"CONVICTED MONOPOLIST" doesn't mean anything as it's not illegal to have a monopoly.
Either way, you still don't present an argument that explains why Microsoft doesn't have the right to do this. You seriously believe they have no right to restrict their own downloads to their own products?
So, does this justify pirating music? That depends... Do you believe you have the right to access your own culture; or, do you believe that others have the right to lock your own culture away from you and make you pay to experience it?
Are GPL programs part of the "culture," thereby meaning anybody can break the GPL and do whatever they want with the code? After all, we're just accessing our culture.
Can I download Doom 3 without paying John Carmack for his years of work? I'm just accessing our computing culture.
It's a bogus argument. When someone makes media content, it doesn't magically travel up into the clouds and become part of some global collective accessible to everyone. The person who made the media content owns the content and can do what they want with it. If they decide to sell it, have at it. If other people don't want it or think it's being sold at an unreasonable price, the artist loses and nobody buys the content.
The only reason other people are arguing they have the right to said content is they are freeloaders who don't want to pay money. Honestly, that's the only reason, and people have grafted entire justifications onto this one seed of truth. Some of those are:
1.) Even though artists are willingly signing their contracts, the music industry is the bad guy and I'm just sticking it to them.
2.) The RIAA is evil. I hate them even more because they are suing individual downloaders, even though it's what Slashdot was suggesting they do during the Napster lawsuit.
3.) Information/culture/whatever wants to be free (the basic argument you're putting forward). Nobody should pay for anything, thereby removing the incentive for anyone to start a career making content. We'll all just go back to working industrial jobs in factories and other industries that wouldn't be affected by digital copying, because it would be the only place to make a living to feed families.
4.) The music industry is using an "obsolete business model," even though I won't actually offer any alternative business models, CD sales go up every year, and services like iTunes are already offering digital downloads thereby negating my argument.
5.) It's "free advertising." Somehow, giving something away to people is advertising to buy it even though they already received it for free. Expect everyone to trust everyone else with a wink and a nudge.
People just want something for free when they learn they don't have to pay for it. It really does come down to such basic human nature--greed.
A lot of people kill other people. A lot of people drink while driving. A lot of people drive twenty miles over the speed limit. A lot of people rape other people. A lot of people shoplift batteries. Should we ignore the laws because a lot of other people do?
The law is not there to uphold the beliefs of society. It is there to maintain order.
As for my own opinion, I don't see what's "unjust" about copyright law. If anything, it's the artists who have the right to be complaining since so many people not only take the music they put out for sale without compensating them for it, those people have justified it as a crusade against tyranny in the music industry. The artist just seems to disappear from their mindset as they paint someone else as the bad guy so that they don't feel guilty about their behavior. And honestly, with things like iTunes selling songs at $0.99 a pop (and giving away free tunes every week on the store front page), it's hard to justify music piracy anymore.
The post you were repying to wasn't talking about rerouting data you own. It was talking about not breaking the law because it is wrong, and how moral relativism has seeped its way into the collective around here.
Now if you're refusing to pay for a legitimate copy of a commercial work, that's one thing.
That's what the topic was. Not redirecting output streams.
And at what point did I say anything to the contrary? You're arguing my own point. Quartz uses the PDF imaging model. The internal representations of the data are not "completely different;" they are very similar and use that Adobe imaging model.
I don't know why some people are trying so hard to convince everyone Quartz isn't using PDF imaging. It is. And by your own words, it is. Quartz uses the PDF document model; it's specifically based on it. In fact, Apple would have used Display Postscript but didn't like Adobe's licensing fees, so they implemented their own license-free PDF 1.4 based technology instead.
Read Apple's own developer documentation for those APIs. Look at the history of the display model technologies (hint: it's an evolution of NeXT's PostScript model).
People are arguing with me by restating my own point. Quartz uses the PDF imaging model. It is based on PDF. End of story. If the object graph of Quartz corresponds so closely to PDF that it translates directly, isn't that just another way of saying it is PDF-based? What's the difference?
I'm not sure I understand the basis for the arguments here. But oh, well.
My comment is not a troll. I was just pointing out how silly it is that something that is supposed to be so "free"--OSS--has a smorgasbord of various licenses attached to it.
