I hope Apple didn't spend too much time and effort on that, being that it only took a few hours for people to undo it. DRM is a pain. I don't particularily believe in downloading content I haven't paid for...
Slightly off topic, but I wonder how you feel about downloding content that was on broadcast TV. Take the show "Lost" for example. Lets say you missed it when it was broadcast. Now, you could have recorded it for free and stripped out the commercials. But you didn't for whatever reason. You could wait a year for the DVD to come out, but you don't want to wait. You could pay some "legit" online service for the convenience of downloading, but why should pay for something that was broadcast for free just yesterday? Is there anything wrong with downloading it or getting it from a friend?
Python doesn't have JIT. Well, it does if you use Psycho on i386, but stock python doesn't. YARV is at least an order of magnitude slower than stock python. We need to match that before we even think about JIT compiling. Would be nice if you could generate compiled (into bytecode).rb files. Unfortunately the development of YARV seems pretty slow.
On the other hand, the statelessness is what makes web applications possible. Lets say you have a web application that serves 100,000 different users during the course of an hour. Depending on the demands of your application, you might be able to support all of them on one server because the server doesn't have ot maintain a connection for each and every user for the entire duration of the session. The server just keeps a small bit of the state stored in a session and moves on to serving the next request. But if everyone has a stateful connection, you start running into trouble with resources. Even if nobody is actually DOING anything on the app, you've got these open connections.
I dunno, at some point I think we're going to have to ask ourselves if the web/browser is really the best way to get the kind of richness people are expencting from internet applications. By the tiem you add statefulness, better UI toolkits, better event model, etc, you don't really have a "browser" anymore. You just have a virtual machine and you find that you've just reinvented Java applets.
Yeah, too bad I haven't see an svn update to YARV trunk since sept. 1. And that update was pretty minor. Unless they're doing a lot of work outside of svn (doesn't make much sense), things are not looking too hot.
The problem with Jruby isn't performance, but limitations in the JVM. The JVM is very much taylored to Java. And Java and Ruby are different in very significant ways. YARV is probably going to be the official/default VM for Ruby. I'd rather see focus on making YARV better and faster. Although development seems pretty slow on YARV so I'm not holding my breath.
It really is too bad. I thouroughly enjoy programming in Ruby.. especially with Rails. But I just can't justify using Ruby outside of a low traffic web app because it is just too damn slow!
My own benchmarks of YARV for some particularly slow real world tasks such as referencing items in a hash show only a modest performance boost. For example, I am trying to read 35,000 records from an SQLite database into a Ruby Array and it takes 23 seconds. The query itself only takes 1 second, but iterating over the records from SQLite is what takes so much time. I've profiled it and everything. It is definitly the iteration over the ResultSet that is the problem. Using the latest YARV from SVN only gets me to about 15 seconds. Doing the exact same thing in Python only takes 1.5 seconds. So even with YARV, Ruby is still an order of magitude slower than similar interpreters/VMs. At least in my limited benchmarks.
Your biggest problem is going to be hardware support. AFAIK, FreeBSD only supports the Haupage PVR-250... and not very well. The last thing you need is a poorly supported tuner card. That will make or break a setup.
Wouldn't you build a set top box anyway? Why is it an either/or choice between Linux and FreeBSD? Install Linux on the Myth box and FreeBSD for your desktop. Whats the problem?
Except that access to Google isn't a life/death situation. I say block Google altogether instead of censoring it. At least if it is blocked completely, people will be more aware what their government is doing. If you just silently filter it, you are more easily fooled into thinking you are getting everything you want/need from the service. It is much more insidious that way.
Let's here it for community driven public endevours which are not bound by the necessity to make money. Corporations almost have to give in to censorship if the want to make money. Take money out of the equation and freedom wins.
On the subject of laptops, that's another thousand or so dollars per student. And that's not all. If the students get issued one laptop in high school, what use will a 4 year old laptop be to a senior (issued as a freshman)?
