However, the entire concept of upgrades depends completely on legal licensing
No it doesn't; you could sell what amounts to a bunch of patches, using previously installed components of the system that did not change. Making it robust is a technical challenge, but isn't the entire argument that we are paying for people to solve technical challenges?
The question was never if Apple can prevent consumers from installing on OS X on hackintoshes
Hm...if my memory serves me, that was exactly what Psystar was accused of illegally doing, installing Mac OS X on a hackintosh, as well as transferring the computer to someone else. Psystar claimed that the EULA was not enforceable, and the court ruled against them.
Psystar bought a different copy of Mac OS X for every computer they built and shipped. They were sued for violations of the EULA clause that forbids them from installing Mac OS X on a system that does not have an Apple logo, and another clause which forbids transfer of ownership or third party installations. This entire case was about the EULA; Psystar was not sued because they did not buy enough copies of Mac OS X from Apple, they were sued for using those copies in a way that violates the EULA. That is why this case matters at all.
There are a number of species of animal that can see ultraviolet light, and a number of plant and animal species have evolved to take advantage of this. Parrots are known for having UV patterns in their feathers, butterflies use UV patterns to communicate with each other, and most flowers have UV patterns to attract insects. Some fish-eating birds use UV light to help identify fish underwater.
So if you are truly able to see UV light, you should be seeing a very interesting world!
Except that I can buy a licensed copy Windows, install it on a computer, and then sell that computer to you without it being considered a violation of copyright law. The question here is whether or not Apple can use copyright law to prevent you from installing a licensed copy of Mac OS X on a computer without an Apple logo; the courts have ruled that Apple can do this and that it is not overstepping the bounds of copyright law. It was not obvious that Psystar could not installed legally purchased copies of Mac OS X on a non-Apply computer prior to this case, because it was not clear that a license that forbids such installations is legally enforceable.
I'm sure this will make those free market morons happy
Have you ever carried on a conversation with a libertarian or an objectivist, or whomever else you might classify as a "free market moron?" They would tell you that Psystar was in the right, that Psystar was contributing in a positive way to the economy and to technology (by lowering the price of hardware needed to run Mac OS X), and that Apple is abusing the justice system by using it to attack a legitimate competitor.
Their activities were blatantly and obviously illegal.
Really? When last I checked, they were building clones of Apple computers, and making it possible to install Mac OS X on those clones. How is that obviously illegal?
The sad thing is the number of people who still believe that HIV/AIDS is a gay man's disease. While female-to-male transmission is less prevalent, it has never been unheard of, and as that very article points out Africa is one of the hardest hit regions of the entire world. It was only referred to as GRID early on because the spread began in homosexual communities in major cities.
And that's why I use Facebook as little as possible.
...or why we should not have Facebook accounts to begin with? I mean really, with their web bugs scattered all over the place, the only real way to win is not to play.
Well, considering that they are protesting the heart of America's economic system, and considering that mainstream media outlets have long refused to publicize movements that run counter the American economic policy, I would not be surprised if the black-out was deliberate.
Not just Ireland, but everywhere else too. You have a body that burned at high temperature, no damage to the room except the floor under the body and the ceiling over it, and no evidence of unusual chemicals on the body. This phenomenon is called "spontaneous combustion" because it appears that the body just started burning without an external ignition. Since most of these cases occur near fireplaces, it is likely that the cause is a spark from the fireplace, which under yet-unknown conditions can cause a human body to burn (perhaps with clothing acting as a wick). I doubt that any forensic team would be able to distinguish the ashes from whatever spark set the man on fire from the ashes from his clothes or body, particularly given the temperature at which he burned.
As a social protest, all it seems to accomplish is annoying your friends and family
Which, as antisocial as it sounds, I would say is a good thing. The last thing we need is for people to simply assume that everyone has a Facebook account, and since that is what a lot of people assume now, they need to be annoyed and reminded that not everyone is on Facebook. Why should someone like Mark Zuckerberg be able to exert so much control over how people communicate?
You don't have to "submit to the beast" - just use it for what's convenient.
Any communication on Facebook is submitting to the beast.
The story is old, but it is this: Facebook can and does track your activity across the web, not just on facebook.com. People who would prefer to not be tracked in this manner have no way to opt-out and nobody is talking about making it opt-in. Since most people do not care about their privacy on the web, Facebook will continue to get away with this sort of behavior.
