1.) Moonblink's Tricorder app was neither made nor intended to divert profits or attention away from the Star Trek franchise/collection of works. In fact, it was written in homage to the series, and it's really hard to imagine how it could even unintentionally harm CBS in any way, shape or form, especially given that the app (and the part of Star Trek it's emulating) is fairly trivial. It was basically harmless. CBS squelching it seems more out of spite or misguided self-preservation than anything else.
2.) What if CBS doesn't make a Tricorder app -- or doesn't even intend to? If CBS can't produce or deliver something which a lot of people enjoy (or so it seems), and a fan of the franchise can and does, why should CBS actively prevent the fan from doing so? If they can't do it (and don't even want to), no one can? That seems awfully childish. Especially considering -- and I'm repeating myself here -- the Tricorder app posed absolutely no threat to the brand, and may have even earned it a tiny bit of recognition. It never purported to be official, authentic, or representative of CBS in any way, shape or form (actually, I think it purported to not represent CBS at all).
This isn't piracy. This is an original creation that bore a mere cosmetic resemblance to certain elements of a fictional universe and was not released for a profit -- additionally, its source code is freely and publicly available. There was no real or even potential harm being done to CBS, Star Trek, or anything related, as far as I can see. Why should CBS be acting against things that do it no harm? Is there something I'm missing?
1.) Cell phone service was not disrupted directly following the shooting. (Which would have been worse!)
2.) The shooting I'm thinking of is Oscar Grant III, which was two years ago and probably resolved by this point.
I apologize, I flew off without actually knowing what the hell was going on, instead extrapolating from the admittedly limited information and summaries I was seeing on Twitter and taking in the wrong order and the wrong way. I was totally desynched from the truth. My fault.
Nope, I'm actually totally desynched from what's going on, don't mind me. One, I'm thinking of Oscar Grant III and the article posted is Charles Hill. Two, I thought footage was suppressed after the shooting, it was actually suppressed on Thursday.
1) BART has no obligation to assist them in doing so. BART had every right to turn off their equipment. Do these protesters expect to have the police drive them to the protest as well?
There's a difference between the police not driving you to the demonstration area of the protest and the supervisor (or, rather, controlling entity) of the police actively suppressing the release of information regarding the death of an unarmed man that their officer was responsible for.
2) If the protesters are interfering with mass transit, they're just being assholes. Yes, it's sad that someone got killed. No, this doesn't mean that tens of thousands of people should have their schedules fucked around with.
The fact that this is such a big deal in the first place shows that these aren't real protesters anyway. They're just a bunch of spoiled SF kids thinking they're activists. Real activists wouldn't let something like not having internet access during the protest get in their way.
It wasn't a protest being suppressed, it was footage and details of a man's death with suspicious causes. Both of those *did* later surface around the internet, but not nearly as quickly as they could have or possibly should have, directly because of BART's suppressive action.
Furthermore, on a personal level, I'd have to say it's a grave injustice that details of a man's death at the hands of security personnel and its coverup at the hands of their employer "isn't worth" the potential, minor inconvenience of a large group of people that happen to use the employer's service, the greatest length of time of which should be 5 to 20 minutes. From what I've heard, people were also unable to contact emergency services during that time (but other comments I've seen have led me to believe that may not have been true).
Please prove me wrong if I have any of the details incorrect; I'd love to hear more.
It isn't that a protest couldn't happen, it's that BART security were responsible for the death of an unarmed man (who, in fact, was being held on the ground when he died), and no one could have posted anything on the internet or anything while the BART cell network lockdown was in effect. Videos did later get posted when the people recording got internet access, but the simple fact that BART tried to cover up a deadly use of force (however limited their coverup was or could possibly have been) against a man who was essentially defenseless is absolutely inexcusable.
But if you are not willing to come even a little bit forward (like, accepting DRM or closed binaries) don't cry about it when companies don't want to support it.
The problem is that DRM is actually totally backwards, and closed binaries will eventually wind up breaking with lack of vendor support or in really subtle ways as the libraries they depend on change, grow, update and improve -- although if the vendor is sufficiently proactive in their development process, the latter need not be true. However, DRM simply doesn't do what it's intended to do, and instead winds up harming the consumer by imposing largely artificial restrictions on them that pirates -- you know, the ones that DRM is supposed to prevent in the first place -- just don't have. What you wind up with, then, is media that is substantially and fundamentally broken in silly and stupid ways to harm the consumer who paid good money to enjoy their content legally vs. the criminal who paid absolutely nothing to enjoy the same content as they wish in any form they want it!
There are two flaws in the bootloader for all the pre-iPad2 devices. They are commonly referred to by the names of the exploits against them, SHAtter and GreenPois0n. These will not ever be patched by Apple, they are too low level. This means that every iDevice before the iPad2 has a jailbreak for life.
Greenpois0n is the name of the tool that utilizes the exploit which is actually called "limera1n", coined by the exploit's discoverer and first implementer, geohot. These are exploits that have been found in the *mask* bootROM for all iDevices preceding the iPad 2; the code at that level has actually been permanently burned in and, in fact, cannot be changed. This is by design to preserve the first step in Apple's "chain of trust" loading.
You seem to see the iPhone as a PC in phone form. I think most see it as a phone with some extra features, or at least an appliance of some sort.... It's not necessarily "evil" for an appliance-style device to be locked down - it all depends on the end user.
