At this time I believe the only non-Apple portable devices that support FairPlay are a few Motorola phones (the ROKR actually had it before the RAZR, though the first version of that phone was a flop). It seems to be a way for Apple to test the waters for the potential of licensing and/or demand for iTunes-enabled cell phones.
I think it's also important to note that, on Mac and Windows platforms, any application that uses Quicktime can decode FairPlay. So there's really no reason why, for example, a Windows Media Center settop box couldn't play any content that the upcoming iTV can. I'm pretty sure Apple actively encourages venders to include Quicktime, so licensing is probably not an issue there. The only caveat would be that such a box would count towards the five computer simultaneous authorization limit, from which iPods (and presumably RAZRs and iTV) are exempt due to having some sort of master key.
So yeah, it's true that FairPlay is not a widely-licensed system, but there are definitely signs that Apple is prepared to adapt if market conditions demand it.
No, that's just not true. I've been abroad more than a couple of times (and I don't just mean Canada), and US officials simply do not stop you, let alone ask where you're going, before you board the plane. When you arrive at a foreign country, yeah, the local immigration officials want to know a bit about why you're there, but that's because you're a foreigner entering their country!
As for the customs end of it, you only have to report what you're taking back into the US that you didn't already have when you left, and only if it exceeds something like $400 in value or includes regulated items. That exists to minimize smuggling that circumvents import taxes and restrictions on hazardous items (like plants that might introduce non-native pests). And honestly, if you have nothing to declare and fill out the form properly, customs usually hardly says a word before waving you on. YMMV
Er, I'm just a bystander in this argument, but I believe you misread the response. The GP is saying that LiveJournal could well have cleared the ad, but that it wouldn't have mattered because they're a US-based company and the malware was designed only to download to IP's outside of the US. The point was not that the ads went through a third party server, which I agree is irrelevant, but that the ad was coded nefariously enough to appear malware-free to anyone looking at it from the US. That doesn't mean LiveJournal isn't responsible, but I do think that makes the error a bit more understandable.
I agree that we should be frisking an 80 year old grandma just the same as a Middle Eastern man of 18-34 years of age who is in good physical condition (the characteristics shared by over 95% of terrorists).
Yeah, and over 78.2% of statistics are made up. Al Queda and its ilk may be all the rage when talking about terrorism, but I assure you there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists around who would love to do harm to the United States. Timothy McVeigh wasn't Middle Eastern, and there are plenty of extremist groups in the US that are made up entirely of whites. Looking internationally, we have FARC and other guerilla groups in South America, ETA in the Basque region of Spain, the “Real” IRA in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on. Recently there has been an uptick in female suicide bombers, so the male part of your profile doesn't really hold up either. I suppose the age range is still fairly accurate, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that it will stay that way.
The point is, racial profiling would at least have a strong argument if it were actually effective. Unfortunately, all it really means is that the next terrorist to strike won't fit the profile. It's not like it takes long for a terrorist group to figure out what security agents are looking for and change strategies accordingly.
Um, no. That's just not true. Apple makes maybe 20 applications that aren't part of the OS at the most, while there are many thousands of Mac OS X programs out there. They don't even make a lot of the most widely-used Mac programs, e.g. Word, Photoshop, and InDesign. Heck, there are over a thousand Mac applications that have Intel-native binaries available. Take a look at this guide if you really don't believe me.
Um, no. iTunes existed for a few years before there was an iTunes Music Store, and before there was an iPod. It's simple to add regular MP3 files to the iTunes library (as well as AIFF, WAV, AAC and Apple Lossless), and one of the original motivations for iTunes was to make it simple for Mac users to rip CD albums to their computers (remember the "Rip. Mix. Burn." ad campaign that infuriated the recording industry?). You have the option of converting non-DRM'd songs between formats if you want, but you certainly don't have to convert an MP3 to AAC in order to listen to it on iTunes or on an iPod.
They're paying a license fee to Apple? I'd certainly like to know your source on that. As far as I can tell, the details of the Motorola/Apple agreement aren't public.
Regardless, it's certainly not just like the HP-branded iPod. That device was simply, as you imply yourself, an iPod with an HP logo on it. Apple still developed and manufactured it. The Rokr, on the other hand, is made by Motorola. You may not like the fact that Apple controls who can access FairPlay technology (and to be accurate, that's all it's about, since iTunes was synching with MP3 players long before there was an iPod), but I don't see how that's any less independent than when a camcorder company licenses FireWire or something like that. In the long-run, I agree, we need open standards, but this is still very much an emerging market. I don't blame Apple for wanting to move judiciously.
