After having used OS X PB (none of the nice new developer builds. sigh.) extensively on my year-old iMac (400MHz G3, 512MB RAM), I can't trust you. It's been plenty fast for me, even in Classic. Although I would doubtless consider certain things suboptimal, as expected in a beta, barely useable would have to be FUD, troll or exaggeration. The *other* possibility, I suppose, would be misconfiguration. With the beta, if you didn't instlall it on a freshly formatted partition, performance suffered very visibly. Also, if you are hacking around, following tips posted in forums, etc. and not familiar with NeXT and BSD, it certainly is possible to hose your setup... I guess this is true of any OS though. ymmv- pétard
To avoid an object lesson to Adobe in how obfuscation != encryption, it should not be compiled in by default. If Adobe were to learn this lesson, future formats/revisions of this format could become difficult or impossible to implement in F/free software. Good middle ground would be to include the patch as a compile-time option, but don't compile it in to the binaries that Debian distributes themselves. That way, people who want to circumvent the copy control can, but the average user won't.
FWIW, I can't think of a single copy protected PDF I've encountered anyway. How often does this come up in the average case?
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job. Right now, on my iMac I've replaced my LinuxPPC partitions with Mac OS X Public Beta partitions... for running an iMac, it's absolutely the best option around, though I still do reboot into the classic OS for certain things (faxing, etc.). On my x86 box, however, it's a different story entirely. FreeBSD is the right tool for that box. OpenBSD is the right tool for my server. On my laptop, I prefer Mandrake at the moment. Once OS X is final and I find myself not needing to boot into classic, though, I think I may reload LinuxPPC onto the iMac and start dual-booting again for 1 simple reason-- so I can make certain that patches I submit as a result of porting utilities to OS X don't break Liunx builds!
Finally, part of the appeal of OS X for me was summed up quite nicely by Linus Torvalds some time ago:
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote
their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying
to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you
finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-
nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just
for you:-)
./configure; make; make install
has gotten too easy on Linux!
This makes me wonder if I really want one. Sure, this bug's only with the chipset, not with the chip itself, and it only affects a small percentage of users. I would not be one of them, to be sure. Just the same, this just seems to be one more in a series of errata surrounding this chip and, indeed, this company's products. It seems that poor QA continues within Intel, and they don't even provide best-of-class performance anymore.
Because of the bug, consumers may experience slow processing or data corruption if they connect a second monitor or an additional graphics card through one of the PCI expansion slots in a Pentium 4 computer.
Given the QA track record thus far, is there anything else lingering that might cause "slow processing or data corruption" yet is branded minor? I don't think my next purchase is likely to contain this company's products.
Go purchase hard drive of your choice from one of the participating manufacturers, before this technology is implemented
Go purchase an identical drive after the technology is implemented. I'd lay 10 to 1 odds that the only difference between the 2 will be the controller boards.
Use dd or something similar to dump the "protected" sectors (containing the keys in the factory set non-usable portion of the drive) from the "compliant" drive to a "non-compliant" one.
There. Now you have the keys. Modify your driver to copy no matter what. No HD can come with an EULA, and you run a Free OS, right? Then it's legal too:-)
IANAL. YMMV!
They feel the need b/c movies come out so late there. They are often on video overseas by the time they hit theaters in France. I don't think that justifies it, but that's why.
According to the article in libé, Zone 1 DVD's are only banned during the period that videos are banned, and they reduced that.
The French have a law stating that movies cannot be sold on video (OR DVD) for 6 months after they hit the theaters. It used to be 9! They cannot appear on pay per view for 9 months and on premium movie channels (Canal+) for 1 year. This law simply bans selling Zone 1 DVDs of the movie while the ban is in effect. These fell into a loophole before.
Honestly, it's no worse than the old law was! A little better even, since the time has been reduced. The real "accros" will be able to get their fix over the net anyway.
ORBS doesn't have the authority to probe *MY* machine. Moreover, if they try, *MY* machine is configured such that their probe will likely slow down enormously
There are two techniques I can think of for fighting this evil business practice:
Take your business elsewhere, and tell them why.
Refuse to carry their traffic.
(1) doesn't apply to me. I am not one of their customers, nor is my company. (2) is very difficult. Can anyone afford to reject all traffic from ISP's this size? I certainly can't. I get far too much legitimate traffic from them to do that without a sever degradation in my service. So how do we fight this one WITHOUT LEGISLATION? (I'm not 100% sure, but legislation sounds like a losing proposition to me!)
