To be fair, the black one had a bigger hard disk, which probably cost Apple an extra $20, so they were "only" charging an extra $180 for all the lovely blackness...
I've got a set-top DVR / DVD burner / etc. that also encourages using pirated stuff, although for a different reason.
I wanted to copy my boxed DVD set of extended LOTR disks to the HD to (a) avoid having to swap them half way through the movies, and (b) keep the originals in pristine condition. This seemed to me to be very reasonable use for a DVR, but the film studios don't agree with me, so the machine won't let me do this for copy-protected stuff because the manufacturers can't obtain the relevant licenses and trademarks otherwise.
Fortunately, the box has in-built DIVX support and a USB port that can read thumb drives directly, so the solution is obvious: download a pirated DIVX version of each movie, stick it on a thumb drive, and then copy that to the HD, an operation that will also save me lots of HD space, and let me make backup DVDs of my LOTR disks with an entire 2-DVD movie on each. Score: Pirates 2, Genuine Version 0.
It should be noted that I haven't actually downloaded a pirate version yet because I haven't previously pirated anything unless it's the only alternative (e.g. I want something that's no longer available commercially), but this short-sighted policy has made me think about it seriously for the first time. I paid quite a lot of money for what amounts to a crippled product that prevents me from using it in a legitimate way that doesn't carry even the potential for any lost sales by the copyright owners, and if that's the way they treat their paying customers, then I can see no benefit in being one. I will not therefore be buying any more of their products unless they're in a bargain bin for price that's low enough to offset the fact that I'm buying a crippled POS whose true value is lower than that of a free version I can easily find on the Internet.
"Which is certainly true as far as it goes... but neglects to mention that this advance was largely driven by demand from NASA."
That's actually extremely debatable. It's certainly true that the on-board computer developed by MIT for the Apollo missions was unusual in being based on integrated circuits when it was being developed in the early 1960s, but the circuits it used already existed (albeit in an expensive low-volume form), and it was an obsolete design by the time of the first actual mission when compared to available commercial computer systems.
NB: the oft-heard claim about the Apollo computers having microprocessors and solid-state memory is a myth, because their processors were built from sets of discrete ICs, and they used a conventional (for the time when they were being designed) magnetic core system.
"How about titanium tools and magnesium suitcases?"
Titanium and magnesium were used to make light, hard, corrosion-free and non-magnetic metal items before anything made it into space. There were for example German aircraft from the first world war that used magnesium for parts of their airframes and/or engines, and the Soviets used titanium to make submarine pressure hulls in the 1950s.
"I'm sorry, but it's exactly like Rockbox' talking menus."
I suggest that reading beyond the patent summary would be enough to indicate that not "exactly the same".
"Have you ever tried it?"
Yes.
"Knowing how it works, you couldn't tell from reading the patent application that it wasn't talking about Rockbox."
You have to read all the claims in order to tell the difference between closely related concepts, including those in two or more patents which cover similar concepts in subtly different ways. Doing this with Apple's patent reveals that what they're actually patenting is the idea of directly embedding information in a file's metadata that contains either the audio for the spoken information directly, or something that points to it if the audio info. is in a separate file.
"6. A method as recited in claim 1 wherein the selected audio file is associated with an associated media file, and wherein the method further comprises: retrieving the selected audio file from the associated media file....
"16. A method as recited in claim 15, wherein the method further comprises: inserting the audio file into the media file.
17. A method as recited in claim 15, wherein the method further comprises: inserting a pointer into the media file, wherein the pointer points to the audio file."
There are also other claims for things Rockbox doesn't do, so I had far less difficulty knowing that I wasn't reading about RockBox.
NB: patents tend to be as broad as they possibly can because the lawyers who write them know they're likely to be narrowed during court cases, so it's common for the real "meat" of a patent to be scattered somewhere among a bunch of more generic claims that are already covered by other (usually cited) patents or unpatented prior art.
"Read the first few lines of the link. Care to enlighten us as to how to make an X with a single stroke? / sarcasm"
Care to enlighten us as to how to play a two or three part fugue on a keyboard with one finger, because that's the difference between what the parent and nearly everyone except you understands by the term "multi-touch" and single point of contact systems like PenPoint (or indeed, a mouse).
The problem with Mr. Sternberg's claims is that neither of them actually holds any water, i.e.:
1) Adjusting volume according to ambient noise levels was a feature request that (a) never got implemented, and (b) now only exists as a table, so it's impossible to tell how close it is to Apple's patent.
2) Rockbox's "talking menus" are nothing like the system Apple have patented, and Rockbox was in any case far from being the first piece of software to use audio cues for selecting options.
"Apple is the company that sued Microsoft over the "look and feel" of Microsoft Windows being too similar to Mac OS"
They also sued Digital research for GEM, which also bore an uncanny resemblance to MacOS (much more so than Windows 1.0), and HP for NewWave.
"Back then, anything other than a command-line interface would have triggered a lawsuit from Apple."
This isn't actually true, because there were other companies making GUIs at the same time which Apple didn't go after due to them not copying concepts that Apple had developed for the Lisa rather than them having been part of the Xerox STAR software system (e.g. menus and overlapping windows, neither of which were present in the original Xerox UI).
NB: it's interesting to note that both Apple and MS licensed the basic GUI concepts from Xerox independently during a similar time frame. This was a significant factor in the judge's eventual ruling, which went against Apple on the grounds that everything copyrightable had been licensed to both parties by the legal copyright holder, and the remaining stuff which had been developed by Apple couldn't be copyrighted.
