Bingo. The reason the RIAA's campaign hasn't stopped in the states is that they get what they want most of the time. People cough up the money for the "settlement offer." If everyone served with such offers stood up to fight them, I doubt even the RIAA could afford the attorney's fees. You could also argue the increased burden on our courts would have resulted in the formal and permanent quashing of the use of ex parte subpoenas for this purpose.
You're pointing out two very specific cases where Vista is necessary; not a reason why it is necessary for everybody. As an example, consider your hypothetical company who publishes reviews of games for Vista. There's nothing saying that Vista has to be deployed site-wide. You could have a set of Vista machines and still do everything else on XP.
I just contacted my rep. It took all of five minutes to write this up. Have YOU contacted yours? Speak up, or this thing WILL be passed as-is.
Mr. Flake,
I am writing to you with regard to provisions in the proposed College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 that, among other things, would require institutions of higher education to implement strict anti-piracy measures that may include implementing filtering software and/or subscription music services for students. I believe voting Yea on such a bill would be a tremendous error in judgment. Funding for educational institutions should never be tied to commercial enterprise in this way.
History has proven conclusively that no filtering implementation is perfect, and literally each and every time software such as this is implemented people find a way around it. Furthermore, implementing software of this kind is prohibitively expensive, and would place an unfair burden on our already financially strapped educational institutions. It would be a grave disservice to students, faculty, and citizens alike to force the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and others to spend large sums of money on unproven technology when teachers are leaving because of pay that is less than competitive.
Additionally, forcing schools to sign up students for subscription music services, or requiring schools to purchase a site-wide license for such services, is an extraordinarily short-sighted "solution." The access to said services does not conclusively lead to lower piracy rates, and restricts competition in this emerging market. Requiring a campus to sign up for Rhapsody is not fair to Napster (and vice versa). Furthermore, these services rely on Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes which are not universally compatible. In a day and age when increasing numbers of students are not running a version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, it would be a serious disservice to require these students to pay for something they will not be able to use. Microsoft DRM-protected content is only accessible from Windows and devices built for it, which leaves users of Apple's Mac OS X and all Linux distributions out. These services are not compatible with the most popular portable media playing device sold today, the iPod, and students cannot and should not be expected to pay to replace said devices. This, again, would amount to a restriction on competition.
In short, this legislation is poorly conceived and the only people who stand to benefit from it in its current form are record company executives and purveyors of filtering software. There is no question that the illegal distribution and consumption of copyrighted content is a problem; however, this legislation will not solve that problem. It will increase costs for taxpayers. It will discriminate against users whose computers are not running Windows. It will require extremely costly investments from educational institutions that are already struggling with their bills.
It is in Arizona's better interests that this legislation be defeated, or modified to remove these provisions. As a graduate of the University of Arizona, I can tell you firsthand that our state's schools cannot afford to be forced down this path.
Sincerely yours,
Joseph [DELETED]
(My rep's name is Jeff Flake.. I wasn't insulting the guy.)
Most people don't have them because - to date - no implementation has provided enough justification for the price. People won't pay whatever you're charging if they don't feel it's worth that much. I think that's what really gets under the skin of Apple/Mac-haters in general. They don't see the value in Apple products and it actually angers many of them that some of us do. It's really quite silly when you think about it, but no one ever called a fanboy rational.
On a side note, innovation generally isn't cheap. (And there's nothing innovative about $7k speaker cables. I have no idea who'd actually buy Pear products after that debacle).
Given today's announcements, I'm going to claim this point. It is clear Google is practically giving away everything in the hopes of getting people to use its services through these devices, and it's worth noting that as of yet there is no Google-branded phone. This isn't to say that some companies won't use Android as the basis for a device that could target the iPhone, but it doesn't look like Google is going after Apple directly.
I did say "as I read it," and to respond to your question, I'd say based on what I see as them still having plenty to gain from one another. Apple can afford to hit with a higher-priced device because it's profitable in that niche. Google needs a device that really can reach everybody while being as cheap as possible to produce, because they're not going to make money on the hardware itself. The side effect of this is that Google can release an open device and instantly get the support that might be necessary to tackle the business markets Apple has traditionally had difficulty with.
Together these two companies could rule the mobile phone market, and would be large enough to tackle Windows Mobile and the other major players. Obviously this is speculation, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that Google would be better off opposing Apple in this instance. And don't forget, Apple's official stance on the iPhone is that it isn't a "smartphone." It's not competing on the same terms. Literally and semantically.
