Not just them. Think of the major cities that would be threatened by even a few metres rise in sea levels. London, New York, Tokyo, just to name a few Things would be a little bit troublesome for our economies if any one of those was seriously damaged by flooding, for example.
Um, no. The world will not grind to a halt because a few cities experience some flooding. Will it be inconvienient for some of the population? Sure. But to think that it would be some kind of economic catastrophy? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. If humanity has become so inflexible that a little flooding throws everything into chaos, than we are well overdue for evolution to wipe us off the planet.
Am I failing to see the big picture? Not at all. I just believe the world economy doesn't consist of a few metropolitan centers of which I would guess much less than 10% of the world's population inhabit.
Climate Change is real. Saying mankind is the cause, or that it will be our doom is nothing more than fear mongering. I'm more affraid of the people who want to try and stop the climate change cycle. The planet is not a static system, nor should it be just for the convienience of mankind.
As a disclaimer for my calous attitude, I don't own any ocean front property and will not shed a single tear for people who stand to lose it. That however doesn't mean I'm not studying the topography and making educated guesses on where the next beach front paradises are going to be...
I stated twice, and you missed it twice: the importance of a bug must consider the impact.
Mea culpa. Third times a charm though, and I agree with you.
I'm saying that, over time, bugs are found. But a large majority of the serious flaws are usually found within a year or two after release.
By your own measure then, Apple is 3 years past this. So I still take issue with you that OS X will have more serious bugs more often.
Also, it looks to me that they cannot leverage their previous OS knowledge to any serious degree. Nextstep, which was based on Mach, cannot apply - it was both based on a microkernel, and on completely different hardware.
Actually, in the end NextStep ran on Intel hardware. While hardware architectures require different code to run, to say that all software design and development principles don't apply from one platform to the next is simply not true. To say that the Next experience brought into Apple doesn't apply is again a disservice to the people doing the work. The same C code that generates "Hello World" on the PPC will generate "Hello World" on Intel. If everything were still written at the machine level I would concede your point, but modern OS' have long since departed from machine level coding. You may think of NextStep as old and irrelevent, but the fact remains that it was a well designed OS. If something is irrelevent simply because of it's age then you must necessarily get rid of Linux, Windows and every other OS in production today.
However, IIRC, there have been a couple recent challenges to break into a default, fully-patched apple system, and all have been cracked within a day or two.
And if I remember correctly, all were cracked from the inside. Meaning local user exploits. I believe this is what you are refering to. You should also see this in which OS X was not breached in the time the server was available for attempts. Granted I did not do an exhaustive search, but I will still stand by my supposition that OS X is more secure out-of-the-box than Windows.
I wouldn't call NeXtstep (Job's baby) an apple product.
Since Apple bought the remains of Next, it's incorrect to think that none of the Next technology exists in today's Mac OS.
They are relatively new, as I said, in relation to WinXP and Linux 2.x. OSX was not merely an incremental upgrade from their previous OS's.
My memory is faulty, but I think OS X was first released in 2001. So It's been around for 5 years as a commercially available OS. Has Linux been around longer? Sure. To use your example, Windows XP has also been around since 2001 However you're implying that because OS X was not an incremental release, it's buggier. My supposition is that OS X is newer, but the technologies it's based on have been around for quite some time (Next, NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc.) and are very proven.
Here are some statistics. I wasn't meaning to further the FUD, either. You'll see that, so far, Apple is doing merely "okay".
Based on the statistics from Secunia, which you link to, I would say Apple is doing better than "okay." In 2006 there have been 21 advisories for OS X, 39 for Windows XP Pro, and 40 for Linux. When you say "okay" you imply average. However the statistics linked to indicate better than average. Unfortunately those graphs don't indicate virigin, default installations for any OS and are therefore not really useable to say than any one OS is more secure out of the box. Still, the data you offer makes OS X look better by almost half and you still call this "okay?" If this is "okay," what do you call Windows and Linux? Horrendous? What would you call "good?"
I say they have a lot of bugs to shake out because of this newness, and I admit that's my conjecture. I would put a lot of cash that says several more serious bugs will be filtering in over the next year.
And only a fool would take you up on that bet. As long as the software continues to evolve and people continue to use it bugs will be found, even serious ones. However I absolutely disagree with the mindset that something must have more bugs simply because it's newer. Consumers don't have to settle for mediocrity in software.
To further muddy the waters, you also have to take into account QA product management between OS venders. Apple has to be better than Microsoft because of their market share. Apple's reputation is hurt far more by exploits and hardware issues than any other OS/hardware vender. They are motivated to get it right. Will that change in the future? Possibly. When Steve Jobs passes on there's a good chance Apple will lose their way and finally die.
Lastly, comparing OSX to Linux and WinXP isn't really fair to Apple... they're still relatively new to the scene and have a lot of bugs to shake out. And when comparing, you can't just say "N bugs in X OS over K days", you have to also multiply this by the impact. 31 local DoS security fixes is not as scary as 1 remote execution fix.
Actually it is perfectly fair. Apple is not new in the OS marketspace. They have experience from the pre-X days, they have Next experience and they are built on OSS in the core from NetBSD and FreeBSD. You insult all the people who have ever worked on all of those projects when you call it "new."
To say they have "a lot of bugs to shake out," does them a disservice and only furthers the FUD. Define "a lot" and compare it to the bugs on all the other platforms.
