If you are behind NAT, Skype routes your call through someone who isn't. In other words, you will be using somebody else's bandwidth for your call. And that someone probably doesn't know you are doing it. Up until this point, there has been no free software author willing to do what Skype has done. Basically, because it is unethical in many people's minds. And free software authors tend to work based on ethics.
Er, which part of that is unethical? Using other people's bandwidth is how peer-to-peer systems work, and there's no shortage of free software P2P: BitTorrent, Freenet, etc.
Apple has released version 4.0 of its iOS mobile operating system, formerly know as the iPhone OS, closing a total of 65 vulnerabilities, some of which could be used by an attacker to take remote control of the device. [...]
The iOS 4 update is only available for iPhone 3G and 3GS and second and third generation iPod Touch devices. [...] The company has yet to confirm if it will issue a separate security update for first generation iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
If they do decide to release a separate security update for older devices, then we can say they haven't dropped support for them.
Again, there haven't been new FEATURE upgrades, but it still works as well as it did when you bought it. If the phone service (on an iPhone) were no longer available, I would consider that "no support".
You misunderstand what "support" means. Apple doesn't provide phone service for the iPhone -- AT&T does, so the scenario you describe is one in which AT&T stops supporting the iPhone.
The support Apple provides is in the form of software patches. If they stop providing those patches, they stop supporting the device.
How is that "cut[ting] support"? If they literally stopped working (e.g. the playsforsure stuff, and I am NOT a general MS hater btw), that would be cutting support.
No, "support" includes patching security holes. Supporting a product means they stand behind it and ensure not only that it does what it was designed for, but also that it stays secure and stable.
For example, when people talk about Microsoft cutting support for Windows XP, they mean MS will stop providing any updates. MS's answer to any newly discovered exploits will be "sorry, we don't support that anymore, upgrade your OS."
Likewise, if Apple stops patching holes in the older iPhones (which apparently they have), then they're no longer supporting those products. Apple's answer to flaws in the older iPhones is now "sorry, we don't support that anymore, upgrade your phone."
How does an app maintain a network connection? or listen of incoming messages? Or is this not possible?
It is possible. The trick is that "unused" has a more complicated meaning than "not in the foreground".
Android divides all apps into a few different kinds of chunks, the most important of which are "activities" and "services". Activities are the visible pages that you can interact with; tapping an icon in the launcher starts an activity, and pressing the back button returns to the activity you were using before. Services are the parts that can keep running in the background.
An app that needs to keep doing something in the background must separate that part into a service. For example, the music player starts a service when you hit play, and that service keeps running even when you switch to another activity (even though the activity is suspended). When you pause or when the playlist ends, the service stops. Keeping a network connection open works similarly. The OS tries not to kill processes that are hosting a running service, but it will kill them anyway if it gets desperate enough.
Well-written apps usually put an icon in the notification bar when they have a background service running. You can also go to Settings|Applications|Running services to see which services are running or to kill them manually -- but if you ever need to do that, it probably means you installed a buggy app that you should replace with something better.
Android needs a task manager but doesn't come with one.
False. Android doesn't need a task manager: the OS suspends tasks when they become unused (leaving them in memory but not using any CPU), and kills them when it needs to reclaim their memory. Task managers are for people with OCD and people who are confused about how Android's multitasking works.
The most popular Android task manager doesn't show which apps are consuming the battery most.
Android 2.x has that built in: Settings | About phone | Battery use
I live in a metro area of around 500,000 people. My girlfriend has an account with a local bank, and their online banking site is ass-ugly and slow to update.
Yeah, those are great for people who never use ATMs (or don't mind paying $2 every time they use an ATM outside their home town), and who don't need new-fangled gimmicks like decent online banking, online bill pay, SMS notifications, and 24-hour customer service.
I used to have an account with a community bank and a credit union, then I switched to a national bank (first one, then another). The only thing I miss about the little guys are their savings account rates, but my online savings account has better rates anyway.
Can you exlplain how installing a 3rd party android build would prevent OTA installs? OTA install capabilities exist at a level lower than the OS.
The OTA install capabilities being discussed in this thread are part of the OS, so you can compile your own copy of Android without them.
