Apple say, on their battery page, that the battery will hold 80% of its original charge after 400 full charge cycles.
Now, in absolute fairness, you'd be doing bloody well to use more than one full charge cycle per day for a year, and even if you did the battery still wouldn't need replacing.
The only people this will affect are people buying second-hand iPhones, which isn't this guy.
Thing is, the first gen iPod was still very popular. Lots of people bought it and liked it because it did exactly what it claimed to do, and it did it well.
Like the iPhone, the iPod didn't ever claim to be the best audio player you'll ever buy. The iPod won out in specific areas that Apple considered to be most important, and it was worthwhile (temporarily, in some instances) sacrificing other aspects in order to provide for what Apple considered to be the important ones. The iPod UI has barely changed since the 1G, and it's been copied extensively. The UI and the iTunes synchronisation together made the iPod easy enough to use that anybody could, and they did--in droves. Certainly, Apple improved upon it, and made it PC-friendly by the third generation, but by that point it had long since taken off.
The people who are bitching and moaning about the 1G iPhone are the same people who bitched and moaned about the first few generations of the iPod (and in many cases, the same people who bitch and moan about all iPods). The thing is, Apple doesn't really care. Sure, it cares, in that it wants to make a better product--and it no doubt will--but in a lot of instances, the complaints levelled against the iPod and iPhone are those which would at the moment cause it to shift away from what's made it successful, and in the iPod's case, that's shifting away from being by a huge margin the most successful portable music player on the planet. Essentially, those people are categorised either into "you're right, but we'll fix that in the next gen" or "you're not our target market".
Whether that's how it should be or not, I don't really know. It's been Apple's strategy since Jobs took over again, and it's difficult to argue against it being an effective one, even if it's not everybody's tastes. (It's exactly the same with the Mac, incidentally: lots of PC users don't want to buy/use Macs because of things that Apple won't ever change, rather than actual faults with them; Apple hears what they're saying, but isn't going to compromise for the sake of sheer volume--market share keeps them in business, but they don't need to supplant the entire PC market in order to be incredibly successful).
I think one area of concern is merely that of singling out Linux, because that so often gets seized upon as a source of FUD. The only significant factor regarding Linux as a source of infringements is its size and complexity, and of course there are many many other pieces of software which fall into that category.
Thing is, though, there's nothing much worse about somebody from say, the CIA, contributing false information wilfully, as opposed to somebody doing it without realising.
In either case, Wikipedia has (by and large) mechanisms which prevent it from being a problem in anything more than the very short term. Claims have to be verifiable, or they're marked as not being, which tends to be a hint to anybody reading that it's just conjecture.
And to just repeat that statement continually misses the point entirely. "Infringing a software patent"means nothing except "you might be taken to court". It says absolutely nothing about the likelihood of winning or losing the case.
Given the frivolity of many of the patents that have been issued, it's going to be extremely difficult for any piece of software of any reasonable complexity to not infringe upon a granted patent, open source or otherwise, but that doesn't actually mean that any actual innovation took place, that the patent holder would win an infringement suit (it doesn't mean they'd lose, either), or that the developers of the software did anything wrong.
All that patent is--until it's been tested--is a hypothetical opportunity to stand up in front of a judge and attempt to argue that you did in fact invent the thing being described by the patent and that the defendant is utilising it without your permission.
In real terms, talking about "infringing upon software patents" is absolutely meaningless. Talk about specific patents, and ones which actually have some grounding, and you're into the realm of a tangible risk. Anything other than that, though--talking about infringement in general terms--is basically just one of those footnotes or random statistics that people mention from time to time; it shouldn't, and in a practical sense can't have any bearing on the development of software, be it open source or not.
How many of those patents have actually been tested in court?
A patent that's merely been granted is just a tool to persuade people to stop doing something you don't like. It doesn't actually mean that you hold that "IP", just that you have a right to take somebody to court who you believe is violating it and put it to the (legal) test, provided you're aware that you may very well lose.