Sorry, moving the goal posts didn't work.:-)
So, wishing that his country would preserve the civil liberties that make it great is treason? This man has not turned against his country, his government has. Patriotism isn't about blindly accepting what others tell you, it's about fighting for what's right. If the terrorists are winning, it is because they have scared us into compromising our values.
Apple could use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to ensure that only Mac computers can run its OS X operating system, according to a news analysis from Gartner.
In other words, this is just idle speculation from a market research company. This article is flamebait.
Yes, states and the federal government are both funded by taxes, but they are different pools of money from different sources. The federal tax base consists primarily of funds collected via the federal income tax, with small amounts coming from import tariffs and the like. States each choose how to raise money and usually have their own income taxes, but those are usually much lower and supplemented by sales taxes and possibly property taxes (although property tax tends to go to municipalities, at least it does where I'm from).
In any case, the reason unfunded mandates matter is because the federal government effectively tells the states how to spend their money, irrespective of any budgetary plans each state might have. In effect, the federal government gets to claim it's being more fiscally responsible than it really is because these expenditures aren't showing up on its balance sheet, while the states incur extra debt. Worse, the burden of a program like REAL ID will vary by state; those states with relatively sophisticated driver licenses probably won't have to spend as much on compliance as other states.
Nice try, but had you looked at the article, you would have noticed the MSNBC logo. I'll give you three guesses as to what the "MS" stands for. Hardly a case of a corporation wanting iTunes to be successful. Not everything is a conspiracy.
That's news to me. At Tufts, the Network Use Policy allows us to run servers and simply recommends working with TCCS to help things run smoothly (except mail servers -- we need permission for that). Ports are not blocked at all here, and the "policing" of file sharing is limited to responding to specific requests by copyright holders who trace files to our network.
To respond to your broader point, bandwidth isn't only beneficial for file sharing (nor is file sharing only beneficial for copyright infringement and Linux ISO's). Broadcast-quality video conferencing comes to mind, and people in different fields, particularly in academia, can undoubtedly think of many situations where the bandwidth is genuinely useful.
I like OS X as much as anyone, and its multipedia capabilities are utterly obscene, but for general apps most people don't need it.
I'd argue that these days, multimedia capabilities are essential to general apps. The cubicle may still be all about word processing and email, but in the rest of the universe, people are listening to music, archiving photos, and watching DVD's on their computers on a regular basis. Beyond that, multimedia creation is even beginning to become a major part of general computing. As more people get camcorders with FireWire ports, they're discovering that they can clean up footage on the computer and send it to grandma. Video conferencing is also on the rise.
Those utterly obscence capabilities of which you speak are rapidly becoming essential. If we look at where Linux market share is coming from, I am certain we will find that it's not truly coming from general-use computers. Quite frankly, for an entire generation of users, if it can't sync with an iPod, it's not for general use.
Actually, Objective-C is converted to C during preprocessing. [object method:var1 with:var2] gets converted to something like objc_msgsend(object, msg1, var1, msg2, var2). Obviously, the whole message sending business is going to be slower than regular function calls, but that really just means that more code is being generated and not that the compiled code is "slower." In fact, since Objective-C is a strict superset of C, you can write and call plain old C functions and pass them to cc1obj, which will output the exact same code as cc1.
There was a long period of time when I didn't visit Slashdot because I couldn't stand the one-sided editorial bent. Although there are obviously still certain tendencies, I have recently found this site to be much more open to alternative opinions and worth a few minutes of reading each day. In fact, I recently created this new account and started posting again. Unfortunately, it's stories like this that make me wonder whether I made the right decision. Except for the "from the dept" line, there is little to stop readers from taking this story as fact and not just a totally unverifyable rumor!
Granted, CNet did post this story, but I'm not happy with their journalistic practices either, and right now I'm talking about Slashdot. I don't feel it's in the community's best interests for the editors to feed into this rumors-as-fact frenzy. Just yesterday, this very site reported as fact that Apple was discontinuing the iMac, when in fact all that was happening was a switch in suppliers. Was there a followup story correcting this, or even an update to the headline? Nope. I suspect that the same thing will happen if January 7th comes and goes and Apple doesn't reveal any plans to charge for iApps, leaving readers with opinions in their minds based on something that wasn't even true.
This rumor frenzy isn't even limited to Apple, although it happens to be a very prolific subject of speculation. Slashdot is supposed to be reporting news for nerds, not rumors.
An article at MacWorld UK says that Apple is going to be switching its supplier of iMacs and eMacs. I think it's likely that the real story here is that LG will stop production of the iMac in June, NOT that Apple will stop making them completely. Obviously I can't be certain that both reports aren't true, but this certainly looks like another example of bad journalism.
