my analogy was intentionally ridiculous, as are most analogies i've seen relating to computers. The point I was trying to make was that wanting something to be a certain way does not mean that it is that way, or that you have the right to force the issue.
I don't like software licensing anymore than the rest of the general/. population. However, I choose to limit myself to licenses I can stomach instead of accepting licenses I can't and then willfully violating the contract I agreed to, simply because I feel entitled.
Individual clauses in a contract being invalid do not invalidate the entire contract, unless the entire contract is somehow dependent upon the relevant clause.
That's what this whole thing is about anyway. It's time for the FCC to decide what the new fair use exceptions will be to copyright law. There have been requests to make jail-breaking legal. Apple has stated that they don't want this exception to be granted because they don't want part of their EULA that is currently valid to be invalidated.
Quoting someone else that responded to one of my other posts:
You are absolutely, unequivocably, incorrect.
Courts have recently held EULAs to be perfectly valid contracts (see Blizzard Entertainment Inc vs MDY Industries, LLC [arstechnica.com]).
The specific quote that applies is:
Blizzard argued, and Judge Campbell agreed, that when users violated the World of Warcraft EULA, they no longer had a license to play the game and were therefore guilty of copyright infringement. As Siy noted in a blog post last year, Blizzard's theory, if taken literally, would mean that violating any of the rules in the EULA and Terms of Service, such as choosing a screen name that didn't meet Blizzard's guidelines, would be an act of copyright infringement
Now, that court decision may be overturned at some point, or the law may be rewritten to change the situation. But until then, this court decisions is pretty strong evidence that my interpretation of the Stats Quo is accurate, at least more accurate than yours.
Quoting another respondent to that thread
I believe you are thinking of shrinkwrap license agreements which essentially try to say that you agreed to the license before you opened the box, even the the license was inside the box and unavailable until the box was already opened. Those agreements have been found invalid since the consumer did not have an opportunity to examine them prior to their "consent".
This isn't the same thing.
Shrink wrapped contract that required you to agree to them before being able to read them have been invalidated. However, software EULA's that require you to agree to them, after being allowed to read them, in order to use the software are still very much legal. I'm not saying I like it. I don't, but they are currently accepted as legal by the courts.
...it allows them the legal right to copy it, and then distribute it as they want (which usually means selling it)
Emphasis mine.
Software distribution is different than physical distribution of books. I'm not saying I approve of the current status quo, but until it gets changed, they distribute "Software Licenses" not "Software", and part of the License is a non-negotiable agreement as to what you can and cannot do with the software.
Ultimately, if you find their license to be too restrictive, they you need to decide if the restrictions outweigh your desire to have the device. If so, then purchase a different phone with different restrictions. If enough people agree with you, Apple will either not sell enough iPhones, or have to change their licensing so as to allow the functionality you desire. It doesn't mean you are allowed to accept the agreement and then ignore it, legally speaking. You can in actuality as long as you don't get caught.
Just because you want and iPhone with no restrictions, doesn't mean that they have to sell you one. I want to have sex with various, unnamed celebrity starlets, but that doesn't mean that they have to let me.
I don't own an iPhone, but as I understand things jailbreaking an iPhone enables you to install non-sanctioned programs on your iPhone.
It is not considered fair use, which applies to copyright movies and music and allows the copying of content for specific reasons (backups, etc.), but not for the violation of software EULA's.
There are free, non-stolen apps available only if you've jailbroken you iPhone. They are unavailable for 1 of 3 reasons. 1. They violate Apples agreements with AT&T (tethering apps). 2. They violate Apples Developer agreements by running a process in the background, duplicating already existing functionality (or soon to be released functionality), create their own runtime (Flash), install spyware, etc. 3. The authors never tried to release the software via iTunes music store becuase they are against it for one reason or another (Can't/Won't pay the $100 Apple Developer Fee, Opposed to any limitation on what their software can/will do, Just plain don't like Apple, etc.).
Jailbreaking also allows you to install pirated software. There was a post somewhere recently talking about a site that had sprung up around cracking AppStore Apps and then distributing them for free (Crackulous).
No, they said that they don't want to have Jailbreaking made legal. There is a big difference between not wanting the routine violation of your EULA made legal, and actually bothering to sue someone over it.
Apple is not opposed to you F*ing with your hardware (it'll void your warantee), but saying they don't want the FCC to say that jailbreaking is legal. They have their justifications for it, but if you don't agree then you don't have to buy an iPhone.
It really is that simple. Companies that sell software are allowed (for now) to write EULA's that limit the uses to which you can put their software. While that ability is still in place you need to decide whether their limitations are worth the features. If not, they buy a different device where the trade off is acceptable. You don't get to violate the EULA, just becuase you don't like it. That's like saying I should be able to walk into a Best Buy with my laptop and start ripping movies b/c I think they charge too much for new releases (Which they do, IMHO).
[sarcasm] It's my hardware, and I'm only copying bits. What's the problem?[/sarcasm]
A citation would really be appreciated for this. Both companies get sued alot. MS by anti-trust regulators primarily and Apple by customers that are pissed something didn't work as intended, and both by patent trolls. The only company I know that Apple is Suing at the moment is that cheap Apple knock off manufacturer.
Are you confusing Apple with the MPAA or RIAA for some reason?
