It's an inferior product. [...] There's nothing arbitrary about Apple not allowing Flash. Again, for web usage, it's a buggy, battery draining pile of crap.
It's arbitrary because they don't guarantee the value of anything else. You can buy an app that farts, and it might fail to fart, and Apple doesn't care, but they'll prevent you from buying something made with Flash because it might drain your battery faster than the alternative.
If Apple guaranteed the power-draw of apps it wouldn't need to ban Flash, it'd be ranked down at the bottom of the list.
Good. iOS will remain the best mobile OS because of this attention to the quality of user experience.
Yeah, the best OS if you want to be absolutely unable to ever do something because Jobs thought the UI would be cluttered.
Like a Microsoft user or developer, you'll enjoy your time right up until you find yourself on the other side of whatever Gates/Jobs find useful and then you'll be arbitrarily banned from any markets they control.
Based on this, there would be no difference between a mobster and a policeman: both of them use violence or threat of violence, isn't it?
Quite right. It all depends on what they're trying to do, and why. Police in many countries are the mob.
If that policeman uses the implied threat of force to stop more unjust uses of force, it's good. If he collects unreasonably high parking-ticket fees he's a mobster.
Editing/cropping a photo to exclude the context so that the subject will seem/look like doing something nasty: is this a desirable outcome to you? Where's the balance in this?
Could you prove my intent to demean you more than inform the world, in court? If so it's a crime regardless of what medium I use.
We don't need special laws for knife-murder, or for photo-libel.
The moment in which Google StreetView (or any other publisher) will affix a note: "This is how the house looked at: -datetime-", you may be right and I might agree with it (depending on the context in which the photo is published).
No. That's inherent in still photography and thus implicit. If it doesn't claim to be a live feed it doesn't need ridiculous "the area or items depicted in this photo may have changed" legalese on the bottom.
I've got photos of flowers that are now dead - is the photo misrepresenting the true nature of the flower?
Yes. And I can afford to be sure of that only because you used true nature of the flower: cannot be captured by a simple shot.
And here I have you, in an equally tautological way, but one level higher.
I said "misrepresent". Where on that photo are the words "'flower' as it is, was, and ever will be."? If they aren't there it's not claiming to be any more than an instant in the life of that flower.
[stop me from taking photos]
Mate, I'm tried already of repeating: should the owner of a house be able to control the publishing of a photo of the home.
And you keep falling into the "taking the photo" action or the photo itself. I didn't ask to ban cameras, I didn't ask the cameras to have safety pins, all I'm asking is the publishing of the photo to benefit of some control from the owner of the house. Publishing is still an action in your understanding, is it not?
Yes, but photography without publishing is useless. Once you start to control who can and can't see my work I might as well not bother. Which, I suspect, is the real motive of many people. I've been asked, in a hostile fashion, why I take photos instead of just buying post-cards. I'm surrounded by people who think nothing of my hobby and as such are willing to dismantle it, piece by seemingly unimportant piece. To one guy it's "no taking pictures of factories", to another it's airplanes, to you it's only publishing the works the subjects are happy with, etc. At the end there's nothing left.
So no, I don't think your publishing controls would really stop there. If you let me take the photo I could leak it, obviously the law would need to cover capture to be effective.
If you would say: the owner's right to control the publishing should be somehow counter-balanced and limited by safe-guards, I might agree and we can explore the ways to limit my potential abuses. If you insist that I have absolutely no right to control the publishing of photos of my home, then we might as well stop here and agree to disagree.
Of course. If only I'd agree to these chains you'd know I saw reason and you wouldn't need the rest of them.
No. There's no reason for it. Anything you wish to achieve is better achieved through other existing laws and doesn't come with the chilling effect of having to get the mercurial permission of a subject to depict them.
If you actually had a single issue that was valid, could be solved this way, and could
Because of this, you can think of Apple's reaction to Flash as payback.
"You didn't devote your money to highlighting improvements in our OS quickly enough - because of that your other products are henceforth arbitrarily banned."
Go use Flash somewhere else then, or don't use it. I don't really care about Flash. It means absolutely nothing to me.
Me either. But having companies arbitrarily run out of business by DRM-enforced limitations in one product is pretty anti-competitive and bad for the industry and the consumer in the long run.
Initially many lauded Microsoft's destructiveness. They saw it as making things easier for users by removing pesky decisions.
The Flash exploits aren't Trojan horses - if you wait long enough, you'll get hit.
You seems confused. If I have a Flash game that I play it'll eventually just steal my data out of nowhere? No, of course not.
A meter to see how big a dent Flash puts in your battery? Brilliant.
No idiot, a meter to see how much ANY app draws. We pretty safely assume Flash sucks but without the individualized stats, who knows what else sucks.
Now all we have to go by is Jobs' obviously biased stance. He's a corporation, he'd say Flash melts baby jesus if he thought it'd help.
There's an app that makes fart noises but you aren't allowed to get Flash.
There are plenty of fart apps for Android too, so just get over it already.
Your reading comprehension sucks. I'm pointing out how Apple feels it necessary to ban things.
Think principle and the long term, not compromise and short term.
Oh, if only you'd follow your own advice.
if you truly hate Flash, then you'd like see the world where Flash disappears from the web.
I do. I'd like to see it killed by better dev tools that produce more useful and maintainable products using the standards we're building for just this reason.
That's what Jobs is delivering.
No, Jobs is delivering his own lock-in. First he destroys any competition in his intended area and then he starts exerting more control.
I don't want Flash banned, I want people to abandon it for better products.
The leverage of iOS not running Flash [...]
