Well, basically, yeah. Given that only one entity can have the name, the question arises of who is more entitled to it. If both are using it for commercial purposes, then the entity that has more to gain from it is more entitled to it. So big companies do, indeed, have first rights to the best domain names.
I get that every once in a while, Wil. There was a span a few months back when somebody hit me with five "-1, Troll" mods right in a row on three or four separate occasions, even going so far as to dig up old posts of mine just to down-moderate them.
You seem to be a pretty easygoing guy, humble and inoffensive. Me, on the other hand... if I haven't pissed somebody off, I must not be telling it like it is.
No, it doesn't. Apple dropped that sealed-case warranty thing years and years ago. You can replace whatever replaceable parts in your Mac you like without worrying one bit about the warranty.
Are you talking about the AppleDouble thing? This issue has been put to bed already. Mail.app encodes attachments with the AppleDouble encoding scheme, and some mail readers (notably Outlook) aren't capable of interpreting that encoding scheme. To those readers, AppleDouble attachments look like two separate attachments, one for the data fork and one small one for the resource fork.
This problem doesn't lie with Mail.app or with Apple at all. It lies with the makers of mail readers who don't support documented, open standards for encoding attachments.
I'm pretty sure what makes it a word is having the other person or people understand it without explanation. Even if you don't know what Photoshop is or what one does with it, the meaning of "photoshopping" can certainly be glorked from context.
You're more right than ChaosDiscord was, but you're not 100% right either.
DRM is about managing rights, both those of the user and those of the creator. "Managing" is a very fuzzy word. It can mean anything from enforcing access controls with encryption and digital signatures all the way down to simply providing a way to store information about rights electronically.
A system that stores rights information-- who is allowed to use the media, and how, and when-- in a database with a link to the content file itself is a DRM system. It doesn't prevent anybody from doing anything; it doesn't force anybody to do anything. But it does provide users with a facility to help them manage rights and clearances. My former employer made and sold systems like this, calling them "DRM systems" the whole time, and nobody was ever confused about what was meant by that.
DRM is a very generic term for an entire class of technology products, like "spreadsheet" or "browser." Saying-- or even implying-- that DRM is inherently either good or bad is just about as meaningful as saying that FTP is inherently good or bad.
What? That's the dumbest comment I've read all day. Let's define "crack" in this context: to decrypt without access to the necessary key(s). A message encrypted with a one-time pad is decrypted with the same one-time pad by the recipient. It is not possible to decrypt the message without the one-time pad except through simple brute force: i.e., trying all possible combinations of transforms over the length of the message. This method will, of course, produce a very large number of readable messages, only one of which is the correct one. So yes, "cracking" a message encrypted with a one-time pad is, for all purposes, impossible.
Guys, encryption and DRM are not the same thing at all.
What's needed here is a "tamper-proof" digital image format, one that can't be modified or that can't be modified without leaving a record. Think checksums and digital signatures here, comprehensively applied. The same thing will be useful not only in criminology but also in medical imaging and lots of other areas as well.
DRM has nothing to do with "tamper-proof" data. DRM, which stands after all for "digital rights management," is simply a catch-all term for any technology that serves to capture rights as metadata, and possibly control access to media according to that metadata.
As I've written before, DRM is most important in the commercial TV broadcast space. A TV station buys a "rights package" for a syndicated program, and has to pay a very large fine if they violate the terms of that package. (Say, if they show the program at 10:00 AM when the contract says they can only show it between noon and midnight.) DRM in that arena will be a life-saver for those kinds of folks.
I know this is Slashdot and ungroupthink is doubleplusungood, but DRM is not a dirty word, and DRM and "tamper-proof" media are not the same thing at all.
Also, note that it's "immutable," not "immuteable." When you wrote "immuteable" initially, my natural conclusion was that you meant "un-mute-able," as in "cannot be silenced." This is, of course, not a word, but it makes more sense in context than "immutable" does.
This is a case where a misspelling on your part significantly changed the meaning of your message.
The wonderful thing about the word "fair" is that the opposing parties on any issue will have radically different ideas of what it means.
It is also the word that the parent of a six-year-old hates most. If I had a nickel for every time I've cringed at, "But it's not fair!" I wouldn't have to work for a living.
In other words, my friend, quit your whining.
why cant companies do something simple like NOT STEAL FROM THEIR EMPLOYEES?
If Slashdot ever posts an article about an employer stealing from an employee, you can post this comment again. For now, though, I think we should all just stick to the subject at hand. Okay? Thanks.
Maybe the real story here is how people feel a moral and emotional "ownership" of Apple that has them react with revulsion when Apple behaves like the for-profit company that they are!
