, conceivably the same dev tool targeting both. The difference is if you're developing for Flash you don't have a choice as to who is supplying that dev tool, and Adobe is not the most responsive company in the world. More importantly, if you're trying to adapt your software to a particular platform, you're not limited to what Adobe supports well enough for your needs. Anyone can write HTML5 interpretation engines for their platform and likely everyone will for all credible platforms.
"have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions in public statements"
You mean in much the same way climate change promoters exaggerate claims from other papers?
Actually, several recent studies have indicated the consensus in academic journals over the last 15 years has understated the actual effects both in terms of overall temperature change and cloud trends. I suppose you could argue there is no difference between a supposed scientist and author of a study on global warming and the press, but for those of us that pay more attention to scholarly journals than mainstream media sound bites, the difference is stark.
The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.
I've worked in the field of usability testing and computer-human interfaces. My understanding is that the ribbon was based on a fairly interesting research project into interface design, one that might yet prove to be a significant improvement. MS, however, was unable to get it to work as designed and settled for a more classic interface that was superficially similar in appearance to the research project. I've seen absolutely zero scientific support for it being a more usable UI.
They're [sandboxes] a theoretical concept that have never worked well in the real world. They've been tried time and time and time and time again. They aren't a new concept, but nobody ever seems able to implement them properly, even when some of the biggest names in the field are involved, and even when they have nearly unlimited resources and people to throw at the problem.
Well, except Apple with iOS, Google with Android, the NSA with their SELinux improvements, a crap-ton of people who worked on and use TrustedBSD, Bitfrost in the OLPC, and every security researcher for the last 20 years who has relied heavily on VMs. But yeah aside from those and probably a bunch more I don't know about, no one has successfully implemented sandboxes.
Maybe what you meant to say was that Microsoft hasn't been able to implement them properly.
That's damn wrong.
ActiveX's widespread usage is NOT the only reason. The most significant reason is that ActiveX had basically NO security - one wrong decision by the user and their whole system is compromised. There is no "sandbox filesystem actions" like in Java model for instance. The second glaring issue is that the user does not always gets to decide - lots of objects were marked "safe for scripting" - that is for use from JavaScript, when in fact their interfaces never meant to be secure.
I would add that being a closed source, single vendor project, there was no competition. If MS's implementation was insecure, well you're SOL. With an open standard implementation of NaCl with an open source reference implementation you have a different beast. If Google doesn't fix a problematic hole MS or Apple or Nokia or Canonical or Adobe can and will. Competition drives improvement, including security improvements.
Good security relies upon a layered defense so no one factor, even a weak password, can compromise your system. A prudent administrator has an IDS looking at and blocking propagation traffic based upon a normal use signature for their network, and has strong passwords, and has a VPN and has firewalls in between network segments. A good OS has services off by default and a silent mode to prevent port scanning and a sandbox around such a likely service with a history of exploits and strongly tested code for the service in the first place to prevent privilege escalation even if there were no sandbox and scanning on the server to identify known malware signatures.
Layered security, because relying on any one layer in our current climate is absurd.
Right now apps are deliberately curtailed to only certain background activities because of the limitations of the amount of cores, adding in more cores and more powerful cores will allow apps to do more in the background.
I think Apple has been very upfront about the fact that limiting available background activities is primarily about power management and battery. Nothing about 2 cores prevents you from maxing them out, it's just that most of the apps that do such a thing do so because they are poorly and lazily coded. Apple's restrictions have always been about forcing developers to make apps that run in a way that will not kill the user's battery and several of the Android developers have made comments about wishing they had done the same. That said, I think Android's model of informing the user of battery usage and trying to automatically curtail it in the OS is a more flexible solution if they can make it work. If they paired it with a stronger vetting system it would probably be better than the iOS solution right now.
Way to miss the point. That being, it isn't locked down in any way. You can use it with the software that came on it. You can change the software/OS. Sure people will trade in old models, but people trade in old Linux boxes for new ones. That doesn't make something "locked down" unless you're an idiot for whome "locked down" means the specific company you want to don something isn't doing it for your lazy butt.
