Er, technically its described as a "family show" and it is heavily marketed at children. In the UK at least it airs at ~6-6:30pm on a Saturday and thus has to be child friendly.
...however, fortunately, most Dr Who writers and producers have interpreted "child friendly" as "do your best to scare the little buggers shitless without technically violating the BBC content guidelines." Of course, the kids love that! The meme about watching it from behind the sofa is founded in reality (I did, when I was little).
Actually, as any history of the show will tell you, it was originally conceived as an educational show to teach kids science and history, and in the old days used to have the occasional straight historical story (nowadays, they may meet historical characters, but there's inevitably an alien monster involved.
And you honestly think Apple will not bring the same fantastic lockdown to their desktop line.
Yes, I honestly think that maybe, just maybe Jobs lacks the mouth-foaming insanity required to stand up and announce to Mac users that the new models wouldn't run any existing software and that they'd need to re-purchase everything from iTunes.
Plus, to move the entire Mac line to ARM they'd need to pull a desktop-spec ARM core out of their ass. They'd be back to where they were in the PPC days, constantly playing catch-up with Intel for performance because nobody else wanted desktop-spec RISC chips.
The moment Apple locks applications in your Mac in a similar way to what they are doing in the iPad and other gadgets
...will be the moment that I slam a Linux DVD into my Mac, wipe OS X and build my next computer from generic PC components. Anybody who doesn't want a closed appliance as their main system will doubtless follow suit.
It might happen - but currently there's no sign of it. Currently, OS X comes bundled with free development tools, supports all the major scripting languages and can compile and run most of the major FOSS projects. The iProducts are designed for consuming, not creating.
You thought Microsoft was evil. Well Steve Jobs is the devil himself.
Well, if it wasn't for the serpent proffering apples, Adam and Eve would probably have died of scurvy or constipation for lack of fibre and vitamin C. Plus, he broke them out of a "walled garden"!
But the custom version of Xandros used on the EEE was more obscure than most. What consumers might have noticed is the very limited range of software in the default repository c.f, say, Ubuntu. (/.ers wouldn't think twice about adding the Debian repos or installing tarballs, but typical consumers would rely on the repository).
That would have been forgivable if the applications ASUS offered had been carefully optimized for the small screen - but, by and large, they were just out-of-the-box versions of OpenOffice, Thunderbird etc. which filled the screen with toolbars.
The problem was really that Microsoft rereleased XP for these devices
I agree that was the major problem... but I think there were other flaws in the implementation which helped ensure that MS were pushing on an open door. Netbook manufacturers saw Linux as a cheap way of getting an off-the-peg operating system rather than as a building block for a proper mobile OS. Had netbooks launched with something like Android*, things might have gone differently.
The trick with the iPad is it doesn't look like Microsoft Windows. It doesn't act like Microsoft Windows. If it doesn't walk like a duck or quack like a duck, people will not expect to be able to steal Photoshop and run it like, uh, a duck.
I'm glad somebody else gets it:-) The reason that its "just a big iPod Touch" is because a big iPod touch has a lot of potential uses (I've been wanting one since I got my regular sized iPod touch).
* I quite like Android - I have an Android phone (for variety, and because the iPhone tariffs sucked) - but it doesn't have quite the consistency and attention to detail you get with the Apple OS.
OSX will build on ARM without a problem and the ARM CPU would be better than the Intel Atom in a netbook.
Provided you didn't expect your desktop apps and games to run on your netbook. Give it a few years until everything is browser- or virtual machine based and that's not a problem, but here and now if people perceive their "netbook" as a portable version of their main computer, they'll want application compatibility.
Sure, Apple are past masters at seamless CPU emulation, but that overhead will probably wipe out the benefit of ARM vs. Atom.
However, as the world inside the Reality Distortion Field now knows, netbooks will never sell because no one really wants them and anyway, as a failed product
No distortion field required: the original netbook concept (e.g. the EEE PC 700) was a small, non-windows computer for web browsing, email and casual gaming. It failed* (sure, it sold by the shedload, but it was a dead end: hands up if you have an original EEE PC gathering dust - or serving some nerdy purpose like a mini-server or SSH terminal). I do, because even with its size, the iPod Touch is a better instant-on internet appliance.
Go out to buy a netbook today and what you'll be offered is an entry-level, full-featured subnotebook. Nothing like the original concept.
, they have been replaced by the magical iPad.
Which is Apple's attempt at doing the original "netbook" concept properly, using hardware that can't be seen as a replacement for a full-size laptop or desktop.
Ideally, you are reading this post a) on your iPhone or b) while waiting in line to buy your Really Big iPhone.
No, because, after spotting a few interesting/. threads on my iPod Touch while sitting in the comfy chair in the lounge, I fired up my real computer to comment, because its easier to type on. Sounds like, on the iPad, the threshold is higher, and short replies and emails would be do-able, but ultimately the iProducts are devices for consuming content.
(* Blame Asus for using an obscure Linux distro, doing a half-baked job of optimising the key applications for a small screen and then Osbourning it by announcing a new model every five minutes, or blame MS for reviving XP and dumping it on the netbook market at silly prices...)
