The tense of the highlighted verbs should reveal why your earlier post was irrelevant.
But at that point, Microsoft was already offering the closed, single-vendor Xbox system. My post is perfectly relevant as a rebuttal to the idea that Microsoft somehow cares about being a multi-vendor company.
I've already explained why I don't believe that Apple deserves primary credit for DRM-free music elsewhere.
Yes, but you're wrong.
How would it have happened otherwise? If iTunes didn't turn out to be a shocking success, the labels wouldn't be selling DRM-free music, everybody would just be licensing Microsoft's DRM. likewise, if Apple had licensed Fairplay to other manufacturers, then everybody would be using that. Instead, we ended up with DRM-free music because the iPod DRM was closed to everyone else. Bizarre, but true.
Why on earth would you want to use an iPad to browse the internet if you have a laptop?
Because the interface is so much better for web browsing than a laptop. The silky-smooth touch screen is much easier for scrolling through pages than arrow keys, mouse scroll wheels, trackpads, scroll bars, etc. You just interact directly with the pages. In comparison, the laptop interface just gets in the way, adding another layer between you and the content.
Subscription services and game consoles are irrelevant to my original statements:
Why, because they are inconvenient to your argument? I was directly responding to your argument that Microsoft is a multi-platform vendor, and you don't have to buy a Microsoft-branded player. Back in facts-land, it turns out you do.
Apple did not dispose of music DRM out of any munificence.
But I was not responding to that argument in my post.
It charged a premium for DRM-free music (which "coincidentally" would not be tied to its iPods) until Amazon disposed of DRM by offering DRM-free MP3s at the standard price point.
Premium or not, Apple was the first to offer the DRM-free tracks, and Amazon was only allowed to sell them because of the labels' battle with Apple. Do you seriously believe Amazon would have gotten that deal if it weren't for that battle?
If Apple ever offers a subscription service that runs on something non-Apple, you can begin to bring Zune into the discussion. You've completely left the city limits by the time you get to game consoles.
Absolutely absurd. the Xbox and Zune are perfectly germane to the discussion of Microsoft's multi-vendorness. And I don't see why Apple would have to release a subscription service for the Zune to be involved in a discussion of Apple and Microsoft's use of DRM. Remember Plays For Sure wasn't just limited to subscription services - so how is it not relevant to the discussion?
The Asus convertible allows you to use multi-touch when you want to, or keyboard/mouse when you want to. So the interface is better as well.
That's such a nonsensical statement. Just because you can change modes, doesn't make an interface automatically "better." Also, the iPad supports a keyboard, so you can do the exact same thing.
But the real question is - what is the quality of the touch interface, how well is it designed, what's the usability like? About the only other options out there at the moment are Windows 7 and Android, and I think most people would agree that they aren't as nice as touch interfaces as iPhone OS.
Not every company holds features out at the beginning and adds them in later...
Spoken like somebody who knows nothing about software or hardware development. Do you think Apple just has a pile of these "features" sitting around and says "hey, let's exclude this feature so we can screw customers again in the future"?
Software development takes time. Features that armchair pundits think are "trivial" actually take a lot of work and testing to implement. And features don't exist in isolation. They live within a system, where different parts are dependent on others. So, if you want good software it takes time and hard decisions to get it right. Of course, you could just add features in a rushed, half-assed manner, but then you don't end up with good software.
Hardware is similar - you have to balance a whole range of factors - battery life, physical space and form factor, cost, heat, component availability, industrial design, manufacturing technology. A wafer-thin portable computer is not just something you hack together.
And Europe is the entirely of "the rest of the world"? I think other countries are rumored to exist than the European ones. And I wouldn't be surprised to see the EU countries adopt software patents.
Re:You signed away this "right" by picking Apple.
on
Flash Is Not a Right
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Watch the rest of my profession, and a large chunk of the general public, be pulled into this trap? Or speak out against it?
Well, you're not going to have any effect with whiny posts on slashdot. In fact, if you whine like you do here elsewhere, people are only going to discount your opinion - hurting your stated goal.
Which is why we are arguing against Apple's platform - if noone cares, everyone is worse off.
