Apple also borked my new iPhone on-purpose, simply because they detected I had tried (unsuccessfully) to unlock it. They've crossed over into some of the most evil practices I've seen, outdoing even the worst from M$. I must admit I enjoyed smashing the thing to pieces in front of the "Genius" at the Apple store.
Not that I believe your story, but if it was true then you were incredibly stupid.
First, for borking your iPhone when the updater clearly says that after mucking around with it the update would be likely to break the phone. Second, for not just sending it to Apple for repair or warranty replacement (because firmware upgrades tend to occasionally just break things anyway, and this happened to some iPhone users, and they did get their phone replaced, no questions asked), and thirdly because smashing the phone to pieces obviously makes it impossible to ever get it fixed or get any money back.
You are also claiming that Apple did this on purpose. There is no evidence for that whatsoever. If you have any evidence, please show it.
Re:Congratulations Microsoft...
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ZOMG New Zunes
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"Microsoft releases iPod killer. However, the new Zune was designed to kill the last generation of iPods - not the currently released iPods."
The term "iPod killer" is generally used for MP3 players that have some supposedly cool feature that the iPod doesn't have and that nobody wants, and "iPod killers" tend to disappear quite quickly. Microsoft is a different case; it won't disappear until Microsoft's losses on Zune exceed Apple's profit on the iPod.
I have never heard that SanDisk is making any "iPod killer", and yet somehow they managed to become number two in the market, where Microsoft is maybe a distant number four.
"The installation of third party software" is the stated reason for the bricking they do.
I'm glad to see we agree that this is unacceptable. You are either very confused or you are intentionally misleading people.
Apple doesn't brick iPhones because someone installed third party software.
The officially stated reason is that the installation process of certain third party software caused damage to the firmware of an iPhone, and as a consequence of that damage, applying an upgrade will brick it.
This is like someone playing around with the electrics of their car, and modifying it in such a way that plugging in the manufacturer's test equipment will explode it.
"But others say Cupertino is well within its rights to control its own device."
Control its own device? So Apple takes your money but the phone is still theirs? Sorry but that's just plain wrong.
This is the rare case where people trying to support Apple build up a strawman which you rightfully burn down.
If you buy an iPhone, _you_ own it. Nobody can disallow you to do with it whatever you want, and Apple can't either. However, when you modify the firmware, and in the process of modifying it damage the iPhone (which is what Apple claims; the damage was lurking around after unlocking the phone with certain software), and a software update from Apple bricks it, after Apple gave a strong warning that you should _not_ update the phone if you have unlocked it, then any damage is entirely your fault.
Like the guy who filmed an iPhone in a blender; it was entirely legal for him to do this, but the result is not covered by warranty.
I would expect that if I hacked the firmware, that the update would simply blow all those modifications away, and I would end up with a stock device again.
Note that Phil Schiller claims that iPhones have actually been _damaged_ during the unlocking process. It is entirely possible to damage firmware in such a way that everything looks fine, but only the next firmware update will make the problem visible. There have been reports from people who bricked their iPhones when they tried to remove the unlocking; that would clearly support this theory. At least it shows that an iPhone can get bricked when doing a firmware upgrade that most definitely doesn't try to cause damage.
But if any bricking happened intentionally, then some engineer has written the code, half a dozen other engineers are quite capable of checking the code, two dozen engineers have been talking to them, and since engineers are not generally well known for being good liars, this would leak out. There is no way anyone would take that risk.
English tabloids like to send some reporter with a bit of plastic with "bomb" written on it through security checks and claim how insecure things are when the reporter gets through.
Clearly the reporter, being completely innocent and up to no harm except embarrassing the security guards, behaves in a way that _doesn't_ trigger whatever law enforcement people are lucking for. The same person with _real_ explosives and _real_ intent to hurt would behave differently and would be much more likely to be caught.
