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Apple Crippled Its DTrace Port
Linnen writes in to note that one of developers of Sun's open source system tracing tool, DTrace, has discovered that Apple crippled its port of the tool so that software like iTunes could not be traced. From Adam Leventhal's blog: "I let it run for a while, made iTunes do some work, and the result when I stopped the script? Nothing. The expensive DTrace invocation clearly caused iTunes to do a lot more work, but DTrace was giving me no output. Which started me thinking... did they? Surely not. They wouldn't disable DTrace for certain applications. But that's exactly what Apple's done with their DTrace implementation. The notion of true systemic tracing was a bit too egalitarian for their classist sensibilities..."
As quickly as the issue is reported, a hack comes out to resolve it. Gotta love how quickly the community can respond to these things.
Could this to help prevent circumvention of DRM?
Come on, this isn't a class struggle. It's Big Business trying to protect their intellectual property. DRM sucks, this is yet another way in which it degrades computer systems. But Apple's just being a company, and their hack to DTrace is actually good coding. Dislike their choice, sure. But there's no epic struggle for humanity here.
Apple is as much the DRM laden threat to open computing as Microsoft is. We may have circumvented this issue this time, but what about the time after that? and after that? Its a cat and mouse game Apple is going to play.
Is it possibly they included this so as not to provide a tool capable of circumventing DRM?
This will be a big help for me in my quest for a legion of Mac zombies
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
From TFA:
The most likely reason for this is to prevent circumvention of DRM, the same DRM mandated by the studios for participation in the iTMS. "A little too egalitarian for their classist sensibilities"? Give me a fucking break. DTrace is hardly crippled, although these modifications are certainly not ideal. Maybe we could actually discuss the real effects, and potential solutions, instead of spewing sensationalist rhetoric? Of course not.
From the DTrace source (in an #IFDEF APPLE):
/*
* If the thread on which this probe has fired belongs to a process marked P_LNOATTACH
* then this enabling is not permitted to observe it. Move along, nothing to see here.
*/
Luckily no malicious programmer will mark their malware's process with this flag!
You of all people should know that you give up your freedom to use your software and hardware as you wish when you use proprietary software. Apple's continuous attempt to stop people from changing software on their home computers is a good example of how they feel about freedom. They only side with freedom when it is immediately beneficial.
Since when was Apple stuff open source?
FLR
As much the DRM laden threat as Microsoft? Hardly. There are no DRM APIs in OS X. In fact, the only DRM I've seen on OS X is in iTunes. (And remember, they had to agree to DRM to get contracts with the labels.) Compare that to MS's pandering to DRM loving CEOs and including it in Vista! And, really DRM is much more an application specific problem so far and has little to do with any OS besides Vista.
Is "egalitarian" the Slashdot word of the day today?
Could this to help prevent circumvention of DRM?
Of course.
The interesting issue is that nobody can compete with Apple on, say, a music store effectively.
When they add a new iTunes feature, they can change Quicktime to support it or they can disable DTrace so people can't easily reverse it. Nobody else can do that. They're probably not going to get into a DOJ tiff over it, though - Bush [the _ administration] isn't likely to get into it, and Al Gore is on their board.
And so it's probably not surprising that the iTunes DRM defeaters are on Windows, which is where their sales base is anyway. So, spending this effort on OSX is really just a waste of time.
Personally, Amazon is my iTunes DRM defeat. I own a total of 2 iTunes Plus songs - they never have anything I want without DRM.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Fuck me, it's like a Student Union bar in here. What next, comrades, do we storm the Winter Palace or just go and sell some copies of Socialist Worker?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
I have to suspect this was made to be discovered, otherwise it would stuff some superficially correct looking data into the output instead of simply black holing it. It's not like the person running it isn't going to check.
Sounds like just the sort of executive order that a good programmer would implement to the letter, ignoring the spirit.
Oh, piffle. Without Apple DRM, iTunes (store) would be impossible due to the idiot record labels. Go grouse at them. Outside of iTunes, what is there in Mac OS X that's DRMed?
When Apple begins sending out legions of hunter-killer robots to take down open source projects and assassinate their maintainers, then you might have a point, Mr. Zombie, sir.
