Right. But Amazon was wise. They could have seized major portions of the software patent landscape early on, they thought about going down the path Apple is on and they decided against it. In contrast to Cook's statements here, Bezos basically said software patents are not our future and other companies should follow our lead.
If you truly understod the patent system you'd realise it's a lot less "cut and dry" than you perceive it to be. Patent law with all its wonderful intricacies that many spend careers learning can get you to an issued patent. But an issued patent can't guarantee you anything, except the right to sue alleged infringers. It gives you no "right to a monopoly" only a right to sue. It gives you no right to manufacture or sell anything. Someone else might sue you you, regardless of your patent. That's not the patent office's problem.
Your issued patent is only as good as it holds up in litigation. And patent litigation is more or less a crap shoot. With high stakes.
The only way to determine the "validity" of a patent claim is to litigate it. And Federal Circuit decisions are not exactly "consistent" so as to be "predictable", to say the least. The end result is patent litigation is extraordinarily expensive and is to be to be feared, even when the patent claims being asserted are garbage.
The issue is not with the patent system in general. The issue is with how Apple is using the system.
There is nothing inherently wrong with patents or intellectal property.
The problem is with companies like Apple who think it is all some kind of game.
Again, the problem is not IP. IP is just rules.
The problem is Apple, specifically the people who run the company. The problem is the actions they take.
When nerds on the web discuss IP, unfortunately it ends up being employed as the proverbial "straw man". Nerds ignore the actions of Apple and instead debate IP. But IP is not a person, real or imaginary. IP makes no decisions. IP is just a concept. The decisions and the evil being done here are by _people_. Patent law (or any law) does not mandate that anyone has to behave like an a-hole. That is a decision Apple makes, not the drafters of patent laws.
But Apple thinks that just because they can afford to dump millions into legal fees, month after month, year after year, it gives them the justification to make life miserable for everyone else (forcing them to spend the same amounts or be forced out of the game).
Apple behaves like an a-hole. And everyone has to mimic them.
IP is not going to disappear. It's only going to grow. The reforms will have to change how it can be used.
You're right about one thing: evaluation of audio qualities is incredibly subjective. In a word, it comes down to "preferences".
If I really want to "hear things I've never heard before" in recordings I've heard countless times in countless environments, I choose loudspeakers and headphones with a flat frequency response. I've come to prefer a set of near-field studio monitors over "audiophile" brands, without hesitation. This shifts the subjectiity to the sound engineers who produced the recording, instead of the "hifi" manufacturer targeting "audiophiles".
If these recordings need to be "fixed" to adjust to my preferred perception of the audio - and needless to say, there's a lot that needs to be fixed these days - then that needs to be done at the recording and mastering stages ("the input"), by recording and mastering engineers, not at the reproduction stage ("the output"), by those who design and manufacture "audiophile" stereo components. This is the conclusion I reached many years ago.
Of course, it is subjective conclusion. Audio qualities will alwys be a matter of preference.
Yes, highly subjective. The following has happened to me more than once:
I'll sit down to put the finishing touches on a song. The drums are always tricky to EQ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametric_equalizer), especially the snare. I'll easily spend 20 minutes carefully dialing in the exact sound I'm looking for. Sometimes I'll spend over 5 minutes on a single frequency band, agonizing over the effect of a single decibel boost or cut. Finally, after I've gotten it to sound perfect, I realize that the frigging bypass button is on. In other words, the equalizer wasn't even on. I was completely imagining the changes, yet for 20 minutes I was certain that my delicate adjustments were really doing something.
I'd be embarrased about it, but it's happened to nearly every recording engineer. IMHO the placebo effect applies more strongly to sound than any other sense.
tl;dr: Audio nerds sit around in darkened rooms by themselves uselessly twiddling their knobs for hours on end.
Manipulating spacial environments (acoustics, not knobs) is, to me, the true "art" and the most interesting skill. It predates all this gear. And it seems to be something that some people have "mastered" without necessarily being experts in, say, the the science of acoustics at the same time. (Picture all the pseudo-scientific literature the "audiofile" industry churns out as part of their marketing. I confess in my younger days I totally fell for it. Sadly I know many older folks who still do.)
I've been less involved with music for the past few years. It's still a hobby that I have great affection for, but I'm lucky if I find the time to record something once a year lately. Too many things to do, not enough hours in a day.
