The flakes of skin coming off your body are "waste" being shed into the environment, harvesting them would not require a warrant. The supreme court ruled that cops could view IR spectrum radiation from your house to determine if there are grow lights in your basement. The rationale being that the IR radiation is "waste" heat being released into the environment so collecting it was not considered violating your privacy.
Sad but true.
While I feel the threat of terrorism is seriously overblown, it might seem reasonable to use these in airports to search for explosives. However, the potential for this device for searching for drugs underscores the urgent need to completely eliminate the insanity of Prohibition.
"Stealth Mode" means a startup company that is keeping everything they do secret, in an attempt to surprise the market and thus gain competitive advantage. It isn't related to their methods of contducting scans, but to the purpose.
For months/years nobody really knew what Transmeta was up to and only public patent filings gave any clues. They were in "Stealth Mode"...
I loved the NextStep/OpenStep OS and environment, but it's sad this effort fizzled despite it's promise. And they want to try again ?
OS-X is the evolution of NeXTStep/OpenStep. It's the same OS, except with an OS independent abstraction layer (CoreFoundation), a newer, better Windowing system (Quartz), a better driver achitecture, Mac compatibility, and more. Oh yeah, and will have zillions more users and developers compared to the NeXT days.
"Opaque folders", isn't this really much like a.tar / tar.gz / zip whatever?. I think MacOS 7-8 had something like - like "baskets"(sp?) of fonts etc. New concept? Don't think so - Anyhow I think they did a very good job - and they absolutely deserve any fame they can get from it. Btw! I got the dibs on the first graphical kernel panic!
No it's not like a tar/zip bundle. It's just a directory but the Finder treats it as if it were just a file. You are right, it's not a new concept as it has been part of the NeXT operating system since at least 2.0 (which came out in late 1990). It's probably been in there since the first version of NeXTStep which came out in 88/89.
also, when NeXT's panic they pop up a little "window" in the middle of the screen that says "panic!" and shows the current register values. Of course, you can't do much from there except hook up a remote debugger or reboot. I haven't been able to make OS-X panic yet though I haven't tried very hard.
For that matter, is it really BSD underneath? They don't mention Mach at all. Was the NeXT stuff dumped completely?
Yes, Mac OS-X is basically the evolution of the NeXT operating system. The shipping "OS-X Server," is basically Rhapsody/OpenStep 5.0. Many radical changes have been made since X-Server.
It does have Mach and 4.4 BSD at the bottom. You can download all of the source to this, known as Darwin, from the Apple web site. It's the same source being used in OS-X. Since OS-X is still 'alpha' I'm not sure how current it is, but they are making efforts to keep it up to date with what is currently shipping.
The important thing to remember is that despite having a Mach/BSD core, Apple stresses that it is a BadIdea(*TM) to write anything that relies on Mach or BSD interfaces. Apple has created an operating system independent abstraction layer on top of Mach/BSD known as "CoreFoundation". CoreFoundation provides basic operating system services such as process control, file system access, networking access, etc... and also provides primitives used for foundation level API's such as string handling and file package stuff.
Built on top of CoreFoundation are all of the NeXT frameworks such as Cocoa (formerly AppKit), Foundation, EOF, etc... as well as Quartz. Also built on top of CoreFoundation is Carbon (the legacy MacOS "toolboxes"). Apps built to the Carbon API's will run on either MacOS 9 or X! There is also "Classic" which is an emulator for old apps that use the old Mac Toolbox API's. Any existing ISV's are strongly encouraged to port their apps to Carbon. Classic is for old orphaned apps that people still need to run (but can't port to Carbon since they aren't Open Source).
So while Apple is building OS-X on top of Mach/BSD, they are not tied to it. They can port everything to a different OS with relatively little pain. Apps will just recompile unless they do sneaky stuff like access Mach or BSD api's directcly. Even drivers will be semi-portable since Apple has a very advanced driver achitecture known as "IO Kit"...
