I'm sure the person who leaked information about Nike's 'sweatshops' broke NDA'a as well.
As I and many others have pointed out, there exist special legal protections for "whistleblowers", as opposed to people who just leak product and marketing information. Apple isn't doing anything illegal by building computers.
"OSHA also administers the whistleblowing provisions of thirteen other statutes, protecting employees who report violations of various trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, and securities laws." -- The Whistleblower Program, Office of Investigative Assistance
What if Apple 'leaks' information to the press to generate market? can they go after the press in those cases to? how would someone know?
Why on earth would any company do this? It makes absolutely no sense.
ThinkSecret signed no such NDA. They are under no obligation to protect Apple's secrets or anyone else's; neither are you, me, or CNN. The person breaching the NDA can get into hot water.
That sounds nice, but it isn't the law. The UTSPA says that if you print information that you know to be a trade secret, you are at fault. If you run around saying "I have insider information, here it is!", well, you're going to get sued.
The free press depends on information provided by whistleblowers, leakers, criminals, and insiders of all types. If journalists are forced to reveal sources - especially in a civil matter - this will hamstring the free press. Nobody will talk to them.
As I and many others have been repeatedly pointing out, there are special legal protections and exceptions for "whistleblowers". If you had inside information that Apple was using baby seals in the manufacturing process for iPods, or dumping toxic waste, or something, you would be protected. (Google for "whistleblower protection", etc) If you're passing future product specifications to some website, you're not really going anything for the public good -- you would not be protected.
Apple is responsible for policing its own policies; ThinkSecret is not and neither are the courts.
The courts *are* responsible for enforcing legally binding contracts like NDAs and employment contracts.
They're GENERALIZATIONS becuase they are GENERALLY true.
The article refers to the concerns of 14 year-old girls, which can't reasonably be expected to reflect those of "women in the US and Canada" in general.
If any generalization could be drawn, it would be that 14 year-olds are highly concerned with what their peers think of them. This is not a new idea.
You stupid fucking asshat. Try crunching some numbers and reading a few books of your own before falling to your knees begging for the forgiveness of women who are "so unfairly wronged by the male dominated work place".
I find it odd that you would quote something that I didn't write and don't believe. I also don't see what "crunching some numbers" (what numbers?) and "reading a few books" (what books?) have to do with anything I said.
I was only pointing out that an environment where saying "women aren't free thinkers" is considered "Insightful" isn't going to be an attractive or pleasant one to work in, and that I, personally, don't blame any for not wanting to work in it.
I would likewise say that environments where statements like "Jews are greedy", "Christians are stupid", "Hispanics are lazy", "Blacks are violent", "Asians are dirty", "Whites are oppressive", "Blue-eyed people are inferior", and so on are considered interesting and insightful would be unpleasant for Jews, Christians, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Whites, and blue-eyed people, respectively. And I wouldn't blame anybody for not wanting to work a field where they are thusly discriminated against.
I don't think there is anything wrong with women that are repulsed by a field where comments that make sweeping generalizations about them are modded up as Insightful and Interesting.
I will happily PayPal $1 per episode to download HDTV LOL XVID of Battlestar, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis.
The going rate for a five-minute downloadable 128kbps song is $1. Whether you agree with that pricing or not, you're asking for 45 minutes of several-megabit video for the same price. That same video which costs much more to produce and distribute.
In other words, you're asking for something like 100 times the content (in bits), for the same price. I think that counts as an example of not getting it.
Well yeah... blogs are for people to express themselves, not a place for them to write great literary works.
Fortunately, some people express themseles in great literary works. Paul Ford has written some incredibly great stuff, and on a technically interesting platform that he created. And even he's got a story about his cat on the front page right now.
We're at the point now where there is enough variety in "continually updated personal websites" that they can abe considered a format.
The trouble is that the most popular blogs are the blogs about blogs and blogging. This is a genre.
Confusion results when people can't distinguish between the genre, the format, and the medium. People who think blogs are revolutionary and like to talk about it a lot tend to be ascribing the accumulated power of communications technology to the very specific and ephemeral idea-of-the-minute.
Blogs aren't revolutionizing the world, they're just becoming more mainstream.
(The medium being the web, the internet in general, or even the writen word in general, depending on how you want to look at it. The point is that each builds upon the former in evolutionary, not revolutionary, fashion.)