Assuming it still runs (hasn't been beaten to a pulp) it should serve just fine. I mean, a computer from 2002 isn't awesome today by any stretch, but it will run a browser, word processor, etc. The student may not *appreciate* having a 4 year old laptop, but it'll still be of use. Why would you want to teach students that laptops, and technology in general, are disposable? Make them take care of a laptop.
The current school systems are already being pumped cash,
Depends on where you go, I guess. In Chicago and Portland, where I've lived, public schools can barely afford to maintain their facilities and they're certainly not paying teachers much. While I don't think throwing money at the problem is an cure all, there *are* many public school systems that are sorely underfunded.
If you're running the mail servers for a business, how prudent is it to run a spam filter in the first place? While using something that relies on checking the content of the mail may be useful in getting rid of the most egregious spam, you don't want to block all items identified as spam. You can't run the risk of blocking your customers.
Well, the sender should get a notification if a message was blocked by an RBL. Same can be done with SpamAssassin+Amavisd. Send a bounceback for low scored spam and drop the most egregious. Unless your customers are particularly sensitive and/or irritable, it shouldn't be a disaster if there is a false positive now and then. The way I see it, users run about the same risk of accidently deleting an important email (i've done it) while manually trying to clean spam from their inbox (or even special spambox).
If you have to, have SpamAssassin archive all blocked spam.
Relax, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just making sure you are taking enough into consideration. You more or less just said "if emulation works well, we'd use it." I don't know what all you consider when it comes to "works well" or how much bias on your part might be involved. Also, even if it works well now, I'm still not sure it is a good long term plan. I mean, if you're only emulating as a hold-over because you know native solutions will be available soon, that is one thing, but if you plan on emulating indefinitely, then you better think twice. What happens when a new version of a critical piece of software comes out that you just "have to have" for whatever reason and it doesn't work in emulation even though the previous version worked flaulessly? Your boss isn't goign to like to hear that you can't upgrade because you've locked everyone into a platform that is different than the one your critical apps run on.
And incidentally, I don't care what's "best for users" other than making sure my users have a good, stable platform that lets them get their work done and keeps their productivity high. If you want Windows because you "like it", or so you can play FPS at work, well, that's not going to be a high priority for me.
Oh please. What ever gave you any indication that I like Windows or that I want to play FPS at work? I despise Windows (my computer at work is a Mac with Linux/OS X at home) and the only games I play are RPGs. And why not? I've got things running such that my job is only part time.:-P
For me, the real question is, how well do the apps I need run in my emulation environment? If they all run very well, then it may well be worth it, even if there are many.
Even if a particular application can be emulated well, that doesn't necessarily make it fully functional and useful. You also have to consider workflow. Don't underestimate how badly an emulated app can integrate with the rest of the system.. even if it seems to work well enough in and of itself. Windows and OS X are vastly different platforms. There can be printing issues (and there will be). There can be inter-application communication issues, i.e. opening up a document from email in an emulated app. As a general rule, people do not like to run apps in any kind of emulation. Look at how quickly "Classic" mode was phased out on Macs.
While YOU might like to admin OS X or Linux instead Windows, that isn't necessarily what is best for users. If you find that you have to emulate lots of apps, chances are that emulation is not a good idea.
I would like to be able to justify hardware upgrades by saying, "On PC #1 over a typical workday the user sees the hourglass icon X amount of time, but on new PC #2 he only sees it Y amount of time".
Could also be used to justify a switch to a proper desktop OS that doesn't spend much time at all giving the user an hour glass (or similar). Sure, OS X has a beachball, but even on a G4 I hardly see it. Question is, what are your using doing that they get an hour glass at all?
Yeah, well, Windows will never top the elegence of being able to drag an application to the "Applicaitons" folder to install, for example. The whole self-contained.app thing is genius (even if Apple didn't invent it). I never get a sense that my Mac is cluttered (besides the files on my Desktop, but that is my fault) like I do on Windows. I mean at the system level. There just isn't a tight enough correlation between the files that are in C:\Program Files, the icons in the Start menu, and the applications listed in Add/Remove Programs.
