Real makes a competing product. They want to be able to interoperate with the songs sold on iTunes. This should be an open and shut case.
First, Real announced this to the press in order to get free press because they are in danger of disappearing from the public consciousness. It is marketing. Next there is basically no doubt that the reverse engineering itself is legal, their statements to the contrary are FUD. Where they are on very shaky legal ground is by including technology hidden in music files that uses another company's servers without authorization from that company, without informing the individual user whose machine is connecting, in violation of that user's licensing agreement with Apple, and doing so for profit.
This falls afoul of any number of recent anti-cracking laws, some of which carry stiff criminal penalties. So far Apple has taken the high ground and neither cut off any users for violating their licenses, nor taken Real to court. All they have done was made statements that they certainly weren't going to insure it kept working and ignored them. If Real's piggybacking ever becomes a serious amount of bandwidth expect Apple to not only shut them down with technology, but also sue for reparations and to get a court order to stop the behavior.
It would take a couple of years to develop a new processor architecture, and get chips out based on it.
Ahh, you're thinking processor architecture according to a chip designer, nor processor architecture from the perspective of a marketing guy. Heck, if this is for Apple it could be just a nicer interconnect between cores or it could be the next generation Pentium M, with some of the legacy architecture stripped off. Neither would take a long time to bring to market. The former is already in the works and has been for a long time, the latter would be something Apple just made a viable market for. Or it could be that Steve jobs said, "it needs to use less power to fit in a laptop properly" and Intel said, "OK, we'll push our new power technologies into a chip for you pronto... if you sign here."
Mind you, this is all idle speculation. This could be something significant or something insignificant or pretty much anything at this stage.
One has to wonder if Apple had any 'insight' to these plans when they signed the deal.
Actually, it is pretty likely that Apple was given a full roadmap and a few engineers to explain the whole thing while in in discussions and under NDA. The real questions are did this have anything to do with Apple's decision, is this in response to the deal with Apple, or is this just coincidental.
So - what other software company is still patching eight-year old OS? Sun? IBM? SCO? Novell? Apple?
Your question is not quite fair. The relevant question is what OS's are eight years old, and have no published security vulnerabilities for which you cannot easily acquire a fix?
Looking at this from the point of view of a customer, I want to buy an OS and in eight years I want it to still be usable and secure and I preferably want it to be that way at no extra cost. I'm planning on running this platform long-term, and I recognize that my applications may end up tied to that platform. What would you choose?
Microsoft - historically support some systems as long as 8 years, but refuse to fix vulnerabilities that are too difficult. The end result is the OS is supported, but insecure in 8 years. MS may support some or all future releases for up to eight years but is not legally obligated to do so. It is possible MS will go under (unlikely) and their OS will not have any support.
Sun - Definitely supports OS's for more than 8 years, including security fixes. Currently releases their OS as open source so any current versions are guaranteed to be fixable for a price even if Sun is not around or changes their policies.
IBM - IBM is currently shipping multiple OS's, Linux being a major one. They or someone else can support Linux basically forever because it is open source and you even can get competitive bids on the support and fixes.
Apple - Support for at least three years, but I don't see any published commitment beyond that. OS is a mix of open/closed source so most security problems will be fixable by consultants forever, but some may not be.
SCO - Will be dead soon, next.
Novell - Same as IBM except even more focused on Linux. Basically guaranteed competitive support forever mostly free, but possibly at a price for specific problems.
From a consumer looking to have an OS supported and secure for 8 years I can tell you MS certainly does not look like a good choice to me. They are the only OS vendor you listed I know of that still has open, unfixed and unfixable vulnerabilities in an OS under ten years old. You seem to have mistaken "support" for "fixes vulnerabilities." Both are valuable but MS only does one for any length of time.
So isn't this just an old exploit that was just found?
No. This is an old vulnerability that was just published, and had new exploits written and published for it. That is not to say other exploits have not existed for this vulnerability for the last five years.
So why ask others for links for proof but refuse to supply any of your own?
Noo, I asked for a link to support your opinion, which you seem unable to supply. On the other hand you never asked for a link to the information I mentioned. After a quick look, in fact, most of it is contained in the second article (The register) linked to from the story. If there is any particular point you'd like me reference do ask.
I also stated that I think this referenced patent is very close to patent of the obvious...
Actually, I don't see you making that comment at all. There is no comment to that effect in this thread and certainly not from an anonymous coward poster.
Your text and explanations about this patent did nothing to change my mind and there is nothing to address.
Well, I guess that puts me about three steps ahead of you since I have facts, logical opinions based upon those facts, and explanations of those opinions and and why your stated assertions are incorrect. You seem to have assertions and no stated reasons for them, nor any rebuttal for any of the points I made.
I'll refrain from going deeply into things, but please try to escape from so much generalization. Apple isn't good or bad and neither are patents. Linux isn't perfect for every application. OS X isn't the perfect GUI. Copyright law can be used to benefit humanity and anonymous cowards posts aren't always worthless.
It's really hard having a discussion with someone who is constantly quoting you and then telling you what you meant by that comment, or writing about how they inferred from that statement this other thing, or how my statement obviously implies something when in fact it is all pretty much coming straight out of your head.
Is it unreasonable to have read your response as somewhat challenging? I don't think so, and that's the feeling I was left with after reading your post.
Nope it isn't unreasonable. It is a very reasonable mistake. Perhaps in future if you want to infer such a thing from a comment you could instead ask the author, "is this what you meant" or possibly, "can I take it to mean then?" I quoted a previous poster and then provided some explanation as to why a lot of people feel the way he mentioned about companies. I actually quite agree with the original poster (as I've mentioned since) in that I don't believe companies are always bad or wrong, merely that there is good reason to be suspicious of them.
You reiterate your distrust of companies, say that companies are at least partially responsible for government corruption (and I don't think it's completely unreasonable to interpret that is saying you believe they are primarily responsible)
I do think it is unreasonable. Why would you think that? I mean what real logical reason do you have for making that assumption based upon what I said?
...and demonstrate at least a partial trust/faith in government.
