I said the difference between buying a locked-down smartphone and marrying an abusive husband seems to be one of degree, at least to the point where it makes a good analogy.
I mean, I wrote you a detailed reply, and rather than even try to tell me where I'm wrong, you've basically asserted "If you don't agree with me, you're crazy!" That's the least logical thing I've heard all week, and I've spent the past several days debating a travelling preacher, so the bar isn't exactly high.
And to top it all off, in your one-line dismissal of my thousand-word argument, you still strawman me. Bravo.
- Wedding is a real life lifetime commitment. It has implications in every aspect of your life. - Buying a phone is buying a fucking toy you can throw away whenever you please.
That's a decent response, but that's also entirely a matter of attitudes. For example:
Wedding is a commitment for a long time. It's not necessarily a lifetime -- even ignoring divorce, there are places where weddings are (at least legally) contracts which occasionally come up for renewal, say, every 5 years or so. And it does have implications in most of your life, but that depends on your relationship. For example, if the wife was an avid painter before the marriage, her work might be influenced by her marriage, but it's not like her ability to paint is entirely contingent on that marriage.
In fact, some people think that the key to a healthy marriage, especially after retirement age, is to have parts of your life it doesn't affect as much -- to have hobbies which don't involve your spouse.
And some people, sadly, marry for the wrong reasons. To some women, a man is a fucking toy she can throw away whenever she pleases.
Now, consider a phone.
I don't know about you, but my phone -- it's not even a smartphone -- already affects nearly every aspect of my life, in all kinds of subtle ways. I recently managed to get myself locked into a room, late at night, with no way to get out and go home -- there were people to call, even before I managed to brute-force my own way out. I will find out, on a moment's notice, when my friends are about to do something I'd be interested in, wherever I am -- we can be far more spontaneous this way. I never have to worry about getting lost -- worst case, I call someone, but I usually have a map or two, and more modern phones have GPS. I'm significantly safer just walking across town at night, knowing 911 is a call away, and potential attackers know that too. Or I'll be in an interesting discussion, and someone will say "Hey, you should read this book," and I have somewhere I can save the title -- pencil and paper would work, if I always brought it, and if I wouldn't lose the scrap of paper later. I'm about to start learning a language, and being able to pull out my phone and some earbuds anywhere and listen to a lesson will be incredibly useful.
Now, if your point is that I could throw away my phone and get another one whenever I please, that might be valid. A newer, better phone would probably improve on all of the above. But I couldn't simply throw it away, and even that upgrade is going to be tricky. I have a large contact list that needs to be transferred, I'd need to set up an account somewhere for the new phone, I have tons of photos and podcasts on the memory card that I'd want transferred somewhere.
And there's the contract -- the new phone would have to be able to play nice with my current network, or I'd have to break up with it and pick a new network, and I might not be able to keep my phone number, which would be very disruptive. Or I could pay a fair amount extra to buy a phone without the contract, but I still need some sort of contract to connect it to, otherwise it really is a toy -- so yes, there is a commitment, if only temporary.
And perhaps I'm foolish, but I don't think I'm the only one who gets a little bit attached to their phone -- it's been with me every moment of every day, the screen has a tragically beautiful webbing of cracks, I've upgraded it a bit and learned every quirk of it...
So... both of these things are describing a long-term commitment measured in years (at least), both can affect every aspect of your life, both involve some sort of attachment (perhaps emotional), both can be tricky to get out of (divorce vs contract termination), and both impose certain restrictions while you're in that relationship. And yes, an abusive husband is analogous to some of the things cell companies do -- changing the rules on you while you're already committed (but y
Instead of talking nonsense for the mere pleasure of doing it, you should consider the harm your words can do to another human being.
They really can't. Words are just words. You're the one who gives them power.
Who cares about other's feelings?
Of course I care about others' feelings. Just because you could have a thicker skin (or ignore me altogether) doesn't mean I deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible.
I think some context is in order, though -- in philosophical discussions, when we talk about morality, hyperbole is common. For example, a frequent hypothetical is, "What would you do if someone held a gun to your head and ordered you to rape a child? Ok, what if they told you that if you don't do it, they're going to kill the child?" To read the literature, it almost seems like philosophers really like guns.
So, even if my analogy is inaccurate, it's still hyperbole. Judging by your reply, it looks like the difference is still one of scale. It's like the difference between, say, stealing $5 and stealing someone's home -- yes, one's trivial and one's catastrophic, but they're still analogous.