You're right in aspiration, but the hyperbole here really gives me pause. It isn't that "you can't do anything" with the iPhone; it's that the iPhone doesn't enable you to do what you want on a "smartphone." The iPhone - like virtually all Apple products, from Mac OS X (and Macs) to the iPhone and iPod - is aimed at the average consumer, while attempting to hit enough high notes for the geeks to be satisfied. The Apple of late has been largely successful in this regard.
We all want the iPhone opened up as a development platform, and that's in the works. It probably still won't be the completely open ecosystem you desire, but that's just not Apple's way. Apple is extremely good at doing things its way, but unfortunately that means certain (many) people will be disappointed. That's understandable, but don't go around saying you can't do anything with it. That's flat-out false. It does a remarkable number of things really well, and for most people will provide a great deal of entertainment and utility. The implementation of its web browser alone was worth the price of admission for me. I do miss Flash on occasion, but I really respect Apple for focusing on standards-based web development as the initial "SDK" for its first mobile device. A toy? This device makes the mobile web usable for real people. It is not a toy.
I'm ecstatic at the thought of a future 1-3 years from now when most iPod users (and all iPod newcomers) are walking around with devices capable of truly accessing the web. As a web developer, that inevitability is reason enough for me to appreciate it.
It's also worthwhile to note that Google really is going after Microsoft - and not Apple - with its device (whatever it ends up being). That's how I read it, at least. Google and Apple have much to gain from one another, although neither absolutely needs the other, as is the case with most of the great partnerships. I apologize for coming off like an Apple fanboy, but as someone who has come to rely on having an iPhone in his pocket, I couldn't not say anything.
Technically, we're both right. You're correct in that my reasoning isn't the only reasoning, and I'm right in pointing out that my reasoning exists in addition to yours, the one he cited, and others.
I honestly think the only reason people are cracking this stuff is the same reason that people climb Mt. Everest: Because it's there.
Ah, no. People are cracking these because they enforce usage controls that many - myself included - believe go too far. Some of us like to use media centers that play video that's been ripped (not necessarily pirated). I've got a nice collection of video files that I've ripped from DVDs that I own that I stream to my living room media center. It's extremely convenient and the video quality is quite good. I'm not out there distributing the ripped versions of these films, and I'm not out there downloading pirated versions of them, either. I'm doing nothing more than utilizing an alternative method to view content I paid for in the privacy of my own home. At present, I cannot do this with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
To be fair, commercial DVDs contain copy protections designed to thwart this kind of activity, but thanks to the diligent efforts by the very same kind of people (and likely the same people in many cases) who are working to crack the new schemes, the process is convenient and effectively one-click. Until I can do the same thing with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, I won't be buying any of either, and I'll continue to recommend to the people who ask my opinion that they stay away.
In short, people aren't just doing it because they can. They're doing it because there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Not everyone who rips discs is a pirate, but this DRM punishes all equally.
Except that in this case, you're misunderstanding the "product." You do not just buy an iPhone. You buy an iPhone w/ a 2-year contract with AT&T. So far as Apple is concerned (and they're doing the books in precisely this way), it's an iPhone w/ AT&T. It isn't just an iPhone you purchase, and the small print on the back of the box makes that clear.
So far as your analogies, it really is quite like you say it isn't, although with obvious differences. If you didn't want the original OS on that Dell, perhaps you could've bought one without an OS, or a different one entirely. Or you could have built a machine yourself. Thing is, when you buy a Dell, you buy a Dell w/ a license for a particular OS. It wasn't until recently you were given any option other than Windows, and this is the PC market we're talking about here.
Again, I'm not defending the practice, or anything else. I'm simply stating that there are entitlements people think they have they really don't. The appropriate response is to buy something else, or not buy at all.
I would be genuinely interested in seeing some citations. I'm not an expert on economics by any means, and this seems critical to the entire conversation.
The main issue for me with issues like vendor lock-in and net neutrality is that from a legislation perspective, it's a very slippery slope. It is extremely difficult to craft a law regulating these issues, and it would be worse to enact a bad one than to maintain the status quo. I'm open to the possibility that legislation is the solution to the problem, but my gut is always to allow the market reasonable time to settle the matter before turning to the law. This is pretty much the first time in the mobile industry's history that a single device has been so clamored for on such a wide scale and been released with such strong exclusivity agreements. The market has never dealt with this problem in this way, and it is prudent to see what comes of it, and fix it if it becomes blatantly obvious the system is broken (ahem, software patents, anyone?).
