In fact, Apple would be negligent and unethical if they did not act in the best interests of their stockholders.
Yeah, that's bullshit. The most vocal shareholders usually value short-term gain. A corporation would be stupid to give in to that, but it seems what Apple is doing lately. Apple stayed alive next to Windows because they focused on the user. Apple is the number one MP3 seller because their product is better. Everyone wants an iPhone because the user experience blows everything else away.
In other words, Apple is successful because they give their customers what the customers want.
Recently, they have started to do small-ish things that annoy their customers while pleasing other corporations, or simply helping their own bottom line. Not allowing you to use music you legally own as ringtones. Selling special cables for video out on iPods. Not selling the iPhone unlocked. Not allowing third-party native iPhone apps.
These are crappy decisions. Yes, they make them money short-term. Yes, they make the shareholders happy. No, they are not good for the company, because they destroy the very thing that has allowed Apple to remain alive against Microsoft, and become successful against many other companies: Their focus on their customers.
So screw the shareholders. If Apple wants to remain the success that it is, it needs to value the customer, not the shareholder. Success brings a good stock price, not vice versa.
Their intention was not to block third-party apps per se. In fact, they have publicly said that they do not mind third-party apps.
The problem is that you need to run code on the iPhone in order to SIM-unlock it. So if Apple wants to prevent SIM unlocks, one thing they can do is prevent you from running your own code.
All these incidents with exploding Litium-Ion-Batteries are starting to freak me out. I don't particularly want my crown jewels blown away by the phone in my pocket.
Ars Technica had an article on this some time ago.Here's another one about Japanese scientists who think Li-Ion batteries are "inherently dangerous and must be changed to ensure safety." The thing is, all these companies have invested a ton of money into developing and manufacturing these batteries, and now they need their investment to pay off before getting rid of the technology.
Quote from the second article:
In the past two years alone, Toshiba, Gateway, Lenovo, Sony, and Dell have all issued recalls on lithium ion batteries used in their products. The Times suggests that the reason many of these manufacturers haven't switched out the lithium ion batteries altogether is because the battery technology is fairly new, and the investments in lithium ion batteries have been expensive. Lithium ion batteries were first introduced to the mainstream market in 1992 by Sony.
I understand the workings of snapshotting in zfs, and the difference between a snapshot and a backup (normal snapshots are no substitute. I will admit that I was under the impression that Time Machine was closer to a snapshot then a backup, but as I said earlier, I don't follow what Apple is doing in-depth). That said, snapshots can be easily exported to an external device, and if that is your only purpose, take the snapshot, send it to the external device, then delete the snapshot (I have done this, it works nicely). I stand by my point that the implimentation is trivial.
Okay, now you have me confused. Are you talking about the specific implementation of Snapshots in ZFS, or about the idea of Snapshots in general? What does "take a snapshot and send it to an external device" mean? Does that mean storing the whole FS state at the time of the snapshot on the external disk? If so, how is that superior to basically versioning each single file, as Time Machine does? If you do this and then create a second Snapshot and store that on an external disk, does ZFS somehow know to only store the difference between the first and the second Snapshot? Can the OS easily get the different versions of single files as they exist in different Snapshots?
Frankly, I simply don't see the upside Snapshots provide. When trying to use Snapshots as Backup, they simply make everything much more complicated.
Why use Snapshots if you aren't going to use them as Snapshots?
It is a delta (it has to be due to zvols).
Doesn't that create a huge overhead? If I work on a video project with a number of multi-gigabyte files, create a Snapshot, and then continue working on them, ZFS somehow only writes deltas of the changes of each single file?
I really have never understood where this whole "it uses too much space" argument comes from.
Oh, no. The argument is not really that it uses "too much space". The problem is that Sun claims that Snapshots are free. They are not. They are free at the specific time when you create them, but as soon as you start changing files, they aren't free anymore.
On the second point, how often do you REALLY flip every bit on the drive?
Obviously hardly ever. However, in certain environments (video production being an obvious one with regards to Macs), you flip a huge percentage of all bits on the drive pretty regularly.
I lost interest in what Apple does when stopped working for a school district, so I'll acknowledge my ignorance of how Time Machine works. I believe it allows you to restore files to previous states. (correct me if I'm wrong). This should be fairly trivial to implement using snapshots and clones. Which ZFS does quite efficiently.