Everyone loves to point and say, "Ooo look! Apple has security issues too!" Of course they do. The big difference is remote execution fixes. Local user exploits require access to the box and the hacker has to get on the box first. OS X goes a lot farther to preventing that right out of the box. Vulnerabilities that allow external entities to exploit your OS are, in my opinion, far more concerning. Local users are another issue and not a small one at that, but at least I like to be sure that an external attacker can't root my machine directly.
Is there a site listing the number of remote root/admin exploits available for each OS in their default "out of the box" configuration? That would be the real lightning rod to shutdown the "OS X is just as bad as Windows" crowd.
Point me to a version of iTunes without DRM from Apple please.
This is a trick question right? Every version of iTunes ever can play and rip *gasp* DRM-less files. The mp3 files I ripped using iTunes will play in any mp3 capable app or hardware.
Oh, you meant the iTunes Music Store? Have you even heard about the DRM in the Zune? Oh that's right, you wanted to excuse the DRM issue on the Zune and only talk about Apple's DRM. If you want to say Apple's is bad you have to show how MS' is better. Were you asleep when everyone was talking about the Zune automatically wrapping music in DRM even if that music was given away by the creater for free? Sorry, the DRM in Zune is MORE restrictive. But that's okay as long as it's not the evil Apple empire, right?
While the Zune has limited Wi-Fi, iPod has NONE.
"This one is better, it goes to eleven." Wow, and I thought that was just satire, but people like this really do exist. Okay, you got me. The Zune has a longer feature list. Even if the feature is crap.
Sideways viewing:
Okay. You got me here too. You like your device on its side. Hey, good for you. You can have the Zune I'm not buying.
Apple fanboy are we?
MS fanboy are we? You may not like the iPod, that's your choice. But the fact of the matter is that Apple nailed the market. They didn't do that by leveraging their dominance in any other market. They have no dominance anywhere else. They didn't do it by introducing crap and refining it over the past 5 years. The iPod was a hit from year one. They did that by creating a product that works well, consistantly and with style.
The problem is those terrible ads help pay for shows like Stargate: Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica. Will these shows be able to get made without television ads? Who knows.
Well I was happy when I discovered the current season of SG-1 was available from iTunes. Put aside any DRM opinions, I paid $40 to have have the season automatically downloaded to my computer as episodes come out. I also did the same for Atlantis. (I did not buy Galactica because I personally think it sucks, but that's my opinion.) I watch episodes commercial free and I don't have to wait the year or two for the seasons to come out on DVD.
Now, if SG-1 draws 4 million viewers (I'm pulling that number out of my butt) and all of those viewers subscribed to a season, that would be 160 million dollars. Is that enough to produce a show like that for a season? Given an episode costs 1 million (another number I'm pulling out of my butt), that's roughly 20-25 million to produce a season. Seems there's profit to be had there...without needing advertising...
I know there's a whole mindset to overcome in the industry (We can't do it any other way because we've always done it this way...), but if it were me producing shows I'd be all over this.
Times change, technologies change. Companies that embrace and deliver are going to be riding the crest of a very big wave.
Wait a minute. You want me to have sympathy for the CEO of a company who commited credit fraud using his employees confidential information?
You know, this is really taking the whole victim mentality to the next level of insanity. "It's not his fault really, society forced him to because no one would loan him money." Give me a break!
Theft is wrong. Stealing from your employees is NEVER excusable. Please don't ask me to have sympathy for the crook. Corporations have a myriad of ways to legally screw employees without having to resort to outright theft.
You know, there are some things in the world that really are black or white, right or wrong. This is one of them. Please stop turning everything gray.
Let's see, I pay roughly $60/month now. I watch 3 channels regularly. So in effect I'm already paying $20/month/channel. The other extraneous crap doesn't count. It's not what I want to see anyway. (Man, I really need to dump this stuff. I'm going to have to work on the wife again to agree to it. I think she's seen every episode of Law and Order already anyway...)
Do you think it's by chance that I can't get the basic package with everything I want?
The content providers have the crap channels because they can sell more advertising. It's more revenue for them, regardless if anyone watches it. Cable companies do it because *SURPRISE* they are actually content providers themselves! (or are owned by content providers)
It doesn't work for the consumer now. It's a falacy that it would cost more to the consumer. The technology is in place to do ala cart now. But imaging the downsizing the industry would have to do to survive losing advertising revenue from all the channels people really don't want. They don't want to lose their cash cow. Therefore they fight it tooth and nail and tell you it would be more expensive. Yes it would be expensive if they charged more for the channels people wanted to keep the channels people don't, alive. What they should be doing is getting rid of the channels people don't want.
Keep the packages for the people who like 200+ channels of drek. I'll pay $3/channel for what I want. $15/month from me (do the math, yes that means 5 channels) is better than $0, and I'm guessing I watch a lot less TV than most people. They wouldn't really be hurting themsleves at all. I think Joe six-pack would still go for the bundles anyway.
The first production house to do quality programming, available pay per view download, is going to rock the video industry the same way iTunes did in the music industry.
I don't care what their reason for it is. I pay for 100+ channels, of which I watch 3 with any regularity. Do you think I want all of those channels? Do I want 10 "discovery" type channels? What's the point? They all recycle each others content, so just give me one.
We don't get al la cart now because they don't want us to have it. They want to be able to push crappy products out there. Yes, a lot of channels would go away if they did it. Yes, a lot of channels SHOULD go away.