"What you're describing is that it's a good idea that Microsoft to teach children to sing like Barney [youtube.com]."
Are you really incapable of telling the difference between a child passively sitting in front of a television and interactively using a piece of software to generate music based on the choices they make and the things they do?
"Listen to that music, it's nearly the same as in Songsmith"
Listen to any large selection of music. Note the similarities both in form and orchestration between many of the pieces from particular eras and within defined genres.
"I argue that teaching children to have poor taste in music is not a service to them, or the rest of us."
And I argue that arrogant people who set themselves up as arbiters of good taste in any area of art are pompous killjoys who only seek to serve themselves.
Your point seemed to be that MS reinvented Band-in-the-box, which is not something that PGMusic (who seem pretty excited about Songsmith if their press releases are anything to go by) are claiming, just as Microsoft's other established music software and add-on partners aren't claiming that MS reinvented their stuff. Furthermore, the fact that Microsoft's Songsmith site carries links to these companies quite clearly shows that they're not trying to get credit for the work of others.
"Why is this product coming from Microsoft Research? Someone else, namely PGMusic, had already invented this product."
PGMusic know a lot more about both Songsmith and Band-in-the-Box than you do, and they're not claiming that Songsmith is the same product, only that it incorporates elements of their technology, a fact which they seem to be very happy about.
"At least PGMusic will be able to profit from it."
It's probable that PGMusic will profit from it in more ways than by simply selling add-ons, because Band-in-the-Box is a logical upgrade path for Songsmith users who feel ready for something more powerful, and they'll already know about PGMusic thanks to their partnership with Microsoft.
If you'd bothered to do just a little checking before posting, you'd know that PGMusic is one Microsoft's partners in the Songsmith project who are already selling add-on style packs for it:
"It's not about the quality of songs, it's the jump-start of children's creativity.
Once children realize how easy it is to create music, they'll have a huge bonfire lit within them."
Agreed in full. Songsmith's a fun, cheap introduction to music that can help stimulate a child's interest by providing instant gratification, but it also has the ability to let them do (much!) more sophisticated things with it if they decide that they want to explore more musical possibilities than ones that are provided by default. And it isn't just budding singers who will benefit: Songsmith can play a backing track for kids who are learning more conventional instruments, something that's especially useful for the monophonic ones, where getting a good feel for harmony and rhythm can be especially challenging.
Products such as Songsmith, Wii Music, and Apple's Garageband are IMO absolutely brilliant products that I'd have loved when I was a kid, and I envy today's children who have access to so many cheap and satisfying ways of exploring music.
"why is UK's current situation so touchy with child abuse?"
It's due to the well known British love of all children who are quiet, respectful, properly dressed, in extremely small groups, and stay away from their houses, places of work, or shopping areas when not accompanied by one or more responsible adults.
Because British local and national government would obviously never behave like clueless fuckwits without those jealous Europeans forcing them to. That's why all the most horrible European laws are only forced on Britain, while the rest of the EU goes around acting as if they don't exist at all.
It should also be noted that it isn't just some current plasma displays that will be affected: various existing LCD and back projection systems (and a lot of other electronic devices) will also fall afoul of the proposed legislation because they draw too much power in standby mode.
It's also a fact that despite the bleating about the "green" benefits, most EU members are likely so support this legislation for far more pragmatic reasons. The EU's been taught some nasty lessons over the last couple of years that have highlighted how dependant they are on external energy supply factors that they have absolutely no control over, and the steadily rising domestic power consumption figures in nearly all member states have made them more vulnerable to those factors over time. It therefore follows that a reduction in consumption should result in a reduction of the EU's overall vulnerability to external energy supply factors, and this is one of the main reasons why it's likely that the proposed legislation will be enacted.
Another important factor that will help to ensure support from most member states is so many of them having ageing or obsolete power generation systems that were too economically expensive to replace en masse before the current recession, let alone during it. The distribution grid in many countries is also badly in need of upgrading, which adds significantly to the costs of meeting future energy requirements if they continue to rise like they've been doing over the past decade.
With the above in mind, it's easy to see why EU member countries would welcome any legislation that could help to reduce domestic energy consumption by even a small amount, especially when the costs of complying with it are borne by device manufacturers rather than them.
Free market proponents should note that domestic energy consumption figures in most EU countries have been rising continually for quite some time under free market conditions, and have been projected by both the power industry and various EU statistical analysis bodies to continue rising unless various measures are taken to reduce demand.
"The owners are allowed to make copies only for private usage, with collective and lucrative uses not allowed."
It would be more correct to say that collective use is technically illegal, because it's most definitely allowed. A Spanish legal precedent was established for this at the end of 1996 by a judgement that exonerated an accused Internet file sharer on the grounds that non-commercial copying not only isn't a crime, but that it's a common social practice that should not therefore to be criminalised. This stance on the part of the Spanish legal authorities was underlined at the end of 1997 when what amounts to their chief copyright cop said that not everything which is technically illegal is a crime, including non-commercial copying via the Internet or any other means, so they have no intention of pursuing anyone who isn't involved in commercial piracy.
