Show me a single open-source project that goes from end-to-end (source to end-user) and gives you a seamless natural way of doing "it" (whatever 'it' is) like the [itunes store][mac or pc][itunes software][ipod device][ipod interface] does. And it does it well, even under extreme loads like several thousand songs - the click-wheel made sure of that. There's nothing that Open-Source does like that. Not one thing comes to mind. Linux ? You must be joking! Apache? Yeah, right! Both of these are aimed at highly technical and able people. My sister (and you'd have to know her!) has an Ipod!
Open source is excellent at doing a task. "We want an OS". Great - here it is. "We want a webserver". Cool - here you are. As a paradigm it's less good at the whole shebang. It's a cog in the wheel, not an end, in and of itself.
I should probably point out that I've been using Linux since it came on floppies, that I ditched a DECstation 3100 to run it on an early '486. That I set up one of the earliest webservers (on the ditched DECstation, actually) in the UK - when you had to email CERN to tell them there's a new webserver in the world. I'm familiar with open-source, have used it, have contributed. I'm in no way a foe of open source. I just don't think it's a panacea.
Why is it that people don't "get" this - it's not sufficient now to simply make an MP3 player that "does more", or even is as easy to use as an Ipod. You need the whole shebang - the store, the presence on the desktop, the device itself, the ease of transfer between computer and device, the chic design, and good marketing/PR. Hell, there's probably loads more too.
Apple have a history (and therefore a lot of expertise) in "doing it all". They design their own hardware, write their own OS (*), develop their own apps, do their own marketing (the 'reality distortion field' effect:-). They do it all, just to make the whole experience as unified and simple for the end-user as possible. They grok synergy.
Coming up with an ipod-killer that could make *coffee* (+) wouldn't break the grip of Apple on this market now - it'll take a multi-vectored attack to shake their dominance, and no open-source project has the resources that Apple have in the focus areas that are needed. Open-source has manpower and skill, not billions of dollars in the bank. Apple have a fair amount of manpower and skill too...
I think Neuros will gain *some* benefit from this - it's a positive move for some people, but they're still fighting over the scraps in the remaining 10-20 percent of the market that *haven't* converted to Apple yet. Also it's cool to have legitimate access to something like this - I'm sure the OS community will come up with more uses for the Neuros device than Neuros ever thought of. I'm not *against* Neuros, I just don't think it's a disruptive idea.
Simon.
(*) Yes, I'm aware that they didn't completely design the OS, but they have contributed a good portion of it, and most of that in the user-visible areas.
(+) Yes, I'm aware that making coffee wouldn't be a useful ipod feature - think of the leakage - but I'm making the point that features alone aren't as valuable as they were when the market was nascent.
No, I think it's you that has it wrong. WTF is "OS X". If you go to www.apple.com/macosx/ you'll see there are none, no, zero, nada, references to just "OS X". Every mention on the page is for 'Mac OS X'. Sometimes with a designation thereafter ('Tiger', on this page).
Now normally I don't give a flying fuck about grammar/naming/nomenclature/whatever on/. - the purpose of language is to communicate, and if you didn't understand that I was talking about 'Mac OS X' when I said 'OS-X', then frankly you have larger issues...
But, it's always nice to see someone hoisted on their own petard. Especially when that petard really does blow up in their face, over such a trivial, little, useless, inconsequential matter such as this. Way to go - you've just (a) shown yourself to be anally retentive to the highest degree, and (b) wrong anyway. Cool.
I'm not exactly sure how TFA displays arrogance in anybody
I didn't say that it did.
And I don't have a problem with either MS or Apple's engineers' attitudes. I think it's appropriate - that's what I was pointing out. I think it's for different reasons, and I think (on Apple's part), that it (at least in part) comes from the attitude at the top.
Walk around the campus at Microsoft, or across to Cafe Macs in Cupertino, and you come across the same sort of casual arrogance - both sets of employees generally (there are exceptions:-) think they're in the best place to be.
In Microsoft's case, it's because they're the most successful computer company in the world, bar none. That they're on pretty much every desktop (or at least 90% or so of them), and that what they do, matters. Microsoft is all to do with preserving and increasing that user-base, and delivering what (mainly business) requires to do so.
