That fact that Apple paid Xerox to use what they saw at PARC probably factored into it too. You can't really sue a company for using what you willingly sold them...
In particular, Ward has a reputation as being extremely willing to hand out injunctions on very flimsy grounds. This helps the patent troller put significant pressure on the defending company to settle with them.
The Wiimote, by it's very design, afford being held like a lightsaber in one or two hands with the buttons still completely accessible. The SIXAXIS can't be held comfortably in other manner than as a standard two hand controller. OK for games that want you to either twist or tilt, piss-poor for anything else.
How many people right now are facing a choice between buying 100 CDs at retail or on ITMS or the Zune Marketplace, and using a subscription model to obtain those same CDs? Most people who go out and buy an MP3 player of any brand aren't making their first foray into the realm of music. They already own tens or hundreds of CDs that they can permanently fill their players with for no money whatsoever.
The question really is, do most people buy 100 new CDs every year? If you're constantly chasing after the latest releases and rarely revisit the same albums after a few months, subscription is probably a smart move. In my case, though, it's a horrible idea. In the last 5 years I purchased maybe ten albums, either physically or through iTunes. I have no interest whatsoever in 99.99999% of the turds the music industry craps out every year; I only want a few specific albums from specific artists to add to my collection, and I'll revisit those albums constantly. Subscription would merely condemn me to constantly paying for something I could have bought once and kept forever.
And I'm betting the majority of the market is more like me than not. If most people were going to buy a player based on whether or not it allowed them access to a music subscription model, they already would have. There's no shortage of such offerings; they're all fairly miserable failures. The only demographic that seems likely to constantly be chasing the new releases and abandoning older albums is the teen demographic, who largely lack the credit cards needed to commit to subscription services, and their parents aren't apparently interested in paying $20 a month so their kids can download the latest shit from whoever.
The market has spoken here. Subscriptions don't appear to be remotely exciting for most consumers. There seems to be only a small minority who want to pay monthly for access to a lot of different music rather than pay once to permanently have access to a specific set of songs.
No, you're quite incorrect. US courts do not and cannot declare people "innocent", merely "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" which isn't the same thing.
What the Judge is telling the RIAA here is that, having completed discovery, they can either go to a jury trial and pursue a guilty verdict, or have the case dismissed with prejudice. See, the way everything has worked out for them in this case so far, they've got a snowball's cahnce in hell of winning, and they don't want to lose and set some nasty precedents (like the having to pay court fees for indiscriminately suing people with shitty evidence). What they want to do is back out of the case by dropping it and then suing her again for the same thing, in a different court with different tactics to try to get a better likelihood of winning. The Judge is telling them to either take it to a Jury and lose or be dismissed with prejudice and be unable to sue her again for the same thing. They're fucked either way.
but it doesn't make it look any worse. How do you hurt the image of a pair of morons who already do an incredible job of making themselves look like asshats?
MOAB as "revenge"? A number of "Apple's" bugs as listed in MOAB were in third-party software (VLC on day 2 for fuck's sake!), the same as their original hyperbolic wireless exploit shenanigans. And then they go and use an exploit on the site, and act like petulant children in their communication with others through the site, all the while crying foul that they aren't being treated like serious security professionals.
Why would we need another java or flash? Flash isn't all that hot for client-side, desktop app type functionality, and while server-side Java has long since established itself, Java as a platform for apps on the desktop has been a collosal failure for years. A platform agnostic, desktop-suitable GUI runtime that doesn't suck horribly would be a real win.
Whether or not Apollo actually lives up to that I have no idea.
Freedom is a laudable ideal, but thinking that private police forces and private security forces could in any way make most people more free is insanity masquerading as sense. The failure of Libertarians (the big-L, Libertarian party kind), is in simple over-application of a trend.
Some reduction in government size leads to an increase in freedom, but it does not follow that drastic reductions lead to drastic increases, any more than it follows that if some water is good for you drinking tons of it must be better.
I owned every Blizzard title and expansion up to Warcraft 3. They haven't gotten a nickel of my money since. Congrats, your boycott seems to really be hurting their World of Warcraft product.
I don't know any Libertarian that would agree with that. Having a monopoly on initiating violence is the root of authoritarianism. Maybe national defense, but that is obviously dangerous too. More likely, a national registry of dispute resolution if anything at all. And this is why Libertarians put the lunatic in "Lunatic Fringe".
The interoperability that Jobs said was less secure, the interoperability that Norway wants, isn't offered by Microsoft's WMV either. Norway is demanding that Apple allow fairplay encrypted files to be converted into files DRM'd under Microsoft's PlaysForSure(OrNot) DRM model or anyone else's, not that they start licensing FairPlay.
This wouldn't be unacceptable if you had a problem _installing_ vista and the sales guy at the store said, "I don't know why you're having a problem, we'll have to have a technical rep. get back to you". It just sounds horrible because it's something simple like a 'product key'. Well guess what - not everybody can make those.