I dunno...I have several dedicated mp3 players. For one thing...I don't use the phone all day for music, I don't want the battery to run out in case I need to talk or txt or check email on it. I do use it at times for Pandora at work when I'm up for some 'radio' like experience.
This seems like a cop out. Sort of a, "the battery life on my phone sucks so I need another device". Thats akin to "the camera in my phone is poor resolution, so I need a separate camera". It doesn't work in the long term and mostly reflects poor choices about your phone. I listened to music on my phone for hours today and did some web browser and some phone calls and some messaging, and took a few pictures. It's 9:30 PM and I'm at 90% battery. It always amazes me the people that have phones that they plug in every night and still can't last for a whole day of use, but even the laggards in the field will be bolstered by better battery tech within the next few years. Digital cameras are declining in sales because the market has decided phones are good enough to replace them.
But aside from that, I have the new iPod nano...for working out at the gym. I don't want the heavy bulky phone there in my pocket...the nano clips on to my shirt and is largely out of the way but providing both mp3's or radio if I want.
This is a valid argument, but pretty easily solved by a good bluetooth headset with controls.
Also, the phone has more limited memory and can't carry my large library of music...only a small subsection.
Your phone has less storage than your nano?
So, sure..we are trying to downgrade carrying SO much..but it isn't going away totally....a phone can do many things, but it can't do them all well.
I've found a phone does most things better than the other device I left at home, and because the interface is decent, does most everything I want well enough to not bother with say, a GPS, digital camera, music player, stand alone portable game device, etc. Consolidation of the hardware is what I have wanted for years and it is finally getting to the point where it is good enough and I can solve the rest in software.
If software titles were platform independent then people wouldn't get locked in to a certain platform, and wouldn't care about buying what their friends have in order to have apps/games that talk to each other nicely. More people probably would be buying HP (or other) tablets if it weren't for this.
Apple still supports HTML5/Javascript apps and developers can make cross platform apps using this technology. Some do, but most don't see value in cross platform and are focused on developing something quickly.
Funny, because Apple originally wanted only web-clips and not native apps...
Apple originally championed HTML5/javascript as the only native development platform, but developers wanted a more full featured dev environment and toolset so Apple adapted their existing Xcode.
Of course then devices probably could not run any apps locally.
Why not? Apple has a very nice standard HTML and javascript engine on the phone and you don't need an external server to host it as javascript runs client side. Heck Apple even committed to supporting phonegap so you can compile Web apps for sale in the app store. There are hundreds of apps, some fairly major that are cross platform using this dev platform.
Do the math. You could tax everyone who makes $1m or more per year (you know, the evil hated rich people) at a rate of 100% (confiscate all of their earnings for the year), and it wouldn't close the deficit - not even close!
It is pretty hard to do the math since no one seems to have reliable numbers about the income for people that make more than a million dollars. Please cite your sources and show your work. From the numbers I've seen, if you take people making more than $250K (1.7 million according to the census) and confiscate just $250K it would take about 4 years to completely pay off the debt without any other changes. Mind you, that's not a good plan, but a significant portion of that group makes a whole lot more than $250K, some making tens or hundreds of millions. It make a whole lot of economic sense to tax that bracket at rates similar to the 50's or 60's until the debt is paid off, while simultaneously cutting spending (like responsibly pulling out of our very expensive foreign wars) and increasing spending on economy growing incentives that make us less dependent and send less of our money overseas. There is no quick fix. It will take a decade of responsible taxation and financial decisions without getting diverted by wealthy lobbies or politicians who promise miracles. When you're in debt, you sacrifice and work harder to increase revenue, especially in ways that you can afford, until the debt is paid off and you are not losing exponentially due to interest. The poor can't pay any more and we can only decrease spending so much without huge economic failure that defeats the purpose. Tax increases on the high end are pretty much the only real option (since the bottom 50% already has no net wealth and increases will simply drive them into more debt).
