Rayz2016

bkkcanuck said:

I disagree with the Federal Court.  

API is just the interface (e.g. add(operand1, operand2) - i.e. no implementation to that - and implementation is basically 99%+ of the code).

Being able to use an API for compatibility purposes is no different than for example Open Office being able to implement the file format for Word.  The need for competition outweighs the argument as an API protected IP.   Google's implementation uses the API (common) and then the implementation code which is probably more than 99% of the code base.  As long as Google did not copy the code itself the API itself should be fair use.  Languages and APIs should not be able to be protected as API.  

The court has already previously ruled that you cannot protect interfaces for hardware for the purposes of locking out the competition on things like printer cartridges etc.  An API is not much different than the software equivalent.  

Actually, Google did copy code from Java. That's how the case first got started, but that's not really the point. The Java license permits this as fair use, and many of us have made a good living from Java and have given back by helping out on other projects and with occasional bug fixes. If fork a new version of Java, however, and then make a commercial product based around this fork then you are expected to buy a license. IBM did, and so did Microsoft.

Google thought it was above such paltry concerns as fair use. It believed that because it gave Android away for free, then it wasn't a commercial product and so no license was needed. Unfortunately, the court has decided that because Android is used to harvest user data which is then sold on to advertisers, then it is actually a commercial product: Google does make money from it after all.

So they are guilty, but what this means in monetary terms is the big unknown. Guilty does not mean they owe Oracle any money, especially if they can prove that Android doesn't make them much. This could be tricky. Google takes 30% from apps sold on the app store. But then a lot of them are free. Google is more concerned with harvesting data from iOS users than Android users. Is that another point in favour of them? Does Android make so little money for them that it translates into not very much owed to Oracle?

crowley said:

Maybe I missed it, but I haven't heard them say ARM once.  I wonder if that means anything.

Good point. 

Hmph. Their website locks up if you don’t accept their tracking cookies. 

ascii said:

Same chassis after all this time, whaaaaa?

If there are server farms using these things by the thousand then they might not appreciate a redesigned case. 

loopless said:

I agree that 1Password is much more than a simple password manager - I have been using it for a long time.

However, the iOS keychain is now much more convenient than 1Password as a single user password manager.

I have several apps/web sites that prompt me regularly for a password. With keychain, I can unlock the keychain quickly with touch id, then keychain enters them directly from the "keyboard" - the suggestions seem always correct and match up with the app/website.

With 1Password I would be switching back and forth to the 1Password app to get the username and password.

Should become much easier when the next round of upgrades are ready. Apple is adding an API that third party password managers can hook into. 

jony0 said:

Send me cash (bitcoins) and I will send you back double !
Good Lord, I'm sorry but try as I may, I can't seem to muster much sympathy for the people dumb enough to fall for this one.
This is even dumber then the ever so slightly less obvious "African Prince" emails.
Oh-ooh Darwin … please believe me … I'll never do you no harm …

Microsoft carried out a study on these scams a few years ago. They found that the scammers were deliberately making the scam messages as unbelievable as possible: unlikely scenarios, poor grammar and spelling …  Why? Because the scammers believe that if someone is so dumb as to believe that first message, then they’re less likely to become suspicious over the course of the fleecing. The messages are designed to catch the dumbest people. 

Yup, this basically. 

hammeroftruth said:

This was settled a long time ago when the government spanked Apple hard and let Amazon skate. Now they’re complaining about it again and are surprised Amazon has been abusing their power for years. 

Amazon’s KDP platform explicitly prohibits writers from selling their books on other platforms. 

Rule 5.5.2 is pretty clear.  

But things must be getting a bit sticky if they're rolling out Hair Force One.

It's odd, because with this much of a backlash, Google and Microsoft would've thrown in the towel and sat round the campfire for a rethink,

Apple keeps on insisting that the problem is the dissenters: we just don't understand. We understand just fine, Craig; we just disagree with you.

Apple is determined to drive this through, no matter what; and you have to wonder why. I mean they already scan images on their servers, so why are they so determined to get spyware running on your phone?

I think the reason is that, after a couple of false starts, Cupertino is ready to go all in on its next big product: advertising. But how do you do this while keeping up the 'privacy' mantra? How do you get into user tracking when you've spent the past three or four years crucifying all the other companies who make money doing it?

Well, to start with, you release a client-side tracker, give it a noble purpose, and then try to convince people that their privacy is protected because it is not moving around a real image; just a hashed representation of the image.

If you can get people to accept that, then it's a lot easier to get them to accept step 2; a client-side tracker that logs what you're doing on the phone, which developers and marketers can hook into and extract information. But here's the clever part: the info they extract is a machine-learned representation of you that gets a unique number so it can be tracked across applications. But it doesn't contain any real details; not your name, address, health records, nothing; because as long as they know that 884398443894398 exercises three times a week, goes to a lot of cookery classes and has a subscription to PornHub, that's all they really care about. Why do they need to know your real name? They can serve relevant ads to that person without knowing who they are. Only Apple knows that, and they will not allow that information out.  The APIs to access this pseudo-you might even incur a subscription charge.

But to make this work, they would need the user base to be accept loggers running on their phones. And that's where we are now: Step 1. That's why the client-side tool cannot be dropped. Without it, the whole plan is screwed.

Of course, this would work for apps, but once you get out onto the web then there's no API, so for that to work, Apple would need some kind of private relay that could substitute your details with your avatar when you make web requests.


The message Apple is trying to get across is that your privacy is not compromised, because we're just dealing with a representation of your data, not the data itself.