Domain squatting is a completely separate issue. And one that has been solved in many countries —where I live it's outright illegal to domain squat, and protected using the same laws/infrastructure as trademarks.
You can buy any domain you want here, but if someone else has a trademark — or if they're simply better known than you — then they can take it off you at any time. It's also illegal for anyone except officially approved registrars to sell a domain name, so taking control of a domain name someone else owns is always free.
I'm sure the developers of VLC, Mplayer, Perrian and the like would have loved to use QTKit and CoreAnimation like you suggest. But they can't because those APIs simply do not work.
What *you* don't get, is that VLC, Mplayer, Perrian, etc have all been able to play video perfectly fine for years. It's only adobe that can't get their act together.
Personally, i don't give a flying fuck whether or not my video is hardware accelerated. As long as the framerates are smooth I'm happy. Everyone else can do it, why not adobe?
Why do we even need hardware accelerated h.264 decoding? My mac at work has it, and my ~6 year old mac at home doesn't have it. The only difference seems to be playing 1080p video.
For youtube quality... there's no reason to have hardware decoding except to conserve battery life. Adobe should be able to get 60 frames per second at low CPU usage on any processor released in the last 5 years, but they struggle even to achieve 20 frames per second at 100% cpu usage!
Adobe is the *only* video decoder with this problem. QuickTime, Windows Media Player, MPlayer, etc... they've all been decoding video perfectly fine for decades!
Steve Jobs' exact words were "it turns out the limit for most people's eyesight is around 300dpi at 12 inches. We have 326dpi, so there's plenty of room there."
If you read the article, it says that 20/20 vision is 286dpi at 12inches. It seems perfectly clear that Jobs' claim of "about 300dpi and we have more than that" is perfectly reasonable.
At that point, the technology bottleneck will be the pipes (a 72 dpi image is quite a bit smaller than a 300 dpi image, after all...).
Actually, on a modern broadband connection the biggest factors are network latency and browser's css/javascript rendering speed.
Neither of which is effected at all by the actual size of each image. I just tested downloading a 400x267px (27KB) photo vs a 160x120 photo (6KB). The large photo took 0.361 seconds, and the small photo took 0.358 seconds. I repeated the test several times, and in fact —the small photo was slower than the large one sometimes.
So, tripling the resolution of an image only has a 1% performance hit.
The 2nd and 3rd generation iPhones both supported HSDPA, the largest network in australia uses it. So I highly doubt the next model will ditch it.
Though from what I've seen, it only does 7Mbps HSDPA. We have 24Mbps HSDPA on just about every cell tower in the country, and metro areas are being upgraded to 48Mbps.:(
That doesn't mean an experienced PHP programmer can't write secure code. I write database driven websites 6 days a week in PHP, and never use any of the dangerous methods in PHP.
We have our own API for escaping SQL strings, our own API for pulling data out of the HTTP request, our own API for converting a string into html.
Yes, PHP has a bunch of crap, but no-one forced you to use them. It's perfectly feasible to treat PHP like a lower level language, such as C, where you're forced to write all those little utility functions, because they aren't built in.
Your examples are good ones, but there are plenty of other examples of proprietary software succeeding where open ones are failed. One of my own small open source projects was swallowed by a proprietary competitor for example.
Just because flash is dying the way VB did, doesn't mean android or linux will take over. iPhone OS and Windows are more entrenched than flash ever was, and they are both under active development by skilled programmers, unlike flash.
In my case at least, there's a single universal key which will open our front door, the door to our apartment building, and the door into the security gate for the complex. And an RFID swiper to open the car gate into the complex, and our garage door. And the padlock into the storage cage for where I keep my bike, and the mailbox key (i'll never check the mail if i don't have it with me every time i walk past).
So that's three keys, and an RFID swiper, just for my house. And only one of them I can possibly get by without.
When driving the car around town I take the car key off, and leave the other keys in the cup holder. I only take the car key itself when I leave the car (except at home). On my motorbike, I also take the bike key's bunch off, and clip the rest onto a belt loop on my jeans (or in my backpack for a serious ride). When I go for a walk, I only take the small bunch of house keys with me... etc.
I work with PHP every day, and feel exactly the same way.
There's nothing wrong with PHP, it's great! My colleagues and I write wonderful code with it whenever our client's give us enough budget. But I have almost never seen any third party PHP software or sample code which I would call "good". It's all riddled with bugs and security holes.
Woah!!! Stop right there. I love RealBasic, I wrote my first real app in it, and thousands of people told me they loved it. But there's no way it's "completely right".
