> What if you're using open source to pirate books, or movies, or music, or to scam people through spam?
The thing is, here, there's no non-infringing use of Hercules, or so it appears from their perspective. What would you run except for one of IBM's OSes? (Yeah, you *could* run other things... but come on...)
> As for the DPL, it's not a case of making lemonade, it's a case of, by adopting it, validating the whole patent troll methodology. It's akin to saying "stealing is wrong, but instead of preventing crime, we'll reduce the amount they can steal by stealing some first."
No, it's more like we'll put locks on the doors so they can't steal from *us*
> They're VERY hesitant to sue. Why do you think they have people going around claiming patent violations but never suing? They know they have nothing. Nobody believes them any more.
SCO wasn't hesitant to sue. But not suing is always cheaper, if you can get what you want without a lawsuit (see also: IBM vs. Heracles).
> IBM is under no obligation to give Turbo Hercules the right to use z/OS for purposes other than what it is licensed for, same as GPL software is under no obligation to give a proprietary/closed license to anyone.
True! But they shouldn't have gone around throwing out terms like "infringing platform" to begin with. And when reminded of their pledge (as they were in letter #2), they could at least have avoided listing those three patents that were listed on the pledge. I mean they had almost 200. Couldn't they have skipped three?
> This doesn't mean we won't figure out how to do it - just that the result won't be patentable, any more than you can patent your consciousness.
Says who? Don't give them ideas.
> The court has screwed over the patent trolls royally - how are they going to get financing for more trolls when there's so much uncertainty now about how to even decide if something is patentable?
Well, the patent lawyers are going to win (sort of: some of them *are* troll/inventor/lawyers) because of all the hours they can now bill figuring this out.
And how will they figure it out? The same way they got the door opened to ridiculous patents in the first place: litigation. They're going to cherry pick every part where the court showed ambivalence about the specific machine or transformation test and find new, cute tricks (like trying to say that the normal operation of a hard drive is a "transformation", etc.)
But I am hopeful that we can do the same. The Curry-Howard correspondence, incidentally, is great to reduce their software to a formula.
So what I would say is that the fight is going to continue. And they're not going to give up. And that's the thing: we can't win until they give up. So I wouldn't say that we won or they lost. It's more like the Supremes fumbled and we're all trying to take possession of the ball.
> Anyone can implement this with with any cms with a bit of work. It doesn't suddenly make it nefarious - it lowers the amount of repeat spamming and astroturfing, because when astroturfers realize that nobody is getting their message, they go elsewhere.
I'm sure they can, but you have a poor idea of what PJ actually censors. I have a much better idea, because I have quite a few examples.
Some things she has actually censored:
* PDF to text of the four letters between TH & IBM. * Pointing out that Red Hat is a CCIA member. * Talking about the parol evidence rule, specifically comparing what she said about it in the past to how she treats it nowadays (e.g. only a lying weasel like SCO would give out inadmissible parol evidence to what I'd paraphrase as "here's some parol evidence; but don't ask too many questions, I don't have time to explain").
There were quite a few other things, too. I can give you links if you want, but they'll all be dead pages for you. I hope you'll agree that this isn't "KKK manifesto" type material?
Incidentally, there *is* one troll post she hasn't censored. Some idiot made a rambling, off-topic post about drugs or something. It has been reported, but never got cleaned up. If *that* was what she censored, I wouldn't care.
But when she censors people who try to post relevant facts that conflict with her theories? Well, then I start to question her commitment to bringing us the whole truth. And that IS part of Groklaw's mission, right? To lay out ALL the facts and let us decide, or as she put it, "applying open-source principles to research to the extent that they apply"
I don't think she can do that while censoring the posts she has censored.
I can give you text for those entries, BTW. Her vanishing scheme has a flaw, but I can't use it too often.
> Why, it's almost as if they want to copy and paste that source code, rather than writing their own from the flow chart!
You'd almost think that the purpose of a patent was to enable people skilled in the art to make the disclosed invention, rather than for patent lawyers to make money.
> The software patent issue is a temporary problem.
The specific patents may be temporary. I don't see the problem going away unless we kill software patents at the root. I really hope we do, though!
> but they only have a "shelf life" of 10 - because 10 years from now, we'll be able to stream uncompressed 1920x1080x32bitx120hz streams in real time, using only non-lossy, non-patented compression schemes.
Are you saying that we'll be using current schemes when the patents expire and better hardware, or new schemes (which they'll patent if they can)?
> It's a repetition of what happened with Stacker. On-the-fly disk compression was obvious, somebody did it, and it looked like the world was their oyster.
Transparent compression hasn't gone anywhere that I know of. There are quite a few files transparently compressed on my hard drive.
> Remember math co-processors? They had what, a 15-year run?
Those got built into the CPUs rather than being an independent chip. There was a day when CPUs didn't HAVE an FPU. But yes, I remember. I have an 8088 sitting under the bed next to me. It's full of RAM, has a 10 MB HD, CGA graphics (!) and... yes, a math coprocessor. Pity I have nowhere to set it up.
> As more and more people switch to laptops and other portable computing devices, the home UPS market will just disappear - another victim of changes in tech.
Umm, I think that battery issues are here to stay (they have NOT scaled, historically, like our other tech). Unless they're going to put RTGs in them or something!?
I don't think my UPS is going anywhere, unless they're able to build it into the power grid (or build it into people's homes directly, perhaps, as part of a solar energy system).
> For those desktops still around in 10 years, most will probably be running a journaling file system, and software will mostly auto-save not just changes in files, but such things as what apps are open, screen layout, etc (KDE already does a great job of this if you yank the plug, and I expect it to only improve)...
Wait... 10 years from now? We already have journaling file systems! I'm using one right now. And suspend mode isn't very new, either...
> That's one good thing about software patents - we can guarantee that when the burden of any one particular patent gets too onerous, someone will figure a way to code around it.
You can't code around a lawsuit, though. And you can't stop someone from filing a lawsuit to begin with. Remember SCO? Their whole damn lawsuit was baseless, right? But it was expensive.
Who pays for that? IBM & Novel, mostly. This is one of the flaws of our legal system, really. You have to pay people even if you're right. Loser pays? Oh, sorry, SCO is bankrupt now and can't pay you...
We can handle the technical stuff, yes! But the legal stuff? They still haven't figured out how to put the damned laws into source control and they *really* would fear the day that the public has an equivalent to the CVS blame feature if they understood how source control works.
> This is why I'm against "fair compulsory licensing" - by removing the pain, it takes away the incentive to develop alternatives, it takes away the incentive to adopt alternatives, and it encourages monopolies.
That's a fair point, yes, but I hate to ask everyone to bear that pain. I'm not sure it's fair to demand that everyone be willing to be the next Rosa Parks, even though I'll be happy to cheer all the FOSS people on who work to see that we're not sent to the back of the buss by the proprietary folks.
> What about the smoking gun emails from YouTube's founders?
What about the OTHER smoking gun where Viacom uploaded videos altered to appear to be leaks?
Copyright is a matter of *permission* Nobody but Viacom knows who they gave permission to upload the videos to. And they not only could, but did give people permission to load certain videos (that would appear infringing to anyone who didn't know that). Worse, Viacom's expensive lawyers couldn't figure that out, even after performing a detailed investigation.
The problem was so bad that Viacom had to withdraw certain clips from its case after the fact. Twice.
If Viacom's own highly paid legal team can't figure it out who Viacom gave permission to upload what after spending many billable hours (at rates on the order of $300/hour), how the hell is YouTube supposed to do this millions of times a day? And if humans can't figure it out, how is Google supposed to find people who can program a computer to do it? Yes, they now do automatic matching of MAFIAA content based on the assumption that *nobody* has the right to upload it, but they're just making the best guesses they can. They don't actually know.
