Exactly. Linux never had anything to do with BSD -- any convergence as such was inevitable (not that there is much, but it's there), but only because they're open-source Unices (trademark be damned).
Not that MacOS X isn't excruciatingly cool, but it won't be number one until it ships...
/Brian
Re:Unix = Family of Operating Systems ?
on
Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 1
The plural of VAX is VAXen.
The plural of Unix is Unices.
It's called common usage -- go back and read A Christmas Carol and see what Dickens had to say about the expression "dead as a doornail" for a wittier perspective than mine on the issue.
For the record, you take language far too seriously.
/Brian
David Every's Interesting Point
on
Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 1
Well, I reacted first with outrage -- David Every is probably one of the better tech writers out there, and in my Mac zealot days his MacKiDo site was one of my favorite sites. He should know better than to say something that stupid.
But then I gave it a bit of thought. He has a point.
Unix indeed isn't an operating system, and calling it a religion is not necessarily inaccurate in its own way but rather too loaded for a straight description. In that respect, I agree with David that Unix is no longer an OS. V7 Unix is an OS. Solaris is an OS. Linux is an OS. netBSD is an OS. Unix per se... Unix per se is more of a more-or-less informal specification for the high-level design of an OS.
There is no Unix implementation left out there that you can point to as being the direct descendant of the original PDP-7 OS anymore. The original USL identity has become so diluted since the sale from Novell to SCO that it can't really be said to exist anymore. (And don't point to Monterey -- PR aside, Monterey is no more or less than AIX for IA64.) There are more-or-less accurate implementations of said ideal (think the BSDs, Minix, SCO), deviant implementations that still maintain a high level of quality and adherence to the Unix ideal (Linux being the canonical example), commercial implementations with Unix at the core that do things their own way (MacOS X and Solaris being the most high-profile examples), and even those that are not Unix but support Unix-like programs via Posix (BeOS, Plan9/Brazil; yes, Virginia, even Win2K). But to say any one of these many more-and/or-less similar systems is the Golden Unix is inaccurate.
I do have issues with the article, as it happens -- I don't buy David's point about an "OS development kit" for a moment, especially inasmuch as it bolsters Microsoft's fraudulent position that an OS is whatever the company making it says it is. But his essential point is that there is no Unix, only manifestations thereof. This, I think, is rendered beyond dispute with only a moment of thought (or a corresponding red pill:-) )
I think you need some new fishhooks. This troll doesn't.
In any case, there's already a decent closed-source office solution for the Mac; it's called AppleWorks. BUT... I don't think either one has been Carbonized, and of course it's just the bloody principle of the thing...
Actually, I'd think Gateway was a good choice. Dell, Micron, IBM, good. Compaq, HP, probably work but you have no hope of a motherboard swap or anything of the sort (I own a Compaq because it was cheap, not because I like the brand). Sony: stay away. Stay far away.
Actually, I think RHPro is $180 primarily because of markup on printing costs for manuals and stamping NINE CDs. (Still rather a lot, but think of what the equivalent Win2K package would cost...)
Even then, I still think it's overpriced, but you're getting a hell of a lot of what is at worst semi-decent shovelware. Aw, who am I kidding... I buy my Red Hat CDs from a couple of people who get their stock from Linux Central...
Black and *white* -- trivial. Black and red was more what I had in mind when I had the same idea (qclogin -- will write it Real Soon Now). Apparently a properly printed Cue puts the C in a shade of red that disappears under the scanner light.
And in any case it's not a very good idea with barcodes anyway. You'll still need to enter a password (though a keypad or joystick pattern would do just fine for that purpose).
OS/2 is still partly copyrighted by Microsoft; rumor has it they cannibalized large amounts of it for NT. Microsoft would probably pull a Chernobyl if IBM went ahead and opensourced the whole thing.
Now, they COULD opensource SOM and (with Apple's cooperation) OpenDoc. That's some old tech that could use a new life.
-Create your own online database to piss off DC/provide the service to others who can't afford the ad fees.
-Scan things that don't involve CueCat/ISBN/UPC codes. I happen to know it will scan my library card (Codabar) beautifully.
As for Sbux and Pepsi -- I work for Starbucks. We give them the coffee, they make the bottled Frappucino and sell it. Sometimes back to us.