I think it's hard to dispute that something is more free if there are no limitations, and the GPL does impose limitations, which makes it not totally free. I didn't say any license is better than the other; I just mentioned that BSD is the most truly "free" of all of them.
Though I understand the ideas behind all these licenses, it occurs to me how amusing it is that if something was truly 100% free, it wouldn't have or need a license at all. BSD comes closest to that.
I acknowledge your inability to refute those links. I've offered developer documentation from Apple. What do you have to offer other than your word?
Basically, you're going around claiming Quartz doesn't use PDF for imaging, when every developer documentation from Apple directly states that Quartz uses the PDF imaging model (its "digital paper").
I don't know what else to say except that I'll take developer.apple.com's word for it.
"Based on version 1.4 of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specification the same standard that drives the professional publishing industry Quartz is the name for Panthers revolutionary composited windowing system. Take one glance at the Panther screen and youll see crisp graphics, anti-aliased text, liquid transparency, and photo-realistic drop shadows. The technology behind this unparalleled graphic rendering quality is Quartz."
But perhaps the best source would be Apple itself: "Based on version 1.4 of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specification the same standard that drives the professional publishing industry Quartz is the name for Panthers revolutionary composited windowing system. Take one glance at the Panther screen and youll see crisp graphics, anti-aliased text, liquid transparency, and photo-realistic drop shadows. The technology behind this unparalleled graphic rendering quality is Quartz.
Uncompromised beauty Even when you print or save to a PDF file, the Quartz engine makes sure the quality of your image is never compromised. Your PDF file or your printed document retains its transparency and 3-dimensional elements so that it looks just as its supposed to look.
From PostScript to PDF Using industry-leading PostScript-to-PDF conversion technology, Panther translates Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and PostScript data to high-quality PDF. Because this technology is integrated into Quartz, any Panther application can benefit from it by drawing images on screen from high-resolution PostScript/EPS data instead of low-resolution bitmap. And this also means that you can print PostScript-quality documents on all printers, even on non-PostScript devices by always using hi-res data Panther makes sure your documents always look their best, no matter what printer you use."
Another one from Apple: "Quartz is a powerful graphics system which forms the foundation of the imaging model for Mac OS X . Quartz offers a sophisticated two-dimensional drawing engine and an advanced windowing environment. Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing functionality. Quartz's windowing services provide low-level functionality like window buffering, event handling/dispatch as well as dynamically creating the translucency and drop shadow effects found in the Aqua user interface."
I don't see what the problem is. Others have already addressed your points.
I, too, speak from personal observation. Users intuitively noticed that red meant a closure of the window, yellow would "pause" it, and green makes it full-screen/zoomed.
You know, using something that's not GPL'd doesn't make you a "slave" to anything. Your emotive rants against people who (gasp!) enjoy their operating systems drown out any rational points you tried to make about open standards.
There are plenty of "just like Linux!" posts on Slashdot all the time too. Plus, someone could argue you're a slave if you use the GPL, since you're not 100% free like you are with a BSD license. See how easy it is to paint people with a broad brush.
"MacOS X is the first operating system on the market that actually uses PDF-technology within the operating system itself. Apple calls this technology 'Quartz'. Quartz is a layer of software that runs on top of Darwin, the core (or kernel) of the MacOS X operating system. It is responsible for the rendering of all 2D objects. Alongside Quartz, OpenGL takes care of handling 3D data (used in games like Quake or Unreal as well as professional 3D applications like Maya) and QuickTime handles multimedia stuff (movies, sound,...).
Quartz
Quartz replaces QuickDraw, which was used within earlier versions of MacOS. Within QuickDraw, the native file format was PICT. With Quartz, this now becomes PDF.
Quartz performs a number of tasks that include include: automatic PDF generation and save-as-PDF (disk and clipboard) conversion of PDF data to raster data or PostScript. The fact that Quartz can rasterize PDF files means that even cheap inkjet printers can output complex files. Gone are the days when only the screen preview of EPS-files was printed on non-PostScript printers. a consistent feature set for all printers automatic on-screen preview of graphics high-quality screen rendering
In short: Quartz implements a set of rules for describing how pictures and text are displayed and printed. Because Quartz uses the PDF drawing model for imaging, native applications can create and import PDFs without the need for outside programs.