The iPhone 4 has a 1 GHz A5 (ARM) CPU, 512 MB of RAM or so, wifi, bluetooth, and is capable of installing and running applications i.e. code written for the device -- and, on top of all that, multitasking it. It is, at its core, a computing device pretending to be an "appliance" as you call it. However, I don't believe that the presentation of a thing (like the iPhone presenting as an appliance) should necessarily define its entire purpose and utility, especially when it is capable of being and doing far more than it "appears" able to. For example, I'm fairly certain it has more than enough hardware power to be productively used as a wireless network penetration tester -- and the only thing standing between its user and that particular use is Apple's walled garden, and the fact that they don't want to allow the user the low-level control required for such a purpose. It could also be an ultra-low-power server or proxy with a built-in UPS, for example. Truth be told, there's not a whole lot that *can't* be done with it, but marginalizing it as an "appliance" and using that as an excuse to wrest control of a computing device away from the user seems like a really good way to squander some incredible opportunities and possibilities.
That's not even beginning to get into the fact that the OS running on the phone is, itself, a heavily-modified and cut-down UNIX. In short, I don't see how an iPhone couldn't or shouldn't be thought of as a personal computing device, unless you're really willing to give up all of the benefits such a device would entail in such a form factor.
Ob.answer: Since this is a license for the use of the software, you can simply choose not to use the software. Thus, it can be terminated.
I'm not actually sure about how the Nintendo 3DS specifically works, but many devices made in this manner (PS3, iPhone, etc) have hardware (or somehow unmodifiable firmware e.g. the mask ROM for the iPhone bootrom) that enforces a requirement for a cryptographic signature on the software that is to be run on the hardware, making the hardware effectively useless without signed software whose agreement you *must* accept in order to use the software (and, effectively, the device) at all. Because it could be considered an anti-circumvention measure in the U.S., as well, the DMCA makes reverse engineering such a scheme kind of murky (unless, of course, you're trying to write interoperable software...). This would require the purchaser (or someone, at least) to hack the device before they can opt-out of the license agreement and use alternative software.
In essence, it is almost illegal to opt out of software licenses now if they're tied to a device that won't accept any other software.
Awesome. I never want to work for you. I've got several friends, and they're good friends, but they're retards. They are C purists, and like to write everything in more low level languages because it's "leet". They have lots of knowledge about C, understand some amazingly complex concepts, but get them to implement something simple, and they're going to write everything from scratch. Why? Because that's the kind of person who isn't used to using all this other code. Isn't used to finding other libraries, or just re-using someone else's code.
As a 'purist' myself, I have to ask -- are they retards simply because they'd write as much from scratch as they can? To be honest, it really depends on what you're implementing and how much time you have, but I, personally, also have an aversion to using other peoples' libraries and frameworks because that's one more thing I'm going to have to keep track of in the long run, and it's also potentially lots and lots of code that I may never use because I just need this one little nice function they've got. Plus, it keeps me from learning how, exactly, they do it. To (ab)use an old, frequently-quoted metaphor, I am not content with merely being given a fish.
Don't other frameworks potentially have IP issues or other attached issues (like the article states, using Microsoft's platform means your code's tied to Microsoft and requires licenses, etc.) as well? There seem to be a lot of questions like that attached to the Using Of Other Peoples' Code that seems to be much vaunted (with good reason, I will grant, because it really can save time).
Really, my biggest fear with using other frameworks has got to be atrophy -- the "use it or lose it" kind of factor. I'm probably unrealistically afraid that once I start using other peoples' libraries, frameworks, code, etc. that I'm going to be dependent on it and unable (or, at least, less able) to go outside of what can be done with that framework. Which is what the writer of the article is talking about as well. Realistically, since I know it, I probably won't forget it, but I still don't want to be tied down or "married" (as it were) to that framework.
What "full control" do you have over your computer now? You use billions of lines of application code, OS code, device drivers, firmware drivers, boot ROMs, and more, all written by people you don't know. Your "full control" is an illusion. Further, full access to the system, for most people, means that they have to pay their annual protection money in order to be safe from viruses, trojans, and rootkits.
Yes, but I can read and modify every line of it if I want to (yes, I'm one of those Linux freaks). Even if I never, ever do, I should have that privilege -- failing that, I should at least have the option not to run it at all. With today's personal computers, *I CAN DO THAT.* But if I don't want to run Apple's code on an Apple device for whatever reason -- hey, maybe the hardware's more important to me -- I can't do that without first exploiting Apple's code. I inherently do not have full control of an iDevice. In fact, I have less control over an iDevice than I do over my personal computer running Windows 7, precisely because Windows -- and any programs on it -- can be uninstalled. Once again, in case you missed it -- I can't uninstall iOS unless I hack it first.
Open systems are no protection. Witness the recent rootkit trojan attack via the "open" Android Marketplace. How are "those devices" supposed to be trusted on a network?
And even on systems where people have "full control", is it exercised? Or do 99% of them check Gmail and log into Facebook, all systems controlled by others anyway. How many of the day-to-day applications you use on your computer and phone did you, personally, write?
