No, it's not like a waiter says - (a) we're talking about published marketing, not casual chat, (b) we're comparing competitors, not entirely different kinds of products.
The analogy would be more like a restaurant having Pepsi and Coca Cola available, and having marketing blurb that makes implicit references against Coca Cola. Coca Cola would probably have something to say about that.
It works both ways - for example, the UK's practice of storing fingerprints of anyone arrested (even if not convicted or charged) was found to be illegal by the EU courts.
Remember that the EU is still made up of its member countries. So more liberal countries suffer, because they get pressure from countries like the UK to do such things. But the EU is better for places like the UK - the UK Government is gladly pushing ahead with all these authoritarian schemes, and the EU is the only thing to hold them back.
Then again, the UK Government haven't changed their fingerprinting policy, merely saying that they'll think about looking into it - why aren't they being sued?
Once you get it ($99 developer fee - much cheaper than Visual Studio)
Visual Studio Express, which is able to create full applications without limitations, is free. Yes, I can choose to pay for a better IDE. I'd rather that than have to pay a whacking $99 fee just for the privilege of development.
If you're going to play the "who uses those features" card, that equally applies to whatever features that the Iphone's web browser has over Nokia's web browser. Could it possibly be that you're just assuming that everyone else's preferences and needs are identical to yours? They're not.
For most people, a bog standard phone that runs Opera Mini, takes pics, plays a few mp3s - and does MMS - is more than enough for what they need.
Apple decided to ditch useless crap and focused on implementing the core features superbly.
If you don't care about extensive features, then why spend the money on a high end phone? Also, objective examples to support your claim of "superbly", please.
MMS fails because operators suck. Email does the job *much* better, and it works, even with spam and shit.
Now who's bringing up feature lists? Email doesn't work if your recipient has a phone that doesn't support email attachments. It might be better, but that's irrelevant since you can only control what phone you have, no what your recipient has. I don't want to try to send a picture, and then have to go "Oh sorry, I can't do that - I'm an Apple user". I expect my phone to Just Work.
And just about everyone else out there, even computer incompetents, seem to be enjoying MMS, so I find it worrying if you can't manage it...
Last time I looked, Nokia had vastly greater market share.
I think this comment just exemplifies how out of touch Slashdot has come when it comes to the mobile phone market. It's bad enough when I see "Hey, I can read a webpage on an Iphone, no one did that before!", but it's interesting and worrying to see the belief that Apple are the dominant player in the market. I like to think I come to Slashdot to learn about geek news, but this demonstrates a problem when the continual stream of Iphone stories on Slashdot, with hardly any coverage of the bigger players, gives people the misperception that Apple are dominant.
Nokia do shout about it. It's just that the stories never get on Slashdot, because of all the Iphone hype.
As to your later comment:
Symbian may hold almost 50% of the smartphone market, but few mainstream consumers know about it.
They don't know about Symbian because they don't give a crap about the OS. But everyone knows about Nokia. Whilst plenty of people know about Apple, that would primarily be as a computer company. I bet far more people think of Nokia as a phone company, than they think of Apple as a phone company.
Indeed, surely any Mac users can just install Windows on their Mac? They're always telling us how great Macs are that they can run both MacOS and Windows. So therefore, the Zune can be developed on all PCs and Macs (i.e., virtually every computer on the market today), whilst the Iphone can only be developed on Macs (i.e., only computers from one company).
Except one platform is far more widely available than the other (not trolling, just pointing it out, as this is an important factor - I mean, I loved the Amiga, but these days I concede that if a platform came out that could only be developed on the Amiga, it wouldn't be a wise marketing move either).
What you cannot do without using iTunes or your own (probably corporate) server is widely distribute your applications to others around the world.
Oh, well that's just fine then...
If you really want to know what you can or cannot do with an Apple device or software, you should ask the people who know - experienced Apple users.
Actually, they are often the last you want to ask - getting actual objective answers about features is often impossible, and usually you just get vague answers of "It's just great, it just is, it just does it better, it just works, you'd know if you'd tried it" which obviously isn't helpful at all to potential buyers.