By trying to compare buying a phone to being battered by one's husband, you have discredited yourself as a human being.
And by not being willing to consider it, you've shown yourself to be irrational and emotional.
Look, I am not trying to say that a business practice is anywhere near as bad as actually, physically hurting another human being. I'm even willing to leave the sweatshops out of this discussion. The point was not about severity, but kind.
Aside from the fact that being beaten and restricted in who you can talk to is far, far worse than being restricted in what you can install, the only other difference I see is what I said: The woman didn't necessarily know she was marrying crazy, whereas a person buying an iPhone should know what they're getting into.
And for what it's worth, I'm not done here. You could certainly convince me that I'm wrong. But writing me off as a human being, rather than even trying to explain where I'm wrong? That's cold, and a bit unfair.
Then I find it really hard to understand your attitude... I mean...
Plus, I have some dignity;-)
Well, let's start here. You have too much dignity to tell your wife that you won't fix her phone if she breaks it? That seems like just the opposite, to me. Frankly, someone I plan to spend the rest of my life with is at least going to learn the concept of re-imaging a device -- even if I'm the one to do it, that's how infections get dealt with.
I'd rather play with my kids than lock down their phone or to keep resetting them. Especially since there is a company out there that does just that for me.
It resets them? Really? And you must be very lucky to have exactly the same set of values that Apple pushes, if your claim is that the iPhone is exactly as locked-down as it needs to be for your purposes.
If you want a phone "liberated", don't buy an iPhone.
It affects me whether or not I buy it, as I discussed elsewhere...
Have you looked at some numbers about marketshare lately? It looks as if Android is catching up, and fast. In other words, it looks like you don't have a point.
Android's actually ahead, but that's irrelevant. Every person who buys an iPhone is, effectively, part of the problem of availability of iPhone jobs vs Android jobs. It's true that I'm much less concerned now than before:
Why focusing on the one handset that doesn't fit your need and keep bashing it as if Apple removes some of your freedom, when you're not a user?
Apple doesn't so long as they don't control a majority of the market, but since when is that less of a threat? Also, where in my posts are you getting that I'm "focused" on the iPhone?
For that matter, what about DRM in games? I do still comment on this, and try to keep up with it, and work against it, because it does affect me. It's true that I don't buy games with excessive DRM, but that's because I pay attention. For brief windows of time, it really did look like the industry was about to be taken over by DRM -- developers were either entirely going to consoles because consoles provide sufficient DRM, or applying so much on the PC that it took a massive Amazon rating campaign to get EA to back down.
Because of the persistent bitching of people like me, there are more games with fewer DRM, and there are at least a few decent games which are designed to fully exploit the PC as a platform, rather than being pathetic console ports.
But following your logic, I should just not buy DRM'd games, and otherwise shut up about it. Nobody's forcing me to use it, after all. (Where in the above rant about DRM did I mention anyone "forcing" me to do anything?)
Actually, no, it's worse than that:
Apple is a sovereign company that does whatever the fuck they want with their products. I wouldn't live in a world where that wouldn't be the case.... It looks as if their philosophy on iOS pleases users.
At the expense of developers, and look at this same logic applied to the console vs PC debate. Microsoft is a sovereign company that does whatever the fuck it wants with its products. I wouldn't want to live in a world where they couldn't make the Xbox. It looks like their philosophy on Xbox pleases users.
Yet, even so, I would prefer DRM-free games, and I would prefer developers to actually target the PC, and people who get an Xbox instead of a PC, and only play games on the Xbox, are effectively working against that.
Now, would I tell someone not to get an Xbox? No, not really. Once they ask, I might tell them why I think they should get a PC. But if you look at my original post to you here, I think it applies -- Microsoft controls what you can and can't buy on the Xbox. It's therefore a walled garden. You may well
They don't even claim that the browser does not log information when you visit HTTPS websites (like accessing your bank account).
Yeah, and?
I don't have a problem with a browser logging information... on my own machine. If my machine is compromised, no browser will save me. If it's not, then having that information is actually really convenient to me.
And all this is assuming that they are in fact doing this -- you say "They don't even claim that..." implying that they must be doing this. Yeah, and Glenn Beck has never denied raping and murdering a young girl in 1990.
