Slashdot Mirror

Michael's acerbic response to Tim O'Reilly's essay may not help the cause of free software. But there are legitimate reasons a government should at least consider such a move. The United States government enjoys a special relationship with the world's software monopolist: the US makes and enforces the laws Microsoft must (ostensibly) abide by. Other countries do not enjoy this priviledge.

Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nunez of Peru makes the case for using free software in government as well as anyone. Before dismissing the notion as hogwash, one would do well to read a more reasoned argument that Michael's knee jerk reaction.

Peru to MS

It seems, in general, that most people are arguing in favor of the same thing: giving goverment more freedom. Some argue that eliminating proprietary software from the panoply of licenses the government can choose from diminishes their freedom. Others argue that proprietary software, by its very nature, reduces freedom - particularly in the extreme case of being built on an edifice of patents and copyrights.

I'm going to blatently copy a quote used by Lawrence Lessig in a recent presentation. It's actually a Bill Gates quote, so it's being copied twice over (I hope I dont get arrested ;)

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. -Bill Gates

I highly recommend reading the entirety of Lessig's presentation.

How is this an insightful post? Because you can't figure out that MS has released a _FREE_ C# compiler for both Windows and FreeBSD? Sure, the FreeBSD one is just for non-commercial use, but then you have Mono.

Since you seem to be having troubles:
.NET Framework for Windows

Rotor - C# for FreeBSD

Fully working Linux C# compiler

Just incase you want some education so you don't sound uninformed next time

As somebody else has already pointed out, you can do this with user CSS. For more examples of fun and bizarre things you can do with user CSS, see the CSS Anarchist's Cookbook.

The CSS Anarchist's Cookbook
The CSS Anarchist Strikes Again!

Enjoy!

Roger

As somebody else has already pointed out, you can do this with user CSS. For more examples of fun and bizarre things you can do with user CSS, see the CSS Anarchist's Cookbook.

The CSS Anarchist's Cookbook
The CSS Anarchist Strikes Again!

Enjoy!

Roger

There is a good O'Reilly article that covers tuning I/O with hdparm

"In general, when cost is no object, RAID 1 or RAID 0/1 provides the best overall performance. Since striping spreads the I/O load across multiple disks, RAID 0/1 has the best overall performance characteristics of any RAID option. However, if you know ahead of time that the proportion of writes to disk is low, you can fall back on a less expensive RAID 5 configuration. In addition, if there is adequate battery-backed cache memory in the configuration, you may be able to support a moderate amount of disk writes under RAID 5. But even with large amounts of cache, a heavy write-oriented workload is likely to cause performance problems under RAID 5."
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/01/18 /diskperf.html

To optimize your file layout, follow these...rules:
1. Use RAID
2. The more disks, the better"
http://www.swynk.com/friends/israel/optimaldisk.as p

"If your SQL Server is experiencing I/O bottlenecks, consider these possible solutions: Add more physical drives to the current arrays. This helps to boost both read and write access times. But don't add more drives to the array than your I/O controller can support.
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/fixing_bottl enecks.asp

Most distros use very conservative settings for the IDE interfaces which will work with just about any old drives, but do not take advantage of more modern hardware. hdparm allows you to activate those advanced features.

There is a nice write-up about using hdparm here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/h dparm.html

Of course, all this only applies to Linux boxes.

Full Disclosure of their APIs: Done

Ensure that .NET runs on UNIX: Done and Done

Windows network protocols should be well documented in such a way that other companies can write software that interfaces with Windows clients (like SAMBA) and Windows servers (like Ximian Connector): Done

Why don't you actually try getting out of your parents basement and get some fucking EXCERCISE. Ever seen how fat the Slashdot editors are?. Even tux the penguin is a fat slob! Even if it means actually going up to the Toilet instead of using UNIX pipes to send it to /dev/null. Go on, moderate this as FAT TROLL that is if your not too fat to click the moderate button.

It's no wonder that Open Source hackers and Linux users are so poorly perceived by the general public. Here is yet another picture of the father/grand daddy of Open Source. That's right RMS himself.

