Given the amount of imitation and bad research there, those are near-worthless credentials outside of China.
Then again, unlike China, education is not reserved for the few who manage to luck out on the tests. It's more or less open to all in comparison.
Exactly.
I don't mean to sound racist (and I'm not); but I can tell you from reading many, many résumés from Chinese applicants for EE positions, that not only does every one of them list education out the ying-yang (see what I did there?); but Every. Single. One. of those applicants lists about 30 years of "job experience", even though they ALSO list that they have only graduated from University of ("You'll Never Be Able To Prove I Went There") 5 years prior. I guess they figure no one can put two-and-two together, or something. But it really is Every. Single. One.
I know it isn't uncommon to gild the lilly a bit on a résumé, and I know I'm painting with a firehose; but it just seems that Chinese "engineering" job candidates list themselves as being the Chief Engineer (or nearly so) on every single large-scale project they even walked by on the way to their factory job.
And the worst part is, it is so endemic to their culture, (I guess) they don't even see how patently ridiculous their résumés look in comparison with applicants from other countries.
I bet you can buy those degrees in China, whereas in the U.S. you can only buy a liberal arts degree or a variety of lesser graduate degrees. Like, oh, I don't know... I'll have to think of an example...
Actually, I think that College is free (or nearly so) in China.
I wonder how that number would change if it cost the equivalent of a damned Rolls Royce (guessing) to get, like it does in the U.S.?
If your motherboard has a TPM chip, you could set up a trusted boot sequence, insuring that the OS is unmodified. You can then make the OS execute only signed executables, making any modifications to installed software impossible. Malware would also be prevented from running.
And even putting all the useability issues aside, just how many Slashdotters do you think would be capable of accomplishing the above? Now, expand that to the general population. How many now?
A floppy drive is easy - a floppy drive is just some motors in a cage - the floppy controller resides on the motherboard and tells those motors how to operate
My guess is that you've never actually SEEN a floppy drive.
Even the most hardware efficient floppy drive of all time, the Disk ][ drive electronics designed by Steve Wozniak for use with the Apple ][, used something like 8 TTL and analog chips on the floppy drive itself, plus some transistors, resistors, capacitors, an inductor, and a few other components. This is IN the drive itself. This connected via a 20-pin (IIRC) ribbon cable to a peripheral card in the computer with 5 more chips on it, including a pair of TTL ROMS that formed a really clever state machine that did the actual GCC "nibble" encoding/decoding. While it is true that the CPU in the Apple ][ controlled the stepper motor for the head movement (and maybe the spindle motor, too. Can't recall) more or less directly, and was responsible for the actual timing of the reading and writing of the "nibbles"; but the actual laying down and picking up of those nibbles on the disk surface was actually all done by the peripheral card and the electronics in the drive enclosure. So, your assertion that the floppy drive is but a box-full-o-motors is demonstrably false.
And as I said, that was the MOST hardware-efficient floppy design of all time. The reference designs by Shugart had a TON of electronics inside the floppy drive itself, and ANOTHER TWO TONS of the most bizarre conglomeration of digital and analog hardware mankind has ever seen on the "interface" card in the computer. I have no idea what the CPU in the host had to do after all this; but I assure you, that NO floppy has EVER been "just a box with motors". Period. You are simply talking out of your ass.
I did that because when I worked in repair I needed working copies (they get damaged) that would not lose the tape. You can buy disks without the notch so there is no protect to fall off. To prevent accidents, the switch I put in the drive was a reed switch. It required knowledge of the switch as well as the pocket screwdriver with the magnet in the end to turn on the hidden write switch while writing another working copy of the diagnostic floppy disks.
None of the floppies in the field service kit had a write enable notch. It makes no sense taking one customer's infection and giving it to someone else. The modern replacement is a burned DVD instead of a thumb drive. Use read only media for any of your service materials. No exceptions.
Yeah, the 8 inch floppies actually got it right. They had a Write ENABLE sticker. If the Notch was NOT covered over, then the disk was automatically Write Protected. The rationale was that a sticker can NEVER "fall ON". I would imagine that whatever evil engineer inverted that logic did it because he was either pressured to, or was tired to digging around to find write-enable stickers...
Well and good until somebody hacks a floppy drive to bypass it.
You don't understand hardware so good, do you?
The W/P switch in old floppy drives wasn't a "request not to write"; it actually disabled the HARDWARE enable input to the WRITE CURRENT driver in the R/W head. The only way it could fail was if the microswitch that read the "tab" (or the optical sensor in the 3.5 inch version) failed; or, if you had an Apple ][ disk drive, if static zapped the 74LS125 on the 5.25 Shugart drive's board (a somewhat common, VERY nasty problem, which resulted in the write/erase current being turned on PERMANENTLY!).
No amount of SOFTWARE could defeat the HARDWARE W/P switch. And if you are talking about a USER "hacking" their OWN drive to defeat that (a common mod was to install a switch on the front of the drive to provide "no-tab" Normal, Protect Always, and No Protect operation), then that particular user has done so with the understanding that they have VOLUNTARILY placed themselves at greater risk. Different situation completely than with a "Please Write Protect Me" SOFTWARE scheme, as with the USB sticks.
On a related note, I can't understand why someone can't actually provide HARDWARE write protect on a USB stick, unless the integration has gotten so high that the controller and memory are actually within the same IC package (and if the designer of that chip wanted it, they could STILL bring a HARDWARE enable out to the world, not just a port pin read by the controller).