I did say that it was a long while ago when I had seen it, and the site was Slashdotted (or maybe just broken) when I posted the comment.
But now it works, and I find that they still have the album, but have strangely enough labled it as "Also known as Portishead's Pearl". This seems like an odd kind of compromise.
The point of mentioning it was that it suggests that AllOfMP3 gets at least some of it's selection off of P2P networks, which is damned shady and probably not so good for the consumer. Again, I can't prove it, and there are probably a dozen other possible explainations, but I personally was put off of the site because of that.
Additionally, the Hot Snakes are fucking terrible.
You're probably right. The guy that recommended them to me (just a few days ago) is dating a chick with a Blink 182 tatoo. I probably shouldn't trust his taste anymore.
Their catalogue covers stuff that is not found in iTunes or other US-based media industry's services.
That may be true, but it's at the cost of not having a single goddamn thing I want.
From my "buyme" list: Atmosphere, RJD2, Sage Francis, Kid Koala, Kid606, Dwayne Sodahberk, The Decemberists, Hot Snakes, Arcade Fire -- AllOfMP3 had none of these. iTunes had all of them. And that's not even the obscure stuff.
[I would have tried more, but AllofMP3 seems to be Slashdotted now.]
They have even rare stuff that is not on P2P services!
Some of that "rare" stuff happens to be the same mislabeled crap that's on P2P services. The example I'm most familiar with is an album called "Pearl" supposedly by Portishead. Almost any P2P network will have a bajillion copies of it labeled that way, when in fact the album isn't by Portishead. Hell, the title isn't even "Pearl". It's by some European band trying very hard and failing even harder to sound like Portishead.
The last time I checked (admittedly this was long ago), AllOfMP3 still carried "Portishead - Pearl". I thought it was pretty clear then that they're getting at least some of those supposedly lossless tracks off of P2P networks. To put it another way: Some of those lossless FLACs you bought may well have originated as MP3s off of KaZaA. I don't have proof of this, but it's fishy enough that I don't trust AllOfMP3 enough to buy anything from them.
At several times the size of a Mac Mini, the SN25P is an entirely different breed of small form factor system;
If it's entirely different, then why even mention the Mac Mini? They don't compare on size, market, utility, platform, expandability, speed, heat, appearance, and certainly not on price.
Interestingly, the summary neglected to mention Beagle, the one Mono application I actually plan on using and that has created some momentum for getting the Mono into various distros.
The reason it wasn't mentioned is illustrated by what most of the comments in this thread are about: "Java Sucks vs. Mono Sucks".
People just seem more interested in the languages than in the applications that can be written in them.
This is understandable, I suppose, given the mostly-programmer audience that Slashdot (and open source in general) have, but tragic when it means that projects like Beagle get ignored.
The point of the OSNews thing was to show that there's a huge amount of new and interesting work being done with Mono, flaws or no, and I think it's rather silly for so many to ignore it because of their gripes about the language itself.
IMHO, Beagle is one of the most important projects in open source today, and yet it's argued-down because of the language it's written in.
Quote the admin: "I have never seen the tracker without a significant amount of files which aren't pirated."
I think he's being mighty selective in his measurements. I think a more appropriate measure of what the tracker is built on can be found in the number of seeders and leechers for each file.
Sure, there may be dozens of abandonware titles and service manuals available with one or two seeds, but if the majority of users are downloading "Pirated_OS_10.4", then the variety of files doesn't mean much. Any BitTorrent tracker's success is a function of the number of users, not the number of different files.
There may be a significant number of files that aren't pirated in the usual sense, but there's also a significant number of users that are committing piracy.
Comparing Apple rumors to cancer, tsunamis, famines, and war... you certainly are one of the crazier Apple fanboys out there, aren't you?
What the fuck are you talking about? I was making fun of the OP's ridiculous claim that leaked trade secrets are somehow a good thing for a company. Learn to read.
I'll touch on his web sites claim, as well. Just because he claims to have reliable sources doesn't mean he actually does.
If his source is an insider, and he believes [even without absolute proof] that they are, and he still prints the information, then he is in voilation.
The only part of that that is in question is whether the source was an insider, and even this seems highly probable.
it could be that some secretary who's not under an NDA heard it at the office water cooler.