For God's sake, couldn't some one have told him to button his shirt and get a haircut before giving a keynote speech.

It's no wonder that Open Source hackers and Linux users are so poorly perceived by the general public. Here is yet another picture of the father/grand daddy of Open Source. That's right RMS himself.

For God's sake, couldn't some one have told him to button his shirt and get a haircut before giving a keynote speech.

linuxinsider

linuxtoday

firstlinux

linuxsecurity

and somewhat linux related but definitely awesome...

oreilly's meerkat

oreillynet and not so much news but definitely up to date...

ONLAMP

linuxinsider

linuxtoday

firstlinux

linuxsecurity

and somewhat linux related but definitely awesome...

oreilly's meerkat

oreillynet and not so much news but definitely up to date...

ONLAMP

The story above attempts to link to OSCON, but in fact simply links back to itself.

And the /. front page summary's link just links back to itself.

Both should link (I presume) to the OSCON site.

Thanks for fixing.

Perl is real programming language, and as for the readability aspect: Perl doesn't hold your hand. It's perfectly possible to write clear code in Perl. If I was to show you one of my scripts I'm sure anyone with basic programming knowledge would be able to understand it.

The listed address had an extra space and HTML isn't too tough ;o)

http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/01/31 /CVS.html

Here is a link for an O'Reilly article on setting up a home 802.11b network using Linux and a 802.11b network card.

I'm sure it isn't as thorough as the book, but its here fast and free.

Jeremy

also published two articles on wireless security...

Seven Security Problems of 802.11 Wireless
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2002/05/2 4/wlan.html
May 2002

Wireless LAN Security: A Short History
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2002/04/1 9/security.html
April 2002

also published two articles on wireless security...

Seven Security Problems of 802.11 Wireless
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2002/05/2 4/wlan.html
May 2002

Wireless LAN Security: A Short History
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2002/04/1 9/security.html
April 2002

There's no need to actually invent new P2P-stream-distribution techniques: a better approach would be to merge live, refreshing station playlists with existing P2P file-sharing networks, like Gnutella, ED2K, FastTrack, etc.

You can think of this as as "Judo Radio" because it uses a tiny, smart control channel to throw around a giant amount of content that lives and travels on outside networks.

I wrote more about it here:

Judo Radio: P2P-Leveraged Webcasting

Whether the "stations" need any licenses whatsoever to the tracks they "recommend" seems a debatable point to me: the stations themselves make no copies of copyrighted material at all, instead leaving that completely up to the audience to do on their own.

This approach thus has the same resiliency (or weakness) of the underlying P2P file-sharing networks themselves.

My guess is that over time Apple wil make Javascript an equal MacOS X scripting system, alongside Applescript

you can download it from Late Night Software.

O'Reilly Net had a tutorial on scripting applications with JavaScript.

Actually, besides the obvious bloat, a nationality byte would be like the 'digital watermark' crap that involves a DRM Helmet.

Perhaps you should check this out:

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1535

Kent

Tim O'Reilly actually commented on this same issue in his weblog. It's intresting to note that as a publisher he knows that the business of trying to stop book use like the RIAA is trying to stop MP3 use won't work. Take a look at O'Reilly and the network of information they setup. I'm sure no one is hurting over their and consumers still have the ability to buy, sell, loan, etc. books in their library.

Colliding billiard balls. Missile trajectories. Cornering dynamics in speeding cars. By applying the laws of physics, you can realistically model nearly everything in games that bounces around, flies, rolls, slides, or isn't sitting still, to create compelling, believable content for computer games, simulations, and animation. Physics for Game Developers serves as the starting point for enriching games with physics-based realism.

It's too easy to accidently fry something if your making your own antenna.

Please read O'Reilly Network: Re: Health isses and wireless. for more information.

Unfortunately, the standard of tying all these different modules together is VST/VST2, and to my knowledge there currently is no package that provides support for VST under linux. Even if there was such a thing, most VST plug-ins still call upon platform-specific API's, etc.