Most people do not actually care. They love being able to follow what all their friends, acquaintances, and former boyfriends and girlfriends are doing. They love the idea that other people are following what they are doing. If people really cared about their privacy, they would ditch Facebook entirely.
A read-only bootloader is a horrible idea for a common desktop computer. IT would hate you.
Thus explaining why we are going to let OEMs decide whose bootloaders can be used?
At some point the new UEFI boot process needs to allow IT departments to sign their own bootloaders. How is this different from allowing them to change a jumper to install a custom bootloader? Maybe I am just not familiar enough with how IT staff manage their boot media.
I fail to see how this is bad.
...because it means that individual users will not be able to use a different operating system if the OEM decides not to allow it? Do you really want your laptop to use the same software restriction model that cell phones or video game consoles use?
I'd say the degree benefits the recipient much more than the taxpayers in the community
This is why the American education system is so far behind other countries': nobody thinks there is any value in having lots of educated people walking around. Societies with an educated population tend to be more successful, which benefits everyone. Democracies are in particular need of an educated populace: people need to have enough education to understand the political issues that they or their representatives are being asked to decide.
Education has been under attack in the United States for a long time now, and that includes higher education. People simply do not place much value on an education, and the general sentiment is that college exists to train people for a job. Thus we have seen college programs with less practical value slowly die off, curricula have become less rigorous and more "practicality" oriented, and students are not complaining about receiving a sub-par education. Nobody wants their tax dollars to pay for some other person's job training.
If Americans thought that there was value in having a well-educated population, free education for all might be possible.
Most IT workers should go to tech / trade schools and apprenticeships.
I agree with this, but for completely different reasons. The problem with the current system is not that IT workers are learning too much, it is that they are receiving bachelor's degrees without learning enough. If people just want job training, they should do what you just said: go to a trade school or establish apprenticeships. The point of higher education is education, not to train people for particular careers.
Some people have used the term "credentialism" to refer to the current view of higher education. For decades, we have been treating 4 year degrees as some sort of certification that a person has received training for a job, and high school students are being told that they must go to college or else they will never be able to get a "good job." The result is that large numbers of college students seek the path of least resistance, and they select courses that require the least work, avoid professors who demand excellence from their students, and cheat when they are confronted with tough problems.
It is not at all wrong to expect that someone who completed a CS curriculum should be able to state the P vs. NP problem -- yet the majority cannot. The standards have fallen to the point where most CS majors are only expected to understand a single programming paradigm, and they are not even expected to understand the theory behind that paradigm (how many CS grads can state Liskov's principle, or are even familiar with the term?). If someone wants to work in IT, and does not really care about the theory of computation or algorithms or programming languages, then what are they doing in a CS program?
Not that we are likely to see any change. When I was an undergrad, I confronted the program chair in my school's CS department about what I felt were lax standards, and I was told that (1) I was underestimating the difficulty of computer science because of my own talent and (2) if the department raised its standards, they would only have half a dozen students in their graduating class. That is the view that schools take: students who want a challenging curriculum and who are actually passionate about their major are outliers, and demanding too much out of the mainstream of the student body will cause them to flee, and thus the school will lose those tuition dollars.
Sadly this rise has happened in a time when it has become almost essential to get a college degree if you want any kind of decent job.
Actually, this has been so detrimental to higher education that employers are beginning to rethink the value of a bachelor's degree. It is a simple matter of economics: people are going to college in order to get a "one decent job" coupon, and they will seek the least-effort path through college to receive that coupon. Slowly but surely managers are realizing that a college degree may not actually reflect the work ethic, education, or intelligence that people ascribe to it.
The new coupon for a decent job is a masters degree, and you can bet that the same thing will happen to graduate programs over the next 20 years. This destructive cycle will only be stopped when universities put their collective foot down and remind their students that the college is about receiving a quality education, not partying one's way into a career.
Slashdot Mirror
However, the entire concept of upgrades depends completely on legal licensing
No it doesn't; you could sell what amounts to a bunch of patches, using previously installed components of the system that did not change. Making it robust is a technical challenge, but isn't the entire argument that we are paying for people to solve technical challenges?
