Seriously, I was trying to say that, speaking as a real fan of cinema, I'd rather see all that money spent on script development rather than pointless visual effects that don't make the movie any better.
Do they have special glasses that improve overall story and character development?
I know you were making a joke there but you really did hit the nail right on the head. It would be much better if the producers took the money they sink into making a movie into 3D and used it to pay expert screenwriters to improve their crappy scripts.
3D isn't going to turn a bad movie into a good one. Conversely, a good movie isn't improved by 3D. The whole trend is nothing more than a gimmick to milk more money out of theater-goers.
I have an iPad. I liked it, until I tried to compose a blog post. Mobile Safari doesn't support content-editable fields.
I'm not arguing with you, but could you clarify that statement a bit? I've made Slashdot posts using Mobile Safari on a demo iPad at an Apple Store so it is possible to use text entry fields, at least.
I'm not sure where you get that they don't write to native OSX APIs, that's definitely not true. [...] AI definitely uses Carbon
Exactly--Illustrator uses the Carbon APIs, which are not native OS X APIs, they're a kludge that Apple created so developers such as Adobe and Microsoft wouldn't have to rewrite their software using Cocoa.
and they've spent most of the CS5 release cycle porting everything to Cocoa
CS5, yes--roughly ten years after the announcement of OS X and it's advanced Cocoa API set. While it's certainly understandable that Adobe wouldn't want jump right into a rewrite of applications as complex as AI or Photoshop, they could have at least worked on it incrementally over a series of releases.
I don't know if Adobe erred somewhere in the past or shifted in some subtle way that suggested they were more interested in Windows or what.
They did exactly that. During Apple's low ebb in the late Nineties and once again shortly after the Second Coming of Steve and the announcement of OS X Adobe essentially--and publicly--wrote off the Mac platform and began concentrating on Windows development, even threatening to drop Mac development entirely if Apple didn't offer an alternative to rewriting their apps to Cocoa. That's where Carbon came from. It wasn't a part of the original plan for OS X APIs.
Jobs is brilliant -- no question about that -- but he's also an incredible headcase.
No argument there. I know someone who was the CEO of a well-known company that designed third-party hardware for the Mac. She used to complain about the way Apple would frequently change course suddenly and without warning during the development of a new Apple product. This would cause headaches for her as her company would have to scramble to redesign it's products in order to meet the new specs.
I have a sense that once you get on his bad side -- deserved or not -- its damned near impossible to get off it. And to give him credit, he seems to be consistent about it
No argument there, either. Adobe has been on Jobs' shit list for a long time now and that no doubt has something to do with the 64-bit Carbon decision. I think that Jobs lost patience with Adobe's foot-dragging when it came to switching over to Cocoa and when it became apparent that 64-bit Carbon was going to take too much time and money to implement, he decided to make it Adobe's problem rather than Apple's. From his viewpoint, it makes sense. He's answerable to Apple's BoD and stockholders, not Adobe. Like it or not, it was a logical business decision, although his grudge against Adobe probably made it easier for him.
I'm sure there was corporate politics involved, but it sure felt like Adobe was being a better friend to Apple than Apple was to them.
I think it's a case of chickens coming home to roost. Back in the early days of both companies, Adobe and Apple helped each other grow. They used to work closely together but when Adobe gave Apple the corporate finger back when Apple needed all the friends it could get, Jobs took it personally. Now that Apple has something Adobe wants badly, he's letting them get a taste of what they gave to Apple twelve years ago. Can't say I blame him.
While I do like Apple products, I'm not an Apple fanboy. I have computers running OS X, Windows XP and various flavors of Linux and use whatever works the best for a given task. When Apple truly screws up--and they do, regularly--I'll be among the first to jump on them. In this case, however, Adobe's whining sounds a bit shrill given the circumstances.
Not to mention the fact that, except when taking off and landing, flying an airplane doesn't require the same sort of immediate attention that driving a car does. If a pilot were to lose focus for thirty seconds in an airplane while at cruise, the worst that's going to happen is he'll gain or lose a few feet of altitude or drift off course a couple of degrees. Maybe not even that if the airplane is trimmed properly or is on autopilot. If a driver were to lose focus in a car for the same amount of time he's likely to end up in the ditch--or worse.
Wait, so she was talking on the phone and punching the keypad?
Yeah, it was like the time I was working on my screenplay and hit a bump while driving down the Pasadena Freeway. My MacBook landed on the floor and I was so startled that I dropped my phone right in the middle of a call to my agent. Bummer.