Now, if you mean to imply that Chrome sends a log to Google every time I visit an HTTPS website, then you're going to have to back that up. It shouldn't be too hard, anyway, if you want to prove your point -- set up a VM, use Wireshark to monitor all traffic into and out of it, ensure everything's up-to-date, and go browse around the Internet. Let me know how many times it phones home, and what it sends.
Invariably, if there is a way to screw up your phone, my users will do, because they'll stumble on a website giving instructions on how to put this "marvelous" app on their phone.
Ah, so you're responsible for some people who you presumably have no real authority over, but you're allowed to choose their technology for them.
Why not allow your users to do what they want after promising (in writing) not to bother you about it? Some users get hand-held, some get to do what they want. Or why not simply factory-reset their phones if they screw them up?
Or, if you must lock them down, is it really the case that Android provides no such security here? After all, these are presumably the same people who, if not you, then some IT department somewhere lets them use PCs. Surely, then, even if it's by locking it down yourself, an open platform is manageable.
Ways to jailbreak your phone are security issues, nothing less, nothing more. Can you blame Apple from closing security vulnerabilities?
Nope, but I can blame them for setting up a situation in which a security vulnerability is what's required to "jailbreak" (read: liberate) my own device.
Where I live, every single Android phone has to be rootkitted in order to reinstall another kernel.
And where is that, exactly?
Motorola, among others, has pledged to ship unlocked bootloaders on new phones. You plug the phone in, run one command from the dev kit on a PC -- which will even work from a Linux PC -- to install an entire new copy of the OS.
Also, since when were we talking about kernels? I was talking about additional software. On iPhone, you have to jailbreak just to download an app that isn't from Apple's own app store. Not all Android devices require even the procedure I described above -- some allow you to download apps from a web browser the way PCs (and Macs) have for, well, forever. So, on some brand-new Android phones, I can take the phone out of the box, navigate to a competitor's app store website, and I'm good -- at worst, I download their app store client.
And for god's sake, Apple doesn't force anyone to do anything!!!! Nobody prevents anyone from using Android...
That's a bit like an abusive husband telling his battered wife that she didn't have to marry him. Yes, it's true that Apple can't stop me from buying Android, and no one was suggesting that they can. However, if I were to buy Apple, then I'd have these restrictions.
Furthermore, the more people who buy Apple, the more of a market there is for iOS apps, and the less of a market there is for Android apps. This affects me as a developer -- I don't want to be forced to publish through Apple, to submit every patch to their capricious review process. And before you say "Nobody is forced to..." Sure, it's not the case yet, but the smaller the iOS market, the more opportunities there will be for me to find employment, or for me to sell a solo killer app, to non-iOS platforms.
I don't know why *none* of these are getting reamed, but Chrome? It collects data and stores it *on your local machine.* It doesn't route every request through Google.
All well and good, but how would any of the above be threatened by allowing you to download third-party apps?
No one would care if it weren't for the fact that you have to "jailbreak" your phone in order to do so, and that Apple has expressed that it wants jailbreaking to be illegal, and short of that, they tend to do everything in their power to prevent jailbreaking from working with every update.
Or, take android. I could stay within the official Google store, though I agree that it doesn't seem to be as well-policed as Apple's App Store. But I can also install third-party apps, even entire third-party app stores. I can even download third-party remixes of the OS itself. The fact that Google's app store isn't as well-policed as Apple's has nothing to do with the fact that Apple forces you to use their app store or hack your own fucking phone, while Google gives you a choice.
So, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, a bullet to the head that left him a vegetable, a mental degenerate disease, or even something that just left him physically too debilitated to continue to do his, job, would have been fine with Stallman.
Aside from the fact that he was quoting someone, I don't see how you can possibly interpret his comments this way.
It seems simple enough. He doesn't particularly wish ill of Steve Jobs. He'd much prefer, say, a quiet retirement to death or degeneration. But one good consequence of this is that Steve Jobs is not still working to turn every generic computing device into an iOS-style, approved-apps-only device.
Now, granted, this is almost certainly the wrong thing to say as a political movement, but I don't see anything wrong with the contents of the remark. It just could've been stated a little bit more tastefully.
And frankly, I'm sick of every even mildly relevant person becoming a saint when they die -- we remember the good and forget the bad. I have to imagine that if Glenn Beck had died while he was still an anchor, it would've immediately become politically incorrect to criticize him.