I hate to say it, but for the next couple of years I do not see linux becoming a viable platform for DAW/midi suites such as Cubase, Logic, or Performer, at least in terms of VST support. I don't know whether in the future it will be possible to port apps like Cubase to linux using wine (more specifically, Trans-Gaming's approach of porting programs one at a time), but I don't really see an alternative at this point.

I do appreciate the work that has been done with LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plug-in API, check here), but the de-facto standard is VST, and that's not going to change.

Please read this and consider carefully if you really want to roll out wireless networking. Think security. Think performance. Think reliability. Think about still being able to sleep at night.

Key points not made clearly in the article:
(a)Setting up a wireless LAN is like taking some cat5 from the switch and running it to plugs in your walls, on the street, and in the neighbours' houses. You lose _all_ physical security.
(b) you become vunerable to RF intererence, both intentional and accidental. DoS could be hard to trace.
(c) even with WEP, etc, your internal LAN must be treated with DMZ level security as you never know who's listening. IPSec VPN a must. WEP could be secure - but there are several well documented problems with it even in its current incarnation.
(d) Personal firewalls on all windows boxes would be strongly reccomended, there is a cost in this too.

Above all this, you've got to factor in performance. 54MBps (11MBps is a joke after overheads, not worth the bother) + WEP & MAC-layer overheads of up to 50% + IPSec VPN overheads (maybe 10-20% more again?). You'll have 20-30MBps shared between all clients on each access-point, hub style. Ever used a hub (instead of a switch?). they _suck_. Well, unless you like to find out where the guy in the next office gets his pr()n *grin*

Is shared 20MBit enough for most of your clients? is it worth a hybrid wired/wireless setup for the clients that need more throughput? Is the reduced hardware and cabling cost worth the security issues, security costs, etc?

Heck, what if an employee puts in a cool new kind of fluro light or something and fizz, down goes the LAN. Imagine debugging that!

Wireless might be more of an option in a year or so if the standards people and vendors get moving and agree on a decent, two-way-authenticating system that doesn't leak too much info and is reasonably robust. Currently, I'd never reccomend wireless LANs for anything other than a "guest access" subnet firewalled off carefully from the rest of the LAN and requiring a password for any 'net access (all forced through a proxy of course).

Other than the desktop stranglehold and various back-room government deals that MS employs to maintain that monopoly, what's to stop the Liberty Alliance from porting to *all* platforms and just putting an end to the BS once and for all?

Or is this a ploy by the EU to get a better deal from MS as the new licensing sceme approaches?

oreillynet overview of web identity

Just for the record, while you usually think as 802.11 as being relatively limited in range, its really not. For instance, a Primestar dish can be used as a directional antenna and get a supossed 10 mile range. I've also heard of a Pringles can being used similiarly. (Those were the first hits on google, there are many more resources.) My point is that its not just "war drivers" you need to be concerned about, but the guy two blocks away but with line of sight too. For about $10, you can build a directional antenna, and the rest is just a matter of time.

I setup a small AP in my apartment, only used by me, so far ;)

I used an old 486 laptop running Linux 2.4.18 (RedHat base) with an Orinoco Silver card, using 40-bit WEP (which to a cracker, is slightly inconvenient at best) and IPTABLES, MAC filtering with IPSEC 3DES and 1024-bit keys.

Be sure to use some kind of encryption better than WEP (like Checkpoint VPN, IPSEC, etc.) otherwise, it's only a matter of time before your users' account info is stolen.

Also consider the kinds of antennas used on the AP. I actually bought the 3 dB loop antenna (size of a 10" plastic ruler) but I don't even need it within my own apartment (100' radius). I use both 2.4GHz phone and microwave with no major problems in my access. Mind you, I'm not using the link for heavy-use or Internet/media streaming. Here are some links to sites that helped me:

• O'Reilly Network 802.11b Tips, Tricks, and Facts [Mar. 02, 2001]
• Dockapps @ Schuermann.org
• O'Reilly Network Recipe for a Linux 802.11b Home Network [Mar. 06, 2001]
• NoCatNet

Good luck with it, please post a link to your HOWTO when you get it running!