They (Apple) just haven't gotten to the market share level they need yet to take over the world as it were.
...and its hard to see how they would get to that market share without the massive leg-up that Microsoft and the Wintel platform got from IBM (the big evil monopolist of the day) back in the early days of personal computing. MS managed to inherit IBM's customer base and ride the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" meme (and eventually left IBM in the dust).
Remember, MS still has a virtual stranglehold on the corporate sector, which Apple hasn't even tried to penetrate - and if anybody shakes MS loose from that, my bet would be Google rather than Apple.
Also, unlike the early 80s, we now have the concept of standards-based computing (and the internet, which is a force for standardization which wasn't relevant to PCs in the 80s), something which only MS are big enough to ignore. Plus, even if the will had been there, 1980s PCs didn't have the horsepower that goes with the extra layers of abstraction required for most standards.
Yes, native apps for Apple are non-standard (although OS X is also POSIX compliant) and the case of the iPod/Phone/Pad (but not their "real" desktop/laptop computers) is locked to Apples "App Store". However, it seems quite probable that as internet connectivity improves, native apps are going to become increasingly irrelevant compared to browser-based applications (for which Apple offer one of the better, more standards-based, platforms, and which can be run without restriction on the iProducts). Aside from the proprietary binary API, Apple's OS is built on open-source projects like Webkit, Apache, PHP/Python, Samba, CUPS the GNU compilers and the BSD toolkits, and can build and run most of the popular FOSS applications.
So, maybe we'll see a competetive market split between (say) MS, Google and Apple. That would be vastly more healthy than the almost complete Wintel monoculture that had developed by the end of the 20th century.
Remember - Apple helps Linux just by existing and having a significant market share: if a Website supports only IE, then only Windows can access it; if it supports Safari then its very likely to work on Linux browsers. If a USB peripheral supports Mac, then it probably uses one of the standard USB protocols (rather than requiring a custom windows-only driver) and will probably work on Linux. As long as there is more than one platform with market share, standards are more likely to be observed. Heck, even MS is now being dragged kicking and screaming into supporting HTML5...
Of course, it pays to be vigilant against a new monopoly and keep half an eye on what MS, Apple, Google are up to (especially if there's any danger of a merger) but if you think what Apple's doing bears any resemblance to the birth of the Wintel monoculture, you presumably weren't paying attention back in the 80s.
If Apple had won the computer wars, we'd probably be stuck with some half-baked system which was only just dropping backward-compatibility with Apple II.
If the guy from Digital Research hadn't been out flying his plane when IBM called we'd probably be stuck with some half-baked system which was only just dropping backward-compatibility with CP/M for the Z80 (and probably on closed IBM-made hardware, too).
If any one company "wins" the computer wars and gets the sort of monopoly enjoyed by the Wintel PC then, a few years down the line, we'll be stuck with crap, proprietary systems from a company with no incentive to innovate. Film at 11.
Fortunately, Apple are a million miles from that sort of monopoly (even their iPod/iTunes empire doesn't come close to the sort of dominance Wintel enjoyed at its height). Meanwhile, they're doing a great job of dropping the occasional bomb under the industry's ass. By all means go and buy an Android device instead (although Google are out-Borging Apple at the moment) but don't delude yourself into thinking that Android (or Palm Pre, or HTC's customised versions of WM6, or WM7) would exist in anything like their present form without the inspiration provided by Apple.
iPad != desktop/laptop replacement
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Think for yourself. Do you want a 'computer' that only allows you to do what they want you to do?
If you want a general purpose, programmable computer, don't buy an iPad. Nobody is forcing you. I see plenty of uses for one which don't involve running much beyond the standard software.
If I want to do more than that, I have a "real" Mac (something upon which the iPad also depends).
Now, the moment Apple try to "close" the Mac, I'll drop them like a ton of bricks for PC/Linux, but currently the Mac scores pretty high on openness.
Meanwhile, if you want to run your own software on the iPad its simple: forget the App store and code whatever the hell you like in loverly open standards-based HTML5/ECMAScript/SVG and host it on your Real Computer. Practical upshot: odds are your "cloud" apps will also be compatible with anything running a half-decent browser.
...and I love the way that the slashdot group mind treats Flash as the spawn of Satan and destroyer of worlds until Apple leaves it out (and, consequently, persuades a number of large video sites to switch to standards-based HTML5 video).
I think what we have here is something that can implement a large subset of Turing machines (i.e. specific initial tape/state table combinations) but falls short of being a universal Turing machine because there will always be computable algorithms that it can't run because of (a) lack of tape or (b) tape melting due to the sun leaving the main sequence.
My call would be that you can't have a physical implementation of a true universal Turing machine - because you need to be able to "run" a non-computable algorithm "to completion" in order to prove that it used infinite tape or infinite steps (of course, with an abstract Turing machine you'd do it analytically, in the same way that you can use math to add up all the numbers in an infinite series, rather than empirically).
Notwithstanding: hail the Ubergeek. This is sooooooo cool! Pointlessness only adds to its coolness!
I suspect that there are plenty of people who have sufficient aptitude for logic and problem solving, but flunked math at high school or college - which tends to be about memorizing definitions and rote learning of set-piece party tricks with numbers and simple algebra, wrapped up in the language of faux "not even wrong" rigour to make it look superficially like "real mathematics".