In Apple's case, it's more insidious (possibly that's being harsh, perhaps 'subtle') - Apple engineers think they make the best computers. Bar none. They don't think they're the most popular (there's an implied 'yet' in that statement), but they do think they're the best. Apple is all to do with ease-of-use, attention-to-detail, and a good experience. They invest thought.
Some of the Apple attitude comes from having the potential for Steve Jobs to "take an interest" in your project. You *really* want it to measure up, if he does, and Mr. Jobs (to you!) is a perfectionist. This does keep people on their toes, but I wonder how often it *really* happens.
There's more though - the 'ease-of-use' is a mantra to the Apple employees I've met. They really care how their software is perceived, and I think it shows in the product. Sure, there are business decisions that override engineering wishes, but it seems to be less the case at Apple than anywhere else. I think that comes from the top (SJ) as well.
For me, back then, Apple computers sucked big time before OS-X came out. The focus of the company was pointed in a different direction. Now they woo techies, artists, movie-people, graphics designers, and business (with the 'office' suite) alike. For me, now, an OS-X machine with 2 cinema-displays is the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've been using Linux since it came on floppies, Irix (ok, that was a close second), SunOS, Solaris, HPUX, etc...
I personally think SJ has done well - long may he continue, especially as I have some stock in the company I bought a while back when it was a lot lower:-)
Not necessarily. My manager came in to see me a month or so ago, saying that he'd upgraded my classification in the company records, because I was towards the right-edge of the bell-curve. Now I'm in the middle of the bell curve on the next pay-scale up, which makes it easy for him to give a pay rise come review time. I didn't solicit this (although I was obviously happy that he took the time/trouble to do it:-) It bodes well for the forthcoming pay review:-)
I'm with the OP, about the only time you have some *real* say in your salary is at the starting point. When I was offered my current position, I countered with 1.5x the salary offer, with believable reasons why I needed the extra money. I settled for 1.3x + perks.
It's *expensive* for a company to hire people. If you're good enough, they're *not* going to quibble over even what seems a significant price difference. If you're not good enough, then they'll make excuses. If you start getting too many excuses, you've an inflated idea of your own value. Decrease it and start over again (with different employers, obviously!).
Er, not to rain on your parade, but if SJ (as CEO) has presided while the stock price has gone through the roof, and if SJ only takes a minimal salary, and pays himself in stock, what exactly is the problem ?
Considering the obvious (look at the stock chart prices) effect of hiring SJ as CEO, Apple ought to be paying him loadsadosh. And no, I'm not Steve Jobs, I just think he's done a phenomenal job (didn't you hear ? Apple has been "dying" for years now...).
I don't see a problem paying CEO's who perform that well. It's pure jealousy to advovate otherwise - especially as the man is only getting richer when the company does better!
I *do* have a problem with 'golden handshakes' when a CEO runs a company into the ground. I *do* think a lot of CEO's sit on their collective arses, do little (or worse, meddle!) and badly affect their company, and I don't think this should be rewarded. I don't think you can level that at SJ.
% mysqladmin -p ver [...] Uptime: 1 day 37 sec Threads: 6 Questions: 17086993 Slow queries: 12 Opens: 79141 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 64 Queries per second avg: 197.681
The queries/sec average is surprisingly low, usually we're up at between 300 and 400 queries/second. I've just been re-working the search interface - some of the queries were over a megabyte of SQL statement! Now they're down under a kilobyte again. We can easily see >500 threads at once as well...
They may consider it proprietary, but it didn't count under the terms of the deal - otherwise I couldn't have run it by the lawyer before signing. I made sure of that with Sony first....
There was a clause in an NDA I signed with Sony that said something along the lines of "In the event of You disclosing material which is considered proprietary under this agreement, the Company will seek maximum damages, and financial reparation may not be sufficient".
That scared me slightly... I still signed though. And I made sure not to have any first-born (hah! As if I had the chance back then:-)
Just to comment on your BBC link there - it's now widely agreed that the journalist was right and the government was wrong. The BBC backed down because pressure was applied, not because of the story's inaccuracy. This is itself something of a scandal, but with the largest news organisation having already "admitted" its error, no-one else wants to take it on.
The 'sexed up' dossier was in fact pretty 'sexed up' when all the details came to life, and it ended with one of the authors committing suicide in dodgy circumstances.