I mean, if it was actually for the purpose of deposing Hussein, then well done, mission accomplished, but holy fuck that cost a lot of lives and made a lot of enemies for such a petty goal.
What I thought it was about was WMDs. What most of the US public thought it was about was stopping terrorism -- a majority of Republicans, in particular, don't understand that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are two different people, and that Hussein had less than nothing to do with 9/11.
Depending on how thorough the company is, the SOP with paper is to just go through the document and strike (with a pen) the stuff you don't agree with, then sign it and hand it back to them. Chances are, they won't notice. Sometimes they notice and don't care. Very rarely, they notice and do care.
When it comes up, however, if they signed it too, then you're in the clear. If they didn't read your modifications, they're no better off than if you didn't read the contract to begin with.
The problem is whether anything like this could be an acceptable way of modifying a contract. It seems to follow a similar principle -- if the service in question isn't expecting it, then you modified the contract and they agreed also, so you win. But at the same time, unlike paper, there's no reasonable expectation at this point that the server will notice these headers, and if we either insist on some acknowledgment from the server that they like those headers or wait till this is well-known enough for services to adapt, then you'd be right and they'd be unlikely to accept any changes.
If that's really the case, I'd just mark the Windows partition bootable. Grub doesn't care. However, the DOS MBR can only boot when you only have a single partition marked bootable.
Still, I'm pretty sure my Linux partition was the bootable one... Oh well.
Is it that it never asks you to install, or that you get an error when you install?
It is, somewhat. But as much as I despise Flash, I'd still prefer that to a native client for Linux, also. I don't see why I should trust your service with local access to my machine just to show me a movie.
Or, for that matter, people who buy Windows with the device because it's cheaper that way, so they can dual-boot?
I like Linux. I use Linux as my primary OS, and I bought my most recent laptop with Ubuntu preloaded. I also like being able to reboot, fire up Steam, and just play a game when it doesn't have a Linux port.
Most likely incompetence, yes. I use grub as my bootloader, and had no real issues installing or upgrading Win7. I assume I have SP1, given that I tend to apply most updates immediately.
And somehow convince someone with the administrator password (the IT department for the break room PC at work, or the head of household at home) to install it.
Fair, though I think the same applies to most options here. I mean, HTML5 at all is a non-starter if they insist on running IE on XP, for example. Somehow, I think a codec provided by Google is one of the safer things you could possibly ask an admin to install -- certainly safer than, say, Flash.
Citation? Wikipedia lists Symbian and WP7, but not Android, iOS, or any game consoles. The only reference I could find for Silverlight on Android was something about the Moonlight team doing it, and if it's just Moonlight, then there's exactly as much Silverlight support for Android as there is for Linux -- which means none of the DRM.
Are you sure that's not just a native Netflix client for these platforms?
They are appliances... They need internet access about as much as my refrigerator does...
A "fileserver" needs Internet about as much as your refrigerator does? Really? I'd think you'd at least have it on a network, or are you suggesting it's only serving other non-Internet-connected machines? Or do you only deliver stuff via sneakernet?
The operator of a web site should not recommend that end users use codecs that "are in a legal grey area" unless it wants to be sued for inducing infringement.
FWIW, I think Chrome on Linux is still an option for the moment.
For another, it was easier to get Microsoft to include partial PNG support in IE 6 than it will be to get Microsoft to include any support for WebM in future versions of IE.
Wait, what?
Ok, first off, PNG isn't a replacement for GIF in that it doesn't support animation -- there are several competing standards for PNG animation, none universally supported. There's a lot of places where PNG beats GIF, but GIF is still around, and for good reason.
Second, WebM is already supported in IE, just not out of the box. This isn't even a legal grey area -- you can just download it. There's a framework already in place for this, too -- not like the kind of kludges you'd need to get PNG working on IE6, they actually have pluggable codecs. The only issue would be getting them to ship it by default, and it's possible they'll fight that, but it's also possible PC manufacturers will preload it anyway.
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That's not what I said.
I said the difference between buying a locked-down smartphone and marrying an abusive husband seems to be one of degree, at least to the point where it makes a good analogy.
I mean, I wrote you a detailed reply, and rather than even try to tell me where I'm wrong, you've basically asserted "If you don't agree with me, you're crazy!" That's the least logical thing I've heard all week, and I've spent the past several days debating a travelling preacher, so the bar isn't exactly high.
