But this way Microsoft doesn't lose money...
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X-Box Emulated (Not)
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· Score: 2
There's the problem, Microsoft makes money on the X-Box consoles, and every emulator out there will just provide another way to run X-Box games without having Microsoft take the nearly-hundred-dollar hit on hardware that the system itself costs them. So, even though Microsoft might try and sue, it's kind of an amusing situation in that the more people running emulators there are who buy games, the more money Microsoft actually makes.
I'll admit, the IRC log could pretty easily be seen as my misconstruing what came across, and I'll even admit that's pretty likely what happened. Unfortunately, I just felt like a slightly better answer would have been nice to have. And the emails, well, those rapidly colored my perception of the entire thing. They'd rather I just left it all alone, and I did. But I figured with this article posted, and others relaying the same sort of interaction with the Smoothwall team, it might be best if I actually gave out the address to the site I'd designed while things were ongoing.
This way, people can have a fully documented experience, warts and all, from both sides.
Once this thread goes off the main page, it's out of my mind once more.:)
Now tell me, though, does this excuse your boss from falsely accusing me of being a hacker to my ISP and attempting to have my account removed?
Is this appropriate behaviour for someone in security? By no means. I made no threats other than disclosure. Richard threatened to, and attempted to, have me silenced by false accusations.
As I stated on my site, not a single person at Smoothwall responded to the harassment issue. But I see the truth hurts.
My problem really was with wondering if the fact Smoothwall was a firewall somehow automatically -had- to preclude it from providing other features, such as the ability to run secure services for internal use. As Smoothwall was going on a machine with a three-gig hard drive, and would only use a few hundred megs, I was hoping that I could make use of that other space on a machine connected and up at all times. Also, if Smoothwall is so capable of running a web server for configuration on port 81 that's so secure, why couldn't a properly designed or even minimalist web server on port 80 be put in place with an emphasis on security?
Given that Smoothwall's NAT features are at best, rudimentary (No port forwarding by range, no statically assigned IP addresses as of version 0.9.9) it seemed rather logical to want to be able to add in features myself, at my own rick, that would provide these functions. But without a C compiler, it's just easier to go with someone else.
I would like to add, as an afternote to this, that when I contacted my ISP in order to be sure that Richard was not going to pull a fast one and get my account yanked, that I was then contacted the following day and asked if I had indeed been hacking Smoothwall's parent site. My reply was no, and I pointed my ISP to the site given in my previous post. After a quick examination of my site, my ISP apologised for the trouble, and said things would be taken care of. Nothing ever came of that, but I hope others would agree that what happened was quite low.
Several months ago, I was messing around with Smoothwall as a possible simple solution to my home LAN situation. It was the eve of the 0.9.8 release, and I went on the Smoothwall IRC chat area and joked about getting an early copy of the release. Joked. I know that doesn't happen, and figured that with a technically oriented crowd, that I'd be understood as kidding. At the time, it seemed that I was. However.
A couple days later, after having installed Smoothwall and found it to be almost-but-not-quite-right, I popped on and asked a pretty simple question. Why wasn't there a copy of any compilation tools present, or any other services that someone on a small, personal network might like?
The response was pretty terse. "It's a firewall." Repeated inquiries resulted in various forms of the same answer. Now I understand that a firewall has one main purpose, but the -attitude- I got from the developers was really too much. I figured, after being booted from the channel, I'd email Richard and hope that a cooler, more corporate head might reside at the leadership of the Smoothwall project.
Unfortunately, I could -not- have been further from the truth. The situation escalated with Richard harassing me VIA email for several days, after repeated requests of mine not to email me any longer. He continued, his crude insults became -threats-, and it took three days for the matter to settle.
I am currently an assistant administrator at a small college using Linux as a gateway/NAS solution that's desperately in need of updating. Smoothwall might have once been a contender for this, but definitely not now.
I have posted a rather extensive website airing the entire situation with Richard, my own warts and all, at my Smoothwall site for the perusal of anyone interested. Sure, I might have made a mistake or two, but I don't feel anything I may have said justified what I recieved.
Yes, and being "stuck" with Aqua is just what a desktop needs - a standard interface. Without a standard interface, users won't be able to expect the same exact results on whatever machine they use with that OS.
Also, you -can- run make. All you need to do is install the Developer Tools (Free download after free registration with the Apple Developer Connection) and there you have it, make, cc, gcc, Cocoa, everything you need to not only compile applications for commandline and Aqua, but you can even use a nice tool like Fink to download and install X11.
To quote "Sean Connery" on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy ''My time has come, Trebek!''
I've been ranting about this for a few weeks now, ever since purchasing my first Mac to use, and my rather surprisingly pleasant introduction to OSX.
Linux has always had two major things going for it. Free as in beer and speech, and the open source development model for the kernel. But at the same time, what it's had going against it were a difficult install (not difficult for me, difficult for grandma) and the clunky, quirky system that is X11. (clunky compared to what it -could- be, not necessarily the current competition)
Linux isn't ready for prime time just yet. It could be, but it's not ready yet. Say what you will about Mandrake, but grandma can't use it.