Again, I have the source code to "those devices". In the cases I don't (proprietary overlays and such), sure, they can't be trusted -- because they're not open, either. At the same time, allowing users to bring personal equipment on a company network is always a bad idea. But company equipment running software where I know (or can easily find out) what's going on is an entirely different matter. And possible, given the amount of rootable Android phones and completely open firmwares.
I do exercise that "full control" every day. I'm always installing or removing programs, making changes, tweaking something. Sure, not everyone's like me. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have the opportunity. You can even have some sane user interface prompt in the way that asks, "Hey, you could really mess your system up, are you sure about this?" Firefox does it. I don't see why it would be all that bad. Why is it reasonable to completely and utterly refuse this control, granting the user zero chance of exercising it at all? Why should Apple be able to run code, stop code, kill code and download code onto my device that I bought, but I'm not allowed to do the same thing at the same privileges? If there's that much a risk of breakage -- and in the case of 100% of iDevices, there isn't, everything can be fixed by a restore -- then void my friggin' warranty. Why are there parties out there able to do things with my device that I, myself, am not able to do, purely because those same parties have built their device to actively resist my efforts?
Anyone who wants to buy a full desktop or workstation and learn to program will still be free to do so, just like you, if you desired, could learn how to fix your modern computer-controlled car if you really wanted to do so.
Me, I'd rather just get in it and go somewhere...
And this, right here, is precisely where you completely ignored my post and just flew on your merry way. I said:
The inherent problem with the world actually buying into this crap in a "post-PC" world, to the detriment, of course, to the PCs, is that when the market for the more-capable devices shrinks and quite possibly dies, there may well be nothing left to use but this locked-down Big-Media-friendly user-/comp
I'm surely going to have a lot of people yelling at me in a second, but hey.
The big problem I see with you and everyone else with this dismissive "sure, a few geeks will whine and complain, but the rest of the world will buy and use it" attitude seem to be missing the entire point of said "whining and complaining." You seem to think it's as simple as incredulity or jealousy that people will actually buy something that is effectively a lot more useless in a lot of different ways than an actual computer system. Actually, it goes deeper than that.
The inherent problem with the world actually buying into this crap in a "post-PC" world, to the detriment, of course, to the PCs, is that when the market for the more-capable devices shrinks and quite possibly dies, there may well be nothing left to use but this locked-down Big-Media-friendly user-/competition-hostile Apple crap. (Apple? User-hostile? Yes; it absolutely is user-hostile to prevent the user from attaining full access to a device the user has purchased outright, no matter the user's skill level, to the point where the user has to rely on binary code written by third parties just to gain such access! And yes, many/most Android vendors are no different!)
If these "post-PC" hopes come true, there is a very, very real threat that there will be very few devices the user will ever have full control over without hacking, ignoring the used market. But no one seems to pay attention to this; everyone seems to pay attention to the shinies and the capabilities the devices do have while ignoring, dismissing or apologizing for the capabilities they completely lack by design. Are fancy effects and pretty designs worth the device producers having far more control over devices bought and paid for than those doing the buying? How can these devices be trusted in a corporate or government network?
If what you need for mobile computing can be done with an iPad, then why would you take a laptop too? On the other hand, if you need your laptop anyway for some particular reason, you'd probably leave your iPad at home.
Actually, just throwing my two cents in, I could see myself lugging both a tablet and a laptop around -- the tablet for those instances when I just need to look something up quickly or do a minor task and don't want to wait for the boot-up (looking up wikipedia, for example), and the laptop for when I need to do much more intensive work that I have to deal with the boot process for anyway (SSHing to multiple places and doing tasks concurrently).
You can jailbreak any device legally despite what Apple says;...
Right, but that's not really having a choice of operating system, that's simply hacking the operating system already in place; being able to run an alternative operating system is non-functional on anything but the very first iPhone, to my knowledge. Even if Apple doesn't have to provide support for it -- and they don't -- it's still troublesome that they actively prevent even the attempt.
Proper Android tablets can't even meet the price of the iPad..
Actually, I don't think you're taking the pricing in the proper context.
While true that the *cheapest* iPad is, in fact, much cheaper than, say, the Motorola XOOM, you'll find that -- at least in hardware -- it's also lacking many of the features that the XOOM *does* have. Fortunately, there are models of the iPad that are comparable down to being in the same provider with the same storage space and other similar specifications.
First, let's look at the XOOM: a dual-core 1 GHz ARM CPU (just like the iPad 2 IIRC) with 1 GB low-power DDR2 (twice the amount of the iPad 2) and 32 GB storage space to start, upgradable with another 32 GB to a maximum of 64 GB -- but let's ignore that and stick with the 32 GB baseline. The crucial thing to keep in mind here is that this baseline also, by default, is for Verizon cell service, and it unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to have any alternatives for that. The resolution is also at 1280x800, whereas the iPad's is 1024x768.
That's just pointing out the discrepancies you'll be facing when you see this comparison. So in order to get a fair (IMO) price comparison on this, we'll need an iPad 2 that's roughly the same, INCLUDING Verizon service. If we completely ignore storage altogether and just go Cheapest vs. Cheapest, the answer... depends on getting a contract. If you're a new customer with Verizon (or, I suppose, if you're renewing and they want to give you the contract rate), the cheapest iPad 2 sits at $629 whereas the Motorola XOOM... sits at $599. If you're matching storage points and getting a contract, the XOOM still sits at $599 but the iPad goes up to $729! Of course, however, if you're not getting a contract and purchasing the device outright, the XOOM does get its ass handed to it on price -- although, to be fair, I could not find contract-less purchasing for an iPad 2.
tl;dr: XOOM is less expensive, spec-for-spec unless you're buying it without a contract.