Trust and faith are completely different from noting observed behavior. In truth I have little or no trust in the government, although I have observed them acting in the public interest on occasion. You're again pulling this out of nowhere.
So far, you have indicated: Companies are corrupt. (power->corruption)
A drastic oversimplification. I meant what I said, companies are often corrupt and it is likely at least partially as a result of the amount of power they have.
Companies are not to be trusted, at least as a general rule
Yup, I actually said this one.
Companies need to be carefully watched/regulated.
I recommended suspicion towards companies which in my mind means vigilance toward them is prudent. I did not mention regulation at all. Regulation is an ambiguous and politically charged term usually used as speaking bullet points for people who don't actually want a rational discussion, only something to yell at political rallies. All governments regulate companies, even if it just means they stop them from shooting particular people.
Governments deserve at least some degree of trust
I never said nor implied such a thing. The U.S. was founded on the implicit assumption that you can't trust the government at all, and I think it would be foolish to believe otherwise.
That I think is a very fair summary of your feelings as demonstrated by your post.
Too bad it is quite wrong in a number of ways (as mentioned above).
If you hadn't mentioned government at all, I wouldn't have responded. The thing is, when you did mention government, it was in the context of an explicit trust (lot of trust/little bit of trust?) and was specifically delivered in contrast to business (and you were clearly distrustfull of that).
So if I wrote, "the anarchist movement has been injecting dangerous drugs into twinkies, hotdogs, and snickers in convenience stores" you'd interpret that as an implicit statement of trust in the safety of the chemicals normally contained within twinkies? I'm sorry but that just does not follow. The discussion was about the anarchists and their chemicals or large businesses and their detrimental actions. There was no reason to speak to periphery topics and I'm inclined to chalk anything you read into it up to your own biases.
"whose stated goal is to serve the will of the people..."...yet fini
OSX offers no compelling advantages, and many disadvantages, as a platform to game developers.
Actually that is mostly untrue. You don't think Carmack develops on a mac because he's a moron do you? The dev tools are very very nice and free.
...through refusing to enable low res graphics back in the early 90s when every hit game (Doom, etc.) relied on them to achieve acceptable frame rates.
Heh, I had both a mac and a PC back in the day when doom came out. At the time when many people were playing Doom 1 and 2, I was playing Marathon 1 and 2. It made all the PC users green with envy. The marathon games were so much better there was no comparison. Good sound, better graphics, better story, multiplayer in teams, voice chat with your team... all this many years before anything comparable was available on the PC. Sorry, but what kept games off the mac was market share, not graphics or device support.
Currently, a typical Mac gamer owns a PC to play games on.
No they don't. Currently, the extreme gamer who uses a mac for work, etc. owns a PC for games. The typical mac gamer owns a console and/or just plays games on their mac. The typical gamer does not actually need to play every game 3 months earlier and does not spend tons of money upgrading their machine every year. You've mistaken yourself for a typical gamer when you are, in fact, quite atypical.
On the plus side as far as you are concerned, Windows will run on your x86 mac, and if you don't like rebooting, within a short period of time it will probably run at near real speeds in emulation. Of course being an extreme gamer you probably need that extra 5 FPS so you will probably reboot it anyway. Good luck.
I know that most packages run on OS X/Darwin and I'm not talking about GUI applications, but there are always small dependancy problems or libraries that have not been updated. Heck Darwin may be an inherently better architecture than Linux, but that does not mean maintaining a product built upon it is as easy as Linux. Being involved in two large commercial products, one built on NetBSD and one built on Linux I can tell you with some certainty that Linux is just easier because that is what most of the development is happening on.
It's not a huge difference and either way is possible, it is just nice to have the most up-to-date tools upon occasion.
$35,000 is a good amount of money to most people for a BMW and it's a lot more than what a Honda Civic costs. Know what? BMW doesn't care.
Are you implying that cost is not a significant barrier to people buying BMWs? Because that is what we are talking about, the fact that the price is a significant barrier. Maybe you haven't noticed but most people don't drive BMWs. Maybe that is because there aren't any BMW dealers around or because the controls are too confusing. Or maybe it is because they cost more than many can afford?
Out of the box, a Mac comes with...
If you're talking home users that list bloody well better include the five games they've purchased at Walmart and play all the time. If not, that is a significant barrier. If we're talking office workers it better come with excel or a similar spreadsheet or that is a significant barrier.
Hell you can download hundreds of pretty good free games and office applications for the mac, or you can buy the equivalent. Most users won't know how, or won't want to spend the money. Maybe they will, but that does not mean they want to, hence the barrier.
OS X is my favorite workstation OS. I'm typing this up using it right now. It is still foolish to dismiss the cost of migration. It is a real and valid concern for users considering making the move. Pretending otherwise does not help anyone.
Nowhere in that post did you make any such statement.
True, nowhere in my initial post did I so much as mention the government at all except to say they can be corrupted by the actions of corporations and to state their theoretical purpose (while implying it is not what they really do).
From that original post you somehow infer:
clearly have a whole lot more faith in government than you do in private companies.
I believe the phrase is "Non Sequitur." There is no logical reason to assume from my original post what you inferred. I did not speak to the topic of government corruption except as an aside that related to the topic being discussed. That topic was a business abusing it's power over it's employees. The original post also made an allusion to a comment about embryonic stem cells. You can probably infer from that that I think embryonic stem cells are a superior form of life and we should worship them, or any other thing you please. That does not mean you have a logical reason to do so.
You can buy a Mac Mini for $499. So... what high cost of entry?
First, $500 is a good amount of money to most people and it is a lot more than $200-$300 for a bottom of the line new PC. Second, there is the cost of all the software that will no longer run, and needs to be repurchased. For existing computer users who use commercial software, the cost is still considerable.
Not so at all, I'm just speaking to topics I have not previously addressed and correcting all the incorrect assumptions and implications you have made about my beliefs and then tried to take me to task for. Have you ever thought about asking what I think about something rather than trying to infer it from my other statements?
Sigh.
this implies that, in your opinion, power does in fact corrupt. But I'm sure you will claim it DOES NOT imply that, since you didn't explicitly make the statement that "power does corrupt."