The effect of the above has been to leave civil litigation as the only route open to representative bodies of copyright owners, but their efforts are severely hampered by the fact that ISPs refuse to disclose the identities of the people behind specific IP addresses on the grounds that Spanish law (which is based on EU data protection directives) only requires them to do so as part of a criminal investigation or where matters of public safety or national security are concerned. This eventually ended up at the European Court Of Justice subsequent to a request for a definitive ruling from the Spanish courts, and the ECJ found in favour of the ISP (Telefonica), thereby effectively making civil litigation against Internet file sharers almost impossible.
I couldn't read the first article because it requires a log-in, but the second one (I assume it's the part labelled "Still Thumping") says exactly the opposite of what you're claiming, i.e. that there aren't many PC-specific games being written nowadays except MMOs and web-based puzzle games, with most of the other big-name titles being console ports that don't use the host hardware particularly well.
Please accept my apologies for the late reply -- it's a side-effect of XMas, the new year, and associated "consume until you vomit" excesses.
"the stuff's not really to my taste, especially given the Apple markup compared to other gear of equivalent utility for me"
I agree that Apple's mark-up is quite a bit higher than is typical for the sectors they play in, so it's usually quite easy to find reasonable equipment for quite a bit less than their offerings, especially given their fairly small range of products. And although the typical "fanboy" response about truly equivalent machines from other manufacturers costing a similar amount holds some water, it's only really true if one actually wants _all_ the same features, and there are plenty of people out there who either don't want or need everything that Apple don't give them a choice about having.
"I find Apple fascinating"
A lot of people who don't buy Apple equipment are fascinated by the company and the things it does (and indeed doesn't do, much to the ire of the many "Apple rumour" sites on the web, whose prediction hit rate is lower than that of womens' magazine astrology pages).
"What I'm am claiming here is that their behavior and statements are inconsistent with known facts, like the fact that previous versions of OS X ran just fine on non-Apple hardware."
What previous versions would those be? 10.5X was the first retail MacOS that came with binaries for Intel CPUs, and while there were Intel versions of 10.4X, they only shipped with Intel-based Macs, so the likes of Psystar would very clearly have been in violation of copyright law if they'd even attempted to put them on non-Apple hardware.
"Jobs, et al, have strongly suggested they just can't give the same user experience on non-Apple hardware."
I'd appreciate a link to Jobs or Apple either saying or implying this, because I can't find any reference. I know Apple fanboys say it a lot, but they aren't Apple or Steve Jobs.
"They have done it before, with some of the same people involved. They could do it if they chose."
"Chose" is the operative word here, because the fact if the matter is that they obviously don't want to release OS X for generic PCs, at least at the moment. In 2005, Jobs said Apple had been approached by several of the biggest PC makers, all of whom wanted to license OS X on an OEM basis, but they obviously refused to do, just as they've refused to license the iPod's connector protocols to other music player manufacturers, refused to license their music / video DRM to other media downloads sites, and refuse to license the iPhone/iPod Touch version of OS X to other portable device makers.
"Incorrect, for the same reason that eating and shitting is not the main reason for humans existing."
Then please enlighten me by citing the main reason for companies existing other than making money. Note that I'm not talking about what they _say_ say they exist for, but the actual reason for them existing.
"You are technically correct and effectively wrong. Internally, he owns it like a pimp owns a whore: through obsessive domination and screaming fits of abuse. That's widely observed."
He does not own it internally, irrespective of how much control he has over certain parts of it. Steve Jobs is an Apple employee just like other members of the board of directors, and can therefore be fired at any time, just like he was fired from Apple on a previous occasion. If he has more control over certain product design decisions than's typical, then it's because the board thinks that this is the best way to fulfil their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, i.e. it is a board policy decision that it is Steve Jobs' obligation to ensure is carried out because that's what a CEO is supposed to do.
"Even the shareholders see it as effectively company, which is why the share price wobbles every time people get worried about his health."
The shareholders see him as an extremely valuable asset that Apple have historically been s
"And the fact that MacBookPros still come with only one mouse button..."
The current ones haven't got any mouse buttons.
Re:PC games are dead, so the gaming PC will follow
on
Is the Gaming PC Dead?
·
· Score: 1
"According to some friends in the gaming industry the companies are going to stop developing PC games as they are cracked and distributed faster than you can buy them in the shops."
I've heard the same thing from people who work in the industry. It's the main reason for the move towards PC games with a significant online element, or single-player ones with DRM schemes that require online verification before they can be installed / played.
"As an example they found out that 85 % of the Crysis online gamers used pirate copies."
This is pretty much in line with what some tech. support people in gaming companies have told me, i.e. that they're now fielding _at least_ five calls from people running pirate versions for every call by a legitimate customer. Tech. support costs games companies money, so they not only end up losing sales to pirates, but are also faced with having to pay the wages of people who spend 80% or more of their time dealing with those who feel entitled to technical support despite not having bought a game.
"If you consider the huge efforts that are needed to create a AAA-title and the risk of being copied the PC games will diminish."
The feeling I get from people in the industry is that they'll change rather than diminish, i.e. we'll see a lot less AAA stuff written specifically for the PC that uses the potential of uber-gaming rigs, and an increase in (mostly poor) console ports, MMOs and other server-based offerings, episodic content that has to be downloaded for a small fee (i.e. micro-charging), free games with ad banners that's probably be less than wonderful, and simple games that are played via web browsers.
hello bitter, twisted dweeb who tries to pretend that a bunch of opinions are facts.
"I'm just pointing out that their stated reason for doing it is not their actual reason for doing it."
You are _claiming_ that their stated reason for doing it is not their actual reason for doing it. A claim is not a fact, so you're not actually pointing out anything.
