I honestly don't mind the tiers.
I just want them to make more tiers available; I do a lot of work from client locations, and 2gb a month doesn't cut it; I need about 7. If they had a 7gb tier i could pay...$100-150 a month for, that would be just fine.
So client locations don't have Wifi available? What possible kind of "client" work could you do on an iPhone or tablet anyway?
Maybe they should offer "business" unlimited accounts for around 50 dollars a month. It should only be offered on a business account. Individuals should be able to do all of their streaming just fine at the unlimited wifi hotspots or at home through their ISP and a wifi router.
So what, teams of top-notch lawyers cost lots and lots of money! Enough law suits (even ones they win) and they may look at the cost/benefit of continuing to abuse their customers in a whole new light!
-Oz
Wrong. The only way to change things is to lobby the government to make changes through regulation or create a groundswell in the customer base to complain and threaten to cancel on masse. The latter scenario is even less likely given the apathy of the average consumer.
When I was in Hong Kong, I just had to pay $51 USD per month and they'll give you unlimited 3G data with tethering, tons of voice minutes, wifi access at their hotspots throughout the city, and an legally unlocked iPhone 3GS.
Now I'm in Palo Alto, that barely buys me a voice plan. And even if I give them 2x what I did in Hong Kong, I'm still capped. And AT&T's reception in cities (like San Fran) sucks - yet it's Hong Kong that has more frickin' high rise buildings to block the 3G signals - and in Hong Kong 3G fucking works. I really, REALLY have no idea how any of you guys can try to defend AT&T over their crap service.
Maybe it is a cultural thing. Perhaps people in Hong Kong do not have a sense of entitlement to over use their 3G data even if they technically use as much as they want. Americans seem to have a similar attitude to food where people will gorge themselves at an "all you can eat" buffet to get their "money's worth". Those all you can eat buffets are probably losing money on the real porkers with no appetite control.
I saw that but the speaker failed to consider that the majority of successful "open source" development is done by "paid" developers. Some companies choose to use the open source model but still end up doing the vast majority, if not all of the development and testing of the main source tree. It makes for good PR and anyone can get their hands on the source but most companies would only allow commits to the source tree from developers they know and trust (their employees). They also often require copyright reassignment to the company for any commits so that it can be dual licensed.
You also have to consider that companies doing "open source" manage their projects with "paid" project managers, collect requirements with "paid" analysts and write documentation with "paid" technical writers. The so-called "pure" open source model is like a hydra with no clear leader and no clear change management process which is why the speed of development and innovation often fails to materialize.
If this guy has any balls, he'll take it to court! The only reason crap like this happens at all is that we the consumers have failed time and time again to stand up and face these assholes! So what if you fail, at least the case gets the attention it deserves, and reduces the likelihood that the corporations will act with such impunity in the future!
-Oz
Which law firm do you work for? You guys are like sharks swimming in the water when they smell blood.
Suing should be the last resort because ultimately, corporations almost always win and lawsuits cause the prices that companies charge to go up. Only the lawyers come out as winners.
I don't think this device deserves to be compared to the "iPad and imitations thereof" - A) it's not a tablet; B) it's far less powerful; C) it doesn't even have any built-in network capability, which is what the iPad and its following are intended for; and D) it's horribly ugly.
That being said, it looks like an excellent little device to hack on, and a big bonus is that it has USB ports! I may actually pick one up one of these days.
Agreed. Although I had mod points, I decided to post in agreement instead. This product bares more resemblance to the Atari Profile than it does the iPad. Ok, to be fair, it bares some resemblance to the Toshiba Libretto but the Libretto is probably much more powerful and functional despite being a very old product.
This product will not sell well. I would be surprised if it even sells 4000 units. I remember everyone hyping up the JooJoo tablet but it only sold 4000 units initially and many of those were returned.
The Pandora hardware is closed once you get to the level of individual chips, though it's not that big a deal for someone trying to build one.
