Slashdot Mirror
Tiger's 200 New Features
An anonymous reader writes "If this hasn't already been posted, Apple set up a page listing,
by software section, all of the new features for OS X.4, or Tiger.
Given that every upgrade touts over a hundred features, it is interesting to see all of the enhancements to this upgrade to see what adopters get out of the box.
There are a lot which are tweaks, some new non-Spotlight oriented features and a few that are interesting, mostly security related features.
2 words: stealth mode.
"
There looks like there will be some great new features in Tiger, but I think they are stretching it with things like "Import contacts into Address Book in a variety of formats, including tab-delimited and comma-separated text." and "Print a handy pocket address book to take with you anywhere."
By including this type of thing in the list it threatens to swallow all of the real new features like Dashboard and Spotlight.
*sigh*
OSX is widely regarded as a fairly secure system. XP is widely regarded to be as secure as a barn door.
Tiger gives you features and a speed bump, SP2 gives you application incompatability and some security features that should have been there in the initial release. No wonder it's free.
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
I think a lot of network admins will breath a sigh of partial relief when they see the Password Helper. There will always be the "[kids_name]123" password people, but there are a decent number of users who want something secure but easy to remember, and to know roughly how secure a particular password is.
Please help metamoderate.
Client firewalls are of limited utility. I don't understand why people bother with them.
If you need to provide access to a service, then you have to open its matching ports anyway. If you need to protect a port/daemon/service/wakilix from attack, just don't run it. The only reason for a firewall is to protect you when you can't turn one off for some reason, and if that's the case then you're probably using Windows.
Yep, I agree. Just as I agreed with Thurrots review of Tiger,
It's basically 4 new features, others are just a small case improvements, that probably don't deserve being called feature.
1/3 of them contains Spotlight (addresses, fonts.... being able to be searched in spotlight? This is one feature not a lot of them).
Being able to compose HTML mail???
And after all MacFan bashing over gimp??? GIMP Printer Configuration
Birthday Calendar ??? New feature????
Calendar Printing ??? C'mon it's year 2005. Now every calendar software should be able to print
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
...at $129 yet again, but I've got the family pack on pre-order, so amortize the $150 after the Amazon rebate across 4 Macs and it's quite the bargain. They should really provide upgrade pricing, but the $129 list is still wayyyyy cheaper than XP Pro, but twice as expensive as my SUSE 9.2 boxed set.
I would, too. But, as much as I work via the CLI, I also need a mature GUI. OS X is the only game in town in that regard.
("Damn the electric fence!")
Because a high wind blew through a stable and knocked it's door off, so they had to put in a barn door, and now the barn is left without a door.
(This is an issue because, if the cows get out of the yard they might end up inside the barn and make a hell of a mess.)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Yes! Windows XP does. With Windows XP, there is no need for third party firewalls.
Why is it that zealots, such as yourself, are only wiling to compare new products, like OS X, with Windows 95 rather than Microsoft's new product, Windows XP?
Nat Friedman said it at BrainShare 2005 and it never ceases to amaze me, most Linux users bashing Microsoft haven't used Windows since Windows 95. Here comes the clue train, there have been a few changes.
I just wanted to point out that I have been on slashdot for a while now, and I have *never* seen a thread with so many posts moderated as "troll", "flamebait" or "offtopic". Many of the posts are valid points, and if they were discussing microsoft, they would be modded +5 funny, or +5 informative. It seems to me someone is taking things a little too defensively.
For the record, I hate microsoft, and I am a unix guy at heart. That doesn't mean that everyting apple feeds to me I have to love. A little healthy criticism does everyone good, including apple.
You're looking for a file containing the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (sic?)
In any case, in spot light you type "superca" and the list refines itself enough that you see it and start working with it.
If it waited for you to hit enter, how far would you type? Would "superca" be enough? Maybe you would type "supercalifra" to be safe. Maybe, if you were like most users, you would think you needed to type the whole word out... then you spell it wrong (like i probably did above) and it doesn't find anything.
Live search minimizes your typing. It's the same reason for type-ahead find in firefox. It just works better.
(As far as the subject goes, a . release in OS X is much like a major release or at least 0.5 anywhere else - they just want to keep 10.n because OS X is supposed to mean OS 10.)