Mac OS-X is way cool, Linux folks would be wise to learn more about it and borrow the better features. I would especially look at the Framework system which are the coolest shared libraries around.
UI design (like law) is one of those things that everyone thinks they know something about it, but the fact is that most people know next to nothing. This is especially endemic among Marketeers. Many shops that do large web sites relegate all frontend and UI decisions to Marketing when they know close to nothing at all about it. Then the engineers, some of which might have years of experience and have read scientific papers, are chastised for arguing or refusing to implement the bone-headed decisions made by the Marketroids.
Unlike a lot of people who like to talk about how Dvorak isn't that much better than Qwerty, I actually use Dvorak. I've been using Dvorak since Oct '93 actually... I don't really type faster than I did on Qwerty but my hands sure thank me. The layout of Dvorak means much less reaching and awkward finger positions than Qwerty. My hands don't complain they way they used to with Qwerty. When I am forced to use Qwerty (usually when in single user mode or beta operating systems that don't currently have good dvorak support), it is painfully obvious how bad a layout Qwerty is. It puts commonly used letters in hard to reach places and many common pairs of letters are much more difficult to type, are on the same hand, etc...
The reason words are usually left out is that it makes it less expensive to internationalize a product, but that's at the expense of usability.
Apps written with Cocoa on OS-X are very easy to internationalize (assuming you have a clue and write them properly). In fact, your end-users can internationalize them without access to the source code. As long as you don't do anything dumb like hard-code any text messages. End users can even readjust controls and other UI elements to accomodate longer/shorter words in different languages.
They got this stuff from OpenStep. Some of the old OpenStep software companies (like Stone Design) offered bounties (like free software) for people that translated their apps to other languages.
When individuals are trade music privately, and on a one-to-one basis, it (legally) is not piracy.
Sorry, the DMCA amended the commercial gain clause. Distribution of copyrighted works in expectation of receipt of other copyrighted works is now considered "commercial gain."
Please be aware that federal law was amended in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to change the definition of "commercial gain." Commercial gain is now also "the distribution of copyrighted sound recordings in expectation of receipt of other copyrighted sound recordings."
The powers that be got this language in to stop people that were actively trading music but not selling it. If you give someone a recording in expectation that they will send you a different one in return, then that is now considered commercial gain.
This may or may not affect Napster. When you download a file from someone else's computer with Napster, there is no expectation that you will return the favor and upload something back. In fact, you can't do that at all. The protocol is one-way.
Indeed, MacOS could arguably be described as NeXTStep 5.0 with a MacOS look-and-feel.
Actually, Mac OS-X is more like OpenStep 6.0. Rhapsody, which was OpenStep 4 with a Mac UI slapped on could be considered OpenStep 5.0.
Mac OS-X has been significantly reworked since Rhapsody. It has a completely new window system (Quartz, DPDF), a new GUI (Aqua), a new OS abstraction layer (CoreFoundation) that allows Classic and Carbon compatibility (and the possibility to port everything to another OS), HFS+ filesystem as native, and much much more.
Either way, the kernel of MacOS X is indeed a Mach kernel, and it's safe to say that usability was not the first priority when that thing was built.;-)
Who cares? Users certainly don't care as the kernel is totally invisible to them. Developers don't care as there is no need to touch any Mach or BSD specific stuff when writing applications for OS-X (on either Cocoa or Carbon). The only people who care are geeks who think the kernel actually makes a spit of difference to anyone aside from the people that actually work on the OS services.
Also, I'd be interested to see what happens if SeaLand's sovereignty ever is contested in a
courtroom, or what will happen if a government does order their communications links cut off.
Read the Sealand website again. A ship from the British tax collection agency (Exise) tried to go to Sealand and was fired upon. Prince Roy was eventually hauled into court on tax and gun charges and the court ruled that England had no jurisdiction in Sealand, giving them de-facto recognition of sovereignty.
Metallica still supports their fans taping and trading their live concerts. They have mentioned numerous times in their press releases that they are only after people trading their officially released material and continue to support live taping. Burris
The most important thing, and I can't emphasize this enough, is that these guys have a system. This is not some theoretical, pie-in-the-sky wouldn't-it-be-nice dream, like the XOR business was. They have the details and mechanics of publishing, retrieval, and updating worked out. You may read the paper yourself if you don't believe me.
Of equal importance is these guys know what they are doing. Avi Rubin has a reputation in the academic crypto community. Crypto is one of those things that every programmer thinks they know enough about it, but it is a very involved and subtle art. It takes years of study and experience to design protocols that can withstand attack from real cryptanalysis.
NTFS works the same way. Preserves case but not case sensitive. Sure, it's annoying, but it's not that big of a deal and it makes OS-X compatible with all of the legacy Macs as well as NT/Win2k desktops.
So far the only problem I have encountered with this is building Python. It trys to pop the compiled "python" binary into the top level directory where there also lies a "Python" directory. A few hacks of the Makefile to change the Python directory to something else and all is well. I'm sure future distributions of Python won't have that problem.
My only gripe is that the statement about pdf. This is a closed,and with-held format. while every word processor worth a damn will read and parse rtf exactly. so rtf is the truely "cross-platform" document format. We do not need all the other crap that is crammed into the documents.
Not so, as someone who exclusively used a NeXT for years, which was based on RTF, I can say authoritatively that not all RTF's are the same. I had problems with RTF on the NeXT and in Microsoft apps (they even wrote the spec). In any event, RTF doesn't have page layout features so it is not comparable to PDF.
Now, if the word processor manufacturers would get off their butts and let the software read/write Postscript... this would be a true cross-platform, program indipendant, junk-rich document format. but alas... most word processor programmers are dumb as a stump.
PDF ***IS*** PostScript, without the interpreted language parts. It has the same imaging model, which is why it is so good. It also has a well defined text mechanism, which allows searchable text. That was one of the main problems with PostScript, you couldn't easily parse the text out of it.
Cryptonomicon was partially inspired by the Cypherpunks mailing list and Tim May's Cyphernomicon (which were inspired by many sources, include previous SF). Havenco's Ryan Lackey and Sameer Parekh (and probably others) were early Cypherpunks participants.
My first question is slightly silly, but did this idea arrive as a result of Cryptonomicon?
Uh no, Stephensen took many ideas for Cryptonomicon from the Cypherpunks mailing list (which took ideas from many sources, even SF), of which the people involved with Havenco were early participants (Ryan Lackey, Sameer Parekh).
Many artists are also suing Napster and anyone else who either trades, or facilitates the trading of illegal mp3s.
These artists are suing the wrong people. The authors of Napster are no more responsible for the actions of their users than Xerox, Cannon, Mita, et. al. are for illegal photocopies.
Slashdot Mirror
Sad but true.
While I feel the threat of terrorism is seriously overblown, it might seem reasonable to use these in airports to search for explosives. However, the potential for this device for searching for drugs underscores the urgent need to completely eliminate the insanity of Prohibition.
Burris
For months/years nobody really knew what Transmeta was up to and only public patent filings gave any clues. They were in "Stealth Mode" ...
Burris
Burris
Burris
also, when NeXT's panic they pop up a little "window" in the middle of the screen that says "panic!" and shows the current register values. Of course, you can't do much from there except hook up a remote debugger or reboot. I haven't been able to make OS-X panic yet though I haven't tried very hard.
Burris
It does have Mach and 4.4 BSD at the bottom. You can download all of the source to this, known as Darwin, from the Apple web site. It's the same source being used in OS-X. Since OS-X is still 'alpha' I'm not sure how current it is, but they are making efforts to keep it up to date with what is currently shipping.
