How Did I Miss This Tripe?

On the iPhone being closed: The iPhone is very much wide open, as long as you dare to void our war­ranty. Your dish­washer may even become a drum machine if you reach the FPGA and repro­gram it, you’ll just void your war­ranty of course. The same for iPod, that’s what iPodLinux is made for, do what you want with the device. The way the default iPhone OS is locked makes me just com­fort­able for the fact that apps can­not bypass secu­rity mea­sures, like filesys­tem sand­box­ing and gps/other hard­ware access. Apps in the default sys­tem just can’t do very much damage.

@Simon :

the iphone even uses Free soft­ware inside (mostly the whole unix layer and Webkit).

it’s not the prob­lem. the prob­lem is, you are forced to use itunes to get soft­ware. so, by def­i­n­i­tion, there are no free­dom beside Apple.

– and, itunes app store is clearly, the best way to get and install soft­ware I saw for any device. pretty impressive.

We can under­stand the rea­son apple want to impose itunes (avoid virus, mis­steps and mis­chie­vous peo­ple send­ing bad appli­ca­tions) but in the same time, you loose what you can do on a mac or pc.

– so , it’s all about dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties. Some peo­ple care more about uses than eas­i­ness. oth­ers want More.

not com­pli­cate. and not insane to under­stand. There are no Bad Guy to kick and insult.

@Simon :

the iphone even uses Free soft­ware inside (mostly the whole unix layer and Webkit).

it’s not the prob­lem. the prob­lem is, you are forced to use itunes to get soft­ware. so, by def­i­n­i­tion, there are no free­dom beside Apple.

– and, itunes app store is clearly, the best way to get and install soft­ware I saw for any device. pretty impressive.

We can under­stand the rea­son apple want to impose itunes (avoid virus, mis­steps and mis­chie­vous peo­ple send­ing bad appli­ca­tions) but in the same time, you loose what you can do on a mac or pc.

– so , it’s all about dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties. Some peo­ple care more about uses than eas­i­ness. oth­ers want More.

not com­pli­cate. and not insane to under­stand. There are no Bad Guy to kick and insult.

@oomu: No, DRM is not good for the con­sumer. If you pur­chase apps through the app store, sadly, you’re stuck with it.

But odds are, you’re only try­ing to put those DRMed files on a very small set of Apple branded devices– unlike an MP3, which should work any­where, these are obvi­ously bound to OSX Mobile.

And, cor­rect me if I’m wrong: the SDK is a free down­load, you can load apps onto a test device with it, but you have to pay a $99 fee to actu­ally host them in the App Store. Doesn’t that imply that you can pro­gram how you want on your phone?

And, you can STILL jail­break your phone. So to say you can’t use your device how you like is still not true. You can’t use your device how you like and get Apple to play along, but it’s retarded to expect such a thing anyway.

Apple can­not stop you from jail­break­ing your phone. Apple doesn’t want to stop you from jail­break­ing your phone, because they just want you to buy the damn phone. With the new must-activate model, they also guar­an­tee that AT&T gets their pound of flesh no mat­ter what you do when it comes to unlocking.

@oomu: But you aren’t forced to get it from the App Store. You can also jail­break your phone.

These FSF peo­ple are idiots. Their five “rea­sons” are all bull­shit, fac­tu­ally wrong in every case.

An Apple “tax” on free apps? Uh, no. Developers can put them on the App Store for free, and users down­load them for free.

And DRM does not stand for “Digital Restrictions Management,” but rather, “Digital Rights Management.” Both the iPod and the iPhone play lots of DRM-free file for­mats – just not the spe­cific for­mats the FSF idiots cite (for­mats that no one uses anyway).

And all that “prison” talk? WTF? Have any of these peo­ple ever actu­ally been to prison? Um, yeah — like, maybe they should just not buy an iPhone if they don’t like it?

Sounds to me like a bunch of fools who can’t afford an iPhone think­ing up rea­sons why no one else should have one, either.

I have been qui­etly stew­ing over the FSF “announce­ment” since I read it. They’re com­pletely, totally clue­less. The only point that might even have merit is the “DRM is bad!”, and he imme­di­ately blames Steve Jobs per­son­ally for the labels refus­ing to drop DRM. Riiight.

Anyway, now I think I can let my rant die on the vine.

> More to the point … they dis­miss the hun­dreds, if not thou­sands of devel­op­ers who a) don’t give a shit about “free” soft­ware and b) might actu­ally like get­ting paid for their efforts.

“Free” soft­ware is not about not being paid for mak­ing it

We can under­stand the rea­son apple want to impose itunes (avoid virus, mis­steps and mis­chie­vous peo­ple send­ing bad appli­ca­tions) but in the same time, you loose what you can do on a mac or pc.

Why, that would be because the iPhone is nei­ther a fuck­ing Mac nor a fuck­ing Wintel com­puter. It’s a smart­phone. It does a lot, but it’s not a fuck­ing full-blown gen­eral pur­pose computer.

I can put 3 big ass video cards in my wife’s Mac Pro, can I do that in an iPhone? No.

I can add dozens of USB and FireWire devices to an iMac or a Mac Mini. Can i do that with an iPhone? No.

Why?