While Time Machine's UI looks like Snapshots, Time Machine really does not implement Snapshots. It implements Backup. There's a difference: Snapshots preserve the current state of a disk locally, while Backup stores the current state of a predefined set of documents remotely (usually on another computer or on an external disk). In other words, Snapshots take up a lot of local disk space and are thus not suitable for something like Time Machine, where you want (ideally) each state of a file preserved (i.e. backups occur at regular intervals).
What Snapshots do in ZFS is simply telling ZFS to not delete any of the files currently on the disk. If a file is then changed, a copy is created (or a delta, but I think current implementations simply create copies). If it is deleted, it remains on the disk but becomes invisible. As you can see, this implies that you'll quickly use a huge amount of disk space for Snapshots, so it's simply not an option for Time Machine.
In fact the iPhone is full of gimmicky features that no-one really wants
Well, that's interesting. Usually, the argument is that the iPhone lacks essential features. So, which features (apart from the stock tracker, I guess) are "gimmicky features that no-one really wants"?
The weirdest thing about the iPhone is how everyone keeps complaining that it's overpriced. Apart from my first cell phone, a Nokia 6210, the iPhone is the cheapest phone I've ever owned. And if you count in the Palm Vx I've been carrying around with my Nokia, it's even cheaper than the Nokia/Palm combination.
After the Nokia, I've owned a P800, a Treo 650, and a P990i. Each of those was more expensive than the iPhone, even though Swisscom subsidized part of the price of these phones. Yes: I'm living in Europe, I own an iPhone, and it's the best cell phone I've ever owned. And no, I don't care about ringtones. Only morons use custom ringtones, and morons are too stupid to figure out how to copy MP3s to their cell phones anyway:-)
What the hell is wrong with you. Do you seriously think what you wrote is a legitimate counterpoint to my post? Do you have any clue about how to construct an argument? Seriously? I mean, you sound like a carricature. You can't be serious. Right? Oh, it's a joke. HAHA! Good one.
Dude, I live in Switzerland. About 10% of my friends are French. I'm often in France. Nobody I know there has anything against Americans. On the other hand, "The French are dumb baguette and crêpe eating berret wearing Surrender Monkeys frogs who talk funny and have sex all the time and smell bad" is a constantly repeating theme on the predominantly American Slashdot. So no, French Fries are not the only thing I can come up with. And I'll add your inane conspiracy theory about French diplomats being jealous of the US to the list of American resentments against France.
Here's the difference between my previous phone, a P990i, and my current phone, the iPhone: The P990i had more features, but it annoyed me at every step. It crashes, its UI is complicated and slow, and it eats battery. The iPhone has less features on paper, but in reality, I use more features because they are a pleasure to use. I don't have to think about WiFi, it just works. The browser starts up fast, and reading "real" web pages on the phone works very well. The way it displays SMS is genious (to be fair, my pre-previous phone, a Treo 650, did it the same way). I could go on, but here's the difference: The iPhone is a pleasure to use, and pretty much everything works, and works the way you expect it to. This is the first phone I've ever owned of which I could say this.
The laws were there before Apple's phone. Apple chose to not create an unlockable phone. They locked themselves out of the market. Of course, eventually, they'll cave in, and then you can come back and thank us Europeans for helping you get an unlocked iPhone.
Anyways, if you think that forcing corporations to provide unlocked phones that benefit humans is somehow orwellian, you're insane. No, really. There's no other word for it.
But really, the more regulations you have, the less free the market is.
And why would I want a free market for corporations? I'm human, not a corporation, I don't benefit from a free market per se. Only corporations do.
This seems to be a foreign concept to many people here, but in most countries, humans elect humans who then put in place rules to benefit humans. A free market is only a good thing as long as it does not hurt humans. Forcing providers to unlock phones helps me, because when I go to Italy or France or Germany, I can put a pre-paid card into my cell phone and not get screwed with insane roaming costs.
The funny part is that, of course, our laws eventually will help you, too. Apple can't ignore Europe. They will release a phone that can be unlocked. And then you'll be able to import it back to the U.S.
No, don't. You can thank us later, when you get your unlocked iPhone, curtesy of European laws.
Oddly enough, most consumers here in the states don't really mind locking into contracts.
I guess most Americans never change their plan. Here's the thing, though: I'm living in Switzerland, and I can't spit without hitting at least four other countries. In Europe, it's common for people to spend a lot of time outside of their own country. Often, they then buy prepaid cards and put them into their phones - which you can't do with an unhacked iPhone.
So that is probably one of the reasons why laws are different over here. The EU isn't forcing good products out of the market, it's forcing manufactureres to create products that users actually need. You know, politicians actually doing something for the people who elected them. Might be a foreign concept to some people here.
