No, Ricthie is a guy who invented one specific type of concrete that just happens to be really popular. If Ritchie hadn't invented C, pretty much the same things would have been done in another language.
We would be programming in Pascal, Increment (Pascal), Pascal-Hash, or Papua & New Guinea.
Basically you can take a match stick, and put a single mark on it. The distance between the mark and the end of the stick is the data being recorded. The higher precision the larger amount of data being recorded. With high enough precision a single mark could contain all the information that mankind has ever produced.
You just re-invented arithmetic coding. Any file can be represented as a single real number between 0 and 1, as long as you have enough precision.
Since the camera was meant to be left there, this alleged crime would have occurred on the moon. Does this mean that the US federal government has jurisdiction on the moon?
Interesting point. Maybe if the moon was exactly above the USA when it happened? How many miles up is US jurisdiction? What about satellites that fly above many countries?
On the other hand, there may be a principle that a deed falls under the jurisdiction of the place where it took effect. If he had stolen the camera from his fellow astronaut on the moon, that would have happened on the moon and not be under US jurisdiction. Same as the US can't throw you into jail if you steal jewellery in Germany and take it into the USA (as long as you do everything strictly by the book when you import the stolen goods). Even if you stole from an American. But it may be that he was legally allowed to bring the camera back to earth, but was obliged to hand it back to the NASA. In that case, the action would have happened on earth.
If you look up California law, which is the one that decided this case, you will find that picking up an item that was lost, and not trying to return it to the rightful owner is theft. In New York, it is a different offence than theft, but treated just as badly. In Germany, it would depend on the situation. If found in a bar, or on a train, or an airport, or a similar place that is under the control of someone else, then it would be theft. When found in a public place that is not owned by anyone it would be a different offence.
Problem is, you are the professional software developer, the user isn't. The user is a professional whatever they are. If they are not good at their job, you can call them idiots. If they are not good at stating software requirements, that's your problem.
The FSF is plainly not an objective observer. As demonstrated by Stallman, they f***ing hate the App Store.
Fact is: If you download a non-cost application from the App Store, and someone else you know wants the same application, then they can get it without any problems by downloading it as well. So any complaints about DRM are just plain idiotic.
The FSF's statement that there are restrictions on use are a plain misinterpretation of the store terms. Here's how the App Store rules work: If your product has its own license, then you can distribute it through the App Store with that license, but you must also, _in addition_, give the customer the rights that Apple promises. If you sold your product with a license that allows three installations on any computers of the buyer's choice, then a buyer would be allowed to install it on three computers of their choice (even if not owned or controlled by the buyer) because your license says so, even though Apple's promise doesn't cover it. But the buyer can also install it on ten computers that the buyer owns and controls (because you agreed to allow this by distributing the app through the App Store), beyond the three that you allowed. The App Store rules give the buyer rights, possibly beyond those planned by the licensor. It doesn't restrict whatever the license allows.
Now if the goal of the FSF had been to get properly licensed GPL software into as many hands as possible, they would have written to Apple to make clear that Apple's store rules don't clash with the GPL license, as I explained. But that isn't their goal. The original App Store rules were _not_ compatible with the GPL, so Apple changed them. But after the VLC situation, I think Apple had enough of it.
An ecosystem, that if willingly chosen by the user, deprived them of computing freedom. But comes with a few associated benefits over computing freedom. And in Apple's case, presently, the goal was to make a simpler, more easily usable ecosystem for the user.