Quote:
"So Apple is explicitly preventing DTrace from examining or recording data for processes which don't permit tracing. This is antithetical to the notion of systemic tracing, antithetical to the goals of DTrace, and antithetical to the spirit of open source."
Diagnostic tool that won't look at all processes is no tool at all.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Are you kidding?
This is Slashdot where "paper or plastic" is an epic struggle directly and immediately affecting the fates of billions!
BILLIONS, I tell you! BILLIONS!
The article says, "To say that Apple has crippled DTrace on Mac OS X would be a bit alarmist..." So what is the Slashdot headline? "Apple Crippled Its DTrace Port"
Nice...
Basically profile and tick are useless since they will not fire if a thread with PT_DENY_ATTACH is on proc. Perfectly good DTrace scripts simply will not work correctly on OS X.
Isn't this the time where some wise-ass Slashdotter is supposed to make an infantile comment regarding Microsoft and to completely ignore the fact that Apple has been found with their hands in the cookie jar!
It's like this every time kdawson takes a turn posting stuff to the front page. Wish he'd join up with his natural comrades at digg.com and take the tired rewarmed leftovers of 19th and 20th century politics away with him.
No DRM outside of iTunes... once you get it running on your HP computer, that is.
Isn't this a F/OSS program? Couldn't you just recompile an uncompromised version of the source?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Together with careful use of the Evil Bit by malicious coders, we will have complete security in Apple system software.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I've never seen Apple market OSX as a Unix system or even talk about the shell.
Its main market is for an easy to use home computer and as a creative platform for video editing, graphic design and professional audio.
If you want a command line you're fully in control of, use Linux or a BSD Unix.
It's a commercial OS and Apple will do what they like so long as its legal.
The /. summary and most of the /. posters seem to be missing the point of the article. (To be fair, the author wasn't too clear himself. He's done some clarification in the comments section of his article.)
Sure, it's annoying that DTrace can't "see" iTunes. But that's more of a DRM issue. Whether you agree with DRM and Apple's implementation of it or not, this DTrace feature is merely a logical extension of that issue.
The real problem though is that this feature actually does break iTunes. If DTrace probes while the iTunes application happens to be the application currently running on the CPU, the DTrace probe won't run. (It's technically a thread of iTunes' at that moment.) So not only will DTrace not show iTunes, it won't show ANY information until it happens to fire off when iTunes isn't the app running on the CPU.
It is fair to say that Apple has made a change to DTrace that has introduced a bug that they need to fix. It is possible for them to fix that bug while continuing to block using DTrace on iTunes.
Is it just my imagination or is this post a dupe? And a positively moderated dupe at that (twice!).
Not that I mind, but suddenly I feel at least 50% less efficient.
Quack, quack.
It's nice that Dtrace works again. But I'm betting a lot more people use After Effects or Premiere. The QT 7.4 update which enables movie rentals from iTunes breaks any render that takes longer than 10 minutes. Thank god DRM is here to protect me from the work I need to do. Wasn't apple supposed to me the machine for media professionals?
http://blogs.adobe.com/keyframes/2008/01/dont_update_to_quicktime_74.html
There's no friendship, you're just a fan and Apple rakes in your money. They love this cult like status, some of it is well deserved, their design is unmatched in the computer field. If Mac fans were a little more reserved instead of opening their wallets then Apple would stop and think a bit more.
:)
I'm by no means a fan boy, I own a Mac Pro and I run Leopard. They're just tools and even with Apple's flaws I'll still with them until something better appears.
Right now I'd sooner eat a slightly damaged apple than look through broken windows
If I make a third party app that and Apple allows my app to be traced and reverse engineered when they don't allow it for their own apps, does that mean they've chosen to assist in the reverse engineering of my app? If tracing is bad for their app, why is it ok with mine? Just asking? Could a court ask them?
I just don't see what the big deal with all of this is. Smart people don't touch ITunes, because it's just going to help feed the beast. People seem to have forgotten how Jobs ran Apple the last time he was in charge. He's merely a lot more charismatic than Gates. But they are both equally self-serving.