I agree, there's a huge lack of basic legal knowledge among non-lawyer workers. For example, just the other day I had to warn my girlfriend, who is an artist working at a computer game company, that the fonts available at all those "free font" websites might not actually be free to use when embedding the code of the font in the game itself (as opposed to using the vector or raster data output from the font "program").
It should be common sense that if you take anything that you haven't created yourself, and add it to a commercial product, you ask a lawyer. Or you ask your manager, who will take responsibility (and ask a lawyer).
It is not only various problems specifically with fonts, it is just the problem that you don't know where these "free" fonts come from. If you don't have a piece of paper from the author that declares the font is in the public domain or gives you a license, you can't use them. If some kiddie has a collection of stolen commercial fonts and puts them on his "free fonts" webpage, you are fully responsible if you use them.
Assume the offending portions of code in 'Linux' are explicitly pointed out - i.e. 'Linux' is given a chance - the 'Linux developers' work around that code with new code, and call it a day. Then they were still in violation in the past.
Absolutely true.
I understand the SCO scenario isn't the finest of parallels to draw, but I hardly think GP should be modded -2 Troll.
The difference is that SCO were lying through their teeth; they never had any copyrights and they knew it and the Linux community knew it. And so did everyone else.
how the fuck can they make this claim, yet when SCO filed it's complaint, the open source community's response was "all we have to do is fix the infringment" - the very same claim now being denied.
You are missing the context. If you make a claim that I used your code with permission, and it is proven to be true, I would have to pay for damages. On the other hand, it is _your_ duty to keep the damages as small as possible. The Linux community wanted to know exactly _which_ code was infringing, so that it could be removed to minimise the damages. A consequence of that public offer and the refusal of SCO to show any such code is that any damages from that point on don't count, because these damages only happened because of SCO's refusal to tell which code was infringing.
You are also missing the fact that SCO was full of shit and didn't actually own any copyrights to any Unix code they claimed was copied into Linux. So the Linux community was calling their bluff. If SCO had said which code was copied, a community with a huge knowledge base (plus the IBM lawyers and there experts) would have a look at the code, determine within an hour where it came from and prove that it wasn't owned by SCO - as happened in the single case where SCO actually _did_ publish some allegedly copied source code.
With the GNU GPL, it would seem to apply as such: You give someone software which is licensed under the GPL. The consideration for this generous act is as such: If they'd like to re-distribute the software, they have to do so terms of the GPL. So, they'd required to make the source available, and to include the text of the GPL, and a few other reasonable things that we're all familiar with.
Even GPL 2 was written by lawyers. And as it so happens, your argument would be valid in the USA if the GPL was a contract according to US law, but it isn't. It is a license. If you don't follow the terms of the GPL license, then the GPL license doesn't apply. There is no contract, nothing, just a pure copyright infringement.
Interestingly, according to German law the GPL is a contract. If you don't follow the terms of the GPL, then you can claim you never agreed to the contract in which case it is a pure copyright infringement. If you claim you agreed, then German law doesn't have the need for any consideration in the contract, so that argument falls flat. And the contract clearly states that by not following the terms you lose the right to copy, so we are straight back to copyright infringement.
It's similar to a contract that says if you don't pay the rent for three months you are out. If you don't pay for three months, paying later won't help you, because that is what the contract says.
The GPL will eventually go before a judge, and one of two things will happen. It will likely be found to be perfectly fine and enforceable. Or, it might be found to be in whole or in part against the law, and hence either invalid or partially voidable. And if that happens, it's likely that the judge would also rule that any program released "under the GPL" is closer to a public domain work than an empty utterance. That is similar to the situation when you are caught driving 100mph with your Porsche in a small town on a road passing the local school. The case will eventually go before a judge, and one of two things will happen. The judge will likely kick your arse. Or, it might be found that since you paid so much money for a fast car, it is fine to drive at high speed past a school. And if that happens, it's likely that the judge will also rule that any speed limit doesn't apply to Porsche drivers.