The article summary misinterprets the core of what Gruber was arguing.
I get the distinct impression that most of the posters in this thread haven't even read Gruber's blog. Here's an excerpt from it:
Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.
So from Apple’s perspective, changing the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to prohibit the use of things like Flash CS5 and MonoTouch to create iPhone apps makes complete sense. I’m not saying you have to like this. I’m not arguing that it’s anything other than ruthless competitiveness. I’m not arguing (up to this point) that it benefits anyone other than Apple itself. I’m just arguing that it makes sense from Apple’s perspective — and it was Apple’s decision to make.
Yep, even Gruber admits it's not "anything other than ruthless competitiveness" on Apple's part. But he also points out why it makes sense for them to do it.
Jobs believes that people will write *new* game frameworks for Apple products, ones that are custom-made for that platform. That's what he wants. And given the marketshare he has, it will likely happen.
You're right, although it's not so much the marketshare as the mindshare. The iPhone is still a minority player if you look strictly at the numbers but it's impact on the smartphone market is disproportionally large. That gives Steve Jobs the leverage to dictate how apps should be written for the platform. Fair? Maybe not, but no one's forcing you to write apps for the iPhone. If you don't like it, you can always develop for Android. If enough people leave iPhone app development, then you can bet that Jobs will reconsider his decision. That's how free-market economics are supposed to work.
Apple has the money and the development expertise, especially if Adobe were to step out of the competition by abandoning all those on the Mac platform.
Not to mention that Apple would write it using actual native OS X APIs (Cocoa) in place of Carbon, making it faster and able to use more than 3GB of RAM.
This is becoming less and less true with each new version. They are removing core features (Hello! Contact Sheet! You _REMOVED_ that? WTF?) and making changes that make their software just a little bit worse, slower, and less stable. Seriously. I've been using Adobe software for a lot longer than I care to admit
Same here. I've been using Photoshop since v. 1.0 and Illustrator since 1.something, back when they'd both run on a Mac SE. I used to admire Adobe's products--they were stable and powerful and you could always count on them to work right. Somewhere around the late Nineties, though, that changed. Not only did Adobe apps become bloated and less stable, they started ignoring Mac UI conventions. Adobe claimed that they were attempting to unify the UI between Windows and Mac apps but the truth of the matter is that relatively few people switch back and forth between the two platforms. What they really were doing was writing for Windows, Mac users be damned. They're still not writing apps using OS X native APIs, either. I'm just glad that I'm not forced to use any of them on a daily basis anymore. On the occasions that I need to get back into Illustrator for some reason, I always end up frustrated and cursing Adobe. Their current whining only makes me like them even less.
By the way, I've had Flash blocked on my computers, Mac and Windows, for months now and find that I don't miss it at all. Fuck Flash, and fuck Adobe too. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner a real competitor comes along, the better.
The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple's plans, is to support sophisticated new multitasking APIs in iPhone 4.0. The system will now be evaluating apps as they run in order to implement smart multitasking. It can't do this if apps are running within a runtime or are cross compiled with a foreign structure that doesn't behave identically to a native C/C++/Obj-C app.
Not that I expect the various MS/Adobe/Android astroturfers and other Apple-haters to accept this. They're not big on rational explanations when it interferers with their world view.
That's not what I meant. I was trying--and apparently failing--to make the point that a new today might cost, say, $50k (number pulled out of my butt for illustration purposes) but in ten years, you'll be able to buy a new one for $25k as production costs fall and competitors start building them.
Not true at all, unless you royally fark up the machine, these machines tend to hold their value for quite a while, especially the 5-axis machines.
I think what the OP was getting at is that the prices of these machines is going to drop precipitously over the next ten years. History would tend to suggest he's correct.
I would hardly call Temple Grandin an "animal welfare advocate"
Yeah, I get your point. That's what she considers herself, though, and I wasn't sure how else to label her beyond "autistic slaughterhouse designer," which isn't really an adequate description. I think that her opinion on the matter is that as long as there are going to be slaughterhouses, they might as well be as humane as possible, which is where the "animal welfare" part figures in.
As I recall, when I took my test there was one question about what shouldn't be said on-air. The possible answers included politics and religion but the correct answer was obscene language. However, in the ARRL Operations Handbook does indeed suggest that politics and religion be avoided in international QSOs for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It makes sense to me--even if all my own DX QSOs were far too short to discuss anything but call sign, QTH, a signal report and possibly the local weather conditions.
Coincidentally, I made a contact with a ham in Cuba just the other day. No politics were mentioned!
