As far as I'm concerned, starting CS students with OO modeling is appropriate and I am disappointed in CMU in eliminating this from the freshman curriculum. Why? Because they need to start learning the discipline of thinking about computer constructs as things and not strictly abstractions. To think about how they are structured, behave, and interact. I've been doing large-scale distributed, parallel, and highly available systems for over 20 years, and with OO modeling, some of the stuff that I and my colleagues have accomplished would have been, quite frankly, impossible. Modeling helped identify pernicious race conditions, determine what programming abstractions were appropriate (a storage adapter abstraction, for example, so the same user code could store an object in a local database using one storage adapter type, and in a remote server using a bus storage adapter type - which is a configuration option, not a programming one), and what elements may have platform-specific issues. When the resulting work product is 10M LOC, and has to be delivered in 2-3 years by a small team of programmers/engineers, modeling helps resolve a lot of issues very early on in the design process.
So, in my opinion, CMU has just dropped off of the top of the CS education institutional list, and I speak as one who used to teach for CMU in their professional education division, the AIPE.
Ok. This basically requires a GPS in every vehicle, giving the government total access to your location at all times. Can you spell "rights to privacy"! Nazi Germany tried to be this egregious. We had to slap them down hard...
As far as I understood it, the budget was pretty well under control. It's just that the Republican Congress did not want to spend $$ on basic research. My wife was working on it, and if it had gone ahead, we would have been in Austin, TX. instead of Batavia, IL where my wife is a physicist at Fermi Lab. My father, also a physicist, was involved as well, but he was trying to get the collider to be situated in Colorado, where he worked...:-)
I'v been a long-time fan of the Doctor. We started watching it in the 70's in graduate school. Most every Saturday night a bunch of us would get together at a colleague's house, eat pizza, play bridge, hearts, spades, video games, and then watch Monty Python, Doctor Who, and Saturday Night Live. I have, over time, collected all of the available episodes, including many from the 60's that the BBC so thoughtlessly destroyed, but that fans have reconstructed as well as possible.
The early Doctors are well worth watching, but for someone with no exposure to the old (a lot in black&white), you might want to start with Christopher Eccleston who was the first of the "new" Doctors. The first episode that he starred in was called "Rose", and brought back an old enemy, the Nesteen (sp?) Hive. Basically, a petroleo-organic life form that can animate store window manikins/dummies. Like Pinky and the Brain, it's purpose is to take over the Earth!:-) Anyway, check out Amazon.com or Netflix. You should be able to get plenty of new and old episodes from them.
Well, the nice thing about opinions, and standards, is that everyone has them! I appreciate the feedback. Still doesn't change my opinion, but then only time will tell if this perceived trend is real or only in my mind! Anyway, thanks all for the comments to my comment. I think I am going to sign off of this thread now...:-)
Right. So, what proof is there that Apple is turning Mac OS X into this direction? Because I don't see any restrictions in the software users can install on their system.
None, yet except on iOS devices.
And off course, if Apple would ever decide only software from their App Store can be installed on Mac OS X, it would not be "too late" for people to switch to something else. It would be just as easy or hard to switch platforms then as it is now.
Cost and inertia. Example: my wife has invested a lot in software for her Mac Pros. If she was to switch systems (and as an experience Linux/Unix user/engineer that in itself would not be a problem), she would be hard-pressed to afford that, as it would cost more than the system itself. So, in her case, the cost alone would be prohibitive.
For others, inertia is the gating factor. They are comfortable with their system, know how it behaves, and don't have the time and/or inclination to change, even if it is harming them. I have a lot of Windows clients who could benefit tremendously, financially and otherwise (re. security), by switching to Linux systems and open source software, but they won't change because it would require that they just think about the changes, even if in my opinion those changes would not be a major challenge for them to learn.
I didn't say that they already had eliminated the use of GPL software on OSX. My point is this, that the trend seems to be heading directly toward a closed system, but like boiling a frog, they are slowing turning the heat up. By the time people notice that they can only install software pre-approved on the AppStore, it will be too late. This is my considered opinion of what is happening. If it doesn't go that way, for whatever reason, then great. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case at this point in time.
