The Apple brigade has modded me down again. Questioning Jobs is not allowed on Slashdot.
Which specifically mentioned jailbreaking, which specifically clears that action. It can't get much clearer than that without the whole Supreme Court coming over to your house, dumping a vat of Gatoraide over your head, and screaming JAILBREAKING IS LEGAL.
Since caps are the name of the game: THAT THIS DECISION HAD TO BE MADE SHOWS APPLE'S INTENTIONS. Deny it all you want, but they absolutely do not want you Jailbreaking.
Considering just the contributions to Webkit, the open sourcing of GCD and ZeroConf and other things - yes it's wrong, absurdly so.
Nice red herring. I am talking EXPLICITLY about their attitude towards users in the mobile space.
It's almost like you are a parody of the Apple hater with no ears or eyes, just raw hate from Apple flowing out with no input allowed the other way.
I get it, I get it. Disagreeing with Apple and their actions is impossible, and anyone who does is obviously a blind Apple hater.
I'll let you have the last response since you won't pay attention to a thing I've said anyway
Ah, the passive agressive "I think I've won this argument, and you're obviously deluded and crazy!" retreat.
your type doesn't care how much evidence is presented, you believe what you want and nothing will shake it. I present this information only for the other readers who might be confused by the things you say are true.
I know, I'm CRAZY because I won't accept that Apple's take on mobile devices (locked down, restricted devices with no ability to optionally and freely access the full capabilities of their devices) is the RIGHT and BEST way to do things.
The pro-Lockdown, pro-DRM Apple brigade is strong on Slashdot.
You do not need to jailbreak to run any software you want.
You do.
The second group is iOS developers who can run anything the damn well please on their devices.
iOS developers who pay $100 for limited access to their own devices. Last I checked, you had to sign these with developer certificates that had a limited runtime and limited redistribution abilities. So you are restricted, even after becoming a "developer."
Why can't you live with the fact that there are a lot of people out there who like the walled garden when it comes to the intrinsically limited device that they carry around in their pocket?
I don't care if they like it or not. If you hadn't noticed, the entire industry seems intent on cramming such walled gardens down our throats. Of course, what I want is simply the ability to opt out, which Apple et. al. don't give.
Why can't you understand that making it easy to load untrusted code onto an iOS device would also make it easy to have the same problems with crappy spyware/spamware/viruses/etc. that PCs suffer from?
So don't make it easy. But don't force people to pay you extra money, and cripple their ability to share.
It's not like there aren't alternatives. Go buy one.
Not many, and there are fewer each day. But I did buy one, however it will probably be the last of its kind as Nokia is going all in on an equally restrictive platform.
Have you ever heard an Apple customer complaining that the Android option shouldn't exist?
Am I saying the Apple option shouldn't exist? I'm saying the Apple option should give advanced users an opt-out. And I'm being screamed at by people defending Apple's lockdown.
I guess it is in the same way that a car is crippled because it doesn't expose an easy way to manually deploy the airbag.
More like, crippled in the way my car's hood is not welded shut. Sure, I don't have to go tinker under the hood, no one does, but I have the option.
I call it good engineering. I suspect you wouldn't know good engineering if it slapped you in the face.
You are getting angry (indeed, quite pissed) because I am opposed to Apple's zero-options lockdown that forces users to violate the EULA to access the full capabilities of their own property. And so I criticize Apple's anti-freedom behavior and do not use their products.
But go ahead, attack me more for opposing lock down and DRM, and platforms that proactively deny users any and all access to Free Software. Because that's what this is in the end.
I didn't think I needed to make a point about those. Also, the bit in your topic is a non-sequitor (I don't recall GE ever attacking people publicly over microwave microntroller hacking.)
The problem is that you want iOS devices to be something that they aren't.
Rather, you've bought into Apple's mantra that mobile devices are somehow "special" and "need" to be locked down. They are exactly what I think they are, just crippled. Apparently others agree, otherwise Jailbreaks wouldn't exist.
As an Android user rooting their own phone first, then get back to me.
Beats me about that too, unsurprisingly I don't own an Android device. I bought an N900, which I was able to get Root access trivially and without relying on any exploits.
Why would I indeed? I wouldn't.