While both are possible, they are equally unlikely.
Who was harmed? That's a question a judge/jury would consider. If they were infringing on a patent or commercially licensed software, it would be easier to find a monetary value (and there is plenty of precedent)
Imagine Microsoft wanted to use some code that is published under the GPL. It doesn't really make a difference, but we can imagine that Microsoft has money in the bank, and wouldn't do something obviously illegal.
Microsoft has two choices: Use the code and follow the rules of the GPL license, or find the copyright holders and offer them money for a proprietary license. If they go the second route, unless the copyright holders for some reason refuse any business with Microsoft, there will be an agreement in the end where Microsoft will pay a certain amount to the copyright holders.
If someone else just copies the code and then doesn't follow the rules of the GPL license, the fair market value determined by our Microsoft thought experiment would be the damages. That would likely be tripled for punitive reasons (otherwise a company could just steal anything, if they didn't get caught they'd be fine and if they got caught, they would only pay what they owed anyway).
And there is real precedence, like Apple first paying for a proprietary license to CUPS and then buying the copyrights to CUPS.
There's a huge difference between a firmware update accidentally bricking a phone due to inadequate QA and designing firmware to deliberately detect and brick a modified phone. It's a question of intent. If it's deliberate, there are definitely emails to document that and in a lawsuit will come out in discovery. Apple qualifies the statement by saying the update "will likely result" in a bricked phone. Sounds like a mobster saying, "that's a nice restaurant you have. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
What about an experienced fire fighter having a look at your restaurant kitchen and saying "that's a nice restaurant you have. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
Adding third party apps should be like adding seat covers or a 'foofy' steering wheel cover. It shouldn't really mess with the inner workings of the iPhone, and should be easy to get rid of them when you need to do so. Even perhaps with OS hacks, they shouldn't hurt the hardware at all. You might have to re-flash the main memory to fix a major problem, but that's it. It's quite obvious it can be done, because Apple is releasing a firmware update as it is. Problem is, we are talking about a firmware update. The firmware is among other things responsible for installing firmware updates. If you manage to damage the part of the firmware that installs firmware updates, you're out of luck.
Some people have posted here that unlocking an iPhone doesn't damage it. Now consider this possibility: If a firmware change has correctly unlocked the iPhone, but has also damaged the part of the firmware that does firmware updates, to a point where it works incorrectly, then your unlocked iPhone will work absolutely fine until you try any other firmware update for whatever reason.
And there have been reports from people trying to re-lock the iPhone saying that either the re-lock didn't work, or bricked the iPhone. That could be explained by the firmware updating firmware being either completely hosed (doesn't work anymore, but can't cause damage either) or being slightly hosed (bricks the iPhone).
How is that a bug? I often see dates without years mentioned in text. It's convenient to get auto-conversion. Even a user not aware of formatting at all should be able to Undo back to normal.
I agree that the heuristics suitable to English or Swedish date formats might cause trouble in German, but it's not really a bug. I would say it's generally a good thing that some auto-detection is going on, or you would have to specify by hand which cells are numbers, and which are text, even when it's bloody obvious to you as well as the program.
It works as designed. Unfortunately, the design is crap. Therefore, it is a bug.
But maybe that is the difference between a Macintosh user and a Windows user. Any Macintosh user will say "this is a bug". Many Windows users will say "I guess I'm too stupid to use computers".
You should check out www.groklaw.net. There has been a lengthy article just recently about the latest anti-Linux FUD campaign. Now that SCO is bankrupt and nobody believes anymore that there is any Unix code copied into Linux illegally, they had to come up with something new. The new campaign is: Linux is self destructing! Sources are the usual suspects, like ZDNet in this case.
However, if you think about it, there are several thousand Linux developers, and with that many developers, occasional arguments are unavoidable. The same arguments happen within Microsoft software development, except that you don't read about them on some kernel development newsgroup, and the press doesn't pick up on it.