As for acoustics, I agree. The acoustics of the room you record in is the #2 factor (only behind the skill of the musician). Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of AD/DA converters, pre amps, and microphones aren't going to fix crappy acoustics.
I've seen some great pseudo-science from audiophiles. I remember the site for a recording studio advertising that they suspended their computers in the air because of something to do with vibrations from the floor hurting the audio quality of burned CD's or some such nonsense. It was the best example of Poe's Law I've ever encountered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law).
I've read a few issues of TapeOp, but it was a number of years ago.
For Apple, it's all about controlling the minds of consumers. And controlling their access to information about the devices.
For Samsung, it's less about that and more about plain old lack of interoperability: proprietary plugs, crappy Windows proprietary "install" software that was written hastily, and other little annoyances, stuff that will only work with Samsung. Like every other Asian manufacturer for as long as I can remember. (But at least companies like Samsung make SSD's and other components that can be used in any device. They keep companies like Apple afloat. Can Apple make its own components? Not as cost-effectively as Samsung.)
The result is always the same: the consumer overpays for these cheap electronics and gets next to zero customer service. It's "take it or leave it".
Showing a random Starbucks customer OSX in a virtual machine? Priceless.
If they only knew what their iPhones, iPads, "iOS" and "OSX" were really made of. They might never care. But they do care about overpaying.
How can you claim to say what it's all about for Apple? You are very far out of bounds to claim it's about controlling something. From my perspective it's about making devices that offer a good experience, and from their current earnings I'd say that consumers believe it to be a fair price for that experience.
Starbucks has forced other coffee shops (assuming there were any- in many cities they wasn't anything comparable to Starbucks in recent times) out of the picture. Are Starbucks customers faced with an abundance of choice of which coffee shop to visit? Or is Starbucks front and center, the "default choice"?
Maybe things have changed but in the past there were no unsubsidised cellphones available to US customers. Are US consumers wanting a cellphone now having to decide whether to buy a subsidised (locked) or unsubsidised cellphone? Maybe things are changing.
In many other countries the phones are not locked.
Choice.
When someone in the US goes to buy a touchscreen tablet, how much choice of other alternatives will they have?
Yes, I know that. Samsung is one company among many. For example, in the first iPods (which kicked off this insane run Apple is having), they relied on Toshiba for the drives.
I also know that thinking Apple would be able to stay afloat if they did not use manufacturers in Asia, such as Samsung, is "utter delusion". Is that what you're suggesting?
11.) Governments who sell IPR won because more and more everyone thinks the path to success in IT must go through IP registration (of junk software patents in bulk) and (kangaroo court) IP litigation; moreover they can periodically raise fees without much pushback. Their main customers have loads of cash.
That's funny. For me it had the opposite effect. Obviously he has a conscience, for anyone with an intellect who is not the least bit offended by Zynga-ism is, arguably, lacking in that capacity, i.e., in need of a real conscience.
Well, you must admit the average age of persons using Facebook in the span of a few years went from university age to something like mid-30's or 40's. It's just not "cool" anymore.
This is definitely part of it. As generations come of "Facebook age" are they really going to want to join the same social network as their parents?
I'm in my early 20s so I was on social networks well before those of my parent's generation. Just try dodging your parents' friend requests, that never goes well...
This is a consumer. Do the opinions of consumers matter?
All that matters to Apple is sales. Do they care what consumers say about them on the web? Silence the nonbelievers!
Consumers do not need to understand patent law to make purchase decisions. But most consumers know what lawsuits are, especially ones that make a mockery of the justice system.
It's possible many consumers really don't care if they're buying Apple or Samsung. If they did care, if they only wanted Apple products, then Apple wouldn't need to sue other manufacturers, would they?
In the 1990's it was copyright. Now its patent. What next?
All Apple does is whine. Even when they are winning.
Their internal memo/public statement goes so far as to say "it's not about patents and money". Yes, I do believe you Mr. Cook. It's about a bunch of morally inept emotionally underdeveloped overgrown children.
Apple is above "copying". Went they want to cut corners (pun intended) and get to market quickly, they _steal_.
Look at this way. Apple is not the first and last company to make a device that will function as a "phone". Or as an MP3 player.