Since when did you or anyone here own a chip foundry? You statement is pure fluff. You are getting sucked in by the word "open". You might not like the whole concept of "profit" but without a profit motive and some semblance of even temporary exclusivity, no competent company will ever develop an innovative product. Hiring real talent requires money and despite what everyone says, most techie people will not produce the same kind of quality on an open source project as they would on a closed source one where they are getting paid a lot of money.
One of the major downfalls of all of those "open" initiatives is that, once you go beyond basic things like a web browser with an well established UI paradigm or core services, the design by committee effect drags down not only innovation but quality of the end product. Core services tend to work out better because they are usually licensed to be compatible with wide participation from everyone including corporations and are focused on implementing an open standard.
Ultimately the problem is not about money but rather a herd mentality in open source. With a closed product, the employees have some incentive to come up with the best possible product because bonuses could hinge on good sales and because any team member could get rewarded even more if they came up with a brilliant innovation which set the product apart from the field.
In the "US" market during a month that is just prior to the release of the next iPhone refresh so most people are holding off "purchasing" iPhone. The install base is higher even if you don't count touches and the iPad but once the new iPhone comes out, expect the numbers to reverse in the US.
It would raise the cost to Apple by.7 percent per iPad. I think that Apple intends on eating that difference rather than passing it on to the consumer.
Another damn fanboy in denial. If that list of excuses still means it qualifies for "it just works" in your book, you're dellusional.
And by the way , no you can't create an account without a credit card, not without lying about where you live. The Australian store FORCES you to put in a credit card. I've Googled other solutions, and they all require a US account with a US address.
The only thing more annoying than these flaws are people like you who insist these flaws are my fault or something I shouldn't care about because you say so. Go buy a damned turtle neck.
Yes, anyone who disagrees with you is a fanboy. Why do you have a problem with using a credit card? Apple is a reputable company. If you have no credit, how is that Apple's fault? You cannot get a cellphone without a credit check. You cannot get utilities without a credit check.
You can sign up for a US account without a credit card. You do have to supply a US address but it only has to be a valid US address. You could use a hotel address and prepaid credit cards but you can setup a US account without first setting up a payment method.
I thought the purpose of Apple products was that you shouldn't have to.
The Fun Manual is only needed for people who have already been "trained" to work another way. New computer users don't seem to have any problems adjusting to how it works without a manual.
People move their music libraries all the time. Buy a newer hard drive, move the library to it. Use an external, move it to that. Even worse (and this one completely sucks, btw) - if your music is on an external, it could come it with different letters on occasion. I have a drive that floats between E and F. When I still tolerated iTunes, I had to keep going in and re-assigning the drive letters (and hoping that iTunes didn't auto-launch in the interim).
Oh, then there is the massive facepalm when it decides to go flag every dang song invalid and you have to pretty much start over.
I use songbird portable now, and I'm a lot happier. It still can be a pain if you change paths, but it handles the drive letter changes really well and I can use the same library+player on pretty much any machine.
Yes, if you are changing machines or upgrading your hard drive, you would either use an external drive to backup the entire library and copy it to the new machine drive or take the drive from the old machine, install it as a secondary drive and copy the library and music folder to the new drive. I don't see a problem here. If you are keeping your music on an external drive, you are going to have problems unless if you go into the volume manager and setup the drive to use a mount name instead of a drive letter before you start using it.
If you want to avoid problems with how windows handles drives by default, consider getting an internal drive large enough and keeping the entire library there.
The itunes library uses paths supplied by windows when running on windows within the XML library file so don't blame windows for having a brain dead default way of mounting drives with drive letters that can change.
I probably understand how windows works better than you but you are calling me a fanboy? I develop software on windows for my day job and I was involved in the XP beta before I decided to switch to OS X at home.
If windows used volume names instead of drive letters for drives there would be no problem. iTunes on a mac does not have this problem because drives are accessed by volume name.
Yep. My brother gave me his ipod touch a few days ago.
I had been trying to figure out how to sync music, videos, change the volume, fast forward, etc. Once I figured it out, it is easy to remember, but it is not very intuitive for me.
Worst is the inability to transfer my ebooks over to it. I had to create a server with all my books on it to get stanza to even see them.