I have no clue whether your NYT or TNR stories are valid, but your link to the BBC is in error.
I personally doubt that when the BBC says "experts think....", that they're making it up. In general, the BBC are careful with what they say, and tend to admit mistakes rather than try to pretend it didn't happen. Reputations are hard to build and easy to destroy.
Just thinking out loud, but if I were a climatologist running simulations over various scenarios, with large numbers of variables in each scenario, I might like to be interpolating data between two known points rather than extrapolating from 'here' on out to the great unknown. The vanished water, atmospheric CO2 and lack of a biosphere are effects of runaway global warming, not causes, although I'll grant you the solar flux is higher. I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible to cope with increased flux in the model though.
Maybe I'm wrong, but whenever I was running physics experiments to try and model a theory, it was always useful to have the outlying datapoints clustered together as well as the area of the model under study - you have a lot more faith in a theoretical model when it lies within your measurements rather than off to one side of all your data... Assuming they *can* compensate for the different world-models within one theory, I think this might be a useful exercise.
Well, for myself, there are only a few shows I watch CSI {NY,Miami}, Stargate {Atlantis}, Battlestar Galactica, and the daily show. The rest is pretty much crap apart from the occasional BBC America/Discovery thing.
Adding all that up would probably come to $20/week - too much as you say. But this *is* only the first step - the ground-breaking thing is getting Disney on-board. Tweaking the model is a lot (a *lot*) easier... I really do this is a major shift.
And besides, people aren't rational. They'll download and play stuff they missed, or the Tivo failed to record, or to have on their imac for a flight, or (insert reason here). It's the convenience and portability that gives it the 'pizzazz' effect...
So now I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic ? Because the first two lines are typical 6-year-old attitude, but the last line is almost surreal in its self importance...
"Excuse me, but why do i have to pay to watch something that i already paid to have broadcast to my house?"... to...
"Excuse me, but why do I have to pay for this taxi cab when I have a fully-working car at my house ?" "Excuse me, but why do I have to pay to buy this book, when I have another copy sitting in my house ?"... Company A is providing you with a service. You *don't* have to pay for it, but then they're not obliged to give you that service either. Grow up.
It's been announced/available for 2 days now. It's a revolution in how we'll get TV delivered. All the other networks will look on, see that they're missing out, and clamour to get onboard, but this takes more than 2 days...
Give it time - rome wasn't built in a day, or even 2.
Well, yes and no. There is still the occasional "what's it doing ?" pause when you start up something new (eg: System Prefs component). Spotlight is only marginally faster (pure "feel" rating there), but there are things that are noticeable as above. It's not a new computer, it's just marginally better.
Yep - there's no secrets, it's all on display in the profiler:-) I knew about the possible upgrade before I bought it - saw it on MacSlash I think, so I went looking for it.
I bought one about a week ago. I can't say I've noticed it's faster in real-world use, but it does benchmark slightly faster (in accordance with the CPU speed bump). Since its main purpose is to look gorgeous in the living room, run email and web-browsing, I have no complaints, but then I wouldn't have had, anyway:-) The faster drive is noticeable though (once you get past the spotlight indexing, anyway)
Having the extra VRAM seems to improve video performance a fair bit as well - subtly but noticeably smoother when doing the 'cube' switch using 'Desktop Manager', for example. (Which is the *very* first piece of s/w I ever install on a mac). Yes I use expose too, but with DM I can dedicate one screen per task. Much nicer:-)
Well, mine records DVD's too. Just select 'Burn to DVD' from the Tivo menu and it creates a nice menu-driven DVD of the show for you, splitting over discs if necessary. Great:-)
You'd see that he was about to be apologised to for having his time wasted at the station, before they correlated his workplace with a firearm incident, and a hoax firewarm call, and staff at his workplace photographing tube stations. That's what prompted the arrest and house search. He had a radio scanner and "odd stuff" (to the average copper, anyway) at home, and they reasonably quickly then cleared him and apologised for the inconvenience.
Frankly it seems to me as though he (in particular) was under surveillance, and the copper on-the-spot thought "I don't understand what he's doing, lets stop him". Cue the whole series of events. I don't think this is indicative of a general policy for just anyone walking around London.
