In any realistic deployment of computer systems, the environment changes. There is practically nothing that can be done to prevent this.
If you do make a breaking change you can replicate the environment virtually.
Sure there are. But how many open source platforms are there that cannot be used with modern hardware, or cannot be used at all due to widespread security vulnerabilities or bugs that haven't been patched?
Maemo/Meego, webOS, etc... it's only the popular ones that do and it is prohibitively expensive to convert older ones. There are many older versions of the Linux kernel with security vulnerabilities such that you have to use newer versions just like there are with Windows.
Ones that spring to mind: Borland Pascal 7. The drivers for several pieces of hardware that I used to use. An administration program for a router that depends on an obsolete and insecure version of Java and will not run with more recent ones.
Of course but you make it sound as though open source somehow does all this porting for you magically or that it's just a recompile away, that is not reality. Open source is great and has a lot of advantages but it is not to be sold on the promise that it is a silver bullet and a cure-all.
It requires a lot more than that! You have access to the source code so can you (or anybody for that matter) assure me that Linux is secure? Or Harmony? Or Apache Web Server? Or anything at all?
Wasn't Internet Explorer so tied into early windows versions that it was considered part of the OS itself since mare mortals couldn't just uninstall it till a few years ago?
No, they shared components. The operating system provided the rendering engine and many first and third party applications took advantage of that (including Internet Explorer) so - while you could remove IE (you could even just delete the executable) or use any other browser - removing it in its entirety including the shared components would break a lot of other applications.
They haven't required it, but if you're going to be downloading and installing things from dubious sources and browsing the web then yes it is advisable no matter what platform you are on. Just like there is avast!, bitdefender, AVG, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, Norton, McAfee, etc... for Android, which is Linux.
No. It degrades over time for entirely different reasons. But it *does* degrade over time.
No, it doesn't degrade, it stays the same. If you change the environment or system it runs on that is a different story.
Were it open source, I doubt this would have happened.
There are plenty of open source products that are platform dependent, even the most popular ones like Android and Java. Open source has its advantages but it can't magically make software do anything and run anywhere, that requires a *lot* of effort and even the most popular and widely used ones struggle with it. Conceivably you could do it but in most cases it is prohibitively expensive.
Out of interest, what are some of these software packages that you used to use but now can not?
Maybe you should make sure you read and understand what you're linking to before you post.
"Software rot, also known as code rot, bit rot, software erosion, software decay or software entropy describes the perceived "rot" which is either a slow deterioration of software performance over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or otherwise called "legacy" and in need of upgrade. This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides."
As in it is nothing to do with the software itself but the system and environment in which it is run, changing the software won't change the system it runs on.
If you don't change your own spark plugs, would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?
Well software doesnt degrade over time due to use so if the spark plugs in my car were the same I would never need to replace them and yes having the hood welded shut (assuming all the components were like that too) would probably be just fine.
I do frown on people doing something once (I just had this brilliant idea - patent; I just thought of a tune - song; I wrote this neat software - copyright; etc.) and expecting to sit on their couch for the rest of their lives and have people sending them money.
The return on the investment of producing a song or software or whatever is amortized over a number of people because rarely can one person afford to pay for all of that upfront by themselves. Sometimes that investment doesn't pay off because the result is sub-par (in terms of popularity) and sometimes the return is greater than the investment because the result is very popular.
The problem with desktop Linux is that while it is a great operating system it isn't significantly better in any way than the incumbents so ultimately people don't use it because there is no benefit. It suffers the chicken and the egg problem, vendors don't support it, so people don't use it, so vendors don't support it, and so on...
The operating system exists to run programs, whether I use Photoshop on OS X or Windows makes no difference, it's the same but I can't run it on Linux. How and why would professional photographers use Linux? Or what if you're doing architectural or product design and visualization? Structural analysis, engineering and simulation? Various manufacturing process simulations (compression molding, injection molding, composite over-molding, 3d printing, milling, etc...)? Factory design? Mechanical simulation? Video editing? CAD/CAM/CAE? Even most office workers use Windows or Mac because they use MS Office.