Apple makes about 30% profit on their devices. They make 30% profit on apps sold through the app store. Would it really f'in kill them if they let someone else make a buck? What, having the highest market cap of any technology company is not good enough for them?
Apple runs the app store (like the regular iTunes store) at near break even levels. [citation] They do it because it sells hardware, not out of any altruism, but claiming Apple's percentage on app sales is exorbitant shows an ignorance about what percentage online retailers normally charge and about Apple's particular numbers. If anything you should be upset that they charge so little and thereby undermine the ability of competitors to get started in the market.
Now, Microsoft looks like like a gentle giant compared to the Apple.
There is certainly a lot of PR to that effect, and it seems like the "in thing" among some people to espouse such opinions. In my opinion, that just demonstrates one's ignorance about MS's business practices. Maybe MS finally figured out effective marketing for their brand image.
While the previous poster's specific example is a poor one, I don't think that's what he's implying at all. Rather he's implying that because some of the aspects of our biology are so grossly unintelligent, this provides evidence against the idea that there was an intelligent designer. He's implying there is no god, because if there was, he'd be pretty dumb and weird, ala, nipples on men, nasal passages rotated 90 degrees from optimal, obvious deficiencies in the eye that are easily explained by a particular evolutionary route, but make no sense if you were designing from the ground up, etc., etc.
The problem with that thinking, somebody may offhandedly utter a word string, or phrase that, while meant as an innocuous statement, perhaps in jest, that some hyper sensitive person will overhear and report as a "threat". Now, other than pointing to the obvious "thoughtcrime" Orwellian connotations, what if it was YOU in that situation?
I take personal responsibility for my actions including my public statements. If I were to threaten to kill a president or member of congress and someone reported it, they'd be right in questioning and detaining me and I'd tell the truth and potentially go to prison. Threatening the lives of others is NOT okay, and when you're in a situation where there are hundreds of credible threats to a person and those are all attempts to undermine the democratic process, people should fucking know better.
Stop trying to slough off your responsibilities. If you said it, you are responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
apple advertised itself as 'open source', and darwin is based off of BSD, windows off of Xerox, the mouse off of Xerox, etc etc etc. apple owes everything it is to other people's work and inventions, and the open intellectual culture of places like Berkeley.
Apple takes from and gives back to open source as an excellent model for a "good" open source player that understands the benefits of contributing back to areas that are not their core competence. As a contributor myself, I take umbrage with the idea that obeying licenses and in fact going beyond the requirements of the licenses for copyleft works, somehow invalidates one's right to avail oneself of copyright and other intellectual property law.
for it to get all anally draconian about IP law is the height of lunacy. its like watching a building implode its own foundation and expect to go floating off into space.
BSD, Apache, GPL, and other copyleft licenses rely upon enforcement of copyright law to work. Utilizing them is supporting copyright law and making use of it, not undermining it.
They'd be much more convincing if Apple wasn't out there suing everybody else as the 'creator' and 20-year owner of the 'pinch to zoom' gesture...
Which would be a valid argument if they were, but Apple doesn't have a patent on "pinch to zoom". They have a patent on a very specific function where "pinch to zoom" is applied multiple times sequentially on a touchscreen and the first one clues the OS into the fact that other gestures within a preset amount of time are likely to be the same UI input even if the normal algorithm for determining it is a "pinch to zoom" would not have detected it as such. That was a real innovation and it was an innovation that was copied by the Android OS makers without license. If you can find prior art for that, well it would be awesome and an excellent thing for Android going forward. Please do present it.
I won't go into your other points because I don't feel like doing the research, but YOU should do the research before making these kind of claims in future. Just reading a superficial summary by a magazine looking to get more hits will not result in being informed about a topic. Talking points don't make for understanding an issue.
How can Samsung be copying Apple when Samsung had a similar looking device out before the ipad?