I setup a small AP in my apartment, only used by me, so far ;)

I used an old 486 laptop running Linux 2.4.18 (RedHat base) with an Orinoco Silver card, using 40-bit WEP (which to a cracker, is slightly inconvenient at best) and IPTABLES, MAC filtering with IPSEC 3DES and 1024-bit keys.

Be sure to use some kind of encryption better than WEP (like Checkpoint VPN, IPSEC, etc.) otherwise, it's only a matter of time before your users' account info is stolen.

Also consider the kinds of antennas used on the AP. I actually bought the 3 dB loop antenna (size of a 10" plastic ruler) but I don't even need it within my own apartment (100' radius). I use both 2.4GHz phone and microwave with no major problems in my access. Mind you, I'm not using the link for heavy-use or Internet/media streaming. Here are some links to sites that helped me:

• O'Reilly Network 802.11b Tips, Tricks, and Facts [Mar. 02, 2001]
• Dockapps @ Schuermann.org
• O'Reilly Network Recipe for a Linux 802.11b Home Network [Mar. 06, 2001]
• NoCatNet

Good luck with it, please post a link to your HOWTO when you get it running!

as someone else stated, PAM does this. More specifically, it's the cracklib PAM module, here's an intro http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2001/10/05 / amModules.html.

NT has actually the same type of deal. The dll that does the password check is just a generic password filter provided my MS, you can replace with your own. I wrote an NT password filter that catches the username and password of a user whenever they change their password and sends it to a an external program registered in the registry. Use it to keep Win2K and OpenLDAP server passwords in sync, http://acctsync.sf.net but the external program could obviously be anything.

As usual, it's just that windows has a pretty GUI ( which should not be discounted btw. )

Note: the server is apparently still able to serve the images. Click on the links!

Tapping the alpha geek noosphere with EtherPEG

by Rob Flickenger
May. 15, 2002

So there I was at ETech, sitting in the back of the Emergence discussion, listening to Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow, Clay Shirky, and other extraordinary blogging minds thought about the blogging world.

I was thoroughly enjoying the discussion, but I had to wonder, how were the other 200 people in the room reacting to the proceedings? Response seemed very favorable, but I did see quite a few faces staring down, with accompanying tell-tale key clicks buzzing about the room.

If only there were some way of getting into the collective stream-of-consciousness of the crowd, to gauge their actual reactions to what was really going on up on stage...

If you've never heard of EtherPEG, its a Mac hack that's been around for a while that combines all of the modern conveniences of a packet sniffer with the good old-fashioned friendliness of a graphics rendering library, to show you whatever GIFs and JPEGs are flying around on your network. It's sort of a real-time meta browser that dynamically builds a view of other people's browsers, built up as other people look around online.

The effect was staggering. As I expected, traffic was very light at the beginning (a couple of big news and blog sites were obvious, and strangely enough, the Microsoft Developer's Network.) But as the talk continued, some people were obviously letting their minds (and their fingers) wander...

Early traffic showed a very wandering bent.

I was impressed that when Tim O'Reilly stood up to ask about whether bloggers were building a city or living in their own ghetto, virtually all traffic stopped. Evidently, this was something that almost everybody in the room was interested in listening to. And once Tim sat down again, the pixels began to flow once more.

After a little while, the atmosphere took on a bit of a dark turn. Lots of images of law enforcement agency websites, some american flags with an angry eagle bursting through, and possibly darkest of all, a Britney Spears fan site. The theme continued as Clay Shirky was discussing "maps and non-player characters" and the downward gothic spiral expanded...

Further down the spiral

It became obvious that the crowd could be viewed as a living organism, with its own cycles of activity and rest. The chaotic effect of random images plastering themselves on my screen gave me a unique point of view-- it was a sort of mental feedback (much like audio feedback, even with the accompanying headache, only this headache was in some bizarre fourth dimension.)

