what I was actually referring to was the fact that the straight mp3 that are typically downloaded from Kazaa, etc, have no restrictions on their use.
OTOH, they also have no guarantee on their use:) They may be a loop of 20 seconds of the song, crappy encodes, cut off at the end etc. You're of course correct that the offerings by Apple are more restricted in their use than the free alternatives. I do think however that they went out of their way to make those restrictions as light as possible.
After all, you can still burn to CD and copy them to your mp3 player (as long as it's an iPod anyway <g>). When you rip them again from the CD, you can do anything you want with them. It's true you'll get degraded quality (not even that much from what I've read in the comments on this story), but I don't think it will be much worse than what you generally get from Kazaa.
So it does have its limitations and although you can do whatever you want with the music you bought, it is more work that when you'd get straight mp3's (or non-protected mp4's). OTOH, it's also a lot easier to spam millions of people than to convince people to subscribe to your commercial mailing lists and have them opt-in to receive your offerings (and people who actually want to receive such offers have to go through more trouble in the latter case). Does that mean that opt-in mailing lists are a broken product and that spam is the way to go?
What's the most convenient for one party, is not necessarily acceptable for the other party and there's always two required to make a deal (unless you say "screw the other ones, I'll do as I please anyway)... You can always say "But the others are unreasonable", but that doesn't make it right imho.
Re:AAC is pretty weak, no marketing can change tha
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure what your point it is. The AAC encoder of Quicktime 6.2 Pro, Nero, the stuff Apple uses for its web store (Quicktime as well?) or of any other product may or may not produce equally good or better quality sound than good encoders for other formats at similar bitrates. I don't know which way it is, and neither do you it seems. I was just pointing out that you can't judge a format like this based on the output of one specific encoder.
According to this Apple KB article, their AAC encoder is VBR. Actually, I don't know whether AAC CBR even exists. Also have a look at this comment. The quality claims are of course purely subjective, but his file size observations also support that Apple's AAC encoder is definitely VBR.
Re:AAC is pretty weak, no marketing can change tha
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The quality of an AAC file very much depends on the encoder (it's the same with mpeg4 video or mp3 audio). The test you are refering to only shows that the encoder they used (the one present in Quicktime at that time) was quite bad. It doesn't mean that AAC in itself is bad.
With Quicktime 6.2, they improved the quality of the AAC encoder (at least if you have Quicktime Pro) according to the release notes. I don't have Nero though, so I can't compare.
especially when alternatives of higher quality are so readily available.
Have you actually compared a 128kbps aac to a 192 (or 256) kbps mp3 and found the aac was really so much worse? I'm most definitely not a trained listener or someone with super hearing, but I do think these files (t least the 30 second samples) do sound good.
Do you really believe that America was not at much greater risk of being subject to terrorist attack from opportunistic extremists as we go to war against an insane regime already proven to be capable ___(Fill in the atrocity)___?
Absolutely. Those terrorist organisations don't pop up out of thin air and much more importantly, neither do the people that they abuse to do their dirty work. Those people can only be brainwashed into doing such horrible acts if they are desperate enough to give in to it. Losing members of your family in bombings, seeing half your country being looted (by your own people) and destroyed without the people that supposedly came to free you do anything about it and having the feeling that you have absolutely no control over your own destiny are all factors that make a person much more susceptible to manipulation.
You don't fight terrorism with bombs. Although the people at the top may very well be "truly evil" and only out for power (by causing terror), the ones that actually perform these acts are most of the time simply misguided and brainwashed. The best way to fight such organisations is to make sure they don't get new recruits, since the leaders aren't that stupid to hijack a plane themselves and fly it into a building. For that, they use cannon fodder.
By waging wars like this, the US government gives these terrorist organisations extra ammo they can use to justify what they claim is their cause and to convince more people to join their ranks. They do not weaken them, they only strengthen them. This in turn may lead to even worse attacks, which then again can be used by the US gov't to justify even larger scale retaliations. You can't scare someone who is prepared to kill himself with display of military power.
You have to convince people that it's not worth it, that you aren't the big bad superstate that the terrorists make of you. If you do that, they may actually start to help you in the fight against terrorism. And you won't get millions of people protesting against the US around the world either.
The opportunists you should be wary of are the repressive dictatorial regimes in the Arab world that squander their countries' resources, enriching themselves, and fomenting religious fervor among their people in hopes that they overlook their own pathetic existence.