(No, I'm not including software, usability, etc. -- I'm just going hardware-for-hardware and ignoring the OS, which is largely a measure of personal bias. Full disclosure: my personal bias is Android. However, what I've written here may be verified by going to the websites for the Apple Store and for Verizon's store.)
You know, as long as I can remember, I've heard this b.s. spouted. "It's not Linux's fault that nVidia and ATI won't release specs to support their hardware." "nVidia and ATI obviously are too stupid to see that openness and free software are the way of the future, and that if they'd just embrace it, they'd have a huge new market to sell to."
If there's such a huge market demanding Linux drivers for this hardware, then why the fuck, in the 20 years since Linux was released to the world, has nobody managed to build a competitor that will produce decent, open, free graphics hardware?
Either the market for "open" graphics and audio isn't as big and lucrative as you like to pretend (VERY likely) or the open source world is filled with lazy people who would rather not actually do the work themselves, but would rather simply force other people to provide a foundation for their accomplishments. Which is it?
1.) It's really *not* Linux's fault if a vendor doesn't release hardware specifications, and you still have no right to blame it for not supporting hardware that no one knows how to code support for because the vendor didn't release the specs! If you want to blame someone, blame the vendor, even though there is no obligation for them to release specifications. The whole idea behind that "b.s." is to create consumer pressure on the vendors to the point where they *do* release specs and get better support for their device for it.
2.) There are no competitors providing open, free, decent graphics hardware for these reasons:
a.) There's a huge number of patents and IP involved with graphics hardware that prohibits 'duplication' of certain capabilities by an up-and-coming graphics vendor. The legal fees alone to simply figure out whether a feature can or cannot be implemented would be staggering.
b.) Even if the legal fees were out of the way, the task of actually building such a card is fairly daunting to people who simply don't have the cashflow to begin with to produce such things. ESPECIALLY if you're aiming for compliance to any number of video/graphics specifications (OpenGL, etc.) and versions out there.
c.) To compete in the video marketplace, they would also have to write and release Windows drivers, which for various licensing reasons they may not be able to release source code for.
Basically it comes down to the process of making such a card being too large and difficult for most people, even in the open source community, to accomplish without outside help.
And, of course, the companies seem to figure Linux can be ignored -- except that the big two graphics companies, nVidia and ATI, are both releasing drivers (and ATI *has* open sourced a fair bit of their stuff, releasing specifications for the rest).
Ever try installing Leopard (10.5) on a Mac with a PPC G4 < 867 MHz? Or Tiger (10.4) on a Mac without built-in FireWire? Or Panther (10.3) on a Beige PowerMac?
"Miraculously", XPostFacto allowed this to happen (well, the Leopard/G4 requirement has to be bypassed some other way); without it, it wouldn't happen because the vendor wanted to force obsolescence on systems still at least somewhat viable. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that applications that start supporting the new versions of Mac OS X start dropping support for the older versions -- effectively rendering a rather sizable number of machines stuck without application updates for a given application simply because Apple decided those machines shouldn't run new software anymore. If I recall correctly, you can't even get a newer version of Firefox installed on those machines unless you entirely exchange the operating system for Linux or start running Windows in a VM and using that exclusively (which defeats the purpose).
Actually, Apple has a regular habit of making the next given version of Mac OS X simply not run on what they deem "old" hardware, regardless of whether or not that old hardware is actually still capable of running the OS or not. It's not even a technical check; it's a "if allowed_vendor(venid) && allowed_product(prodid) then run else fail" type check. It's one of the things that's most irritating about Apple. Thankfully and luckily, those machines they choose to arbitrarily obsolete usually wind up running Linux extremely well in OS X's stead, since no distribution is going to play that kind of silly game.
What is it about other people's computer choices that bothers you so much?
When those other people get up in your face all the time crowing about how damn good their computer is and how superior it is to everything else ever made EVER, you start to get pissed the fuck off. I'm just saying. (Yes, this cuts both ways.)
For fuck's sake; it's been in the OS since (I believe) OS 9.2.2 or, at the latest, OS X 10.2. Just because the "default" peripheral doesn't do it out of the box doesn't mean it's not there; the Mac usability/human interface guidelines (however rarely-followed) are very different from PC, and Mac applications are strongly advised to avoid use of the 'right click' as often as possible to reduce user confusion. It adds to simplicity, which is ostensibly a good thing; the costs of this decision, of course, are users who don't know better and think that this necessarily equates to a "lack of functionality", and retards like you who keep making these "HURUR RIGHT CLICK LOLZZZZ" jokes.
In the end it wasn't technical superiority but business economics and logistics that delivered x86 as the winner, and we're still paying the price.
Actually, wasn't the thing that finally killed PPC Mac the fact that IBM simply could not deliver higher-performing chips past a certain point, nor could they deliver a chip like the PowerPC G5 in a mobile form factor while still keeping an exceptional battery life and a minimal heat profile? Apple has even cited performance-per-watt endless times as a reason for the switch. Or is that not a technical superiority thing?