Because the people that wrote the code were being payed from the money gained by those very same business tactics he supposedly finds so reprehensible.
Besides, his comments make it obvious he was never going to consider paying for Apple products in the first place, this is a case of justification for bias after the fact. It is clear that the OP believes Apple sells products, not because they are better than the alternative, but because Apple has better marketing and a CEO with mind control abilities. That kind of perception means he wouldn't consider Apple products no matter what they did.
It's like someone that is heterosexual using the AIDS outbreaks in the 70's & 80's as justification for not being gay. The Hetero guy was never really considering becoming homosexual, He'd just be using the Horror surrounding AIDS as some sort of evidence for his own perceived moral superiority.
I'm not saying all, or even most of Apples business decisions are ideal. However, Apple hasn't sued anyone that I'm aware of over this issue, they just stated their stance on the issue. If they start suing, then he'd be fully justified in chastizing the Co.
As a biologist, I've never heard to evolution refered to as Darwinism by anyone outside of the ID press core. In my biology classes it was:
Darwinian evolution
Mendelian inheritence
etc.
This whole article is based on a red herring thrown out by the ID proponents to distract from the lack of irrifutable evidence for their "Theory". Congratulations, the author of the original piece has taken the bait, hook, line & sinker.
Be careful about casting aspersions on an entire Nation because of a handful of nutjobs. Britan may not have the Anti-Evolutionist ID proponents, but it does have a rampant case of Homeopathy which is compounded by the growing belief that Vaccinations cause Autism.
The evidence for Homeopathy and Vaccine caused Autism are not any better than the "evidence" for ID put forward by the nutjobs here in the US. There is a whole soap opera going on right now concerning the Science blog "Bad Science" by Brian Goldacre and some London radio personality that's decided the pharmecutical companies are out to kill children.
That's not an assumption, which is normally based purely on personal conjecture. It's based on them receiving a patent, which is supposed to require the creation and description of a novel or innovative process/technique/device/etc.
The patent system may be overworked, and prone to approve overly broad patents despite the existence of prior art, but I've not seen any commentary that this is the case for Apple's Multi-Touch patent. FingerWorks developed a lot of Multi-Touch technology from scratch and then was purchased by Apple. The innovating that has been, and continues to be done by the people that originally worked at FingerWorks is still very innovative. The best inventions seem obvious after the fact, and multi-touch is one of those types of innovations.
It sounds a lot more like "Create your own, you can't have ours!" Historically, Apple believes that MS ripped off much of their IP for windows. They were just reinforcing the point that they weren't going to let it happen again.
Anyone else can develop a multi-touch phone, they are just going to have to come up with a unique implementation that is innovative enough to be non-infringing. Or in short, Innovate.
The Palm Pre has received so much press because the press likes to pit Davids against the current Goliath when ever they can. It sells more papers, gets more page hits, and ultimately makes them more money. The Palm is an unreleased piece of equipment, where much of the functionality hasn't even been finished yet. It's impossible to know how good something is if it is currently vaporware. I'm not saying can't be good or even better than an iPhone, but the iPhone is real, and available today. The same cannot be said about the Pre.
You are being unnecessarily pedantic. Once Apple purchased FingerWorks, the patents and innovation became Apple property. Integrating the technology from the FingerWorks acquisition and creating the iPhone was no small feat, and I'm sure that a lot of the relevant patents were applied for after the acquisition.
If Apples patent is fairly specific and not overly broad, it can only stop Palm from using the same implementation as Apple. If Palm, or anyone else for that matter, wants to implement similar functionality they'll be forced to develop a Novel, non-infringing implementation. This is innovation by it's very definition.
I agree that if Apple were to start suing anyone that attempted to develop multi-touch implementations that do not violate their patent, then they could be accused of stifling innovation. However, that hasn't happened yet and there is little evidence that they are planning on it. Most of this speculation is based on responses that were made during the quarterly conference call, and taken out of context to create the appearance that Apple has been threatening Palm.
Question: "Now a number of competitors coming for iPhone. Their own variance on customer experience, Palm Pre, Android, Windows. How do you think about sustaining your leadership in sector?"
Cook: "I would say, first of all, it's difficult to judge products that are not yet in the market. The iPhone has sold over 17 million units thus far. It's received the highest overall customer satisfaction from many different surveys. And we've said since the beginning software's the key ingredient, and we believe we're still years ahead on software. I would include with software the Applications Store ad you've seen the explosion with half a billion downloads.
When you think of having multiple variations of displays, of resolutions and input methods, and of hardware, it's a big challenge to a software developer and it's not very enticing to build a different app for every one of these things. But we'll see what people will do. We approached this business as a software platform business, so we've approached it fundamentally different than those who approached it only from a hardware point of view.
We are confident with where we are competitively. We're watching the landscape, we like competition. As long as they don't rip off our IP, and if they do, we'll go after anybody that does. I thought that might be your next question, so that's why I wanted to get that out."
Question: "Are you referring to Palm when you say ripping off IP?"
Cook: "I'm not talking about any specific company. I'm just making a general statement. We think competition is good, it makes us better. But we will not stand to have our IP ripped off. We will go after them with every weapon at our disposal. I don't think I can be more clear than that."