They are probably under the tightest lock & key system microsoft has because you _don't_ want anybody, even most of your own employees, to be able to create valid keys. You're kidding, right? "Call me Jeff", their outsourced tech-support in friggin' Bangalore can issue you a new key in a bored tone of voice and bad English if you ask him nicely. If they're willing to let quasi-third party notoriously non-company-loyal contract workers in a country rife with piracy cut genuine keys, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think they're not exactly held in Fort Knox here in the US.
No AAC, which is Apple's baby. AAC is the Moving Pictures Experts Group's baby. You might know some of their other kids: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, MP3...? In the same way that mp3 is the audio layer (layer 3) of an MPEG1 file, AAC is the audio layer of an MPEG4 file. It was created by an industry group that Apple wasn't even involved in. They adopted its use simply because of what it is; a better mp3.
I don't know, I think that there are a few instances in which citing an encyclopedia might be appropriate. If you're writing a paper and casually reference something that is only shallowly related to the subject, I would say that it's okay to use an encyclopedia. For example, if you only need the birth date and place of a historical figure not important to the main body of your paper, it'd be fine. So now the issue isn't just that no student at any college worth going to should ever be allowed to cite an encyclopedia, it's apparently that many people here don't know proper citation rules for anything.
Basic facts (like the birthplace and date of a historical figure, which are simply known facts, no interpretation or opinion involved) do not have to be cited. Your paper would be a ridiculous forest of footnotes, otherwise.
Can you not accept that for others, the ability to browse a list of apps, view screen shots, click one and have it installed without knowing anything beyond the GUI is a good thing? So, the Grandparent asks why anyone wouldn't love apt-get et al, I explain my reasons for loathing package managers based on my experiences, and you somehow construe it as a universal condemnation and declaration that no one could ever love it for their own reasons?
The plus about apt-get, CNR, etc, is that they get the application for you. The minus about these programs is, they want to get the application for you. You're in some forum or something, somebody talks about a useful piece of software, links the site. It's cross-platform, all your Windows and Mac OS X compatriots click the link and have it downloading in 10 seconds. You on the other hand have to fire up $DISTRO_APP to install it.
Only it's one of those unlucky pieces of software that isn't in the repository because of some dumbass nerd licensing pissing contest. So you google around some and find out that some guy is running an unofficial repository that contains it, and you only have to alter a couple of files to include the repository address. And then you can install it! Easy!
Only, half the time some guy's repository's latest version is three months out of date because some guy has a life, so now you're downloading the source and compiling it yourself. But hey, it's all so easy!!
The problem with all these programs is that all they do is introduce middle-men. They intermediate and abstract. They get in the way. John just released Foobar 2.1, which fixes a nasty bug you are dealing with. Only that doesn't help you, because you need it in your Distro repository, where Mike maintains it. Only he's too busy arguing arguing with Jack, Sally, and Javier in the Distro dev mailing list about life, liberty and who's more hardcore about the meaning of Free Software. I'll get the new version in 6 weeks, if I'm lucky and Mike doesn't resign in a hissy fit.
I've been through all this shit as a Linux user, and I got sick of it. Fuck Mike, I like dealing directly with John.
Something else I don't like is the inability to easily see how many windows are open for each app. Yes, I know about the F9/F10/F11 tricks, but it'd be nice to have a few ticks next to the icon for running apps rather than a single tick showing it's running.
Right click on the app's icon in the dock. Viola.
Further, I know Apple has released the Darwin OS as open-source while maintaining OSX separately. I think it'd be better if Apple opened the kernel for OSX and merged with with Darwin, and kept their proprietary fun and games confined to Aqua.
The OS X kernel is open-sourced, and it is the Darwin kernel. The rest of Darwin is the rest of the low layer levels of OS X. The proprietary stuff is exactly what you want it to be, the higher level layer like the GUI libraries, the windowing system, quicktime, et al.
None of which helps the kernel bug, because the NVidia driver isn't open source.
Slashdot Mirror
That fact that Apple paid Xerox to use what they saw at PARC probably factored into it too. You can't really sue a company for using what you willingly sold them...
In particular, Ward has a reputation as being extremely willing to hand out injunctions on very flimsy grounds. This helps the patent troller put significant pressure on the defending company to settle with them.
By you're logic, it's legal for me to sell someone the Brooklyn bridge. After all, New York still owns it after I'm done, so where's the crime?
The Wiimote, by it's very design, afford being held like a lightsaber in one or two hands with the buttons still completely accessible. The SIXAXIS can't be held comfortably in other manner than as a standard two hand controller. OK for games that want you to either twist or tilt, piss-poor for anything else.
How many people right now are facing a choice between buying 100 CDs at retail or on ITMS or the Zune Marketplace, and using a subscription model to obtain those same CDs? Most people who go out and buy an MP3 player of any brand aren't making their first foray into the realm of music. They already own tens or hundreds of CDs that they can permanently fill their players with for no money whatsoever.
The question really is, do most people buy 100 new CDs every year? If you're constantly chasing after the latest releases and rarely revisit the same albums after a few months, subscription is probably a smart move. In my case, though, it's a horrible idea. In the last 5 years I purchased maybe ten albums, either physically or through iTunes. I have no interest whatsoever in 99.99999% of the turds the music industry craps out every year; I only want a few specific albums from specific artists to add to my collection, and I'll revisit those albums constantly. Subscription would merely condemn me to constantly paying for something I could have bought once and kept forever.
