How Did I Miss This Tripe?

@Jesse:

You all are my own num­ber one rea­son to avoid own­ing an iPhone.

Oh, Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. You of all peo­ple should rec­og­nize what a ter­ri­ble rea­son that is. What a shame.

Before I started read­ing this arti­cle, I was expect­ing to take your side on this one, but instead you just come across as stu­pid and clumsy.

Perhaps you’re try­ing to play up to the “drunk” part of your blog title… but you only suc­ceed inso­far as “drunk” can often be syn­ony­mous with “stupid.”

In any case, you’ve com­pletely under­mined what is actu­ally a pretty sound coun­ter­point and, iron­i­cally enough (refer­ring to your com­ment @Dan, above) are con­sis­tently both a troll and an idiot.

But, hey. At least you got the page views, right?

Oh, wait — you’ve already con­demned Gawker for the whole hit count chas­ing thing. Looks like there’s enough hypocrisy to go around.

Weren’t you also con­demn­ing hypocrisy…?

iPhones are great. Free soft­ware is great. In fact, with­out free soft­ware, you’d still be using OS 9 right now. Or Windows.

The choice really is yours, I guess.

Anyhow, here’s some help on just the DRM point. I’ll leave the pick­ing up of the other pieces as an exer­cise for you (and trust me, you need it):

Although Apple my want to remove DRM from song down­loads, they love the DRM for the apps. And with arguably good rea­son — it allows them to uni­lat­er­ally pull any appli­ca­tion that’s found to do any­thing mali­cious, or that needs removal.

Can this be abused? You bet. Is this a prison? Considering how many other phones are out there, no fuck­ing way. Does it really serve Apple’s inter­ests to abuse the depths of the power DRM the­o­ret­i­cally pro­vides them? No way.

If this is some­thing that really trou­bles you, you may take com­fort know­ing that you’ll be able to hack your phone…

On the other hand, don’t come cry­ing to any­one if your phone actu­ally DOES start report­ing your exact loca­tion, brows­ing / call­ing / tex­ting habits, and even address book con­tacts to some untrusted entity.

iPhones are a healthy and blos­som­ing mar­ket. iPhone own­ers have money (just the demo­graphic that black hats like to tar­get). Doing the math here, the fre­quency of mali­cious attempts to breach their secu­rity will there­fore rise.

Now, hope­fully, Apple did a good enough job with their san­box­ing to keep mali­cious soft­ware from access­ing data that isn’t theirs. But, for when an exploit is found, and a piece of soft­ware dis­cov­ered to be lever­ag­ing it, Apple can yank all instances of said soft­ware from existence.

Suddenly, it might suck just a lit­tle less to have DRM in your soup.

@Jesse

Well your point is not valid. They are the ones that brought up the FreeRunner and vapor­ware phones “on the hori­zon.” The FSF made the point that some­time really soon now you can buy some­thing that they agree is the most won­der­ful phone ever. They made an explicit point to men­tion these things.

So we should let them off the hook when these things don’t exist yet? When they have com­pletely failed to cre­ate and deliver some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to the iPhone or any exist­ing phone? Because the thing they are argu­ing for doesn’t exist except in their fan­tasies? That a closed source, non-free, DRM “infested” com­pany man­aged to cre­ate some­thing that they couldn’t but will do any day now for reals?

Oh sure they men­tion that you can’t get the “on the hori­zon phone” (I’m assum­ing they mean Android) but the say you can get FreeRunner now. Except that you can’t. The one caveat they don’t add to the FreeRunner is that you can not buy it at this point. Period. Doesn’t mat­ter how pretty or ugly it is. It’s not an option.

Or maybe we should let them off the hook for mak­ing a very quotable state­ment that strongly implies that the FreeRunner is a com­peti­tor to the iPhone (or any other phone really) then spend the time writ­ing sen­tences back ped­dling on that state­ment? That is more than a bit disingenuous.

They brought up the FreeRunner because they needed some­thing to point to and that is all they had. They didn’t bring up Android by name since that plat­form has been get­ting dinged by their the­o­ret­i­cal core audi­ence due to Google’s miss-steps. The truth is they don’t have an alter­na­tive to offer. They have noth­ing. But with a bit of hand wav­ing, fancy steps and fast talk­ing they hope to con­vince some­one that there is an alter­na­tive to every other phone out there.

Sorry, I’m call­ing bullshit.

The truth is they could have writ­ten this same arti­cle but sub­sti­tuted any other phone man­u­fac­turer and model. It still would be over the top hyper­bole and excre­ment. Their points are at best overblown and at worst out right lies.

So tell me again why I should treat them with any respect?

@Jesse: Attacking peo­ple for crit­i­ciz­ing a phone? No no no no no. Clearly you are con­fused as to what the prob­lem is here.

In the FSF dia­tribe, they say things that are FACTUALLY INCORRECT. They’re not crit­i­ciz­ing the iPhone, they’re LYING about its capa­bilites, or lack of them. FSF said: “iPhone exposes your where­abouts and pro­vides ways for oth­ers to track you with­out your knowledge.”

