Yes, people were aware of the web in 2000 and knew it was a "big thing". However, even today I'd say the majority of the people I mix with who are not computer people have little or no understanding of the consequences of many things. The notion that a book given a "web site" name might harm that web site is not something that springs to mind. These people, remember, were publishers, not computer geeks. It's a very conservative industry at the best of times.
Secondly what you say is a "verifiable lie" has not been verified as a lie and you've misquoted her. What KT has said is that Aftab is not her lawyer. She has not denied that at some point she is or was associated with Aftab. Verifiably, the two worked together at some point on putting together websites concerning abuse, however this doesn't mean that KT's current legal representative is Aftab, it just means the two collaborated on a project.
Penguin has presumably made a mistake in 2000, that's verifiably correct, though the conspiracy stories that imply it was more than a mistake, and that Penguin was planning to hound some poor innocent out of her domain name in order to publicise a relatively minor book are simply ridiculous. It appears to me to be an obvious misjudgement with no apparent ill intent.
Penguin, according to some Slashdot posts, has renamed KT's sequel to avoid the whole ".com" thing altogether, which makes sense to me as it was a stupid name to begin with.
I might add that I'm actually fairly bothered by what's been written here on Slashdot since the story broke. We have people advocating a campaign of harassment over an issue where the other side hasn't been revealed and where the original story doesn't 100% make sense except with some extreme reading between lines. I do hope Aftab takes up Slashdot's offer to present a rebuttle, this crap needs to stop.
I don't think the "in a rush" excuse flies. They had the time to check out "girl.com" but somehow completely forgot when it became "katie.com"? Sorry, but that's just impossible. Speaking of which, how many books out there end in ".com" anyway?
I don't believe that argument is as clear cut as you and other slashdotters make it.
If girl.com was a problem and katie.com wasn't, and both were resolved, then it's more likely to be what girl.com was pointing at that was the issue, not who owned what.
Indeed, if girl.com was pointing at pr0n, and Penguin's response was to change the name, not try to buy the name "girl.com", then one likely conclusion was that Penguin had no intention of setting up a website to begin with.
This would seem to me to be especially true as there's no suggestion Penguin tried to buy Katie.com before the book was published. The major "conspiracy theory" that's come up about Penguin's actions are that somehow Penguin hoped to muscle Katie J out of her domain name so they could use the name for publicity.
But at the most critical time to do so, just before the marketing campaign for the book was about to start, they didn't even try!
I have a certain amount of sympathy for Katie J, but I'll be honest and say I think there's a lot more to this story than is being presented to us. I suspect, ultimately, it's more like this:
Penguin chooses a name for the book, at the last moment discovers that the name is associated with porn, and changes it to something verified as not being about porn
Otherwise, the launch of the book is typical. It's not hyped to the roof and back, because it's not that kind of book. Penguin sees the publication as the end of the process and expects to have no further involvement other than collecting and distributing royalties, and perhaps doing a second run if it's popular.
Katie J starts getting unwelcome attention because of the title of the book from Internet kooks
KJ blames Penguin and Katie T; Penguin takes one look at the costs involved in pulping the book and reprinting it under another name, says "No way", and tells KT they're not going to do it and that she can consider the matter out of her hands. The response to KJ is a resounding "Tough Sh*t"
Unsatisfied, KJ continues to lobby Penguin and anyone else who cares to get the name changed. Meanwhile she's having to rebuild her site because she's concerned about the attention she's getting from the Internet's low-life. She blames Penguin.
Other people involved in the process, such as "KT's lawyer" (Parry Aftab), peripherally or directly start to be drawn into the process. Relatively innocent, or at least well intentioned, comments, start to get taken out of context. Aftab suggests KJ might sell the domain name to KJ. Having been rebuffed, Aftab points out that the situation with Internet low life harassing her isn't going to get better (which is probably true.)
There's more than one side to any story. We haven't heard directly from Aftab or Penguin at this point. Some of KJ's comments seem a little extreme to me, such as the demands that Penguin change the name of KT's books. This makes me think that she's not telling her story with 100% good faith.