Just how much protection would your constitution provide if the CIA had been observing you, and decided to arrest you ? Really ? If they didn't want to let people know ? The UK does have a constitution anyway, it's just not in a single document. It's easy to make a constitution if you start afresh, but when your country is as old as ours, and has the complicated history of ours, it's not so easy. Besides, our officials are accountable, at least as much as anyone else's, (which is the prime purpose of a constitution - the govt *can* do this, and the govt *cannot* do that) so why "fix" what isn't broken.
Well, there are only a few hundred sites on that list! - I'm perfectly happy blocking that many sites! If there were several million proxy servers, it'd be a bit different...
That's good to know (about intercept, and about PHP 5.1 - we're scheduled to move over to it soon, just as soon as all the code's been properly tested...)
You can't evade the shutdown function by causing fatal errors though - I've just tested it with:
register_shutdown_function("testit");// this is another comment and it's got different text echo "Doing nasty hacker stuff now";//you know the drill - it's just a game we have to play eval("::");
function testit()
{
echo "yes, it was called";
}
The 'testit' code was called. When you introduce a parse error (after the 'eval' for example), nothing is output, presumably because it fails during tokenisation.
The advantage of being able to disallow calling would be very useful though:-) I don't have the runkit installed, so there's no danger from that.
I'm not aware of any - although if anyone knows of one, I'd be interested too - just to make sure I've not made a stupid mistake...
It's not too hard, though, if you download the PHP source and look in "ext/standard", you'll see the various files - for example 'exec.c'. If you look in there, you'll find a function per php command {exec(), shell_exec(), system(), passthru()}, to all of which you could simply add
... either changing the '1' or the constant-name (SYSCALL_EXEC) to suit for the different functions. This is detailed in the Zend API under 'creating constants'
Then you just need to write something that registers a shutdown hook (there's examples at php.net) and decides what to do. In my case I generate a vector of the intval(constant) values with comma's between (eg: "0,0,1,0,0,1"), and check to see if they're all '0'. If they are, I just exit normally. If not, I check the entry in the SQL table 'syscall_allowed' for that script corresponds to the exact string above (I used comma-separated values to make this easier). If there's no match for script and vector, I firewall the incoming (REMOTE_ADDR) ip address.
Slashdot Mirror
[sigh] No, I didn't say that. You just said that.
Show me a single open-source project that goes from end-to-end (source to end-user) and gives you a seamless natural way of doing "it" (whatever 'it' is) like the [itunes store][mac or pc][itunes software][ipod device][ipod interface] does. And it does it well, even under extreme loads like several thousand songs - the click-wheel made sure of that. There's nothing that Open-Source does like that. Not one thing comes to mind. Linux ? You must be joking! Apache? Yeah, right! Both of these are aimed at highly technical and able people. My sister (and you'd have to know her!) has an Ipod!
Open source is excellent at doing a task. "We want an OS". Great - here it is. "We want a webserver". Cool - here you are. As a paradigm it's less good at the whole shebang. It's a cog in the wheel, not an end, in and of itself.
I should probably point out that I've been using Linux since it came on floppies, that I ditched a DECstation 3100 to run it on an early '486. That I set up one of the earliest webservers (on the ditched DECstation, actually) in the UK - when you had to email CERN to tell them there's a new webserver in the world. I'm familiar with open-source, have used it, have contributed. I'm in no way a foe of open source. I just don't think it's a panacea.
Simon
Why is it that people don't "get" this - it's not sufficient now to simply make an MP3 player that "does more", or even is as easy to use as an Ipod. You need the whole shebang - the store, the presence on the desktop, the device itself, the ease of transfer between computer and device, the chic design, and good marketing/PR. Hell, there's probably loads more too.
Apple have a history (and therefore a lot of expertise) in "doing it all". They design their own hardware, write their own OS (*), develop their own apps, do their own marketing (the 'reality distortion field' effect
Coming up with an ipod-killer that could make *coffee* (+) wouldn't break the grip of Apple on this market now - it'll take a multi-vectored attack to shake their dominance, and no open-source project has the resources that Apple have in the focus areas that are needed. Open-source has manpower and skill, not billions of dollars in the bank. Apple have a fair amount of manpower and skill too...