Last time I checked, their players came with Sony's own ripping software. The Walkman Bean description actually says "Transfer Personal Downloaded Music and CD Recordings": Walkan Bean @ Sony
No, not like Apple at all. Apple always supported MP3. Sony's early "MP3 players" actually did not support MP3, instead supporting a proprietary Sony format (ATRAC).
I was commenting on the submitter's silly implication that because Sony's devices allow this, they are responsible for same.
Sigh. As I've alredy explained in my other post, you are missing the point. Sony's devices not only allow this, they are specifically intended to be used that way. Sony sells Minidisc players which can not really be used unless you copy CDs to them. They sell MP3 players which actually come with CD ripping software.
Okay, I wrote the submission. I guess if you're not familiar with Sony's product line, you could misunderstand my comment, and I will admit that it was perhaps not strong enough. Here's an example: Sony sells Minidisc players. For a long time, they have not sold any pre-recorded Minidiscs (at least where I live). The only way to listen to music on Sony's own Minidisc players is by copying music on them. Are you telling me Sony does not intend these players to be used for music bought on CDs?
So no, the "hammers" comparison does not apply, at all, unless Home Depot was publicly telling people that nailing hammers into walls is theft.
You could read it that way, if you had no clue about ZFS. The claims which aren't backed up in the blog post are backed up in an exhaustive article MacJournals has written on ZFS a few weeks ago, although I don't think that article is available anywhere for free.
So what you're basically saying is that the post got moderated as Flamebait because moderators who have no clue about ZFS were to lazy to inform themselves about it and preferred to just moderate the post as Flamebait.
Okay, why the hell is parent moderated flamebait? I'm the person who submitted the article, and I submitted it in order to inform people about what a representative of Sony BMG - a corporation - said, not so the Slashdot mob could personally harrass Jennifer Pariser. This is not about her, it's about the music companies. You can call her all day long, and all you've achieved is annoy another human. But she's not the problem. The record companies are the problem.
There are RAID systems whch do error correction. RAID-2 can correct one-bit errors, I think, although I don't think anyone uses it anymore. So yeah, the article is at least somewhat incorrect in that area.
ZFS is great for many situations, but it's no good as a default OS X file system, and Apple knows it. For example, it could not be used as the basis of Time Machine because it would use way too much disk space. ZFS is great. It's just not magic, as some people seem to think
I find it amusing that my post got rated Flamebait, by the way. I generally tend to avoid the "fanboy" defense, but I must say there seem to be a lot of ZFS fanboys here who kind of try to avoid reality.
Just to avoid confusion: No shipping PS3 has pure software backwards compatibility. Not all PS3s ship with the Emotion Engine, but all PS3s have some PS2 hardware to play PS2 games.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's bullshit. The most vocal shareholders usually value short-term gain. A corporation would be stupid to give in to that, but it seems what Apple is doing lately. Apple stayed alive next to Windows because they focused on the user. Apple is the number one MP3 seller because their product is better. Everyone wants an iPhone because the user experience blows everything else away.
In other words, Apple is successful because they give their customers what the customers want.
Recently, they have started to do small-ish things that annoy their customers while pleasing other corporations, or simply helping their own bottom line. Not allowing you to use music you legally own as ringtones. Selling special cables for video out on iPods. Not selling the iPhone unlocked. Not allowing third-party native iPhone apps.
These are crappy decisions. Yes, they make them money short-term. Yes, they make the shareholders happy. No, they are not good for the company, because they destroy the very thing that has allowed Apple to remain alive against Microsoft, and become successful against many other companies: Their focus on their customers.
So screw the shareholders. If Apple wants to remain the success that it is, it needs to value the customer, not the shareholder. Success brings a good stock price, not vice versa.
Their intention was not to block third-party apps per se. In fact, they have publicly said that they do not mind third-party apps.
The problem is that you need to run code on the iPhone in order to SIM-unlock it. So if Apple wants to prevent SIM unlocks, one thing they can do is prevent you from running your own code.
Ars Technica had an article on this some time ago. Here's another one about Japanese scientists who think Li-Ion batteries are "inherently dangerous and must be changed to ensure safety." The thing is, all these companies have invested a ton of money into developing and manufacturing these batteries, and now they need their investment to pay off before getting rid of the technology.
