You're joking but seriously... look at what Apple did.../Library/Preferences/*.plist is a simple, human parsable, easily scriptable, programmatically manipulatable (with a concise API) way. All current different weird file patters could be collapsed in an unique versatile structure that could be (ad lib) mapped to a registry like GUI or handled by sh scripts or vi. I vote for com.example.app.plist files
which is close to the roman attitude. Intersections, roman style: if you've got right of way just step on the gas to scare the old farts out of the way; if not, just stop right in the middle of it as if asking: "are you willing to crash into me, asshole?" Best tools for the job: either a new thick skinned car oozing attitude, or an old beaten up scrap (anyone will think you can't give a damn in case of an accident). If you drive an average, fairly new but not too much, car... you're condemned to irrelevancy.
If you're in electronic dub visit thinnerism and also monohm for other organic & artificial ambient. If you're in Europe also check out the live performances or go paypal. Also, check out interchill dl available on iTMS or ambient us. Wonderful stuff, discovered on long silent psyradio stream...
Don't they just make a perfect match with this Frankenst_in_ piece of ricer crap? Last week I drooled over a Dual G5 silence. Is it on? Oh yeah, the disk spins and, ah! that Panther desktop. Sweet, come back when there's some computer to match.
The hype machine always has some new crappy potion to sell. Shame that those perfect designs, turning points set in stone, only happen every so much; quality is not for the masses (not that they can't afford it... this fridge isn't exactly cheap).
Please, can you forgive people for being incidentally blunt or do you always expect & pretend sterilized politically correct statements? Listen, the guy worded it a bit backwards, but he's just saying that in a heavily discriminated community only the most determined folks will have "success" while most will drop the towel and seek fulfillment in other aspects of life. Objectively, a middle class, good family (9/10 times, white) male (there's that detail too) really has to try hard to screw his life into becoming a janitor; he's not just brighter, he's priviledged. Fire a campaign for a blunt, but correct and un-racist, statement makes me think it's a pretext.
Excuse me? You equate Apple to Microsoft for not producing a Linux executable of iTunes? Oh, my! Listen, anyone can mount an iPod disk and have access to the directories containing the music files. The directory names are mangled for efficency on a resource limited controller but the iTunes db file that maps the paths to the idtags isn't that undocumented as (say) a.doc file. The file formats are perfectly open as spec'd, even the DRM works within the mp4 file standard. Hell, if you only wish to playback songs from an iPod you only need xmms to scan the subdir and pickup all the files (tags are in files), simple. A protected m4p daemon isn't probably available because the Labels don't want their content on a "hacker" platform and in any case Apple prefers not to troubleshoot the idiots that would inevitably lock themselves out of auth keys. I don't think that's exactly the same level of crippleware as, say, Active Directory. If you want to update the iPod under Linux you need to touch the iPod db... google it, and if it doesn't exist write an xmms plugin. You seem to forget what Linux is all about...;-)
That was a wee bit different. Buttiglione was "proposed" to the EU commission by the current italian government as compensation for his aid to straighten up a little domestic crisis.
Antefact: our bipolar system rotates around 2 "coalitions" that compete for an electoral bonus. The winning one gets over represented in parliament and the appointment to run the country for a legislature. During the last non-legislative elections, the Right (Berlusconi's currently in-office "Casa delle Libertà") got a sound beating for a long list of reasons, but simply put: Berlusconi takes care of his judiciary & financial problems and gives a damn about anything else. The internal discipline is formidable, for, whenever there's a Bill or some other Act the Boss desires to pass, rank & file politicians and smaller parties get to execute orders like diligent servicemen. Compensations vary but one party, the xenophobic Lega Nord, got most of the leftovers among the minor parties and was given way too much media coverage. Those that were left out became jealous of this and worried for their own base as it balked at the sheer ineptitude of the current administration. The electoral beating gave them a chance to voice their dissent and it took a full year for them to get quiet, some Chair shuffling and a great deal of threats. In particular, one democristian party, led by a man called Follini, was becoming the proverbial thorn in the ass. Enter Buttiglione; he offered to split the party and minoritize Follini.