Your psychic ability to see the future is as poor as your mind reading. I believe that power often leads to corruption. This is a common event not a truism. For some reason you seem to be inferring that because power causes corruption it is the only cause of corruption. That is obviously false. Greed for example is certainly the cause of much corruption even when not paired with power. Why do you insist on claiming that because an organization is being corrupted by one influence, they could not possibly also be corrupt from another? It is a ridiculous position.
So, barring meddling by "large companies", the government would apparently act in the best interest of "the people".
I neither said nor implied such a statement. It's all yours.
while governments... "act in the best interest of the people", barring outside influence (i.e. meddling corrupting corporations).
Again, this one is all yours. I never said nor implied this. In fact I implied otherwise by saying that governments 'theoretically' act in the best interests of the people, thus implying that in reality they do not.
I also made a great deal of explicit statements about how governments and corporations both have similar problems with corruption and can exacerbate one another's problems. I briefly spoke to the manner in which they or individuals can curb said corruption. For some reason you completely ignored that whole portion of my comment.
To clarify, I did not say anything in this or my previous posts that I did not actually say. There is no need for you to infer my opinions or look for subtle implications that I hate children or that intestines are not useful organs. You need not, for that matter, ever try to determine all of my opinions on topics I have not directly discussed, by inferring (poorly) my world view from those statements I did make.
Oh, and governments are infallible organizations that always work perfectly to solve all of our problems.
your language implied that the aristocracy of western Europe were the only people to which this was new.
Whatever you read from my comment, my intention was to state that Locke introduced a concept to the aristocracy of Western Europe and that same concept was derived from and well known in many other cultures. It is, I think, obvious that both the concept and the works of Locke were also not well known in yet other cultures.
However of course when you have a million boxes any licencing fee is too much, so they are really better off with Linux anyway as it's been hammered on a lot more, even though they could have just grabbed Darwin and gone with it.
Licensing fee? I don't know what you mean by that. Linux really is a good choice for them, simply because there is so much momentum behind it. Pretty much every open source project runs on Linux and is up to date, which is not always going to be the case with the BSDs or Darwin. Linux is a very good fit for them as a service company.
...because Locke introduced his treatises on government in English, in England. They made there way to the colonies and much of the rest of Western Europe's literary population (i.e. the aristocracy). I don't think he was popularly read in Japan, nor by the Egyptians thousands of years before his birth. I think Rome is traditionally considered Western Europe.
How long before the record companies realize they've just lost to Apple their most important asset: the direct relationship with the customer?
Actually, at least in the U.S., Apple has bent over backward to avoid threatening the record companies in this way. Apple only accepts songs from record companies, not from individuals. They could easily implement a way for their Garageband music mastering software to publish to the iTunes store either for free or for a set amount. This is a huge threat to the record companies, so Apple has avoided it entirely and makes it super simple for labels to publish on itunes, but impossible for individuals.
It was implied. Or at least it was implied that corporations in general are inherently more evil than governments in general.
You're reading beliefs and statements into my comments that do not exist. I don't even believe in the concept of evil. I occasionally use the term facetiously (but I never used it in any post in this thread).
Which is weird because the source of "evil" by your reasoning is "amount of power".
See my above comments about 'evil.' Making assertions about other people's reasoning is very dangerous. First, it is a very difficult thing to judge based upon a few lines that you may or may not be interpreting correctly. Secondly, psychologists will tell you that making claims that misrepresent a person is one of the easiest ways to make them angry with you. It is a direct attack upon their ego and almost always yields a hostile response. It is a great way to have most people disregard and disagree with your points categorically.
Also, you're completely wrong about my reasoning. I'm pretty sure I have a better understanding of my reasoning than you do unless you have some sort of psychic powers. In that case please read my mind so that you need not bother responding to any of my posts.
I would think that if evil is proportional to power (which you do clearly state)
I do? Really? No, I don't. Whose post were you reading?
But the only time you mention government, is in the context of government being a victim of "corruption."
Maybe that is because this thread was discussing corporations (actually employers) and not governments.
Saying that corporation are able to corrupt the government, implies that:
a) The government would not have otherwise been corrupt.
b) The corruption was done without the consent of government.
They may imply that to you because of your belief system, but neither of those statements is actually implicit in my original statement. There is nothing about the nature of corruption to imply or require that an entity cannot be corrupted in multiple ways nor that a corrupt entity cannot be made more corrupt by additional negative influences. Nothing about "able to corrupt" implies anything about consent. In fact consent is nearly meaningless in the context of large social structures. corporations and governments do not possess hive minds, they are constructed of individuals. One of the main ways to influence government is to alter which individuals are in them. I don't see where replacing one individual with another in the government can ever be considered consenting or not. Obviously government officials do not want to be replaced, so they are not "consenting." I think you are drastically oversimplifying.
And a staw man argument is only a straw man argument if I made up some assertion or position and represent it as yours. I certainly represented the position of corporations being inherently evil/dangerous to regular people and governments being inherently good/protecting of regular people as your postion.
..but it isn't, hence that meets your definition of a straw man argument.
However, I didn't not make it up. It's pretty clear by your post that you consider most corruption in government to be the fault of corporations, and despite what you say now, that governments are otherwise corruptionless (or close to it).
It may be clear to you, but that is because you are misunderstanding and reading things into my post that are not there. You are mistaken and if it comes right down to it I'm going to have to argue that I have a better understanding of what I think than you do. Unless, perhaps, you've been secretly studying me for your anthropology thesis for the last several years? You were they guy with the camera at the crannog weren't you? Sure was a nice day, huh.
I think stated goals mean crap. It's perfectly possible to make money without hurting lots of people. In fact, I would say in most cases where people
Nice. I'm not sure that it is completely accurate, but it is a reasonable thesis. I actually think even people who are not particularly corrupt can be brought to that state when introduced into an existing corrupt culture and frustrated by being unable to do anything good without making compromises. A real philosophical quandary has surrounded the contradiction between pragmatism and idealism. Pragmatists often do more to help the world than idealists, but at the cost of facilitating some harm. There is a certain dangerous arrogance to accepting personal responsibility for the world and trusting that ones own capabilities are sufficient to judge what is right for a "greater good."