Hey man, it's 85 degrees here today. Sorry if I'm a little testy (or have little testies)...
Have you honestly forgotten Apple's original 'Well, you can just develop webapps and like it.' position on 3rd party iDevice software so quickly?
Well, considering that ended in 2008, and lasted only about a year, yes, I have forgotten about it. Why can't you? Apple had a product that they were simply DYING to get out; but didn't have a "ready-for-prime-time" SDK, toolchain, simulator, documentation, licensing, etc. Do you really think they whipped all that up in the 9 months or so before they announced the iOS XCode SDK? There's a BIG difference between having some rickety terminal apps, and having stuff that Just Works with XCode. Plus, I'm pretty sure that Apple was testing the waters a bit, seeing if Javascript would be enough.
Speaking of "forgetting, we all forget: When the iPhone debuted, there simply wasn't anything like it. You can say "My (fill in the blank) did this or that for years before the iPhone came out"; but, the simple fact of the matter is, just like the iPad is doing now, the iPhone truly was a game-changer. Perhaps you might give Apple just a LITTLE slack on getting a detail or two wrong. And UNlike many, many, MANY other companies, Apple has a pretty damned stellar track record of listening, and changing, when appropriate. In fact, they are now beta-testing an entire website that is focused on PRECISELY that.
Compared to the matter of whether development tools are free-with-purchase-of-mac, or slightly expensive, or a few thousand bucks, the fact that they created an entire category of devices that you had to exploit bugs just to run 3rd party code is slightly more noticeable...
They eventually conceded, and now 3rd party code can be run, subject to their blessing and on their terms
Eventually was a scant 9 months after the introduction of the first generation of the device. So what?
but I find your contention that the price of dev tools, rather than the control of platforms, indicates an entity's attitude toward 3rd parties very strange. While it is true that Apple does not view dev tools as a profit center, they consistently treat 3rd party entities as barely tolerable adjuncts to the mac experience, who have to be carefully kept in line. Hence the iDevice lockdown and app store rules. Hence the migration of the app store to the desktop. Hence the safari plugin signing requirements.
Really, you MUST put another layer on that tinfoil hat! Some of the mind-control rays must be leaking in...
The "iDevice lockdown" is about as iron-clad as the old iTunes DRM (which doesn't exist anymore, BTW). In other words, pretty much completely ineffective. Do you see Apple sending C&D letters to Cydia, et al? People publish apps in the App Store because THAT'S WHERE THE CUSTOMERS ARE, not because Apple actually FORCES them to in any meaningful way (and certainly not as "meaningful" as some of the Android lock-down!)
And, are you REALLY arguing AGAINST browser-plugin-signing?!? OMFG!!! If there is a larger attack-surface than a malicious browser plugin, I really can't imagine it.
Apple isn't being evil; they're just jealously guarding their (well-deserved) reputation for an essentially malware-free platform.
And, as an Apple user since 1976, and a Mac user since, well, when they were called Lisas, I'm pretty damn glad they are doing that, thankyouverymuch! I have disinfected enough Windows PCs in my life to fully appreciate what the lack of malware means. And, like the fact that I like laws against burglary, fraud, extortion, etc (and the prosecutors and courts that enforce and interpret them), doesn't mean that I'm willing to sacrifice everything as a good little sheeple; it simply means that I understand what having NO laws would soon bring to my doorstep.
But it can also be interpreted as a useful warning to those of us who might have been tempted to go into the iOS/OSX app development profession. It looks like we shouldn't bother; you can't make a living that way any more.
Apple has shown zero signs that they are doing this with OS X development. The horse is already out of the barn, and Apple is in no way foolish enough to cut off its nose to spite its horse.
And I point out, yet again, that WWDC sold out in EIGHT HOURS. Apple knows full well that it has the Lion by the Horns, and is not about to do anything to stop that momentum!
Microsoft never made itself a gate keeper like Apple has done.
Let's examine all those shenanigans with the docx, xlsx, etc. formats, Exchange and Outlook lock-in (which STILL has an iron-fisted grip on business!), and all the backroom-dealing, specification-hiding and arm-twisting involved with that, and a bunch of other stuff.
MS Office apps can't even SAVE in the older formats. I'm sure you CAN get the "output converter"; but for fuck's sake! Most people just go "Oh, well. I guess you'll have to upgrade at your end". I've seen it happen first hand!
And, the only reason that MS hasn't become a gate keeper is that the gate was left wide open to start with, and even MS isn't bold enough to try and weld it shut now. But I'll bet they wished they thought of it, too!
After seeing the horrid shit that has happened time after time to Android users, even those who have purchased stuff from supposedly legit. channels, and considering the "Walls" of the Apple "Garden" are so far off on the horizon that, for the user at least, for all practical purposes, they might as well not exist, Apple has made a Wise Choice with the iOS App Store. And, those restrictions DO NOT EXIST for OS X development. And if you want to engage in speculation regarding that topic, then you have just negated your own argument regarding "could" and "is".
I wonder what would happen if these people simply put their app on the Cydia store? Apple doesn't seem to be pursuing that "sideload" adventure/venture very aggressively; so, why not take a chance, while they are porting their stupid reader-app to Android/WinMobile?
Life is a series of compromises, turn-arounds, and set-backs. Anyone who is in business longer than 1 month learns that. In fact, most people who are simply BREATHING learn that. These idiots seem simply incapable of adjusting for their "moved cheese".