Always pleasant to have a good, rational discussion with here on Slashdot without anyone resorting to ad hominem attacks. Adults should be able to disagree without it getting personal.
73, K4DET de KJ6BSO. (I operate PSK31 on 20 meters frequently)
97.117 used to state very clearly that the message had to be so trivial that "...recourse to the public
telecommunications service is not justified."
That pretty much describes most ham radio communications! I'm still not convinced that it precludes talking politics or religion but Part 97 is often unclear on things.
Since the FCC doesn't care about US telco profits, then the logical reason this rule exists is for the telcos in the other countries.
I agree with you completely there. Unless there's a third-party agreement in place between the two countries, only trivial conversations are allowed when third parties are involved. However, I don't believe that those same restrictions apply to the licensed amateur radio operators themselves.
You're mixing up Sec. 97.117 with Sec. 97.115 which deals with international third-party communications. That's where the competition with PT&T comes in.
As far as hams talking politics, it happens all the time. True, it's rare in international QSOs but I think that has more to do with the ephemeral nature of DX which precludes long rag chew sessions (not to mention that there's generally a pile up waiting for a chance of making a contact) than any prohibition. I've been reading the FCC Amateur Radio Enforcement Actions Web page for a long time and have yet to see any mention of them chastising a ham for talking politics.
ARRL manuals repeatedly stated that those topics were to be avoided. FCC Part 97 strongly suggests that communications not delve into any issues considered controversial.
Perhaps, but there's a big difference between "suggests" or "avoid" and "forbidden," as you stated in your original post.
In any case, people talk about politics, religion and business on the ham bands all the time. No one cares. If you don't like what they're saying, you can always spin the VFO knob.
You need to move down here to San Diego. Yes, the ham demographic trends old here too but my local club has members as young as ten years old and various racial/ethnic groups including blacks, Latinos and Asians. Women, too. That aforementioned ten-year-old is a girl who got her technician license just last week. And they all welcomed me as a new member and made me feel a part of the community as well.
alking about anything really serious (politics, religion, business) is forbidden
That's incorrect. You can talk about any issue you want including politics, religion or business. What you can't do is use the amateur radio frequencies for business purposes. You can't even use them to call your boss and tell him you'll be late for work.
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In 1982, I paid good money, earned from pushing a lawn mower, in order to see this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083630/ and then was fool enough to pay to see this in 1983: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085811/
You're right. You shouldn't be sarcastic! ;-)
Seriously, I was trying to say that, speaking as a real fan of cinema, I'd rather see all that money spent on script development rather than pointless visual effects that don't make the movie any better.
Do they have special glasses that improve overall story and character development?
I know you were making a joke there but you really did hit the nail right on the head. It would be much better if the producers took the money they sink into making a movie into 3D and used it to pay expert screenwriters to improve their crappy scripts.
3D isn't going to turn a bad movie into a good one. Conversely, a good movie isn't improved by 3D. The whole trend is nothing more than a gimmick to milk more money out of theater-goers.
Okay, thanks, I get what you mean now. Seems like a fairly large omission for the iPad.
I have an iPad. I liked it, until I tried to compose a blog post. Mobile Safari doesn't support content-editable fields.
I'm not arguing with you, but could you clarify that statement a bit? I've made Slashdot posts using Mobile Safari on a demo iPad at an Apple Store so it is possible to use text entry fields, at least.
I'm not sure where you get that they don't write to native OSX APIs, that's definitely not true. [...] AI definitely uses Carbon
Exactly--Illustrator uses the Carbon APIs, which are not native OS X APIs, they're a kludge that Apple created so developers such as Adobe and Microsoft wouldn't have to rewrite their software using Cocoa.
and they've spent most of the CS5 release cycle porting everything to Cocoa
CS5, yes--roughly ten years after the announcement of OS X and it's advanced Cocoa API set. While it's certainly understandable that Adobe wouldn't want jump right into a rewrite of applications as complex as AI or Photoshop, they could have at least worked on it incrementally over a series of releases.
I don't know if Adobe erred somewhere in the past or shifted in some subtle way that suggested they were more interested in Windows or what.
They did exactly that. During Apple's low ebb in the late Nineties and once again shortly after the Second Coming of Steve and the announcement of OS X Adobe essentially--and publicly--wrote off the Mac platform and began concentrating on Windows development, even threatening to drop Mac development entirely if Apple didn't offer an alternative to rewriting their apps to Cocoa. That's where Carbon came from. It wasn't a part of the original plan for OS X APIs.