You might have a point if Apple were suing because Samsung made a similar looking device. Maybe you should read the actual filing so you know what it is you're talking about. The design patents are about many, many elements of appearance all being used in a way that can confuse users. It includes device shape, color, user interface, icons, packaging, and even marketing. On top of that are specific software patents (mapping elliptical regions to capacitive touches) and hardware patents (Apple's new type of rocker switch).
Ok google you are making money of me , then I want my cut. I think 80% of every dollar you make sounds fair. Oh and don't try and tell me your "free" products are my payment because those are making you money not costing.
You seem a little unclear on the concept. Google offers services so they can serve ads. If you want to use the services, you get the ads. If you don't want the ads, don't use the services. It is pretty simple. The services Google runs cost them money, which is recouped by serving ads. The services are your cut and if you don't like the cut, go somewhere else and pay for the services without ads.
Apple wanted money for that information. They re-sell that info. From their POV, that is giving away an extra product.
A Google search for "Apple sells subscriber data" yields only hits about Apple refusing to sell data. Citation please.
ALL are targeting us. They are all selling to us and our information. Google does sell access to us. However, you can not get specific information about us. OTH, I CAN go to MS or Apple and get any of our information.
Hmm, I thought Apple's talks with publishers were hung for quite a while because Apple refused to give them the credit card and personal details of people making purchases. When does Apple sell your information and to whom?
That said, I agree that your distinction is important. Personally, I rather prefer that Google sells access to me in a targeted way as it means the ads that do make their way to me are at least moderately tailored to things of interest to me.
That's disingenuous. Also before the iPad were things like the Nokia N700 (Maemo) and the SmartQ series (Ubuntu/Wince/Android). The SmartQ devices, in particular, look a lot like the Samsung design, yet predate the iPad by years.
I think you should read the actual filing. Apple isn't filing suit based upon the fact that the devices look very similar, but upon that fact coupled with the fact that the user interface is also very similar (and in fact violated both trademarks on the art and software patents on the interface), the packaging in very similar, and the hardware uses patented Apple designs. It's all these things in combination that Apple is claiming is misleading users (well and the regular patent claims). It's one thing to have a device that looks sort of like an iPhone or iPad. It's another to do that and design an interface with the same elements right down to cloning a dozen of the icons.
There is NOTHING unique about the iPad, certainly nothing unique that other manufacturers do. Shape and size? The natural results of designing a case around a screen, CPU, RAM, battery etc.
Yes, clearly if you use off the shelf batteries your icons will be the same color foreground and background, have the same image and the same color gradient in the background. That's obvious; surely no one at Samsung looked at an iPhone/iPad and copied it without considering the copyright ramifications.
Seriously though, if you actually read the text of the claims and go through them (here's a link to an analysis of the phone claims) there is a whole lot of very similar design and styling and advertising and packaging that may well be enough to confuse less savvy consumers.
On top of that there are real, technical patents that Samsung seems to have willfully infringed (like Patent #7,812,828) or the new type of rocker switch used for the volume on both devices (but invented and patented by Apple). Regardless of how you feel about these patents or patents in general, your claim that there is nothing unique about the iPad is both wrong (in terms of patented hardware) and missing a big part of the point. Even if no one element is unique, combining so many of them in the exact same way violates trade dress infringement because it confuses and misleads consumers looking to buy one device into thinking another device is the same thing.
For example, Apple seems to have done a great job of keeping this out of the news, but "generic" mp3 players now hold 4 gigs...
Apple has never been competing using disk space as a differentiator. They weren't the largest mp3 player, nor the largest per $ when they came out and they never have been since. Apple won and has kept their lead in that market based on a coherent user experience, from ripping CDs, to buying new music online, to synching, to organizing and rating, to playing easily with one hand. The fact that you think Apple has ever won on disk space just shows you haven't been paying attention.
It's bene out for a few months now and nothing that interesting has come out of it. People aren't moving there from Facebook, nothing interesting is happening there (compared to Facebook), and like the article states they missed some really great opportunities.