(Not that I have a particular fondness for x86, mind you, but I'm pretty sure Apple had valid technical reasons to drop PPC for holding them back)
Actually, no; Opera Mini just tells a rendering proxy at Opera's servers to render a page for it, and the proxy renders the page and sends the data (and all the interactive regions and such) back to Opera Mini, which presents it. This is necessary because Apple doesn't allow 'language interpreters' to be in applications in the App Store (last I checked, anyway).
The way Opera does it is complete crap, actually, in my opinion, but they did manage to use it to beat the system.
Slashdot Mirror
I have two problems with what you're saying:
1.) Moonblink's Tricorder app was neither made nor intended to divert profits or attention away from the Star Trek franchise/collection of works. In fact, it was written in homage to the series, and it's really hard to imagine how it could even unintentionally harm CBS in any way, shape or form, especially given that the app (and the part of Star Trek it's emulating) is fairly trivial. It was basically harmless. CBS squelching it seems more out of spite or misguided self-preservation than anything else.
2.) What if CBS doesn't make a Tricorder app -- or doesn't even intend to? If CBS can't produce or deliver something which a lot of people enjoy (or so it seems), and a fan of the franchise can and does, why should CBS actively prevent the fan from doing so? If they can't do it (and don't even want to), no one can? That seems awfully childish. Especially considering -- and I'm repeating myself here -- the Tricorder app posed absolutely no threat to the brand, and may have even earned it a tiny bit of recognition. It never purported to be official, authentic, or representative of CBS in any way, shape or form (actually, I think it purported to not represent CBS at all).
This isn't piracy. This is an original creation that bore a mere cosmetic resemblance to certain elements of a fictional universe and was not released for a profit -- additionally, its source code is freely and publicly available. There was no real or even potential harm being done to CBS, Star Trek, or anything related, as far as I can see. Why should CBS be acting against things that do it no harm? Is there something I'm missing?
I love this idea. I almost want to write it myself.
I'm disproving myself:
1.) Cell phone service was not disrupted directly following the shooting. (Which would have been worse!)
2.) The shooting I'm thinking of is Oscar Grant III, which was two years ago and probably resolved by this point.
I apologize, I flew off without actually knowing what the hell was going on, instead extrapolating from the admittedly limited information and summaries I was seeing on Twitter and taking in the wrong order and the wrong way. I was totally desynched from the truth. My fault.
Nope, I'm actually totally desynched from what's going on, don't mind me. One, I'm thinking of Oscar Grant III and the article posted is Charles Hill. Two, I thought footage was suppressed after the shooting, it was actually suppressed on Thursday.
There's a difference between the police not driving you to the demonstration area of the protest and the supervisor (or, rather, controlling entity) of the police actively suppressing the release of information regarding the death of an unarmed man that their officer was responsible for.
It wasn't a protest being suppressed, it was footage and details of a man's death with suspicious causes. Both of those *did* later surface around the internet, but not nearly as quickly as they could have or possibly should have, directly because of BART's suppressive action.
Furthermore, on a personal level, I'd have to say it's a grave injustice that details of a man's death at the hands of security personnel and its coverup at the hands of their employer "isn't worth" the potential, minor inconvenience of a large group of people that happen to use the employer's service, the greatest length of time of which should be 5 to 20 minutes. From what I've heard, people were also unable to contact emergency services during that time (but other comments I've seen have led me to believe that may not have been true).
Please prove me wrong if I have any of the details incorrect; I'd love to hear more.
It isn't that a protest couldn't happen, it's that BART security were responsible for the death of an unarmed man (who, in fact, was being held on the ground when he died), and no one could have posted anything on the internet or anything while the BART cell network lockdown was in effect. Videos did later get posted when the people recording got internet access, but the simple fact that BART tried to cover up a deadly use of force (however limited their coverup was or could possibly have been) against a man who was essentially defenseless is absolutely inexcusable.
The problem is that DRM is actually totally backwards, and closed binaries will eventually wind up breaking with lack of vendor support or in really subtle ways as the libraries they depend on change, grow, update and improve -- although if the vendor is sufficiently proactive in their development process, the latter need not be true. However, DRM simply doesn't do what it's intended to do, and instead winds up harming the consumer by imposing largely artificial restrictions on them that pirates -- you know, the ones that DRM is supposed to prevent in the first place -- just don't have. What you wind up with, then, is media that is substantially and fundamentally broken in silly and stupid ways to harm the consumer who paid good money to enjoy their content legally vs. the criminal who paid absolutely nothing to enjoy the same content as they wish in any form they want it!
A point of correction, if anyone's interested:
Greenpois0n is the name of the tool that utilizes the exploit which is actually called "limera1n", coined by the exploit's discoverer and first implementer, geohot. These are exploits that have been found in the *mask* bootROM for all iDevices preceding the iPad 2; the code at that level has actually been permanently burned in and, in fact, cannot be changed. This is by design to preserve the first step in Apple's "chain of trust" loading.