Now, OSX has the advantage of a pretty decent Mach/BSD core, and an incredibly impressive and functional GUI. Aqua, for being as young and closed as it is, does a damn good job at innovating in the 2D paradigm. Transparencies, dialog boxes that attach to the affected window, an actually useful style of windowshading. And all this with the environment of *nix beneath. With OSX, more than half the work Linux needs to do to make it on the desktop has already been accomplished. People may call for Apple to open the GUI, or they'll whine and complain that it's not open enough. So be it. If you want it that badly, make your own that's better. Open source doesn't have to simply follow other ideas, it can innovate too.
I'm glad to hear that, I really am. But then I look at companies where I am, and particularly the educational institution (if you could call it that), and get completely depressed. Anything that isn't Microsoft is getting shuffled out to pasture. Everyone coming out of my school thinks Microsoft is cool, Microsoft was unfairly prosecuted, and Bill Gates is a hero.
By driver support, I mean hardware drivers. Digital cameras, scanners, printers, webcams, video cards, sound cards, ethernet cards, etc. I think most people understood that one pretty well.
As to Be not being able to print, see above. Being a monopolist has gotten Microsoft where they are. It fucking sucks, but they're there. They won, for now. It doesn't always have to stay that way. Today's desktop needs are a windowing system that produces no delay for the users perception, can do full motion video without any glitches, and has an open API where people can mess with it without breaking anything. X almost fits the last of these, and I'll admit to not having seen much FMV on X myself due to crappy video cards (AKA ones without decent X drivers) in the Linux machines I've used. People say X is snappy on embedded devices, well, that's because they're able to take out the bloat that makes it run on so much x86 hardware, by limiting it to one system.
And I'm saying X is bloated, unwieldy and ugly simply because it was designed by committee. It doesn't matter if it's a committee of paid employees, or by volunteers. The design concepts for X are good - for developers. And by bloat, I mean it's too large and too difficult to get running. Do you know how much I had to download to get X running on my OSX machine? Seventy megs, between the server source and the base source with a window manager. SEVENTY MEGS. Of source. My 500Mhz machine spent three hours compiling. In contrast, Quake 2's source supposedly can fit on a floppy. Which would you rather dive into to port and modify?
People keep saying open source is about reclaiming the promise of computer technology, from what I read. Is it a matter of open source trying to bring people who like the technology around to their mindset, or is it a matter of wanting to revolutionize computers for everyone? You can't have it both ways. Look at what's happened so far. Efforts to build a simple interface to Linux have gone broke (Nautilus) or simply never differentiate themselves from the other alternatives enough to gain any kind of momentum (Gnome, KDE) that lets people develop for a standard interface.
I compare X bloated to what it could be. It's no worse than Microsoft in the bloat department, but it sure has a long way to go to even reach Windows in the usability area. I'm not defending Microsoft here, but what I do intend to get across is that some kind of decision has to be made among open source developers as to just what the main goal is. Choose one.
Beat Microsoft
Ignore Microsoft
If you choose to ignore Microsoft, then don't complain about them, and don't listen to me.
It you decide you want to try and beat Microsoft, then take the advice that myself and many, many others have. Don't just complain that I'm dissing open source projects, prove me wrong by giving me something better than I think I can see.
My dream OS:
A Linux style kernel, Be's file system, *nix memory management and security, native 3D-capable desktop (Let's find out how to ditch the 2D "window" paradigm), development tools tightly integrated with the system (Out of the box, I want an IDE on my programs list.) and an open source license.
Can this be done with Linux? Yes. Can it be done with X and the current interface options? No. No, I don't think so.
I'll summarize my point for the hint impaired. It's becoming increasingly clear, and yes, repeatedly stated, that open source is stalled at any attempt to actually change the world that the desktop user sees. It's also becoming increasingly clear that the only honest-to-gods challenge to Windows desktops is going to be as it always was, Apple.
The Windows monopoly has -won-. Buisnesses need Office, suits buy what they know about regardless of quality, when it comes to computers. You can argue until you're blue in the face that Linux is a more stable, securable, and cheaper alternative but the question will -always- be asked.
"Who do we call if something goes horribly, drastically wrong? And by the way, where's Office for it?"
Maybe they can call IBM, who knows. But as to Office, Microsoft has essentially shut open source completely out. But they've made one possible mistake, and created possibly the best Word and Excel solution on a non-Microsoft operating system. THIS more than anything else is what open source developers who truly want to change the world should look at, the fact that Apple's finally rising to the challenge, with the -support- of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit.
If you want to change the world, make Mac OS X and the Darwin/x86 core better. Let Apple handle the GUI, let Apple design the hardware. Yes, it may cost 10-20% more for the hardware, but it's a small price to pay for the closest thing to a free chance at actually getting a truly kick-ass OS into the hands of the masses.
Instead of considering Apple a closed-source evil, look at them as a company that knows how to do three things well. They know how to design killer hardware, they know how to create a user interface that doesn't suck, and they know how to -survive-. You don't get bitch-slapped in the marketplace by Microsoft for nearly two decades and remain in business by living on your stock inflation alone.
As operating systems have come and gone, one trend has been impossible to avoid. Driver support is next to nonexistent for anything other than Windows, and increasingly Linux on the x86 platform. This doesn't have anything to do with the ethos of open source, nor does it have anything to do with the quality of the operating system. BeOS absolutely kicked ass, it was an incredible attempt at exactly what the industry needs - a clean OS designed for today's desktop needs.