What, you think you'd be better of on Adobe's proprietary platform? You think the web is better off with the need for Flash plug-ins installed in browsers?
The point of distinction was that you didn't need to buy a Microsoft-marketed player [wikipedia.org] since Microsoft licensed its DRM to third party manufacturers.
But that's not true anymore, is it? Microsoft discontinued that, and made a different DRM of their own, for their own Microsoft-branded Zune players. Similarly - Xbox. Where are the multiple vendors for that?
Except Windows represents a multi-vendor platform just like Flash does.
The key difference between Microsoft and Apple is that Microsoft wants their stuff used far and wide and don't want to p*ss off the developers.
Microsoft doesn't give a shit about developers, Microsoft just wants to control the market. That's why there were anti-trust issues surrounding Microsoft, because Microsoft had the power to control entire sections of the industry.
Can you not see the negative side of one company controlling a multi-vendor platform? At least the control that Apple exerts is limited to Apple products and only Apple products.
Apple also refused to license Fairplay DRM, which ment that the music that you puchased from iTunes could only realistically be played on Apple devices
And that is exactly why we eventually got DRM-free music from the major labels. The labels were getting uneasy about Apple's unanticipated power in the marketplace.
WMA DRM locked you into certain devices, but not only Microsoft-marketed devices.
Which is even worse in many ways. What Apple did with DRM only affected their own platform. Microsoft, on the other hand, could act as a market bully and affect third parties. And it did indeed pull the rug out from under those third parties with the abandonment of "Plays For Sure."
BTW: Fairplay did not kill DRM in the music industry. Amazon [wikipedia.org] killed DRM in the music industry.
Incorrect. Jobs called from DRM to end, and actually had DRM-free music on iTunes before the Amazon store opened. However, EMI was the only label to do this initially. The other labels wanted to use DRM as a bargaining chip to get variable pricing from Apple. And they used Amazon to get it. It's not like if iTunes didn't exist, and the labels weren't engaged in a battle with Jobs they would have just gone to Amazon and said "here, sell our songs DRM free." It was a calculated move to get the changes they wanted in iTunes.
The US and possibly Europe (could be wrong) are the only places where the patent is even valid.
That's nonsense. Heaps of countries have trade agreements where they respect each other's patents. A US patent is basically valid in most of the world where patent law is respected.
How is selling a derivative work that adds further restrictions to my rights a perfect embodiment of free software principles?
If they're selling something that isn't protected by copyright and free to share, then that embodies Free Software principles, doesn't it?
Or are you saying it is not a derivative work? Is the font original because of the way it is now encoded digitally?
I'm not claiming anything. I'm simply employing the Socratic Method to try and determine what your actual beliefs on this matter are. It hasn't been determined whether it is illegal to redistribute Adobe's version of Caslon yet, as it has never gone to trial.
I guess ebooks are actually original works as well then, because of the way their content is encoded.
I didn't write or imply anything along those lines.
Nothing stops any cross platform framework from including hooks to let you call native APIs directly.
That's certainly true. But if the "first-party" adds something to the API, how long will it be until the third-party supports it? It might be one day, it might be two months, it might be never.
People use cross platform tools for the bits they do well and supplement them with extra native code for the platform specific parts.
Some people do. Other people don't. It all depends on the competence/laziness/diligence of the developer. I'm of the opinion that people who "develop" using Flash would be on the "not likely to add native code" side of the fence. After all, who develops in Flash, apart from those too lazy or incompetent to use good tools?
And besides, the situation you have described is basically how it is with the good cross-platform iPhone OS developers - the bulk of the application might be in C++, and they add the tweaks necessary for the particular platform, and that's perfectly acceptable to Apple. But somebody developing in Flash is just not in the same league.