And I'm betting the majority of the market is more like me than not. If most people were going to buy a player based on whether or not it allowed them access to a music subscription model, they already would have. There's no shortage of such offerings; they're all fairly miserable failures. The only demographic that seems likely to constantly be chasing the new releases and abandoning older albums is the teen demographic, who largely lack the credit cards needed to commit to subscription services, and their parents aren't apparently interested in paying $20 a month so their kids can download the latest shit from whoever.
The market has spoken here. Subscriptions don't appear to be remotely exciting for most consumers. There seems to be only a small minority who want to pay monthly for access to a lot of different music rather than pay once to permanently have access to a specific set of songs.
No, you're quite incorrect. US courts do not and cannot declare people "innocent", merely "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" which isn't the same thing.
What the Judge is telling the RIAA here is that, having completed discovery, they can either go to a jury trial and pursue a guilty verdict, or have the case dismissed with prejudice. See, the way everything has worked out for them in this case so far, they've got a snowball's cahnce in hell of winning, and they don't want to lose and set some nasty precedents (like the having to pay court fees for indiscriminately suing people with shitty evidence). What they want to do is back out of the case by dropping it and then suing her again for the same thing, in a different court with different tactics to try to get a better likelihood of winning. The Judge is telling them to either take it to a Jury and lose or be dismissed with prejudice and be unable to sue her again for the same thing. They're fucked either way.
but it doesn't make it look any worse. How do you hurt the image of a pair of morons who already do an incredible job of making themselves look like asshats?
MOAB as "revenge"? A number of "Apple's" bugs as listed in MOAB were in third-party software (VLC on day 2 for fuck's sake!), the same as their original hyperbolic wireless exploit shenanigans. And then they go and use an exploit on the site, and act like petulant children in their communication with others through the site, all the while crying foul that they aren't being treated like serious security professionals.
Whether or not Apollo actually lives up to that I have no idea.
Freedom is a laudable ideal, but thinking that private police forces and private security forces could in any way make most people more free is insanity masquerading as sense. The failure of Libertarians (the big-L, Libertarian party kind), is in simple over-application of a trend.
Some reduction in government size leads to an increase in freedom, but it does not follow that drastic reductions lead to drastic increases, any more than it follows that if some water is good for you drinking tons of it must be better.
Aren't you just agreeing with me? Meant to hit the parent's reply button, maybe?
I like Penny Arcade and all too but that kind of bugged me. A couple systems on the shelf is not particularly abundant
That's irrelevant; they were responding to a Sony Exec's boast that PS3s simply are not sitting on any shelves, anywhere, period.
You don't need abundance to rebut that claim, just existence.
And when it fails? How is your cargo cult approach to CLI usage going to help the user figure out what went wrong and how to fix it?
The interoperability that Jobs said was less secure, the interoperability that Norway wants, isn't offered by Microsoft's WMV either. Norway is demanding that Apple allow fairplay encrypted files to be converted into files DRM'd under Microsoft's PlaysForSure(OrNot) DRM model or anyone else's, not that they start licensing FairPlay.
Maybe he meant to say Middle Earth.
No encyclopedia is a proper academic source. This shouldn't be news to anyone.
Basic facts (like the birthplace and date of a historical figure, which are simply known facts, no interpretation or opinion involved) do not have to be cited. Your paper would be a ridiculous forest of footnotes, otherwise.
Reading is fundamental, chief. Try it sometime.
Only it's one of those unlucky pieces of software that isn't in the repository because of some dumbass nerd licensing pissing contest. So you google around some and find out that some guy is running an unofficial repository that contains it, and you only have to alter a couple of files to include the repository address. And then you can install it! Easy!
Only, half the time some guy's repository's latest version is three months out of date because some guy has a life, so now you're downloading the source and compiling it yourself. But hey, it's all so easy!!
The problem with all these programs is that all they do is introduce middle-men. They intermediate and abstract. They get in the way. John just released Foobar 2.1, which fixes a nasty bug you are dealing with. Only that doesn't help you, because you need it in your Distro repository, where Mike maintains it. Only he's too busy arguing arguing with Jack, Sally, and Javier in the Distro dev mailing list about life, liberty and who's more hardcore about the meaning of Free Software. I'll get the new version in 6 weeks, if I'm lucky and Mike doesn't resign in a hissy fit.
I've been through all this shit as a Linux user, and I got sick of it. Fuck Mike, I like dealing directly with John.
Right click on the app's icon in the dock. Viola. Further, I know Apple has released the Darwin OS as open-source while maintaining OSX separately. I think it'd be better if Apple opened the kernel for OSX and merged with with Darwin, and kept their proprietary fun and games confined to Aqua.
The OS X kernel is open-sourced, and it is the Darwin kernel. The rest of Darwin is the rest of the low layer levels of OS X. The proprietary stuff is exactly what you want it to be, the higher level layer like the GUI libraries, the windowing system, quicktime, et al.
None of which helps the kernel bug, because the NVidia driver isn't open source.
The whole thing sounds like a load of cat crap to me.