The fundamental purpose of Copyright law is to allow a creator to control how their works are disseminated.
At least in the US, the purpose of copyright is "to promote the arts and useful sciences". That publishers often profit from it is a side effect, not the ultimate goal. (At least, that was the idea until publishers started buying Congressmen).
Obviously, Apple wants you to buy their hardware if you want to run their software, and they're perfectly within their rights to do so.
Copyright does not to equal absolute control over how a product is used after you sell it. I see no moral issue buying a Mac mini, sticking Linux on it, and either using the OS X install discs on a PC or selling them to someone else. If that's illegal, it's not because of copyright. (Again, using the traditional meaning of copyright as the *right* to *copy*, rather than its mutated form of "whatever Disney/Sony/Apple says has the force of law").
Well, Apple used to support writing Cocoa apps in Java.
Which they realized was a lousy idea because of the large impedance mismatch between Java and ObjC. Java has to know everything at compile time, which makes bridging to other languages a pain; for example you have to explicitly create stubs for every method that could possibly be called. More dynamic languages like Python and Ruby don't have those limitations, and are much easier to support.
Anyone doing video filters and page transitions with an application that uses Apple's Core Image library will see the effects in real-time due to their being offloaded onto the video card. This works in all Intel Macs except the MacBook and Mac mini
The integrated graphics in the MacBook and mini do support hardware CoreImage acceleration, although obviously performance won't be as good as with a discrete GPU.
Cut out the middleman and make it like the Mac. This applies to many things, but installing apps in particular. Both Linux and Windows try to hide the complexity of installations using package managers and wizards. OS X *removes* the complexity; you download the file, decompress it, and there is no step 3. (Well, sometimes there is a step 3 because of disk images, which are lousy for usability and not needed in the majority of cases).
If you're running OS X, Apple expect you to be running it on a Mac and price appropriately.
True, but irrelevant. Microsoft prices the Xbox on the expectation that I'll buy lots of games for it, rather than use it as a media center PC. NBC "prices" broadcast TV at $0 on the expectation that I'll watch the commercials. There's no legal or ethical obligation to use a product as the manufacturer "expects".
but for now everyone running OSX x86 other than on Apple hardware has pinched it.
Not necessarily: one could buy an Intel Mac, wipe the hard drive, and use the OS X install DVD on a PC. This would violate the EULA, but probably not violate actual copyright.
The move to PowerPC was Apple's big mistake. That was the point at which Apple market share dropped, and it never came back.
I'd say Windows 95 was a bigger factor, since it was "good enough" compared to Windows 3.1 which wasn't.
Copeland was actually a good operating system
Sort of. The foundation was decent, but it went for backwards compatibility which gave it severe limitations, like running all UI apps in a single kernel process.
Copeland (the original "MacOS 8") actually shipped to some developers. It was almost ready to go.
As I recall, some developers got a "Release 0" of Copland, but it was incomplete and very unstable. Amelio killed it because there was no way it was going to ship in a reasonable timeframe.
Acquiring NeXT delayed the release of a new OS by several years; it took much longer to get NeXT code onto the Apple platform than Jobs said it would.
Not really. Rhapsody was up and running fairly quickly. OS X itself took longer because of the development of new pieces like Carbon and Quartz.
Also, you tend to have to recompile with the latest version of XCode as major OS revisions are released, or your apps will have stability problems, meaning that you can't just keep using the same binaries for long periods of time.
That's not been the case in my experience. I run several apps that haven't been updated since 10.0 or 10.1 with no trouble. It is true that going the other way can be an issue; often if you build a project on 10.z you'll have to tweak some settings to get it to run on 10.(z-1) or earlier.
Apple's offerings are NOT more expensive than comparably equipped, say, Dells.
I have to disagree, at least with laptops. Last month I configured a Dell Inspiron for a friend with a 1.66GHz Core 2, 15" 1680x1050 display, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD, DVD burner, and 256MB Radeon X1400 for $970. (No special discount other than the universal "save $250 off $1200"). This is roughly comparable to (actually slightly better than) the low-end MacBook Pro which at $2000 is over twice as much. Sure, the MBP looks prettier and runs OS X and has goodies like iSight and the backlit keyboard, but a $1000 difference is a tough sell to anyone who isn't already a Mac fan. If I didn't already have an MBP, I'd have been tempted order one for myself and stick Ubuntu on it.