Unfortunately, this isn't what hardware manufacturers want to support. They want to support Windows and maybe Linux. From a conspiratorial standpoint, you could always think about it as the hardware manufacturers simply sticking to Windows because the power curve keeps increasing so often, new parts are always in vogue. From a more realistic standpoint, it's likely because the manufacturers are broke due to economic conditions, or simply too inexperienced to handle multiplatform development. Can open source volunteers make good drivers? Sure, we've seen this with xfree86, but look at what's happened to X. It's huge, considerably bloated, and with the exception of a very few window managers, ugly and unwieldy.
The Be kernel and design methodology were excellent, with few major flaws. The file system design was incredible and should be the first thing remembered if anyone does try and develop another operating system, or add support for it to Linux. Unfortunately, I just don't see evidence that the open source community can come together to create the kind of experience we're starting to see from Mac OS X, in regards to the Be effort. You need hardware, you need vendor support, and you need -rapid- development to get momentum going.
OSX's major flaw so far has been performance, because the BSD/Mach codebase it's built on it simply unwieldy without further refinement. Too much RAM is sucked up by the GUI, which at least manages to be the most functionally attractive one out there. It does what it needs to do, looks good doing it, and actually does mange to innovate, something that hasn't honestly been done since the original MacOS. Say what you will, but the windowing paradigm hasn't evolved much until transparencies became a feature of a commercially successful OS. Apple was able to make this leap by having control over the drivers, and the operating system. As a ten percent underdog, that's not the bad kind of monopoly. Particularly as Apple increasingly, yet slowly, warms up to open source.
Do I support work on OpenBe and like projects? Sure. Do I expect they'll change the world? Not at all. I -wish- they could, but if a system with as many developers as Linux still fails to impress me as a desktop solution due to clunkiness and the interface nightmare that is X11, I just don't think open source will be able to develop an interface that'll compete for user friendliness.
Will I use Linux and X11? Yes, of course. But I'm not the average home user, and that's where the battle for vendor support for an OS lies. I hope someday open source will come around and realize this.
Great, so it looks like there's still time to take that Quake 2 source and roll that into Mozilla to make a new feature that Microsoft will never touch. QuakeTML. All we need is a nice markup language for blood splatters and trash talk...
It's not a matter of Apple needing the backing just because they're the underdog. You also need to factor in the fact that they're -trying- to do what they can. Yes, they're real bastards when it comes to Aqua. But the usability of the Mac interface has been the only thing that saved them as a market force until now. As OSX gains momentum, I'm all but positive they'll open up gradually. With people like Hubbard now inside the corporate lounge, Apple will have little choice but to come around and relax a little.
It's important to remember that the core OS behind OS X is still open sourced. You can download Darwin/x86 and run it just fine, using X11 instead of Aqua.
I hope more open source people can come around to the realization that while fully open source platforms may be the best technical option, that until open source focuses as much on interface and ease as much as it does performance, that there is a viable, important place for companies like Apple.
About two days ago, I submitted a review of OSX to Slashdot, but got rejected. Am I sore about it? Not really. Since I'm not anyone of note (yet), it's expected. But this provides a nice chance to say what I said in the review. I won't cut and paste it, as that'd be quite long, but I'll summarize and suggest MacNN's OSX forum as a place to check it out if you're so inclined.
Essentially, I spent the last ten years of my life shackled to Microsoft products with the all-too-infrequent practical use of Linux. As Microsoft's business practices continue to get ever more predatory, and the Microsoft operating systems become increasingly marketing tools rather than productivity tools, I decided that it was about time to try something new.
I found an inexpensive, new iBook, and bought it. An "icebook" with a 500Mhz G3 processor, I've been quite happy with it so far. The construction of the iBook is quite decent, with a few common blemishes in the casing and a few mechanical defects reported. However, the real shining star of Apple's lineup has got to be OS X. This BSD alteration (Or enhancement, or bastardization, or annexation, call it what you will.) is positioned in the perfect place to bring intelligence back into the use of personal computers. Functionally, OS X is a wonderfully complex yet artistically presented program interface which does an admirable job of concealing the true nature of things from the average Macintosh transitional user, while providing an extremely high amount of flexibility for the more technically oriented. With the Macintosh userbase, there's actually a very devoted core that could use the help and assitance of open source efforts despite the problems with Apple in regards to certain areas of the system. (The interface, primarily)
Projects suck as Fink, an excellent tool for porting unix applications to the OS X environment are a great start, but what will really help Apple prove a real challenge to Microsoft is the conscious effort by Open Source developers to port applications to Apple hardware so seamlessly, that the average user won't even have to know that The Gimp was actually a unix application.
This is where Apple has succeeded as a core business, making computing simpler for the artistically, rather than the technically minded. The best thing Open Source can do is aid the Apple userbase in proving that the Mac is a viable alternative. Yes, Linux and BSD themselves as well as all the other systems out there, deserve to continue to be the primary focus of most efforts. But it just may be that the most effective way to open up the operating systems market will be to back the entrenched underdog.
