...Windows 95 vibes: https://youtu.be/LfNQOOr9aR8

Online platforms, for discussion, or social, whatever, do have impact on people's rights. It's not true that somebody could just change platform, because most of the times there is just one platform that does a peculiar thing, and with a certain amount of audience. In this case someone couldn't post an image because of a braggart mod. Every online platform's mod approach, censorship style, banning rules, features for users, everything contributes to build up user rights. Hopefully a time will come in which all online platforms will be forced to guarantee a minimum set of rights decided by a specific law. And in which judges will have somehow their word in the banning or censoring of someone. Because in a democracy, private companies do not write rules, private companies do not deliver judgments.

AMD had a better architecture at the times of Athlon and Intel made "netburst" architecture, the name makes users believe that it bursts internet surfing. It was 30 stages pipeline, because it could go up with MHz and so it was good to make users think "more MHz, better cpu" (like when people buys stereos, more Watts=better sound. Yuck.) AMD was the first to release dual core desktop processors, but Intel preceded AMD with dual core Pentium 4: two single-core dies on one package. AMD was the first to release quad core desktop processors, but Intel preceded AMD with quad cores: two dual-core dies on one package. Now it is the same story with CPU+GPU. The bad thing here is that all this is done with the complicity of magazines and hardware review websites around the world.

wow! :-)

A console is made to play games, you can run whatever game you want on it, as long as it is compatible. A smartphone is made to surf the web, and you SHOULD be able to access every website you want, as long as it is compatible (and Flash websites ARE, because Flash support is ready). Every game console has its own game market, but a smartphone not only has its own market (iTunes Store here), but also stands in the "web market". If Apple said: you can't see any website with the iPhone, that would be ok. But Apple says "no" to Flash websites, "yes" to the others. It's different. But hey, the slogan says "Think Different", doesn't it? ;-)

It's wrong to compare iPhones, iPads, iWhatevers to gaming consoles at this time. Any of those devices is made for the sole purpose of running games which software houses make for it. Nothing more. Every console has a rigid software platform, and online games are played only through the console producer's network. You know it when you buy the console, you know it when you produce a game for it. That's how the console market works and that's well known and accepted by console producers, game producers, and users. Smartphones do surf the web. The web is full of standards, some open and some closed, and on those standards with corresponding API layers there are lots of software houses and other companies that run their businesses. Since applications and services running on the web are distributed applications, devices accessing the web run the client side of those applications, and should be able of running software that respects the actually common standards on the web. That's how the PC and smartphones market works and that's well known and accepted by users, hardware producers and software producers: except for Apple it seems. Ruling which of these technologies should be banned from the user devices means influencing businesses of companies that supply services through the web and means influencing choices users can make (i.e. choosing an online web service or another), so it means influencing the market. We are not talking about a standard that isn't implemented on Apple's platform: indeed, Flash support is ready. Remember that Microsoft, that just makes software, had been ruled by the EU antitrust to show users a choice screen for browsers, just to be sure that browser other than Internet Explorer do exist. Apple makes the hardware AND the software, forces consumers to buy hardware with their brand if they want to use Apple software, and now wants to decide that users can't use web services made with a concurrent technology. It's a bit more restricting and destructive compared to MS practices: it's quite normal an inquiry started. Of course if iPhones were sold as gaming consoles it would be a lot easy for Apple to justify. But they aren't: they are sold as smartphones.

Example no. 1: "I'm a user, I want to see that website... oh wait, but that's in Flash, I can't see it on my iPhone, because uncle Steve said no." Example no. 2: "I run a website, I'd like to make it compatible with smartphones... but wait, it doesn't work on iPhones: that's a pity, I'm loosing a lot of users... damn it's got a lot of Flash in it, I should rewrite it entirely." All this with the iPhone version of Flash that is ready, but uncle Steve said "no". Does it smell of unfair business practice? Yes, it does.

All Apple hardware has been invented elsewere. Nowadays Macs are simply PCs with the Apple brand on them, and the iPhone isn't surely the first smartphone to see the sunlight. Apple has great merits for improving the user interface over the years: but they pretend their hardware is better and worth much more money, which isn't true. The only advantage Apple devices have towards other devices is in the software interface, I can understand they ask more money for it, but they just ask too much. OSX is very nice, but I mean, 2 or 3 months ago I helped a friend of mine choosing a new notebook, he finally bought a Dell, 15,4" fullHD (!!) monitor, core i7 processor, 4GB of ram, etcetera for around 1300€, a MacBookPro with similar hardware costed almost twice as much. It's too much.

This sounds a bit like sci-fi cyberpunk dystopia. A bit like Gattaca. One wonders why decisions on matters that affect democracy are always taken outside parliaments at first.

Here in Italy we had the same problem. There were a lot of cases of fined people complaining that the yellow was too short, then many criminal investigations started around the country and they found out that in a lot of places traffic lights were purposely set with too short yellow, to fine as many people as possible, because at that time companies that installed red-light cameras earned a percentage of the fines. Of course, investigations also found out corruption cases linked to the cameras business. After these scandals, a couple of years ago they changed the law: no more percentages of fines for companies that install cameras.

What you say is true, but there is a difference between putting a not-so-powerful software into an embedded device's firmware and putting a powerful-but-pinioned software inside it. The former can be annoying but is understandable, because software R&D is expensive and has to be paid with the money earned from the product's sales. The latter is hardly jusitifiable from a consumer/free market point of view, because you artificially keep alive the high-end market by mutilating low-end products. That's also what caused criticism of Tivo and led to GPLv3. Most people, even inside the FLOSS community, see FSF and GPLv3 promoters as zealots/integralists/commies, but sooner or later everybody will see that it's just about free market: FSF was right, they just seen the problem years before most people will do.

Ok thanks, I'll give it a try ASAP, but still I see a big difference between nVidia and ATI drivers on linux. For example, XBMC that in my opinion is the top for building up an HTPC, only supports hardware accelerated video decoding on nVidia, using VDPAU. That's an intresting feature if wou want to see 1080p video.

:-D

It's a shame that in the 21st century you buy a device like that and then you have to ask permission to the company that made it for doing something obvious. The iPad can do that, but they prevent you from doing it via software, just because if you want to do something like that, they want you to spend even more money on another of their devices. So actually they don't make money on what they give you, but on what they take away from you. The EU has much more articulated antitrust laws than US (see MS Windows browser case), let's hope they'll do something, sooner or later. BTW, I'm a Linux and GNU and FLOSS supporter, so from my point of view Microsoft is nothing more than a company that tries to do its business, but before MS came along all kinds of computers where closed like Apples. Microsoft opened up the market and spurred strong competition between hardware producers so that now we have better tecnology at lower prices, now with Apple we can see again what the closed world was like. Will the apple hype ever deflate in front of such things?