/Brian
Re:They manufactured the things for DC...
on
CueCat At It Again
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· Score: 1
Which works out great for them in the long run -- when DC crashes and burns, such "intellectual property" as they have will probably be bought out by Tandy...
There's a trick to scanning a catalog from the Shack -- you have to sort of bend the page convexly before you do the scan. It has something to do with the slant, I think, and it's a pain, but it is if nothing else ironic.
It gets better -- I actually opened the CD (yeah, so I'm "breaking the law" now using it on my Linux box. Fsck 'em.) and found no file entitled anything resembling license.txt (opened it on a Mac). So if your OS can't read the CD, there is no license.
And I ran the whole thing by a lawyer I know anyway -- the "we own your 'Cat" is bullshit.
Naw. These things are actually pretty cool -- if you have a friend in the US have them go to RadioShack and pick one up for you. They're pretty light, so shipping shouldn't be too bad.
Hey, I never knew I wanted a barcode scanner either.../Brian
DC will be bought out by Tandy before the year is out. Their business plan looks like a piece of Alpine Lace swiss at the moment, their Intellectual Property (tm), such as it is, has been pretty much thrown to the wolves^h^h^h^h^h^hpublic domain, and they're still giving away a pretty cool toy that would probably normally cost about $50/pop. Their primary product is a loss leader that's too useful to stay in the lines.
On the other hand, Tandy has a zillion Radio Shacks out there and can afford said $50/pop loss leader. They buy DC, and since they can live with eating the loss because they make much more off of store sales, they keep building 'Cats (maybe charging a small fee, $10 a unit or so) and everyone goes home happy.
Write a CueCat barcode generator (or use a UPC or ISBN generator, which I'm sure isn't too hard to find). Pick a project that could use a barcode scanner. Hack away. (I've already got my project picked out -- got my 'Cat yesterday...)
First, Lego's revenue model isn't tied to the software (with the possible exception of the Vision Command expansion pack) -- they make their money off of bricks, and don't lose a damn thing by letting people screw with the RCX as much as they damn please (except for losing money on the waste-of-time redundant CD-ROM that went with the Droid Developer Kit -- you'll notice there is no such beast for the Dark Side Developer kit...) Lego has as much to lose to people who use NQC and pbForth as the DVD player manufacturers do to those who hack their machines to ignore region codes or use DeCSS with their Linux boxes. TI is in the same boat -- not only did they not object when people started hacking their graphing calculators, they started documenting what needed to be done to get in there.
Second, Digital Convergence are a bunch of upstart idiots who are trying a very risky and poorly-thought-out business model and having hissyfits when they get bit. The reason they can't be cool about it is that they're having the rug yanked out from under them because of their own stupidity.
Tough fscking sh*t for them, I say. I'm going to get myself a CueCat now...
Actually, I do have a good use for it, though I haven't tried it...
Lego used to have a Technic set called the CodePilot. The controller was similar to the MicroScout that the Star Wars-themed Mindstorms sets use, and loaded its programs via barcodes (I think you can get bar-code generation software at lego's Technic site). So print out a CodePilot barcode, scan it in with a CueCat, and write a program that will drive a light to feed the MicroScout's light sensor.
That's one use, anyway; the MicroScout is a fairly simple controller and can't really do anything complicated, but it *is* programmable if you know what you're doing, and unlike DC Lego has been very cool about people hacking their hardware.
Digital Convergence's biggest sin was picking a blindingly stupid way to make money. I don't know -- I suppose the existence of the DMCA is proof otherwise, but I thought the point of protective laws was to protect you from getting hurt by others (e.g. the FDA and similar agencies) and not from shooting yourself in the foot (e.g. the entertainment industry pushing DMCA because they don't have to get off their duffs and rewrite the rules that don't work anymore). And now they're trying to sue their way out because they can't get hacker heat off of them?
This isn't even an IP issue, IMHO. DC has come out with an incredibly useful gadget with precisely one intended purpose and is throwing a hissy fit because people stubbornly refuse to read the directions because obviously if it's not supported it doesn't work that way, right? The best thing they can do is fall back on the DMCA and make a slapdash argument to the effect that this is an IP violation and the fact that the open-sourcers (I will cease using the loaded word "hackers" here because in a discussion like this it becomes somewhat tainted) should have known that there was a legal barrier because they slapped a very weak encrypt on it.