Thanks for reminding me about David Brin. I enjoyed one of his works of fiction, years ago. I'll add him into my reading list.
Congratulations for failing to address any of the points I made. You attack the fact that I did not provide references (which you did not request and which are easily located), you attack me personally, and you make even more assertions about my beliefs without any backing whatsoever. What I'm getting from your posts is you don't have any arguments to back up your beliefs, can't find or create any logical reasons for your assertions, but are planning to go on making said assertions anyway. You make sweepings oversimplifications and then whine like a little girl when someone challenges your grouping of all patents as "good" or "bad." I don't know why I even bother responding to an anonymous coward.
You're not quite correct. The original poster was quoting the declaration of independence which always read as I stated. It was, however, strongly influenced by the writings of Locke who wrote
"...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Estate." 'Estate' was a synonym for possessions in its use at the time. It is my understanding that your assertion about the quote is a myth perpetuated by those who were confused by statements about how Jefferson took Locke's works and modified them and who assumed Jefferson was quoting more or less verbatim (which was not the case).
In any case, Locke based much of his work upon existing Jewish "moral" law which held that rulers were not above the law and their actions were not unquestionable. Numerous other cultures (including Greek, Roman, numerous African, etc.) had long codified similar beliefs. It was not new, except among the aristocracy of western Europe.
To get back to the original topic, how does the any of this make a difference as far as the interpretation of how men are held to be equal is concerned?
A number of them, not all us of depend upon Slashdot as our only source of information.
Every other patent related story on/. in the last two or more years would have a headline like "Developer beats Apple at patent of the obvious"
The majority of patent stories that make Slashdot do so because they are gross abuses of the patent system or because they are being used to stifle innovation and stop new inventions from being developed. Most of them relate to software, a "business process," or some other type of patent that should not exist. This includes articles about Apple patenting the "look and feel" of user interfaces for which they have been rightfully flamed here previously.
This story, however, is about a real, honest to goodness, really real, physical patent on a new interface that combines hardware and software in a new, non-obvious way that to the best of my knowledge has never been done before. It would not make Slashdot at all except for the fact that an MS researcher's patent that came out after the ipod overlaps with a portion of the patent and is being used to try to tie it up in paperwork, despite obvious prior art (from Apple).
You made that up.
Or maybe I read is somewhere else? Try google already.
The slashdot summary and article APPEAR to be slanted toward Apple. If this was any other company, they would be labeled as losers for trying to patent something like this and you know it.
For some reason so many people on Slashdot of late seem to be subject to groupthink and rote repetition of themes rather than understanding the reasons behind those themes. People on Slashdot write lots comments critical of the patent system because it is so often abused and has been extended to include things that are wholly detrimental to society. That does not mean those people are opposed to patents in general or that they are opposed to any given patent. There are a number of very good reasons to oppose software patents and business process patents, and patents that just added "on the internet" to something people already do all the time. At the same time there are a number of very good reasons to support traditional patents and praise and reward companies for actually making something new.
Go back and find me an article on Slashdot about a traditional real-world patent of something, where the majority of people objected to it. You'll have a hard time because real patents don't get posted to Slashdot, because they are not normally news. Unless something like these shenannigans are going on.
In future try to apply a little more critical thought to topics like this. "patents bad, microsoft bad, linux good, apple good" is a drastic oversimplification and most of the people here (I hope) only make such comments as jokes. Apple does things that are beneficial and harmful. They are just a company. They aren't bad or good, but they are rightfully lauded and decried for their various deeds. Similarly, not all patents are harmful and some uses of the patent system are perfectly valid.
However, government, with even more "power" than any corporation could hope for, is good.
Please point our where I made this assertion in my post. It's called a straw man argument.
in cases where they are corrupt, it's because "...[corporations] have been able to corrupt the government".
This in no way rules out the government already being corrupt for a number of other reasons.
There is a difference, however, between large organizations who's stated goal is to make money and large organizations whose stated goal is to serve the will of the people, don't you think? As to our current political client, it exists because money talks and always has.
On the one hand we espouse the notion that "all people are created equal." It's an excellent core belief for the basis for civilization, government, law, etc. Yet science makes a mockery of this belief because we are not geneticaly equal and those differences impact outcomes that have legal, governmental, and social implications.
It does not take science and genetics to show that all men are not created equal in the sense that you are using the term. Even back in the 1700 some people were born bigger, stronger, smarter, prettier, etc. than others. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and inherent advantages and disadvantages due to circumstance.
The phrase, "all men are created equal" is followed by the phrase, "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." It then goes on to enumerate some of those rights. Men are created equal in that they are all deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not in that they are all equally strong, smart, or resistant to cancer.
Employers aren't always bad; aren't always in the wrong. You can make assertions that they might gravitate that way, and cite examples, but that doesn't automatically mean all employers' decisions are always wrong and worthy of suspicion, and all employees' decisions and actions are always right and worthy of protection.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "power corrupts?"
Employers have a lot of power over a great many individuals. Employers get bigger and bigger, consolidating into fewer opportunities for work. It is at the point where a few major players control all opportunity to work in certain fields. Collective employment is only occasionally balanced by collective employees in the form of unions. Even when it is, power usually concentrates into a few hands within the unions and corruption and collaboration are commonplace.
This leaves the average individual worker in a very precarious place. Individuals in general don't have the money, influence, or voice to fairly balance their interests with those of a large employer. Given all of the above, it is indeed troubling when an employer is shown to be abusing that power in a new way. When that power is abused in a way that invades the privacy of individuals and opens the door to even more prejudice (which already abounds) then it is profoundly troubling.
...employers trying to use the same essential tools.
Tools are only a means to an end. I don't object to people owning firearms. I do object to people murdering innocent people with firearms. Those beliefs are not contradictory.
I'm speaking in generalities here, and am honestly curious as to peoples' thoughts.