I think Neuros will gain *some* benefit from this - it's a positive move for some people, but they're still fighting over the scraps in the remaining 10-20 percent of the market that *haven't* converted to Apple yet. Also it's cool to have legitimate access to something like this - I'm sure the OS community will come up with more uses for the Neuros device than Neuros ever thought of. I'm not *against* Neuros, I just don't think it's a disruptive idea.
Simon.
(*) Yes, I'm aware that they didn't completely design the OS, but they have contributed a good portion of it, and most of that in the user-visible areas.
(+) Yes, I'm aware that making coffee wouldn't be a useful ipod feature - think of the leakage - but I'm making the point that features alone aren't as valuable as they were when the market was nascent.
No, I think it's you that has it wrong. WTF is "OS X". If you go to www.apple.com/macosx/ you'll see there are none, no, zero, nada, references to just "OS X". Every mention on the page is for 'Mac OS X'. Sometimes with a designation thereafter ('Tiger', on this page).
/. - the purpose of language is to communicate, and if you didn't understand that I was talking about 'Mac OS X' when I said 'OS-X', then frankly you have larger issues...
Now normally I don't give a flying fuck about grammar/naming/nomenclature/whatever on
But, it's always nice to see someone hoisted on their own petard. Especially when that petard really does blow up in their face, over such a trivial, little, useless, inconsequential matter such as this. Way to go - you've just (a) shown yourself to be anally retentive to the highest degree, and (b) wrong anyway. Cool.
Simon.
And I don't have a problem with either MS or Apple's engineers' attitudes. I think it's appropriate - that's what I was pointing out. I think it's for different reasons, and I think (on Apple's part), that it (at least in part) comes from the attitude at the top.
Simon.
I politely but firmly [grin] direct your attention to the part where I say an OSX machine is the best damn unix workstation I've ever used...
....
I was just trying to be unbiased. Yeah I know
Simon
Walk around the campus at Microsoft, or across to Cafe Macs in Cupertino, and you come across the same sort of casual arrogance - both sets of employees generally (there are exceptions
In Microsoft's case, it's because they're the most successful computer company in the world, bar none. That they're on pretty much every desktop (or at least 90% or so of them), and that what they do, matters. Microsoft is all to do with preserving and increasing that user-base, and delivering what (mainly business) requires to do so.
In Apple's case, it's more insidious (possibly that's being harsh, perhaps 'subtle') - Apple engineers think they make the best computers. Bar none. They don't think they're the most popular (there's an implied 'yet' in that statement), but they do think they're the best. Apple is all to do with ease-of-use, attention-to-detail, and a good experience. They invest thought.
Some of the Apple attitude comes from having the potential for Steve Jobs to "take an interest" in your project. You *really* want it to measure up, if he does, and Mr. Jobs (to you!) is a perfectionist. This does keep people on their toes, but I wonder how often it *really* happens.
There's more though - the 'ease-of-use' is a mantra to the Apple employees I've met. They really care how their software is perceived, and I think it shows in the product. Sure, there are business decisions that override engineering wishes, but it seems to be less the case at Apple than anywhere else. I think that comes from the top (SJ) as well.
For me, back then, Apple computers sucked big time before OS-X came out. The focus of the company was pointed in a different direction. Now they woo techies, artists, movie-people, graphics designers, and business (with the 'office' suite) alike. For me, now, an OS-X machine with 2 cinema-displays is the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've been using Linux since it came on floppies, Irix (ok, that was a close second), SunOS, Solaris, HPUX, etc...
I personally think SJ has done well - long may he continue, especially as I have some stock in the company I bought a while back when it was a lot lower
Simon.
Not necessarily. My manager came in to see me a month or so ago, saying that he'd upgraded my classification in the company records, because I was towards the right-edge of the bell-curve. Now I'm in the middle of the bell curve on the next pay-scale up, which makes it easy for him to give a pay rise come review time. I didn't solicit this (although I was obviously happy that he took the time/trouble to do it :-) It bodes well for the forthcoming pay review :-)
I'm with the OP, about the only time you have some *real* say in your salary is at the starting point. When I was offered my current position, I countered with 1.5x the salary offer, with believable reasons why I needed the extra money. I settled for 1.3x + perks.