His service was immediately rewarded with a prestigious nomination to the EU Commission that could be smuggled as tangible recognition to the party's relevance in the coalition (hypocrites). Clearly, the EU parliament wasn't amused for this obvious exchange at it's own cost: Buttiglione took up Mario Monti's slot (yeah, the guy that stood up agains Microsoft...) and grilled the idiot at the first chance; Buttiglione's attitude was also surprising as he did everything possible to get kicked out. He obviously wanted to get kicked out and chose some petty argument to be dealt with championing his fundamentalist catholic agenda.
This long winded post hasn't even scratched the surface of the issue but hopefully it gived an idea of what happened.
I've got a Mac, never fiddled with an USB iPod. A friend bought an iPod, struggled with it on USB2, got sick of it, bought a FW pc-card (my suggestion), became happy. Although it doesn't provide power to the iPod (neither did USB) he's overwhelmed by FW's speed and reliability (on WinXP). USB is like a Soviet car, feels crap but everyone goes with it because it comes default (anybody wonder why all pc laptops don't provide powered FW? is it an intel diktat?)
But headlamp replacements are a commodity; I can go anywhere and buy them from anywhere I wish since the socket is a standard one. I'd be rather pissed if this was proprietary and the only licensed lamps were crap. Also, the non standard voltage would require the substitution of all other car components, this time fom the same company... and the gas too... Microsoft Gas Unleaded Edition... sometimes, though, the engine could stop out of the _blue_;-)
Right... true... I'm in electronic engineering myself. Now, there are cases where the developer wants total control of the platform and shutting out any chance of fiddling is a good thing. But as a general rule, it is not. The examples you are putting forward are so special that they really don't belong to the general purpouse platform called PC (and that's what the article was all about: unbundling WMP from the " computing consumer" market). If anything, I'd be wary of building such a system on a platform (Windows) where I'm not in control to so much an extent; I mean if an Auto Update doesn't lock up the terminal a worm will take it down:'-) On tha other hand, having more choice is good at _design_time_, when I can choose to buy into (or not) whatever component I desire... before locking everything up as tighly as I can! (I wouldn't even include a keyboard...)
Because the key is inside the disk image? Copy the dmg, copy the key. Stream the dmg, stream the key. You could do this with Disk utility, an XServe RAID, an XServe and a mini. It would be cheaper too; who said Apple hardware was expensive!
Unfortunately, in these litigious times, you simply can't leave choices to the local admin's whim. Because if the lights in Exhibit Hall A go out while 10,000 people are inside, a lawsuit is going to happen. And "the customer screwed up the system" is an argument that juries simply don't buy. We have to make the system as robust as possible--and that generally means preventing the local admin from making any choices at all. Oh, yeah--and we turn Automatic Update off as well. 8-)
Exacly what I meant, just don't give 'em the Admin password but choice is a good thing at design time. Your deployments are so specific you can really take full control of the operating environment. In general though, unbundling is better for competition and consumer value for money. If some daft _consumer_ software requires IE screaming and kicking it's feet for no particular reason other that unwillingness to put up (say) compliant HTML, the _consumer_ should understand that it's not acceptable. Once this frame of mind gets mainstream we'll all live in a much healthier computing environment.
PS. [grtatuitous M$ slamming] So, you turn off Auto Update on your customers' machines? Gee... how can you sleep at night?! [/gratuitous M$ slamming];-)
why don't these bastards go back doing their damn business? In the past 2 weeks I've seen 2 incredibly overhyped massively crummy films; this christmas season there wasn't one film one, good enough to get a couple buddies on the phone and arrange for a trip to the cinema. I'm not a compulsive thief, this week I've bought 3 albums online and guess what? None were RIAA and sound great, strange isn't it? I've wasted part of my disposable on shit, it burns, and I'll revert to extreme prejudice mode for as much as I feel necessary. My wallet is always open for quality stuff... they should appreciate if I get a taste of their product for free... (for them, mind you... it's self targeting free advertisement)
Ok, but then yours is a particularly specific context. In a life support context, all dependancies are documented as mandated requirements that can be easily enforced at deployment time and runtime. Privilege restriction is your friend, not inextricably bundled software.