The patent system (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) balances a reduced burden upon the patent examiners (who can't reasonably be experts in all fields) with an increased burden upon those who actually want to protect the IP that they've developed: if you want to assert your ownership over some piece of technology, you'd better be prepared to prove to a judge that you're entitled to it.
Because of that, a patent that's never been tested is just a license to go to court, and very little else. Don't get me wrong, that license to go to court is important, but somebody apparently violating an untested patent doesn't mean there's some kind of IP theft going on, just that there might be.
No, they were just indemnifying them against any action they were thinking of taking.
SCO basically just said "if you sign up for our 'Linux license', we won't sue you for copyright/patent/whatever infringement" (despite, of course, not being able to demonstrate that they'd have any shred of a case if they actually did).
Take a look at your average EULA, it basically contains the same disclaimers as the GPL or the BSD license, but without any of the nice aspects to them.
Not strictly true: Bonjour is one of Apple's open source components (it's available in pre-packaged forms for a great many different operating systems, including Linux, Windows and FreeBSD). Their development model in this instance is not particularly different to that of the Apache web server.
That's why lots and lots of places are only upgrading to CS3 because it's Universal Binary and so runs on their shiny new Macs. Scores of design shops are still happily running Photoshop 7.
No ISP would be plain retarded enough to block all encrypted traffic, on the grounds that it takes away a big reason for people to use the Internet (and thus their service) in the first place: buying stuff online.
(Christ, I had to give up mod points to point this out)
Read the release notes for the latest Xcode releases: it specifically mentions 64-bit Intel support, if memory serves. The developer docs are just a little bit out of date.
In any case, the OS X Mach-O loader actually understands VAX, 68k, x86, x86_64, mc98k, hppa, SPARC, i860, PPC an PPC64 (with numerous subtypes for each). In the wild, though, you get binaries that are optimised specifically for G3/G4/G5 (in 32-bit flavours), G5 (64-bit), Intel (32-bit) and Intel (64-bit). The G3/G4/G5 32-bit versions all use the same system libraries, might contain different application-level code.
If you want more "proof":
$ lipo -info/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem. B.dylib Architectures in the fat file:/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem. B.dylib are: ppc ppc64 i386 x86_64
But that's fine: they can also make the source available internally, if they want to. It doesn't mean any of the employees would bother to grab a copy or make it available externally (as they'd be within their rights to do).
Oh, and also, they're free to provide content in DRM-encumbered WMV if they like; provided it's not the only format (or more importantly: that Windows isn't the only supported platform for which) they make content available in via the service.
Indeed, if they were to release an open source player for their video files under a vaguely reasonable license, it doesn't really matter whether it's DRM-encumbered WMV, or anything else. Microsoft would never let them do that, which is a bit of an acid test for a media format, really.
Yes, being British (and especially as Windows isn't my primary platform), the fact it's a closed, proprietary format pisses me off no end, especially when it's one that I can't easily play and have already paid for.
Moreover, in a few years' time, the content will be useless if it's all Windows Media Video with DRM restrictions.
However, my response was purely to your "it's just plain silly particularly from a news agency trying to reach as many people as possible": characterising the BBC as merely a news agency misrepresents them, and their remit isn't particularly to reach as many people as possible--however their role as a public service broadcaster (operating under charter) is one whereby they are supposed to remain neutral, both in terms of content and in delivery method.
The fact it's WMV is a big deal, even without the DRM. The DRM on its own would be a big deal. It's easy to find fault with either aspect of it. Taken together, it's retarded.
You seem to have missed the point if you think their being a news agency has much relevancy. They're a broadcaster and content producer: news is just one small part of what they do. It's the other (read: prime-time) content that people are interested in, for the most part.
Given that iSync is built on SyncML, it's a fairly safe bet that the iPhone will support it--but it only does Bluetooth or USB syncing for contacts/calendar syncing.
Mind you, what server-side software supports OTA SyncML that's actually in widespread use? (Genuine question, incidentally--I don't know what SyncML server support is like). Having a spec is one thing, but the implementation needs to be there too, after all.
