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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..."
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 to 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.
drama queen: read my reply to another post here: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=426676&cid=22148694
As for dtrace working on every process: why? Your claim that 'system level tools' ==> work on any and every process is totally made up. It's not any different from stripping your binaries before shipping them off.
It's a matter of user vs developer rights. Same for developers who want to prevent people from writing key generators for their software: dtrace and gdb would help the hacker, but the developer can give themselves access to it.
If you're one of those freaks who think all software should be free, well, tough. I don't respect your opinion and won't bother responding to you. People have a right to control how their work is used. I don't want any software I write to be used in biological weapons development, and I'd like to keep the right to make sure it doesn't happen. Other people want to feed their families with the software they write. Also fair in my book.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I may have been somewhat of a smart-ass, but the gist I got from his subject of "Thanks Community, now fix Quicktime 7.4" and the opening "It's nice that Dtrace works again. But I'm betting a lot more people use After Effects or Premiere." was that he's flustered that the community isn't "fixing" the things he expects them to fix.
I even defaulted to a diplomatic "you must be thinking of the wrong thing" in my original post rather than believe anyone could hold such an expectation. Then his reply of "The point, which seems to have eluded you, is that while it's great people are fixing DTrace Apple has also broken applications used by far more people and no fix is available for those (nor can it be)." seems to again imply that the community is somehow responsible for fixing all issues even if the community has no real means to.
I get the impression that his point is essentially "Don't waste your time fixing DTrace and do what I want you to do." as if the community were in any way cohesive and he were somehow in charge of the community or that software popularity should dictate what the community is up to. In my humble opinion not only is this a fallacious position to take since "fixing" DTrace is essentailly trivial compared to his expectations, he is being rather whiny to people who aren't obligated to fix anything in the first place. The fact that it was somehow modded Informative all the way up amazes me (though after the years I should be jaded as to how amazing moderation can be sometimes).
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Wow! I have become a fanboi (I was hoping to be a fanboy someday, but I suppose I will have to settle with "always a vowel" variant). I guess I just don't see this as a slippery slope. I do not have any interest to dtrace iTunes. I am a developer (other posts claimed I was not). But my development is based more upon writing new software than upon snooping on iTunes. I am thrilled that Apple has given us such an awesome tool in DTrace. I have already had the opportunity to use it and am impressed with the power. The fact that Apple disabled it for iTunes does not personally hurt me. I can see why they did it. I don't necessarily agree with the action, but more importantly, I don't care.
I feel that this sort of alarmist reaction (that is oh so common on Slashdot) is so quixotic. I have too many other things going on in my life to constantly worry about how the world is out to get me. For heaven's sake, we are supposed to be fairly intelligent people here. It strikes me as odd that such intelligent, rational people can be so paranoid.