And to top it all off, in your one-line dismissal of my thousand-word argument, you still strawman me. Bravo.
- Wedding is a real life lifetime commitment. It has implications in every aspect of your life.
- Buying a phone is buying a fucking toy you can throw away whenever you please.
That's a decent response, but that's also entirely a matter of attitudes. For example:
Wedding is a commitment for a long time. It's not necessarily a lifetime -- even ignoring divorce, there are places where weddings are (at least legally) contracts which occasionally come up for renewal, say, every 5 years or so. And it does have implications in most of your life, but that depends on your relationship. For example, if the wife was an avid painter before the marriage, her work might be influenced by her marriage, but it's not like her ability to paint is entirely contingent on that marriage.
In fact, some people think that the key to a healthy marriage, especially after retirement age, is to have parts of your life it doesn't affect as much -- to have hobbies which don't involve your spouse.
And some people, sadly, marry for the wrong reasons. To some women, a man is a fucking toy she can throw away whenever she pleases.
Now, consider a phone.
I don't know about you, but my phone -- it's not even a smartphone -- already affects nearly every aspect of my life, in all kinds of subtle ways. I recently managed to get myself locked into a room, late at night, with no way to get out and go home -- there were people to call, even before I managed to brute-force my own way out. I will find out, on a moment's notice, when my friends are about to do something I'd be interested in, wherever I am -- we can be far more spontaneous this way. I never have to worry about getting lost -- worst case, I call someone, but I usually have a map or two, and more modern phones have GPS. I'm significantly safer just walking across town at night, knowing 911 is a call away, and potential attackers know that too. Or I'll be in an interesting discussion, and someone will say "Hey, you should read this book," and I have somewhere I can save the title -- pencil and paper would work, if I always brought it, and if I wouldn't lose the scrap of paper later. I'm about to start learning a language, and being able to pull out my phone and some earbuds anywhere and listen to a lesson will be incredibly useful.
Now, if your point is that I could throw away my phone and get another one whenever I please, that might be valid. A newer, better phone would probably improve on all of the above. But I couldn't simply throw it away, and even that upgrade is going to be tricky. I have a large contact list that needs to be transferred, I'd need to set up an account somewhere for the new phone, I have tons of photos and podcasts on the memory card that I'd want transferred somewhere.
And there's the contract -- the new phone would have to be able to play nice with my current network, or I'd have to break up with it and pick a new network, and I might not be able to keep my phone number, which would be very disruptive. Or I could pay a fair amount extra to buy a phone without the contract, but I still need some sort of contract to connect it to, otherwise it really is a toy -- so yes, there is a commitment, if only temporary.
And perhaps I'm foolish, but I don't think I'm the only one who gets a little bit attached to their phone -- it's been with me every moment of every day, the screen has a tragically beautiful webbing of cracks, I've upgraded it a bit and learned every quirk of it...
So... both of these things are describing a long-term commitment measured in years (at least), both can affect every aspect of your life, both involve some sort of attachment (perhaps emotional), both can be tricky to get out of (divorce vs contract termination), and both impose certain restrictions while you're in that relationship. And yes, an abusive husband is analogous to some of the things cell companies do -- changing the rules on you while you're already committed (but y
Instead of talking nonsense for the mere pleasure of doing it, you should consider the harm your words can do to another human being.
They really can't. Words are just words. You're the one who gives them power.
Who cares about other's feelings?
Of course I care about others' feelings. Just because you could have a thicker skin (or ignore me altogether) doesn't mean I deliberately go out of my way to say the most offensive thing possible.
I think some context is in order, though -- in philosophical discussions, when we talk about morality, hyperbole is common. For example, a frequent hypothetical is, "What would you do if someone held a gun to your head and ordered you to rape a child? Ok, what if they told you that if you don't do it, they're going to kill the child?" To read the literature, it almost seems like philosophers really like guns.
So, even if my analogy is inaccurate, it's still hyperbole. Judging by your reply, it looks like the difference is still one of scale. It's like the difference between, say, stealing $5 and stealing someone's home -- yes, one's trivial and one's catastrophic, but they're still analogous.
Moving on to that...
By trying to compare buying a phone to being battered by one's husband, you have discredited yourself as a human being.
And by not being willing to consider it, you've shown yourself to be irrational and emotional.
Look, I am not trying to say that a business practice is anywhere near as bad as actually, physically hurting another human being. I'm even willing to leave the sweatshops out of this discussion. The point was not about severity, but kind.