Stallman has the problem that the kind of "freedom" that he wants to achieve is of no actual importance to the huge majority of people. Not "not important" as in "you only know how important it was when you lose it", but not important at all. And the only "freedom" that he accepts is _his_ freedom. So the freedom to chose between a few hundred thousand apps that run on your phone, many of the useful or fun, is to him not "freedom". Including the freedom to download an app without actually worrying what it might do. Or the freedom to actually be able to use an application, which is achieved by hiring UI designers that work hard to make an application usable to non-geeks. That's a freedom that counts to people. When my wife wants to listen to a song that she heard on TV, she has the freedom to start iTunes, find that song, download, and play it. And keep it not forever, but as long as I'm there and make sure everything is backed up properly. That's freedom. To Stallman, she is a slave of Apple because she can't modify the iTunes software. If he said that to her face, she would reply that he needs a haircut, Urgently. Because it makes sense that he needs a haircut, but what he is blabbering about freedom doesn't make any sense to her. If you took Stallman to the best restaurant, if they let him in, he would complain that the food is not unfree because he isn't allowed to enter the kitchen, while normal people would just enjoy it.
So how much money would Wozniak have made if Steve Jobs hadn't been there? How many Apple 1 computers would he have sold, and would the Apple 2 have ever been built?
Steve Jobs was also in part responsible for a lot of bad, remember the Foxconn worker 'suicide'?
Do you think Apple should be held responsible for the suicide rate at Foxconn? Altogether, totally, completely, one hundred percent responsible?
In that case you should ask Apple what they are doing at Foxconn to get the suicide rate at Foxconn employees about three or four times lower than the suicide rate in the general population of the USA. Many thousands of lives would be saved every year by reducing the USA suicide rate to the level of Foxconn employees.
No. However, Apple fans everywhere forget that Apple was happy to have their DRM on iTunes, and in fact defaulted to ripping your own CDs to DRMed aac, right up until all the lawsuits saying that unless Apple opens up Fairplay, then they're abusing a monopoly position.
That's about the most idiotic thing I've read for ages. I was told that some Windows Media Player ripped to DRM'd formats if you forgot to change it (which was just an inconvenience because you just ripped the records again, if this was actually true), but iTunes has never, ever even had the capability to add any DRM to songs that you ripped.
And somehow I cannot remember _any_ lawsuits about Fairplay except one from Realplayer, which they lost.
Actually, Apple has no problem accepting GPL software either on the iOS App Store or the MacOS X App Store. However, the VLC port for the iPhone was removed by Apple, because one of the copyright holder threatened to sue Apple.
The store terms are quite clear: If any software provides its own license (like the GPL license), then the customer receives it with that license. Apple _also_ requires that any customer has the right to the minimum license terms provided by Apple, like installing the same software on all Macs you own for private use. And a slight problem is that on the App Store, payment is _for the license_, not for the software, and since GPL doesn't allow charging _for the license_, GPL licensed software on the App Store must be free (as in beer).
Apple was heavily rumored to have hired people to stand in line during the first releases of the iPhone to increase the hype.
If that had happened, some of the hired people would have talked, and this thing would have _so_ backfired. Of course you can feel free to believe that Apple would employ dishonest PR tricks, but this would be both dishonest and stupid, and Apple doesn't do "stupid".
I'm not sure if Google and Samsung were being overly sensitive or if Apple was being callous.
Call me a cynic, but...
If Apple had asked Steve Jobs whether to delay the release of the iPhone 4S, what would he have said? "No way!".
If Google and Samsung had asked Steve Jobs whether to delay the release of their next phone, what would he have said? "Of course, for at least two years!".
Seriously, nobody thinks that Steve Jobs would have wanted them to delay anything, so I don't think anything was delayed out of sensitivity.
Has anyone thought that maybe Apple purposefully restricts inventory at release, thereby driving demand faster to "get in first", and also to build hype about how it sells out?
Yes, there is always a whole bunch of people with conspiracy theories. You sell more buy selling stuff than by not selling stuff.
You obviously don't understand that if they were all just price fixing, then by the laws of capitalism some new ISP could easily come in and undercut them and still make tons of profit.
Since Plum Consulting found ways to supply one GB of data for $0.01 to $0.03, and other ISPs can't, the company should be able to undercut anyone else and make a boatload of profit on the way.