Some people have been wondering whether Apple pays licenses to Adobe for the technology used in Quartz. Here is what an Apple employer had to say about this: The Quartz renderer and the PDF interpreter that Apple ships with Mac OS X are built with Apple code, with no external licenses, by Apple employees. Adobe just publishes a specification for how it's supposed to function. This gives Apple considerably more flexibility with regard to what Quartz and the PDF interpreter can be used for.
Adobe PDF versus Quartz PDF
Since Quartz uses PDF, one would assume that everything that is possible within a PDF file is also supported by Quartz. This is not the case. Quartz uses only some of the features of PDF, it is based on a subset of the full PDF specs.
These are some of the things that are used within both the official PDF specs and Quartz: the PDF imaging model Common colour spaces: grayscale, RGB and CMYK Embedding of images (even though Quartz does not support masks)
And these are things that are feasible in PDF but that are not (yet?) implemented in Quartz: Annotations Colour management using ICC profiles Forms Actions Bookmarks Digital signatures Security DeviceN (used within PDF to offer improved support for images containing spot colours) Embedded fonts Form XObjects: in some ways the PDF-equivalent of an EPS, meaning a group of objects that are a sub-part of a page. Transparency
In fact, one of the main differences between both systems is that the PDF specs are now at version 1.4 while Quartz adheres to a subset of the PDF 1.2 specs."
There's a difference between eye candy and visual cues. The genie effect on OS X looks cool and is fast because of the hardware compositing going on. But more importantly, it's a quick visual cue to show you that you have just minimized a window, and it travelled down to the second spot on the right of your dock, so you know where it is. You also get a scaled version of your window down there. When an icon bounces for your attention, it's a cute little effect, but it's also a visual cue to let you know the app is wanting your attention.
It goes beyond animation effects, too. People have commented on OS X's "gumdrop" window controls, which look cute and friendly, but few seem to notice they're arranged like a traffic light, which is intuitive for most people. Red, yellow, and green circles--red closes the window, yellow minimizes, and green zooms.
Note that I use OS X as an example simple because I think it's the undisputed king of GUI visual cues. I think Linux needs more creative taste and aesthetic in its interfaces. I'm willing to contribute.
Hardware-accelerated PDF viewers, huh? Aqua beat already does that. The entire OpenGL-composited interface is described using PDF, which also makes it awesome for publishing because what you see on screen is how it's going to look on paper (and you get a free "Save to PDF" in your print dialogs).
Not that it isn't cool to see the OSS desktop community finally looking ahead like this. It's something people have definitely been crying out for. But when I see the section titled "What It Might Look Like," I look over at my Mac and see what it already looks like.:)
Then again, I am quite happy to have people follow Apple's lead rather than Microsoft's. Please, no more taskbars, "start menus," integrated filesystem/net browsers, and whatever else is coming over from the Windows world and polluting desktop Linux. Though KDE is still cool, at least Gnome is willing to try some different directions in the name of usability (rather than familiarity...because from a usability standpoint, the Windows GUI sucks the most of all, and we should not be cloning it).
It's an OpenGL-based X11 server, complete with some screenshots. Apparently, window dragging is very smooth (no repaint events are even given to the apps), and with Cairo and GTK, this really could be the future backend for Linux desktops.
With all the reports of GPS being used to restrict the rights of innocent people, is this any better?
But these aren't innocent people; they are "criminals violating restraining orders." I don't understand what the basis for the question is, and I have no problem with this decision.
Slashdot Mirror
What in God's name does someone's life being in danger have to do with supporting some office software on a platform it wasn't designed to run on?
Get some perspective...sheesh.
The Office apps were purchased and presumably have rights to be updated the same as any other user of Office apps. Same with the games.
Why don't you grab the box Office came in and look at what operating system the system requirements say is required to run it?
"CONVICTED MONOPOLIST" doesn't mean anything as it's not illegal to have a monopoly.
Either way, you still don't present an argument that explains why Microsoft doesn't have the right to do this. You seriously believe they have no right to restrict their own downloads to their own products?