Yet you do. You buy into Apple's locked down mobile space.
I buy from Apple because they are VERY friendly toward the nerd in how they build systems and the flexibility I derive from them.
Except that in the mobile space they explicitly deny that to you, and require you jump through hoops and pay for access. And even then you don't get full access over your own devices.
I have never read nor heard of Apple sending even a cease and desist to any jailbreak group.
I expect that if the Library of Congress had agreed with Apple, they would have started machinegunning DMCA notices.
How long ago was that hole revealed to exist?
Sad, isn't it? Known security holes aren't patched, but are relied upon to get out of Apple's lockdown.
they obviously don't care much if the community and facility exists.
Obviously they do care, as they are fixing a lot of the jailbreaks. But at the same time, they don't care if you buy their products and support their ventures.
It means getting past the point of the PC being the PRIMARY platform, and to a world where it is one of many platforms as equals.
That's not what I saw. I see Jobs and Apple making a hard push to displace the PC with their form of mobile computing. I don't doubt that PCs will still exist, but I don't see Jobs et. al. pushing real hard to get them into the hands of consumers (not when they can give them locked down hardware.)
Really? When? I never read a single thing that said that, and now of course the point is moot since the law is clear that jailbreaking is fine.
The law is not clear that Jailbreaking is fine. That was an exception to the DMCA granted by the Library of Congress, on opposition to Apple's belief that Jailbreaking fell foul of the DMCA.
Any change is you misinterpretation of direction, not an about-course.
So my interpretation of their utter and complete hostility towards Free Software and open source in general in the mobile space, the space where Apple is focusing a huge majority of their efforts, is wrong. Right, I'd like to hear you explain how.
I gave up on Apple, despite enjoying OS X, precisely because of how they behave towards more technical users that enjoyed OS X's capabilities. And you know as well as I that the hostility doesn't extend to OS X (yet.) Apple sees mobile as the future of computing (hence the "post-PC era" comments from Jobs), however they give users none of the flexibility offered by OS X, not even the option. Instead they are actively fighting against it, picking and choosing who gets to "innovate" and who is permanently locked out. They were even ready to try and apply US Federal laws against people creating jailbreaks.
That's why I have stopped using OS X, and why I cannot support Apple. They've gone 180 from where I saw them when I got my MacBook.
You have no idea what the hell you are talking about. That's still a very powerful UNIX platform.
But unlike OS X, they refuse to give it to you. They fight you over it, making you waste time breaking their locks while funding them at the same time.
True nerds don't care about locks; they unlock them instead of whining about the existence of same
But why? Why should people support a company that tried to get the DMCA to apply to Jailbeaks? Why should they have to hack around deliberately placed locks to regain functionality that would otherwise exist by default? Why buy from a company that is hostile towards you?
Apple is very hostile to advanced, technical users, no matter how you slice it.
It's too bad they had to go and declare true nerds the enemy with their iProducts. After using my 2006 MacBook and enjoying every minute of using OS X, they had to go and take a hostile approach to software development and control over things they sold.
I can't support them now. And sadly that means the now reduced OS X partition on my MacBook likely won't be seeing Lion, despite having seen up through Snow Leopard.
I've been able to select and block specific groups on my status messages, images, albums, etc. on Facebook for at least the last two years.
As have I, however it is difficult and leaves you open to holes.
Specifically with Facebook, everyone is part of the "Friends" list, and you can't remove people from it without unfriending them, at which point they can see nothing. Some set of people you may not want to see all of your posts, so you can create a list and put people in these blocked lists. However, these changes are not retroactive. So if you create a group later on, you can't deny visibility of older posts to people in that group, and then you get into a complex mess of exceptions and multiple lists with different rules.
Now with Google+ these visibility settings are not retroactive either, however until you place someone in a group that a post is visible to they cannot see any posts. They are in a limbo-like "unclassified" state, only able to see public posts. As you place them into groups, their post visibility increases. Then if you want to really get complex you can create different circles, which are much easier to target with posts than general posts with lots of visibility rules that have to be applied.