In your case I'd be very wary of, say, Automatic Software Updates on IE that might clobber your dedicated app. I'm pretty shure your deployment also includes limits to ASUs so unbundling IE doesn't really make that much of a difference as the admins would drop it in the installer. Actually, I'd only take a (we're talking about IE right?) browser widget and embed it in my app putting it's dll in the installer. this way I could swap it out, or substitute just the js engine if needed. The broader perspective is that noone should make assumptions on what's installed on a single machine unless it's part of an agreed deployment process. All the rest should be left to standardized interfaces where the local admin (home user, business client) can impose it's choices according to it's whim (which could also be specific interoperability requirements with other important apps). Your attitude supports, excuse me, Microsoft's (or any vendor's by all means!) viral lock in strategy. Again, I understand the Windows platform was pretty much designed towards forcing a choice and in the days alternatives weren't exactly competitive (NS4?) but today? Wouldn't you be better off if your code wan't so totally sold to Microsoft libraries? Swapping out a couple thousand lines could get your platform onto cheap mobile phones in no time; or are you stuck on specific (workable? supported?) versions of Windows Mobile? One day it may be the only platform but today, you're stuck with MS's business plan... not yours.
Since you're a SW architect you should know that your apps should depend on whatever application is capable of rendering you standards compliant interface or data. If you need to display HTML your app should call the user's registered browser, not iexplore.exe and of course you shouldn't depend on some vendors' broken implementation. You don't want to get in your customer's way expecting them to install useless, broken and invasive programs just to get your thingie going don't you? Of course your app should interface to the underlying OS thru lightweight facades you can rapidly implement to port your app to whatever OS your customer wants to use. Would you expect Goodyear or Pirelli to dictate what transmission shaft your car should have? Someone might object that a business will only care for 90% of the total market, but hadn't they enslaved themselves to a closed platform this unhealthy monopoly wouldn't have grown anyway...
Now, this might sound infammatoy so let me say that I understand that clear standards, implementations and open platforms haven't quite existed until very recently. I understand that going with IE using broken HTML, inextricably binding your code to Microsoft libraries made perfect sense and still does to a certain extent. So take this unbundling as a good chance to go back to the blackboard and discover new ways to make your products competitive.
... thinking about the headline it musn't be bad at all. He's not advocating flipping opcodes in a cpu and going with the joyride guys. Currently chips work on full swing voltages, beefy noise margins and quite conservative settle timings. In signaling theory there's a lot more than that and the telecomm people developed elaborate modulation schemes that permit data encoding and very good error rejection. I'm talking out of my ass but there are codes that reliably pack a lot of data; why shouldn't computing equipment take advantage of that instead of GHz morse code? RAM and peripherial interconnect could use coherent modulation today rather than go optical (which is still On Off Keying after all) and pay for the mixed subtrate process costs. OOK has been a simple and reliable model for logical circuitry, but today we have enough processing & modeling horsepower to develop stuff that makes better use of the bandwidth.
Of course... wait 'till some $CORP sues you into the ground for that interoperating piece of software you small company wrote to satisfy a customer's spec on a non $CORP owned integrated platform. But the customer can't afford the licensing and wouldn't care less if the IT equipment you try to sell is just a [clickety] scripting customization of some cumbersome, forced upgrade, platform software. The customer probably wants something that just works, that they can forget running on some blade for as long as they please without having to upgrade because the $CORP decided to drop support for it, that they can tinker and refactor for as long as they please and not necessarily by you.
But they can't buy it, and you can't make and sell it because everything from help files to the idea of stored procedures is patented up and nobody wants to contend that in court against a Megabuck $CORP. So you're role is dumbed down to that of VAR, certified [clickety] wizard guy and the customers see their IT costs SOAR because every 3yrs they have to upgrade even if what they've already got is fine: 1. the "platform software", 2. "the Operating system to support 1, 3. new hardware to have 2 run at a decent speed, 4. the custom app because it's not working anymore.
That's not funny... innovation grinds to a halt and a medieval inter-feud toll system bleeds the industry dry while the Seigneurs and their lawyers (who BTW know jack shit about computers) have a collective roaring laugh.
Apple seems to be moving into the place Sony would like to be - the nexus of the consumer digital lifestyle. If that's the case, the old, "Repeat after me: Apple is a hardware company" mantra may not hold up for long.
