Steve Jobs passed away some hour ago.

Love or hate Apple products, you still have to admit he had a big impact on the world. He proved that passion for beauty and simplicity and nicely crafted objects pays off, no matter what engineers say.

RIP Steve Jobs.

(oh, by the way, this video pisses me off)

Now you can !

UPDATE : they just fixed the page, the form doesn’t work anymore

Have fun ! (and thanks, Apple!)

Feel free to send me your best pages
(oh, btw it wasn’t me to discover the exploit)

Check out below what Engadget discovered into an Apple pathet.. patent.

This picture comes from a patent Apple recently filed.

Seems like that even though Iphone Jailbreaking is (Apple claims) unlawful and an ultimate robbery, at least it makes life easier for Apple’s own engineers.

All this post infos come and match pretty closely this engadget article. Shame on me! Kudos to them !

What I like about Apple is their skill to surprise people, but when it comes to their aggressive legal behaviour with competitors, well… that’s definitely no longer the case.

News is that Apple recently sent a cease and desist letter to Procreate, claiming copyright trademark infringement cause by their product Podium. The claim is about the name which too closely resembles iPod and the product’s design which closely resembles Apple products design.

Here’s an excerpt of the letter, provided by TUAW:

The term POD has also been adopted and used extensively in the marketplace by consumers as an abbreviation to refer to Apple’s IPOD player. The IPOD and POD marks indicate to consumers that a broad range of products, including portable electronic devices, computer software, and related goods and services bearing those marks and marks similar thereto originate from or are sponsored or endorsed by Apple.

Now, about the similar design, the thing I can think of is the iMac. For the sake of comparison, here’s Podium:

Here’s the iMac:

How similar those two products really are ? And being so simple in design, are any of them copyrightable ?

Apparently, Apple’s letter also cites Procreate’s website being too similar to Apple’s. Here’s Procreate’s websiste, and here’s Podium’s website. Has apple copyrighted the white and light gray colors or what ?

My take is they just want third party gadget vendors to pay Apple tax on what they earn.

Procreate’s defense until now, is as simple as in “take a look at the dictionary“:

Podium (noun)
Etmyology: Latin
Date originally used: 1743 (a good 243 years before Apple was founded)
1: a low wall serving as a foundation or terrace wall: as a: one around the arena of an ancient amphitheater serving as a base for the tiers of seats b: the masonry under the stylobate of a temple
2: a dais especially for an orchestral conductor
Source: Merriam-Webster

As for me, I bought three Apple products until now. Do I feel bad about that ? Yes, somehow.

Ok, I have to admit that I’ve been bad lately with round-ups, here’s some good stuff I found around, enjoy !

Ubuntu installed on Nokia internet tablets

That’s right, Nokia N810 and N800 have been bent to the will of community.

Nokia N810 internet tablet

Ubuntu on Nokia splash screen

Ubuntu Rescue(?) Menu

Click on the images above to get the full size images.

If someone amongst you has one of those fancy devices and want’s to try, here’s the whole procedure. Here’s some more screenshots.

Also, if any of you wants to buy me one as a gift to reward my screenshots stealing efforts, just post a comment with your email down here .

[via Engadget; image credits: engadget, b-man]

Apple iPod Shuffle headphones policy to raise concerns and shadows

The new iPod Shuffle will refuse to work with third-party headphones that don’t contain an “Apple licensed authentication chip“. That sounds like a joke, but it’s true, and confirms the well know bad Apple‘s attitude.

What does this chip does, other than locking out independent vendors unless they get expensively accepted by Apple ? Together with the DRM encumbered new Display Port standard, the foundation of total media control are getting laid. This is something US anti-trust and EU commission should really give a look into.

A dirty hack has obviously already have been found. In the sense you’ll have to get your hands really dirty.

Software wars map

I often hear people claiming the (free software’s? Ubuntu’s?) mission is “take over the world“. While I don’t necessarily agree with the term and, by the way, my opinions are not necessarily those of my employers (nor my pets, fans and shoes), here’s a little map that could help them not get lost in the software world.

Awesomeness brought to you by http://mshiltonj.com, successfully stolen by me

note: I don’t necessarily agree with the map above (disclosure: I didn’t even spend time to read it)

Installation ease being a *bug* not a feature !