Why are there 3 totally different places where apps are listed? Why can't I uninstall a program by deleting its files from C:\Program Files? Why does everything need a special "uninstaller?" Sure, some programs are complex, but a lot aren't. If I just want to test a program/game out, why do I have to worry about all the places it is putting files? Why can't I delete/reset the preferences for a program by removing the corresponding Preferences file? In Windows, I have to open up the Registry and wade through a bunch of cryptic garbage all while risking to the operating system.
From an admin's perspective, it simply doesn't get any more elegent than OS X. The filesystem is nicely laid out. You have/Library files all neatly organized into Frameworks, Preferences, etc, etc which is mostly mirrored for per user data. WIndows, on the other hand, just pukes in C:\WINDOWS hoping that the all powerful Registry will sort it. And God forbid you have to dive into THAT nightmare. And forget about looking in C:\Program Files for executables. Applicaitons puke in there too. A lot of them even store user specific data there! You have to sort and resort the Explorer just to find the.EXE you want if, for some reason, there is no icon in the "Start" menu. And don't get me started on the Start menu. Navigating that thing is a nightmare compared to just opening up/Applications or maintaining a good Dock.
I dunno. I guess when I think "elegant" I'm looking under the hood to see how things are arranged. I will agree that Microsoft does a decent job of hiding the mess under the hood with a nice shiny veneer, but that isn't elegant to me. That is just hiding poor design.
Now, I'm all in favor of people using whatever system works for them, and if Windows does the job for you, more power to you. In my mind, anything that lets me move to OSX, or better yet Linux, is a good thing.
Question is, how much would you have to emulate to switch to something else? If it is a lot, then I would say it isn't worth it. You'll probably hve more trouble with the emulation than with Windows itself. If you just have one or two specialized apps, you could just run a Terminal Server or something. The Remote Desktop Client for OS X is pretty good. And the per-user licensng for Terminal Services on 2003 is very... loose. I'd keep the Windows apps running on Windows.
While I'm not a Mac user, I agree with your comments. Those of us who remember the OS/2 fiasco will recall the IBM marketing mantra of "A Better Windows than Windows". That strategy back-fired horribly. Put the arguments of technical superiority aside. The users were started asking a very pertinent question. If I already have Windows, and all of my stuff already works with Windows, why should I go through the hassle of a different OS to use Windows Apps? Bad marketing then, bad marketing today.
So true. When I was workign for a college in the mid 90's, I was asked to review OS/2 Warp as a replacement for Windows 3.11 in our computer labs. I knew it was technically superior and that it was supposed to be a "better Windows than Windows." I tried it for a few days. I definitly liked using it more than Windows 3.11 (as long as I happened to be using a fast enough machine), but in the end, I simply couldn't justify the switch. It didn't make sense to replace a system that was mostly working just to emulate it. Students didnt' really care what the underlying OS was. They just wanted to run certain Windows apps.
Indeed, OS/2 serves as a very important lesson. One should NEVER rely on emulation to get a toe-hold in a market. You have to have a solid applicaiton based BEFORE you get serious about emulation. Not that this would have necessarily saved OS/2. IBM made many other mistakes, but this was one of the big ones Fortunately, Apple is well passed that crtical mass of native applications such that they shouldn't have to worry about the "OS/2 effect."
The bottom line is the nobody really likes to run applications under emulation or dual boot if they can avoid it. This can either spell the death of an OS if the OS relies on emulation or it can promote the OS if emulation is but a minor feature. Remember Classic mode in the the early days of OS X. Most Mac users were scrambling to buy the native OS X version of their favorite apps as soon as they came out. Classic apps were phased out in a remarkably short period of time. Nobody really wanted to run Classic because it was ugly and it didn't integrate well with the rest of their programs. And Classic apps integrated with OS X better than Windows apps EVER will. So I would not worry. Whatever effect emulation or vitualization has on application development will be more than offset by the number people who suddenly find it easier to "switch" to OS X.
OS X is well passed that critical mass of native applications that any serious OS needs to compete with Microsoft. In other words, the ability to run Windows apps on a Mac is mere icing on the cake... not the cake itself.