It is interesting to see other people's perspective on this. Like many of us here, I'm a geek. I've seen more than one person I know post a countdown on Facebook with a link to their Google+ account and then, kill off their Facebook account entirely. I haven't gotten rid of my account, but I also got an e-mail from Facebook the other day reminding me I haven't logged in in more than 30 days. I did not plan that or anything, I've just been using it less and less. I've been using Google+ much more than I ever used Facebook. Partly this is because Huddles on the mobile app are an unbelievably easy way to do free group chats with people I actually want to talk to on a regular basis. My co-worker informed me via a Google+ Huddle, late last night, that she was not going to be in this morning. I have about the same number of friends on Google+ as I do on Facebook, but fewer of them are old high school classmates and more have things to say I actually care about. Oh, and being able to view public comments in my locality is an extra entertainment and occasionally even useful.
So I'd say Circles, Huddles, and Nearby are great additions that are better than Facebook. The other big advantage being the things Google+ doesn't have, namely a million notifications from games and boring people that I have to wade through.
Honmestly[sic], the fact that Google+ is aiming for HTML5 games is by and large the reason it'll end up getting and keeping mindshare in the long run. Flash is reliant on Adobe's good graces to get fixes et al, but putting it into the HTML standard means that the FOSS mantra "all bugs are shallow to many eyes" starts having meaning.
I agree to some extend, although the argument is a bit amusing in light of Google only supporting Flash for movies uploaded through the Google+ Web interface.
(you need all sorts of development tools to make a flash game, you need a text editor to make HTML)
Well, realistically to make a viable game you will be using fancy development tools 99% of the time targeting either platform, conceivably the same dev tool targeting both. The difference is if you're developing for Flash you don't have a choice as to who is supplying that dev tool, and Adobe is not the most responsive company in the world. More importantly, if you're trying to adapt your software to a particular platform, you're not limited to what Adobe supports well enough for your needs. Anyone can write HTML5 interpretation engines for their platform and likely everyone will for all credible platforms.
"have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions in public statements"
You mean in much the same way climate change promoters exaggerate claims from other papers?
Actually, several recent studies have indicated the consensus in academic journals over the last 15 years has understated the actual effects both in terms of overall temperature change and cloud trends. I suppose you could argue there is no difference between a supposed scientist and author of a study on global warming and the press, but for those of us that pay more attention to scholarly journals than mainstream media sound bites, the difference is stark.
The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.
I've worked in the field of usability testing and computer-human interfaces. My understanding is that the ribbon was based on a fairly interesting research project into interface design, one that might yet prove to be a significant improvement. MS, however, was unable to get it to work as designed and settled for a more classic interface that was superficially similar in appearance to the research project. I've seen absolutely zero scientific support for it being a more usable UI.
They're [sandboxes] a theoretical concept that have never worked well in the real world. They've been tried time and time and time and time again. They aren't a new concept, but nobody ever seems able to implement them properly, even when some of the biggest names in the field are involved, and even when they have nearly unlimited resources and people to throw at the problem.
Well, except Apple with iOS, Google with Android, the NSA with their SELinux improvements, a crap-ton of people who worked on and use TrustedBSD, Bitfrost in the OLPC, and every security researcher for the last 20 years who has relied heavily on VMs. But yeah aside from those and probably a bunch more I don't know about, no one has successfully implemented sandboxes.
Maybe what you meant to say was that Microsoft hasn't been able to implement them properly.
That's damn wrong. ActiveX's widespread usage is NOT the only reason. The most significant reason is that ActiveX had basically NO security - one wrong decision by the user and their whole system is compromised. There is no "sandbox filesystem actions" like in Java model for instance. The second glaring issue is that the user does not always gets to decide - lots of objects were marked "safe for scripting" - that is for use from JavaScript, when in fact their interfaces never meant to be secure.
