The beauty of the internet is such that every opinion has become worthless; this goes doubly so for those with publish buttons on (relatively, we're humble) major websites. For every opinion, there's a matching counter-opinion, and that's great. Yesterday, we linked to an article by Mark Pilgrim about tinkerers and the iPad, and of course, someone was bound to disagree with that one.
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Member since:2009-08-26
Hmmm I kind remember the title being Apple has declared war on tinkerers, not will declare war in the future.
I don't see why people should be upset with this anymore than with a game console. It isn't making standard computers disappear.
What I see are a bunch of people that are upset that Apple isn't catering to them. Too bad.
Apple has never been about tinkering anyways. They don't even want you replacing the hard drive on the iMAC. They expect you to lug the thing down to the genius bar. This is what happens when you buy Apple, nothing new.
Member since:2007-02-17
Spot on, Thom. As you say, the enlightening quote is the one you pointed out regards DVD Jon.
From your introduction:
My own computer is actually an "upgrade kit". It consisted originally of a motherboard, a CPU, some RAM sticks, a video card, a blank hard disk drive, a CD/DVD burner, and a case and power supply (some of these pieces were purchased seperately). I assembled these components, I turned it on, I set the BIOS to load an OS from a CD as first preference, and I put an Arch Linux install CD in the CD drive. All of the software and data that is now on that system I have added from there, this system has never seen any commercial EULA-restricted software installed on it at any time.
How on earth would I be deemed to have "broken into" my own system that I bought and then tinkered myself?
Yet doubtless this would be the attitude of the Apple's of this world. Control freaks extraordinaire. Anti-freedom in every sense.
The latest push from the control-freak set seems to be to try and subvert HTML5 so that the video codec is h264, not Theora.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy#Opposition
Nokia's objection seems to be that the open Theora codecs that everyone is indeed "both able and permitted to use without restrictions" is not a proprietary codec! Really!
Well der.
Apple's objection was pure FUD:
The comment from Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group makes no sense at all, because it applies the least to Theora of all possible candidate codecs:
Apple in particular is almost blatantly "advertising" for anyone to come forward who may have such a currently-mythical unkown patent, in an ill-disguised attempt to stop Theora adoption. Fortunately, no-one seems to actually have anything even resembling such a patent, thereby effectively disproving the WHATWG objection.
This is relevant because the iPad, delivered as it is with no Flash, has no support at all for web video other than HTML5/h264.
So the control freaks are out in force, and applying spin, spin and evermore spin trying to assert their control over what YOU may or may not do on YOUR OWN COMPUTER.
That is unbelieveable chutzpah.
Edited 2010-02-03 02:41 UTC
RE[4]: Now that's Sniveling!
Member since:2005-07-22
I think the market is diverging with the advent of appliances like the iPhone, iPad and their imitators.
I make the car analogy.
The iPad, iPhone etc are your bog standard car that apart from filling the windscreen washer bottle many owner never open the bonnet/hood.
However that are still the people who like to tinker with their cars. Be it fitting a zillion watt sound system, bigger exhause, different camshafts & fuel injectors etc etc, they are the tinkerers.
As any market matures the proportion of the market of the 'non tinkerers' grows whilst (again proportionally) the % market share of the tinkerers shrinks.
Member since:2007-02-17
I guess the reason we are having issues understanding your point is because you know about as much as we do about the future and spreading FUD just because you think something will happen when there is every indication that it wouldn't is just plain irresponsible. There are enough things to tinker with. In-fact why don't one of these tinkerers make something for them, oh thats right, they have and people still rather hack an iphone instead. Here you have a product made to be hacked and modded to your hearts content and people would rather crack the closed proprietary solution. Why is that? Why complain about it and not focus on the product you can tinker with to your hearts content?
I really don't see the reasoning, I don't get the "Think of the children" arguments. I don't get why our geek paradise has anything to do with what a consumer wants. Clearly the two are not the same, because the ones most interested in the iPhone and the iPad are people who actually want to use the product for what it was intended for not hack it pieces to get it just right for you.
Who cares if the iPad is a closed system. Make your own pad and make it as open as you'd like. Put Linux on it, make the hardware open, let users put whatever they want on it. Try to compete with Apple. HP, Dell, Acer are all waiting in the wings to see how this plays out so that they can drop their own solution which will most likely be as open as you'd like them to be. I don't see the big deal and frankly at this point I think you are just trying to get page hits by posting nonsense poised as arguments when really all you are posting is speculation.
Member since:2006-07-14
I don't think you understand idealism. Its not enough for me to be free, if my brother is enslaved. There are those of us who cages cannot hold: that does not mean we can rest easy; that does not mean we can free every one who cannot break the bars themselves. It does mean that we will have to spend a lot of our energy breaking cages that people try to put us in, that we could have spent doing something more productive.
Member since:2007-02-17
Who cares if the iPad is a closed system.
The problem is when the manufacturer of the closed system uses it later to say: "there are a lot of people who have only that closed system, and hence they can use only this or that when they connect to the web ... therefore the web itself can be allowed to present only this or that".
Apple have already historically used exactly such an argument viz a viz audio formats and the iPod. Now, via the iPad and iPhone, they are trying to do this same trick all over again in order to eliminate open format video on the web (such as the video which Wikipedia/Wikimedia uses) in favour of proprietary format video in which they have an interest in the applicable patents.
iPad user? ... then public access, public domain data is NOT FOR YOU!!! (according to Apple).
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Media_help
This is why people care ... because the closed nature of iPads will be used against the freedom of people who don't own an iPad and wouldn't touch it because it is so limiting.
Edited 2010-02-03 04:20 UTC
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
"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.
Member since:
2005-06-29
And you seem to have a hard time with the reality that we are NOT talking about now, but about the future. A lot of people - me included - fear where this is going to, not where it is now.