You're not going to get far in programming without some skills in elementary mathematical modeling - but most college/high school courses won't guarantee to teach you that anyway (unless you get a good teacher who cares about more than test scores).
Whether you need any knowledge of the mathematical foundation of computing is a different matter - I'd say you only really need that for the proverbial Google database, but what half decent programmer isn't going to be at least curious? Mind you, the math behind that is hardly recognizable as high school/college math (or even undergraduate physics math), even when it uses terms like "calculus" or "algebra".
I was slightly lucky to be educated in England, in the 70s, when they were experimenting with "modern maths" and introduced set theory, group theory, matrices and lots of number bases in the equivalent of high school. All gone, now - but then it wasn't very well taught and I suspect only the nerds who were already messing with programmable calculators and computers got anything out of it (learning how to solve a pair of simple simultaneous equations with matrices must seem bloody pointless unless you realize how easy it makes the problem to program...)
Rich storyline? You mean the fact that the game was packaged with a story that bore at least a passing resemblance to the gameplay? That's not what we mean these days when we say a game has a storyline.
The point is that 1984 wasn't "these days". I don't know that Elite was actually the first to package a scene-setting novella by an actual author (edit: Wikipedia says it was) and an "in-character" instruction manual, but it was certainly one of the first - SOP back then was more along the lines of "you are mankind's last hope - press SPACE to fire".
However, perhaps TFA should have said "back story" rather than "storyline", considering that the USP of Elite was its totally unstructured play...
(2) Not particularly elegant or innovative, if you ask me, using a PRNG to generate random worlds. Things very much like it had been done time and time before.
Certainly, generating "original" descriptions and phrases from random word lists was nothing new - but Elite made particularly good use of it to produce a universe that was just too big to completely explore, without being silly.
We've largely stopped doing it this way, but only because we don't have to any more...
Its a pity that newer games didn't come up with more sophisticated ways of generating huge universes.
Elite may have had rather more sophisticated graphics than its predecessors, but it was still a game that required you to bring your own imagination. It was always bloody obvious how the random worlds were generated, but you could willingly suspend disbelief and imagine you were exploring a vast galaxy, and the red herrings in the manual (generation ships etc.) helped you imagine that there were mysteries out there. None of the successors have had that feeling - even if they have original artwork for every world you visit.
Maybe the comment had some value before 1981, though I don't think it did.
Except the BBC Micro never really made it out of the Commonwealth, so the rest of the world pretty much had to wait another 10 years for Visual BASIC to appear.
The comments of Dijkstra et. al. really relate to the original Dartmouth BASIC, Apple BASIC or the early Microsoft BASIC that you'd see on CP/M, PETs and TRS-80s.
BBC BASIC was partly designed to address those very criticisms (since the BBC Micro project was primarily educational) with a wider variety of loops, named procedures and functions etc. and could be used to write reasonably structured code. (It was also very, very fast!).
There was nothing really like BBC BASIC for years, until Visual BASIC started to take off.
In a world with no copyright for "non commercial" distribution of work how is anyone who creates a non subscription fee based computer game or e-book supposed to make money given that the work will be freely available on file sharing sites?
Ask for donations? It seemed to go OK for Radiohead, provided you don't use RIAA fantasy accounting to count every non-payer as a $20 loss. (I also know of one independent band who successfully financed their last several albums by getting fans to pay over the odds, in advance for "limited edition" CDs. It worked, because fans wanted to support the band).
Get a day job and treat writing/making music as an enjoyable hobby? Accept that the technology that enables you to produce and distribute studio quality music or camera-ready publications for a fraction of the historical cost also has a downside? Heck, you might even make money from t-shirts and souvenir signed copies (sorry if you can't afford the trophy wife/husband and have to drive a car that can pass over speed humps).
Free software seems to have a pretty workable business model but, admittedly, its harder to sell support and consultancy for "art" like a music album, a novel or even a game...
Last time I looked, however, most of the Arts relied pretty heavily on subsidies (be it from Government or from private philanthropists). Why should music and literature be a cash cow?
Meanwhile, the flipside of the problem is that the status quo - strong copyright - is also in danger of stifling the arts (if artists can't take inspiration from earlier works without awakening copyright trolls, what then?) Current status in the UK, by the way, is that ripping a legally-bought CD to your own iPod is illegal - although that is rarely, if ever enforced.
None - but the object has gained immense value. Its not all about content.
No. Why would I want to? Is reading from that one going to be more interesting/entertaining than reading a version that was scanned?
Didn't say you'd want to. Heck, I wouldn't want to pay that sort of money - but plenty of people do. Meanwhile, I have lots of books with personal sentimental value or memories attached which, even if they wouldn't fetch $1 at auction, I wouldn't want to give up.
We're not talking about art or vintage collectibles.
Yes we are - we're talking about the vintage collectibles of 10, 20, 30 years from now. Where will they come from?
They'll have to adjust. Now we're talking about the worth of signatures, and that's an unrelated subject.