Thankfully there are options which involve neither company.
Apple Fanboy: "Well, you see, Apple had to do this because they were protecting their interests. Yeah, thats right, Apple can do no wrong. Wait, what's that!? Microsoft is implementing DRM in Windows Media Player.. How dare they! Microsoft = EVIL"
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
Apple is not a monopoly...
If I say it enough times, maybe I'll start to believe it...
Well compared to Microsoft of course they look wonderful. Now compare it to any open source operating system (which have none of this nonsense at all) and they don't look so good, do they?
Yes, it's annoying - every time we examine the system we are now looking at everything except for iTunes (and possibly Spy-WaR3 ;-). But this issue is about more than just that.
I've introduced DTrace to many companies. While most people love it, some developers of closed source software are concerned about people DTracing their code. DTrace allows customers to gather proof of bugs that are embarrassing, hard to fix, or that the developers have deny existed. I've been asked many times if DTrace can be disabled for an application, usually to avoid negative publicity from the bugs that DTrace will expose. The answer has always been no. It's been great to see developers accept this reality and escelate bug fixing.
This is expected - DTrace visibility should improve overall code quality in IT. Hopefully it will also encourage employers to hire better programmers - since if customers don't use DTrace to point out embarassing bugs, then competitors may. It also erodes reasons to stay closed source - customers can use DTrace to see the code anyway.
Giving developers another option, to disable DTrace visibility, is allowing a backwards step from the future.
It is DRM'd to only run on Apple hardware. There is nothing technical that prevents it from running on any modern PC since that is indeed what Macs are now. However that won't work, hence there are groups out there that have to hack it to disable that and allow it to run on any hardware.
You can argue till your blue in the face that they need to do this, doesn't change what they are doing. If it wasn't DRM'd, it'd run fine on any hardware that met its technical requirements.
Yup, it's the one after that's gonna be the problem. We're doomed.
I agreed, if MS had done this, the mob would already have gathered. :-p
Now it's more about "Thankfully a hack is already out. Move along folks, it was just another DRM decision by Apple."
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It's a real shame that you can't trace iTunes. I was all set to reverse engineer it and use the code to make my own total fucking abortion of a media player. Now I'll have to settle for grafting a horrible GUI onto Mplayer, removing most of the supported formats and making it sleep without releasing the CPU 90% of the time. If I can work out some way to reliably fuck up the contents of the user's iPod, then I doubt anyone will notice the difference.
It will be tricky to make the Windows port twice as horrible though. Maybe I can get it to punch the user in the face every ten minutes?
Then, they came for gettytab, but I did not speak out, because I was happy with Apple's default terminal configuration.
Then, they came for snort, but I was not worried about intrusion detection so I did not speak up.
Next, they came for mkdep, but I did not speak out, because the maid does all my compiling.
Sadly, when it came time for them to use killall, there was nobody left to speak up for me!
Mac haters really are drama queens, aren't they? Here, read this.
Leopard's DTrace isn't broken. Apple put in an API for a program to request that debugging & dtrace be disabled for it. Clearly it's there to keep FairPlay from being broken (too easily). Something that commercial developers could understandably want for their software, to prevent keygen hacks, etc.
The link I provide shows a simple way to get around it. Hell, debugging iTunes is directly encouraged in an Apple Technote (linked in the article).
As listed in the article I linked to, you can get around it by trapping the API call in gdb and disabling it.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
The guy wants Apple to ship a working DTrace. Why should they? To regain community goodwill and get absolution from an official DTrace developer. He left the door open for that. That's the carrot. By publicizing statements on his blog and getting it submitted to Slashdot, he has proved how much trouble he can stir up. By understating the case, he reserves the threat of stating it plainly if they take no action. That's the stick. Now Apple has to weigh community goodwill against DRM dollars and decide whether to ship a working DTrace. Whereas, if he had immediately shoved the carrot up his ass and started flailing around with the stick, Apple would have shrugged their shoulders and moved on.
There are two differences here, how a corporation treats internals, and how it treats externals. As I understand the issue, (bear in mind my computer systems knowledge can by written legibly on a 3"x5" card in crayon), Apple disabled a tool used (among other things) to detect malign software, without publishing the fact.