They can't actually know. This is a social problem, not a technical one.
> 1. Again, IBM did not attack the open source project - and the REAL issue is copyright violation, not patents.
Well, that copyright violation has been around for a long time. Didn't stop them from trumpeting the Hercules emulator in one of their Red Books, now, did it?
And the letters only talk about patents that I saw (and possibly trade secrets, depending on how you parse the words).
I'd reference it, but PJ deleted the comment putting those four letters as text. Never figured out why she didn't put those up when she did everything else, but go figure.
Whatever the case is, my beef is that they're more than willing to attack people for using open source software--in spite of whatever their pledge is interpreted to mean--if that use causes IBM trouble. Unexpected? No. I just want people to realize that we can't trust any company when we get between them and money. I don't hate IBM by any stretch of the imagination. Rob Weir is a pretty decent guy (and a good wine maker), after all, and they've done a lot of good lately (as well as a few things I don't like).
> 2. You don't "trumpet the fact that software patents are bad news" by pushing the "Defensive Patent License" - that just creates a second set of patent trolls.
No, the Munich thing was doing the trumpeting. The DPL is a way to make lemonade (albeit a rather bitter lemonade) if the courts or lawmakers decide to hand us a bunch of rotten lemons. We don't very well have to worry about the DPL-using trolls (which are set up to protect FOSS) if they don't allow anyone to patent software, now, do we?
I think the worry is, after what some senators wrote (one of them being Sen. Patrick Leahy) that patent "reform" is needed. They want their software patents and we need to work to stop them.
> 3. To a certain extent we ARE immune - or at least, we have antibodies. Patents that don't generate enough money to cover their enforcement costs and still make a profit are a financial drain.
Yeah, but people like Microsoft who hate Linux or other free software for encroaching on their profits won't hesitate to sue. Or worse, they'll SCO it up and sue the businesses who use free software.
And I'm not willing to just jettison everyone trying to use free software at work. You said before that we should respect licenses, even the evil ones... so how is a FOSS programmer supposed to get a job if no business can use free software to make money? And won't we get forced to choose between having a job and putting food on the table and accepting worthless EULAs that heap tons of legal restrictions most of us barely understand on us 40 page downs at a time?
Sure, if you go into law as a career you might be able to understand the EULAs (and avoid them). But that kind of sucks for us, the people who are supposed to be able to *build* FOSS. Or do I have to work as a garbageman and do FOSS in my free time?
> Here's something to think about: How are you going to obtain a patent on the algorithms running on a quantum computer when even observing them, never mind describing them, will cause them to change?
I'm not sure you understand how observation affects a quantum system? The quantum algorithms (e.g. Shor's algorithm) can certainly be described. What we don't know (until we measure it) is the state of the qbits. And we arrange them so that they are very likely to give us the answer we want when we measure them. They could just submit approximately the information on that Wikipedia page and patent that (after translating everything to a plurality of legalese).
Even if it was like that, the answer would still be "by making a law which allows it to be patented." When have lawmakers ever been worried about how technology actually works? Sen. Ted "Tubes" Stevens springs to mind...
It's not like they currently require source code for any of the existing software patents, you know. I've read a few of the infamous ones
> Also, Muller's not against software patents. All the DPL does is create even more problems. It's stupid. Let me rephrase that - the Defensive Patent License is REALLY stupid. It's like trying to fix a site with too much flash by adding even more flash, or trying to clean up spaghetti code by adding even more spaghetti code.
No, see, that's a strategy for dealing with them if they become reality (just like the GPL helps us deal with the reality of an out-of-control copyright system). Is it horrible to make contingency plans early? When courts, like the one in Germany, create software patents out of thin air, we may get forced to defend ourselves in strange ways.
Is it a good fix? Hell no! But that's the point: that's why we don't want software patents at all. But if we get them crammed down our throats (and we very well might...), we'd best be prepared, no?
Or would it be better if we said "we're screwed!" and all FOSS closed up shop the minute software patents came into being? Given that it's exactly what some people (e.g. Microsoft) want, I refuse to play into their hands.
But don't take my word for it. You can email Florian and discuss it yourself. He's a nice guy, seriously, in spite of the bad press.
Oh, and the last name thing? It's supposed to be a "u" with an umlaut. That gets changed to a "ue" in English. But most people screw it up, so he gets a lot of misspellings. I know, because he explained that to me.
> Groklaw is not about building an online community, not in the conventional sense that we think of online communities. It's about collecting legal info and putting it out there, and c'est tout!
Well, how can you gather legal information if you're willing to censor legally relevant things you don't want people to mention?
So the point isn't that the tools are inherently evil, it's that the use is abusive and manipulative (seriously, I would ban her or anyone else as a mod for doing these things on any one of several forums where I've been supreme forum mod).
Now, you can say that she doesn't know better, but I've told her all this. She SHOULD know better. She considers anyone who brings up the issue a "troll". Same if you disagree with her, no matter how well-sourced your statements.
> Now for the changing users to "anonymous" - that's what several content management systems do when a user is removed from the system. It's SOP. You even get a warning that all their comments will be assigned to the anonymous account.
Yeah, but it's a *terrible* system. WHY do they need to do that? Normally, you put a [BANNED] status under the username. Far less confusing. And you can't tell me they can't change it, because Mathfox customized Groklaw to begin with. I'll give her more of a pass on this, it being a default, though.
Oh, and I'm still pretty sure that you can lock an account without deleting it. Which doesn't really lead to any confusion.
> Of course, the better way is simply not to delete comments; for a site like slashdot, that's ok - slashdot doesn't make any claim to fame except as a "news for nerds" site.
Yeah, but she *already has* the ability to edit comments. Instead of hitting the delete button (which *doesn't* delete the comment; instead making it invisible to anyone but you--this is what Mathfox customized, IIRC). So instead of doing that, she just has to wipe out the entire comment text and replace it with [DELETED]. That's it. No software change. Just being a lot less willing to use extreme powers (which I, personally, haven't used on people who taught me dozens of new racial epithets) for disagreeing with someone would help.
> Really, people do tend to take it too seriously. Case in point - pudge and I go at it once in a while. And yet, we don't take it personally - to the contrary, if he's ever in town, he's more than welcome to stop by, because I think what he's done here is pretty neat. Same thing with most of my hundred-plus freaks (I'm trying to collect the whole set).
There I can agree with you in part. But look at her and Florian. Or Jay. Everything they do, she finds something to complain about. I mean, would you feel the same way about pudge if he posted a story once a week saying "Tomhudson the LIAR: Wrong Again!" whenever you found a mistake and said, "oops, I meant to say x"? Or if he accused you of being a socialist infiltrator out to destroy capitalism because you have a Democrat somewhere on your list of fans?
> There's at least one user who everyone is sure hates my guts (and vice versa) because over the years we've had lots of very public disagreements - in private, it's the exact opposite. Why? Because we both understand that the other person is sincere in their beliefs and isn't trying to milk it for some personal advantage - unlike lobbyists, who will milk it for all it's worth.
Yeah, but FYI, I've been in contact with Florian. He's actually sincere as well. Now, maybe you're worried because he deals with politicians and has to be pragmatic about achieving his goals (seriously, they see software patents as a purely economic matter; so they only care about money, not freedom). But he's actually quite reasonable and sincere.
> I would have told him as much - that it was directed solely at Turbo Hercules and their attempt to get IBMs customers to violate their license with IBM, so relax, don't worry about it, it has nothing to do with Jay Maynard whatsoever.