The iPhone 4 has a 1 GHz A5 (ARM) CPU, 512 MB of RAM or so, wifi, bluetooth, and is capable of installing and running applications i.e. code written for the device -- and, on top of all that, multitasking it. It is, at its core, a computing device pretending to be an "appliance" as you call it. However, I don't believe that the presentation of a thing (like the iPhone presenting as an appliance) should necessarily define its entire purpose and utility, especially when it is capable of being and doing far more than it "appears" able to. For example, I'm fairly certain it has more than enough hardware power to be productively used as a wireless network penetration tester -- and the only thing standing between its user and that particular use is Apple's walled garden, and the fact that they don't want to allow the user the low-level control required for such a purpose. It could also be an ultra-low-power server or proxy with a built-in UPS, for example. Truth be told, there's not a whole lot that *can't* be done with it, but marginalizing it as an "appliance" and using that as an excuse to wrest control of a computing device away from the user seems like a really good way to squander some incredible opportunities and possibilities.
That's not even beginning to get into the fact that the OS running on the phone is, itself, a heavily-modified and cut-down UNIX. In short, I don't see how an iPhone couldn't or shouldn't be thought of as a personal computing device, unless you're really willing to give up all of the benefits such a device would entail in such a form factor.
Did you check http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2299220&cid=36668368 ?
Do you apply this level of scrutiny to FOX News as well?
I'm not actually sure about how the Nintendo 3DS specifically works, but many devices made in this manner (PS3, iPhone, etc) have hardware (or somehow unmodifiable firmware e.g. the mask ROM for the iPhone bootrom) that enforces a requirement for a cryptographic signature on the software that is to be run on the hardware, making the hardware effectively useless without signed software whose agreement you *must* accept in order to use the software (and, effectively, the device) at all. Because it could be considered an anti-circumvention measure in the U.S., as well, the DMCA makes reverse engineering such a scheme kind of murky (unless, of course, you're trying to write interoperable software...). This would require the purchaser (or someone, at least) to hack the device before they can opt-out of the license agreement and use alternative software.
In essence, it is almost illegal to opt out of software licenses now if they're tied to a device that won't accept any other software.
Awesome. I never want to work for you. I've got several friends, and they're good friends, but they're retards. They are C purists, and like to write everything in more low level languages because it's "leet". They have lots of knowledge about C, understand some amazingly complex concepts, but get them to implement something simple, and they're going to write everything from scratch. Why? Because that's the kind of person who isn't used to using all this other code. Isn't used to finding other libraries, or just re-using someone else's code.
As a 'purist' myself, I have to ask -- are they retards simply because they'd write as much from scratch as they can? To be honest, it really depends on what you're implementing and how much time you have, but I, personally, also have an aversion to using other peoples' libraries and frameworks because that's one more thing I'm going to have to keep track of in the long run, and it's also potentially lots and lots of code that I may never use because I just need this one little nice function they've got. Plus, it keeps me from learning how, exactly, they do it. To (ab)use an old, frequently-quoted metaphor, I am not content with merely being given a fish.
Don't other frameworks potentially have IP issues or other attached issues (like the article states, using Microsoft's platform means your code's tied to Microsoft and requires licenses, etc.) as well? There seem to be a lot of questions like that attached to the Using Of Other Peoples' Code that seems to be much vaunted (with good reason, I will grant, because it really can save time).
Really, my biggest fear with using other frameworks has got to be atrophy -- the "use it or lose it" kind of factor. I'm probably unrealistically afraid that once I start using other peoples' libraries, frameworks, code, etc. that I'm going to be dependent on it and unable (or, at least, less able) to go outside of what can be done with that framework. Which is what the writer of the article is talking about as well. Realistically, since I know it, I probably won't forget it, but I still don't want to be tied down or "married" (as it were) to that framework.
Way to miss it and fly right on by!
What "full control" do you have over your computer now? You use billions of lines of application code, OS code, device drivers, firmware drivers, boot ROMs, and more, all written by people you don't know. Your "full control" is an illusion. Further, full access to the system, for most people, means that they have to pay their annual protection money in order to be safe from viruses, trojans, and rootkits.
Yes, but I can read and modify every line of it if I want to (yes, I'm one of those Linux freaks). Even if I never, ever do, I should have that privilege -- failing that, I should at least have the option not to run it at all. With today's personal computers, *I CAN DO THAT.* But if I don't want to run Apple's code on an Apple device for whatever reason -- hey, maybe the hardware's more important to me -- I can't do that without first exploiting Apple's code. I inherently do not have full control of an iDevice. In fact, I have less control over an iDevice than I do over my personal computer running Windows 7, precisely because Windows -- and any programs on it -- can be uninstalled. Once again, in case you missed it -- I can't uninstall iOS unless I hack it first.
Open systems are no protection. Witness the recent rootkit trojan attack via the "open" Android Marketplace. How are "those devices" supposed to be trusted on a network? And even on systems where people have "full control", is it exercised? Or do 99% of them check Gmail and log into Facebook, all systems controlled by others anyway. How many of the day-to-day applications you use on your computer and phone did you, personally, write?
Again, I have the source code to "those devices". In the cases I don't (proprietary overlays and such), sure, they can't be trusted -- because they're not open, either. At the same time, allowing users to bring personal equipment on a company network is always a bad idea. But company equipment running software where I know (or can easily find out) what's going on is an entirely different matter. And possible, given the amount of rootable Android phones and completely open firmwares.