Uh, no... actually they were banking on selling 10 million. You are missing some context. Apple's goal is to sell 10 million iPhones world wide by the end of their financial year 2008, that would be end of September 2008. So far they sold one million iPhones in the USA only in 74 days, apparently with a huge increase due to the price drop. At that rate, they would sell at least 6 million in the USA, plus whatever happens in the European and other markets. I'd say that is well within their target.
Wouldn't selling it for use on any network generate more sales? If X is the number of users on AT&T and Y is the number of users on T-Mobile, then X + Y > X, unless of course, T-Mobile has less than 1 user. Would it be impossible for them to have a phone that works on all GSM networks. Oh, I forgot, they probably got really good kickbacks from AT&T for going exclusive. Yes, it would generate more unit sales for Apple. But that is not the only consideration. There must be something in it for the network provider as well. AT&T had to make substantial investments to prepare for the iPhone, and any other provider would have had to do the same. However, with two providers, the benefits for each one would have been much less. Maybe Apple would have sold 1.4 million iPhones instead of 1 million. But for AT&T, they would only have had the benefit from 700,000 existing customers upgrading, and no customers switching instead of 300,000 switching. Since for AT&T, a switch is much more valuable than an upgrade, the benefit for AT&T would have been halved, for the same investment.
So I would think that both Verizon and AT&T were extremely interested in an exclusive deal (obviously whoever didn't get the deal would claim that they were not interested at all to save face), but much much less interested in a non-exclusive deal. And on the other hand, Apple could get a much better contract in an exclusive deal than in a non-exclusive deal. And a non-exclusive deal might have never happened.
Just a complaint. At times, Slashdot is too stupid to figure out that I am logged in and post as "Anonymous Coward". And when you repost it after logging in, the bloody stupid software tells you "try to be more original...". So this rant is added to be sufficiently original to please some brain-damaged software.
I can't distribute copies to other people, I can't make public performances of it, I can't distribute information on how to circumvent the digital restrictions on it. Other than that (and a few other non-relevent moral laws), it's my property to do with as I wish. Unless I live in germany, of course. You are confusing TFA (and in this case, TFA stands for "the fucking article") with reality. The law that was actually passed is nothing like what the article describes. By the way, German courts have repeatedly told record companies who wanted subpoenas to get the names of file sharers to fuck off.
What the hell? What he wrote was complete garbage. If we was "snowed under" by SCO, then either because he was a complete idiot, or because he knew that a little bit of investigating would have stood in the way of a "good" article.
We knew that he was wrong months ago. Everybody did. Saying "I was wrong" when he wrote articles three years after SCO made itself a laughing stock in the DaimlerChrysler case, months after their "million lines" of code that iBM supposedly copied shrunk to unproven claims of about 120 lines, three years after SCO's case against Novell where it was obvious from the start that they didn't have a chance in hell (and the SCO idiots didn't even manage to get their claims right in that case in their first sttempt, forgetting to claim special damages); saying "I was wrong" when SCO has just lost their Novell court case completely and the bastards try to keep Novell from getting the money that SCO stole by claiming bankruptcy, all that is nothing that deserves any kind of respect.
What about his personal attacks against Pamela Jones? Did she get any apology from him? Didn't think so. And even when he says "I was wrong" he can't help himself but call the people at Groklaw "nerds". Even now he has to be insulting. There is a point where a reputation is just irrevocably destroyed. Daniel Lyons is way beyond that point.
SMP refers to the fact that all the processors are identical and share the same memory (in contrast to NUMA designs like multi-chip Opteron systems). However, I've seen more and more people refering to cache coherent NUMA designs like multi-core opteron and the upcoming CSI based intel systems as SMP systems which, while a stretch of the definition, is at least reasonable. If each core owns its own memory, and accessing it from another core is a bit more costly because the data has to be moved from the memory of one core to another core, then I would still call that SMP, because the processors are still identical and can be used in identical ways. Ok, switching a thread from one processor to another is a bit costly, but it is still symmetrical.