Lets move on to on-demand programming. I'm willing to pay per episode for quality programming. I'd pay to watch Serenity, but not the "Large mutated animal on a rampage" crap that sci-fi normally dishes. I'd pay to watch Starget SG1 and Atlantis, but not 12oz Mouse. I'd pay up to $2/episode of what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it. So I pay $50 for a whole season of SG1. Fine. That's still better than $600+/year for all the crap I'm not watching today.
Would some good stuff disappear? Sure, but under the current system good stuff disappears (Serenity, Farscape, etc.) and the crap just keeps comming.
If we got rid of the channel bundeling, how would people find new shows? Word of mouth. Imagine a world where the production company gets paid per download/episode by the ultimate consumer. Shows that are popular continue. Production companies with good content make more money. Shows that would otherwise be cancelled because they don't appeal to 90% of America, may go on because the 10% that do like it are enough to pay for it.
Laugh and scorn if you like. This is already happening. There are fan produced projects that rival or even better "proffessionally" produced material.
More channels has not made for better TV. It's gotten worse. It used to be you bought cable to get commercial free programming. Oh yeah, I'd pay money to watch good shows, commercial free. Now I just pay money to get bombarded with advertising.
Hey cable execs, get a clue before I convince my wife we should just dump it altogether. Better hurry, the more expensive it gets, the closer I get to convincing her.
However, the religous right is also a part of the problem. The religous right hates our public education system and has been seeking to undermine the system.
Here's something you need to keep in mind. Correlation is NOT causation. The religious right may like the concept of private and home schooling because it allows them to control what is taught to their children. Not surprisingly this causes them to back voucher systems.
However if you think that it's only the religious right, you are mistaken. High School was a tediously slow process for me. I was not challenged. I could produce mediocre work and make great marks, and I knew it too.
Since then class sizes have gotten bigger. The concept of "Social Promotion" has devastated the learning enviornment. Kids who should be failed and held back a grade are passed on because we don't want to hurt their fragile phsyche. However in the next grade level they are even less prepared, and surprise! The teachers have to dumb down the material even more for the entire class in order to accomodate those individuals. Kids who have special learning needs are kept in the normal classes, but they have no additional assitance. So teachers have to spend more time with them, and less time furthering the knowledge of the other children. Now add to this the standardized tests that every state has. Teachers now teach kids how to pass a test. Passing a test is not thinking!
The school system used to work because classes were smaller. Kids that need special attention got it outside of the regular class room. It was okay to fail a kid, and those who failed were held back. Kids had to think to keep up! Tutoring wasn't uncommon. My Grandma tutored for years because some kids need the extra help, and they had to get it outside of the classroom.
Don't blame the religious right for the sorry state of the school system. My wife resigned from teaching high school, and has vowed that our kids will never go to public school. You know what? I agree with her, and it has absolutely nothing to do with religion. It has to do with 60 (yes SIX ZERO) kids in the classroom. It has to do with parents who insist their kid didn't cheat even though you can find their little darlings paper in the FIRST hit in a google search! It has to do with kids in high school who CAN'T read! It has to do with administration saying your contract won't be renewed if any of your students fail. Is religion responsible for that? No it isn't. Schools get funding based on how well kids do on standardized tests. They get funding based on how many kids graduate.
What's the insentive to actually fail a kid? To bring attention to a learning problem that needs to be addressed, but no one will take serioiusly since they've been socially promoted for the last ten years anyway? Get real. Religion has very little to do with the state of the US school system.
Science with no room for debate is not science. Teach Intelligent Design, Creationism, Evolution and everything else (if you really want to piss of the religious right, this is the way to do it). Above all, teach the kids to THINK! Teach them that there is usually more than one way to answer a question. If you just teach them one thing, well it's no wonder they become mindless automatons regurgitating factoids.
I used say it was all good, after all I still need someone to get those fries for me at McDonald's. But I haven't eaten there in quite a while. It's become too depressing.
I'm one of several people who got a job with IBM, mastered our skill area, and then moved on to other companies willing to pay the market rate. So yes, I was trained by IBM to leave IBM.
(Psst, hey IBM! I would have stayed for the mere price of a modest raise the last two years I was there. You know, something better than 0.0%. Hm, no raise when you work in the most profitable division of the company? Why should I have stayed?)
As of 7 years ago, when I worked for IBM, the Notes installation for all of IBM's West Geoplex consisted of SP Nodes. Silver thins running AIX. About 6 frames worth (12 nodes per frame), using high nodes for backup with TSM. Everything was connected to SSA, I can't even remember how many drawers. I do remember when I was cold all I had to do was go stand behind the SSA racks.;-) High nodes suck, just for the record.
Everything was tied in with the SP high speed switch, which was connected to two Ascend switch routers. (If I remember the company was bought by Lucent). The Notes complex for mail was tied in to the campus network via the switch routers, and also tied to the Notes Database complex (which was a similarly large SP installation.)
We were using gated to dynamically change the default routes if one of the campus network connections died.
We also used pman to monitor the health of the complex. pman notifies you instantly when something goes wrong, where as Tivoli monitoring only polls every few minutes. There were several occasions when I worked there where we detected and resolved problems before Tivoli ever noticed.
Is this relavant to what you want to do? Probably not, just reminicsing a bit. I'm one of the few I know who actually liked the SP.
What they do now, I have no idea. It wouldn't suprise me though if it was Regata Lpars with GigE and Shark disk.