...it would be interesting to know how many IE downloads there have been. :)
So, does this justify pirating music? That depends... Do you believe you have the right to access your own culture; or, do you believe that others have the right to lock your own culture away from you and make you pay to experience it?
Are GPL programs part of the "culture," thereby meaning anybody can break the GPL and do whatever they want with the code? After all, we're just accessing our culture.
Can I download Doom 3 without paying John Carmack for his years of work? I'm just accessing our computing culture.
It's a bogus argument. When someone makes media content, it doesn't magically travel up into the clouds and become part of some global collective accessible to everyone. The person who made the media content owns the content and can do what they want with it. If they decide to sell it, have at it. If other people don't want it or think it's being sold at an unreasonable price, the artist loses and nobody buys the content.
The only reason other people are arguing they have the right to said content is they are freeloaders who don't want to pay money. Honestly, that's the only reason, and people have grafted entire justifications onto this one seed of truth. Some of those are:
1.) Even though artists are willingly signing their contracts, the music industry is the bad guy and I'm just sticking it to them.
2.) The RIAA is evil. I hate them even more because they are suing individual downloaders, even though it's what Slashdot was suggesting they do during the Napster lawsuit.
3.) Information/culture/whatever wants to be free (the basic argument you're putting forward). Nobody should pay for anything, thereby removing the incentive for anyone to start a career making content. We'll all just go back to working industrial jobs in factories and other industries that wouldn't be affected by digital copying, because it would be the only place to make a living to feed families.
4.) The music industry is using an "obsolete business model," even though I won't actually offer any alternative business models, CD sales go up every year, and services like iTunes are already offering digital downloads thereby negating my argument.
5.) It's "free advertising." Somehow, giving something away to people is advertising to buy it even though they already received it for free. Expect everyone to trust everyone else with a wink and a nudge.
People just want something for free when they learn they don't have to pay for it. It really does come down to such basic human nature--greed.
A lot of people kill other people. A lot of people drink while driving. A lot of people drive twenty miles over the speed limit. A lot of people rape other people. A lot of people shoplift batteries. Should we ignore the laws because a lot of other people do?
The law is not there to uphold the beliefs of society. It is there to maintain order.
As for my own opinion, I don't see what's "unjust" about copyright law. If anything, it's the artists who have the right to be complaining since so many people not only take the music they put out for sale without compensating them for it, those people have justified it as a crusade against tyranny in the music industry. The artist just seems to disappear from their mindset as they paint someone else as the bad guy so that they don't feel guilty about their behavior. And honestly, with things like iTunes selling songs at $0.99 a pop (and giving away free tunes every week on the store front page), it's hard to justify music piracy anymore.
The post you were repying to wasn't talking about rerouting data you own. It was talking about not breaking the law because it is wrong, and how moral relativism has seeped its way into the collective around here.
Now if you're refusing to pay for a legitimate copy of a commercial work, that's one thing.
That's what the topic was. Not redirecting output streams.
Have you considered reading Apple's developer documentation on the Quartz imaging system instead?
The one that says Quartz is based on Adobe Image Model (PDF 1.4)?
And at what point did I say anything to the contrary? You're arguing my own point. Quartz uses the PDF imaging model. The internal representations of the data are not "completely different;" they are very similar and use that Adobe imaging model.
I don't know why some people are trying so hard to convince everyone Quartz isn't using PDF imaging. It is. And by your own words, it is. Quartz uses the PDF document model; it's specifically based on it. In fact, Apple would have used Display Postscript but didn't like Adobe's licensing fees, so they implemented their own license-free PDF 1.4 based technology instead.
Read Apple's own developer documentation for those APIs. Look at the history of the display model technologies (hint: it's an evolution of NeXT's PostScript model).
People are arguing with me by restating my own point. Quartz uses the PDF imaging model. It is based on PDF. End of story. If the object graph of Quartz corresponds so closely to PDF that it translates directly, isn't that just another way of saying it is PDF-based? What's the difference?
I'm not sure I understand the basis for the arguments here. But oh, well.
My comment is not a troll. I was just pointing out how silly it is that something that is supposed to be so "free"--OSS--has a smorgasbord of various licenses attached to it.