You mean how iOS *could* run Flash, but won't because of management fiat and technological trickery. Much like Microsoft sabotaging Windows to hurt DR-DOS. Or, like Microsoft sabotaging Office for Mac by inserting delay loops to make the PC product faster, making their OS look faster for apps.
Yeah, those Microsoft tactics could really fuck up Adobe. Yee-ha.
I wouldn't cry if they fell for their DMCA abuses, or because their products weren't improving much anymore, but I don't want Apple arbitrarily ruining them.
I am a law abiding citizen, and as far as I am concerned this is not news.
This is the WORST possible argument one can give regarding the erosion of our rights.
Not at all. It's a valid opinion.
It's an opinion, yes. But it's retarded.
Things we find perfectly reasonable periodically become the subject of crackdowns (alcohol - prohibition) that in no way reflect actual damage being done to society. Upstanding law-abiding citizens one day were jailed the next for having a drink. When the laws were repealed it was widely acknowledged that they were unjust, unreasonable, and useless in implementation and by unrealistic ideas of the benefits.
Further, even if you're not a drinker and never would be, prohibition and other laws similarly not directly impacting you still need to be fought because they're still as unjust, it's just your neighbor who suffers this time. Not only is sitting there and watching someone else suffer and saying "It's okay, because they're not to me yet" sociopathic, but it's dangerously short-sighted. And it guarantees that those who could help you are less inclined, now that they've seen your unwillingness to help others.
Here's a thought for you: The police can already do this. They can follow you by car, bike, helicopter, or on foot. They can check every license plate in the city.
Here's a thought for you: I can already do this. I could follow you by car, bike, helicopter, or on foot. I could check every license plate in the city.
It's only a matter of money.
But does that justify me sticking a transmitter in your belongings, just because I could already do a similar thing?
Just wondering... If I had to pay for it now I'd never do it, but if I could legally bug people because I theoretically could follow them - despite the cost, then it'd be practical. I'm sure I'd find enough dirt to not only make it profitable but to rat out a bunch of annoying neighbors. Heh. If they lose their jobs and need to hire a lawyer maybe I can even get their houses while they're desperate.
Or is that last bit only reasonable for police departments auctioning off confiscated property from drug busts? Hmm. I'll have to go find a law-abiding citizen to ask if he minds what I do to you.
So, if you happen to have a radio transmitter detector, or some other sort of detection device to determine that you have been bugged, you are pretty much free to remove it, sell it
No, because now you'd have to assume some weird box on your car came from the police, and tampering with police property and hindering an investigation are crimes.
The law isn't a refuge from this. Yes, it should guarantee equal and just treatment to all but it doesn't because the enforcers don't want it to and we can't make them.
A constitution only works when the government follows it.
No. A government, like a child or any other entity is going to test its limits. For the best of motives even, a case will fall on the other side of the line and it'll seem okay to bend the rule just this once...
A constitution (or any rule) only works when the people whose mandate it is are willing to enforce it when the line is crossed.
What's wrong with this country is that there are far too many people who think that the world's out to get them, so they'll burn bridges as fast as they can.
No, the world is setup so that they can get anyone at any time. Almost everything is illegal, or "appears" enough so to arrest someone if interpreted that way by someone looking for an excuse to harass or arrest you. The system doesn't give a shit about you, live or die - the rules are just grease to allow you to be dealt with expediently. It'd be easy to think it's out to get you specifically until you noticed the same things happening to your neighbors.
The usual police tactic is to escalate a situation as much as possible and try to arrest the suspect for anything. I've had police bully and outright threaten me - with financial ruin, inability to use public services, prison, and violence during the arrest that they told me they'd blame me for. Before you say I instigated it, I've seen the same behavior (usually without the violent threats - most people are smaller than me) directed at a wide range of non-threatening people, friends and strangers. Some instances from police in the same city have ended in their murder of a civilian for which they weren't even reprimanded.
Had it only happened to me I'd assume it was me but I see the same happening every time I see the police stopping someone. And not just street-kids or anything, even respectable university professors are afraid of the police. Instead of the agency protecting people it instead seeks out charges it can inflict on people who weren't causing any harm. Like any surly, entitled, union employees they work to rule, arresting their quota, be it in speeders, skate-boarders, innocent bystanders, or maybe a real dangerous criminal every now and then.
How about instead of wasting the police's already-tiny budget on drudgery, we do something to let them be more effective so less mistakes are made in the first place?
How about authoritarian apologists like you shut your ignorant mouths?
No asshole, it's not their budget. It's my fucking money and I don't want your or their fucking excuses on how any kind of oversight is going to cost too much. If they can't provide good service we should fire them and hire someone who will.
Gotta love your world where someone who wants to be able to play Flash not being able to because Apple won't allow it, is good. As much as I hate Flash I'd hate having to stop using my phone and go find a computer to view it even more.
Sure, Flash-player should have a huge 'sucks battery' warning in the app store, and shouldn't be installed by default, but that's far from banning it.
They whine like bitches though, whenever anyone else plays rough. I was kind of hoping the guys I liked when they came out with the Apple 2 wouldn't be such rampant jerks when they got the chance.
Steve Jobs is a dictator
And yet the dictator would be in court demanding protection in a heartbeat if big ISPs blocked mac-users on some technicality.
Evolution is, from his point of view, for sissies.
Yes, which explains why MacOS used cooperative multitasking for 20 years, why those early iMacs overheated, etc.
This is very different. Apple is protective of their own platform but they're doing nothing to damage Flash or the Internet.
No, nothing at all Microsoft-ish in targeting one specific competitor and using arbitrary technological measures to make sure none of their products ever run.
At least in Microsoft's case they didn't claim it was a DMCA violation to work around their limits like Apple does.
Instead, Apple rejected Flash right from the start when the iPhone and the iPad had exactly zero market share. Despite that, these products are huge sellers anyway.