Similar capabilities may also exist at a lower level -- I don't know -- but they'd just as likely exist in every other phone, and they're not what TFA is describing anyway.
Actually, this moves android from "my next phone" to a "definite maybe".
I do NOT like back doors.
You always have the option to root your phone and install a third-party build of Android that doesn't have this feature. (Unlike a certain other company, Google doesn't claim that you'd be breaking the law by doing so.)
This makes the SSL Cert that would be used to prove one is google a very valuable target indeed.
As if it isn't already? If you can impersonate Google, you can access everyone's Gmail, AdSense, AdWords, Docs, etc.
I'm sure someone could create a honeypot wifi network that forces all Android devices that connect to it to install a particular app.
Not unless they manage to compromise SSL in order to make the phone think it's talking to Google when it really isn't. If someone manages to do that, we have much bigger things to worry about than a malicious phone app.
Your UPS also wastes current. No UPS is 100% efficient.
I don't think that matters. I personally run a UPS, but not everyone does.
You're going to be using it at some point, so you can't take just the base draw as the total draw - otherwise, why have a computer? So the system sitting at home is not always going to be idling.
I was using it when I took the measurements - I meant "idle" as opposed to startup or heavy load. Heavy loads would mean hardcore gaming or number crunching, which you can't really do on a laptop anyway.
You're also ignoring the extra cooling costs because of that 150 watt heater. That's an additional 500 btus of load.
That translates into something like an extra 40 watts needed to run the air conditioner, using the minimum U.S. standard for residential A/C efficiency. I can save 40 watts just by turning off my monitor.
(Plus, since we're talking about a house, not a data center, you could just open a window or let it get a little warmer.)
Plus, let's face it, when you spend more on a better laptop, you get more than just saving electricity. You get a better screen than your el cheapo laptop, better sound, more storage, faster, more ram
Likewise, a desktop gives you a better screen, better sound, more storage, faster CPU, and more RAM than that laptop.
and since you're not connecting to your box at home, lower latency and no "dead spots" or "you can't plug that into our network to access your home computer"
Just buy a real laptop - you'll save enough energy over the life of the machine to pay for not having to leave a second computer on all the time.
Hrm... maybe. Maybe not.
My last electricity bill was $0.0618/kWh, but let's round up to $0.07. My quad-core computer, monitor, and external RAID use about 150W at idle, according to my UPS; a lower-end computer with no RAID and the monitor turned off would use less, but let's ignore that. My i3 laptop cost about $700, but let's say you can find a decent one for $600. And since we're looking at the cost of a "real laptop" vs. a Chrome OS netbook, let's subtract $350, which is the speculated mid-range price of a Chrome OS netbook. Let's also pretend the real laptop uses exactly as much power as the netbook, so it has no ongoing additional costs.
So, how long would you need to keep that desktop computer running continuously for it to be worth spending $250 on a real laptop instead?
Average replacement time for a computer seems to be 2-4 years. So depending on where you fall in that range, with these very optimistic figures, you might break even. With more realistic figures -- counting the extra electricity used by the more powerful laptop, using a less power-hungry desktop, turning off the monitor when you're away, shutting down at night -- you most likely won't. And if the real laptop you have in mind is a MacBook, forget it.
Everyone conveniently forgets, that if you lend your book to someone, or borrow one from the library, that item is no longer available for other people to see/enjoy for the duration of the loan.
Physical lending is limited to the number of copies on hand, but there are no restrictions on how many copies a person or library is allowed to have, so this really just means lending can't reduce the number of copies sold to less than some small fraction of the number of users.
Now, if you lent your software to other people, no problem, but you're not lending it, are you? you're copying it, allowing both (or all) parties to enjoy it simultaneously.
You'd still only need one copy for each person who wanted to use it simultaneously. For instance, Left 4 Dead 2 has sold millions of copies, but 99% of them are inactive at any given moment -- if not for DRM, the players as a group could theoretically have bought only 1% as many copies using an arrangement that's universally accepted as legal and ethical.
How do you think the RIAA and MPAA would react to a file sharing system that promised they'd bring in 1% as much revenue as they do now?