Of course, they won't acknowledge the "reverse-engineering for interoperability" clause, nor the hole it creates once the reverse-engineered data leaks out into the public domain.
(breathe; continue rant)
The fact is, I don't think they have much of a leg to stand on as far as the "licensed hardware" thing goes to begin with -- I go into RadioShack to get a CueCat, I walk out of there with an actual piece of hardware. DC does not know I have this and is in no position to take it away from me if I use it as I please. (does anyone know how to do ASCII art for an extended middle finger?) I think at this point a properly thinking judge is supposed to look at the case, tell DC "poor baby", and shoosh them out the door.
Besides, if they wanted to do the hardware giveaway thing it should be on Tandy's tab, not theirs! I had first assumed that Tandy was paying them a per-unit for each CueCat and intended to recoup the cost using catalog sales -- that would be the smart way of doing it. DC wins because they're covered coming and going, Tandy wins because they get more business from the convenience factor, and everyone else wins because they get a cool toy for free. That's why I thought the whole idea of DC claiming IP violations would be moot -- if they were doing everything correctly, it would be a non-issue because they already had theirs. (Isn't that how the whole free-computer-with-ISP-signup thing is supposed to work?)
Obviously, this is not how DC sees it. That being the case, it's no wonder they're crapping bricks -- they've been shown to be as dense as humanly possible, and are sending in the lawyers to cover their asses rather than do it correctly. Hey, I'd defy them on general principle myself, if I had much of a use for a CueCat (which, to be honest, I don't...).
The problem with saying that is that you tend to hang out with people similar to you. "Everyone I know" is demonstrably meaningless unless you do truly have a cross-section of society in your circle of friends.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Linux never had anything to do with BSD -- any convergence as such was inevitable (not that there is much, but it's there), but only because they're open-source Unices (trademark be damned).
/Brian
Uhh... not yet.
Not that MacOS X isn't excruciatingly cool, but it won't be number one until it ships...
/Brian
The plural of VAX is VAXen.
The plural of Unix is Unices.
It's called common usage -- go back and read A Christmas Carol and see what Dickens had to say about the expression "dead as a doornail" for a wittier perspective than mine on the issue.
For the record, you take language far too seriously.
/Brian
Well, I reacted first with outrage -- David Every is probably one of the better tech writers out there, and in my Mac zealot days his MacKiDo site was one of my favorite sites. He should know better than to say something that stupid.
:-) )
But then I gave it a bit of thought. He has a point.
Unix indeed isn't an operating system, and calling it a religion is not necessarily inaccurate in its own way but rather too loaded for a straight description. In that respect, I agree with David that Unix is no longer an OS. V7 Unix is an OS. Solaris is an OS. Linux is an OS. netBSD is an OS. Unix per se... Unix per se is more of a more-or-less informal specification for the high-level design of an OS.
There is no Unix implementation left out there that you can point to as being the direct descendant of the original PDP-7 OS anymore. The original USL identity has become so diluted since the sale from Novell to SCO that it can't really be said to exist anymore. (And don't point to Monterey -- PR aside, Monterey is no more or less than AIX for IA64.) There are more-or-less accurate implementations of said ideal (think the BSDs, Minix, SCO), deviant implementations that still maintain a high level of quality and adherence to the Unix ideal (Linux being the canonical example), commercial implementations with Unix at the core that do things their own way (MacOS X and Solaris being the most high-profile examples), and even those that are not Unix but support Unix-like programs via Posix (BeOS, Plan9/Brazil; yes, Virginia, even Win2K). But to say any one of these many more-and/or-less similar systems is the Golden Unix is inaccurate.
I do have issues with the article, as it happens -- I don't buy David's point about an "OS development kit" for a moment, especially inasmuch as it bolsters Microsoft's fraudulent position that an OS is whatever the company making it says it is. But his essential point is that there is no Unix, only manifestations thereof. This, I think, is rendered beyond dispute with only a moment of thought (or a corresponding red pill
/Brian
I think you need some new fishhooks. This troll doesn't.
In any case, there's already a decent closed-source office solution for the Mac; it's called AppleWorks. BUT... I don't think either one has been Carbonized, and of course it's just the bloody principle of the thing...