Nothing like Spotlight OR Dashboard OR Automator as far as order of magnitude goes got added to SP2. SP2 brought a better firewall - so does Tiger. SP2 brought vastly improved security - so does Tiger, to a certain degree (the reason SP2 could deliver vast improvements was because there was a lot of room for it - OS X may not be *all that*, but it's been more secure than XP from day one, for whatever reasons). SP2 brought better handling of wireless network - wireless networks have been way easier to handle on OS X overall.
We haven't even looked into the new stuff, like the new improvements in QuickTime and the addition of Core Image/Video which basically relayers the whole graphical layer part of the OS and allows for much better performance.
SP2 is an example of constantly improving the OS, yes, but so's Tiger, and to a much larger level of magnitude if you look at all the facts. I'm not exactly jumping with joy over having to pay Apple $129. And I'm not exactly the guy that'll take advantage of every single of those 200 features. But I'm liking it for what it is - steady improvement of the OS, so that people won't have to get used to ages of stagnation, be it the way it was with System 7 or the way it is with Windows currently, where security has developed into a feature.
(And yes, Linux is steadily developing too. This discussion is about SP2 vs Tiger.)
Seeing as how all Apple computers come with some version of Mac OS - wouldn't you say that this IS upgrade pricing?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
If you use computers, you should care. Apple has consistently 'led the market' in computing, meaning if you watch Apple now, you will have an idea of what will be a big deal in a few years in general.
It's not necessarily the case that Apple can get 'credit', so much as Apple was first to 'get it right'. If not Apple, then someone else would have, it was just the fact that Apple was first that it matters. Examples include:
Windows, mice, folders, desktop metaphor in 1983 with the Lisa and 1984 with the Macintosh -> Windows 1.0 in 1985
Networking, introduced in 1990 with AppleTalk and AppleShare in System 7 -> Windows for Workgroups and Windows 3.11 in 1992
Quicktime, also introduced in 1990 with System 7 -> Video for Windows/AVI in Windows 3.1/3.11 in 1992
Color support, which allowed for Photoshop and other image programs, in 1988 with System 6 (Photoshop came out in 1990) -> Windows 3.0 in 1990 (And Photoshop in 1992)
Desktop publishing, Word, and WYSIWYG came out for Mac in 1985 -> Windows version in 1989
See a trend yet?
So what features does Tiger have that will probably be common in a few years?
'Quartz' 3d accelerated OS
'Spotlight' integrated OS wide database driven search
'Core Image/Video' hardware accelerated image and video libraries
'iSync' computer to computer 'synchronization' (bookmarks, preferences, etc)
'Apple Remote Desktop' built into the OS
'Target Disk Mode', which transforms your system into a 'plain' Firewire hard disk when it is booted.
'Xgrid' transparent, p2p distributed computing built into the OS
Who knows, maybe only half of these things are big deals, but I suspect most of them will become 'standard' by the time Longhorn ships.
GPL Deconstructed
and I'm sick of us been labelled trolls just for having a view contrary to yours.
Nope, you get modded trolls for the lack of the ability to prove yourselves with credibility. Also, ignorance won't help avoinding trollness. Just count how many times the 'point release' crap is being mentioned from windows freaks up above, or the quite pointless forced comparing to sp2.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Ciao
FTFA - How is this a feature?
Buy Printing Supplies
Easily purchase supplies for your printer right from Mac OS X Tiger.
I (and I think many others) don't want their operating system selling them crap.
With PCs it's somewhat a matter of survival - if a malicious hacker finds your windows box, well, it's his.
With Macs, it's simply a matter of privacy. And tiger does this out of the box, no need to buy any additional software as you point out.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Whatever you are smoking, we want some of it.
Because you can't possibly be that incapable of recognising satire when in your natural state, can you?, or that the actual topic of the parent post was the typical Windowsite reaction to Mac OS updates, the wideness of their Weltanschauung, and its relation to certain categories of news souces (extensible to the mainstream microcomputing press). Not mindless Apple-bashing, although the rest of the comments page holds vast quantities of it for our entertainment.
I suppose we already knew that Jonathan Swift was ahead of our time.
Stealth mode essential? Please. It doesn't make you much more secure--it just pisses off legitimate users of the network.
m ti ps/security.html#stealth
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/c
Mac OS has had the abilitiy to do this "firewall stealth mode" since IPFW was bundled. (10.0? 10.1? not sure...) What they're talking about is now there's an improved interface to ipfw. I run 10.3 and I've already turned on this "stealth mode" with a few ipfw commands in a startup item.