As to the idea that patents allow companies to be lazy b/c they no longer need to innovate, that's a valid concern. However, if you've followed Apple closely enough you'd see that it's not their style, at least not when Steve is at the helm. He was ousted originally, in part, due to his willingness to sacrifice the Lisa profit margins on the Mac, which was a lot cheaper and had much smaller margins and was more capable. Leaving Apple in the hands of those that believed milking the platform for all it was worth was a better business strategy than actually innovating. After Jobs' return, the company has placed innovation above all else and it has proved to be the better strategy for the company.
Now that Steve is at least temporarily out of the CEO chair, it is possible that the scenario everyone is afraid of will come to pass. However, I believe that there are enough intelligent people, in key positions that share his devotion to innovation over quick profit that the fears are unwarranted, at least for now. The trick will be maintaining that outlook 2 and 3 CEO's into the future.
Apple is most likely not going to pursue Palm unless their hand is forced. I don't see anyone having a problem developing non-infringing multi-touch UI guidelines, or baring that lisencing them from Apple.
Legal battles cost money and risk having patents invalidated. They are the Big Stick in the line "Walk softly, but carry a big stick." By having the patent they can intimidate their competitors into using only obviously non-infringing multi-touch features. Thus maintaining the novelty of their device.
Besides, I fail to see how their patent can stifle innovation. They were awarded the pantent for doing something innovative in the first place. If Palm wants to stay competetive they'll just have to do some more innovating to keep up.
I agree. It's neat, but not really useful for anything.
I think getting the whole "eye contact" thing worked out would be much more useful as a way of making the experience feel more "natural". I am used to looking at peoples faces and having them look at mine when I chat with someone in person. Video chatting requires you to either get accustomed to people looking over your head/off to the side the whole time, or only watch the video with your periferal vision so that the person you are chatting with gets the impression you are looking them in the eye while they are talking.
Neither one is comfortable for me, so I tend to just call or do voice chats to avoid the weird factor.
I read most of the article you linked to and I think one of us is misinterpreting what happened, because I didn't see the same story you told.
What I read was that, during the time when personal automobile ownership was already climbing, GM and some automotive parts and supply companies purchased a bunch of transportation companies. The parts and supply companies illegally negotiated exclusive contracts with the company in return for investment capitol. The subsidiary companies, which operated only in major cities, replaced the rail cars with busses.
I think it would be stupid for a subsidiary of GM to continue to use rail cars instead of busses, since GM manufactures busses, but not rail cars. It comes down to the busses being cheaper to purchase than rail cars. I would also suggest that it is easier to add a new bus route than to add a new rail car route. No need to lay rail, jut purchase a new bus and higher a driver.
I agree that there was some wrong doing here, but it was not of the nature you portrayed it to be. The company still provided a mass transit system to the public that did not require users to purchase their own cars. If anything this sounds like diversification. Get into the personal and public transportation business because people will need to use at least one of them and you win either way.
The summary of the judgement at the bottom seems to verify that, they were found "Not Guilty" of attempting to generate a transportation monopoly, but were "Guilty" of gaining an illegal monopoly on the sale of busses and supplies to the subsidiary companies.
So, it's GM's fault that the cities didn't decide to prevent them from purchasing the rail system?
Last I checked, the rails also had government subsidy, how is that different from the government subsidy for the road?
If there was a lot of demand, for light rail, the city wouldn't have allowed them to purchase the light rail in the first place. Even if the light rail had belonged to some entity outside of the government, if those that could not afford to buy cars were a large enough proportion of the population, they should have voted for politicians that would have supported their desire for the public transit system to remain.
Besides, you still haven't given any evidence that GM did what it did in order to pollute the environment, which was the original point of my post. GM did what made business sense to them, and the governments let them. I'm no historian, and since you appear to be so knowledgeable about this purchasing of light rail across the country, could you tell me whether GM was purchasing light rail systems from companies that were profitable, or those that were going under b/c no one wants to ride the train if they own a car. If it's the former, then maybe you have a case for GM being a bad guy here, although not for them being intentional polluters. If it's the later, then there exists a reasonable argument that they were simply speeding up the inevitable. If they were purchasing the rail systems from the municipalities, instead of private industry, well then too little fuss was being made by those who rode the train, most likely because ridership was going down as more and more people were buying cars.
As to:
They aren't profitable enough to be run by private industry. This is clearly a case of industry working against the public interest.
The concept that it is ok for the governments to provide services to the people, that operate at a loss, because people don't take sufficient advantage of them is a fairly new and in my opinion, reprehensible governing philosophy. If the people don't want to ride light rail systems in sufficient numbers to make them profitable, why should the state pay to maintain them? If there are sufficient reasons to maintain the light rail, then it is the job of government to make them profitable. If the government can't or won't make them profitable, and industry comes up with a cheaper alternative, good for industry. That doesn't make them the bad guy, it makes them better problem solvers that the government.
Here is the beginning half of the paragraph you quoted from wikipedia
It was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. The emergence of great factories and consumption of immense quantities of coal and other fossil fuels gave rise to unprecedented air pollution and the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the growing load of untreated human waste.
I read that to mean that the concern was not about polluting the environment, but about the smell coming from industry located within the city. That's not surprising since the whole point of city zoning has been to keep the smelly industry and dirty poor away from the clean and respectable wealthy, this strikes me as little more than an extension of that.