Uh, you mean I was hallucinating when I saw that videowall of SONY plasmas and LCDs down at the mall? Right, "WEGA" brand must be the handle for SONY's OS last rev. Now excuse my but I must reinstall SONY XP on a Microsoft Vaio;-)
I don't know, but this little feature you describe is also the vector for Outlook email viruses. In the dark ages, email clients were just text shufflers and attachment accessors. Then some Microsoft brainstormer decided this feature would be implemented on Outlook: execute programmatic objects embedded into an email... automatically. Excel, as many other windows apps, register themselved as service providers for custom widgets and code objects you can plop anywhere an app that accepts embedded objects.
Now, the drama comes when you get Outlook to automatically execute an embedded object that escapes whatever control might exist (whether at the Outlook application sandbox model) or at a OS user privilege separation and plant commands at Administrator level. The containment offered by Outlook and the OS itself is full of loopholes and wrong assumptions that open a path to other vulns or straight into the windows registry. In UNIX no sane person would have a mail app auto execute an attached shell script; what if it contained rm -rf / or some code to run a local exploit and then proceed as root? Microsoft did.
It's a neat idea, somewhat also Apple supports the notion of Services an app can provide to other and it gives a cool feeling of integration to the platform. The problem is the security model that limits this "integration". A virus that requires the user to manually save the attachment to disc, set exec bit and run won't go anywhere. A virus that only needs the user to click on the subject line to run itself will rape the net. On an Apple, these Services only work on clipboard items; that is some selected text or a selected file in the finder and will receive a call to launch on that file. That is secure; the Mail.app is not programmed to execute anything, it doesn't even have tricky security sandboxes because it doesn't expect to run anything. Need to cut and paste little spreadsheet? Do so, save and attach (drag 'n drop). Edit? Reopen attachment or drag to desktop, edit, save and redrag to Email. Is it difficult or awkward? Very little, if at all. Total cost of Outlook feature? Billions...think about it.
TiPB: Titanium PowerBook. I challenge anyone owning a sub GHz, 2yr old laptop to claim satisfactory performance. My old fart is still in its prime! Wanna try Apple? Go for it; I've never "reinstalled from scratch" in 2 years; only once I've reinstalled to upgrade from Jaguar to Panther but without reformatting. The installer just wiped the old kernel and system folders and moved my home to a/Previous Systems folder. Properly packaged applications (ie self contained.app bundles) were left in the/Applications folder ready to run. The whole process took about 30 min.
agreed, Eclispe is a humongous beast but does loads of neat stuff. It does eat gobs of ram but I'm also fiddling on 3.1m3 (ie not stable). Done properly Java is good (wanna see a really cool java app? lookup Acquisition, a P2P for Panther)
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Please share the band ID, electronic intrigues me as much as folk does. ;-)
e
You're joking but seriously... look at what Apple did... /Library/Preferences/*.plist is a simple, human parsable, easily scriptable, programmatically manipulatable (with a concise API) way. All current different weird file patters could be collapsed in an unique versatile structure that could be (ad lib) mapped to a registry like GUI or handled by sh scripts or vi. I vote for com.example.app.plist files
which is close to the roman attitude. Intersections, roman style: if you've got right of way just step on the gas to scare the old farts out of the way; if not, just stop right in the middle of it as if asking: "are you willing to crash into me, asshole?" Best tools for the job: either a new thick skinned car oozing attitude, or an old beaten up scrap (anyone will think you can't give a damn in case of an accident). If you drive an average, fairly new but not too much, car... you're condemned to irrelevancy.
e
If you're in electronic dub visit thinnerism and also monohm for other organic & artificial ambient. If you're in Europe also check out the live performances or go paypal. Also, check out interchill dl available on iTMS or ambient us. Wonderful stuff, discovered on long silent psyradio stream...
No, but I'd never hook a (P4) furnace to a fridge either? ;-)
Don't they just make a perfect match with this Frankenst_in_ piece of ricer crap? Last week I drooled over a Dual G5 silence. Is it on? Oh yeah, the disk spins and, ah! that Panther desktop. Sweet, come back when there's some computer to match.
The hype machine always has some new crappy potion to sell. Shame that those perfect designs, turning points set in stone, only happen every so much; quality is not for the masses (not that they can't afford it... this fridge isn't exactly cheap).
Please, can you forgive people for being incidentally blunt or do you always expect & pretend sterilized politically correct statements? Listen, the guy worded it a bit backwards, but he's just saying that in a heavily discriminated community only the most determined folks will have "success" while most will drop the towel and seek fulfillment in other aspects of life. Objectively, a middle class, good family (9/10 times, white) male (there's that detail too) really has to try hard to screw his life into becoming a janitor; he's not just brighter, he's priviledged. Fire a campaign for a blunt, but correct and un-racist, statement makes me think it's a pretext.
