Typically, businesses relying on scams get shut down. It seems shutting down a "religion" is a bit harder. Perhaps more businesses should try to declare themselves as "religions."
Please point me to an official Google announcement or site or blog post where a Google person says that the kill switch only applies to apps from the Google app store?
First of all, amusing to see this position on/. -- and to see it upmodded! Installing software on a device you actually own and then restoring it before calling support is fraud?
Second, Apple's own geniuses tell customers who bring in jailbroken iPhones to restore them before bringing them in. It's not fraud, it's simply a troubleshooting step, along the lines of reinstalling Windows if something doesn't work.
Jailbreaking doesn't actually change anything on your iPhone that can't be reverted with a simple restore. The only thing that could possibly brick an iPhone is unlocking it. Jailbreaking has not bricked even a single iPhone.
His point boils down to "I'm sure Apple will abuse it, and I'm sure Google won't abuse it." For example, this sentence:
Overall, I would compare Google's decision to remotely disable troublesome apps more to its malware detection service than to Apple's kill switch.
The exact same thing is a "kill switch" if Apple does it, but "malware detection service" if Google does it. There is no factual basis for this distinction. Apple has said that they intend to use the kill switch to disable malicious applications. They have not used it to disable any other application so far, even though they would have had opportunities to do so, should they want to use the kill switch for nefarious purposes. Even so, Apple's kill switch can't possibly be a "malware detection service", while Google's can.
Scientology isn't a business, it's a scam. They sell things which don't work, brainwash the people to whom they sell their things, and harass people whom they can't sell their things to.
Don't think for a second that encryption isn't a red flag
So we should all have encrypted files on our disks, and put encrypted stuff on our friend's computers, so that it will become commonplace and will no longer serve as a way of singling out people who value their privacy?
That would actually be a neat trick. Photoshop a few pictures of you along with high-ranking government officials. Put the pictures among your personal pictures on your computer so the agent will stumble upon them should he want to look through your images (preferably sorted along the top so he'll actually see them). See if that helps you get better treatment:-)
A nice shirt and a razor would be good investments, but going back to what he actually said: Can you honestly say that he isn't right? And I don't even use Linux or anything...
Go look up Pen Windows 3.1... Geesh. Is a pissing match really where you want to take this? (...) AND THIS WAS A FREAKING WATCH (...) Apple didn't invent this crap, OK?
Please calm yourself, sir. I'm merely pointing out that it's not quite as simple as "Apple is only good at publicity." Obviously, the claim that Apple doesn't innovate is untenable.
At any rate, there's no need to take this personally, and there's no need to claim that Apple took its ideas from a Casio watch. It's obvious that a lot of companies contributed ideas to this concept; no reason for taking sides. These companies are not our friends, and we don't owe them anything.
Anyway, I was not trying to insult you, so I'll leave it at that. Have a nice day.
Remo recommends against a trend of overreaction to minor gripes.
But DRM isn't just a cause of "minor gripes." Yes, not being able to install a game after installing it three times may be a minor gripe. But making a whole decade of culture non-accessible is not.
Games are part of our culture. It's important to have them in a preservable format. We can still play Pac Man and Space Invaders, but will we be able to get today's games to run in 20 years, when all the license servers are turned off and all the current publishers are out of business? Ironically, it's the pirates and hackers who give us hope that our culture will not be lost in a few years' time.
Patents are bad for the economy because they destroy competition,
Is that patents as implemented now, or as a general principle?
As a general principle.
And if you mean the latter - on what evidence?
Destroying competition is the very goal of patents. A patent gives a company the exclusive right to use a certain idea, thus creating an artificial monopoly.
Why not throw out the bathwater but keep the baby - reform the system?
I agree that reforming the system would be a good idea. I am, however, not convinced that there is any actual need for patents. In fact, I'm not convinced that patents are having any kind of positive effect at all - where's the evidence for that?
Patents are just a lot of overhead for all the companies involved. Those who get patents pay in patent fees, time and litigation cost (if they don't get patents solely for defensive purposes, which many companies are forced to do), and those who violate patents (knowingly or unknowingly - it's hardly possible not to violate patents if you do pretty much anything at all) pay in time, risk and - again - litigation costs if they are sued.
It's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
What's an invention, anyways? It's a strange concept. History shows that inventions are nothing special; in fact, most relevant inventions were made by several people at the same time. Why? Because inventions are simply the result of technological advances. As technology progresses, things which used to be unthinkable become common. Preventing all but one company from taking advantage of these new concepts is bad for everyone except this one company who did nothing out of the ordinary other than to first claim ownership to a concept a lot of people would have come up with within a short period of time.
I like the idea of being able to download homebrew apps free of charge and not having to ask the permission of corporate overlords
That is possible with the iPhone without any workarounds. The ones who have to ask permission are the people who distribute the homebrew apps, not those who download them.
Not to mention hardware keyboards are a must for me,
That's what I thought until I actually used an iPhone for a few days.
and I'd rather not pay a "cool tax" on overpriced hardware.