Many Linux advocates focus on the operating system but forget that people don't care about the operating system, they need it to actually do things. Linux is great for embedded applications, servers, re-purposing old outdated desktop hardware or installing on the PC of less computer-literate people that only want to edit basic documents, send/read email and browse the web but click any popup ad (because the lack of popularity means it isn't a target for malware) but for professionals in almost any field it is unsuitable because the required tools to actually do work do not run on it.
Well firstly I was debunking the idea that with Apple you're locked to iCloud, which is false. Then I was asking what the alternative is and your response is that there isn't one and that some fantasy one with everything you want is likely not viable.
The BBC news article about the hack had a quote from one of the celebrities saying that the pictures had already been deleted before they were stolen.
Deleted from the phone, not from iCloud. The hacker(s) gained access to the users' iCloud account where the files are accessible, they were not deleted.
Neither of these are focused on end-to-end user security.
So? The original question posed was about being "locked" into Apple's offering, which is not the case. Can you provide an alternative service that is "focused on end-to-end user security"?
Name one system that does keychain backup/restore inside the standard apple interface.
Why would I want to do that? Saving my passwords (encrypted or not) to a cloud service sounds like a fantastically stupid idea. I'll save photos and videos there but passwords? No thank you, I have no need for that.
Not sure why, I don't need luck because it already works fine with services like DropBox and Skydrive or there's apps from western digital and synology. I could even use the APIs to write my own if I wanted to.
Where "yourself" is one of a set of firms that specialize in very high security hosting for high-risk clients. Using an iphone locked them in to Apple's lowest-common denominator of secure hosting, and while that's great for the average low-value target, it isn't sufficient for someone with a lot to lose.
That's rubbish, you are not "locked" in to Apple's hosting, stop spreading FUD. You can quite easily turn off iCloud and use whatever service you want or no cloud storage at all, it is already decentralized. You are just swapping one supposedly secure service for another.
There's a group of Hollywood celebrities that have just been made aware of the need for decentralized and more private internet services.
In that context what is the solution? Certainly not to host the services yourself. The security was beaten by a flaw in the server software that allowed a brute force attack to take place, so how does decentralization help you there?
Just imagine: Windows depending on the cloud to work, Linux too, Eclipse refusing to work unless you have a connection all the time with a cloud, Photoshop or GIMP refusing to save your images in any other place than a cloud, Word or LibreOffice refusing to save your files because you are offline. Everyone embarking on the cloud hype without worrying about what happens when you lost your connection.
Linux, Eclipse, GIMP and LibreOffice are all FOSS, even if that did happen - and for some reason (maybe you can come up with one because I can't) nobody considered the prospect of offline use - then you could just change them. So there you go, crisis averted, you don't have to fear anymore.
Oh come on, Microsoft couldn't even get rid of the start menu from Windows without a backlash so large were forced to put it back in in the next version and you're actually suggesting vendors would force every desktop and laptop to be always connected to the internet for them to work and that users would accept that?
It's the high performance stuff that I want local.
Like what for example?
I don't want to pay the exorbitant prices for hosting, storage, bandwidth, and renting of applications
From what I've seen the prices generally aren't "exorbitant" by any means.
If it becomes SOP, the ASPs and ISPs will jack up the rates knowing people will have no choice.
Yeah that argument has always been used as a scare tactic, over the years I've been doing much more stuff online (larger email attachments, remote desktop, remotely accessing my NAS, streaming videos) and these days I get orders of magnitude more data allowance a hell of a lot cheaper than I ever did before.
Also, the laws of physics will make this laggy as hell.
Make what laggy as hell? Remote desktop - which is what this is - works pretty well. And this is just a remote desktop system, remoting into another Windows system that you could just as easily run directly on your system, on your desktop at home that you remote into or on a VM.
Yup. It's proponents don't.
Like who? Certainly not the big players like Adobe, Apple, Google (even GApps runs offline), Microsoft, Autodesk, etc...
In this era of egregious NSA and government offenses towards our liberty, we really shouldn't have such enthusiasm for doing all our computing remotely on some fortune 500's remote machines.
