Numerous irrelevant issues and feelings about them are ventilated in comments on the case. However, there are only two important issues. One is what the law is, the other is what we think the law should be.
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Member since:2005-07-12
"Why are *you* defending those crooks is equally beyond me."
Psystar crooks? They legally purchased the copies of Mac OS X. They did not steal them. Then they installed those copies on their Mac-like hardware, and sold the hardware and the installation (as a service).
Pystar did not steal anything. Apple got paid for each copy of Mac OSX. And the mac compatible hardware has nothing to do with Apple - again, nothing was stolen from Apple.
Now, Pystar might have violated a restriction put on OSX via the EULA. Now it's in court, and the court will decide whether Pystar violated the EULA, or even if the EULA is even enforceable. That last bit is particularly relevant to everyone else. EULAs essentially remove consumer rights that are already protected by the law.
It can be well argued that those who attach EULAs to their product are the ones who are crooks, because they are violating consumer rights protected by the law.
But again, the courts will decide these issues. Until then, nobody in this case are crooks. Even if the courts rule against Pystar, Pystar are still not crooks, because this is a civil case, not a criminal one. If the court rules against Pystar, they will have been deemed to have violated Apple's EULA (which by necessity, will have been ruled to be enforceable. If not, the case is irrelevant), they will not have been deemed to have broken the law (which is what makes one a crook).
And, once more, EULA often run contradictory to consumer rights, and the law.
Edited 2009-03-09 20:18 UTC
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Member since:
2007-05-12
I guess I can qualify as Apple person so I'll respond.
I'm defending Apple's position much more because it's the rules of the game than because it's Apple's position. Using a piece of software is not an inalienable right. It's up to the author (or rather the owner of the copyright) of the software to decide who they grant the privilege (yes, I know, all of you will jump on this particular word and tear me a new one, but if you think about it for every piece of software in one way or another you have to qualify to use it - whether it is people having certain hardware, or people having certain software, or people willing to pay x amount of money, or people willing to put x amount of work, or any number of those) to use it.
I'm a dedicated Apple user (one who's been following the rules, well, most of the time) and if schmucks like Psystar manage to erode Apple's ownership of Mac OS X, I'll either have to put up with a WGA lookalike or I'll be forced to use an inferior OS, because Apple had abandoned their PC business (yeah, I know, that las one is not all that likely, but still).
And lastly, I defend Apple's position because it's against people who are making money off of the work of others. Neither me, nor Apple give a flying f--k that pimply nerd in their mom's basements use arcane hacks to get Mac OS X to work on their fancy netbook (or whatever). So it's not about persecuting individuals and crushing their rights, as everyone seems to see this, but instead it's about stopping and punishing a bunch of crooks, who, as I said, are profiting off of other people's work.
Why are *you* defending those crooks is equally beyond me.