"They are not protecting poor, helpless consumers from a bad experience."
Another opinion presented as a fact.
"They aren't going after clone-makers because getting OS X to run on anything other than Apple hardware is so gosh darned hard that even The Steve's mighty experts can't do it."
Apple haven't claimed that it's too difficult for their engineers, so this is a straw man.
"They are keeping it exclusive because their plan is to make lots of money by appearing cool."
They're keeping it exclusive because _they are already_ making lots of money by doing so, and as is the case with all companies, making money is their main reason for existing.
"I think that's mildly douchey, and it fits well with The Steve's well-documented narcissistic tendencies, but hey, it's his company."
Apple is a publicly traded corporation that is owned by its shareholders, it's not "his company". But don't let that stop you from answering this post with another load of your fascinating bitter nerd polemic masquerading as facts. And don't forget to throw in some more straw men while you're at it!
"OSX was actually running on commodity hardware before, when it was the NeXT operating system"
It was indeed, and it cost $795 in 1993, whereas OS X costs $129 in 2008.
"The reason Jobs doesn't do this isn't because it's too gosh darned hard. It's because it would puncture his profitable air of exclusivity."
Would this by any chance be the same Steve Jobs who formed NeXT Inc,, the company that wrote NextSTEP, ported it to various machine architectures, and sold it? Because if it is the same Steve Jobs, then actually having done these things means that he knows (conservatively) several orders of magnitude more about the difficulties of selling operating systems in a world dominated by Microsoft than you do.
"The diamond pattern is the only problem with MI."
But it's not the only problem with MI in C++, as the fact that I mentioned another one in the post you're replying to which you seem to have completely ignored indicates.
"One problem with interface-only inheritance..."
I fail to see where this answers anything in my post, because I didn't mention interfaces anywhere in it.
"I think the biggest issue here is that people who write in languages that do not have MI go out of their way to explain why it is so bad, without actually saying anything except that it "is bad"."
I however am not one of them, because I didn't say MI was bad anywhere in my post.
"For some reason the lack of MI is like having a tiny penis"
Just like answering a post with a load of irrelevant and overly defensive tripe that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything in that post is a lot like having a tiny brain.
"It is true there were issues with earlier MS Windows but I stand by my statement that C++ was a key problem with the later version of the platform."
What "key problem" was caused by C++ in and of itself, i.e. by features that are specific to C++ rather than those that it "inherited" from C such as unchecked arrays, pointers to blocks of memory that can be accessed before they've been allocated or after they've been released, and complex macros producing code that's difficult to debug?
"Bad design was another."
It's difficult to imagine a good design that could serve as many conflicting sets of requirements as the ones the people writing Windows have been expected to code for over the years. The same can be said of C++, which, like Windows, has been progressively added to by committees whose goal is to make them be all things to all people, with the inevitable result of both of them ending up being bloated messes full of kludges and pitfalls for the unwary.
"MS should have stayed the course there and kept away from that wretched monolithic 'everything is connected to everything else so it all has to be loaded design so you solve our scalability issues by throwing hardware at it' design."
What precisely is monolithic about either current or prior versions of Windows? Older ones were simply shells on top of MS-DOS, and dynamic linking has been used since Windows 1.0 (i.e. before either UNIX or Macs had it) to both modularise and reduce the run-time footprint of both Windows itself, its drivers, and applications written for it so everything could run on machines that couldn't directly address more than 640K of RAM. The NT architecture that underlies XP is even more modular due to having a kernel that's far closer to a microkernel than any other current mainstream OS, so I really do fail to see what facts are the basis for your accusations of it being monolithic.
"Gates wanted MS Windows to be as far away from UNIX as it could be made."
Gates wanted Windows to run on an IBM PC with 128K of RAM, which precluded a UNIX-style architecture. You seem to be forgetting the fact that MS became licensees of AT&T Unix V 7 in 1979, and that this (together with elements from BSD Unix) was the basis for their Xenix, which they began licensing to OEMs in 1981, a full 2 years before any work on Windows began. They were therefore not only intimately familiar with Unix, but actually earning a significant amount of income from it, so they weren't an anti-UNIX company or one that had anything approaching a lock-in strategy at that time.
"UNIX - I've had servers up and runing for years without being rebooted."
Which proves nothing beyond the fact that operating systems which were originally designed for "big iron" environments had different design priorities from those that evolved from roots on stand-alone personal computers with no connections to any other computer. Up-times of years are kiddie-talk in the big-iron world, where systems that run for decades with no downtime whatsoever are the rule rather than the exception, but nobody gave two hoots about up-times of more than a day with CP/M, MS-DOS (with or without Windows running on top of it), TRS-DOS, AmigaDOS, the original Mac OS, or any of the other operating systems for computers that were turned on when they needed to be used, and turned off again afterwards.
"My laptop running XP has to be completely shut down every couple of days or it becomes nearly unusable due to memory leaks and fragmentation problems with that stupid pagefile.sys"
Then you have a hardware problem or malware, because I have an old HP laptop that was bought in 2003, has been very heavily used, still has its original install of XP Pro, and has only ever had to be re-booted when required by an update -- it hibernates when not being used otherwise despite only having 512MB of RAM that's usually occupied by several development environments (none of which are from MS) that result in it swapping frequently and vigourously. I have plenty of other
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, the black one had a bigger hard disk, which probably cost Apple an extra $20, so they were "only" charging an extra $180 for all the lovely blackness...