The question was never if Apple can prevent consumers from installing on OS X on hackintoshes
Hm...if my memory serves me, that was exactly what Psystar was accused of illegally doing, installing Mac OS X on a hackintosh, as well as transferring the computer to someone else. Psystar claimed that the EULA was not enforceable, and the court ruled against them.
You. Are. Ignorant. Of. The. Facts.
Psystar bought a different copy of Mac OS X for every computer they built and shipped. They were sued for violations of the EULA clause that forbids them from installing Mac OS X on a system that does not have an Apple logo, and another clause which forbids transfer of ownership or third party installations. This entire case was about the EULA; Psystar was not sued because they did not buy enough copies of Mac OS X from Apple, they were sued for using those copies in a way that violates the EULA. That is why this case matters at all.
I suppose that many flowers will look different, as well as the plumage of many birds, which have UV color patterns that humans usually do not see:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/science/aaas/2002-01-03-budgies-glow.htm
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cockatiel_under_blacklight.jpg
http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_ARNI_ANG.html
http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_LATH_PRA.html
http://i.livescience.com/images/i/7881/i02/fish-uv-pattern-100225-02.jpg?1296089823
There are a number of species of animal that can see ultraviolet light, and a number of plant and animal species have evolved to take advantage of this. Parrots are known for having UV patterns in their feathers, butterflies use UV patterns to communicate with each other, and most flowers have UV patterns to attract insects. Some fish-eating birds use UV light to help identify fish underwater.
So if you are truly able to see UV light, you should be seeing a very interesting world!
Except that I can buy a licensed copy Windows, install it on a computer, and then sell that computer to you without it being considered a violation of copyright law. The question here is whether or not Apple can use copyright law to prevent you from installing a licensed copy of Mac OS X on a computer without an Apple logo; the courts have ruled that Apple can do this and that it is not overstepping the bounds of copyright law. It was not obvious that Psystar could not installed legally purchased copies of Mac OS X on a non-Apply computer prior to this case, because it was not clear that a license that forbids such installations is legally enforceable.
I'm sure this will make those free market morons happy
Have you ever carried on a conversation with a libertarian or an objectivist, or whomever else you might classify as a "free market moron?" They would tell you that Psystar was in the right, that Psystar was contributing in a positive way to the economy and to technology (by lowering the price of hardware needed to run Mac OS X), and that Apple is abusing the justice system by using it to attack a legitimate competitor.
Their activities were blatantly and obviously illegal.
Really? When last I checked, they were building clones of Apple computers, and making it possible to install Mac OS X on those clones. How is that obviously illegal?
+1, just make sure you check the range policies (or that nobody catches you) or that you do it on your own property (if legal).
The sad thing is the number of people who still believe that HIV/AIDS is a gay man's disease. While female-to-male transmission is less prevalent, it has never been unheard of, and as that very article points out Africa is one of the hardest hit regions of the entire world. It was only referred to as GRID early on because the spread began in homosexual communities in major cities.
And that's why I use Facebook as little as possible.
Well, considering that they are protesting the heart of America's economic system, and considering that mainstream media outlets have long refused to publicize movements that run counter the American economic policy, I would not be surprised if the black-out was deliberate.
I am pretty sure that, for example, Condor started as an academic project, but now it is Red Hat's grid computing platform:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/
http://www.redhat.com/mrg/grid/condor/
Not just Ireland, but everywhere else too. You have a body that burned at high temperature, no damage to the room except the floor under the body and the ceiling over it, and no evidence of unusual chemicals on the body. This phenomenon is called "spontaneous combustion" because it appears that the body just started burning without an external ignition. Since most of these cases occur near fireplaces, it is likely that the cause is a spark from the fireplace, which under yet-unknown conditions can cause a human body to burn (perhaps with clothing acting as a wick). I doubt that any forensic team would be able to distinguish the ashes from whatever spark set the man on fire from the ashes from his clothes or body, particularly given the temperature at which he burned.
Really, the phrase is just a euphemism.
As a social protest, all it seems to accomplish is annoying your friends and family
Which, as antisocial as it sounds, I would say is a good thing. The last thing we need is for people to simply assume that everyone has a Facebook account, and since that is what a lot of people assume now, they need to be annoyed and reminded that not everyone is on Facebook. Why should someone like Mark Zuckerberg be able to exert so much control over how people communicate?
You don't have to "submit to the beast" - just use it for what's convenient.
Any communication on Facebook is submitting to the beast.