It could of course be that they made a very simple mistake: The cost is almost completely for providing the infrastructure to supply bandwidth. Once the infrastructure is there, supplying a GB is really, really cheap. Until you reach the limit of that infrastructure and pay a ton to increase it.
You check out the new company and check whether they can be trusted. You check how much notice you have to give. You get a contract with the new company accordingly. You give notice, giving your reasons, without burning bridges if at all possible. See how they react. Depending on their reaction you might now know that you made the right decision.
Your old company can use your salary to hire an experienced developer again, so they shouldn't be doing too badly, and it's not your fault anyway. They could have given you some extra money, right?
Not burning bridges is important because (a) it is the professional thing to do and you don't want to damage your reputation, (b) you never know when you meet people again, and (c) you might want to go back. (Cases that I know of, the shortest time between starting a job and being fired was 10 minutes, the shortest time between starting a new job and calling the old company was also 10 minutes). About (b): A recommended business strategy is to keep some notes about any employees that leave. Some you might want to call if you hire again in case they want to come back, others you might want to hire back by mistake.
Yeah, they built a working physical representation of a "2001 A Space Odyssey" handheld tablet computer
The court in Germany rejected this argument, because there is quite a bit of detail in Apple's design patent, and from the film material it was not possible to decide whether certain details of the design in the film matched Apple's design patent or no, and it was clear that other details did not match.
In Germany, it has always been the law that if a newspaper publishes something about you that you think isn't true, they have to publish what you say. So in the next edition you would read something like "We wrote xxx. Mr. X complained about this, and we are required by law to tell you that he claims yyy. This is not necessarily the truth. ".
The best one I ever read was this followed by "we published the article because we received a declaration under oath that xxx is true. We now also received a declaration under oath that xxx is false. We don't know which one, but we know someone lied under oath and passed both statements to the police."
It really depends on what exactly this law says. Best case Wikipedia adds a button where any person who feels offended can post what they claim is the truth, without modifying the article.
As an AAPL stockholder, you should be pissed off, as their stock just tanked. Down 3% during this press conference, and it has been steadily going down for the past few months.
Sigmund Freud could probably explain it better than I can, but if you bought AAPL a few months ago, you are up quite a bit.
Can Psystar just sell the hardware and OSX in its own box, and let YOU break the EULA?
Psystar _can_ not do anything, because they just lost their appeal against Apple, and now they have to cough up about two million dollars, mostly as fines for DMCA violation, which they can't.
If you ask whether Psystar could have just sold the hardware and MacOS X in its own box, and let YOU break the EULA, they could have done that. There would have been no copyright infringement (the court ordered them to pay $60,000 for making about 700-800 copies of MacOS X illegally, very cheap compared to what the recording industry tries to charge for distributing songs). But there would have been DMCA violation, because Apple has code in the OS that prevents it from running on anything that is not a Macintosh. It is not difficult to get around this, but that is a DMCA violation. And selling a box where MacOS X can be installed unchanged is a DMCA violation, and since Psystar did that, they were ordered to pay $2,500 per Psystar computer sold on that basis.
The other point is this: Why would you buy a Psystar computer like this? The whole Hackintosh community wouldn't touch a Psystar computer with a barge pole; first because they have a strong feeling that Psystar ripped them off, and second because depending on your skill, you can either build your own computer from parts a lot cheaper and better, or you can buy a PC cheaper and better from a dozen of excellent companies that will actually provide you with service and a warranty that is worth its money. The only people buying Psystar would be people who naively thought their offer was legit. How do you think these people would react if they are told that in order to use MacOS X, they have to commit copyright infringement? And if Psystar didn't tell them, don't you think that would get them into legal trouble?
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No, Ricthie is a guy who invented one specific type of concrete that just happens to be really popular. If Ritchie hadn't invented C, pretty much the same things would have been done in another language.
We would be programming in Pascal, Increment (Pascal), Pascal-Hash, or Papua & New Guinea.
