Nice idea, but while it'd work well for business apps, it will fail for games.
Here's why - a modern game can cost upwards of $20M to make. You can't just make a bit of it at a time, you've got to commit to the whole thing. The developers have to get access to the entire funding before they start.
They have to eat, pay the rent and all that.
On top of that, games aren't delivered in a few months. They take a lot of time.
Now, how many gamers will put in real money today for a game that might be delivered in 3-4 years?
Anyone?
No?
You could well argue that games will be simplified in this new model. Programmer art would save a lot of money. Pre-built assets from the public domain would go a long way too. After all the high production value games we've had lately, maybe we're ready for simpler games that look crap.
Hmm...
I've seen your model proposed before, but it just won't work.
(A variation is that gamers band together to form a shell company to pay developers through. Add in a bit of management overhead and you've got a *very* similar situation to what we see today. That is, the model introduces no substantive change.)
And a last point - if your model comes to pass, what will the gamer who paid their $50 and waited through the hard times feel when they see the game being copied for free? Will they adhere to the ideals of the development model, or will they get a bit pissed off that other people are getting a free game while they had to pay, keep the faith and wait and wait and wait?
My experience with people is that they won't be happy about the freeloaders. I reckon they'll feel the same as the companies do today about pirates.
My wording was not precise, and so some of the meaning was lost in my post.
The earlier poster said "You may not give the IOC your bucks directly, but you SURE AS HELL are paying for it." ("It" being the media rights for broadcast).
I disagree because *I* am not paying anything for it. I don't shop from any of the companies advertised in the opening ceremony, so not a cent of my money goes to the advertisers, the TV station or the IOC.
The longer method might involve taxpayer support for sports training, but I'm not so sure about the path there.
In the corporate world, a culture that leads to document shredding and lawsuits is probably a culture that will take a long time to turn around. I've seen similar things in companies (not ones I've worked for, thankfully) and during the years between cleaning house and getting back on track the clients desert the company. Sadly it's never as simple as just replacing the bad apples. The rot spreads into processes and behaviours of the 'good' staff as well.
Clients aren't stupid either, and when a major company loses most of the senior team they know that business is teetering on the edge. Is it worth maintaining that business relationship, or would a more stable business be better?
I actually think both actions should have happened - charge the individuals from the CEO and BOD down and also charge the company for punitive damages. Don't kill the company completely, but wound it badly.
People may view the ads, but they are the product being sold to advertisers by television stations. They have no obligation to buy anything.
There's a very indirect link that's possible here, but no money moves from a viewer to the IOC here except at the sort of remove where you can link everyone on Earth, via Kevin Bacon, to the IOC.
... and please, *never* use the phrase "pray tell."
Apple needs to give up on putting their apple logo stickers over the original 3rd party vendors hardware
While Apple designed the hardware using common components, it's not true to say they're just putting their logo on someone else's box. The design is unique to Apple.
A month ago my MacBook Pro (17", GeForce 8600) died horribly while I was playing World of Warcraft. It threw a kernel panic every time I started it up, and while the screen worked, it was a mass of vertical lines.
Microsoft is many things to many people, but it's not good for shareholders. Have a look at the charts, or wander through the old blog posts by people like MSFTExtremeMakeover or Mini-Microsoft. Even the biggest supporters inside the company are frustrated with the share prices.
Apple's PR machine is telling everyone that only Steve Jobs matters.
Can you point out some of that PR to us? I can't find anything ever said by Apple to back you up.
Sure, there are the IT legends but they're hardly authoratative and are rarely spread by the people involved anyway.
Jobs isn't known to be a humble man, but I haven't heard this sort of PR story from anyone but strawman posters on web forums. Maybe I've missed something big though.
They've completely built up Steve as being their savior.
Are you sure of that? Try as I might, I can't find any comment from the company about this. It's all stuff like your post, stuff everyone apparently knows but no-one can every point to a source for.
It'd be a huge blow to Apple, but I don't believe they've built up Jobs as their saviour.
So if Apple loses, is their next stop to remove OS X from general sale? It's an easy counter and avoids all the legal issues. Make OS X only available through direct channels and require proof of purchase of a Mac to get your copy.
It'd be a pain in the arse for everyone, but it's all perfectly within Apple's rights and there's not a single thing that could be done to stop them.
And what's the benefit? Clones for the people who already know how to get OS X on their home built PC?