Except for maybe your definition of "capable" is not what people want. Maybe they want something that is easy to use, intuitive, fun, great form factor, and DOES WHAT THEY WANT IT TO DO.
That is my definition of "capable". Android is equally easy to use, equally intuitive, equally fun, has a possibly better form factor, and does even more of what they want it to do.
The Android fanbois just can't seem to understand that feature lists are not the sole deciding factor in the consumer's decision.
Meanwhile, the Apple fanbois just can't seem to understand that while they've been making excuses about "feature lists", Android has caught up or surpassed them in just about every other respect, too.
(Speaking of excuses about feature lists, remember when it was in style to pretend you didn't need a third party SDK, copy and paste, multitasking, or tethering? Funny how that changed. I guess people do care about that stuff after all.)
But how can they know until it's written? What may sound like a good idea could be ruined by poor execution.
That's true, they can't know for sure. But the same is true of all services: whenever you pay anyone to do anything, there's a chance it might not turn out the way you'd like. Markets have been working successfully for centuries in spite of that, with various ways for buyers and sellers to minimize their risk.
The existing system - book is written, people hear good reviews of it, they go out and buy it - seems to work for most people.
It's not an entirely broken system, but it's hardly the best available option. It's only as successful as it is because it's subsidized by restrictions on individual rights and on the advancement of technology.
Like when an author signs a deal with a publisher in exchange for an advance, or a band signs with a record company?
Almost like that, but as you note, publishers just push the problem back one level.
See, a publisher doesn't benefit directly from a book being written. They only benefit when they can sell copies. The true market is not publishers, but readers.
Readers are ultimately the ones who benefit from the author's services, and even today they're ultimately the ones who end up paying for those services -- but they do it through a Rube Goldberg-esque series of middlemen that involves a bunch of speculation and waste.
A more sensible model would have a more direct link between the authors who write books and the readers who want books to be written, which would allow authors to know ahead of time whether there was sufficient demand for their services. Middlemen could still serve to introduce readers to authors and vice versa, and save authors from having to handle hundreds of thousands of payments by themselves, but they wouldn't be in the business of speculating with their own money.
Libraries buy books. I don't know if they also pay an additional fee, but one purchase price is still more than zero.
Likewise, file sharers almost always buy software, music, and movies (although there are cases where something gets leaked before release). Those files don't just appear on torrent sites all by themselves - they're ripped by people who have physical copies.
Okay, that's a technicality, but if you mean the 8"x4.2" Archos, I don't think that's exactly equivalent to the 9"x7.5" iPad.
Please, let's not pretend that matching the exact size of the iPad is some kind of requirement for tablets -- especially in light of all the reports that the iPad itself is too heavy to hold comfortably for more than a few minutes. It's ridiculous to suggest that a million tablet buyers considered the Archos tablet but rejected it because the dimensions weren't quite right.
Wow, Archos has an Android tablet out for months and no one knows about it. Quite the successful product.
Apple has one out for 2 months and it's still getting good reviews and is selling left and right.
Funny how that works, isn't it? The press fawns over every word that comes out of Steve Jobs's mouth, treats every Apple product announcement as front-page news, hypes the iPad for months before its release, and coincidentally Apple's tablet ends up better-known and better-selling than a more capable tablet from a company that doesn't receive the same treatment. Why, it's almost as if Apple's success has more to do with marketing than product quality.
Have you actually TRIED using a desktop app on a smartphone, doesn't work very well at all. The ipad is almost exactly the right size for a portable tablet which makes desktop UI apps usable.
Then it ought to work just fine on one of the Android tablets that's already out, or one of the ones coming out later this year.
How is that new droid tablet? Oh, they don't have one yet?
Nice try, but actually Archos has had an Android tablet out for months now. And more from other manufacturers (like the MSI WindPad) are slated to come out this year.
In the case of lending a book or property, theres still only a single instance of the property in use. In the case of file sharing, the original good is duplicated into two separate instances of equivalent good, hence the "copy" part.
The court quite rightly realized that the number of copies is irrelevant. The effect of sharing is the same as the effect of lending, both on consumers (who get their media desires sated for free) and on publishers (who don't get paid).