However, between dyingtolive's informative example of being able to write applications for the Zune, and your clarification on what the Iphone can't do, that's an extra piece of information I'll bear in mind when I'm looking to buy such a product.
There's a wide range of devices out there, and given that one of the reasons to come to Slashdot is supposedly to learn about new tech news, it's frustrating that the coverage when it comes to mobile devices is so poor: covering every trivial news release or even rumour about the Iwhatever, and ignoring any news from other major companies (including ones that are far bigger players in the phone market).
I also love how TFS brags about having more apps for the Iphone than on Windows CE. I don't know if it's true, and it's less likely to be true when the lack of Java on the Iphone is taken into account. But the point being, surely Apple fans are always telling us that having fewer applications isn't a problem? Or do they now concede that Windows is better than MacOS due to the greater application support? Which is it, I wonder?
Sure, it may look better on paper, but you have to take into account that his phone just does it better, and that doesn't show up in a simple feature list.
[Actually, I'm teasing - my point is that this is exactly the response people give when someone points out another phone does more than the Iphone, and they'd get modded up to +5 for saying this.]
no phone (you might not weant one but the rest of the world does)
The topic is Zune/Ipods, so comparing non-phone devices is relevant. And if we include phones, then there are far bigger players than the Iphone there too (e.g., Nokia).
no App Store (see phone comment)
Didn't you see his Wifi comment? Not only can he download apps, he isn't restricted to one single site. True, he can't download apps without a Wifi connection, but the same is true of the Ipod (and you could always use a phone as a modem, if say you wanted a separate PDA with a cheap 3G phone).
no SMS
But surely you'd just send an email rather than use such outdated technology? [Again, I'm joking, but that's the standard Iphone response for MMS.]
no iTunes
Hurray! (I'm afraid I find Itunes on Windows has one of the poorest UIs around - second only to Quicktime.)
I haven't seen a Windows crash in any form in years.
If years old criticisms of a different OS are still relevant today, I might as well joke that if he was using a Mac, he wouldn't have been able to run more than one program at the same time as Paint...
To be fair, the issue is specifically fraud, which requires them to charge money for it.
But yes, I have noticed that the media, including the Slashdot summary, have been repeating how France doesn't consider them a religion. Is this simply being mentioned in passing, or is it an important part of the case? I fair to see how it matters - surely any "official" religions committing fraud should also be charged?
That goes for psychics, homeopaths and so on too, if they charge money for something they can't deliver (this was being planned in the UK recently - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7351199.stm - although I don't know what the outcome was, nor if they exempted "religions").
I don't see why we need an "official" definition of religion anyway, it just leads to discrimination against the non-religious, by allowing exemptions for some beliefs, but not others.
Could you imagine doing that just 5 years back? 10?
I was browsing web sites and playing games and using applications on phones 5 years ago, and I saw other people doing it years before that. It was pretty obvious that phones were going to become more powerful computers as time went on.
One wonders what amazing things we'll be doing 5 years from now on our cell phones. I think this is very cool.
The continual increasing in computing power that started years ago is indeed cool. I'm sure you'll be wondering whilst other people are already doing it, and when the Iphone does it five years later, you'll think it's pretty cool, yes:)
On the desktop, sure, but they're a small player on the mobile phone market.
Of course we should hear about Apple, when it comes to actual news. The point is that we hardly ever hear about the much bigger players in the mobile phone market such as Nokia. The other point is that even for bigger companies like Microsoft, I don't recall seeing stories such as "You can now view this website on a Microsoft platform!!" or "Artists uses Microsoft!!"
The point is that all he's describing is a small computer with video out, that is not in any way closer to the Iphone than a wide range of other devices out there today.
Even Captain Obvious can work out that computers are going to keep getting smaller.
When you get right down to it, I'm no different than an anarchist at a WTO meeting.
Criticising one law doesn't mean you are criticising all laws, or the state as a whole.
I think ethics are also separate from legality. So our judgement of whether someone's behaviour is ethical or not should be independent of what the legality happens to be.