Now as far as Notes is concerned, RUN, do not walk, away. I can't stand it, but hey, it's your mail system.;-)
Appologies if this has already been mentioned, no I haven't read the entire thread.
It seems google is in the perfect place to offer a service. They scan your site, but don't make the contents available to the public. Then they notify you of all the matches they found indexing other sites.
That would make Google the copyright police. Or at least bounty hunters after a fashion.
How about just outlawing something as arcane, ignorant, and hateful as religion?
So you think that getting rid of religion will make people get along with each other? Getting rid of religion will get rid of hate? Will it get rid of envy?
I hate to burst your bubble, but just becuase people use religion as the excuse doesn't make it the cause. People have been hating each other for ever. People use religion as the excuse because it makes them feel justified, even good, about killing others. You think that if you get rid of religion people won't find some other way to feel good about hating and killing?
Someone who has more of something will always be envied by someone who has less. Some of those with less are willing to do anything to get what they don't have, or at least bring down anyone who isn't like them. Some of those with more will always look for ways to flaunt what they have and repress those with less.
Why did the Chinese invade Tibet? Was religion at the heart of that? When was the last time Buddhist Monks went on a crusade to slaughter anyone who wasn't Buddhist?
Religion as the cause? Correlation is NOT causation.
This actually makes the most sense. The Newton line used ARM processors, which Intel now produces. Switching their bread and butter OS to Intel would be dangerous unless they had a way to make all the powerpc stuff work.
This isn't to say it's not possible. Apple has already made this kind of move once in it's life when they switched from Motorolla's 64K line to the PowerPC. They could do it again, and might if they can't get the PowerPC to close the gap in the Mhz war.
Personally, I really hope this means the Newton is coming back. Damn I miss my 2100. If only it was well integrated with OS X...
Wake up and smell the coffee. This is not about the 1st amendment. The leaker exercised his right to free speach and leaked information about a product for which he had signed a contract with Apple not to. Apple merely exercised it's right to satisfy the breech in contract.
What makes people think that the leaker or the web site deserve protection? The judge has it right, there is a huge difference between information in the public's interest and information of interest to the public.
If journalists think it is truely about the 1st amendment they should be willing to go to jail to protect their sources. Did that happen here? No. Again, this is information of interest to the public and that's the difference.
The web site didn't refuse to give up the source. They didn't have to you know. Sure they would have gone to jail for contempt, but if they really thought divulging information was in the public's interest they should be willing to do hard time.
Freedom of speech is not and has never been, freedom from responsibility.
Wow, this is the worst idea yet. Who is going to collect this tax and how are they going to determine which artist it should go to? Let me guess, the kind hearted RIAA will. Any guesses on just how much of this tax will go to the expenses involved in running such a system? Any guesses as to how many artists would actually see a return from such a beast?
Bad idea. Sell the songs individually for $.99. It's easy to track what songs sell and compensate the appropriate artist. I'm actually willing to pay that much.
Taxes will just create more government bloat and the artist still won't see any money.
There has always been piracy and copyright theft no matter what price you charge for something. Until we find an economic model where everything is free, there always will be.
No industry has a right to profit. If their business model isn't working they need to change it or die. I think Apple's idea works pretty well.
So most everyone here is up in arms about how stupid this is from the technical point. I've no argument about that. However most everyone here didn't bother to read anything abou the case, and in fairness Slashdot itself contributed to that by not linking to the plantiffs case:
There's more to it then some bum customer thinking their IP's are like phone numbers. It's about the colocation provider trying to drive a web hosting provider out of business before they can move to a different facility.
READ THE AFFIDAVIT!!! This is a contract dispute and some pretty ugly (and shady) business practices by the colo provider.
The restraining order just means the colo provider can't cut the service off before the customer can move. Yes it does also provide for the IP's to be moved with the customer, however I think that's a side effect. (And I agree that's bad.) However read the whole case and you will see that the customer just wants to get out and keep his business alive, while the colo provider is trying to put him into bankruptcy.
If you want to knee-jerk at something, knee-jerk about the colo squeezing the life out of their customer. I pity anyone here who is using that colo.
I'm not using one of these things until they stop putting restrictions on the file usage.
And they're not going to let you download a perfect digital copy without some reassurance that you not just going to plop that perfect copy down on Kazaa. Fortunately for you, you can still go to the store and buy the album and rip it yourself. However the last time I spent $18 US on an album, there was only ONE song on the album that I liked. I paid $18 US for one track. Complain as much as you want, but if I could have bought just that one track for $1, I would have. As far as restrictions go, Apple's the best compromise.
For everyone else bellyaching about the DRM, would you go for a system where the music you bought was watermarked to it could be identified to you? So you could do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, but if it got out they would know exactly who to sue?
It's a compromise. I haven't bought any music from iTunes or any other online vender for that matter. But if I did it would be from iTunes. I can authorize 3 different systems for the music. When I sell a system I simply unauthorize it. I put it on my iPod, or if I had some other player just convert it to mp3 and use it.
You know what saddens me? People who don't pay the artist anything because they're upset about $1 a track, in a format that is superior to mp3 at the same bit rate.
Me? I still buy CD's on occasion, maybe a couple every year. I get the perfect digital copy I want. But the next time some one-hit-wonder has a song I want, iTunes will definitely be a temptation. $18 for the perfect digital copy (buy the CD) or just $1 for an acceptable electronic version of just the track I want.