As long as he is learning, I see no reason why you should try and hide lectures from kids who choose to learn in a different way. (audio as opposed to sitting through class) Listening to all of them the day before an exam is no different from cramming the night before.
Actually, I think in the long run people retain less when they "cram" it all just before the final. The best learning happens when you let the material "simmer" for an extended period of time, gradually adding on new information. The question becomes, do you value the material or are you just trying to get the grade and move on to the next obsticle-to-graduating?'
Of course, I'm not saying one shouldn't be allowed to skip the class and download the lecture. But you should definitly not discount the effect that cramming vs. gradual learning might have on your overal education.
That said, if we're talking about a huge lecture hall type of class, then screw it. You're not going ot learn much anyway. Might as well just download the podcast.:-)
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Slightly off topic, but I wonder how you feel about downloding content that was on broadcast TV. Take the show "Lost" for example. Lets say you missed it when it was broadcast. Now, you could have recorded it for free and stripped out the commercials. But you didn't for whatever reason. You could wait a year for the DVD to come out, but you don't want to wait. You could pay some "legit" online service for the convenience of downloading, but why should pay for something that was broadcast for free just yesterday? Is there anything wrong with downloading it or getting it from a friend?
-matthew
Python doesn't have JIT. Well, it does if you use Psycho on i386, but stock python doesn't. YARV is at least an order of magnitude slower than stock python. We need to match that before we even think about JIT compiling. Would be nice if you could generate compiled (into bytecode) .rb files. Unfortunately the development of YARV seems pretty slow.
-matthew
On the other hand, the statelessness is what makes web applications possible. Lets say you have a web application that serves 100,000 different users during the course of an hour. Depending on the demands of your application, you might be able to support all of them on one server because the server doesn't have ot maintain a connection for each and every user for the entire duration of the session. The server just keeps a small bit of the state stored in a session and moves on to serving the next request. But if everyone has a stateful connection, you start running into trouble with resources. Even if nobody is actually DOING anything on the app, you've got these open connections.
I dunno, at some point I think we're going to have to ask ourselves if the web/browser is really the best way to get the kind of richness people are expencting from internet applications. By the tiem you add statefulness, better UI toolkits, better event model, etc, you don't really have a "browser" anymore. You just have a virtual machine and you find that you've just reinvented Java applets.
-matthew
Yeah, too bad I haven't see an svn update to YARV trunk since sept. 1. And that update was pretty minor. Unless they're doing a lot of work outside of svn (doesn't make much sense), things are not looking too hot.
Forget about beating Java. Lets try matching Python. My benchmarks show that YARV is still an order of magitude slower than Python.
The problem with Jruby isn't performance, but limitations in the JVM. The JVM is very much taylored to Java. And Java and Ruby are different in very significant ways. YARV is probably going to be the official/default VM for Ruby. I'd rather see focus on making YARV better and faster. Although development seems pretty slow on YARV so I'm not holding my breath.
It really is too bad. I thouroughly enjoy programming in Ruby.. especially with Rails. But I just can't justify using Ruby outside of a low traffic web app because it is just too damn slow!
-matthew
My own benchmarks of YARV for some particularly slow real world tasks such as referencing items in a hash show only a modest performance boost. For example, I am trying to read 35,000 records from an SQLite database into a Ruby Array and it takes 23 seconds. The query itself only takes 1 second, but iterating over the records from SQLite is what takes so much time. I've profiled it and everything. It is definitly the iteration over the ResultSet that is the problem. Using the latest YARV from SVN only gets me to about 15 seconds. Doing the exact same thing in Python only takes 1.5 seconds. So even with YARV, Ruby is still an order of magitude slower than similar interpreters/VMs. At least in my limited benchmarks.
Your biggest problem is going to be hardware support. AFAIK, FreeBSD only supports the Haupage PVR-250... and not very well. The last thing you need is a poorly supported tuner card. That will make or break a setup.
Wouldn't you build a set top box anyway? Why is it an either/or choice between Linux and FreeBSD? Install Linux on the Myth box and FreeBSD for your desktop. Whats the problem?