I generally agree with this, and as corporate citizens go, Apple is better than many/most. However, the trend seems clear as I said in another reply/reply, and that is what worries me the most. Instead of fostering openness, they seem to be heading more and more to a closed ecosystem, and one where they get a slice of all revenue that comes from selling products that work with Apple's.
"No, but then that just means you haven't looked into disabling it. Might not be wise, though, as they have a point."
As the Car Talk guys say, "Just put a piece of black tape over it, or turn the radio up!"...:-) Apple won't let you do that much, I think.
"No, but then that just means you haven't looked into disabling it. Might not be wise, though, as they have a point."
At least the courts in the US has declared that jailbreaking your phone is not a crime. However, jailbreaking a device that is not a phone still may be...
So, back to the car analogy (something I understand since I was a master mechanic before I became a software engineer), there are laws that keep us from bypassing our emission control systems, for good reason. However, there is no law that says I can't change the suspension, drop in a new (emissions-compliant) engine, modify the transmission, give it a new set of brakes, or even give it a new type of exhaust system, as long as what comes out the tailpipe(s) still meets federal and state air quality standards.
When I went back to consulting about 3 1/2 years ago I decided that I wanted to be in some sort of control of my computing ecosystem, and not have to pay the Microsoft and/or Apple taxes that apply to those systems. Even though I had used Linux systems in the past, and a couple of my old workstations still run Linux (Gentoo and Mepis), I had not used Linux exclusively for all day-to-day work and business operations. That said, I was comfortable with the OS in general (having been a Unix user/admin since the 80's, and Linux since the early 00's), and used a lot of open source tools (GNU compilers/debuggers, OOo, etc). So I decided that when I got my new workstation built at the end of 2007 that I would take a month and evaluate an enterprise Linux system for business as well as software development purposes (being a consulting software engineer). I chose CentOS 5 because it was basically a free version of RHEL. It took awhile to find FOSS analogues of the software I was running on Windows for business purposes, but in the end I was able to configure a system that handled everything I needed except for my Fidelity stock/option trading software, which I was able to run in a Windows VM on VirtualBox. FWIW, I first used XEN, but I needed the full capabilities of my nVidia 8800GT video hardware, and the proprietary nVidia drivers don't like a Xen-enabled kernel, which is why I switched to VirtualBox as a virtual machine manager. Since I also do kernel module and driver development for Solaris, that worked well as I can also run Solaris x86 in a virtual machine.
Now, 3+ years on, I haven't looked back once. In January this year I upgraded to Scientific Linux 6 (a clone of RHEL6), and while there are still some minor teething problems, I am very happy with that. At least when I need to kvetch to someone about the OS, I know people on the SL development team at Fermi Lab...:-)
Shrink-wrap licenses have, in many situations, been ruled as unenforceable, because you have to break the wrap to read the license, so you cannot agree to it before purchase. In any case, the term "license" means "not purchased", as if it is really a purchase, then the rights of the owner are well established. Apple is, in my opinion, trying to change the rules about that, and this is what bothers me the most.
I have already heard where Apple is considering moving to an AppStore model for software distribution for OS-X, which would pretty much put the nail in the coffin for GPL applications and tools. Caveat User!
My wife of 37 years is a big Apple user, and will give up her 2 Mac Pro Powerbooks, iPhone, and iPod when I pry them from her cold, dead fingers. I have been an admirer of Apple since the early 80's, and know (knew) Jobs and the Woz when I was working in the Silicon Valley. I have a great deal of respect for both of them, and the innovations they brought to the industry. That doesn't mean that I agree with business decisions that Apple has made about this stuff, and the only way I know for people to protest this is, as I said, voting with their pocket books.
So, I think Apple makes incredibly good and innovative products, and continues to lead the industry in design and implementation of systems that are user-friendly and powerful. That doesn't change my mind about this particular issue, however...
So far, but the trend, to my eye, is clear. Apple is also suing just about anyone who makes compatible hardware, chargers, etc. Why? Not because of IP issues so much, but because it cuts into their profits. In any case, with BSD style licenses, Apple can modify the code and not redistribute those changes, resulting in lock-in to their code base. The entire purpose of the GPL is to avoid this sort of constraint, and to encourage innovation by building upon what others are doing. The entire software development ecosystem becomes much more vibrant and robust as a result.