There were several methods to develop for a Mac in the 90s that involved no codewarrior or a Lisa. I know, I did it.
That's true.
There was MacFORTH, The sadly discontinued Microsoft BASIC (the obvious forerunner of Visual BASIC), Think/Lightspeed C, Borland C (I think), Oasis C, MacFortran, Squirrel BASIC, and some others I'm sure I've forgotten (and my apologies to the teams that worked tirelessly on those, too!).
HOWEVER, there was only One True Path to becoming a REGISTERED Apple Developer; entitled to all the goodies, and some other perks, like some sort of reduced licensing on the Apple trademark, access to Apple testing labs, Apple developer support, etc.
Yes, a lot of that still costs; but at least the "real" Apple dev. tools are FREE. Oh, and it wasn't just the money, the Registered Developer program application was ONEROUSLY long and involved! I don't know if it's still like that; but it reminded me of the Monty Python bit where John Cleese is on the phone giving information for SOMETHING, and after he spits out ever-increasingly-ridiculous bits of personal information, he takes off one of his shoes, and reports "10 1/2" into the phone.
I interned for a rather large company that makes personal hygiene products longer ago than I care to remember. The plant I worked at was located in the mid-western US. I recall how all the plant workers and management were just so fired up about how 'Wal-Mart has increased our business so much over the last couple years...it's saved this plant'
Wal-Mart did exactly what you mention to them. Until they couldn't afford to pay American workers anymore...because they absolutely couldn't afford for Wal-Mart to not stock their shelves with their products. I ride past that closed down plant every day on my way to work...
Yeah, and speaking of Pickles, apparently WallyWorld nearly put Vlasic Pickle company out of business with the same shit. So, when people attempt to compare Apple to Wal-Mart, I just gotta speak up.
Thanks for validating my story. I heard it second hand from my former boss, who had seen it, and the Vlasic story, on some exposé about Wal-Mart's truly unscrupulous business practices.
Are you fucking kidding? Really? The book is about being flexible in the face of adverse change. This is a company dictating terms to it's developers such that flexibility isn't an option, then changing the rules again so that they arrive at a trapped dead end.
Two dead mice. One flexible, the other not, but both dead.
Every time there is a business agreement, that agreement "dictates terms".
No one forced them to develop for iOS exclusively, or even at all.
Someone just moved their cheese, and they were too blind to find out where it was not (Android? WinMobile? ???)
Apple suffers 3rd party software to exist at all because they recognize that they cannot fulfill every customer desire themselves(though they really would have preferred to keep it all first party
So, that's why they give away XCode (and a zillion tutorials, examples, etc.) for FREE? There is VERY little that I can't get to with my FREE "Developer License". No, I can't develop iOS apps; but if $99 is a bar, then it's a pretty fucking low one.
Have you ever priced Dev Tools? I am an embedded developer, and GOOD tools (like IAR and Green Hills, etc.) are often in the multiple THOUSANDS of dollars. You can argue how good XCode and Friends are (but you are also free to use something like Eclipse, too); but the simple fact is, Apple is just as happy to shout "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!" as is Monkey-Boy.
BTW, WWDC (which is ALL about third-party development of Apple products) SOLD OUT IN EIGHT HOURS this year.
So, you sir, are nothing but a stinking Troll. Go back to your Mom's basement. And STAY there, stroking your Stallman-esque beard.
iFlow says that five of them spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app with its unique AutoScrolling approach but all of it now has gone to waste.
I dunno; ask all the PlaysForSure vendors; all the (can't remember all the names) games purchasers that had their license servers just go dark; all the people who bought (and produced) DVD-HD equipment and content; All the buggy-whip manufacturers. All those people had invested their entire business model on a market that looks like the mass-spectrometer output of Sodium. When Apple changed the rules, it was up to them to adapt or die, not Apple.
Apple didn't have it in for this company; they should have been in parallel development with Android, Windows Phone, plus every desktop OS.
"Evil" doesn't excuse Stupidity. It isn't like they didn't have some cash to burn from all those six-million downloads. As they themselves admit, they had at least SOME sales BEFORE Apple "changed the rules".
What happened to all THOSE profits, eh? Too busy buying houses, cars and blow to think ahead, methinks.
iFlow says that five of them spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app with its unique AutoScrolling approach but all of it now has gone to waste.
So, I wonder what they are valuing their sweat at? A million dollars in "cash and sweat equity". Right?
And, although I haven't seen this magical "Auto-scrolling" feature (Hey TelePrompTer, you might want to check these guys out!), I simply can't imagine that it would take that much to scroll some text at a given rate.
>>>These people are whining because they went from a 70% to a 40% profit margin on a product that requires no raw materials to "manufacture".
Your numbers are smelly.
Did you pull them out of your ass?
The profit margin on most books, after you subtract wages for the author and editor and publicist, is just a few percent. If the store suddenly adds a surcharge of 30%, that wipes out your profit completely.
No, I pulled them (actually, calculated them) based on the RTFA.
Assuming you have a 100% (or nearly so) profit margin when you get to the six-million downloads point of something that has NO PHYSICAL GOODS COST, the math is simple. They said they were paying 30% to authors, etc. (paraphrasing). That leaves 70% (or nearly so). Apple comes in and says "You have to pay 30% on your in-app sales, not just the original sales-price of the app itself". This now makes the aggregate profit of app and content be somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% - 30%, or 40%.