Stan: It's MY fault. I broke the dam. Cartman: Aw, man... Sharon Marsh:...Stanley...you? Man: No. Don't you see what this child is saying? We can't spend all our energy placing blame when something bad happens. He's saying...we all broke the dam. Stan: No. I broke the dam. Woman: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: No. I broke the dam. Woman: And I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Cartman: Hehe...I broke the dam! Man: I broke the dam. Woman: I broke the dam. Stan: [trying to insist] I broke the dam. I ran a boat into the dam and I broke it. Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: No! I broke the fucking dam! Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: I literally broke the dam! Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: On a boat! That wasn't mine! Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: I kept it secret for two days! Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: The boat caught on fire and it exploded! Man: I broke the dam. Man: I broke the dam. Stan: Aw, fuck it!
They are arguing for Flash because they want to choose the plataform they want to develop for.
No, you mean "put that choice in Adobe's hands."
Apple is ignoring a significant amount of web content, making developers and animators go through hoops to have their content available for those devices.
Whereby "jump through hoops" you mean "conform to web standards."
Is there a legitimate reason to allowing only languages X,Y,Z?
Yes. It's their platform, they can do whatever they please with it. On the other hand, the internet does not belong to Adobe.
They aren't just atacking Adobe, they are making the life of a lot of developers harder for no reason.
But by support Adobe and Flash, it just prolongs the current sucked-up state, and propagates a proprietary web. Remember when Realplayer and Microsoft screwed up the web in a big way, and web developers had to put in extra effort to make things work with them? Why would you want to continue that kind of situation?
Hell, in the "enterprise" world, there are still internal web apps that require IE6 and proprietary hacks to work. This is something we don't want. It's like kicking a drug habit - it might cause some short-term pain, but the sooner you quit, the better off you'll be.
promoting the idea that some way of drawing the letter 'A' is worthy of copyright and patent protection.
It wouldn't be worthy of a patent (unless it was some new lithographic technique for producing letterforms or something), but it would certainly be copyrightable. What leads you to the idea that it wouldn't be?
Slashdot Mirror
The tense of the highlighted verbs should reveal why your earlier post was irrelevant.
But at that point, Microsoft was already offering the closed, single-vendor Xbox system. My post is perfectly relevant as a rebuttal to the idea that Microsoft somehow cares about being a multi-vendor company.
I've already explained why I don't believe that Apple deserves primary credit for DRM-free music elsewhere.
Yes, but you're wrong.
How would it have happened otherwise? If iTunes didn't turn out to be a shocking success, the labels wouldn't be selling DRM-free music, everybody would just be licensing Microsoft's DRM. likewise, if Apple had licensed Fairplay to other manufacturers, then everybody would be using that. Instead, we ended up with DRM-free music because the iPod DRM was closed to everyone else. Bizarre, but true.
with a coffee in one hand and /. in the other.
So that's what the kids are calling it these days.
Why on earth would you want to use an iPad to browse the internet if you have a laptop?
Because the interface is so much better for web browsing than a laptop. The silky-smooth touch screen is much easier for scrolling through pages than arrow keys, mouse scroll wheels, trackpads, scroll bars, etc. You just interact directly with the pages. In comparison, the laptop interface just gets in the way, adding another layer between you and the content.
When I'm reading through a page, if I come across a link that interests me, I open it in a new tab in the background.
Try Instapaper It also syncs between your iPad/iPhone and your desktop/laptop.
That does sound awesome - sit around all day, surf the web, read email, and watch video.
Well, you have a slashdot account, so you've already made the first step towards your new life.
Subscription services and game consoles are irrelevant to my original statements:
Why, because they are inconvenient to your argument? I was directly responding to your argument that Microsoft is a multi-platform vendor, and you don't have to buy a Microsoft-branded player. Back in facts-land, it turns out you do.
Apple did not dispose of music DRM out of any munificence.
But I was not responding to that argument in my post.
It charged a premium for DRM-free music (which "coincidentally" would not be tied to its iPods) until Amazon disposed of DRM by offering DRM-free MP3s at the standard price point.
Premium or not, Apple was the first to offer the DRM-free tracks, and Amazon was only allowed to sell them because of the labels' battle with Apple. Do you seriously believe Amazon would have gotten that deal if it weren't for that battle?
If Apple ever offers a subscription service that runs on something non-Apple, you can begin to bring Zune into the discussion. You've completely left the city limits by the time you get to game consoles.