Of course they're great sellers, look at the fanboys. You're trying to spin not being allowed to do something as a feature simply because it might drain your battery.
There's a message in there - many millions of people are perfectly happy without Flash. The iPhone has the highest satisfaction rating of all mobile devices. Approved apps sounds good to me if it does what I want, doesn't crash my phone, eat my battery or steal my data.
Then you conflate Flash with Trojan-horse style security flaws, as if the development environment used has anything to do with it, and talk about an app crashing a phone as if that's a reason to avoid the app, not fix the OS.
The correct response to worries about apps draining your battery is for the manufacturer to provide a power-drain meter for all apps, not stigmatizing one particular failure.
If Google wants to allow all that, more power to them.
And yeah, here's why you're so curiously blind, you're defending your turf. Apple good, Android bad.
This isn't a versus battle. Get your head out of your associations. All companies that remove useful customer choices, especially under the guise of security, suck.
I don't like Flash, and wish nobody would use it anywhere, but it's counterproductive and anti-competitive for Apple to ban it. There's an app that makes fart noises but you aren't allowed to get Flash.
To me, it does - directly or a threat of violence thereof
Or any unreasonable outcomes. It's extortion if I threaten to torch your car or file false charges against you.
I object to giving you any control, which is really government-enforced limits on others
As it will be with any law or justice decision, yes.
There's the violence you didn't want to see above though. Your "right" to control a photo is only enforceable because you want police to lock up people who don't agree.
If you tell me not to publish your photo or you'll go to the police and have me arrested you're using threats of violence just as if you said "quit playing that music or I'll come break your face!" You're just doing it by proxy.
Almost for certain, if you find a photo of yourself on the Internet, even when taken in public places, and you don't like the purpose on which it is used, you can ask to be taken down.
You could ask. But you have absolutely no power to compel such a thing.
Nor should you, that's news. "This guy was doing this." Any way you'd force the removal of an embarrassing photo could be used by a criminal to force newspapers to redact their stories.
That's not the only reason I can imagine for a person not agreeing with the photo being made public.
But none of them hold any weight.
Censoring photos for privacy wouldn't provide it. I could still say "John's house is at XYZ, and looks just like this other house." Besides, we have harassment laws for this - regardless of the tool being photos or dead cats.
As for misrepresentation, no, that's not. If I have a photo of your house all messy it's not misrepresenting it. That's what it looked like when I saw it. I've got photos of flowers that are now dead - is the photo misrepresenting the true nature of the flower? If I lie and say "and his house always looks like that", it may be actionable, but not the documentary photo.
Besides, you keep trying to ban the instrument (the photo) rather than the action (harassment). That's like banning knives to prevent murder - totalitarian, harmful to society in general, and ultimately totally ineffective.
I'm on the opinion that the image of a home is not automatically in the public domain, even when visible from the public places
But that's what 'in public is'. If you don't want your home seen (as opposed to its location published, or its cleanliness maligned) then put a tent over it. If you don't want it photographed, you don't want it seen either, as an artist could accurately draw it. All of your issues, other than simply wanting to own something and control its use, are either covered by existing laws or are none of your business even if they involve an image of your home.
Also you haven't shown any reason why you'd be given rights to these photos of mine in the first place. Why should this house-image right exist? Even if you don't like to think of it that way, your "rights" in these areas are actually restraints on my behavior. What possible benefits are there to everyone that could possibly warrant the restrictions on other people's liberty?
The problem wasn't Microsoft's market-share - that could have been 99% without a problem. The problem is what they did with it. The contracts they forced manufacturers into were abusive an anti-competitive.
Any potential fine would have been trivial (look at what we gave the banks). All benefit would have come from breaking Microsoft up into smaller competing companies. That would have helped the industry immediately and probably Microsoft too, in the long run.
If you can make the assumption that there "could have" been more competition without Microsoft, then the assumption could also be made that another company like Apple or IBM "could have" had a monopoly without Microsoft as well.
There was competition before and around Microsoft, that they killed. Without Microsoft there were other companies.
Yes, others would have stepped up to be as monopolistic as possible, but if we'd actively prevented Microsoft's abuses we'd have prevented theirs too.
I don't think they ever had a monopoly.
Sure. But they had enough market leverage in one area to exert undue influence in another. That's doesn't require anywhere near 100% control.
You can and have always been able to buy computers with your choice of OS or without one at all.
Not for the proper price. All computers cost roughly as much as one with MS-Windows because Microsoft would stop giving the manufacturers their quantity discount otherwise.
Do you say that, if I believe I own the image of my home, I'm sort of a mobster?
I wouldn't use that word but to prevent me from taking a photo of your house and using it, at some point, you or someone on your behalf is going to say something roughly equivalent to "That's a nice camera. It'd be a shame if you were in jail and couldn't use it."
Extortion doesn't require violence or a mob, especially where the society is willing to play that part by letting you exploit the law. For instance, suing someone under abusive libel laws for morally justified statements.
Is it clearer now why I'm on the opinion that people should ask my permission to use an image of my home for commercial purposes?
Yes.
However it's not the issue of a monetary fee, or which limited uses you'd restrict. I object to giving you any control, which is really government-enforced limits on others, over images of anything you do in/near public.
The outside of your house is public - you're putting it in the public's domain. For you to own its image, such that you could forbid someone's use of it (in any way) is to have power to enforce a hole in a panoramic photo.
If you've created a work of art and you don't want it demoted to "domicile covering", don't place it in public view. Buy a circus tent and build your house in it and then you having control over the use of its image would be more reasonable.
Overall, I see how you could feel a house is art. If you could draw a house you'd have a copyright on the image, so building the same house seems like it should be similarly protected. But a house by its nature is the covering that keeps the private things inside private by showing a publicly viewable shell.