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At this time I believe the only non-Apple portable devices that support FairPlay are a few Motorola phones (the ROKR actually had it before the RAZR, though the first version of that phone was a flop). It seems to be a way for Apple to test the waters for the potential of licensing and/or demand for iTunes-enabled cell phones.
I think it's also important to note that, on Mac and Windows platforms, any application that uses Quicktime can decode FairPlay. So there's really no reason why, for example, a Windows Media Center settop box couldn't play any content that the upcoming iTV can. I'm pretty sure Apple actively encourages venders to include Quicktime, so licensing is probably not an issue there. The only caveat would be that such a box would count towards the five computer simultaneous authorization limit, from which iPods (and presumably RAZRs and iTV) are exempt due to having some sort of master key.
So yeah, it's true that FairPlay is not a widely-licensed system, but there are definitely signs that Apple is prepared to adapt if market conditions demand it.
So those Motorola phones with iTunes are just figments of my imagination, then?
No, that's just not true. I've been abroad more than a couple of times (and I don't just mean Canada), and US officials simply do not stop you, let alone ask where you're going, before you board the plane. When you arrive at a foreign country, yeah, the local immigration officials want to know a bit about why you're there, but that's because you're a foreigner entering their country!
As for the customs end of it, you only have to report what you're taking back into the US that you didn't already have when you left, and only if it exceeds something like $400 in value or includes regulated items. That exists to minimize smuggling that circumvents import taxes and restrictions on hazardous items (like plants that might introduce non-native pests). And honestly, if you have nothing to declare and fill out the form properly, customs usually hardly says a word before waving you on. YMMV
Er, I'm just a bystander in this argument, but I believe you misread the response. The GP is saying that LiveJournal could well have cleared the ad, but that it wouldn't have mattered because they're a US-based company and the malware was designed only to download to IP's outside of the US. The point was not that the ads went through a third party server, which I agree is irrelevant, but that the ad was coded nefariously enough to appear malware-free to anyone looking at it from the US. That doesn't mean LiveJournal isn't responsible, but I do think that makes the error a bit more understandable.
Yeah, and over 78.2% of statistics are made up. Al Queda and its ilk may be all the rage when talking about terrorism, but I assure you there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists around who would love to do harm to the United States. Timothy McVeigh wasn't Middle Eastern, and there are plenty of extremist groups in the US that are made up entirely of whites. Looking internationally, we have FARC and other guerilla groups in South America, ETA in the Basque region of Spain, the “Real” IRA in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on. Recently there has been an uptick in female suicide bombers, so the male part of your profile doesn't really hold up either. I suppose the age range is still fairly accurate, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that it will stay that way.
The point is, racial profiling would at least have a strong argument if it were actually effective. Unfortunately, all it really means is that the next terrorist to strike won't fit the profile. It's not like it takes long for a terrorist group to figure out what security agents are looking for and change strategies accordingly.
Um, no. That's just not true. Apple makes maybe 20 applications that aren't part of the OS at the most, while there are many thousands of Mac OS X programs out there. They don't even make a lot of the most widely-used Mac programs, e.g. Word, Photoshop, and InDesign. Heck, there are over a thousand Mac applications that have Intel-native binaries available. Take a look at this guide if you really don't believe me.
Um, no. iTunes existed for a few years before there was an iTunes Music Store, and before there was an iPod. It's simple to add regular MP3 files to the iTunes library (as well as AIFF, WAV, AAC and Apple Lossless), and one of the original motivations for iTunes was to make it simple for Mac users to rip CD albums to their computers (remember the "Rip. Mix. Burn." ad campaign that infuriated the recording industry?). You have the option of converting non-DRM'd songs between formats if you want, but you certainly don't have to convert an MP3 to AAC in order to listen to it on iTunes or on an iPod.
They're paying a license fee to Apple? I'd certainly like to know your source on that. As far as I can tell, the details of the Motorola/Apple agreement aren't public. Regardless, it's certainly not just like the HP-branded iPod. That device was simply, as you imply yourself, an iPod with an HP logo on it. Apple still developed and manufactured it. The Rokr, on the other hand, is made by Motorola. You may not like the fact that Apple controls who can access FairPlay technology (and to be accurate, that's all it's about, since iTunes was synching with MP3 players long before there was an iPod), but I don't see how that's any less independent than when a camcorder company licenses FireWire or something like that. In the long-run, I agree, we need open standards, but this is still very much an emerging market. I don't blame Apple for wanting to move judiciously. Sorry, moving the goal posts didn't work. :-)
Um, you mean like the Motorola Rokr?