Basically you can take a match stick, and put a single mark on it. The distance between the mark and the end of the stick is the data being recorded. The higher precision the larger amount of data being recorded. With high enough precision a single mark could contain all the information that mankind has ever produced.
You just re-invented arithmetic coding. Any file can be represented as a single real number between 0 and 1, as long as you have enough precision.
Since the camera was meant to be left there, this alleged crime would have occurred on the moon. Does this mean that the US federal government has jurisdiction on the moon?
Interesting point. Maybe if the moon was exactly above the USA when it happened? How many miles up is US jurisdiction? What about satellites that fly above many countries?
On the other hand, there may be a principle that a deed falls under the jurisdiction of the place where it took effect. If he had stolen the camera from his fellow astronaut on the moon, that would have happened on the moon and not be under US jurisdiction. Same as the US can't throw you into jail if you steal jewellery in Germany and take it into the USA (as long as you do everything strictly by the book when you import the stolen goods). Even if you stole from an American. But it may be that he was legally allowed to bring the camera back to earth, but was obliged to hand it back to the NASA. In that case, the action would have happened on earth.
It's not really theft.
If you look up California law, which is the one that decided this case, you will find that picking up an item that was lost, and not trying to return it to the rightful owner is theft. In New York, it is a different offence than theft, but treated just as badly. In Germany, it would depend on the situation. If found in a bar, or on a train, or an airport, or a similar place that is under the control of someone else, then it would be theft. When found in a public place that is not owned by anyone it would be a different offence.
Problem is, you are the professional software developer, the user isn't. The user is a professional whatever they are. If they are not good at their job, you can call them idiots. If they are not good at stating software requirements, that's your problem.
The FSF is plainly not an objective observer. As demonstrated by Stallman, they f***ing hate the App Store.
Fact is: If you download a non-cost application from the App Store, and someone else you know wants the same application, then they can get it without any problems by downloading it as well. So any complaints about DRM are just plain idiotic.
The FSF's statement that there are restrictions on use are a plain misinterpretation of the store terms. Here's how the App Store rules work: If your product has its own license, then you can distribute it through the App Store with that license, but you must also, _in addition_, give the customer the rights that Apple promises. If you sold your product with a license that allows three installations on any computers of the buyer's choice, then a buyer would be allowed to install it on three computers of their choice (even if not owned or controlled by the buyer) because your license says so, even though Apple's promise doesn't cover it. But the buyer can also install it on ten computers that the buyer owns and controls (because you agreed to allow this by distributing the app through the App Store), beyond the three that you allowed. The App Store rules give the buyer rights, possibly beyond those planned by the licensor. It doesn't restrict whatever the license allows.
Now if the goal of the FSF had been to get properly licensed GPL software into as many hands as possible, they would have written to Apple to make clear that Apple's store rules don't clash with the GPL license, as I explained. But that isn't their goal. The original App Store rules were _not_ compatible with the GPL, so Apple changed them. But after the VLC situation, I think Apple had enough of it.
An ecosystem, that if willingly chosen by the user, deprived them of computing freedom. But comes with a few associated benefits over computing freedom. And in Apple's case, presently, the goal was to make a simpler, more easily usable ecosystem for the user.
Stallman has the problem that the kind of "freedom" that he wants to achieve is of no actual importance to the huge majority of people. Not "not important" as in "you only know how important it was when you lose it", but not important at all. And the only "freedom" that he accepts is _his_ freedom. So the freedom to chose between a few hundred thousand apps that run on your phone, many of the useful or fun, is to him not "freedom". Including the freedom to download an app without actually worrying what it might do. Or the freedom to actually be able to use an application, which is achieved by hiring UI designers that work hard to make an application usable to non-geeks. That's a freedom that counts to people. When my wife wants to listen to a song that she heard on TV, she has the freedom to start iTunes, find that song, download, and play it. And keep it not forever, but as long as I'm there and make sure everything is backed up properly. That's freedom. To Stallman, she is a slave of Apple because she can't modify the iTunes software. If he said that to her face, she would reply that he needs a haircut, Urgently. Because it makes sense that he needs a haircut, but what he is blabbering about freedom doesn't make any sense to her. If you took Stallman to the best restaurant, if they let him in, he would complain that the food is not unfree because he isn't allowed to enter the kitchen, while normal people would just enjoy it.