If you construct something you, by choice or contractual obligation, can't show to others you should be required by law to tarp it - not be given control of its image.
[...] none of those apps make it through the approval process if the tester can make them crash. On that reason alone, Flash wouldn't be allowed in the app store.
So? Fail them then. Yes, crappy dev tools make crappy products and Flash is among the crappiest, but if it's banned outright they'll never be able to make Flash2 which doesn't suck. Hence a less healthy development environment.
Similarly, if Flash's CPU usage is such that it drains the battery more quickly, test for this! It would be great to know, before buying an app, what impact it's been found to have on your battery life. I'm sure there are non-Flash hogs out there and they'll be missed if the focus is on Flash.
Can you [...] toss it on the couch or chair without worrying about hard disk damage?
Have you heard of SSDs? If you've got a laptop/tablet you make your own decisions and can either have a higher-capacity HD or (my choice) a tougher SSD.
You act like this is some special Apple thing.
How well does it work with just touching the screen as an input device.
As well as the programs I run support it. As a regular computer, fairly badly - most apps want some keyboard and the onscreen one isn't always handy. But as an iPad competitor where it only has to run a small subset of programs that run well on a touch-screen, it works very well.
If Asus could have forbidden me to use Flash, play CPU intensive games, given me a CPU incompatible with the majority of the personal computing world, run only "certified" apps, etc, I'm sure the battery life would be even better...
Jobs designed the things to be a walled garden, to trap developers rather than encouraging a healthy development environment.
Calling Flash a healthy development environment is a laugh since it has become one of the most resource hungry attack vectors of recent memory.
I didn't. I said Jobs did not design it to encourage a healthy development environment. But Flash is part of a healthy environment even if it itself sucks. If nothing is allowed until it's perfect you won't get anything new.
The intentions are likely different from what you're thinking. I don't believe anyone really sets out to become a monopolist and Jobs is no exception. [...] If Apple made huge profits off their App Store, I could see why they'd want to protect it from end runs.
Which leads him to being a monopolist. You can't ban a competitor's products and implement a single authorized app store without intending to do so.
Apple has every right to monopolize their own offerings and is under no obligation to support things which harm their offerings.
Yeah, Apple has no obligation not to be as aggressive as possible. No reason not to use every tactic Microsoft used, and they bad-mouthed while Bill was doing them.
Not unless they're trying to avoid being fucking hypocrites.
The Walled Garden complaints are understandable [...] Ironically, I feel like I have more freedom inside that walled garden because of that.
Pft, freedom to do what? Buy approved apps? Browse the web (where it doesn't require plugins from companies that compete with Apple)?
But not freedom to run an app in the background even if you understood the battery issue and were willing to make the tradeoff.
Having Flash "blocked" like to click-to-Flash Firefox extension is a great idea. The message could say "clicking on this will drain your battery quickly". I hate Flash but occasionally have a need to use a site based on it. Sure it's annoying but it's better than not getting the information I need.
But instead Apple has not only gone out of their way to keep Flash from running but to ban it even if it was optimized and ported. It's as if Microsoft banned iTunes - not for any technical reason but simply because they were tired of the competition.
Malware is a non-issue - sure, there is some, and sure there's more for non-proprietary platforms, but there are also more applications. Besides, the real risk isn't some unsigned app that geeks install but Apple-approved apps that turn out to be malicious but have a seal-of-approval and thus are trusted. This is partly why Apple has crippled their dev tools, to make it easier to detect malware, but it's a failed strategy. In the end their complacent users will suffer - having trusted their security to someone who interests are not aligned.
So yeah, no. Apple products do NOT just work, unless you're willing to tell yourself "That's okay, I didn't want to do that anyways."
This kind of respect I give anyone who decides to cut something bad even if it’s going to hurt their sales some. If you have to choose between losing sales because your product doesn’t support some wide-spread technology or because your acceptance of that technology means poorer battery life and/or user experience,
Apple didn't have to cut Flash - it could have let Flash cut itself simply by sucking. But instead they won't let it run, even if it was optimized.
You can pretend that it's blocked for your own good, but Apple is committed to blocking any third-party dev environments and apps made with them, even if they'd improve your user experience. They're going for developer lock-in and that small tightly-controlled pool of developers and tools isn't for the good of the user...
Most Slashdotters still hate Flash. I try to avoid using it. It ruins more webpages than anything else.
But I wouldn't buy a device where I was told anything was forbidden. No matter if they port their software, or how well it works, Apple still won't let it run simply because they're competition. Allowing Flash would lessen the reason to learn Apple's dev tools, they'd have to compete on features, something that should be pretty simple again Flash but fair competition is something Jobs hates.
The argument isn't Flash, it's simply the most well-known thing the iDevices don't support. But for the same reasons (making it hard to develop for two devices at once) interpreted languages are gone... Jobs designed the things to be a walled garden, to trap developers rather than encouraging a healthy development environment.
I'm glad to see Flash wane, and seeing Adobe suffer (payback for Dmitry), but it's clear Jobs is doing it to remove a source of non apple-approved apps, not for the users in any way. Funny how Job's is such a monopolist after all the years of whining like a little bitch about Microsoft... Jealous I guess.
I'll wait to buy a device until I'm not being used as a pawn to destroy the competition. When it's made to serve me, not made to make life difficult for the competition.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an inferior product. [...] There's nothing arbitrary about Apple not allowing Flash. Again, for web usage, it's a buggy, battery draining pile of crap.
It's arbitrary because they don't guarantee the value of anything else. You can buy an app that farts, and it might fail to fart, and Apple doesn't care, but they'll prevent you from buying something made with Flash because it might drain your battery faster than the alternative.