As I was sitting there reading this, it struck me that the technology involved wasn't what frightens me. They're almost certainly nothing new or advanced. What scared me was the stated intent at the end of the article:
Whatever happens to Actis, the completion of the map is prob-ably the first big step in the quest to control internet anarchy.
The quest to control internet anarchy is indeed frightening. When an entity wants to quash a viewpoint (or a group of people), all that is necessary is to declare them "dangerous". In most cases, that's not a stretch. The ideas that the powers that be want to control most often are just that; they're very dangerous to the powers that be. They threaten the status quo. Just now, it looks like they' re not doing anything terribly frightening. They've refused to use the technology to bend to the whims of certain oppressive governments, thus far. The question remains, though. Do you want any single entity to have the power to say what's "undesirable" on the internet?
--
Donating to the EFF now...
Some enhancements can't be made to existing code!
on
Shortcomings Of OSS?
·
· Score: 2
In many cases the itch you want to scratch isn't a particular feature but rather an architectural issue. It can either be a technical architecture issue, a social architecture issue or both. Even if a particular piece of software you'd like to extend is "Open Source", it's very possible that you don't have adequate freedom to do so, or that the licensing of the existing project doesn't protect against your code being taken, enhanced, moved into a closed source project and not returned to you. Sometimes another programmer has achieved a feature set you'd like to expand but the technical architecture of the software makes the enhancements you have in mind impossible, so you have to start from scratch. Even though starting from scratch is sometimes necessary with "Open Source" software, the situation is still better than with closed source. You get a sample implementation of a program which you have the option of either extending or using as a learning tool for creating your own from scratch. Looks like a win for the open-source model to me:-)
Even more proof that telemarketers are scum. Visit The anti-telemarketer's source to get information on how to get your revenge and have some fun with AT&T.
$30?!?! You're excited about $30?! A company I worked for paid > $300/seat to beta test Windows NT a few years back... only M$ had the nerve to call it a release version! At least Apple will give me the $30 off the release version when I purchase it, and it will still be cheaper than NT.
I thought the flame filter was an interesting new feature, but ESP, or Eudora Sharing Protocol looks even more interesting. From the site:
Eudora Sharing Protocol (ESP) is a true peer-to-peer file sharing technology that lets multiple Eudora users automatically share the same set of files and keep them in sync on their own hard drives. Share pictures and audio files with friends and family, lecture notes with a classmate, or business proposals with clients.
<snip> No IT support or server is required. ESP manages files purely on a peer-to-peer basis, using Eudora email as a transport.
So what I want to know is: will the flame filter pick up your angry letters to Lars when he sues Eudora over ESP?
This makes me happier that Mozilla decided to do a ground-up rewrite of Netscape's code. If, as the author maintains, the Open Source development process provides the best framework for avoiding this sort of bug and software that's "falling apart at the seams" then it seems to me that it's worth the wait to have a browser that's
Developed in this fashion
A ground-up rewrite
If the existing codebase was such a steaming pile of dung as the author says (and I believe it was) then IMO it's worth the wait to get it done right.
I *WISH* the market for PC games would be devastated. I say this tongue-in-cheek, but I am half serious. If the PC game market weren't so strong, maybe I could find a really good 2D graphics card without paying big bucks for 3D acceleration that I never use. </RANT> -- (a frustrated video card shopper)
Disks are duplicated on a variety of industrial strength, quality focused systems. Most of these systems are UNIX-based. The UNIX-based duplication systems used in manufacturing are impervious to MS-DOS-based, Windows- based, and Macintosh-based viruses.
We all knew the truth. When M$ wants an "industrial strength, quality focused system" they don't turn to their own products. Why should I?
This really does mirror what RMS describes. Frightening. Here's what VitalBook's FAQ says:
3. Who can use VitalViewerTMand can I share VitalViewerTM with a friend or with upperclassmen?
Only registered students and faculty are legally allowed to use the VitalViewerTM application or the VitalBookTM DVD. Any unauthorized use or distribution of the VitalViewerTM software is a major Copyright Violation and is subject to legal action. Please don't make us do that.
Wow. I used to just laugh at some of RMS's rhetoric. I think I can take him much more seriously now.
IIRC, the only way to flash-update BIOS on many motherboards and PCI cards is to boot into DOS mode to run the utility. If M$ provides no way to do this and doesn't even include a boot disk that allows for it, people who purchase new systems could have a hard time applying these manufacturer-supplied fixes. Talk about shooting themselves and many hardware mfrs in the feet. I guess FreeDOS can fill this gap, though.
petard
-- Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
It seems to me that the Dialectizer got in trouble some time back for letting people run URLs through a filter like this. Could these guys get in the same trouble?
-- Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
Read the article... the card was pulled from the spotlight at the show and ATI was pulled from the keynote. When the Radeon is ready to go (09/2000) it will ship with the computers. They wouldn't damage their product to spite ATI but still put another ATI board in there. It's simple: Steve thought ATI stole some of his thunder with their leak, so he declined to give any to them at the Expo.
"Intel's Speedstep technology allows lower clock speed and lower wattage. Surely what Transmeta is offering is not radically different to that. It will all depend on pricing," he said.
According to Intel's PIII processor thermal design guide, the mobile PIII requires up to 19W at 733 MHz. An activity like playing a DVD, around 3W. With Crusoe, playing a DVD requires 1W!! 66% savings is not radically different?!?! Real world benchmarks suggest similar savings for various applications. Intel has a ways to go to render this difference "not significant", and to deliver all day battery life.
It seems like anyone can call themselves an "analyst" these days... Perhaps his only sources were Intel marketing materials?
-- Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
Macintosh users would then have to be blocked, because of a piece of software called Apple Data Detectors which permits any text to be opened as a link by right-clicking. (or control-clicking if they're stuck with that fscking hockey-puck #$%*@! 1-button mouse) Surely other OSes have comparable software available...
petard -- Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air!
Slashdot Mirror
After having used OS X PB (none of the nice new developer builds. sigh.) extensively on my year-old iMac (400MHz G3, 512MB RAM), I can't trust you. It's been plenty fast for me, even in Classic. Although I would doubtless consider certain things suboptimal, as expected in a beta, barely useable would have to be FUD, troll or exaggeration. The *other* possibility, I suppose, would be misconfiguration. With the beta, if you didn't instlall it on a freshly formatted partition, performance suffered very visibly. Also, if you are hacking around, following tips posted in forums, etc. and not familiar with NeXT and BSD, it certainly is possible to hose your setup... I guess this is true of any OS though.
ymmv-
pétard
To avoid an object lesson to Adobe in how obfuscation != encryption, it should not be compiled in by default. If Adobe were to learn this lesson, future formats/revisions of this format could become difficult or impossible to implement in F/free software. Good middle ground would be to include the patch as a compile-time option, but don't compile it in to the binaries that Debian distributes themselves. That way, people who want to circumvent the copy control can, but the average user won't.
FWIW, I can't think of a single copy protected PDF I've encountered anyway. How often does this come up in the average case?
Reading the post article called some of Richard Stallman's writing to mind, specifically The Right to Read. This must be stopped. Now.
so I can make certain that patches I submit as a result of porting utilities to OS X don't break Liunx builds!
Finally, part of the appeal of OS X for me was summed up quite nicely by Linus Torvalds some time ago:
has gotten too easy on Linux!
This makes me wonder if I really want one. Sure, this bug's only with the chipset, not with the chip itself, and it only affects a small percentage of users. I would not be one of them, to be sure. Just the same, this just seems to be one more in a series of errata surrounding this chip and, indeed, this company's products. It seems that poor QA continues within Intel, and they don't even provide best-of-class performance anymore.
Given the QA track record thus far, is there anything else lingering that might cause "slow processing or data corruption" yet is branded minor? I don't think my next purchase is likely to contain this company's products.Oops. There should have been a step between 2 and 3:
Put the controller board from the old drive onto the new drive!
--
petard
There. Now you have the keys. Modify your driver to copy no matter what. No HD can come with an EULA, and you run a Free OS, right? Then it's legal too
IANAL. YMMV!
--
petard
They feel the need b/c movies come out so late there. They are often on video overseas by the time they hit theaters in France. I don't think that justifies it, but that's why.
pétard
The French have a law stating that movies cannot be sold on video (OR DVD) for 6 months after they hit the theaters. It used to be 9! They cannot appear on pay per view for 9 months and on premium movie channels (Canal+) for 1 year. This law simply bans selling Zone 1 DVDs of the movie while the ban is in effect. These fell into a loophole before.
Honestly, it's no worse than the old law was! A little better even, since the time has been reduced. The real "accros" will be able to get their fix over the net anyway.
pétard
ORBS doesn't have the authority to probe *MY* machine. Moreover, if they try, *MY* machine is configured such that their probe will likely slow down enormously
- Take your business elsewhere, and tell them why.
- Refuse to carry their traffic.