Personally, I think Apple is trying to totally close their software and hardware ecosystems so only they can provide software, or are the gatekeeper of all software, that will run on any Apple device. The only way to stop this is by voting with our pocketbooks! After this sort of behavior, I am boycotting Apple products like I am Sony's. If I purchase something, I own it and therefor have the right to use it as I see fit, not as someone else does. The way Apple wants it to work is that you are in effect leasing from them. You don't own it, and are constrained with what you can do with/to it.
I have an almost unused Nexus One that is unlocked. It is tuned for T-Mobile. I had to get one tuned for AT&T, but still have the original that Google gave me at last year's Linux Collaboration Summit. I only used it for about 2 months. You can send me a private message about this if you are interested.
I was a software developer of risk analysis tools for companies on the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange). Milliseconds are significant when you need to hedge a position (balance your risks). Picoseconds? That is just idiotic, IMHO. Personally, I think we need to throttle back the trend toward automatic computerized trading. There are too many badly understood issues with regard to chaos effects in these time frames.
I still have some useful old software on there after some 20 years using QNX at work. One of these days I will port it to Linux, but time being the main thing I don't have enough of...
Well, when the computer boots, it's Scientific Linux 6. When I have to run that one program, I start XP in a virtual machine. The computer itself isn't running Windows, only the VIRTUAL machine is. So sue me!:-)
Man, this person is a confirmed hard core masochist! Arrrrgh! If he's married, my sympathies to his wire/partner! Whenever I run Windows, I cringe and run screaming back to my Linux systems. Unfortunately, there is ONE program that I have to use that ONLY runs on Windows, so I run it on an XP virtual machine on my Scientific Linux 6 (RHEL6) workstation, or my Ubuntu laptop when I'm on the road.
FWIW, we have something like 13 computers in our house, and not one of them runs MS software! My wife has a couple of Apple Mac Pro laptops, a Sony Vaio running Scientific Linux, and a netbook running Ubuntu. I have an 8 core workstation running SL6, a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.10, an older workstation running Gentoo, an ever older 486 workstation running QNX 4.0, and two Nexus One Android phones. Then there is assorted other stuff (Palm Pilots, iPods, iPhones, etc). I guess you could call our house "Windowless"!:-)
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As far as I'm concerned, starting CS students with OO modeling is appropriate and I am disappointed in CMU in eliminating this from the freshman curriculum. Why? Because they need to start learning the discipline of thinking about computer constructs as things and not strictly abstractions. To think about how they are structured, behave, and interact. I've been doing large-scale distributed, parallel, and highly available systems for over 20 years, and with OO modeling, some of the stuff that I and my colleagues have accomplished would have been, quite frankly, impossible. Modeling helped identify pernicious race conditions, determine what programming abstractions were appropriate (a storage adapter abstraction, for example, so the same user code could store an object in a local database using one storage adapter type, and in a remote server using a bus storage adapter type - which is a configuration option, not a programming one), and what elements may have platform-specific issues. When the resulting work product is 10M LOC, and has to be delivered in 2-3 years by a small team of programmers/engineers, modeling helps resolve a lot of issues very early on in the design process. So, in my opinion, CMU has just dropped off of the top of the CS education institutional list, and I speak as one who used to teach for CMU in their professional education division, the AIPE.
Ok. This basically requires a GPS in every vehicle, giving the government total access to your location at all times. Can you spell "rights to privacy"! Nazi Germany tried to be this egregious. We had to slap them down hard...
