If tapping icons on a touchscreen is a natural progression from the desktop, why did Apple have to re-invent the touchscreen to make it happen?
They didn't. People were already tapping icons on phone touchscreens way before Apple "re-invented" anything. You say in a later post that Palms were dead by 2007, but touch screen phones were not, and the WinMo 5 and 6 phones especially still had icon based interfaces and were still being sold at the time the iPhone turned up.
Odd coming from someone who stole the GUI and the mouse from Xerox.
This actually did amuse me. Apparently tapping icons on a phone screen isn't a natural progression from clicking icons on a computer screen, which as you point out Apple didn't come up with in the first place. It's something new and unique and magical that only they could have worked out, so now anybody else that does it has stolen their ideas.
Of course, he didn't specify which ideas had been stolen, but I struggle to think of anything that the iPhone does which isn't just using a Mac/Windows boiled down to a phone-sized device. I'm sure someone will point one out to me.
I'm not sure why your post was modded up, being as it is a) Apple-centric and therefore ignorant of a multitude of other tablets/ereaders, and b) entirely made up.
I have a place locally that sells a decent gaming PC for about $700. How long is that going to last you? 3, maybe 4 years until games outstrip it? So put that down to $175 per year, which is about $15 a month.
So, now your equation looks like this:
PC: $15 a month + $50 per game, and you get to keep what you buy OnLive: $10 a month + $50 per game, and your purchases evaporate when you quit
I think I'll pay the extra $5 a month, thanks very much. I do think consumers are getting slightly screwed when they're paying only a little under what they'd pay to keep their purchase for something that is entirely fictional.
I'm not sure what the author of that article was thinking, but that prototype was issued 6 months after the iPhone came out. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't find an Android phone that existed in any form before the iPhone was released.
Perform the following experience: Give a Samsung Tablet and an iPad to your Average Idiot, you know, the MARKET for these bright shiny toys. Ask them if they come from the same company. Easily 99% yes, right?
You are aware that the Samsung one has "SAMSUNG" written on it, right?
My experience of CyanogenMod is that although it's more functional than my stock HTC Hero, the battery life on it as absolutely appalling. I mean that I can actively use the phone for less than 2 hours before the battery is completely dead.
Once they have access to whatever they want, then they can also get the encryption key to decrypt the passwords, so what's the point? That's what I'm trying to say.
Further, the "hypocrisy" here is that when Apple stored a location database cache in plaintext, you lot were up in arms.
Yeah, don't think that was about it being in plaintext - it was about it being recorded at all, in secret, and then it being transferred to your PC, also in plaintext, and very easily available. The passwords in plaintext on the Android device are stored in a folder that cannot even be seen unless you root the phone, let alone access - and even then you're still subject to the usual sudo-style admin permissions to give apps access to it.
That is absolutely incorrect. See the iOS/OS X keychain for more details.
Again - if you have that level of access, there's little you can't do. The iPhone must store the encryption key somewhere on the device or it's useless. It's only a matter of time until you or someone else finds it. It's not fanboyism to state the obvious.
I don't think you actually understand anything about the issue. Do you know where the actual passwords on the device are stored? If you look into that, you'll see why further obfuscation is unnecessary. If a user can get access to the folder where these files are stored, they already have enough information to break any remaining encryption on the device.
It's sad that you see this as 'platform-centric hypocrisy' instead of what it is - a non-story dredged from a year old post by an Android engineer that only confirms what other rational people already know.
Incredibly, if you actually RTFA, it's written by someone both technically incapable and clearly illiterate. It's also based on a comment made by a member of the Android team posted nearly a year ago, and the comment also points out exactly why they do it this way:
Simply obscuring your password (e.g. base64) or encrypting it with a key stored elsewhere will *not* make your password or your data more secure. An attacker will still be able to retrieve it. [...] If you can obtain *any* data from files in/data/data/* on a non-rooted device, this is a security problem in the device.
So basically, it's hidden from view on a non-rooted device, people who root their devices have already technically cracked their own security anyway, and even if it wasn't in plain text it would still be trivial to decrypt as the key has to exist somewhere on the device to do it.
All in all, very boring, very old, and very stupid to post.
Nice of you to come back after you'd read the article (or even the summary).
Working out whether a patent applies to you doesn't necessarily need a lawyer - it needs someone with a logical brain who can go through the patent and see if all the statements apply. I would say the kind of mind that writes code for a living is exactly the kind of person who could deduce whether they have a patent issue on their hands. Regardless, even if you didn't want to take the time to read through the patent, it's prudent when you see fellow developers getting sued for something similar to what you're doing to get out while you can in order to review.
Anyway, I don't see the difference between idiots bleating "patents kill innovation" and idiots bleating "if you don't want to infringe don't copy anybody". The issue is far more complicated than either of those statements would imply.