All in all, it is a neat device, but I am saving my money for an android.
Most things are pretty intuitive for people new to PMPs. It sounds like you were struggling with it because of your learned habits from another PMP. Instead of taking a look around first, you decided that it was supposed to work a certain way and then struggled to figure it out. eBooks are not part of the current core functionality of iPod Touches. Why would you expect iTunes to directly sync to one of many eBook readers? What if you had more than one installed?
Android? You must be joking. Where is the software? Where are the games? I tried searching through the Android store through the web and it was amateur night. The store is disorganized and inconsistent.
I call BS on your BS. I use iTunes and I like a couple of things about it, but it has its problems.
- Have you ever tried moving music in your library? Have fun cleaning up the invalid entries.
Why would you feel the need to do that? Are you running out of disk space?
- In Windows there's all sorts of resource hogging software - services and helpers running ALL the time, regardless of if I'm using iTunes
Are you running a really old PC? Do you have a lot of crapware installed?
- Ever tried to recover music back from your iPod? You use to be able to do that once upon a time, but they decided that there was too much potential for piracy
Ever hear of backup? There are plenty of third party applications for both Windows and OS X that let you move music from an iPod to your computer but you really should be using a proper backup mechanism.
- My clickwheel has never quite worked right on my iPod. I should have had that fixed under warranty early on, but who knows how long I owuldn't have had my iPod for and what sort of cost/hassles I'd have gone through to RMA. Apple was making it VERY hard to RMA at one point here in Australia. The local consumer body had to step in.
Maybe they made it hard to RMA because of a high incidence of fraud?
- The click wheel interface sucks for large collections of music. Searching for a song on the iPod can be a pain.
- They make you jump through hoops to use certain features like Genius. In some countries you, like Australia you have to create an iTunes account and supply your credit card. When you "turn off" or don't enable Genius it still gets in the way
- Damn iPod screens attract scratches like moths to a flame. Keep some brasso handy.
*Sigh* Maybe you should RTFM. You can create smart playlists in iTunes or on the fly on the iPod using the current song to generate a genius playlist.
You might want to get some help for your OCD or accept that plastic does scratch especially if you keep other things in your pocket with your iPhone.
Another question is why did some bozo have to come up with "sticky" for this shit. There's no need for a new word -- it's DRM, maniacal top-down content control and savage vendor lock-in all rolled into one.
But sticky sure sounds more like fuzzy kittens.
There are a few problems with your theory.
1. All of the music Apple sells is DRM free and any DRM'ed songs that anyone still has which they could not upgrade can be burned to CD and re-ripped.
2. Even if iPhone apps were DRM-free, you would not be able to run then on non-apple device anyway.
Apps whether they be free or paid are the main part of the stickiness of the iPhone OS platform. Even ignoring the replacement costs, some apps would be irreplaceable on other platforms like Android because of the unique properties of the iPhone OS (multi-touch) and because many third party developers have not bothered with Android because of how poorly Google treats commercial software devs.
The Android store is biased in favour of free apps.
What happened here is someone reverse engineered the protocol tools for communicating with the iPhone on Ubuntu and the data is decrypted on the fly.
This flaw can be defeated with a remote wipe which you can do if your phone is either setup with the Mobileme "find my iphone" feature or provisioned through exchange.
Apple will have to implement a key exchange protocol and keep that closed source. Every security measure can eventually be discovered but providing the source is giving a major head start for the would be hacker to try brute force attacks against a known implementation.
Why in the world would we need 5 BILLION years of data to make wild speculation about the various Sun cycles?!?!?!
Oh, wait... they actually dont think it's just wild speculation, do they? Ah well. Yeah, in that case, I agree with you. a few hundred years of data is a drop in the bucket compared to the Sun's current age.
How exactly was the age of the sun determined? By what empirical data?
I've read the licence but I'm saying that certain causes are potentially unenforceable towards the first party (developer) let alone any third parties. The viral nature of the license for example from even linking to code should be denied. That implies that the license can somehow overwrite the copyright of another author.