As far as I understood it, the budget was pretty well under control. It's just that the Republican Congress did not want to spend $$ on basic research. My wife was working on it, and if it had gone ahead, we would have been in Austin, TX. instead of Batavia, IL where my wife is a physicist at Fermi Lab. My father, also a physicist, was involved as well, but he was trying to get the collider to be situated in Colorado, where he worked... :-)
I'v been a long-time fan of the Doctor. We started watching it in the 70's in graduate school. Most every Saturday night a bunch of us would get together at a colleague's house, eat pizza, play bridge, hearts, spades, video games, and then watch Monty Python, Doctor Who, and Saturday Night Live. I have, over time, collected all of the available episodes, including many from the 60's that the BBC so thoughtlessly destroyed, but that fans have reconstructed as well as possible. The early Doctors are well worth watching, but for someone with no exposure to the old (a lot in black&white), you might want to start with Christopher Eccleston who was the first of the "new" Doctors. The first episode that he starred in was called "Rose", and brought back an old enemy, the Nesteen (sp?) Hive. Basically, a petroleo-organic life form that can animate store window manikins/dummies. Like Pinky and the Brain, it's purpose is to take over the Earth! :-) Anyway, check out Amazon.com or Netflix. You should be able to get plenty of new and old episodes from them.
Well, the nice thing about opinions, and standards, is that everyone has them! I appreciate the feedback. Still doesn't change my opinion, but then only time will tell if this perceived trend is real or only in my mind! Anyway, thanks all for the comments to my comment. I think I am going to sign off of this thread now... :-)
Good for you! That is your right! BTW, is that your tongue I see planted in your cheek? :-)
I didn't say that they already had eliminated the use of GPL software on OSX. My point is this, that the trend seems to be heading directly toward a closed system, but like boiling a frog, they are slowing turning the heat up. By the time people notice that they can only install software pre-approved on the AppStore, it will be too late. This is my considered opinion of what is happening. If it doesn't go that way, for whatever reason, then great. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case at this point in time.
I generally agree with this, and as corporate citizens go, Apple is better than many/most. However, the trend seems clear as I said in another reply/reply, and that is what worries me the most. Instead of fostering openness, they seem to be heading more and more to a closed ecosystem, and one where they get a slice of all revenue that comes from selling products that work with Apple's.
I'm sure you are correct. After all, Next was a BSD derivative, so a lot of those folks are probably still on the job at Apple.
"No, but then that just means you haven't looked into disabling it. Might not be wise, though, as they have a point." As the Car Talk guys say, "Just put a piece of black tape over it, or turn the radio up!"... :-) Apple won't let you do that much, I think.
"No, but then that just means you haven't looked into disabling it. Might not be wise, though, as they have a point."
At least the courts in the US has declared that jailbreaking your phone is not a crime. However, jailbreaking a device that is not a phone still may be...
So, back to the car analogy (something I understand since I was a master mechanic before I became a software engineer), there are laws that keep us from bypassing our emission control systems, for good reason. However, there is no law that says I can't change the suspension, drop in a new (emissions-compliant) engine, modify the transmission, give it a new set of brakes, or even give it a new type of exhaust system, as long as what comes out the tailpipe(s) still meets federal and state air quality standards.
When I went back to consulting about 3 1/2 years ago I decided that I wanted to be in some sort of control of my computing ecosystem, and not have to pay the Microsoft and/or Apple taxes that apply to those systems. Even though I had used Linux systems in the past, and a couple of my old workstations still run Linux (Gentoo and Mepis), I had not used Linux exclusively for all day-to-day work and business operations. That said, I was comfortable with the OS in general (having been a Unix user/admin since the 80's, and Linux since the early 00's), and used a lot of open source tools (GNU compilers/debuggers, OOo, etc). So I decided that when I got my new workstation built at the end of 2007 that I would take a month and evaluate an enterprise Linux system for business as well as software development purposes (being a consulting software engineer). I chose CentOS 5 because it was basically a free version of RHEL. It took awhile to find FOSS analogues of the software I was running on Windows for business purposes, but in the end I was able to configure a system that handled everything I needed except for my Fidelity stock/option trading software, which I was able to run in a Windows VM on VirtualBox. FWIW, I first used XEN, but I needed the full capabilities of my nVidia 8800GT video hardware, and the proprietary nVidia drivers don't like a Xen-enabled kernel, which is why I switched to VirtualBox as a virtual machine manager. Since I also do kernel module and driver development for Solaris, that worked well as I can also run Solaris x86 in a virtual machine.
:-)
Now, 3+ years on, I haven't looked back once. In January this year I upgraded to Scientific Linux 6 (a clone of RHEL6), and while there are still some minor teething problems, I am very happy with that. At least when I need to kvetch to someone about the OS, I know people on the SL development team at Fermi Lab...