No, I didn't. But at least I'll admit that.:) However, I did assume that the obvious response would be something along those lines, which just doesn't work in the environment I need to have a fix for someday, which is a large number of client workstations. If we turned off downloading of files, I think we'd get lynched by the faculty.:)
That'll definitely work, but the problem is going to be users at large networked sites. For example, the school I work at part-time as a tech. I -wish- the option were there to kill Windows in the labs, toss in some Apple hardware or Linux boxes. But for about a billion reasons, that's just not going to happen in my lifetime. Considering that we can't even afford to drop in a $700 build-it-yourself PC in some of the faculty offices while they're using '486-66's and P100's...
Ohyeah, and some are so damn dense they keep putting A4 paper in the printers. Support these people under Linux? No friggin' way.
Damn right I would, if he didn't tell anyone about it, didn't release the code for public review, and didn't update the kernel so people could download new versions with a relatively simple installation process.
But, gee, since it's Linux, I don't think those things are real concerns, do you?
Hope to shed a little light down under your bridge.
We'll see plenty of coverage within the next 48 hours, Microsoft statements by the end of tomorrow, and a bugfix by month's end. The big question is going to be, how will people cope in the midst of it all? Will this kind of lagtime offer virus creators to do a whole world of damage? Considering how things have spread recently, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they did. Might be time to start browsing with my iBook more often.
What kind of steps can people use to protect themselves now, is there any kind of toggle or security setting that can be turned on in IExploiter 5.0(tm) to keep us a little bit safer?
You know, if you spent a little less time trying to troll and a little more time fashioning a rational post together, you might have been able to go someplace with this. But I'll take a few of your more coherent complaints and answer them, just because.
First up, let me cover a few of your 'quickie' style complaints. You talk about how Apple screwed up 'Carbon 1.0', then never shipped it. Isn't this a good thing? Would you rather they release something worse than Windows 95?
Second, you talk an awful lot about speed issues with OSX and Cocoa. I suppose you haven't used 10.1. OSX 10.1 is amazing. Coupled with Office v.X (I'm a student, need Office compatibility or I don't pass my classes) OSX 10.1 is just stunning in speed, stability, and functionality. Granted, OSX may seem a bit bloated on the surface, but I decided after ten years of using Wintel that I'd trade bloat for stability, a choice Microsoft never offered.
Was NeXTStep awesome? Sure, seemed like it was to me anyhow. But back then, you didn't have the newer requirements of being out-of-the-box simple, and supporting so many hundreds of standards to make everything run as transparently as possible. Back in the days of NeXT, you had a NeXT if you were a developer, not an end user. Keep in mind, as a lot of people fail to do, that Apple is a company geared toward the consumer market, not simply the developer market.
Are there flaws? Yes. Are most of the flaws you pointed out accurate representations of the issues facing the Apple userbase? Hell no.
In November, I bought my first current Mac after only having an ancient '030 simply to say I had one. When I was younger, I felt that Apple had great hardware, but a lousy OS. Now, after X.1, I'm convinced that Apple has a far superior consumer grade OS than anyone else with market share. And simply by it's nature, it's also the best OS out there for developers. After all, you didn't have to shell out $2500 for a copy of the development tools, did you?
Well, I think Kamen's got that base covered too.
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
Of course, since DEKA's claim to fame is their contributions to medical technology and innovation, the bed you wind up in may well be "It"s uncle. Makes you hope the thing works better than you expect, doesn't it?
I currently live in a city called Calais, a hop-skip-and-underage-drinker-puke from the Canadian border. Our internet access solutions are a few small ISPs, a couple large ISPs, and a maximum connection speed of 56,666 bps. Here in the 'Downeast' region of Maine, we've got a very odd situation where we're surrounded by native american tribal communities with the ability to get some form of high-speed access, while the normal cities and towns stagger along on standard POS POTS. It's great to see these kinds of service available in the state, but by looking at the map in the article, it looks like it's only the southern parts of Maine that are being wired in. There's a lot more to Maine above Belfast, with a lot more economic need.
Economically, Downeast Maine is pretty much a wasteland. Some companies are relocating here, but most of the region's major employers have bugged out long ago. The prices quoted for the 802.11 setup are quite high to start, seeming priced more for the already-wealthy, not for any possible benefit to those with true economic needs. Around here, a popular bumper sticker is ''I live in the other state of Maine: Washington County''. When a service like this comes to Calais with the ability to afford it with some kind of state subsidy, or with a lower starting cost, that's when it might really help.
And no, this isn't just all about me wanting the access. Even though I've got a modem at home, I've got a laptop and root on the local community college network systems. I've got all the net access I need.
I actually wondered about this one, having seen Serious' magnum-crapus 'Young Einstein' several years ago - early nineties, IIRC. I think the important reason why he's waited this long, is that he's an Australian, and this whole thing started with the August registration in Australia of the Yahoo! brand.
I know that you supposedly can't trademark a proper name, and since Yahoo had changed his proper name -to- Yahoo ages ago, he's got a very good point. This one'll be fun to see the results of.
Y'know, from what I read on/. the day the show premiered (And thanks to the morons at DirecTV I don't get UPN), I expected something that was a total disaster.