Sorry, but the US gov't doesn't give shit about this. They even actively support a number of those. All they care about is power. When it suits them, the US supports them, when they become too annoying for some reason, the US will bring out their dirty laundry and bomb them into oblivion, with or without the UN's consent.
Try doing those benchmarks again on loaded systems instead of on systems doing nothing but running the benchmark. According to what I've read on the different Darwin lists, Mac OS X' performance will stay more or less the same, while the others will slow down severely. This illustrates the design decisions that Apple made when developing Mac OS X: when making the best case a lot faster means making the worst case a lot slower, they don't do it. They prefer consistent behaviour overall over super-duper fast behaviour in the best case.
First off, OSX is based on the Carnegie Mellon University Version 3.0 of the Mach Kernel
It's based on the OSF version of the University of Utah's version of CMU's version 3.0 actually (as outlined in one of the messages I linked to in my previous post). Yes, this is still "based on CMU's Mach kernel 3.0", but with a lot of changes made to it that turned the kernel into something usable for real-world OS's.
but the Kernel in and of itself does not have a natural interface, so Apple used (and licensed) BSD as an interface layer. So you completely discredit any respect of knowledge with the above line, OSX is based on BSD. Yes OSX has the CMU Mach 3.0 kernel but it is wrapped with BSD.
I never claimed OS X doesn't contain any BSD code. What I meant was that a lot of people say Mach was a bad choice, and that Apple should have used the kernel from any of the *BSD's or even Linux kernel instead of just adding a BSD personality on top of Mach. I tried to show why that was not such a bad idea at all and why Apple chose this path.
Yes NT has Mach underpinnings in its design, but it is NOT a monolithic kernel, it is a microkernel that takes advantage of the mach concepts but without restricting the kernel to monolithic operations and the locks that you see with the OSX kernel.
Just like OS X' kernel, the NT kernel runs in one address space, yet keeps the interface to the different components of the kernel strictly defined, so you still have the design advantages of a microkernel (strict interfaces and modular design) without the great speed hits you normally take with a microkernel. Actually, on the page linked above Mictosoft itself even says "From the start, the WindowsNT architecture has fallen squarely into the macrokernel camp."
I get tired of people like you that blast posts but yet bloviate over crap they truly don?t understand. You sometimes have no idea who you are ?trying? to talk down to.
I'll grant you it's hard to know who you are talking to when all you know is his alias. And frankly, I couldn't care less who you are. If I'm wrong, all I can do is learn from whatever you have to say in a rebuttal, which wouldn't happen if I were too intimidated to post because of who you are.
Just a side note, I wasn't blaming the problems with OSX on its kernel, I was just saying Apple made a bad decision on their kernel and it does affect the system, even at a minimal level.
Great, yet another ignorant person ranting about the Mach kernel. First of all, Windows NT's kernel (and as such 2000's and XP's as well) are also based on the ideas of Mach (go to the"DELVING INTO THE WINDOWS NT ARCHITECTURE" heading). Of course, their current kernels hardly resemble a "real" Mach kernel (Mach most certainly did not contain a window server/manager that ran in kernel space), but neither is OS X's kernel (and never was, although Apple fortunately did leave the windowing stuff in user space, even though this does make it slightly slower). The fundamental architectural changes Apple did are outlined here and here (login/password = archives/archives).
Sorrfy for this rant, but I really get tired of all these uninformed people that keep on saying how bad a choice Mach was for Apple and that they should have used a Linux or BSD kernel instead. Those kernels are only now catching up to Apple's Darwin kernel in terms of several - for Apple - critical features such as low-latency (at the interrupt service/driver level), proper smp and real-time support. They do have other advantages over the Darwin kernel (such as much higher fork/clone performance), but that's how it goes in general (you win some, you lose some) and you have to choose the best tool for your job.
MacNN's got a story with a link to unofficial drivers that enable the USB 2.0 functionality. Some comments there indicate they really work, though I can't verify this myself (I have neither an MDD G4 nor any USB2 devices)
Re:As much as spammer's suck
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 1
Society hasn't offically complained until he's been tried in court,
I think you've got that backwards. Trying someone in court is imo the last step, when all other forms of (official or not) complaining have failed. It's not the start or a first step of complaints by society, it's the last one. In strict law enforcement terms you may be entirely correct, but society is a lot broader than that.
nor has he had an opportunity to pay his debt to society until the courts have punished him.