So, wishing that his country would preserve the civil liberties that make it great is treason? This man has not turned against his country, his government has. Patriotism isn't about blindly accepting what others tell you, it's about fighting for what's right. If the terrorists are winning, it is because they have scared us into compromising our values.
Ahem:
In other words, this is just idle speculation from a market research company. This article is flamebait.
Yes, states and the federal government are both funded by taxes, but they are different pools of money from different sources. The federal tax base consists primarily of funds collected via the federal income tax, with small amounts coming from import tariffs and the like. States each choose how to raise money and usually have their own income taxes, but those are usually much lower and supplemented by sales taxes and possibly property taxes (although property tax tends to go to municipalities, at least it does where I'm from).
In any case, the reason unfunded mandates matter is because the federal government effectively tells the states how to spend their money, irrespective of any budgetary plans each state might have. In effect, the federal government gets to claim it's being more fiscally responsible than it really is because these expenditures aren't showing up on its balance sheet, while the states incur extra debt. Worse, the burden of a program like REAL ID will vary by state; those states with relatively sophisticated driver licenses probably won't have to spend as much on compliance as other states.
Nice try, but had you looked at the article, you would have noticed the MSNBC logo. I'll give you three guesses as to what the "MS" stands for. Hardly a case of a corporation wanting iTunes to be successful. Not everything is a conspiracy.
That's news to me. At Tufts, the Network Use Policy allows us to run servers and simply recommends working with TCCS to help things run smoothly (except mail servers -- we need permission for that). Ports are not blocked at all here, and the "policing" of file sharing is limited to responding to specific requests by copyright holders who trace files to our network.
To respond to your broader point, bandwidth isn't only beneficial for file sharing (nor is file sharing only beneficial for copyright infringement and Linux ISO's). Broadcast-quality video conferencing comes to mind, and people in different fields, particularly in academia, can undoubtedly think of many situations where the bandwidth is genuinely useful.
I'd argue that these days, multimedia capabilities are essential to general apps. The cubicle may still be all about word processing and email, but in the rest of the universe, people are listening to music, archiving photos, and watching DVD's on their computers on a regular basis. Beyond that, multimedia creation is even beginning to become a major part of general computing. As more people get camcorders with FireWire ports, they're discovering that they can clean up footage on the computer and send it to grandma. Video conferencing is also on the rise.
Those utterly obscence capabilities of which you speak are rapidly becoming essential. If we look at where Linux market share is coming from, I am certain we will find that it's not truly coming from general-use computers. Quite frankly, for an entire generation of users, if it can't sync with an iPod, it's not for general use.
Actually, Objective-C is converted to C during preprocessing. [object method:var1 with:var2] gets converted to something like objc_msgsend(object, msg1, var1, msg2, var2). Obviously, the whole message sending business is going to be slower than regular function calls, but that really just means that more code is being generated and not that the compiled code is "slower." In fact, since Objective-C is a strict superset of C, you can write and call plain old C functions and pass them to cc1obj, which will output the exact same code as cc1.
There was a long period of time when I didn't visit Slashdot because I couldn't stand the one-sided editorial bent. Although there are obviously still certain tendencies, I have recently found this site to be much more open to alternative opinions and worth a few minutes of reading each day. In fact, I recently created this new account and started posting again. Unfortunately, it's stories like this that make me wonder whether I made the right decision. Except for the "from the dept" line, there is little to stop readers from taking this story as fact and not just a totally unverifyable rumor!
Granted, CNet did post this story, but I'm not happy with their journalistic practices either, and right now I'm talking about Slashdot. I don't feel it's in the community's best interests for the editors to feed into this rumors-as-fact frenzy. Just yesterday, this very site reported as fact that Apple was discontinuing the iMac, when in fact all that was happening was a switch in suppliers. Was there a followup story correcting this, or even an update to the headline? Nope. I suspect that the same thing will happen if January 7th comes and goes and Apple doesn't reveal any plans to charge for iApps, leaving readers with opinions in their minds based on something that wasn't even true.
This rumor frenzy isn't even limited to Apple, although it happens to be a very prolific subject of speculation. Slashdot is supposed to be reporting news for nerds, not rumors.
An article at MacWorld UK says that Apple is going to be switching its supplier of iMacs and eMacs. I think it's likely that the real story here is that LG will stop production of the iMac in June, NOT that Apple will stop making them completely. Obviously I can't be certain that both reports aren't true, but this certainly looks like another example of bad journalism.