So how much money would Wozniak have made if Steve Jobs hadn't been there? How many Apple 1 computers would he have sold, and would the Apple 2 have ever been built?
Steve Jobs was also in part responsible for a lot of bad, remember the Foxconn worker 'suicide'?
Do you think Apple should be held responsible for the suicide rate at Foxconn? Altogether, totally, completely, one hundred percent responsible?
In that case you should ask Apple what they are doing at Foxconn to get the suicide rate at Foxconn employees about three or four times lower than the suicide rate in the general population of the USA. Many thousands of lives would be saved every year by reducing the USA suicide rate to the level of Foxconn employees.
There's no one today in the tech world who can easily claim he's not been affected by RMS's works. It's funny that Apple's Xcode uses FSF's GCC.
Used to use. It's still installed for people who don't want to change, but the default compiler is clang. And thanks heavens for that.
No. However, Apple fans everywhere forget that Apple was happy to have their DRM on iTunes, and in fact defaulted to ripping your own CDs to DRMed aac, right up until all the lawsuits saying that unless Apple opens up Fairplay, then they're abusing a monopoly position.
That's about the most idiotic thing I've read for ages. I was told that some Windows Media Player ripped to DRM'd formats if you forgot to change it (which was just an inconvenience because you just ripped the records again, if this was actually true), but iTunes has never, ever even had the capability to add any DRM to songs that you ripped.
And somehow I cannot remember _any_ lawsuits about Fairplay except one from Realplayer, which they lost.
Actually, Apple has no problem accepting GPL software either on the iOS App Store or the MacOS X App Store. However, the VLC port for the iPhone was removed by Apple, because one of the copyright holder threatened to sue Apple.
The store terms are quite clear: If any software provides its own license (like the GPL license), then the customer receives it with that license. Apple _also_ requires that any customer has the right to the minimum license terms provided by Apple, like installing the same software on all Macs you own for private use. And a slight problem is that on the App Store, payment is _for the license_, not for the software, and since GPL doesn't allow charging _for the license_, GPL licensed software on the App Store must be free (as in beer).
I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is
I don't consider myself a "power user", but I'm developing software for a living for many years, and _I_ don't know what "duel booting" is.
Apple was heavily rumored to have hired people to stand in line during the first releases of the iPhone to increase the hype.
If that had happened, some of the hired people would have talked, and this thing would have _so_ backfired. Of course you can feel free to believe that Apple would employ dishonest PR tricks, but this would be both dishonest and stupid, and Apple doesn't do "stupid".
I'm not sure if Google and Samsung were being overly sensitive or if Apple was being callous.
Call me a cynic, but...
If Apple had asked Steve Jobs whether to delay the release of the iPhone 4S, what would he have said? "No way!". If Google and Samsung had asked Steve Jobs whether to delay the release of their next phone, what would he have said? "Of course, for at least two years!".
Seriously, nobody thinks that Steve Jobs would have wanted them to delay anything, so I don't think anything was delayed out of sensitivity.
Has anyone thought that maybe Apple purposefully restricts inventory at release, thereby driving demand faster to "get in first", and also to build hype about how it sells out?
Yes, there is always a whole bunch of people with conspiracy theories. You sell more buy selling stuff than by not selling stuff.
This first-to-file-means-I-can-steal-your-invention or prior-art-no-longer-exists keeps getting posted and I just had to say something.
I thought "first-to-file" means I can't steal your invention anymore by faking documentation that I invented it earlier than you.
You obviously don't understand that if they were all just price fixing, then by the laws of capitalism some new ISP could easily come in and undercut them and still make tons of profit.