If the distributors don't agree with the GPL, they don't distribute the program. Simple as that. The distributors are well aware of the license terms.
I hope that the viral and binary linking/packaging terms of the GPL are not only challenged but struck down as unenforceable...I do have a problem with license which attempt to "steal" or encumber the rights of other people.
I'm against the proprietary licenses that encumber the rights of the end-users. I hope that those are deemed unenforceable in the future.
End users don't give a crap about code or access to it. If your product requires modification of code in order to use it in another environment other than your own dev environment, end users will not touch it with a ten foot pole.
The developer never notified Apple of the license terms of the code (which I believe to be partially unenforceable) so Apple is not bound by those terms when they receive the binary.
If I download the binary of a GPL'ed program, I am not bound by the GPL one bit because it is not an end user or recipient license agreement for the binary. It only covers code.
While the source is a problem, the bigger problem is that the GPL states that you're not allowed to prevent people from redistributing the binary. Can you transfer an app from your phone to another one without Apple trying to stop you? No.
You can install apps on an unlimited number of iPhones/iPod Touches as long as you either authorize the device by signing in and redownloading the app directly or authorize the other person's iTunes to download and sync the app from your account.
I hope that the viral and binary linking/packaging terms of the GPL are not only challenged but struck down as unenforceable because they attempt to bind third parties to a license which they did not agree to and attempt to usurp the copyrights of other parties.
I have no problem with the FSF having a goal of keeping source code "free" but I do have a problem with license which attempt to "steal" or encumber the rights of other people.
Apple is the vendor of the software just like Walmart is a vendor. There is no requirement for the source to be distributed with the software by the vendor, it is up to the developer to make an offer to distribute the source to anyone who asks for it. There is no requirement for it to be a download either.
No license can impose additional restrictions on third parties other than developers taking the code and distributing a binary. The GPL does not apply to Apple anymore than it would apply to Walmart.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly don't mind the tiers. I just want them to make more tiers available; I do a lot of work from client locations, and 2gb a month doesn't cut it; I need about 7. If they had a 7gb tier i could pay...$100-150 a month for, that would be just fine.
So client locations don't have Wifi available? What possible kind of "client" work could you do on an iPhone or tablet anyway?
Maybe they should offer "business" unlimited accounts for around 50 dollars a month. It should only be offered on a business account. Individuals should be able to do all of their streaming just fine at the unlimited wifi hotspots or at home through their ISP and a wifi router.
So what, teams of top-notch lawyers cost lots and lots of money! Enough law suits (even ones they win) and they may look at the cost/benefit of continuing to abuse their customers in a whole new light! -Oz
Wrong. The only way to change things is to lobby the government to make changes through regulation or create a groundswell in the customer base to complain and threaten to cancel on masse. The latter scenario is even less likely given the apathy of the average consumer.
When I was in Hong Kong, I just had to pay $51 USD per month and they'll give you unlimited 3G data with tethering, tons of voice minutes, wifi access at their hotspots throughout the city, and an legally unlocked iPhone 3GS. Now I'm in Palo Alto, that barely buys me a voice plan. And even if I give them 2x what I did in Hong Kong, I'm still capped. And AT&T's reception in cities (like San Fran) sucks - yet it's Hong Kong that has more frickin' high rise buildings to block the 3G signals - and in Hong Kong 3G fucking works. I really, REALLY have no idea how any of you guys can try to defend AT&T over their crap service.
Maybe it is a cultural thing. Perhaps people in Hong Kong do not have a sense of entitlement to over use their 3G data even if they technically use as much as they want. Americans seem to have a similar attitude to food where people will gorge themselves at an "all you can eat" buffet to get their "money's worth". Those all you can eat buffets are probably losing money on the real porkers with no appetite control.
Regarding motivation for creative tasks, this that I only saw a day or two ago looks highly relevant.