I have a P800 with T-mobile in the US. They don't officially support the phone, but then again I don't care. I just want the service. The phone is GSM/GPRS, so all T-Mobile does is activate the service. I took the SIM card out of the free phone they gave me, plopped it into the P800 and it works like a charm.
I've been impressed with T-Mobile's coverage, compared to Nextel which was my previous provider.
It sync's to my work laptop and lotus notes, and also to my home Mac's without a problem. Bluetooth is fantastic too. I have a wireless headset that alone is worth the price of the phone. I love doing conference calls with both hands free.
Battery life is phenominal. Sony rates it as 13 hour of TALK time. I've used it heavily and only gotten it down to half a charge with a full day's use. My Nextel phone would give up the ghost after just one, two hour conference call.
The P900 looks nice and some nifty features, but I'm not going to buy it for mostly cosmetic features like theme support. Although if anything happens to my P800, I'd buy a P900 without a second thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, no. The world will not grind to a halt because a few cities experience some flooding. Will it be inconvienient for some of the population? Sure. But to think that it would be some kind of economic catastrophy? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. If humanity has become so inflexible that a little flooding throws everything into chaos, than we are well overdue for evolution to wipe us off the planet.
Am I failing to see the big picture? Not at all. I just believe the world economy doesn't consist of a few metropolitan centers of which I would guess much less than 10% of the world's population inhabit.
Climate Change is real. Saying mankind is the cause, or that it will be our doom is nothing more than fear mongering. I'm more affraid of the people who want to try and stop the climate change cycle. The planet is not a static system, nor should it be just for the convienience of mankind.
As a disclaimer for my calous attitude, I don't own any ocean front property and will not shed a single tear for people who stand to lose it. That however doesn't mean I'm not studying the topography and making educated guesses on where the next beach front paradises are going to be...
Mea culpa. Third times a charm though, and I agree with you.
By your own measure then, Apple is 3 years past this. So I still take issue with you that OS X will have more serious bugs more often.
Actually, in the end NextStep ran on Intel hardware. While hardware architectures require different code to run, to say that all software design and development principles don't apply from one platform to the next is simply not true. To say that the Next experience brought into Apple doesn't apply is again a disservice to the people doing the work. The same C code that generates "Hello World" on the PPC will generate "Hello World" on Intel. If everything were still written at the machine level I would concede your point, but modern OS' have long since departed from machine level coding. You may think of NextStep as old and irrelevent, but the fact remains that it was a well designed OS. If something is irrelevent simply because of it's age then you must necessarily get rid of Linux, Windows and every other OS in production today.
And if I remember correctly, all were cracked from the inside. Meaning local user exploits. I believe this is what you are refering to. You should also see this in which OS X was not breached in the time the server was available for attempts. Granted I did not do an exhaustive search, but I will still stand by my supposition that OS X is more secure out-of-the-box than Windows.
Will Vista change that? We'll see.
Since Apple bought the remains of Next, it's incorrect to think that none of the Next technology exists in today's Mac OS.
My memory is faulty, but I think OS X was first released in 2001. So It's been around for 5 years as a commercially available OS. Has Linux been around longer? Sure. To use your example, Windows XP has also been around since 2001 However you're implying that because OS X was not an incremental release, it's buggier. My supposition is that OS X is newer, but the technologies it's based on have been around for quite some time (Next, NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc.) and are very proven.
Based on the statistics from Secunia, which you link to, I would say Apple is doing better than "okay." In 2006 there have been 21 advisories for OS X, 39 for Windows XP Pro, and 40 for Linux. When you say "okay" you imply average. However the statistics linked to indicate better than average. Unfortunately those graphs don't indicate virigin, default installations for any OS and are therefore not really useable to say than any one OS is more secure out of the box. Still, the data you offer makes OS X look better by almost half and you still call this "okay?" If this is "okay," what do you call Windows and Linux? Horrendous? What would you call "good?"
And only a fool would take you up on that bet. As long as the software continues to evolve and people continue to use it bugs will be found, even serious ones. However I absolutely disagree with the mindset that something must have more bugs simply because it's newer. Consumers don't have to settle for mediocrity in software.
To further muddy the waters, you also have to take into account QA product management between OS venders. Apple has to be better than Microsoft because of their market share. Apple's reputation is hurt far more by exploits and hardware issues than any other OS/hardware vender. They are motivated to get it right. Will that change in the future? Possibly. When Steve Jobs passes on there's a good chance Apple will lose their way and finally die.
Actually it is perfectly fair. Apple is not new in the OS marketspace. They have experience from the pre-X days, they have Next experience and they are built on OSS in the core from NetBSD and FreeBSD. You insult all the people who have ever worked on all of those projects when you call it "new."
To say they have "a lot of bugs to shake out," does them a disservice and only furthers the FUD. Define "a lot" and compare it to the bugs on all the other platforms.
Everyone loves to point and say, "Ooo look! Apple has security issues too!" Of course they do. The big difference is remote execution fixes. Local user exploits require access to the box and the hacker has to get on the box first. OS X goes a lot farther to preventing that right out of the box. Vulnerabilities that allow external entities to exploit your OS are, in my opinion, far more concerning. Local users are another issue and not a small one at that, but at least I like to be sure that an external attacker can't root my machine directly.
Is there a site listing the number of remote root/admin exploits available for each OS in their default "out of the box" configuration? That would be the real lightning rod to shutdown the "OS X is just as bad as Windows" crowd.
This is a trick question right? Every version of iTunes ever can play and rip *gasp* DRM-less files. The mp3 files I ripped using iTunes will play in any mp3 capable app or hardware.