It's good enough for simple apps, and better than flash. But vastly inferior to Cocoa.
It would be trivial to write that app in JavaScript, with no need for commercial/proprietary tools, and it would run just as well if not better, and on more platforms than adobe air.
You don't have to use iTunes. You can use the device itself. I have an iPhone and rarely use the iTunes music store, I always access apps/music/podcasts/tv shows/etc on the phone directly. I use iTunes to make regular backups of my phone, but that's all.
Who cares about choice? As long as the software I want is easily available — I'm happy.
Oh, and remind me what's the process for writing an application for the iPhone/iPad and distributing it to others again? Is it something you can do cheaply and easily?
Option 1: Buy a mac (a second hand one is suitable, so very cheap), you need to install the developer toolkit (which is free, and better than most commercial development suites, better than *all* free ones —trust me, I've used most of them). After you've finished writing/testing your software you need to pay a small annual fee to be able to sell apps (this money goes towards actual humans checking over your software to make sure it isn't illegal/malware/etc, as well as bandwidth — a pretty good deal).
Option 2: Buy a mac or pc (second hand one is suitable, so very cheap). Use freely available tools for writing applications using javascript, which are more tightly integrated into the operating system than *any* other platform, including desktop PC's. You must provide your own servers, so this is probably more expensive in the long run than writing software directly (unless you use an unreliable server, or if hardly anyone actually downloads your software — in which case you might as well not distribute it).
Either option is easy, and they're both pretty cheap.
Another aspect to think about iPod vs Walkman or other MP3 players was that iPod had no physical feedback on controls. Only flat buttons in front of it. The other players had song scrolls that were out of the player and you could feel them - another important point when you're just putting your hand in pocket and want to change a song.
That's just not true. I've owned and used several iPod models daily, they all had physical buttons and you could use all of them without looking. In fact, I used to control my iPod without even putting my hand in the pocket, i could feel the button locations through the outside of my pockets, and would usually press them that way. The centre of the button surface on most iPods is raised slightly, and it's trivial able to press any button and change the volume simply by feeling that one bump (the bump is a button, above/below/left/right are buttons. all big and no need to press exactly the right place). These days I use an iPhone... and while it doesn't have raised buttons (touch screen), it does have play/pause/next track/prev track/volume on the headphone cable.
He said "to most people", and this is the absolute truth. The vast majority of people have no knowledge that mobile phones are equipped with these sensors
The vast majority of people don't buy $500+ phones. Where I live people who do usually are aware of these sensors.
and there's absolutely zero on the packaging or the user documentation to indicate such in almost all cases when it would be trivial to do so, which is prima facie evidence of the manufacturer's intent to conceal the presence of the sensors from their customers.
Apple's support website clearly states water damage isn't covered and has photos of the sensor, so it is clearly documented. Since when is a box expected to answer every question you could possibly have?
Just the same, I don't necessarily disagree with Apple or anyone else using them (even covertly), as long as they're absolutely reliable - warranty fraud is a real problem, but so is having a legitimate warranty claim denied just because you live in Florida and it got cold one day.
If these sensors aren't perfect *and apple's warranty team doesn't take that into account* then you have a relevant argument. but there's no indication of that being the case... On the contrary apple has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratios in the world.
that can only be used against you to Apple's advantage.
Agreed with this bit.
I don't even agree with that. The liquid sensor is used almost certainly used to reduce the price of the phone by reducing fraudulent warranty claims.
As someone who pays for insurance which covers dropping my stuff in water, I don't want to also pay extra for a product just so someone else can rip corporations off.
As it says in wikipedia, 1GB == 1 billion bytes, and historically it was 1.07 billion bytes.
Most operating systems have switched to 1GB == 1000MB, 1MB == 1000KB, including Mac OS X and Ubuntu.
Windows is still using 1024, but that's only because microsoft resists change, even when it makes sense. No doubt they will also start using the proper value in a future version of windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Domain squatting is a completely separate issue. And one that has been solved in many countries —where I live it's outright illegal to domain squat, and protected using the same laws/infrastructure as trademarks.
You can buy any domain you want here, but if someone else has a trademark — or if they're simply better known than you — then they can take it off you at any time. It's also illegal for anyone except officially approved registrars to sell a domain name, so taking control of a domain name someone else owns is always free.
But this isn't "software" this is just "updated contents of an XML file".
I'm sure the developers of VLC, Mplayer, Perrian and the like would have loved to use QTKit and CoreAnimation like you suggest. But they can't because those APIs simply do not work.