How so? The lower court wanted to force patents to be put through the "particular machine or transformation" test. The Supremes said, well, sure THIS patent is too abstract... but we're not sure about that test. So we'll make a narrow ruling and discourage people from using that test, which could be used to eliminate software patents wholesale, unless they can start convincing the courts to buy trivial "transformations" like the hard drives doing their thing.
In short, nobody got what they wanted, but we ended up with less than we started with. Seriously. Read Patently-O or one of the sites where they love patents. They hated the test imposed by the lower court, but they're somewhat relieved that this decision wasn't as bad as they feared it could be.
> So why does Mueller continue to lie and spread fud? It's what he does - he's a lobbyist. Not a programmer.
Believe it or not, he's not out to destroy FOSS. Yes, PJ hates his guts. But that doesn't make him a bad person. She hates almost everyone who disagrees with her, after all.
You can read my submissions supporting Groklaw in the past (I have, what? Maybe 10 accepted SCO stories with Groklaw as a source? I don't remember any more.). I have trumpeted her site quite loudly for several years and cheered SCO's slow demise. I hope you're not going to lump me in with shills & astro-turfers. I honestly question how many of those there are, because PJ lumps *anyone* who disagrees with her in with them, or so it seems. I've also fought against Microsoft on OOXML and the rest and supported IBM's Rob Weir when discussing how much OOXML sucks ass (seriously, he's a good guy, his blog also has some information on wine making, if you're into that). If I'm some kind of shill who hates Groklaw or IBM for no reason, well, I must have been replaced by a doppleganger recently. Here are a fewlinks that go allllll the way back to 2004, when hardly anybody knew who the hell Groklaw was and show me agreeing with and promoting the site. I've read her site daily since the RU days and remember when she had a hard time surviving a Slashdotting, before she moved to iBiblio. I think I contributed one or two of those early, hard-to-survive Slashdottings, for that matter.
That support is in the past, I'm afraid. PJ is a huge jerk, mostly in private, and you'll probably only see that if you disagree with her. I can give you her real email (it's close to the public email, pj@groklaw.net, which has more filtering), if you want me to prove that I've been in contact. I don't think it's a big deal to put that out here because she's more than capable of switching it if the spammers get hold of it.
She's had way more than three fallings-out, incidentally. But most of the people feel like they're the only ones. AllParadox is a good example because he wrote stories for Groklaw once upon a time. It's not like he's some nobody who lurked for a little while. It's more like almost anyone who worked with her closely got driven out. Except for Mathfox, I guess.
There are quite a few people she's parted ways with. Heck, ESR may be next on that list for saying that she "jumped the shark" when she attacked his friend, Jay Maynard (who got booted from Groklaw, even though he has nothing to do with TurboHercules the company; even if he's a friend of some of the founders thereof). His crime? Saying he felt threatened when IBM called the QPL-licensed Hercules emulator an "infringing platform." He's not Darl McBride. He's not a party to the EU complaint. He's a guy who dresses up in a Tron outfit and writes an emulator, for crying out loud. We're not talking "conspirator" here. But PJ sees "conspiracy" everywhere these days. I can't blame her, after SCO, but I won't agree, either.
Sadly, now, apparently, anyone who refers to "AllParadox" risks having their post deleted. If past complaints by former Groklaw regulars are any guide, anyone who naively trys to re-post a deleted post, or innocently inquires of PJ about the problem, also risks having their Groklaw account deleted.
Incidentally, I notice that the article takes a jab at Canon, which is breaking their code and talking about the price of ink. I remember a very different story Slashdot ran a while back which shows just how absurd things are right now.
If anyone here does a lot of printing, I'd say to look up continuous flow systems. People buy gallons of ink and feed them into the cartridge. Yeah, sometimes they have problems, but they get a new print cartridge when they *need* one, not when it's empty.
>> They're doing this to follow the letter of the law.
> And it's amazing so many people are in favor of violating the law.
I'm not sure how you got from what I said to what you said, particularly when you agreed that, if they do what everyone is saying they'll do and reclassify the service, that "they facially have that authority."
Of course it'd be subject to legal challenge, though. Everything is. As far as taking a wait-and-see, though, the point is well taken.
> Shrug. They didn't say it, but the logical path is undeniable.
I'm not sure how it can "undeniable" be unconstitutional when they didn't want to touch that issue, given that they almost always base their decision on the easiest-to-justify reason. If it was truly undeniable, they'd have gone to that reason first, rather than refusing to address it. As it was, they relied on a lack of jurisdiction, and they said something to the effect of Comcast's argument being "more persuasive" than the FCC's. We're not quite in "undeniable" territory here. They could have ruled on those grounds, but didn't.
The real test will be if they uphold a challenge on those grounds later. If they do, then I'll agree with you.
> Why does this strike me that this is more about a bunch of so-called, "developers," who are getting all huffy about not being able to easily whack out Whack-A-Mole and Fart apps for the i(Pad|Touch|Phone), than about a true fight for a "right" to develop as you please?
Huh? Those are the one kind of app that Apple isn't restricting. There are plenty of them. Most people are miffed that Apple allows these apps, but won't let you show political cartoons (unless you win a Pulitzer). And they didn't just restrict Flash, they restricted everything but Objective C and a few other languages. A bit of overkill, no?
Feel free to argue against what imaginary idiots are arguing for, though. It's a lot easier than actually addressing the real reasons why people don't like this. I don't like it because it's the latest in a long line of dick moves by Apple. I don't care if they're going after Adobe. I care that they're being dicks. That's why I don't do business with them.
> You may not like those reasons, and you may think those reasons are stupid, but I don't really see a lot in the way of grounds to disbelieve that those are the main reasons. To boil it down to what's probably the biggest reason: Apple *wants* developers to develop apps specifically for the iPhone/iPad because they believe they'll get better apps that way.
Well, I see plenty of reasons to believe that those aren't the real reasons, and that the real reasons start and end with $$$.
It's a walled garden and they don't want anyone making a way to climb over the wall (so no Flash, emulators, etc.). I don't give a crap about Adobe. "Astroturf"? Leave me out of that. I wouldn't care if Adobe curled up and died and you can find plenty of folks here saying the same thing. Apple fanboys are legendary, though. I don't care which company wins. I only care about making sure that I don't lose. I haven't seen anyone saying how great Flash is, so you're arguing against an opponent you invented. If not, please at least give us some quotes that demonstrate these motivations you made up on the spot. There are tons of comments here, it shouldn't be hard to show that more than one person is actually claiming that Flash is perfect and wonderful, right?
As for complaining about Apple's lock-down, we DID complain about all of those things! And I still am! Finally, they're also saying that you can't use any tool but those in a small set. That stops you from using a lot more than Flash. It also prevents you from making anything new. No, I won't buy their damn phone. Ever. But the iPad is eating into the netbook market and that worries me. Yeah, yeah, they're not a monopoly... yet. But Apple is big enough that I see no point in waiting to worry about that when they're pulling off a bunch of total dick moves that would make Microsoft proud. And yes, I've read the Comes v. Microsoft documents, so I know what kind of crap Microsoft pulled to get their monopoly. In short, I have every confidence that they could become one and I don't want to let it happen.
But being anti-Apple because of the restrictions they put on what you can do with their iPhones (and thanks to the EULA, they really are *their* phones, not yours), does NOT make me pro-Adobe.
The Court didn't rule on constitutional grounds at all. The ruling was based on a lack of FCC jurisdiction because they thought that the FCC did not properly apply its rulemaking authority. That has nothing whatsoever to do with constitutional claims. Maybe you could point out that Comcast raised a Due Process claim, but the Court didn't bother addressing it (they don't have to; they would only have to address that if they had found in the FCC's favor, in which case they would have spent all their time explaining why they didn't buy Comcast's argument).