Six years ago 99% of people would have laughed hysterically if you'd said "in less than a decade Apple will have a higher market cap than IBM and be releasing mobile phones." The market changes quickly. I'd like to hold hope that there is more than one company in this country capable of producing a game-changing device. Can anyone say what this landscape will look like in six years? Can anyone guarantee that during that time the situation will - without a doubt - have gotten no better? That's when you write legislation. Doing it before is premature.
As I said, I'm open. You could be totally right. I'd just like a little more time before we jump to the doomsday scenario.
That wouldn't solve a thing in the states. There's a difference between locking your phone to a carrier and making a phone that's actually compatible with other carrier technologies. Apple has no reason to make anything other than a GSM phone, which means in the US an unlocked iPhone would still be good nationwide on a grand total of two carriers. Then look at the numbers themselves. If Apple is expecting this mythical $831 per phone in revenue, how expensive do you think an unlocked iPhone would be? Prohibitive is my guess, and it isn't like you can force them to make it cheap without grossly overstepping the bounds of what a government should be able to do when it comes to product pricing.
All things being equal, I don't like carrier lock-in any more than you do, but people act like it's some brilliant solution ("faster and better for our economy") when in reality all it does for US customers is increase the number of options you have to two. The far better option is for those who want the iPhone, but "can't" have it for whatever reason, to wait for competing products and buy those. The market can settle this one without government interference if people just purchase accordingly. I stand by my original assertion: if you have to jump through hoops to get and use an iPhone in the manner of your choosing, you aren't part of the target market and you can and will eventually be served by products better suited for you.
Good points, except they apply to any carrier. All carriers have coverage gaps, and having unlocked iPhones available doesn't exactly mean that problem is solved. In the US, at least, where T-Mobile is pretty much your "other" GSM option, the coverage issue certainly isn't solved.
One thing that strikes me about this product in particular is how people feel entitled to it, as though in a free market you have the "right" to purchase and use an iPhone. Like all products the iPhone has a target market, and apparently Apple has decided that its target market for this device shall be limited to the people with coverage by one of its exclusive carriers. They have the right to make that decision, just as you have the right to determine whether or not it fits your needs.
Bottom line: The iPhone isn't intended for everyone, and if you have to jump through hoops to get it on your terms, it certainly isn't meant for you. Wait a little while so the market can come to terms with how to create appropriate competing products, and buy something that actually fits your needs.
It isn't.
A kernel panic is the Mac OS X equivalent of a BSOD. If the machine takes hours to launch after an upgrade, or doesn't launch at all, it's a different kind of failure.
I speak from first-hand experience, as this happened to me. Thankfully I keep good daily backups.
Good points.
It really just seems like this guy tried to use Rails to say he was using Rails. I don't see anything in the article that actually states why he chose Rails in the first place. Not having a specific reason for doing it any one way or the other, and then being surprised when it doesn't work the way you want? Sure.. that must be Rails' fault.
Next time try choosing a language and/or framework based on cold, hard reasons, and not because it's what the cool kids are doing. Rails is designed such that you know the assumptions and opt to work with them. When you choose to use Rails and then choose to shrug off everything that goes with it, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Your Rails project failed because of bad reasoning. Rails had nothing to do with it.
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The lawyers are going to have a field day with that one.
Is anyone else tired of comments to this effect? I get laid regularly, and I'm sick of being stereotyped otherwise, jokingly or not.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
Bingo. The reason the RIAA's campaign hasn't stopped in the states is that they get what they want most of the time. People cough up the money for the "settlement offer." If everyone served with such offers stood up to fight them, I doubt even the RIAA could afford the attorney's fees. You could also argue the increased burden on our courts would have resulted in the formal and permanent quashing of the use of ex parte subpoenas for this purpose.
Good point. I assumed that running some version of Windows was a baseline requirement, but you're absolutely right.
You're pointing out two very specific cases where Vista is necessary; not a reason why it is necessary for everybody. As an example, consider your hypothetical company who publishes reviews of games for Vista. There's nothing saying that Vista has to be deployed site-wide. You could have a set of Vista machines and still do everything else on XP.
I just contacted my rep. It took all of five minutes to write this up. Have YOU contacted yours? Speak up, or this thing WILL be passed as-is.
(My rep's name is Jeff Flake.. I wasn't insulting the guy.)
Most people don't have them because - to date - no implementation has provided enough justification for the price. People won't pay whatever you're charging if they don't feel it's worth that much. I think that's what really gets under the skin of Apple/Mac-haters in general. They don't see the value in Apple products and it actually angers many of them that some of us do. It's really quite silly when you think about it, but no one ever called a fanboy rational.