The issue is that they do not have a low end el cheapo to compete with Dell's $500 junk.
The $600 mini is decent value for a SFF box, and if you specifically want a small laptop the MacBooks aren't too far out of line. But having to spend $2k to get a 15" screen is just silly.
But, no they will never dump the hardware side; that's their bread and butter.
But how could you think that this is better for *programmers*?
In many cases, software and programmers are complements, not substitutes. What would the demand for web developers be if Apache and PHP cost $1000 per server?
It's not clear to me how the OSS movement affects the economy.
It benefits the economy, just as a cheap, abundant, renewable and nonpolluting energy source would benefit the economy. Specific industries might be harmed, but society as a whole benefits. To argue otherwise is the inverse of the broken window fallacy. And in the case of software, I'd argue that developers are helped more than harmed. What would the demand for web sites be if Apache and PHP cost $1000/seat?
You were talking about dollar values versus human life. Fuck that. Get help.
Get a clue. It's done all the time, and it's absolutely necessary. A strictly enforced speed limit of 25mph or lower everywhere would save thousands of lives a year. Why don't we do it?
Parent post to me illustrates one of the festering sores on the fundamental fabric of modern western society: The reduction of everything, including life itself, to monetary value.
What society has ever placed no limits on the expenses they would bear trying to preserve a single life? If there ever was such a society, it wouldn't last long. Yes, your life and mine have finite values. If I were kidnapped by a supervillian who demanded a billion dollars from my government or he would execute me, they would refuse and rightly so. (Even if the deal would remain secret so as not to encourage future kidnappers).
No, no they aren't. If you actually believed that you would be dedicating every bit of your time and resources towards feeding starving people in Africa or an equally life-supporting cause.
The only problem with SUVs are the people that just use the to drive to work and home.
That entirely depends on how far away home and work are. A 2 mile commute in an SUV is less harmful than a 50 mile commute in a Prius. That's why I support a higher gas tax rather than fuel-economy standards: it attacks the problem directly, rather than through an inaccurate proxy.
Some of them (like SWT) even use the native widgets when they are available, so that the app behaves and looks like its native platform.
Having native widgets is a far cry from behaving like a native app. I use Eclipse on Mac OS X, and I'm glad that it's available, but there's no mistaking it for a "real" Mac app.
For players who are there to play a game of skill for fun it sucks when a hope and a wish player catches their 5% draw on the river knocking out the good players.
Yes, but 95% of the time they don't, so you *want* them to call.
The idiots out there make it suck for the real players. "Players" not "Gamblers".
I don't understand your definitions then. Successful "players" make money by making correct decisions, and by having their opponents make incorrect decisions. Idiots make lots of incorrect decisions, thereby increasing the profits of good players. Yes, sometimes they make stupid plays that end up winning, but you want them at your table.
Overseas casinos aren't monitored, and thus probably cheat.
In some ways it's harder for online casinos to cheat, because you can keep a perfect record of your history and analyze it for statistical discrepancies. There are guys with databases of millions of poker hands they've played. If the cards were non-random, they'd have found it.
They also return absolutely nothing of value to the US for the money being sent to them.
Except that people seem to enjoy playing. But the preferences of mere mortals are generally of little importance to those who would be all-powerful central planners.
I hope this passes, I think it will be good for the country to keep more money here to avoid contributing to the national debt, keep people from being cheated, and avoid contributing to future debt repayment and erosion of the value of the dollar.
This argument works equally well (i.e. poorly) for banning all spending on foreign goods and services.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as Bush/Cheney "don't torture" ?
The difference is we know that's a lie, and pointing out that it's a lie won't get you thrown in prison.
The fundamental purpose of Copyright law is to allow a creator to control how their works are disseminated.
At least in the US, the purpose of copyright is "to promote the arts and useful sciences". That publishers often profit from it is a side effect, not the ultimate goal. (At least, that was the idea until publishers started buying Congressmen).
Obviously, Apple wants you to buy their hardware if you want to run their software, and they're perfectly within their rights to do so.