On a quad core Intel Core 2 chip, the cores are still identical, but pairs of cores are not. Core A and B share their cache, and so do Core C and D, so if you need two cores for a task, it makes a difference which cores you chose. At this point you may argue that it is still SMP, because from a programmers point of view there is no difference in the processors; things will "work" whatever cores you or the OS choose, just a slight difference in efficiency.
>> I didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with--that is, exactly what Apple did that was locking Linux et al out of iPod.
iTunes copies two things onto an iPod when you sync: The files containing music, and a database of those files, so that the iPod can find the music quicker.
With the new iPods, the database has a checksum, which is based on the contents of the database and the serial number of the iPod. If that checksum is not correct, the iPod will refuse to play any music. Obviously iTunes knows how to calculate the checksum and stores it on the iPod.
Linux applications that could download music files + database onto an iPod didn't have the code to calculate the checksum, so after using a Linux application to fill a new iPod with music, the iPod wouldn't work. The hack that has been developed within 36 hours is really a hack: First you have to run a program that reads the serial number. Then you modify the hack program by typing in that serial number into the source code. Then you run whatever software you used to copy music onto the iPod. Then compile and run the "hack" program: It will read the database, calculate the checksum and add the checksum to the database, and everything works.
That is of course a horrible complicated way (for the end user) to do it. Expect all the Linux music players to be updated soon so that all this will happen automatically.
>> If I have a PC from work, then chances are that when it comes to my home machine I will go buy a PC. If my wife decides to buy a laptop I will get a PC for her as well.
>> I'm not badmouthing Apple because my "$5 network card" doesn't work in OSX, which is completely besides the point, but it does provide an example of how my scheme could work. My "$5 network card" may not work in OSX, but if Apple had certified it for use, then Apple would have asked for a license fee to use the certification sticker on the box... maybe $2 per unit (for argument's sake)? This then turns my "$5 network card" into a $7 one.
I can't say anything about $5 network cards because all my Macs have Ethernet connectors.
On the other hand, I took the cheapest USB 2.0 PCI card that I could find and put it into my six year old PowerPC Mac, and it just worked.
I wouldn't be too surprised if a $5 network card would also just work.
On the other hand, all this is not the business that Apple is in. Apple's goal is _not_ to sell more operating systems than Microsoft does. Maybe Steve Jobs has a secret plan to achieve this thirty years from now, but right now it is not Apple's goal. It is also not Apple's goal to sell more computers than Dell does (there is a miniscule possibility that it might happen, but not because of anything that Apple does, but because of things that HP, Acer, Lenovo etc. and Dell do). It may be Apple's goal to make more profits selling computers than Dell does - and I think they are close or may even have achieved it.
But what Apple really _is_ trying to achieve is to open up more and more highly profitable niches; first because a profitable niche is profitable, and second because every time they succeed they strengthen the brand and sell more in all the other niches. At the moment the niches are: MacOS X based computers, iPods, music and video downloads, and iPhone.
The first two are highly profitable today, with tons of room for growth in MacOS X based computers, and some room for growth left in iPods. Music and video downloads make some profit today, but they have excellent potential. Might not go anywhere, or it could explode. iPhone is just starting. But operating system sales is not an important factor for Apple today.
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Not that I believe your story, but if it was true then you were incredibly stupid.
First, for borking your iPhone when the updater clearly says that after mucking around with it the update would be likely to break the phone. Second, for not just sending it to Apple for repair or warranty replacement (because firmware upgrades tend to occasionally just break things anyway, and this happened to some iPhone users, and they did get their phone replaced, no questions asked), and thirdly because smashing the phone to pieces obviously makes it impossible to ever get it fixed or get any money back.
You are also claiming that Apple did this on purpose. There is no evidence for that whatsoever. If you have any evidence, please show it.