It's actually a little more complicated, (and perhaps even higher profit); because they don't have to pay the 30% out to WHOEVER ELSE (NOT APPLE) for the app itself; so they get to make closer to the 70% profit on that; but the volume of those purchases would likely be somewhat lower (assuming more than one eBook sale per app) than on the "books" they have to pay the extra 30% to NOT APPLE for. So, to make my own brain hurt a little less, and since we are not privvy to the real numbers, I simply came up with an aggregate GROSS profit of 40%.
This really should come as no surprise to anyone at all.
This is Apple. This is what they do. This has been their form of business for, what, 30 years? If you are not Apple, do not trust Apple, do not rely on Apple, Apple is only, ONLY, interested in Apple, and has never hesitated to lock down their platform and squeeze dry anyone not Apple trying to do business on their platform.
First, Apple has been a publicly-traded company for HOW many years? They have a duty to stockholders to maximize profits. Simple business realities. And, I suppose that MS, Google, Amazon, et al, are completely altruistic corporations, who, like Newman's Own, have a business model that is predicated upon being a NON-PROFIT corporation. Gimme a break!
I mean for the love of god Apple driving out non-Apple products from their platform was one of The Big Reasons why Apple nearly closed it doors, why it fell apart in the 80s/90s. It was the open platform of the IBM-compatible PC (lol, anachronistic terms!) where anyone could write and sell their own program that allowed it to flourish, when doing the same on the Apple platform would.. wait for it.. drumroll please.... reduce profits to absolutely nothing due to Apple's onerous licensing fees!
What licensing fees were those? You mean the ones like everyone has if you use a logo or trademark; or the petty $500/yr to become a Registered Developer; which not only entitled you to "free" Macintosh Workbench software development/debugging tools (which are now REALLY free, except for iOS), but also entitled you to monthly/quarterly CDs (remember, this was before broadband was ubiquitous) that had lotsa developer goodies?
And you could even eschew all that, and just buy a copy of CodeWarrior (until Motorola bought it destroyed it!), and just start writing stuff yourself. There was NOTHING that stopped someone from developing and selling Apple ][ or Macintosh apps for whatever he wanted. Nothing.
I mean really people, I feel bad for any company failing that is just trying to make an honest living, but there is such a thing as a deserved death.
On this, we agree completely.
It's not like Apple has ever, ever, EVER turned a new leaf. This has been how Apple operates for DECADES.
How is that, again?
You've gotta be a special kind of idiot to put your faith and livelihood in a company that has, time and time again, bitten the hand of anyone not Apple trying to make money on an Apple product. THAT IS APPLE!
So, I guess giving out the free XCode IDE, free TONS of documentation, examples, tutorials, etc. just doesn't count? You are not only an idiot; but a demonstrable idiot. And all of that is available under a FREE (unlike back in the Macintosh Workbench days) OS X software development license. Yes, there are two other "tiers" of Software Developer licenses that are not free; and the iOS developer license costs a "whopping" $99; but, please!
Not that it's an excuse for Apple's deplorable policies, but what did this developer expect when they created something that competed directly with Apple on Apple's closed platform?
Deplorable? I guess they didn't expect Apple to start making a commission on in-app purchases? After all, they have ongoing costs, just like the publisher. Why shouldn't they get a piece of ONGOING PROFITS from the person making ONGOING PROFITS from their in-app purchases?
I'm as anti-capitalist as the next person; but what you are saying just doesn't make sense.
Not just wal-mart, but an evil wall mart. If walmart doesn't want to sell yeast, they don't prevent me from buying yeast from a third party. Apple has DRM'ed thier platform so that it is forboden to load apps except through a store they controll.
These people are whining because they went from a 70% to a 40% profit margin on a product that requires no raw materials to "manufacture".
Ask anyone who sells to Wal-Mart whether they get to make 40% on their stuff they wholesale to Wal-Mart, and those companies HAVE actual, ongoing raw-materials costs. Oh, and let me let you in on a dirty little secret about being a Wal-Mart supplier: When you start supplying goods to Wal-Mart, as time goes on, you are EXPECTED to continuously REDUCE your wholesale price to Wal-Mart every single year, REGARDLESS of whether your actual costs go up, the value of the dollar goes down, or whatever. Apple certainly isn't doing that!
And please don't whine to me about servers, electricity, bandwidth and IT. At six-million downloads the per-unit cost of those "materials" is down in the sub-dollar-per-unit range.
They just negotiated some bad contracts early on, and didn't have the smarts to figure out how to share Apple's cut with their content-creators in a more equitable manner.
Remember, if the publisher has ongoing costs as listed above, so does Apple, since you are d/ling the books through their store. If Apple didn't charge for these "in-app purchases", then THEY would quickly eat up any profits from that initial 30% on the app sale.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the amount of imitation and bad research there, those are near-worthless credentials outside of China.
Then again, unlike China, education is not reserved for the few who manage to luck out on the tests. It's more or less open to all in comparison.
Exactly.
I don't mean to sound racist (and I'm not); but I can tell you from reading many, many résumés from Chinese applicants for EE positions, that not only does every one of them list education out the ying-yang (see what I did there?); but Every. Single. One. of those applicants lists about 30 years of "job experience", even though they ALSO list that they have only graduated from University of ("You'll Never Be Able To Prove I Went There") 5 years prior. I guess they figure no one can put two-and-two together, or something. But it really is Every. Single. One.