Copyright does not to equal absolute control over how a product is used after you sell it. I see no moral issue buying a Mac mini, sticking Linux on it, and either using the OS X install discs on a PC or selling them to someone else. If that's illegal, it's not because of copyright. (Again, using the traditional meaning of copyright as the *right* to *copy*, rather than its mutated form of "whatever Disney/Sony/Apple says has the force of law").
Secondly Encrypting some vulnerable application help prevent future viruses from infecting some key applications
Malware writer: "Darn, I can't easily infect the Spotlight indexer. Guess I'll just have to infect the kernel instead".
I am actually happy to hear this it shows that Apple care about security
Unfortunately this isn't the kind of security that's beneficial to actual users.
(Nifty retro website btw).
Well, Apple used to support writing Cocoa apps in Java.
Which they realized was a lousy idea because of the large impedance mismatch between Java and ObjC. Java has to know everything at compile time, which makes bridging to other languages a pain; for example you have to explicitly create stubs for every method that could possibly be called. More dynamic languages like Python and Ruby don't have those limitations, and are much easier to support.
Anyone doing video filters and page transitions with an application that uses Apple's Core Image library will see the effects in real-time due to their being offloaded onto the video card. This works in all Intel Macs except the MacBook and Mac mini
The integrated graphics in the MacBook and mini do support hardware CoreImage acceleration, although obviously performance won't be as good as with a discrete GPU.
Make it like Windows.
Cut out the middleman and make it like the Mac. This applies to many things, but installing apps in particular. Both Linux and Windows try to hide the complexity of installations using package managers and wizards. OS X *removes* the complexity; you download the file, decompress it, and there is no step 3. (Well, sometimes there is a step 3 because of disk images, which are lousy for usability and not needed in the majority of cases).
If you're running OS X, Apple expect you to be running it on a Mac and price appropriately.
True, but irrelevant. Microsoft prices the Xbox on the expectation that I'll buy lots of games for it, rather than use it as a media center PC. NBC "prices" broadcast TV at $0 on the expectation that I'll watch the commercials. There's no legal or ethical obligation to use a product as the manufacturer "expects".
but for now everyone running OSX x86 other than on Apple hardware has pinched it.
Not necessarily: one could buy an Intel Mac, wipe the hard drive, and use the OS X install DVD on a PC. This would violate the EULA, but probably not violate actual copyright.
The move to PowerPC was Apple's big mistake. That was the point at which Apple market share dropped, and it never came back.
I'd say Windows 95 was a bigger factor, since it was "good enough" compared to Windows 3.1 which wasn't.
Copeland was actually a good operating system
Sort of. The foundation was decent, but it went for backwards compatibility which gave it severe limitations, like running all UI apps in a single kernel process.
Copeland (the original "MacOS 8") actually shipped to some developers. It was almost ready to go.
As I recall, some developers got a "Release 0" of Copland, but it was incomplete and very unstable. Amelio killed it because there was no way it was going to ship in a reasonable timeframe.
Acquiring NeXT delayed the release of a new OS by several years; it took much longer to get NeXT code onto the Apple platform than Jobs said it would.
Not really. Rhapsody was up and running fairly quickly. OS X itself took longer because of the development of new pieces like Carbon and Quartz.
Also, you tend to have to recompile with the latest version of XCode as major OS revisions are released, or your apps will have stability problems, meaning that you can't just keep using the same binaries for long periods of time.
That's not been the case in my experience. I run several apps that haven't been updated since 10.0 or 10.1 with no trouble. It is true that going the other way can be an issue; often if you build a project on 10.z you'll have to tweak some settings to get it to run on 10.(z-1) or earlier.
Apple's offerings are NOT more expensive than comparably equipped, say, Dells.
I have to disagree, at least with laptops. Last month I configured a Dell Inspiron for a friend with a 1.66GHz Core 2, 15" 1680x1050 display, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD, DVD burner, and 256MB Radeon X1400 for $970. (No special discount other than the universal "save $250 off $1200"). This is roughly comparable to (actually slightly better than) the low-end MacBook Pro which at $2000 is over twice as much. Sure, the MBP looks prettier and runs OS X and has goodies like iSight and the backlit keyboard, but a $1000 difference is a tough sell to anyone who isn't already a Mac fan. If I didn't already have an MBP, I'd have been tempted order one for myself and stick Ubuntu on it.