Aside from the fact that being beaten and restricted in who you can talk to is far, far worse than being restricted in what you can install, the only other difference I see is what I said: The woman didn't necessarily know she was marrying crazy, whereas a person buying an iPhone should know what they're getting into.
And for what it's worth, I'm not done here. You could certainly convince me that I'm wrong. But writing me off as a human being, rather than even trying to explain where I'm wrong? That's cold, and a bit unfair.
My users are my family. My wife and my kids.
Then I find it really hard to understand your attitude... I mean...
Plus, I have some dignity ;-)
Well, let's start here. You have too much dignity to tell your wife that you won't fix her phone if she breaks it? That seems like just the opposite, to me. Frankly, someone I plan to spend the rest of my life with is at least going to learn the concept of re-imaging a device -- even if I'm the one to do it, that's how infections get dealt with.
I'd rather play with my kids than lock down their phone or to keep resetting them. Especially since there is a company out there that does just that for me.
It resets them? Really? And you must be very lucky to have exactly the same set of values that Apple pushes, if your claim is that the iPhone is exactly as locked-down as it needs to be for your purposes.
If you want a phone "liberated", don't buy an iPhone.
It affects me whether or not I buy it, as I discussed elsewhere...
Have you looked at some numbers about marketshare lately? It looks as if Android is catching up, and fast. In other words, it looks like you don't have a point.
Android's actually ahead, but that's irrelevant. Every person who buys an iPhone is, effectively, part of the problem of availability of iPhone jobs vs Android jobs. It's true that I'm much less concerned now than before:
Why focusing on the one handset that doesn't fit your need and keep bashing it as if Apple removes some of your freedom, when you're not a user?
Apple doesn't so long as they don't control a majority of the market, but since when is that less of a threat? Also, where in my posts are you getting that I'm "focused" on the iPhone?
For that matter, what about DRM in games? I do still comment on this, and try to keep up with it, and work against it, because it does affect me. It's true that I don't buy games with excessive DRM, but that's because I pay attention. For brief windows of time, it really did look like the industry was about to be taken over by DRM -- developers were either entirely going to consoles because consoles provide sufficient DRM, or applying so much on the PC that it took a massive Amazon rating campaign to get EA to back down.
Because of the persistent bitching of people like me, there are more games with fewer DRM, and there are at least a few decent games which are designed to fully exploit the PC as a platform, rather than being pathetic console ports.
But following your logic, I should just not buy DRM'd games, and otherwise shut up about it. Nobody's forcing me to use it, after all. (Where in the above rant about DRM did I mention anyone "forcing" me to do anything?)
Actually, no, it's worse than that:
Apple is a sovereign company that does whatever the fuck they want with their products. I wouldn't live in a world where that wouldn't be the case.... It looks as if their philosophy on iOS pleases users.
At the expense of developers, and look at this same logic applied to the console vs PC debate. Microsoft is a sovereign company that does whatever the fuck it wants with its products. I wouldn't want to live in a world where they couldn't make the Xbox. It looks like their philosophy on Xbox pleases users.
Yet, even so, I would prefer DRM-free games, and I would prefer developers to actually target the PC, and people who get an Xbox instead of a PC, and only play games on the Xbox, are effectively working against that.
Now, would I tell someone not to get an Xbox? No, not really. Once they ask, I might tell them why I think they should get a PC. But if you look at my original post to you here, I think it applies -- Microsoft controls what you can and can't buy on the Xbox. It's therefore a walled garden. You may well
Chrome is Google spyware.
Citation needed.
They don't even claim that the browser does not log information when you visit HTTPS websites (like accessing your bank account).
Yeah, and?
I don't have a problem with a browser logging information... on my own machine. If my machine is compromised, no browser will save me. If it's not, then having that information is actually really convenient to me.
And all this is assuming that they are in fact doing this -- you say "They don't even claim that..." implying that they must be doing this. Yeah, and Glenn Beck has never denied raping and murdering a young girl in 1990.
Now, if you mean to imply that Chrome sends a log to Google every time I visit an HTTPS website, then you're going to have to back that up. It shouldn't be too hard, anyway, if you want to prove your point -- set up a VM, use Wireshark to monitor all traffic into and out of it, ensure everything's up-to-date, and go browse around the Internet. Let me know how many times it phones home, and what it sends.