Shrink-wrap licenses have, in many situations, been ruled as unenforceable, because you have to break the wrap to read the license, so you cannot agree to it before purchase. In any case, the term "license" means "not purchased", as if it is really a purchase, then the rights of the owner are well established. Apple is, in my opinion, trying to change the rules about that, and this is what bothers me the most.
I have already heard where Apple is considering moving to an AppStore model for software distribution for OS-X, which would pretty much put the nail in the coffin for GPL applications and tools. Caveat User!
My wife of 37 years is a big Apple user, and will give up her 2 Mac Pro Powerbooks, iPhone, and iPod when I pry them from her cold, dead fingers. I have been an admirer of Apple since the early 80's, and know (knew) Jobs and the Woz when I was working in the Silicon Valley. I have a great deal of respect for both of them, and the innovations they brought to the industry. That doesn't mean that I agree with business decisions that Apple has made about this stuff, and the only way I know for people to protest this is, as I said, voting with their pocket books. So, I think Apple makes incredibly good and innovative products, and continues to lead the industry in design and implementation of systems that are user-friendly and powerful. That doesn't change my mind about this particular issue, however...
So far, but the trend, to my eye, is clear. Apple is also suing just about anyone who makes compatible hardware, chargers, etc. Why? Not because of IP issues so much, but because it cuts into their profits. In any case, with BSD style licenses, Apple can modify the code and not redistribute those changes, resulting in lock-in to their code base. The entire purpose of the GPL is to avoid this sort of constraint, and to encourage innovation by building upon what others are doing. The entire software development ecosystem becomes much more vibrant and robust as a result.
Personally, I think Apple is trying to totally close their software and hardware ecosystems so only they can provide software, or are the gatekeeper of all software, that will run on any Apple device. The only way to stop this is by voting with our pocketbooks! After this sort of behavior, I am boycotting Apple products like I am Sony's. If I purchase something, I own it and therefor have the right to use it as I see fit, not as someone else does. The way Apple wants it to work is that you are in effect leasing from them. You don't own it, and are constrained with what you can do with/to it.
I have an almost unused Nexus One that is unlocked. It is tuned for T-Mobile. I had to get one tuned for AT&T, but still have the original that Google gave me at last year's Linux Collaboration Summit. I only used it for about 2 months. You can send me a private message about this if you are interested.
I was a software developer of risk analysis tools for companies on the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange). Milliseconds are significant when you need to hedge a position (balance your risks). Picoseconds? That is just idiotic, IMHO. Personally, I think we need to throttle back the trend toward automatic computerized trading. There are too many badly understood issues with regard to chaos effects in these time frames.
I still have some useful old software on there after some 20 years using QNX at work. One of these days I will port it to Linux, but time being the main thing I don't have enough of...
Well, when the computer boots, it's Scientific Linux 6. When I have to run that one program, I start XP in a virtual machine. The computer itself isn't running Windows, only the VIRTUAL machine is. So sue me! :-)
This is me, sticking my tongue out and and giving you a raspberry... :->...
The process of doing a continuous migration from Win1 to Win7 is, in my opinion, either crazy, futile, or both! But I give him credit for doing it! :-)
Man, this person is a confirmed hard core masochist! Arrrrgh! If he's married, my sympathies to his wire/partner! Whenever I run Windows, I cringe and run screaming back to my Linux systems. Unfortunately, there is ONE program that I have to use that ONLY runs on Windows, so I run it on an XP virtual machine on my Scientific Linux 6 (RHEL6) workstation, or my Ubuntu laptop when I'm on the road.
:-)
FWIW, we have something like 13 computers in our house, and not one of them runs MS software! My wife has a couple of Apple Mac Pro laptops, a Sony Vaio running Scientific Linux, and a netbook running Ubuntu. I have an 8 core workstation running SL6, a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.10, an older workstation running Gentoo, an ever older 486 workstation running QNX 4.0, and two Nexus One Android phones. Then there is assorted other stuff (Palm Pilots, iPods, iPhones, etc). I guess you could call our house "Windowless"!
This butthead should be in rehab, not running a "serious" security company...