I know it isn't uncommon to gild the lilly a bit on a résumé, and I know I'm painting with a firehose; but it just seems that Chinese "engineering" job candidates list themselves as being the Chief Engineer (or nearly so) on every single large-scale project they even walked by on the way to their factory job.
And the worst part is, it is so endemic to their culture, (I guess) they don't even see how patently ridiculous their résumés look in comparison with applicants from other countries.
That only excludes ~$90k of foreign income. The rest is double taxed. I think it only applies to US citizens and not green card holders.
I'm sorry. If your income is so far over $90k that form 2555 is down under the noise floor, I have absolutely no sympathy for you.
I bet you can buy those degrees in China, whereas in the U.S. you can only buy a liberal arts degree or a variety of lesser graduate degrees. Like, oh, I don't know... I'll have to think of an example...
Actually, I think that College is free (or nearly so) in China.
I wonder how that number would change if it cost the equivalent of a damned Rolls Royce (guessing) to get, like it does in the U.S.?
Computer Science isn't a Science?
Yes, but it isn't about Computers; so it's ok.
WOW, talking about reading fail. Hey, dufus: how you you think they wrote to commercial disks that had no notched at all?
First, the preferred spelling is "Doofus", dufus.
Second, it is YOU that has the reading comprehension issue, not I.
I was talking about regular CONSUMER drives; not the specially-modified DUPLICATOR drives.
Oh, nevermind. You won't understand the difference anyway...
Some people will just argue and argue no matter the fact that they are demonstrably full of it.
Unfortunately, Slashdot seems to attract those types, like flies to a steaming dungpile.
Please consider using <em> or <strong> tags instead of capitalization. Your post was otherwise excellent.
Sorry. Just a lazy habit. It interrupts my train of thought too much to use those clumsy HTML tags.
But, thanks for the props on the content!
If your motherboard has a TPM chip, you could set up a trusted boot sequence, insuring that the OS is unmodified. You can then make the OS execute only signed executables, making any modifications to installed software impossible. Malware would also be prevented from running.
And even putting all the useability issues aside, just how many Slashdotters do you think would be capable of accomplishing the above? Now, expand that to the general population. How many now?
A floppy drive is easy - a floppy drive is just some motors in a cage - the floppy controller resides on the motherboard and tells those motors how to operate
My guess is that you've never actually SEEN a floppy drive.
Even the most hardware efficient floppy drive of all time, the Disk ][ drive electronics designed by Steve Wozniak for use with the Apple ][, used something like 8 TTL and analog chips on the floppy drive itself, plus some transistors, resistors, capacitors, an inductor, and a few other components. This is IN the drive itself. This connected via a 20-pin (IIRC) ribbon cable to a peripheral card in the computer with 5 more chips on it, including a pair of TTL ROMS that formed a really clever state machine that did the actual GCC "nibble" encoding/decoding. While it is true that the CPU in the Apple ][ controlled the stepper motor for the head movement (and maybe the spindle motor, too. Can't recall) more or less directly, and was responsible for the actual timing of the reading and writing of the "nibbles"; but the actual laying down and picking up of those nibbles on the disk surface was actually all done by the peripheral card and the electronics in the drive enclosure. So, your assertion that the floppy drive is but a box-full-o-motors is demonstrably false.
And as I said, that was the MOST hardware-efficient floppy design of all time. The reference designs by Shugart had a TON of electronics inside the floppy drive itself, and ANOTHER TWO TONS of the most bizarre conglomeration of digital and analog hardware mankind has ever seen on the "interface" card in the computer. I have no idea what the CPU in the host had to do after all this; but I assure you, that NO floppy has EVER been "just a box with motors". Period. You are simply talking out of your ass.
I did that because when I worked in repair I needed working copies (they get damaged) that would not lose the tape. You can buy disks without the notch so there is no protect to fall off. To prevent accidents, the switch I put in the drive was a reed switch. It required knowledge of the switch as well as the pocket screwdriver with the magnet in the end to turn on the hidden write switch while writing another working copy of the diagnostic floppy disks.
None of the floppies in the field service kit had a write enable notch. It makes no sense taking one customer's infection and giving it to someone else. The modern replacement is a burned DVD instead of a thumb drive. Use read only media for any of your service materials. No exceptions.
Yeah, the 8 inch floppies actually got it right. They had a Write ENABLE sticker. If the Notch was NOT covered over, then the disk was automatically Write Protected. The rationale was that a sticker can NEVER "fall ON". I would imagine that whatever evil engineer inverted that logic did it because he was either pressured to, or was tired to digging around to find write-enable stickers...
Well and good until somebody hacks a floppy drive to bypass it.
You don't understand hardware so good, do you?
The W/P switch in old floppy drives wasn't a "request not to write"; it actually disabled the HARDWARE enable input to the WRITE CURRENT driver in the R/W head. The only way it could fail was if the microswitch that read the "tab" (or the optical sensor in the 3.5 inch version) failed; or, if you had an Apple ][ disk drive, if static zapped the 74LS125 on the 5.25 Shugart drive's board (a somewhat common, VERY nasty problem, which resulted in the write/erase current being turned on PERMANENTLY!).
No amount of SOFTWARE could defeat the HARDWARE W/P switch. And if you are talking about a USER "hacking" their OWN drive to defeat that (a common mod was to install a switch on the front of the drive to provide "no-tab" Normal, Protect Always, and No Protect operation), then that particular user has done so with the understanding that they have VOLUNTARILY placed themselves at greater risk. Different situation completely than with a "Please Write Protect Me" SOFTWARE scheme, as with the USB sticks.