I've got a set-top DVR / DVD burner / etc. that also encourages using pirated stuff, although for a different reason.
I wanted to copy my boxed DVD set of extended LOTR disks to the HD to (a) avoid having to swap them half way through the movies, and (b) keep the originals in pristine condition. This seemed to me to be very reasonable use for a DVR, but the film studios don't agree with me, so the machine won't let me do this for copy-protected stuff because the manufacturers can't obtain the relevant licenses and trademarks otherwise.
Fortunately, the box has in-built DIVX support and a USB port that can read thumb drives directly, so the solution is obvious: download a pirated DIVX version of each movie, stick it on a thumb drive, and then copy that to the HD, an operation that will also save me lots of HD space, and let me make backup DVDs of my LOTR disks with an entire 2-DVD movie on each. Score: Pirates 2, Genuine Version 0.
It should be noted that I haven't actually downloaded a pirate version yet because I haven't previously pirated anything unless it's the only alternative (e.g. I want something that's no longer available commercially), but this short-sighted policy has made me think about it seriously for the first time. I paid quite a lot of money for what amounts to a crippled product that prevents me from using it in a legitimate way that doesn't carry even the potential for any lost sales by the copyright owners, and if that's the way they treat their paying customers, then I can see no benefit in being one. I will not therefore be buying any more of their products unless they're in a bargain bin for price that's low enough to offset the fact that I'm buying a crippled POS whose true value is lower than that of a free version I can easily find on the Internet.
"Which is certainly true as far as it goes ... but neglects to mention that this advance was largely driven by demand from NASA."
That's actually extremely debatable. It's certainly true that the on-board computer developed by MIT for the Apollo missions was unusual in being based on integrated circuits when it was being developed in the early 1960s, but the circuits it used already existed (albeit in an expensive low-volume form), and it was an obsolete design by the time of the first actual mission when compared to available commercial computer systems.
NB: the oft-heard claim about the Apollo computers having microprocessors and solid-state memory is a myth, because their processors were built from sets of discrete ICs, and they used a conventional (for the time when they were being designed) magnetic core system.
"How about titanium tools and magnesium suitcases?"
Titanium and magnesium were used to make light, hard, corrosion-free and non-magnetic metal items before anything made it into space. There were for example German aircraft from the first world war that used magnesium for parts of their airframes and /or engines, and the Soviets used titanium to make submarine pressure hulls in the 1950s.
"We used meat to explore Terra because manned systems and men were cheap."
We used to explore using men and manned systems because there weren't any other ways to do it.
"I'm sorry, but it's exactly like Rockbox' talking menus."
I suggest that reading beyond the patent summary would be enough to indicate that not "exactly the same".
"Have you ever tried it?"
Yes.
"Knowing how it works, you couldn't tell from reading the patent application that it wasn't talking about Rockbox."
You have to read all the claims in order to tell the difference between closely related concepts, including those in two or more patents which cover similar concepts in subtly different ways. Doing this with Apple's patent reveals that what they're actually patenting is the idea of directly embedding information in a file's metadata that contains either the audio for the spoken information directly, or something that points to it if the audio info. is in a separate file.
"6. A method as recited in claim 1 wherein the selected audio file is associated with an associated media file, and wherein the method further comprises: retrieving the selected audio file from the associated media file. ...
"16. A method as recited in claim 15, wherein the method further comprises: inserting the audio file into the media file.
17. A method as recited in claim 15, wherein the method further comprises: inserting a pointer into the media file, wherein the pointer points to the audio file."
There are also other claims for things Rockbox doesn't do, so I had far less difficulty knowing that I wasn't reading about RockBox.
NB: patents tend to be as broad as they possibly can because the lawyers who write them know they're likely to be narrowed during court cases, so it's common for the real "meat" of a patent to be scattered somewhere among a bunch of more generic claims that are already covered by other (usually cited) patents or unpatented prior art.
"Read the first few lines of the link. Care to enlighten us as to how to make an X with a single stroke? / sarcasm"
Care to enlighten us as to how to play a two or three part fugue on a keyboard with one finger, because that's the difference between what the parent and nearly everyone except you understands by the term "multi-touch" and single point of contact systems like PenPoint (or indeed, a mouse).
The problem with Mr. Sternberg's claims is that neither of them actually holds any water, i.e.:
1) Adjusting volume according to ambient noise levels was a feature request that (a) never got implemented, and (b) now only exists as a table, so it's impossible to tell how close it is to Apple's patent.
2) Rockbox's "talking menus" are nothing like the system Apple have patented, and Rockbox was in any case far from being the first piece of software to use audio cues for selecting options.
"Apple is the company that sued Microsoft over the "look and feel" of Microsoft Windows being too similar to Mac OS"
They also sued Digital research for GEM, which also bore an uncanny resemblance to MacOS (much more so than Windows 1.0), and HP for NewWave.
"Back then, anything other than a command-line interface would have triggered a lawsuit from Apple."
This isn't actually true, because there were other companies making GUIs at the same time which Apple didn't go after due to them not copying concepts that Apple had developed for the Lisa rather than them having been part of the Xerox STAR software system (e.g. menus and overlapping windows, neither of which were present in the original Xerox UI).
NB: it's interesting to note that both Apple and MS licensed the basic GUI concepts from Xerox independently during a similar time frame. This was a significant factor in the judge's eventual ruling, which went against Apple on the grounds that everything copyrightable had been licensed to both parties by the legal copyright holder, and the remaining stuff which had been developed by Apple couldn't be copyrighted.