No, we're talking about the worth of signatures on books which plenty of people are clearly prepared to queue for ages to obtain, and book signings which are quite an important element in book publicity (and quite important to some authors).
If you like an actor, do you ask him to sign a DVD of a movie that he's been in? What if he's a stage actor? Do you ask him to sign the theater ticket?
Not me, personally - but an awful lot of people would if they got the opportunity.
This is nostalgia. It's the same as vinyl records. The value of the content didn't change, just the container.
Vinyl records were around for a couple of decades, yet attained such significance as objects that people even convinced themselves (against all evidence) that they sounded better than CDs. Books have been iconic objects for hundreds of years.
If, due to the popularity of digital content, this becomes more expensive (since it'll become a niche industry), then that's an acceptable sacrifice (if it's a sacrifice at all).
I'd agree that is likely (but, unlike TFA, I don't see the "niche" consisting entirely of pop-up books and suchlike). Its just a continuation of the paperback vs. hardback tradition. Of course, at the moment its pretty academic with no particularly attractive savings between ebooks and paper books and DRM schemes which make it unlikely that your ebook library will still work in ten years' time.
(It'll also be interesting to see if music continues to be released on CD or DVD for the same niche - last time I looked, some albums still get released on vinyl, so its not that unlikely).
B) Is this some kind of metaphysical crap? "they're complete objects"? WTF does that mean?
I don't know why people are talking about pop-up books: all books are tangible. Your "copy" of a book is forever linked to a physical object that, as time passes, becomes different from all other instances of that book.
Can you imagine someone paying $1m for a first edition of an ebook download? (that's just a recent, extreme example that happens to be a comic book - people cherish rare editions of books of all kinds, even when the content is widely available elsewhere).
Imagine you were giving someone a gift or a presentation? Which would be better: (a) hardback copy of their favorite author's latest work with a suitable inscription or (b) an iTunes gift card.
How will future authors cope at book signings? Hey, Mr Pullman, could you validate this X.509 certificate and write it back to the SD card? Its not for me, you understand, its for my daemon...
My 1979 paperback copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide" (the yellowed and dogeared one) is certainly a "complete object". It's still got the price tag on the back (80p!?)
...and what is that funny stain on page 30 of "American Gods"...:-)
but they might be more able to remember that they got the "puppy error" if I showed a puppy picture next to the error message.
And a gun.
Make a note of this error message and take it to the help desk or we shoot this puppy!
Another option is physical violence: when you start to explain something to them and they whip out the note pad and start to write things down, a steel rule across the knuckles accompanied by a polite reminder that this isn't f***ing French dictation - look at what I'm f***ing well showing you on that big square glass thing!.
Alternatively, a full Clockwork Orange rig with eyelid hooks and head clamps can encourage users to actually notice that things are happening on the screen when they're typing. Ludiwg Van is optional.
The real problem is if you're dealing with older, trained touch-typists who've been subjected to techniques not a million miles from the above to stop them looking at their work.
I love MythTV but, lets be honest, setting it up was a week's worth of intensive nerding...
While its quite friendly in day-to-day use and has really cool features (e.g. MythWeb, multiple front ends...) it all goes a bit pear shaped when it comes to configuration.
Tuning, in particular is a major hassle (thats in the UK with digital terrestrial - your mileage may vary). Partly, of course, that's because it supports so many standards and hardware alternatives.
Well, the obvious difference is that most of the EFF actions in the article you linked to involve them defending people who have actually received DCMA takedowns
Activision produces Guitar Hero series under license from Konami, owner of patent rights in the Guitar Freaks and DrumMania franchises. Konami already managed to sue Roxor Games into oblivion for In the Groove, a spiritual sequel to Dance Dance Revolution.
Well, if the "Patent Compliance Group, Inc." is defending Roxor, or if they are going after Konami, or if the patent that Roxor violated is one that PCG asserts is being falsely claimed then show me, and I'll happily concede the point.
Meanwhile, I don't think anybody is crying bitter salty tears for Activision. However the existance of IP "bounty hunters" looking to profit from anybody who steps on the cracks in the legal pavement, whether or not anybody has actually been damaged, is not good news for anybody.
So what's the big difference between a "false patent marking troll" and EFF?
Well, the obvious difference is that most of the EFF actions in the article you linked to involve them defending people who have actually received DCMA takedowns, C&Ds or similar nastygrams from the people dubiously claiming copyright infringement.
By contrast, if Activision have actually been threatening people over their (allegedly) false patent claims then TFA neglects to mention it.
freeing the web from both Flash and the proprietary H.264 codec.'
Point of order: Flash is not a video codec - it is a rich internet application platform which includes streaming video capability. Flash video is a "container" format which can use a variety of (proprietary) codecs including On2 VP6 and H.264.
So, whatever the other arguments against Flash, on the issue of potential future H.264 patent problems its no better or worse than HTML5+H.264.
Slashdot Mirror
No it isn’t.
Er, technically its described as a "family show" and it is heavily marketed at children. In the UK at least it airs at ~6-6:30pm on a Saturday and thus has to be child friendly.
...however, fortunately, most Dr Who writers and producers have interpreted "child friendly" as "do your best to scare the little buggers shitless without technically violating the BBC content guidelines." Of course, the kids love that! The meme about watching it from behind the sofa is founded in reality (I did, when I was little).