Check out the scaring story of Gabriel, who inadvertitely left is precious box at the mercy of his parents with Mandriva’s Live CD still in the drive. Everybody now scream My mom runs Ubuntu !

Italy’s government to try wipe off anonimity on the Internet (LOL) with the excuse of Pedophily.

Don’t laugh, this is real. Really !

Gabriella Carlucci, ex showgirl and italian deputy, presented a new law proposal, with the declared intent of fighting pedo-pornography.
To the disappoint of technology press [see vogliono chiudere la rete - translation: "they want to lock the net"], the proposal’s text seemed to have nothing to do with child pornography (despite the declared intents), rather than with putting outlaw websites that allow anonymity for their users.

This is already pretty lame, but the best has yet to come. Looking at the properties of the file containing the proposed text, a Microsoft Word Document, the name of Davide Rossi – president of Univideo (Italian Union of Audio-Visive Editory) – was to be found.

That obviously led to a number of concerns about the whole matter, as obviously the president of a content providers association is not really expected to write (or even edit) laws in place of the deputies, nor deputies are expected to be paper-passers on behalf of business men of any kind.

Carlucci later explained, below the beginning translated as literally as possible (square brackets contain text written by me):

Dear Giacomo [a journalist],
there is not secret to be revealed. My collaborators followed attorney David Rossi’s intervention (which is not only Univideo President [?!?!?]) at the meeting organized by Assodigitale on 15th January and I had the opportunity to share with him some ideas, and ask him to send me some informational notes.

For example the one of the responsibility of own acts, even if performed via the internet, that is you cannot throw a stone then hide your hand [the "cannot..hand" is a common saying in Italy].

You’ll be surely agree with me about this – year’s 2000 directive has been conceived when Internet was not yet web 2.0 [!!!] but there were more easily identifiable sites in case of violation. Nowadays it’s more easy to launch a discussion forum with a well defined title but leave to the polo [guess she meant "people"]  of the Internet, in anonymous manner, abuse perpetration such as defamation, injury, slander.

But there’s more. Who gone to check the propierties of the documents related to the law proposal about the Internet, has recovered the generalities of the author [which we all expected to be her], but strangely forgot to cite the files denomination [...]

Follow the link above for the full letter, but it’s written in italian, and by the way, the rest of the text doesn’t get any smarter than this.

Ok, you’re free to laugh now.

This is a great news for those that un-cautious enough to buy such a device just to discover right after it’s a cage

Read the update Ubuntu Wiki’s page here:

Syncing iPhones and iPods Touch w/ Firmware 2.x

Dulcis in fundo, at the end of the page, there’s a method to sync without using wireless. Cool.

A word of warning

First, that obviously only work on jailbroken iPhones.

Second, as far as I undestand, the new syncing method works by changing the iTunes DB protocol version in one iPhone’s configuration file. That makes the iPhone use the old hashing scheme, which has been succesfully cracked and – because of that – supported by gPod.

I wouldn’t rush into followring the guide, consider carefully the following:

• You’ll probably loose the music on the device. You’ll have to sync it back fully using Amarok/Banshee/etc. That will require time.
• AppStore bought apps may stop working and crash right after launching. That’s been reported from one user (other people had no problem so that could be related to other things). At worst you can restore the phone and get those app again from the AppStore (it won’t make you pay another time), but be sure to take that into account.
• You may not be able to sync the iPhone using iTunes anymore. I don’t know, i didn’t try. But you’re warned.

I highly suggest you read the comments on the original post before you try:

Using Amarok and other iIunes db compatible software with the iPhone 2.x

[image credits: openmind.netsons.org ]

Happy ?

Digg

First and foremost, I’ve got an account on Digg. If any of you is on digg the just add me as a friend, let’s digg together . My nickname there is tacone.

World of Goo

Rocks. Get it here. Dont’ forget to adjust the resolution to your maximum (runs 1600×1050 without a glitch for me).

mkdir .WorldOfGoo #it may already exist, if so, skip this step
cp /opt/WorldOfGooDemo/properties/config.txt .WorldOfGoo/
gedit .WorldOfGoo/config.txt

Blueman

I’ve got a shout from a Digg friend regarding Blueman (thanks vadi0). It’s a new Bluetooth manager for Gnome.

I didn’t try it, just gave a look to the source. It’s almost all python. At first look, it seems to use C just for binding to C libraries. This help bring me to the conclusion that programming in C is often unneeded and almost damaging in many cases. You’ll get a crashing optimized application which will be never done 100%.