If Apple guaranteed the power-draw of apps it wouldn't need to ban Flash, it'd be ranked down at the bottom of the list.
Good. iOS will remain the best mobile OS because of this attention to the quality of user experience.
Yeah, the best OS if you want to be absolutely unable to ever do something because Jobs thought the UI would be cluttered.
Like a Microsoft user or developer, you'll enjoy your time right up until you find yourself on the other side of whatever Gates/Jobs find useful and then you'll be arbitrarily banned from any markets they control.
Better pray you never fall out of the herd.
Based on this, there would be no difference between a mobster and a policeman: both of them use violence or threat of violence, isn't it?
Quite right. It all depends on what they're trying to do, and why. Police in many countries are the mob.
If that policeman uses the implied threat of force to stop more unjust uses of force, it's good. If he collects unreasonably high parking-ticket fees he's a mobster.
Editing/cropping a photo to exclude the context so that the subject will seem/look like doing something nasty: is this a desirable outcome to you? Where's the balance in this?
Could you prove my intent to demean you more than inform the world, in court? If so it's a crime regardless of what medium I use.
We don't need special laws for knife-murder, or for photo-libel.
The moment in which Google StreetView (or any other publisher) will affix a note: "This is how the house looked at: -datetime-", you may be right and I might agree with it (depending on the context in which the photo is published).
No. That's inherent in still photography and thus implicit. If it doesn't claim to be a live feed it doesn't need ridiculous "the area or items depicted in this photo may have changed" legalese on the bottom.
I've got photos of flowers that are now dead - is the photo misrepresenting the true nature of the flower?
Yes. And I can afford to be sure of that only because you used true nature of the flower: cannot be captured by a simple shot.
And here I have you, in an equally tautological way, but one level higher.
I said "misrepresent". Where on that photo are the words "'flower' as it is, was, and ever will be."? If they aren't there it's not claiming to be any more than an instant in the life of that flower.
[stop me from taking photos]
Mate, I'm tried already of repeating: should the owner of a house be able to control the publishing of a photo of the home.
And you keep falling into the "taking the photo" action or the photo itself.
I didn't ask to ban cameras, I didn't ask the cameras to have safety pins, all I'm asking is the publishing of the photo to benefit of some control from the owner of the house. Publishing is still an action in your understanding, is it not?
Yes, but photography without publishing is useless. Once you start to control who can and can't see my work I might as well not bother. Which, I suspect, is the real motive of many people. I've been asked, in a hostile fashion, why I take photos instead of just buying post-cards. I'm surrounded by people who think nothing of my hobby and as such are willing to dismantle it, piece by seemingly unimportant piece. To one guy it's "no taking pictures of factories", to another it's airplanes, to you it's only publishing the works the subjects are happy with, etc. At the end there's nothing left.
So no, I don't think your publishing controls would really stop there. If you let me take the photo I could leak it, obviously the law would need to cover capture to be effective.
If you would say: the owner's right to control the publishing should be somehow counter-balanced and limited by safe-guards, I might agree and we can explore the ways to limit my potential abuses. If you insist that I have absolutely no right to control the publishing of photos of my home, then we might as well stop here and agree to disagree.
Of course. If only I'd agree to these chains you'd know I saw reason and you wouldn't need the rest of them.
No. There's no reason for it. Anything you wish to achieve is better achieved through other existing laws and doesn't come with the chilling effect of having to get the mercurial permission of a subject to depict them.
If you actually had a single issue that was valid, could be solved this way, and could
Because of this, you can think of Apple's reaction to Flash as payback.
"You didn't devote your money to highlighting improvements in our OS quickly enough - because of that your other products are henceforth arbitrarily banned."
Go use Flash somewhere else then, or don't use it. I don't really care about Flash. It means absolutely nothing to me.
Me either. But having companies arbitrarily run out of business by DRM-enforced limitations in one product is pretty anti-competitive and bad for the industry and the consumer in the long run.
Initially many lauded Microsoft's destructiveness. They saw it as making things easier for users by removing pesky decisions.
The Flash exploits aren't Trojan horses - if you wait long enough, you'll get hit.
You seems confused. If I have a Flash game that I play it'll eventually just steal my data out of nowhere? No, of course not.
A meter to see how big a dent Flash puts in your battery? Brilliant.
No idiot, a meter to see how much ANY app draws. We pretty safely assume Flash sucks but without the individualized stats, who knows what else sucks.
Now all we have to go by is Jobs' obviously biased stance. He's a corporation, he'd say Flash melts baby jesus if he thought it'd help.
There's an app that makes fart noises but you aren't allowed to get Flash.
There are plenty of fart apps for Android too, so just get over it already.
Your reading comprehension sucks. I'm pointing out how Apple feels it necessary to ban things.
Think principle and the long term, not compromise and short term.
Oh, if only you'd follow your own advice.
if you truly hate Flash, then you'd like see the world where Flash disappears from the web.
I do. I'd like to see it killed by better dev tools that produce more useful and maintainable products using the standards we're building for just this reason.
That's what Jobs is delivering.
No, Jobs is delivering his own lock-in. First he destroys any competition in his intended area and then he starts exerting more control.
I don't want Flash banned, I want people to abandon it for better products.
The leverage of iOS not running Flash [...]
You mean how iOS *could* run Flash, but won't because of management fiat and technological trickery. Much like Microsoft sabotaging Windows to hurt DR-DOS. Or, like Microsoft sabotaging Office for Mac by inserting delay loops to make the PC product faster, making their OS look faster for apps.
Yeah, those Microsoft tactics could really fuck up Adobe. Yee-ha.