I was pleasantly surprised. I have to say I actually like it, a lot. It conveys the theme and mood of the series quite well - we're explorers, and tired of being held back. In a way, I think the music as much sets the pace for the entire series as well as it does for this incarnation of The Franchise itself. Humanity finally coming into it's own.
I expect the series will have it's ups and downs, but really, how much stagnation do we -want- in Star Trek? Same Theme, Different Stereotypes?
Slashdot Mirror
There's the problem, Microsoft makes money on the X-Box consoles, and every emulator out there will just provide another way to run X-Box games without having Microsoft take the nearly-hundred-dollar hit on hardware that the system itself costs them. So, even though Microsoft might try and sue, it's kind of an amusing situation in that the more people running emulators there are who buy games, the more money Microsoft actually makes.
I'll admit, the IRC log could pretty easily be seen as my misconstruing what came across, and I'll even admit that's pretty likely what happened. Unfortunately, I just felt like a slightly better answer would have been nice to have. And the emails, well, those rapidly colored my perception of the entire thing. They'd rather I just left it all alone, and I did. But I figured with this article posted, and others relaying the same sort of interaction with the Smoothwall team, it might be best if I actually gave out the address to the site I'd designed while things were ongoing.
:)
This way, people can have a fully documented experience, warts and all, from both sides.
Once this thread goes off the main page, it's out of my mind once more.
Now tell me, though, does this excuse your boss from falsely accusing me of being a hacker to my ISP and attempting to have my account removed?
Is this appropriate behaviour for someone in security? By no means. I made no threats other than disclosure. Richard threatened to, and attempted to, have me silenced by false accusations.
As I stated on my site, not a single person at Smoothwall responded to the harassment issue. But I see the truth hurts.
My problem really was with wondering if the fact Smoothwall was a firewall somehow automatically -had- to preclude it from providing other features, such as the ability to run secure services for internal use. As Smoothwall was going on a machine with a three-gig hard drive, and would only use a few hundred megs, I was hoping that I could make use of that other space on a machine connected and up at all times. Also, if Smoothwall is so capable of running a web server for configuration on port 81 that's so secure, why couldn't a properly designed or even minimalist web server on port 80 be put in place with an emphasis on security?
Given that Smoothwall's NAT features are at best, rudimentary (No port forwarding by range, no statically assigned IP addresses as of version 0.9.9) it seemed rather logical to want to be able to add in features myself, at my own rick, that would provide these functions. But without a C compiler, it's just easier to go with someone else.
I would like to add, as an afternote to this, that when I contacted my ISP in order to be sure that Richard was not going to pull a fast one and get my account yanked, that I was then contacted the following day and asked if I had indeed been hacking Smoothwall's parent site. My reply was no, and I pointed my ISP to the site given in my previous post. After a quick examination of my site, my ISP apologised for the trouble, and said things would be taken care of. Nothing ever came of that, but I hope others would agree that what happened was quite low.
Several months ago, I was messing around with Smoothwall as a possible simple solution to my home LAN situation. It was the eve of the 0.9.8 release, and I went on the Smoothwall IRC chat area and joked about getting an early copy of the release. Joked. I know that doesn't happen, and figured that with a technically oriented crowd, that I'd be understood as kidding. At the time, it seemed that I was. However.
A couple days later, after having installed Smoothwall and found it to be almost-but-not-quite-right, I popped on and asked a pretty simple question. Why wasn't there a copy of any compilation tools present, or any other services that someone on a small, personal network might like?
The response was pretty terse. "It's a firewall." Repeated inquiries resulted in various forms of the same answer. Now I understand that a firewall has one main purpose, but the -attitude- I got from the developers was really too much. I figured, after being booted from the channel, I'd email Richard and hope that a cooler, more corporate head might reside at the leadership of the Smoothwall project.
Unfortunately, I could -not- have been further from the truth. The situation escalated with Richard harassing me VIA email for several days, after repeated requests of mine not to email me any longer. He continued, his crude insults became -threats-, and it took three days for the matter to settle.
I am currently an assistant administrator at a small college using Linux as a gateway/NAS solution that's desperately in need of updating. Smoothwall might have once been a contender for this, but definitely not now.
I have posted a rather extensive website airing the entire situation with Richard, my own warts and all, at my Smoothwall site for the perusal of anyone interested. Sure, I might have made a mistake or two, but I don't feel anything I may have said justified what I recieved.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
The comparison isn't Windows, it's OSX.
Yes, and being "stuck" with Aqua is just what a desktop needs - a standard interface. Without a standard interface, users won't be able to expect the same exact results on whatever machine they use with that OS.
Also, you -can- run make. All you need to do is install the Developer Tools (Free download after free registration with the Apple Developer Connection) and there you have it, make, cc, gcc, Cocoa, everything you need to not only compile applications for commandline and Aqua, but you can even use a nice tool like Fink to download and install X11.
To quote "Sean Connery" on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy ''My time has come, Trebek!''
I've been ranting about this for a few weeks now, ever since purchasing my first Mac to use, and my rather surprisingly pleasant introduction to OSX.