The term "iPod killer" is generally used for MP3 players that have some supposedly cool feature that the iPod doesn't have and that nobody wants, and "iPod killers" tend to disappear quite quickly. Microsoft is a different case; it won't disappear until Microsoft's losses on Zune exceed Apple's profit on the iPod.
I have never heard that SanDisk is making any "iPod killer", and yet somehow they managed to become number two in the market, where Microsoft is maybe a distant number four.
Apple doesn't brick iPhones because someone installed third party software.
The officially stated reason is that the installation process of certain third party software caused damage to the firmware of an iPhone, and as a consequence of that damage, applying an upgrade will brick it.
This is like someone playing around with the electrics of their car, and modifying it in such a way that plugging in the manufacturer's test equipment will explode it.
Control its own device? So Apple takes your money but the phone is still theirs? Sorry but that's just plain wrong.
This is the rare case where people trying to support Apple build up a strawman which you rightfully burn down.
If you buy an iPhone, _you_ own it. Nobody can disallow you to do with it whatever you want, and Apple can't either. However, when you modify the firmware, and in the process of modifying it damage the iPhone (which is what Apple claims; the damage was lurking around after unlocking the phone with certain software), and a software update from Apple bricks it, after Apple gave a strong warning that you should _not_ update the phone if you have unlocked it, then any damage is entirely your fault.
Like the guy who filmed an iPhone in a blender; it was entirely legal for him to do this, but the result is not covered by warranty.
Note that Phil Schiller claims that iPhones have actually been _damaged_ during the unlocking process. It is entirely possible to damage firmware in such a way that everything looks fine, but only the next firmware update will make the problem visible. There have been reports from people who bricked their iPhones when they tried to remove the unlocking; that would clearly support this theory. At least it shows that an iPhone can get bricked when doing a firmware upgrade that most definitely doesn't try to cause damage.
But if any bricking happened intentionally, then some engineer has written the code, half a dozen other engineers are quite capable of checking the code, two dozen engineers have been talking to them, and since engineers are not generally well known for being good liars, this would leak out. There is no way anyone would take that risk.
English tabloids like to send some reporter with a bit of plastic with "bomb" written on it through security checks and claim how insecure things are when the reporter gets through.
Clearly the reporter, being completely innocent and up to no harm except embarrassing the security guards, behaves in a way that _doesn't_ trigger whatever law enforcement people are lucking for. The same person with _real_ explosives and _real_ intent to hurt would behave differently and would be much more likely to be caught.
It should be common sense that if you take anything that you haven't created yourself, and add it to a commercial product, you ask a lawyer. Or you ask your manager, who will take responsibility (and ask a lawyer).
It is not only various problems specifically with fonts, it is just the problem that you don't know where these "free" fonts come from. If you don't have a piece of paper from the author that declares the font is in the public domain or gives you a license, you can't use them. If some kiddie has a collection of stolen commercial fonts and puts them on his "free fonts" webpage, you are fully responsible if you use them.
Absolutely true.
I understand the SCO scenario isn't the finest of parallels to draw, but I hardly think GP should be modded -2 Troll.
The difference is that SCO were lying through their teeth; they never had any copyrights and they knew it and the Linux community knew it. And so did everyone else.
You are missing the context. If you make a claim that I used your code with permission, and it is proven to be true, I would have to pay for damages. On the other hand, it is _your_ duty to keep the damages as small as possible. The Linux community wanted to know exactly _which_ code was infringing, so that it could be removed to minimise the damages. A consequence of that public offer and the refusal of SCO to show any such code is that any damages from that point on don't count, because these damages only happened because of SCO's refusal to tell which code was infringing.
You are also missing the fact that SCO was full of shit and didn't actually own any copyrights to any Unix code they claimed was copied into Linux. So the Linux community was calling their bluff. If SCO had said which code was copied, a community with a huge knowledge base (plus the IBM lawyers and there experts) would have a look at the code, determine within an hour where it came from and prove that it wasn't owned by SCO - as happened in the single case where SCO actually _did_ publish some allegedly copied source code.