Actually, as any history of the show will tell you, it was originally conceived as an educational show to teach kids science and history, and in the old days used to have the occasional straight historical story (nowadays, they may meet historical characters, but there's inevitably an alien monster involved.
And you honestly think Apple will not bring the same fantastic lockdown to their desktop line.
Yes, I honestly think that maybe, just maybe Jobs lacks the mouth-foaming insanity required to stand up and announce to Mac users that the new models wouldn't run any existing software and that they'd need to re-purchase everything from iTunes.
Plus, to move the entire Mac line to ARM they'd need to pull a desktop-spec ARM core out of their ass. They'd be back to where they were in the PPC days, constantly playing catch-up with Intel for performance because nobody else wanted desktop-spec RISC chips.
The moment Apple locks applications in your Mac in a similar way to what they are doing in the iPad and other gadgets
...will be the moment that I slam a Linux DVD into my Mac, wipe OS X and build my next computer from generic PC components. Anybody who doesn't want a closed appliance as their main system will doubtless follow suit.
It might happen - but currently there's no sign of it. Currently, OS X comes bundled with free development tools, supports all the major scripting languages and can compile and run most of the major FOSS projects. The iProducts are designed for consuming, not creating.
You thought Microsoft was evil. Well Steve Jobs is the devil himself.
Well, if it wasn't for the serpent proffering apples, Adam and Eve would probably have died of scurvy or constipation for lack of fibre and vitamin C. Plus, he broke them out of a "walled garden"!
Plus, the iDevil has all the best iTunes...
For the consumer, all Linux distros are obscure.
But the custom version of Xandros used on the EEE was more obscure than most. What consumers might have noticed is the very limited range of software in the default repository c.f, say, Ubuntu. (/.ers wouldn't think twice about adding the Debian repos or installing tarballs, but typical consumers would rely on the repository).
That would have been forgivable if the applications ASUS offered had been carefully optimized for the small screen - but, by and large, they were just out-of-the-box versions of OpenOffice, Thunderbird etc. which filled the screen with toolbars.
The problem was really that Microsoft rereleased XP for these devices
I agree that was the major problem... but I think there were other flaws in the implementation which helped ensure that MS were pushing on an open door. Netbook manufacturers saw Linux as a cheap way of getting an off-the-peg operating system rather than as a building block for a proper mobile OS. Had netbooks launched with something like Android*, things might have gone differently.
The trick with the iPad is it doesn't look like Microsoft Windows. It doesn't act like Microsoft Windows. If it doesn't walk like a duck or quack like a duck, people will not expect to be able to steal Photoshop and run it like, uh, a duck.
I'm glad somebody else gets it :-) The reason that its "just a big iPod Touch" is because a big iPod touch has a lot of potential uses (I've been wanting one since I got my regular sized iPod touch).
* I quite like Android - I have an Android phone (for variety, and because the iPhone tariffs sucked) - but it doesn't have quite the consistency and attention to detail you get with the Apple OS.
OSX will build on ARM without a problem and the ARM CPU would be better than the Intel Atom in a netbook.
Provided you didn't expect your desktop apps and games to run on your netbook. Give it a few years until everything is browser- or virtual machine based and that's not a problem, but here and now if people perceive their "netbook" as a portable version of their main computer, they'll want application compatibility.
Sure, Apple are past masters at seamless CPU emulation, but that overhead will probably wipe out the benefit of ARM vs. Atom.
However, as the world inside the Reality Distortion Field now knows, netbooks will never sell because no one really wants them and anyway, as a failed product
No distortion field required: the original netbook concept (e.g. the EEE PC 700) was a small, non-windows computer for web browsing, email and casual gaming. It failed* (sure, it sold by the shedload, but it was a dead end: hands up if you have an original EEE PC gathering dust - or serving some nerdy purpose like a mini-server or SSH terminal). I do, because even with its size, the iPod Touch is a better instant-on internet appliance.
Go out to buy a netbook today and what you'll be offered is an entry-level, full-featured subnotebook. Nothing like the original concept.
, they have been replaced by the magical iPad.
Which is Apple's attempt at doing the original "netbook" concept properly, using hardware that can't be seen as a replacement for a full-size laptop or desktop.
Ideally, you are reading this post a) on your iPhone or b) while waiting in line to buy your Really Big iPhone.
No, because, after spotting a few interesting /. threads on my iPod Touch while sitting in the comfy chair in the lounge, I fired up my real computer to comment, because its easier to type on. Sounds like, on the iPad, the threshold is higher, and short replies and emails would be do-able, but ultimately the iProducts are devices for consuming content.
(* Blame Asus for using an obscure Linux distro, doing a half-baked job of optimising the key applications for a small screen and then Osbourning it by announcing a new model every five minutes, or blame MS for reviving XP and dumping it on the netbook market at silly prices...)
They (Apple) just haven't gotten to the market share level they need yet to take over the world as it were.
...and its hard to see how they would get to that market share without the massive leg-up that Microsoft and the Wintel platform got from IBM (the big evil monopolist of the day) back in the early days of personal computing. MS managed to inherit IBM's customer base and ride the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" meme (and eventually left IBM in the dust).