Locking up someone is something you do to protect society from an individual (and you hope that during the time he's locked up, he'll have time to think about what he did and see why it was wrong), not to make him pay for what he did. Nobody even asked him to make up for what he did, all that people wanted was for him to stop spamming.
Going back to the bank analogy, I'm sure the first robbery was reported. The robber certainly can't claim ignorance.
The spammer wasn't tried after his first spamming run, but after almost a year of continuous spamming and getting booted from a dozen isp's.
Re:As much as spammer's suck
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 1
In the latter case, I have been given a chance by society to reform and have shown that I likely cannot.
Society has complained already at least 46000 times in this case. As such; I think that he got plenty of chances to reform if he wanted to (he can't claim ignorance) and that he has shown he cannot without harsher measures.
Re:As much as spammer's suck
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 1
I'm of the opinion that jail is something that should be reserved for violent offenders; and maybe repeat non-violent offenders
Is 46000 spams (of which 41100 are archived here) not enough repeat offence for you?
% whois -h whois.geektools.com appleuniversal.com
GeekTools Whois Proxy v5.0 Ready.
Checking server [whois.crsnic.net]
Checking server [whois.bulkregister.com]
Results:
The data in Bulkregister.com's WHOIS database is provided
[snip]
Hahahah!!! Tricked You!!!
April Fools
Tricked You!, HA HA HA HAHAHA
US
Domain Name: APPLEUNIVERSAL.COM
Administrative Contact:
NOC Apple Apple-NOC@APPLE.COM
[snip]
How do you guys keep interpreting this as a request for "a lot more programs?"
I got that impression from the following part of your original mail:
You don't find that Apple is again returning to an era of having a full-featured OS (in the BSD sense of the term) and a broad application suite? I can safely say they ARE trying to do everything for me and let's try an analogy:
Why can't Apple's out-of-the-box Unix be as compelling to RedHat users as say, their Final Cut Pro is to Avid users?
I thought that you meant that because Final Cut Pro offers pretty much everything a video editor would want, Mac OS X should do the same for all users (including unix geeks), just like Red Hat. Seems I interpreted this wrong.
Anyway, I do agree a nice package manager for would be great. And Apple is also interested in that, which is why they sponsor(ed?) the OpenPackages initiative. Unfortunately, it's completely stalled it seems. I personally don't know what they don't/didn't like about existing package management systems such as RPM and the Debian package system. A bit more background information for JKH can be found here though (login/pass = archives/archives).
Help me here, please: It is illogical to think that having a default apache and a Fink-installed apache is redundant? Obviously I am missing something.
It makes sure that system upgrades don't muck around with your customized apache. I think that's redundancy in a good way. I think it is of vital importance that the components in the default locations are what Apple assumes they are. If they're not, it would bring an enormous amount of extra testing work for them. E.g., one of the iTunes updates (not the one that erased your HD in some cases) failed for several people because they had upgraded the system's perl. The one included by default may be outdated, but Apple only tested its installer script with that one and it did work with it. It didn't work anymore with a newer version though.
As such, I don't agree with your assertion that since they include a command line, they should immediately support replacing all system packages as well, since "Apple's ease-of-use" is compromised anyway. This has nothing to with the command line, since the above can be performed from the GUI equally well by obtaining a precompiled package from somewhere.
Mac OS X's Darwin is based on NeXTStep. NeXTStep shipped in 1988. How is Linux older? Going out on a limb... maybe in OSS years if you compare the man hours spend inside Apple on Darwin to those outside working on Linux but calendar years are calendar years.
If you count that way, then you can also say that Linux is based on Minux, which shipped in January 1987. However, Linux is not Minix just like Mac OS X is not NeXTStep. And Linux is definitely more established and more widely used than NextSTep ever was, regardless of the technical and other merits the latter may hold over the former.
I am getting a very mixed message from you, Apple and the gentleman who reamed me earlier that Mac OS X IS, and ISN'T a recognized out-of-the-box *nix flavor. The topic at hand (Fink) seems to go, "it is, but it ins't, but it really is if you add Fink." So it isn't? You should port to Aqua and Carbon, not compile the code you have, and perhaps used on Ultrix, NeXT, Linux and now Mac OS X?
I'm not sure why saying that you don't need X to create a good Mac OS X application (or why saying that creating a program that leverages Mac OS X-specific technologies allows you to create a better application than when you don't) would contradict the fact that Mac OS X is a unix variant. Even today, XWindows applications don't offer the same ease-of-use as native app
That's normal. OS X charges your battery to 100% and then waits until the battery is back at 95% before it starts charging again. This is done to prolong the battery life.
