Since the core of the OS X is unix. Does this mean that quicktime will be ported to other *nix systems?(i.e. linux)
People keep asking this, and the answer is probably not. The BSD layer is in the middle, underneath all the GUI stuff. Anything graphical is written using Apple's proprietary APIs.
I can imagine, though, that if you're running on PPC, something like Wine might work out. And of course, you can run MacOS under Linux/PPC right now with Mac-on-Linux. (Hey, anyone know if MacOS X will work under that?)
Actually, the paper is the other way around. The originally-MacOS-based HFS+ filesystem uses colons as its path seperator (Mac HD:Application:Simpletext), while UNIX uses slashes (/bin/echo).
I said "filenames", not "pathnames". MacOS will let you have a file called "baz:foo/bar" ("foo/bar" in the "baz" directory). BSD programs will see it as "baz/foo:bar". Now, try accessing that file in a colon-delimited environment, like your password file. Or your path.
And to say that a poor OS encourages good application engineering is silly, to say the least. An OS with memory protection, such as Windows NT, Unix or Mac OS X, makes it much more practical and efficient to debug applictions suffering from stray pointers, etc.
I wasn't making any such claim, because it would be silly. A friend of mine used to code on Macs, and I've worked with Windows quite a bit. I absolutely despise both systems for their pathetic attempts at multitasking and memory management.
My point was that even with MacOS, a poorer operating system than Windows in that arena, there is a higher quality user experience (from when I've used 'em, anyway). That would imply apps on MacOS are better behaved.
(Though I've only gotten as far as reading about the integration of the filesystems. That's one of my few complaints about Java, using the file_seperator token is just plain annoying/tedious, though it looks like that won't be an issue for working with this system, but I haven't finished reading yet.)
That actually seems like it'll be their biggest problem. The paper states that MacOS X will translate slashes in Mac filenames into colons when read from BSD. Um, the colon is like the universal token separator under UNIX. (Paths, passwd, etc).
A similar problem occurs where I work. The directory naming convention for packages is packagename,vX.X. Unfortunately, some programs use a comma as the separator, and you can figure out what happens.
Personally, I never get hurt by this, because I use the intersection of available characters from all OSes in my filenames. That means things like colons, slashes, commas, and usually spaces (just for easy shell access) are always out.
Also, Mac OS 9.0.4 is significantly more stable than previous versions. It's probably the most stable Mac OS version out there, greatly exceeding Windows, despite Windows' "protected memory," (or lack thereof.)
I'd say that speaks more to the quality of software available for MacOS than anything else. If the OS is less protective, that means programmers have to be a little more careful with their pointers. Contrast that with Windows, where even with its better memory management (which is highly questionable), commercially available software crashes it on a regular basis, or slows the system down to a crawl.
Application programmers are just lazy now, is all.
So how does making the computer silent help, if it causes the ringing to increase in volume? The computer's either going to produce silence or white noise, if both of those are a problem, what difference does it make?
I agree with you about Word and Windows, but PDF? I like PDF. And there are free viewers (GhostScript) for it, too. I don't even have AcroRead on my box... I just use gv.
To this day, most usrrs and admins resolve CVS problems by mucking with the/CVSROOT files themselves, and just taking it from scratch. It is incredibly easy to get CVS into a confused state, particularly when removing or moving files.
Um, yeah, and if you happen to think that "rm" stands for "RenaMe", you can also get yourself in trouble. This is kind of a sore subject for me, because a number of people where I work loudly and consistently preach the virtues of supporting user stupidity. "Oh, if they set this environment variable and used this command-line option and delete the temporary file, the button might be an ugly color! Lock it down!"
At some point, you have to stop trying to protect users from their own stupidity. Especially admins, come to think of it. Anyone who ignores the instructions in the manual (freely available btw) shouldn't be administering anything, let alone the version management system for a multiple-developer project.
Face it: system administration can be hard work sometimes. Doing anything right can be hard work sometimes. If you don't know how something works, learn! Most any package comes with something, and there's always mailing lists, IRC channels, and newsgroups...
You're absolutely right, but if he was that sick, he could have gotten out of it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he showed up in this condition, just so he could later say, "oh, disregard my testimony, I was sick". Would anything this man tries surprise you?
If you're sick, don't go! If you go, what you say is your responsibility. The end.
BY MR. GARBUS: Q What is the concept of Fair Use, as you understand it?
A It means that libraries or schoolteachers can play movies in their classrooms for educational purposes.
I also threw my coffee over the keyboard at this one. Just for educational institutions?
While I suspect that's exactly what they think, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He might just be using education as an example of fair use. I know I like to give examples when describing a concept.
This is a great quote, and they should play it back for the jury at least 5 times if at all possible:
MR. GARBUS: You have called him a lay witness. This is the man who's the head of the MPAA, who for 34 years has been the head of the MPAA, who has testified endless times before various groups about his legal interpretation of the DMCA. And you don't permit him to answer questions about the DMCA. Do you find that surprising?
MR. COOPER: I tell you what, if you want to spend the time in this deposition arguing about issues I'll be glad to. Let me say that I will describe my meaning in my statements. Why don't you ask the witness procipient testimony on issues that he is here to answer on?