I seriously doubt that anyone working for Apple is not under a kind of NDA as part of the terms of their employment.
Either way, there's really no way to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did receive the info from someone actually under NDA.
That's why the courts only require one to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
the newsblob here seems to indicate that EFF is getting involved on behalf of ThinkSecret.com; not someone's ISP. I'm sure you can recognize and accept that, correct?
What I'm saying is that the newsblob is wrong, and that some of your conclusions are based on that information. To be even more specific, the suit that the EFF is getting involved in isn't even the one against ThinkSecret.
It's positively absurd for someone running a rumor site, asking for insider info, at the age of 12 or 13, when this kid opened ThinkSecret.com, to really take anything he gets with more than a grain of salt.
When he started the site is completely irrelevant. Nobody is saying he had insider information when he started the site. The accusation is that he knowingly accepted and reproduced trade secrets within the last year or so. The "innocent kid" thing doesn't fly when the person in question is an adult.
Also, that same adult has claimed on his site to have "very reliable sources" from both "inside and out" of Apple. His site was one most popular Mac rumor sites out there, largely because it's believed to have the most accurate information. I find it hard to believe that none of his anonymous sources ever claimed to be an insider, especially when (as you pointed out), he was soliciting insider information. And I find it hard to believe that he didn't believe that any of his sources were insiders, when he claimed as much on the site.
However, I've had a lot of the same thoughts, and usually right about the time that MacWorld rolls around, and usually, on the stuff that really makes sense, Apple reveals a product along those lines.
That's because Apple knows there is demand for those products. (If they released a product that was completely unexpected and without prescident, it would probably be because nobody wanted it.)
The thing that seems to have sparked this batch of lawsuits is the leaking of the internal product codename "Asteroid", which (if really an internal codname) is pretty damning evidence -- certainly not something that just anyone could have come up with.
While the information in question was classified as a trade secret, without him knowing that it was coming from someone under NDA he's not in violation of the UTSA, which is what he's being sued under.
It hasn't been shown that the site operators in question didn't know where the information came from. It's easy to say that they didn't, but it isn't necessarily true.
Bottom line, Apple is bringing it's weight to bear on someone in order to coerce the names of his sources, and those are protected by 1st amendment rights.
If the site operators did know, then those sources are not protected. Apple isn't trying to coerce anything that they wouldn't have the right to. It's up to one side or the other to prove that they did or didn't know where the information came from.
I say good on the EFF for stepping up on this one.
The EFF's website indicates that they are getting involved because Apple was suing the ISP of one of the sites in question for access to the site's email. This is a very specific reason that has little to do with most of what's being discussed here.
"Sites like [ThinkSecret.com] are beneficial because they inspire interest in the products." It's free f'king advertising!
Diseases like cancer are good because they inspire interest in medicine! Disasters like tsunamis are good because they inspire interest in construction! Famines are good because they inspire interest in food! Wars are good because they inspire interest in guns!
Unless it's got some literal "Trade Secret" such as "this is how we made the processors 20% faster", it's not a trade secret, it's just information that they didn't want us to have at this present time.
You have no idea what a trade secret is, do you? You're implying that there is some difference, but you're just conveniently making it up.
I frankly just don't care whether or not their precious product release information was released early or not.
Maybe you don't, but their competitors do, and they do.
Neither the BBC piece nor any of the comments I've seen indicate why the EFF is getting involved in what seems like a pretty simple trade secret case. So I went to the EFF and found out the real reason:
After initially threatening to subpoena reporters directly, Apple sent subpoenas to Nfox.com, the email provider for PowerPage publisher Jason O'Grady. By forcing Nfox to hand over O'Grady's email, Apple hopes to find out who told the journalist about an upcoming product code-named "Asteroid."
"Rather than confronting the issue of reporter's privilege head-on, Apple is going to this journalist's ISP for his emails," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.
In its request for the protective order, EFF points out that reporter's privileges protect the anonymity of sources regardless of whether third parties hold a journalist's records.
Aha! Now that is something a bit different, and I'm glad the EFF isn't (as the story comment implies) saying that trade secrets shouldn't be protected, because that would stupid. Apple isn't wrong for protecting it's trade secrets, but I would agree that this "innovative" approach isn't fair.