-matthew
Except that access to Google isn't a life/death situation. I say block Google altogether instead of censoring it. At least if it is blocked completely, people will be more aware what their government is doing. If you just silently filter it, you are more easily fooled into thinking you are getting everything you want/need from the service. It is much more insidious that way.
-matthew
Let's here it for community driven public endevours which are not bound by the necessity to make money. Corporations almost have to give in to censorship if the want to make money. Take money out of the equation and freedom wins.
Assuming it still runs (hasn't been beaten to a pulp) it should serve just fine. I mean, a computer from 2002 isn't awesome today by any stretch, but it will run a browser, word processor, etc. The student may not *appreciate* having a 4 year old laptop, but it'll still be of use. Why would you want to teach students that laptops, and technology in general, are disposable? Make them take care of a laptop.
-matthew
Depends on where you go, I guess. In Chicago and Portland, where I've lived, public schools can barely afford to maintain their facilities and they're certainly not paying teachers much. While I don't think throwing money at the problem is an cure all, there *are* many public school systems that are sorely underfunded.
Well, the sender should get a notification if a message was blocked by an RBL. Same can be done with SpamAssassin+Amavisd. Send a bounceback for low scored spam and drop the most egregious. Unless your customers are particularly sensitive and/or irritable, it shouldn't be a disaster if there is a false positive now and then. The way I see it, users run about the same risk of accidently deleting an important email (i've done it) while manually trying to clean spam from their inbox (or even special spambox).
If you have to, have SpamAssassin archive all blocked spam.
-matthew
Relax, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just making sure you are taking enough into consideration. You more or less just said "if emulation works well, we'd use it." I don't know what all you consider when it comes to "works well" or how much bias on your part might be involved. Also, even if it works well now, I'm still not sure it is a good long term plan. I mean, if you're only emulating as a hold-over because you know native solutions will be available soon, that is one thing, but if you plan on emulating indefinitely, then you better think twice. What happens when a new version of a critical piece of software comes out that you just "have to have" for whatever reason and it doesn't work in emulation even though the previous version worked flaulessly? Your boss isn't goign to like to hear that you can't upgrade because you've locked everyone into a platform that is different than the one your critical apps run on.
Oh please. What ever gave you any indication that I like Windows or that I want to play FPS at work? I despise Windows (my computer at work is a Mac with Linux/OS X at home) and the only games I play are RPGs. And why not? I've got things running such that my job is only part time.
-matthew
Even if a particular application can be emulated well, that doesn't necessarily make it fully functional and useful. You also have to consider workflow. Don't underestimate how badly an emulated app can integrate with the rest of the system.. even if it seems to work well enough in and of itself. Windows and OS X are vastly different platforms. There can be printing issues (and there will be). There can be inter-application communication issues, i.e. opening up a document from email in an emulated app. As a general rule, people do not like to run apps in any kind of emulation. Look at how quickly "Classic" mode was phased out on Macs.
While YOU might like to admin OS X or Linux instead Windows, that isn't necessarily what is best for users. If you find that you have to emulate lots of apps, chances are that emulation is not a good idea.
-matthew
Could also be used to justify a switch to a proper desktop OS that doesn't spend much time at all giving the user an hour glass (or similar). Sure, OS X has a beachball, but even on a G4 I hardly see it. Question is, what are your using doing that they get an hour glass at all?
-matthew
How did he get the camera to follow the exact same path in each run? Doesn't the camera usually follow the car?
Yeah, well, Windows will never top the elegence of being able to drag an application to the "Applicaitons" folder to install, for example. The whole self-contained .app thing is genius (even if Apple didn't invent it). I never get a sense that my Mac is cluttered (besides the files on my Desktop, but that is my fault) like I do on Windows. I mean at the system level. There just isn't a tight enough correlation between the files that are in C:\Program Files, the icons in the Start menu, and the applications listed in Add/Remove Programs.