You may choose to associate with GE, and yet still have objections the Ford plant next door putting out high quantities of Carbon Monoxide. You may also have objections to freely associating with GE, and discovering after working there for 20 years that they release enough benzene into the environment in your plant to triple your cancer risk.
Now, is disabling one tool very few people use worth government action to stop it. Perhaps not. Is disabling one tool very few people use a reasonable thing for a private individual responsible for keeping his own company's network secure something he should consider before allowing this vendors products inside his firewall? Different question.
We never ever criticize our heroes ever.
The difference you seem to be missing here is that Steve Jobs only occasionally does a boneheaded thing like this against his fan base. Bill Gates only occasionally doesn't.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"Without Apple DRM, iTunes (store) would be impossible due to the idiot record labels."
Well, they're selling mp3's on amazon with no DRM.
Or are you going to give the credit to apple for that? Next thing you know, you'll be saying "this isn't so bad" and follow it up with "the record labels have the right to protect their property".
About the time some rootkit does take advantage of this you bet people will be all over Apple for it.
Okay, apple is not our friend.
That doesn't mean they're nearly as bad as Microsoft. Apple software doesn't downgrade all your video if you plug a monitor into your computer that isn't tied into their DRM scheme, unlike Vista. For that matter, Apple software doesn't downgrade all your video just for having a jack with which it's possible to plug in a monitor that isn't tied into their DRM scheme, unlike Vista. If you put an mp3 on your ipod, it doesn't convert it into a DRM'd file, unlike the Zune.
Apple has its problems, but you can use Apple products with completely non-DRM media and it'll behave as designed. Microsoft's stuff is so DRM-insane that it'll force you into a DRM environment even for your non-DRM media. Please, don't try to convince me Apple is as bad as Microsoft.
I call BULLSHIT.
If they're selectively telling this app NOT to log "certain types of traffic", and give no notification of such, or allow the functionality to be restored, then it's CRIPPLED.
I'm so sick of apologists telling me that stuff that's broken is broken for a good reason and that I should be glad someone deigned to allow me to hack it back to some semblance of functionality without getting sued into oblivion!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We are more forgiving of people who aren't more chronically evil, life just is that way, get over it.
Nobody and nothing is perfect, this does NOT mean that everything imperfect, is equivalent.
Do you divorce your wife for making occasional mistakes? No, only if she is habitually and frequently bad. Are you more forgiving of a son who just occasionally screws up lightly, as opposed to one who does drugs and steals from you and ends up in jail regularly? Of course. Is every political leader who has lied at least once, just as bad as Hitler? Is somebody who beats his wife every day equally bad to somebody who once slapped his wife over 50 years of marriage?
Please, stop with this pretending that all things are equivalent. There is NO double-standard here.
The best thing to do now is to make DTrace as useless as possible until Apple removes this limitation.
Every developer reading this who cares about DTrace and wants to be able to use it for system-wide metrics should set the P_LNOATTACH flag in the next point release for their app. Apple won't like it, but if enough developers do it as a form of protest, it would effectively make DTrace/Instruments ineffective, eliminating a bullet-point feature from Leopard.
Maybe everyone knows what dtrace is. I didn't. Then I watched this: link and now I do.
http://ed.markovich.googlepages.com
Thank you RMS. d:
"and yes, I'm not using the term "open source" here to highlight the freedoms the open source movement doesn't want to talk about"
If you're talking GPL vs BSD then I get what you're on about but it's still silly. GPL just means that if you distribute, you must open. You're free to do whatever the hell you like on your own systems.
At least they'll be attractively designed, hip and sexy hunter-killer robots. They might lock you into a ghetto, but it'll be a FUN ghetto. They'll merely remove choice from the human race to prevent it hurting itself. The Zeroth Law is 'the giant floating head of Steve knows best'.
Come to think of it, Apple should have been the major sponsor of I, Robot, not US Robotics.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Bill Gates has a fan base?
You ruined a perfectly good paranoia thread.