The last thing is this - why should Apple sue a company that says its hardware is OS X compatible? What legal case could they bring? There are lots of people making assumptions in this thread, but it's all guesswork and theories.
I think I'll just sit back and see what actually happens, if anything.
OP said "when Apple tried to defraud the public out of using graphical user interfaces" which is very different from the LSF's goal of "oppos[ing] software patents and user interface copyrights."
I can agree with the LSF on this, but that's got nothing to do with the OP's claim about fraud, which is frankly made up using the facts as a loose starting point.
NeXT refused to contribute gcc patches back in... well, sometime pre-1991 according to that link ("In 1991, the Objective-C related modifications by NeXT to gcc find their way back into the FSF GNU CC distribution.")
The second issue is true, but has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple. It's a tenuous link to attribute the actions of one company to another, when they occurred at least six years before purchase. All of which was over seventeen years back!
The OP is clearly on some anti-Apple kick. Good luck to him or her, there are good reasons to oppose Apple. I'd like a bit more honesty though.
Maybe. Go and read the comments in the "Atheros releases driver" thread, and you'll see that Linux is only now getting moderate support for hardware.
To be better than Windows requires more support in drivers, which is a hard problem to solve when Linux advocates don't have any direct control over drivers.
I wish that was the only issue with point 1, but sadly it's not.
First, they're guilty in some small part, because they get paid by the company. Having an unimportant job doesn't clear you of all personal responsibility.
Wait a moment. Guilty of what, exactly? Responsible for what, precisely?
No crimes are being committed here. No violations of civil laws or other people's rights. No-one is being abused by Apple, and they're not suing anyone over FOSS.
Maybe Apple aren't as into FOSS as you would like, but I can't see where guilt comes into the picture. From my point of view, they're doing fine and have nothing to answer for.
Seriously? That's your smoking gun? A completely separate company (as it was then), over fifteen years ago tried and failed to do something that you remember a bit vaguely and don't provide any substantiation for.
And further - that Jobs (as the CEO of NeXT and now of Apple) has nurtured a deep desire to try again, and he's just biding his time until he strikes. Like some evil super-villain in a cartoon.
It's hard to believe someone would stretch that far, but there you go! It's impressive stuff. Not grounded in sanity perhaps, but impressive nonetheless.
> It is the customer's choice to agree to the terms of the apple licenses.
Customer choice is what brought us the Microsoft monopoly.
Is your point here that people should not have the freedom to make choices you personally disagree with, or that you don't trust people to make choices? I'm not sure why it's relevant either, except as a snide non-sequitur.
As opposed to mature bullshit, like when Jobs tried to defraud the FSF out of gcc, or when Apple tried to defraud the public out of using graphical user interfaces?
You know, just making stuff up doesn't help the point. Or can you validate your extraordinary statements with some extraordinary linkage?
Misinformation is rife in IT. It's a field that's got a short history but lots of legends. Another good example is the whole "Apple stole the GUI from Xerox" meme, which was never true. Then there's the Bill Gates 'quote' about 640K, which no-one has ever shown to be authentic.
I hadn't heard the one about Torvalds writing everything in Linux before (he must have been busy with all those packages!). I can't imagine anyone smart enough to run Linux who could believe that, but there you go.
By the way, did you know Microsoft bought Apple for $150M about ten years ago? Funny story...
Nothing wrong to you maybe, personally I think no matter what the game, the players should all be playing by the same rules.
The effect of which will be to ensure that an entrenched monopoly can never be taken down, even by a better competitor.
As an example, imagine any competitor selling a product when the monopoly can temporarily drop their price to near zero.
Playing by the same rules is nice on paper, but when you get into reality you have to see that the big players have more clout than the little ones, so unless their hands are tied in some manner, they'll kill the little players stone dead. It is in their interest to kill competition off as quickly as possible.
Anti-trust laws (and their equivalents around the world) are an attempt to even the playing field, not distort it.
Yea, grounded in bad law, which doesn't make it right. The Nuremberg trials after the Holocaust established that.
You are kidding here, I assume. No sane person could put those two together.
Moving swiftly on...
Let's be clear, given the evidence at hand, if history was different and Apple were in Microsoft's position there would be, if anything, far less openness and freedom for innovation in the software industry.
No, you think this is so. I think it's not. History went another way and we can only speculate. Don't pretend that your opinion is any more valid than mine on this. We're both guessing.
They make a habit of suing or gagging (by gag order) enthusiast sites...