Jobs is brilliant -- no question about that -- but he's also an incredible headcase.
No argument there. I know someone who was the CEO of a well-known company that designed third-party hardware for the Mac. She used to complain about the way Apple would frequently change course suddenly and without warning during the development of a new Apple product. This would cause headaches for her as her company would have to scramble to redesign it's products in order to meet the new specs.
I have a sense that once you get on his bad side -- deserved or not -- its damned near impossible to get off it. And to give him credit, he seems to be consistent about it
No argument there, either. Adobe has been on Jobs' shit list for a long time now and that no doubt has something to do with the 64-bit Carbon decision. I think that Jobs lost patience with Adobe's foot-dragging when it came to switching over to Cocoa and when it became apparent that 64-bit Carbon was going to take too much time and money to implement, he decided to make it Adobe's problem rather than Apple's. From his viewpoint, it makes sense. He's answerable to Apple's BoD and stockholders, not Adobe. Like it or not, it was a logical business decision, although his grudge against Adobe probably made it easier for him.
I'm sure there was corporate politics involved, but it sure felt like Adobe was being a better friend to Apple than Apple was to them.
I think it's a case of chickens coming home to roost. Back in the early days of both companies, Adobe and Apple helped each other grow. They used to work closely together but when Adobe gave Apple the corporate finger back when Apple needed all the friends it could get, Jobs took it personally. Now that Apple has something Adobe wants badly, he's letting them get a taste of what they gave to Apple twelve years ago. Can't say I blame him.
While I do like Apple products, I'm not an Apple fanboy. I have computers running OS X, Windows XP and various flavors of Linux and use whatever works the best for a given task. When Apple truly screws up--and they do, regularly--I'll be among the first to jump on them. In this case, however, Adobe's whining sounds a bit shrill given the circumstances.
Not to mention the fact that, except when taking off and landing, flying an airplane doesn't require the same sort of immediate attention that driving a car does. If a pilot were to lose focus for thirty seconds in an airplane while at cruise, the worst that's going to happen is he'll gain or lose a few feet of altitude or drift off course a couple of degrees. Maybe not even that if the airplane is trimmed properly or is on autopilot. If a driver were to lose focus in a car for the same amount of time he's likely to end up in the ditch--or worse.
Wait, so she was talking on the phone and punching the keypad?
Yeah, it was like the time I was working on my screenplay and hit a bump while driving down the Pasadena Freeway. My MacBook landed on the floor and I was so startled that I dropped my phone right in the middle of a call to my agent. Bummer.
The article summary misinterprets the core of what Gruber was arguing.
I get the distinct impression that most of the posters in this thread haven't even read Gruber's blog. Here's an excerpt from it:
Yep, even Gruber admits it's not "anything other than ruthless competitiveness" on Apple's part. But he also points out why it makes sense for them to do it.
Jobs believes that people will write *new* game frameworks for Apple products, ones that are custom-made for that platform. That's what he wants. And given the marketshare he has, it will likely happen.
You're right, although it's not so much the marketshare as the mindshare. The iPhone is still a minority player if you look strictly at the numbers but it's impact on the smartphone market is disproportionally large. That gives Steve Jobs the leverage to dictate how apps should be written for the platform. Fair? Maybe not, but no one's forcing you to write apps for the iPhone. If you don't like it, you can always develop for Android. If enough people leave iPhone app development, then you can bet that Jobs will reconsider his decision. That's how free-market economics are supposed to work.
Apple has the money and the development expertise, especially if Adobe were to step out of the competition by abandoning all those on the Mac platform.
Not to mention that Apple would write it using actual native OS X APIs (Cocoa) in place of Carbon, making it faster and able to use more than 3GB of RAM.
This is becoming less and less true with each new version. They are removing core features (Hello! Contact Sheet! You _REMOVED_ that? WTF?) and making changes that make their software just a little bit worse, slower, and less stable. Seriously. I've been using Adobe software for a lot longer than I care to admit
Same here. I've been using Photoshop since v. 1.0 and Illustrator since 1.something, back when they'd both run on a Mac SE. I used to admire Adobe's products--they were stable and powerful and you could always count on them to work right. Somewhere around the late Nineties, though, that changed. Not only did Adobe apps become bloated and less stable, they started ignoring Mac UI conventions. Adobe claimed that they were attempting to unify the UI between Windows and Mac apps but the truth of the matter is that relatively few people switch back and forth between the two platforms. What they really were doing was writing for Windows, Mac users be damned. They're still not writing apps using OS X native APIs, either. I'm just glad that I'm not forced to use any of them on a daily basis anymore. On the occasions that I need to get back into Illustrator for some reason, I always end up frustrated and cursing Adobe. Their current whining only makes me like them even less.