In fairness, an awful lot of Windows administrators are just as clueless as the Linux "I've got {Red Hat,SuSE,Ubuntu} installed on an external drive on my computer at home and can add users through the GUI tools" wannabes, and just as hard to find really clued Windows sysadmins.
Because Windows already has more than enough traction in corporate environments, the barrier for Linux (or anything non-Windows, in fact) adoption is pretty high: you still need to support the Windows systems, and you can't very well just sack your existing sysadmin. Unless Corporate IT already has Unix in its skill-set, you need to have some serious demonstrable (cost-saving) advantages to pull it off.
Of course, were the situation reversed, the same would apply. Try persuading a firm of graphic designers who have Macs throughout to install a Windows server, for example.
It's not something that has to be inherently proprietary, though, and complete reliance on it is silly (even if you provide a push-notification mechanism, it's still sensible to provide POP or IMAP-based access as well). If people want to pay data charges for continual access to their e-mail, let them.
Realistically, why isn't there an open standards/source-based push e-mail system out there? Strikes me as an odd part of the chain to be missing.
I wonder if Kannel does something like this, actually...
Slashdot Mirror
The OP said "crappy sales".
I didn't say (not in my post, at any rate) that the iPhone was any good.
Ah yes, because selling 7,500 iPhones per hour in the first 30 hours of its release is "crappy".
Apple say, on their battery page, that the battery will hold 80% of its original charge after 400 full charge cycles.
Now, in absolute fairness, you'd be doing bloody well to use more than one full charge cycle per day for a year, and even if you did the battery still wouldn't need replacing.
The only people this will affect are people buying second-hand iPhones, which isn't this guy.
Yeah, I thought some of the TRON variants were in pretty massive widespread use in embedded systems, especially in Japan.
Thing is, the first gen iPod was still very popular. Lots of people bought it and liked it because it did exactly what it claimed to do, and it did it well.
Like the iPhone, the iPod didn't ever claim to be the best audio player you'll ever buy. The iPod won out in specific areas that Apple considered to be most important, and it was worthwhile (temporarily, in some instances) sacrificing other aspects in order to provide for what Apple considered to be the important ones. The iPod UI has barely changed since the 1G, and it's been copied extensively. The UI and the iTunes synchronisation together made the iPod easy enough to use that anybody could, and they did--in droves. Certainly, Apple improved upon it, and made it PC-friendly by the third generation, but by that point it had long since taken off.
The people who are bitching and moaning about the 1G iPhone are the same people who bitched and moaned about the first few generations of the iPod (and in many cases, the same people who bitch and moan about all iPods). The thing is, Apple doesn't really care. Sure, it cares, in that it wants to make a better product--and it no doubt will--but in a lot of instances, the complaints levelled against the iPod and iPhone are those which would at the moment cause it to shift away from what's made it successful, and in the iPod's case, that's shifting away from being by a huge margin the most successful portable music player on the planet. Essentially, those people are categorised either into "you're right, but we'll fix that in the next gen" or "you're not our target market".
Whether that's how it should be or not, I don't really know. It's been Apple's strategy since Jobs took over again, and it's difficult to argue against it being an effective one, even if it's not everybody's tastes. (It's exactly the same with the Mac, incidentally: lots of PC users don't want to buy/use Macs because of things that Apple won't ever change, rather than actual faults with them; Apple hears what they're saying, but isn't going to compromise for the sake of sheer volume--market share keeps them in business, but they don't need to supplant the entire PC market in order to be incredibly successful).
That's not what people said about the iPod when it was launched. Go look at the Slashdot posts/comments on it.
"It's not nearly as good as . Apple are dumb."
"I think we are in agreement."
:-)
I think you may be right
I think one area of concern is merely that of singling out Linux, because that so often gets seized upon as a source of FUD. The only significant factor regarding Linux as a source of infringements is its size and complexity, and of course there are many many other pieces of software which fall into that category.
Thing is, though, there's nothing much worse about somebody from say, the CIA, contributing false information wilfully, as opposed to somebody doing it without realising.