Although the web document doesn't mention it, if you look at the contents of the update (lsbom MacOSXUpdate10.2.5.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom), you'll see that all those components are indeed updated (again). And I'm sure I don't have the combo-updater, since I've already got 10.2.4 installed and the update is "only" 40MB.
From the Archive.bom file in the installer:
[snip] ./System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Battery.menu
[snip a lot of files below that directory] ./System/Library/SystemConfiguration/PowerManageme nt.bundle
[snip also several files in that directory]
So even if they didn't fix that issue with the update of the PowerManagement bundle, at least they tinkered with the display of the battery status:)
(note: this is a reply to both this and your previous post)
Do a search for the bugs Apple has introduced to IPSec and GCC.
And you do a search on the improvements they introduced in those things. Yes, when you do improvements or change things to improve compatibility with your product, you always run the risk of breaking things. Regression testing can only help you so far.
Why can't Apple's out-of-the-box Unix be as compelling to RedHat users as say
Maybe for the same reason the the reverse also doesn't necessarily hold true. You are now already complaining that Apple ships some buggy stuff. Do you think the situation would improve if they started shipping a lot more programs? Red Hat also didn't create/port all that software themselves, nor are all the maintainers Red Hat employees. Linux is simply a more established/older Unix variant, so more software has already been ported to it and thoroughly tested.
Perhaps I've failed to make my point that in my humble opinion, Mac OS X 1.0 should have shipped with an X11 implementation right out of the box given that is shipping with say... developer tools.
What do developer tools have to do with X11? You can perfectly create programs that have nothing to do with X11. In fact, a non-X11 program is likely to be of much greater value (in the sense of usability and attractiveness) to the Mac community than an X11 program.
It's true that Mac OS X is probably the only modern Unix variant that doesn't ship with X11 by default (yet), but has it ever occurred to you that the reason for that may be that Mac OS X already has a different window manager on board (while for the others it's either XWindows or nothing) which is much more important to most Mac users? I really don't understand why you are so obsessed with X11 not being included by default.
Fully embrace a mainstream open source OS
Those "mainstream open source OS"'s lacked several key features Apple needed in its OS at the time Mac OS X development started and they are only now catching up. Which features? For example proper smp support (multi-processor Macs finally had to be able to their fullest potential), proper real-time support (Final Cut Pro anyone?) and low latency support (low-level audio, user interface).
I really don't understand why you think Apple should do everything based on open source. What is the problem with using existing stuff of which you think it's done well, and do other things (of which you think you can do them better) yourself? What is the problem with first focussing on your largest user base (Mac users) and only when you're confident you're on the right track there, starting to spend resources on other target groups?
I'm not trying to be elitist here, I'm just trying to point out that Apple is a company with a small market share and thus it can't take very large gambles (it doesn't control the market). You call opening the Darwin source (and several other packages) a leap of faith, but there's no large risk involved there. At worst, it has cost them a bit extra in terms of bandwidth and HD space. On the other hand, it gave/gives them extra publicity, it makes it much easier for driver developers and they get some free bug fixing in the process. On top of that, the open source world also benefits from it, so it's a win-win (or WIN-win for Apple according to a lot of people, but even then everyone still gains) situation.
Maybe you didn't read the title of the article, but these things aren't aimed at school labs, for that they've got the free iMovie. And Final Cut Express is $200 (or $250, I forgot) for education usage. Yes, you can create an even cheaper setup with an old PC, Linux and those free software tools you mentioned, but the discussion on whether or not that's a better deal than Apple's comparable offerings is completely besides the point of this story.
Screen:
Apple - 17 in. widescreen
Dell - 15.4 in widescreen
Winner: Apple"
Bzzzzt! We aren't comparing desktops here - we are comparing latops. Either Apple loses here or Apple loses in dimensions/weight.
Actually, the PBG4 weighs slightly less with its 17" screen than the Dell with its 15.4" screen. Of course, it is still wider (not higher though, it's a widescreen model with the same height as a 15" screen). If you then have to add an extra battery to the Dell to be able to surpass the Powerbook's battery life, I don't want to be the one that has to lug that stuff around...
FWIW, you can also get a 3 year warranty (+ 3 years telephone support) on the Powerbook. That doesn't cost a small amount however, though I don't know how the cost compares to that from Dell.