Linux has always had two major things going for it. Free as in beer and speech, and the open source development model for the kernel. But at the same time, what it's had going against it were a difficult install (not difficult for me, difficult for grandma) and the clunky, quirky system that is X11. (clunky compared to what it -could- be, not necessarily the current competition)
Linux isn't ready for prime time just yet. It could be, but it's not ready yet. Say what you will about Mandrake, but grandma can't use it.
Now, OSX has the advantage of a pretty decent Mach/BSD core, and an incredibly impressive and functional GUI. Aqua, for being as young and closed as it is, does a damn good job at innovating in the 2D paradigm. Transparencies, dialog boxes that attach to the affected window, an actually useful style of windowshading. And all this with the environment of *nix beneath. With OSX, more than half the work Linux needs to do to make it on the desktop has already been accomplished. People may call for Apple to open the GUI, or they'll whine and complain that it's not open enough. So be it. If you want it that badly, make your own that's better. Open source doesn't have to simply follow other ideas, it can innovate too.
I'm glad to hear that, I really am. But then I look at companies where I am, and particularly the educational institution (if you could call it that), and get completely depressed. Anything that isn't Microsoft is getting shuffled out to pasture. Everyone coming out of my school thinks Microsoft is cool, Microsoft was unfairly prosecuted, and Bill Gates is a hero.
God, people are morons.
By driver support, I mean hardware drivers. Digital cameras, scanners, printers, webcams, video cards, sound cards, ethernet cards, etc. I think most people understood that one pretty well.
As to Be not being able to print, see above. Being a monopolist has gotten Microsoft where they are. It fucking sucks, but they're there. They won, for now. It doesn't always have to stay that way. Today's desktop needs are a windowing system that produces no delay for the users perception, can do full motion video without any glitches, and has an open API where people can mess with it without breaking anything. X almost fits the last of these, and I'll admit to not having seen much FMV on X myself due to crappy video cards (AKA ones without decent X drivers) in the Linux machines I've used. People say X is snappy on embedded devices, well, that's because they're able to take out the bloat that makes it run on so much x86 hardware, by limiting it to one system.
And I'm saying X is bloated, unwieldy and ugly simply because it was designed by committee. It doesn't matter if it's a committee of paid employees, or by volunteers. The design concepts for X are good - for developers. And by bloat, I mean it's too large and too difficult to get running. Do you know how much I had to download to get X running on my OSX machine? Seventy megs, between the server source and the base source with a window manager. SEVENTY MEGS. Of source. My 500Mhz machine spent three hours compiling. In contrast, Quake 2's source supposedly can fit on a floppy. Which would you rather dive into to port and modify?
People keep saying open source is about reclaiming the promise of computer technology, from what I read. Is it a matter of open source trying to bring people who like the technology around to their mindset, or is it a matter of wanting to revolutionize computers for everyone? You can't have it both ways. Look at what's happened so far. Efforts to build a simple interface to Linux have gone broke (Nautilus) or simply never differentiate themselves from the other alternatives enough to gain any kind of momentum (Gnome, KDE) that lets people develop for a standard interface.
I compare X bloated to what it could be. It's no worse than Microsoft in the bloat department, but it sure has a long way to go to even reach Windows in the usability area. I'm not defending Microsoft here, but what I do intend to get across is that some kind of decision has to be made among open source developers as to just what the main goal is. Choose one.
Beat Microsoft
Ignore Microsoft
If you choose to ignore Microsoft, then don't complain about them, and don't listen to me.
It you decide you want to try and beat Microsoft, then take the advice that myself and many, many others have. Don't just complain that I'm dissing open source projects, prove me wrong by giving me something better than I think I can see.
My dream OS:
A Linux style kernel, Be's file system, *nix memory management and security, native 3D-capable desktop (Let's find out how to ditch the 2D "window" paradigm), development tools tightly integrated with the system (Out of the box, I want an IDE on my programs list.) and an open source license.
Can this be done with Linux? Yes. Can it be done with X and the current interface options? No. No, I don't think so.
Prove me wrong.
I'll summarize my point for the hint impaired. It's becoming increasingly clear, and yes, repeatedly stated, that open source is stalled at any attempt to actually change the world that the desktop user sees. It's also becoming increasingly clear that the only honest-to-gods challenge to Windows desktops is going to be as it always was, Apple.
The Windows monopoly has -won-. Buisnesses need Office, suits buy what they know about regardless of quality, when it comes to computers. You can argue until you're blue in the face that Linux is a more stable, securable, and cheaper alternative but the question will -always- be asked.
"Who do we call if something goes horribly, drastically wrong? And by the way, where's Office for it?"
Maybe they can call IBM, who knows. But as to Office, Microsoft has essentially shut open source completely out. But they've made one possible mistake, and created possibly the best Word and Excel solution on a non-Microsoft operating system. THIS more than anything else is what open source developers who truly want to change the world should look at, the fact that Apple's finally rising to the challenge, with the -support- of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit.
If you want to change the world, make Mac OS X and the Darwin/x86 core better. Let Apple handle the GUI, let Apple design the hardware. Yes, it may cost 10-20% more for the hardware, but it's a small price to pay for the closest thing to a free chance at actually getting a truly kick-ass OS into the hands of the masses.