Realistically, the iPhone is one of the cheaper smartphones. After having owned the P800, the Treo 650 and the P990i, the iPhone is actually the cheapest smartphone I've ever owned.
Gestures on Windows Mobile are almost as old as Pen Gestures introduced back in the Tablet PC in 2002. Sad that people in the mainstream don't have any idea where all this comes from and how Apple did better at marketing than innovating anything.
Yes on the "sad that people don't know where it comes from," no on the "Apple didn't innovate." Remember the Newton? Yes, that was 1993. A decade before your Tablet PC.
Yes, it does not follow, but in this particular case, it's probably correct nevertheless. Studies have shown that patents cost more money than they generate in most cases:
Most shockingly, Bessen and Meurer's data suggest that outside of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, litigation costs for the average public firm actually exceed profits from their patent portfolio by a wide margin
Patents are bad for the economy because they destroy competition, and throwing out the baby would - in this particular case - improve the situation tremendously for almost everyone involved.
What makes me laugh is that there is such an "Us Vs Them" tone in all of it. It's like the nice business people think that all the open source guys are just waiting to kill their babies! I mean settle down.
Yes, it's quite insane. The place I work at creates closed-source software, but we rely on open-source software, and we contribute back.
You can't compete with open-source software by fighting it. You have to combete by leveraging open-source software, and by being great where open-source software has issues (such as user interface design).
Ironically, I'm better off downloading movies than buying Bluray movies. I can put movies bought on iTunes on my iPod; I can only play Bluray movies in my PS3. So tell me again: Why would I want to own a physical copy?
Personally, I have bought two Bluray discs. They're both hand-drawn animated movies I ordered online because no store had them. In my opinion, these are the only types of movies where the improvement in visual quality actually warrants the price and hassle of Bluray.
I've gone to the store with the intention of buying a Bluray movie a ton of times. After walking down the aisles of crappy movies released on Bluray, I've eventually bought the cheaper, rippable DVD each time.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the reasoning, I'm just surprised it gets support on /.
"Installing software which is listed as warranty voiding"
Listed where?
Scientology isn't a business, it's a scam.
It's not like the two are mutually exclusive.
Typically, businesses relying on scams get shut down. It seems shutting down a "religion" is a bit harder. Perhaps more businesses should try to declare themselves as "religions."
Please point me to an official Google announcement or site or blog post where a Google person says that the kill switch only applies to apps from the Google app store?
First of all, amusing to see this position on /. -- and to see it upmodded! Installing software on a device you actually own and then restoring it before calling support is fraud?
Second, Apple's own geniuses tell customers who bring in jailbroken iPhones to restore them before bringing them in. It's not fraud, it's simply a troubleshooting step, along the lines of reinstalling Windows if something doesn't work.
Jailbreaking doesn't actually change anything on your iPhone that can't be reverted with a simple restore. The only thing that could possibly brick an iPhone is unlocking it. Jailbreaking has not bricked even a single iPhone.
So gp was right, the kill switch is the exact same on both platforms.
I agree.
His point boils down to "I'm sure Apple will abuse it, and I'm sure Google won't abuse it." For example, this sentence:
Overall, I would compare Google's decision to remotely disable troublesome apps more to its malware detection service than to Apple's kill switch.
The exact same thing is a "kill switch" if Apple does it, but "malware detection service" if Google does it. There is no factual basis for this distinction. Apple has said that they intend to use the kill switch to disable malicious applications. They have not used it to disable any other application so far, even though they would have had opportunities to do so, should they want to use the kill switch for nefarious purposes. Even so, Apple's kill switch can't possibly be a "malware detection service", while Google's can.
There's obvious bias in this article.
Scientology isn't a business, it's a scam. They sell things which don't work, brainwash the people to whom they sell their things, and harass people whom they can't sell their things to.
Don't think for a second that encryption isn't a red flag
So we should all have encrypted files on our disks, and put encrypted stuff on our friend's computers, so that it will become commonplace and will no longer serve as a way of singling out people who value their privacy?
That would actually be a neat trick. Photoshop a few pictures of you along with high-ranking government officials. Put the pictures among your personal pictures on your computer so the agent will stumble upon them should he want to look through your images (preferably sorted along the top so he'll actually see them). See if that helps you get better treatment :-)
It's not really free: you're paying in control, namely the control over your data you give up in order to use somebody else's resources.
A nice shirt and a razor would be good investments, but going back to what he actually said: Can you honestly say that he isn't right? And I don't even use Linux or anything...
Go look up Pen Windows 3.1... Geesh. Is a pissing match really where you want to take this? (...) AND THIS WAS A FREAKING WATCH (...) Apple didn't invent this crap, OK?
Please calm yourself, sir. I'm merely pointing out that it's not quite as simple as "Apple is only good at publicity." Obviously, the claim that Apple doesn't innovate is untenable.
