Yes, dragging a volume into the trash to eject it was a horrible UI decision. However, with all the UI problems which exist in the *nix interface, self-righteously criticizing one bad UI decision from another community hardly takes care of the multitude of bad UI decisions within our own. Have you ever tried configuring Sendmail or INN by hand? It's hellish, let me tell you. And while it's nice that there are more options and flags on *nix programs than you can shake a stick at, having so many options can also hinder a person's ability to figure out on their own how to use that program. There's a reason why a lot of people hate vi, and it's not because it doesn't to its job well. It does. I use it, I like it. But trying to learn it without a book (or at least a man page) is brutally difficult.
As far as I'm concerned, bad UI design is more rampant in *nix than in any other flavor of OS that I've used. I'm not trying to absolve others of their poor choices - and everyone has made poor choices at times - just point out that we have little ground on which to criticize others when we have so many problems ourselves.
I've been using Linux on PowerPC-based systems (not all of them Macintoshes) since somewhere around 1995 or 1996. At first, I had to use MkLinux, as none of the other forms of PPC-based Linux supported NuBus systems like the 8100 (PPC 601@80 MHz). MkLinux got its start, as I understand it, because a couple of guys at Apple wanted to play around with Linux on their systems and managed to get themselves assigned to working on that as a project.
At the time, Apple was trying to get itself in gear working on their Copeland project. Copeland originally was supposed to be Mac OS 8, and was supposed to include preemptive multitasking and protected memory, and all those fun little buzzwords. No one especially cared what these couple of guys were doing when everyone was so focused on getting Copeland out the door. As we all know, Copeland got killed. No skin off my back; Copeland was such a bastardized, hacked OS that no one in their right mind would have used it, much less developed for it.
In the meantime, the guys working on MkLinux had decided to base it on the Mach microkernel, figuring that this would make it easy to port it to other systems. They got DR1 and DR2 out the door, and they even worked half-way decently. The installer warned you about five times that you were doing something that could wreck your file system, and they didn't give you any options in terms of what was installed, but damn if it didn't boot up with a linux kernel and run KDE when you typed 'startx'.
After Copeland was killed off, Apple started up the Rhapsody project - the all-new, action-packed, feature-filled, buzzword-compliant OS based on NeXT's technology. NeXT was based on the Mach microkernel. Guess who found themselves reassigned *real* fast once Apple realized they had been playing around with Mach for a couple of years. To my knowledge, Apple has never officially dropped MkLinux.. they just don't have anyone working on it right now. The MkLinux web site is still up at http://www.mklinux.apple.com, and you can still download DR3 from there.
The next sort of PPC-based Linux I have experience with is LinuxPPC. I "inherited" (since no one else wanted it) an IBM PowerPersonal 6015. Very few people have ever heard of this beast. It's one of the original CHRP designs, also known as "Sandalfoot". I spent about $50 getting parts so I could get it to run, and decided to throw LinuxPPC on it since I could get it for free. (My other options were AIX and Windows NT, neither of which I had, and neither of which I could get my hands on quickly) Sadly, this system only ran for a little bit. The power supply isn't especially good. If I felt it were worth it, I'd get a new power supply to put in. It's not though, because there's no way I can install LinuxPPC anymore - the CHRP/PPCP installer program won't fit onto a floppy disk, and CHRP systems are not a support priority for the LinuxPPC guys since their are so few of them (CHRP systems, not LinuxPPC guys).
My next experience with running an Apple-related alternative OS came when I received a copy of the Rhapsody for Intel CD. I tell you, it's unholy starting up an x86 box and seeing a giant Apple logo appearing on your screen. It just felt Wrong.
Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling now. My own personal perspective on the web site mentioned in the article ( http://ppclinux.apple.com) is that it is not official in any capacity. It looks like something that an Apple employee just threw together so s/he could say "Hey, my little web page has links to useful info about running Linux on PPC machines!".
P.S. I don't mean to discredit the LinuxPPC guys above. They've done a lot of hard work and LinuxPPC runs very well on the Apple hardware on which I've tried it. It just didn't work so well for me on the obscure, non-Apple hardware.