Consider the difference between a file sharing site that lets you download any song you want, and a hypothetical "file lending site" that lets you listen to any song you want (anywhere, on any device, at any time(*)). The only real difference is that one site leaves you with more free space on your hard drive, and the other leaves you with more free bandwidth. But as far as your appetite for music and the publisher's appetite for money are concerned, they might as well be the same.
(* Physical lending is limited to the number of copies on hand, but that number might as well be infinite, because there are no restrictions on how many copies a person or library is allowed to lend. For the "lending site" analogy to be perfect, it would have to buy multiple copies of popular songs, but that number would still be much lower than the number of listeners.)
You're doing something worse. You're telling people how they should use technology and consume content. You're telling people to stop using the internet for exactly what it was designed for--copying information at no cost--because you're upset that technological advancement has invalidated the old business model of distributing media.
It's even worse than that, I'm afraid. He's restricting speech in order to, at best, make it a little easier for someone else to make a buck.
This isn't just about the internet: it also affects the telephone, the mail, even the human voice. Copyright makes it illegal to share too many facts about a piece of property that you own: "Hey Bob, how's it going? I got this cool new book. The first word on the first page is 'Call'. Isn't that exciting? The next word is 'me'. After that it says 'Ishmael'. Want me to keep going?" And if you do keep going, pretty soon you will have broken the law.
The difference isn't semantic. It's the difference between one copy being passed around, and many copies being created.
That difference is irrelevant, because the effect is the same for everyone involved. If I can get all my media needs filled for free, it doesn't really matter whether that involves passing around a single copy or making multiple copies. It matters in court, but it doesn't matter to me and my wallet, and it doesn't matter to the publisher's bottom line.
From the publisher's perspective, there's no difference between borrowing a book from the library and downloading a pirated copy from the internet: either way, I'm reading the book for free and the publisher isn't getting paid. The only difference is that in one case he can sue someone, and in the other he just has to accept the "loss".
Slashdot Mirror
If you are behind NAT, Skype routes your call through someone who isn't. In other words, you will be using somebody else's bandwidth for your call. And that someone probably doesn't know you are doing it. Up until this point, there has been no free software author willing to do what Skype has done. Basically, because it is unethical in many people's minds. And free software authors tend to work based on ethics.
Er, which part of that is unethical? Using other people's bandwidth is how peer-to-peer systems work, and there's no shortage of free software P2P: BitTorrent, Freenet, etc.
Name specific security holes that exist in the older ones that they have said "we aren't releasing patches".
link
If they do decide to release a separate security update for older devices, then we can say they haven't dropped support for them.
Again, there haven't been new FEATURE upgrades, but it still works as well as it did when you bought it. If the phone service (on an iPhone) were no longer available, I would consider that "no support".
You misunderstand what "support" means. Apple doesn't provide phone service for the iPhone -- AT&T does, so the scenario you describe is one in which AT&T stops supporting the iPhone.
The support Apple provides is in the form of software patches. If they stop providing those patches, they stop supporting the device.
How is that "cut[ting] support"? If they literally stopped working (e.g. the playsforsure stuff, and I am NOT a general MS hater btw), that would be cutting support.
No, "support" includes patching security holes. Supporting a product means they stand behind it and ensure not only that it does what it was designed for, but also that it stays secure and stable.
For example, when people talk about Microsoft cutting support for Windows XP, they mean MS will stop providing any updates. MS's answer to any newly discovered exploits will be "sorry, we don't support that anymore, upgrade your OS."
Likewise, if Apple stops patching holes in the older iPhones (which apparently they have), then they're no longer supporting those products. Apple's answer to flaws in the older iPhones is now "sorry, we don't support that anymore, upgrade your phone."
How does an app maintain a network connection? or listen of incoming messages? Or is this not possible?
It is possible. The trick is that "unused" has a more complicated meaning than "not in the foreground".
Android divides all apps into a few different kinds of chunks, the most important of which are "activities" and "services". Activities are the visible pages that you can interact with; tapping an icon in the launcher starts an activity, and pressing the back button returns to the activity you were using before. Services are the parts that can keep running in the background.