Excuse me? You equate Apple to Microsoft for not producing a Linux executable of iTunes? Oh, my! Listen, anyone can mount an iPod disk and have access to the directories containing the music files. The directory names are mangled for efficency on a resource limited controller but the iTunes db file that maps the paths to the idtags isn't that undocumented as (say) a .doc file. The file formats are perfectly open as spec'd, even the DRM works within the mp4 file standard. Hell, if you only wish to playback songs from an iPod you only need xmms to scan the subdir and pickup all the files (tags are in files), simple. A protected m4p daemon isn't probably available because the Labels don't want their content on a "hacker" platform and in any case Apple prefers not to troubleshoot the idiots that would inevitably lock themselves out of auth keys. I don't think that's exactly the same level of crippleware as, say, Active Directory. If you want to update the iPod under Linux you need to touch the iPod db... google it, and if it doesn't exist write an xmms plugin. You seem to forget what Linux is all about... ;-)
This long winded post hasn't even scratched the surface of the issue but hopefully it gived
It's a typo, I swear! ;-)
That was a wee bit different. Buttiglione was "proposed" to the EU commission by the current italian government as compensation for his aid to straighten up a little domestic crisis.
Antefact: our bipolar system rotates around 2 "coalitions" that compete for an electoral bonus. The winning one gets over represented in parliament and the appointment to run the country for a legislature.
During the last non-legislative elections, the Right (Berlusconi's currently in-office "Casa delle Libertà") got a sound beating for a long list of reasons, but simply put: Berlusconi takes care of his judiciary & financial problems and gives a damn about anything else. The internal discipline is formidable, for, whenever there's a Bill or some other Act the Boss desires to pass, rank & file politicians and smaller parties get to execute orders like diligent servicemen.
Compensations vary but one party, the xenophobic Lega Nord, got most of the leftovers among the minor parties and was given way too much media coverage. Those that were left out became jealous of this and worried for their own base as it balked at the sheer ineptitude of the current administration.
The electoral beating gave them a chance to voice their dissent and it took a full year for them to get quiet, some Chair shuffling and a great deal of threats. In particular, one democristian party, led by a man called Follini, was becoming the proverbial thorn in the ass. Enter Buttiglione; he offered to split the party and minoritize Follini.
His service was immediately rewarded with a prestigious nomination to the EU Commission that could be smuggled as tangible recognition to the party's relevance in the coalition (hypocrites). Clearly, the EU parliament wasn't amused for this obvious exchange at it's own cost: Buttiglione took up Mario Monti's slot (yeah, the guy that stood up agains Microsoft...) and grilled the idiot at the first chance; Buttiglione's attitude was also surprising as he did everything possible to get kicked out. He obviously wanted to get kicked out and chose some petty argument to be dealt with championing his fundamentalist catholic agenda.
This long winded post hasn't even scratched the surface of the issue but hopefully it gived an idea of what happened.
I've got a Mac, never fiddled with an USB iPod. A friend bought an iPod, struggled with it on USB2, got sick of it, bought a FW pc-card (my suggestion), became happy. Although it doesn't provide power to the iPod (neither did USB) he's overwhelmed by FW's speed and reliability (on WinXP). USB is like a Soviet car, feels crap but everyone goes with it because it comes default (anybody wonder why all pc laptops don't provide powered FW? is it an intel diktat?)
But headlamp replacements are a commodity; I can go anywhere and buy them from anywhere I wish since the socket is a standard one. I'd be rather pissed if this was proprietary and the only licensed lamps were crap. Also, the non standard voltage would require the substitution of all other car components, this time fom the same company... and the gas too... Microsoft Gas Unleaded Edition... sometimes, though, the engine could stop out of the _blue_ ;-)
Right... true... I'm in electronic engineering myself. Now, there are cases where the developer wants total control of the platform and shutting out any chance of fiddling is a good thing. But as a general rule, it is not. The examples you are putting forward are so special that they really don't belong to the general purpouse platform called PC (and that's what the article was all about: unbundling WMP from the " computing consumer" market). If anything, I'd be wary of building such a system on a platform (Windows) where I'm not in control to so much an extent; I mean if an Auto Update doesn't lock up the terminal a worm will take it down :'-) On tha other hand, having more choice is good at _design_time_, when I can choose to buy into (or not) whatever component I desire... before locking everything up as tighly as I can! (I wouldn't even include a keyboard...)