(Also note, for your number 2 example, even if you made a copy of the file you legally own for your laptop/Blackberry/etc, in the UK that would be just as illegal as downloading another copy...)
Yet he posts his views... on the Internet. Period.
He then refers to the "blogosphere", trying to reduce all criticism to a single entity: "Now, the blogosphere does not take so kindly to provocations like that"
Lynton may have been privileged to have been offered a publication in a traditional news site, on account of him being CEO of some company, but his words written on the Internet are no different to any kind of blogger. Period.
On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed? Even if we accept that Internet piracy is causing harm, where is all the newspaper-piracy? Are people distributing copies of the Huffington Post on bittorrent? Is there a Napster for Broadsheets?
I legally buy my Torchwood episodes off iTunes (despite the repugnant DRM) because it is available and the right thing to do. I cannot buy (AFAICT) old Dr. Who episodes (William Hartnell era), so I torrent them. If the BBC doesn't like it, put 'em on iTunes and I'll pay for 'em!
I wouldn't feel so bad about the BBC anyway - the BBC gets to take money from UK citizens who use a TV, but don't watch any BBC programmes, so it all works out okay...
The vast majority of people who advocate C++ do so because they don't know any other languages, or only know them to a superficial level.
Citation? I suspect that this is just as much true of any language, given that most people only mainly know one language, and the one they use and hence are most likely to advocate is going to be the one they know best.
Personally I like C++, and I know other languages such as Java.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not like a waiter says - (a) we're talking about published marketing, not casual chat, (b) we're comparing competitors, not entirely different kinds of products.
The analogy would be more like a restaurant having Pepsi and Coca Cola available, and having marketing blurb that makes implicit references against Coca Cola. Coca Cola would probably have something to say about that.
It works both ways - for example, the UK's practice of storing fingerprints of anyone arrested (even if not convicted or charged) was found to be illegal by the EU courts.
Remember that the EU is still made up of its member countries. So more liberal countries suffer, because they get pressure from countries like the UK to do such things. But the EU is better for places like the UK - the UK Government is gladly pushing ahead with all these authoritarian schemes, and the EU is the only thing to hold them back.
Then again, the UK Government haven't changed their fingerprinting policy, merely saying that they'll think about looking into it - why aren't they being sued?
Indeed, and the UK have already made it illegal to refuse to unencrypt data. And if you've forgotten/lost your key, tough luck.
Once you get it ($99 developer fee - much cheaper than Visual Studio)
Visual Studio Express, which is able to create full applications without limitations, is free. Yes, I can choose to pay for a better IDE. I'd rather that than have to pay a whacking $99 fee just for the privilege of development.
I'm always amazed how ignorant non-Microsoft users are about Microsoft's products and how much disinformation they spew. If you really want to know what you can or cannot do with an Microsoft device or software, you should ask the people who know - experienced Microsoft users. (For the mods who will no doubt interpret this as trolling, but the same statement about Apple as Informative.)
If you're going to play the "who uses those features" card, that equally applies to whatever features that the Iphone's web browser has over Nokia's web browser. Could it possibly be that you're just assuming that everyone else's preferences and needs are identical to yours? They're not.
For most people, a bog standard phone that runs Opera Mini, takes pics, plays a few mp3s - and does MMS - is more than enough for what they need.
Apple decided to ditch useless crap and focused on implementing the core features superbly.
If you don't care about extensive features, then why spend the money on a high end phone? Also, objective examples to support your claim of "superbly", please.
MMS fails because operators suck. Email does the job *much* better, and it works, even with spam and shit.
Now who's bringing up feature lists? Email doesn't work if your recipient has a phone that doesn't support email attachments. It might be better, but that's irrelevant since you can only control what phone you have, no what your recipient has. I don't want to try to send a picture, and then have to go "Oh sorry, I can't do that - I'm an Apple user". I expect my phone to Just Work.
And just about everyone else out there, even computer incompetents, seem to be enjoying MMS, so I find it worrying if you can't manage it...
Last time I looked, Nokia had vastly greater market share.