Remember, MS still has a virtual stranglehold on the corporate sector, which Apple hasn't even tried to penetrate - and if anybody shakes MS loose from that, my bet would be Google rather than Apple.
Also, unlike the early 80s, we now have the concept of standards-based computing (and the internet, which is a force for standardization which wasn't relevant to PCs in the 80s), something which only MS are big enough to ignore. Plus, even if the will had been there, 1980s PCs didn't have the horsepower that goes with the extra layers of abstraction required for most standards.
Yes, native apps for Apple are non-standard (although OS X is also POSIX compliant) and the case of the iPod/Phone/Pad (but not their "real" desktop/laptop computers) is locked to Apples "App Store". However, it seems quite probable that as internet connectivity improves, native apps are going to become increasingly irrelevant compared to browser-based applications (for which Apple offer one of the better, more standards-based, platforms, and which can be run without restriction on the iProducts). Aside from the proprietary binary API, Apple's OS is built on open-source projects like Webkit, Apache, PHP/Python, Samba, CUPS the GNU compilers and the BSD toolkits, and can build and run most of the popular FOSS applications.
So, maybe we'll see a competetive market split between (say) MS, Google and Apple. That would be vastly more healthy than the almost complete Wintel monoculture that had developed by the end of the 20th century.
Remember - Apple helps Linux just by existing and having a significant market share: if a Website supports only IE, then only Windows can access it; if it supports Safari then its very likely to work on Linux browsers. If a USB peripheral supports Mac, then it probably uses one of the standard USB protocols (rather than requiring a custom windows-only driver) and will probably work on Linux. As long as there is more than one platform with market share, standards are more likely to be observed. Heck, even MS is now being dragged kicking and screaming into supporting HTML5...
Of course, it pays to be vigilant against a new monopoly and keep half an eye on what MS, Apple, Google are up to (especially if there's any danger of a merger) but if you think what Apple's doing bears any resemblance to the birth of the Wintel monoculture, you presumably weren't paying attention back in the 80s.
If Apple had won the computer wars, we'd probably be stuck with some half-baked system which was only just dropping backward-compatibility with Apple II.
If the guy from Digital Research hadn't been out flying his plane when IBM called we'd probably be stuck with some half-baked system which was only just dropping backward-compatibility with CP/M for the Z80 (and probably on closed IBM-made hardware, too).
If any one company "wins" the computer wars and gets the sort of monopoly enjoyed by the Wintel PC then, a few years down the line, we'll be stuck with crap, proprietary systems from a company with no incentive to innovate. Film at 11.
Fortunately, Apple are a million miles from that sort of monopoly (even their iPod/iTunes empire doesn't come close to the sort of dominance Wintel enjoyed at its height). Meanwhile, they're doing a great job of dropping the occasional bomb under the industry's ass. By all means go and buy an Android device instead (although Google are out-Borging Apple at the moment) but don't delude yourself into thinking that Android (or Palm Pre, or HTC's customised versions of WM6, or WM7) would exist in anything like their present form without the inspiration provided by Apple.
Think for yourself. Do you want a 'computer' that only allows you to do what they want you to do?
If you want a general purpose, programmable computer, don't buy an iPad. Nobody is forcing you. I see plenty of uses for one which don't involve running much beyond the standard software.
If I want to do more than that, I have a "real" Mac (something upon which the iPad also depends).
Now, the moment Apple try to "close" the Mac, I'll drop them like a ton of bricks for PC/Linux, but currently the Mac scores pretty high on openness.
Meanwhile, if you want to run your own software on the iPad its simple: forget the App store and code whatever the hell you like in loverly open standards-based HTML5/ECMAScript/SVG and host it on your Real Computer. Practical upshot: odds are your "cloud" apps will also be compatible with anything running a half-decent browser.
...and I love the way that the slashdot group mind treats Flash as the spawn of Satan and destroyer of worlds until Apple leaves it out (and, consequently, persuades a number of large video sites to switch to standards-based HTML5 video).
I think what we have here is something that can implement a large subset of Turing machines (i.e. specific initial tape/state table combinations) but falls short of being a universal Turing machine because there will always be computable algorithms that it can't run because of (a) lack of tape or (b) tape melting due to the sun leaving the main sequence.
My call would be that you can't have a physical implementation of a true universal Turing machine - because you need to be able to "run" a non-computable algorithm "to completion" in order to prove that it used infinite tape or infinite steps (of course, with an abstract Turing machine you'd do it analytically, in the same way that you can use math to add up all the numbers in an infinite series, rather than empirically).
Notwithstanding: hail the Ubergeek. This is sooooooo cool! Pointlessness only adds to its coolness!
I suspect that there are plenty of people who have sufficient aptitude for logic and problem solving, but flunked math at high school or college - which tends to be about memorizing definitions and rote learning of set-piece party tricks with numbers and simple algebra, wrapped up in the language of faux "not even wrong" rigour to make it look superficially like "real mathematics".
You're not going to get far in programming without some skills in elementary mathematical modeling - but most college/high school courses won't guarantee to teach you that anyway (unless you get a good teacher who cares about more than test scores).