An app that needs to keep doing something in the background must separate that part into a service. For example, the music player starts a service when you hit play, and that service keeps running even when you switch to another activity (even though the activity is suspended). When you pause or when the playlist ends, the service stops. Keeping a network connection open works similarly. The OS tries not to kill processes that are hosting a running service, but it will kill them anyway if it gets desperate enough.
Well-written apps usually put an icon in the notification bar when they have a background service running. You can also go to Settings|Applications|Running services to see which services are running or to kill them manually -- but if you ever need to do that, it probably means you installed a buggy app that you should replace with something better.
Android needs a task manager but doesn't come with one.
False. Android doesn't need a task manager: the OS suspends tasks when they become unused (leaving them in memory but not using any CPU), and kills them when it needs to reclaim their memory. Task managers are for people with OCD and people who are confused about how Android's multitasking works.
The most popular Android task manager doesn't show which apps are consuming the battery most.
Android 2.x has that built in: Settings | About phone | Battery use
My community bank has all that... and more!
Maybe it depends on the community.
I live in a metro area of around 500,000 people. My girlfriend has an account with a local bank, and their online banking site is ass-ugly and slow to update.
What does your bank do about out-of-town ATMs?
As for the iPhone, Apple doesn't seriously try to block jailbreaking.
This statement is not true, unless you consider trying to have jailbreaking declared illegal non-serious.
Yeah, those are great for people who never use ATMs (or don't mind paying $2 every time they use an ATM outside their home town), and who don't need new-fangled gimmicks like decent online banking, online bill pay, SMS notifications, and 24-hour customer service.
I used to have an account with a community bank and a credit union, then I switched to a national bank (first one, then another). The only thing I miss about the little guys are their savings account rates, but my online savings account has better rates anyway.
Can you exlplain how installing a 3rd party android build would prevent OTA installs? OTA install capabilities exist at a level lower than the OS.
The OTA install capabilities being discussed in this thread are part of the OS, so you can compile your own copy of Android without them.
Similar capabilities may also exist at a lower level -- I don't know -- but they'd just as likely exist in every other phone, and they're not what TFA is describing anyway.
Actually, this moves android from "my next phone" to a "definite maybe".
I do NOT like back doors.
You always have the option to root your phone and install a third-party build of Android that doesn't have this feature. (Unlike a certain other company, Google doesn't claim that you'd be breaking the law by doing so.)
This makes the SSL Cert that would be used to prove one is google a very valuable target indeed.
As if it isn't already? If you can impersonate Google, you can access everyone's Gmail, AdSense, AdWords, Docs, etc.
I'm sure someone could create a honeypot wifi network that forces all Android devices that connect to it to install a particular app.
Not unless they manage to compromise SSL in order to make the phone think it's talking to Google when it really isn't. If someone manages to do that, we have much bigger things to worry about than a malicious phone app.
Your UPS also wastes current. No UPS is 100% efficient.
I don't think that matters. I personally run a UPS, but not everyone does.
You're going to be using it at some point, so you can't take just the base draw as the total draw - otherwise, why have a computer? So the system sitting at home is not always going to be idling.
I was using it when I took the measurements - I meant "idle" as opposed to startup or heavy load. Heavy loads would mean hardcore gaming or number crunching, which you can't really do on a laptop anyway.
You're also ignoring the extra cooling costs because of that 150 watt heater. That's an additional 500 btus of load.
That translates into something like an extra 40 watts needed to run the air conditioner, using the minimum U.S. standard for residential A/C efficiency. I can save 40 watts just by turning off my monitor.
(Plus, since we're talking about a house, not a data center, you could just open a window or let it get a little warmer.)
Plus, let's face it, when you spend more on a better laptop, you get more than just saving electricity. You get a better screen than your el cheapo laptop, better sound, more storage, faster, more ram
Likewise, a desktop gives you a better screen, better sound, more storage, faster CPU, and more RAM than that laptop.
and since you're not connecting to your box at home, lower latency and no "dead spots" or "you can't plug that into our network to access your home computer"
Fair enough.