Because the key is inside the disk image? Copy the dmg, copy the key. Stream the dmg, stream the key. You could do this with Disk utility, an XServe RAID, an XServe and a mini. It would be cheaper too; who said Apple hardware was expensive!
Exacly what I meant, just don't give 'em the Admin password but choice is a good thing at design time. Your deployments are so specific you can really take full control of the operating environment. In general though, unbundling is better for competition and consumer value for money. If some daft _consumer_ software requires IE screaming and kicking it's feet for no particular reason other that unwillingness to put up (say) compliant HTML, the _consumer_ should understand that it's not acceptable. Once this frame of mind gets mainstream we'll all live in a much healthier computing environment.
PS. [grtatuitous M$ slamming] So, you turn off Auto Update on your customers' machines? Gee... how can you sleep at night?! [/gratuitous M$ slamming] ;-)
why don't these bastards go back doing their damn business? In the past 2 weeks I've seen 2 incredibly overhyped massively crummy films; this christmas season there wasn't one film one, good enough to get a couple buddies on the phone and arrange for a trip to the cinema. I'm not a compulsive thief, this week I've bought 3 albums online and guess what? None were RIAA and sound great, strange isn't it? I've wasted part of my disposable on shit, it burns, and I'll revert to extreme prejudice mode for as much as I feel necessary. My wallet is always open for quality stuff... they should appreciate if I get a taste of their product for free... (for them, mind you... it's self targeting free advertisement)
Ok, but then yours is a particularly specific context. In a life support context, all dependancies are documented as mandated requirements that can be easily enforced at deployment time and runtime. Privilege restriction is your friend, not inextricably bundled software.
In your case I'd be very wary of, say, Automatic Software Updates on IE that might clobber your dedicated app. I'm pretty shure your deployment also includes limits to ASUs so unbundling IE doesn't really make that much of a difference as the admins would drop it in the installer.
Actually, I'd only take a (we're talking about IE right?) browser widget and embed it in my app putting it's dll in the installer. this way I could swap it out, or substitute just the js engine if needed.
The broader perspective is that noone should make assumptions on what's installed on a single machine unless it's part of an agreed deployment process. All the rest should be left to standardized interfaces where the local admin (home user, business client) can impose it's choices according to it's whim (which could also be specific interoperability requirements with other important apps).
Your attitude supports, excuse me, Microsoft's (or any vendor's by all means!) viral lock in strategy.
Again, I understand the Windows platform was pretty much designed towards forcing a choice and in the days alternatives weren't exactly competitive (NS4?) but today?
Wouldn't you be better off if your code wan't so totally sold to Microsoft libraries? Swapping out a couple thousand lines could get your platform onto cheap mobile phones in no time; or are you stuck on specific (workable? supported?) versions of Windows Mobile? One day it may be the only platform but today, you're stuck with MS's business plan... not yours.
Since you're a SW architect you should know that your apps should depend on whatever application is capable of rendering you standards compliant interface or data. If you need to display HTML your app should call the user's registered browser, not iexplore.exe and of course you shouldn't depend on some vendors' broken implementation. You don't want to get in your customer's way expecting them to install useless, broken and invasive programs just to get your thingie going don't you? Of course your app should interface to the underlying OS thru lightweight facades you can rapidly implement to port your app to whatever OS your customer wants to use. Would you expect Goodyear or Pirelli to dictate what transmission shaft your car should have? Someone might object that a business will only care for 90% of the total market, but hadn't they enslaved themselves to a closed platform this unhealthy monopoly wouldn't have grown anyway...
Now, this might sound infammatoy so let me say that I understand that clear standards, implementations and open platforms haven't quite existed until very recently. I understand that going with IE using broken HTML, inextricably binding your code to Microsoft libraries made perfect sense and still does to a certain extent. So take this unbundling as a good chance to go back to the blackboard and discover new ways to make your products competitive.