Quote from the second article: In the past two years alone, Toshiba, Gateway, Lenovo, Sony, and Dell have all issued recalls on lithium ion batteries used in their products. The Times suggests that the reason many of these manufacturers haven't switched out the lithium ion batteries altogether is because the battery technology is fairly new, and the investments in lithium ion batteries have been expensive. Lithium ion batteries were first introduced to the mainstream market in 1992 by Sony.
Okay, now you have me confused. Are you talking about the specific implementation of Snapshots in ZFS, or about the idea of Snapshots in general? What does "take a snapshot and send it to an external device" mean? Does that mean storing the whole FS state at the time of the snapshot on the external disk? If so, how is that superior to basically versioning each single file, as Time Machine does? If you do this and then create a second Snapshot and store that on an external disk, does ZFS somehow know to only store the difference between the first and the second Snapshot? Can the OS easily get the different versions of single files as they exist in different Snapshots?
Frankly, I simply don't see the upside Snapshots provide. When trying to use Snapshots as Backup, they simply make everything much more complicated.
Why use Snapshots if you aren't going to use them as Snapshots?
It is a delta (it has to be due to zvols).Doesn't that create a huge overhead? If I work on a video project with a number of multi-gigabyte files, create a Snapshot, and then continue working on them, ZFS somehow only writes deltas of the changes of each single file?
I really have never understood where this whole "it uses too much space" argument comes from.Oh, no. The argument is not really that it uses "too much space". The problem is that Sun claims that Snapshots are free. They are not. They are free at the specific time when you create them, but as soon as you start changing files, they aren't free anymore.
On the second point, how often do you REALLY flip every bit on the drive?Obviously hardly ever. However, in certain environments (video production being an obvious one with regards to Macs), you flip a huge percentage of all bits on the drive pretty regularly.
While Time Machine's UI looks like Snapshots, Time Machine really does not implement Snapshots. It implements Backup. There's a difference: Snapshots preserve the current state of a disk locally, while Backup stores the current state of a predefined set of documents remotely (usually on another computer or on an external disk). In other words, Snapshots take up a lot of local disk space and are thus not suitable for something like Time Machine, where you want (ideally) each state of a file preserved (i.e. backups occur at regular intervals).
What Snapshots do in ZFS is simply telling ZFS to not delete any of the files currently on the disk. If a file is then changed, a copy is created (or a delta, but I think current implementations simply create copies). If it is deleted, it remains on the disk but becomes invisible. As you can see, this implies that you'll quickly use a huge amount of disk space for Snapshots, so it's simply not an option for Time Machine.
Well, that's interesting. Usually, the argument is that the iPhone lacks essential features. So, which features (apart from the stock tracker, I guess) are "gimmicky features that no-one really wants"?
The weirdest thing about the iPhone is how everyone keeps complaining that it's overpriced. Apart from my first cell phone, a Nokia 6210, the iPhone is the cheapest phone I've ever owned. And if you count in the Palm Vx I've been carrying around with my Nokia, it's even cheaper than the Nokia/Palm combination.
:-)
After the Nokia, I've owned a P800, a Treo 650, and a P990i. Each of those was more expensive than the iPhone, even though Swisscom subsidized part of the price of these phones. Yes: I'm living in Europe, I own an iPhone, and it's the best cell phone I've ever owned. And no, I don't care about ringtones. Only morons use custom ringtones, and morons are too stupid to figure out how to copy MP3s to their cell phones anyway
Macjournals.com clarifies its earlier post.
What the hell is wrong with you. Do you seriously think what you wrote is a legitimate counterpoint to my post? Do you have any clue about how to construct an argument? Seriously? I mean, you sound like a carricature. You can't be serious. Right? Oh, it's a joke. HAHA! Good one.
Dude, I live in Switzerland. About 10% of my friends are French. I'm often in France. Nobody I know there has anything against Americans. On the other hand, "The French are dumb baguette and crêpe eating berret wearing Surrender Monkeys frogs who talk funny and have sex all the time and smell bad" is a constantly repeating theme on the predominantly American Slashdot. So no, French Fries are not the only thing I can come up with. And I'll add your inane conspiracy theory about French diplomats being jealous of the US to the list of American resentments against France.
Here's the difference between my previous phone, a P990i, and my current phone, the iPhone: The P990i had more features, but it annoyed me at every step. It crashes, its UI is complicated and slow, and it eats battery. The iPhone has less features on paper, but in reality, I use more features because they are a pleasure to use. I don't have to think about WiFi, it just works. The browser starts up fast, and reading "real" web pages on the phone works very well. The way it displays SMS is genious (to be fair, my pre-previous phone, a Treo 650, did it the same way). I could go on, but here's the difference: The iPhone is a pleasure to use, and pretty much everything works, and works the way you expect it to. This is the first phone I've ever owned of which I could say this.