This nugget of information may have been "factual" but was it relevent? Assuming it was true, was it a necessary fact for potential readers to know or was merely confrontational and antagonistic?
I ask because I've written a fair few reviews (27) for Amazon so far, both positive and negative, and never had a review pulled. I think it might be that I have an annoying habit of actually writing facts relevent to the product at hand. I rarely care about the people involved except, for the occasional DVD review, to say whether or not they can act, or for a book review, whether they can write and whether they're competent in the field they're writing in.
It strikes me that making personal allegations (true, provable, proved in court, author convicted, or otherwise) doesn't actually help buyers make a decision. If this book on Java was any good, people needed to know that. If it sucked, people needed to know that. If the author's a paedophile, then the courts and a jury need to get involved, but there's nothing inherent about paedophilia, to the best of my knowledge, that affects the quality of books on Java. Or was he chosing some exceptionally dubious examples?
You know, I'd change your argument right now. The phrase "They are designed to enable humans to kill with greater ease" would be consistant, an affirmation indeed, of the phrase "They are designed to kill". Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean that that's not what guns (assuming we're talking about the regular, popular, bullet carrying type) are designed to do.
Just like a calculator is designed to add numbers together (and multiply them etc.) I can add them up in my head too, but nobody would reason that as such calculators aren't designed to add up (and multiply, divide, subtract, etc) numbers.
A more viable argument would be to point out that "designed to kill" is both a slight exaggeration (guns can be used to injure, though it's not guaranteed that using them this way will not eventually cause death) and by itself not as negative as it could be. Having something "designed to kill" on you may act as a deterent and prevent a death (your own) from happening. A security guard ferrying a huge amount of money is arguably safer with a gun than without one. And we perform certain types of killing every day of the week, it's only the killing of humans we have issues with. Hunters want something "designed to kill", they certainly don't want to kill people though.
But (regular) guns aren't designed to kill? Come on, that's exactly what they're designed to do.
The DMCA consists of five divisions (titles). The very first is to implement the WIPO treaties, which includes but isn't specific to the provisions on access and copy controls. It covers though the general WIPO agreements to harmonize copyright law with those treaties. To quote the summary:
Technical Amendments
National Eligibility
The WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) each require member countries to provide protection to certain works from other member countries or created by nationals of other member countries. That protection must be no less favorable than that accorded to domestic works.
Section 104 of the Copyright Act establishes the conditions of eligibility for protection under U.S. law for works from other countries. Section 102(b) of the DMCA amends section 104 of the Copyright Act and adds new definitions to section 101 of the Copyright Act in order to extend the protection of U.S. law to those works required to be protected under the WCT and the WPPT.
Restoration of Copyright Protection
Both treaties require parties to protect preexisting works from other member countries that have not fallen into the public domain in the country of origin through the expiry of the term of protection. A similar obligation is contained in both the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement. In 1995 this obligation was implemented in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, creating a new section 104A in the Copyright Act to restore protection to works from Berne or WTO member countries that are still protected in the country of origin, but fell into the public domain in the United States in the past because of a failure to comply with formalities that then existed in U.S. law, or due to a lack of treaty relations. Section 102(c) of the DMCA amends section 104A to restore copyright protection in the same circumstances to works from WCT and WPPT member countries.
Registration as a Prerequisite to Suit
The remaining technical amendment relates to the prohibition in both treaties against conditioning the exercise or enjoyment of rights on the fulfillment of formalities. Section 411(a) of the Copyright Act requires claims to copyright to be registered with the Copyright Office before a lawsuit can be initiated by the copyright owner, but exempts many foreign works in order to comply with existing treaty obligations under the Berne Convention. Section 102(d) of the DMCA amends section 411(a) by broadening the exemption to cover all foreign works.
It also clarifies the law on a range of issues from online broadcasting to contractual agreements between content makers and publishers particularly in the movie industry.
FWIW, the DMCA is a general copyright act that includes, amongst general stuff about copyright, the crap about "Access Control Mechanisms".
Generally most copyright violations these days are violations of the DMCA, simply because it's the latest attempt to define copyright.
