I was kidding, but the idea isn't ridiculous. The reservoir is unlikely to be located near the surface, so you've basically got a long, thin drill hole going down a long way. Even if you could get the nuke right down to the sea bed by the hole (unlikely, since there's oil spewing out of it) the crater wouldn't go down to the reservoir. Instead, the pressure on the sea bed would likely collapse the drill hole.
You wouldn't want to just chuck a nuke down there and see what happened, but figuring out the best place to detonate it shouldn't be too hard.
That's a pretty paranoid reading. The agreement mentions the application and the program, but says nothing about the source code. Since you can't actually run the app unmodified on anything other than an Apple device anyway, I don't see why there's a problem. If you port it to another device it's not the same app. The intention seems to be very clearly that Apple doesn't want people trying to do an end run around the App Store, not that they're trying to prevent people from porting their iPhone apps to other platforms. If they actually sue someone for doing so then I take it back, but they haven't done that, despite there being several examples of iPhone apps being ported to Android and vice versa.
Yes, the wording is a little bit ambiguous, but it's far less so than many, many other legal agreements, including quite a few actual laws. Yes, the agreement has some parts, that Apple enforces, that aren't great. But I don't think this is one of them, at least not the way you claim.
"when you develop an app for the iPhone you have to almost completely re-write it for every other platform discouraging developers to port to other OSes."
Not if you follow Apple's own coding recommendations. You have to rewrite the GUI code and OS interaction stuff but that's it. All the backend logic etc. should port just fine, so long as your target platform can run C or C++ code.
No, you can't just write some code and have it run on anything, as is. That's kind of Apple's point: they want everyone to make sure anything the user sees is customized for the device.
Can you point out where it says that? The agreement actually has a specific item in it that specifies if you use any FOSS you agree to satisfy the requirements of the particular FOSS license.
There was a time when the SDK was under NDA and so you weren't allowed to discuss it in public, but that time is past, except for the bleeding edge beta releases. There are lots of publicly viewable discussion groups, including one hosted by Apple, and many, many tutorials (that would be publishing code).
No need to use C++ exclusively, just write your algorithm in it and use one of the wrapping methods to make it available in Python. You get C speed and Python ease.
You can do the same thing in MatLab, of course, but I found MatLab wrapping a lot more work than even by-hand wrapping for Python, and there are a variety of tools to help out with the latter, all the way up to fully automatic.
Only if it uses mostly the functions that are coded in C. If you, god forbid, need to write something of your own, particularly if it includes loops, you're hooped.
That's not maximizing the amount of law breaking, that's enforcing the law, as written. What you're objecting to is failing to NOT enforce the law. I agree the spirit of the law should be considered, but let's call a spade a spade: the meter maid is not "maximiz[ing] the amount of regulation breaking."
"Look at traffic wardens who are supposed to be enforcing parking regulations, but are rewarded based on the number of tickets issued. So now it becomes in their interest to maximize the amount of regulation breaking so they can hand out tickets."
Okay... how does a meter maid maximize the amount of illegal parking? Pull down the signs? Here there's a law that says if the sign isn't legible the ticket is invalid. And if the maid ever got caught....
"MPEG-LA doesn't want to see the issue end up in court, because they'd probably lose."
I agree that if the MPEG-LA tried to enforce some sort of not-for-commercial-use license on a video camera they'd probably lose. That suggests that the patents are not actually at fault, but rather what the MPEG-LA/manufacturer writes in their manual is inaccurate. Even then, that statement isn't particularly specific - lots of products come with similar disclaimers so the manufacturer can duck some responsibility of you do something stupid.
Still, go Pirate Party! Hey, I can vote for them next election!
My point is, there's no collaboration. There isn't any reason to use competition laws.
If Apple or Amazon got together and said all right, we're going to sell books for $15.99 and we're going to pay you $10.99, that would be worthy of a complaint.