The current environmental movement, and awareness of the state of the environment is very much a new thing. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. I recycle, ride the bus, & combine errands to save gas when I do drive. I also support the preservation of environment, strict regulation of automobile emissions, using tax credits to find better sources of energy production. I just don't agree that any industry exists with intentional pollution as even a minor part of it's business goals. I also don't believe it is correct to look at actions that took place in the past through the lens of modern knowledge and morality. I believe it's called presentism, and it only confuses the matter you are trying to understand.
GM was selling a product, and it bought out it's competition. That's not uncommon. If there was enough demand for light rail instead of automobiles, then another company would have created a light rail system to replace the ones that GM was buying.
If consumers preferred having personal automobiles for their convenience and flexibility over using a public rail system that may have been cheaper, but took more time to get you to work, and didn't go everyplace you wanted to go whenever you wanted to go there, that's the fault of consumers not GM.
I grew up in the North East, one of the few regions of the country that has extensive subway systems that everyone, not just the poor, ride. I know how inconvenient they can be, adding as much as an hour or more to a commute due to the inflexibility of the schedules, and not offering direct lines from where you are to where you want to go. I approve of public light rail systems, but they need to be cost effective, and outside of area's with long cold winters and high population density, they just don't work well (cost far more then they are worth to run and maintain).
In any case, GM didn't buy the light rails and promote their automobiles because they wanted to pollute the environment, but because the wanted to sell cars. Back in the 40's no one was really thinking about pollution, not governments, corporations, or citizens. So it's more than a little disingenuous to look at the actions of any individual or corporation through the lens of modern knowledge and morality and then persecute them for not behaving according to the standards of Today.
Do you want your great grandchildren to judge you based on the morality and public standards of their generation? Based on the dramatic changes we've seen in the definition of Right and Wrong in just the last generation, I know that I wouldn't.
Your first paragraph strikes me as being more than a little bigoted (not that you are, it just reads that way to me).
I don't work in the field of mathematics, but I have taken a fair amount of statistics and can agree on the scarcity of individuals in my classes (myself included) that truly understood what the teacher was saying.
I totally agree with you on the 3rd and 4th paragraphs. Although, once again you seem to be getting a little bigoted. (As a man of Polish decent I can assure that "Pollack" is not exactly the N word, but it's not the correct term either. Polish people are supposed to be referred to as Pols.)
I'm not saying they owe the state a fix dollar amount or anything, just that they owe the state some consideration. Remember, the recession will not last forever, and at some point (assuming the don't go out of business) Dell will be hiring and expanding again. When that happens, they'll be expecting special concessions again. However, if the state determines they ended up with a net Loss, or the voters decide to blame their troubles to a large extent on Dell shafting their communities, they won't be so generous.
"Burn me once, shame on you! Burn me twice, shame on me!"
While that won't prevent Dell from setting up shop somewhere else. They will have to incur the costs associated with the relocation to greener pastures. Obviously, Dell will do what it feels like it needs to do to survive, but it could end up cutting off it's nose to spite its face if it isn't careful.
IIRC, people with H1B visas can eventually become legal citizens of the US. What would happen to that money after they are no longer deportable if unemployed?
The US doesn't want to get a name as a place that evicts all of the foreigners when we hit hard times.
I don't believe that Michael Dell owes me anything, I don't work for him.
But for those states that have given his company tax breakes to locate his offices and factories in there cities and towns? Yeah, I think he owes them a little. They cut him breaks that helped him become successful, and he really ought to pay a little of that back if he can.
Those states went without certain tax revenue, and they'll be losing even more if he starts dumping American employees in that state in favor of imported labor at a lower price.
Ultimately I really don't see a problem with Dell dumping local help and not the help he's already imported, but I do have a problem with them dumping local help and then importing NEW help to replace them. That's the same thing as firing union employees and then hiring scabs, except that there is no union making exorbitant demands. If there are so many qualified people out of work, someone will be willing to do that job at the price Dell is willing to pay so they can cover their mortgage and car payments.
You do realize that this "Pollutant Industry" is a giant straw-man, right? Industries exist to make products people want/need. They don't exist to pollute the environment for the sake of polluting the environment.
All industry produces waste. Some of that waste is more detrimental than other, or in larger quantities. A failure of the government to propperly regulate the handling and management of that waste doesn't make those that work in any given industryt he kind of willful polluters you are making them out to be.
The same industry that puts food on the plates of all Americans and a lot of other 1st and 3rd world countries is linked with N and P overapplication to the soil. At first they didn't even know that they were polluting. Then they realized and started limiting soil aplication of manure based on the N content of the manure and the N requirements of the crops being grown on that soil. Then they realized that P was building up even faster than N, and now they limit based on which ever is more likely to cause pollution. Did those industries contribute to eutrification of lakes and streams? Yes. Did they do it on purpose? No. Are they trying to fix it? Yes. Are there those within the industry that ignore the well know best practices in favor of profits and ease of management? Unfortunately Yes, but when they get caught it usually costs them their operation.
The same goes for most other industries. Are there bad actors that know the dangers of their products and pollute with them anyway? Yes! However, they are most likely the minority and give the rest of their respective industry a bad name. I say punish those that are actually guilty to the extent of the law and refrain from giving everyone else a permanent black eye because of the actions of another entity over which they had no control.