It's *expensive* for a company to hire people. If you're good enough, they're *not* going to quibble over even what seems a significant price difference. If you're not good enough, then they'll make excuses. If you start getting too many excuses, you've an inflated idea of your own value. Decrease it and start over again (with different employers, obviously!).
Simon.
Er, not to rain on your parade, but if SJ (as CEO) has presided while the stock price has gone through the roof, and if SJ only takes a minimal salary, and pays himself in stock, what exactly is the problem ?
Considering the obvious (look at the stock chart prices) effect of hiring SJ as CEO, Apple ought to be paying him loadsadosh. And no, I'm not Steve Jobs, I just think he's done a phenomenal job (didn't you hear ? Apple has been "dying" for years now...).
I don't see a problem paying CEO's who perform that well. It's pure jealousy to advovate otherwise - especially as the man is only getting richer when the company does better!
I *do* have a problem with 'golden handshakes' when a CEO runs a company into the ground. I *do* think a lot of CEO's sit on their collective arses, do little (or worse, meddle!) and badly affect their company, and I don't think this should be rewarded. I don't think you can level that at SJ.
Simon.
% mysqladmin -p ver
[...]
Uptime: 1 day 37 sec
Threads: 6 Questions: 17086993 Slow queries: 12 Opens: 79141 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 64 Queries per second avg: 197.681
The queries/sec average is surprisingly low, usually we're up at between 300 and 400 queries/second. I've just been re-working the search interface - some of the queries were over a megabyte of SQL statement! Now they're down under a kilobyte again. We can easily see >500 threads at once as well...
Just a unix (SUSE/64) box...
Simon.
They may consider it proprietary, but it didn't count under the terms of the deal - otherwise I couldn't have run it by the lawyer before signing. I made sure of that with Sony first ....
Simon.
There was a clause in an NDA I signed with Sony that said something along the lines of "In the event of You disclosing material which is considered proprietary under this agreement, the Company will seek maximum damages, and financial reparation may not be sufficient".
:-)
That scared me slightly... I still signed though. And I made sure not to have any first-born (hah! As if I had the chance back then
Simon
Just to comment on your BBC link there - it's now widely agreed that the journalist was right and the government was wrong. The BBC backed down because pressure was applied, not because of the story's inaccuracy. This is itself something of a scandal, but with the largest news organisation having already "admitted" its error, no-one else wants to take it on.
The 'sexed up' dossier was in fact pretty 'sexed up' when all the details came to life, and it ended with one of the authors committing suicide in dodgy circumstances.
I have no clue whether your NYT or TNR stories are valid, but your link to the BBC is in error.
Simon.
I personally doubt that when the BBC says "experts think ....", that they're making it up. In general, the BBC are careful with what they say, and tend to admit mistakes rather than try to pretend it didn't happen. Reputations are hard to build and easy to destroy.
Just thinking out loud, but if I were a climatologist running simulations over various scenarios, with large numbers of variables in each scenario, I might like to be interpolating data between two known points rather than extrapolating from 'here' on out to the great unknown. The vanished water, atmospheric CO2 and lack of a biosphere are effects of runaway global warming, not causes, although I'll grant you the solar flux is higher. I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible to cope with increased flux in the model though.
Maybe I'm wrong, but whenever I was running physics experiments to try and model a theory, it was always useful to have the outlying datapoints clustered together as well as the area of the model under study - you have a lot more faith in a theoretical model when it lies within your measurements rather than off to one side of all your data... Assuming they *can* compensate for the different world-models within one theory, I think this might be a useful exercise.
Simon
Well, for myself, there are only a few shows I watch CSI {NY,Miami}, Stargate {Atlantis}, Battlestar Galactica, and the daily show. The rest is pretty much crap apart from the occasional BBC America/Discovery thing.
Adding all that up would probably come to $20/week - too much as you say. But this *is* only the first step - the ground-breaking thing is getting Disney on-board. Tweaking the model is a lot (a *lot*) easier... I really do this is a major shift.
And besides, people aren't rational. They'll download and play stuff they missed, or the Tivo failed to record, or to have on their imac for a flight, or (insert reason here). It's the convenience and portability that gives it the 'pizzazz' effect...
Simon.
So now I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic ? Because the first two lines are typical 6-year-old attitude, but the last line is almost surreal in its self importance...
Probably a troll, then.
Simon.