Absolutely absurd. the Xbox and Zune are perfectly germane to the discussion of Microsoft's multi-vendorness. And I don't see why Apple would have to release a subscription service for the Zune to be involved in a discussion of Apple and Microsoft's use of DRM. Remember Plays For Sure wasn't just limited to subscription services - so how is it not relevant to the discussion?
The Asus convertible allows you to use multi-touch when you want to, or keyboard/mouse when you want to. So the interface is better as well.
That's such a nonsensical statement. Just because you can change modes, doesn't make an interface automatically "better." Also, the iPad supports a keyboard, so you can do the exact same thing.
But the real question is - what is the quality of the touch interface, how well is it designed, what's the usability like? About the only other options out there at the moment are Windows 7 and Android, and I think most people would agree that they aren't as nice as touch interfaces as iPhone OS.
Not every company holds features out at the beginning and adds them in later...
Spoken like somebody who knows nothing about software or hardware development. Do you think Apple just has a pile of these "features" sitting around and says "hey, let's exclude this feature so we can screw customers again in the future"?
Software development takes time. Features that armchair pundits think are "trivial" actually take a lot of work and testing to implement. And features don't exist in isolation. They live within a system, where different parts are dependent on others. So, if you want good software it takes time and hard decisions to get it right. Of course, you could just add features in a rushed, half-assed manner, but then you don't end up with good software.
Hardware is similar - you have to balance a whole range of factors - battery life, physical space and form factor, cost, heat, component availability, industrial design, manufacturing technology. A wafer-thin portable computer is not just something you hack together.
And Europe is the entirely of "the rest of the world"? I think other countries are rumored to exist than the European ones. And I wouldn't be surprised to see the EU countries adopt software patents.
Watch the rest of my profession, and a large chunk of the general public, be pulled into this trap? Or speak out against it?
Well, you're not going to have any effect with whiny posts on slashdot. In fact, if you whine like you do here elsewhere, people are only going to discount your opinion - hurting your stated goal.
Which is why we are arguing against Apple's platform - if noone cares, everyone is worse off.
What, you think you'd be better of on Adobe's proprietary platform? You think the web is better off with the need for Flash plug-ins installed in browsers?
The point of distinction was that you didn't need to buy a Microsoft-marketed player [wikipedia.org] since Microsoft licensed its DRM to third party manufacturers.
But that's not true anymore, is it? Microsoft discontinued that, and made a different DRM of their own, for their own Microsoft-branded Zune players. Similarly - Xbox. Where are the multiple vendors for that?
Except Windows represents a multi-vendor platform just like Flash does. The key difference between Microsoft and Apple is that Microsoft wants their stuff used far and wide and don't want to p*ss off the developers.
Microsoft doesn't give a shit about developers, Microsoft just wants to control the market. That's why there were anti-trust issues surrounding Microsoft, because Microsoft had the power to control entire sections of the industry.
Can you not see the negative side of one company controlling a multi-vendor platform? At least the control that Apple exerts is limited to Apple products and only Apple products.
Apple also refused to license Fairplay DRM, which ment that the music that you puchased from iTunes could only realistically be played on Apple devices
And that is exactly why we eventually got DRM-free music from the major labels. The labels were getting uneasy about Apple's unanticipated power in the marketplace.
WMA DRM locked you into certain devices, but not only Microsoft-marketed devices.
Which is even worse in many ways. What Apple did with DRM only affected their own platform. Microsoft, on the other hand, could act as a market bully and affect third parties. And it did indeed pull the rug out from under those third parties with the abandonment of "Plays For Sure."
BTW: Fairplay did not kill DRM in the music industry. Amazon [wikipedia.org] killed DRM in the music industry.
Incorrect. Jobs called from DRM to end, and actually had DRM-free music on iTunes before the Amazon store opened. However, EMI was the only label to do this initially. The other labels wanted to use DRM as a bargaining chip to get variable pricing from Apple. And they used Amazon to get it. It's not like if iTunes didn't exist, and the labels weren't engaged in a battle with Jobs they would have just gone to Amazon and said "here, sell our songs DRM free." It was a calculated move to get the changes they wanted in iTunes.