Also, while I'm being pedantic, CSS has nothing to do with "copy protection circumvention", it's an access control not copy control. Both are (to my surprise, I knew about the access control thing and someone recently put me right about copy controls) protected by the DMCA, but the DMCA is about far more than just circumventing copy and access control mechanisms.
It broke because the user followed the instructions? That's defective. If my brake peddle broke while I was trying to stop the car, you wouldn't argue "Well, it's cheap, what do you expect?"
Ordinary, documented, operation should not turn something into a brick, no matter how cheap it is. And how is dual/backup-firmware expensive anyway? How expensive do you seriously think it is to add a ROM and a "Full reset" button in this day and age? If it adds a dollar to the price of the unit, I'd be surprised.
I suggest a reread of my explanation. I totally agree Apple doesn't want to own the content market. Indeed, I suspect eventually Apple will license their technology to other music stores, but only on condition the music stores ship unconvertable FairPlay AAC files (ie not in some format that can be easily and automatically translated to the native format supported by any MP3 player.)
Apple is using FairPlay to lock people into the iPod platform. You buy a large music library for your iPod and then find, when it's time to upgrade the hardware, that the only player that exists that can play your music is an iPod. The notion Apple can continue to compete on function is a nonsense, iPods haven't really gotten significantly more functional in the last few years. In the mean time, Apple should be assuming that its rivals will catch up.
This is why Real is a threat to Apple. Real's files can be played on anything. If people buy music from Real to play on their iPods, and avoid the iTMS, they'll be able to upgrade to a different MP3 player.
It's actually not a bad compiler, it's just about 15 years out of date - older if you consider the fact that function prototypes and other nicities were pretty much becoming standard in the late eighties without the help of ANSI.
It's usable for just about anything except compiling code intended for other systems. I didn't really think, for some reason, about the option of compiling GCC locally (eg into our user account), I may try that and see how far we can get. That would at least also allow us to get around the Perl et al issues too.
Believe it or not, there are still K&R systems around. I was somewhat surprised and a little disheartened about six years ago when one of our clients gave us use of a machine where pretty much the only development tools were an old version of Perl and a K&R C compiler - and not a "modernized" just-pre-ANSI one either, I mean something that choked on function prototypes in a way my Sinclair QL's Metacomco C compiler didn't back in 1995...
In case anyone's interested, this is a HP-UX 11 (the machine is a 9000/800) system, and we can only use it, not administer it, and they pretty much refuse to upgrade anything other than Oracle on it, so we're still stuck with the damned compiler.
That said, there is a solution: GNU GCC comes with an ANSI to K&R tool. I've not tried it, but it's probably worth playing with. If your ANSI 89 C code can also stay compatable with the translator, then your plans for total compatability should hold up.
And, of course, some people would argue that K&R was never standard anyway. They're kind of correct, there was a general consensus to how it should work (some of which contradicted the book itself) and most of the incompatabilities were actually extensions, but there will be areas of incompatability whatever you do.
Actually it was that part of the story that made sense to me. I honestly don't see why firmware upgrades should leave devices as bricks - at the very least, a non-overridable "boot rom" (which normally hands over to the firmware, but can instead run a rescue program in the event of mishap) or twin firmware strategy would help prevent these kinds of mishaps. While many may shrug and say "Well, most consumer level gadgets are designed this way", I personally see it as a design flaw.
The bit I didn't understand was the comment:
I have always been on a strict policy of updating firmware on all my devices
Now that makes no sense, and unfortunately seems to be considered standard practice with everything by many people in the tech industry right now. If it's not running the latest version of Perl, or has a slightly out of date kernel, then some how the world is going to end.
I understand keeping on top of bugs and security updates, but updating everything, all the time, when there's no good reason is just plain asking for trouble. We had an issue for a year or so when a particular computer seemed to be constantly going up and down - it turned out, we realised afterwards standing back and looking at why - the problem was we'd hired a system administrator specifically for that machine. And he'd install the latest DEC Unix patches, and things would break, and he'd install more patches, and... well, you get the picture. The system worked, but the guy felt that if you weren't running the latest version of everything then, somehow, it was wrong.