Slashdot Mirror
my analogy was intentionally ridiculous, as are most analogies i've seen relating to computers. The point I was trying to make was that wanting something to be a certain way does not mean that it is that way, or that you have the right to force the issue.
/. population. However, I choose to limit myself to licenses I can stomach instead of accepting licenses I can't and then willfully violating the contract I agreed to, simply because I feel entitled.
I don't like software licensing anymore than the rest of the general
Individual clauses in a contract being invalid do not invalidate the entire contract, unless the entire contract is somehow dependent upon the relevant clause.
That's what this whole thing is about anyway. It's time for the FCC to decide what the new fair use exceptions will be to copyright law. There have been requests to make jail-breaking legal. Apple has stated that they don't want this exception to be granted because they don't want part of their EULA that is currently valid to be invalidated.
You are absolutely, unequivocably, incorrect.
Courts have recently held EULAs to be perfectly valid contracts (see Blizzard Entertainment Inc vs MDY Industries, LLC [arstechnica.com]).
The specific quote that applies is:
Blizzard argued, and Judge Campbell agreed, that when users violated the World of Warcraft EULA, they no longer had a license to play the game and were therefore guilty of copyright infringement. As Siy noted in a blog post last year, Blizzard's theory, if taken literally, would mean that violating any of the rules in the EULA and Terms of Service, such as choosing a screen name that didn't meet Blizzard's guidelines, would be an act of copyright infringement
Now, that court decision may be overturned at some point, or the law may be rewritten to change the situation. But until then, this court decisions is pretty strong evidence that my interpretation of the Stats Quo is accurate, at least more accurate than yours.
Quoting another respondent to that thread
I believe you are thinking of shrinkwrap license agreements which essentially try to say that you agreed to the license before you opened the box, even the the license was inside the box and unavailable until the box was already opened. Those agreements have been found invalid since the consumer did not have an opportunity to examine them prior to their "consent".
This isn't the same thing.
Shrink wrapped contract that required you to agree to them before being able to read them have been invalidated. However, software EULA's that require you to agree to them, after being allowed to read them, in order to use the software are still very much legal. I'm not saying I like it. I don't, but they are currently accepted as legal by the courts.
...it allows them the legal right to copy it, and then distribute it as they want (which usually means selling it)
Emphasis mine.
Software distribution is different than physical distribution of books. I'm not saying I approve of the current status quo, but until it gets changed, they distribute "Software Licenses" not "Software", and part of the License is a non-negotiable agreement as to what you can and cannot do with the software.
Ultimately, if you find their license to be too restrictive, they you need to decide if the restrictions outweigh your desire to have the device. If so, then purchase a different phone with different restrictions. If enough people agree with you, Apple will either not sell enough iPhones, or have to change their licensing so as to allow the functionality you desire. It doesn't mean you are allowed to accept the agreement and then ignore it, legally speaking. You can in actuality as long as you don't get caught.
Just because you want and iPhone with no restrictions, doesn't mean that they have to sell you one. I want to have sex with various, unnamed celebrity starlets, but that doesn't mean that they have to let me.
I don't want to start a war, but which practices specifically?
I don't own an iPhone, but as I understand things jailbreaking an iPhone enables you to install non-sanctioned programs on your iPhone.
It is not considered fair use, which applies to copyright movies and music and allows the copying of content for specific reasons (backups, etc.), but not for the violation of software EULA's.
There are free, non-stolen apps available only if you've jailbroken you iPhone. They are unavailable for 1 of 3 reasons.
1. They violate Apples agreements with AT&T (tethering apps).
2. They violate Apples Developer agreements by running a process in the background, duplicating already existing functionality (or soon to be released functionality), create their own runtime (Flash), install spyware, etc.
3. The authors never tried to release the software via iTunes music store becuase they are against it for one reason or another (Can't/Won't pay the $100 Apple Developer Fee, Opposed to any limitation on what their software can/will do, Just plain don't like Apple, etc.).
Jailbreaking also allows you to install pirated software. There was a post somewhere recently talking about a site that had sprung up around cracking AppStore Apps and then distributing them for free (Crackulous).
No, they said that they don't want to have Jailbreaking made legal. There is a big difference between not wanting the routine violation of your EULA made legal, and actually bothering to sue someone over it.
Hardware != Software
Apple is not opposed to you F*ing with your hardware (it'll void your warantee), but saying they don't want the FCC to say that jailbreaking is legal. They have their justifications for it, but if you don't agree then you don't have to buy an iPhone.
It really is that simple. Companies that sell software are allowed (for now) to write EULA's that limit the uses to which you can put their software. While that ability is still in place you need to decide whether their limitations are worth the features. If not, they buy a different device where the trade off is acceptable.
You don't get to violate the EULA, just becuase you don't like it. That's like saying I should be able to walk into a Best Buy with my laptop and start ripping movies b/c I think they charge too much for new releases (Which they do, IMHO).
[sarcasm] It's my hardware, and I'm only copying bits. What's the problem?[/sarcasm]
A citation would really be appreciated for this. Both companies get sued alot. MS by anti-trust regulators primarily and Apple by customers that are pissed something didn't work as intended, and both by patent trolls. The only company I know that Apple is Suing at the moment is that cheap Apple knock off manufacturer.
Are you confusing Apple with the MPAA or RIAA for some reason?