I do exercise that "full control" every day. I'm always installing or removing programs, making changes, tweaking something. Sure, not everyone's like me. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have the opportunity. You can even have some sane user interface prompt in the way that asks, "Hey, you could really mess your system up, are you sure about this?" Firefox does it. I don't see why it would be all that bad. Why is it reasonable to completely and utterly refuse this control, granting the user zero chance of exercising it at all? Why should Apple be able to run code, stop code, kill code and download code onto my device that I bought, but I'm not allowed to do the same thing at the same privileges? If there's that much a risk of breakage -- and in the case of 100% of iDevices, there isn't, everything can be fixed by a restore -- then void my friggin' warranty. Why are there parties out there able to do things with my device that I, myself, am not able to do, purely because those same parties have built their device to actively resist my efforts?
Anyone who wants to buy a full desktop or workstation and learn to program will still be free to do so, just like you, if you desired, could learn how to fix your modern computer-controlled car if you really wanted to do so. Me, I'd rather just get in it and go somewhere...
And this, right here, is precisely where you completely ignored my post and just flew on your merry way. I said:
The inherent problem with the world actually buying into this crap in a "post-PC" world, to the detriment, of course, to the PCs, is that when the market for the more-capable devices shrinks and quite possibly dies, there may well be nothing left to use but this locked-down Big-Media-friendly user-/comp
I'm surely going to have a lot of people yelling at me in a second, but hey.
The big problem I see with you and everyone else with this dismissive "sure, a few geeks will whine and complain, but the rest of the world will buy and use it" attitude seem to be missing the entire point of said "whining and complaining." You seem to think it's as simple as incredulity or jealousy that people will actually buy something that is effectively a lot more useless in a lot of different ways than an actual computer system. Actually, it goes deeper than that.
The inherent problem with the world actually buying into this crap in a "post-PC" world, to the detriment, of course, to the PCs, is that when the market for the more-capable devices shrinks and quite possibly dies, there may well be nothing left to use but this locked-down Big-Media-friendly user-/competition-hostile Apple crap. (Apple? User-hostile? Yes; it absolutely is user-hostile to prevent the user from attaining full access to a device the user has purchased outright, no matter the user's skill level, to the point where the user has to rely on binary code written by third parties just to gain such access! And yes, many/most Android vendors are no different!)
If these "post-PC" hopes come true, there is a very, very real threat that there will be very few devices the user will ever have full control over without hacking, ignoring the used market. But no one seems to pay attention to this; everyone seems to pay attention to the shinies and the capabilities the devices do have while ignoring, dismissing or apologizing for the capabilities they completely lack by design. Are fancy effects and pretty designs worth the device producers having far more control over devices bought and paid for than those doing the buying? How can these devices be trusted in a corporate or government network?
If what you need for mobile computing can be done with an iPad, then why would you take a laptop too? On the other hand, if you need your laptop anyway for some particular reason, you'd probably leave your iPad at home.
Actually, just throwing my two cents in, I could see myself lugging both a tablet and a laptop around -- the tablet for those instances when I just need to look something up quickly or do a minor task and don't want to wait for the boot-up (looking up wikipedia, for example), and the laptop for when I need to do much more intensive work that I have to deal with the boot process for anyway (SSHing to multiple places and doing tasks concurrently).
You can jailbreak any device legally despite what Apple says;...
Right, but that's not really having a choice of operating system, that's simply hacking the operating system already in place; being able to run an alternative operating system is non-functional on anything but the very first iPhone, to my knowledge. Even if Apple doesn't have to provide support for it -- and they don't -- it's still troublesome that they actively prevent even the attempt.
Actually, I don't think you're taking the pricing in the proper context.
While true that the *cheapest* iPad is, in fact, much cheaper than, say, the Motorola XOOM, you'll find that -- at least in hardware -- it's also lacking many of the features that the XOOM *does* have. Fortunately, there are models of the iPad that are comparable down to being in the same provider with the same storage space and other similar specifications.
First, let's look at the XOOM: a dual-core 1 GHz ARM CPU (just like the iPad 2 IIRC) with 1 GB low-power DDR2 (twice the amount of the iPad 2) and 32 GB storage space to start, upgradable with another 32 GB to a maximum of 64 GB -- but let's ignore that and stick with the 32 GB baseline. The crucial thing to keep in mind here is that this baseline also, by default, is for Verizon cell service, and it unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to have any alternatives for that. The resolution is also at 1280x800, whereas the iPad's is 1024x768.
That's just pointing out the discrepancies you'll be facing when you see this comparison. So in order to get a fair (IMO) price comparison on this, we'll need an iPad 2 that's roughly the same, INCLUDING Verizon service. If we completely ignore storage altogether and just go Cheapest vs. Cheapest, the answer... depends on getting a contract. If you're a new customer with Verizon (or, I suppose, if you're renewing and they want to give you the contract rate), the cheapest iPad 2 sits at $629 whereas the Motorola XOOM... sits at $599 . If you're matching storage points and getting a contract, the XOOM still sits at $599 but the iPad goes up to $729! Of course, however, if you're not getting a contract and purchasing the device outright, the XOOM does get its ass handed to it on price -- although, to be fair, I could not find contract-less purchasing for an iPad 2.
tl;dr: XOOM is less expensive, spec-for-spec unless you're buying it without a contract.
(No, I'm not including software, usability, etc. -- I'm just going hardware-for-hardware and ignoring the OS, which is largely a measure of personal bias. Full disclosure: my personal bias is Android. However, what I've written here may be verified by going to the websites for the Apple Store and for Verizon's store.)
