Until I can write apps for it that target the Linux environment underneath, or even replace the kernel, the fact that it is based on Linux is pointless. I can name a LOT of other phones that are Linux based. They're not open either.
You can blame the california ban on homeschooling on the fundie christians who insisted on not actually educating their kids, choosing instead to pump their heads full of useless religious "knowlege" and award them A's for it, expecting the state to back them up come college application time.
I wonder if its even possible to touch the underlying Linux subsystem without the phone torching itself (sorta like some of the Linux-based Motorola phones.)
Intellectual property is a relatively new property concept, historically--several hundred years old at most.
Which means in the context of modern society, it's fairly integrated. Especially when one's life is governed by money.
Because the scarcity is artificial, the pricing is impossible to truly justify.
Scarcity in what aspect, copies? Copies are infinite. The value (and cost) all lies in the creation of the work. It doesn't matter what the DVD costs (if anything) to produce, but what the content on it did.
There are a number of examples in modern economy that follow the "patron model" of producing works, where a wealthy person or company pays for the creation of intellectual property which is freely distributed in promoting some tangible good (hardware, say).
Few and far between. Oh and I hope you like what those wealthy people like, because only what they like is going to get made. Sometimes you will, most of the time you probably won't.
our present approach of patenting and copyrighting everything that might be the least bit profitable is probably in violation of the spirit of that law.
Well then obviously the current laws are wrong, not copyright as a concept.
This is about preserving a broken way of thinking--a way that is incompatible with most people's sense of fairness.
Most people's sense of "fairness" is "take all I can, screw the other guy."
Unfortunately, if the result of the Information Age is to destroy copyright, then things will return to the old world of Trade Secrets and Trade Guilds, where things are kept in secret, hidden from view and potentially lost when its creators die. Or significantly fewer people will participate in creation of works that would otherwise be copyrightable, because it will be entirely unprofitable and they have to earn a living some how.
Or we just enjoy what the rich enjoy. Which they would likely go through great efforts to keep to themselves.
It is that great. In about 20 minutes from a clean install I can have it on par with an Ubuntu install in terms of functionality.
The desktop environment isn't nearly as ugly and messy as Gnome and KDE are. They can reac OS X's level with a fair amount of work though.
it doesn't come with any decent usable software.
It comes with what's necessary to get started, and has damn near every open source app available to it. It's also got a lot of stuff that it's unlikely Linux will ever have.
It's got this weird browser that doesn't render stuff
You mean Safari, which uses Webkit, which is used by Konqueror now, right?
which usually gets replaced with Firefox.
I do the same thing on every OS. OS X or not.
It can't play back most videos or music files without expensive shareware.
Nice bald-faced lie. It played all but my OGGs out of the box, and I've been meaning to replace those with AAC rips (for a couple years now, suffice it to say they aren't that important.) And video is almost entirely accounted for by VLC, Perian, and the free version of Flip4Mac.
It's utter crap. Ubuntu is already better than Mac OSX.
No it's not. Just because it was too hard for you to figure out and make intelligent comments regarding what you encountered does not make it crap.
MS is known to get threatening with the licensing for companies the stray too far from the Microsoft ideal of exclusivity in the consumer market.
Indeed. I recall them threatening their OEM licensees when Be started looking for a box maker who was willing to set up a daul boot option. Microsoft loves abusing its monopoly to keep competitors out of the market.
Because if you're forcing them to let you undermine their hardware sales, then you're going to PAY for development and PAY to have your hardware supported.
Don't go thinking that if Psystar wins AND forces Apple to sell that the price is going to stay anywhere around $120 a copy. It'll go way, way up.
Apple is making it impossible for anyone else to sell a computer that is compatible with OS X.
THERE IS NOTHING STOPPING ANYONE FROM MAKING A MAC OS X COMPATIBLE COMPUTER. NOT EVEN APPLE COULD SUE YOU IF IT WERE COMPATIBLE, EVEN IF YOU INCLUDED EFI.
if Microsoft is going to be found guilty by bundling Media Player with Windows
Because the last time Microsoft was caught bundling they were threatening their OEM licensees with termination of their contracts if they allowed a competitor to be so much as VISIBLE on the desktop. Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing them to destroy competition is.
Apple not licensing to Psystar in no way inhibits their ability to sell PCs, not even ones that would otherwise be Mac compatible (which is OSX86 + a fairly common set of existing hardware.)
I think Apple does far worse things when it comes to bundling, such as forcing me to purchase Apple hardware to run Apple software.
How dare they subsidize their software development using revenues from their hardware divisions. HOW DARE THEY.
Man, I thought Slashdot was anti-Microsoft, but goddamn I have never seen such vicious attacks. If Slashdot has ever hated a company for being successful, it's Apple.
This would have interesting ramifications if the countersuit was to succeed, and Apple forced to change the licencing restriction so that anyone could legally run OSX on non-Apple hardware.
It wouldn't really, at least as far as I could see. The only way to get a license to OS X that isn't an "upgrade license" is to actually BUY a Mac.