But this isn't something joe sixpack can do with just a click. Oh wait, now there's tiger. Nevermind that.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Because most people don't understand that a firewall should only be a secondary protection mechanism for your computer or network. It shouldn't be your sole line of defense.
Personally, I make sure my machines don't have anything running or listening that doesn't need to be. Really, that's security 101. I also use firewalls, both on the host and at the network perimiter, but those are just there for backup in case I'm messing with the initscripts or something one day and start up something I shouldn't have and don't notice right away.
The other important functions of any firewall should be egress filtering & monitoring. That means doing the rest of the world a favor (and yourself too, by extension) and blocking port 25 outbound except to where it needs to go, dropping spoofed packets from your network, limiting the rate of outbound SYNs, and similar things.
The firewall can also serve as an intrusion detection mechanism when watching outbound traffic. IE, if you one day start seeing your firewall drop all kinds of traffic to random SMTP servers and it isn't a mail server, that's a red flag.
The fact that the site is called winsupersite.com should give you some hint of bias from its owner. Of course, it's not iluvwindozecuzitskool.com but it's getting there. I wouldn't call Thurrot an "experienced reviewer". The first paragraphs about how he claims to be a Mac fan because he had at some time an Apple IIgs are particularly laughable.
The fields that Thurrot covered in his review concern generally the GUI. And, apart from Spotlight, there is little revolution in this area from Panther to Tiger, merely refinements. Most of the people that will upgrade won't notice a big difference in their habits.
There are two points where Thurrot isn't particularly convincing. One is his endless comparision between Mac OS X and what Microsoft offers, that ranges from "It's some kind of imitation of Windows" to "They're the first to implement it but MS had certainly already thought about this feature before and their version will be better". The other point is the new set of APIs brought by Tiger, much welcomed by developers and overlooked by Thurrot.
In the end, many people will be ready to spend $129, not only because they're "Apple fans" or because they expect a revolution but because they feel that 10.4 will be an improvement in many fields (especially speed) and that future exciting apps for Mac OS X will require this release.
For instance, I'll pay for the new version and I see the relative lack of major redesign in Tiger as a sign that major architecture choices for Mac OS X have turned out to be valid. Apple is currently expanding what their OS can do instead of spending time to correct a big flaw. Which is a rather new notion for Apple users. And Apple users love to pay for something new.
Yeah, right. The Slashdot editors and community is known to fall all over themselves on everything Apple does. Not. Shall I count the number of Mac-related articles that include the obligatory smart-ass line indicating the authors disdain for everything Mac? C'mon. Apple has done really well reaching out to the nerd set over the last few years. What acceptance they've gotten here is well-deserved.
You want to see slashdot get really stupid? See how everything having to do wth Linux is unquestioningly regarded as The Best Thing Ever.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
"apples loud-mouth marketing is pathetic, 200 new features? yeah right...just like the "over 150 new features" in panther?, i could count to about 7 or 8"
;-)
I recommend you not to buy the upgrade.
But be honest, compare with other OS upgrades and you'll see what value is in the package.
For me, the whole widget thing is extremely useful. I've only just explained that yesterday, not about to do it again, but it's a very Good Thing(TM) for me and I think lots of other people. Not talking about the potential, just the widgets that are standard in Tiger.
Spotlight is another thing most computer users have been asking for. Now we get it. And it's a hell of a lot more useful than the Google thing. And maybe next year or the next we can see if Windows will be on par. You don't want it? Don't buy it.
Apart from that, this is not a trivial "update". Just like core audio was a godsend, core video is way out there.
About half of the 200 features appeal to me. That's pretty much. You sir, can't judge this, if you can only count to 8
You'll be happy to hear however that the Turd agrees with you, but sadly that doesn't say much about the credibility of your statement. So please, whatever OS you use, be honest in your assessment.
And I repeat, upgrading is a voluntary process.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
THANK YOU! I have been trying to explain this to our Novell folks at work for a while now. When you can belong to multiple groups, then you should be able to belong to more then one group and be able to rwx anything with the proper permissions. The UNIX model is a bit more nitty gritty and fine grained, but once you understand the octal model, it's easy to limit things by user, by group or world. Want it world readable and not executable? No problem! :D
ACL's, like LDAP are wayyyy over rated. I agree LDAP is pretty cool from a management stand point, but once that main LDAP password is breached, then anything that Authenticates to the LDAP table is also breached. We don't LIKE to have you having to remember 30 different passwords, but we do like not having anyone break into our server when you make your password your dogs name or have it written down on a paper under your keyboard.