/Brian
Umm... Is this a troll or not?
If not, you seem to be missing your own point (nice work, btw). Why should you have to buy a full copy of your OS when you should already have one?
/Brian
Actually, I'd think Gateway was a good choice. Dell, Micron, IBM, good. Compaq, HP, probably work but you have no hope of a motherboard swap or anything of the sort (I own a Compaq because it was cheap, not because I like the brand). Sony: stay away. Stay far away.
/Brian
Actually, I think RHPro is $180 primarily because of markup on printing costs for manuals and stamping NINE CDs. (Still rather a lot, but think of what the equivalent Win2K package would cost...)
Even then, I still think it's overpriced, but you're getting a hell of a lot of what is at worst semi-decent shovelware. Aw, who am I kidding... I buy my Red Hat CDs from a couple of people who get their stock from Linux Central...
/Brian
Black and *white* -- trivial. Black and red was more what I had in mind when I had the same idea (qclogin -- will write it Real Soon Now). Apparently a properly printed Cue puts the C in a shade of red that disappears under the scanner light.
And in any case it's not a very good idea with barcodes anyway. You'll still need to enter a password (though a keypad or joystick pattern would do just fine for that purpose).
/Brian
Don't moderate me down if I'm horribly misinformed, but...
Solaris is pretty good stuff. Who exactly is using SPARC Linux on anything but old equipment (except as a political statement)?
/Brian
Mandrake is its own beast now, at least since 7.0. It's RPM-based, but it's not RedHat.
/Brian
OS/2 is still partly copyrighted by Microsoft; rumor has it they cannibalized large amounts of it for NT. Microsoft would probably pull a Chernobyl if IBM went ahead and opensourced the whole thing.
Now, they COULD opensource SOM and (with Apple's cooperation) OpenDoc. That's some old tech that could use a new life.
/Brian
More ideas:
-Create your own online database to piss off DC/provide the service to others who can't afford the ad fees.
-Scan things that don't involve CueCat/ISBN/UPC codes. I happen to know it will scan my library card (Codabar) beautifully.
As for Sbux and Pepsi -- I work for Starbucks. We give them the coffee, they make the bottled Frappucino and sell it. Sometimes back to us.
/Brian
Which works out great for them in the long run -- when DC crashes and burns, such "intellectual property" as they have will probably be bought out by Tandy...
/Brian
There's a trick to scanning a catalog from the Shack -- you have to sort of bend the page convexly before you do the scan. It has something to do with the slant, I think, and it's a pain, but it is if nothing else ironic.
/Brian
It gets better -- I actually opened the CD (yeah, so I'm "breaking the law" now using it on my Linux box. Fsck 'em.) and found no file entitled anything resembling license.txt (opened it on a Mac). So if your OS can't read the CD, there is no license.
:-)
And I ran the whole thing by a lawyer I know anyway -- the "we own your 'Cat" is bullshit.
/Anonymous Coward
/
Naw. These things are actually pretty cool -- if you have a friend in the US have them go to RadioShack and pick one up for you. They're pretty light, so shipping shouldn't be too bad. Hey, I never knew I wanted a barcode scanner either... /Brian
DC will be bought out by Tandy before the year is out. Their business plan looks like a piece of Alpine Lace swiss at the moment, their Intellectual Property (tm), such as it is, has been pretty much thrown to the wolves^h^h^h^h^h^hpublic domain, and they're still giving away a pretty cool toy that would probably normally cost about $50/pop. Their primary product is a loss leader that's too useful to stay in the lines.
On the other hand, Tandy has a zillion Radio Shacks out there and can afford said $50/pop loss leader. They buy DC, and since they can live with eating the loss because they make much more off of store sales, they keep building 'Cats (maybe charging a small fee, $10 a unit or so) and everyone goes home happy.
/Brian
Write a CueCat barcode generator (or use a UPC or ISBN generator, which I'm sure isn't too hard to find). Pick a project that could use a barcode scanner. Hack away. (I've already got my project picked out -- got my 'Cat yesterday...)