In general employers are only interested in making the largest profit possible for themselves and sometimes for their shareholders. As powerful entities motivated solely or for a large part by greed and with no inherent interest in the welfare of their employees, they need to be watched carefully and regulated by the people to protect the people. Theoretically the government acts in the best interests of the people, but it has been shown time and again that large companies have significant influence over the government even when acting against the interests of the public.
Basically, large companies have proven themselves untrustworthy (in general) and dangerous to the well being and rights of the individual. They have also been able to corrupt the government to the detriment of the individual. I'd say any behavior they show that is damaging to the individual is troubling, wouldn't you?
Slashdot Mirror
Real makes a competing product. They want to be able to interoperate with the songs sold on iTunes. This should be an open and shut case.
First, Real announced this to the press in order to get free press because they are in danger of disappearing from the public consciousness. It is marketing. Next there is basically no doubt that the reverse engineering itself is legal, their statements to the contrary are FUD. Where they are on very shaky legal ground is by including technology hidden in music files that uses another company's servers without authorization from that company, without informing the individual user whose machine is connecting, in violation of that user's licensing agreement with Apple, and doing so for profit.
This falls afoul of any number of recent anti-cracking laws, some of which carry stiff criminal penalties. So far Apple has taken the high ground and neither cut off any users for violating their licenses, nor taken Real to court. All they have done was made statements that they certainly weren't going to insure it kept working and ignored them. If Real's piggybacking ever becomes a serious amount of bandwidth expect Apple to not only shut them down with technology, but also sue for reparations and to get a court order to stop the behavior.
It would take a couple of years to develop a new processor architecture, and get chips out based on it.
Ahh, you're thinking processor architecture according to a chip designer, nor processor architecture from the perspective of a marketing guy. Heck, if this is for Apple it could be just a nicer interconnect between cores or it could be the next generation Pentium M, with some of the legacy architecture stripped off. Neither would take a long time to bring to market. The former is already in the works and has been for a long time, the latter would be something Apple just made a viable market for. Or it could be that Steve jobs said, "it needs to use less power to fit in a laptop properly" and Intel said, "OK, we'll push our new power technologies into a chip for you pronto... if you sign here."
Mind you, this is all idle speculation. This could be something significant or something insignificant or pretty much anything at this stage.
One has to wonder if Apple had any 'insight' to these plans when they signed the deal.
Actually, it is pretty likely that Apple was given a full roadmap and a few engineers to explain the whole thing while in in discussions and under NDA. The real questions are did this have anything to do with Apple's decision, is this in response to the deal with Apple, or is this just coincidental.
So - what other software company is still patching eight-year old OS? Sun? IBM? SCO? Novell? Apple?
Your question is not quite fair. The relevant question is what OS's are eight years old, and have no published security vulnerabilities for which you cannot easily acquire a fix?
Looking at this from the point of view of a customer, I want to buy an OS and in eight years I want it to still be usable and secure and I preferably want it to be that way at no extra cost. I'm planning on running this platform long-term, and I recognize that my applications may end up tied to that platform. What would you choose?
From a consumer looking to have an OS supported and secure for 8 years I can tell you MS certainly does not look like a good choice to me. They are the only OS vendor you listed I know of that still has open, unfixed and unfixable vulnerabilities in an OS under ten years old. You seem to have mistaken "support" for "fixes vulnerabilities." Both are valuable but MS only does one for any length of time.
So isn't this just an old exploit that was just found?
No. This is an old vulnerability that was just published, and had new exploits written and published for it. That is not to say other exploits have not existed for this vulnerability for the last five years.
So why ask others for links for proof but refuse to supply any of your own?
Noo, I asked for a link to support your opinion, which you seem unable to supply. On the other hand you never asked for a link to the information I mentioned. After a quick look, in fact, most of it is contained in the second article (The register) linked to from the story. If there is any particular point you'd like me reference do ask.
I also stated that I think this referenced patent is very close to patent of the obvious...
Actually, I don't see you making that comment at all. There is no comment to that effect in this thread and certainly not from an anonymous coward poster.
Your text and explanations about this patent did nothing to change my mind and there is nothing to address.
Well, I guess that puts me about three steps ahead of you since I have facts, logical opinions based upon those facts, and explanations of those opinions and and why your stated assertions are incorrect. You seem to have assertions and no stated reasons for them, nor any rebuttal for any of the points I made.
I'll refrain from going deeply into things, but please try to escape from so much generalization. Apple isn't good or bad and neither are patents. Linux isn't perfect for every application. OS X isn't the perfect GUI. Copyright law can be used to benefit humanity and anonymous cowards posts aren't always worthless.
It's really hard having a discussion with someone who is constantly quoting you and then telling you what you meant by that comment, or writing about how they inferred from that statement this other thing, or how my statement obviously implies something when in fact it is all pretty much coming straight out of your head.
Is it unreasonable to have read your response as somewhat challenging? I don't think so, and that's the feeling I was left with after reading your post.
Nope it isn't unreasonable. It is a very reasonable mistake. Perhaps in future if you want to infer such a thing from a comment you could instead ask the author, "is this what you meant" or possibly, "can I take it to mean then?" I quoted a previous poster and then provided some explanation as to why a lot of people feel the way he mentioned about companies. I actually quite agree with the original poster (as I've mentioned since) in that I don't believe companies are always bad or wrong, merely that there is good reason to be suspicious of them.
You reiterate your distrust of companies, say that companies are at least partially responsible for government corruption (and I don't think it's completely unreasonable to interpret that is saying you believe they are primarily responsible)
I do think it is unreasonable. Why would you think that? I mean what real logical reason do you have for making that assumption based upon what I said?
Trust and faith are completely different from noting observed behavior. In truth I have little or no trust in the government, although I have observed them acting in the public interest on occasion. You're again pulling this out of nowhere.
So far, you have indicated: Companies are corrupt. (power->corruption)
A drastic oversimplification. I meant what I said, companies are often corrupt and it is likely at least partially as a result of the amount of power they have.
Companies are not to be trusted, at least as a general rule
Yup, I actually said this one.
Companies need to be carefully watched/regulated.