I wouldn't cry if they fell for their DMCA abuses, or because their products weren't improving much anymore, but I don't want Apple arbitrarily ruining them.
I am a law abiding citizen, and as far as I am concerned this is not news.
This is the WORST possible argument one can give regarding the erosion of our rights.
Not at all. It's a valid opinion.
It's an opinion, yes. But it's retarded.
Things we find perfectly reasonable periodically become the subject of crackdowns (alcohol - prohibition) that in no way reflect actual damage being done to society. Upstanding law-abiding citizens one day were jailed the next for having a drink. When the laws were repealed it was widely acknowledged that they were unjust, unreasonable, and useless in implementation and by unrealistic ideas of the benefits.
Further, even if you're not a drinker and never would be, prohibition and other laws similarly not directly impacting you still need to be fought because they're still as unjust, it's just your neighbor who suffers this time. Not only is sitting there and watching someone else suffer and saying "It's okay, because they're not to me yet" sociopathic, but it's dangerously short-sighted. And it guarantees that those who could help you are less inclined, now that they've seen your unwillingness to help others.
Here's a thought for you: The police can already do this. They can follow you by car, bike, helicopter, or on foot. They can check every license plate in the city.
Here's a thought for you: I can already do this. I could follow you by car, bike, helicopter, or on foot. I could check every license plate in the city.
It's only a matter of money.
But does that justify me sticking a transmitter in your belongings, just because I could already do a similar thing?
Just wondering... If I had to pay for it now I'd never do it, but if I could legally bug people because I theoretically could follow them - despite the cost, then it'd be practical. I'm sure I'd find enough dirt to not only make it profitable but to rat out a bunch of annoying neighbors. Heh. If they lose their jobs and need to hire a lawyer maybe I can even get their houses while they're desperate.
Or is that last bit only reasonable for police departments auctioning off confiscated property from drug busts? Hmm. I'll have to go find a law-abiding citizen to ask if he minds what I do to you.
So, if you happen to have a radio transmitter detector, or some other sort of detection device to determine that you have been bugged, you are pretty much free to remove it, sell it
No, because now you'd have to assume some weird box on your car came from the police, and tampering with police property and hindering an investigation are crimes.
The law isn't a refuge from this. Yes, it should guarantee equal and just treatment to all but it doesn't because the enforcers don't want it to and we can't make them.
A constitution only works when the government follows it.
No. A government, like a child or any other entity is going to test its limits. For the best of motives even, a case will fall on the other side of the line and it'll seem okay to bend the rule just this once...
A constitution (or any rule) only works when the people whose mandate it is are willing to enforce it when the line is crossed.
What's wrong with this country is that there are far too many people who think that the world's out to get them, so they'll burn bridges as fast as they can.
No, the world is setup so that they can get anyone at any time. Almost everything is illegal, or "appears" enough so to arrest someone if interpreted that way by someone looking for an excuse to harass or arrest you. The system doesn't give a shit about you, live or die - the rules are just grease to allow you to be dealt with expediently. It'd be easy to think it's out to get you specifically until you noticed the same things happening to your neighbors.
The usual police tactic is to escalate a situation as much as possible and try to arrest the suspect for anything. I've had police bully and outright threaten me - with financial ruin, inability to use public services, prison, and violence during the arrest that they told me they'd blame me for. Before you say I instigated it, I've seen the same behavior (usually without the violent threats - most people are smaller than me) directed at a wide range of non-threatening people, friends and strangers. Some instances from police in the same city have ended in their murder of a civilian for which they weren't even reprimanded.
Had it only happened to me I'd assume it was me but I see the same happening every time I see the police stopping someone. And not just street-kids or anything, even respectable university professors are afraid of the police. Instead of the agency protecting people it instead seeks out charges it can inflict on people who weren't causing any harm. Like any surly, entitled, union employees they work to rule, arresting their quota, be it in speeders, skate-boarders, innocent bystanders, or maybe a real dangerous criminal every now and then.
How about instead of wasting the police's already-tiny budget on drudgery, we do something to let them be more effective so less mistakes are made in the first place?
How about authoritarian apologists like you shut your ignorant mouths?
No asshole, it's not their budget. It's my fucking money and I don't want your or their fucking excuses on how any kind of oversight is going to cost too much. If they can't provide good service we should fire them and hire someone who will.
Gotta love your world where someone who wants to be able to play Flash not being able to because Apple won't allow it, is good. As much as I hate Flash I'd hate having to stop using my phone and go find a computer to view it even more.
Sure, Flash-player should have a huge 'sucks battery' warning in the app store, and shouldn't be installed by default, but that's far from banning it.
Maybe. But that’s not how Apple rolls. ;)
They whine like bitches though, whenever anyone else plays rough. I was kind of hoping the guys I liked when they came out with the Apple 2 wouldn't be such rampant jerks when they got the chance.
Steve Jobs is a dictator
And yet the dictator would be in court demanding protection in a heartbeat if big ISPs blocked mac-users on some technicality.
Evolution is, from his point of view, for sissies.
Yes, which explains why MacOS used cooperative multitasking for 20 years, why those early iMacs overheated, etc.
This is very different. Apple is protective of their own platform but they're doing nothing to damage Flash or the Internet.
No, nothing at all Microsoft-ish in targeting one specific competitor and using arbitrary technological measures to make sure none of their products ever run.
At least in Microsoft's case they didn't claim it was a DMCA violation to work around their limits like Apple does.
Instead, Apple rejected Flash right from the start when the iPhone and the iPad had exactly zero market share. Despite that, these products are huge sellers anyway.
Of course they're great sellers, look at the fanboys. You're trying to spin not being allowed to do something as a feature simply because it might drain your battery.