The End

By the end, the dark forces had definitely descended. I was treading on some very dark back waters of the collective geek subconscious... Think Evil Dead and PDAs in Washington DC. I had definitely descended into a sort of techno hell, the sixth circle of hades, where the damned are only given t-shirts after they listen to a short marketing presentation.

EtherPEG isn't for the faint of heart, especially at a technical conference. The gentleman sitting next to me leaned over and inquired about how he could prevent me from watching his traffic... The technical answer is easy: run application layer encryption (ssh tunneling, vtun, ipsec, pptp) to a point outside of the wireless, and then your traffic will at least be protected from neighboring wireless eavesdroppers. But the philosophical answer is much simpler: I have stared at the sun, and for the sake of my sanity, will never again look directly at the consciousness of the online ueber-geek collective.

Unless I really want to...

Rob Flickenger is the O'Reilly Network's Systems Administrator

Note: the server is apparently still able to serve the images. Click on the links!

Tapping the alpha geek noosphere with EtherPEG

by Rob Flickenger
May. 15, 2002

So there I was at ETech, sitting in the back of the Emergence discussion, listening to Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow, Clay Shirky, and other extraordinary blogging minds thought about the blogging world.

I was thoroughly enjoying the discussion, but I had to wonder, how were the other 200 people in the room reacting to the proceedings? Response seemed very favorable, but I did see quite a few faces staring down, with accompanying tell-tale key clicks buzzing about the room.

If only there were some way of getting into the collective stream-of-consciousness of the crowd, to gauge their actual reactions to what was really going on up on stage...

If you've never heard of EtherPEG, its a Mac hack that's been around for a while that combines all of the modern conveniences of a packet sniffer with the good old-fashioned friendliness of a graphics rendering library, to show you whatever GIFs and JPEGs are flying around on your network. It's sort of a real-time meta browser that dynamically builds a view of other people's browsers, built up as other people look around online.

The effect was staggering. As I expected, traffic was very light at the beginning (a couple of big news and blog sites were obvious, and strangely enough, the Microsoft Developer's Network.) But as the talk continued, some people were obviously letting their minds (and their fingers) wander...

Early traffic showed a very wandering bent.

I was impressed that when Tim O'Reilly stood up to ask about whether bloggers were building a city or living in their own ghetto, virtually all traffic stopped. Evidently, this was something that almost everybody in the room was interested in listening to. And once Tim sat down again, the pixels began to flow once more.

After a little while, the atmosphere took on a bit of a dark turn. Lots of images of law enforcement agency websites, some american flags with an angry eagle bursting through, and possibly darkest of all, a Britney Spears fan site. The theme continued as Clay Shirky was discussing "maps and non-player characters" and the downward gothic spiral expanded...

Further down the spiral

It became obvious that the crowd could be viewed as a living organism, with its own cycles of activity and rest. The chaotic effect of random images plastering themselves on my screen gave me a unique point of view-- it was a sort of mental feedback (much like audio feedback, even with the accompanying headache, only this headache was in some bizarre fourth dimension.)

The End

By the end, the dark forces had definitely descended. I was treading on some very dark back waters of the collective geek subconscious... Think Evil Dead and PDAs in Washington DC. I had definitely descended into a sort of techno hell, the sixth circle of hades, where the damned are only given t-shirts after they listen to a short marketing presentation.

EtherPEG isn't for the faint of heart, especially at a technical conference. The gentleman sitting next to me leaned over and inquired about how he could prevent me from watching his traffic... The technical answer is easy: run application layer encryption (ssh tunneling, vtun, ipsec, pptp) to a point outside of the wireless, and then your traffic will at least be protected from neighboring wireless eavesdroppers. But the philosophical answer is much simpler: I have stared at the sun, and for the sake of my sanity, will never again look directly at the consciousness of the online ueber-geek collective.

Unless I really want to...