On a related note, I can't understand why someone can't actually provide HARDWARE write protect on a USB stick, unless the integration has gotten so high that the controller and memory are actually within the same IC package (and if the designer of that chip wanted it, they could STILL bring a HARDWARE enable out to the world, not just a port pin read by the controller).
Wow. Try the sedatives.
Hey man, it's 85 degrees here today. Sorry if I'm a little testy (or have little testies)...
Have you honestly forgotten Apple's original 'Well, you can just develop webapps and like it.' position on 3rd party iDevice software so quickly?
Well, considering that ended in 2008, and lasted only about a year, yes, I have forgotten about it. Why can't you? Apple had a product that they were simply DYING to get out; but didn't have a "ready-for-prime-time" SDK, toolchain, simulator, documentation, licensing, etc. Do you really think they whipped all that up in the 9 months or so before they announced the iOS XCode SDK? There's a BIG difference between having some rickety terminal apps, and having stuff that Just Works with XCode. Plus, I'm pretty sure that Apple was testing the waters a bit, seeing if Javascript would be enough.
Speaking of "forgetting, we all forget: When the iPhone debuted, there simply wasn't anything like it. You can say "My (fill in the blank) did this or that for years before the iPhone came out"; but, the simple fact of the matter is, just like the iPad is doing now, the iPhone truly was a game-changer. Perhaps you might give Apple just a LITTLE slack on getting a detail or two wrong. And UNlike many, many, MANY other companies, Apple has a pretty damned stellar track record of listening, and changing, when appropriate. In fact, they are now beta-testing an entire website that is focused on PRECISELY that.
Compared to the matter of whether development tools are free-with-purchase-of-mac, or slightly expensive, or a few thousand bucks, the fact that they created an entire category of devices that you had to exploit bugs just to run 3rd party code is slightly more noticeable...
They eventually conceded, and now 3rd party code can be run, subject to their blessing and on their terms
Eventually was a scant 9 months after the introduction of the first generation of the device. So what?
but I find your contention that the price of dev tools, rather than the control of platforms, indicates an entity's attitude toward 3rd parties very strange. While it is true that Apple does not view dev tools as a profit center, they consistently treat 3rd party entities as barely tolerable adjuncts to the mac experience, who have to be carefully kept in line. Hence the iDevice lockdown and app store rules. Hence the migration of the app store to the desktop. Hence the safari plugin signing requirements.
Really, you MUST put another layer on that tinfoil hat! Some of the mind-control rays must be leaking in...
The "iDevice lockdown" is about as iron-clad as the old iTunes DRM (which doesn't exist anymore, BTW). In other words, pretty much completely ineffective. Do you see Apple sending C&D letters to Cydia, et al? People publish apps in the App Store because THAT'S WHERE THE CUSTOMERS ARE, not because Apple actually FORCES them to in any meaningful way (and certainly not as "meaningful" as some of the Android lock-down!)
And, are you REALLY arguing AGAINST browser-plugin-signing?!? OMFG!!! If there is a larger attack-surface than a malicious browser plugin, I really can't imagine it.
Apple isn't being evil; they're just jealously guarding their (well-deserved) reputation for an essentially malware-free platform.
And, as an Apple user since 1976, and a Mac user since, well, when they were called Lisas, I'm pretty damn glad they are doing that, thankyouverymuch! I have disinfected enough Windows PCs in my life to fully appreciate what the lack of malware means. And, like the fact that I like laws against burglary, fraud, extortion, etc (and the prosecutors and courts that enforce and interpret them), doesn't mean that I'm willing to sacrifice everything as a good little sheeple; it simply means that I understand what having NO laws would soon bring to my doorstep.
But it can also be interpreted as a useful warning to those of us who might have been tempted to go into the iOS/OSX app development profession. It looks like we shouldn't bother; you can't make a living that way any more.
Apple has shown zero signs that they are doing this with OS X development. The horse is already out of the barn, and Apple is in no way foolish enough to cut off its nose to spite its horse.
And I point out, yet again, that WWDC sold out in EIGHT HOURS. Apple knows full well that it has the Lion by the Horns, and is not about to do anything to stop that momentum!
Microsoft never made itself a gate keeper like Apple has done.
Let's examine all those shenanigans with the docx, xlsx, etc. formats, Exchange and Outlook lock-in (which STILL has an iron-fisted grip on business!), and all the backroom-dealing, specification-hiding and arm-twisting involved with that, and a bunch of other stuff.
MS Office apps can't even SAVE in the older formats. I'm sure you CAN get the "output converter"; but for fuck's sake! Most people just go "Oh, well. I guess you'll have to upgrade at your end". I've seen it happen first hand!
And, the only reason that MS hasn't become a gate keeper is that the gate was left wide open to start with, and even MS isn't bold enough to try and weld it shut now. But I'll bet they wished they thought of it, too!
After seeing the horrid shit that has happened time after time to Android users, even those who have purchased stuff from supposedly legit. channels, and considering the "Walls" of the Apple "Garden" are so far off on the horizon that, for the user at least, for all practical purposes, they might as well not exist, Apple has made a Wise Choice with the iOS App Store. And, those restrictions DO NOT EXIST for OS X development. And if you want to engage in speculation regarding that topic, then you have just negated your own argument regarding "could" and "is".