Re:I don't hate the war, just GWB
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
So my question to you is, what do we ( an I do mean a collective we, not a U.S. we) do to demonstrate to states that would defy the security council in this fashion that there are consequences for their actions? None of the tactics used so far have worked, so help come up with a better idea.
That is indeed the big problem. Nothing they did helped, so what now. I personally also don't have a simple "do this and that and then everything will be fine"-solution either. I even doubt there is one. The US gov't decided to try to blow Saddam to bits (which is a "do this and that"-approach actually). The problem that I have with that option is that it isn't a solution either in the spirit of all those resolutions or in the spirit of the charter of the UN..
What I mean is that this invasion can only "solve" what all those resolution against Iraq aimed for in a literal way, i.e. afterwards we will be reasonably sure that Iraq won't have any WMD's anymore and that their government will be cooperative with the "democratic West", so we won't have to fear them anymore. However, accepting this as a solution to the impasse is looking at the situation with eye flaps imho.
You have to think about why those resolutions were passed: to make the world a safer place, to remove a threat from our society. As I explained before, I see the current invasion of the US & allies as the ultimate way to increase threats all around and to make a lot more enemies (even among previously neutral and even friendly nations). I can't imagine that GWB & Co don't know this, so I assume that they have other motives (GWB's ambitions - whatever they may ultimately be -, helping corporate friends, please ultra/neo-conservatives/imperialists,... ?).
So ultimately, the UN did imho what it was supposed to do in this situation: it tried to avoid an armed conflict that wouldn't do the world much if any good (after all, the UN should have the well-being of the entire world as its highest goal). You are correct that they didn't propose a viable alternative either (though "they" is a bit weird to use, as "they" is at the same time "us" - all countries of the world, including the US), but I don't think one can use that as excuse to do something really dumb.
Imho, that's a bit like saying that in my city, we have a large problem with bike thefts and despite initiatives such as bike registrations, prevention campaigns that urge you to use two locks at once, statements by the police etc, the situation doesn't really improve.
So then I enter the picture and propose to destroy all parked bikes you can see. After all, when all bikes are destroyed, the thieves can't do anything anymore. And in the process, since everyone is looking for bikes, they may spot a bike thief that tries to take advantage of the situation as well and turn him in.
It's a completely daft proposal, but it will stop the problem of bike thefts in my city. Will the inhabitants of my city be happy? No. Will the general problem of bike theft, which obviously is not limited to this city, be any closer to be solved? No. Will it scare bike thieves elsewhere? No. Will it help in the long term "battle against bike thieves"? No.
Do the police, the city council and whoever else currently trying to stop bike theft make themselves irrelevant if they tries to stop me because their own plans don't solve the problem while mine does?
I think the current battle of the US gov't is pretty similar. Although it may solve one problem somewhere for which no-one has a solution (yet), it completely disregards any other consequences. They are simply using the UN resolution completely against its spirit (promote peace) to justify their own unjust actions and thereby completely undermining the moral authority of the UN. Although the UN has failed to solve the problem themselves as well until now, at least they're not making the situation worse. That feat is already a big accomplishment unfortunately.
PS: whenever I write "US" in these messages, I invariably mean the "current US government and its neo-conservative think-thank". I don't have anything against the US an sich. I actually like my American Macs a lot:)
The place I would argue is only in the veto area. Do some research into the ties France, Germany, and Russia have with Iraq and the types of assistance they have provided over the last 12 years. It flies completely in the face of the UN Security resolutions, and I would speculate that these countries just don't want to be found guilty of such things in the international arena.
Note that this is a partial repost from another message I just posted in another thread, because I also referred to your message. It's not because I don't think your post doesn't deserve its own reply, just because I don't think typing the same thing twice in different words will add any value to my arguments:) Anyway:
Before you go to war, you have to ask yourself whether it's really worth it. Obviously, most of the countries in the UN didn't think so. Bush wanted a war he could win (he thought it would even be easy, but it seems like he made a small mistake there), so he simply used the UN resolutions as a pretext to start this war. For Iran, it seems he isn't even going through that trouble anymore (although Powel seems to be trying to convince him otherwise).
It is certainly possible that France, Germany and Russia have other reasons to be against a war on Iraq than just that they think it's plain stupid, but they were/are not the only ones that are against. Of course they are the most vocal, since they are all quite large and diplomatic heavy-weight countries, but for example Belgium ("my" country) is also against. And all those millions of people that protest(ed) against the war. I don't think you can dismiss that all as "they have other interests to protect" or "they are misguided, they don't know what they are talking about".