At any rate, there's no need to take this personally, and there's no need to claim that Apple took its ideas from a Casio watch. It's obvious that a lot of companies contributed ideas to this concept; no reason for taking sides. These companies are not our friends, and we don't owe them anything.
Anyway, I was not trying to insult you, so I'll leave it at that. Have a nice day.
Remo recommends against a trend of overreaction to minor gripes.
But DRM isn't just a cause of "minor gripes." Yes, not being able to install a game after installing it three times may be a minor gripe. But making a whole decade of culture non-accessible is not.
Games are part of our culture. It's important to have them in a preservable format. We can still play Pac Man and Space Invaders, but will we be able to get today's games to run in 20 years, when all the license servers are turned off and all the current publishers are out of business? Ironically, it's the pirates and hackers who give us hope that our culture will not be lost in a few years' time.
Patents are bad for the economy because they destroy competition,
Is that patents as implemented now, or as a general principle?
As a general principle.
And if you mean the latter - on what evidence?
Destroying competition is the very goal of patents. A patent gives a company the exclusive right to use a certain idea, thus creating an artificial monopoly.
Why not throw out the bathwater but keep the baby - reform the system?
I agree that reforming the system would be a good idea. I am, however, not convinced that there is any actual need for patents. In fact, I'm not convinced that patents are having any kind of positive effect at all - where's the evidence for that?
Patents are just a lot of overhead for all the companies involved. Those who get patents pay in patent fees, time and litigation cost (if they don't get patents solely for defensive purposes, which many companies are forced to do), and those who violate patents (knowingly or unknowingly - it's hardly possible not to violate patents if you do pretty much anything at all) pay in time, risk and - again - litigation costs if they are sued.
It's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
What's an invention, anyways? It's a strange concept. History shows that inventions are nothing special; in fact, most relevant inventions were made by several people at the same time. Why? Because inventions are simply the result of technological advances. As technology progresses, things which used to be unthinkable become common. Preventing all but one company from taking advantage of these new concepts is bad for everyone except this one company who did nothing out of the ordinary other than to first claim ownership to a concept a lot of people would have come up with within a short period of time.
Let's fire Balmer for releasing the most popular gaming machine amongst gamers
Where by "gamers", you really mean "a subset of all gamers which I define based on some arbitrary ideas on who is allowed to call himself a gamer."
The Xbox 360 will end up in third place, doing worse than the original Xbox which at least managed to (barely) outsell the Cube.
unlike the iPhone that requires Objective-C!
If you can't figure out Objective-C, you're doing something wrong :-)
I like the idea of being able to download homebrew apps free of charge and not having to ask the permission of corporate overlords
That is possible with the iPhone without any workarounds. The ones who have to ask permission are the people who distribute the homebrew apps, not those who download them.
Not to mention hardware keyboards are a must for me,
That's what I thought until I actually used an iPhone for a few days.
and I'd rather not pay a "cool tax" on overpriced hardware.
Realistically, the iPhone is one of the cheaper smartphones. After having owned the P800, the Treo 650 and the P990i, the iPhone is actually the cheapest smartphone I've ever owned.
Gestures on Windows Mobile are almost as old as Pen Gestures introduced back in the Tablet PC in 2002.
Sad that people in the mainstream don't have any idea where all this comes from and how Apple did better at marketing than innovating anything.
Yes on the "sad that people don't know where it comes from," no on the "Apple didn't innovate." Remember the Newton? Yes, that was 1993. A decade before your Tablet PC.
Yes, it does not follow, but in this particular case, it's probably correct nevertheless. Studies have shown that patents cost more money than they generate in most cases:
Most shockingly, Bessen and Meurer's data suggest that outside of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, litigation costs for the average public firm actually exceed profits from their patent portfolio by a wide margin
via ars technica.
Patents are bad for the economy because they destroy competition, and throwing out the baby would - in this particular case - improve the situation tremendously for almost everyone involved.
Oh my, I wrote "combete". Kill me now.
What makes me laugh is that there is such an "Us Vs Them" tone in all of it. It's like the nice business people think that all the open source guys are just waiting to kill their babies! I mean settle down.
Yes, it's quite insane. The place I work at creates closed-source software, but we rely on open-source software, and we contribute back.
You can't compete with open-source software by fighting it. You have to combete by leveraging open-source software, and by being great where open-source software has issues (such as user interface design).
Paprika and Tekkonkinkreet. For live-action movies, the difference in visual quality isn't worth the price of Bluray.
Ironically, I'm better off downloading movies than buying Bluray movies. I can put movies bought on iTunes on my iPod; I can only play Bluray movies in my PS3. So tell me again: Why would I want to own a physical copy?
Personally, I have bought two Bluray discs. They're both hand-drawn animated movies I ordered online because no store had them. In my opinion, these are the only types of movies where the improvement in visual quality actually warrants the price and hassle of Bluray.
I've gone to the store with the intention of buying a Bluray movie a ton of times. After walking down the aisles of crappy movies released on Bluray, I've eventually bought the cheaper, rippable DVD each time.