There’s more to the Apple-EMI deal than the mainstream press cares to tell. Background EMI is a record label. Apple Computer, a nascent audio distributor, wants to compete in EMI’s market via the iPod, iTunes music program, and iTunes Music … Continue reading
After much bad press about Apple’s hardware failing including causing two instances of minor burns to people handling the machines, Apple has issued a recall on a bunch of bad batteries in their customer’s iBooks. Mike Pinkerton mentions a colleague’s … Continue reading
The BBC reports that despite Apple’s alleged zero tolerance policy for any instance, isolated or not, of any treatment of workers that could be interpreted as harsh, Apple has been found to support workers: working more than six consecutive days … Continue reading
Apple computer software is somewhat popular and widely known for being easy to use, easier to use than other equally unethical competition from other organizations including IBM, HP, an uncountable number of smaller software development houses, and Microsoft. When faced … Continue reading
Jef Raskin, one of the big movers and shakers behind the MacOS graphical user interface, was interviewed by The Guardian. He notes that Apple develops “by accretion”, not fixing the old stuff but acquiring new stuff to throw on top … Continue reading
Occasionally I see news stories that highlight the differences between the older free software social movement and the newer open source development methodology. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published a couple of essays on this topic (older essay, newer … Continue reading
Want to fix a licensing problem for a GPLv2 or LGPLv2.x program? Relicense under GPLv3 or later, or under AGPLv3 or later. Consider LGPLv3 or later carefully before use, erring on the side of picking the GNU GPL v3 or … Continue reading
A flight simulator company FlightSimLabs was caught embedding malware in their proprietary software which copies a user’s website credentials. FlightSimLabs claims they only had plans to use this against users who “pirated” the software but nobody can be sure because this malware was in every copy of the FlightSimLabs software; the credentials copying was indiscriminate. We won’t really know when this issue will go away or if it does go away because we can’t tell where the unethically copied data will travel. But there are aspects of this case which bring to mind the underlying class basis of users vs. proprietors, how things were different in the recent past with home computing, and what the changes of always-on networked computing (in which we store sensitive information) means for the public. Continue reading
Today I came across a report in Trisquel GNU/Linux’s issue tracker describing a new bug in Mozilla Firefox which, Trisquel developer Rubén Rodríguez Pérez says “allows Mozilla to install any binary into the browser, through a dedicated system of updates”. … Continue reading
I don’t agree with any form of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) being “justifiable” for some forms of media but not audio (presumably because consumers have been acclimated to DRM-freedom for audio). A series of technocratic explanations won’t justify rejecting Apple’s … Continue reading