How are they going to stop people from 3D printing their own cool casings? And from using free open source code that is the same or better as what Apple uses? With lawyers? It's not going to work.
For now Apple is riding high. But it won't last forever. Apple needs developers, as in the ones who do not work for Apple and can speak freely. Just like Microsoft needed developers in the 90's. They hired as many as they could and flooded the developer ecosystem with a gazillion closed API's and an easy peasy IDE. Strange as it may seem, these companies need you in order to stay competitive.
I can "sandbox" code using the shell far easier than I can control what a "modern browser" can do.
Because I know the shell and my OS better than I know a "modern browser".
"People are working on it..."
C'mon, man. This sounds pathetic. You can learn to use the shell safely. How do you think sysadmins do their jobs?
Or you can pretend the shell is too difficult and something to be feared. The simple fact is _you_ control the shell. You don't expose it to the world (unless you're playing games with CGI or doing like the OP said: feeding it random bytes from the internet). You can read the code for a basic shell (e.g. rc, sh, dash). You can modify and compile it yourself. You can write your own. CS students routinely write their own shells as part of the curriculum. A "shell" is something relatively simple.
You really think you're ridiculously complex "modern browser" is "safe"? Safer than your shell?
When your use the shell, you trust the people who provide your OS's kernel, the compiler, libraries and userland and those 3d party applications, if any, you choose to run. That's already a lot of people and a lot of code. When you use a "modern browser" who do you trust? I can't even begin to quantify it.
As a very well respected cryptographer once wrote, security may be less a matter of reducing privilege than of reducing the amount of trusted code. The only reason you even have a concet of "privilege" is because it's a relic of shared computing. Everyone has their own computer now. There's no such thing as "root" in Plan 9.
Compare the LOC in a basic shell with the LOC in your web browser.
This discussion began when people pointed out that running shell scripts directly from the web was a Very Bad Idea. You then seemed to claim that browsing with javascript enabled was a similarly bad idea. I simply pointed out that they weren't equivalent at all, since the web browser was explicitly designed to execute untrusted code while your shell most certainly is not. I did not argue that web browser security was foolproof, and you're welcome to disable javascript and similar browser features if you feel it's a good tradeoff of functionality and security for you.
Right. But Amazon was wise. They could have seized major portions of the software patent landscape early on, they thought about going down the path Apple is on and they decided against it. In contrast to Cook's statements here, Bezos basically said software patents are not our future and other companies should follow our lead.
If you truly understod the patent system you'd realise it's a lot less "cut and dry" than you perceive it to be. Patent law with all its wonderful intricacies that many spend careers learning can get you to an issued patent. But an issued patent can't guarantee you anything, except the right to sue alleged infringers. It gives you no "right to a monopoly" only a right to sue. It gives you no right to manufacture or sell anything. Someone else might sue you you, regardless of your patent. That's not the patent office's problem.
Your issued patent is only as good as it holds up in litigation. And patent litigation is more or less a crap shoot. With high stakes.
The only way to determine the "validity" of a patent claim is to litigate it. And Federal Circuit decisions are not exactly "consistent" so as to be "predictable", to say the least. The end result is patent litigation is extraordinarily expensive and is to be to be feared, even when the patent claims being asserted are garbage.
The issue is not with the patent system in general. The issue is with how Apple is using the system.
There is nothing inherently wrong with patents or intellectal property.
The problem is with companies like Apple who think it is all some kind of game.
Again, the problem is not IP. IP is just rules.
The problem is Apple, specifically the people who run the company. The problem is the actions they take.
When nerds on the web discuss IP, unfortunately it ends up being employed as the proverbial "straw man". Nerds ignore the actions of Apple and instead debate IP. But IP is not a person, real or imaginary. IP makes no decisions. IP is just a concept. The decisions and the evil being done here are by _people_. Patent law (or any law) does not mandate that anyone has to behave like an a-hole. That is a decision Apple makes, not the drafters of patent laws.
But Apple thinks that just because they can afford to dump millions into legal fees, month after month, year after year, it gives them the justification to make life miserable for everyone else (forcing them to spend the same amounts or be forced out of the game).
Apple behaves like an a-hole. And everyone has to mimic them.
IP is not going to disappear. It's only going to grow. The reforms will have to change how it can be used.