Just buy a real laptop - you'll save enough energy over the life of the machine to pay for not having to leave a second computer on all the time.
Hrm... maybe. Maybe not.
My last electricity bill was $0.0618/kWh, but let's round up to $0.07. My quad-core computer, monitor, and external RAID use about 150W at idle, according to my UPS; a lower-end computer with no RAID and the monitor turned off would use less, but let's ignore that. My i3 laptop cost about $700, but let's say you can find a decent one for $600. And since we're looking at the cost of a "real laptop" vs. a Chrome OS netbook, let's subtract $350, which is the speculated mid-range price of a Chrome OS netbook. Let's also pretend the real laptop uses exactly as much power as the netbook, so it has no ongoing additional costs.
So, how long would you need to keep that desktop computer running continuously for it to be worth spending $250 on a real laptop instead?
(250 USD) / (0.07 USD/kWh) / (0.150 kW) / (24 hr/day) / (365 day/yr) = 2.7 years
Average replacement time for a computer seems to be 2-4 years. So depending on where you fall in that range, with these very optimistic figures, you might break even. With more realistic figures -- counting the extra electricity used by the more powerful laptop, using a less power-hungry desktop, turning off the monitor when you're away, shutting down at night -- you most likely won't. And if the real laptop you have in mind is a MacBook, forget it.
Everyone conveniently forgets, that if you lend your book to someone, or borrow one from the library, that item is no longer available for other people to see/enjoy for the duration of the loan.
Physical lending is limited to the number of copies on hand, but there are no restrictions on how many copies a person or library is allowed to have, so this really just means lending can't reduce the number of copies sold to less than some small fraction of the number of users.
Now, if you lent your software to other people, no problem, but you're not lending it, are you? you're copying it, allowing both (or all) parties to enjoy it simultaneously.
You'd still only need one copy for each person who wanted to use it simultaneously. For instance, Left 4 Dead 2 has sold millions of copies, but 99% of them are inactive at any given moment -- if not for DRM, the players as a group could theoretically have bought only 1% as many copies using an arrangement that's universally accepted as legal and ethical.
How do you think the RIAA and MPAA would react to a file sharing system that promised they'd bring in 1% as much revenue as they do now?
Except for maybe your definition of "capable" is not what people want. Maybe they want something that is easy to use, intuitive, fun, great form factor, and DOES WHAT THEY WANT IT TO DO.
That is my definition of "capable". Android is equally easy to use, equally intuitive, equally fun, has a possibly better form factor, and does even more of what they want it to do.
The Android fanbois just can't seem to understand that feature lists are not the sole deciding factor in the consumer's decision.
Meanwhile, the Apple fanbois just can't seem to understand that while they've been making excuses about "feature lists", Android has caught up or surpassed them in just about every other respect, too.
(Speaking of excuses about feature lists, remember when it was in style to pretend you didn't need a third party SDK, copy and paste, multitasking, or tethering? Funny how that changed. I guess people do care about that stuff after all.)
But how can they know until it's written? What may sound like a good idea could be ruined by poor execution.
That's true, they can't know for sure. But the same is true of all services: whenever you pay anyone to do anything, there's a chance it might not turn out the way you'd like. Markets have been working successfully for centuries in spite of that, with various ways for buyers and sellers to minimize their risk.
The existing system - book is written, people hear good reviews of it, they go out and buy it - seems to work for most people.
It's not an entirely broken system, but it's hardly the best available option. It's only as successful as it is because it's subsidized by restrictions on individual rights and on the advancement of technology.
Like when an author signs a deal with a publisher in exchange for an advance, or a band signs with a record company?
Almost like that, but as you note, publishers just push the problem back one level.
See, a publisher doesn't benefit directly from a book being written. They only benefit when they can sell copies. The true market is not publishers, but readers.
Readers are ultimately the ones who benefit from the author's services, and even today they're ultimately the ones who end up paying for those services -- but they do it through a Rube Goldberg-esque series of middlemen that involves a bunch of speculation and waste.
A more sensible model would have a more direct link between the authors who write books and the readers who want books to be written, which would allow authors to know ahead of time whether there was sufficient demand for their services. Middlemen could still serve to introduce readers to authors and vice versa, and save authors from having to handle hundreds of thousands of payments by themselves, but they wouldn't be in the business of speculating with their own money.