Maybe I should have added that the US gov't is not just ignoring veto's, but also the will of the majority of the members of the UN and that especially that fact is undercutting their moral grounds. If the whole world thought this war was necessary/"a good idea" except for a small minority that included two or three security council members with veto power, the situation would be quite different in my eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
After all, you can still burn to CD and copy them to your mp3 player (as long as it's an iPod anyway <g>). When you rip them again from the CD, you can do anything you want with them. It's true you'll get degraded quality (not even that much from what I've read in the comments on this story), but I don't think it will be much worse than what you generally get from Kazaa.
So it does have its limitations and although you can do whatever you want with the music you bought, it is more work that when you'd get straight mp3's (or non-protected mp4's). OTOH, it's also a lot easier to spam millions of people than to convince people to subscribe to your commercial mailing lists and have them opt-in to receive your offerings (and people who actually want to receive such offers have to go through more trouble in the latter case). Does that mean that opt-in mailing lists are a broken product and that spam is the way to go?
What's the most convenient for one party, is not necessarily acceptable for the other party and there's always two required to make a deal (unless you say "screw the other ones, I'll do as I please anyway)... You can always say "But the others are unreasonable", but that doesn't make it right imho.
I'm not sure what your point it is. The AAC encoder of Quicktime 6.2 Pro, Nero, the stuff Apple uses for its web store (Quicktime as well?) or of any other product may or may not produce equally good or better quality sound than good encoders for other formats at similar bitrates. I don't know which way it is, and neither do you it seems. I was just pointing out that you can't judge a format like this based on the output of one specific encoder.
According to this Apple KB article, their AAC encoder is VBR. Actually, I don't know whether AAC CBR even exists. Also have a look at this comment. The quality claims are of course purely subjective, but his file size observations also support that Apple's AAC encoder is definitely VBR.
The quality of an AAC file very much depends on the encoder (it's the same with mpeg4 video or mp3 audio). The test you are refering to only shows that the encoder they used (the one present in Quicktime at that time) was quite bad. It doesn't mean that AAC in itself is bad.
With Quicktime 6.2, they improved the quality of the AAC encoder (at least if you have Quicktime Pro) according to the release notes. I don't have Nero though, so I can't compare.
You don't fight terrorism with bombs. Although the people at the top may very well be "truly evil" and only out for power (by causing terror), the ones that actually perform these acts are most of the time simply misguided and brainwashed. The best way to fight such organisations is to make sure they don't get new recruits, since the leaders aren't that stupid to hijack a plane themselves and fly it into a building. For that, they use cannon fodder.
By waging wars like this, the US government gives these terrorist organisations extra ammo they can use to justify what they claim is their cause and to convince more people to join their ranks. They do not weaken them, they only strengthen them. This in turn may lead to even worse attacks, which then again can be used by the US gov't to justify even larger scale retaliations. You can't scare someone who is prepared to kill himself with display of military power.
You have to convince people that it's not worth it, that you aren't the big bad superstate that the terrorists make of you. If you do that, they may actually start to help you in the fight against terrorism. And you won't get millions of people protesting against the US around the world either.
Sorry, but the US gov't doesn't give shit about this. They even actively support a number of those. All they care about is power. When it suits them, the US supports them, when they become too annoying for some reason, the US will bring out their dirty laundry and bomb them into oblivion, with or without the UN's consent.Try doing those benchmarks again on loaded systems instead of on systems doing nothing but running the benchmark. According to what I've read on the different Darwin lists, Mac OS X' performance will stay more or less the same, while the others will slow down severely. This illustrates the design decisions that Apple made when developing Mac OS X: when making the best case a lot faster means making the worst case a lot slower, they don't do it. They prefer consistent behaviour overall over super-duper fast behaviour in the best case.
Sorrfy for this rant, but I really get tired of all these uninformed people that keep on saying how bad a choice Mach was for Apple and that they should have used a Linux or BSD kernel instead. Those kernels are only now catching up to Apple's Darwin kernel in terms of several - for Apple - critical features such as low-latency (at the interrupt service/driver level), proper smp and real-time support. They do have other advantages over the Darwin kernel (such as much higher fork/clone performance), but that's how it goes in general (you win some, you lose some) and you have to choose the best tool for your job.