In either case, Wikipedia has (by and large) mechanisms which prevent it from being a problem in anything more than the very short term. Claims have to be verifiable, or they're marked as not being, which tends to be a hint to anybody reading that it's just conjecture.
And to just repeat that statement continually misses the point entirely. "Infringing a software patent"means nothing except "you might be taken to court". It says absolutely nothing about the likelihood of winning or losing the case.
Given the frivolity of many of the patents that have been issued, it's going to be extremely difficult for any piece of software of any reasonable complexity to not infringe upon a granted patent, open source or otherwise, but that doesn't actually mean that any actual innovation took place, that the patent holder would win an infringement suit (it doesn't mean they'd lose, either), or that the developers of the software did anything wrong.
All that patent is--until it's been tested--is a hypothetical opportunity to stand up in front of a judge and attempt to argue that you did in fact invent the thing being described by the patent and that the defendant is utilising it without your permission.
In real terms, talking about "infringing upon software patents" is absolutely meaningless. Talk about specific patents, and ones which actually have some grounding, and you're into the realm of a tangible risk. Anything other than that, though--talking about infringement in general terms--is basically just one of those footnotes or random statistics that people mention from time to time; it shouldn't, and in a practical sense can't have any bearing on the development of software, be it open source or not.
...would be "is there a major web-site which doesn't have a presence from at least one intelligence agency?"
How many of those patents have actually been tested in court?
A patent that's merely been granted is just a tool to persuade people to stop doing something you don't like. It doesn't actually mean that you hold that "IP", just that you have a right to take somebody to court who you believe is violating it and put it to the (legal) test, provided you're aware that you may very well lose.
The patent system (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) balances a reduced burden upon the patent examiners (who can't reasonably be experts in all fields) with an increased burden upon those who actually want to protect the IP that they've developed: if you want to assert your ownership over some piece of technology, you'd better be prepared to prove to a judge that you're entitled to it.
Because of that, a patent that's never been tested is just a license to go to court, and very little else. Don't get me wrong, that license to go to court is important, but somebody apparently violating an untested patent doesn't mean there's some kind of IP theft going on, just that there might be.
No, they were just indemnifying them against any action they were thinking of taking.
SCO basically just said "if you sign up for our 'Linux license', we won't sue you for copyright/patent/whatever infringement" (despite, of course, not being able to demonstrate that they'd have any shred of a case if they actually did).
Take a look at your average EULA, it basically contains the same disclaimers as the GPL or the BSD license, but without any of the nice aspects to them.
Not strictly true: Bonjour is one of Apple's open source components (it's available in pre-packaged forms for a great many different operating systems, including Linux, Windows and FreeBSD). Their development model in this instance is not particularly different to that of the Apache web server.
That's why lots and lots of places are only upgrading to CS3 because it's Universal Binary and so runs on their shiny new Macs. Scores of design shops are still happily running Photoshop 7.
What the hell do you think SSL is?
No ISP would be plain retarded enough to block all encrypted traffic, on the grounds that it takes away a big reason for people to use the Internet (and thus their service) in the first place: buying stuff online.
(Christ, I had to give up mod points to point this out)
Read the release notes for the latest Xcode releases: it specifically mentions 64-bit Intel support, if memory serves. The developer docs are just a little bit out of date.
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem. B.dylib /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem. B.dylib are: ppc ppc64 i386 x86_64
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem. B.dylib /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/libSystem. B.dylib
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/include/mach/m achine.h which lists the known CPU types and subtypes.
In any case, the OS X Mach-O loader actually understands VAX, 68k, x86, x86_64, mc98k, hppa, SPARC, i860, PPC an PPC64 (with numerous subtypes for each). In the wild, though, you get binaries that are optimised specifically for G3/G4/G5 (in 32-bit flavours), G5 (64-bit), Intel (32-bit) and Intel (64-bit). The G3/G4/G5 32-bit versions all use the same system libraries, might contain different application-level code.