I would add that being a closed source, single vendor project, there was no competition. If MS's implementation was insecure, well you're SOL. With an open standard implementation of NaCl with an open source reference implementation you have a different beast. If Google doesn't fix a problematic hole MS or Apple or Nokia or Canonical or Adobe can and will. Competition drives improvement, including security improvements.
Good security relies upon a layered defense so no one factor, even a weak password, can compromise your system. A prudent administrator has an IDS looking at and blocking propagation traffic based upon a normal use signature for their network, and has strong passwords, and has a VPN and has firewalls in between network segments. A good OS has services off by default and a silent mode to prevent port scanning and a sandbox around such a likely service with a history of exploits and strongly tested code for the service in the first place to prevent privilege escalation even if there were no sandbox and scanning on the server to identify known malware signatures.
Layered security, because relying on any one layer in our current climate is absurd.
Right now apps are deliberately curtailed to only certain background activities because of the limitations of the amount of cores, adding in more cores and more powerful cores will allow apps to do more in the background.
I think Apple has been very upfront about the fact that limiting available background activities is primarily about power management and battery. Nothing about 2 cores prevents you from maxing them out, it's just that most of the apps that do such a thing do so because they are poorly and lazily coded. Apple's restrictions have always been about forcing developers to make apps that run in a way that will not kill the user's battery and several of the Android developers have made comments about wishing they had done the same. That said, I think Android's model of informing the user of battery usage and trying to automatically curtail it in the OS is a more flexible solution if they can make it work. If they paired it with a stronger vetting system it would probably be better than the iOS solution right now.
Way to miss the point. That being, it isn't locked down in any way. You can use it with the software that came on it. You can change the software/OS. Sure people will trade in old models, but people trade in old Linux boxes for new ones. That doesn't make something "locked down" unless you're an idiot for whome "locked down" means the specific company you want to don something isn't doing it for your lazy butt.
I dunno...I have several dedicated mp3 players. For one thing...I don't use the phone all day for music, I don't want the battery to run out in case I need to talk or txt or check email on it. I do use it at times for Pandora at work when I'm up for some 'radio' like experience.
This seems like a cop out. Sort of a, "the battery life on my phone sucks so I need another device". Thats akin to "the camera in my phone is poor resolution, so I need a separate camera". It doesn't work in the long term and mostly reflects poor choices about your phone. I listened to music on my phone for hours today and did some web browser and some phone calls and some messaging, and took a few pictures. It's 9:30 PM and I'm at 90% battery. It always amazes me the people that have phones that they plug in every night and still can't last for a whole day of use, but even the laggards in the field will be bolstered by better battery tech within the next few years. Digital cameras are declining in sales because the market has decided phones are good enough to replace them.
But aside from that, I have the new iPod nano...for working out at the gym. I don't want the heavy bulky phone there in my pocket...the nano clips on to my shirt and is largely out of the way but providing both mp3's or radio if I want.
This is a valid argument, but pretty easily solved by a good bluetooth headset with controls.
Also, the phone has more limited memory and can't carry my large library of music...only a small subsection.
Your phone has less storage than your nano?
So, sure..we are trying to downgrade carrying SO much..but it isn't going away totally....a phone can do many things, but it can't do them all well.
I've found a phone does most things better than the other device I left at home, and because the interface is decent, does most everything I want well enough to not bother with say, a GPS, digital camera, music player, stand alone portable game device, etc. Consolidation of the hardware is what I have wanted for years and it is finally getting to the point where it is good enough and I can solve the rest in software.
Especially a 3GS, which many people will undoubtedly trade in this year for a 5. Perfectly fast and good, if it weren't locked down....
Why don't you install Android on it then? What kind of cut-rate nerd are you?
If software titles were platform independent then people wouldn't get locked in to a certain platform, and wouldn't care about buying what their friends have in order to have apps/games that talk to each other nicely. More people probably would be buying HP (or other) tablets if it weren't for this.
Apple still supports HTML5/Javascript apps and developers can make cross platform apps using this technology. Some do, but most don't see value in cross platform and are focused on developing something quickly.