Hm. In light of the absolutely insane emotional reactions that Slashdotters have to Microsoft, HP, and Red Hat, I'd say that that's not a particularly interesting story either.
If there's one at all, it's that Slashdotters, as a group, tend to take everything way too seriously.
News Corp, too. I think they're called News Ltd. in Oz, but I'm too lazy to be bothered looking it up. They own just too damn much. Rupert Murdoch scares me. Anybody who would renounce citizenship in his own birth-country purely for business ends isn't the kind of guy I want in charge of telling me what I get to see and hear every day.
Clearly it is in Apple's best interest to repudiate the DMCA, to remove the onerous anti-privacy clause from the APSL, and to meet the standards of GNU Project, so that users can have a truly free OS, and so that activists can support Darwin instead of undermining it.
Actually, I would say that it's in Apple's best interest to stay profitable. To do this, they're going to have to keep selling computers. The OS is what differentiates Apple computers from everybody else's. So keeping their OS differentiated is in Apple's best interest.
Giving away their OS is not a good idea from this point of view. So "a truly free OS" is actually contrary to Apple's best interest.
In other words, Apple currently has N customers, giving them revenues of $X. If they gave away their OS, they would gradually reach N+M customers (M being the ten or twelve guys out there who refuse to use OS X because it's not politically acceptable to them), but their revenues would drop to $0.
C'MON! We sit around and post all day about how evil the DMCA is and when someone has the balls to do something about it we call them stupid?
Apple was 100% right to go after OWC over the iDVD thing. That's why nobody is making a stink about Apple's invoking of the DMCA. To get all up-in-arms about this action merely demonstrates one's ignorance of the issues that surrounded it.
The point is that the APSL is not an acceptable free software license.
To whom? It seems that many people-- maybe even most, if you were to take a head-count-- do not agree with the FSF on this issue. Stating their opinions as if they were facts doesn't make them so.
Look at it in another way. How do you feel about M$ taking all the networking layer code from BSD?
Great. It means computers running Microsoft operating systems can interoperate flawlessly over TCP/IP with computers running other operating systems. If it weren't for the BSD networking stack, this probably wouldn't be the case.
Man, is this ever old news. It all started when somebody at Apple said that they would be doing some stuff with "amd" in the near future. This was widely reported on the rumor sites as meaning that Apple was about to announce a partnership with AMD, the microprocessor company. In fact, it referred to amd, the auto-mounting daemon.
Apple is a company that listens only to it's own evangalism, which is why it remains a minor player where new ideas are created so they can be stolen and marketed more effectivily by others who care less.
I wouldn't call being the single most influential computer company of the 20th century being "a minor player."
Seriously. Name me one computer maker that has had more influence than Apple. Apple essentially invented the personal computer in the Apple II; that is, they had the right combination of pieces in the right place before anybody else did. Apple essentially invented the graphical user interface, to the extent that they took principles of GUIs developed at Xerox, wrapped a software toolbox around them, wrote guidelines for deploying them, and built them into a line of computers.
Apple's influence is everywhere, from software to computers to toasters. Every time you see a gizmo encased in translucent colored plastic, that's Apple's influence staring back at you.
It's quite another thing to use BSD-licensed code and try to actively stifle innovation by supporting the DMCA and using a license (APSL) which is incompatible with most open source projetcs out there.
1. Are you referring to the iDVD thing? Apple's invocation of the DMCA had nothing to do with trying to "actively stifle innovation." It had to do with stopping organized software piracy. They were absolutely in the right to do what they did.
2. Apple is free (there's that troubling word, again) to do whatever they want with their OS. That's the beautiful thing about BSD. Now, there are two very different opinions about what the true ideals of the open source movement ought to be. One ideal, "Here, take this, use it to make the world a better place," is embodied by the BSD license, and Apple is following those ideals to the letter. The other idea is embodied by the GPL. Apple doesn't subscribe to that idea. So accusing them of not living up to it isn't going to mean anything at all, I'm afraid.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, basically, yeah. Given that only one entity can have the name, the question arises of who is more entitled to it. If both are using it for commercial purposes, then the entity that has more to gain from it is more entitled to it. So big companies do, indeed, have first rights to the best domain names.
Crossover cables are obsolete. At least, they should be. Doesn't everybody do autosense MDI-X by now?
Gigabit ethernet is useless for 99% of Mac users
Huh? Say that next time we use a $12 cable to copy gigs of stuff from my Power Mac to my friend's PowerBook G4 at over 30 MB/s.
I get that every once in a while, Wil. There was a span a few months back when somebody hit me with five "-1, Troll" mods right in a row on three or four separate occasions, even going so far as to dig up old posts of mine just to down-moderate them.