Compare:
... to ...
... Company A is providing you with a service. You *don't* have to pay for it, but then they're not obliged to give you that service either. Grow up.
"Excuse me, but why do i have to pay to watch something that i already paid to have broadcast to my house?"
"Excuse me, but why do I have to pay for this taxi cab when I have a fully-working car at my house ?"
"Excuse me, but why do I have to pay to buy this book, when I have another copy sitting in my house ?"
Simon.
It's only five shows
It's been announced/available for 2 days now. It's a revolution in how we'll get TV delivered. All the other networks will look on, see that they're missing out, and clamour to get onboard, but this takes more than 2 days...
Give it time - rome wasn't built in a day, or even 2.
Simon
Well, yes and no. There is still the occasional "what's it doing ?" pause when you start up something new (eg: System Prefs component). Spotlight is only marginally faster (pure "feel" rating there), but there are things that are noticeable as above. It's not a new computer, it's just marginally better.
:-)
This still isn't a bad thing
Simon
Yep - there's no secrets, it's all on display in the profiler :-) I knew about the possible upgrade before I bought it - saw it on MacSlash I think, so I went looking for it.
ATB,
Simon
I bought one about a week ago. I can't say I've noticed it's faster in real-world use, but it does benchmark slightly faster (in accordance with the CPU speed bump). Since its main purpose is to look gorgeous in the living room, run email and web-browsing, I have no complaints, but then I wouldn't have had, anyway
Having the extra VRAM seems to improve video performance a fair bit as well - subtly but noticeably smoother when doing the 'cube' switch using 'Desktop Manager', for example. (Which is the *very* first piece of s/w I ever install on a mac). Yes I use expose too, but with DM I can dedicate one screen per task. Much nicer
Simon
Well, mine records DVD's too. Just select 'Burn to DVD' from the Tivo menu and it creates a nice menu-driven DVD of the show for you, splitting over discs if necessary. Great :-)
Simon
You'd see that he was about to be apologised to for having his time wasted at the station, before they correlated his workplace with a firearm incident, and a hoax firewarm call, and staff at his workplace photographing tube stations. That's what prompted the arrest and house search. He had a radio scanner and "odd stuff" (to the average copper, anyway) at home, and they reasonably quickly then cleared him and apologised for the inconvenience.
Frankly it seems to me as though he (in particular) was under surveillance, and the copper on-the-spot thought "I don't understand what he's doing, lets stop him". Cue the whole series of events. I don't think this is indicative of a general policy for just anyone walking around London.
Just how much protection would your constitution provide if the CIA had been observing you, and decided to arrest you ? Really ? If they didn't want to let people know ? The UK does have a constitution anyway, it's just not in a single document. It's easy to make a constitution if you start afresh, but when your country is as old as ours, and has the complicated history of ours, it's not so easy. Besides, our officials are accountable, at least as much as anyone else's, (which is the prime purpose of a constitution - the govt *can* do this, and the govt *cannot* do that) so why "fix" what isn't broken.
Simon.
Well, there are only a few hundred sites on that list! - I'm perfectly happy blocking that many sites! If there were several million proxy servers, it'd be a bit different...
Simon
You can't evade the shutdown function by causing fatal errors though - I've just tested it with:
The 'testit' code was called. When you introduce a parse error (after the 'eval' for example), nothing is output, presumably because it fails during tokenisation.
The advantage of being able to disallow calling would be very useful though
Thanks for the input
Simon.
I'm not aware of any - although if anyone knows of one, I'd be interested too - just to make sure I've not made a stupid mistake...
It's not too hard, though, if you download the PHP source and look in "ext/standard", you'll see the various files - for example 'exec.c'. If you look in there, you'll find a function per php command {exec(), shell_exec(), system(), passthru()}, to all of which you could simply add
Then you just need to write something that registers a shutdown hook (there's examples at php.net) and decides what to do. In my case I generate a vector of the intval(constant) values with comma's between (eg: "0,0,1,0,0,1"), and check to see if they're all '0'. If they are, I just exit normally. If not, I check the entry in the SQL table 'syscall_allowed' for that script corresponds to the exact string above (I used comma-separated values to make this easier). If there's no match for script and vector, I firewall the incoming (REMOTE_ADDR) ip address.
Simon.