Whole classes of corporate abuses against the general public would be subject to an NDA gag rule.
Which is why there exist many legal protections and exceptions for those that come forward with information that concerns the public interest.
"To help ensure that employees are, in fact, free to participation in safety and health activities, Section 11(c) of the Act prohibits any person from discharging or in any manner discriminating against any employee because the employee has exercised rights under the Act."
"OSHA also administers the whistleblowing provisions of thirteen other statutes, protecting employees who report violations of various trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, and securities laws." -- OSHA Whistleblower Program
If I am running an offshore oil company, and the way I keep my prices so low is that I maintain totally inadequate saftey percautions for my ocean liners, isn't that a trade secret? So, the media should not be allowed to report that?
You're confusing a layperson's definition with a legal definition.
And also ignoring the existing legal protections for "Whistleblowers".
Yeah we all know microsoft spends absolutely no research dollars on UI and design..
Throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it any more than not having any money makes problems impossible to solve. Least of all design problems. Design and research are two very different things -- Paul Graham does a better job of pointing out the difference than I can in this space (especially when I'm responding to an AC.)
Of course every developer out there thinks they always know the best UI
You're right about this. However, I am not a developer with ideas about design. I'm a designer with ideas about design.
(when frankly they are so far out of touch with what is good for the common nontechnical joe it isn't even funny)
You, too, Mr. AC, are out of touch, as you're invoking the myth of the the "common nontechnical joe", as if his needs are vastly different [in design terms] as your own. If you design applications strictly for novices, then not only will it be useless to non-novices, but those novices will stay novices.
When designing interfaces for general use (like a desktop environment), it's a mistake to assume that you have to make things "idiot proof" or "friendly", for some foreign breed of person that is incapable of learning anything and has no desire to do anything with his computer than "browse the web and check email", unless you yourself are like that.
Microsoft probably doesn't have everything perfect when it comes to UI design, but it certainly doesn't "suck" either..
My problem is less with Microsoft's interfaces and more with the blind copying that goes on in OSS. If you copy something without understanding it first, it's probable that you will copy it's mistakes as well. My main point is that copying Windows has a high probability of producing an interface that sucks.
Windows is not better because it works better...It's that it's easy to use.
My point (and I know it wasn't clear), was the Windows is *not* easy to use. Or, more accurately ("ease of use" is an ill-defined measure of UI quality) , I was saying that the Windows UI sucks, and should not be imitated. The *only* real strength of the Windows UI is that familiarity with it is common.
I think that it would be (and is presently) a disasterous mistake for open source GUI projects to consciously aim to emulate Windows. It's a naive approach to interface design, and frankly, pretty boring. For all the talk about freedom and innovation and choice, open source developers tend to have pretty dull and conventional ideas about GUIs.
I have a lot of thoughts on the subject (I'm writing a pretty lengthy essay on the subject elsewhere), but one stands out in this case: I think OSS GUI designers should examine the Mac OS GUI, past and present.
For all of the small mistakes and commonly hated aspects, the Mac GUI has been consistently well-regarded for more than twenty years. And yet I've yet to see a single OSS GUI project that resembles it in any but the most superficial ways. There's something about that that doesn't seem right.
As for the rest of what you mentioned, I basically agree that it's all good stuff -- but I think the technical aspects are much *less* important than the interface and user experience in regards to actual adoption by users.
Most linux distributions come with at least three database servers, five email servers and a thousand other programs you can install from the disk.
The discussion is about Linux on the desktop. (How did you miss that?) And on the desktop, Linux has very little to offer. My point was that this is because the projects are focused on creating something only marginally better than Windows, rather than something really and truly great in it's own right.
Also, projects like Fink for Mac OS X and Cygwin for Windows make adding those "thousands of other programs" trivial. Unfortunately there's no such trivial way to make Linux GUIs not suck.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure the person who leaked information about Nike's 'sweatshops' broke NDA'a as well.
As I and many others have pointed out, there exist special legal protections for "whistleblowers", as opposed to people who just leak product and marketing information. Apple isn't doing anything illegal by building computers.
"OSHA also administers the whistleblowing provisions of thirteen other statutes, protecting employees who report violations of various trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, and securities laws." -- The Whistleblower Program, Office of Investigative Assistance
What if Apple 'leaks' information to the press to generate market? can they go after the press in those cases to? how would someone know?