The story is old, but it is this: Facebook can and does track your activity across the web, not just on facebook.com. People who would prefer to not be tracked in this manner have no way to opt-out and nobody is talking about making it opt-in. Since most people do not care about their privacy on the web, Facebook will continue to get away with this sort of behavior.
But but but we need Facebook. How else are we supposed to communicate with our friends?
As if anyone could have been surprised by this, didn't Slashdot already cover this story?
Most people do not actually care. They love being able to follow what all their friends, acquaintances, and former boyfriends and girlfriends are doing. They love the idea that other people are following what they are doing. If people really cared about their privacy, they would ditch Facebook entirely.
I like Javascript, it allowed me to code without having to install big fancy development platform.
So would a number of other and largely better programming languages.
A read-only bootloader is a horrible idea for a common desktop computer. IT would hate you.
Thus explaining why we are going to let OEMs decide whose bootloaders can be used?
At some point the new UEFI boot process needs to allow IT departments to sign their own bootloaders. How is this different from allowing them to change a jumper to install a custom bootloader? Maybe I am just not familiar enough with how IT staff manage their boot media.
I fail to see how this is bad.
Also, everyone is happy to call education an investment. Me too
Speak for yourself. I would call education the return on an investment.
I'd say the degree benefits the recipient much more than the taxpayers in the community
This is why the American education system is so far behind other countries': nobody thinks there is any value in having lots of educated people walking around. Societies with an educated population tend to be more successful, which benefits everyone. Democracies are in particular need of an educated populace: people need to have enough education to understand the political issues that they or their representatives are being asked to decide.
Education has been under attack in the United States for a long time now, and that includes higher education. People simply do not place much value on an education, and the general sentiment is that college exists to train people for a job. Thus we have seen college programs with less practical value slowly die off, curricula have become less rigorous and more "practicality" oriented, and students are not complaining about receiving a sub-par education. Nobody wants their tax dollars to pay for some other person's job training.
If Americans thought that there was value in having a well-educated population, free education for all might be possible.
Most IT workers should go to tech / trade schools and apprenticeships.
I agree with this, but for completely different reasons. The problem with the current system is not that IT workers are learning too much, it is that they are receiving bachelor's degrees without learning enough. If people just want job training, they should do what you just said: go to a trade school or establish apprenticeships. The point of higher education is education, not to train people for particular careers.
Some people have used the term "credentialism" to refer to the current view of higher education. For decades, we have been treating 4 year degrees as some sort of certification that a person has received training for a job, and high school students are being told that they must go to college or else they will never be able to get a "good job." The result is that large numbers of college students seek the path of least resistance, and they select courses that require the least work, avoid professors who demand excellence from their students, and cheat when they are confronted with tough problems.
It is not at all wrong to expect that someone who completed a CS curriculum should be able to state the P vs. NP problem -- yet the majority cannot. The standards have fallen to the point where most CS majors are only expected to understand a single programming paradigm, and they are not even expected to understand the theory behind that paradigm (how many CS grads can state Liskov's principle, or are even familiar with the term?). If someone wants to work in IT, and does not really care about the theory of computation or algorithms or programming languages, then what are they doing in a CS program?
Not that we are likely to see any change. When I was an undergrad, I confronted the program chair in my school's CS department about what I felt were lax standards, and I was told that (1) I was underestimating the difficulty of computer science because of my own talent and (2) if the department raised its standards, they would only have half a dozen students in their graduating class. That is the view that schools take: students who want a challenging curriculum and who are actually passionate about their major are outliers, and demanding too much out of the mainstream of the student body will cause them to flee, and thus the school will lose those tuition dollars.
Sadly this rise has happened in a time when it has become almost essential to get a college degree if you want any kind of decent job.
Actually, this has been so detrimental to higher education that employers are beginning to rethink the value of a bachelor's degree. It is a simple matter of economics: people are going to college in order to get a "one decent job" coupon, and they will seek the least-effort path through college to receive that coupon. Slowly but surely managers are realizing that a college degree may not actually reflect the work ethic, education, or intelligence that people ascribe to it.
The new coupon for a decent job is a masters degree, and you can bet that the same thing will happen to graduate programs over the next 20 years. This destructive cycle will only be stopped when universities put their collective foot down and remind their students that the college is about receiving a quality education, not partying one's way into a career.