What they've done is, independently, say okay, we'll buy books from you for whatever you want to charge, add 30%, and resell them. We've only got two conditions - you can't sell to anyone else cheaper than you sell to us (a pretty standard arrangement practiced on the scale of nations or at the supermarket every day) and your price + 30% has to end in.99 (which is exactly the same as the app store and a less restrictive version of the music store's tiers).
If there's any collusion it's between the publishers, not Apple and Amazon, because the publishers are setting the prices.
Except you have it backwards. In this case Apple is the RETAILER. You are buying something from Apple, which is supplied by the publisher.
Apple is requiring that their suppliers (the publishers) charge them the same or less than they charge everyone else. In my example you are Apple and the grocery store is the book publisher.
The relationship is a little bit more complicated in that Apple applies a fixed markup so they don't absorb any fluctuations in supplier pricing, and they specify the price after markup, but the supplier-retailer-end customer relationship is still the same.
Requiring that a supplier provide you with product for the same or lower price as they supply it to everyone else is not price fixing.
Suppose we both went to the grocery store and picked up identical bars of chocolate. Going through the cash they charged me $0.99. When you came to the cashier she rang yours up as $1.29. Are you going to complete the transaction? Are you guilty of price fixing?
Hey, I've got one of those. A motorola razr. I stopped using it when I got my iPhone. Want it? Mine is even unlocked, so the USB port sort of does something, unlike the usual carrier locked ones.
Slashdot Mirror
I was kidding, but the idea isn't ridiculous. The reservoir is unlikely to be located near the surface, so you've basically got a long, thin drill hole going down a long way. Even if you could get the nuke right down to the sea bed by the hole (unlikely, since there's oil spewing out of it) the crater wouldn't go down to the reservoir. Instead, the pressure on the sea bed would likely collapse the drill hole.
You wouldn't want to just chuck a nuke down there and see what happened, but figuring out the best place to detonate it shouldn't be too hard.
Nuke it. Drop one down into the hole and blow it closed.
That's a pretty paranoid reading. The agreement mentions the application and the program, but says nothing about the source code. Since you can't actually run the app unmodified on anything other than an Apple device anyway, I don't see why there's a problem. If you port it to another device it's not the same app. The intention seems to be very clearly that Apple doesn't want people trying to do an end run around the App Store, not that they're trying to prevent people from porting their iPhone apps to other platforms. If they actually sue someone for doing so then I take it back, but they haven't done that, despite there being several examples of iPhone apps being ported to Android and vice versa.
Yes, the wording is a little bit ambiguous, but it's far less so than many, many other legal agreements, including quite a few actual laws. Yes, the agreement has some parts, that Apple enforces, that aren't great. But I don't think this is one of them, at least not the way you claim.
"when you develop an app for the iPhone you have to almost completely re-write it for every other platform discouraging developers to port to other OSes."
Not if you follow Apple's own coding recommendations. You have to rewrite the GUI code and OS interaction stuff but that's it. All the backend logic etc. should port just fine, so long as your target platform can run C or C++ code.
No, you can't just write some code and have it run on anything, as is. That's kind of Apple's point: they want everyone to make sure anything the user sees is customized for the device.
Can you point out where it says that? The agreement actually has a specific item in it that specifies if you use any FOSS you agree to satisfy the requirements of the particular FOSS license.
There was a time when the SDK was under NDA and so you weren't allowed to discuss it in public, but that time is past, except for the bleeding edge beta releases. There are lots of publicly viewable discussion groups, including one hosted by Apple, and many, many tutorials (that would be publishing code).
No need to use C++ exclusively, just write your algorithm in it and use one of the wrapping methods to make it available in Python. You get C speed and Python ease.
You can do the same thing in MatLab, of course, but I found MatLab wrapping a lot more work than even by-hand wrapping for Python, and there are a variety of tools to help out with the latter, all the way up to fully automatic.
Gnuplot can do quite a lot too.
Now, Matplotlib, in Python, was designed to clone the MatLab plotting facilities. Then someone tied it into vtk..
