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Free Software Foundation calls for avoiding of iPhone 3G
- Thread starter clevin
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Thoughtful piece. One thing, though, the ability to identify a user's location and broadcast it is not unique to the iPhone. I'm pretty sure that any recently made phone sold in the U.S. must have the ability to do that. Under the guise of keeping us safe (once again), The Man has turned our cell phones into tracking devices.
that is true, most location based services even in Treos etc have a option to only be used in emergency calls. The GPS also can be turned off on the iphone which shuts off the transmission right?
Start with a predetermined point of view, mix in equal portions social commentary and idealism with just a pinch of product comparison. Garnish with laughable alternative and bake under a tin foil hat. Mmm, tasty!
in case you didn't realize, OSX, Safari both have large proportion (20-70 % for OSX, 50-80% for safari, personal estimation, will only accept corrections with real data) of codes from Free Softwares.
Normally, you dont need to pay for Free Softwares, but its apple, you know..
Which means that you're flat-out guessing, but require any other positions to provide proof?
Yeah, I can see where this thread is going...
yeah, my guess is quite generous for apple
. Too bad Apple didn't do it itself from scratch. After all, BSD, Unix are all full featured OS beforehand, aren't they 
... Too bad Apple didn't do it itself from scratch. After all, BSD, Unix are all full featured OS beforehand, aren't they
"Too bad"...? Hmm. I find the FreeBSD and the whole unix flavor of OS X to be too good actually. If OS X was something other that *nix based I wouldn't be using it. I've used Linux since '94, but I certainly wouldn't want to have to downgrade to using a Linux desktop vs. the OS X desktop platform. On the server side of Linux I run Redhat Enterprise Linux (REL) on two servers. Like OS X, REL isn't "free" even though its based on a "free" *nix distro. Bottom line, my business is worth more than the price I pay for these commercial systems.
Some minorly to moderately valid points couched in a lot of vitriol... it would be much more compelling, however, if I could actually obtain the freetard-approved phone they're promising today. If it ever becomes available, I'd take it seriously, but until then it's just a rumor.
I'd start a rejoinder about how, for instance, the world is not exactly teeming with sites that make music to which I actually want to listen available to me legally, digitally, in an open-source, non-DRM format, but what's the point?
The fact that Apple (most likely) signed a long-term exclusivity deal with those morons at AT&T (and not just b/c of T-Mobile ... if Apple had both the US and Korean CDMA markets available, they might actually bother to make a CDMA variant of the iPhone) bothers me much more than anything in the article (none of which really bothers me at all, honestly).
I'd start a rejoinder about how, for instance, the world is not exactly teeming with sites that make music to which I actually want to listen available to me legally, digitally, in an open-source, non-DRM format, but what's the point?
The fact that Apple (most likely) signed a long-term exclusivity deal with those morons at AT&T (and not just b/c of T-Mobile ... if Apple had both the US and Korean CDMA markets available, they might actually bother to make a CDMA variant of the iPhone) bothers me much more than anything in the article (none of which really bothers me at all, honestly).
Once again, the FSF outdoes itself by publishing baseless FUD not grounded in fact.
- Hence all the free applications that are already available from Apple's Application Store. Besides, real software costs real money in the real world. And distribution of that software - even over the Internet - has real costs associated with it. I'll never understand why the FSF propagates the idea that software development should be a profession void of compensation.
- It's "Digital Rights Management," and Apple is actually on record against it (at least for music). So while the support is there, the endorsement is not.
- FUD at its finest. Location Services may be disabled in the iPhone's settings. Even when enabled, the iPhone OS requires the user to explicitly allow access to location data.
- But it will play consumer accepted formats like MP3 and AAC, both of which support DRM-free content.
- Hmmm... Alternatives like GNU Hurd, which was announced by the FSF in 1991 and still isn't considered production quality?
Thank you. The thing I love the most about the Free Software (as opposed to Open Source) movement is that it's all about them wanting the software to be free to modify from other developer's labors. They don't actually want to produce quality, freely changeable software themselves. That would involve work, responsibility, and a realization that society is a little more involved than they want to understand. It's also hard to pay bills when nobody respects your work.
Their "Four Freedoms" look all cuddly on the face of it, but when you actually think about them for more than five seconds you realize that it is an utterly Utopian, completely unsupportable set of precepts. Ah, but this allows them to claim a never-ending crusade against the evils of IP. Since 1985, by the way, from which time they've actually accomplished, well, nothing, really.
Then again, just as with Greenpeace, Apple's an easy target for the fringe element to garner a little attention. This type of nutter's been around for centuries, I just look to them for simple amusement. Luddites, Wobblies, Moonies, Scientologists, pick your whack job with an agenda and a forum, and they'll always find a way to get coverage.
i don't know you dislike idealism so much even in the face that Unix, BSD, KHTML are all built-upon idealism and now is the foundation of Apple's business, You don't get OSX or safari w/o them.
Too much work? Sorry Apple didn't write their own OS from scratch, otherwise your attack might be more convincing. But nooooooo, apple actually avoided the "much work and responsibility" by direct copy the products from idealism OSS stuff.
Meanwhile, WordPress for iPhone Source Code Released
So, how again is the iPhone completely blocking free software?
The point is that DRM doesn't give you rights, rather it takes them away.
I don't believe that they're actually entitled to release that source, as I'm pretty sure that the APIs are under NDA.
Exactly where did I say, and how can you reasonably infer, any supposed dislike for idealism? Referring to the idiotic "Old Internet" thread, what I miss is where one's words are taken at face value and not reinterpreted inanely. Discourse has devolved to the point where not only history can be ignored and reinterpreted without challenge (FTR, Unix was developed at Bell Labs, hardly the most "idealistic" of operations), but one's words apparently mean only what another feels like making them mean.
If you want to disagree, fine, but have the intellectual honestly to at least attend to my points instead of parsing them into something entirely unrelated to my commentary.