/Library files all neatly organized into Frameworks, Preferences, etc, etc which is mostly mirrored for per user data. WIndows, on the other hand, just pukes in C:\WINDOWS hoping that the all powerful Registry will sort it. And God forbid you have to dive into THAT nightmare. And forget about looking in C:\Program Files for executables. Applicaitons puke in there too. A lot of them even store user specific data there! You have to sort and resort the Explorer just to find the .EXE you want if, for some reason, there is no icon in the "Start" menu. And don't get me started on the Start menu. Navigating that thing is a nightmare compared to just opening up /Applications or maintaining a good Dock.
Why are there 3 totally different places where apps are listed?
Why can't I uninstall a program by deleting its files from C:\Program Files?
Why does everything need a special "uninstaller?" Sure, some programs are complex, but a lot aren't.
If I just want to test a program/game out, why do I have to worry about all the places it is putting files?
Why can't I delete/reset the preferences for a program by removing the corresponding Preferences file? In Windows, I have to open up the Registry and wade through a bunch of cryptic garbage all while risking to the operating system.
From an admin's perspective, it simply doesn't get any more elegent than OS X. The filesystem is nicely laid out. You have
I dunno. I guess when I think "elegant" I'm looking under the hood to see how things are arranged. I will agree that Microsoft does a decent job of hiding the mess under the hood with a nice shiny veneer, but that isn't elegant to me. That is just hiding poor design.
-matthew
Windows File Protection.
Well that explains your post.
Question is, how much would you have to emulate to switch to something else? If it is a lot, then I would say it isn't worth it. You'll probably hve more trouble with the emulation than with Windows itself. If you just have one or two specialized apps, you could just run a Terminal Server or something. The Remote Desktop Client for OS X is pretty good. And the per-user licensng for Terminal Services on 2003 is very... loose. I'd keep the Windows apps running on Windows.
-matthew
So true. When I was workign for a college in the mid 90's, I was asked to review OS/2 Warp as a replacement for Windows 3.11 in our computer labs. I knew it was technically superior and that it was supposed to be a "better Windows than Windows." I tried it for a few days. I definitly liked using it more than Windows 3.11 (as long as I happened to be using a fast enough machine), but in the end, I simply couldn't justify the switch. It didn't make sense to replace a system that was mostly working just to emulate it. Students didnt' really care what the underlying OS was. They just wanted to run certain Windows apps.
Indeed, OS/2 serves as a very important lesson. One should NEVER rely on emulation to get a toe-hold in a market. You have to have a solid applicaiton based BEFORE you get serious about emulation. Not that this would have necessarily saved OS/2. IBM made many other mistakes, but this was one of the big ones Fortunately, Apple is well passed that crtical mass of native applications such that they shouldn't have to worry about the "OS/2 effect."
The bottom line is the nobody really likes to run applications under emulation or dual boot if they can avoid it. This can either spell the death of an OS if the OS relies on emulation or it can promote the OS if emulation is but a minor feature. Remember Classic mode in the the early days of OS X. Most Mac users were scrambling to buy the native OS X version of their favorite apps as soon as they came out. Classic apps were phased out in a remarkably short period of time. Nobody really wanted to run Classic because it was ugly and it didn't integrate well with the rest of their programs. And Classic apps integrated with OS X better than Windows apps EVER will. So I would not worry. Whatever effect emulation or vitualization has on application development will be more than offset by the number people who suddenly find it easier to "switch" to OS X.
OS X is well passed that critical mass of native applications that any serious OS needs to compete with Microsoft. In other words, the ability to run Windows apps on a Mac is mere icing on the cake... not the cake itself.
-matthew
Actually, I think in the long run people retain less when they "cram" it all just before the final. The best learning happens when you let the material "simmer" for an extended period of time, gradually adding on new information. The question becomes, do you value the material or are you just trying to get the grade and move on to the next obsticle-to-graduating?'
Of course, I'm not saying one shouldn't be allowed to skip the class and download the lecture. But you should definitly not discount the effect that cramming vs. gradual learning might have on your overal education.
That said, if we're talking about a huge lecture hall type of class, then screw it. You're not going ot learn much anyway. Might as well just download the podcast.
-matthew