On a side note, innovation generally isn't cheap. (And there's nothing innovative about $7k speaker cables. I have no idea who'd actually buy Pear products after that debacle).
Given today's announcements, I'm going to claim this point. It is clear Google is practically giving away everything in the hopes of getting people to use its services through these devices, and it's worth noting that as of yet there is no Google-branded phone. This isn't to say that some companies won't use Android as the basis for a device that could target the iPhone, but it doesn't look like Google is going after Apple directly.
I did say "as I read it," and to respond to your question, I'd say based on what I see as them still having plenty to gain from one another. Apple can afford to hit with a higher-priced device because it's profitable in that niche. Google needs a device that really can reach everybody while being as cheap as possible to produce, because they're not going to make money on the hardware itself. The side effect of this is that Google can release an open device and instantly get the support that might be necessary to tackle the business markets Apple has traditionally had difficulty with.
Together these two companies could rule the mobile phone market, and would be large enough to tackle Windows Mobile and the other major players. Obviously this is speculation, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that Google would be better off opposing Apple in this instance. And don't forget, Apple's official stance on the iPhone is that it isn't a "smartphone." It's not competing on the same terms. Literally and semantically.
You're right in aspiration, but the hyperbole here really gives me pause. It isn't that "you can't do anything" with the iPhone; it's that the iPhone doesn't enable you to do what you want on a "smartphone." The iPhone - like virtually all Apple products, from Mac OS X (and Macs) to the iPhone and iPod - is aimed at the average consumer, while attempting to hit enough high notes for the geeks to be satisfied. The Apple of late has been largely successful in this regard.
We all want the iPhone opened up as a development platform, and that's in the works. It probably still won't be the completely open ecosystem you desire, but that's just not Apple's way. Apple is extremely good at doing things its way, but unfortunately that means certain (many) people will be disappointed. That's understandable, but don't go around saying you can't do anything with it. That's flat-out false. It does a remarkable number of things really well, and for most people will provide a great deal of entertainment and utility. The implementation of its web browser alone was worth the price of admission for me. I do miss Flash on occasion, but I really respect Apple for focusing on standards-based web development as the initial "SDK" for its first mobile device. A toy? This device makes the mobile web usable for real people. It is not a toy.
I'm ecstatic at the thought of a future 1-3 years from now when most iPod users (and all iPod newcomers) are walking around with devices capable of truly accessing the web. As a web developer, that inevitability is reason enough for me to appreciate it.
It's also worthwhile to note that Google really is going after Microsoft - and not Apple - with its device (whatever it ends up being). That's how I read it, at least. Google and Apple have much to gain from one another, although neither absolutely needs the other, as is the case with most of the great partnerships. I apologize for coming off like an Apple fanboy, but as someone who has come to rely on having an iPhone in his pocket, I couldn't not say anything.Technically, we're both right. You're correct in that my reasoning isn't the only reasoning, and I'm right in pointing out that my reasoning exists in addition to yours, the one he cited, and others.
Ah, no. People are cracking these because they enforce usage controls that many - myself included - believe go too far. Some of us like to use media centers that play video that's been ripped (not necessarily pirated). I've got a nice collection of video files that I've ripped from DVDs that I own that I stream to my living room media center. It's extremely convenient and the video quality is quite good. I'm not out there distributing the ripped versions of these films, and I'm not out there downloading pirated versions of them, either. I'm doing nothing more than utilizing an alternative method to view content I paid for in the privacy of my own home. At present, I cannot do this with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
To be fair, commercial DVDs contain copy protections designed to thwart this kind of activity, but thanks to the diligent efforts by the very same kind of people (and likely the same people in many cases) who are working to crack the new schemes, the process is convenient and effectively one-click. Until I can do the same thing with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, I won't be buying any of either, and I'll continue to recommend to the people who ask my opinion that they stay away.
In short, people aren't just doing it because they can. They're doing it because there are legitimate reasons for doing so. Not everyone who rips discs is a pirate, but this DRM punishes all equally.
Except that in this case, you're misunderstanding the "product." You do not just buy an iPhone. You buy an iPhone w/ a 2-year contract with AT&T. So far as Apple is concerned (and they're doing the books in precisely this way), it's an iPhone w/ AT&T. It isn't just an iPhone you purchase, and the small print on the back of the box makes that clear. So far as your analogies, it really is quite like you say it isn't, although with obvious differences. If you didn't want the original OS on that Dell, perhaps you could've bought one without an OS, or a different one entirely. Or you could have built a machine yourself. Thing is, when you buy a Dell, you buy a Dell w/ a license for a particular OS. It wasn't until recently you were given any option other than Windows, and this is the PC market we're talking about here. Again, I'm not defending the practice, or anything else. I'm simply stating that there are entitlements people think they have they really don't. The appropriate response is to buy something else, or not buy at all.