Why on earth would any company do this? It makes absolutely no sense.
ThinkSecret signed no such NDA. They are under no obligation to protect Apple's secrets or anyone else's; neither are you, me, or CNN. The person breaching the NDA can get into hot water.
That sounds nice, but it isn't the law. The UTSPA says that if you print information that you know to be a trade secret, you are at fault. If you run around saying "I have insider information, here it is!", well, you're going to get sued.
The free press depends on information provided by whistleblowers, leakers, criminals, and insiders of all types. If journalists are forced to reveal sources - especially in a civil matter - this will hamstring the free press. Nobody will talk to them.
As I and many others have been repeatedly pointing out, there are special legal protections and exceptions for "whistleblowers". If you had inside information that Apple was using baby seals in the manufacturing process for iPods, or dumping toxic waste, or something, you would be protected. (Google for "whistleblower protection", etc) If you're passing future product specifications to some website, you're not really going anything for the public good -- you would not be protected.
Apple is responsible for policing its own policies; ThinkSecret is not and neither are the courts.
The courts *are* responsible for enforcing legally binding contracts like NDAs and employment contracts.
You're a politically correct pussy.
You're an Anonymous Coward.
They're GENERALIZATIONS becuase they are GENERALLY true.
The article refers to the concerns of 14 year-old girls, which can't reasonably be expected to reflect those of "women in the US and Canada" in general.
If any generalization could be drawn, it would be that 14 year-olds are highly concerned with what their peers think of them. This is not a new idea.
You stupid fucking asshat. Try crunching some numbers and reading a few books of your own before falling to your knees begging for the forgiveness of women who are "so unfairly wronged by the male dominated work place".
I find it odd that you would quote something that I didn't write and don't believe. I also don't see what "crunching some numbers" (what numbers?) and "reading a few books" (what books?) have to do with anything I said.
I was only pointing out that an environment where saying "women aren't free thinkers" is considered "Insightful" isn't going to be an attractive or pleasant one to work in, and that I, personally, don't blame any for not wanting to work in it.
I would likewise say that environments where statements like "Jews are greedy", "Christians are stupid", "Hispanics are lazy", "Blacks are violent", "Asians are dirty", "Whites are oppressive", "Blue-eyed people are inferior", and so on are considered interesting and insightful would be unpleasant for Jews, Christians, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Whites, and blue-eyed people, respectively. And I wouldn't blame anybody for not wanting to work a field where they are thusly discriminated against.
I have no idea. Why is this relevant? You were comparing 1$ song downloads with the pricing of DVDs, not 1$ CD downloads.
:
No, no I wasn't. I was comparing $1 song downloads to (hypothetical) $1 TV episode downloads. Yours was the first mention of DVDs.
The parent said
I will happily PayPal $1 per episode to download HDTV LOL XVID of Battlestar, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis.
While you can store hours of multi-megabit video on a DVD, they aren't downloadable and they don't cost $1, so I don't see how they apply.
Read before posting.
I don't think there is anything wrong with women that are repulsed by a field where comments that make sweeping generalizations about them are modded up as Insightful and Interesting.
Then again, DVDs cost almost the same as CDs, so 1$ sounds about right :-)
Where can you download DVDs for $1?
Somebody forgot to notify the producers of DVDs.
Where can you download DVDs for $1?
I will happily PayPal $1 per episode to download HDTV LOL XVID of Battlestar, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis.
The going rate for a five-minute downloadable 128kbps song is $1. Whether you agree with that pricing or not, you're asking for 45 minutes of several-megabit video for the same price. That same video which costs much more to produce and distribute.
In other words, you're asking for something like 100 times the content (in bits), for the same price. I think that counts as an example of not getting it.
Well yeah... blogs are for people to express themselves, not a place for them to write great literary works.
Fortunately, some people express themseles in great literary works. Paul Ford has written some incredibly great stuff, and on a technically interesting platform that he created. And even he's got a story about his cat on the front page right now.
We're at the point now where there is enough variety in "continually updated personal websites" that they can abe considered a format.
The trouble is that the most popular blogs are the blogs about blogs and blogging. This is a genre.