Because the people that wrote the code were being payed from the money gained by those very same business tactics he supposedly finds so reprehensible.
Besides, his comments make it obvious he was never going to consider paying for Apple products in the first place, this is a case of justification for bias after the fact. It is clear that the OP believes Apple sells products, not because they are better than the alternative, but because Apple has better marketing and a CEO with mind control abilities. That kind of perception means he wouldn't consider Apple products no matter what they did.
It's like someone that is heterosexual using the AIDS outbreaks in the 70's & 80's as justification for not being gay. The Hetero guy was never really considering becoming homosexual, He'd just be using the Horror surrounding AIDS as some sort of evidence for his own perceived moral superiority.
I'm not saying all, or even most of Apples business decisions are ideal. However, Apple hasn't sued anyone that I'm aware of over this issue, they just stated their stance on the issue. If they start suing, then he'd be fully justified in chastizing the Co.
As a biologist, I've never heard to evolution refered to as Darwinism by anyone outside of the ID press core. In my biology classes it was:
Darwinian evolution
Mendelian inheritence
etc.
This whole article is based on a red herring thrown out by the ID proponents to distract from the lack of irrifutable evidence for their "Theory". Congratulations, the author of the original piece has taken the bait, hook, line & sinker.
Be careful about casting aspersions on an entire Nation because of a handful of nutjobs. Britan may not have the Anti-Evolutionist ID proponents, but it does have a rampant case of Homeopathy which is compounded by the growing belief that Vaccinations cause Autism.
The evidence for Homeopathy and Vaccine caused Autism are not any better than the "evidence" for ID put forward by the nutjobs here in the US. There is a whole soap opera going on right now concerning the Science blog "Bad Science" by Brian Goldacre and some London radio personality that's decided the pharmecutical companies are out to kill children.
That's not an assumption, which is normally based purely on personal conjecture. It's based on them receiving a patent, which is supposed to require the creation and description of a novel or innovative process/technique/device/etc.
The patent system may be overworked, and prone to approve overly broad patents despite the existence of prior art, but I've not seen any commentary that this is the case for Apple's Multi-Touch patent. FingerWorks developed a lot of Multi-Touch technology from scratch and then was purchased by Apple. The innovating that has been, and continues to be done by the people that originally worked at FingerWorks is still very innovative. The best inventions seem obvious after the fact, and multi-touch is one of those types of innovations.
It sounds a lot more like "Create your own, you can't have ours!" Historically, Apple believes that MS ripped off much of their IP for windows. They were just reinforcing the point that they weren't going to let it happen again.
Anyone else can develop a multi-touch phone, they are just going to have to come up with a unique implementation that is innovative enough to be non-infringing. Or in short, Innovate.
The Palm Pre has received so much press because the press likes to pit Davids against the current Goliath when ever they can. It sells more papers, gets more page hits, and ultimately makes them more money. The Palm is an unreleased piece of equipment, where much of the functionality hasn't even been finished yet. It's impossible to know how good something is if it is currently vaporware. I'm not saying can't be good or even better than an iPhone, but the iPhone is real, and available today. The same cannot be said about the Pre.
You are being unnecessarily pedantic. Once Apple purchased FingerWorks, the patents and innovation became Apple property. Integrating the technology from the FingerWorks acquisition and creating the iPhone was no small feat, and I'm sure that a lot of the relevant patents were applied for after the acquisition.
If Apples patent is fairly specific and not overly broad, it can only stop Palm from using the same implementation as Apple. If Palm, or anyone else for that matter, wants to implement similar functionality they'll be forced to develop a Novel, non-infringing implementation. This is innovation by it's very definition.
I agree that if Apple were to start suing anyone that attempted to develop multi-touch implementations that do not violate their patent, then they could be accused of stifling innovation. However, that hasn't happened yet and there is little evidence that they are planning on it. Most of this speculation is based on responses that were made during the quarterly conference call, and taken out of context to create the appearance that Apple has been threatening Palm.
Taken from roughlydrafted.com:
Question: "Now a number of competitors coming for iPhone. Their own variance on customer experience, Palm Pre, Android, Windows. How do you think about sustaining your leadership in sector?"
Cook: "I would say, first of all, it's difficult to judge products that are not yet in the market. The iPhone has sold over 17 million units thus far. It's received the highest overall customer satisfaction from many different surveys. And we've said since the beginning software's the key ingredient, and we believe we're still years ahead on software. I would include with software the Applications Store ad you've seen the explosion with half a billion downloads.
When you think of having multiple variations of displays, of resolutions and input methods, and of hardware, it's a big challenge to a software developer and it's not very enticing to build a different app for every one of these things. But we'll see what people will do. We approached this business as a software platform business, so we've approached it fundamentally different than those who approached it only from a hardware point of view.
We are confident with where we are competitively. We're watching the landscape, we like competition. As long as they don't rip off our IP, and if they do, we'll go after anybody that does. I thought that might be your next question, so that's why I wanted to get that out."
Question: "Are you referring to Palm when you say ripping off IP?"
Cook: "I'm not talking about any specific company. I'm just making a general statement. We think competition is good, it makes us better. But we will not stand to have our IP ripped off. We will go after them with every weapon at our disposal. I don't think I can be more clear than that."