RSAnimate
I saw that but the speaker failed to consider that the majority of successful "open source" development is done by "paid" developers. Some companies choose to use the open source model but still end up doing the vast majority, if not all of the development and testing of the main source tree. It makes for good PR and anyone can get their hands on the source but most companies would only allow commits to the source tree from developers they know and trust (their employees). They also often require copyright reassignment to the company for any commits so that it can be dual licensed.
You also have to consider that companies doing "open source" manage their projects with "paid" project managers, collect requirements with "paid" analysts and write documentation with "paid" technical writers. The so-called "pure" open source model is like a hydra with no clear leader and no clear change management process which is why the speed of development and innovation often fails to materialize.
If this guy has any balls, he'll take it to court! The only reason crap like this happens at all is that we the consumers have failed time and time again to stand up and face these assholes! So what if you fail, at least the case gets the attention it deserves, and reduces the likelihood that the corporations will act with such impunity in the future! -Oz
Which law firm do you work for? You guys are like sharks swimming in the water when they smell blood.
Suing should be the last resort because ultimately, corporations almost always win and lawsuits cause the prices that companies charge to go up. Only the lawyers come out as winners.
There were all of those holes appearing in the alternate world.
I don't think this device deserves to be compared to the "iPad and imitations thereof" - A) it's not a tablet; B) it's far less powerful; C) it doesn't even have any built-in network capability, which is what the iPad and its following are intended for; and D) it's horribly ugly. That being said, it looks like an excellent little device to hack on, and a big bonus is that it has USB ports! I may actually pick one up one of these days.
Agreed. Although I had mod points, I decided to post in agreement instead. This product bares more resemblance to the Atari Profile than it does the iPad. Ok, to be fair, it bares some resemblance to the Toshiba Libretto but the Libretto is probably much more powerful and functional despite being a very old product.
This product will not sell well. I would be surprised if it even sells 4000 units. I remember everyone hyping up the JooJoo tablet but it only sold 4000 units initially and many of those were returned.
The Pandora hardware is closed once you get to the level of individual chips, though it's not that big a deal for someone trying to build one.
Since when did you or anyone here own a chip foundry? You statement is pure fluff. You are getting sucked in by the word "open". You might not like the whole concept of "profit" but without a profit motive and some semblance of even temporary exclusivity, no competent company will ever develop an innovative product. Hiring real talent requires money and despite what everyone says, most techie people will not produce the same kind of quality on an open source project as they would on a closed source one where they are getting paid a lot of money.
One of the major downfalls of all of those "open" initiatives is that, once you go beyond basic things like a web browser with an well established UI paradigm or core services, the design by committee effect drags down not only innovation but quality of the end product. Core services tend to work out better because they are usually licensed to be compatible with wide participation from everyone including corporations and are focused on implementing an open standard.
Ultimately the problem is not about money but rather a herd mentality in open source. With a closed product, the employees have some incentive to come up with the best possible product because bonuses could hinge on good sales and because any team member could get rewarded even more if they came up with a brilliant innovation which set the product apart from the field.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/android-market-share-passes-iphones-npd-data-2010-05-10
In the "US" market during a month that is just prior to the release of the next iPhone refresh so most people are holding off "purchasing" iPhone. The install base is higher even if you don't count touches and the iPad but once the new iPhone comes out, expect the numbers to reverse in the US.
Now Apple will jack up the price on iPads by 20%!
It would raise the cost to Apple by .7 percent per iPad. I think that Apple intends on eating that difference rather than passing it on to the consumer.
Another damn fanboy in denial. If that list of excuses still means it qualifies for "it just works" in your book, you're dellusional.
And by the way , no you can't create an account without a credit card, not without lying about where you live. The Australian store FORCES you to put in a credit card. I've Googled other solutions, and they all require a US account with a US address.
The only thing more annoying than these flaws are people like you who insist these flaws are my fault or something I shouldn't care about because you say so. Go buy a damned turtle neck.
Yes, anyone who disagrees with you is a fanboy. Why do you have a problem with using a credit card? Apple is a reputable company. If you have no credit, how is that Apple's fault? You cannot get a cellphone without a credit check. You cannot get utilities without a credit check.