Confusion results when people can't distinguish between the genre, the format, and the medium. People who think blogs are revolutionary and like to talk about it a lot tend to be ascribing the accumulated power of communications technology to the very specific and ephemeral idea-of-the-minute.
Blogs aren't revolutionizing the world, they're just becoming more mainstream.
(The medium being the web, the internet in general, or even the writen word in general, depending on how you want to look at it. The point is that each builds upon the former in evolutionary, not revolutionary, fashion.)
I did say that it was a long while ago when I had seen it, and the site was Slashdotted (or maybe just broken) when I posted the comment.
But now it works, and I find that they still have the album, but have strangely enough labled it as "Also known as Portishead's Pearl". This seems like an odd kind of compromise.
The point of mentioning it was that it suggests that AllOfMP3 gets at least some of it's selection off of P2P networks, which is damned shady and probably not so good for the consumer. Again, I can't prove it, and there are probably a dozen other possible explainations, but I personally was put off of the site because of that.
Additionally, the Hot Snakes are fucking terrible.
You're probably right. The guy that recommended them to me (just a few days ago) is dating a chick with a Blink 182 tatoo. I probably shouldn't trust his taste anymore.
Their catalogue covers stuff that is not found in iTunes or other US-based media industry's services.
That may be true, but it's at the cost of not having a single goddamn thing I want.
From my "buyme" list: Atmosphere, RJD2, Sage Francis, Kid Koala, Kid606, Dwayne Sodahberk, The Decemberists, Hot Snakes, Arcade Fire -- AllOfMP3 had none of these. iTunes had all of them. And that's not even the obscure stuff.
[I would have tried more, but AllofMP3 seems to be Slashdotted now.]
They have even rare stuff that is not on P2P services!
Some of that "rare" stuff happens to be the same mislabeled crap that's on P2P services. The example I'm most familiar with is an album called "Pearl" supposedly by Portishead. Almost any P2P network will have a bajillion copies of it labeled that way, when in fact the album isn't by Portishead. Hell, the title isn't even "Pearl". It's by some European band trying very hard and failing even harder to sound like Portishead.
The last time I checked (admittedly this was long ago), AllOfMP3 still carried "Portishead - Pearl". I thought it was pretty clear then that they're getting at least some of those supposedly lossless tracks off of P2P networks. To put it another way: Some of those lossless FLACs you bought may well have originated as MP3s off of KaZaA. I don't have proof of this, but it's fishy enough that I don't trust AllOfMP3 enough to buy anything from them.
This little russian shop enriches culture.
You're an idiot.
At several times the size of a Mac Mini, the SN25P is an entirely different breed of small form factor system;
If it's entirely different, then why even mention the Mac Mini? They don't compare on size, market, utility, platform, expandability, speed, heat, appearance, and certainly not on price.
Interestingly, the summary neglected to mention Beagle, the one Mono application I actually plan on using and that has created some momentum for getting the Mono into various distros.
The reason it wasn't mentioned is illustrated by what most of the comments in this thread are about: "Java Sucks vs. Mono Sucks".
People just seem more interested in the languages than in the applications that can be written in them.
This is understandable, I suppose, given the mostly-programmer audience that Slashdot (and open source in general) have, but tragic when it means that projects like Beagle get ignored.
The point of the OSNews thing was to show that there's a huge amount of new and interesting work being done with Mono, flaws or no, and I think it's rather silly for so many to ignore it because of their gripes about the language itself.
IMHO, Beagle is one of the most important projects in open source today, and yet it's argued-down because of the language it's written in.
Quote the admin: "I have never seen the tracker without a significant amount of files which aren't pirated."
I think he's being mighty selective in his measurements. I think a more appropriate measure of what the tracker is built on can be found in the number of seeders and leechers for each file.
Sure, there may be dozens of abandonware titles and service manuals available with one or two seeds, but if the majority of users are downloading "Pirated_OS_10.4", then the variety of files doesn't mean much. Any BitTorrent tracker's success is a function of the number of users, not the number of different files.
There may be a significant number of files that aren't pirated in the usual sense, but there's also a significant number of users that are committing piracy.
Comparing Apple rumors to cancer, tsunamis, famines, and war... you certainly are one of the crazier Apple fanboys out there, aren't you?