Gorkman
The image units are really cool indeed. Not only will there be a standard for "filters" built into the OS, but every app will be able to use them (including AdobeCS, iPhoto, Office, etc)
But where it becomes interesting is in the freeware domain. These image units greatly level the playing field. It will become excessively easy to build an image manipulation app in Cocoa that not only uses all these same filters (+ the third party ones) but also uses the hardware to its full potential (i.e. GPU-accelerated filters). Adobe will face some serious competition (specially if we look at PS Elements). I can also see The Gimp having a hard time competing on the Mac without some serious remodeling of their design philosophy.
In all, these new APIs will make it A LOT easier for the next killer-app(s) to be developed on OSX. And that, to me, is the biggest feature of Tiger.
I don't disagree that Apple isn't first.
But Apple is still here.
BeOS, Xerox, Amiga, Geos, all of them had 'firsts' that Apple now can 'claim' not because Apple was necessarily better, but because Apple survived and they did not.
Windows has always had the possibility of doing great things, but they rarely exercised that option. It seems, in hindsight, that Windows was more an exercise in accessibility than an exercise in usability. Apple, traditionally, has been much more useful, but due to pricing, availability, or compatibility, has had much more limited accessibility.
GPL Deconstructed
I think Panther to Tiger would be more akin to windows 2000 upgrading to XP-sp2 then XP upgrading to XP-sp2
so what if I pay for what people think is a "point-release"
hmmm windows users NEVER do that
Windows 2000 = Windows v. 5.0
Windows XP = Windows v. 5.1
I will gladly pay up for the upgrades in OSX, not to be a zealot,
but because I like to keep current technology on my desktop. Since I prefer Apple's computers & OS then I'll keep current with them; if I preferred windows then I suppose I would fork out the couple hundred bucks to upgrade when they release new OS version. It's a simple matter of preference, not a feud war for crying out loud. no one is being FORCED to upgrade in either camp. Mac users who are happy with 10.3 can stay with it, Windowz users happy with Win 2000 could stay with it. The way I see it it's that simple.
Panther could do this too; after all, it uses ipfw. But Tiger just adds it to the graphical interface for the firewall.
English is easier said than done.
Then 'justsomebody' tried to correct the examples.
Xerox Alto 1972
They didn't get it 'right'--at least not right enough to bring to market. The Mac made the GUI useable.
ARPANET 1969
The GP was referring to desktops and LANS, not workstations and big iron. Etc. with the rest of your response. Maybe you're being obtuse on purpose?
Damn those pesky terrorists
Does anyone else notice this phenomenon of the system req's slowly advancing?
With 10.0-10.2, any Beige G3 or Wallstreet PowerBook G3 was fully supported. For Panther, they required built-in USB, thus knocking Beige G3 and Wallstreet systems out of the mix. Now for Tiger, it requires built-in FireWire. The only systems that come to mind without FW but without USB are early iMacs, some clamshell iBooks, and Lombard PowerBooks. That's a fair number of people that are starting to get left behind of the upgrade cycle.
You're obviously making your point from a developer's point of view: mine is as an end-user, who doesn't have the tiniest idea about developer technologies. I'm sure everything you said about Spotlight is true, as you seem to know your stuff, however to the end user, who wants a search function, it's Copernic.
Um. No. Dashboard widgets are little Web Views. They're essentially Web applications running in little floating windows. I'd suggest you check it out before just arbitrarily declaring it to be the same as something else.
Again, it's clear from my ignorance that I'm not a developer. I do know however as an end user that Widgets are Widgets. If I understand correctly what you're saying, you're saying that Dashboard is different to AveDesk/Samaurise/The rest because it pulls it's information off the Internet. Avedesk/Samaurise/The rest, to the best of my knowlege, also do this, hence the Weather Widget, (which can be skinned to be exact clones of the Tiger widget, and has been available since the first shots of Dashboard were released) POP/IMAP mail checker, etc.
We're not including free fonts. We're including professionally designed and licensed fonts --fully Unicode-savvy, of course -- that would cost hundreds of dollars if bought after the fact.
The Longhorn Readability Fonts are free: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantina and Corbel. They look pretty professional to me.