I recommended suspicion towards companies which in my mind means vigilance toward them is prudent. I did not mention regulation at all. Regulation is an ambiguous and politically charged term usually used as speaking bullet points for people who don't actually want a rational discussion, only something to yell at political rallies. All governments regulate companies, even if it just means they stop them from shooting particular people.
Governments deserve at least some degree of trust
I never said nor implied such a thing. The U.S. was founded on the implicit assumption that you can't trust the government at all, and I think it would be foolish to believe otherwise.
That I think is a very fair summary of your feelings as demonstrated by your post.
Too bad it is quite wrong in a number of ways (as mentioned above).
If you hadn't mentioned government at all, I wouldn't have responded. The thing is, when you did mention government, it was in the context of an explicit trust (lot of trust/little bit of trust?) and was specifically delivered in contrast to business (and you were clearly distrustfull of that).
So if I wrote, "the anarchist movement has been injecting dangerous drugs into twinkies, hotdogs, and snickers in convenience stores" you'd interpret that as an implicit statement of trust in the safety of the chemicals normally contained within twinkies? I'm sorry but that just does not follow. The discussion was about the anarchists and their chemicals or large businesses and their detrimental actions. There was no reason to speak to periphery topics and I'm inclined to chalk anything you read into it up to your own biases.
"whose stated goal is to serve the will of the people..." ...yet fini
OSX offers no compelling advantages, and many disadvantages, as a platform to game developers.
Actually that is mostly untrue. You don't think Carmack develops on a mac because he's a moron do you? The dev tools are very very nice and free.
Heh, I had both a mac and a PC back in the day when doom came out. At the time when many people were playing Doom 1 and 2, I was playing Marathon 1 and 2. It made all the PC users green with envy. The marathon games were so much better there was no comparison. Good sound, better graphics, better story, multiplayer in teams, voice chat with your team... all this many years before anything comparable was available on the PC. Sorry, but what kept games off the mac was market share, not graphics or device support.
Currently, a typical Mac gamer owns a PC to play games on.
No they don't. Currently, the extreme gamer who uses a mac for work, etc. owns a PC for games. The typical mac gamer owns a console and/or just plays games on their mac. The typical gamer does not actually need to play every game 3 months earlier and does not spend tons of money upgrading their machine every year. You've mistaken yourself for a typical gamer when you are, in fact, quite atypical.
On the plus side as far as you are concerned, Windows will run on your x86 mac, and if you don't like rebooting, within a short period of time it will probably run at near real speeds in emulation. Of course being an extreme gamer you probably need that extra 5 FPS so you will probably reboot it anyway. Good luck.
I know that most packages run on OS X/Darwin and I'm not talking about GUI applications, but there are always small dependancy problems or libraries that have not been updated. Heck Darwin may be an inherently better architecture than Linux, but that does not mean maintaining a product built upon it is as easy as Linux. Being involved in two large commercial products, one built on NetBSD and one built on Linux I can tell you with some certainty that Linux is just easier because that is what most of the development is happening on.
It's not a huge difference and either way is possible, it is just nice to have the most up-to-date tools upon occasion.
$35,000 is a good amount of money to most people for a BMW and it's a lot more than what a Honda Civic costs. Know what? BMW doesn't care.
Are you implying that cost is not a significant barrier to people buying BMWs? Because that is what we are talking about, the fact that the price is a significant barrier. Maybe you haven't noticed but most people don't drive BMWs. Maybe that is because there aren't any BMW dealers around or because the controls are too confusing. Or maybe it is because they cost more than many can afford?
Out of the box, a Mac comes with...
If you're talking home users that list bloody well better include the five games they've purchased at Walmart and play all the time. If not, that is a significant barrier. If we're talking office workers it better come with excel or a similar spreadsheet or that is a significant barrier.
Hell you can download hundreds of pretty good free games and office applications for the mac, or you can buy the equivalent. Most users won't know how, or won't want to spend the money. Maybe they will, but that does not mean they want to, hence the barrier.
OS X is my favorite workstation OS. I'm typing this up using it right now. It is still foolish to dismiss the cost of migration. It is a real and valid concern for users considering making the move. Pretending otherwise does not help anyone.
Nowhere in that post did you make any such statement.
True, nowhere in my initial post did I so much as mention the government at all except to say they can be corrupted by the actions of corporations and to state their theoretical purpose (while implying it is not what they really do).
From that original post you somehow infer:
clearly have a whole lot more faith in government than you do in private companies.
I believe the phrase is "Non Sequitur." There is no logical reason to assume from my original post what you inferred. I did not speak to the topic of government corruption except as an aside that related to the topic being discussed. That topic was a business abusing it's power over it's employees. The original post also made an allusion to a comment about embryonic stem cells. You can probably infer from that that I think embryonic stem cells are a superior form of life and we should worship them, or any other thing you please. That does not mean you have a logical reason to do so.
You can buy a Mac Mini for $499. So... what high cost of entry?
First, $500 is a good amount of money to most people and it is a lot more than $200-$300 for a bottom of the line new PC. Second, there is the cost of all the software that will no longer run, and needs to be repurchased. For existing computer users who use commercial software, the cost is still considerable.
You're backpeddling.
Not so at all, I'm just speaking to topics I have not previously addressed and correcting all the incorrect assumptions and implications you have made about my beliefs and then tried to take me to task for. Have you ever thought about asking what I think about something rather than trying to infer it from my other statements?
Sigh.
this implies that, in your opinion, power does in fact corrupt. But I'm sure you will claim it DOES NOT imply that, since you didn't explicitly make the statement that "power does corrupt."
Your psychic ability to see the future is as poor as your mind reading. I believe that power often leads to corruption. This is a common event not a truism. For some reason you seem to be inferring that because power causes corruption it is the only cause of corruption. That is obviously false. Greed for example is certainly the cause of much corruption even when not paired with power. Why do you insist on claiming that because an organization is being corrupted by one influence, they could not possibly also be corrupt from another? It is a ridiculous position.
So, barring meddling by "large companies", the government would apparently act in the best interest of "the people".