I think it's hard to dispute that something is more free if there are no limitations, and the GPL does impose limitations, which makes it not totally free. I didn't say any license is better than the other; I just mentioned that BSD is the most truly "free" of all of them.
"Prior art" would prevent someone from doing that.
Though I understand the ideas behind all these licenses, it occurs to me how amusing it is that if something was truly 100% free, it wouldn't have or need a license at all. BSD comes closest to that.
I acknowledge your inability to refute those links. I've offered developer documentation from Apple. What do you have to offer other than your word?
Basically, you're going around claiming Quartz doesn't use PDF for imaging, when every developer documentation from Apple directly states that Quartz uses the PDF imaging model (its "digital paper").
I don't know what else to say except that I'll take developer.apple.com's word for it.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartz/:
"Based on version 1.4 of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specification the same standard that drives the professional publishing industry Quartz is the name for Panthers revolutionary composited windowing system. Take one glance at the Panther screen and youll see crisp graphics, anti-aliased text, liquid transparency, and photo-realistic drop shadows. The technology behind this unparalleled graphic rendering quality is Quartz."
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartz/
"Quartz uses the PDF drawing model for imaging"
"Quartz - Adobe Imaging Model (PDF)"
Quartz - "Display PDF"
"Quartz is Mac OS X's new 2D graphics system based on Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF)."
But perhaps the best source would be Apple itself:
"Based on version 1.4 of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specification the same standard that drives the professional publishing industry Quartz is the name for Panthers revolutionary composited windowing system. Take one glance at the Panther screen and youll see crisp graphics, anti-aliased text, liquid transparency, and photo-realistic drop shadows. The technology behind this unparalleled graphic rendering quality is Quartz.
Uncompromised beauty
Even when you print or save to a PDF file, the Quartz engine makes sure the quality of your image is never compromised. Your PDF file or your printed document retains its transparency and 3-dimensional elements so that it looks just as its supposed to look.
From PostScript to PDF
Using industry-leading PostScript-to-PDF conversion technology, Panther translates Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and PostScript data to high-quality PDF. Because this technology is integrated into Quartz, any Panther application can benefit from it by drawing images on screen from high-resolution PostScript/EPS data instead of low-resolution bitmap. And this also means that you can print PostScript-quality documents on all printers, even on non-PostScript devices by always using hi-res data Panther makes sure your documents always look their best, no matter what printer you use."
Another one from Apple:
"Quartz is a powerful graphics system which forms the foundation of the imaging model for Mac OS X . Quartz offers a sophisticated two-dimensional drawing engine and an advanced windowing environment. Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing functionality. Quartz's windowing services provide low-level functionality like window buffering, event handling/dispatch as well as dynamically creating the translucency and drop shadow effects found in the Aqua user interface."
You know, searching through every search engine and reading every website contradicts what you're posting and confirms the website I linked to.
Is Arstechnica wrong? Quartz: "Display PDF"
So, is this website wrong?
I don't see what the problem is. Others have already addressed your points.
I, too, speak from personal observation. Users intuitively noticed that red meant a closure of the window, yellow would "pause" it, and green makes it full-screen/zoomed.
You know, using something that's not GPL'd doesn't make you a "slave" to anything. Your emotive rants against people who (gasp!) enjoy their operating systems drown out any rational points you tried to make about open standards.
There are plenty of "just like Linux!" posts on Slashdot all the time too. Plus, someone could argue you're a slave if you use the GPL, since you're not 100% free like you are with a BSD license. See how easy it is to paint people with a broad brush.
From PDF Information: OS X and PDF:
"MacOS X is the first operating system on the market that actually uses PDF-technology within the operating system itself. Apple calls this technology 'Quartz'. Quartz is a layer of software that runs on top of Darwin, the core (or kernel) of the MacOS X operating system. It is responsible for the rendering of all 2D objects. Alongside Quartz, OpenGL takes care of handling 3D data (used in games like Quake or Unreal as well as professional 3D applications like Maya) and QuickTime handles multimedia stuff (movies, sound,...).
Quartz
Quartz replaces QuickDraw, which was used within earlier versions of MacOS. Within QuickDraw, the native file format was PICT. With Quartz, this now becomes PDF.