But don't take my word for it, read the Court's opinion [PDF] for yourself. If you find anything indicating that the Court (not just Comcast) thought this was unconstitutional, please quote it.
> It is NOT LEGAL. It VIOLATES OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. You're not getting it. This is simply unacceptable. Unelected bureaucrats have no right to make laws to tell us what to do. Period.
They have never made laws. They make rules. And the rulemaking authority is delegated to them by Congress. I realize that the difference between "law" and "rule" may seem arbitrary, but that's how it works. What they exceeded was their rulemaking authority. If you can find anything in the Court's opinion about "violat[ing] our civil rights" please quote it, because I believe that the opinion says nothing of the sort. That's probably what you want it to say, but it doesn't actually say that anywhere. While Comcast did indeed claim that "the Commission’s adjudicatory action was procedurally flawed because it circumvented the rulemaking requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act and violated the notice requirements of the Due Process Clause," the Court only addressed the matter of jurisdiction. As the Court wrote, "We begin—and end—with Comcast’s jurisdictional challenge." In short, they didn't decide that issue. At all.
But yes, the FCC was ruled to have exceeded its rulemaking authority. But you're wrong if you think they can't do anything about that. They're doing this to follow the letter of the law. And yes, they DO have authority to reclassify services because they're the ones who reclassified the service to begin with.
You appear to think that, just because the way they did it overstepped their bounds that there's no way for them to do it without overstepping their bounds. I don't believe that is correct. The Court did NOT say they couldn't do this. The Court never addressed what they're doing now, because they're doing it in response to the ruling, so the Court never gave its opinion of what they're doing now.
Any appeal to "they just lost in court!" is therefore irrelevant to the matter at hand.
> Of course we're automating as much minimum wage work as possible. Minimum wage laws make it more and more feasible to replace actual workers with automata. People are expensive. They constantly incur payroll expense, are inconsistent, get sick, complain. Machines don't.
Hate to reply twice, but I skipped this part.
Thing is, we actually end up replacing skills more than we replace people. So we end up with unskilled folks plus machines rather than skilled labor.
Finally, machines have their own troubles. They certainly do break down (or I wouldn't have a job), but you're right that they're less trouble as a whole. Then again, when a machine goes bad, it can screw up everything run through it consistently. That really sucks, especially when you can't really afford to do proper repairs. Sometimes I think the whole damn plant is held together with duct tape.
> Can you get as much done without him? No. Can you get by without him? Almost assuredly.
There has to be at least one person to do the work. Management sure as hell isn't going to do it.
And we're already at a skeleton crew. So no, we couldn't get work done with one less person. We have deadlines, too. If you miss the shipping time, you're hosed. Our customers don't care about the details, but they do care if their order is late. We barely make production on time as it is some days.
> If it *did* become a primary way of developing applications, apple would add features to the iPhone, and no one would use them, because adobe hadn't yet got round to adding support to flash. They don't want that situation.
They also don't want people making applications for the iPhone that can bypass the App Store.
The restrictions on flash he gives are post-hoc justification and, frankly, a load of crap.
There is one main reason why they ban Flash, emulators, cross-compilers and the like: they would let developers bypass the App Store and Apple would no longer get a piece of every application sale. Anything they say to justify that is pure PR, because any other explanation fails to predict their actions. We either accept a load of convoluted BS technical explanations, or one simple explanation: that Apple knows where the money is and wants to keep it.
Just watch. Every time someone finds a way to make applications that bypasses the App Store, they'll find a reason to ban it. It has nothing to do with frameworks, openness or user experience. They'll never admit to their real goal, and they won't care that they never bothered to enforce whatever restriction they came up with until such time as it becomes a way to bypass the App Store.
But it's an easy prediction to monitor. I'll eat my words the day Apple permits people to make iPhone applications without having to go through the App Store, unless they're forced into that by a court order or other law.
> That's not railing against the internet? > the pope is clearly railing against the internet,
I asked where the Pope "rails against [...] transparency" and you spend your entire post claiming it's an attack on the Internet.
Then you tell me to learn to read.
> Again, if the passage is faithful to the essence of the Pope's words, which are not placed in TFA verbatim,
Two problems with this. One is that there IS a direct quote of the Pope (which I helpfully quoted for you...). Yes, there were other quotes in the article (from an aide of some kind, who *supported* transparency even though he said it was painful), but if you actually read what I quoted, you will find that those are the Pope's words.
Second, you say "if the passage is faithful to the essence of the Pope's words" like this article is the only source we have. If you spent even a minute or two looking around this thread, you'd have found this link to the entire speech (hint: it's in a highly-moderated comment and it was here on Monday April 26, @02:10PM, about a day before you posted).
Here's that "attack on the Internet" BTW:
How is it possible today to return to faces? I tried to show the road in my third encyclical. It passes through that "caritas in veritate" that shines upon the face of Christ. Love in truth constitutes a "great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized" ("Caritas in Veritate," no. 9). The media can become a factor in humanization "not only when, thanks to technological development, they increase the possibilities of communicating information, but above all when they are geared towards a vision of the person and the common good that reflects truly universal values" (no. 73). This demands that they "focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity" (ibid.). Only under those conditions can the epochal journey that we are undertaking become something rich and fertile with new opportunities. Without fear we want to set out upon the digital sea embracing the unrestricted navigation with the same passion that for 2,000 years has steered the barque of the Church. More than with technical resources, although necessary, we want to qualify ourselves dwelling in this universe too with a believing heart, that contributes to giving a soul to the uninterrupted communicational flow of the Internet.
So they don't hate it, they want to improve it. Even though I focused on whether they were "railing on [...] transparency" I think this is a fair point as well. Now, this is a criticism of the Internet, but not the kind it's being made out to be. They want to see it improve, not to ban it or something.
> Please read and at least attempt to understand comment before replying, kthxbye.
Words fail me given that you spent your whole post arguing against something I didn't even argue in the original post, namely that it is an "attack on the Internet" (which I pointed out in this post is of questionable accuracy in itself). Worse, you didn't bother to consult any of the other sources (which quote the whole damn speech) that can be found in this thread, but instead pointed out to bits of TFA that can be twisted to support your view.
So, exactly when did you attempt to understand anything with respect to this story? You clearly didn't bother to look anything up. You attacked my post for something I didn't argue. And you ignored easily-found means of supporting your point (possibly because the full speech doesn't really support your point).
> Yes some cops abuse their powers, but they do that anyway. That's a separate battle.
And yet, making it so that we can sue them if they don't use those powers is such a great incentive for them not to abuse them?
Did you even read that Slashdot story about the guy who got tased at the border for asking questions (they gave him two contradictory orders, tased him for not following both, then charged him with resisting arrest!)?
Riddle me this: what part of this law is a good idea? You seem to think that our understaffed immigration enforcement (which, I remind you, is this bad because it's unfunded and forced to pay for itself by making legal immigration an expensive, royal PITA) can just have thousands of people dumped on it and that, rather than focusing on the illegal immigrants who are running drugs and joining gangs, that we need to round up anyone who looks Mexican (so far, nobody has defined anything else that's likely to give them a suspicion that people are here illegally) and make them produce papers.
So, how is it a separate battle to point out that this is ripe for abuse? And don't you realize that this is a feel-good measure that's partly an election stunt by an otherwise unknown replacement governor (who came into power when Napolitano was appointed by Obama to head the DHS) who never really cared about immigration before?