Oh, you meant the iTunes Music Store? Have you even heard about the DRM in the Zune? Oh that's right, you wanted to excuse the DRM issue on the Zune and only talk about Apple's DRM. If you want to say Apple's is bad you have to show how MS' is better. Were you asleep when everyone was talking about the Zune automatically wrapping music in DRM even if that music was given away by the creater for free? Sorry, the DRM in Zune is MORE restrictive. But that's okay as long as it's not the evil Apple empire, right?
"This one is better, it goes to eleven." Wow, and I thought that was just satire, but people like this really do exist. Okay, you got me. The Zune has a longer feature list. Even if the feature is crap.
Okay. You got me here too. You like your device on its side. Hey, good for you. You can have the Zune I'm not buying.
MS fanboy are we? You may not like the iPod, that's your choice. But the fact of the matter is that Apple nailed the market. They didn't do that by leveraging their dominance in any other market. They have no dominance anywhere else. They didn't do it by introducing crap and refining it over the past 5 years. The iPod was a hit from year one. They did that by creating a product that works well, consistantly and with style.
Well I was happy when I discovered the current season of SG-1 was available from iTunes. Put aside any DRM opinions, I paid $40 to have have the season automatically downloaded to my computer as episodes come out. I also did the same for Atlantis. (I did not buy Galactica because I personally think it sucks, but that's my opinion.) I watch episodes commercial free and I don't have to wait the year or two for the seasons to come out on DVD.
Now, if SG-1 draws 4 million viewers (I'm pulling that number out of my butt) and all of those viewers subscribed to a season, that would be 160 million dollars. Is that enough to produce a show like that for a season? Given an episode costs 1 million (another number I'm pulling out of my butt), that's roughly 20-25 million to produce a season. Seems there's profit to be had there...without needing advertising...
I know there's a whole mindset to overcome in the industry (We can't do it any other way because we've always done it this way...), but if it were me producing shows I'd be all over this.
Times change, technologies change. Companies that embrace and deliver are going to be riding the crest of a very big wave.
Wait a minute. You want me to have sympathy for the CEO of a company who commited credit fraud using his employees confidential information?
You know, this is really taking the whole victim mentality to the next level of insanity. "It's not his fault really, society forced him to because no one would loan him money." Give me a break!
Theft is wrong. Stealing from your employees is NEVER excusable. Please don't ask me to have sympathy for the crook. Corporations have a myriad of ways to legally screw employees without having to resort to outright theft.
You know, there are some things in the world that really are black or white, right or wrong. This is one of them. Please stop turning everything gray.
Let's see, how to get into the headlines?
Claim Apple is switching to Windows!
Watch the geek world go crazy.
Let's see, I pay roughly $60/month now. I watch 3 channels regularly. So in effect I'm already paying $20/month/channel. The other extraneous crap doesn't count. It's not what I want to see anyway. (Man, I really need to dump this stuff. I'm going to have to work on the wife again to agree to it. I think she's seen every episode of Law and Order already anyway...)
Do you think it's by chance that I can't get the basic package with everything I want?
The content providers have the crap channels because they can sell more advertising. It's more revenue for them, regardless if anyone watches it. Cable companies do it because *SURPRISE* they are actually content providers themselves! (or are owned by content providers)
It doesn't work for the consumer now. It's a falacy that it would cost more to the consumer. The technology is in place to do ala cart now. But imaging the downsizing the industry would have to do to survive losing advertising revenue from all the channels people really don't want. They don't want to lose their cash cow. Therefore they fight it tooth and nail and tell you it would be more expensive. Yes it would be expensive if they charged more for the channels people wanted to keep the channels people don't, alive. What they should be doing is getting rid of the channels people don't want.
Keep the packages for the people who like 200+ channels of drek. I'll pay $3/channel for what I want. $15/month from me (do the math, yes that means 5 channels) is better than $0, and I'm guessing I watch a lot less TV than most people. They wouldn't really be hurting themsleves at all. I think Joe six-pack would still go for the bundles anyway.
The first production house to do quality programming, available pay per view download, is going to rock the video industry the same way iTunes did in the music industry.
I don't care what their reason for it is. I pay for 100+ channels, of which I watch 3 with any regularity. Do you think I want all of those channels? Do I want 10 "discovery" type channels? What's the point? They all recycle each others content, so just give me one.
We don't get al la cart now because they don't want us to have it. They want to be able to push crappy products out there. Yes, a lot of channels would go away if they did it. Yes, a lot of channels SHOULD go away.
Lets move on to on-demand programming. I'm willing to pay per episode for quality programming. I'd pay to watch Serenity, but not the "Large mutated animal on a rampage" crap that sci-fi normally dishes. I'd pay to watch Starget SG1 and Atlantis, but not 12oz Mouse. I'd pay up to $2/episode of what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it. So I pay $50 for a whole season of SG1. Fine. That's still better than $600+/year for all the crap I'm not watching today.
Would some good stuff disappear? Sure, but under the current system good stuff disappears (Serenity, Farscape, etc.) and the crap just keeps comming.
If we got rid of the channel bundeling, how would people find new shows? Word of mouth. Imagine a world where the production company gets paid per download/episode by the ultimate consumer. Shows that are popular continue. Production companies with good content make more money. Shows that would otherwise be cancelled because they don't appeal to 90% of America, may go on because the 10% that do like it are enough to pay for it.