What *you* don't get, is that VLC, Mplayer, Perrian, etc have all been able to play video perfectly fine for years. It's only adobe that can't get their act together.
Personally, i don't give a flying fuck whether or not my video is hardware accelerated. As long as the framerates are smooth I'm happy. Everyone else can do it, why not adobe?
Why do we even need hardware accelerated h.264 decoding? My mac at work has it, and my ~6 year old mac at home doesn't have it. The only difference seems to be playing 1080p video.
For youtube quality... there's no reason to have hardware decoding except to conserve battery life. Adobe should be able to get 60 frames per second at low CPU usage on any processor released in the last 5 years, but they struggle even to achieve 20 frames per second at 100% cpu usage!
Adobe is the *only* video decoder with this problem. QuickTime, Windows Media Player, MPlayer, etc... they've all been decoding video perfectly fine for decades!
Steve Jobs' exact words were "it turns out the limit for most people's eyesight is around 300dpi at 12 inches. We have 326dpi, so there's plenty of room there."
If you read the article, it says that 20/20 vision is 286dpi at 12inches. It seems perfectly clear that Jobs' claim of "about 300dpi and we have more than that" is perfectly reasonable.
Actually, on a modern broadband connection the biggest factors are network latency and browser's css/javascript rendering speed.
Neither of which is effected at all by the actual size of each image. I just tested downloading a 400x267px (27KB) photo vs a 160x120 photo (6KB). The large photo took 0.361 seconds, and the small photo took 0.358 seconds. I repeated the test several times, and in fact —the small photo was slower than the large one sometimes.
So, tripling the resolution of an image only has a 1% performance hit.
*Everything* you can see is "projecting an image into your retina".
That's how our eyes work!
There are high res displays, I'm running 2560x1600 myself.
But I do agree, they are *way* too expensive. I wouldn't have bought mine, except I found a good secondhand deal.
The 2nd and 3rd generation iPhones both supported HSDPA, the largest network in australia uses it. So I highly doubt the next model will ditch it.
Though from what I've seen, it only does 7Mbps HSDPA. We have 24Mbps HSDPA on just about every cell tower in the country, and metro areas are being upgraded to 48Mbps. :(
That doesn't mean an experienced PHP programmer can't write secure code. I write database driven websites 6 days a week in PHP, and never use any of the dangerous methods in PHP.
We have our own API for escaping SQL strings, our own API for pulling data out of the HTTP request, our own API for converting a string into html.
Yes, PHP has a bunch of crap, but no-one forced you to use them. It's perfectly feasible to treat PHP like a lower level language, such as C, where you're forced to write all those little utility functions, because they aren't built in.
Your examples are good ones, but there are plenty of other examples of proprietary software succeeding where open ones are failed. One of my own small open source projects was swallowed by a proprietary competitor for example.
Just because flash is dying the way VB did, doesn't mean android or linux will take over. iPhone OS and Windows are more entrenched than flash ever was, and they are both under active development by skilled programmers, unlike flash.
Do you hate google as well? They also give you access to stuff other people made public, often illegally.
Hell, we should shut down the whole internet.
It would be easier to use a crowbar, or lock picks, or social engineer our real estate agent to give them their copy of the key.
Locks only keep honest people out. I have insurance for everyone else.
In my case at least, there's a single universal key which will open our front door, the door to our apartment building, and the door into the security gate for the complex. And an RFID swiper to open the car gate into the complex, and our garage door. And the padlock into the storage cage for where I keep my bike, and the mailbox key (i'll never check the mail if i don't have it with me every time i walk past).
So that's three keys, and an RFID swiper, just for my house. And only one of them I can possibly get by without.
I have my keys split into about 5 small bunches, clipped onto a large carabiner:
http://mediumstack.com/abhibeckert/15962865
When driving the car around town I take the car key off, and leave the other keys in the cup holder. I only take the car key itself when I leave the car (except at home). On my motorbike, I also take the bike key's bunch off, and clip the rest onto a belt loop on my jeans (or in my backpack for a serious ride). When I go for a walk, I only take the small bunch of house keys with me... etc.
I work with PHP every day, and feel exactly the same way.
There's nothing wrong with PHP, it's great! My colleagues and I write wonderful code with it whenever our client's give us enough budget. But I have almost never seen any third party PHP software or sample code which I would call "good". It's all riddled with bugs and security holes.
I think it's a barrier-to-entry problem.
[RealBasic] gets [Mac] completely right.
