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Apple Embeds Message to OS X Hackers
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Feb 19, 2006 02:02 AM
from the pretty-please dept.
from the pretty-please dept.
zentechno writes "Apple has confirmed it embedded a message in the form of a poem to those who would hack its version of OS X on Intel hardware." From the article: "The embedded poem reads: 'Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc.'Apple also put in a separate hidden message, 'Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext,' in another spot for would-be hackers."
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Translation (Score:5, Funny)
In anticipation of the Intel switch, we believe we have made our legal department 4-5X faster too. We're actively looking to test and confirm those benchmarks.
XOXO, Steve
It's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the Sequel: (Score:5, Funny)
All other systems he'd explored
So he added one more to his hoard
Though against his methods the vendor implored.
Cute, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Now that's what I'm talking about.
When you care to quote correctly... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
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This is the UK sale of goods legislation (Score:5, Informative)
Test of fairness A term is unfair if: * contrary to the requirement of good faith it causes a significant imbalance inthe parties' rights and obligations under the contract, to the detriment of consumers."
"Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977
"Consumer Sale of Goods Contracts
"Consumers cannot have their legal rights removed in sale of goods contracts. Furthermore, it can be an offence to mislead consumers about their legal rights. To do so could result in a criminal prosecution. For example, notices such as "We do not give refunds" are misleading and cannot be used. Enforcement is undertaken by local Trading Standards Departments."
These quotes are from Department of Trade and Industry Guidelines.
It must be very doubtful that a EULA which forbids you to do things with the product after you have bought it, that you can perfectly well do, and which you have some reasonable reason to want to do, can be lawful in the UK or the EC. In fact, putting clauses in a Eula which mislead the consumer about his rights under the law in this regard appears, from the above, to be criminal.
Re:That's not bad... (Score:5, Funny)
Who saw another BSOD and said f..k it
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Re:That's not bad... (Score:5, Funny)
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who saw another BSOD and said fuck it,
He couldn't get any sex,
So he installed OS X,
With love that requires a mop and bucket.
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Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you get this sense of self-entitlement? Apple spent their money creating Mac OS X. They get to decide how they want to sell it. If you don't like how they sell it, you don't have to buy it. You're not morally, much less legally, entitled to do what you want with their hard work, just because you can.
Apple isn't denying that people are capable of breaking their copy-protection. They're asking that people don't, out of respect for their right as producer of the software to sell it under their terms.
I don't understand this attitude, where people think that they are fucking entitled to pirate music, movies, software, or whatever. They actually get offended when you tell them that it's immoral!
I mean, I can understand the attitude of "Yeah, I know it's wrong, but I don't care." I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But I don't understand the people who truly don't see what's immoral about, for example, running Mac OS X in a way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
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They don't have the moral right to dictate HOW (Score:5, Insightful)
> way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
Because I don't recognize their moral authority to tell me HOW to use their product. Their Copyright only gives them the right to control making copies. Yea I'd violate the letter of that if an iso appeared that would boot on my hardware simply because of curiosity. I wouldn't adopt it for daily use and certainly wouldn't use it at work without buying a copy. (Although until the first upgrade hits retail I'd probably have to buy the PPC copy and call it close enough.)
And I don't recognize any right for them to say their copyrighted work can ONLY be accessed on their brand of player. That is the same sort of bullshit arguments the MPAA and the DVD-CCA use to tell me I can't play DVDs I own on a DVD drive equipped PC I own because they refuse to bless a player for my preferred platform. By your logic I should just forego DVD on Linux or be a good lemming and install Windows. Wrong, I didn't 'license' my season sets of South Park, I BOUGHT copies and I'll read them wherever I damned well please and if I want to skip the trice damned commercials for Drawn Together and the Daily Show I will. And if I ever decided to install OS X I'd BUY a copy of it and do whatever I damned well wanted to with it as well and Steve could just go perform an improbable act of self procreation if he didn't like it. It is just a fscking product people, you don't have to join Steve'e cult and lose all sense of right and wrong.
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Re:They don't have the moral right to dictate HOW (Score:5, Insightful)
"What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, what right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were."
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Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
If you won't give me your credit card info, I'll just take it from you instead! In case you don't get it, you are the publisher of your credit card info, and since you refuse to publish that info, I'll just bootleg it instead.
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Re:Lame (Score:5, Funny)
Michael Dell, is that you!?
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Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Question: do you think the same applies to MS Office? They wrote it, they get to decide whether you run it under Wine or not. If you don't like the conditions, don't buy it? Or to Windows. They charge OEMs for all computers sold regardless of whether they have Windows installed. You are an OEM. They get to decide how to sell it...
Fact is, companies cannot set any conditions they like, because there is in most Western jurisdictions both competition law restraints, and consumer protection restraints.
This is not an argument about whether they should sell OS X or not, its just an argument about whether they have the legal right to impose these kinds of restrictions on use, post sale. Don't believe so.
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Re:Hackers to Apple, sell your fricking OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has two hurdles to overcome before they can successfully sell OS X for generic Intel hardware:
1) Convince manufacturers to write drivers for OS X. If 3/4 of he hardware out there RIGHT NOW lack OS X drivers for PPC, why would they magically have OS X drivers for Intel? So that means OS X won't be able to access your scanner, your TV tuner, your sound card, your mpeg accelerated video card, etc.
2) Create a reference platform of supported devices, after they convince manufacturers to provide drivers in step 1.