"What you're describing is that it's a good idea that Microsoft to teach children to sing like Barney [youtube.com]."
Are you really incapable of telling the difference between a child passively sitting in front of a television and interactively using a piece of software to generate music based on the choices they make and the things they do?
"Listen to that music, it's nearly the same as in Songsmith"
Listen to any large selection of music. Note the similarities both in form and orchestration between many of the pieces from particular eras and within defined genres.
"I argue that teaching children to have poor taste in music is not a service to them, or the rest of us."
And I argue that arrogant people who set themselves up as arbiters of good taste in any area of art are pompous killjoys who only seek to serve themselves.
"Which proves my point"
Your point seemed to be that MS reinvented Band-in-the-box, which is not something that PGMusic (who seem pretty excited about Songsmith if their press releases are anything to go by) are claiming, just as Microsoft's other established music software and add-on partners aren't claiming that MS reinvented their stuff. Furthermore, the fact that Microsoft's Songsmith site carries links to these companies quite clearly shows that they're not trying to get credit for the work of others.
"Why is this product coming from Microsoft Research? Someone else, namely PGMusic, had already invented this product."
PGMusic know a lot more about both Songsmith and Band-in-the-Box than you do, and they're not claiming that Songsmith is the same product, only that it incorporates elements of their technology, a fact which they seem to be very happy about.
"At least PGMusic will be able to profit from it."
It's probable that PGMusic will profit from it in more ways than by simply selling add-ons, because Band-in-the-Box is a logical upgrade path for Songsmith users who feel ready for something more powerful, and they'll already know about PGMusic thanks to their partnership with Microsoft.
If you'd bothered to do just a little checking before posting, you'd know that PGMusic is one Microsoft's partners in the Songsmith project who are already selling add-on style packs for it:
http://www.pgmusic.com/songsmith.htm
"It's not about the quality of songs, it's the jump-start of children's creativity.
Once children realize how easy it is to create music, they'll have a huge bonfire lit within them."
Agreed in full. Songsmith's a fun, cheap introduction to music that can help stimulate a child's interest by providing instant gratification, but it also has the ability to let them do (much!) more sophisticated things with it if they decide that they want to explore more musical possibilities than ones that are provided by default. And it isn't just budding singers who will benefit: Songsmith can play a backing track for kids who are learning more conventional instruments, something that's especially useful for the monophonic ones, where getting a good feel for harmony and rhythm can be especially challenging.
Products such as Songsmith, Wii Music, and Apple's Garageband are IMO absolutely brilliant products that I'd have loved when I was a kid, and I envy today's children who have access to so many cheap and satisfying ways of exploring music.
"why is UK's current situation so touchy with child abuse?"
It's due to the well known British love of all children who are quiet, respectful, properly dressed, in extremely small groups, and stay away from their houses, places of work, or shopping areas when not accompanied by one or more responsible adults.
"I suspect this originated in Brussels."
Because British local and national government would obviously never behave like clueless fuckwits without those jealous Europeans forcing them to. That's why all the most horrible European laws are only forced on Britain, while the rest of the EU goes around acting as if they don't exist at all.
It should also be noted that it isn't just some current plasma displays that will be affected: various existing LCD and back projection systems (and a lot of other electronic devices) will also fall afoul of the proposed legislation because they draw too much power in standby mode.
It's also a fact that despite the bleating about the "green" benefits, most EU members are likely so support this legislation for far more pragmatic reasons. The EU's been taught some nasty lessons over the last couple of years that have highlighted how dependant they are on external energy supply factors that they have absolutely no control over, and the steadily rising domestic power consumption figures in nearly all member states have made them more vulnerable to those factors over time. It therefore follows that a reduction in consumption should result in a reduction of the EU's overall vulnerability to external energy supply factors, and this is one of the main reasons why it's likely that the proposed legislation will be enacted.
Another important factor that will help to ensure support from most member states is so many of them having ageing or obsolete power generation systems that were too economically expensive to replace en masse before the current recession, let alone during it. The distribution grid in many countries is also badly in need of upgrading, which adds significantly to the costs of meeting future energy requirements if they continue to rise like they've been doing over the past decade.
With the above in mind, it's easy to see why EU member countries would welcome any legislation that could help to reduce domestic energy consumption by even a small amount, especially when the costs of complying with it are borne by device manufacturers rather than them.
Free market proponents should note that domestic energy consumption figures in most EU countries have been rising continually for quite some time under free market conditions, and have been projected by both the power industry and various EU statistical analysis bodies to continue rising unless various measures are taken to reduce demand.
"The owners are allowed to make copies only for private usage, with collective and lucrative uses not allowed."
It would be more correct to say that collective use is technically illegal, because it's most definitely allowed. A Spanish legal precedent was established for this at the end of 1996 by a judgement that exonerated an accused Internet file sharer on the grounds that non-commercial copying not only isn't a crime, but that it's a common social practice that should not therefore to be criminalised. This stance on the part of the Spanish legal authorities was underlined at the end of 1997 when what amounts to their chief copyright cop said that not everything which is technically illegal is a crime, including non-commercial copying via the Internet or any other means, so they have no intention of pursuing anyone who isn't involved in commercial piracy.