Finally, no. They can perform searches within 200 miles (or something like that) of the border. The ACLU even had a campaign complaining about that, if you've forgotten, calling it the "Constitution-free zone."
Slashdot Mirror
> What if you're using open source to pirate books, or movies, or music, or to scam people through spam?
The thing is, here, there's no non-infringing use of Hercules, or so it appears from their perspective. What would you run except for one of IBM's OSes? (Yeah, you *could* run other things... but come on...)
> As for the DPL, it's not a case of making lemonade, it's a case of, by adopting it, validating the whole patent troll methodology. It's akin to saying "stealing is wrong, but instead of preventing crime, we'll reduce the amount they can steal by stealing some first."
No, it's more like we'll put locks on the doors so they can't steal from *us*
> They're VERY hesitant to sue. Why do you think they have people going around claiming patent violations but never suing? They know they have nothing. Nobody believes them any more.
SCO wasn't hesitant to sue. But not suing is always cheaper, if you can get what you want without a lawsuit (see also: IBM vs. Heracles).
> IBM is under no obligation to give Turbo Hercules the right to use z/OS for purposes other than what it is licensed for, same as GPL software is under no obligation to give a proprietary/closed license to anyone.
True! But they shouldn't have gone around throwing out terms like "infringing platform" to begin with. And when reminded of their pledge (as they were in letter #2), they could at least have avoided listing those three patents that were listed on the pledge. I mean they had almost 200. Couldn't they have skipped three?
> This doesn't mean we won't figure out how to do it - just that the result won't be patentable, any more than you can patent your consciousness.
Says who? Don't give them ideas.
> The court has screwed over the patent trolls royally - how are they going to get financing for more trolls when there's so much uncertainty now about how to even decide if something is patentable?
Well, the patent lawyers are going to win (sort of: some of them *are* troll/inventor/lawyers) because of all the hours they can now bill figuring this out.
And how will they figure it out? The same way they got the door opened to ridiculous patents in the first place: litigation. They're going to cherry pick every part where the court showed ambivalence about the specific machine or transformation test and find new, cute tricks (like trying to say that the normal operation of a hard drive is a "transformation", etc.)
But I am hopeful that we can do the same. The Curry-Howard correspondence, incidentally, is great to reduce their software to a formula.
So what I would say is that the fight is going to continue. And they're not going to give up. And that's the thing: we can't win until they give up. So I wouldn't say that we won or they lost. It's more like the Supremes fumbled and we're all trying to take possession of the ball.
> Anyone can implement this with with any cms with a bit of work. It doesn't suddenly make it nefarious - it lowers the amount of repeat spamming and astroturfing, because when astroturfers realize that nobody is getting their message, they go elsewhere.
I'm sure they can, but you have a poor idea of what PJ actually censors. I have a much better idea, because I have quite a few examples.
Some things she has actually censored:
* PDF to text of the four letters between TH & IBM.
* Pointing out that Red Hat is a CCIA member.
* Talking about the parol evidence rule, specifically comparing what she said about it in the past to how she treats it nowadays (e.g. only a lying weasel like SCO would give out inadmissible parol evidence to what I'd paraphrase as "here's some parol evidence; but don't ask too many questions, I don't have time to explain").
There were quite a few other things, too. I can give you links if you want, but they'll all be dead pages for you. I hope you'll agree that this isn't "KKK manifesto" type material?
Incidentally, there *is* one troll post she hasn't censored. Some idiot made a rambling, off-topic post about drugs or something. It has been reported, but never got cleaned up. If *that* was what she censored, I wouldn't care.
But when she censors people who try to post relevant facts that conflict with her theories? Well, then I start to question her commitment to bringing us the whole truth. And that IS part of Groklaw's mission, right? To lay out ALL the facts and let us decide, or as she put it, "applying open-source principles to research to the extent that they apply"
I don't think she can do that while censoring the posts she has censored.
I can give you text for those entries, BTW. Her vanishing scheme has a flaw, but I can't use it too often.
> Why, it's almost as if they want to copy and paste that source code, rather than writing their own from the flow chart!
You'd almost think that the purpose of a patent was to enable people skilled in the art to make the disclosed invention, rather than for patent lawyers to make money.
> The software patent issue is a temporary problem.
The specific patents may be temporary. I don't see the problem going away unless we kill software patents at the root. I really hope we do, though!
> but they only have a "shelf life" of 10 - because 10 years from now, we'll be able to stream uncompressed 1920x1080x32bitx120hz streams in real time, using only non-lossy, non-patented compression schemes.
Are you saying that we'll be using current schemes when the patents expire and better hardware, or new schemes (which they'll patent if they can)?
> It's a repetition of what happened with Stacker. On-the-fly disk compression was obvious, somebody did it, and it looked like the world was their oyster.
Transparent compression hasn't gone anywhere that I know of. There are quite a few files transparently compressed on my hard drive.
> Remember math co-processors? They had what, a 15-year run?
Those got built into the CPUs rather than being an independent chip. There was a day when CPUs didn't HAVE an FPU. But yes, I remember. I have an 8088 sitting under the bed next to me. It's full of RAM, has a 10 MB HD, CGA graphics (!) and... yes, a math coprocessor. Pity I have nowhere to set it up.
> As more and more people switch to laptops and other portable computing devices, the home UPS market will just disappear - another victim of changes in tech.
Umm, I think that battery issues are here to stay (they have NOT scaled, historically, like our other tech). Unless they're going to put RTGs in them or something!?
I don't think my UPS is going anywhere, unless they're able to build it into the power grid (or build it into people's homes directly, perhaps, as part of a solar energy system).
> For those desktops still around in 10 years, most will probably be running a journaling file system, and software will mostly auto-save not just changes in files, but such things as what apps are open, screen layout, etc (KDE already does a great job of this if you yank the plug, and I expect it to only improve) ...
Wait... 10 years from now? We already have journaling file systems! I'm using one right now. And suspend mode isn't very new, either...
> That's one good thing about software patents - we can guarantee that when the burden of any one particular patent gets too onerous, someone will figure a way to code around it.
You can't code around a lawsuit, though. And you can't stop someone from filing a lawsuit to begin with. Remember SCO? Their whole damn lawsuit was baseless, right? But it was expensive.
Who pays for that? IBM & Novel, mostly. This is one of the flaws of our legal system, really. You have to pay people even if you're right. Loser pays? Oh, sorry, SCO is bankrupt now and can't pay you...
We can handle the technical stuff, yes! But the legal stuff? They still haven't figured out how to put the damned laws into source control and they *really* would fear the day that the public has an equivalent to the CVS blame feature if they understood how source control works.
> This is why I'm against "fair compulsory licensing" - by removing the pain, it takes away the incentive to develop alternatives, it takes away the incentive to adopt alternatives, and it encourages monopolies.
That's a fair point, yes, but I hate to ask everyone to bear that pain. I'm not sure it's fair to demand that everyone be willing to be the next Rosa Parks, even though I'll be happy to cheer all the FOSS people on who work to see that we're not sent to the back of the buss by the proprietary folks.
> What about the smoking gun emails from YouTube's founders?
What about the OTHER smoking gun where Viacom uploaded videos altered to appear to be leaks?
Copyright is a matter of *permission* Nobody but Viacom knows who they gave permission to upload the videos to. And they not only could, but did give people permission to load certain videos (that would appear infringing to anyone who didn't know that). Worse, Viacom's expensive lawyers couldn't figure that out, even after performing a detailed investigation.
The problem was so bad that Viacom had to withdraw certain clips from its case after the fact. Twice.