Invariably, if there is a way to screw up your phone, my users will do, because they'll stumble on a website giving instructions on how to put this "marvelous" app on their phone.
Ah, so you're responsible for some people who you presumably have no real authority over, but you're allowed to choose their technology for them.
Why not allow your users to do what they want after promising (in writing) not to bother you about it? Some users get hand-held, some get to do what they want. Or why not simply factory-reset their phones if they screw them up?
Or, if you must lock them down, is it really the case that Android provides no such security here? After all, these are presumably the same people who, if not you, then some IT department somewhere lets them use PCs. Surely, then, even if it's by locking it down yourself, an open platform is manageable.
Ways to jailbreak your phone are security issues, nothing less, nothing more. Can you blame Apple from closing security vulnerabilities?
Nope, but I can blame them for setting up a situation in which a security vulnerability is what's required to "jailbreak" (read: liberate) my own device.
Where I live, every single Android phone has to be rootkitted in order to reinstall another kernel.
And where is that, exactly?
Motorola, among others, has pledged to ship unlocked bootloaders on new phones. You plug the phone in, run one command from the dev kit on a PC -- which will even work from a Linux PC -- to install an entire new copy of the OS.
Also, since when were we talking about kernels? I was talking about additional software. On iPhone, you have to jailbreak just to download an app that isn't from Apple's own app store. Not all Android devices require even the procedure I described above -- some allow you to download apps from a web browser the way PCs (and Macs) have for, well, forever. So, on some brand-new Android phones, I can take the phone out of the box, navigate to a competitor's app store website, and I'm good -- at worst, I download their app store client.
And for god's sake, Apple doesn't force anyone to do anything!!!! Nobody prevents anyone from using Android...
That's a bit like an abusive husband telling his battered wife that she didn't have to marry him. Yes, it's true that Apple can't stop me from buying Android, and no one was suggesting that they can. However, if I were to buy Apple, then I'd have these restrictions.
Furthermore, the more people who buy Apple, the more of a market there is for iOS apps, and the less of a market there is for Android apps. This affects me as a developer -- I don't want to be forced to publish through Apple, to submit every patch to their capricious review process. And before you say "Nobody is forced to..." Sure, it's not the case yet, but the smaller the iOS market, the more opportunities there will be for me to find employment, or for me to sell a solo killer app, to non-iOS platforms.
I don't know why *none* of these are getting reamed, but Chrome? It collects data and stores it *on your local machine.* It doesn't route every request through Google.
All well and good, but how would any of the above be threatened by allowing you to download third-party apps?
No one would care if it weren't for the fact that you have to "jailbreak" your phone in order to do so, and that Apple has expressed that it wants jailbreaking to be illegal, and short of that, they tend to do everything in their power to prevent jailbreaking from working with every update.
Or, take android. I could stay within the official Google store, though I agree that it doesn't seem to be as well-policed as Apple's App Store. But I can also install third-party apps, even entire third-party app stores. I can even download third-party remixes of the OS itself. The fact that Google's app store isn't as well-policed as Apple's has nothing to do with the fact that Apple forces you to use their app store or hack your own fucking phone, while Google gives you a choice.
So, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, a bullet to the head that left him a vegetable, a mental degenerate disease, or even something that just left him physically too debilitated to continue to do his, job, would have been fine with Stallman.
Aside from the fact that he was quoting someone, I don't see how you can possibly interpret his comments this way.
It seems simple enough. He doesn't particularly wish ill of Steve Jobs. He'd much prefer, say, a quiet retirement to death or degeneration. But one good consequence of this is that Steve Jobs is not still working to turn every generic computing device into an iOS-style, approved-apps-only device.
Now, granted, this is almost certainly the wrong thing to say as a political movement, but I don't see anything wrong with the contents of the remark. It just could've been stated a little bit more tastefully.
And frankly, I'm sick of every even mildly relevant person becoming a saint when they die -- we remember the good and forget the bad. I have to imagine that if Glenn Beck had died while he was still an anchor, it would've immediately become politically incorrect to criticize him.
This.
I mean, if it was actually for the purpose of deposing Hussein, then well done, mission accomplished, but holy fuck that cost a lot of lives and made a lot of enemies for such a petty goal.
What I thought it was about was WMDs. What most of the US public thought it was about was stopping terrorism -- a majority of Republicans, in particular, don't understand that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are two different people, and that Hussein had less than nothing to do with 9/11.