Whether you need any knowledge of the mathematical foundation of computing is a different matter - I'd say you only really need that for the proverbial Google database, but what half decent programmer isn't going to be at least curious? Mind you, the math behind that is hardly recognizable as high school/college math (or even undergraduate physics math), even when it uses terms like "calculus" or "algebra".
I was slightly lucky to be educated in England, in the 70s, when they were experimenting with "modern maths" and introduced set theory, group theory, matrices and lots of number bases in the equivalent of high school. All gone, now - but then it wasn't very well taught and I suspect only the nerds who were already messing with programmable calculators and computers got anything out of it (learning how to solve a pair of simple simultaneous equations with matrices must seem bloody pointless unless you realize how easy it makes the problem to program...)
Rich storyline? You mean the fact that the game was packaged with a story that bore at least a passing resemblance to the gameplay? That's not what we mean these days when we say a game has a storyline.
The point is that 1984 wasn't "these days". I don't know that Elite was actually the first to package a scene-setting novella by an actual author (edit: Wikipedia says it was) and an "in-character" instruction manual, but it was certainly one of the first - SOP back then was more along the lines of "you are mankind's last hope - press SPACE to fire".
However, perhaps TFA should have said "back story" rather than "storyline", considering that the USP of Elite was its totally unstructured play...
(2) Not particularly elegant or innovative, if you ask me, using a PRNG to generate random worlds. Things very much like it had been done time and time before.
Certainly, generating "original" descriptions and phrases from random word lists was nothing new - but Elite made particularly good use of it to produce a universe that was just too big to completely explore, without being silly.
We've largely stopped doing it this way, but only because we don't have to any more...
Its a pity that newer games didn't come up with more sophisticated ways of generating huge universes.
Elite may have had rather more sophisticated graphics than its predecessors, but it was still a game that required you to bring your own imagination. It was always bloody obvious how the random worlds were generated, but you could willingly suspend disbelief and imagine you were exploring a vast galaxy, and the red herrings in the manual (generation ships etc.) helped you imagine that there were mysteries out there. None of the successors have had that feeling - even if they have original artwork for every world you visit.
Maybe the comment had some value before 1981, though I don't think it did.
Except the BBC Micro never really made it out of the Commonwealth, so the rest of the world pretty much had to wait another 10 years for Visual BASIC to appear.
I cut my teeth on BBC BASIC back in the 80's.
The comments of Dijkstra et. al. really relate to the original Dartmouth BASIC, Apple BASIC or the early Microsoft BASIC that you'd see on CP/M, PETs and TRS-80s.
BBC BASIC was partly designed to address those very criticisms (since the BBC Micro project was primarily educational) with a wider variety of loops, named procedures and functions etc. and could be used to write reasonably structured code. (It was also very, very fast!).
There was nothing really like BBC BASIC for years, until Visual BASIC started to take off.
In a world with no copyright for "non commercial" distribution of work how is anyone who creates a non subscription fee based computer game or e-book supposed to make money given that the work will be freely available on file sharing sites?
Ask for donations? It seemed to go OK for Radiohead, provided you don't use RIAA fantasy accounting to count every non-payer as a $20 loss. (I also know of one independent band who successfully financed their last several albums by getting fans to pay over the odds, in advance for "limited edition" CDs. It worked, because fans wanted to support the band).
Get a day job and treat writing/making music as an enjoyable hobby? Accept that the technology that enables you to produce and distribute studio quality music or camera-ready publications for a fraction of the historical cost also has a downside? Heck, you might even make money from t-shirts and souvenir signed copies (sorry if you can't afford the trophy wife/husband and have to drive a car that can pass over speed humps).
Free software seems to have a pretty workable business model but, admittedly, its harder to sell support and consultancy for "art" like a music album, a novel or even a game...
Last time I looked, however, most of the Arts relied pretty heavily on subsidies (be it from Government or from private philanthropists). Why should music and literature be a cash cow?
Meanwhile, the flipside of the problem is that the status quo - strong copyright - is also in danger of stifling the arts (if artists can't take inspiration from earlier works without awakening copyright trolls, what then?) Current status in the UK, by the way, is that ripping a legally-bought CD to your own iPod is illegal - although that is rarely, if ever enforced.
The same way actors and actresses do at conventions? They'll sign an 8x10 picture of themselves.
So much for ugly people who want to write... :-)
So what? What value has the content gained?
None - but the object has gained immense value. Its not all about content.
No. Why would I want to? Is reading from that one going to be more interesting/entertaining than reading a version that was scanned?
Didn't say you'd want to. Heck, I wouldn't want to pay that sort of money - but plenty of people do. Meanwhile, I have lots of books with personal sentimental value or memories attached which, even if they wouldn't fetch $1 at auction, I wouldn't want to give up.
We're not talking about art or vintage collectibles.
Yes we are - we're talking about the vintage collectibles of 10, 20, 30 years from now. Where will they come from?
They'll have to adjust. Now we're talking about the worth of signatures, and that's an unrelated subject.
No, we're talking about the worth of signatures on books which plenty of people are clearly prepared to queue for ages to obtain, and book signings which are quite an important element in book publicity (and quite important to some authors).