Even GPL 2 was written by lawyers. And as it so happens, your argument would be valid in the USA if the GPL was a contract according to US law, but it isn't. It is a license. If you don't follow the terms of the GPL license, then the GPL license doesn't apply. There is no contract, nothing, just a pure copyright infringement.
Interestingly, according to German law the GPL is a contract. If you don't follow the terms of the GPL, then you can claim you never agreed to the contract in which case it is a pure copyright infringement. If you claim you agreed, then German law doesn't have the need for any consideration in the contract, so that argument falls flat. And the contract clearly states that by not following the terms you lose the right to copy, so we are straight back to copyright infringement.
It's similar to a contract that says if you don't pay the rent for three months you are out. If you don't pay for three months, paying later won't help you, because that is what the contract says.
While both are possible, they are equally unlikely.
Imagine Microsoft wanted to use some code that is published under the GPL. It doesn't really make a difference, but we can imagine that Microsoft has money in the bank, and wouldn't do something obviously illegal.
Microsoft has two choices: Use the code and follow the rules of the GPL license, or find the copyright holders and offer them money for a proprietary license. If they go the second route, unless the copyright holders for some reason refuse any business with Microsoft, there will be an agreement in the end where Microsoft will pay a certain amount to the copyright holders.
If someone else just copies the code and then doesn't follow the rules of the GPL license, the fair market value determined by our Microsoft thought experiment would be the damages. That would likely be tripled for punitive reasons (otherwise a company could just steal anything, if they didn't get caught they'd be fine and if they got caught, they would only pay what they owed anyway).
And there is real precedence, like Apple first paying for a proprietary license to CUPS and then buying the copyrights to CUPS.
What about an experienced fire fighter having a look at your restaurant kitchen and saying "that's a nice restaurant you have. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
I agree that the heuristics suitable to English or Swedish date formats might cause trouble in German, but it's not really a bug. I would say it's generally a good thing that some auto-detection is going on, or you would have to specify by hand which cells are numbers, and which are text, even when it's bloody obvious to you as well as the program.
It works as designed. Unfortunately, the design is crap. Therefore, it is a bug.
But maybe that is the difference between a Macintosh user and a Windows user. Any Macintosh user will say "this is a bug". Many Windows users will say "I guess I'm too stupid to use computers".
You should check out www.groklaw.net. There has been a lengthy article just recently about the latest anti-Linux FUD campaign. Now that SCO is bankrupt and nobody believes anymore that there is any Unix code copied into Linux illegally, they had to come up with something new. The new campaign is: Linux is self destructing! Sources are the usual suspects, like ZDNet in this case.
However, if you think about it, there are several thousand Linux developers, and with that many developers, occasional arguments are unavoidable. The same arguments happen within Microsoft software development, except that you don't read about them on some kernel development newsgroup, and the press doesn't pick up on it.
So I would think that both Verizon and AT&T were extremely interested in an exclusive deal (obviously whoever didn't get the deal would claim that they were not interested at all to save face), but much much less interested in a non-exclusive deal. And on the other hand, Apple could get a much better contract in an exclusive deal than in a non-exclusive deal. And a non-exclusive deal might have never happened.
By the way, German courts have repeatedly told record companies who wanted subpoenas to get the names of file sharers to fuck off.
For some more serious information check out this article:
http://www.goethe.de/wis/buv/thm/urh/en2550214.htm
Very quick summary: Yes, you can make copies of your CDs for private use. There are things that you are not allowed to copy, but they are not CDs.
Obviously it is now up to consumers not to buy music in a format that doesn't allow copying.
What the hell? What he wrote was complete garbage. If we was "snowed under" by SCO, then either because he was a complete idiot, or because he knew that a little bit of investigating would have stood in the way of a "good" article.