We can argue symantecs
Or, we could argue Nortons and McAffees.
The US and possibly Europe (could be wrong) are the only places where the patent is even valid.
That's nonsense. Heaps of countries have trade agreements where they respect each other's patents. A US patent is basically valid in most of the world where patent law is respected.
How is selling a derivative work that adds further restrictions to my rights a perfect embodiment of free software principles?
If they're selling something that isn't protected by copyright and free to share, then that embodies Free Software principles, doesn't it?
Or are you saying it is not a derivative work? Is the font original because of the way it is now encoded digitally?
I'm not claiming anything. I'm simply employing the Socratic Method to try and determine what your actual beliefs on this matter are. It hasn't been determined whether it is illegal to redistribute Adobe's version of Caslon yet, as it has never gone to trial.
I guess ebooks are actually original works as well then, because of the way their content is encoded.
I didn't write or imply anything along those lines.
So, they're not actually selling Caslon, making your original point invalid?
But if Caslon is out of copyright, then why not?
By "vendor," I don't mean that guy on the sidewalk who sells you pirated copies of Windows.
This is just misinformation.
No, it's not.
Nothing stops any cross platform framework from including hooks to let you call native APIs directly.
That's certainly true. But if the "first-party" adds something to the API, how long will it be until the third-party supports it? It might be one day, it might be two months, it might be never.
People use cross platform tools for the bits they do well and supplement them with extra native code for the platform specific parts.
Some people do. Other people don't. It all depends on the competence/laziness/diligence of the developer. I'm of the opinion that people who "develop" using Flash would be on the "not likely to add native code" side of the fence. After all, who develops in Flash, apart from those too lazy or incompetent to use good tools?
And besides, the situation you have described is basically how it is with the good cross-platform iPhone OS developers - the bulk of the application might be in C++, and they add the tweaks necessary for the particular platform, and that's perfectly acceptable to Apple. But somebody developing in Flash is just not in the same league.
You can easily see people from space on Google Maps.
People from space have arrived on Earth? I would have thought that would at least warrant a few newspaper articles.
Stan: It's MY fault. I broke the dam. ...Stanley...you?
Cartman: Aw, man...
Sharon Marsh:
Man: No. Don't you see what this child is saying? We can't spend all our energy placing blame when something bad happens. He's saying...we all broke the dam.
Stan: No. I broke the dam.
Woman: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: No. I broke the dam.
Woman: And I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Cartman: Hehe...I broke the dam!
Man: I broke the dam.
Woman: I broke the dam.
Stan: [trying to insist] I broke the dam. I ran a boat into the dam and I broke it.
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: No! I broke the fucking dam!
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: I literally broke the dam!
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: On a boat! That wasn't mine!
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: I kept it secret for two days!
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: The boat caught on fire and it exploded!
Man: I broke the dam.
Man: I broke the dam.
Stan: Aw, fuck it!
They are arguing for Flash because they want to choose the plataform they want to develop for.
No, you mean "put that choice in Adobe's hands."
Apple is ignoring a significant amount of web content, making developers and animators go through hoops to have their content available for those devices.
Whereby "jump through hoops" you mean "conform to web standards."
Is there a legitimate reason to allowing only languages X,Y,Z?
Yes. It's their platform, they can do whatever they please with it. On the other hand, the internet does not belong to Adobe.
They aren't just atacking Adobe, they are making the life of a lot of developers harder for no reason.
But by support Adobe and Flash, it just prolongs the current sucked-up state, and propagates a proprietary web. Remember when Realplayer and Microsoft screwed up the web in a big way, and web developers had to put in extra effort to make things work with them? Why would you want to continue that kind of situation?
Hell, in the "enterprise" world, there are still internal web apps that require IE6 and proprietary hacks to work. This is something we don't want. It's like kicking a drug habit - it might cause some short-term pain, but the sooner you quit, the better off you'll be.
promoting the idea that some way of drawing the letter 'A' is worthy of copyright and patent protection.
It wouldn't be worthy of a patent (unless it was some new lithographic technique for producing letterforms or something), but it would certainly be copyrightable. What leads you to the idea that it wouldn't be?