I neither said nor implied such a statement. It's all yours.
while governments... "act in the best interest of the people", barring outside influence (i.e. meddling corrupting corporations).
Again, this one is all yours. I never said nor implied this. In fact I implied otherwise by saying that governments 'theoretically' act in the best interests of the people, thus implying that in reality they do not.
I also made a great deal of explicit statements about how governments and corporations both have similar problems with corruption and can exacerbate one another's problems. I briefly spoke to the manner in which they or individuals can curb said corruption. For some reason you completely ignored that whole portion of my comment.
To clarify, I did not say anything in this or my previous posts that I did not actually say. There is no need for you to infer my opinions or look for subtle implications that I hate children or that intestines are not useful organs. You need not, for that matter, ever try to determine all of my opinions on topics I have not directly discussed, by inferring (poorly) my world view from those statements I did make.
Oh, and governments are infallible organizations that always work perfectly to solve all of our problems.
your language implied that the aristocracy of western Europe were the only people to which this was new.
Whatever you read from my comment, my intention was to state that Locke introduced a concept to the aristocracy of Western Europe and that same concept was derived from and well known in many other cultures. It is, I think, obvious that both the concept and the works of Locke were also not well known in yet other cultures.
However of course when you have a million boxes any licencing fee is too much, so they are really better off with Linux anyway as it's been hammered on a lot more, even though they could have just grabbed Darwin and gone with it.
Licensing fee? I don't know what you mean by that. Linux really is a good choice for them, simply because there is so much momentum behind it. Pretty much every open source project runs on Linux and is up to date, which is not always going to be the case with the BSDs or Darwin. Linux is a very good fit for them as a service company.
Why pick on just western Europe?
...because Locke introduced his treatises on government in English, in England. They made there way to the colonies and much of the rest of Western Europe's literary population (i.e. the aristocracy). I don't think he was popularly read in Japan, nor by the Egyptians thousands of years before his birth. I think Rome is traditionally considered Western Europe.
How long before the record companies realize they've just lost to Apple their most important asset: the direct relationship with the customer?
Actually, at least in the U.S., Apple has bent over backward to avoid threatening the record companies in this way. Apple only accepts songs from record companies, not from individuals. They could easily implement a way for their Garageband music mastering software to publish to the iTunes store either for free or for a set amount. This is a huge threat to the record companies, so Apple has avoided it entirely and makes it super simple for labels to publish on itunes, but impossible for individuals.
It was implied. Or at least it was implied that corporations in general are inherently more evil than governments in general.
You're reading beliefs and statements into my comments that do not exist. I don't even believe in the concept of evil. I occasionally use the term facetiously (but I never used it in any post in this thread).
Which is weird because the source of "evil" by your reasoning is "amount of power".
See my above comments about 'evil.' Making assertions about other people's reasoning is very dangerous. First, it is a very difficult thing to judge based upon a few lines that you may or may not be interpreting correctly. Secondly, psychologists will tell you that making claims that misrepresent a person is one of the easiest ways to make them angry with you. It is a direct attack upon their ego and almost always yields a hostile response. It is a great way to have most people disregard and disagree with your points categorically.
Also, you're completely wrong about my reasoning. I'm pretty sure I have a better understanding of my reasoning than you do unless you have some sort of psychic powers. In that case please read my mind so that you need not bother responding to any of my posts.
I would think that if evil is proportional to power (which you do clearly state)
I do? Really? No, I don't. Whose post were you reading?
But the only time you mention government, is in the context of government being a victim of "corruption."
Maybe that is because this thread was discussing corporations (actually employers) and not governments.
Saying that corporation are able to corrupt the government, implies that: a) The government would not have otherwise been corrupt. b) The corruption was done without the consent of government.
They may imply that to you because of your belief system, but neither of those statements is actually implicit in my original statement. There is nothing about the nature of corruption to imply or require that an entity cannot be corrupted in multiple ways nor that a corrupt entity cannot be made more corrupt by additional negative influences. Nothing about "able to corrupt" implies anything about consent. In fact consent is nearly meaningless in the context of large social structures. corporations and governments do not possess hive minds, they are constructed of individuals. One of the main ways to influence government is to alter which individuals are in them. I don't see where replacing one individual with another in the government can ever be considered consenting or not. Obviously government officials do not want to be replaced, so they are not "consenting." I think you are drastically oversimplifying.
And a staw man argument is only a straw man argument if I made up some assertion or position and represent it as yours. I certainly represented the position of corporations being inherently evil/dangerous to regular people and governments being inherently good/protecting of regular people as your postion.
..but it isn't, hence that meets your definition of a straw man argument.
However, I didn't not make it up. It's pretty clear by your post that you consider most corruption in government to be the fault of corporations, and despite what you say now, that governments are otherwise corruptionless (or close to it).
It may be clear to you, but that is because you are misunderstanding and reading things into my post that are not there. You are mistaken and if it comes right down to it I'm going to have to argue that I have a better understanding of what I think than you do. Unless, perhaps, you've been secretly studying me for your anthropology thesis for the last several years? You were they guy with the camera at the crannog weren't you? Sure was a nice day, huh.
I think stated goals mean crap. It's perfectly possible to make money without hurting lots of people. In fact, I would say in most cases where people
Nice. I'm not sure that it is completely accurate, but it is a reasonable thesis. I actually think even people who are not particularly corrupt can be brought to that state when introduced into an existing corrupt culture and frustrated by being unable to do anything good without making compromises. A real philosophical quandary has surrounded the contradiction between pragmatism and idealism. Pragmatists often do more to help the world than idealists, but at the cost of facilitating some harm. There is a certain dangerous arrogance to accepting personal responsibility for the world and trusting that ones own capabilities are sufficient to judge what is right for a "greater good."
Thanks for reminding me about David Brin. I enjoyed one of his works of fiction, years ago. I'll add him into my reading list.