You don't really believe that Apple will be the only company putting out multi-touch mobile phones, do you?
I would be genuinely interested in seeing some citations. I'm not an expert on economics by any means, and this seems critical to the entire conversation.
The main issue for me with issues like vendor lock-in and net neutrality is that from a legislation perspective, it's a very slippery slope. It is extremely difficult to craft a law regulating these issues, and it would be worse to enact a bad one than to maintain the status quo. I'm open to the possibility that legislation is the solution to the problem, but my gut is always to allow the market reasonable time to settle the matter before turning to the law. This is pretty much the first time in the mobile industry's history that a single device has been so clamored for on such a wide scale and been released with such strong exclusivity agreements. The market has never dealt with this problem in this way, and it is prudent to see what comes of it, and fix it if it becomes blatantly obvious the system is broken (ahem, software patents, anyone?).
Six years ago 99% of people would have laughed hysterically if you'd said "in less than a decade Apple will have a higher market cap than IBM and be releasing mobile phones." The market changes quickly. I'd like to hold hope that there is more than one company in this country capable of producing a game-changing device. Can anyone say what this landscape will look like in six years? Can anyone guarantee that during that time the situation will - without a doubt - have gotten no better? That's when you write legislation. Doing it before is premature.
As I said, I'm open. You could be totally right. I'd just like a little more time before we jump to the doomsday scenario.
That wouldn't solve a thing in the states. There's a difference between locking your phone to a carrier and making a phone that's actually compatible with other carrier technologies. Apple has no reason to make anything other than a GSM phone, which means in the US an unlocked iPhone would still be good nationwide on a grand total of two carriers. Then look at the numbers themselves. If Apple is expecting this mythical $831 per phone in revenue, how expensive do you think an unlocked iPhone would be? Prohibitive is my guess, and it isn't like you can force them to make it cheap without grossly overstepping the bounds of what a government should be able to do when it comes to product pricing.
All things being equal, I don't like carrier lock-in any more than you do, but people act like it's some brilliant solution ("faster and better for our economy") when in reality all it does for US customers is increase the number of options you have to two. The far better option is for those who want the iPhone, but "can't" have it for whatever reason, to wait for competing products and buy those. The market can settle this one without government interference if people just purchase accordingly. I stand by my original assertion: if you have to jump through hoops to get and use an iPhone in the manner of your choosing, you aren't part of the target market and you can and will eventually be served by products better suited for you.
Good points, except they apply to any carrier. All carriers have coverage gaps, and having unlocked iPhones available doesn't exactly mean that problem is solved. In the US, at least, where T-Mobile is pretty much your "other" GSM option, the coverage issue certainly isn't solved.
One thing that strikes me about this product in particular is how people feel entitled to it, as though in a free market you have the "right" to purchase and use an iPhone. Like all products the iPhone has a target market, and apparently Apple has decided that its target market for this device shall be limited to the people with coverage by one of its exclusive carriers. They have the right to make that decision, just as you have the right to determine whether or not it fits your needs.
Bottom line: The iPhone isn't intended for everyone, and if you have to jump through hoops to get it on your terms, it certainly isn't meant for you. Wait a little while so the market can come to terms with how to create appropriate competing products, and buy something that actually fits your needs.
It isn't. A kernel panic is the Mac OS X equivalent of a BSOD. If the machine takes hours to launch after an upgrade, or doesn't launch at all, it's a different kind of failure. I speak from first-hand experience, as this happened to me. Thankfully I keep good daily backups.
Tell that to John Hicks.
So anyone with a history of liking Apple and/or the iPhone must be incapable of offering an unbiased opinion?
Good points. It really just seems like this guy tried to use Rails to say he was using Rails. I don't see anything in the article that actually states why he chose Rails in the first place. Not having a specific reason for doing it any one way or the other, and then being surprised when it doesn't work the way you want? Sure.. that must be Rails' fault. Next time try choosing a language and/or framework based on cold, hard reasons, and not because it's what the cool kids are doing. Rails is designed such that you know the assumptions and opt to work with them. When you choose to use Rails and then choose to shrug off everything that goes with it, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Your Rails project failed because of bad reasoning. Rails had nothing to do with it.
If you'll notice.. I was joking.
Seriously. "640k ought to be enough for anybody." :P
And the Mac-haters would be complaining about how the statistical methods are flawed. In the end, it's all the same.