The effect of the above has been to leave civil litigation as the only route open to representative bodies of copyright owners, but their efforts are severely hampered by the fact that ISPs refuse to disclose the identities of the people behind specific IP addresses on the grounds that Spanish law (which is based on EU data protection directives) only requires them to do so as part of a criminal investigation or where matters of public safety or national security are concerned. This eventually ended up at the European Court Of Justice subsequent to a request for a definitive ruling from the Spanish courts, and the ECJ found in favour of the ISP (Telefonica), thereby effectively making civil litigation against Internet file sharers almost impossible.
I couldn't read the first article because it requires a log-in, but the second one (I assume it's the part labelled "Still Thumping") says exactly the opposite of what you're claiming, i.e. that there aren't many PC-specific games being written nowadays except MMOs and web-based puzzle games, with most of the other big-name titles being console ports that don't use the host hardware particularly well.
Please accept my apologies for the late reply -- it's a side-effect of XMas, the new year, and associated "consume until you vomit" excesses.
"the stuff's not really to my taste, especially given the Apple markup compared to other gear of equivalent utility for me"
I agree that Apple's mark-up is quite a bit higher than is typical for the sectors they play in, so it's usually quite easy to find reasonable equipment for quite a bit less than their offerings, especially given their fairly small range of products. And although the typical "fanboy" response about truly equivalent machines from other manufacturers costing a similar amount holds some water, it's only really true if one actually wants _all_ the same features, and there are plenty of people out there who either don't want or need everything that Apple don't give them a choice about having.
"I find Apple fascinating"
A lot of people who don't buy Apple equipment are fascinated by the company and the things it does (and indeed doesn't do, much to the ire of the many "Apple rumour" sites on the web, whose prediction hit rate is lower than that of womens' magazine astrology pages).
"What I'm am claiming here is that their behavior and statements are inconsistent with known facts, like the fact that previous versions of OS X ran just fine on non-Apple hardware."
What previous versions would those be? 10.5X was the first retail MacOS that came with binaries for Intel CPUs, and while there were Intel versions of 10.4X, they only shipped with Intel-based Macs, so the likes of Psystar would very clearly have been in violation of copyright law if they'd even attempted to put them on non-Apple hardware.
"Jobs, et al, have strongly suggested they just can't give the same user experience on non-Apple hardware."
I'd appreciate a link to Jobs or Apple either saying or implying this, because I can't find any reference. I know Apple fanboys say it a lot, but they aren't Apple or Steve Jobs.
"They have done it before, with some of the same people involved. They could do it if they chose."
"Chose" is the operative word here, because the fact if the matter is that they obviously don't want to release OS X for generic PCs, at least at the moment. In 2005, Jobs said Apple had been approached by several of the biggest PC makers, all of whom wanted to license OS X on an OEM basis, but they obviously refused to do, just as they've refused to license the iPod's connector protocols to other music player manufacturers, refused to license their music / video DRM to other media downloads sites, and refuse to license the iPhone/iPod Touch version of OS X to other portable device makers.
"Incorrect, for the same reason that eating and shitting is not the main reason for humans existing."
Then please enlighten me by citing the main reason for companies existing other than making money. Note that I'm not talking about what they _say_ say they exist for, but the actual reason for them existing.
"You are technically correct and effectively wrong. Internally, he owns it like a pimp owns a whore: through obsessive domination and screaming fits of abuse. That's widely observed."
He does not own it internally, irrespective of how much control he has over certain parts of it. Steve Jobs is an Apple employee just like other members of the board of directors, and can therefore be fired at any time, just like he was fired from Apple on a previous occasion. If he has more control over certain product design decisions than's typical, then it's because the board thinks that this is the best way to fulfil their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, i.e. it is a board policy decision that it is Steve Jobs' obligation to ensure is carried out because that's what a CEO is supposed to do.
"Even the shareholders see it as effectively company, which is why the share price wobbles every time people get worried about his health."
The shareholders see him as an extremely valuable asset that Apple have historically been s
"And the fact that MacBookPros still come with only one mouse button..."
The current ones haven't got any mouse buttons.
"According to some friends in the gaming industry the companies are going to stop developing PC games as they are cracked and distributed faster than you can buy them in the shops."
I've heard the same thing from people who work in the industry. It's the main reason for the move towards PC games with a significant online element, or single-player ones with DRM schemes that require online verification before they can be installed / played.
"As an example they found out that 85 % of the Crysis online gamers used pirate copies."
This is pretty much in line with what some tech. support people in gaming companies have told me, i.e. that they're now fielding _at least_ five calls from people running pirate versions for every call by a legitimate customer. Tech. support costs games companies money, so they not only end up losing sales to pirates, but are also faced with having to pay the wages of people who spend 80% or more of their time dealing with those who feel entitled to technical support despite not having bought a game.
"If you consider the huge efforts that are needed to create a AAA-title and the risk of being copied the PC games will diminish."
The feeling I get from people in the industry is that they'll change rather than diminish, i.e. we'll see a lot less AAA stuff written specifically for the PC that uses the potential of uber-gaming rigs, and an increase in (mostly poor) console ports, MMOs and other server-based offerings, episodic content that has to be downloaded for a small fee (i.e. micro-charging), free games with ad banners that's probably be less than wonderful, and simple games that are played via web browsers.
"Ah, hello fanboy."
hello bitter, twisted dweeb who tries to pretend that a bunch of opinions are facts.
"I'm just pointing out that their stated reason for doing it is not their actual reason for doing it."