I'm thinking of suing you for damage to my business. I was making a tidy profit by selling tinfoil hats, but you have gone and ruined it for me!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Seriously, they made a spammy DRM-filled OS just like Microsoft did, except they did it by bastardizing several highly respected open-source projects.
How people can hate Microsoft but be fans of Apple is beyond me.
Bill Gates is his fan base.
Somewhat ironically, DTrace is open source, and it should be possible to compile it without this crippling feature.
Yup. Ninety-something percent of computer users. The ones who wouldn't try Mac or Linux if their lives depended on it. To them, computer = Windows.
<sig> </sig>
Alright kids, the word of the day is "egalitarian"!
Here Here!
Apple is Las Vegas, Microsoft is Atlantic City. In both cities you wake up with a hangover and an empty wallet most of the time, but Las Vegas is a lot prettier so you feel better about it.
Thanks Steve for protecting us!!!
"Its a cat and mouse game Apple is going to play"
You mean like having a leapord face off against a mighty mouse?
-I only code in BASIC.-
Tried OSX. Tried Suse. Tried Ubuntu. Still ended back at Windows XP.
:)
It's funny, I worked in retail for 6 years selling Computers, and people always complained about Compaqs or HP being "proprietary". How many different hardware configurations can you install Mac OSX on without hacking the BIOS? Everyone would refuse to buy Compaqs because of "proprietary" hardware (which at the time was completely unfounded to begin with), yet consumers flock to Apple because they're pretty and trendy. Buying an iMac is like buying a laptop. Extremely limited upgrade options, and to keep up with modern hardware you have to replace the entire system every two-three years. Not to mention they're incredibly overpriced.
The Mac was fun for a while, but I'll stick with my PC. It does everything a Mac will, and is cheaper
In an effort to conform with internet communication standards, please note that the above comment is 100% biased opinion
As much the DRM laden threat as Microsoft? Hardly. There are no DRM APIs in OS X. In fact, the only DRM I've seen on OS X is in iTunes. (And remember, they had to agree to DRM to get contracts with the labels.) Compare that to MS's pandering to DRM loving CEOs and including it in Vista! And, really DRM is much more an application specific problem so far and has little to do with any OS besides Vista.
You have to love the double standards here. Apple includes DRM to satisfy the RIAA, and the fanboys claim they were forced by the labels. Microsoft includes DRM to satisfy the MPAA, and the fanboys claim that Microsoft panders to DRM loving CEOs.
As I understand it, a DTrace user has experimented with the program, determined it to be specifically crippled, and given an educated guess about why it is crippled in that way.
"Adam Leventhal is a Staff Engineer in Solaris Kernel Development. He is one of the three authors of DTrace for which Adam has received Sun's chairman's award for technical excellence in 2004, was named one of InfoWorld's Innovators of 2005, and won top honors from the 2006 Wall Street Journal's Innovation Awards. Adam has developed various debugging and post-mortem analysis facilities, and continues his work on user-land tracing to expand the breadth and depth of DTrace's view of the system. Adam joined the Sun after graduating cum laude from Brown University in 2001 with a degree in Math and Computer Science."
(from http://opensolaris.org/viewProfile.jspa?id=21 )
I'd listen to this user.
That's because the CEO of Apple wrote and published an open letter on their website expressing his desire to rid their music store of DRM, and the CEO of Microsoft has done no such thing, instead integrating DRM support into their entire audio and video driver stack. (To the detriment of the stability and functionality of the rest of the OS, I might add...) Please, please, let me know when Microsoft (or a major figurehead thereof) takes an official position against DRM. I'll be waiting eagerly.
That's because the CEO of Apple wrote and published an open letter on their website expressing his desire to rid their music store of DRM, and the CEO of Microsoft has done no such thing, instead integrating DRM support into their entire audio and video driver stack. (To the detriment of the stability and functionality of the rest of the OS, I might add...) Please, please, let me know when Microsoft (or a major figurehead thereof) takes an official position against DRM. I'll be waiting eagerly.
Remember, that's the same CEO that refused to remove the DRM off of non-RIAA tracks, even at the request of the copyright holders, until he had colluded with major labels to design iTunes Plus. Double standard indeed.
Whoops. Guess he underestimated the hyper-drama of Slashdot submitters.