(1) doesn't apply to me. I am not one of their customers, nor is my company. (2) is very difficult. Can anyone afford to reject all traffic from ISP's this size? I certainly can't. I get far too much legitimate traffic from them to do that without a sever degradation in my service. So how do we fight this one WITHOUT LEGISLATION? (I'm not 100% sure, but legislation sounds like a losing proposition to me!)The quest to control internet anarchy is indeed frightening. When an entity wants to quash a viewpoint (or a group of people), all that is necessary is to declare them "dangerous". In most cases, that's not a stretch. The ideas that the powers that be want to control most often are just that; they're very dangerous to the powers that be. They threaten the status quo. Just now, it looks like they' re not doing anything terribly frightening. They've refused to use the technology to bend to the whims of certain oppressive governments, thus far. The question remains, though. Do you want any single entity to have the power to say what's "undesirable" on the internet?
--
Donating to the EFF now...
In many cases the itch you want to scratch isn't a particular feature but rather an architectural issue. It can either be a technical architecture issue, a social architecture issue or both. Even if a particular piece of software you'd like to extend is "Open Source", it's very possible that you don't have adequate freedom to do so, or that the licensing of the existing project doesn't protect against your code being taken, enhanced, moved into a closed source project and not returned to you. Sometimes another programmer has achieved a feature set you'd like to expand but the technical architecture of the software makes the enhancements you have in mind impossible, so you have to start from scratch. Even though starting from scratch is sometimes necessary with "Open Source" software, the situation is still better than with closed source. You get a sample implementation of a program which you have the option of either extending or using as a learning tool for creating your own from scratch. Looks like a win for the open-source model to me :-)
Even more proof that telemarketers are scum. Visit The anti-telemarketer's source to get information on how to get your revenge and have some fun with AT&T.
YMMV!
--petard
$30?!?! You're excited about $30?! A company I worked for paid > $300/seat to beta test Windows NT a few years back... only M$ had the nerve to call it a release version! At least Apple will give me the $30 off the release version when I purchase it, and it will still be cheaper than NT.
"HTML needs a <RANT> tag." --Alan Cox
So what I want to know is: will the flame filter pick up your angry letters to Lars when he sues Eudora over ESP?
This makes me happier that Mozilla decided to do a ground-up rewrite of Netscape's code. If, as the author maintains, the Open Source development process provides the best framework for avoiding this sort of bug and software that's "falling apart at the seams" then it seems to me that it's worth the wait to have a browser that's
- Developed in this fashion
- A ground-up rewrite
If the existing codebase was such a steaming pile of dung as the author says (and I believe it was) then IMO it's worth the wait to get it done right.I *WISH* the market for PC games would be devastated. I say this tongue-in-cheek, but I am half serious. If the PC game market weren't so strong, maybe I could find a really good 2D graphics card without paying big bucks for 3D acceleration that I never use.
</RANT>
--
(a frustrated video card shopper)
We all knew the truth. When M$ wants an "industrial strength, quality focused system" they don't turn to their own products. Why should I?
This really does mirror what RMS describes. Frightening. Here's what VitalBook's FAQ says:
Wow. I used to just laugh at some of RMS's rhetoric. I think I can take him much more seriously now.
And I was in a bad mood to begin with today...IIRC, the only way to flash-update BIOS on many motherboards and PCI cards is to boot into DOS mode to run the utility. If M$ provides no way to do this and doesn't even include a boot disk that allows for it, people who purchase new systems could have a hard time applying these manufacturer-supplied fixes. Talk about shooting themselves and many hardware mfrs in the feet. I guess FreeDOS can fill this gap, though.
petard
--
Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
It seems to me that the Dialectizer got in trouble some time back for letting people run URLs through a filter like this. Could these guys get in the same trouble?
--
Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
Read the article... the card was pulled from the spotlight at the show and ATI was pulled from the keynote. When the Radeon is ready to go (09/2000) it will ship with the computers. They wouldn't damage their product to spite ATI but still put another ATI board in there. It's simple: Steve thought ATI stole some of his thunder with their leak, so he declined to give any to them at the Expo.
According to Intel's PIII processor thermal design guide, the mobile PIII requires up to 19W at 733 MHz. An activity like playing a DVD, around 3W. With Crusoe, playing a DVD requires 1W!! 66% savings is not radically different?!?! Real world benchmarks suggest similar savings for various applications. Intel has a ways to go to render this difference "not significant", and to deliver all day battery life.
It seems like anyone can call themselves an "analyst" these days... Perhaps his only sources were Intel marketing materials?
--
Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air.
Macintosh users would then have to be blocked, because of a piece of software called Apple Data Detectors which permits any text to be opened as a link by right-clicking. (or control-clicking if they're stuck with that fscking hockey-puck #$%*@! 1-button mouse) Surely other OSes have comparable software available...
petard
--
Il vaut mieux avoir l'air sans l'effet que l'effet sans l'air!