If Viacom's own highly paid legal team can't figure it out who Viacom gave permission to upload what after spending many billable hours (at rates on the order of $300/hour), how the hell is YouTube supposed to do this millions of times a day? And if humans can't figure it out, how is Google supposed to find people who can program a computer to do it? Yes, they now do automatic matching of MAFIAA content based on the assumption that *nobody* has the right to upload it, but they're just making the best guesses they can. They don't actually know.
They can't actually know. This is a social problem, not a technical one.
> 1. Again, IBM did not attack the open source project - and the REAL issue is copyright violation, not patents.
Well, that copyright violation has been around for a long time. Didn't stop them from trumpeting the Hercules emulator in one of their Red Books, now, did it?
And the letters only talk about patents that I saw (and possibly trade secrets, depending on how you parse the words).
I'd reference it, but PJ deleted the comment putting those four letters as text. Never figured out why she didn't put those up when she did everything else, but go figure.
Whatever the case is, my beef is that they're more than willing to attack people for using open source software--in spite of whatever their pledge is interpreted to mean--if that use causes IBM trouble. Unexpected? No. I just want people to realize that we can't trust any company when we get between them and money. I don't hate IBM by any stretch of the imagination. Rob Weir is a pretty decent guy (and a good wine maker), after all, and they've done a lot of good lately (as well as a few things I don't like).
> 2. You don't "trumpet the fact that software patents are bad news" by pushing the "Defensive Patent License" - that just creates a second set of patent trolls.
No, the Munich thing was doing the trumpeting. The DPL is a way to make lemonade (albeit a rather bitter lemonade) if the courts or lawmakers decide to hand us a bunch of rotten lemons. We don't very well have to worry about the DPL-using trolls (which are set up to protect FOSS) if they don't allow anyone to patent software, now, do we?
I think the worry is, after what some senators wrote (one of them being Sen. Patrick Leahy) that patent "reform" is needed. They want their software patents and we need to work to stop them.
> 3. To a certain extent we ARE immune - or at least, we have antibodies. Patents that don't generate enough money to cover their enforcement costs and still make a profit are a financial drain.
Yeah, but people like Microsoft who hate Linux or other free software for encroaching on their profits won't hesitate to sue. Or worse, they'll SCO it up and sue the businesses who use free software.
And I'm not willing to just jettison everyone trying to use free software at work. You said before that we should respect licenses, even the evil ones... so how is a FOSS programmer supposed to get a job if no business can use free software to make money? And won't we get forced to choose between having a job and putting food on the table and accepting worthless EULAs that heap tons of legal restrictions most of us barely understand on us 40 page downs at a time?
Sure, if you go into law as a career you might be able to understand the EULAs (and avoid them). But that kind of sucks for us, the people who are supposed to be able to *build* FOSS. Or do I have to work as a garbageman and do FOSS in my free time?
> Here's something to think about: How are you going to obtain a patent on the algorithms running on a quantum computer when even observing them, never mind describing them, will cause them to change?
I'm not sure you understand how observation affects a quantum system? The quantum algorithms (e.g. Shor's algorithm) can certainly be described. What we don't know (until we measure it) is the state of the qbits. And we arrange them so that they are very likely to give us the answer we want when we measure them. They could just submit approximately the information on that Wikipedia page and patent that (after translating everything to a plurality of legalese).
Even if it was like that, the answer would still be "by making a law which allows it to be patented." When have lawmakers ever been worried about how technology actually works? Sen. Ted "Tubes" Stevens springs to mind...
It's not like they currently require source code for any of the existing software patents, you know. I've read a few of the infamous ones
> Video: H.264 (open)
Well, except for the MPEG-LA thing... But I get your point.
> Also, Muller's not against software patents. All the DPL does is create even more problems. It's stupid. Let me rephrase that - the Defensive Patent License is REALLY stupid. It's like trying to fix a site with too much flash by adding even more flash, or trying to clean up spaghetti code by adding even more spaghetti code.
No, see, that's a strategy for dealing with them if they become reality (just like the GPL helps us deal with the reality of an out-of-control copyright system). Is it horrible to make contingency plans early? When courts, like the one in Germany, create software patents out of thin air, we may get forced to defend ourselves in strange ways.
Is it a good fix? Hell no! But that's the point: that's why we don't want software patents at all. But if we get them crammed down our throats (and we very well might...), we'd best be prepared, no?
Or would it be better if we said "we're screwed!" and all FOSS closed up shop the minute software patents came into being? Given that it's exactly what some people (e.g. Microsoft) want, I refuse to play into their hands.
But don't take my word for it. You can email Florian and discuss it yourself. He's a nice guy, seriously, in spite of the bad press.
Oh, and the last name thing? It's supposed to be a "u" with an umlaut. That gets changed to a "ue" in English. But most people screw it up, so he gets a lot of misspellings. I know, because he explained that to me.
> Groklaw is not about building an online community, not in the conventional sense that we think of online communities. It's about collecting legal info and putting it out there, and c'est tout!
Well, how can you gather legal information if you're willing to censor legally relevant things you don't want people to mention?
So the point isn't that the tools are inherently evil, it's that the use is abusive and manipulative (seriously, I would ban her or anyone else as a mod for doing these things on any one of several forums where I've been supreme forum mod).
Now, you can say that she doesn't know better, but I've told her all this. She SHOULD know better. She considers anyone who brings up the issue a "troll". Same if you disagree with her, no matter how well-sourced your statements.
> Now for the changing users to "anonymous" - that's what several content management systems do when a user is removed from the system. It's SOP. You even get a warning that all their comments will be assigned to the anonymous account.
Yeah, but it's a *terrible* system. WHY do they need to do that? Normally, you put a [BANNED] status under the username. Far less confusing. And you can't tell me they can't change it, because Mathfox customized Groklaw to begin with. I'll give her more of a pass on this, it being a default, though.
Oh, and I'm still pretty sure that you can lock an account without deleting it. Which doesn't really lead to any confusion.
> Of course, the better way is simply not to delete comments; for a site like slashdot, that's ok - slashdot doesn't make any claim to fame except as a "news for nerds" site.
Yeah, but she *already has* the ability to edit comments. Instead of hitting the delete button (which *doesn't* delete the comment; instead making it invisible to anyone but you--this is what Mathfox customized, IIRC). So instead of doing that, she just has to wipe out the entire comment text and replace it with [DELETED]. That's it. No software change. Just being a lot less willing to use extreme powers (which I, personally, haven't used on people who taught me dozens of new racial epithets) for disagreeing with someone would help.
> Really, people do tend to take it too seriously. Case in point - pudge and I go at it once in a while. And yet, we don't take it personally - to the contrary, if he's ever in town, he's more than welcome to stop by, because I think what he's done here is pretty neat. Same thing with most of my hundred-plus freaks (I'm trying to collect the whole set).
There I can agree with you in part. But look at her and Florian. Or Jay. Everything they do, she finds something to complain about. I mean, would you feel the same way about pudge if he posted a story once a week saying "Tomhudson the LIAR: Wrong Again!" whenever you found a mistake and said, "oops, I meant to say x"? Or if he accused you of being a socialist infiltrator out to destroy capitalism because you have a Democrat somewhere on your list of fans?
> There's at least one user who everyone is sure hates my guts (and vice versa) because over the years we've had lots of very public disagreements - in private, it's the exact opposite. Why? Because we both understand that the other person is sincere in their beliefs and isn't trying to milk it for some personal advantage - unlike lobbyists, who will milk it for all it's worth.
Yeah, but FYI, I've been in contact with Florian. He's actually sincere as well. Now, maybe you're worried because he deals with politicians and has to be pragmatic about achieving his goals (seriously, they see software patents as a purely economic matter; so they only care about money, not freedom). But he's actually quite reasonable and sincere.