It isn't about doing all your computing there. Most of your private stuff is pretty mundane and can be accomplished on even the lowest end hardware locally but if I want to run CAE simulations from my chromebook then this certainly sounds preferable to lugging around 5kg of expensive hardware that is virtually unused 95% of the time.
The problem is this absolutist view of cloud computing, you do realize that it isn't an "all or nothing" proposition don't you?
Now they want to make games essentially play themselves.
No, they don't. Read what this is about.
What happens when the player produces input the software does not expect?
If it matches none of the speculated actions then the speculative frames are discarded or it can use what they call a "misprediction compensation technique" to build the correct frame from the speculated frames. How about reading what this is about and then asking specific questions about it?
Few gamers want to play games any more, they just want instant gratification trophies. There's more focus in achievement trophies in modern games (especially AAA games) than there is on actual gameplay.
What is that based on? For years we had the promise that one day the level of immersion and the quality of the output would be such that it would be able to produce a sort of "interactive movie" experience, that is what you get from games like Call of Duty and while they are wildly popular they don't supplant more traditional games and those who enjoy one aren't excluded from enjoying the other.
You mean like my mousepad becoming non-functional when I bring my Windows 8.1 notebook up from sleep?
Sounds like an issue with the ACPI implementation in the driver, if that's the case the operating system can't really do much about it. Try installing the latest driver from the manufacturer. I know it's tempting to blame the operating system for every error but in most cases the problem isn't the operating system at all, for example the catastrophic Blue Screen of Death is almost always a driver/hardware problem.
Yeah.. great, but Word renders documents differently computer to computer.
Are you sure you know what you're talking about? I can see the potential for issues with rendering documents from different versions (though I can't imagine there would be much that is particularly show-stopping) but different rendering on different computers doesn't sound right.
Slashdot Mirror
In any realistic deployment of computer systems, the environment changes. There is practically nothing that can be done to prevent this.
If you do make a breaking change you can replicate the environment virtually.
Sure there are. But how many open source platforms are there that cannot be used with modern hardware, or cannot be used at all due to widespread security vulnerabilities or bugs that haven't been patched?
Maemo/Meego, webOS, etc ... it's only the popular ones that do and it is prohibitively expensive to convert older ones. There are many older versions of the Linux kernel with security vulnerabilities such that you have to use newer versions just like there are with Windows.
Ones that spring to mind: Borland Pascal 7. The drivers for several pieces of hardware that I used to use. An administration program for a router that depends on an obsolete and insecure version of Java and will not run with more recent ones.
Of course but you make it sound as though open source somehow does all this porting for you magically or that it's just a recompile away, that is not reality. Open source is great and has a lot of advantages but it is not to be sold on the promise that it is a silver bullet and a cure-all.
Assurance requires access to the source code.
It requires a lot more than that! You have access to the source code so can you (or anybody for that matter) assure me that Linux is secure? Or Harmony? Or Apache Web Server? Or anything at all?
Wasn't Internet Explorer so tied into early windows versions that it was considered part of the OS itself since mare mortals couldn't just uninstall it till a few years ago?
No, they shared components. The operating system provided the rendering engine and many first and third party applications took advantage of that (including Internet Explorer) so - while you could remove IE (you could even just delete the executable) or use any other browser - removing it in its entirety including the shared components would break a lot of other applications.
They haven't required it, but if you're going to be downloading and installing things from dubious sources and browsing the web then yes it is advisable no matter what platform you are on. Just like there is avast!, bitdefender, AVG, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, Norton, McAfee, etc... for Android, which is Linux.
No. It degrades over time for entirely different reasons. But it *does* degrade over time.
No, it doesn't degrade, it stays the same. If you change the environment or system it runs on that is a different story.
Were it open source, I doubt this would have happened.
There are plenty of open source products that are platform dependent, even the most popular ones like Android and Java. Open source has its advantages but it can't magically make software do anything and run anywhere, that requires a *lot* of effort and even the most popular and widely used ones struggle with it. Conceivably you could do it but in most cases it is prohibitively expensive.