We knew that he was wrong months ago. Everybody did. Saying "I was wrong" when he wrote articles three years after SCO made itself a laughing stock in the DaimlerChrysler case, months after their "million lines" of code that iBM supposedly copied shrunk to unproven claims of about 120 lines, three years after SCO's case against Novell where it was obvious from the start that they didn't have a chance in hell (and the SCO idiots didn't even manage to get their claims right in that case in their first sttempt, forgetting to claim special damages); saying "I was wrong" when SCO has just lost their Novell court case completely and the bastards try to keep Novell from getting the money that SCO stole by claiming bankruptcy, all that is nothing that deserves any kind of respect.
What about his personal attacks against Pamela Jones? Did she get any apology from him? Didn't think so. And even when he says "I was wrong" he can't help himself but call the people at Groklaw "nerds". Even now he has to be insulting. There is a point where a reputation is just irrevocably destroyed. Daniel Lyons is way beyond that point.
>> I didn't really understand what the problem was to begin with--that is, exactly what Apple did that was locking Linux et al out of iPod.
iTunes copies two things onto an iPod when you sync: The files containing music, and a database of those files, so that the iPod can find the music quicker.
With the new iPods, the database has a checksum, which is based on the contents of the database and the serial number of the iPod. If that checksum is not correct, the iPod will refuse to play any music. Obviously iTunes knows how to calculate the checksum and stores it on the iPod.
Linux applications that could download music files + database onto an iPod didn't have the code to calculate the checksum, so after using a Linux application to fill a new iPod with music, the iPod wouldn't work. The hack that has been developed within 36 hours is really a hack: First you have to run a program that reads the serial number. Then you modify the hack program by typing in that serial number into the source code. Then you run whatever software you used to copy music onto the iPod. Then compile and run the "hack" program: It will read the database, calculate the checksum and add the checksum to the database, and everything works.
That is of course a horrible complicated way (for the end user) to do it. Expect all the Linux music players to be updated soon so that all this will happen automatically.
>> If I have a PC from work, then chances are that when it comes to my home machine I will go buy a PC. If my wife decides to buy a laptop I will get a PC for her as well.
And then you install SAP on both of them, right?
>> I'm not badmouthing Apple because my "$5 network card" doesn't work in OSX, which is completely besides the point, but it does provide an example of how my scheme could work. My "$5 network card" may not work in OSX, but if Apple had certified it for use, then Apple would have asked for a license fee to use the certification sticker on the box... maybe $2 per unit (for argument's sake)? This then turns my "$5 network card" into a $7 one.
I can't say anything about $5 network cards because all my Macs have Ethernet connectors.
On the other hand, I took the cheapest USB 2.0 PCI card that I could find and put it into my six year old PowerPC Mac, and it just worked.
I wouldn't be too surprised if a $5 network card would also just work.
On the other hand, all this is not the business that Apple is in. Apple's goal is _not_ to sell more operating systems than Microsoft does. Maybe Steve Jobs has a secret plan to achieve this thirty years from now, but right now it is not Apple's goal. It is also not Apple's goal to sell more computers than Dell does (there is a miniscule possibility that it might happen, but not because of anything that Apple does, but because of things that HP, Acer, Lenovo etc. and Dell do). It may be Apple's goal to make more profits selling computers than Dell does - and I think they are close or may even have achieved it.
But what Apple really _is_ trying to achieve is to open up more and more highly profitable niches; first because a profitable niche is profitable, and second because every time they succeed they strengthen the brand and sell more in all the other niches. At the moment the niches are: MacOS X based computers, iPods, music and video downloads, and iPhone.
The first two are highly profitable today, with tons of room for growth in MacOS X based computers, and some room for growth left in iPods. Music and video downloads make some profit today, but they have excellent potential. Might not go anywhere, or it could explode. iPhone is just starting. But operating system sales is not an important factor for Apple today.