There's a message in there - many millions of people are perfectly happy without Flash. The iPhone has the highest satisfaction rating of all mobile devices. Approved apps sounds good to me if it does what I want, doesn't crash my phone, eat my battery or steal my data.
Then you conflate Flash with Trojan-horse style security flaws, as if the development environment used has anything to do with it, and talk about an app crashing a phone as if that's a reason to avoid the app, not fix the OS.
The correct response to worries about apps draining your battery is for the manufacturer to provide a power-drain meter for all apps, not stigmatizing one particular failure.
If Google wants to allow all that, more power to them.
And yeah, here's why you're so curiously blind, you're defending your turf. Apple good, Android bad.
This isn't a versus battle. Get your head out of your associations. All companies that remove useful customer choices, especially under the guise of security, suck.
I don't like Flash, and wish nobody would use it anywhere, but it's counterproductive and anti-competitive for Apple to ban it. There's an app that makes fart noises but you aren't allowed to get Flash.
Extortion doesn't require violence or a mob
To me, it does - directly or a threat of violence thereof
Or any unreasonable outcomes. It's extortion if I threaten to torch your car or file false charges against you.
I object to giving you any control, which is really government-enforced limits on others
As it will be with any law or justice decision, yes.
There's the violence you didn't want to see above though. Your "right" to control a photo is only enforceable because you want police to lock up people who don't agree.
If you tell me not to publish your photo or you'll go to the police and have me arrested you're using threats of violence just as if you said "quit playing that music or I'll come break your face!" You're just doing it by proxy.
Almost for certain, if you find a photo of yourself on the Internet, even when taken in public places, and you don't like the purpose on which it is used, you can ask to be taken down.
You could ask. But you have absolutely no power to compel such a thing.
Nor should you, that's news. "This guy was doing this." Any way you'd force the removal of an embarrassing photo could be used by a criminal to force newspapers to redact their stories.
That's not the only reason I can imagine for a person not agreeing with the photo being made public.
But none of them hold any weight.
Censoring photos for privacy wouldn't provide it. I could still say "John's house is at XYZ, and looks just like this other house." Besides, we have harassment laws for this - regardless of the tool being photos or dead cats.
As for misrepresentation, no, that's not. If I have a photo of your house all messy it's not misrepresenting it. That's what it looked like when I saw it. I've got photos of flowers that are now dead - is the photo misrepresenting the true nature of the flower? If I lie and say "and his house always looks like that", it may be actionable, but not the documentary photo.
Besides, you keep trying to ban the instrument (the photo) rather than the action (harassment). That's like banning knives to prevent murder - totalitarian, harmful to society in general, and ultimately totally ineffective.
I'm on the opinion that the image of a home is not automatically in the public domain, even when visible from the public places
But that's what 'in public is'. If you don't want your home seen (as opposed to its location published, or its cleanliness maligned) then put a tent over it. If you don't want it photographed, you don't want it seen either, as an artist could accurately draw it. All of your issues, other than simply wanting to own something and control its use, are either covered by existing laws or are none of your business even if they involve an image of your home.
Also you haven't shown any reason why you'd be given rights to these photos of mine in the first place. Why should this house-image right exist? Even if you don't like to think of it that way, your "rights" in these areas are actually restraints on my behavior. What possible benefits are there to everyone that could possibly warrant the restrictions on other people's liberty?
The problem wasn't Microsoft's market-share - that could have been 99% without a problem. The problem is what they did with it. The contracts they forced manufacturers into were abusive an anti-competitive.
Any potential fine would have been trivial (look at what we gave the banks). All benefit would have come from breaking Microsoft up into smaller competing companies. That would have helped the industry immediately and probably Microsoft too, in the long run.
If you can make the assumption that there "could have" been more competition without Microsoft, then the assumption could also be made that another company like Apple or IBM "could have" had a monopoly without Microsoft as well.
There was competition before and around Microsoft, that they killed. Without Microsoft there were other companies.
Yes, others would have stepped up to be as monopolistic as possible, but if we'd actively prevented Microsoft's abuses we'd have prevented theirs too.
I don't think they ever had a monopoly.
Sure. But they had enough market leverage in one area to exert undue influence in another. That's doesn't require anywhere near 100% control.
You can and have always been able to buy computers with your choice of OS or without one at all.
Not for the proper price. All computers cost roughly as much as one with MS-Windows because Microsoft would stop giving the manufacturers their quantity discount otherwise.
Do you say that, if I believe I own the image of my home, I'm sort of a mobster?
I wouldn't use that word but to prevent me from taking a photo of your house and using it, at some point, you or someone on your behalf is going to say something roughly equivalent to "That's a nice camera. It'd be a shame if you were in jail and couldn't use it."
Extortion doesn't require violence or a mob, especially where the society is willing to play that part by letting you exploit the law. For instance, suing someone under abusive libel laws for morally justified statements.
Is it clearer now why I'm on the opinion that people should ask my permission to use an image of my home for commercial purposes?
Yes.
However it's not the issue of a monetary fee, or which limited uses you'd restrict. I object to giving you any control, which is really government-enforced limits on others, over images of anything you do in/near public.
The outside of your house is public - you're putting it in the public's domain. For you to own its image, such that you could forbid someone's use of it (in any way) is to have power to enforce a hole in a panoramic photo.
If you've created a work of art and you don't want it demoted to "domicile covering", don't place it in public view. Buy a circus tent and build your house in it and then you having control over the use of its image would be more reasonable.
Overall, I see how you could feel a house is art. If you could draw a house you'd have a copyright on the image, so building the same house seems like it should be similarly protected. But a house by its nature is the covering that keeps the private things inside private by showing a publicly viewable shell.