It wouldn't stop anyone (hasn't and won't) stop anyone from cooking up a hackintosh, which I doubt Apple truly cares about.
this is Apple saying that once you've bought the food from the restaurant you can't then go outside and sell it to someone you meet on the street
Well not quite. Not at all really. That would be you taking your Mac and selling it, since the license to OS X came with it (and is bound to it, like MS does to damn near every copy of Windows.) Unless you want to suggest that Psystar could do this if they bought a Mac for every Psystar unit they sold, which would be hilarious.
Those copies of OS X on the shelf? They're the equivalent of upgrades. The EULA requires that you have a license to OS X already, and said licenses are only sold with Macs. Notice that you could not, at all, buy Intel copies of OS X 10.4 off the shelf. All the copies available retail were upgrades for PowerPC machines.
I doubt they'd employ all the annoying technical measures MS has.
They'd probably just tie licenses to serial numbers, and establish a legal path for copies of OS X to make it impossible for Psystar to legally purchase copies of OS X without buying a Mac for each one they want.
they're trying to stand up to Apple's bullying that immorally (and hopefully illegally, but we'll see) says you can't run their OS except on their hardware.
No, they're trying to play legal games to somehow suggest that the retail copies of OS X are not in fact upgrades, but wholly licensed full copies of the OS. They wouldn't dare try it against Microsoft, because the market for Vista machines is already flooded.
They want to push boxes with the shiny X logo on the front, in the hopes that some sucker will buy one and go whining to Apple when their system goes tits up.
"purchase an Apple product at retail and resell it"
According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies of OS X are meant as upgrades to prior versions of OS X. Much like how MS sells upgrades of Vista from XP for considerably less than the full retail version (at least they used to.) Were a company selling PCs that were installed from non-OEM upgrade copies of XP, MS would have their heads.
Of course, if Psystar won here you would probably see an explosion of PCs sold with upgrade versions of Windows instead of full retail copies. Apple will just kill off the retail channel for upgrades of OS X.
Apple will just kill retail sales of OS X upgrades, and do it all through the iTunes store. Won't prevent hackintoshes but it'll kill Psystar's ability to ride Apple's development efforts.
AXFS is read-only. The usage case tends to go as follows:
- Build a compressed filesystem - Run a test case, interacting with the filesystem to generate page hits on your binaries. - Take the profile the filesystem generates and rebuild the filesystem.
The article says that CramFS supports a version, but it seems as if this version may be able to work on smaller chunks of memory (a page) at a time than the CramFS version (which seems to only work on a full file at a time?).
Precisely. CramFS works by setting the entirety of a file XIP if its sticky bit is set. AXFS runs based off a profile generated by the kernel when page faults are caused. Individual pages are then left uncompressed and executed directly from flash.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is wholly irrelevant.
Until I can write apps for it that target the Linux environment underneath, or even replace the kernel, the fact that it is based on Linux is pointless. I can name a LOT of other phones that are Linux based. They're not open either.
I pay $70/mo for their regular 8mbit/1mbit service.
I haven't gotten their e-mail yet, but I expect to. I also expect to see my service hit the shitter when I actually use it.
You can blame the california ban on homeschooling on the fundie christians who insisted on not actually educating their kids, choosing instead to pump their heads full of useless religious "knowlege" and award them A's for it, expecting the state to back them up come college application time.
The phones have nothing to do with it.
It's all about the carriers.
Ever try to find the entrance to the parking deck? Handy, and it saves me on a couple minutes of circling a building trying to find it.
As others have noted, it's Tivo'd.
I wonder if its even possible to touch the underlying Linux subsystem without the phone torching itself (sorta like some of the Linux-based Motorola phones.)
Or maybe they'll just quit making games, since the profit's all gone.
Cue the people who think we'll reach some sort of magical "game utopia" when that happens.
Yes! At GPRS speeds!
Nothing better than adopting a mobile platform that takes 3 minutes to boot up on hardware ~2 generations (8 years?) behind.
Which means in the context of modern society, it's fairly integrated. Especially when one's life is governed by money.
Scarcity in what aspect, copies? Copies are infinite. The value (and cost) all lies in the creation of the work. It doesn't matter what the DVD costs (if anything) to produce, but what the content on it did.
Few and far between. Oh and I hope you like what those wealthy people like, because only what they like is going to get made. Sometimes you will, most of the time you probably won't.
Well then obviously the current laws are wrong, not copyright as a concept.
Most people's sense of "fairness" is "take all I can, screw the other guy."
Unfortunately, if the result of the Information Age is to destroy copyright, then things will return to the old world of Trade Secrets and Trade Guilds, where things are kept in secret, hidden from view and potentially lost when its creators die. Or significantly fewer people will participate in creation of works that would otherwise be copyrightable, because it will be entirely unprofitable and they have to earn a living some how.
Or we just enjoy what the rich enjoy. Which they would likely go through great efforts to keep to themselves.
It is that great. In about 20 minutes from a clean install I can have it on par with an Ubuntu install in terms of functionality.
The desktop environment isn't nearly as ugly and messy as Gnome and KDE are. They can reac OS X's level with a fair amount of work though.