If you want more "proof":
$ lipo -info
Architectures in the fat file:
$ lipo -detailed_info
Fat header in:
fat_magic 0xcafebabe
nfat_arch 4
architecture ppc
cputype CPU_TYPE_POWERPC
cpusubtype CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_ALL
offset 4096
size 276976
align 2^12 (4096)
architecture ppc64
cputype CPU_TYPE_POWERPC64
cpusubtype CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_ALL
offset 282624
size 119204
align 2^12 (4096)
architecture i386
cputype CPU_TYPE_I386
cpusubtype CPU_SUBTYPE_I386_ALL
offset 405504
size 249320
align 2^12 (4096)
architecture x86_64
cputype CPU_TYPE_X86_64
cpusubtype CPU_SUBTYPE_X86_64_ALL
offset 655360
size 111540
align 2^12 (4096)
See also
But that's fine: they can also make the source available internally, if they want to. It doesn't mean any of the employees would bother to grab a copy or make it available externally (as they'd be within their rights to do).
Well, I'm assuming you wouldn't be VPN'ing to a box on the end of a consumer-grade Internet connection.
It's just a shame that HTTPS is so damned slow, not to mention all the CA issues.
You'd probably be better off browsing via a VPN.
Oh, and also, they're free to provide content in DRM-encumbered WMV if they like; provided it's not the only format (or more importantly: that Windows isn't the only supported platform for which) they make content available in via the service.
Indeed, if they were to release an open source player for their video files under a vaguely reasonable license, it doesn't really matter whether it's DRM-encumbered WMV, or anything else. Microsoft would never let them do that, which is a bit of an acid test for a media format, really.
Yes, being British (and especially as Windows isn't my primary platform), the fact it's a closed, proprietary format pisses me off no end, especially when it's one that I can't easily play and have already paid for.
Moreover, in a few years' time, the content will be useless if it's all Windows Media Video with DRM restrictions.
However, my response was purely to your "it's just plain silly particularly from a news agency trying to reach as many people as possible": characterising the BBC as merely a news agency misrepresents them, and their remit isn't particularly to reach as many people as possible--however their role as a public service broadcaster (operating under charter) is one whereby they are supposed to remain neutral, both in terms of content and in delivery method.
The fact it's WMV is a big deal, even without the DRM. The DRM on its own would be a big deal. It's easy to find fault with either aspect of it. Taken together, it's retarded.
You seem to have missed the point if you think their being a news agency has much relevancy. They're a broadcaster and content producer: news is just one small part of what they do. It's the other (read: prime-time) content that people are interested in, for the most part.
Given that iSync is built on SyncML, it's a fairly safe bet that the iPhone will support it--but it only does Bluetooth or USB syncing for contacts/calendar syncing.
Mind you, what server-side software supports OTA SyncML that's actually in widespread use? (Genuine question, incidentally--I don't know what SyncML server support is like). Having a spec is one thing, but the implementation needs to be there too, after all.
In fairness, an awful lot of Windows administrators are just as clueless as the Linux "I've got {Red Hat,SuSE,Ubuntu} installed on an external drive on my computer at home and can add users through the GUI tools" wannabes, and just as hard to find really clued Windows sysadmins.
Because Windows already has more than enough traction in corporate environments, the barrier for Linux (or anything non-Windows, in fact) adoption is pretty high: you still need to support the Windows systems, and you can't very well just sack your existing sysadmin. Unless Corporate IT already has Unix in its skill-set, you need to have some serious demonstrable (cost-saving) advantages to pull it off.
Of course, were the situation reversed, the same would apply. Try persuading a firm of graphic designers who have Macs throughout to install a Windows server, for example.
It's not something that has to be inherently proprietary, though, and complete reliance on it is silly (even if you provide a push-notification mechanism, it's still sensible to provide POP or IMAP-based access as well). If people want to pay data charges for continual access to their e-mail, let them.
Realistically, why isn't there an open standards/source-based push e-mail system out there? Strikes me as an odd part of the chain to be missing.
I wonder if Kannel does something like this, actually...