I worked it out and believe me all the naive stuff about "user experiences" and "support" are nonsense. If Apple was concerned to the extent people argue about either, there'd be no third party Mac developers. The iPod wouldn't be compatable with LAME or WinAmp rips. It just wouldn't work that way.
The real reason is that the iTMS exists to sell iPods. You buy an iPod, you buy large amounts of music from the iTMS, and then you want to upgrade. What do you upgrade to?
Answer: an iPod. Or you can upgrade to a player that will not play your existing music collection. And you're not going to do that.
This matters in the case of Real, because Real's native format is not a play-on-iPod only system. Real doesn't sell hardware, it has an active interest in ensuring you can play its music on as many players as possible.
Apple knows that through this strategy, they can keep a hold on iPod sales for as long as they remain profitable, and continue to price quite a bit higher than commodity levels. Sales of iPods will have nothing to do with function in the long term, they're just going to be the only machines out there that'll play what you want.
For the same reason, iPod isn't going to support WMA, regardless of how much incentive Microsoft gives them. If iPod starts to support WMA, then people will happily buy music from WMA music stores, which will release the lock. iPod will only ever support two formats:
Apple's DRM (FairPlay)
No DRM
That's it.
Personally, I think those kinds of business tactics stink to high heaven, but so be it. At least Apple has a semi-solution in that you can burn your FairPlay music to CD so you're not completely locked I guess. But I'm going to be cautious from now on.
Now hold on, because while that's an example of being closed, it's not an example in the same way as Apple's DRM is closed.
What Real said with Helix is that they'll provide binaries to link with Helix for any platform to play the missing media formats. What they'll not do is give you source code. And Real have given away the tools to create Real content for a while now.
By comparison, when Apple was asked to work with Real (in the same way as, say, if I wanted SquigglePlayer to play RealPlayer streams, Real would compile those binaries for me so such a thing is possible), Apple refused point blank.
Both are closed in some sense. However the difference is that Apple's is closed completely. Real's formats, on the other hand, are "open" as in "Open Group" rather than (unfortunately) "Open Source".
Seriously though, as long as you're still breathing I doubt it's an issue. I don't think most people would bother checking for a pulse (something that requires physical contact) if they can see you breathing.
Ummm...you don't honestly believe this do you? It is entirely Apple's business if another company tries to profit from a technology developed by Apple. If Real reverse-engineers a technology developed by Apple, for their own financial gain, Apple has every right to speak up.
I completely disagree in this context. Real is profiting by selling Apple's customers music. That's all. And that's what the iPod is supposed to do, what it was sold, to customers, to do.
If Real was producing their own iPod, and reverse engineered the technology to play Apple's DRM'd music, then that might be another story. But they're not.
Really, quite honestly, Apple should have cooperated with Real when they had the chance. They could have shaped Real's offering and made sure they retained some kind of control. Right now, if Apple went any further with its threats, if I were Real I wouldn't just continue...
...I'd publish the results of the reverse-engineering.
YOU make the choice, then YOU do the hack, mate. Don't expect someone else (REAL) to do it for you.
I'm not FORCING Real to do anything. But I can't make the choice to play Real's music without them doing this work. More to the point, if I can modify my iPod, or hack it, or anything else, then by implication I can allow others to do the same thing.
Still, it's like talking to a brick wall with some people.
Yes, it is. You appear to think that someone's property rights somehow end the moment they bring a third party into the equation.
This isn't about Real's rights, it's about my rights to do as I wish with my property. Saying "You have the right to do what you want except do this that and the other, because this that and the other requires involving someone else" is incompatable with that. It doesn't matter whether I'm playing Real's music or listening using Sony's headphones. Do you understand that? Do you believe Apple should be able to forbid me from selling my iPod too?
Did you miss the part of the story where it's clear that this isn't simply about firmware updates? No-one may be forcing me to apply Firmware Updates, but Apple is considering LEGAL challenges, and Real certainly would, if Apple chooses to go down that route, be forced to appear in court, and possibly forced to drop their system, preventing me from having that choice.