As someone mentioned above, this isn't about cloning concepts. This is about being unable to do trivial things like bring up a dialog box saying "Would you like to pay more for more content" on a mobile phone, because someone decided that's so incredibly inventive that it needs to be protected.
Speaking for me, you'd have to pay for materials, and you'd be doing all the labour yourself, so no, I wouldn't mind. The car manufacturer might because it's their design you've taken.
If I coded something, and you copied that, I'd expect you to pay for materials and labour that went into creating it, i.e. the time and effort that I put in. You haven't done anything other than a couple of mouse clicks. If you don't pay me for the work I've done when it's been made clear there's a charge, you're damn right I'd have a problem with it.
1) Windows will tell when your graphics card isn't up to scratch instead of just refusing to boot and saying nothing. 2) If your card does work on Windows and then you install drivers that don't work, Windows will still boot to a desktop and tell you it had to recover, instead of just refusing to boot and saying nothing. 3) Windows doesn't recommend you install drivers that don't work. 4) Windows doesn't recommend you install drivers that aren't complete. 5) Microsoft is up front about what will work and what won't, instead of implementing something with no testing and no backwards compatibility without notifying users. From the links I provided, you can read that this is actually the second update in a row that Canonical have broken nvidia-96 support.
I hope that was informative, because I am now done answering your stupid questions and I'm done with this topic. I have better things to do than educate you.
Now try doing it with a GeForce Go 420M. You'll find that Additional Drivers for some reason installs nvidia-current, when that card isn't covered by that driver. However, loading nvidia-96 (the correct driver) now fails for me, stating that it's a broken package. When I try to fix it, it tells me I can't fix that broken package because it's broken.
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If tapping icons on a touchscreen is a natural progression from the desktop, why did Apple have to re-invent the touchscreen to make it happen?
They didn't. People were already tapping icons on phone touchscreens way before Apple "re-invented" anything. You say in a later post that Palms were dead by 2007, but touch screen phones were not, and the WinMo 5 and 6 phones especially still had icon based interfaces and were still being sold at the time the iPhone turned up.
Odd coming from someone who stole the GUI and the mouse from Xerox.
This actually did amuse me. Apparently tapping icons on a phone screen isn't a natural progression from clicking icons on a computer screen, which as you point out Apple didn't come up with in the first place. It's something new and unique and magical that only they could have worked out, so now anybody else that does it has stolen their ideas.
Of course, he didn't specify which ideas had been stolen, but I struggle to think of anything that the iPhone does which isn't just using a Mac/Windows boiled down to a phone-sized device. I'm sure someone will point one out to me.
There are plenty of other backup apps that don't require root. The rest of what you posted falls apart on its own.
I'm not sure why your post was modded up, being as it is a) Apple-centric and therefore ignorant of a multitude of other tablets/ereaders, and b) entirely made up.
I have a place locally that sells a decent gaming PC for about $700. How long is that going to last you? 3, maybe 4 years until games outstrip it? So put that down to $175 per year, which is about $15 a month.
So, now your equation looks like this:
PC: $15 a month + $50 per game, and you get to keep what you buy
OnLive: $10 a month + $50 per game, and your purchases evaporate when you quit
I think I'll pay the extra $5 a month, thanks very much. I do think consumers are getting slightly screwed when they're paying only a little under what they'd pay to keep their purchase for something that is entirely fictional.
I'm not sure what the author of that article was thinking, but that prototype was issued 6 months after the iPhone came out. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't find an Android phone that existed in any form before the iPhone was released.
Perform the following experience: Give a Samsung Tablet and an iPad to your Average Idiot, you know, the MARKET for these bright shiny toys. Ask them if they come from the same company. Easily 99% yes, right?
You are aware that the Samsung one has "SAMSUNG" written on it, right?
I think saying "whoosh" is standard Slashdot etiquette.
And when you run out of space, you... do nothing.
How archaic.
My experience of CyanogenMod is that although it's more functional than my stock HTC Hero, the battery life on it as absolutely appalling. I mean that I can actively use the phone for less than 2 hours before the battery is completely dead.
Actually, there's one up the road from me. :)
Once they have access to whatever they want, then they can also get the encryption key to decrypt the passwords, so what's the point? That's what I'm trying to say.
Further, the "hypocrisy" here is that when Apple stored a location database cache in plaintext, you lot were up in arms.
Yeah, don't think that was about it being in plaintext - it was about it being recorded at all, in secret, and then it being transferred to your PC, also in plaintext, and very easily available. The passwords in plaintext on the Android device are stored in a folder that cannot even be seen unless you root the phone, let alone access - and even then you're still subject to the usual sudo-style admin permissions to give apps access to it.