MacNN's got a story with a link to unofficial drivers that enable the USB 2.0 functionality. Some comments there indicate they really work, though I can't verify this myself (I have neither an MDD G4 nor any USB2 devices)
% whois -h whois.geektools.com appleuniversal.com
GeekTools Whois Proxy v5.0 Ready.
Checking server [whois.crsnic.net]
Checking server [whois.bulkregister.com] Results:
The data in Bulkregister.com's WHOIS database is provided
[snip]
Hahahah!!! Tricked You!!!
April Fools
Tricked You!, HA HA HA HAHAHA
US
Domain Name: APPLEUNIVERSAL.COM
Administrative Contact:
NOC Apple Apple-NOC@APPLE.COM
[snip]
FWIW, you don't need the command key, just ctrl-click will do.
I got that impression from the following part of your original mail:
I thought that you meant that because Final Cut Pro offers pretty much everything a video editor would want, Mac OS X should do the same for all users (including unix geeks), just like Red Hat. Seems I interpreted this wrong.
Anyway, I do agree a nice package manager for would be great. And Apple is also interested in that, which is why they sponsor(ed?) the OpenPackages initiative. Unfortunately, it's completely stalled it seems. I personally don't know what they don't/didn't like about existing package management systems such as RPM and the Debian package system. A bit more background information for JKH can be found here though (login/pass = archives/archives).
It makes sure that system upgrades don't muck around with your customized apache. I think that's redundancy in a good way. I think it is of vital importance that the components in the default locations are what Apple assumes they are. If they're not, it would bring an enormous amount of extra testing work for them. E.g., one of the iTunes updates (not the one that erased your HD in some cases) failed for several people because they had upgraded the system's perl. The one included by default may be outdated, but Apple only tested its installer script with that one and it did work with it. It didn't work anymore with a newer version though.
As such, I don't agree with your assertion that since they include a command line, they should immediately support replacing all system packages as well, since "Apple's ease-of-use" is compromised anyway. This has nothing to with the command line, since the above can be performed from the GUI equally well by obtaining a precompiled package from somewhere.
If you count that way, then you can also say that Linux is based on Minux, which shipped in January 1987. However, Linux is not Minix just like Mac OS X is not NeXTStep. And Linux is definitely more established and more widely used than NextSTep ever was, regardless of the technical and other merits the latter may hold over the former.
I'm not sure why saying that you don't need X to create a good Mac OS X application (or why saying that creating a program that leverages Mac OS X-specific technologies allows you to create a better application than when you don't) would contradict the fact that Mac OS X is a unix variant. Even today, XWindows applications don't offer the same ease-of-use as native app
That's normal. OS X charges your battery to 100% and then waits until the battery is back at 95% before it starts charging again. This is done to prolong the battery life.
Although the web document doesn't mention it, if you look at the contents of the update (lsbom MacOSXUpdate10.2.5.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom), you'll see that all those components are indeed updated (again). And I'm sure I don't have the combo-updater, since I've already got 10.2.4 installed and the update is "only" 40MB.
[snip]
[snip a lot of files below that directory]
[snip also several files in that directory]
So even if they didn't fix that issue with the update of the PowerManagement bundle, at least they tinkered with the display of the battery status :)
It's true that Mac OS X is probably the only modern Unix variant that doesn't ship with X11 by default (yet), but has it ever occurred to you that the reason for that may be that Mac OS X already has a different window manager on board (while for the others it's either XWindows or nothing) which is much more important to most Mac users? I really don't understand why you are so obsessed with X11 not being included by default.
Those "mainstream open source OS"'s lacked several key features Apple needed in its OS at the time Mac OS X development started and they are only now catching up. Which features? For example proper smp support (multi-processor Macs finally had to be able to their fullest potential), proper real-time support (Final Cut Pro anyone?) and low latency support (low-level audio, user interface).I really don't understand why you think Apple should do everything based on open source. What is the problem with using existing stuff of which you think it's done well, and do other things (of which you think you can do them better) yourself? What is the problem with first focussing on your largest user base (Mac users) and only when you're confident you're on the right track there, starting to spend resources on other target groups?
I'm not trying to be elitist here, I'm just trying to point out that Apple is a company with a small market share and thus it can't take very large gambles (it doesn't control the market). You call opening the Darwin source (and several other packages) a leap of faith, but there's no large risk involved there. At worst, it has cost them a bit extra in terms of bandwidth and HD space. On the other hand, it gave/gives them extra publicity, it makes it much easier for driver developers and they get some free bug fixing in the process. On top of that, the open source world also benefits from it, so it's a win-win (or WIN-win for Apple according to a lot of people, but even then everyone still gains) situation.