It comes with what's necessary to get started, and has damn near every open source app available to it. It's also got a lot of stuff that it's unlikely Linux will ever have.
You mean Safari, which uses Webkit, which is used by Konqueror now, right?
I do the same thing on every OS. OS X or not.
Nice bald-faced lie. It played all but my OGGs out of the box, and I've been meaning to replace those with AAC rips (for a couple years now, suffice it to say they aren't that important.) And video is almost entirely accounted for by VLC, Perian, and the free version of Flip4Mac.
No it's not. Just because it was too hard for you to figure out and make intelligent comments regarding what you encountered does not make it crap.
Indeed. I recall them threatening their OEM licensees when Be started looking for a box maker who was willing to set up a daul boot option. Microsoft loves abusing its monopoly to keep competitors out of the market.
Seriously, /. should just replace "Overrated" with "I Disagree."
The only reason people use "Overrated" is because it doesn't come up for metamod, and it applies negative moderations anyway.
-1 Overrated
That should read "-1 I Disagree"
Except that at $500, that'll double the price of the $500 machine the slashbots want to buy. And I doubt Apple will cut any sort of deal.
Tell me how this makes sense.
At $500 a license.
Because if you're forcing them to let you undermine their hardware sales, then you're going to PAY for development and PAY to have your hardware supported.
Don't go thinking that if Psystar wins AND forces Apple to sell that the price is going to stay anywhere around $120 a copy. It'll go way, way up.
No it doesn't.
You just move the OS X grades to online-only purchases. You sell only hardware via retail channels.
They'll decouple the license to use the software from the physical media. That's all.
This is a blatant lie. A BLATANT LIE.
THERE IS NOTHING STOPPING ANYONE FROM MAKING A MAC OS X COMPATIBLE COMPUTER. NOT EVEN APPLE COULD SUE YOU IF IT WERE COMPATIBLE, EVEN IF YOU INCLUDED EFI.
Because the last time Microsoft was caught bundling they were threatening their OEM licensees with termination of their contracts if they allowed a competitor to be so much as VISIBLE on the desktop. Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing them to destroy competition is.
Apple not licensing to Psystar in no way inhibits their ability to sell PCs, not even ones that would otherwise be Mac compatible (which is OSX86 + a fairly common set of existing hardware.)
How dare they subsidize their software development using revenues from their hardware divisions. HOW DARE THEY.
Man, I thought Slashdot was anti-Microsoft, but goddamn I have never seen such vicious attacks. If Slashdot has ever hated a company for being successful, it's Apple.
Then logically, for every machine Psystar ships with OS X they'd be obligated to buy a Mac for the OS X license.
Seems like a fairly expensive means of operating, no?
It wouldn't really, at least as far as I could see. The only way to get a license to OS X that isn't an "upgrade license" is to actually BUY a Mac.
It wouldn't stop anyone (hasn't and won't) stop anyone from cooking up a hackintosh, which I doubt Apple truly cares about.
Well not quite. Not at all really. That would be you taking your Mac and selling it, since the license to OS X came with it (and is bound to it, like MS does to damn near every copy of Windows.) Unless you want to suggest that Psystar could do this if they bought a Mac for every Psystar unit they sold, which would be hilarious.
Those copies of OS X on the shelf? They're the equivalent of upgrades. The EULA requires that you have a license to OS X already, and said licenses are only sold with Macs. Notice that you could not, at all, buy Intel copies of OS X 10.4 off the shelf. All the copies available retail were upgrades for PowerPC machines.
I doubt they'd employ all the annoying technical measures MS has.
They'd probably just tie licenses to serial numbers, and establish a legal path for copies of OS X to make it impossible for Psystar to legally purchase copies of OS X without buying a Mac for each one they want.
No, they're trying to play legal games to somehow suggest that the retail copies of OS X are not in fact upgrades, but wholly licensed full copies of the OS. They wouldn't dare try it against Microsoft, because the market for Vista machines is already flooded.
They want to push boxes with the shiny X logo on the front, in the hopes that some sucker will buy one and go whining to Apple when their system goes tits up.
According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies of OS X are meant as upgrades to prior versions of OS X. Much like how MS sells upgrades of Vista from XP for considerably less than the full retail version (at least they used to.) Were a company selling PCs that were installed from non-OEM upgrade copies of XP, MS would have their heads.
Of course, if Psystar won here you would probably see an explosion of PCs sold with upgrade versions of Windows instead of full retail copies. Apple will just kill off the retail channel for upgrades of OS X.
If Psystar wins, it'll be a pyrrhic victory.
Apple will just kill retail sales of OS X upgrades, and do it all through the iTunes store. Won't prevent hackintoshes but it'll kill Psystar's ability to ride Apple's development efforts.
AXFS is read-only. The usage case tends to go as follows:
- Build a compressed filesystem
- Run a test case, interacting with the filesystem to generate page hits on your binaries.
- Take the profile the filesystem generates and rebuild the filesystem.
Precisely. CramFS works by setting the entirety of a file XIP if its sticky bit is set. AXFS runs based off a profile generated by the kernel when page faults are caused. Individual pages are then left uncompressed and executed directly from flash.