... thinking about the headline it musn't be bad at all. He's not advocating flipping opcodes in a cpu and going with the joyride guys. Currently chips work on full swing voltages, beefy noise margins and quite conservative settle timings. In signaling theory there's a lot more than that and the telecomm people developed elaborate modulation schemes that permit data encoding and very good error rejection. I'm talking out of my ass but there are codes that reliably pack a lot of data; why shouldn't computing equipment take advantage of that instead of GHz morse code? RAM and peripherial interconnect could use coherent modulation today rather than go optical (which is still On Off Keying after all) and pay for the mixed subtrate process costs. OOK has been a simple and reliable model for logical circuitry, but today we have enough processing & modeling horsepower to develop stuff that makes better use of the bandwidth.
Of course... wait 'till some $CORP sues you into the ground for that interoperating piece of software you small company wrote to satisfy a customer's spec on a non $CORP owned integrated platform. But the customer can't afford the licensing and wouldn't care less if the IT equipment you try to sell is just a [clickety] scripting customization of some cumbersome, forced upgrade, platform software. The customer probably wants something that just works, that they can forget running on some blade for as long as they please without having to upgrade because the $CORP decided to drop support for it, that they can tinker and refactor for as long as they please and not necessarily by you.
But they can't buy it, and you can't make and sell it because everything from help files to the idea of stored procedures is patented up and nobody wants to contend that in court against a Megabuck $CORP. So you're role is dumbed down to that of VAR, certified [clickety] wizard guy and the customers see their IT costs SOAR because every 3yrs they have to upgrade even if what they've already got is fine: 1. the "platform software", 2. "the Operating system to support 1, 3. new hardware to have 2 run at a decent speed, 4. the custom app because it's not working anymore.
That's not funny... innovation grinds to a halt and a medieval inter-feud toll system bleeds the industry dry while the Seigneurs and their lawyers (who BTW know jack shit about computers) have a collective roaring laugh.
EUR () my friend. Francs, Marks, Liras no longer exist...
I don't know, but this little feature you describe is also the vector for Outlook email viruses. In the dark ages, email clients were just text shufflers and attachment accessors. Then some Microsoft brainstormer decided this feature would be implemented on Outlook: execute programmatic objects embedded into an email... automatically. Excel, as many other windows apps, register themselved as service providers for custom widgets and code objects you can plop anywhere an app that accepts embedded objects.
Now, the drama comes when you get Outlook to automatically execute an embedded object that escapes whatever control might exist (whether at the Outlook application sandbox model) or at a OS user privilege separation and plant commands at Administrator level. The containment offered by Outlook and the OS itself is full of loopholes and wrong assumptions that open a path to other vulns or straight into the windows registry. In UNIX no sane person would have a mail app auto execute an attached shell script; what if it contained rm -rf / or some code to run a local exploit and then proceed as root? Microsoft did.
It's a neat idea, somewhat also Apple supports the notion of Services an app can provide to other and it gives a cool feeling of integration to the platform. The problem is the security model that limits this "integration". A virus that requires the user to manually save the attachment to disc, set exec bit and run won't go anywhere. A virus that only needs the user to click on the subject line to run itself will rape the net. On an Apple, these Services only work on clipboard items; that is some selected text or a selected file in the finder and will receive a call to launch on that file. That is secure; the Mail.app is not programmed to execute anything, it doesn't even have tricky security sandboxes because it doesn't expect to run anything. Need to cut and paste little spreadsheet? Do so, save and attach (drag 'n drop). Edit? Reopen attachment or drag to desktop, edit, save and redrag to Email. Is it difficult or awkward? Very little, if at all. Total cost of Outlook feature? Billions...think about it.
TiPB: Titanium PowerBook. I challenge anyone owning a sub GHz, 2yr old laptop to claim satisfactory performance. My old fart is still in its prime! Wanna try Apple? Go for it; I've never "reinstalled from scratch" in 2 years; only once I've reinstalled to upgrade from Jaguar to Panther but without reformatting. The installer just wiped the old kernel and system folders and moved my home to a /Previous Systems folder. Properly packaged applications (ie self contained .app bundles) were left in the /Applications folder ready to run. The whole process took about 30 min.
agreed, Eclispe is a humongous beast but does loads of neat stuff. It does eat gobs of ram but I'm also fiddling on 3.1m3 (ie not stable). Done properly Java is good (wanna see a really cool java app? lookup Acquisition, a P2P for Panther)