Name two. Okay, we all know about Think Secret and that was a bit muddied by the whole inducing-people-to-break-NDA's issue, but I can't recall a second case.
One time does not a habit make, young AC.
I'd NEVER, EVER get a straight answer on if a model has any production problems, bugs, flaws or "issues".. as I can about Dells or just about any normal model.
Oh please, call Dell and ask them which model to avoid due to a trend of failures. Ask them which model has the most lemons. I'm sure you'll see the same behaviour you criticise Apple for.
Wireless security issue? Well, if only the security 'researchers' followed the normal model of notify-wait-publicise instead of their preferred method of publicise-gain notoriety-never notify. It's hard to take someone seriously when they go for the publicity and never actually report the specifics of the security issue to the company. Others do it, and get all the credit in patch notes. Why didn't Maynor and Ellch?
That one's debatable, and my view won't ever match yours. I think Occam's Razor is on my side, but I may be wrong. It's a reasonable vector of attack, compared to the other two.
Ah, I really shouldn't respond to ACs who don't know their history.
A Mac can set you back a few thousand, but Microsoft's PC only... uh... okay, Microsoft don't sell PCs.
So OS X costs $129, which is just ridiculous compared to Microsoft's Vista, which is only... oh. $239 is the recommended price for Home Premium, and goes up to $399 for Ultimate.
Well, at least Microsoft beat Apple on mouse prices! Woo! Good mice too (I always use them).
Yup, except for computers and operating systems, Microsoft beat Apple's pricing every time.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice idea, but while it'd work well for business apps, it will fail for games.
Here's why - a modern game can cost upwards of $20M to make. You can't just make a bit of it at a time, you've got to commit to the whole thing. The developers have to get access to the entire funding before they start.
They have to eat, pay the rent and all that.
On top of that, games aren't delivered in a few months. They take a lot of time.
Now, how many gamers will put in real money today for a game that might be delivered in 3-4 years?
Anyone?
No?
You could well argue that games will be simplified in this new model. Programmer art would save a lot of money. Pre-built assets from the public domain would go a long way too. After all the high production value games we've had lately, maybe we're ready for simpler games that look crap.
Hmm...
I've seen your model proposed before, but it just won't work.
(A variation is that gamers band together to form a shell company to pay developers through. Add in a bit of management overhead and you've got a *very* similar situation to what we see today. That is, the model introduces no substantive change.)
And a last point - if your model comes to pass, what will the gamer who paid their $50 and waited through the hard times feel when they see the game being copied for free? Will they adhere to the ideals of the development model, or will they get a bit pissed off that other people are getting a free game while they had to pay, keep the faith and wait and wait and wait?
My experience with people is that they won't be happy about the freeloaders. I reckon they'll feel the same as the companies do today about pirates.
And so we come full circle.
My wording was not precise, and so some of the meaning was lost in my post.
The earlier poster said "You may not give the IOC your bucks directly, but you SURE AS HELL are paying for it." ("It" being the media rights for broadcast).
I disagree because *I* am not paying anything for it. I don't shop from any of the companies advertised in the opening ceremony, so not a cent of my money goes to the advertisers, the TV station or the IOC.
The longer method might involve taxpayer support for sports training, but I'm not so sure about the path there.
Right now? Wow, you have a steady hand at the keyboard. Impressive control!
In the corporate world, a culture that leads to document shredding and lawsuits is probably a culture that will take a long time to turn around. I've seen similar things in companies (not ones I've worked for, thankfully) and during the years between cleaning house and getting back on track the clients desert the company. Sadly it's never as simple as just replacing the bad apples. The rot spreads into processes and behaviours of the 'good' staff as well.
Clients aren't stupid either, and when a major company loses most of the senior team they know that business is teetering on the edge. Is it worth maintaining that business relationship, or would a more stable business be better?
I actually think both actions should have happened - charge the individuals from the CEO and BOD down and also charge the company for punitive damages. Don't kill the company completely, but wound it badly.
People may view the ads, but they are the product being sold to advertisers by television stations. They have no obligation to buy anything.
There's a very indirect link that's possible here, but no money moves from a viewer to the IOC here except at the sort of remove where you can link everyone on Earth, via Kevin Bacon, to the IOC.
... and please, *never* use the phrase "pray tell."
No, Channel 7 (here in Aus) is paying for it from the revenue they raise by selling advertising time.
The channel is a free-to-air channel, so viewers are definitely not paying for it.
The goal of the bean market is to buy and sell beans for consumption.
