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The Silencing of Maya

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Re: The Silencing of Maya

#221

Post by Karunamon »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #169
Karunamon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck does Jobs have to do with this? The man was a capitalist and hardly a philanthropist.

I don't want to be impolite or start a personal attack, but if you really don't consider what he did philanthropic , then you must re-consider your definition of this word. He wasn't the only on, but was one of those guys who created this device that's giving this child a voice in the first place. You don't have to give huge chunks of money to charitable causes to be a philanthropic, you can use that money to build a…

No offense taken :)

>He wasn't the only one, but was one of those guys who created this device that's giving this child a voice in the first place.

That's a matter of happenstance, though. Jobs and Apple didn't create a device altruistically to be used by the disabled, they created a very popular piece of consumer electronics.

Nothing more. Any other light touchpad device with a similar app would fit Maya's use case, which could just as easily have been a Galaxy Tab or a Thinkpad X.

This is going to sound really bad, so please don't take offense, but what you're saying sounds very similar to Apple marketspeak. "The magical, world changing device" and whatnot. Let's try to keep perspective here.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#222

Post by randallsquared »

Karunamon wrote: post #217
jaysonelliot wrote: post #127

The biggest culprit here, in my view, isn't Apple, PRC, or the patent system. It's the death of physical media and the rise of the "app store" model. I have programs for my Apple //e computer that are over 30 years old. Most of the companies that made the software have long since disappeared, and the computer hasn't been supported since the '80s, but I can still use them. That software is my property. I own it, and I…

>and it can be taken away Except this has never, ever been done to anything but malware. Not even apps that flagrantly and blatantly violated the store rules and got taken down are removed from end user devices. Not even apps which were pulled down for patent or copyright infringement . It isn't going to happen. Until such time as the killswitch is abused, this remains a slippery slope argument with no basis in reali…

Unless you think that Apple is immune to injunction, the mere existence of the capability to remove apps from customers' devices is a sort of attractive nuisance. Now, it could be that precedent will be established that removing infringing or other undesirable content or applications from third-party computers is not permissible. Until that precedent exists, though, the risk seems high that precedent will go the other way.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#223

Post by flyinRyan »

wissler wrote: post #136
Confusion wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand patents. Despite what is reported every so often, you cannot patent abstract concepts: only specific ways to execute upon those concepts. The title of a patent is irrelevant, but it is the title that gets the press. Patents do not disallow you to think of certain things and they do not disallow you to share those thoughts. They only disallow you to implement a specific solution to a specific problem…

No, you misunderstand ethics. There is and can be no ethical principle that bans you from creating a physical object that happens to be similar to an object someone else created, unless you had explicitly consented to being bound to an agreement where you would refrain from doing so. And you misunderstand patents as well, but that's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is that you cannot make an ethical c…

Do you realize that, regardless of how it's abused now, in a world with zero patents no little guy would ever be paid for his idea? Big companies could just see the idea, realize the value and task 100 people with copying it exactly.

Further no company would bother with R&D because as soon as they make a breakthrough everyone else will simply steal the idea and sell for pennies more than cost of production. R&D costs could never be recouped so no one would ever do it again.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#224

Post by flyinRyan »

lukeschlather wrote: post #104
kvnn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant what I said more literally than you took it. Apple doesn't obstruct her from using Android. She can choose not to use Apple products. Edit: keep in mind this is what I was replying to: They reserved for themselves the power to obstruct the author's use of her own tools, which should be a human right second only to food and shelter.

Apple doesn't own the product; they sold it to her, and shouldn't obstruct her from using it as she sees fit. Your sentiment seems to imply that no one actually buys anything from Apple, they merely rent, and Apple rightly has the final say over how the renter uses the product. I don't see how the idea that she can simply choose to use another product really makes sense unless she's renting it.

Someone probably sold you a microwave. How easy is it to install Linux on it? They haven't provided you a way to and may have even erected barriers to stop you from doing so. Wouldn't that put any and all embedded device/"appliance" manufacturer in the same boat?

As far as I know, Apple doesn't want people to think of the iPad as a "computer" but as a device or appliance.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#225

Post by ralfd »

ender7 wrote: post #8

Here's a video of the Maya in question using the device. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXBb_30NNYE

What illness/disability does she have? She clearly understands her mother and navigates a complex UI .