Rob Flickenger is the O'Reilly Network's Systems Administrator

Note: the server is apparently still able to serve the images. Click on the links!

Tapping the alpha geek noosphere with EtherPEG

by Rob Flickenger
May. 15, 2002

So there I was at ETech, sitting in the back of the Emergence discussion, listening to Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow, Clay Shirky, and other extraordinary blogging minds thought about the blogging world.

I was thoroughly enjoying the discussion, but I had to wonder, how were the other 200 people in the room reacting to the proceedings? Response seemed very favorable, but I did see quite a few faces staring down, with accompanying tell-tale key clicks buzzing about the room.

If only there were some way of getting into the collective stream-of-consciousness of the crowd, to gauge their actual reactions to what was really going on up on stage...

If you've never heard of EtherPEG, its a Mac hack that's been around for a while that combines all of the modern conveniences of a packet sniffer with the good old-fashioned friendliness of a graphics rendering library, to show you whatever GIFs and JPEGs are flying around on your network. It's sort of a real-time meta browser that dynamically builds a view of other people's browsers, built up as other people look around online.

The effect was staggering. As I expected, traffic was very light at the beginning (a couple of big news and blog sites were obvious, and strangely enough, the Microsoft Developer's Network.) But as the talk continued, some people were obviously letting their minds (and their fingers) wander...

Early traffic showed a very wandering bent.

I was impressed that when Tim O'Reilly stood up to ask about whether bloggers were building a city or living in their own ghetto, virtually all traffic stopped. Evidently, this was something that almost everybody in the room was interested in listening to. And once Tim sat down again, the pixels began to flow once more.

After a little while, the atmosphere took on a bit of a dark turn. Lots of images of law enforcement agency websites, some american flags with an angry eagle bursting through, and possibly darkest of all, a Britney Spears fan site. The theme continued as Clay Shirky was discussing "maps and non-player characters" and the downward gothic spiral expanded...

Further down the spiral

It became obvious that the crowd could be viewed as a living organism, with its own cycles of activity and rest. The chaotic effect of random images plastering themselves on my screen gave me a unique point of view-- it was a sort of mental feedback (much like audio feedback, even with the accompanying headache, only this headache was in some bizarre fourth dimension.)

The End

By the end, the dark forces had definitely descended. I was treading on some very dark back waters of the collective geek subconscious... Think Evil Dead and PDAs in Washington DC. I had definitely descended into a sort of techno hell, the sixth circle of hades, where the damned are only given t-shirts after they listen to a short marketing presentation.

EtherPEG isn't for the faint of heart, especially at a technical conference. The gentleman sitting next to me leaned over and inquired about how he could prevent me from watching his traffic... The technical answer is easy: run application layer encryption (ssh tunneling, vtun, ipsec, pptp) to a point outside of the wireless, and then your traffic will at least be protected from neighboring wireless eavesdroppers. But the philosophical answer is much simpler: I have stared at the sun, and for the sake of my sanity, will never again look directly at the consciousness of the online ueber-geek collective.

Unless I really want to...

Rob Flickenger is the O'Reilly Network's Systems Administrator

According to this review over at Visor Central and one at O'Reilly its a pretty nice card.

But I remember reading another review saying that its speed was nowhere near the 11Mbits advertised. This isn't really surprising considering the speed of the Dragnball processor that runs the Visor. But I'll be it beats the heck out of the VisorPhone's data mode (which is really an analog modem connection to your ISP over the cell network).

Brian

The peculiarities of OSX make me shudder

Zentec, your post seems to be a moderately well-constructed troll. The only problem you mentioned in specific is that HFS file systems are case preserving but insensitive, and there's a trivial solution to that.

Not sure I'd want to run a webserver on OSX.

You mean like this?

• Apple now has it's own section on Slashdot
• There seems to be a little less Apple FUD in posts
• There are more OS X specific information sites like O'Riely's
• There are a ton of new OS X books

Hey don't get me wrong. I'm delighted - yes delighted - that O'Reilly likes OS X. And everything he outlines as being good ideas really are good ideas.