BULLSHIT. When any app wants to use CoreLocation on the iPhone, you are pre­sented with a big fat Do Not Allow but­ton, and you can push it if you want. Does that sound like it’s access­ing your loca­tion with­out your knowledge?

How about this, Jesse: Instead of mis­guid­edly flam­ing The Drunk, why don’t you look up the facts first? The FSF deserve every iota of The Drunk’s rant.

Their points are NOT valid. That’s not an opin­ion, that’s a FACT. What is log­i­cal about a propo­si­tion that’s based on things that are com­pletely untrue?

They’re also guilty of lies by omis­sion. The FSF said: “iPhone won’t play patent– and DRM-free for­mats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.”

But the iPhone DOES play DRM-free for­mats like MP3, MP4, WAV, AIFF, Lossless, etc. Why do you sup­pose they left that out? Could it be because that would kind of derail their entire idi­otic, oh I’m sorry “log­i­cal” proposition?

Seriously, get a clue before com­ing in here to knee-jerk defend the FSF for spout­ing a bunch of bull­shit lies and lies by omis­sion. They deserve every piece of crap peo­ple can fling at them.

@john: Ok, last response for a while; I have bet­ter things to do with my time. What the fuck is this bull­shit. Another “your point is valid but I dis­agree with the pre­sen­ta­tion” com­ment. I’m sorry, I didn’t real­ize that I had some sort of moral oblig­a­tion to respond to every retarded blog on the inter­net that raises my ire with a fuck­ing PhD. dis­ser­ta­tion. Do you pompous fucks cor­rect the gram­mar in LOL Cat pic­tures too?

As for the link-baiting issue, you bet you’re ass Gawker is link-baiting; they get their rev­enue from adver­tise­ments. As for me, the whop­ping $4.00 n my Google account not with­stand­ing; this shit costs me money.

Ignore the snivel­ing free­tards, Drunk. They’re all worth­less girly-men who are going to spend all Friday night edit­ing a conf file.

As for me, I’m going to a tip a few myself.

LOLcats? Really?

Look, bud. If all you wanna do is to have a blind and furi­ous piss­ing match with the so-called “free­tards,” fine. Be true to that. But in this case, you may as well just stick to sling­ing com­ments about their stereo­typed appear­ances, and not bother try­ing to refute their points.

You cer­tainly put forth an obvi­ous effort to frame them as mak­ing a shitty argu­ment. Problem is, they’re not the only ones.

Glass houses, pots and ket­tles, what­ever — you pick.

You both­ered to put this out in pub­lic. If you put out crap, expect to be called out. I know this is just a blog (and not, as you say, a PhD dis­ser­ta­tion), but at least think deeply enough about what you write that your own argu­ments ridicule can’t be turned so eas­ily and applied against you.

No-one’s as fun to heckle as a bad heckler.

I am really tired of the fact that my bicy­cle doesn’t fly. Aeroplanes fly, don’t they? Why do the peo­ple that make my bike not let me fly it? I’m furi­ous. I blame Steve Jobs AND Bill Gates. It’s a vio­la­tion of my human rights. Why did it not come with a solar-powered rocket, exactly?

I’m get­ting my iPhone next week. Not going to jail­break it. gonna use it as a phone, a data device and an iPod. I must be some kind of con­formist, right?

And all the peo­ple who don’t like the Angry Drunk — don’t read it. Go to another site. It’s called ‘The Angry Drunk’ not the ‘Boring both-sides-of-the-story I-have-no-position-blog’. What did you expect?

Dear Mr. Angry Drunk,

I used to think I wanted to be men­tioned by Gruber. You’ve taught me oth­er­wise. If I might, I’d like to take a moment to address the crowd.

Dear Dumbasses,

The iPhone is a phone. There are many phones. You have other options for writ­ing and using free soft­ware. Please go write free soft­ware for those other plat­forms. If you write some free soft­ware for the iPhone, and if that free stuff is worth the price, I’ll try it.

If you can get one of those devices for free, load your free crap on it, and then use it with­out pay­ing for ser­vice, please do.

To those of us who work for our money and pay for our gro­ceries, you sound incred­i­bly self-serving, stu­pid, and unshowered.

Shut the fuck up.

Really.

Thanks, Darby. Have a lovely evening.

I really hope in 2012 every­thing will be over, I’ll laugh my head off

Nathan, your neck-beard is show­ing in your photo. Just sayin’.

Fuck! Retards! Fucking retards! Retards with beards! Fuck!

Is “John C Welch” a sock pup­pet, or just an asskiss­ing wannabe?

@rant!: Oh you ram­pag­ing moron. “John C. Welch” has been yelling at idiots long before I decided to let the crazy out.

@rant!

John C. Welch is one of the the originals.

I dream of some­day being rec­og­nized as sig­nif­i­cant enough to carry Master Welch’s hockey-puck mouse.

I have farted more intel­li­gence than you’ve posted.

Punk.

@Rip Ragged: Truly, to have one one of these morons think that John is my sock­pup­pet is both the ulti­mate com­ple­ment and, at the same time, the ulti­mate sign of ignorance.

