A side-effect generated by the Datagate scandal is the privacy hysteria exploitation to sell encryption-based services. Taking apart some obvious exceptions (business transactions, health information, judiciary data) these services are useless, ineffective and dangerous for the citizen an such and for the society. Continue reading “The Datagate and the Risk of Outlawing Encryption”
On Apple’s Adobe Flash Ban(g)
So, according to MacRumors, Apple’s explanation for the ban over Adobe’s Flash-to-Iphone compiler is deadly simple: Apple doesn’t want to loose its grip on the users. They invested monies in creating product, capturing a market and now want to raise fences to prevent other eating on theyr own dish (or, better, hunting in the same hunt-resort.
Adobe’s supporters – on their side – ?shout fire accusing Apple of being unfair, etc. etc. etc. …
Well, I might agree with those criticism against Apple, were the accusation coming from the open source community (where Mac OsX is supposed to come from?) but honestly I can’t accept that an hyper-proprietary company such Adobe (member of Business Software Alliance, among other things) might complain against a business strategy that is entirely into the “mood” of this industry sector. This is the market, catch-it or leave-it.
This is not to say that I do like or approve Apple behaviour.
Preventing user from having multiple choices, liberty in other words, is by definition an unfair move. I think Apple should learn from Google, whose “power” stays firmly in users’ hands.
One may think that this is wrong too. Maybe, but between a leaving in a golden cage (as soon as you can afford it) or be free in the wild I would go for the latter.
More on the Snow Leopard Heat Issue…
Kidding apart, the Snow Leopard oddities (laptop heat issue, printer and application incompatibility and so on) raise a still unanswered question: can a software house – and in particular an operating system manufacturer – be free to sell a not well enough tested and not fully usable application?
This is not the rant of a discontented user but a precise legal question. Is it conceivable to let a producer of critical assets – as software surely is – to deliberately mass market unreliable products? Time has come when software manufacturer can’t be anymore allowed to “go crappy” treating users as a bunch of sheep and just “selling a roadmap”.
I don’t know if somebody ever did an assessment of the additional expenses caused by this marketing strategy (or, at least, I don’t know if this assessment has been made available to the public.) The fact is that software manufacturers should bear the legal consequences of their choice. But as Mark Minasi and Alan Cooper pointed out, software houses succeeded in convincing users that things must go that (wrong) way.
Apple’s Snow Leopard’s mismatched name…
Well, it seems that this time Apple marketing guys have slipped on a wet surface. Snow Leopard, the latest MacOS X version, causes serious heat problems to laptops such as the Mac Book Air (mine is literally burning.) A quick look at users’ forums on the Internet shows that this is a widespread problem and that Apple is doing almost nothing to fix it. Sure, a patch will come, but when? In the meantime, it is very hard to use a Snow Leopard equipped laptop.
Apple is more and more posing as Microsoft, and I wonder how the Cupertino-based company could possbily still run its commercial by claiming that OSX works out of the box, with no big legal copies for each advertising statement. But above all, can we still trust Apple?
Somebody might think that this is an exaggerated criticism for a very common event in the computing market (i.e. a new software that is – at least partially – a ? crap one) but that’s the point. I start asking myself whether Apples really are the computers for the rest of us.
Snow Leopard… they’d better call it Firefox, oh, sorry, its taken. Why not Firebird, then?
p.s. I switched back to 10.5.8
Italian Politicians to storm the Internet
There is a disturbing trend in Italy. Every now and then, for the most various reasons, a politician feels compelled to propose a bill ?”regulating” the Internet. ?
In a previous post I addressed the issues arisen by Cassinelli and D’Alia bills in re: Internet censorship. A few weeks after, more colleagues followed their lead. ?
Former showpersons – now MPs of Berlusconi’s party – proposes free speech and anonimity regulation “to protect minors” (but fact shows that they’re mostly concerned of copyright.) ?
Between January and March 2009 Luca Barbareschi (actor) and Gabriella Carlucci (anchor woman), proposed two draft laws whose declared intent was to enforce copyright protection by shutting down civil liberties. ?
Mr. Barbareschi proposal creates a “single point of cultural control” by granting the Italian State backed royalty collecting agency, the role of exclusive gateway between artists and market. Furthermore, Mr. Barbareschi’s draft law contains so loose statements about ISPs liability that the Government is allowed to do basically whatever he wants. ?
More dangerous, if possible, is Mrs. Carlucci draft law that wants to ban anonymity from the Net, refusing even to consider intermediate forms such as “protected anonymity” (where the ISP act as trusted third party). ?Mrs. Carlucci want to establish a committee under the Communication Authority with power of interpreting Internet-related law (in Italy, only magistrates and the Parliament is supposed to), receiving “confidential notice” of infringement, acting as Alternative Dispute Resolution provider, counseling magistrates about the enforcement of preemptive activities ruled under rule of evidence code, like searches and seizure, termporary jail restriction etc.)
Again, on March 19 2009, MP’s Beatrice Lorenzin, Manlio Contento e Enrico Costa (all belonging to Mr. Berlusconi’s party) proposed a bill to filter minor’s access to websites suggesting though weight-loss techniques. Of course this was done to “protect minors”.
On the other (political) side, ?on March, 27 2009 ?Vincenzo Vita and Luigi Vimercati (both belonging to the Democratic Party), ?proposed a bill to respect network neutrality and use open source in public administration. Oddly enough, this proposal comes too late, since both Mr. Vita and Mt. Vimercati ran institutional offices under the centre-left central Government and local administrations. When both Mr. Vita and Mr. Vimercati had the actual chance to do something effective, they did nothing, while their colleagues promoted proprietary software (Mr. Mussi as Minister of university and Mr. Nicolais as ?Minister of innovation) and severely injured human rights by forcing Italian ISPs to block access to controversial websites, without a court order (Mr. Gentiloni, now Democratic Party, Minister of communication.)