Funny, because Apple originally wanted only web-clips and not native apps...
Apple originally championed HTML5/javascript as the only native development platform, but developers wanted a more full featured dev environment and toolset so Apple adapted their existing Xcode.
Of course then devices probably could not run any apps locally.
Why not? Apple has a very nice standard HTML and javascript engine on the phone and you don't need an external server to host it as javascript runs client side. Heck Apple even committed to supporting phonegap so you can compile Web apps for sale in the app store. There are hundreds of apps, some fairly major that are cross platform using this dev platform.
Do the math. You could tax everyone who makes $1m or more per year (you know, the evil hated rich people) at a rate of 100% (confiscate all of their earnings for the year), and it wouldn't close the deficit - not even close!
It is pretty hard to do the math since no one seems to have reliable numbers about the income for people that make more than a million dollars. Please cite your sources and show your work. From the numbers I've seen, if you take people making more than $250K (1.7 million according to the census) and confiscate just $250K it would take about 4 years to completely pay off the debt without any other changes. Mind you, that's not a good plan, but a significant portion of that group makes a whole lot more than $250K, some making tens or hundreds of millions. It make a whole lot of economic sense to tax that bracket at rates similar to the 50's or 60's until the debt is paid off, while simultaneously cutting spending (like responsibly pulling out of our very expensive foreign wars) and increasing spending on economy growing incentives that make us less dependent and send less of our money overseas. There is no quick fix. It will take a decade of responsible taxation and financial decisions without getting diverted by wealthy lobbies or politicians who promise miracles. When you're in debt, you sacrifice and work harder to increase revenue, especially in ways that you can afford, until the debt is paid off and you are not losing exponentially due to interest. The poor can't pay any more and we can only decrease spending so much without huge economic failure that defeats the purpose. Tax increases on the high end are pretty much the only real option (since the bottom 50% already has no net wealth and increases will simply drive them into more debt).
Apple makes about 30% profit on their devices. They make 30% profit on apps sold through the app store. Would it really f'in kill them if they let someone else make a buck? What, having the highest market cap of any technology company is not good enough for them?
Apple runs the app store (like the regular iTunes store) at near break even levels. [citation] They do it because it sells hardware, not out of any altruism, but claiming Apple's percentage on app sales is exorbitant shows an ignorance about what percentage online retailers normally charge and about Apple's particular numbers. If anything you should be upset that they charge so little and thereby undermine the ability of competitors to get started in the market.
Now, Microsoft looks like like a gentle giant compared to the Apple.
There is certainly a lot of PR to that effect, and it seems like the "in thing" among some people to espouse such opinions. In my opinion, that just demonstrates one's ignorance about MS's business practices. Maybe MS finally figured out effective marketing for their brand image.
You're implying that you know better than God
While the previous poster's specific example is a poor one, I don't think that's what he's implying at all. Rather he's implying that because some of the aspects of our biology are so grossly unintelligent, this provides evidence against the idea that there was an intelligent designer. He's implying there is no god, because if there was, he'd be pretty dumb and weird, ala, nipples on men, nasal passages rotated 90 degrees from optimal, obvious deficiencies in the eye that are easily explained by a particular evolutionary route, but make no sense if you were designing from the ground up, etc., etc.
The problem with that thinking, somebody may offhandedly utter a word string, or phrase that, while meant as an innocuous statement, perhaps in jest, that some hyper sensitive person will overhear and report as a "threat". Now, other than pointing to the obvious "thoughtcrime" Orwellian connotations, what if it was YOU in that situation?
I take personal responsibility for my actions including my public statements. If I were to threaten to kill a president or member of congress and someone reported it, they'd be right in questioning and detaining me and I'd tell the truth and potentially go to prison. Threatening the lives of others is NOT okay, and when you're in a situation where there are hundreds of credible threats to a person and those are all attempts to undermine the democratic process, people should fucking know better.
Stop trying to slough off your responsibilities. If you said it, you are responsible.