After all, some people are more acquaintances or professional contacts whereas some people are friends and yet others are family. So you can much more tightly control what people can see, and who can see it. An easy way to think of it, at least for a Slashdotter, is the difference between a firewall that defaults to ALLOW and specifies what to DENY, versus a firewall that defaults to DENY and specifies what to ALLOW. One of these ways is more secure than the other. Google+, at first glance, seems to default to the more secure way.
There's a difference between giving people technical options, and having a controlled App Store serve as the primary software source.
Apple gives no option at all. You are supposed to be a passive consumer. Unless you're an "artsy" type, then you can create all you want. But not if you're the technical type.
given that many of their competitors can release products (some of them cheaper/some more expensive) is really enough to fend off any monopoly charges
When Microsoft was tried for abusing their monopoly, other vendors were releasing OSes and browsers. Nonetheless, they were found to have a monopoly. The direction for abuse would be threats against App Developers directed towards other mobile platforms.
The fact that the competing products have mostly sucked so far isn't really on Apple but on their competitors' inadequacies.
No argument there.
After that Apple must be shown to somehow curtail competition through the use of their monopoly. Having 90+% marketshare wasn't the problem with MS and Windows. It was their dealings with OEMs and partners to harm Netscape and Sun that was why MS was convicted.
Right, and it's much easier to do so when you control a huge percentage of the mobile space. Again, my post was wondering if Apple would be able to resist that temptation.
Yes, when they went from the power user friendly OS X on all of their devices to declaring that the mobile space was for Apple only, and if you wanted to play you had to pay money and be blessed by them.
And yeah, I expect them to become more hostile and move the restrictive platform up the stack, locking out more developers. Boy, I'd hate to have grown up with a locked down iMac as my family computer. I'd never have gotten into software development.
While it's pathetic and sad that so few vendors can come up with something whose usability matches the iPad, it is interesting to see Apple take such a huge slice of that pie.
Last I recall they had something like 90% of the market, which is easily monopoly territory. It'll be fascinating to see if they succumb to the temptation to abuse it, or if they can stay their hand.
WebOS, at last glance, used a proprietary system and not Xorg. If they move to Wayland... well then. All they'd need to do is eliminate the proprietary IPC system and they'd have a fully open system (minus the webOS specific bits.)
No one has a problem with forks. Redhat maintains a huge fork.
The problem is that Android uses a heavily customized kernel that results in virtually nothing (certainly nothing that I am aware of) going back upstream. Unsurprisingly, vendors are loathe to port their drivers forward to the next version of the kernel (which would be easier if they were upstream.)
the fact that all their changes are not merged back to the mainline doesn't mean it's a fork
Actually that explicitly makes it a fork. Every distro has its own fork of the kernel. The problem is that Google has made little effort to get their changes into the kernel, and when drivers for hardware are built against their kernel they are almost completely unsalvageable and a pain in the ass to bring into the mainline.
there's a GNU community, an X community, a Debian community, a GCC community, an Android community
The interesting part is that if you look at how code flows between those communities, the first four benefit each other in various ways. In contrast, the Android community is entirely insular, neither aiding nor being aided by the others.
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I know, we should lock down ALL computers. No software from anywhere except the hardware or OS vendor's approved locations!
This includes other OSes. Those terrible, evil Linux installations... you never know where they've been!
First comes the license, then comes the hardware.
The Apple brigade has modded me down again. Questioning Jobs is not allowed on Slashdot.
Since caps are the name of the game: THAT THIS DECISION HAD TO BE MADE SHOWS APPLE'S INTENTIONS. Deny it all you want, but they absolutely do not want you Jailbreaking.
Nice red herring. I am talking EXPLICITLY about their attitude towards users in the mobile space.
I get it, I get it. Disagreeing with Apple and their actions is impossible, and anyone who does is obviously a blind Apple hater.
Ah, the passive agressive "I think I've won this argument, and you're obviously deluded and crazy!" retreat.
I know, I'm CRAZY because I won't accept that Apple's take on mobile devices (locked down, restricted devices with no ability to optionally and freely access the full capabilities of their devices) is the RIGHT and BEST way to do things.
The pro-Lockdown, pro-DRM Apple brigade is strong on Slashdot.
You do.
iOS developers who pay $100 for limited access to their own devices. Last I checked, you had to sign these with developer certificates that had a limited runtime and limited redistribution abilities. So you are restricted, even after becoming a "developer."