Whine, whine... I have to wonder what the stenographers think about this. They have to put up with it every single day.
Of course, it's fairly obvious that this is an issue he's "here to answer on". His competence in addressing the DMCA is directly relevant to this case, and I find it a little surprising that his lawyers are trying to stop it so blatantly. Myself, I would have just tried to dodge the question with a Clinton-like many-words-but-no-content answer.
We all know, that the reason they're so worried is that if he screws up even the tiniest aspect of the DMCA, Garbus will be all over him for it. As well he should.
This reminds me of those Grisham novels where the lawyer takes on a corporation, finds out they are in way over their head, and just rips them to shreds within minutes. Quite enjoyable to watch... =)
I just started reading the deposition, and while I don't have any substantial comments to make yet, I couldn't help noticing that the first thing the MPAA guys do is start whining about how "inconvenient" the whole deposition is.
Um, guys, if I filed a lawsuit, I would expect to need to take part in depositions. Course, I'm just one of them evil reverse-engineering-supporting hackers...
What if it had been an OSS project that was "not quite ready" and MSN did a report with screen shots? Would the feeling still be "Hope MSN wins?"
Then no one would care. Open source projects are generally conducted in the open, all the way from version 0.0.1alpha (just take a look at Freshmeat =). Problems with the technology are discussed quite openly, and anyone is welcome to submit suggestions.
A number of times, it has actually happened that newspaper or some other medium mentioned a bug in an open source project and it was fixed the next day. But it has also happened that J. Random User mentioned a bug in an open source project and it was fixed the next day. With open source, you don't have to be a major media outlet for developers to listen to you.
Back to your original question, though, it is absolutely true that the law should be upheld. If someone violated their beta testing agreement, they should be responsible for that. Comparing that to MSN and open source is apples and oranges, though.
Actually, the only time I have seen anyone complain about an MS* report is when they misstate or distort facts about their competition. (Granted, this is pretty much whenever they open their mouth, but still...) There are the random trolls who just yell "LINUX IS GOD, AND TORVALDS IS ITS PROPHET" but most developers are grateful for any pointers or suggestions, no matter what the source.
I don't know the exact details, but it's basically that any implementation of Swing made after even looking at Sun's documentation falls under Sun's licensing restrictions. According to those rules, there is no such thing as a "clean-room implementation".
I love this... The MPAA lawyer wanted to have the whole freaking deposition marked confidential, and then he might decide some of it could go out later. This is both a) the funniest suggestion I have seen in a while, and b) the saddest attempt at legal strategy I have seen in a while. If they keep this up, though, the same thing might happen as in the Microsoft case, where the judge just gets so pissed off at their stalling, lying, and obfuscating that he says "we can't trust you on anything, so we're finding you guilty".
Except that due to licensing restrictions, people that would gladly write a truly free JVM aren't able to do so, and to them it's not worth the effort of doing it with Sun breathing down their neck.
This is why Kaffe doesn't have Swing. The debian-java mailing list has a few discussions about this from time to time.
Interestingly, there was an article on the RIAA site about digital music on the Internet. While they went through the usual things about "no one will pay for music they can get online instead", it talked about how online music can be a great help to an artist, especially since it helps him/her produce music without *gasp* a label. They actually sounded admiring.
If you're really concerned about privacy, don't use Netscape 4.7 or later. Notice the spare packets it throws around at startup (and who knows when else) ?
That would probably be Netscape doing its initial DNS stuff; it's common knowledge that Netscape will often hang if this part screws up. As far as anything else, I just turn off "smart browsing".
If you're convinved it's evil, fire up a packet sniffer and tell us what you find. Seriously. I'm interested, but I'm waaaay too busy right now.
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People keep asking this, and the answer is probably not. The BSD layer is in the middle, underneath all the GUI stuff. Anything graphical is written using Apple's proprietary APIs.
I can imagine, though, that if you're running on PPC, something like Wine might work out. And of course, you can run MacOS under Linux/PPC right now with Mac-on-Linux. (Hey, anyone know if MacOS X will work under that?)
I said "filenames", not "pathnames". MacOS will let you have a file called "baz:foo/bar" ("foo/bar" in the "baz" directory). BSD programs will see it as "baz/foo:bar". Now, try accessing that file in a colon-delimited environment, like your password file. Or your path.
I wasn't making any such claim, because it would be silly. A friend of mine used to code on Macs, and I've worked with Windows quite a bit. I absolutely despise both systems for their pathetic attempts at multitasking and memory management.
My point was that even with MacOS, a poorer operating system than Windows in that arena, there is a higher quality user experience (from when I've used 'em, anyway). That would imply apps on MacOS are better behaved.
That actually seems like it'll be their biggest problem. The paper states that MacOS X will translate slashes in Mac filenames into colons when read from BSD. Um, the colon is like the universal token separator under UNIX. (Paths, passwd, etc).
A similar problem occurs where I work. The directory naming convention for packages is packagename,vX.X. Unfortunately, some programs use a comma as the separator, and you can figure out what happens.