By the way, I've had Flash blocked on my computers, Mac and Windows, for months now and find that I don't miss it at all. Fuck Flash, and fuck Adobe too. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner a real competitor comes along, the better.
Not that I expect the various MS/Adobe/Android astroturfers and other Apple-haters to accept this. They're not big on rational explanations when it interferers with their world view.
That's not what I meant. I was trying--and apparently failing--to make the point that a new today might cost, say, $50k (number pulled out of my butt for illustration purposes) but in ten years, you'll be able to buy a new one for $25k as production costs fall and competitors start building them.
Not true at all, unless you royally fark up the machine, these machines tend to hold their value for quite a while, especially the 5-axis machines.
I think what the OP was getting at is that the prices of these machines is going to drop precipitously over the next ten years. History would tend to suggest he's correct.
"Heigh-ho, heigh-ho..."
And in this case, the vacuum is a merciful thing... ;-)
I would hardly call Temple Grandin an "animal welfare advocate"
Yeah, I get your point. That's what she considers herself, though, and I wasn't sure how else to label her beyond "autistic slaughterhouse designer," which isn't really an adequate description. I think that her opinion on the matter is that as long as there are going to be slaughterhouses, they might as well be as humane as possible, which is where the "animal welfare" part figures in.
Temple Grandin, an animal welfare advocate and autistic, invented a hug machine in the 1960s
As I recall, when I took my test there was one question about what shouldn't be said on-air. The possible answers included politics and religion but the correct answer was obscene language. However, in the ARRL Operations Handbook does indeed suggest that politics and religion be avoided in international QSOs for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It makes sense to me--even if all my own DX QSOs were far too short to discuss anything but call sign, QTH, a signal report and possibly the local weather conditions.
Coincidentally, I made a contact with a ham in Cuba just the other day. No politics were mentioned!
Always pleasant to have a good, rational discussion with here on Slashdot without anyone resorting to ad hominem attacks. Adults should be able to disagree without it getting personal.
73, K4DET de KJ6BSO. (I operate PSK31 on 20 meters frequently)
97.117 used to state very clearly that the message had to be so trivial that "...recourse to the public telecommunications service is not justified."
That pretty much describes most ham radio communications! I'm still not convinced that it precludes talking politics or religion but Part 97 is often unclear on things.
Since the FCC doesn't care about US telco profits, then the logical reason this rule exists is for the telcos in the other countries.
I agree with you completely there. Unless there's a third-party agreement in place between the two countries, only trivial conversations are allowed when third parties are involved. However, I don't believe that those same restrictions apply to the licensed amateur radio operators themselves.
You're mixing up Sec. 97.117 with Sec. 97.115 which deals with international third-party communications. That's where the competition with PT&T comes in.
As far as hams talking politics, it happens all the time. True, it's rare in international QSOs but I think that has more to do with the ephemeral nature of DX which precludes long rag chew sessions (not to mention that there's generally a pile up waiting for a chance of making a contact) than any prohibition. I've been reading the FCC Amateur Radio Enforcement Actions Web page for a long time and have yet to see any mention of them chastising a ham for talking politics.
The speedometer on my old Triumph TR-2 was calibrated in FPF--Furlongs per Fortnight.
You mean a BOL - Big Old Lemon.
Got that for you right here.
(This thing is only two blocks away from where I live, BTW)
ARRL manuals repeatedly stated that those topics were to be avoided. FCC Part 97 strongly suggests that communications not delve into any issues considered controversial.
Perhaps, but there's a big difference between "suggests" or "avoid" and "forbidden," as you stated in your original post.
In any case, people talk about politics, religion and business on the ham bands all the time. No one cares. If you don't like what they're saying, you can always spin the VFO knob.
You need to move down here to San Diego. Yes, the ham demographic trends old here too but my local club has members as young as ten years old and various racial/ethnic groups including blacks, Latinos and Asians. Women, too. That aforementioned ten-year-old is a girl who got her technician license just last week. And they all welcomed me as a new member and made me feel a part of the community as well.
73 de KJ6BSO
alking about anything really serious (politics, religion, business) is forbidden
That's incorrect. You can talk about any issue you want including politics, religion or business. What you can't do is use the amateur radio frequencies for business purposes. You can't even use them to call your boss and tell him you'll be late for work.