Ah yes, because numbers make someone right.
I don't care if they like it or not. If you hadn't noticed, the entire industry seems intent on cramming such walled gardens down our throats. Of course, what I want is simply the ability to opt out, which Apple et. al. don't give.
So don't make it easy. But don't force people to pay you extra money, and cripple their ability to share.
Not many, and there are fewer each day. But I did buy one, however it will probably be the last of its kind as Nokia is going all in on an equally restrictive platform.
Am I saying the Apple option shouldn't exist? I'm saying the Apple option should give advanced users an opt-out. And I'm being screamed at by people defending Apple's lockdown.
More like, crippled in the way my car's hood is not welded shut. Sure, I don't have to go tinker under the hood, no one does, but I have the option.
You are getting angry (indeed, quite pissed) because I am opposed to Apple's zero-options lockdown that forces users to violate the EULA to access the full capabilities of their own property. And so I criticize Apple's anti-freedom behavior and do not use their products.
But go ahead, attack me more for opposing lock down and DRM, and platforms that proactively deny users any and all access to Free Software. Because that's what this is in the end.
I didn't think I needed to make a point about those. Also, the bit in your topic is a non-sequitor (I don't recall GE ever attacking people publicly over microwave microntroller hacking.)
Rather, you've bought into Apple's mantra that mobile devices are somehow "special" and "need" to be locked down. They are exactly what I think they are, just crippled. Apparently others agree, otherwise Jailbreaks wouldn't exist.
Oh, oh. The Apple fanboy brigade is on the march, downmodding my critical posts!
Beats me about that too, unsurprisingly I don't own an Android device. I bought an N900, which I was able to get Root access trivially and without relying on any exploits.
Yet you do. You buy into Apple's locked down mobile space.
Except that in the mobile space they explicitly deny that to you, and require you jump through hoops and pay for access. And even then you don't get full access over your own devices.
I guess this is the abused Apple fanboy form of Stockholm syndrome.
I expect that if the Library of Congress had agreed with Apple, they would have started machinegunning DMCA notices.
Sad, isn't it? Known security holes aren't patched, but are relied upon to get out of Apple's lockdown.
Obviously they do care, as they are fixing a lot of the jailbreaks. But at the same time, they don't care if you buy their products and support their ventures.
And you say the same thing again.
That's not what I saw. I see Jobs and Apple making a hard push to displace the PC with their form of mobile computing. I don't doubt that PCs will still exist, but I don't see Jobs et. al. pushing real hard to get them into the hands of consumers (not when they can give them locked down hardware.)
The law is not clear that Jailbreaking is fine. That was an exception to the DMCA granted by the Library of Congress, on opposition to Apple's belief that Jailbreaking fell foul of the DMCA.
So my interpretation of their utter and complete hostility towards Free Software and open source in general in the mobile space, the space where Apple is focusing a huge majority of their efforts, is wrong. Right, I'd like to hear you explain how.
Perhaps you did not read what I said.
I gave up on Apple, despite enjoying OS X, precisely because of how they behave towards more technical users that enjoyed OS X's capabilities. And you know as well as I that the hostility doesn't extend to OS X (yet.) Apple sees mobile as the future of computing (hence the "post-PC era" comments from Jobs), however they give users none of the flexibility offered by OS X, not even the option. Instead they are actively fighting against it, picking and choosing who gets to "innovate" and who is permanently locked out. They were even ready to try and apply US Federal laws against people creating jailbreaks.
That's why I have stopped using OS X, and why I cannot support Apple. They've gone 180 from where I saw them when I got my MacBook.
But unlike OS X, they refuse to give it to you. They fight you over it, making you waste time breaking their locks while funding them at the same time.
But why? Why should people support a company that tried to get the DMCA to apply to Jailbeaks? Why should they have to hack around deliberately placed locks to regain functionality that would otherwise exist by default? Why buy from a company that is hostile towards you?
Apple is very hostile to advanced, technical users, no matter how you slice it.
It's too bad they had to go and declare true nerds the enemy with their iProducts. After using my 2006 MacBook and enjoying every minute of using OS X, they had to go and take a hostile approach to software development and control over things they sold.