Instead of considering Apple a closed-source evil, look at them as a company that knows how to do three things well. They know how to design killer hardware, they know how to create a user interface that doesn't suck, and they know how to -survive-. You don't get bitch-slapped in the marketplace by Microsoft for nearly two decades and remain in business by living on your stock inflation alone.
As operating systems have come and gone, one trend has been impossible to avoid. Driver support is next to nonexistent for anything other than Windows, and increasingly Linux on the x86 platform. This doesn't have anything to do with the ethos of open source, nor does it have anything to do with the quality of the operating system. BeOS absolutely kicked ass, it was an incredible attempt at exactly what the industry needs - a clean OS designed for today's desktop needs.
Unfortunately, this isn't what hardware manufacturers want to support. They want to support Windows and maybe Linux. From a conspiratorial standpoint, you could always think about it as the hardware manufacturers simply sticking to Windows because the power curve keeps increasing so often, new parts are always in vogue. From a more realistic standpoint, it's likely because the manufacturers are broke due to economic conditions, or simply too inexperienced to handle multiplatform development. Can open source volunteers make good drivers? Sure, we've seen this with xfree86, but look at what's happened to X. It's huge, considerably bloated, and with the exception of a very few window managers, ugly and unwieldy.
The Be kernel and design methodology were excellent, with few major flaws. The file system design was incredible and should be the first thing remembered if anyone does try and develop another operating system, or add support for it to Linux. Unfortunately, I just don't see evidence that the open source community can come together to create the kind of experience we're starting to see from Mac OS X, in regards to the Be effort. You need hardware, you need vendor support, and you need -rapid- development to get momentum going.
OSX's major flaw so far has been performance, because the BSD/Mach codebase it's built on it simply unwieldy without further refinement. Too much RAM is sucked up by the GUI, which at least manages to be the most functionally attractive one out there. It does what it needs to do, looks good doing it, and actually does mange to innovate, something that hasn't honestly been done since the original MacOS. Say what you will, but the windowing paradigm hasn't evolved much until transparencies became a feature of a commercially successful OS. Apple was able to make this leap by having control over the drivers, and the operating system. As a ten percent underdog, that's not the bad kind of monopoly. Particularly as Apple increasingly, yet slowly, warms up to open source.
Do I support work on OpenBe and like projects? Sure. Do I expect they'll change the world? Not at all. I -wish- they could, but if a system with as many developers as Linux still fails to impress me as a desktop solution due to clunkiness and the interface nightmare that is X11, I just don't think open source will be able to develop an interface that'll compete for user friendliness.
Will I use Linux and X11? Yes, of course. But I'm not the average home user, and that's where the battle for vendor support for an OS lies. I hope someday open source will come around and realize this.
Great, so it looks like there's still time to take that Quake 2 source and roll that into Mozilla to make a new feature that Microsoft will never touch. QuakeTML. All we need is a nice markup language for blood splatters and trash talk...
It's important to remember that the core OS behind OS X is still open sourced. You can download Darwin/x86 and run it just fine, using X11 instead of Aqua.
I hope more open source people can come around to the realization that while fully open source platforms may be the best technical option, that until open source focuses as much on interface and ease as much as it does performance, that there is a viable, important place for companies like Apple.
Essentially, I spent the last ten years of my life shackled to Microsoft products with the all-too-infrequent practical use of Linux. As Microsoft's business practices continue to get ever more predatory, and the Microsoft operating systems become increasingly marketing tools rather than productivity tools, I decided that it was about time to try something new.
I found an inexpensive, new iBook, and bought it. An "icebook" with a 500Mhz G3 processor, I've been quite happy with it so far. The construction of the iBook is quite decent, with a few common blemishes in the casing and a few mechanical defects reported. However, the real shining star of Apple's lineup has got to be OS X. This BSD alteration (Or enhancement, or bastardization, or annexation, call it what you will.) is positioned in the perfect place to bring intelligence back into the use of personal computers. Functionally, OS X is a wonderfully complex yet artistically presented program interface which does an admirable job of concealing the true nature of things from the average Macintosh transitional user, while providing an extremely high amount of flexibility for the more technically oriented. With the Macintosh userbase, there's actually a very devoted core that could use the help and assitance of open source efforts despite the problems with Apple in regards to certain areas of the system. (The interface, primarily)
Projects suck as Fink, an excellent tool for porting unix applications to the OS X environment are a great start, but what will really help Apple prove a real challenge to Microsoft is the conscious effort by Open Source developers to port applications to Apple hardware so seamlessly, that the average user won't even have to know that The Gimp was actually a unix application.
This is where Apple has succeeded as a core business, making computing simpler for the artistically, rather than the technically minded. The best thing Open Source can do is aid the Apple userbase in proving that the Mac is a viable alternative. Yes, Linux and BSD themselves as well as all the other systems out there, deserve to continue to be the primary focus of most efforts. But it just may be that the most effective way to open up the operating systems market will be to back the entrenched underdog.
No, I didn't. But at least I'll admit that. :) However, I did assume that the obvious response would be something along those lines, which just doesn't work in the environment I need to have a fix for someday, which is a large number of client workstations. If we turned off downloading of files, I think we'd get lynched by the faculty. :)
That'll definitely work, but the problem is going to be users at large networked sites. For example, the school I work at part-time as a tech. I -wish- the option were there to kill Windows in the labs, toss in some Apple hardware or Linux boxes. But for about a billion reasons, that's just not going to happen in my lifetime. Considering that we can't even afford to drop in a $700 build-it-yourself PC in some of the faculty offices while they're using '486-66's and P100's...