Well, it’s not because Steve Jobs and Apple aren’t march­ing lock­step to that folk danc­ing retard’s song of judge­men­tal stupidity.

It’s because they’re DIFFERENT FUCKING THINGS. Apple, Orange, Pear, Dildo. One of these things is not like the other…

For fuck’s sake is it even pos­si­ble for the free­tards to not bitch that a car is not a condor?

@oomu

Did you read the con­tents of the link I gave ? Where I down­loaded the source-code of an appli­ca­tion, com­piled it, and installed it onto my phone with­out going any­where near the app-store ?

It is easy to dis­trib­ute open-source apps for the phone with­out using the app-store. The FSF piece is pure FUD, which is sad. I think they let their pol­i­tics get in the way of their research before writ­ing the piece, and my opin­ion of them as an organ­i­sa­tion has suf­fered because of that.

@Simon

Of course the free­tards aren’t going to acknowl­edge the real­ity of jail­bro­ken phones et al, because then they lose hit counts.

The only rea­son they even pub­lished this is because rag­ging on the iPhone gets you atten­tion, and with peo­ple real­iz­ing that Open Source does not in fact require you to be part of the Stallmanolgy cult, and Torvalds telling Stallman and the FSF to go fuck them­selves on a reg­u­lar basis, they’re start­ing to feel a lit­tle insignificant.

I’m still wait­ing for them to even­tu­ally admit that the only pur­pose they serve is a col­lec­tion point for whin­ing enti­tle­ment queens.

AT&T is com­plicit with ille­gal spy­ing by the worst admin­is­tra­tion in his­tory, and these guys are wor­ried about the lack of open source soft­ware on the phone using their net­work? The forces of evil in our coun­try are glee­fully watch­ing as orga­ni­za­tions like this one waste their time and resources on com­pletely unim­por­tant and, frankly, stu­pid causes.

@JCW

But this isn’t even with a jail­bro­ken iphone. This is offi­cial apple-supported pol­icy! It’s all legit — you just use the ad-hoc cer­tifi­cate rather than the dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­tifi­cate. Since you’re dis­trib­ut­ing source-code, each devel­oper can sign the pro­gram while they com­pile the code, with their own ad-hoc cer­tifi­cate. That’s it — the result­ing binary will work on the developer’s iphone.

Honestly, I don’t think Apple could have bent over much farther…

@Simon

Oh yeah, I for­got about that one. But again, why would the FSF let real­ity get in the way of their attention-whoring.

@Gene: Now THAT’S a valid complaint.

@Gene: Now THAT’S a valid complaint.

Don’t for­get about us thugs who pre­fer Chinese slip­pers to jack­boots. There’s a lot of us out here.

@Angry Drunk

Fuck that “GNU/Linux” shit. GNU makes tools. Good ones, and that’s hon­or­able. But just like I don’t own a “Makita/Toyota” or a “Snap-On/Chevy”, it’s not GNU Linux.

Stallman wants an OS with his name on it, maybe he should, you know, FINISH HURD.

But that would require him to do, you know, actual work.

@John C. Welch: I HURD that was just vapor­ware, and always would be.

//And the hard­ware isn’t quite there for a true micro­ker­nel yet.

I just bought a Sunbeam toaster oven, and, man, does Sunbeam have me by the balls!

Say I want to make toast in my Frigidaire refrig­er­a­tor — no dice. Maytag dish­washer? Nice try.

And it’s not just toast. It’s cheese toast, cin­na­mon toast, the occa­sional toasted bagel, you name it.

So it also comes with this lit­tle bak­ing pan. Great, I also can use this in the microwave, right? NO! This damned pro­pri­etary pan is made of metal and will explode and give me gen­i­tal her­pes if it comes near any other appliance!

Not only that, if I take it to my friend’s house and try to put it in his Black & Decker toaster oven … it’s too wide. Won’t fit at all.

When it comes to my toast­ing needs, Sunbeam has the whole gig locked up. It’s like those bas­tards want to divide us.

So basi­cally this blog is one reac­tionary swear­ing pro­lif­i­cally at peo­ple who dis­agree with him, with his fan­boys fol­low­ing suit?

The argu­ment you’ve laid out is a total joke, you’d be laughed out of a high school debate for try­ing to put for­ward this kind of “rea­son­ing” and the only rea­son your com­menters can’t see that is because their minds are so poorly stim­u­lated that they are tit­il­lated by almost-clever swearing.

Whine about the FSF but at least they have the dis­ci­pline (and edu­ca­tion?) to out­line a real argu­ment with struc­tured points. What you do is name-calling, but you haven’t rebutted any of their points, you’ve just laughed at them. Probably hastily and out of ignorance.

@47itchy Awesome!

So when my freerun­ner throws up a “no space on device /usr/bin” black screen of death, what num­ber does my Mom/Dad/Girlfriend/Boyfriend not “build from source” friend call for support?

Oh yeah, none.

I’ll just tell them to log onto alt.bin.phone.open.moko.help.help.help and wait 24 – 48 hours for a solution.

also, fuck OGG and fuck the­ora, nobody gives a shit about your free for­mats. I could dis­trib­ute a book on micro­fiche for free, doesn’t mean any­one would use it.