You don't understand the feature. This doesn't really surprise me at this point, because it's clear that your goal here is just to post criticisms without a whole lot of concern about truth.
My apologies, it wasn't clear which features had been added in the explanation on the Apple site, so I incorrectly assumed that Apple's uber-modern "World's Most Advanced Operating System" already fully supported RAID that was fully laid down in 1988, and that they were merely fixing a bug or two.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Too bad I did not find any references to a Java 1.5 upgrade.
Does anyone know if this is to be expected in the near future?
There is for instance good SmartCard Token Support in Java 1.5 (PKCS#11) amongst other important language and framework features...
--------
* Sigh *
Add the manager to only to group A as well as keeping his primary, group C.
That would give him access to all of group A's files, not just the one he needs. That solution would not work.
If your security model is so complex you have to do something like what you discribe here, then you don't need ACL's, you need to rethink your model.
Sorry, but what I described is the simplest possible case. I deal with it every day. An editor needs to have write access to the documentation file to which he's assigned, but can't have write access to all the documentation files. Additionally, the developers need read access to the documentation but can't have write access.
Saying "rethink your whole company's way of doing business to work around a flaw in the technology" is a dumb answer, I think.
In this case, I would make a D and put the file this manager in C needs to write to and make A and C members of D or add anyone who needs to write to this file to D.
A file can only belong to one group. It can either belong to A or to D, not both. So that solution would not work either.
There are MANY ways of think yourself out of crap like this.
In fact, there are zero ways. Because "redesign your organizational structure to accommodate obsolete technology" is not a way.
Well. No. But I do think it shows that the original OS-X was rushed out the door long before it should have been. The same thing every slams Microsoft for...
Why was it, then? Because Perfect is the enemy of good. No matter how much testing you do, you'll never be able to get everything without real world experience. XP SP2 is significantly better than XP, and that would be true no matter how long Microsoft held back and internally tested XP. Similarly, OS X.4 is better than OS X.0, and that'd be true no matter how long they internally tested OS X.0...
I've been on Slashdot since '99, and I noticed initially there was quite a bit of resistence to most things Apple. The groupthink about Apple seemed to be, "Yeah, they make shiny widgets that graphic artists like, but they're toys unsuitable for people who know anything about computers."
The release of early builds of OS X started the ball rolling in the right direction. Apple's foray into Open Source with Darwin at first was greated with enormous skepticism, but after a while people started to realize that Apple wasn't just pulling a publicity stunt. The evolution of Apple hardware got more people interested in Apple, and the titanium PowerBooks in particular made quite a few Slashdotters to realize that OS X on a PowerBook was essentially a very capable UNIX machine with a great form factor and nifty features.
Subsequent events (the launch of the iPod, the foray into online music, the G5 boxes, and the continuing improvements to OS X) have changed a lot of minds. I seriously doubt that Slashdot has become infested with Apple fanboys who drool at the opportunity to mod up comments that make Apple look good. My take on it is that Apple has changed for the better, and they're coming out with hardware and software that many Slashdotters like.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Okay, so you get to the point where there's one group for every file on the system. Every file is owned by its own group, and you determine who has access to that file by who belongs to that group.
Which is just strikingly similar to ACLs.
Also, if you can't trust your developers to not make writes to the files, then who can you trust?
Clearly you don't understand the idea here. It's not about trust. It's about safeguards against accidental changes. You may prefer to work without a net. We don't.
Put the file in a PDF or a password protected PDF or even a web page.
Let me say it again because it clearly didn't sink in the first time: Proposing silly workarounds while denying that the shortcoming of the system even exists is, in a word, dumb.
The Unix model presumes that whenever you want to set up something that is shared among a group of people, you have someone with root access available to make appropriate group adjustments.
ACLs allow sets of people to control accell among themselves WITHOUT having to get root involved.
If you're willing to type out descriptions on all your files, the point being. When Jobs demonstrated Spotlight he had a load of images from Corbis which had all been nicely tagged and described by the good people that work there. People who don't have the luxury of being revered as gods inside Cupertino would have to actually type these lengthy descriptions themselves.
You've managed to effectively argue for the point you wished to oppose. You initially claimed only music files have meta-data, and then you go on to mention Corbis images - which are carefully tagged with extensive meta-data.
The meta-data from Corbis is put to good use by a lot of people who buy their images (publishers for example). Currently only people running a program like iView can search on that data. With spotlight anyone can - I know that this will make my life easier personally, and I'm more likely to purchase images with said data pre-entered (note that they do this now, on all images, not just for Steve Jobs as you imply).