Maybe you didn't read the title of the article, but these things aren't aimed at school labs, for that they've got the free iMovie. And Final Cut Express is $200 (or $250, I forgot) for education usage. Yes, you can create an even cheaper setup with an old PC, Linux and those free software tools you mentioned, but the discussion on whether or not that's a better deal than Apple's comparable offerings is completely besides the point of this story.
FWIW, you can also get a 3 year warranty (+ 3 years telephone support) on the Powerbook. That doesn't cost a small amount however, though I don't know how the cost compares to that from Dell.
What I mean is that this invasion can only "solve" what all those resolution against Iraq aimed for in a literal way, i.e. afterwards we will be reasonably sure that Iraq won't have any WMD's anymore and that their government will be cooperative with the "democratic West", so we won't have to fear them anymore. However, accepting this as a solution to the impasse is looking at the situation with eye flaps imho.
You have to think about why those resolutions were passed: to make the world a safer place, to remove a threat from our society. As I explained before, I see the current invasion of the US & allies as the ultimate way to increase threats all around and to make a lot more enemies (even among previously neutral and even friendly nations). I can't imagine that GWB & Co don't know this, so I assume that they have other motives (GWB's ambitions - whatever they may ultimately be -, helping corporate friends, please ultra/neo-conservatives/imperialists, ... ?).
So ultimately, the UN did imho what it was supposed to do in this situation: it tried to avoid an armed conflict that wouldn't do the world much if any good (after all, the UN should have the well-being of the entire world as its highest goal). You are correct that they didn't propose a viable alternative either (though "they" is a bit weird to use, as "they" is at the same time "us" - all countries of the world, including the US), but I don't think one can use that as excuse to do something really dumb.
Imho, that's a bit like saying that in my city, we have a large problem with bike thefts and despite initiatives such as bike registrations, prevention campaigns that urge you to use two locks at once, statements by the police etc, the situation doesn't really improve.
So then I enter the picture and propose to destroy all parked bikes you can see. After all, when all bikes are destroyed, the thieves can't do anything anymore. And in the process, since everyone is looking for bikes, they may spot a bike thief that tries to take advantage of the situation as well and turn him in.
It's a completely daft proposal, but it will stop the problem of bike thefts in my city. Will the inhabitants of my city be happy? No. Will the general problem of bike theft, which obviously is not limited to this city, be any closer to be solved? No. Will it scare bike thieves elsewhere? No. Will it help in the long term "battle against bike thieves"? No.
Do the police, the city council and whoever else currently trying to stop bike theft make themselves irrelevant if they tries to stop me because their own plans don't solve the problem while mine does?
I think the current battle of the US gov't is pretty similar. Although it may solve one problem somewhere for which no-one has a solution (yet), it completely disregards any other consequences. They are simply using the UN resolution completely against its spirit (promote peace) to justify their own unjust actions and thereby completely undermining the moral authority of the UN. Although the UN has failed to solve the problem themselves as well until now, at least they're not making the situation worse. That feat is already a big accomplishment unfortunately.
PS: whenever I write "US" in these messages, I invariably mean the "current US government and its neo-conservative think-thank". I don't have anything against the US an sich. I actually like my American Macs a lot :)
Before you go to war, you have to ask yourself whether it's really worth it. Obviously, most of the countries in the UN didn't think so. Bush wanted a war he could win (he thought it would even be easy, but it seems like he made a small mistake there), so he simply used the UN resolutions as a pretext to start this war. For Iran, it seems he isn't even going through that trouble anymore (although Powel seems to be trying to convince him otherwise).
It is certainly possible that France, Germany and Russia have other reasons to be against a war on Iraq than just that they think it's plain stupid, but they were/are not the only ones that are against. Of course they are the most vocal, since they are all quite large and diplomatic heavy-weight countries, but for example Belgium ("my" country) is also against. And all those millions of people that protest(ed) against the war. I don't think you can dismiss that all as "they have other interests to protect" or "they are misguided, they don't know what they are talking about".
Maybe I should have added that the US gov't is not just ignoring veto's, but also the will of the majority of the members of the UN and that especially that fact is undercutting their moral grounds. If the whole world thought this war was necessary/"a good idea" except for a small minority that included two or three security council members with veto power, the situation would be quite different in my eyes.