That is absolutely incorrect. See the iOS/OS X keychain for more details.
What, this iOS keychain? iOS keychain system crack can expose passwords
Again - if you have that level of access, there's little you can't do. The iPhone must store the encryption key somewhere on the device or it's useless. It's only a matter of time until you or someone else finds it. It's not fanboyism to state the obvious.
I don't think you actually understand anything about the issue. Do you know where the actual passwords on the device are stored? If you look into that, you'll see why further obfuscation is unnecessary. If a user can get access to the folder where these files are stored, they already have enough information to break any remaining encryption on the device.
It's sad that you see this as 'platform-centric hypocrisy' instead of what it is - a non-story dredged from a year old post by an Android engineer that only confirms what other rational people already know.
Incredibly, if you actually RTFA, it's written by someone both technically incapable and clearly illiterate. It's also based on a comment made by a member of the Android team posted nearly a year ago, and the comment also points out exactly why they do it this way:
Simply obscuring your password (e.g. base64) or encrypting it with a key stored elsewhere will *not* make your password or your data more secure. An attacker will still be able to retrieve it. [...] If you can obtain *any* data from files in /data/data/* on a non-rooted device, this is a security problem in the device.
So basically, it's hidden from view on a non-rooted device, people who root their devices have already technically cracked their own security anyway, and even if it wasn't in plain text it would still be trivial to decrypt as the key has to exist somewhere on the device to do it.
All in all, very boring, very old, and very stupid to post.
All fair enough points, and I've been guilty just as often of posting while indignant :)
Nice of you to come back after you'd read the article (or even the summary).
Working out whether a patent applies to you doesn't necessarily need a lawyer - it needs someone with a logical brain who can go through the patent and see if all the statements apply. I would say the kind of mind that writes code for a living is exactly the kind of person who could deduce whether they have a patent issue on their hands. Regardless, even if you didn't want to take the time to read through the patent, it's prudent when you see fellow developers getting sued for something similar to what you're doing to get out while you can in order to review.
Anyway, I don't see the difference between idiots bleating "patents kill innovation" and idiots bleating "if you don't want to infringe don't copy anybody". The issue is far more complicated than either of those statements would imply.
As someone mentioned above, this isn't about cloning concepts. This is about being unable to do trivial things like bring up a dialog box saying "Would you like to pay more for more content" on a mobile phone, because someone decided that's so incredibly inventive that it needs to be protected.
Yeah, this is a lesson to research before you write. I kind of figured I was wrong the moment I wrote it :(
Aren't those Macs less than 2 bloody years old? Are they actually ending support entirely, or will 10.6 still get security updates?
Just because armies are authorised to use lethal force, that doesn't mean (or even imply) that it's all they do.
Speaking for me, you'd have to pay for materials, and you'd be doing all the labour yourself, so no, I wouldn't mind. The car manufacturer might because it's their design you've taken.
If I coded something, and you copied that, I'd expect you to pay for materials and labour that went into creating it, i.e. the time and effort that I put in. You haven't done anything other than a couple of mouse clicks. If you don't pay me for the work I've done when it's been made clear there's a charge, you're damn right I'd have a problem with it.
You have trouble with synonyms, don't you?
You mean homonyms. For more information about the parent post, please see Muphry's Law.
Well, Windows wins out on a few counts:
1) Windows will tell when your graphics card isn't up to scratch instead of just refusing to boot and saying nothing.
2) If your card does work on Windows and then you install drivers that don't work, Windows will still boot to a desktop and tell you it had to recover, instead of just refusing to boot and saying nothing.
3) Windows doesn't recommend you install drivers that don't work.
4) Windows doesn't recommend you install drivers that aren't complete.
5) Microsoft is up front about what will work and what won't, instead of implementing something with no testing and no backwards compatibility without notifying users. From the links I provided, you can read that this is actually the second update in a row that Canonical have broken nvidia-96 support.
I hope that was informative, because I am now done answering your stupid questions and I'm done with this topic. I have better things to do than educate you.
Now try doing it with a GeForce Go 420M. You'll find that Additional Drivers for some reason installs nvidia-current, when that card isn't covered by that driver. However, loading nvidia-96 (the correct driver) now fails for me, stating that it's a broken package. When I try to fix it, it tells me I can't fix that broken package because it's broken.
Incidentally, you could always go to http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/nvidia-96-series-drivers-for-ubuntu-11-04-a-879438/ and accuse me of copying that, or the actual bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/+bug/741930 but I only just found it after another half an hour or so of research. Apparently Ubuntu decided to move to a version of Xorg that doesn't work with my graphics card driver. So now, I get to regress back to an earlier version of Xubuntu/Ubuntu, switch distribution to one that works or just cut my losses and go back to Windows.