Where there is financial value for adding meta-data (and in many cases in business there definitely is) it *will* be added, and extensively used. Programs like Word already add author specific data to files, I imagine once it is a system-wide service this sort of facility will be pervasive, as it will allow sophisticated searches and sorting of documents which previously had to be done by hand. Initially inside organisations and between trusted partners, but it will happen. Perhaps it will never spread to the internet, but if we're talking about Spotlight that is irrelevent.
Meta-data on the internet is a joke because of trust issues. You have extrapolated from that narrow case to all others. Please don't do that.
My bible for this argument is basicly here: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia
I quite like the "Metacrap" paper, and I use it a lot as a reality check for those diving too deeply into the metadata / XML web services / SOA utopia.
Unfortunately I disagree with your interpretation of its arguments, as noted below.
People being lazy is possibly the greatest problem: Very few people are going to sit down and add descriptions to all their photographs, documents and video footage. Currently Metadata is common in Music only.
Which came to be because some people are anal enough to sit down and add descriptions to their music collection , and people created ways of sharing those with others easily.
The point is to make it easy to add descriptions and combine it with implicit / observational metadata. iPhoto , for example, knows when you took your photos, which is a very good start for lazy people organizing data -- Spotlight can answer queries like "pictures taken on December 13 2004". People that are organization freaks can get better searches by putting some more words associated with it.
Meta data can only identify what we know as it is added by humans
Or that which is implicitly associated with something by necessity - "observational" stuff. Creation dates, authors, links, etc. That stuff is usually very reliable, as noted in the last section of that paper...
This last point might not be a problem with Spotlight currently, as a systemwide index it's not affected by it - however on an enterprise level there are instances where it could be a problem even over a LAN or WAN and afterall, the Internet is just computers connected together....
Whoa. This argument seems to be an example of the "division fallacy". Since explicit metadata solutions don't work well on Internet scales means they won't work on smaller scales (like enterprises).
It's interesting you used communism as an argument against metadata in the beginning of your post, because economic systems are really a form of information system, in a sense. Communism is an attempt to explicitly associate metadata (prices) with goods. A market-based system, on the other hand, uses implicit metadata (supply/demand price adjustments) to govern. Yet we do recognize that explicit control is used within a company because it's more efficient than the market when applied to a small enough group (aka. 'transaction costs' argument).
Relating to the topic at hand -- quality data is important, and seriously lacking in most organizations (and individual user desktops!). Metadata partially fixes a major part of the quality issue: relevance. Explicit metadata, like most explicit forms of agreement, works well in an environment with a consistent culture and centralized policy -- or in the case of a single user, someone anal enough to tag their pictures. But it requries an investment.
On the other hand, implicit metadata is "free" because it's already there, it's just a matter of capturing, indexing, and making it accessible. Google did that with hyperlinks. Spotlight is doing that with photos, music, and emails. So whether people stay lazy or not, Spotlight still significantly improves the user experience in getting access to relevant information....
-Stu
Sounds like a job for UNIX domain sockets and proper file system permissions.
Only if his webserver and database server are running on the same machine.
If they're not, you should be using SSL or an SSH tunnel.
Also, the cost of the upgrade is not all that much. For most users, it is like $100 a year, and upgrades can be skipped if the user really wants to. There is no poisin bullet that dramatically raise the licensing cost if the user skips an upgrade. For me, with rebates, I wil be able to upgrade in May for around $50 per machine. Windows XP prof is nearly twice as much as OS X. They should give more free stuff with it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Flamebait? Ah, I get it: When Microsoft copies somebody else, sharpen the ol pitchforks. But when Linux distros FINALLY get features that Windows had for years, it's sacred.
Honestly guys, if you can't take a little poke here and there, maybe you should consider not dishing it out.
"Derp de derp."
It's called TCO (Total Cost Ownership).
That's the Microsoft Mantra, yep.
My experience is that Windows requires significantly more time from real live humans, either support people or from people fucking around with Windows annoyances instead of working, than Microsoft wants you to believe. And humans cost a lot more than hardware or software.
But if you're going with open source servers, then using the same OS (BSD, Darwin, OS X, Linux, they're all pretty much interchangable) on your desktop is a big win. And most of your desktops can use a Mac Mini for $500, if it breaks swap out another one just like you're already doing with your Wintel desktops... it's way cheaper than Applecare *or* Windows annoyances for any size office.