You can sign up for a US account without a credit card. You do have to supply a US address but it only has to be a valid US address. You could use a hotel address and prepaid credit cards but you can setup a US account without first setting up a payment method.
*Sigh* Maybe you should RTFM.
I thought the purpose of Apple products was that you shouldn't have to.
The Fun Manual is only needed for people who have already been "trained" to work another way. New computer users don't seem to have any problems adjusting to how it works without a manual.
Wow, what a fanboi.
People move their music libraries all the time. Buy a newer hard drive, move the library to it. Use an external, move it to that. Even worse (and this one completely sucks, btw) - if your music is on an external, it could come it with different letters on occasion. I have a drive that floats between E and F. When I still tolerated iTunes, I had to keep going in and re-assigning the drive letters (and hoping that iTunes didn't auto-launch in the interim).
Oh, then there is the massive facepalm when it decides to go flag every dang song invalid and you have to pretty much start over.
I use songbird portable now, and I'm a lot happier. It still can be a pain if you change paths, but it handles the drive letter changes really well and I can use the same library+player on pretty much any machine.
Yes, if you are changing machines or upgrading your hard drive, you would either use an external drive to backup the entire library and copy it to the new machine drive or take the drive from the old machine, install it as a secondary drive and copy the library and music folder to the new drive. I don't see a problem here. If you are keeping your music on an external drive, you are going to have problems unless if you go into the volume manager and setup the drive to use a mount name instead of a drive letter before you start using it.
If you want to avoid problems with how windows handles drives by default, consider getting an internal drive large enough and keeping the entire library there.
The itunes library uses paths supplied by windows when running on windows within the XML library file so don't blame windows for having a brain dead default way of mounting drives with drive letters that can change.
I probably understand how windows works better than you but you are calling me a fanboy? I develop software on windows for my day job and I was involved in the XP beta before I decided to switch to OS X at home.
If windows used volume names instead of drive letters for drives there would be no problem. iTunes on a mac does not have this problem because drives are accessed by volume name.
Yep. My brother gave me his ipod touch a few days ago.
I had been trying to figure out how to sync music, videos, change the volume, fast forward, etc. Once I figured it out, it is easy to remember, but it is not very intuitive for me.
Worst is the inability to transfer my ebooks over to it. I had to create a server with all my books on it to get stanza to even see them.
All in all, it is a neat device, but I am saving my money for an android.
Most things are pretty intuitive for people new to PMPs. It sounds like you were struggling with it because of your learned habits from another PMP. Instead of taking a look around first, you decided that it was supposed to work a certain way and then struggled to figure it out. eBooks are not part of the current core functionality of iPod Touches. Why would you expect iTunes to directly sync to one of many eBook readers? What if you had more than one installed?
Android? You must be joking. Where is the software? Where are the games? I tried searching through the Android store through the web and it was amateur night. The store is disorganized and inconsistent.
I call bullshit on this one.
I call BS on your BS. I use iTunes and I like a couple of things about it, but it has its problems.
- Have you ever tried moving music in your library? Have fun cleaning up the invalid entries.
Why would you feel the need to do that? Are you running out of disk space?
- In Windows there's all sorts of resource hogging software - services and helpers running ALL the time, regardless of if I'm using iTunes
Are you running a really old PC? Do you have a lot of crapware installed?
- Ever tried to recover music back from your iPod? You use to be able to do that once upon a time, but they decided that there was too much potential for piracy
Ever hear of backup? There are plenty of third party applications for both Windows and OS X that let you move music from an iPod to your computer but you really should be using a proper backup mechanism.
- My clickwheel has never quite worked right on my iPod. I should have had that fixed under warranty early on, but who knows how long I owuldn't have had my iPod for and what sort of cost/hassles I'd have gone through to RMA. Apple was making it VERY hard to RMA at one point here in Australia. The local consumer body had to step in.
Maybe they made it hard to RMA because of a high incidence of fraud?
- The click wheel interface sucks for large collections of music. Searching for a song on the iPod can be a pain.