Ohyeah, and some are so damn dense they keep putting A4 paper in the printers. Support these people under Linux? No friggin' way.
Damn right I would, if he didn't tell anyone about it, didn't release the code for public review, and didn't update the kernel so people could download new versions with a relatively simple installation process.
But, gee, since it's Linux, I don't think those things are real concerns, do you?
Hope to shed a little light down under your bridge.
We'll see plenty of coverage within the next 48 hours, Microsoft statements by the end of tomorrow, and a bugfix by month's end. The big question is going to be, how will people cope in the midst of it all? Will this kind of lagtime offer virus creators to do a whole world of damage? Considering how things have spread recently, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they did. Might be time to start browsing with my iBook more often.
What kind of steps can people use to protect themselves now, is there any kind of toggle or security setting that can be turned on in IExploiter 5.0(tm) to keep us a little bit safer?
You know, if you spent a little less time trying to troll and a little more time fashioning a rational post together, you might have been able to go someplace with this. But I'll take a few of your more coherent complaints and answer them, just because.
First up, let me cover a few of your 'quickie' style complaints. You talk about how Apple screwed up 'Carbon 1.0', then never shipped it. Isn't this a good thing? Would you rather they release something worse than Windows 95?
Second, you talk an awful lot about speed issues with OSX and Cocoa. I suppose you haven't used 10.1. OSX 10.1 is amazing. Coupled with Office v.X (I'm a student, need Office compatibility or I don't pass my classes) OSX 10.1 is just stunning in speed, stability, and functionality. Granted, OSX may seem a bit bloated on the surface, but I decided after ten years of using Wintel that I'd trade bloat for stability, a choice Microsoft never offered.
Was NeXTStep awesome? Sure, seemed like it was to me anyhow. But back then, you didn't have the newer requirements of being out-of-the-box simple, and supporting so many hundreds of standards to make everything run as transparently as possible. Back in the days of NeXT, you had a NeXT if you were a developer, not an end user. Keep in mind, as a lot of people fail to do, that Apple is a company geared toward the consumer market, not simply the developer market.
Are there flaws? Yes. Are most of the flaws you pointed out accurate representations of the issues facing the Apple userbase? Hell no.
In November, I bought my first current Mac after only having an ancient '030 simply to say I had one. When I was younger, I felt that Apple had great hardware, but a lousy OS. Now, after X.1, I'm convinced that Apple has a far superior consumer grade OS than anyone else with market share. And simply by it's nature, it's also the best OS out there for developers. After all, you didn't have to shell out $2500 for a copy of the development tools, did you?
Of course, since DEKA's claim to fame is their contributions to medical technology and innovation, the bed you wind up in may well be "It"s uncle. Makes you hope the thing works better than you expect, doesn't it?
Apologies for the title ripoff.
I currently live in a city called Calais, a hop-skip-and-underage-drinker-puke from the Canadian border. Our internet access solutions are a few small ISPs, a couple large ISPs, and a maximum connection speed of 56,666 bps. Here in the 'Downeast' region of Maine, we've got a very odd situation where we're surrounded by native american tribal communities with the ability to get some form of high-speed access, while the normal cities and towns stagger along on standard POS POTS. It's great to see these kinds of service available in the state, but by looking at the map in the article, it looks like it's only the southern parts of Maine that are being wired in. There's a lot more to Maine above Belfast, with a lot more economic need.
Economically, Downeast Maine is pretty much a wasteland. Some companies are relocating here, but most of the region's major employers have bugged out long ago. The prices quoted for the 802.11 setup are quite high to start, seeming priced more for the already-wealthy, not for any possible benefit to those with true economic needs. Around here, a popular bumper sticker is ''I live in the other state of Maine: Washington County''. When a service like this comes to Calais with the ability to afford it with some kind of state subsidy, or with a lower starting cost, that's when it might really help.
And no, this isn't just all about me wanting the access. Even though I've got a modem at home, I've got a laptop and root on the local community college network systems. I've got all the net access I need.
I actually wondered about this one, having seen Serious' magnum-crapus 'Young Einstein' several years ago - early nineties, IIRC. I think the important reason why he's waited this long, is that he's an Australian, and this whole thing started with the August registration in Australia of the Yahoo! brand.
I know that you supposedly can't trademark a proper name, and since Yahoo had changed his proper name -to- Yahoo ages ago, he's got a very good point. This one'll be fun to see the results of.
Y'know, from what I read on /. the day the show premiered (And thanks to the morons at DirecTV I don't get UPN), I expected something that was a total disaster.
I was pleasantly surprised. I have to say I actually like it, a lot. It conveys the theme and mood of the series quite well - we're explorers, and tired of being held back. In a way, I think the music as much sets the pace for the entire series as well as it does for this incarnation of The Franchise itself. Humanity finally coming into it's own.
I expect the series will have it's ups and downs, but really, how much stagnation do we -want- in Star Trek? Same Theme, Different Stereotypes?