If you're going with Windows servers, I guess there's SOME point to Windows desktops, but
if you're going with Windows servers, your TCO just shot through the roof.
You want a ACL change? Ask me. I'll change it if the reason is good enough.
Nothing personal, but I'm so glad I work for a company whose overriding business plan is to make overbearing, self-important jerks like yourself obsolete.
IT guys are the ultimate middle-men. They stand between people who can do things and the resources (computers, tools and data) they need to do them. Even at their best, they're just glorified elevator operators.
And with that attitude, you, my good chum, are not at your best.
What? No!
Why all this elitism and defensiveness whenever the topic of client firewalls comes up?
Why would the guy want to run an SSH tunnel on his network to connect two systems? Look, I have the same situation. I'm running mysql on the Linux box, and a web server too. So those hook up over loopback or domain sockets or whatever. But to admin it I have a nice tool that runs on my Windows machine. So I need to expose the mysql port. No big deal, just allow the Windows box access to the necessary port, block off everyone else. Same with POP. I run POP on the Linux box. No one except the Windows box needs access, so same setup. A local mp3 streamer? Same deal, except an extra allow from the proxy at work, so I can listen to it there. A file share? Same thing. Why in the world would I run a file share over my nice Gige network and hobble its usefulness (ie speed) by running it over SSH?
Yeah, I could probably do the same via application configs and TCP wrappers. One is completely different for each app, if it exists at all, AND exposes the port, which presents risks on its own, the other is clunky and not always appropriate. Centralize all the access in iptables config, and it's done.
And the last thing I want is a jet engine, err... sorry, a Cisco router, sitting in my room.
It's a home network, not the friggen CIA.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Very few people are going to sit down and add descriptions to all their photographs, documents and video footage.
Which is why you don't have to for the system to work. Yes, the more metadata that's available, the better, but it doesn't suddenly break down (as you seem to be saying) if you're inconsistent. If you organize at all, it works better. If you don't, it still works better than it used to.
Also, invoking "Metacrap" is basically meaningless, as the entire piece is about the use of metadata on the Internet, which is a vastly different scenario than on the desktop. I don't see how any of the seven points really applies.
On the internet, the producer of the metadata and the consumer are not the same, and have very different desires. On the desktop, you are the consumer of your own metadata. You have much more incentive to do it well, and much less incentive to do it poorly (lie). If you add keywords like "v1agra pr0n britney spears" to your documents , it's nobody's problem but your own.
If the system is incomplete and any single file doesn't have metadata added, the system is effectively useless
This might be true if the system *only* used metadata, but it doesn't. Plain text files don't have any kind of user-added metadata at all, but you can still find them by content, or filename, or create/modify dates, etc.
If i was confronted by Java Source Code for a program, I wouldn't be able to read it and I would not know what to describe it as.
This is a horrible example for some point I cannot fathom. Why on earth would you *need* to describe something that you can't read? Why would you even care if the file is effectively meaningless to you? Why would you need to describe a source file at all, when all of the useful information would be part of the content index?
Maybe you should learn more about a subject before likening it to Communism.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Seeing as you're an Apple employee I'd like to repeat a request I have regarding Voice - to - text. That is... don't forget us deaf folks. :-) Stick in a sorta generic voice recognition that we could use on the fly to get at least a phonetic translation of someone's speech and deaf people all over will flock to Apple's. (Just like the blind are gonna do with Tiger) Something where you could turn it on and off and get a little floating / scrolling transcript. Heck, make it work for movies that aren't captioned or subtitled and I'll be able to rent stuff that came out before the mid 80's! I wouldn't have had to sell my original Twilight Zone collection just because those cheap-skates couldn't be bothered to add subtitles to old TV shows.
:-) Hmmm... maybe this is already doable in Tiger or even Panther. HMMMMM...
:-D
Oh and... if you're doing the iTunes Movie Store thing... you must add subtitles to all the movies cuz... if not I'm gonna have to sue you guys under the ADA to keep us from being completely ignored as digital movie downloads become big.
Of course make it multi-lingual and sprinkle in the real-time Dashboard translation and we've got a tricorder.
P.S. Love ya for the multi-video chat... hope it can handle 4 way sign language with a decent fps. I gotta figure out how to get the govt to hand out iMacs to deaf now.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz