I'm running a default 1.5.0_07 build on PPC OS X, with the MRJ plugin for Firefox, and I was watching the Java console when I tried his sample evil popup; I've put the stack trace below, but the gist is that
it wouldn't let the window be always on top, and indeed it wasn't; I could use my desktop and other apps pretty normally. This isn't the default security policy?
~Jesse
Wed Aug 08 11:57:08 EDT 2007 JEP creating applet FullScreen (http://evil.hackademix.net/fullscreen/classes/) java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.awt.AWTPermission setWindowAlwaysOnTop)
at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission (AccessControlContext.java:264)
at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Acc essController.java:427)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Security Manager.java:532)
at java.awt.Window.setAlwaysOnTop(Window.java:1358)
at FullScreen.start(FullScreen.java:30)
at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(AppletPanel.java:418)
at jep.AppletFramePanel.run(AppletFramePanel.java:176 )
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:613)
Charva is an curses-based, Java text UI toolkit that is modeled after Swing. If you know Java and Swing, using Charva is quite straightforward, and won't require you to muck around writing your own text widgets.
You install everything on one machine, and then prep it for a transfer using MS Sysprep tools. Create a disk image with Acronis, and then, when the time comes to restore it to dissimilar hardware, the restoration program will allow you to replace drivers and even the HAL.
It is about the apps! The consumer will ask, "Will this Mac or Linux box run all those spyware programs I'm used to?"
But really, in the real world, people buy things for style as well as function, and for a computer the OS is responsible for a good part of that experience.
> So all this OS brand zealotry is really like > saying you buy only a certain brand of car for the > dashboard
A large number of people buy cars because they want others to see that their car has a certain logo on it, and they pay a premium for it. If running Linux makes people think that you're a computer whiz, or a Mac makes them view you as an aesthete, then those machines will sell too.
Not everyone is a pure utilitarian.
Are hackers quick to forsake open source?
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 1
The new Macs are beautiful toys, but I will never make a serious investment of time developing or customizing the Mac, because the system as a whole does not provide the potential for learning, user empowerment, and security against obsolescence that are the pillars of open source software.
And I do not understand how so many technically-inclined hackers on this site can abandon those notions for something that "just works". Darwin is just an incomplete part of the Mac OS, and not the component that makes it different from its open-source brethren.
Let me address those points from above: 1. Let's say that I love how the Mac does something in Cocoa--can I look for myself how they did it, and thus become more knowledgable? No, it's closed. So I can just look at the pretty graphics like any other non-technical user. For whatever the warts of X.org, it is open for me to study and fix. 2. Which takes me to this point: I can potentially customize all of the open-source software that I use to suit my needs or whims. Having the freedom to do something--whether it be the modification of software that almost defines my usefulness to society in this age, or the right to privacy--is very important. The increasing ubiquity of software makes the former ability closer in worth to the latter each year. 3. Shall I put countless hours of effort into developing for a system--the Mac--that is completely intertwined with the fortunes of a single company? If Apple fails, I don't want my software to fall with them.
On one hand, there is a strong resistence to Java because of Sun's not-really-open implementation, and on the other a perfect eagerness to -advocate- a closed software system. I have a feeling that it was just the poor quality of Windows that drove these people to open-source OS's, rather than a spanning belief in their own technical worth and in the potential of open-source.
If smart hackers put their blood and sweat into programming for a system that is only available to the few in the first world who can afford a certain brand name, and if this invaluable knowledge becomes lost in future years if Apple becomes a memory, what a disservice to the intellectual vault of the world.
I have a 2002 Toyota Prius, and I consistently get above 50 mpg for both highway and city driving, which is a notch above the stated efficiency ratings. There are a number of factors that one needs to consider when reading a report like the one linked to:
1. The recommended PSI to which you inflate your tires has a lot of impact, perhaps 5-7 mpg, on the fuel efficiency, and Toyota recommends an inflation below what most efficiency-concerned Prius enthusiasts use.
2. One has to drive a hybrid differently than a normal car to get the best mileage. Almost counterintuitively, you have to accelerate quickly to get to your cruising speed, and then maintain that speed with very minor corrections. Or, in city driving with a lot of traffic, massage the accelerator so that you're mostly using the electric motor to start, and brake slowly so that the regenerative braking system can reclaim power, without needing the hydraulic brakes.
Someone who just sits in a hybrid without experience is going to get far worse mileage than a veteran driver.
I'm sure that there will be many comments to this story pointing out how the free software community is hypocritical, demanding enforcement of and adherence to the GPL, etc, while willfully circumventing the copyright measures of commercial companies; they will say that this is inconsistent, and shows base minds that just want everything for free (monitarily).
But there is consistency, just not with respect to copyright law. The belief that one should be able to use a good one has purchased in an unencumbered, "fair" manner, I--and many others here--believe stands on higher ground than copyrights. It is the definition of "fair" that is the gray area on which our current legal and technological battles broil. And this is why we can support the GPL while decrying measures like FairPlay, CSS, DRM, etc: the copyrights in only _some_ cases are at odds with our position on fairness.
MIT's Athena computing environment runs on Dell Linux boxes, Sun workstations, and a few IRIX machines, and accounts are granted to all students. These *nix machines, with the exception of a small media cluster, are the only public machines available.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm running a default 1.5.0_07 build on PPC OS X, with the MRJ plugin for Firefox, and I was watching the Java console when I tried his sample evil popup; I've put the stack trace below, but the gist is that
n (AccessControlContext.java:264)c essController.java:427)y Manager.java:532)6 )
java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.awt.AWTPermission setWindowAlwaysOnTop)
it wouldn't let the window be always on top, and indeed it wasn't; I could use my desktop and other apps pretty normally. This isn't the default security policy?
~Jesse
Wed Aug 08 11:57:08 EDT 2007 JEP creating applet FullScreen (http://evil.hackademix.net/fullscreen/classes/)
java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.awt.AWTPermission setWindowAlwaysOnTop)
at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermissio
at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Ac
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Securit
at java.awt.Window.setAlwaysOnTop(Window.java:1358)
at FullScreen.start(FullScreen.java:30)
at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(AppletPanel.java:418)
at jep.AppletFramePanel.run(AppletFramePanel.java:17
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:613)
Charva is an curses-based, Java text UI toolkit that is modeled after Swing. If you know Java and Swing, using Charva is quite straightforward, and won't require you to muck around writing your own text widgets.
Acronis Universal Restore.
You install everything on one machine, and then prep it for a transfer using MS Sysprep tools. Create a disk image with Acronis, and then, when the time comes to restore it to dissimilar hardware, the restoration program will allow you to replace drivers and even the HAL.
It is about the apps! The consumer will ask, "Will this Mac or Linux box run all those spyware programs I'm used to?"
But really, in the real world, people buy things for style as well as function, and for a computer the OS is responsible for a good part of that experience.
> So all this OS brand zealotry is really like
> saying you buy only a certain brand of car for the
> dashboard
A large number of people buy cars because they want others to see that their car has a certain logo on it, and they pay a premium for it. If running Linux makes people think that you're a computer whiz, or a Mac makes them view you as an aesthete, then those machines will sell too.
Not everyone is a pure utilitarian.
The new Macs are beautiful toys, but I will never make a serious investment of time developing or customizing the Mac, because the system as a whole does not provide the potential for learning, user empowerment, and security against obsolescence that are the pillars of open source software.
And I do not understand how so many technically-inclined hackers on this site can abandon those notions for something that "just works". Darwin is just an incomplete part of the Mac OS, and not the component that makes it different from its open-source brethren.
Let me address those points from above:
1. Let's say that I love how the Mac does something in Cocoa--can I look for myself how they did it, and thus become more knowledgable? No, it's closed. So I can just look at the pretty graphics like any other non-technical user. For whatever the warts of X.org, it is open for me to study and fix.
2. Which takes me to this point: I can potentially customize all of the open-source software that I use to suit my needs or whims. Having the freedom to do something--whether it be the modification of software that almost defines my usefulness to society in this age, or the right to privacy--is very important. The increasing ubiquity of software makes the former ability closer in worth to the latter each year.
3. Shall I put countless hours of effort into developing for a system--the Mac--that is completely intertwined with the fortunes of a single company? If Apple fails, I don't want my software to fall with them.
On one hand, there is a strong resistence to Java because of Sun's not-really-open implementation, and on the other a perfect eagerness to -advocate- a closed software system. I have a feeling that it was just the poor quality of Windows that drove these people to open-source OS's, rather than a spanning belief in their own technical worth and in the potential of open-source.
If smart hackers put their blood and sweat into programming for a system that is only available to the few in the first world who can afford a certain brand name, and if this invaluable knowledge becomes lost in future years if Apple becomes a memory, what a disservice to the intellectual vault of the world.
I have a 2002 Toyota Prius, and I consistently get above 50 mpg for both highway and city driving, which is a notch above the stated efficiency ratings. There are a number of factors that one needs to consider when reading a report like the one linked to:
1. The recommended PSI to which you inflate your tires has a lot of impact, perhaps 5-7 mpg, on the fuel efficiency, and Toyota recommends an inflation below what most efficiency-concerned Prius enthusiasts use.
2. One has to drive a hybrid differently than a normal car to get the best mileage. Almost counterintuitively, you have to accelerate quickly to get to your cruising speed, and then maintain that speed with very minor corrections. Or, in city driving with a lot of traffic, massage the accelerator so that you're mostly using the electric motor to start, and brake slowly so that the regenerative braking system can reclaim power, without needing the hydraulic brakes.
Someone who just sits in a hybrid without experience is going to get far worse mileage than a veteran driver.
I'm sure that there will be many comments to this story pointing out how the free software community is hypocritical, demanding enforcement of and adherence to the GPL, etc, while willfully circumventing the copyright measures of commercial companies; they will say that this is inconsistent, and shows base minds that just want everything for free (monitarily).
But there is consistency, just not with respect to copyright law. The belief that one should be able to use a good one has purchased in an unencumbered, "fair" manner, I--and many others here--believe stands on higher ground than copyrights. It is the definition of "fair" that is the gray area on which our current legal and technological battles broil. And this is why we can support the GPL while decrying measures like FairPlay, CSS, DRM, etc: the copyrights in only _some_ cases are at odds with our position on fairness.
Fortunately, there is an open source Java MP3 decoder, JavaLayer that I've found to work quite nicely.
MIT's Athena computing environment runs on Dell Linux boxes, Sun workstations, and a few IRIX machines, and accounts are granted to all students. These *nix machines, with the exception of a small media cluster, are the only public machines available.
The Byzantine fault tolerance described in the article sounds much like a paper
we read in an MIT systems course, from OSDI, 1999.
Linked Here