You know, as long as I can remember, I've heard this b.s. spouted. "It's not Linux's fault that nVidia and ATI won't release specs to support their hardware." "nVidia and ATI obviously are too stupid to see that openness and free software are the way of the future, and that if they'd just embrace it, they'd have a huge new market to sell to."
If there's such a huge market demanding Linux drivers for this hardware, then why the fuck, in the 20 years since Linux was released to the world, has nobody managed to build a competitor that will produce decent, open, free graphics hardware?
Either the market for "open" graphics and audio isn't as big and lucrative as you like to pretend (VERY likely) or the open source world is filled with lazy people who would rather not actually do the work themselves, but would rather simply force other people to provide a foundation for their accomplishments. Which is it?
1.) It's really *not* Linux's fault if a vendor doesn't release hardware specifications, and you still have no right to blame it for not supporting hardware that no one knows how to code support for because the vendor didn't release the specs! If you want to blame someone, blame the vendor, even though there is no obligation for them to release specifications. The whole idea behind that "b.s." is to create consumer pressure on the vendors to the point where they *do* release specs and get better support for their device for it.
2.) There are no competitors providing open, free, decent graphics hardware for these reasons:
a.) There's a huge number of patents and IP involved with graphics hardware that prohibits 'duplication' of certain capabilities by an up-and-coming graphics vendor. The legal fees alone to simply figure out whether a feature can or cannot be implemented would be staggering.
b.) Even if the legal fees were out of the way, the task of actually building such a card is fairly daunting to people who simply don't have the cashflow to begin with to produce such things. ESPECIALLY if you're aiming for compliance to any number of video/graphics specifications (OpenGL, etc.) and versions out there.
c.) To compete in the video marketplace, they would also have to write and release Windows drivers, which for various licensing reasons they may not be able to release source code for.
Basically it comes down to the process of making such a card being too large and difficult for most people, even in the open source community, to accomplish without outside help.
And, of course, the companies seem to figure Linux can be ignored -- except that the big two graphics companies, nVidia and ATI, are both releasing drivers (and ATI *has* open sourced a fair bit of their stuff, releasing specifications for the rest).
Ever try installing Leopard (10.5) on a Mac with a PPC G4 < 867 MHz? Or Tiger (10.4) on a Mac without built-in FireWire? Or Panther (10.3) on a Beige PowerMac?
"Miraculously", XPostFacto allowed this to happen (well, the Leopard/G4 requirement has to be bypassed some other way); without it, it wouldn't happen because the vendor wanted to force obsolescence on systems still at least somewhat viable. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that applications that start supporting the new versions of Mac OS X start dropping support for the older versions -- effectively rendering a rather sizable number of machines stuck without application updates for a given application simply because Apple decided those machines shouldn't run new software anymore. If I recall correctly, you can't even get a newer version of Firefox installed on those machines unless you entirely exchange the operating system for Linux or start running Windows in a VM and using that exclusively (which defeats the purpose).
Actually, Apple has a regular habit of making the next given version of Mac OS X simply not run on what they deem "old" hardware, regardless of whether or not that old hardware is actually still capable of running the OS or not. It's not even a technical check; it's a "if allowed_vendor(venid) && allowed_product(prodid) then run else fail" type check. It's one of the things that's most irritating about Apple. Thankfully and luckily, those machines they choose to arbitrarily obsolete usually wind up running Linux extremely well in OS X's stead, since no distribution is going to play that kind of silly game.
When those other people get up in your face all the time crowing about how damn good their computer is and how superior it is to everything else ever made EVER, you start to get pissed the fuck off. I'm just saying. (Yes, this cuts both ways.)
For fuck's sake; it's been in the OS since (I believe) OS 9.2.2 or, at the latest, OS X 10.2. Just because the "default" peripheral doesn't do it out of the box doesn't mean it's not there; the Mac usability/human interface guidelines (however rarely-followed) are very different from PC, and Mac applications are strongly advised to avoid use of the 'right click' as often as possible to reduce user confusion. It adds to simplicity, which is ostensibly a good thing; the costs of this decision, of course, are users who don't know better and think that this necessarily equates to a "lack of functionality", and retards like you who keep making these "HURUR RIGHT CLICK LOLZZZZ" jokes.
Actually, wasn't the thing that finally killed PPC Mac the fact that IBM simply could not deliver higher-performing chips past a certain point, nor could they deliver a chip like the PowerPC G5 in a mobile form factor while still keeping an exceptional battery life and a minimal heat profile? Apple has even cited performance-per-watt endless times as a reason for the switch. Or is that not a technical superiority thing?
(Not that I have a particular fondness for x86, mind you, but I'm pretty sure Apple had valid technical reasons to drop PPC for holding them back)
Actually, no; Opera Mini just tells a rendering proxy at Opera's servers to render a page for it, and the proxy renders the page and sends the data (and all the interactive regions and such) back to Opera Mini, which presents it. This is necessary because Apple doesn't allow 'language interpreters' to be in applications in the App Store (last I checked, anyway). The way Opera does it is complete crap, actually, in my opinion, but they did manage to use it to beat the system.
I could write a script that just replies to posts the way you do and no one would be the wiser.