You know I am right.

/me wish like all the Gnome applications were written in Python

Ear candy

I still get many many visits about Ear Candy. I’ve updated my review to include 0.3 download instructions.

Remember it’s alpha.

Btw, it now sniffs .desktop files on your computer, and auto detects which kind of applications is the one you’re using. That works for the 90% of your applications. Nice I say.

Software patents Kittens

No wonder how this guy got to my site (look at the tag cloud on my site), but that leaves me wondering about subtle associations between Software Patents and kittens.

Rapache Windows

Also, someone got to my site looking for a version of Rapache for Windows:

I’m happy people look for Rapache on non-windows systems, but this is not going to happen. Not done by me, at least. Only one way to get it, switch to Ubuntu (also good looking girls happen to like it for apparently non-sense reasons).

The happy choices of RAI about their new website payed off

I have a few visits from people looking for a way to use their tax-payed tv content on Linux. This leaves me wondering about the working status of that 8th wonder.

So they’re getting what they deserved.

I’ve got a nice Mighty Mouse

Which turned out to be quite crappy.

Apple’s Mighty Mouse works out of of the box on Ubuntu, including the Mighty Ball (ZOMG) but sucks because:

• the squeeze bottom put at the sides of the mouse is just too hard to press. And gives no tactile feedback to the user when the click is accomplished. How hardy ? You may find yourself litterally lift the mouse from the mouse pad, attempting to struck.
• it’s slow. This turned out to be not a Linux problem (works just the same under Mac Os X) but a poor laser resolution. My 20$ dell mouse works so much better.
• to right click you have to lift the left finger from the mouse. Because it’s touch sensitive, so if you even slightly touch the mouse with the other finger as you right click, it will be a left click, not a right one.

By the way, if you have one and want to use it with Ubuntu, you’ll be asked the device’s PIN  number. Write 0000 (4 zeros) and you’re done.

That’s a question ! Whether you like SJ or not, he was the individual that got Apple in business, and he did so with just one key ingredient Amusement. Tons of it.

I’ve recently come along to an old video on digg which is really worthwhile seeing. Be sure to turn volume on because that’s the greatest part. This video was taken in 1984. And things shown were just out of this earth for people that since that time knew just commandline and ansi terminals.

This is a great example on what Linux will probably never have.

No video ? No party! if you don’t see the video click here !

Those times and those excitement will probably never come back. Not for Apple, not for us. At the present Apple is still an innovative company, which still relies on innovative products but mixes these with admittedly legal aggressivity and patent locking to keep their business going.

Neverthless the above video is contagiously exciting and was worth sharing.

Despite some shortcoming the experience was quite nice. Actually, the most interesting (or even funny) thing in the perspective is the way he looks at things. For example the Add/Remove Application which he describes as:

Ubuntu has an iPhone Cydia/Installer-like application where you can find, install, automatically update or remove applications

He also considers killer features of Nautilus the possibility to re-size the individual icon size and put emblems on it.

All in all is a nice read, especially if you’re into Ubuntu or Gnome development in a way or another. So here it is:

Two Days Without Mac OS X Leopard: Ubuntu 8.10 Review

This is of course, quite disturbing. Plainly said, this sucks.

In a way we cannot really bear with them, rather than with the current US software patent system, which somewhat encourage organizations to file patents even for defensive purpouses. Despite of that, Apple’s declaration of intents doesn’t leave many doubts about the purpouse of their new patents (so, sorry, you’re *plain* wrong):

We approach this business as a software platform business. And so I think we approach it fundamentally different than people that are approaching it only from a hardware point of view. And, so, as I’ve said before, we’re very, very confident with where we are competitively. We are watching the landscape. We like competition, as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, were going to go after anybody that does.

And:

Well, I don’t want to talk about any specific company. I’m just making a general statement that we think competition is good. It makes us all better. And we are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we’ll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don’t know that I could be more clear than that.

(Tim Cook [source])

Seems like the scope of the patents is limited but anyway significant. This should remind us why software patents are bad and that in no way shall we drop the vigilance in Europe.

Further Reading

• CleverMonkey break down (discusses patents and links the official documents)
• Engadget breakdown (discusses patents scope)
• NoSoftwarePatents petition (did you already signed, didn’t you ?)

Oh, BTW, I just got a MacBook.