Out of interest, what are some of these software packages that you used to use but now can not?
Maybe you should make sure you read and understand what you're linking to before you post.
"Software rot, also known as code rot, bit rot, software erosion, software decay or software entropy describes the perceived "rot" which is either a slow deterioration of software performance over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or otherwise called "legacy" and in need of upgrade. This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides."
As in it is nothing to do with the software itself but the system and environment in which it is run, changing the software won't change the system it runs on.
We're you planning to edit the source? I wasn't.
If you don't change your own spark plugs, would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?
Well software doesnt degrade over time due to use so if the spark plugs in my car were the same I would never need to replace them and yes having the hood welded shut (assuming all the components were like that too) would probably be just fine.
I do frown on people doing something once (I just had this brilliant idea - patent; I just thought of a tune - song; I wrote this neat software - copyright; etc.) and expecting to sit on their couch for the rest of their lives and have people sending them money.
The return on the investment of producing a song or software or whatever is amortized over a number of people because rarely can one person afford to pay for all of that upfront by themselves. Sometimes that investment doesn't pay off because the result is sub-par (in terms of popularity) and sometimes the return is greater than the investment because the result is very popular.
The problem with desktop Linux is that while it is a great operating system it isn't significantly better in any way than the incumbents so ultimately people don't use it because there is no benefit. It suffers the chicken and the egg problem, vendors don't support it, so people don't use it, so vendors don't support it, and so on...
The operating system exists to run programs, whether I use Photoshop on OS X or Windows makes no difference, it's the same but I can't run it on Linux. How and why would professional photographers use Linux? Or what if you're doing architectural or product design and visualization? Structural analysis, engineering and simulation? Various manufacturing process simulations (compression molding, injection molding, composite over-molding, 3d printing, milling, etc...)? Factory design? Mechanical simulation? Video editing? CAD/CAM/CAE? Even most office workers use Windows or Mac because they use MS Office.
Many Linux advocates focus on the operating system but forget that people don't care about the operating system, they need it to actually do things. Linux is great for embedded applications, servers, re-purposing old outdated desktop hardware or installing on the PC of less computer-literate people that only want to edit basic documents, send/read email and browse the web but click any popup ad (because the lack of popularity means it isn't a target for malware) but for professionals in almost any field it is unsuitable because the required tools to actually do work do not run on it.
Well firstly I was debunking the idea that with Apple you're locked to iCloud, which is false. Then I was asking what the alternative is and your response is that there isn't one and that some fantasy one with everything you want is likely not viable.
The BBC news article about the hack had a quote from one of the celebrities saying that the pictures had already been deleted before they were stolen.
Deleted from the phone, not from iCloud. The hacker(s) gained access to the users' iCloud account where the files are accessible, they were not deleted.
Neither of these are focused on end-to-end user security.
So? The original question posed was about being "locked" into Apple's offering, which is not the case. Can you provide an alternative service that is "focused on end-to-end user security"?
Name one system that does keychain backup/restore inside the standard apple interface.
Why would I want to do that? Saving my passwords (encrypted or not) to a cloud service sounds like a fantastically stupid idea. I'll save photos and videos there but passwords? No thank you, I have no need for that.
I'm afraid I must say "good luck with that".
Not sure why, I don't need luck because it already works fine with services like DropBox and Skydrive or there's apps from western digital and synology. I could even use the APIs to write my own if I wanted to.
Where "yourself" is one of a set of firms that specialize in very high security hosting for high-risk clients. Using an iphone locked them in to Apple's lowest-common denominator of secure hosting, and while that's great for the average low-value target, it isn't sufficient for someone with a lot to lose.
That's rubbish, you are not "locked" in to Apple's hosting, stop spreading FUD. You can quite easily turn off iCloud and use whatever service you want or no cloud storage at all, it is already decentralized. You are just swapping one supposedly secure service for another.
There's a group of Hollywood celebrities that have just been made aware of the need for decentralized and more private internet services.
In that context what is the solution? Certainly not to host the services yourself. The security was beaten by a flaw in the server software that allowed a brute force attack to take place, so how does decentralization help you there?