What the fuck are you talking about? I was making fun of the OP's ridiculous claim that leaked trade secrets are somehow a good thing for a company. Learn to read.
I'll touch on his web sites claim, as well. Just because he claims to have reliable sources doesn't mean he actually does.
If his source is an insider, and he believes [even without absolute proof] that they are, and he still prints the information, then he is in voilation.
The only part of that that is in question is whether the source was an insider, and even this seems highly probable.
it could be that some secretary who's not under an NDA heard it at the office water cooler.
I seriously doubt that anyone working for Apple is not under a kind of NDA as part of the terms of their employment.
Either way, there's really no way to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did receive the info from someone actually under NDA.
That's why the courts only require one to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
the newsblob here seems to indicate that EFF is getting involved on behalf of ThinkSecret.com; not someone's ISP. I'm sure you can recognize and accept that, correct?
What I'm saying is that the newsblob is wrong, and that some of your conclusions are based on that information. To be even more specific, the suit that the EFF is getting involved in isn't even the one against ThinkSecret.
It's positively absurd for someone running a rumor site, asking for insider info, at the age of 12 or 13, when this kid opened ThinkSecret.com, to really take anything he gets with more than a grain of salt.
When he started the site is completely irrelevant. Nobody is saying he had insider information when he started the site. The accusation is that he knowingly accepted and reproduced trade secrets within the last year or so. The "innocent kid" thing doesn't fly when the person in question is an adult.
Also, that same adult has claimed on his site to have "very reliable sources" from both "inside and out" of Apple. His site was one most popular Mac rumor sites out there, largely because it's believed to have the most accurate information. I find it hard to believe that none of his anonymous sources ever claimed to be an insider, especially when (as you pointed out), he was soliciting insider information. And I find it hard to believe that he didn't believe that any of his sources were insiders, when he claimed as much on the site.
However, I've had a lot of the same thoughts, and usually right about the time that MacWorld rolls around, and usually, on the stuff that really makes sense, Apple reveals a product along those lines.
That's because Apple knows there is demand for those products. (If they released a product that was completely unexpected and without prescident, it would probably be because nobody wanted it.)
The thing that seems to have sparked this batch of lawsuits is the leaking of the internal product codename "Asteroid", which (if really an internal codname) is pretty damning evidence -- certainly not something that just anyone could have come up with.
While the information in question was classified as a trade secret, without him knowing that it was coming from someone under NDA he's not in violation of the UTSA, which is what he's being sued under.
It hasn't been shown that the site operators in question didn't know where the information came from. It's easy to say that they didn't, but it isn't necessarily true.
Bottom line, Apple is bringing it's weight to bear on someone in order to coerce the names of his sources, and those are protected by 1st amendment rights.
If the site operators did know, then those sources are not protected. Apple isn't trying to coerce anything that they wouldn't have the right to. It's up to one side or the other to prove that they did or didn't know where the information came from.
I say good on the EFF for stepping up on this one.
The EFF's website indicates that they are getting involved because Apple was suing the ISP of one of the sites in question for access to the site's email. This is a very specific reason that has little to do with most of what's being discussed here.
"Sites like [ThinkSecret.com] are beneficial because they inspire interest in the products." It's free f'king advertising!
Diseases like cancer are good because they inspire interest in medicine! Disasters like tsunamis are good because they inspire interest in construction! Famines are good because they inspire interest in food! Wars are good because they inspire interest in guns!
Unless it's got some literal "Trade Secret" such as "this is how we made the processors 20% faster", it's not a trade secret, it's just information that they didn't want us to have at this present time.
You have no idea what a trade secret is, do you? You're implying that there is some difference, but you're just conveniently making it up.
I frankly just don't care whether or not their precious product release information was released early or not.
Maybe you don't, but their competitors do, and they do.
Neither the BBC piece nor any of the comments I've seen indicate why the EFF is getting involved in what seems like a pretty simple trade secret case. So I went to the EFF and found out the real reason:
After initially threatening to subpoena reporters directly, Apple sent subpoenas to Nfox.com, the email provider for PowerPage publisher Jason O'Grady. By forcing Nfox to hand over O'Grady's email, Apple hopes to find out who told the journalist about an upcoming product code-named "Asteroid."
"Rather than confronting the issue of reporter's privilege head-on, Apple is going to this journalist's ISP for his emails," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.