Libraries buy books. I don't know if they also pay an additional fee, but one purchase price is still more than zero.
Likewise, file sharers almost always buy software, music, and movies (although there are cases where something gets leaked before release). Those files don't just appear on torrent sites all by themselves - they're ripped by people who have physical copies.
Okay, that's a technicality, but if you mean the 8"x4.2" Archos, I don't think that's exactly equivalent to the 9"x7.5" iPad.
Please, let's not pretend that matching the exact size of the iPad is some kind of requirement for tablets -- especially in light of all the reports that the iPad itself is too heavy to hold comfortably for more than a few minutes. It's ridiculous to suggest that a million tablet buyers considered the Archos tablet but rejected it because the dimensions weren't quite right.
Wow, Archos has an Android tablet out for months and no one knows about it. Quite the successful product.
Apple has one out for 2 months and it's still getting good reviews and is selling left and right.
Funny how that works, isn't it? The press fawns over every word that comes out of Steve Jobs's mouth, treats every Apple product announcement as front-page news, hypes the iPad for months before its release, and coincidentally Apple's tablet ends up better-known and better-selling than a more capable tablet from a company that doesn't receive the same treatment. Why, it's almost as if Apple's success has more to do with marketing than product quality.
Have you actually TRIED using a desktop app on a smartphone, doesn't work very well at all. The ipad is almost exactly the right size for a portable tablet which makes desktop UI apps usable.
Then it ought to work just fine on one of the Android tablets that's already out, or one of the ones coming out later this year.
How is that new droid tablet? Oh, they don't have one yet?
Nice try, but actually Archos has had an Android tablet out for months now. And more from other manufacturers (like the MSI WindPad) are slated to come out this year.
In the case of lending a book or property, theres still only a single instance of the property in use. In the case of file sharing, the original good is duplicated into two separate instances of equivalent good, hence the "copy" part.
The court quite rightly realized that the number of copies is irrelevant. The effect of sharing is the same as the effect of lending, both on consumers (who get their media desires sated for free) and on publishers (who don't get paid).
Consider the difference between a file sharing site that lets you download any song you want, and a hypothetical "file lending site" that lets you listen to any song you want (anywhere, on any device, at any time(*)). The only real difference is that one site leaves you with more free space on your hard drive, and the other leaves you with more free bandwidth. But as far as your appetite for music and the publisher's appetite for money are concerned, they might as well be the same.
(* Physical lending is limited to the number of copies on hand, but that number might as well be infinite, because there are no restrictions on how many copies a person or library is allowed to lend. For the "lending site" analogy to be perfect, it would have to buy multiple copies of popular songs, but that number would still be much lower than the number of listeners.)
You're doing something worse. You're telling people how they should use technology and consume content. You're telling people to stop using the internet for exactly what it was designed for--copying information at no cost--because you're upset that technological advancement has invalidated the old business model of distributing media.
It's even worse than that, I'm afraid. He's restricting speech in order to, at best, make it a little easier for someone else to make a buck.
This isn't just about the internet: it also affects the telephone, the mail, even the human voice. Copyright makes it illegal to share too many facts about a piece of property that you own: "Hey Bob, how's it going? I got this cool new book. The first word on the first page is 'Call'. Isn't that exciting? The next word is 'me'. After that it says 'Ishmael'. Want me to keep going?" And if you do keep going, pretty soon you will have broken the law.
The difference isn't semantic. It's the difference between one copy being passed around, and many copies being created.
That difference is irrelevant, because the effect is the same for everyone involved. If I can get all my media needs filled for free, it doesn't really matter whether that involves passing around a single copy or making multiple copies. It matters in court, but it doesn't matter to me and my wallet, and it doesn't matter to the publisher's bottom line.
From the publisher's perspective, there's no difference between borrowing a book from the library and downloading a pirated copy from the internet: either way, I'm reading the book for free and the publisher isn't getting paid. The only difference is that in one case he can sue someone, and in the other he just has to accept the "loss".