Quartz performs a number of tasks that include include:
automatic PDF generation and save-as-PDF (disk and clipboard)
conversion of PDF data to raster data or PostScript. The fact that Quartz can rasterize PDF files means that even cheap inkjet printers can output complex files. Gone are the days when only the screen preview of EPS-files was printed on non-PostScript printers.
a consistent feature set for all printers
automatic on-screen preview of graphics
high-quality screen rendering
In short: Quartz implements a set of rules for describing how pictures and text are displayed and printed. Because Quartz uses the PDF drawing model for imaging, native applications can create and import PDFs without the need for outside programs.
Some people have been wondering whether Apple pays licenses to Adobe for the technology used in Quartz. Here is what an Apple employer had to say about this: The Quartz renderer and the PDF interpreter that Apple ships with Mac OS X are built with Apple code, with no external licenses, by Apple employees. Adobe just publishes a specification for how it's supposed to function. This gives Apple considerably more flexibility with regard to what Quartz and the PDF interpreter can be used for.
Adobe PDF versus Quartz PDF
Since Quartz uses PDF, one would assume that everything that is possible within a PDF file is also supported by Quartz. This is not the case. Quartz uses only some of the features of PDF, it is based on a subset of the full PDF specs.
These are some of the things that are used within both the official PDF specs and Quartz:
the PDF imaging model
Common colour spaces: grayscale, RGB and CMYK
Embedding of images (even though Quartz does not support masks)
And these are things that are feasible in PDF but that are not (yet?) implemented in Quartz:
Annotations
Colour management using ICC profiles
Forms
Actions
Bookmarks
Digital signatures
Security
DeviceN (used within PDF to offer improved support for images containing spot colours)
Embedded fonts
Form XObjects: in some ways the PDF-equivalent of an EPS, meaning a group of objects that are a sub-part of a page.
Transparency
In fact, one of the main differences between both systems is that the PDF specs are now at version 1.4 while Quartz adheres to a subset of the PDF 1.2 specs."
What you're describing are called visual cues.
There's a difference between eye candy and visual cues. The genie effect on OS X looks cool and is fast because of the hardware compositing going on. But more importantly, it's a quick visual cue to show you that you have just minimized a window, and it travelled down to the second spot on the right of your dock, so you know where it is. You also get a scaled version of your window down there. When an icon bounces for your attention, it's a cute little effect, but it's also a visual cue to let you know the app is wanting your attention.
It goes beyond animation effects, too. People have commented on OS X's "gumdrop" window controls, which look cute and friendly, but few seem to notice they're arranged like a traffic light, which is intuitive for most people. Red, yellow, and green circles--red closes the window, yellow minimizes, and green zooms.
Note that I use OS X as an example simple because I think it's the undisputed king of GUI visual cues. I think Linux needs more creative taste and aesthetic in its interfaces. I'm willing to contribute.
Hardware-accelerated PDF viewers, huh? Aqua beat already does that. The entire OpenGL-composited interface is described using PDF, which also makes it awesome for publishing because what you see on screen is how it's going to look on paper (and you get a free "Save to PDF" in your print dialogs).
:)
Not that it isn't cool to see the OSS desktop community finally looking ahead like this. It's something people have definitely been crying out for. But when I see the section titled "What It Might Look Like," I look over at my Mac and see what it already looks like.
Then again, I am quite happy to have people follow Apple's lead rather than Microsoft's. Please, no more taskbars, "start menus," integrated filesystem/net browsers, and whatever else is coming over from the Windows world and polluting desktop Linux. Though KDE is still cool, at least Gnome is willing to try some different directions in the name of usability (rather than familiarity...because from a usability standpoint, the Windows GUI sucks the most of all, and we should not be cloning it).
I submitted this story to Slashdot last week, but for some reason it seems to be stuck in "Pending" status, so go here: http://nat.org/2005/february/#9-February-2005
It's an OpenGL-based X11 server, complete with some screenshots. Apparently, window dragging is very smooth (no repaint events are even given to the apps), and with Cairo and GTK, this really could be the future backend for Linux desktops.
With all the reports of GPS being used to restrict the rights of innocent people, is this any better?
But these aren't innocent people; they are "criminals violating restraining orders." I don't understand what the basis for the question is, and I have no problem with this decision.