Since Plum Consulting found ways to supply one GB of data for $0.01 to $0.03, and other ISPs can't, the company should be able to undercut anyone else and make a boatload of profit on the way.
It could of course be that they made a very simple mistake: The cost is almost completely for providing the infrastructure to supply bandwidth. Once the infrastructure is there, supplying a GB is really, really cheap. Until you reach the limit of that infrastructure and pay a ton to increase it.
You check out the new company and check whether they can be trusted. You check how much notice you have to give. You get a contract with the new company accordingly. You give notice, giving your reasons, without burning bridges if at all possible. See how they react. Depending on their reaction you might now know that you made the right decision.
Your old company can use your salary to hire an experienced developer again, so they shouldn't be doing too badly, and it's not your fault anyway. They could have given you some extra money, right?
Not burning bridges is important because (a) it is the professional thing to do and you don't want to damage your reputation, (b) you never know when you meet people again, and (c) you might want to go back. (Cases that I know of, the shortest time between starting a job and being fired was 10 minutes, the shortest time between starting a new job and calling the old company was also 10 minutes). About (b): A recommended business strategy is to keep some notes about any employees that leave. Some you might want to call if you hire again in case they want to come back, others you might want to hire back by mistake.
Yeah, they built a working physical representation of a "2001 A Space Odyssey" handheld tablet computer
The court in Germany rejected this argument, because there is quite a bit of detail in Apple's design patent, and from the film material it was not possible to decide whether certain details of the design in the film matched Apple's design patent or no, and it was clear that other details did not match.
In Germany, it has always been the law that if a newspaper publishes something about you that you think isn't true, they have to publish what you say. So in the next edition you would read something like "We wrote xxx. Mr. X complained about this, and we are required by law to tell you that he claims yyy. This is not necessarily the truth. ".
The best one I ever read was this followed by "we published the article because we received a declaration under oath that xxx is true. We now also received a declaration under oath that xxx is false. We don't know which one, but we know someone lied under oath and passed both statements to the police."
It really depends on what exactly this law says. Best case Wikipedia adds a button where any person who feels offended can post what they claim is the truth, without modifying the article.
As an AAPL stockholder, you should be pissed off, as their stock just tanked. Down 3% during this press conference, and it has been steadily going down for the past few months.
Sigmund Freud could probably explain it better than I can, but if you bought AAPL a few months ago, you are up quite a bit.
Can you guys imagine why anyone in Europe almost dies laughing when Americans claim they live in the world's freest country?
Can Psystar just sell the hardware and OSX in its own box, and let YOU break the EULA?
Psystar _can_ not do anything, because they just lost their appeal against Apple, and now they have to cough up about two million dollars, mostly as fines for DMCA violation, which they can't.
If you ask whether Psystar could have just sold the hardware and MacOS X in its own box, and let YOU break the EULA, they could have done that. There would have been no copyright infringement (the court ordered them to pay $60,000 for making about 700-800 copies of MacOS X illegally, very cheap compared to what the recording industry tries to charge for distributing songs). But there would have been DMCA violation, because Apple has code in the OS that prevents it from running on anything that is not a Macintosh. It is not difficult to get around this, but that is a DMCA violation. And selling a box where MacOS X can be installed unchanged is a DMCA violation, and since Psystar did that, they were ordered to pay $2,500 per Psystar computer sold on that basis.
The other point is this: Why would you buy a Psystar computer like this? The whole Hackintosh community wouldn't touch a Psystar computer with a barge pole; first because they have a strong feeling that Psystar ripped them off, and second because depending on your skill, you can either build your own computer from parts a lot cheaper and better, or you can buy a PC cheaper and better from a dozen of excellent companies that will actually provide you with service and a warranty that is worth its money. The only people buying Psystar would be people who naively thought their offer was legit. How do you think these people would react if they are told that in order to use MacOS X, they have to commit copyright infringement? And if Psystar didn't tell them, don't you think that would get them into legal trouble?