- They make you jump through hoops to use certain features like Genius. In some countries you, like Australia you have to create an iTunes account and supply your credit card. When you "turn off" or don't enable Genius it still gets in the way
- Damn iPod screens attract scratches like moths to a flame. Keep some brasso handy.
*Sigh* Maybe you should RTFM. You can create smart playlists in iTunes or on the fly on the iPod using the current song to generate a genius playlist.
You might want to get some help for your OCD or accept that plastic does scratch especially if you keep other things in your pocket with your iPhone.
Why is Slashdot so stuck on Apple?
Another question is why did some bozo have to come up with "sticky" for this shit. There's no need for a new word -- it's DRM, maniacal top-down content control and savage vendor lock-in all rolled into one.
But sticky sure sounds more like fuzzy kittens.
There are a few problems with your theory. 1. All of the music Apple sells is DRM free and any DRM'ed songs that anyone still has which they could not upgrade can be burned to CD and re-ripped. 2. Even if iPhone apps were DRM-free, you would not be able to run then on non-apple device anyway.
Apps whether they be free or paid are the main part of the stickiness of the iPhone OS platform. Even ignoring the replacement costs, some apps would be irreplaceable on other platforms like Android because of the unique properties of the iPhone OS (multi-touch) and because many third party developers have not bothered with Android because of how poorly Google treats commercial software devs.
The Android store is biased in favour of free apps.
This flaw can be defeated with a remote wipe which you can do if your phone is either setup with the Mobileme "find my iphone" feature or provisioned through exchange.
Apple will have to implement a key exchange protocol and keep that closed source. Every security measure can eventually be discovered but providing the source is giving a major head start for the would be hacker to try brute force attacks against a known implementation.
Why in the world would we need 5 BILLION years of data to make wild speculation about the various Sun cycles?!?!?!
Oh, wait... they actually dont think it's just wild speculation, do they? Ah well. Yeah, in that case, I agree with you. a few hundred years of data is a drop in the bucket compared to the Sun's current age.
How exactly was the age of the sun determined? By what empirical data?
I've read the licence but I'm saying that certain causes are potentially unenforceable towards the first party (developer) let alone any third parties. The viral nature of the license for example from even linking to code should be denied. That implies that the license can somehow overwrite the copyright of another author.
If the distributors don't agree with the GPL, they don't distribute the program. Simple as that. The distributors are well aware of the license terms.
I hope that the viral and binary linking/packaging terms of the GPL are not only challenged but struck down as unenforceable...I do have a problem with license which attempt to "steal" or encumber the rights of other people.
I'm against the proprietary licenses that encumber the rights of the end-users. I hope that those are deemed unenforceable in the future.
End users don't give a crap about code or access to it. If your product requires modification of code in order to use it in another environment other than your own dev environment, end users will not touch it with a ten foot pole.
The developer never notified Apple of the license terms of the code (which I believe to be partially unenforceable) so Apple is not bound by those terms when they receive the binary.
If I download the binary of a GPL'ed program, I am not bound by the GPL one bit because it is not an end user or recipient license agreement for the binary. It only covers code.
Those terms don't attempt to bind third parties to anything, they limit what third parties can do with the code released under the GPL.
Apple is doing nothing with the code. They receive a binary from the developer.
While the source is a problem, the bigger problem is that the GPL states that you're not allowed to prevent people from redistributing the binary. Can you transfer an app from your phone to another one without Apple trying to stop you? No.
You can install apps on an unlimited number of iPhones/iPod Touches as long as you either authorize the device by signing in and redownloading the app directly or authorize the other person's iTunes to download and sync the app from your account.
I have no problem with the FSF having a goal of keeping source code "free" but I do have a problem with license which attempt to "steal" or encumber the rights of other people.
No license can impose additional restrictions on third parties other than developers taking the code and distributing a binary. The GPL does not apply to Apple anymore than it would apply to Walmart.
Where is a slate with a "SlateOS"? Good for reading, good for watching, good for casual surfing/ computing. multitouch, high end pen input.
The iPhone OS. You can use a pen input if you really want to and the touch screen has a fairly high resolution sensor grid.