But there is a slight element of ridiculousness to this whole post. The idea that what Apple needs to do to be "a big sucess" and make "more money" is create more man pages is absurd.

Golly gee, maybe they can be as sucessful as Linux next! Do ya think??

If you don't even understand the irony of the above line then you really need a reality check.

Anyhow, like I said I am positively giddy about O'Reilly's love for OS X. I myself benefitted directly from the Apache Web Serving In OS X series of articles which appeared under the O'Reilly banner not long ago. But still...the idea that pandering to the uber-geek is going to do wonders for Apple's marketshare or bottom line is absurd on it's face. They should still do it...but it's consumer products like iMovie, pricing and marketing that affect the bottom line, not man pages.

Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, took center stage for a lunch time keynote at WWDC in San Jose. Tim's talk, "Watching the Alpha Geeks: OS X and the next big thing" was a stroll through lessons from the past leading to successful trends of the future.

Tim praised Apple's approach to building Mac OS X, not because he was speaking at WWDC, but because Apple appears to be following a proven positive approach to the design of its Unix-based platform -- characteristics shared by another modern success story: the Apache Web server. Tim's three keys to survival are:

1. Adhere to standards.
2. Keep things small and modular.
3. Document as you go -- man pages and RFCs

He urged Apple developers to "think platform, not just application -- build in extensibility and interoperability," and to "play well with others -- it breeds success and you'll have more fun."

The one-hour talk wrapped up with questions from the audience. My favorite was, "If you had three wishes from Steve Jobs, what would they be?" Tim responded:

• Keep speaking out on the fair-use issues that he's been addressing.
• Keep doing the cool stuff because we're enjoying Apple's innovation.
• Keep playing well with others by adhering to existing standards.

As a side note, the biggest applause of the talk was when Tim praised Steve Jobs' acceptance speech at the Grammys where he said that people are entitled to fair use of the music they legally purchase.

Tim's messages seemed to resonate well with the WWDC audience. At one point, after Tim had finished his talk and the applause died down, one attendee remarked, "Man, that talk was dense. My head's spinnin'."

Late breaking note: Apple has posted an article about Tim's talk on their WWDC site.

Other WWDC weblogs: Cafe Computing Goes Triple Shot Rendezvous Is French for JXTA Apple Not Resting on Its Mac OS X Laurels

Derrick Story is the managing editor of the O'Reilly Network.

Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, took center stage for a lunch time keynote at WWDC in San Jose. Tim's talk, "Watching the Alpha Geeks: OS X and the next big thing" was a stroll through lessons from the past leading to successful trends of the future.

Tim praised Apple's approach to building Mac OS X, not because he was speaking at WWDC, but because Apple appears to be following a proven positive approach to the design of its Unix-based platform -- characteristics shared by another modern success story: the Apache Web server. Tim's three keys to survival are:

1. Adhere to standards.
2. Keep things small and modular.
3. Document as you go -- man pages and RFCs

He urged Apple developers to "think platform, not just application -- build in extensibility and interoperability," and to "play well with others -- it breeds success and you'll have more fun."

The one-hour talk wrapped up with questions from the audience. My favorite was, "If you had three wishes from Steve Jobs, what would they be?" Tim responded:

• Keep speaking out on the fair-use issues that he's been addressing.
• Keep doing the cool stuff because we're enjoying Apple's innovation.
• Keep playing well with others by adhering to existing standards.

As a side note, the biggest applause of the talk was when Tim praised Steve Jobs' acceptance speech at the Grammys where he said that people are entitled to fair use of the music they legally purchase.

Tim's messages seemed to resonate well with the WWDC audience. At one point, after Tim had finished his talk and the applause died down, one attendee remarked, "Man, that talk was dense. My head's spinnin'."

Late breaking note: Apple has posted an article about Tim's talk on their WWDC site.

Other WWDC weblogs: Cafe Computing Goes Triple Shot Rendezvous Is French for JXTA Apple Not Resting on Its Mac OS X Laurels

Derrick Story is the managing editor of the O'Reilly Network.

Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, took center stage for a lunch time keynote at WWDC in San Jose. Tim's talk, "Watching the Alpha Geeks: OS X and the next big thing" was a stroll through lessons from the past leading to successful trends of the future.

Tim praised Apple's approach to building Mac OS X, not because he was speaking at WWDC, but because Apple appears to be following a proven positive approach to the design of its Unix-based platform -- characteristics shared by another modern success story: the Apache Web server. Tim's three keys to survival are:

1. Adhere to standards.
2. Keep things small and modular.
3. Document as you go -- man pages and RFCs

He urged Apple developers to "think platform, not just application -- build in extensibility and interoperability," and to "play well with others -- it breeds success and you'll have more fun."

The one-hour talk wrapped up with questions from the audience. My favorite was, "If you had three wishes from Steve Jobs, what would they be?" Tim responded:

• Keep speaking out on the fair-use issues that he's been addressing.
• Keep doing the cool stuff because we're enjoying Apple's innovation.
• Keep playing well with others by adhering to existing standards.

As a side note, the biggest applause of the talk was when Tim praised Steve Jobs' acceptance speech at the Grammys where he said that people are entitled to fair use of the music they legally purchase.

Tim's messages seemed to resonate well with the WWDC audience. At one point, after Tim had finished his talk and the applause died down, one attendee remarked, "Man, that talk was dense. My head's spinnin'."

Late breaking note: Apple has posted an article about Tim's talk on their WWDC site.

Other WWDC weblogs: Cafe Computing Goes Triple Shot Rendezvous Is French for JXTA Apple Not Resting on Its Mac OS X Laurels

Derrick Story is the managing editor of the O'Reilly Network.

"The team right now is focused on finishing 1.0, and then the priority is tables."

"Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source security adversaries. FreeBSD continues to suffer the lion's share of security problems, and in this column, we look at buffer overflows in OpenSSH, Squid, Listar/Ecartis, slrnpull, and syslogd; problems in Sudo, MHonArc, Mosix and a local root hole and denial-of-service attack vulnerability in FreeBSD."

In addition to support for WebDAV in the Finder, OS X has a mod_dav enabled copy of Apache. The link is to an O'Reilly article on setting up a WebDAV folder in OS X.

"Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source security advisories. FreeBSD continues to suffer the lion's shrare of security problems, and in this column, we look at buffer overflows in OpenSSH, Squid, Listar/Ecartis, slrnpull, and syslogd; problems in Sudo, MHonArc, Mosix and a local root hole and denial-of-service attack vulnerability in FreeBSD."

Crack smoke wafts through air
Humorless moderator
Why do you hate me?

For any question which begins "Can Microsoft really afford...", the answer is usually 'Yes'. Some quick Googling revealed that they have "over $30 billion in cash reserves, with $40 billion expected by the end of the year" (I think that's a 2001 quote -- whatever, it's definitely north of $30b).

GIMP has been in use for film production and Dreamworks has been making contributions, the development branch is GIMP16, a.k.a. Hollywood GIMP.

According to this article:

"Having the source available is critical, as emphasized by Ed Leonard from PDI/DreamWorks and their "expansion" of the GIMP, or how they and BMC Software were able to reduce their operating costs by standardizing on Linux as the operating system for server and rendering farms."

In the document "GIMP and Film Production":

"Because the source code is available, GIMP can be customized to fit the needs of production. Experimental versions which support 16-bits per channel have been built and proven useful in production for over a year (see Appendix B)."

The same reason is given in Appendix B.1 "Why Rhythm & Hues uses GIMP". Also: "Other big advantages of having source code for GIMP include being able to install and use multiple file display look up tables for viewing film images on monitors. TDs can view images with a variety of these tables depending on the type of job, or film stock."

For the reasons above, some of the GIMP problems can be adressed, such as "Alpha channel access and editing", "Color Channel visibility and editing", "Memory usage", "Speed", "Resolution independence".