While his reasons are debatable, the fact that he was right isn't.
Which country's government cafeteria changed the name of a potato product to avoid the name of which other country again?
The laws were there before Apple's phone. Apple chose to not create an unlockable phone. They locked themselves out of the market. Of course, eventually, they'll cave in, and then you can come back and thank us Europeans for helping you get an unlocked iPhone.
Anyways, if you think that forcing corporations to provide unlocked phones that benefit humans is somehow orwellian, you're insane. No, really. There's no other word for it.
And why would I want a free market for corporations? I'm human, not a corporation, I don't benefit from a free market per se. Only corporations do.
This seems to be a foreign concept to many people here, but in most countries, humans elect humans who then put in place rules to benefit humans. A free market is only a good thing as long as it does not hurt humans. Forcing providers to unlock phones helps me, because when I go to Italy or France or Germany, I can put a pre-paid card into my cell phone and not get screwed with insane roaming costs.
The funny part is that, of course, our laws eventually will help you, too. Apple can't ignore Europe. They will release a phone that can be unlocked. And then you'll be able to import it back to the U.S.
No, don't. You can thank us later, when you get your unlocked iPhone, curtesy of European laws.
I guess most Americans never change their plan. Here's the thing, though: I'm living in Switzerland, and I can't spit without hitting at least four other countries. In Europe, it's common for people to spend a lot of time outside of their own country. Often, they then buy prepaid cards and put them into their phones - which you can't do with an unhacked iPhone.
So that is probably one of the reasons why laws are different over here. The EU isn't forcing good products out of the market, it's forcing manufactureres to create products that users actually need. You know, politicians actually doing something for the people who elected them. Might be a foreign concept to some people here.
Last time I checked, their players came with Sony's own ripping software. The Walkman Bean description actually says "Transfer Personal Downloaded Music and CD Recordings":
Walkan Bean @ Sony
And this is relevant how? Fair Use applies either way.
No, not like Apple at all. Apple always supported MP3. Sony's early "MP3 players" actually did not support MP3, instead supporting a proprietary Sony format (ATRAC).
Sigh. As I've alredy explained in my other post, you are missing the point. Sony's devices not only allow this, they are specifically intended to be used that way. Sony sells Minidisc players which can not really be used unless you copy CDs to them. They sell MP3 players which actually come with CD ripping software.
Okay, I wrote the submission. I guess if you're not familiar with Sony's product line, you could misunderstand my comment, and I will admit that it was perhaps not strong enough. Here's an example: Sony sells Minidisc players. For a long time, they have not sold any pre-recorded Minidiscs (at least where I live). The only way to listen to music on Sony's own Minidisc players is by copying music on them. Are you telling me Sony does not intend these players to be used for music bought on CDs?
So no, the "hammers" comparison does not apply, at all, unless Home Depot was publicly telling people that nailing hammers into walls is theft.
You could read it that way, if you had no clue about ZFS. The claims which aren't backed up in the blog post are backed up in an exhaustive article MacJournals has written on ZFS a few weeks ago, although I don't think that article is available anywhere for free.
So what you're basically saying is that the post got moderated as Flamebait because moderators who have no clue about ZFS were to lazy to inform themselves about it and preferred to just moderate the post as Flamebait.
Okay, why the hell is parent moderated flamebait? I'm the person who submitted the article, and I submitted it in order to inform people about what a representative of Sony BMG - a corporation - said, not so the Slashdot mob could personally harrass Jennifer Pariser. This is not about her, it's about the music companies. You can call her all day long, and all you've achieved is annoy another human. But she's not the problem. The record companies are the problem.
There are RAID systems whch do error correction. RAID-2 can correct one-bit errors, I think, although I don't think anyone uses it anymore. So yeah, the article is at least somewhat incorrect in that area.
ZFS is great for many situations, but it's no good as a default OS X file system, and Apple knows it. For example, it could not be used as the basis of Time Machine because it would use way too much disk space. ZFS is great. It's just not magic, as some people seem to think
I find it amusing that my post got rated Flamebait, by the way. I generally tend to avoid the "fanboy" defense, but I must say there seem to be a lot of ZFS fanboys here who kind of try to avoid reality.
Just to avoid confusion: No shipping PS3 has pure software backwards compatibility. Not all PS3s ship with the Emotion Engine, but all PS3s have some PS2 hardware to play PS2 games.