/Brian
Two things:
First, Lego's revenue model isn't tied to the software (with the possible exception of the Vision Command expansion pack) -- they make their money off of bricks, and don't lose a damn thing by letting people screw with the RCX as much as they damn please (except for losing money on the waste-of-time redundant CD-ROM that went with the Droid Developer Kit -- you'll notice there is no such beast for the Dark Side Developer kit...) Lego has as much to lose to people who use NQC and pbForth as the DVD player manufacturers do to those who hack their machines to ignore region codes or use DeCSS with their Linux boxes. TI is in the same boat -- not only did they not object when people started hacking their graphing calculators, they started documenting what needed to be done to get in there.
Second, Digital Convergence are a bunch of upstart idiots who are trying a very risky and poorly-thought-out business model and having hissyfits when they get bit. The reason they can't be cool about it is that they're having the rug yanked out from under them because of their own stupidity.
Tough fscking sh*t for them, I say. I'm going to get myself a CueCat now...
/Brian
Actually, I do have a good use for it, though I haven't tried it...
Lego used to have a Technic set called the CodePilot. The controller was similar to the MicroScout that the Star Wars-themed Mindstorms sets use, and loaded its programs via barcodes (I think you can get bar-code generation software at lego's Technic site). So print out a CodePilot barcode, scan it in with a CueCat, and write a program that will drive a light to feed the MicroScout's light sensor.
That's one use, anyway; the MicroScout is a fairly simple controller and can't really do anything complicated, but it *is* programmable if you know what you're doing, and unlike DC Lego has been very cool about people hacking their hardware.
/Brian
Well, I'm not, actually, but...
Digital Convergence's biggest sin was picking a blindingly stupid way to make money. I don't know -- I suppose the existence of the DMCA is proof otherwise, but I thought the point of protective laws was to protect you from getting hurt by others (e.g. the FDA and similar agencies) and not from shooting yourself in the foot (e.g. the entertainment industry pushing DMCA because they don't have to get off their duffs and rewrite the rules that don't work anymore). And now they're trying to sue their way out because they can't get hacker heat off of them?
This isn't even an IP issue, IMHO. DC has come out with an incredibly useful gadget with precisely one intended purpose and is throwing a hissy fit because people stubbornly refuse to read the directions because obviously if it's not supported it doesn't work that way, right? The best thing they can do is fall back on the DMCA and make a slapdash argument to the effect that this is an IP violation and the fact that the open-sourcers (I will cease using the loaded word "hackers" here because in a discussion like this it becomes somewhat tainted) should have known that there was a legal barrier because they slapped a very weak encrypt on it.
Of course, they won't acknowledge the "reverse-engineering for interoperability" clause, nor the hole it creates once the reverse-engineered data leaks out into the public domain.
(breathe; continue rant)
The fact is, I don't think they have much of a leg to stand on as far as the "licensed hardware" thing goes to begin with -- I go into RadioShack to get a CueCat, I walk out of there with an actual piece of hardware. DC does not know I have this and is in no position to take it away from me if I use it as I please. (does anyone know how to do ASCII art for an extended middle finger?) I think at this point a properly thinking judge is supposed to look at the case, tell DC "poor baby", and shoosh them out the door.
Besides, if they wanted to do the hardware giveaway thing it should be on Tandy's tab, not theirs! I had first assumed that Tandy was paying them a per-unit for each CueCat and intended to recoup the cost using catalog sales -- that would be the smart way of doing it. DC wins because they're covered coming and going, Tandy wins because they get more business from the convenience factor, and everyone else wins because they get a cool toy for free. That's why I thought the whole idea of DC claiming IP violations would be moot -- if they were doing everything correctly, it would be a non-issue because they already had theirs. (Isn't that how the whole free-computer-with-ISP-signup thing is supposed to work?)
Obviously, this is not how DC sees it. That being the case, it's no wonder they're crapping bricks -- they've been shown to be as dense as humanly possible, and are sending in the lawyers to cover their asses rather than do it correctly. Hey, I'd defy them on general principle myself, if I had much of a use for a CueCat (which, to be honest, I don't...).
/Brian
"Everyone I know..."
The problem with saying that is that you tend to hang out with people similar to you. "Everyone I know" is demonstrably meaningless unless you do truly have a cross-section of society in your circle of friends.
/Brian
There is no X here.
There was never any X in NextStep/OpenStep/Cocoa either, for that matter. Any X that winds up in there will be by the grace of Carmack.
/Brian
And MacOS X splits the difference.
/Brian