If you construct something you, by choice or contractual obligation, can't show to others you should be required by law to tarp it - not be given control of its image.
[...] none of those apps make it through the approval process if the tester can make them crash. On that reason alone, Flash wouldn't be allowed in the app store.
So? Fail them then. Yes, crappy dev tools make crappy products and Flash is among the crappiest, but if it's banned outright they'll never be able to make Flash2 which doesn't suck. Hence a less healthy development environment.
Similarly, if Flash's CPU usage is such that it drains the battery more quickly, test for this! It would be great to know, before buying an app, what impact it's been found to have on your battery life. I'm sure there are non-Flash hogs out there and they'll be missed if the focus is on Flash.
No consoles for you then.
Quite right.
Or DVD players.
There are some. Not that you'd buy a DVD player these days...
[...] increasingly you cant even buy the newer Android phones, as they put in restrictions to stop you reflashing to your own custom builds of the OS.
Right, even something apparently "open" can be locked down in other ways. Hence the AGPLv3.
Can you [...] toss it on the couch or chair without worrying about hard disk damage?
Have you heard of SSDs? If you've got a laptop/tablet you make your own decisions and can either have a higher-capacity HD or (my choice) a tougher SSD.
You act like this is some special Apple thing.
How well does it work with just touching the screen as an input device.
As well as the programs I run support it. As a regular computer, fairly badly - most apps want some keyboard and the onscreen one isn't always handy. But as an iPad competitor where it only has to run a small subset of programs that run well on a touch-screen, it works very well.
If Asus could have forbidden me to use Flash, play CPU intensive games, given me a CPU incompatible with the majority of the personal computing world, run only "certified" apps, etc, I'm sure the battery life would be even better...
Jobs designed the things to be a walled garden, to trap developers rather than encouraging a healthy development environment.
Calling Flash a healthy development environment is a laugh since it has become one of the most resource hungry attack vectors of recent memory.
I didn't. I said Jobs did not design it to encourage a healthy development environment. But Flash is part of a healthy environment even if it itself sucks. If nothing is allowed until it's perfect you won't get anything new.
The intentions are likely different from what you're thinking. I don't believe anyone really sets out to become a monopolist and Jobs is no exception. [...] If Apple made huge profits off their App Store, I could see why they'd want to protect it from end runs.
Which leads him to being a monopolist. You can't ban a competitor's products and implement a single authorized app store without intending to do so.
Apple has every right to monopolize their own offerings and is under no obligation to support things which harm their offerings.
Yeah, Apple has no obligation not to be as aggressive as possible. No reason not to use every tactic Microsoft used, and they bad-mouthed while Bill was doing them.
Not unless they're trying to avoid being fucking hypocrites.
The Walled Garden complaints are understandable [...] Ironically, I feel like I have more freedom inside that walled garden because of that.
Pft, freedom to do what? Buy approved apps? Browse the web (where it doesn't require plugins from companies that compete with Apple)?
But not freedom to run an app in the background even if you understood the battery issue and were willing to make the tradeoff.
Or stealing from hit-men. They'd have the cool toys...
Having Flash "blocked" like to click-to-Flash Firefox extension is a great idea. The message could say "clicking on this will drain your battery quickly". I hate Flash but occasionally have a need to use a site based on it. Sure it's annoying but it's better than not getting the information I need.
But instead Apple has not only gone out of their way to keep Flash from running but to ban it even if it was optimized and ported. It's as if Microsoft banned iTunes - not for any technical reason but simply because they were tired of the competition.
Malware is a non-issue - sure, there is some, and sure there's more for non-proprietary platforms, but there are also more applications. Besides, the real risk isn't some unsigned app that geeks install but Apple-approved apps that turn out to be malicious but have a seal-of-approval and thus are trusted. This is partly why Apple has crippled their dev tools, to make it easier to detect malware, but it's a failed strategy. In the end their complacent users will suffer - having trusted their security to someone who interests are not aligned.
So yeah, no. Apple products do NOT just work, unless you're willing to tell yourself "That's okay, I didn't want to do that anyways."
This kind of respect I give anyone who decides to cut something bad even if it’s going to hurt their sales some. If you have to choose between losing sales because your product doesn’t support some wide-spread technology or because your acceptance of that technology means poorer battery life and/or user experience,
Apple didn't have to cut Flash - it could have let Flash cut itself simply by sucking. But instead they won't let it run, even if it was optimized.
You can pretend that it's blocked for your own good, but Apple is committed to blocking any third-party dev environments and apps made with them, even if they'd improve your user experience. They're going for developer lock-in and that small tightly-controlled pool of developers and tools isn't for the good of the user...
Most Slashdotters still hate Flash. I try to avoid using it. It ruins more webpages than anything else.
But I wouldn't buy a device where I was told anything was forbidden. No matter if they port their software, or how well it works, Apple still won't let it run simply because they're competition. Allowing Flash would lessen the reason to learn Apple's dev tools, they'd have to compete on features, something that should be pretty simple again Flash but fair competition is something Jobs hates.
The argument isn't Flash, it's simply the most well-known thing the iDevices don't support. But for the same reasons (making it hard to develop for two devices at once) interpreted languages are gone... Jobs designed the things to be a walled garden, to trap developers rather than encouraging a healthy development environment.
I'm glad to see Flash wane, and seeing Adobe suffer (payback for Dmitry), but it's clear Jobs is doing it to remove a source of non apple-approved apps, not for the users in any way. Funny how Job's is such a monopolist after all the years of whining like a little bitch about Microsoft... Jealous I guess.
I'll wait to buy a device until I'm not being used as a pawn to destroy the competition. When it's made to serve me, not made to make life difficult for the competition.
Of course not, they collect fees (which translate to promotions/rewards) from rejections too.