In its request for the protective order, EFF points out that reporter's privileges protect the anonymity of sources regardless of whether third parties hold a journalist's records.
Aha! Now that is something a bit different, and I'm glad the EFF isn't (as the story comment implies) saying that trade secrets shouldn't be protected, because that would stupid. Apple isn't wrong for protecting it's trade secrets, but I would agree that this "innovative" approach isn't fair.
Whole classes of corporate abuses against the general public would be subject to an NDA gag rule.
Which is why there exist many legal protections and exceptions for those that come forward with information that concerns the public interest.
"To help ensure that employees are, in fact, free to participation in safety and health activities, Section 11(c) of the Act prohibits any person from discharging or in any manner discriminating against any employee because the employee has exercised rights under the Act."
"OSHA also administers the whistleblowing provisions of thirteen other statutes, protecting employees who report violations of various trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, and securities laws." -- OSHA Whistleblower Program
If I am running an offshore oil company, and the way I keep my prices so low is that I maintain totally inadequate saftey percautions for my ocean liners, isn't that a trade secret? So, the media should not be allowed to report that?
You're confusing a layperson's definition with a legal definition.
And also ignoring the existing legal protections for "Whistleblowers".
Yeah we all know microsoft spends absolutely no research dollars on UI and design..
Throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it any more than not having any money makes problems impossible to solve. Least of all design problems. Design and research are two very different things -- Paul Graham does a better job of pointing out the difference than I can in this space (especially when I'm responding to an AC.)
Of course every developer out there thinks they always know the best UI
You're right about this. However, I am not a developer with ideas about design. I'm a designer with ideas about design.
(when frankly they are so far out of touch with what is good for the common nontechnical joe it isn't even funny)
You, too, Mr. AC, are out of touch, as you're invoking the myth of the the "common nontechnical joe", as if his needs are vastly different [in design terms] as your own. If you design applications strictly for novices, then not only will it be useless to non-novices, but those novices will stay novices.
When designing interfaces for general use (like a desktop environment), it's a mistake to assume that you have to make things "idiot proof" or "friendly", for some foreign breed of person that is incapable of learning anything and has no desire to do anything with his computer than "browse the web and check email", unless you yourself are like that.
Microsoft probably doesn't have everything perfect when it comes to UI design, but it certainly doesn't "suck" either..
My problem is less with Microsoft's interfaces and more with the blind copying that goes on in OSS. If you copy something without understanding it first, it's probable that you will copy it's mistakes as well. My main point is that copying Windows has a high probability of producing an interface that sucks.
Windows is not better because it works better...It's that it's easy to use.
My point (and I know it wasn't clear), was the Windows is *not* easy to use. Or, more accurately ("ease of use" is an ill-defined measure of UI quality) , I was saying that the Windows UI sucks, and should not be imitated. The *only* real strength of the Windows UI is that familiarity with it is common.
I think that it would be (and is presently) a disasterous mistake for open source GUI projects to consciously aim to emulate Windows. It's a naive approach to interface design, and frankly, pretty boring. For all the talk about freedom and innovation and choice, open source developers tend to have pretty dull and conventional ideas about GUIs.
I have a lot of thoughts on the subject (I'm writing a pretty lengthy essay on the subject elsewhere), but one stands out in this case: I think OSS GUI designers should examine the Mac OS GUI, past and present.
For all of the small mistakes and commonly hated aspects, the Mac GUI has been consistently well-regarded for more than twenty years. And yet I've yet to see a single OSS GUI project that resembles it in any but the most superficial ways. There's something about that that doesn't seem right.
As for the rest of what you mentioned, I basically agree that it's all good stuff -- but I think the technical aspects are much *less* important than the interface and user experience in regards to actual adoption by users.
Most linux distributions come with at least three database servers, five email servers and a thousand other programs you can install from the disk.
The discussion is about Linux on the desktop. (How did you miss that?) And on the desktop, Linux has very little to offer. My point was that this is because the projects are focused on creating something only marginally better than Windows, rather than something really and truly great in it's own right.
Also, projects like Fink for Mac OS X and Cygwin for Windows make adding those "thousands of other programs" trivial. Unfortunately there's no such trivial way to make Linux GUIs not suck.