If you like an actor, do you ask him to sign a DVD of a movie that he's been in? What if he's a stage actor? Do you ask him to sign the theater ticket?
Not me, personally - but an awful lot of people would if they got the opportunity.
This is nostalgia. It's the same as vinyl records. The value of the content didn't change, just the container.
Vinyl records were around for a couple of decades, yet attained such significance as objects that people even convinced themselves (against all evidence) that they sounded better than CDs. Books have been iconic objects for hundreds of years.
If, due to the popularity of digital content, this becomes more expensive (since it'll become a niche industry), then that's an acceptable sacrifice (if it's a sacrifice at all).
I'd agree that is likely (but, unlike TFA, I don't see the "niche" consisting entirely of pop-up books and suchlike). Its just a continuation of the paperback vs. hardback tradition. Of course, at the moment its pretty academic with no particularly attractive savings between ebooks and paper books and DRM schemes which make it unlikely that your ebook library will still work in ten years' time.
(It'll also be interesting to see if music continues to be released on CD or DVD for the same niche - last time I looked, some albums still get released on vinyl, so its not that unlikely).
Think about A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Interesting example in this context, given that, in The Diamond Age:
So, not your Kindle or iPad (unless Steve has some manufacturing problems he's not letting on about).
B) Is this some kind of metaphysical crap? "they're complete objects"? WTF does that mean?
I don't know why people are talking about pop-up books: all books are tangible. Your "copy" of a book is forever linked to a physical object that, as time passes, becomes different from all other instances of that book.
Can you imagine someone paying $1m for a first edition of an ebook download? (that's just a recent, extreme example that happens to be a comic book - people cherish rare editions of books of all kinds, even when the content is widely available elsewhere).
Imagine you were giving someone a gift or a presentation? Which would be better: (a) hardback copy of their favorite author's latest work with a suitable inscription or (b) an iTunes gift card.
How will future authors cope at book signings? Hey, Mr Pullman, could you validate this X.509 certificate and write it back to the SD card? Its not for me, you understand, its for my daemon...
My 1979 paperback copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide" (the yellowed and dogeared one) is certainly a "complete object". It's still got the price tag on the back (80p!?)
...and what is that funny stain on page 30 of "American Gods"... :-)
Mr. Jobs, I have Xerox holding on line 1 for you. They say they'd like to talk to you about some kind of mouse.
I think you'll find that Apple bought those rights fair and square for a string of shiny glass beads and a gallon of fire water.
but they might be more able to remember that they got the "puppy error" if I showed a puppy picture next to the error message.
And a gun.
Make a note of this error message and take it to the help desk or we shoot this puppy!
Another option is physical violence: when you start to explain something to them and they whip out the note pad and start to write things down, a steel rule across the knuckles accompanied by a polite reminder that this isn't f***ing French dictation - look at what I'm f***ing well showing you on that big square glass thing!.
Alternatively, a full Clockwork Orange rig with eyelid hooks and head clamps can encourage users to actually notice that things are happening on the screen when they're typing. Ludiwg Van is optional.
The real problem is if you're dealing with older, trained touch-typists who've been subjected to techniques not a million miles from the above to stop them looking at their work.
I love MythTV but, lets be honest, setting it up was a week's worth of intensive nerding...
While its quite friendly in day-to-day use and has really cool features (e.g. MythWeb, multiple front ends...) it all goes a bit pear shaped when it comes to configuration.
Tuning, in particular is a major hassle (thats in the UK with digital terrestrial - your mileage may vary). Partly, of course, that's because it supports so many standards and hardware alternatives.
Well, the obvious difference is that most of the EFF actions in the article you linked to involve them defending people who have actually received DCMA takedowns
Activision produces Guitar Hero series under license from Konami, owner of patent rights in the Guitar Freaks and DrumMania franchises. Konami already managed to sue Roxor Games into oblivion for In the Groove, a spiritual sequel to Dance Dance Revolution.
Well, if the "Patent Compliance Group, Inc." is defending Roxor, or if they are going after Konami, or if the patent that Roxor violated is one that PCG asserts is being falsely claimed then show me, and I'll happily concede the point.
Meanwhile, I don't think anybody is crying bitter salty tears for Activision. However the existance of IP "bounty hunters" looking to profit from anybody who steps on the cracks in the legal pavement, whether or not anybody has actually been damaged, is not good news for anybody.
So what's the big difference between a "false patent marking troll" and EFF?
Well, the obvious difference is that most of the EFF actions in the article you linked to involve them defending people who have actually received DCMA takedowns, C&Ds or similar nastygrams from the people dubiously claiming copyright infringement.
By contrast, if Activision have actually been threatening people over their (allegedly) false patent claims then TFA neglects to mention it.
freeing the web from both Flash and the proprietary H.264 codec.'
Point of order: Flash is not a video codec - it is a rich internet application platform which includes streaming video capability. Flash video is a "container" format which can use a variety of (proprietary) codecs including On2 VP6 and H.264.
So, whatever the other arguments against Flash, on the issue of potential future H.264 patent problems its no better or worse than HTML5+H.264.