"Sufferin' succotash."
You know, I just fucking give up this site.
Was the comment about hunter killer robots not enough to show I wasn't being serious?
No, we all have to take ourselves seriously and flame over the most trivial shit in the world.
I can't imagine what tedious, drab and humorless bores some people around here will be when they grow up.
This is why I use GPLv3 for software I write. The anti-tivoization clause in GPLv3 is reason enough for all Free Software projects to upgrade to it, in my opinion.
I happened to browse SourceForge by rank the other day. I had to laugh that a simple text editor made it to #2!
Blah blah blah who cares? And the 1980s called. They want their "fanboi" term back.
OK, I'm done with you, wanker.
1998 called. They want their lame Bondi case jokes back, dude. If the most you can say about Apple is "teh shiny," and you're in IT, I fear for your soul.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
I could imagine that dtracing iTunes actually is a violation of the iTunes EULA. I don't know, I have never read it, but have you?
Folks hit the roof over similar issues in Vista, especially when it was discovered it was relatively easy for a root kit to obtain protective status or un-protect "protected" code, modify that code, then hide it again. If you cannot trust your debugger to actually show you what is going on, what is the point of having one? I am an avid Apple user, and I still think this is stupid.
the 1980s called. They want their "fanboi" term back.
The 90's called - they want their xxxx year called joke back.
OK, I'm done with you, wanker.
God, let's hope so. Maybe you should check if the nick "Whiney Mac Fanboi" is taken? Describes you perfectly.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Back in 2000, if you installed MacsBug on a Mac you couldn't play DVDs. When you opened the DVD Player you got an error message telling you a debugger was installed. In these pre-memory protection days, MacsBug was the only debugger low-level enough to catch a whole mess of problems. Unfortunately, MacsBug was loaded when the system booted, so the only way to play a DVD was to remove MacsBug and restart your machine.
Long time Mac developer ally Bare Bones Software (they have a great text editor) created a patch that "fixed" this limitation. AFAIK, Apple never said anything about their patch and just quietly let it exist. http://www.macobserver.com/news/00/april/000418/dvdplayerhelper.shtml
This whole message mess came about because Macrovision didn't want people disabling their protection on video-output (there were Macs you could literally plug into VCRs then), and I suspect it was also to guard the CSS "encryption."
When Blu-ray movies finally show up in Macs, this kind of thing is probably going to get a lot worse than patches to D-Trace.
I think Jobs and Gates are about equally evil; the big difference is that Jobs packages it better and that Gates is more successful.
And Jobs has an easier task: he doesn't need to build a machine for 90% of the market, only for the 5% that are so disgruntled that they won't be using Windows.
There is a large gap between not letting DTrace trace anything about iTunes and allowing it to trace everything in the application. Perhaps Apple could have been a little more subtle about iTunes traces? At least they would have bought some time.
And, as pointed out by others; Jobs/iTunes insists on DRM on tracks even if the labels (like indi labels) don't want it.. And, compared to other music download stores, many of the MS based ones have had less restrictive DRM than iTunes (more copies on more machines, redownloads, etc.)
And the big "iTunes" launch of EMI DRM free music was an EMI lead initiative for all download stores -- iTunes had the choice to make the most of it, or see it go only to competitors. So I wouldn't fully buy all the PR grandstanding from Apple in this area.
You'll have to explain to me how enforcing the same restrictions on both non-RIAA and RIAA tracks is a double standard. Seems consistent to me.
If you modify DTrace so you can use it to break the DRM on iTunes then you wouldn't run into the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright.
So the lawyers don't care if the workaround is relatively trivial as long as you have to do "something".
I was excited to see that any from of dtrace / strace would officially be ported by Apple. Only to discover that it is only available upon upgrading to OS X 10.5. I will get around to upgrading some time, but DTrace and many of the other improvements (Safari excluded, since you can get Safari 3.0 for OS X 10.4) alone, do not make it worthwhile.
To be honest, though... Is not tracing the system calls of iTunes at runtime (or anytime, for that matter) dangerously close to what might be considered DMCA infringement?