Only if it uses mostly the functions that are coded in C. If you, god forbid, need to write something of your own, particularly if it includes loops, you're hooped.
MatLab is just fine for engineers to use... until they decide they want to write applications or reusable code. With GUIs. Shudder.
You better not be crunching numbers that size in MatLab.
So it clones Matlab very well then.
That's not maximizing the amount of law breaking, that's enforcing the law, as written. What you're objecting to is failing to NOT enforce the law. I agree the spirit of the law should be considered, but let's call a spade a spade: the meter maid is not "maximiz[ing] the amount of regulation breaking."
"Look at traffic wardens who are supposed to be enforcing parking regulations, but are rewarded based on the number of tickets issued. So now it becomes in their interest to maximize the amount of regulation breaking so they can hand out tickets."
Okay... how does a meter maid maximize the amount of illegal parking? Pull down the signs? Here there's a law that says if the sign isn't legible the ticket is invalid. And if the maid ever got caught....
"Mutually Assured Patent Destruction."
Yes, I look forward to the day when all electronics are banned for sale or import.
Distributing your video in an MPEG-LA format and shooting it in one are two very different things.
They'd be hard pressed to even prove you did so.
"MPEG-LA doesn't want to see the issue end up in court, because they'd probably lose."
I agree that if the MPEG-LA tried to enforce some sort of not-for-commercial-use license on a video camera they'd probably lose. That suggests that the patents are not actually at fault, but rather what the MPEG-LA/manufacturer writes in their manual is inaccurate. Even then, that statement isn't particularly specific - lots of products come with similar disclaimers so the manufacturer can duck some responsibility of you do something stupid.
Still, go Pirate Party! Hey, I can vote for them next election!
My point is, there's no collaboration. There isn't any reason to use competition laws.
If Apple or Amazon got together and said all right, we're going to sell books for $15.99 and we're going to pay you $10.99, that would be worthy of a complaint.
What they've done is, independently, say okay, we'll buy books from you for whatever you want to charge, add 30%, and resell them. We've only got two conditions - you can't sell to anyone else cheaper than you sell to us (a pretty standard arrangement practiced on the scale of nations or at the supermarket every day) and your price + 30% has to end in .99 (which is exactly the same as the app store and a less restrictive version of the music store's tiers).
If there's any collusion it's between the publishers, not Apple and Amazon, because the publishers are setting the prices.
An interview conducted by a puppet with annoying music dubbed over the first several seconds of each interviewee response.
"I spent a lot of time creating a Flash-based website so that it would be more appealing to customers than an HTML site."
I think I found your problem. Like so many things, it can be traced back to a faulty assumption.
You can get Flash on an iPhone if you jailbreak it too.
Except you have it backwards. In this case Apple is the RETAILER. You are buying something from Apple, which is supplied by the publisher.
Apple is requiring that their suppliers (the publishers) charge them the same or less than they charge everyone else. In my example you are Apple and the grocery store is the book publisher.
The relationship is a little bit more complicated in that Apple applies a fixed markup so they don't absorb any fluctuations in supplier pricing, and they specify the price after markup, but the supplier-retailer-end customer relationship is still the same.
"e-Book prices of this concerted agreement?"
Where's the coordination? You added in a very important word without justifying it.
Requiring that a supplier provide you with product for the same or lower price as they supply it to everyone else is not price fixing.
Suppose we both went to the grocery store and picked up identical bars of chocolate. Going through the cash they charged me $0.99. When you came to the cashier she rang yours up as $1.29. Are you going to complete the transaction? Are you guilty of price fixing?
So you can use any kind of non-DRM book on the iPad that you can on the other two AND you can use other DRMed books too.
No matter what you think of DRM that is extra flexibility.
Hey, I've got one of those. A motorola razr. I stopped using it when I got my iPhone. Want it? Mine is even unlocked, so the USB port sort of does something, unlike the usual carrier locked ones.