Congratulations for failing to address any of the points I made. You attack the fact that I did not provide references (which you did not request and which are easily located), you attack me personally, and you make even more assertions about my beliefs without any backing whatsoever. What I'm getting from your posts is you don't have any arguments to back up your beliefs, can't find or create any logical reasons for your assertions, but are planning to go on making said assertions anyway. You make sweepings oversimplifications and then whine like a little girl when someone challenges your grouping of all patents as "good" or "bad." I don't know why I even bother responding to an anonymous coward.
You're not quite correct. The original poster was quoting the declaration of independence which always read as I stated. It was, however, strongly influenced by the writings of Locke who wrote "...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Estate." 'Estate' was a synonym for possessions in its use at the time. It is my understanding that your assertion about the quote is a myth perpetuated by those who were confused by statements about how Jefferson took Locke's works and modified them and who assumed Jefferson was quoting more or less verbatim (which was not the case).
In any case, Locke based much of his work upon existing Jewish "moral" law which held that rulers were not above the law and their actions were not unquestionable. Numerous other cultures (including Greek, Roman, numerous African, etc.) had long codified similar beliefs. It was not new, except among the aristocracy of western Europe.
To get back to the original topic, how does the any of this make a difference as far as the interpretation of how men are held to be equal is concerned?
What article did you read?
A number of them, not all us of depend upon Slashdot as our only source of information.
Every other patent related story on /. in the last two or more years would have a headline like "Developer beats Apple at patent of the obvious"
The majority of patent stories that make Slashdot do so because they are gross abuses of the patent system or because they are being used to stifle innovation and stop new inventions from being developed. Most of them relate to software, a "business process," or some other type of patent that should not exist. This includes articles about Apple patenting the "look and feel" of user interfaces for which they have been rightfully flamed here previously.
This story, however, is about a real, honest to goodness, really real, physical patent on a new interface that combines hardware and software in a new, non-obvious way that to the best of my knowledge has never been done before. It would not make Slashdot at all except for the fact that an MS researcher's patent that came out after the ipod overlaps with a portion of the patent and is being used to try to tie it up in paperwork, despite obvious prior art (from Apple).
You made that up.
Or maybe I read is somewhere else? Try google already.
The slashdot summary and article APPEAR to be slanted toward Apple. If this was any other company, they would be labeled as losers for trying to patent something like this and you know it.
For some reason so many people on Slashdot of late seem to be subject to groupthink and rote repetition of themes rather than understanding the reasons behind those themes. People on Slashdot write lots comments critical of the patent system because it is so often abused and has been extended to include things that are wholly detrimental to society. That does not mean those people are opposed to patents in general or that they are opposed to any given patent. There are a number of very good reasons to oppose software patents and business process patents, and patents that just added "on the internet" to something people already do all the time. At the same time there are a number of very good reasons to support traditional patents and praise and reward companies for actually making something new.
Go back and find me an article on Slashdot about a traditional real-world patent of something, where the majority of people objected to it. You'll have a hard time because real patents don't get posted to Slashdot, because they are not normally news. Unless something like these shenannigans are going on.
In future try to apply a little more critical thought to topics like this. "patents bad, microsoft bad, linux good, apple good" is a drastic oversimplification and most of the people here (I hope) only make such comments as jokes. Apple does things that are beneficial and harmful. They are just a company. They aren't bad or good, but they are rightfully lauded and decried for their various deeds. Similarly, not all patents are harmful and some uses of the patent system are perfectly valid.
However, government, with even more "power" than any corporation could hope for, is good.
Please point our where I made this assertion in my post. It's called a straw man argument.
in cases where they are corrupt, it's because "...[corporations] have been able to corrupt the government".
This in no way rules out the government already being corrupt for a number of other reasons.
There is a difference, however, between large organizations who's stated goal is to make money and large organizations whose stated goal is to serve the will of the people, don't you think? As to our current political client, it exists because money talks and always has.
On the one hand we espouse the notion that "all people are created equal." It's an excellent core belief for the basis for civilization, government, law, etc. Yet science makes a mockery of this belief because we are not geneticaly equal and those differences impact outcomes that have legal, governmental, and social implications.
It does not take science and genetics to show that all men are not created equal in the sense that you are using the term. Even back in the 1700 some people were born bigger, stronger, smarter, prettier, etc. than others. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and inherent advantages and disadvantages due to circumstance.
The phrase, "all men are created equal" is followed by the phrase, "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." It then goes on to enumerate some of those rights. Men are created equal in that they are all deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not in that they are all equally strong, smart, or resistant to cancer.
Employers aren't always bad; aren't always in the wrong. You can make assertions that they might gravitate that way, and cite examples, but that doesn't automatically mean all employers' decisions are always wrong and worthy of suspicion, and all employees' decisions and actions are always right and worthy of protection.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "power corrupts?"
Employers have a lot of power over a great many individuals. Employers get bigger and bigger, consolidating into fewer opportunities for work. It is at the point where a few major players control all opportunity to work in certain fields. Collective employment is only occasionally balanced by collective employees in the form of unions. Even when it is, power usually concentrates into a few hands within the unions and corruption and collaboration are commonplace.
This leaves the average individual worker in a very precarious place. Individuals in general don't have the money, influence, or voice to fairly balance their interests with those of a large employer. Given all of the above, it is indeed troubling when an employer is shown to be abusing that power in a new way. When that power is abused in a way that invades the privacy of individuals and opens the door to even more prejudice (which already abounds) then it is profoundly troubling.
Tools are only a means to an end. I don't object to people owning firearms. I do object to people murdering innocent people with firearms. Those beliefs are not contradictory.
I'm speaking in generalities here, and am honestly curious as to peoples' thoughts.
In general employers are only interested in making the largest profit possible for themselves and sometimes for their shareholders. As powerful entities motivated solely or for a large part by greed and with no inherent interest in the welfare of their employees, they need to be watched carefully and regulated by the people to protect the people. Theoretically the government acts in the best interests of the people, but it has been shown time and again that large companies have significant influence over the government even when acting against the interests of the public.
Basically, large companies have proven themselves untrustworthy (in general) and dangerous to the well being and rights of the individual. They have also been able to corrupt the government to the detriment of the individual. I'd say any behavior they show that is damaging to the individual is troubling, wouldn't you?