You are _claiming_ that their stated reason for doing it is not their actual reason for doing it. A claim is not a fact, so you're not actually pointing out anything.
"They are not protecting poor, helpless consumers from a bad experience."
Another opinion presented as a fact.
"They aren't going after clone-makers because getting OS X to run on anything other than Apple hardware is so gosh darned hard that even The Steve's mighty experts can't do it."
Apple haven't claimed that it's too difficult for their engineers, so this is a straw man.
"They are keeping it exclusive because their plan is to make lots of money by appearing cool."
They're keeping it exclusive because _they are already_ making lots of money by doing so, and as is the case with all companies, making money is their main reason for existing.
"I think that's mildly douchey, and it fits well with The Steve's well-documented narcissistic tendencies, but hey, it's his company."
Apple is a publicly traded corporation that is owned by its shareholders, it's not "his company". But don't let that stop you from answering this post with another load of your fascinating bitter nerd polemic masquerading as facts. And don't forget to throw in some more straw men while you're at it!
"OSX was actually running on commodity hardware before, when it was the NeXT operating system"
It was indeed, and it cost $795 in 1993, whereas OS X costs $129 in 2008.
"The reason Jobs doesn't do this isn't because it's too gosh darned hard. It's because it would puncture his profitable air of exclusivity."
Would this by any chance be the same Steve Jobs who formed NeXT Inc,, the company that wrote NextSTEP, ported it to various machine architectures, and sold it? Because if it is the same Steve Jobs, then actually having done these things means that he knows (conservatively) several orders of magnitude more about the difficulties of selling operating systems in a world dominated by Microsoft than you do.
"The diamond pattern is the only problem with MI."
But it's not the only problem with MI in C++, as the fact that I mentioned another one in the post you're replying to which you seem to have completely ignored indicates.
"One problem with interface-only inheritance..."
I fail to see where this answers anything in my post, because I didn't mention interfaces anywhere in it.
"I think the biggest issue here is that people who write in languages that do not have MI go out of their way to explain why it is so bad, without actually saying anything except that it "is bad"."
I however am not one of them, because I didn't say MI was bad anywhere in my post.
"For some reason the lack of MI is like having a tiny penis"
Just like answering a post with a load of irrelevant and overly defensive tripe that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything in that post is a lot like having a tiny brain.
"It is true there were issues with earlier MS Windows but I stand by my statement that C++ was a key problem with the later version of the platform."
What "key problem" was caused by C++ in and of itself, i.e. by features that are specific to C++ rather than those that it "inherited" from C such as unchecked arrays, pointers to blocks of memory that can be accessed before they've been allocated or after they've been released, and complex macros producing code that's difficult to debug?
"Bad design was another."
It's difficult to imagine a good design that could serve as many conflicting sets of requirements as the ones the people writing Windows have been expected to code for over the years. The same can be said of C++, which, like Windows, has been progressively added to by committees whose goal is to make them be all things to all people, with the inevitable result of both of them ending up being bloated messes full of kludges and pitfalls for the unwary.
"MS should have stayed the course there and kept away from that wretched monolithic 'everything is connected to everything else so it all has to be loaded design so you solve our scalability issues by throwing hardware at it' design."
What precisely is monolithic about either current or prior versions of Windows? Older ones were simply shells on top of MS-DOS, and dynamic linking has been used since Windows 1.0 (i.e. before either UNIX or Macs had it) to both modularise and reduce the run-time footprint of both Windows itself, its drivers, and applications written for it so everything could run on machines that couldn't directly address more than 640K of RAM. The NT architecture that underlies XP is even more modular due to having a kernel that's far closer to a microkernel than any other current mainstream OS, so I really do fail to see what facts are the basis for your accusations of it being monolithic.
"Gates wanted MS Windows to be as far away from UNIX as it could be made."
Gates wanted Windows to run on an IBM PC with 128K of RAM, which precluded a UNIX-style architecture. You seem to be forgetting the fact that MS became licensees of AT&T Unix V 7 in 1979, and that this (together with elements from BSD Unix) was the basis for their Xenix, which they began licensing to OEMs in 1981, a full 2 years before any work on Windows began. They were therefore not only intimately familiar with Unix, but actually earning a significant amount of income from it, so they weren't an anti-UNIX company or one that had anything approaching a lock-in strategy at that time.
"UNIX - I've had servers up and runing for years without being rebooted."
Which proves nothing beyond the fact that operating systems which were originally designed for "big iron" environments had different design priorities from those that evolved from roots on stand-alone personal computers with no connections to any other computer. Up-times of years are kiddie-talk in the big-iron world, where systems that run for decades with no downtime whatsoever are the rule rather than the exception, but nobody gave two hoots about up-times of more than a day with CP/M, MS-DOS (with or without Windows running on top of it), TRS-DOS, AmigaDOS, the original Mac OS, or any of the other operating systems for computers that were turned on when they needed to be used, and turned off again afterwards.
"My laptop running XP has to be completely shut down every couple of days or it becomes nearly unusable due to memory leaks and fragmentation problems with that stupid pagefile.sys"
Then you have a hardware problem or malware, because I have an old HP laptop that was bought in 2003, has been very heavily used, still has its original install of XP Pro, and has only ever had to be re-booted when required by an update -- it hibernates when not being used otherwise despite only having 512MB of RAM that's usually occupied by several development environments (none of which are from MS) that result in it swapping frequently and vigourously. I have plenty of other