> I would have told him as much - that it was directed solely at Turbo Hercules and their attempt to get IBMs customers to violate their license with IBM, so relax, don't worry about it, it has nothing to do with Jay Maynard whatsoever.
The only way
> This court ruling was a win.
How so? The lower court wanted to force patents to be put through the "particular machine or transformation" test. The Supremes said, well, sure THIS patent is too abstract... but we're not sure about that test. So we'll make a narrow ruling and discourage people from using that test, which could be used to eliminate software patents wholesale, unless they can start convincing the courts to buy trivial "transformations" like the hard drives doing their thing.
In short, nobody got what they wanted, but we ended up with less than we started with. Seriously. Read Patently-O or one of the sites where they love patents. They hated the test imposed by the lower court, but they're somewhat relieved that this decision wasn't as bad as they feared it could be.
> So why does Mueller continue to lie and spread fud? It's what he does - he's a lobbyist. Not a programmer.
You mean like how he lobbied the EU against software patents? And he did program a lot more in the C64 days, but he has credits in Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness, Diablo I and Starcraft I's German version, though it says something about translation so I'm not sure about the details.
Believe it or not, he's not out to destroy FOSS. Yes, PJ hates his guts. But that doesn't make him a bad person. She hates almost everyone who disagrees with her, after all.
You can read my submissions supporting Groklaw in the past (I have, what? Maybe 10 accepted SCO stories with Groklaw as a source? I don't remember any more.). I have trumpeted her site quite loudly for several years and cheered SCO's slow demise. I hope you're not going to lump me in with shills & astro-turfers. I honestly question how many of those there are, because PJ lumps *anyone* who disagrees with her in with them, or so it seems. I've also fought against Microsoft on OOXML and the rest and supported IBM's Rob Weir when discussing how much OOXML sucks ass (seriously, he's a good guy, his blog also has some information on wine making, if you're into that). If I'm some kind of shill who hates Groklaw or IBM for no reason, well, I must have been replaced by a doppleganger recently. Here are a few links that go allllll the way back to 2004, when hardly anybody knew who the hell Groklaw was and show me agreeing with and promoting the site. I've read her site daily since the RU days and remember when she had a hard time surviving a Slashdotting, before she moved to iBiblio. I think I contributed one or two of those early, hard-to-survive Slashdottings, for that matter.
That support is in the past, I'm afraid. PJ is a huge jerk, mostly in private, and you'll probably only see that if you disagree with her. I can give you her real email (it's close to the public email, pj@groklaw.net, which has more filtering), if you want me to prove that I've been in contact. I don't think it's a big deal to put that out here because she's more than capable of switching it if the spammers get hold of it.
She's had way more than three fallings-out, incidentally. But most of the people feel like they're the only ones. AllParadox is a good example because he wrote stories for Groklaw once upon a time. It's not like he's some nobody who lurked for a little while. It's more like almost anyone who worked with her closely got driven out. Except for Mathfox, I guess.
There are quite a few people she's parted ways with. Heck, ESR may be next on that list for saying that she "jumped the shark" when she attacked his friend, Jay Maynard (who got booted from Groklaw, even though he has nothing to do with TurboHercules the company; even if he's a friend of some of the founders thereof). His crime? Saying he felt threatened when IBM called the QPL-licensed Hercules emulator an "infringing platform." He's not Darl McBride. He's not a party to the EU complaint. He's a guy who dresses up in a Tron outfit and writes an emulator, for crying out loud. We're not talking "conspirator" here. But PJ sees "conspiracy" everywhere these days. I can't blame her, after SCO, but I won't agree, either.
You can read AllParadox's account of his departure here, incidentally.
> My grocery store censors my scotch selection
I'll consider that an analogous situation when you have to jailbreak a shopping cart in order to shop at any store but that one.
(For the record, the last Apple device I owned was an Apple ][ GS.)
Incidentally, I notice that the article takes a jab at Canon, which is breaking their code and talking about the price of ink. I remember a very different story Slashdot ran a while back which shows just how absurd things are right now.
If anyone here does a lot of printing, I'd say to look up continuous flow systems. People buy gallons of ink and feed them into the cartridge. Yeah, sometimes they have problems, but they get a new print cartridge when they *need* one, not when it's empty.
Try putting http in front of your URLs next time.
The protocol section of a URL is not optional, your browser just makes assumptions for you.
>> They're doing this to follow the letter of the law.
> And it's amazing so many people are in favor of violating the law.
I'm not sure how you got from what I said to what you said, particularly when you agreed that, if they do what everyone is saying they'll do and reclassify the service, that "they facially have that authority."
Of course it'd be subject to legal challenge, though. Everything is. As far as taking a wait-and-see, though, the point is well taken.
> Shrug. They didn't say it, but the logical path is undeniable.
I'm not sure how it can "undeniable" be unconstitutional when they didn't want to touch that issue, given that they almost always base their decision on the easiest-to-justify reason. If it was truly undeniable, they'd have gone to that reason first, rather than refusing to address it. As it was, they relied on a lack of jurisdiction, and they said something to the effect of Comcast's argument being "more persuasive" than the FCC's. We're not quite in "undeniable" territory here. They could have ruled on those grounds, but didn't.
The real test will be if they uphold a challenge on those grounds later. If they do, then I'll agree with you.
> Why does this strike me that this is more about a bunch of so-called, "developers," who are getting all huffy about not being able to easily whack out Whack-A-Mole and Fart apps for the i(Pad|Touch|Phone), than about a true fight for a "right" to develop as you please?
Huh? Those are the one kind of app that Apple isn't restricting. There are plenty of them. Most people are miffed that Apple allows these apps, but won't let you show political cartoons (unless you win a Pulitzer). And they didn't just restrict Flash, they restricted everything but Objective C and a few other languages. A bit of overkill, no?
Feel free to argue against what imaginary idiots are arguing for, though. It's a lot easier than actually addressing the real reasons why people don't like this. I don't like it because it's the latest in a long line of dick moves by Apple. I don't care if they're going after Adobe. I care that they're being dicks. That's why I don't do business with them.
> You may not like those reasons, and you may think those reasons are stupid, but I don't really see a lot in the way of grounds to disbelieve that those are the main reasons. To boil it down to what's probably the biggest reason: Apple *wants* developers to develop apps specifically for the iPhone/iPad because they believe they'll get better apps that way.
Well, I see plenty of reasons to believe that those aren't the real reasons, and that the real reasons start and end with $$$.
It's a walled garden and they don't want anyone making a way to climb over the wall (so no Flash, emulators, etc.). I don't give a crap about Adobe. "Astroturf"? Leave me out of that. I wouldn't care if Adobe curled up and died and you can find plenty of folks here saying the same thing. Apple fanboys are legendary, though. I don't care which company wins. I only care about making sure that I don't lose. I haven't seen anyone saying how great Flash is, so you're arguing against an opponent you invented. If not, please at least give us some quotes that demonstrate these motivations you made up on the spot. There are tons of comments here, it shouldn't be hard to show that more than one person is actually claiming that Flash is perfect and wonderful, right?
As for complaining about Apple's lock-down, we DID complain about all of those things! And I still am! Finally, they're also saying that you can't use any tool but those in a small set. That stops you from using a lot more than Flash. It also prevents you from making anything new. No, I won't buy their damn phone. Ever. But the iPad is eating into the netbook market and that worries me. Yeah, yeah, they're not a monopoly... yet. But Apple is big enough that I see no point in waiting to worry about that when they're pulling off a bunch of total dick moves that would make Microsoft proud. And yes, I've read the Comes v. Microsoft documents, so I know what kind of crap Microsoft pulled to get their monopoly. In short, I have every confidence that they could become one and I don't want to let it happen.