The goal of the "surgeon market" is to produce people who can save lives.
Friedman is wrong on this one.
Of course, pointing out his history of visits to untrained and unqualified doctors would be a good way to show me up here.
Apple needs to give up on putting their apple logo stickers over the original 3rd party vendors hardware
While Apple designed the hardware using common components, it's not true to say they're just putting their logo on someone else's box. The design is unique to Apple.
Well, this is interesting timing.
A month ago my MacBook Pro (17", GeForce 8600) died horribly while I was playing World of Warcraft. It threw a kernel panic every time I started it up, and while the screen worked, it was a mass of vertical lines.
It looked exactly like the fourth picture in this gallery:
http://gallery.mac.com/justinhart#100193
Apple replaced the motherboard, and I'm fine again, but I never did find out the root cause.
Hmm...
Microsoft is many things to many people, but it's not good for shareholders. Have a look at the charts, or wander through the old blog posts by people like MSFTExtremeMakeover or Mini-Microsoft. Even the biggest supporters inside the company are frustrated with the share prices.
Apple's PR machine is telling everyone that only Steve Jobs matters.
Can you point out some of that PR to us? I can't find anything ever said by Apple to back you up.
Sure, there are the IT legends but they're hardly authoratative and are rarely spread by the people involved anyway.
Jobs isn't known to be a humble man, but I haven't heard this sort of PR story from anyone but strawman posters on web forums. Maybe I've missed something big though.
They've completely built up Steve as being their savior.
Are you sure of that? Try as I might, I can't find any comment from the company about this. It's all stuff like your post, stuff everyone apparently knows but no-one can every point to a source for.
It'd be a huge blow to Apple, but I don't believe they've built up Jobs as their saviour.
So if Apple loses, is their next stop to remove OS X from general sale? It's an easy counter and avoids all the legal issues. Make OS X only available through direct channels and require proof of purchase of a Mac to get your copy.
It'd be a pain in the arse for everyone, but it's all perfectly within Apple's rights and there's not a single thing that could be done to stop them.
And what's the benefit? Clones for the people who already know how to get OS X on their home built PC?
The last thing is this - why should Apple sue a company that says its hardware is OS X compatible? What legal case could they bring? There are lots of people making assumptions in this thread, but it's all guesswork and theories.
I think I'll just sit back and see what actually happens, if anything.
You might need to prove Apple is a monopoly PC manufacturer before you can kick off an anti-trust lawsuit.
Since they have below 10% of the market now in the US, that's going to be rather a hard task.
OP said "when Apple tried to defraud the public out of using graphical user interfaces" which is very different from the LSF's goal of "oppos[ing] software patents and user interface copyrights."
I can agree with the LSF on this, but that's got nothing to do with the OP's claim about fraud, which is frankly made up using the facts as a loose starting point.
NeXT refused to contribute gcc patches back in... well, sometime pre-1991 according to that link ("In 1991, the Objective-C related modifications by NeXT to gcc find their way back into the FSF GNU CC distribution.")
The second issue is true, but has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple. It's a tenuous link to attribute the actions of one company to another, when they occurred at least six years before purchase. All of which was over seventeen years back!
The OP is clearly on some anti-Apple kick. Good luck to him or her, there are good reasons to oppose Apple. I'd like a bit more honesty though.
1. Linux is better than Windows
Maybe. Go and read the comments in the "Atheros releases driver" thread, and you'll see that Linux is only now getting moderate support for hardware.
To be better than Windows requires more support in drivers, which is a hard problem to solve when Linux advocates don't have any direct control over drivers.
I wish that was the only issue with point 1, but sadly it's not.
First, they're guilty in some small part, because they get paid by the company. Having an unimportant job doesn't clear you of all personal responsibility.
Wait a moment. Guilty of what, exactly? Responsible for what, precisely?
No crimes are being committed here. No violations of civil laws or other people's rights. No-one is being abused by Apple, and they're not suing anyone over FOSS.
Maybe Apple aren't as into FOSS as you would like, but I can't see where guilt comes into the picture. From my point of view, they're doing fine and have nothing to answer for.
Seriously? That's your smoking gun? A completely separate company (as it was then), over fifteen years ago tried and failed to do something that you remember a bit vaguely and don't provide any substantiation for.
And further - that Jobs (as the CEO of NeXT and now of Apple) has nurtured a deep desire to try again, and he's just biding his time until he strikes. Like some evil super-villain in a cartoon.