You seem to be a pretty easygoing guy, humble and inoffensive. Me, on the other hand... if I haven't pissed somebody off, I must not be telling it like it is.
Of course this voids the warrenty
No, it doesn't. Apple dropped that sealed-case warranty thing years and years ago. You can replace whatever replaceable parts in your Mac you like without worrying one bit about the warranty.
That still adds up to a $350 computer in a $300 case, friend. You wasted some good money there.
Oh yeah, and Linux ;)
See? You knew there had to be a down-side, right?
Are you talking about the AppleDouble thing? This issue has been put to bed already. Mail.app encodes attachments with the AppleDouble encoding scheme, and some mail readers (notably Outlook) aren't capable of interpreting that encoding scheme. To those readers, AppleDouble attachments look like two separate attachments, one for the data fork and one small one for the resource fork.
This problem doesn't lie with Mail.app or with Apple at all. It lies with the makers of mail readers who don't support documented, open standards for encoding attachments.
I don't know whether this was legit in 10.2.2 or not, but it doesn't cause a panic in 10.2.3.
Just updated. Happy as a clam, so far.
I'm pretty sure what makes it a word is having the other person or people understand it without explanation. Even if you don't know what Photoshop is or what one does with it, the meaning of "photoshopping" can certainly be glorked from context.
You're more right than ChaosDiscord was, but you're not 100% right either.
DRM is about managing rights, both those of the user and those of the creator. "Managing" is a very fuzzy word. It can mean anything from enforcing access controls with encryption and digital signatures all the way down to simply providing a way to store information about rights electronically.
A system that stores rights information-- who is allowed to use the media, and how, and when-- in a database with a link to the content file itself is a DRM system. It doesn't prevent anybody from doing anything; it doesn't force anybody to do anything. But it does provide users with a facility to help them manage rights and clearances. My former employer made and sold systems like this, calling them "DRM systems" the whole time, and nobody was ever confused about what was meant by that.
DRM is a very generic term for an entire class of technology products, like "spreadsheet" or "browser." Saying-- or even implying-- that DRM is inherently either good or bad is just about as meaningful as saying that FTP is inherently good or bad.
What? That's the dumbest comment I've read all day. Let's define "crack" in this context: to decrypt without access to the necessary key(s). A message encrypted with a one-time pad is decrypted with the same one-time pad by the recipient. It is not possible to decrypt the message without the one-time pad except through simple brute force: i.e., trying all possible combinations of transforms over the length of the message. This method will, of course, produce a very large number of readable messages, only one of which is the correct one. So yes, "cracking" a message encrypted with a one-time pad is, for all purposes, impossible.
Guys, encryption and DRM are not the same thing at all.
What's needed here is a "tamper-proof" digital image format, one that can't be modified or that can't be modified without leaving a record. Think checksums and digital signatures here, comprehensively applied. The same thing will be useful not only in criminology but also in medical imaging and lots of other areas as well.
DRM has nothing to do with "tamper-proof" data. DRM, which stands after all for "digital rights management," is simply a catch-all term for any technology that serves to capture rights as metadata, and possibly control access to media according to that metadata.
As I've written before, DRM is most important in the commercial TV broadcast space. A TV station buys a "rights package" for a syndicated program, and has to pay a very large fine if they violate the terms of that package. (Say, if they show the program at 10:00 AM when the contract says they can only show it between noon and midnight.) DRM in that arena will be a life-saver for those kinds of folks.
I know this is Slashdot and ungroupthink is doubleplusungood, but DRM is not a dirty word, and DRM and "tamper-proof" media are not the same thing at all.
Yeah. Like I said, makes basically no sense.
Also, note that it's "immutable," not "immuteable." When you wrote "immuteable" initially, my natural conclusion was that you meant "un-mute-able," as in "cannot be silenced." This is, of course, not a word, but it makes more sense in context than "immutable" does.
This is a case where a misspelling on your part significantly changed the meaning of your message.
Any time. If I'd been able to find a way to work an "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" reference in there, too, I would have.
it's called being paid fairly
The wonderful thing about the word "fair" is that the opposing parties on any issue will have radically different ideas of what it means.
It is also the word that the parent of a six-year-old hates most. If I had a nickel for every time I've cringed at, "But it's not fair!" I wouldn't have to work for a living.
In other words, my friend, quit your whining.
why cant companies do something simple like NOT STEAL FROM THEIR EMPLOYEES?
If Slashdot ever posts an article about an employer stealing from an employee, you can post this comment again. For now, though, I think we should all just stick to the subject at hand. Okay? Thanks.