I think this comment just exemplifies how out of touch Slashdot has come when it comes to the mobile phone market. It's bad enough when I see "Hey, I can read a webpage on an Iphone, no one did that before!", but it's interesting and worrying to see the belief that Apple are the dominant player in the market. I like to think I come to Slashdot to learn about geek news, but this demonstrates a problem when the continual stream of Iphone stories on Slashdot, with hardly any coverage of the bigger players, gives people the misperception that Apple are dominant.
Nokia do shout about it. It's just that the stories never get on Slashdot, because of all the Iphone hype.
As to your later comment:
Symbian may hold almost 50% of the smartphone market, but few mainstream consumers know about it.
They don't know about Symbian because they don't give a crap about the OS. But everyone knows about Nokia. Whilst plenty of people know about Apple, that would primarily be as a computer company. I bet far more people think of Nokia as a phone company, than they think of Apple as a phone company.
Indeed, surely any Mac users can just install Windows on their Mac? They're always telling us how great Macs are that they can run both MacOS and Windows. So therefore, the Zune can be developed on all PCs and Macs (i.e., virtually every computer on the market today), whilst the Iphone can only be developed on Macs (i.e., only computers from one company).
Except one platform is far more widely available than the other (not trolling, just pointing it out, as this is an important factor - I mean, I loved the Amiga, but these days I concede that if a platform came out that could only be developed on the Amiga, it wouldn't be a wise marketing move either).
What you cannot do without using iTunes or your own (probably corporate) server is widely distribute your applications to others around the world.
Oh, well that's just fine then...
If you really want to know what you can or cannot do with an Apple device or software, you should ask the people who know - experienced Apple users.
Actually, they are often the last you want to ask - getting actual objective answers about features is often impossible, and usually you just get vague answers of "It's just great, it just is, it just does it better, it just works, you'd know if you'd tried it" which obviously isn't helpful at all to potential buyers.
However, between dyingtolive's informative example of being able to write applications for the Zune, and your clarification on what the Iphone can't do, that's an extra piece of information I'll bear in mind when I'm looking to buy such a product.
I couldn't agree more.
There's a wide range of devices out there, and given that one of the reasons to come to Slashdot is supposedly to learn about new tech news, it's frustrating that the coverage when it comes to mobile devices is so poor: covering every trivial news release or even rumour about the Iwhatever, and ignoring any news from other major companies (including ones that are far bigger players in the phone market).
I also love how TFS brags about having more apps for the Iphone than on Windows CE. I don't know if it's true, and it's less likely to be true when the lack of Java on the Iphone is taken into account. But the point being, surely Apple fans are always telling us that having fewer applications isn't a problem? Or do they now concede that Windows is better than MacOS due to the greater application support? Which is it, I wonder?
But isn't that just grumpy featurism?
Sure, it may look better on paper, but you have to take into account that his phone just does it better, and that doesn't show up in a simple feature list.
[Actually, I'm teasing - my point is that this is exactly the response people give when someone points out another phone does more than the Iphone, and they'd get modded up to +5 for saying this.]
no phone (you might not weant one but the rest of the world does)
The topic is Zune/Ipods, so comparing non-phone devices is relevant. And if we include phones, then there are far bigger players than the Iphone there too (e.g., Nokia).
no App Store (see phone comment)
Didn't you see his Wifi comment? Not only can he download apps, he isn't restricted to one single site. True, he can't download apps without a Wifi connection, but the same is true of the Ipod (and you could always use a phone as a modem, if say you wanted a separate PDA with a cheap 3G phone).
no SMS
But surely you'd just send an email rather than use such outdated technology? [Again, I'm joking, but that's the standard Iphone response for MMS.]
no iTunes
Hurray! (I'm afraid I find Itunes on Windows has one of the poorest UIs around - second only to Quicktime.)
I haven't seen a Windows crash in any form in years.
If years old criticisms of a different OS are still relevant today, I might as well joke that if he was using a Mac, he wouldn't have been able to run more than one program at the same time as Paint...
BTW the phrase "other religions" implicitly concedes that Scientology is a religion as they claim
And your definition of a religion is?