Personally, I never get hurt by this, because I use the intersection of available characters from all OSes in my filenames. That means things like colons, slashes, commas, and usually spaces (just for easy shell access) are always out.
I'd say that speaks more to the quality of software available for MacOS than anything else. If the OS is less protective, that means programmers have to be a little more careful with their pointers. Contrast that with Windows, where even with its better memory management (which is highly questionable), commercially available software crashes it on a regular basis, or slows the system down to a crawl.
Application programmers are just lazy now, is all.
=)
Not only that, but you could bring along all of the "IF I EVER MEET YOU..." trolls to help you... =)
Why don't they just put on an MP3 or something?
I agree with you about Word and Windows, but PDF? I like PDF. And there are free viewers (GhostScript) for it, too. I don't even have AcroRead on my box... I just use gv.
Ooh! And Jikes! Jikes is cool, if a little quirky at times, and it's blazingly fast.
Um, yeah, and if you happen to think that "rm" stands for "RenaMe", you can also get yourself in trouble. This is kind of a sore subject for me, because a number of people where I work loudly and consistently preach the virtues of supporting user stupidity. "Oh, if they set this environment variable and used this command-line option and delete the temporary file, the button might be an ugly color! Lock it down!"
At some point, you have to stop trying to protect users from their own stupidity. Especially admins, come to think of it. Anyone who ignores the instructions in the manual (freely available btw) shouldn't be administering anything, let alone the version management system for a multiple-developer project.
Face it: system administration can be hard work sometimes. Doing anything right can be hard work sometimes. If you don't know how something works, learn! Most any package comes with something, and there's always mailing lists, IRC channels, and newsgroups...
If you're sick, don't go! If you go, what you say is your responsibility. The end.
While I suspect that's exactly what they think, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He might just be using education as an example of fair use. I know I like to give examples when describing a concept.
Whine, whine... I have to wonder what the stenographers think about this. They have to put up with it every single day.
Of course, it's fairly obvious that this is an issue he's "here to answer on". His competence in addressing the DMCA is directly relevant to this case, and I find it a little surprising that his lawyers are trying to stop it so blatantly. Myself, I would have just tried to dodge the question with a Clinton-like many-words-but-no-content answer.
We all know, that the reason they're so worried is that if he screws up even the tiniest aspect of the DMCA, Garbus will be all over him for it. As well he should.
This reminds me of those Grisham novels where the lawyer takes on a corporation, finds out they are in way over their head, and just rips them to shreds within minutes. Quite enjoyable to watch... =)
Um, guys, if I filed a lawsuit, I would expect to need to take part in depositions. Course, I'm just one of them evil reverse-engineering-supporting hackers...
What is gamut? Is that related to gamma?
Ooh! Pretty! Someone should tell the debian-java folks, though, 'cause they just freak out every time it's mentioned...
Then no one would care. Open source projects are generally conducted in the open, all the way from version 0.0.1alpha (just take a look at Freshmeat =). Problems with the technology are discussed quite openly, and anyone is welcome to submit suggestions.
A number of times, it has actually happened that newspaper or some other medium mentioned a bug in an open source project and it was fixed the next day. But it has also happened that J. Random User mentioned a bug in an open source project and it was fixed the next day. With open source, you don't have to be a major media outlet for developers to listen to you.
Back to your original question, though, it is absolutely true that the law should be upheld. If someone violated their beta testing agreement, they should be responsible for that. Comparing that to MSN and open source is apples and oranges, though.
Actually, the only time I have seen anyone complain about an MS* report is when they misstate or distort facts about their competition. (Granted, this is pretty much whenever they open their mouth, but still...) There are the random trolls who just yell "LINUX IS GOD, AND TORVALDS IS ITS PROPHET" but most developers are grateful for any pointers or suggestions, no matter what the source.
I don't know the exact details, but it's basically that any implementation of Swing made after even looking at Sun's documentation falls under Sun's licensing restrictions. According to those rules, there is no such thing as a "clean-room implementation".
I love this... The MPAA lawyer wanted to have the whole freaking deposition marked confidential, and then he might decide some of it could go out later. This is both a) the funniest suggestion I have seen in a while, and b) the saddest attempt at legal strategy I have seen in a while. If they keep this up, though, the same thing might happen as in the Microsoft case, where the judge just gets so pissed off at their stalling, lying, and obfuscating that he says "we can't trust you on anything, so we're finding you guilty".
This is why Kaffe doesn't have Swing. The debian-java mailing list has a few discussions about this from time to time.
Two words: venture capital.
Interestingly, there was an article on the RIAA site about digital music on the Internet. While they went through the usual things about "no one will pay for music they can get online instead", it talked about how online music can be a great help to an artist, especially since it helps him/her produce music without *gasp* a label. They actually sounded admiring.
That would probably be Netscape doing its initial DNS stuff; it's common knowledge that Netscape will often hang if this part screws up. As far as anything else, I just turn off "smart browsing".
If you're convinved it's evil, fire up a packet sniffer and tell us what you find. Seriously. I'm interested, but I'm waaaay too busy right now.