As to the idea that patents allow companies to be lazy b/c they no longer need to innovate, that's a valid concern. However, if you've followed Apple closely enough you'd see that it's not their style, at least not when Steve is at the helm. He was ousted originally, in part, due to his willingness to sacrifice the Lisa profit margins on the Mac, which was a lot cheaper and had much smaller margins and was more capable. Leaving Apple in the hands of those that believed milking the platform for all it was worth was a better business strategy than actually innovating. After Jobs' return, the company has placed innovation above all else and it has proved to be the better strategy for the company.
Now that Steve is at least temporarily out of the CEO chair, it is possible that the scenario everyone is afraid of will come to pass. However, I believe that there are enough intelligent people, in key positions that share his devotion to innovation over quick profit that the fears are unwarranted, at least for now. The trick will be maintaining that outlook 2 and 3 CEO's into the future.
Apple is most likely not going to pursue Palm unless their hand is forced. I don't see anyone having a problem developing non-infringing multi-touch UI guidelines, or baring that lisencing them from Apple.
Legal battles cost money and risk having patents invalidated. They are the Big Stick in the line "Walk softly, but carry a big stick." By having the patent they can intimidate their competitors into using only obviously non-infringing multi-touch features. Thus maintaining the novelty of their device.
Besides, I fail to see how their patent can stifle innovation. They were awarded the pantent for doing something innovative in the first place. If Palm wants to stay competetive they'll just have to do some more innovating to keep up.
I agree. It's neat, but not really useful for anything.
I think getting the whole "eye contact" thing worked out would be much more useful as a way of making the experience feel more "natural". I am used to looking at peoples faces and having them look at mine when I chat with someone in person. Video chatting requires you to either get accustomed to people looking over your head/off to the side the whole time, or only watch the video with your periferal vision so that the person you are chatting with gets the impression you are looking them in the eye while they are talking.
Neither one is comfortable for me, so I tend to just call or do voice chats to avoid the weird factor.
I read most of the article you linked to and I think one of us is misinterpreting what happened, because I didn't see the same story you told.
What I read was that, during the time when personal automobile ownership was already climbing, GM and some automotive parts and supply companies purchased a bunch of transportation companies. The parts and supply companies illegally negotiated exclusive contracts with the company in return for investment capitol. The subsidiary companies, which operated only in major cities, replaced the rail cars with busses.
I think it would be stupid for a subsidiary of GM to continue to use rail cars instead of busses, since GM manufactures busses, but not rail cars. It comes down to the busses being cheaper to purchase than rail cars. I would also suggest that it is easier to add a new bus route than to add a new rail car route. No need to lay rail, jut purchase a new bus and higher a driver.
I agree that there was some wrong doing here, but it was not of the nature you portrayed it to be. The company still provided a mass transit system to the public that did not require users to purchase their own cars. If anything this sounds like diversification. Get into the personal and public transportation business because people will need to use at least one of them and you win either way.
The summary of the judgement at the bottom seems to verify that, they were found "Not Guilty" of attempting to generate a transportation monopoly, but were "Guilty" of gaining an illegal monopoly on the sale of busses and supplies to the subsidiary companies.
Last I checked, the rails also had government subsidy, how is that different from the government subsidy for the road?
If there was a lot of demand, for light rail, the city wouldn't have allowed them to purchase the light rail in the first place. Even if the light rail had belonged to some entity outside of the government, if those that could not afford to buy cars were a large enough proportion of the population, they should have voted for politicians that would have supported their desire for the public transit system to remain.
Besides, you still haven't given any evidence that GM did what it did in order to pollute the environment, which was the original point of my post. GM did what made business sense to them, and the governments let them. I'm no historian, and since you appear to be so knowledgeable about this purchasing of light rail across the country, could you tell me whether GM was purchasing light rail systems from companies that were profitable, or those that were going under b/c no one wants to ride the train if they own a car. If it's the former, then maybe you have a case for GM being a bad guy here, although not for them being intentional polluters. If it's the later, then there exists a reasonable argument that they were simply speeding up the inevitable. If they were purchasing the rail systems from the municipalities, instead of private industry, well then too little fuss was being made by those who rode the train, most likely because ridership was going down as more and more people were buying cars.
As to:
They aren't profitable enough to be run by private industry. This is clearly a case of industry working against the public interest.
The concept that it is ok for the governments to provide services to the people, that operate at a loss, because people don't take sufficient advantage of them is a fairly new and in my opinion, reprehensible governing philosophy. If the people don't want to ride light rail systems in sufficient numbers to make them profitable, why should the state pay to maintain them? If there are sufficient reasons to maintain the light rail, then it is the job of government to make them profitable. If the government can't or won't make them profitable, and industry comes up with a cheaper alternative, good for industry. That doesn't make them the bad guy, it makes them better problem solvers that the government.
Here is the beginning half of the paragraph you quoted from wikipedia
It was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. The emergence of great factories and consumption of immense quantities of coal and other fossil fuels gave rise to unprecedented air pollution and the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the growing load of untreated human waste.
I read that to mean that the concern was not about polluting the environment, but about the smell coming from industry located within the city. That's not surprising since the whole point of city zoning has been to keep the smelly industry and dirty poor away from the clean and respectable wealthy, this strikes me as little more than an extension of that.