Maybe the real story here is how people feel a moral and emotional "ownership" of Apple that has them react with revulsion when Apple behaves like the for-profit company that they are!
Hm. In light of the absolutely insane emotional reactions that Slashdotters have to Microsoft, HP, and Red Hat, I'd say that that's not a particularly interesting story either.
If there's one at all, it's that Slashdotters, as a group, tend to take everything way too seriously.
Information is immuteable, if someone needs to know, someone else needs to know too.
I donno think that word means what you think it means.
"Immutable" means not changeable, or "carved in stone." The past is immutable. CDROMs are immutable. Stone tablets are immutable.
Given that definition, your comment makes basically no sense, so I have to think that you meant something else.
News Corp, too. I think they're called News Ltd. in Oz, but I'm too lazy to be bothered looking it up. They own just too damn much. Rupert Murdoch scares me. Anybody who would renounce citizenship in his own birth-country purely for business ends isn't the kind of guy I want in charge of telling me what I get to see and hear every day.
It is not down, and it does work. I'm using it right now, both for email and to post an iPhoto picture gallery to my home page.
The FUD ends here, okay?
Clearly it is in Apple's best interest to repudiate the DMCA, to remove the onerous anti-privacy clause from the APSL, and to meet the standards of GNU Project, so that users can have a truly free OS, and so that activists can support Darwin instead of undermining it.
Actually, I would say that it's in Apple's best interest to stay profitable. To do this, they're going to have to keep selling computers. The OS is what differentiates Apple computers from everybody else's. So keeping their OS differentiated is in Apple's best interest.
Giving away their OS is not a good idea from this point of view. So "a truly free OS" is actually contrary to Apple's best interest.
In other words, Apple currently has N customers, giving them revenues of $X. If they gave away their OS, they would gradually reach N+M customers (M being the ten or twelve guys out there who refuse to use OS X because it's not politically acceptable to them), but their revenues would drop to $0.
C'MON! We sit around and post all day about how evil the DMCA is and when someone has the balls to do something about it we call them stupid?
Apple was 100% right to go after OWC over the iDVD thing. That's why nobody is making a stink about Apple's invoking of the DMCA. To get all up-in-arms about this action merely demonstrates one's ignorance of the issues that surrounded it.
The point is that the APSL is not an acceptable free software license.
To whom? It seems that many people-- maybe even most, if you were to take a head-count-- do not agree with the FSF on this issue. Stating their opinions as if they were facts doesn't make them so.
Look at it in another way. How do you feel about M$ taking all the networking layer code from BSD?
Great. It means computers running Microsoft operating systems can interoperate flawlessly over TCP/IP with computers running other operating systems. If it weren't for the BSD networking stack, this probably wouldn't be the case.
Man, is this ever old news. It all started when somebody at Apple said that they would be doing some stuff with "amd" in the near future. This was widely reported on the rumor sites as meaning that Apple was about to announce a partnership with AMD, the microprocessor company. In fact, it referred to amd, the auto-mounting daemon.
Go back to your homes. Nothing to see here.
Apple is a company that listens only to it's own evangalism, which is why it remains a minor player where new ideas are created so they can be stolen and marketed more effectivily by others who care less.
I wouldn't call being the single most influential computer company of the 20th century being "a minor player."
Seriously. Name me one computer maker that has had more influence than Apple. Apple essentially invented the personal computer in the Apple II; that is, they had the right combination of pieces in the right place before anybody else did. Apple essentially invented the graphical user interface, to the extent that they took principles of GUIs developed at Xerox, wrapped a software toolbox around them, wrote guidelines for deploying them, and built them into a line of computers.
Apple's influence is everywhere, from software to computers to toasters. Every time you see a gizmo encased in translucent colored plastic, that's Apple's influence staring back at you.
"A minor player?" Hardly.
It's quite another thing to use BSD-licensed code and try to actively stifle innovation by supporting the DMCA and using a license (APSL) which is incompatible with most open source projetcs out there.
1. Are you referring to the iDVD thing? Apple's invocation of the DMCA had nothing to do with trying to "actively stifle innovation." It had to do with stopping organized software piracy. They were absolutely in the right to do what they did.
2. Apple is free (there's that troubling word, again) to do whatever they want with their OS. That's the beautiful thing about BSD. Now, there are two very different opinions about what the true ideals of the open source movement ought to be. One ideal, "Here, take this, use it to make the world a better place," is embodied by the BSD license, and Apple is following those ideals to the letter. The other idea is embodied by the GPL. Apple doesn't subscribe to that idea. So accusing them of not living up to it isn't going to mean anything at all, I'm afraid.