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#226

Post by ricardobeat »

randallsquared wrote: post #222
Karunamon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and it can be taken away Except this has never, ever been done to anything but malware. Not even apps that flagrantly and blatantly violated the store rules and got taken down are removed from end user devices. Not even apps which were pulled down for patent or copyright infringement . It isn't going to happen. Until such time as the killswitch is abused, this remains a slippery slope argument with no basis in reali…

Unless you think that Apple is immune to injunction, the mere existence of the capability to remove apps from customers' devices is a sort of attractive nuisance. Now, it could be that precedent will be established that removing infringing or other undesirable content or applications from third-party computers is not permissible. Until that precedent exists, though, the risk seems high that precedent will go the othe…

The capability to remove apps from customer's devices has always existed in desktops since the internet, even for those you keep in CDs, as long as you are connected and receiving OS updates.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#227

Post by ricardobeat »

masklinn wrote: post #137
jemfinch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absent a court-ordered injuction, Apple has no obligation to read, let alone give credence to anyone's claims in this matter, and that's exactly what they should have done: let the courts sort it out. Make PRC get the injuction, don't just give it to them for free.

They don't have any obligation to do so, but in most case you'll probably want them to: you built an application on your own, over 6 months of your life, and a guy cracked, replicated and uploaded it. Surely you'll want his app thrown out even without having to go through court won't you?

"cracked" is a bit of a stretch, isn't it?

The engineers used their knowledge on speech-synthesizers to make a similar app. Just like an Airport engineer leaving Apple to build wi-fi devices, or an iPod engineer using his knowledge of hardware and interfaces to build modern thermostats. Hmmm...

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#228

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

lloeki wrote: post #151
jaysonelliot wrote: post #127

The biggest culprit here, in my view, isn't Apple, PRC, or the patent system. It's the death of physical media and the rise of the "app store" model. I have programs for my Apple //e computer that are over 30 years old. Most of the companies that made the software have long since disappeared, and the computer hasn't been supported since the '80s, but I can still use them. That software is my property. I own it, and I…

> That software is my property. I own it Technically, no. I'm pretty sure that if you cashed for a copy of WordPerfect on Apple II, that software was licensed to you for unlimited time use and you don't own any bit of it.

Well, this is really getting down to a philosophical level. You can't technically "own" any land at all in the United States, for example, the most you can get is unlimited use rights in perpetuity. Stop paying your property taxes for a few months and you'll find out who actually "owns" your land real quick.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#229

Post by ricardobeat »

justin_vanw wrote: post #165

If someone makes a false or unfounded claim, and it causes harm to another person (not least of which a disabled 4 year old) can't you sue the person making a false claim? If this were shrink wrapped software, you wouldn't have this issue. This sort of thing only comes up because we have given a corporation the power to revoke access to software. In iOS there is no opportunity to install 'unsigned' software. This sit…

1) Don't be fooled, Google would do the same in the Play store.

2) You can legally jailbreak your device and install any software you want.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#230

Post by ralfd »

randallsquared wrote: post #222
Karunamon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and it can be taken away Except this has never, ever been done to anything but malware. Not even apps that flagrantly and blatantly violated the store rules and got taken down are removed from end user devices. Not even apps which were pulled down for patent or copyright infringement . It isn't going to happen. Until such time as the killswitch is abused, this remains a slippery slope argument with no basis in reali…

Unless you think that Apple is immune to injunction, the mere existence of the capability to remove apps from customers' devices is a sort of attractive nuisance. Now, it could be that precedent will be established that removing infringing or other undesirable content or applications from third-party computers is not permissible. Until that precedent exists, though, the risk seems high that precedent will go the othe…

There is precedent. Not in a legal way, but in the judgement of the public. Amazon remote erased an eBook in 2009, ironically "1984", from Kindle devices because the publisher didn't have the copyright and the real copyright holder demanded it from Amazon. It was a PR nightmare! CEO Jeff Bezos had to offer a public apology to mitigate this mistake. I don't expect a big company will make this mistake again.

http://slashdot.org/story/09/07/27/0541212/jeff-bezos-offers...

Google first pushed the killswitch on an App in March 2011, a trojan malware for Android, and nobody really complained. Apple on the other hand never triggered the killswitch to date. They also don't have magic powers. Make a backup the iOS device and in the unlikely event the App isn't working on a future OS update or Tim Cook is getting insane, just install the backup again.

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