The current environmental movement, and awareness of the state of the environment is very much a new thing. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. I recycle, ride the bus, & combine errands to save gas when I do drive. I also support the preservation of environment, strict regulation of automobile emissions, using tax credits to find better sources of energy production. I just don't agree that any industry exists with intentional pollution as even a minor part of it's business goals. I also don't believe it is correct to look at actions that took place in the past through the lens of modern knowledge and morality. I believe it's called presentism, and it only confuses the matter you are trying to understand.
GM was selling a product, and it bought out it's competition. That's not uncommon. If there was enough demand for light rail instead of automobiles, then another company would have created a light rail system to replace the ones that GM was buying.
If consumers preferred having personal automobiles for their convenience and flexibility over using a public rail system that may have been cheaper, but took more time to get you to work, and didn't go everyplace you wanted to go whenever you wanted to go there, that's the fault of consumers not GM.
I grew up in the North East, one of the few regions of the country that has extensive subway systems that everyone, not just the poor, ride. I know how inconvenient they can be, adding as much as an hour or more to a commute due to the inflexibility of the schedules, and not offering direct lines from where you are to where you want to go. I approve of public light rail systems, but they need to be cost effective, and outside of area's with long cold winters and high population density, they just don't work well (cost far more then they are worth to run and maintain).
In any case, GM didn't buy the light rails and promote their automobiles because they wanted to pollute the environment, but because the wanted to sell cars. Back in the 40's no one was really thinking about pollution, not governments, corporations, or citizens. So it's more than a little disingenuous to look at the actions of any individual or corporation through the lens of modern knowledge and morality and then persecute them for not behaving according to the standards of Today.
Do you want your great grandchildren to judge you based on the morality and public standards of their generation? Based on the dramatic changes we've seen in the definition of Right and Wrong in just the last generation, I know that I wouldn't.
Your first paragraph strikes me as being more than a little bigoted (not that you are, it just reads that way to me).
I don't work in the field of mathematics, but I have taken a fair amount of statistics and can agree on the scarcity of individuals in my classes (myself included) that truly understood what the teacher was saying.
I totally agree with you on the 3rd and 4th paragraphs. Although, once again you seem to be getting a little bigoted. (As a man of Polish decent I can assure that "Pollack" is not exactly the N word, but it's not the correct term either. Polish people are supposed to be referred to as Pols.)
I'm not saying they owe the state a fix dollar amount or anything, just that they owe the state some consideration. Remember, the recession will not last forever, and at some point (assuming the don't go out of business) Dell will be hiring and expanding again. When that happens, they'll be expecting special concessions again. However, if the state determines they ended up with a net Loss, or the voters decide to blame their troubles to a large extent on Dell shafting their communities, they won't be so generous.
"Burn me once, shame on you! Burn me twice, shame on me!"
While that won't prevent Dell from setting up shop somewhere else. They will have to incur the costs associated with the relocation to greener pastures. Obviously, Dell will do what it feels like it needs to do to survive, but it could end up cutting off it's nose to spite its face if it isn't careful.
IIRC, people with H1B visas can eventually become legal citizens of the US. What would happen to that money after they are no longer deportable if unemployed?
The US doesn't want to get a name as a place that evicts all of the foreigners when we hit hard times.
I don't believe that Michael Dell owes me anything, I don't work for him.
But for those states that have given his company tax breakes to locate his offices and factories in there cities and towns? Yeah, I think he owes them a little. They cut him breaks that helped him become successful, and he really ought to pay a little of that back if he can.
Those states went without certain tax revenue, and they'll be losing even more if he starts dumping American employees in that state in favor of imported labor at a lower price.
Ultimately I really don't see a problem with Dell dumping local help and not the help he's already imported, but I do have a problem with them dumping local help and then importing NEW help to replace them. That's the same thing as firing union employees and then hiring scabs, except that there is no union making exorbitant demands. If there are so many qualified people out of work, someone will be willing to do that job at the price Dell is willing to pay so they can cover their mortgage and car payments.
Do you think the pollutant industries
You do realize that this "Pollutant Industry" is a giant straw-man, right? Industries exist to make products people want/need. They don't exist to pollute the environment for the sake of polluting the environment.
All industry produces waste. Some of that waste is more detrimental than other, or in larger quantities. A failure of the government to propperly regulate the handling and management of that waste doesn't make those that work in any given industryt he kind of willful polluters you are making them out to be.
The same industry that puts food on the plates of all Americans and a lot of other 1st and 3rd world countries is linked with N and P overapplication to the soil. At first they didn't even know that they were polluting. Then they realized and started limiting soil aplication of manure based on the N content of the manure and the N requirements of the crops being grown on that soil. Then they realized that P was building up even faster than N, and now they limit based on which ever is more likely to cause pollution.
Did those industries contribute to eutrification of lakes and streams? Yes.
Did they do it on purpose? No.
Are they trying to fix it? Yes.
Are there those within the industry that ignore the well know best practices in favor of profits and ease of management? Unfortunately Yes, but when they get caught it usually costs them their operation.
The same goes for most other industries. Are there bad actors that know the dangers of their products and pollute with them anyway? Yes! However, they are most likely the minority and give the rest of their respective industry a bad name. I say punish those that are actually guilty to the extent of the law and refrain from giving everyone else a permanent black eye because of the actions of another entity over which they had no control.