If Apple goes down this route, it is an attack on their customers, nothing less.
Apple is under absolutely no obligation to make it easy for you to do any of those things.
Nobody's arguing otherwise. When Apple refused to work with Real, I made no comment. Real doesn't have a god-given right to Apple's help.
However, as I wrote above:
if Apple takes further action against Real rather than sabre-rattling, I'll never buy another Apple product again.
In this instance, if Apple does, as threatened, as I made my comments conditional upon, take action against Real (rather than simply not cooperate), then they're going one step further than simply not making it easy. They're actively trying to prevent me from using my iPod in the way I choose.
The problem is 1) the legal precedent that could dwindle iPod sales (they do have shareholders to answer to), 2) the support nightmare Apple (NOT Real) will inherit from users who have problems uploading Real songs, especially if the reverse-engineering breaks after an update. These are reasonable concerns, I think.
1 is bogus. Adding functionality to the iPod will not cause iPod sales to dwindle, and even if it did, their obligation to shareholders is not a carte-blanche to trample over their customers.
2 is also bogus. People having problems with Real music playing on iPods will most likely call Real because they'll be using Real's solution to load music bought from Real's music store. Even if someone opts to go straight to Apple, Apple has a perfect right to direct such queries back to Real.
I don't think either are reasonable concerns.
In any case, Apple has brought these upon itself. It could have worked with Real, it chose not to. Real, quite reasonably, decided to do the work itself. Apple's updates may "break" things in future, and there may be complaints, but the only damage I can think of is to their reputation, and let's be honest, given Apple's behaviour here, they deserve any damage to their reputation that this causes
Apple's best response would be to cooperate or ignore. Suing Real is a direct attack on their customer base, and that's not acceptable.
You can do whatever you want with your iPod, it's Real that did the wrong thing here.
No mate, YOU are missing the point. Real has done nothing wrong. Real has enabled ME to make a choice. It is _I_ who ultimately am able to do something as a result of Real's actions. So Apple fucking with Real is most certainly preventing me from doing what I (potentially) want to do with my iPod.
This is ALL about what end users can do with their iPods. Does my iPod belong to me or Apple? If the answer is the former, Real certainly has my permission to develop products for my iPod, and doesn't (morally) need Apple's.
Regarding the DMCA: you can't fault Apple for using a law on the books - passed by Congress (unanimously by the Senate), and signed into law by President Clinton - to protect its own business interests.
That's right, because Lord knows, people shouldn't be responsible for their own actions. If you can't blame the government for your own lack of morals, who can you blame?
All that said, Apple is indeed licensing ; why should Apple be forced to license to entities to whom it doesn't wish?
Why should Apple have the right to dictate what people do with their iPods (which is what this amounts to) in the first place? Beyond me copying their software or logos, I don't think their are any issues they should be intefering in when it comes to my iPod. If I want to paint it green, change the battery, use my own headphones, or load music I downloaded from Real, that's up to me. I don't recall, prior to buying the iPod (let alone afterwards) ever agreeing to only buy my DRM-encumbered music from the iTunes music store.
I've been a big fan of my iPod so far, and defended them publically about the pseudo-DRM in the iTMS files, but honestly, if Apple takes further action against Real rather than sabre-rattling, I'll never buy another Apple product again. And that's not just an angry Squiggleslash speaking, that's a practical one too - I prefer open systems.
That's right. How dare Real make it possible for buyers of iPods to play music they'd otherwise be unable to play.
Erm, hold on. This makes no sense. What's your argument again? That Real is being unreasonable because Apple refused to cooperate with them, and then had the audacity to winge when Real did the work necessary to implement something by themselves?
Why the f--- is REAL in the wrong there? What next? Are you going to advocate makers of webcams, MP3 players, 802.11 adapters, et al, suing Linux programmers for ignoring their refusal to cooperate and working out how to make Linux interoperate with their hardware?
Maybe Apple should start suing its own customers too, just to keep its hand in.