What is known, is that there is a flag running processes may have to prevent tracing (attaching). However, the article does not speculate which applications are given this flag at runtime. Therefore, it may just relate to applications that employ some form of DRM and/or are protected by the DMCA. That would be my best guess, I still want to believe that Apple has not lost sight of the open spirit of Darwin...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
If someone outside the RIAA wanted to release a song under a licence which specifically permitted copying, sampling, remixing &c., they couldn't do so through iTunes. The iTunes DRM scheme didn't include a way to permit those things even with the blessing of the copyright holder.
Nor was there any way to deal with special issues. For instance, I managed to secure special permission from the band Ocean Colour Scene to copy any recording they ever released for my own use. (This was in 1990 and we were all pissed at the time, but a promise is a promise.) If I were to download something by OCS from iTunes (except I'm unlikely to, unless an Open Source iTunes client comes along) I would be prevented from doing what I was originally given permission to do.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
.. and see what it's doing, then load a kernel module
to undo it.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
On closer inspection, I was wrong and OCG was right.
You think that's easy to say?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Simply because a fanboi doesn't see the need for full dtrace functionality doesn't mean it's a Good Thing to disable it.
Doing so is simply the first step on the slippery slope to disabling it for other things.
If you want to pay someone for the privilege of computing on a system that's essentially a black box, more power to you.
Other people don't.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's an example of Apple pandering to big corporate CEOs while pissing on the little guy, which is something the original poster was quick to jump onto Microsoft for doing.
Aqua provides a consistent and powerful toolkit for local GUI apps, which is a very nice thing to have. It's also Display PDF on the inside, which is quite convenient for the programmer. X trumps Aqua in a few things such as remote operation, but to ignore Aqua completely is silly. It's a big reason for the success of the OS X platform.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
You're right about limited upgrade options, but they also have a much longer longevity. I'm using a 5 year old PowerBook to develop on professionally. In that time it came with 10.3, been upgraded to Tiger (10.4), and recently to Leopard (10.5). The interface is still snappy, and with the exception of some video editing, its chugging along just fine with no decrease in performance. The DVD burner still works, the screen still works, the battery needed changing, but that is something that will happen in most laptops.
You are right though that, a new MacBook Pro would be snappier in opening applications, and I would have a much better Virtual Machine in Parallels (or Boot Camp), than in Virtual PC.
How much does the average person actually upgrade their computer over the course of its life?
Hard-drive? Possibly, but USB hard-drives make that "easy" even for iMacs and Laptops.
Memory? Possibly, but iMacs and Laptops also have that option.
VideoCard? Yes, if they have to keep up to date on the latest PC games. If they aren't so concerned with playing the latest "Crysis" or if they use a console though, no.
Processor? Most people don't know that they have one, so much as how to upgrade one.
Yeah, they don't have as much flexibility as a home built PC (although the MacPro's seem to have a lot of what you're looking for, although they are aimed at the professional workstation market), but for most home and office users, a MacMini or an iMac will suit there needs just fine, without needing the upgrading options down the road (or at least nothing that can't be connected via USB, FireWire, or Network).
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I must be missing something. I've found it MUCH easier to remove applications on my Mac than on my Windows PC. Just drag the application to the trashcan. On Windows I have to run the uninstaller and pray it finds all the application's pieces (and even then, it takes a ridiculously long time and doesn't always work).
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the students. Those academics can be compared to sewer rats, leaving in the damp corridors of Universities, their world has very little connection with reality. Here is my personal encounter with one of those, while I was working for BBN. The guy was from Harvard U and also hold a 'scientist' position at BBN. We had a group meeting, don't remember what was the conversation, but I remember making rather ironical remarks of Soviet Union.
The guy said, rather thoughtfully: I don't understand why those Russian Emigres are so critical about the Soviet Union.
(I emigrated from USSR in 1978, at the peak of Brezhnev-era idiocy and revival of Stalinist cult.)
So I wanted to tell him: because they have some first-hand experience, you idiot. But then I realized I would be taking to the wall.
You're making Apple into an entity even more dispised than Micro$oft. I hear you had a bit of a hit this morning on the markets. Hope you have a clean hankie.
