And i wasn't slamming the GPL, it has its place. But in a corporation that wants to make lots of $, it isn't there.
So IBM isn't a corporation? Sorry, in my experience most Linux development is done by corporations looking to make a profit. Why would HP copy Apple and be later to market and have less of a software base to start with? Even Apple releases all their changes to BSD code back, so they're not making use of any of the so-called advantage of BSD over GPL.
Using Linux would allow HP to undercut Apple's development costs by having more code to make use of and more ongoing development from other companies. It's clearly the best starting point and nothing stops HP from preventing user migration with closed source end user software and services, or simply by selling the best, cheapest hardware (they are the number one vendor already).
It occurs to me that they aren't going to do this because they love Linux. They would do it to make money and I'm willing to bet that if they make their own version it would be designed to be difficult to move to other systems.
So what? Most Linux development is done for profit because people want it to work so they can make money from hardware or services or closed source software that runs on Linux. So long as it is another company dumping resources into improving Linux, it benefits all of us.
Apple sure doesn't contribute OSS code out of altruism. They don't implement open standard protocols in order to benefit society. Yet they do both of these things and both benefit the OSS community and help thwart MS's lock-in strategies. I don't really care why HP contributes, so long as they do. Scratch that, I prefer they contribute because they see a profitable business venture, because that makes it more likely they will continue to do so.
Ah. I can't see why they would want to, there is no marketing cachet to Linux. It would make more sense though to license OS X and say, "Powered by Apple" than to re-invent the wheel with Linux...
So your business move would be to stop having the huge liability of having to license Windows from Microsoft (who does not compete in the desktop computer space) and instead license OS X and have the same liability with Apple except also be directly competing with Apple in the desktop computer space? And you think this would be a good strategy why?
Linux is not owned by anyone. It commoditzes the OS so no one party can hold you hostage or charge you for each system sold or kill your business by refusing to license to you if you do something they don't like.
Even if linux had an equal market share to Windows, it would still be far more difficult to develop for. Which window manager are we using? Which sound library? Which directory layout?
You're assuming the market share was split up among many different distros and there was not one major winner (which there could be). If there was not, technologies would emerge to make it easier, either Java VMs, cross-platform/distro dev kits, or another technology. If there is profit to be had, there will be solutions.
It'd not like users of Windows aren't spread across different versions with different libraries you know.
Even if the market share were equal, it would not be cost effective to develop for Linux, not to mention support.
I disagree. The market would make it effective by heavily rewarding technologies that make it so. Heck if Windows was reduced to 40% of the market and the rest was split evenly among OS X, Linux, BSD, and Plan9, cross platform development technologies like Java, VMs, or just really good, portable cross platform dev tools would become hugely popular and very slick and easy to use.
Why would HP get into the business of building their own operating system? They already make good servers that run every popular OS out there, including Linux. What's the point of throwing a whole bunch of R&D into making ANOTHER operating system?
They have good choice of OS's in the server market. They are also the largest seller of desktop computers pretty much all of which ship with Windows right now... which is both a huge expense and a huge liability for HP. If they aren't at least looking into the possibility of contributing to Linux and making it into a competing desktop OS (like all the other major PC makers are) then their CEO should be fired pronto.
That's not to say I think H will pull it off and make Linux good enough and well supported enough for he average, desktop user. They probably won't, but they certainly should be investing in projects that explore that idea.
In short, server and desktop OS markets are different markets. Linux is a potentially disruptive offering and no major vendor has any excuse for being caught flat-footed given the number of Linux based phones, tablets and mini-laptops making waves in the industry right now. No one expected OS X, everyone expects Linux on the desktop eventually, including HP.
HP is irrelevant. The only reason you'd buy Linux systems from HP is if you are already an HP shop and need the badges to line up.
HP is the largest PC seller, bigger even than Dell right now and growing. That does not really make them irrelevant. Anyway, they look a lot like Apple did before OS X was introduced... having a bit of a comeback because of their hardware offerings and looking to invest some of that cash into something to differentiate them from others. A smooth and well built Linux distro could do for them what OS X did for Apple (and undercut Apple and most everyone else at the same time.
I doubt it will happen, but then I figured a BSD based version of Mac OS was a pie in the sky project that would never hit retail too.
No one can argue that the number of programs released for Windows is much, much higher than for Linux. But the reason for that is mainly the difference between open and closed source. In the closed source area there are many, many programs for the same purpose. In Linux when you want to develope something you can help in an already existing one making it better...
Yes, I can help out but 99.99% of desktop users can't, because they aren't programmers. The reason there is so much less software for Linux on the desktop is because there is less financial incentive to create it due to the smaller install base. That's it. There's plenty of OSS projects on Windows people can and do contribute to, but commercial developers are mostly closed source and mostly aim for where there are lots of established users. That's really Windows right now and to a lesser extend OS X. Some day it will hopefully be Linux, but not so much right now. OpenGL and other cross platform technologies are helping and OS X utilizing them is helping, but Linux doesn't aim for complete OS X compatibility and vice versus, so until they do, Linux has to stand mostly on it's own market share, which to date is not big enough to motivate a lot of desktop end-user offerings.
I don't know if this is what HP is speculated to be doing, but if Linux were to ever be successful as a desktop OS, they would need to do the following:
Determine which components are going to be part of the system.
Fork every single one of them.
That's a pretty lousy idea. That gets them a start, but loses them all the free work others are doing on Linux going forward, while still not stopping people from directly copying the work they do. If HP uses their hardware and services as differentiator, as well as some closed source end-user software, they could partner with someone like Canonical and gain huge amounts of development work/dollars free of charge, while still earning goodwill in the OSS community and maintaining compatibility with Linux so they have a software development base. They just have to accept their investment dollars in OS development as adding to a commodity (a sales incentive) without lock-in. They can still have lock-in elsewhere.
Alternately, they could grab OpenStep and try for binary compatibility with OS X, leveraging those technologies and Apple's software development base, which would make them even more mainstream on the desktop than Linux. Or, if they're really willing to go for the gusto, they could do both and try to sell their systems as OS X and Linux compatible, a best of breed. Done well and marketed well they'd make a mint. Done poorly, well they'd have a mess on their hands. Still they could invest in it and only release if they were confident and otherwise stick with Windows and be conservative (but make less money).
Well, that's where the GPL trumps the BSD license....:) Apple doesn't contribute code back to BSD because it's not required.
Who mods this crap "insightful?" Apple has continually released the BSD subsystem of OS X as Darwin, despite the BSD license not requiring them to. They do this because it allows others to fix things for them and help create interoperable systems. They understand the benefits of an OSS license and want to gain those benefits (for areas outside their core competency and value propositions).
But HP cares less about locking down their shit, and more about moving boxes, so Linux would be a logical choice for them.
Actually, HP is probably not willing to spend the time or expense to develop their own GUI and Linux is the best bet to provide one. That doesn't mean HP won't develop closed source drivers and end-user software and services on top of Linux in order to help motivate users to stick with their hardware.
I just went over that list of 10 programs through some (admittedly not thorough) googling, and checked them for compatibility with iPhone/iPod Touch, which are the models that cause the issue due to the encryption/hashing used.
Yep, most of those have problems with the iPhone/iPod touch, but they work just fine with all the other iPods which use the hashing technique we are describing. The iPhone is not primarily an iPod, but a smartphone/PDA which is locked down for completely different reasons than the potential of copying music (as should be obvious to pretty much everyone with a clue) and using completely different techniques that have nothing to do with mounting it as a hard drive.
I HAVE a nano 3G, and as of a month ago Amarok did not work with it. It looks like it's working, but then you try the Ipod out by itself and there's nothing on it.
I don't have an iPod of any sort, but my girlfriend's shuffle works fine with Amarok (1.4.9) under Ubuntu. What version of Amarok are you using?
I also just looked up the article, it's a thesis for a student working towards a Bachelor's degree and it mentions Nothing about the name hashing technique with respect to power savings.
It's on the second page where they describe the battery saving and wear leveling techniques.
The point is, that your average joe doesn't have a clue how to pull songs from an ipod, so the name hashing technique "protects" the music from a large percentage of the population.
For the average person finding the iPod and browsing the files on it has about the same difficulty level as googling, downloading, and running one of the many programs designed to let them easily do just that. If Apple was trying to make it hard to access, they could easily have implemented some minimal copy protection that would at least let them sue people who make such programs using the DMCA.
Of course the Touch uses the Iphone firmware, and it's even more locked down. This shows a definite progression to stronger DRM
Sigh. The trend at Apple has been to push for lesser DRM, but they also have to deal with DRM requirements from new markets they are entering. When they started supporting commercial video on iPods they added enough DRM to satisfy the MPAA. When they moved into the cell phone market, they added the protections they needed to get access to AT&T's network. Sure there's a progression towards more DRM (one of the reasons I don't own any of said products) but it is a progression tied closely to their move into new markets with DRM requirements as part of the barrier to entry. From Apple's perspective, all the DRM except the iPhone/touch is a necessary evil that costs them money and exists because they are dependent upon criminal cartels. For the iPhone it is partly to satisfy AT&T's requirement that certain programs that would compete with them are stopped and partly a security measure to try to improve the overall experience for the average, normal user. The chronology of DRM is unimportant unless you use it to link up to the other things Apple has done (new markets) that require said DRM.
Rubbish. The hashing would not even save the most trivial amount of power, and may actually cost a minute amount more, since the Song Name now absolutely has to come from inside the file instead of from the filesystem, meaning every "directory listing" on an ipod has to open up every file, parse the id3 tags and cache the results for display instead of simply showing the filename.
Funny I just read an IEEE article on forensic analysis of iPods that disagrees with you. [Pod Forensics: Forensically Sound Examination of an Apple iPod, Jill Slay; Andrew Przibilla, System Sciences, 2007. HICSS 2007]
This is simply a lame way of satisfying the RIAA that Ipods are not used for piracy.
I have no doubt that Apple did make certain things harder to do using iTunes at the request of the RIAA, but I don't think that is the reason for their hashing, which is so easily bypassed.
The 3G nanos have built in encryption and have yet to be hacked by any of those programs...
Are you talking about the checksum it took the Amarok people all of two days to work around?
...and the Ipod Touch doesn't even offer disk mode anymore, most likely to keep the hackers out.
The iPod touch is using the same firmware as the iPhone so they keep it locked down the same way. All the other iPods work fine with third party music jukebox software I've used.
When the iTouch came out and was jailbreaked Apple released new firmware that blocked the hack.
Yeah, because it is the same firmware as the iPhone and they're trying to fix security flaws in that and are contractually obligated with AT&T to prevent arbitrary, unauthorized programs from running on it. What does that have to do with being able to read and write music to iPods in general?
Go on, scan Slashdot archive about Apple offerings, you will find article after article conveying the frustration of people daring to wish to use a device they paid for as they damn wish.
I see plenty of articles about people wanting to run arbitrary software on iPhones (and the iPod Touch handheld) but don't see much about people having problems putting music on or taking music off of iPods using programs other than iTunes, which is what the person I was replying to brought up... along with some sort of "encryption" used on the USB connection.
I provided a nice list of ten programs other than iTunes that read and write music to the iPod. I think that pretty thoroughly debunks said point.
There are no special drivers, just generic userspace software, and userspace programs SHOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO CAUSE A KERNEL PANIC!
Tell that to my coworker's iMac running Leopard, which has been crashing at least once a day for the last week while running video editing software.
What video editing software? Usually repeated crashes of the whole OS (OS X) end up being hardware problems. For example, Adobe InDesign has numerous memory leaks and several reproducible bugs that will crash the program every time. The difference I've noted is that under OS X it just crashes the program and restarting the program recovers the memory. Under Windows XP and Vista the same crashes (cross platform bugs) will take down the entire OS and the only way to get memory back is to reboot the OS.
I have no doubt there are programs that can crash OS X, just as there are programs that can crash Vista, but my experience has been OS X is more resistant to those problems, in general.
If iPods were simply accessible as a USB mass storage device, I don't think there would have been a problem. From what I can see, Apple uses a proprietary device-type, so they can talk to it using an encrypted connection.
Apple uses a proprietary device type so they can hash the files so reading them uses less battery than it would if it was arranged like a storage drive. I've never heard of any "encryption" for the USB connection and numerous other programs have figured out how to read the hash tables without any problems (e.g. Amarok, Banshee, Floola, gtkpod, MediaMonkey, Rhythmbox, SharePod, Songbird,Winamp, YamiPod). If Apple is trying to stop other programs from interfacing with iPods they're doing a lousy job of it.
All that, simply to keep you from copying files you supposedly don't have the right to copy.
Now people are hardwired to act like this. Someone who dresses the same, acts the same looks the same is more likely to be trusted than someone who looks or acts in a very different manner.
This is a well known psychological phenomenon and often explored in books on the art of persuasion. That said, dressing and acting the same only works as a persuasive technique when the person being persuaded does not recognize it as an intentional technique. If they do, if works very, very strongly against you. The last paper I read on the subject recommended imitating gestures one time in five, with a delay of 3-8 seconds. That was the optimal method in their testing.
You're mistaken. Amazon encodes all their video with Windows Media DRM.
You're also mistaken. TiVo doesn't use Windows Media DRM.
I don't have one to test, but Googling for info on the DRM used for the service I found on DRM-Watch:
"The technology presumably already makes use of TiVo's TiVoToGo technology, which interoperates with Windows Media DRM, on which Amazon Unbox is based."
Do you have any good sources to back up your assertion? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the only info I found seems to disagree with you.
AppleTV, then, but with a fixed monthly cost instead of individual product purchases?
That's closer, but has the issue of requiring vendor specific hardware. Ideally, TVs would simply support grabbing content from the internet using the service of choice. Buying an expensive box from one vendor removes incentive to move to a better, cheaper, easier service dulling the advantages of true competition.
For a subscription service to succeed it has to have something its competitors don't, which means unique content. This means customers will have to use multiple services to get at everything they want.
I disagree. Does Netflix have any exclusive film rental deals? You don't need exclusive content if you focus on building the best system of delivering content to your customers. A really easy to use service/Website is enough to gain an advantage on the competition and there are always niches that can be better served.
Plus, these services will have to deal with entrenched national oligopolists known as the movie studios.
True, and this is the real barrier to progress. We can't have excellent services at low prices with innovative solutions when the internet connection industry is broken up into local monopolies and duopolies and regulated by corporate shills. The same applies to the RIAA cartel's lock in on movie distribution. Since the US government has proved incapable of solving these regulatory problems in the face of well funded corporations, we'll probably never have the level of quality we'd like. But then, we were talking about what real progress would look like in theory, not the intentionally crippled changes we're likely to actually see.
I think what the typical person really wants is a reasonably priced subscription-based television service.
OnDemand does this now. You pay the cable provider for HBO, and you get to watch whatever they make available each month. Any reason to think this can't be expanded on a larger scale?
OnDemand fails because it is offered by the existing cable providers and bundled with their cable TV services. A lot of people want to be able to watch any TV show they want, when they want, but not own anything. This is not affordable when it can only be obtained by also paying $50 a month for regular cable TV, which is not really of interest. It also sucks when it is paired with the quality of service and customer responsiveness of an entrenched local monopolist.
A subscription service over the internet, run by people who actually care if their customers are happy and competing on price and quality with similar services would revolutionize television watching for many americans.
Google created Chrome because of AdBlockPlus and NoScript.
Okay, there's your assertion. I'm just not seeing your support. I know chrome has a plug-in architecture. Is it limited in some way so that Adblock and NoScript can't be ported to it? Is their some sort of signing scheme? Do you know or are you just guessing here? Let's see some evidence.
From where I sit, it looks like Chrome is all about Google Docs and they don't care at all about AdBlock. All the features they announced are focused on running Web applications quickly and with the same type of functionality you'd expect from native applications. This makes sense, given that Google is investing heavily in the Web application business both to drive revenue (ad supported for home, paid versions for corporate use) and to undermine MS's stranglehold on that market.
This isn't to say that you're wrong, just that you need to provide some support if you want a reasonable person to believe you.
No, the rendering engine is "only" a small fraction of where we are going with "the browser". Javascript, API calls, plugin support and other browser specific features are what make the browser application a whole cohesive unit that ultimately the end users deem acceptable.
Webkit includes a javascript interpreter called JavaScriptCore. The latest beta version is Squirrelfish and is really fast. It's not just the HTML engine (WebCore).
Looking into the past we discover all kinds of climate changes affecting civilizations. Darfur is another example and like the snows of Kilmanjaro, it is not causally attached to Global Warming.
Not even the most respected climatologists are willing to say with certainty whether the climate change that occurred in Darfur is part of the global trend or not. It doesn't matter in this instance. The climate changed (warming) in that region, becoming warmer, which was the first event in the series that lead to tragedy. You don't think it is not only possible, but probable that other climate change towards warmer weather in other parts of the world will lead to other conflicts and suffering? Sorry, but warming is not going to benefit the human race in general because it is upsetting the status quo and the conditions under which much of our current stability was built. Change will lead to problems and conflicts.
A hotter earth is going to also be a wetter earth. Check your peer reviewed articles, if you doubt that.
In places it certainly will be and we'll have flooding and storms in places where people are not accustomed to it. Major cities will be partially under the sea level causing series problems and a drain on resources. Other places will get hotter and dryer and there will be droughts and food shortages. People will try to relocate from where they are to a place that is now more suitable and that will lead to wars and more drain on humanity's resources.
Winners and losers, always going to have those. The Earth heating or not heating, isn't going to change that.
Your argument is flawed. You might as well try to apply it to a giant meteor hitting the earth. Hopefully you've realized by now that your argument was weak and poorly thought out. I'll leave it at that.
Now they want a browser? Why? What reason would they need for a new browser? So instead of putting full support behind a 'generic' Firefox, they want to enter the market so they can gather even more information from the user.
That's a pretty big assumption. Since this browser will be open sourced, it's not like they'll be able to hide any tracking. My best guess is they have different motivations. First, this gives them a good project to help contribute to Webkit, which in turn benefits them by further undermining Microsoft's market dominance. Second, it allows them to develop their own Java VM and faster javascripting and pages protected from one another and special windows for Web apps. All of those features point to making a browser specifically designed to make Web applications (a market Google is heavily investing in to sell to corporations and give to individuals with ad supported revenue) faster, more stable, easier to use, and more practical.
I don't do any really heavy Web development, but my development process has always been develop for the standards, then fix it to work with IE, then test on everything. The amount of work I estimate for supporting the Webkit engine running in Chrome as opposed to the Webkit engine running in Safari is negligible.
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And i wasn't slamming the GPL, it has its place. But in a corporation that wants to make lots of $, it isn't there.
So IBM isn't a corporation? Sorry, in my experience most Linux development is done by corporations looking to make a profit. Why would HP copy Apple and be later to market and have less of a software base to start with? Even Apple releases all their changes to BSD code back, so they're not making use of any of the so-called advantage of BSD over GPL.
Using Linux would allow HP to undercut Apple's development costs by having more code to make use of and more ongoing development from other companies. It's clearly the best starting point and nothing stops HP from preventing user migration with closed source end user software and services, or simply by selling the best, cheapest hardware (they are the number one vendor already).
It occurs to me that they aren't going to do this because they love Linux. They would do it to make money and I'm willing to bet that if they make their own version it would be designed to be difficult to move to other systems.
So what? Most Linux development is done for profit because people want it to work so they can make money from hardware or services or closed source software that runs on Linux. So long as it is another company dumping resources into improving Linux, it benefits all of us.
Apple sure doesn't contribute OSS code out of altruism. They don't implement open standard protocols in order to benefit society. Yet they do both of these things and both benefit the OSS community and help thwart MS's lock-in strategies. I don't really care why HP contributes, so long as they do. Scratch that, I prefer they contribute because they see a profitable business venture, because that makes it more likely they will continue to do so.
Ah. I can't see why they would want to, there is no marketing cachet to Linux. It would make more sense though to license OS X and say, "Powered by Apple" than to re-invent the wheel with Linux...
So your business move would be to stop having the huge liability of having to license Windows from Microsoft (who does not compete in the desktop computer space) and instead license OS X and have the same liability with Apple except also be directly competing with Apple in the desktop computer space? And you think this would be a good strategy why?
Linux is not owned by anyone. It commoditzes the OS so no one party can hold you hostage or charge you for each system sold or kill your business by refusing to license to you if you do something they don't like.
Even if linux had an equal market share to Windows, it would still be far more difficult to develop for. Which window manager are we using? Which sound library? Which directory layout?
You're assuming the market share was split up among many different distros and there was not one major winner (which there could be). If there was not, technologies would emerge to make it easier, either Java VMs, cross-platform/distro dev kits, or another technology. If there is profit to be had, there will be solutions.
It'd not like users of Windows aren't spread across different versions with different libraries you know.
Even if the market share were equal, it would not be cost effective to develop for Linux, not to mention support.
I disagree. The market would make it effective by heavily rewarding technologies that make it so. Heck if Windows was reduced to 40% of the market and the rest was split evenly among OS X, Linux, BSD, and Plan9, cross platform development technologies like Java, VMs, or just really good, portable cross platform dev tools would become hugely popular and very slick and easy to use.
Why would HP get into the business of building their own operating system? They already make good servers that run every popular OS out there, including Linux. What's the point of throwing a whole bunch of R&D into making ANOTHER operating system?
They have good choice of OS's in the server market. They are also the largest seller of desktop computers pretty much all of which ship with Windows right now... which is both a huge expense and a huge liability for HP. If they aren't at least looking into the possibility of contributing to Linux and making it into a competing desktop OS (like all the other major PC makers are) then their CEO should be fired pronto.
That's not to say I think H will pull it off and make Linux good enough and well supported enough for he average, desktop user. They probably won't, but they certainly should be investing in projects that explore that idea.
In short, server and desktop OS markets are different markets. Linux is a potentially disruptive offering and no major vendor has any excuse for being caught flat-footed given the number of Linux based phones, tablets and mini-laptops making waves in the industry right now. No one expected OS X, everyone expects Linux on the desktop eventually, including HP.
HP is irrelevant. The only reason you'd buy Linux systems from HP is if you are already an HP shop and need the badges to line up.
HP is the largest PC seller, bigger even than Dell right now and growing. That does not really make them irrelevant. Anyway, they look a lot like Apple did before OS X was introduced... having a bit of a comeback because of their hardware offerings and looking to invest some of that cash into something to differentiate them from others. A smooth and well built Linux distro could do for them what OS X did for Apple (and undercut Apple and most everyone else at the same time.
I doubt it will happen, but then I figured a BSD based version of Mac OS was a pie in the sky project that would never hit retail too.
No one can argue that the number of programs released for Windows is much, much higher than for Linux. But the reason for that is mainly the difference between open and closed source. In the closed source area there are many, many programs for the same purpose. In Linux when you want to develope something you can help in an already existing one making it better...
Yes, I can help out but 99.99% of desktop users can't, because they aren't programmers. The reason there is so much less software for Linux on the desktop is because there is less financial incentive to create it due to the smaller install base. That's it. There's plenty of OSS projects on Windows people can and do contribute to, but commercial developers are mostly closed source and mostly aim for where there are lots of established users. That's really Windows right now and to a lesser extend OS X. Some day it will hopefully be Linux, but not so much right now. OpenGL and other cross platform technologies are helping and OS X utilizing them is helping, but Linux doesn't aim for complete OS X compatibility and vice versus, so until they do, Linux has to stand mostly on it's own market share, which to date is not big enough to motivate a lot of desktop end-user offerings.
I don't know if this is what HP is speculated to be doing, but if Linux were to ever be successful as a desktop OS, they would need to do the following: Determine which components are going to be part of the system. Fork every single one of them.
That's a pretty lousy idea. That gets them a start, but loses them all the free work others are doing on Linux going forward, while still not stopping people from directly copying the work they do. If HP uses their hardware and services as differentiator, as well as some closed source end-user software, they could partner with someone like Canonical and gain huge amounts of development work/dollars free of charge, while still earning goodwill in the OSS community and maintaining compatibility with Linux so they have a software development base. They just have to accept their investment dollars in OS development as adding to a commodity (a sales incentive) without lock-in. They can still have lock-in elsewhere.
Alternately, they could grab OpenStep and try for binary compatibility with OS X, leveraging those technologies and Apple's software development base, which would make them even more mainstream on the desktop than Linux. Or, if they're really willing to go for the gusto, they could do both and try to sell their systems as OS X and Linux compatible, a best of breed. Done well and marketed well they'd make a mint. Done poorly, well they'd have a mess on their hands. Still they could invest in it and only release if they were confident and otherwise stick with Windows and be conservative (but make less money).
Well, that's where the GPL trumps the BSD license.... :) Apple doesn't contribute code back to BSD because it's not required.
Who mods this crap "insightful?" Apple has continually released the BSD subsystem of OS X as Darwin, despite the BSD license not requiring them to. They do this because it allows others to fix things for them and help create interoperable systems. They understand the benefits of an OSS license and want to gain those benefits (for areas outside their core competency and value propositions).
But HP cares less about locking down their shit, and more about moving boxes, so Linux would be a logical choice for them.
Actually, HP is probably not willing to spend the time or expense to develop their own GUI and Linux is the best bet to provide one. That doesn't mean HP won't develop closed source drivers and end-user software and services on top of Linux in order to help motivate users to stick with their hardware.
I just went over that list of 10 programs through some (admittedly not thorough) googling, and checked them for compatibility with iPhone/iPod Touch, which are the models that cause the issue due to the encryption/hashing used.
Yep, most of those have problems with the iPhone/iPod touch, but they work just fine with all the other iPods which use the hashing technique we are describing. The iPhone is not primarily an iPod, but a smartphone/PDA which is locked down for completely different reasons than the potential of copying music (as should be obvious to pretty much everyone with a clue) and using completely different techniques that have nothing to do with mounting it as a hard drive.
My point stands.
I HAVE a nano 3G, and as of a month ago Amarok did not work with it. It looks like it's working, but then you try the Ipod out by itself and there's nothing on it.
I don't have an iPod of any sort, but my girlfriend's shuffle works fine with Amarok (1.4.9) under Ubuntu. What version of Amarok are you using?
I also just looked up the article, it's a thesis for a student working towards a Bachelor's degree and it mentions Nothing about the name hashing technique with respect to power savings.
It's on the second page where they describe the battery saving and wear leveling techniques.
The point is, that your average joe doesn't have a clue how to pull songs from an ipod, so the name hashing technique "protects" the music from a large percentage of the population.
For the average person finding the iPod and browsing the files on it has about the same difficulty level as googling, downloading, and running one of the many programs designed to let them easily do just that. If Apple was trying to make it hard to access, they could easily have implemented some minimal copy protection that would at least let them sue people who make such programs using the DMCA.
Of course the Touch uses the Iphone firmware, and it's even more locked down. This shows a definite progression to stronger DRM
Sigh. The trend at Apple has been to push for lesser DRM, but they also have to deal with DRM requirements from new markets they are entering. When they started supporting commercial video on iPods they added enough DRM to satisfy the MPAA. When they moved into the cell phone market, they added the protections they needed to get access to AT&T's network. Sure there's a progression towards more DRM (one of the reasons I don't own any of said products) but it is a progression tied closely to their move into new markets with DRM requirements as part of the barrier to entry. From Apple's perspective, all the DRM except the iPhone/touch is a necessary evil that costs them money and exists because they are dependent upon criminal cartels. For the iPhone it is partly to satisfy AT&T's requirement that certain programs that would compete with them are stopped and partly a security measure to try to improve the overall experience for the average, normal user. The chronology of DRM is unimportant unless you use it to link up to the other things Apple has done (new markets) that require said DRM.
Rubbish. The hashing would not even save the most trivial amount of power, and may actually cost a minute amount more, since the Song Name now absolutely has to come from inside the file instead of from the filesystem, meaning every "directory listing" on an ipod has to open up every file, parse the id3 tags and cache the results for display instead of simply showing the filename.
Funny I just read an IEEE article on forensic analysis of iPods that disagrees with you. [Pod Forensics: Forensically Sound Examination of an Apple iPod, Jill Slay; Andrew Przibilla, System Sciences, 2007. HICSS 2007]
This is simply a lame way of satisfying the RIAA that Ipods are not used for piracy.
I have no doubt that Apple did make certain things harder to do using iTunes at the request of the RIAA, but I don't think that is the reason for their hashing, which is so easily bypassed.
The 3G nanos have built in encryption and have yet to be hacked by any of those programs...
Are you talking about the checksum it took the Amarok people all of two days to work around?
...and the Ipod Touch doesn't even offer disk mode anymore, most likely to keep the hackers out.
The iPod touch is using the same firmware as the iPhone so they keep it locked down the same way. All the other iPods work fine with third party music jukebox software I've used.
You are obviously new around here.
Hardly.
When the iTouch came out and was jailbreaked Apple released new firmware that blocked the hack.
Yeah, because it is the same firmware as the iPhone and they're trying to fix security flaws in that and are contractually obligated with AT&T to prevent arbitrary, unauthorized programs from running on it. What does that have to do with being able to read and write music to iPods in general?
Go on, scan Slashdot archive about Apple offerings, you will find article after article conveying the frustration of people daring to wish to use a device they paid for as they damn wish.
I see plenty of articles about people wanting to run arbitrary software on iPhones (and the iPod Touch handheld) but don't see much about people having problems putting music on or taking music off of iPods using programs other than iTunes, which is what the person I was replying to brought up... along with some sort of "encryption" used on the USB connection.
I provided a nice list of ten programs other than iTunes that read and write music to the iPod. I think that pretty thoroughly debunks said point.
There are no special drivers, just generic userspace software, and userspace programs SHOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO CAUSE A KERNEL PANIC!
Tell that to my coworker's iMac running Leopard, which has been crashing at least once a day for the last week while running video editing software.
What video editing software? Usually repeated crashes of the whole OS (OS X) end up being hardware problems. For example, Adobe InDesign has numerous memory leaks and several reproducible bugs that will crash the program every time. The difference I've noted is that under OS X it just crashes the program and restarting the program recovers the memory. Under Windows XP and Vista the same crashes (cross platform bugs) will take down the entire OS and the only way to get memory back is to reboot the OS.
I have no doubt there are programs that can crash OS X, just as there are programs that can crash Vista, but my experience has been OS X is more resistant to those problems, in general.
If iPods were simply accessible as a USB mass storage device, I don't think there would have been a problem. From what I can see, Apple uses a proprietary device-type, so they can talk to it using an encrypted connection.
Apple uses a proprietary device type so they can hash the files so reading them uses less battery than it would if it was arranged like a storage drive. I've never heard of any "encryption" for the USB connection and numerous other programs have figured out how to read the hash tables without any problems (e.g. Amarok, Banshee, Floola, gtkpod, MediaMonkey, Rhythmbox, SharePod, Songbird,Winamp, YamiPod). If Apple is trying to stop other programs from interfacing with iPods they're doing a lousy job of it.
All that, simply to keep you from copying files you supposedly don't have the right to copy.
I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Now people are hardwired to act like this. Someone who dresses the same, acts the same looks the same is more likely to be trusted than someone who looks or acts in a very different manner.
This is a well known psychological phenomenon and often explored in books on the art of persuasion. That said, dressing and acting the same only works as a persuasive technique when the person being persuaded does not recognize it as an intentional technique. If they do, if works very, very strongly against you. The last paper I read on the subject recommended imitating gestures one time in five, with a delay of 3-8 seconds. That was the optimal method in their testing.
You're mistaken. Amazon encodes all their video with Windows Media DRM.
You're also mistaken. TiVo doesn't use Windows Media DRM.
I don't have one to test, but Googling for info on the DRM used for the service I found on DRM-Watch:
"The technology presumably already makes use of TiVo's TiVoToGo technology, which interoperates with Windows Media DRM, on which Amazon Unbox is based."
Do you have any good sources to back up your assertion? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the only info I found seems to disagree with you.
AppleTV, then, but with a fixed monthly cost instead of individual product purchases?
That's closer, but has the issue of requiring vendor specific hardware. Ideally, TVs would simply support grabbing content from the internet using the service of choice. Buying an expensive box from one vendor removes incentive to move to a better, cheaper, easier service dulling the advantages of true competition.
For a subscription service to succeed it has to have something its competitors don't, which means unique content. This means customers will have to use multiple services to get at everything they want.
I disagree. Does Netflix have any exclusive film rental deals? You don't need exclusive content if you focus on building the best system of delivering content to your customers. A really easy to use service/Website is enough to gain an advantage on the competition and there are always niches that can be better served.
Plus, these services will have to deal with entrenched national oligopolists known as the movie studios.
True, and this is the real barrier to progress. We can't have excellent services at low prices with innovative solutions when the internet connection industry is broken up into local monopolies and duopolies and regulated by corporate shills. The same applies to the RIAA cartel's lock in on movie distribution. Since the US government has proved incapable of solving these regulatory problems in the face of well funded corporations, we'll probably never have the level of quality we'd like. But then, we were talking about what real progress would look like in theory, not the intentionally crippled changes we're likely to actually see.
I think what the typical person really wants is a reasonably priced subscription-based television service.
OnDemand does this now. You pay the cable provider for HBO, and you get to watch whatever they make available each month. Any reason to think this can't be expanded on a larger scale?
OnDemand fails because it is offered by the existing cable providers and bundled with their cable TV services. A lot of people want to be able to watch any TV show they want, when they want, but not own anything. This is not affordable when it can only be obtained by also paying $50 a month for regular cable TV, which is not really of interest. It also sucks when it is paired with the quality of service and customer responsiveness of an entrenched local monopolist.
A subscription service over the internet, run by people who actually care if their customers are happy and competing on price and quality with similar services would revolutionize television watching for many americans.
And if I'm not mistaken (and if I am, I'm sure someone will correct me) Amazon doesn't put DRM on their downloads.
You're mistaken. Amazon encodes all their video with Windows Media DRM.
Google created Chrome because of AdBlockPlus and NoScript.
Okay, there's your assertion. I'm just not seeing your support. I know chrome has a plug-in architecture. Is it limited in some way so that Adblock and NoScript can't be ported to it? Is their some sort of signing scheme? Do you know or are you just guessing here? Let's see some evidence.
From where I sit, it looks like Chrome is all about Google Docs and they don't care at all about AdBlock. All the features they announced are focused on running Web applications quickly and with the same type of functionality you'd expect from native applications. This makes sense, given that Google is investing heavily in the Web application business both to drive revenue (ad supported for home, paid versions for corporate use) and to undermine MS's stranglehold on that market.
This isn't to say that you're wrong, just that you need to provide some support if you want a reasonable person to believe you.
No, the rendering engine is "only" a small fraction of where we are going with "the browser". Javascript, API calls, plugin support and other browser specific features are what make the browser application a whole cohesive unit that ultimately the end users deem acceptable.
Webkit includes a javascript interpreter called JavaScriptCore. The latest beta version is Squirrelfish and is really fast. It's not just the HTML engine (WebCore).
Looking into the past we discover all kinds of climate changes affecting civilizations. Darfur is another example and like the snows of Kilmanjaro, it is not causally attached to Global Warming.
Not even the most respected climatologists are willing to say with certainty whether the climate change that occurred in Darfur is part of the global trend or not. It doesn't matter in this instance. The climate changed (warming) in that region, becoming warmer, which was the first event in the series that lead to tragedy. You don't think it is not only possible, but probable that other climate change towards warmer weather in other parts of the world will lead to other conflicts and suffering? Sorry, but warming is not going to benefit the human race in general because it is upsetting the status quo and the conditions under which much of our current stability was built. Change will lead to problems and conflicts.
A hotter earth is going to also be a wetter earth. Check your peer reviewed articles, if you doubt that.
In places it certainly will be and we'll have flooding and storms in places where people are not accustomed to it. Major cities will be partially under the sea level causing series problems and a drain on resources. Other places will get hotter and dryer and there will be droughts and food shortages. People will try to relocate from where they are to a place that is now more suitable and that will lead to wars and more drain on humanity's resources.
Winners and losers, always going to have those. The Earth heating or not heating, isn't going to change that.
Your argument is flawed. You might as well try to apply it to a giant meteor hitting the earth. Hopefully you've realized by now that your argument was weak and poorly thought out. I'll leave it at that.
Now they want a browser? Why? What reason would they need for a new browser? So instead of putting full support behind a 'generic' Firefox, they want to enter the market so they can gather even more information from the user.
That's a pretty big assumption. Since this browser will be open sourced, it's not like they'll be able to hide any tracking. My best guess is they have different motivations. First, this gives them a good project to help contribute to Webkit, which in turn benefits them by further undermining Microsoft's market dominance. Second, it allows them to develop their own Java VM and faster javascripting and pages protected from one another and special windows for Web apps. All of those features point to making a browser specifically designed to make Web applications (a market Google is heavily investing in to sell to corporations and give to individuals with ad supported revenue) faster, more stable, easier to use, and more practical.
Yeah, another browser to code for...
I don't do any really heavy Web development, but my development process has always been develop for the standards, then fix it to work with IE, then test on everything. The amount of work I estimate for supporting the Webkit engine running in Chrome as opposed to the Webkit engine running in Safari is negligible.