But being anti-Apple because of the restrictions they put on what you can do with their iPhones (and thanks to the EULA, they really are *their* phones, not yours), does NOT make me pro-Adobe.
> yah, this particular rule was unconstitional,
The Court didn't rule on constitutional grounds at all. The ruling was based on a lack of FCC jurisdiction because they thought that the FCC did not properly apply its rulemaking authority. That has nothing whatsoever to do with constitutional claims. Maybe you could point out that Comcast raised a Due Process claim, but the Court didn't bother addressing it (they don't have to; they would only have to address that if they had found in the FCC's favor, in which case they would have spent all their time explaining why they didn't buy Comcast's argument).
But don't take my word for it, read the Court's opinion [PDF] for yourself. If you find anything indicating that the Court (not just Comcast) thought this was unconstitutional, please quote it.
> It is NOT LEGAL. It VIOLATES OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. You're not getting it. This is simply unacceptable. Unelected bureaucrats have no right to make laws to tell us what to do. Period.
They have never made laws. They make rules. And the rulemaking authority is delegated to them by Congress. I realize that the difference between "law" and "rule" may seem arbitrary, but that's how it works. What they exceeded was their rulemaking authority. If you can find anything in the Court's opinion about "violat[ing] our civil rights" please quote it, because I believe that the opinion says nothing of the sort. That's probably what you want it to say, but it doesn't actually say that anywhere. While Comcast did indeed claim that "the Commission’s adjudicatory action was procedurally flawed because it circumvented the rulemaking requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act and violated the notice requirements of the Due Process Clause," the Court only addressed the matter of jurisdiction. As the Court wrote, "We begin—and end—with Comcast’s jurisdictional challenge." In short, they didn't decide that issue. At all.
But yes, the FCC was ruled to have exceeded its rulemaking authority. But you're wrong if you think they can't do anything about that. They're doing this to follow the letter of the law. And yes, they DO have authority to reclassify services because they're the ones who reclassified the service to begin with.
You appear to think that, just because the way they did it overstepped their bounds that there's no way for them to do it without overstepping their bounds. I don't believe that is correct. The Court did NOT say they couldn't do this. The Court never addressed what they're doing now, because they're doing it in response to the ruling, so the Court never gave its opinion of what they're doing now.
Any appeal to "they just lost in court!" is therefore irrelevant to the matter at hand.
> Of course we're automating as much minimum wage work as possible. Minimum wage laws make it more and more feasible to replace actual workers with automata. People are expensive. They constantly incur payroll expense, are inconsistent, get sick, complain. Machines don't.
Hate to reply twice, but I skipped this part.
Thing is, we actually end up replacing skills more than we replace people. So we end up with unskilled folks plus machines rather than skilled labor.
Finally, machines have their own troubles. They certainly do break down (or I wouldn't have a job), but you're right that they're less trouble as a whole. Then again, when a machine goes bad, it can screw up everything run through it consistently. That really sucks, especially when you can't really afford to do proper repairs. Sometimes I think the whole damn plant is held together with duct tape.
> Can you get as much done without him? No. Can you get by without him? Almost assuredly.
There has to be at least one person to do the work. Management sure as hell isn't going to do it.
And we're already at a skeleton crew. So no, we couldn't get work done with one less person. We have deadlines, too. If you miss the shipping time, you're hosed. Our customers don't care about the details, but they do care if their order is late. We barely make production on time as it is some days.
> If it *did* become a primary way of developing applications, apple would add features to the iPhone, and no one would use them, because adobe hadn't yet got round to adding support to flash. They don't want that situation.
They also don't want people making applications for the iPhone that can bypass the App Store.
The restrictions on flash he gives are post-hoc justification and, frankly, a load of crap.
There is one main reason why they ban Flash, emulators, cross-compilers and the like: they would let developers bypass the App Store and Apple would no longer get a piece of every application sale. Anything they say to justify that is pure PR, because any other explanation fails to predict their actions. We either accept a load of convoluted BS technical explanations, or one simple explanation: that Apple knows where the money is and wants to keep it.
Just watch. Every time someone finds a way to make applications that bypasses the App Store, they'll find a reason to ban it. It has nothing to do with frameworks, openness or user experience. They'll never admit to their real goal, and they won't care that they never bothered to enforce whatever restriction they came up with until such time as it becomes a way to bypass the App Store.
But it's an easy prediction to monitor. I'll eat my words the day Apple permits people to make iPhone applications without having to go through the App Store, unless they're forced into that by a court order or other law.
> That's not railing against the internet?
> the pope is clearly railing against the internet,
I asked where the Pope "rails against [...] transparency" and you spend your entire post claiming it's an attack on the Internet.
Then you tell me to learn to read.
> Again, if the passage is faithful to the essence of the Pope's words, which are not placed in TFA verbatim,
Two problems with this. One is that there IS a direct quote of the Pope (which I helpfully quoted for you...). Yes, there were other quotes in the article (from an aide of some kind, who *supported* transparency even though he said it was painful), but if you actually read what I quoted, you will find that those are the Pope's words.
Second, you say "if the passage is faithful to the essence of the Pope's words" like this article is the only source we have. If you spent even a minute or two looking around this thread, you'd have found this link to the entire speech (hint: it's in a highly-moderated comment and it was here on Monday April 26, @02:10PM, about a day before you posted).
Here's that "attack on the Internet" BTW:
So they don't hate it, they want to improve it. Even though I focused on whether they were "railing on [...] transparency" I think this is a fair point as well. Now, this is a criticism of the Internet, but not the kind it's being made out to be. They want to see it improve, not to ban it or something.
> Please read and at least attempt to understand comment before replying, kthxbye.
Words fail me given that you spent your whole post arguing against something I didn't even argue in the original post, namely that it is an "attack on the Internet" (which I pointed out in this post is of questionable accuracy in itself). Worse, you didn't bother to consult any of the other sources (which quote the whole damn speech) that can be found in this thread, but instead pointed out to bits of TFA that can be twisted to support your view.
So, exactly when did you attempt to understand anything with respect to this story? You clearly didn't bother to look anything up. You attacked my post for something I didn't argue. And you ignored easily-found means of supporting your point (possibly because the full speech doesn't really support your point).
> Yes some cops abuse their powers, but they do that anyway. That's a separate battle.
And yet, making it so that we can sue them if they don't use those powers is such a great incentive for them not to abuse them?
Did you even read that Slashdot story about the guy who got tased at the border for asking questions (they gave him two contradictory orders, tased him for not following both, then charged him with resisting arrest!)?
Riddle me this: what part of this law is a good idea? You seem to think that our understaffed immigration enforcement (which, I remind you, is this bad because it's unfunded and forced to pay for itself by making legal immigration an expensive, royal PITA) can just have thousands of people dumped on it and that, rather than focusing on the illegal immigrants who are running drugs and joining gangs, that we need to round up anyone who looks Mexican (so far, nobody has defined anything else that's likely to give them a suspicion that people are here illegally) and make them produce papers.
So, how is it a separate battle to point out that this is ripe for abuse? And don't you realize that this is a feel-good measure that's partly an election stunt by an otherwise unknown replacement governor (who came into power when Napolitano was appointed by Obama to head the DHS) who never really cared about immigration before?
Finally, no. They can perform searches within 200 miles (or something like that) of the border. The ACLU even had a campaign complaining about that, if you've forgotten, calling it the "Constitution-free zone."