I wonder what would happen if these people simply put their app on the Cydia store? Apple doesn't seem to be pursuing that "sideload" adventure/venture very aggressively; so, why not take a chance, while they are porting their stupid reader-app to Android/WinMobile?
Life is a series of compromises, turn-arounds, and set-backs. Anyone who is in business longer than 1 month learns that. In fact, most people who are simply BREATHING learn that. These idiots seem simply incapable of adjusting for their "moved cheese".
No Cheese For You!
There were several methods to develop for a Mac in the 90s that involved no codewarrior or a Lisa. I know, I did it.
That's true.
There was MacFORTH, The sadly discontinued Microsoft BASIC (the obvious forerunner of Visual BASIC), Think/Lightspeed C, Borland C (I think), Oasis C, MacFortran, Squirrel BASIC, and some others I'm sure I've forgotten (and my apologies to the teams that worked tirelessly on those, too!).
HOWEVER, there was only One True Path to becoming a REGISTERED Apple Developer; entitled to all the goodies, and some other perks, like some sort of reduced licensing on the Apple trademark, access to Apple testing labs, Apple developer support, etc.
Yes, a lot of that still costs; but at least the "real" Apple dev. tools are FREE. Oh, and it wasn't just the money, the Registered Developer program application was ONEROUSLY long and involved! I don't know if it's still like that; but it reminded me of the Monty Python bit where John Cleese is on the phone giving information for SOMETHING, and after he spits out ever-increasingly-ridiculous bits of personal information, he takes off one of his shoes, and reports "10 1/2" into the phone.
I interned for a rather large company that makes personal hygiene products longer ago than I care to remember. The plant I worked at was located in the mid-western US. I recall how all the plant workers and management were just so fired up about how 'Wal-Mart has increased our business so much over the last couple years...it's saved this plant' Wal-Mart did exactly what you mention to them. Until they couldn't afford to pay American workers anymore...because they absolutely couldn't afford for Wal-Mart to not stock their shelves with their products. I ride past that closed down plant every day on my way to work...
Yeah, and speaking of Pickles, apparently WallyWorld nearly put Vlasic Pickle company out of business with the same shit. So, when people attempt to compare Apple to Wal-Mart, I just gotta speak up.
Thanks for validating my story. I heard it second hand from my former boss, who had seen it, and the Vlasic story, on some exposé about Wal-Mart's truly unscrupulous business practices.
Are you fucking kidding? Really? The book is about being flexible in the face of adverse change. This is a company dictating terms to it's developers such that flexibility isn't an option, then changing the rules again so that they arrive at a trapped dead end.
Two dead mice. One flexible, the other not, but both dead.
Every time there is a business agreement, that agreement "dictates terms".
No one forced them to develop for iOS exclusively, or even at all.
Someone just moved their cheese, and they were too blind to find out where it was not (Android? WinMobile? ???)
Apple suffers 3rd party software to exist at all because they recognize that they cannot fulfill every customer desire themselves(though they really would have preferred to keep it all first party
So, that's why they give away XCode (and a zillion tutorials, examples, etc.) for FREE? There is VERY little that I can't get to with my FREE "Developer License". No, I can't develop iOS apps; but if $99 is a bar, then it's a pretty fucking low one.
Have you ever priced Dev Tools? I am an embedded developer, and GOOD tools (like IAR and Green Hills, etc.) are often in the multiple THOUSANDS of dollars. You can argue how good XCode and Friends are (but you are also free to use something like Eclipse, too); but the simple fact is, Apple is just as happy to shout "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!" as is Monkey-Boy.
BTW, WWDC (which is ALL about third-party development of Apple products) SOLD OUT IN EIGHT HOURS this year.
So, you sir, are nothing but a stinking Troll. Go back to your Mom's basement. And STAY there, stroking your Stallman-esque beard.
Jeezus.
iFlow says that five of them spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app with its unique AutoScrolling approach but all of it now has gone to waste.
I dunno; ask all the PlaysForSure vendors; all the (can't remember all the names) games purchasers that had their license servers just go dark; all the people who bought (and produced) DVD-HD equipment and content; All the buggy-whip manufacturers. All those people had invested their entire business model on a market that looks like the mass-spectrometer output of Sodium. When Apple changed the rules, it was up to them to adapt or die, not Apple.
Apple didn't have it in for this company; they should have been in parallel development with Android, Windows Phone, plus every desktop OS.
"Evil" doesn't excuse Stupidity. It isn't like they didn't have some cash to burn from all those six-million downloads. As they themselves admit, they had at least SOME sales BEFORE Apple "changed the rules".
What happened to all THOSE profits, eh? Too busy buying houses, cars and blow to think ahead, methinks.
iFlow says that five of them spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app with its unique AutoScrolling approach but all of it now has gone to waste.
So, I wonder what they are valuing their sweat at? A million dollars in "cash and sweat equity". Right?
And, although I haven't seen this magical "Auto-scrolling" feature (Hey TelePrompTer, you might want to check these guys out!), I simply can't imagine that it would take that much to scroll some text at a given rate.
Jeezus. What crybabies.
>>>These people are whining because they went from a 70% to a 40% profit margin on a product that requires no raw materials to "manufacture".
Your numbers are smelly. Did you pull them out of your ass? The profit margin on most books, after you subtract wages for the author and editor and publicist, is just a few percent. If the store suddenly adds a surcharge of 30%, that wipes out your profit completely.
No, I pulled them (actually, calculated them) based on the RTFA.