Salut,
Jacques
The line between features demanded by Apple's clients (media portability), and features demanded by their suppliers (like the record labels) is a jagged edge. It's not surprising that sometimes they cut themselves on the serrations.
We are the 198 proof..
Apple hasn't quite caught up with WinXP, but they're unfortunately getting there.
Windows Media Player 9, which was introduced shortly before XP, included a kernel component that gave it privileged access and control, to support DRM. Later versions of WMP, XP, and now Vista have even stronger restrictions. This kind of chichanery from Microsoft is why my Wintendo is still based on Windows 2000.
I had honestly expected that Apple would implement similar restrictions to Microsoft's when the iTunes Music Store came out... and I've been pleasantly surprised by the lack of these kinds of DRM-friendly features in OS X up to now.
My fallback position is switching back to other operating systems based on Free UNIX. I don't want to do that, because I'd rather have access to applications that don't suck, but I'm not naive enough to assume I won't have to.
I took the time to put up a page with screenshots of how the different systems render the same wikipedia page. I even made the font size +1 larger, as XP, even with smooth type turned on, won't anti-alias below a certain font size.
http://homepage.mac.com/sumpuran/antialiasing/
The experience of what is easier on the eyes is a subjective one, but that's not what we're testing. What determines the quality of anti-aliasing is how well the onscreen rendition matches a printed version (the whole idea being that this is not 1993 and not everything should need proofing.)
I didn't take the screenshots to judge the way Linux and XP handle spacing and kerning. I picked a page that contained no serifs, as on the Mac that would've shown ligatures, another unfair advantage. It should be taken into account that Linux comes with no high-quality fonts, and that the font shown on the Linux rendition of the Wikipedia is nowhere close to the ones on the Mac and PC. Quality fonts can be installed of course, but this demo is about what the average user will experience.
Looking at the results, it is particularly interesting to see that XP and Linux don't render the sans-serif headings as bold, but rather thicken the regular font a bit. Furthermore, on XP as well as on Linux straight areas of the characters aren't anti-aliased at all, the drawback of which is very noticeable looking at the capital 'L' in the cutouts.
In order to judge how well your own system renders fonts, you can browse to the Linux article on Wikipedia, print the page, and then hold it next to your screen.
NB: Anti-aliasing settings were used for flat panel displays with a gamma of 2.2.
Would you think that `ls` should not list iTunes.app if Apple wants to (for DRM reasons, of course!)? Or perhaps 'top' should not list an Apple process if it is taking a lot of CPU (which could reflect badly on that app)? These are of course absurd, but are of the same structural level as what has been done to DTrace (which should be absurd, but apparently is not to some people). To equate it to stripping a binary shows a lack of understanding.
Feel free to continue our conversation if you wish but I don't know what you're standing on.
Disclaimer: I am writing this on a MacBook Pro, my other Mac is a Mac Pro, though only the 2 core system (i could go for a Mac Pro 8 cores standard. How many effects can I run? grin). I use it for audio processing. I find that my MacBook Pro has problems even with Garage Band after more than a few tracks though the 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo w/ 2GB ram should do more than that, i would think! Maybe I'll put Logic Pro on it and see what happens. I also have a couple of Windows machines left, I also have Linux in VMware on my Mac, so, whatever.
Ok, so that got OT but well, so what?
Cheers!
My point in stripping the executable was that it's a means for software vendors to make reverse engineering harder.
:-)
Similarly, vendors tell the os 'Please don't allow gdb or dtrace on me.' Unless I'm alone here, I think the two are pretty similar in concept. Tools like ls and top let you manage the app without learning about its internal structure (the line's a little fuzzy, but I'm not going for a hard stance on this).
Is it really that offensive to prevent gdb and dtrace on an executable? If the internals aren't documented, then the only way to use the tools effectively on the binary is through some degree of reverse engineering, which the vendor doesn't want.
Btw: I'm not too far off: a macbook pro and a sun ultra 40, which is essentially sun's competitor for a mac pro
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I think you are the only responder who didn't take my post totally seriously and as an excuse to call me names.
Honestly, there's been some recent influx of new Slashdotters who take themselves seriously to a level I never before thought possible.