I bought an iPod. At this point, Apple has no business telling me what I should do with it. Apple has no business complaining about third parties wanting to offer me things that work with that iPod. Apple should butt out and mind their own business.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, people were aware of the web in 2000 and knew it was a "big thing". However, even today I'd say the majority of the people I mix with who are not computer people have little or no understanding of the consequences of many things. The notion that a book given a "web site" name might harm that web site is not something that springs to mind. These people, remember, were publishers, not computer geeks. It's a very conservative industry at the best of times.
Secondly what you say is a "verifiable lie" has not been verified as a lie and you've misquoted her. What KT has said is that Aftab is not her lawyer. She has not denied that at some point she is or was associated with Aftab. Verifiably, the two worked together at some point on putting together websites concerning abuse, however this doesn't mean that KT's current legal representative is Aftab, it just means the two collaborated on a project.
Penguin has presumably made a mistake in 2000, that's verifiably correct, though the conspiracy stories that imply it was more than a mistake, and that Penguin was planning to hound some poor innocent out of her domain name in order to publicise a relatively minor book are simply ridiculous. It appears to me to be an obvious misjudgement with no apparent ill intent.
Penguin, according to some Slashdot posts, has renamed KT's sequel to avoid the whole ".com" thing altogether, which makes sense to me as it was a stupid name to begin with.
I might add that I'm actually fairly bothered by what's been written here on Slashdot since the story broke. We have people advocating a campaign of harassment over an issue where the other side hasn't been revealed and where the original story doesn't 100% make sense except with some extreme reading between lines. I do hope Aftab takes up Slashdot's offer to present a rebuttle, this crap needs to stop.
I don't believe that argument is as clear cut as you and other slashdotters make it.
If girl.com was a problem and katie.com wasn't, and both were resolved, then it's more likely to be what girl.com was pointing at that was the issue, not who owned what.
Indeed, if girl.com was pointing at pr0n, and Penguin's response was to change the name, not try to buy the name "girl.com", then one likely conclusion was that Penguin had no intention of setting up a website to begin with.
This would seem to me to be especially true as there's no suggestion Penguin tried to buy Katie.com before the book was published. The major "conspiracy theory" that's come up about Penguin's actions are that somehow Penguin hoped to muscle Katie J out of her domain name so they could use the name for publicity.
But at the most critical time to do so, just before the marketing campaign for the book was about to start, they didn't even try!
I have a certain amount of sympathy for Katie J, but I'll be honest and say I think there's a lot more to this story than is being presented to us. I suspect, ultimately, it's more like this:
I ask because I've written a fair few reviews (27) for Amazon so far, both positive and negative, and never had a review pulled. I think it might be that I have an annoying habit of actually writing facts relevent to the product at hand. I rarely care about the people involved except, for the occasional DVD review, to say whether or not they can act, or for a book review, whether they can write and whether they're competent in the field they're writing in.
It strikes me that making personal allegations (true, provable, proved in court, author convicted, or otherwise) doesn't actually help buyers make a decision. If this book on Java was any good, people needed to know that. If it sucked, people needed to know that. If the author's a paedophile, then the courts and a jury need to get involved, but there's nothing inherent about paedophilia, to the best of my knowledge, that affects the quality of books on Java. Or was he chosing some exceptionally dubious examples?
Just like a calculator is designed to add numbers together (and multiply them etc.) I can add them up in my head too, but nobody would reason that as such calculators aren't designed to add up (and multiply, divide, subtract, etc) numbers.
A more viable argument would be to point out that "designed to kill" is both a slight exaggeration (guns can be used to injure, though it's not guaranteed that using them this way will not eventually cause death) and by itself not as negative as it could be. Having something "designed to kill" on you may act as a deterent and prevent a death (your own) from happening. A security guard ferrying a huge amount of money is arguably safer with a gun than without one. And we perform certain types of killing every day of the week, it's only the killing of humans we have issues with. Hunters want something "designed to kill", they certainly don't want to kill people though.
But (regular) guns aren't designed to kill? Come on, that's exactly what they're designed to do.
The DMCA consists of five divisions (titles). The very first is to implement the WIPO treaties, which includes but isn't specific to the provisions on access and copy controls. It covers though the general WIPO agreements to harmonize copyright law with those treaties. To quote the summary:
It also clarifies the law on a range of issues from online broadcasting to contractual agreements between content makers and publishers particularly in the movie industry.That makes it a general copyright act in my book.
Why don't you read the whole thing here?
Generally most copyright violations these days are violations of the DMCA, simply because it's the latest attempt to define copyright.
Also, while I'm being pedantic, CSS has nothing to do with "copy protection circumvention", it's an access control not copy control. Both are (to my surprise, I knew about the access control thing and someone recently put me right about copy controls) protected by the DMCA, but the DMCA is about far more than just circumventing copy and access control mechanisms.
Ordinary, documented, operation should not turn something into a brick, no matter how cheap it is. And how is dual/backup-firmware expensive anyway? How expensive do you seriously think it is to add a ROM and a "Full reset" button in this day and age? If it adds a dollar to the price of the unit, I'd be surprised.
Apple is using FairPlay to lock people into the iPod platform. You buy a large music library for your iPod and then find, when it's time to upgrade the hardware, that the only player that exists that can play your music is an iPod. The notion Apple can continue to compete on function is a nonsense, iPods haven't really gotten significantly more functional in the last few years. In the mean time, Apple should be assuming that its rivals will catch up.
This is why Real is a threat to Apple. Real's files can be played on anything. If people buy music from Real to play on their iPods, and avoid the iTMS, they'll be able to upgrade to a different MP3 player.
I don't agree with the notion that "cheap" should mean "defective".
It's usable for just about anything except compiling code intended for other systems. I didn't really think, for some reason, about the option of compiling GCC locally (eg into our user account), I may try that and see how far we can get. That would at least also allow us to get around the Perl et al issues too.
In case anyone's interested, this is a HP-UX 11 (the machine is a 9000/800) system, and we can only use it, not administer it, and they pretty much refuse to upgrade anything other than Oracle on it, so we're still stuck with the damned compiler.
That said, there is a solution: GNU GCC comes with an ANSI to K&R tool. I've not tried it, but it's probably worth playing with. If your ANSI 89 C code can also stay compatable with the translator, then your plans for total compatability should hold up.
And, of course, some people would argue that K&R was never standard anyway. They're kind of correct, there was a general consensus to how it should work (some of which contradicted the book itself) and most of the incompatabilities were actually extensions, but there will be areas of incompatability whatever you do.
The bit I didn't understand was the comment:
Now that makes no sense, and unfortunately seems to be considered standard practice with everything by many people in the tech industry right now. If it's not running the latest version of Perl, or has a slightly out of date kernel, then some how the world is going to end.I understand keeping on top of bugs and security updates, but updating everything, all the time, when there's no good reason is just plain asking for trouble. We had an issue for a year or so when a particular computer seemed to be constantly going up and down - it turned out, we realised afterwards standing back and looking at why - the problem was we'd hired a system administrator specifically for that machine. And he'd install the latest DEC Unix patches, and things would break, and he'd install more patches, and... well, you get the picture. The system worked, but the guy felt that if you weren't running the latest version of everything then, somehow, it was wrong.
Gah.
The real reason is that the iTMS exists to sell iPods. You buy an iPod, you buy large amounts of music from the iTMS, and then you want to upgrade. What do you upgrade to?
Answer: an iPod. Or you can upgrade to a player that will not play your existing music collection. And you're not going to do that.
This matters in the case of Real, because Real's native format is not a play-on-iPod only system. Real doesn't sell hardware, it has an active interest in ensuring you can play its music on as many players as possible.
Apple knows that through this strategy, they can keep a hold on iPod sales for as long as they remain profitable, and continue to price quite a bit higher than commodity levels. Sales of iPods will have nothing to do with function in the long term, they're just going to be the only machines out there that'll play what you want.
For the same reason, iPod isn't going to support WMA, regardless of how much incentive Microsoft gives them. If iPod starts to support WMA, then people will happily buy music from WMA music stores, which will release the lock. iPod will only ever support two formats:
Apple's DRM (FairPlay)
No DRM
That's it.
Personally, I think those kinds of business tactics stink to high heaven, but so be it. At least Apple has a semi-solution in that you can burn your FairPlay music to CD so you're not completely locked I guess. But I'm going to be cautious from now on.
What Real said with Helix is that they'll provide binaries to link with Helix for any platform to play the missing media formats. What they'll not do is give you source code. And Real have given away the tools to create Real content for a while now.
By comparison, when Apple was asked to work with Real (in the same way as, say, if I wanted SquigglePlayer to play RealPlayer streams, Real would compile those binaries for me so such a thing is possible), Apple refused point blank.
Both are closed in some sense. However the difference is that Apple's is closed completely. Real's formats, on the other hand, are "open" as in "Open Group" rather than (unfortunately) "Open Source".
Seriously though, as long as you're still breathing I doubt it's an issue. I don't think most people would bother checking for a pulse (something that requires physical contact) if they can see you breathing.
If Real was producing their own iPod, and reverse engineered the technology to play Apple's DRM'd music, then that might be another story. But they're not.
Really, quite honestly, Apple should have cooperated with Real when they had the chance. They could have shaped Real's offering and made sure they retained some kind of control. Right now, if Apple went any further with its threats, if I were Real I wouldn't just continue...
This isn't about Real's rights, it's about my rights to do as I wish with my property. Saying "You have the right to do what you want except do this that and the other, because this that and the other requires involving someone else" is incompatable with that. It doesn't matter whether I'm playing Real's music or listening using Sony's headphones. Do you understand that? Do you believe Apple should be able to forbid me from selling my iPod too?
If Apple goes down this route, it is an attack on their customers, nothing less.
However, as I wrote above:
In this instance, if Apple does, as threatened, as I made my comments conditional upon, take action against Real (rather than simply not cooperate), then they're going one step further than simply not making it easy. They're actively trying to prevent me from using my iPod in the way I choose. 1 is bogus. Adding functionality to the iPod will not cause iPod sales to dwindle, and even if it did, their obligation to shareholders is not a carte-blanche to trample over their customers.2 is also bogus. People having problems with Real music playing on iPods will most likely call Real because they'll be using Real's solution to load music bought from Real's music store. Even if someone opts to go straight to Apple, Apple has a perfect right to direct such queries back to Real.
I don't think either are reasonable concerns.
In any case, Apple has brought these upon itself. It could have worked with Real, it chose not to. Real, quite reasonably, decided to do the work itself. Apple's updates may "break" things in future, and there may be complaints, but the only damage I can think of is to their reputation, and let's be honest, given Apple's behaviour here, they deserve any damage to their reputation that this causes
Apple's best response would be to cooperate or ignore. Suing Real is a direct attack on their customer base, and that's not acceptable.
This is ALL about what end users can do with their iPods. Does my iPod belong to me or Apple? If the answer is the former, Real certainly has my permission to develop products for my iPod, and doesn't (morally) need Apple's.
This isn't about what Apple or Real can do with iPods, it's what we end users can do with our own iPods. You know, the ones we bought.
I've been a big fan of my iPod so far, and defended them publically about the pseudo-DRM in the iTMS files, but honestly, if Apple takes further action against Real rather than sabre-rattling, I'll never buy another Apple product again. And that's not just an angry Squiggleslash speaking, that's a practical one too - I prefer open systems.
Erm, hold on. This makes no sense. What's your argument again? That Real is being unreasonable because Apple refused to cooperate with them, and then had the audacity to winge when Real did the work necessary to implement something by themselves?
Why the f--- is REAL in the wrong there? What next? Are you going to advocate makers of webcams, MP3 players, 802.11 adapters, et al, suing Linux programmers for ignoring their refusal to cooperate and working out how to make Linux interoperate with their hardware?
Maybe Apple should start suing its own customers too, just to keep its hand in.
I bought an iPod. At this point, Apple has no business telling me what I should do with it. Apple has no business complaining about third parties wanting to offer me things that work with that iPod. Apple should butt out and mind their own business.
I don't believe that Apple's GUI was ever contributed to the OSS community.