The important thing to remember is that despite having a Mach/BSD core, Apple stresses that it is a BadIdea(*TM) to write anything that relies on Mach or BSD interfaces. Apple has created an operating system independent abstraction layer on top of Mach/BSD known as "CoreFoundation". CoreFoundation provides basic operating system services such as process control, file system access, networking access, etc... and also provides primitives used for foundation level API's such as string handling and file package stuff.
Built on top of CoreFoundation are all of the NeXT frameworks such as Cocoa (formerly AppKit), Foundation, EOF, etc... as well as Quartz. Also built on top of CoreFoundation is Carbon (the legacy MacOS "toolboxes"). Apps built to the Carbon API's will run on either MacOS 9 or X! There is also "Classic" which is an emulator for old apps that use the old Mac Toolbox API's. Any existing ISV's are strongly encouraged to port their apps to Carbon. Classic is for old orphaned apps that people still need to run (but can't port to Carbon since they aren't Open Source).
So while Apple is building OS-X on top of Mach/BSD, they are not tied to it. They can port everything to a different OS with relatively little pain. Apps will just recompile unless they do sneaky stuff like access Mach or BSD api's directcly. Even drivers will be semi-portable since Apple has a very advanced driver achitecture known as "IO Kit"...
Mac OS-X is way cool, Linux folks would be wise to learn more about it and borrow the better features. I would especially look at the Framework system which are the coolest shared libraries around.
Burris
Burris
Burris
They got this stuff from OpenStep. Some of the old OpenStep software companies (like Stone Design) offered bounties (like free software) for people that translated their apps to other languages.
Burris
This was specifically aimed at traders.
Burris
The powers that be got this language in to stop people that were actively trading music but not selling it. If you give someone a recording in expectation that they will send you a different one in return, then that is now considered commercial gain.
This may or may not affect Napster. When you download a file from someone else's computer with Napster, there is no expectation that you will return the favor and upload something back. In fact, you can't do that at all. The protocol is one-way.
Just something to think about.
Burris
If you went to the South by Southwest music industry conference in Austin the last few years you could see this happening with the music execs:
'98: "Hmm, this MP3 thing looks interesting. Will it catch on? What could we do with it? Will it cannabilize CD sales? What about piracy?"
'99: "SDMI. That's what we'll do. We'll sell our music encoded with SDMI. That will prevent piracy and we're sure to make a mint."
'00: "Shit. Napster. Gnutella. We're fucked. What are we going to do??"
Burris
Mac OS-X has been significantly reworked since Rhapsody. It has a completely new window system (Quartz, DPDF), a new GUI (Aqua), a new OS abstraction layer (CoreFoundation) that allows Classic and Carbon compatibility (and the possibility to port everything to another OS), HFS+ filesystem as native, and much much more.
Who cares? Users certainly don't care as the kernel is totally invisible to them. Developers don't care as there is no need to touch any Mach or BSD specific stuff when writing applications for OS-X (on either Cocoa or Carbon). The only people who care are geeks who think the kernel actually makes a spit of difference to anyone aside from the people that actually work on the OS services.Burris
Metallica still supports their fans taping and trading their live concerts. They have mentioned numerous times in their press releases that they are only after people trading their officially released material and continue to support live taping. Burris
Burris
NTFS works the same way. Preserves case but not case sensitive. Sure, it's annoying, but it's not that big of a deal and it makes OS-X compatible with all of the legacy Macs as well as NT/Win2k desktops.
So far the only problem I have encountered with this is building Python. It trys to pop the compiled "python" binary into the top level directory where there also lies a "Python" directory. A few hacks of the Makefile to change the Python directory to something else and all is well. I'm sure future distributions of Python won't have that problem.
Burris
Silly, that's what strong crypto is for!
Burris
(Of course, you can't get strong crypto from MSFT)
Burris
Burris
You can thank prohibition and pressure from the DEA for that.
Burris
Is this surprising, considering the USA is the state that brought you the Clipper Chip?
Burris
Burris
Burris