It's hard to believe someone would stretch that far, but there you go! It's impressive stuff. Not grounded in sanity perhaps, but impressive nonetheless.
> It is the customer's choice to agree to the terms of the apple licenses.
Customer choice is what brought us the Microsoft monopoly.
Is your point here that people should not have the freedom to make choices you personally disagree with, or that you don't trust people to make choices? I'm not sure why it's relevant either, except as a snide non-sequitur.
As opposed to mature bullshit, like when Jobs tried to defraud the FSF out of gcc, or when Apple tried to defraud the public out of using graphical user interfaces?
You know, just making stuff up doesn't help the point. Or can you validate your extraordinary statements with some extraordinary linkage?
Misinformation is rife in IT. It's a field that's got a short history but lots of legends. Another good example is the whole "Apple stole the GUI from Xerox" meme, which was never true. Then there's the Bill Gates 'quote' about 640K, which no-one has ever shown to be authentic.
I hadn't heard the one about Torvalds writing everything in Linux before (he must have been busy with all those packages!). I can't imagine anyone smart enough to run Linux who could believe that, but there you go.
By the way, did you know Microsoft bought Apple for $150M about ten years ago? Funny story...
Nothing wrong to you maybe, personally I think no matter what the game, the players should all be playing by the same rules.
The effect of which will be to ensure that an entrenched monopoly can never be taken down, even by a better competitor.
As an example, imagine any competitor selling a product when the monopoly can temporarily drop their price to near zero.
Playing by the same rules is nice on paper, but when you get into reality you have to see that the big players have more clout than the little ones, so unless their hands are tied in some manner, they'll kill the little players stone dead. It is in their interest to kill competition off as quickly as possible.
Anti-trust laws (and their equivalents around the world) are an attempt to even the playing field, not distort it.
Yea, grounded in bad law, which doesn't make it right. The Nuremberg trials after the Holocaust established that.
You are kidding here, I assume. No sane person could put those two together.
Moving swiftly on...
Let's be clear, given the evidence at hand, if history was different and Apple were in Microsoft's position there would be, if anything, far less openness and freedom for innovation in the software industry.
No, you think this is so. I think it's not. History went another way and we can only speculate. Don't pretend that your opinion is any more valid than mine on this. We're both guessing.
Others' right to prevent me is called censorship.
Only if it's the government. No-one else can stop you unless you're using their forum or products you've licensed from them.
Slashdot can ban all posts about pandas if they like. It's their forum and while it may irritate, it's not censorship.
Your right of free speech ends when you need someone else to publish what you say.
I shouldn't reply to the AC, but...
They make a habit of suing or gagging (by gag order) enthusiast sites...
Name two. Okay, we all know about Think Secret and that was a bit muddied by the whole inducing-people-to-break-NDA's issue, but I can't recall a second case.
One time does not a habit make, young AC.
I'd NEVER, EVER get a straight answer on if a model has any production problems, bugs, flaws or "issues".. as I can about Dells or just about any normal model.
Oh please, call Dell and ask them which model to avoid due to a trend of failures. Ask them which model has the most lemons. I'm sure you'll see the same behaviour you criticise Apple for.
Wireless security issue? Well, if only the security 'researchers' followed the normal model of notify-wait-publicise instead of their preferred method of publicise-gain notoriety-never notify. It's hard to take someone seriously when they go for the publicity and never actually report the specifics of the security issue to the company. Others do it, and get all the credit in patch notes. Why didn't Maynor and Ellch?
That one's debatable, and my view won't ever match yours. I think Occam's Razor is on my side, but I may be wrong. It's a reasonable vector of attack, compared to the other two.
Ah, I really shouldn't respond to ACs who don't know their history.
Too true!
A Mac can set you back a few thousand, but Microsoft's PC only... uh... okay, Microsoft don't sell PCs.
So OS X costs $129, which is just ridiculous compared to Microsoft's Vista, which is only... oh. $239 is the recommended price for Home Premium, and goes up to $399 for Ultimate.
Well, at least Microsoft beat Apple on mouse prices! Woo! Good mice too (I always use them).
Yup, except for computers and operating systems, Microsoft beat Apple's pricing every time.
To be fair, they don't make computers.
Crap. Posted from work and my copy-paste fu was lacking. The post above was meant to start with:
The main evil with Microsoft is seen by the IT professional, not the consumer
So the whole 'giving any web-facing app access to ActiveX' never caused a single problem.