Without step 1, number 2 ends up being, more or less, an iMac or MacBook Pro. Which is more or less what they have right now, except that they haven't yet released OS X for Intel.
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Re:Hackers to Apple, sell your fricking OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
And Sun experienced this the same way. The x86 hardware they sell is undercutting their profits on their own architectures. That's ok only if they make more money this way.
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Re:Hackers to Apple, sell your fricking OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Often Mac advocates want to have it both ways, say that Macs are no more expensive AND say that selling the OS separately would destroy the hardware business and with it the company. I think the reality is, they are more expensive, particularly at the high end, but not so much more expensive that there would be mass flight or substitution. Apple buyers are prepared to pay a premium to get something certified by Apple to work well.
In fact, I don't think there is much evidence for a great suppressed demand for OSX on non-Apple labelled hardware. Its something people have always assumed was out there - and back in the days of Classic and Win 3.1, there probably was such a demand, but now, probably not. Obviously there would be incremental sales, as for unbundled Windows, and they would be useful because they would have 100% margin, but they wouldn't affect the main business.
All in all, its very hard to understand the strategy, other than that its some kind of cultural obsession in Cupertino.
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Re:Hackers to Apple, sell your fricking OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one problem, though. To use a playground analogy, Apple is the kid on the playground who owns his ball and refuses to let you use his ball outside of a few games that Apple likes to play on the playground. Apple will let you loan (or license) his ball to play four square, but won't let you use the ball to attach to a tether to play tetherball. Sure, you can tie the ball to the tetherball, but Apple will get mad and call up the yard supervisors and have you sitting in detention, thanks to a law called the PTMPA (Playground Toys' Millenium Protection Act), created by the TMAA (Toy Manufacturers' Association of America). The PTMPA disallows balls made specifically for four square to be used for tetherball, basketballs to be used for bowling, and other combinations, and is punishable by a hefty fine.
In other words, Apple owns OS X, and has created rules about how you can use it. Because it uses DRM, you cannot legally install it under your brand-spanking new vanilla x86 machine, even if you ran out and purchased bought two MacBook Pros and owned tons of Apple stock, thanks to the DMCA. Yeah, I would love to purchase OS X for x86 and install it natively on my PC, but that isn't going to legally happen anytime soon. I don't feel like breaking laws to simply use an operating system; I would much rather use GNU-licensed or BSD-licensed software and not have to worry about the legality of running it on whatever hardware I feel fit to install it on. I also believe that installing OS X on a vanilla PC should constitute as fair use, but the DMCA overrides fair use. The best way to get legal OS X for x86 on a vanilla PC is to either write up your Congresscritter and ask him/her to pass a bill repealing the DMCA (or, better yet, since elections for Congresscritters are this November, vote for candidates who will repeal it), or talk to Apple and show them the $$$ in selling copies of OS X for x86 to an open market.
It's sad what we have to deal with today thanks to our growing loss of fair use rights, but we have to deal with it for now until the political landscape changes in the realm of copyrights and fair use. In the meanwhile, we'll be either saving up for a Mac or working on making *nix easier to use and almost comparable to OS X. I wonder what Apple is more afraid of; selling copies of OS X and them losing money because people aren't buying their machines, or having to compete with a Linux or BSD distribution that just as good or better than OS X?
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Re:Hackers to Apple, sell your fricking OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite simple. The PC market is much more price conscious than the Mac side of things. No one is going to pay the "Apple Tax" for hardware when they can build a PC for a few hundred bucks, or pay a small premium for someone to do it for them. Apple would still gain sales from style-concious consumers, but the overwhelming number of OS X users would drop the Mac in a heartbeat and go with something cheaper.
We know this because it happened once before already. Read up on your Apple history with regard to the mid-90s. That little episode was enough to bring the company to its knees.
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Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
as a lot of Mac people have said...... if this is what makes Apple adopt MS-like security measures for the OS i will be unhappy. for those that don't use OS X, you have NEVER had to put in a serial number or do any authorization to install it. compared to some of the chaos MS users have had, i am thankful that Apple never had to worry about this so far. i buy every OS X release, but it's really nice not to have to deal with that. since i won't be trying to install Apple software of non-apple os i can be grumpy and say it would suck if they ruin it for us because they have to prove their extreme hacking skills.
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Re:Pirate? (Score:5, Informative)
Now, ask yourself, what is the legal and moral position of a company which is attempting to lead purchasers of its products to believe they have entered into an agreement which is unlawful in the jurisdiction of sale?
If this is wrong, please do cite a few EC cases or precedents showing it is. But no-one ever has, yet.
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Re:Pirate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is nonsense, even if clickwrap licenses are nonsense the courts have decided to allow.
I already own a copy of the software before I ever see the license. If Apple wants me to license their software, rather than buy a copy, they can present me with the terms of the license before I pay and make agreement to the license a condition of the transaction. Since the implicit contract of purchase is complete before I see the license, Apple should not be able to add post-facto conditions, any more than I can put post-facto conditions on their use of the money I give them. The transaction, and the opportunity to place conditions on it, is over when payment has been rendered and the goods have entered my posession.
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Re:Pirate? (Score:5, Funny)
A Dymo Labelmaker [amazon.com] is one heck of a lot cheaper than an Intel iMac [apple.com].
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Re:late again (Score:5, Funny)
You don't think it had anything to do with CmdrTaco not wanting to splash your username on the front page, would it?
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