Someday, I’d like to have some­one for a sock­pup­pet, but I’m think­ing more of

Hey. That’s a good pic­ture. Dammit.

AND I’m out of beer.

Shit.

I find the FSF’s biggest hypocrisy to be that of hard­ware. Surely, if their phi­los­o­phy is so pure and won­der­ful, it should also apply to hardware?

But their gripe about the iPhone includes a prod­uct place­ment for a hard­ware device. Now, to the FSF, any soft­ware or pro­to­col that is “patent encum­bered” is a seri­ous issue. But they are sell­ing hard­ware. Is there any doubt that the hard­ware on their Freerunner phone is cov­ered by patents?

I doubt very much that the chips used to power their hard­ware is free from patents. I doubt that these pieces of sil­i­con and metal were designed by peo­ple work­ing for prin­ci­ples of free­dom or the com­mon good. I’m 100% sure that the hard­ware was man­u­fac­tured in plants belong­ing to cor­po­ra­tions with a for-profit motive.

So, what’s so spe­cial about soft­ware? Why does soft­ware have to be ide­o­log­i­cally pure, but hard­ware can be designed “patent encum­bered” by engi­neers work­ing for big busi­ness, and prob­a­bly assem­bled by sweat­shop work­ers who lack all kinds of freedoms?

The other strange thing is how they will always empha­sise that they are talk­ing about free­dom (as in the free­dom to have sex while read­ing the Constitution) and not free­dom (as in warm beer). But then in their rants, they con­stantly talk about free­ness (as in free from mon­e­tary costs) with their men­tion of taxes?

Stallman says that the FSF phi­los­o­phy doesn’t mean you can’t charge money for soft­ware, but they con­stantly bitch about hav­ing to pay money for stuff (i.e The Apple Tax).

Particularly ironic when they com­plain about the “devel­oper tax” that Apple charges — when Apple is charg­ing that money for a SERVICE — they pro­vide you the ser­vice of host­ing and pro­mot­ing your appli­ca­tion in the App Store, deal­ing with sup­port issues, etc.

Now, isn’t that pretty much the hal­lowed Free Software busi­ness model? Charge for ser­vices, not the soft­ware. But when Apple does charge for their ser­vices, they are evil?

@Bucky

That was very well thought out, cogent, rea­soned, and sensible.

The FSF dorks can’t grasp shit like that.

Just call them names and laugh at them from a safe dis­tance (they can smell a lot bet­ter than they look and still be scary).

@Rip Ragged: Sweet Zombie Jesus Rip, I don’t know what you were doing with that link, but I hope I fixed it. ON that note, I’m pass­ing out.

I for one think the FreeRunner is rev­o­lu­tion­ary. It’s the Che Guevara of mobile devices!

Imagine a world when that model is applied to all facets of con­sumer goods!

Go ahead, imag­ine it. Just close your eyes and pic­ture an unwashed neck­beard stand­ing out­side of a car deal­er­ship. As a well dressed cou­ple walks in, he approaches them:

Two weeks later, a load of baux­ite and steel beams is dropped off on their lawn, along with a 5,000 page set of assem­bly instructions.

Note:

The assem­bly instruc­tions have been trans­lated from the orig­i­nal German to Japanese, then to English by a Frenchman as part of his English as a Second Language class.

The illus­tra­tions will be anno­tated in a mix of Arabic and two dialects of Spanish.

@Scott

TAD has announced that he’s pass­ing out now. I just read your com­ment about name call­ing, pro­fan­ity, and all caps. Darby won’t be here until later today to dis­cuss that, but as a recent reg­u­lar com­menter, I feel com­pelled to say on his behalf,

GO MASTURBATE IN A CORNER, YOU FUCKING RETARD.

I hope that’s okay. I’m sort of out of prac­tice at that sort of thing.

TAD, you and your shit dip don’t know what’s com­ing to ya. Even if Jobs is well inten­tioned the cur­rent recipe will ulti­mately result in a cor­po­rate con­trolled internet.

@Bucky

Is the $99 fee just for putting apps on the AppStore, or is it required for every­one who wants to com­pile apps for her own phone, using the ad-hoc method? I’ve been told the lat­ter, in which case it seems like a big demotivator.

Making free soft­ware for the iPhone that users have to pay $99 dol­lars for (and that money doesn’t even go to me, it would go to Apple) kind of defeats some of the pur­poses of mak­ing free soft­ware in the first place.

It basi­cally boils down to whether or not work­ers should con­trols the means of pro­duc­tion and enjoy the fruits of their own labor, as intended by the found­ing fathers of good old free United States of America. Do we want it in our hands, or in Apples? It’s your choice.

(Btw, just because point 1, 2 and 4 isn’t rel­e­vant to what you want to do doesn’t mean they’re false. There are no ogg play­ers yet (there will prob­a­bly be soon, though, even on the iPhone) and Apple has imple­mented and mar­keted sev­eral DRM sys­tems in the past, for var­i­ous record labels and movie stu­dios, and there are sig­nif­i­cant hoops to jump through just to run any free soft­ware you want. Those points are true and if you don’t care about them, you don’t, but they’re still points.)