Laugh and scorn if you like. This is already happening. There are fan produced projects that rival or even better "proffessionally" produced material.
More channels has not made for better TV. It's gotten worse. It used to be you bought cable to get commercial free programming. Oh yeah, I'd pay money to watch good shows, commercial free. Now I just pay money to get bombarded with advertising.
Hey cable execs, get a clue before I convince my wife we should just dump it altogether. Better hurry, the more expensive it gets, the closer I get to convincing her.
Here's something you need to keep in mind. Correlation is NOT causation. The religious right may like the concept of private and home schooling because it allows them to control what is taught to their children. Not surprisingly this causes them to back voucher systems.
However if you think that it's only the religious right, you are mistaken. High School was a tediously slow process for me. I was not challenged. I could produce mediocre work and make great marks, and I knew it too.
Since then class sizes have gotten bigger. The concept of "Social Promotion" has devastated the learning enviornment. Kids who should be failed and held back a grade are passed on because we don't want to hurt their fragile phsyche. However in the next grade level they are even less prepared, and surprise! The teachers have to dumb down the material even more for the entire class in order to accomodate those individuals. Kids who have special learning needs are kept in the normal classes, but they have no additional assitance. So teachers have to spend more time with them, and less time furthering the knowledge of the other children. Now add to this the standardized tests that every state has. Teachers now teach kids how to pass a test. Passing a test is not thinking!
The school system used to work because classes were smaller. Kids that need special attention got it outside of the regular class room. It was okay to fail a kid, and those who failed were held back. Kids had to think to keep up! Tutoring wasn't uncommon. My Grandma tutored for years because some kids need the extra help, and they had to get it outside of the classroom.
Don't blame the religious right for the sorry state of the school system. My wife resigned from teaching high school, and has vowed that our kids will never go to public school. You know what? I agree with her, and it has absolutely nothing to do with religion. It has to do with 60 (yes SIX ZERO) kids in the classroom. It has to do with parents who insist their kid didn't cheat even though you can find their little darlings paper in the FIRST hit in a google search! It has to do with kids in high school who CAN'T read! It has to do with administration saying your contract won't be renewed if any of your students fail. Is religion responsible for that? No it isn't. Schools get funding based on how well kids do on standardized tests. They get funding based on how many kids graduate.
What's the insentive to actually fail a kid? To bring attention to a learning problem that needs to be addressed, but no one will take serioiusly since they've been socially promoted for the last ten years anyway? Get real. Religion has very little to do with the state of the US school system.
Science with no room for debate is not science. Teach Intelligent Design, Creationism, Evolution and everything else (if you really want to piss of the religious right, this is the way to do it). Above all, teach the kids to THINK! Teach them that there is usually more than one way to answer a question. If you just teach them one thing, well it's no wonder they become mindless automatons regurgitating factoids.
I used say it was all good, after all I still need someone to get those fries for me at McDonald's. But I haven't eaten there in quite a while. It's become too depressing.
I'm one of several people who got a job with IBM, mastered our skill area, and then moved on to other companies willing to pay the market rate. So yes, I was trained by IBM to leave IBM.
(Psst, hey IBM! I would have stayed for the mere price of a modest raise the last two years I was there. You know, something better than 0.0%. Hm, no raise when you work in the most profitable division of the company? Why should I have stayed?)
As of 7 years ago, when I worked for IBM, the Notes installation for all of IBM's West Geoplex consisted of SP Nodes. Silver thins running AIX. About 6 frames worth (12 nodes per frame), using high nodes for backup with TSM. Everything was connected to SSA, I can't even remember how many drawers. I do remember when I was cold all I had to do was go stand behind the SSA racks. ;-) High nodes suck, just for the record.
;-)
Everything was tied in with the SP high speed switch, which was connected to two Ascend switch routers. (If I remember the company was bought by Lucent). The Notes complex for mail was tied in to the campus network via the switch routers, and also tied to the Notes Database complex (which was a similarly large SP installation.)
We were using gated to dynamically change the default routes if one of the campus network connections died.
We also used pman to monitor the health of the complex. pman notifies you instantly when something goes wrong, where as Tivoli monitoring only polls every few minutes. There were several occasions when I worked there where we detected and resolved problems before Tivoli ever noticed.
Is this relavant to what you want to do? Probably not, just reminicsing a bit. I'm one of the few I know who actually liked the SP.
What they do now, I have no idea. It wouldn't suprise me though if it was Regata Lpars with GigE and Shark disk.
Now as far as Notes is concerned, RUN, do not walk, away. I can't stand it, but hey, it's your mail system.
Appologies if this has already been mentioned, no I haven't read the entire thread.
It seems google is in the perfect place to offer a service. They scan your site, but don't make the contents available to the public. Then they notify you of all the matches they found indexing other sites.
That would make Google the copyright police. Or at least bounty hunters after a fashion.
So you think that getting rid of religion will make people get along with each other? Getting rid of religion will get rid of hate? Will it get rid of envy?
I hate to burst your bubble, but just becuase people use religion as the excuse doesn't make it the cause. People have been hating each other for ever. People use religion as the excuse because it makes them feel justified, even good, about killing others. You think that if you get rid of religion people won't find some other way to feel good about hating and killing?
Someone who has more of something will always be envied by someone who has less. Some of those with less are willing to do anything to get what they don't have, or at least bring down anyone who isn't like them. Some of those with more will always look for ways to flaunt what they have and repress those with less.