Assuming you have a 100% (or nearly so) profit margin when you get to the six-million downloads point of something that has NO PHYSICAL GOODS COST, the math is simple. They said they were paying 30% to authors, etc. (paraphrasing). That leaves 70% (or nearly so). Apple comes in and says "You have to pay 30% on your in-app sales, not just the original sales-price of the app itself". This now makes the aggregate profit of app and content be somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% - 30%, or 40%.
It's actually a little more complicated, (and perhaps even higher profit); because they don't have to pay the 30% out to WHOEVER ELSE (NOT APPLE) for the app itself; so they get to make closer to the 70% profit on that; but the volume of those purchases would likely be somewhat lower (assuming more than one eBook sale per app) than on the "books" they have to pay the extra 30% to NOT APPLE for. So, to make my own brain hurt a little less, and since we are not privvy to the real numbers, I simply came up with an aggregate GROSS profit of 40%.
Got that?
the actual cost of producing the physical part of an eBook is relatively small part of the sale price... see Charles Stross's blog/diary
Wasn't that my point? They have basically ZERO physical part. Or, in most cases, ZERO.
This really should come as no surprise to anyone at all.
This is Apple. This is what they do. This has been their form of business for, what, 30 years? If you are not Apple, do not trust Apple, do not rely on Apple, Apple is only, ONLY, interested in Apple, and has never hesitated to lock down their platform and squeeze dry anyone not Apple trying to do business on their platform.
First, Apple has been a publicly-traded company for HOW many years? They have a duty to stockholders to maximize profits. Simple business realities. And, I suppose that MS, Google, Amazon, et al, are completely altruistic corporations, who, like Newman's Own, have a business model that is predicated upon being a NON-PROFIT corporation. Gimme a break!
I mean for the love of god Apple driving out non-Apple products from their platform was one of The Big Reasons why Apple nearly closed it doors, why it fell apart in the 80s/90s. It was the open platform of the IBM-compatible PC (lol, anachronistic terms!) where anyone could write and sell their own program that allowed it to flourish, when doing the same on the Apple platform would.. wait for it.. drumroll please.... reduce profits to absolutely nothing due to Apple's onerous licensing fees!
What licensing fees were those? You mean the ones like everyone has if you use a logo or trademark; or the petty $500/yr to become a Registered Developer; which not only entitled you to "free" Macintosh Workbench software development/debugging tools (which are now REALLY free, except for iOS), but also entitled you to monthly/quarterly CDs (remember, this was before broadband was ubiquitous) that had lotsa developer goodies?
And you could even eschew all that, and just buy a copy of CodeWarrior (until Motorola bought it destroyed it!), and just start writing stuff yourself. There was NOTHING that stopped someone from developing and selling Apple ][ or Macintosh apps for whatever he wanted. Nothing.
I mean really people, I feel bad for any company failing that is just trying to make an honest living, but there is such a thing as a deserved death.
On this, we agree completely.
It's not like Apple has ever, ever, EVER turned a new leaf. This has been how Apple operates for DECADES.
How is that, again?
You've gotta be a special kind of idiot to put your faith and livelihood in a company that has, time and time again, bitten the hand of anyone not Apple trying to make money on an Apple product. THAT IS APPLE!
So, I guess giving out the free XCode IDE, free TONS of documentation, examples, tutorials, etc. just doesn't count? You are not only an idiot; but a demonstrable idiot. And all of that is available under a FREE (unlike back in the Macintosh Workbench days) OS X software development license. Yes, there are two other "tiers" of Software Developer licenses that are not free; and the iOS developer license costs a "whopping" $99; but, please!
Not that it's an excuse for Apple's deplorable policies, but what did this developer expect when they created something that competed directly with Apple on Apple's closed platform?
Deplorable? I guess they didn't expect Apple to start making a commission on in-app purchases? After all, they have ongoing costs, just like the publisher. Why shouldn't they get a piece of ONGOING PROFITS from the person making ONGOING PROFITS from their in-app purchases?
I'm as anti-capitalist as the next person; but what you are saying just doesn't make sense.
Not just wal-mart, but an evil wall mart. If walmart doesn't want to sell yeast, they don't prevent me from buying yeast from a third party. Apple has DRM'ed thier platform so that it is forboden to load apps except through a store they controll.
These people are whining because they went from a 70% to a 40% profit margin on a product that requires no raw materials to "manufacture".
Ask anyone who sells to Wal-Mart whether they get to make 40% on their stuff they wholesale to Wal-Mart, and those companies HAVE actual, ongoing raw-materials costs. Oh, and let me let you in on a dirty little secret about being a Wal-Mart supplier: When you start supplying goods to Wal-Mart, as time goes on, you are EXPECTED to continuously REDUCE your wholesale price to Wal-Mart every single year, REGARDLESS of whether your actual costs go up, the value of the dollar goes down, or whatever. Apple certainly isn't doing that!
And please don't whine to me about servers, electricity, bandwidth and IT. At six-million downloads the per-unit cost of those "materials" is down in the sub-dollar-per-unit range.
They just negotiated some bad contracts early on, and didn't have the smarts to figure out how to share Apple's cut with their content-creators in a more equitable manner.
Remember, if the publisher has ongoing costs as listed above, so does Apple, since you are d/ling the books through their store. If Apple didn't charge for these "in-app purchases", then THEY would quickly eat up any profits from that initial 30% on the app sale.
Or is everyone on Slashdot REALLY that stupid?