I can't support them now. And sadly that means the now reduced OS X partition on my MacBook likely won't be seeing Lion, despite having seen up through Snow Leopard.
As have I, however it is difficult and leaves you open to holes.
Specifically with Facebook, everyone is part of the "Friends" list, and you can't remove people from it without unfriending them, at which point they can see nothing. Some set of people you may not want to see all of your posts, so you can create a list and put people in these blocked lists. However, these changes are not retroactive. So if you create a group later on, you can't deny visibility of older posts to people in that group, and then you get into a complex mess of exceptions and multiple lists with different rules.
Now with Google+ these visibility settings are not retroactive either, however until you place someone in a group that a post is visible to they cannot see any posts. They are in a limbo-like "unclassified" state, only able to see public posts. As you place them into groups, their post visibility increases. Then if you want to really get complex you can create different circles, which are much easier to target with posts than general posts with lots of visibility rules that have to be applied.
After all, some people are more acquaintances or professional contacts whereas some people are friends and yet others are family. So you can much more tightly control what people can see, and who can see it. An easy way to think of it, at least for a Slashdotter, is the difference between a firewall that defaults to ALLOW and specifies what to DENY, versus a firewall that defaults to DENY and specifies what to ALLOW. One of these ways is more secure than the other. Google+, at first glance, seems to default to the more secure way.
There's a difference between giving people technical options, and having a controlled App Store serve as the primary software source.
Apple gives no option at all. You are supposed to be a passive consumer. Unless you're an "artsy" type, then you can create all you want. But not if you're the technical type.
given that many of their competitors can release products (some of them cheaper/some more expensive) is really enough to fend off any monopoly charges
When Microsoft was tried for abusing their monopoly, other vendors were releasing OSes and browsers. Nonetheless, they were found to have a monopoly. The direction for abuse would be threats against App Developers directed towards other mobile platforms.
The fact that the competing products have mostly sucked so far isn't really on Apple but on their competitors' inadequacies.
No argument there.
After that Apple must be shown to somehow curtail competition through the use of their monopoly. Having 90+% marketshare wasn't the problem with MS and Windows. It was their dealings with OEMs and partners to harm Netscape and Sun that was why MS was convicted.
Right, and it's much easier to do so when you control a huge percentage of the mobile space. Again, my post was wondering if Apple would be able to resist that temptation.
Yes, when they went from the power user friendly OS X on all of their devices to declaring that the mobile space was for Apple only, and if you wanted to play you had to pay money and be blessed by them.
And yeah, I expect them to become more hostile and move the restrictive platform up the stack, locking out more developers. Boy, I'd hate to have grown up with a locked down iMac as my family computer. I'd never have gotten into software development.
Indeed, but they don't want you. At least, they don't want you as you are, but as they want you to be (getting kinda Nirvana here...)
Apple's hostility towards technical users should be well known at this point, which is a tragic turn from where they are with OS X.
While it's pathetic and sad that so few vendors can come up with something whose usability matches the iPad, it is interesting to see Apple take such a huge slice of that pie.
Last I recall they had something like 90% of the market, which is easily monopoly territory. It'll be fascinating to see if they succumb to the temptation to abuse it, or if they can stay their hand.
WebOS, at last glance, used a proprietary system and not Xorg. If they move to Wayland... well then. All they'd need to do is eliminate the proprietary IPC system and they'd have a fully open system (minus the webOS specific bits.)
No one has a problem with forks. Redhat maintains a huge fork.
The problem is that Android uses a heavily customized kernel that results in virtually nothing (certainly nothing that I am aware of) going back upstream. Unsurprisingly, vendors are loathe to port their drivers forward to the next version of the kernel (which would be easier if they were upstream.)
Actually that explicitly makes it a fork. Every distro has its own fork of the kernel. The problem is that Google has made little effort to get their changes into the kernel, and when drivers for hardware are built against their kernel they are almost completely unsalvageable and a pain in the ass to bring into the mainline.
Good to see anti-FOSS trolls are all over Slashdot these days too.
The interesting part is that if you look at how code flows between those communities, the first four benefit each other in various ways. In contrast, the Android community is entirely insular, neither aiding nor being aided by the others.