Why did the Chinese invade Tibet? Was religion at the heart of that? When was the last time Buddhist Monks went on a crusade to slaughter anyone who wasn't Buddhist?
Religion as the cause? Correlation is NOT causation.
Yup. Less caffine, slow the fingers down...
This actually makes the most sense. The Newton line used ARM processors, which Intel now produces. Switching their bread and butter OS to Intel would be dangerous unless they had a way to make all the powerpc stuff work.
This isn't to say it's not possible. Apple has already made this kind of move once in it's life when they switched from Motorolla's 64K line to the PowerPC. They could do it again, and might if they can't get the PowerPC to close the gap in the Mhz war.
Personally, I really hope this means the Newton is coming back. Damn I miss my 2100. If only it was well integrated with OS X...
You mean like this: Five is not equal to 2.
You may like rule one, but I don't subscribe...nay believe...in it. ;-)
Wake up and smell the coffee. This is not about the 1st amendment. The leaker exercised his right to free speach and leaked information about a product for which he had signed a contract with Apple not to. Apple merely exercised it's right to satisfy the breech in contract.
What makes people think that the leaker or the web site deserve protection? The judge has it right, there is a huge difference between information in the public's interest and information of interest to the public.
If journalists think it is truely about the 1st amendment they should be willing to go to jail to protect their sources. Did that happen here? No. Again, this is information of interest to the public and that's the difference.
The web site didn't refuse to give up the source. They didn't have to you know. Sure they would have gone to jail for contempt, but if they really thought divulging information was in the public's interest they should be willing to do hard time.
Freedom of speech is not and has never been, freedom from responsibility.
Wow, this is the worst idea yet. Who is going to collect this tax and how are they going to determine which artist it should go to? Let me guess, the kind hearted RIAA will. Any guesses on just how much of this tax will go to the expenses involved in running such a system? Any guesses as to how many artists would actually see a return from such a beast?
Bad idea. Sell the songs individually for $.99. It's easy to track what songs sell and compensate the appropriate artist. I'm actually willing to pay that much.
Taxes will just create more government bloat and the artist still won't see any money.
There has always been piracy and copyright theft no matter what price you charge for something. Until we find an economic model where everything is free, there always will be.
No industry has a right to profit. If their business model isn't working they need to change it or die. I think Apple's idea works pretty well.
Good Boy! Now go lie down.
So most everyone here is up in arms about how stupid this is from the technical point. I've no argument about that. However most everyone here didn't bother to read anything abou the case, and in fairness Slashdot itself contributed to that by not linking to the plantiffs case:
Read the Plantiff's case!
There's more to it then some bum customer thinking their IP's are like phone numbers. It's about the colocation provider trying to drive a web hosting provider out of business before they can move to a different facility.
READ THE AFFIDAVIT!!! This is a contract dispute and some pretty ugly (and shady) business practices by the colo provider.
The restraining order just means the colo provider can't cut the service off before the customer can move. Yes it does also provide for the IP's to be moved with the customer, however I think that's a side effect. (And I agree that's bad.) However read the whole case and you will see that the customer just wants to get out and keep his business alive, while the colo provider is trying to put him into bankruptcy.
If you want to knee-jerk at something, knee-jerk about the colo squeezing the life out of their customer. I pity anyone here who is using that colo.
And they're not going to let you download a perfect digital copy without some reassurance that you not just going to plop that perfect copy down on Kazaa. Fortunately for you, you can still go to the store and buy the album and rip it yourself. However the last time I spent $18 US on an album, there was only ONE song on the album that I liked. I paid $18 US for one track. Complain as much as you want, but if I could have bought just that one track for $1, I would have. As far as restrictions go, Apple's the best compromise.
For everyone else bellyaching about the DRM, would you go for a system where the music you bought was watermarked to it could be identified to you? So you could do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, but if it got out they would know exactly who to sue?
It's a compromise. I haven't bought any music from iTunes or any other online vender for that matter. But if I did it would be from iTunes. I can authorize 3 different systems for the music. When I sell a system I simply unauthorize it. I put it on my iPod, or if I had some other player just convert it to mp3 and use it.
You know what saddens me? People who don't pay the artist anything because they're upset about $1 a track, in a format that is superior to mp3 at the same bit rate.
Me? I still buy CD's on occasion, maybe a couple every year. I get the perfect digital copy I want. But the next time some one-hit-wonder has a song I want, iTunes will definitely be a temptation. $18 for the perfect digital copy (buy the CD) or just $1 for an acceptable electronic version of just the track I want.
I have a P800 with T-mobile in the US. They don't officially support the phone, but then again I don't care. I just want the service. The phone is GSM/GPRS, so all T-Mobile does is activate the service. I took the SIM card out of the free phone they gave me, plopped it into the P800 and it works like a charm.
I've been impressed with T-Mobile's coverage, compared to Nextel which was my previous provider.
It sync's to my work laptop and lotus notes, and also to my home Mac's without a problem. Bluetooth is fantastic too. I have a wireless headset that alone is worth the price of the phone. I love doing conference calls with both hands free.
Battery life is phenominal. Sony rates it as 13 hour of TALK time. I've used it heavily and only gotten it down to half a charge with a full day's use. My Nextel phone would give up the ghost after just one, two hour conference call.
The P900 looks nice and some nifty features, but I'm not going to buy it for mostly cosmetic features like theme support. Although if anything happens to my P800, I'd buy a P900 without a second thought.