This could be a case of blatant false advertising, do Scientology products come with a disclaimer? May not perform upto expectations..
Yes, false advertising, also known as fraud. Which if you actually RTFA is what they are being charged with.
To be fair, the issue is specifically fraud, which requires them to charge money for it.
But yes, I have noticed that the media, including the Slashdot summary, have been repeating how France doesn't consider them a religion. Is this simply being mentioned in passing, or is it an important part of the case? I fair to see how it matters - surely any "official" religions committing fraud should also be charged?
That goes for psychics, homeopaths and so on too, if they charge money for something they can't deliver (this was being planned in the UK recently - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7351199.stm - although I don't know what the outcome was, nor if they exempted "religions").
I don't see why we need an "official" definition of religion anyway, it just leads to discrimination against the non-religious, by allowing exemptions for some beliefs, but not others.
It Just Works!
Could you imagine doing that just 5 years back? 10?
I was browsing web sites and playing games and using applications on phones 5 years ago, and I saw other people doing it years before that. It was pretty obvious that phones were going to become more powerful computers as time went on.
One wonders what amazing things we'll be doing 5 years from now on our cell phones. I think this is very cool.
The continual increasing in computing power that started years ago is indeed cool. I'm sure you'll be wondering whilst other people are already doing it, and when the Iphone does it five years later, you'll think it's pretty cool, yes :)
On the desktop, sure, but they're a small player on the mobile phone market.
Of course we should hear about Apple, when it comes to actual news. The point is that we hardly ever hear about the much bigger players in the mobile phone market such as Nokia. The other point is that even for bigger companies like Microsoft, I don't recall seeing stories such as "You can now view this website on a Microsoft platform!!" or "Artists uses Microsoft!!"
The point is that all he's describing is a small computer with video out, that is not in any way closer to the Iphone than a wide range of other devices out there today.
Even Captain Obvious can work out that computers are going to keep getting smaller.
The distinction between "communications device" and "computer" blurred about five to ten years ago.
Welcome to the 21st Century.
It's the next big deal.
I'm glad you've finally discovered. Welcome to the party, so glad you can make it as we didn't think you'd be turning up for a moment.
Sorry, I mean BBC channels.
Yes BBC programmes often show up on the other channels, which is even more infuriating - I'm paying for them twice.
When you get right down to it, I'm no different than an anarchist at a WTO meeting.
Criticising one law doesn't mean you are criticising all laws, or the state as a whole.
I think ethics are also separate from legality. So our judgement of whether someone's behaviour is ethical or not should be independent of what the legality happens to be.
(Also note, for your number 2 example, even if you made a copy of the file you legally own for your laptop/Blackberry/etc, in the UK that would be just as illegal as downloading another copy...)
Yet he posts his views ... on the Internet. Period.
He then refers to the "blogosphere", trying to reduce all criticism to a single entity: "Now, the blogosphere does not take so kindly to provocations like that"
Lynton may have been privileged to have been offered a publication in a traditional news site, on account of him being CEO of some company, but his words written on the Internet are no different to any kind of blogger. Period.
On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed? Even if we accept that Internet piracy is causing harm, where is all the newspaper-piracy? Are people distributing copies of the Huffington Post on bittorrent? Is there a Napster for Broadsheets?
Period.
I legally buy my Torchwood episodes off iTunes (despite the repugnant DRM) because it is available and the right thing to do. I cannot buy (AFAICT) old Dr. Who episodes (William Hartnell era), so I torrent them. If the BBC doesn't like it, put 'em on iTunes and I'll pay for 'em!
I wouldn't feel so bad about the BBC anyway - the BBC gets to take money from UK citizens who use a TV, but don't watch any BBC programmes, so it all works out okay...
The vast majority of people who advocate C++ do so because they don't know any other languages, or only know them to a superficial level.
Citation? I suspect that this is just as much true of any language, given that most people only mainly know one language, and the one they use and hence are most likely to advocate is going to be the one they know best.
Personally I like C++, and I know other languages such as Java.
And I suspect that most C++ programmers know C...