Huh. It doesn't help that there's their signature on the contract with mine?
George disagree. javajavajavajavajava...
Depending on how thorough the company is, the SOP with paper is to just go through the document and strike (with a pen) the stuff you don't agree with, then sign it and hand it back to them. Chances are, they won't notice. Sometimes they notice and don't care. Very rarely, they notice and do care.
When it comes up, however, if they signed it too, then you're in the clear. If they didn't read your modifications, they're no better off than if you didn't read the contract to begin with.
The problem is whether anything like this could be an acceptable way of modifying a contract. It seems to follow a similar principle -- if the service in question isn't expecting it, then you modified the contract and they agreed also, so you win. But at the same time, unlike paper, there's no reasonable expectation at this point that the server will notice these headers, and if we either insist on some acknowledgment from the server that they like those headers or wait till this is well-known enough for services to adapt, then you'd be right and they'd be unlikely to accept any changes.
If that's really the case, I'd just mark the Windows partition bootable. Grub doesn't care. However, the DOS MBR can only boot when you only have a single partition marked bootable.
Still, I'm pretty sure my Linux partition was the bootable one... Oh well.
Is it that it never asks you to install, or that you get an error when you install?
It is, somewhat. But as much as I despise Flash, I'd still prefer that to a native client for Linux, also. I don't see why I should trust your service with local access to my machine just to show me a movie.
Or, for that matter, people who buy Windows with the device because it's cheaper that way, so they can dual-boot?
I like Linux. I use Linux as my primary OS, and I bought my most recent laptop with Ubuntu preloaded. I also like being able to reboot, fire up Steam, and just play a game when it doesn't have a Linux port.
It seems to me that the major Android manufacturers have been introducing unlocked bootloaders lately.
Most likely incompetence, yes. I use grub as my bootloader, and had no real issues installing or upgrading Win7. I assume I have SP1, given that I tend to apply most updates immediately.
PuTTY is a better SSH client, at least on Windows, than Cygwin's SSH.
Correct me if I'm wrong though.
YTMND launched in 2001. LZW expired in 2003.
And somehow convince someone with the administrator password (the IT department for the break room PC at work, or the head of household at home) to install it.
Fair, though I think the same applies to most options here. I mean, HTML5 at all is a non-starter if they insist on running IE on XP, for example. Somehow, I think a codec provided by Google is one of the safer things you could possibly ask an admin to install -- certainly safer than, say, Flash.
Citation? Wikipedia lists Symbian and WP7, but not Android, iOS, or any game consoles. The only reference I could find for Silverlight on Android was something about the Moonlight team doing it, and if it's just Moonlight, then there's exactly as much Silverlight support for Android as there is for Linux -- which means none of the DRM.
Are you sure that's not just a native Netflix client for these platforms?
They are appliances... They need internet access about as much as my refrigerator does...
A "fileserver" needs Internet about as much as your refrigerator does? Really? I'd think you'd at least have it on a network, or are you suggesting it's only serving other non-Internet-connected machines? Or do you only deliver stuff via sneakernet?
I don't apply software patches to it, either.
Does it have software?
The operator of a web site should not recommend that end users use codecs that "are in a legal grey area" unless it wants to be sued for inducing infringement.
FWIW, I think Chrome on Linux is still an option for the moment.
For another, it was easier to get Microsoft to include partial PNG support in IE 6 than it will be to get Microsoft to include any support for WebM in future versions of IE.
Wait, what?
Ok, first off, PNG isn't a replacement for GIF in that it doesn't support animation -- there are several competing standards for PNG animation, none universally supported. There's a lot of places where PNG beats GIF, but GIF is still around, and for good reason.
Second, WebM is already supported in IE, just not out of the box. This isn't even a legal grey area -- you can just download it. There's a framework already in place for this, too -- not like the kind of kludges you'd need to get PNG working on IE6, they actually have pluggable codecs. The only issue would be getting them to ship it by default, and it's possible they'll fight that, but it's also possible PC manufacturers will preload it anyway.
None of these installations will ever see a software or kernel upgrade.
I hope they're not online...
Redhat 6 on aged hardware as a file server, SCO Openserver on an abandoned IBM server for backups...
...looks like they are.
Um. No kernel upgrades? Not even vulnerability patches?
Do you have any idea how bad an idea this is?