Woah!!! Stop right there. I love RealBasic, I wrote my first real app in it, and thousands of people told me they loved it. But there's no way it's "completely right".
It's good enough for simple apps, and better than flash. But vastly inferior to Cocoa.
It would be trivial to write that app in JavaScript, with no need for commercial/proprietary tools, and it would run just as well if not better, and on more platforms than adobe air.
Lock-in = removal of choice.
'Thou must use iTunes' = removal of that choice.
It isn't that hard to grasp.
You don't have to use iTunes. You can use the device itself. I have an iPhone and rarely use the iTunes music store, I always access apps/music/podcasts/tv shows/etc on the phone directly. I use iTunes to make regular backups of my phone, but that's all.
Who cares about choice? As long as the software I want is easily available — I'm happy.
Oh, and remind me what's the process for writing an application for the iPhone/iPad and distributing it to others again? Is it something you can do cheaply and easily?
Option 1: Buy a mac (a second hand one is suitable, so very cheap), you need to install the developer toolkit (which is free, and better than most commercial development suites, better than *all* free ones —trust me, I've used most of them). After you've finished writing/testing your software you need to pay a small annual fee to be able to sell apps (this money goes towards actual humans checking over your software to make sure it isn't illegal/malware/etc, as well as bandwidth — a pretty good deal).
Option 2: Buy a mac or pc (second hand one is suitable, so very cheap). Use freely available tools for writing applications using javascript, which are more tightly integrated into the operating system than *any* other platform, including desktop PC's. You must provide your own servers, so this is probably more expensive in the long run than writing software directly (unless you use an unreliable server, or if hardly anyone actually downloads your software — in which case you might as well not distribute it).
Either option is easy, and they're both pretty cheap.
Another aspect to think about iPod vs Walkman or other MP3 players was that iPod had no physical feedback on controls. Only flat buttons in front of it. The other players had song scrolls that were out of the player and you could feel them - another important point when you're just putting your hand in pocket and want to change a song.
That's just not true. I've owned and used several iPod models daily, they all had physical buttons and you could use all of them without looking. In fact, I used to control my iPod without even putting my hand in the pocket, i could feel the button locations through the outside of my pockets, and would usually press them that way. The centre of the button surface on most iPods is raised slightly, and it's trivial able to press any button and change the volume simply by feeling that one bump (the bump is a button, above/below/left/right are buttons. all big and no need to press exactly the right place). These days I use an iPhone... and while it doesn't have raised buttons (touch screen), it does have play/pause/next track/prev track/volume on the headphone cable.
He said "to most people", and this is the absolute truth. The vast majority of people have no knowledge that mobile phones are equipped with these sensors
The vast majority of people don't buy $500+ phones. Where I live people who do usually are aware of these sensors.
and there's absolutely zero on the packaging or the user documentation to indicate such in almost all cases when it would be trivial to do so, which is prima facie evidence of the manufacturer's intent to conceal the presence of the sensors from their customers.
Apple's support website clearly states water damage isn't covered and has photos of the sensor, so it is clearly documented. Since when is a box expected to answer every question you could possibly have?
Just the same, I don't necessarily disagree with Apple or anyone else using them (even covertly), as long as they're absolutely reliable - warranty fraud is a real problem, but so is having a legitimate warranty claim denied just because you live in Florida and it got cold one day.
If these sensors aren't perfect *and apple's warranty team doesn't take that into account* then you have a relevant argument. but there's no indication of that being the case... On the contrary apple has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratios in the world.
that can only be used against you to Apple's advantage.
Agreed with this bit.
I don't even agree with that. The liquid sensor is used almost certainly used to reduce the price of the phone by reducing fraudulent warranty claims.
As someone who pays for insurance which covers dropping my stuff in water, I don't want to also pay extra for a product just so someone else can rip corporations off.
As it says in wikipedia, 1GB == 1 billion bytes, and historically it was 1.07 billion bytes.
Most operating systems have switched to 1GB == 1000MB, 1MB == 1000KB, including Mac OS X and Ubuntu.
Windows is still using 1024, but that's only because microsoft resists change, even when it makes sense. No doubt they will also start using the proper value in a future version of windows.
Modern browsers have JiT compilation for fast execution and hardware accelerated 3D graphics... I would argue html5 is *better* for games than flash
Good quality vorbis videos take up too much disk space for YouTube to use it (they said so during html5 spec arguments).
So either firefox supports h.264 (via QuickTime plugin?) or users have to put up with flash.