The issue is that they do not have a low end el cheapo to compete with Dell's $500 junk.
The $600 mini is decent value for a SFF box, and if you specifically want a small laptop the MacBooks aren't too far out of line. But having to spend $2k to get a 15" screen is just silly.
But, no they will never dump the hardware side; that's their bread and butter.
Agreed.
But how could you think that this is better for *programmers*?
In many cases, software and programmers are complements, not substitutes. What would the demand for web developers be if Apache and PHP cost $1000 per server?
It's not clear to me how the OSS movement affects the economy.
It benefits the economy, just as a cheap, abundant, renewable and nonpolluting energy source would benefit the economy. Specific industries might be harmed, but society as a whole benefits. To argue otherwise is the inverse of the broken window fallacy. And in the case of software, I'd argue that developers are helped more than harmed. What would the demand for web sites be if Apache and PHP cost $1000/seat?
There are lots of great uses for virtual machines, but you don't need one to surf MySpace and YouTube, send e-mail, download porn
Considering the frequency of trojans and spyware on porn sites, that's an excellent use for a VM.
However, as an Apple shareholder, I applaud this move by Microsoft. Keep it up, guys!
Between this and the Zune fiasco, I'm starting to wonder if there are Apple double agents in Microsoft's business strategy groups.
There's not a courtroom in the country that will accept it as evidence
Which he said. It's not evidence in the legal sense, but it is evidence in the Bayesian sense.
You were talking about dollar values versus human life. Fuck that. Get help.
Get a clue. It's done all the time, and it's absolutely necessary. A strictly enforced speed limit of 25mph or lower everywhere would save thousands of lives a year. Why don't we do it?
Parent post to me illustrates one of the festering sores on the fundamental fabric of modern western society: The reduction of everything, including life itself, to monetary value.
What society has ever placed no limits on the expenses they would bear trying to preserve a single life? If there ever was such a society, it wouldn't last long. Yes, your life and mine have finite values. If I were kidnapped by a supervillian who demanded a billion dollars from my government or he would execute me, they would refuse and rightly so. (Even if the deal would remain secret so as not to encourage future kidnappers).
Yes, yes they are.
No, no they aren't. If you actually believed that you would be dedicating every bit of your time and resources towards feeding starving people in Africa or an equally life-supporting cause.
You are a horrible human being.
Perhaps. I'm still right.
The only problem with SUVs are the people that just use the to drive to work and home.
That entirely depends on how far away home and work are. A 2 mile commute in an SUV is less harmful than a 50 mile commute in a Prius. That's why I support a higher gas tax rather than fuel-economy standards: it attacks the problem directly, rather than through an inaccurate proxy.
That is going to seriously impede my productivity. Along similar lines I recommend Gunroar.
Having native widgets is a far cry from behaving like a native app. I use Eclipse on Mac OS X, and I'm glad that it's available, but there's no mistaking it for a "real" Mac app.
For players who are there to play a game of skill for fun it sucks when a hope and a wish player catches their 5% draw on the river knocking out the good players.
Yes, but 95% of the time they don't, so you *want* them to call.
The idiots out there make it suck for the real players. "Players" not "Gamblers".
I don't understand your definitions then. Successful "players" make money by making correct decisions, and by having their opponents make incorrect decisions. Idiots make lots of incorrect decisions, thereby increasing the profits of good players. Yes, sometimes they make stupid plays that end up winning, but you want them at your table.
But I also think gambling with borrowed, unsecured funds should not be allowed without the expressed consent of the lender.
Most credit card companies already deny transfers to gambling sites.
Overseas casinos aren't monitored, and thus probably cheat.
In some ways it's harder for online casinos to cheat, because you can keep a perfect record of your history and analyze it for statistical discrepancies. There are guys with databases of millions of poker hands they've played. If the cards were non-random, they'd have found it.
They also return absolutely nothing of value to the US for the money being sent to them.
Except that people seem to enjoy playing. But the preferences of mere mortals are generally of little importance to those who would be all-powerful central planners.
I hope this passes, I think it will be good for the country to keep more money here to avoid contributing to the national debt, keep people from being cheated, and avoid contributing to future debt repayment and erosion of the value of the dollar.
This argument works equally well (i.e. poorly) for banning all spending on foreign goods and services.