Wrong, you don't have to be always on to use the Adobe Cloud, you can use Photoshop, Illustrator, etc... offline just like you always could.
Just imagine: Windows depending on the cloud to work, Linux too, Eclipse refusing to work unless you have a connection all the time with a cloud, Photoshop or GIMP refusing to save your images in any other place than a cloud, Word or LibreOffice refusing to save your files because you are offline. Everyone embarking on the cloud hype without worrying about what happens when you lost your connection.
Linux, Eclipse, GIMP and LibreOffice are all FOSS, even if that did happen - and for some reason (maybe you can come up with one because I can't) nobody considered the prospect of offline use - then you could just change them. So there you go, crisis averted, you don't have to fear anymore.
Oh come on, Microsoft couldn't even get rid of the start menu from Windows without a backlash so large were forced to put it back in in the next version and you're actually suggesting vendors would force every desktop and laptop to be always connected to the internet for them to work and that users would accept that?
Stop spreading FUD, you're just fear-mongering.
It's the high performance stuff that I want local.
Like what for example?
I don't want to pay the exorbitant prices for hosting, storage, bandwidth, and renting of applications
From what I've seen the prices generally aren't "exorbitant" by any means.
If it becomes SOP, the ASPs and ISPs will jack up the rates knowing people will have no choice.
Yeah that argument has always been used as a scare tactic, over the years I've been doing much more stuff online (larger email attachments, remote desktop, remotely accessing my NAS, streaming videos) and these days I get orders of magnitude more data allowance a hell of a lot cheaper than I ever did before.
Also, the laws of physics will make this laggy as hell.
Make what laggy as hell? Remote desktop - which is what this is - works pretty well. And this is just a remote desktop system, remoting into another Windows system that you could just as easily run directly on your system, on your desktop at home that you remote into or on a VM.
Yup. It's proponents don't.
Like who? Certainly not the big players like Adobe, Apple, Google (even GApps runs offline), Microsoft, Autodesk, etc ...
But this is exactly the problem: So far no one is forced to use. But for how long?
What's your theory on why you would be forced to use them?
In this era of egregious NSA and government offenses towards our liberty, we really shouldn't have such enthusiasm for doing all our computing remotely on some fortune 500's remote machines.
It isn't about doing all your computing there. Most of your private stuff is pretty mundane and can be accomplished on even the lowest end hardware locally but if I want to run CAE simulations from my chromebook then this certainly sounds preferable to lugging around 5kg of expensive hardware that is virtually unused 95% of the time.
The problem is this absolutist view of cloud computing, you do realize that it isn't an "all or nothing" proposition don't you?
Now they want to make games essentially play themselves.
No, they don't. Read what this is about.
What happens when the player produces input the software does not expect?
If it matches none of the speculated actions then the speculative frames are discarded or it can use what they call a "misprediction compensation technique" to build the correct frame from the speculated frames. How about reading what this is about and then asking specific questions about it?
Few gamers want to play games any more, they just want instant gratification trophies. There's more focus in achievement trophies in modern games (especially AAA games) than there is on actual gameplay.
What is that based on? For years we had the promise that one day the level of immersion and the quality of the output would be such that it would be able to produce a sort of "interactive movie" experience, that is what you get from games like Call of Duty and while they are wildly popular they don't supplant more traditional games and those who enjoy one aren't excluded from enjoying the other.
You mean like my mousepad becoming non-functional when I bring my Windows 8.1 notebook up from sleep?
Sounds like an issue with the ACPI implementation in the driver, if that's the case the operating system can't really do much about it. Try installing the latest driver from the manufacturer. I know it's tempting to blame the operating system for every error but in most cases the problem isn't the operating system at all, for example the catastrophic Blue Screen of Death is almost always a driver/hardware problem.
Yeah.. great, but Word renders documents differently computer to computer.
Are you sure you know what you're talking about? I can see the potential for issues with rendering documents from different versions (though I can't imagine there would be much that is particularly show-stopping) but different rendering on different computers doesn't sound right.