The Mac Resource Page had the best coverage of this DoS attack, imho. They cover it a lot better and in more detail than I could, so instead of repeating their words, I'll just post a link to them here: http://www.macresource.com/. Apple did indeed release a patch today by the name of "Open Transport Tuner". You can find it at the Apple Software Library (http://asu.info.apple.com/) on the "Recent Changes" page.
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Yes, dragging a volume into the trash to eject it was a horrible UI decision. However, with all the UI problems which exist in the *nix interface, self-righteously criticizing one bad UI decision from another community hardly takes care of the multitude of bad UI decisions within our own. Have you ever tried configuring Sendmail or INN by hand? It's hellish, let me tell you. And while it's nice that there are more options and flags on *nix programs than you can shake a stick at, having so many options can also hinder a person's ability to figure out on their own how to use that program. There's a reason why a lot of people hate vi, and it's not because it doesn't to its job well. It does. I use it, I like it. But trying to learn it without a book (or at least a man page) is brutally difficult.
As far as I'm concerned, bad UI design is more rampant in *nix than in any other flavor of OS that I've used. I'm not trying to absolve others of their poor choices - and everyone has made poor choices at times - just point out that we have little ground on which to criticize others when we have so many problems ourselves.
At the time, Apple was trying to get itself in gear working on their Copeland project. Copeland originally was supposed to be Mac OS 8, and was supposed to include preemptive multitasking and protected memory, and all those fun little buzzwords. No one especially cared what these couple of guys were doing when everyone was so focused on getting Copeland out the door. As we all know, Copeland got killed. No skin off my back; Copeland was such a bastardized, hacked OS that no one in their right mind would have used it, much less developed for it.
In the meantime, the guys working on MkLinux had decided to base it on the Mach microkernel, figuring that this would make it easy to port it to other systems. They got DR1 and DR2 out the door, and they even worked half-way decently. The installer warned you about five times that you were doing something that could wreck your file system, and they didn't give you any options in terms of what was installed, but damn if it didn't boot up with a linux kernel and run KDE when you typed 'startx'.
After Copeland was killed off, Apple started up the Rhapsody project - the all-new, action-packed, feature-filled, buzzword-compliant OS based on NeXT's technology. NeXT was based on the Mach microkernel. Guess who found themselves reassigned *real* fast once Apple realized they had been playing around with Mach for a couple of years. To my knowledge, Apple has never officially dropped MkLinux.. they just don't have anyone working on it right now. The MkLinux web site is still up at http://www.mklinux.apple.com, and you can still download DR3 from there.
The next sort of PPC-based Linux I have experience with is LinuxPPC. I "inherited" (since no one else wanted it) an IBM PowerPersonal 6015. Very few people have ever heard of this beast. It's one of the original CHRP designs, also known as "Sandalfoot". I spent about $50 getting parts so I could get it to run, and decided to throw LinuxPPC on it since I could get it for free. (My other options were AIX and Windows NT, neither of which I had, and neither of which I could get my hands on quickly) Sadly, this system only ran for a little bit. The power supply isn't especially good. If I felt it were worth it, I'd get a new power supply to put in. It's not though, because there's no way I can install LinuxPPC anymore - the CHRP/PPCP installer program won't fit onto a floppy disk, and CHRP systems are not a support priority for the LinuxPPC guys since their are so few of them (CHRP systems, not LinuxPPC guys).
My next experience with running an Apple-related alternative OS came when I received a copy of the Rhapsody for Intel CD. I tell you, it's unholy starting up an x86 box and seeing a giant Apple logo appearing on your screen. It just felt Wrong.
Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling now. My own personal perspective on the web site mentioned in the article ( http://ppclinux.apple.com) is that it is not official in any capacity. It looks like something that an Apple employee just threw together so s/he could say "Hey, my little web page has links to useful info about running Linux on PPC machines!".
P.S. I don't mean to discredit the LinuxPPC guys above. They've done a lot of hard work and LinuxPPC runs very well on the Apple hardware on which I've tried it. It just didn't work so well for me on the obscure, non-Apple hardware.
The Mac Resource Page had the best coverage of this DoS attack, imho. They cover it a lot better and in more detail than I could, so instead of repeating their words, I'll just post a link to them here: http://www.macresource.com/. Apple did indeed release a patch today by the name of "Open Transport Tuner". You can find it at the Apple Software Library (http://asu.info.apple.com/) on the "Recent Changes" page.