I remember a few years back, MacUser ran an April fool about an application called MacSniff. They'd mocked up a screenshot of an application which was apparently measuring smells using some sort of custom-built adaptor, and could also `play back' smells that you'd `recorded'.
I'm still a little suspicious of this one, frankly:-)
Well I could have gone on. I know its shortcomings but it struck a very nice balance between being friendly towards developers and users alike. Indeed there's lots of stuff which smacks of terrible design, but for a few years it was a truly lovely OS to work with (e.g. the fine Zap programmers' editor-- incredibly fast (though impossible to maintain) because it was written entirely in assembler and the CorelDraw-mashing Artworks). It's certainly not faded into the realm of `nostalgia' for me, anyhow. Linux is just shit in different ways:-)
Random RISC OS trivia by an ex-user
on
The ROX Desktop
·
· Score: 5
Read this if you know nothing about this RISC OS thing like finding out about old operating systems...
RISC OS is about the only OS to `get' this drag-and-drop thing. It didn't have a clipboard from day one or those ghastly save/open boxes which infest every other OS. You have a Filer (the RISC OS filesystem explorer) and when you want to save a file, you open the application's save dialogue, which is a small window with a filename and a document icon. You then drag the icon onto the Filer to save it, or onto the Printer icon to print it. I'm sure this could be grafted onto GTK somehow, if only someone would write a filer as functional as the RISC OS one.
The other thing RISC OS got really really right was its application encapsulation. That is, you have a directory which contains the main program binary, an initialisation script, any other program-specific resources, plus an icon for the Filer to display. This directory could then be zipped up and copied elsewhere which is why pretty much no RISC OS application ever had, or needed, any mucky or unreliable install wizards. This also meant that for many people the Filer served as your application launcher too-- a concept completely alien to most desktops these days.
Hmm... it sortof went wrong in the shared library department, though. The only `standard' way of doing shared libraries in RISC OS was through kernel modules providing extra system calls. Yup, in the ARM's supervisor mode and everything. So they have to be pretty perfect otherwise bugs crash the machine.
But its fate is pretty much sealed, sadly: last year Acorn cancelled its new hardware project, laid off half its staff and eventually disappeared. By this time nearly all the talent who had once programmed for the machine had left for greener pastures (with some exceptions who continue to amaze me:-) ) and the OS has been taken over essentially by two enthusiastic hackers and lots of well-wishers trying to extract a salary out of it. Check this page out for the list of new and exciting features that you get for £120. There's also a somewhat suspect conflict of interest created by the fact that the people who have taken it over are those people who want to sell software for it.
Bah; I could go on but ultimately I left because the thing was too slow for me to play games on, the SDK increasingly dated and the application support had long since dried up. I hope somebody someday gives it the shot in the arm it needs, but for now ROX is quite a good simulation:-)
You might as well urge people to boycott Coke:-) I felt like responding since a few people have suggested a boycott would be a good way to `fight the cause'. I think the DVD people would want nothing more than for the very people most interested in having the DVD `secrets' to completely lay off any involvement in their industry. Then they can continue to impose their barmy controls over it.
They know and we know the market is not going to be threatened by having an open-source player; the technology is just too darned good for anybody (industry or users) to just junk, and it'll be a while before anybody has sufficient resources to keep an vast collection of pirate DVDs (and even so, how much did tapes hurt the music industry...?).
Their revenue is assured (from their vastly more numberous consumers) whether a few assorted geeks revert to VHS or not. But I'd say in general, geeks like technology their way. Here we've got an opportunity to have it our way, and we've got the means to get around whatever dim legal muzzles are imposed. CVS mirrors, encrypted PPP tunnels... whatever it takes. We've got the technology, we've got the brains. Let's not just roll over in some misguided `protest' when we can have it our way.
Two things: a) thanks for not expounding this post to several dull, smug paragraphs, then submitting it as a story to Slashdot (I think we understand each other;-) ) and b) Pixar-- kewl, I just watched A Bug's Life! What did you help 'em with?
So yes, Napster went through the motions of covering their behinds and many posters here are of the opinion that `they've done nothing wrong'. Because they've done nothing illegal other than to create some `enabling' technology in order to let people trade music files. So for the purposes of argument let's take it as given that the copying of music which one has not in some way paid for is immoral. And we can deduce that the laws of many countries takes this view too, since the activity is also illegal.
From their website: Just download Napster now to start building your MP3 collection today--faster and easier than you ever dreamed possible!
But who here believes that Napster really intended to make money from people trading legal MP3s through their server? I'm not sure exactly what their business model is here but c'mon, these guys are completely aware of the illegal status of 99% of the files available through their servers. Maybe they're intending to sell advertising through their client software, or were planning on charging for use of the network. But they're hiring people, so they've got to make some money out of this. It's a business, and its product consists almost entirely of ripping off record companies. They can claim that this wasn't their intention, but given the ease of the technology they've provided, and the scant provision for encouraging legal (or discouraging illegal) distribution of MP3s, this case is pretty weak.
A few people have reasoned, quite rightly, that suing a company for producing a product merely with the capacity for assisting in criminal activity is absurd. Of course I'd agree. But there's a very convicing argument saying that Napster wrote their software for the express purpose of making money out of music piracy, and that their legal get-out is on a point of technicality: that their servers hold pointers to other people's pirated music files rather than the files themselves, and that the RIAA ought to attempt the impossible, and go after the people actually holding the files. But at the end of the day, since this technical difference makes little difference morally (given our above assertion), it is only an irrelevant technicality. I guess it raises the question as to whether any technology which has a clearly illegal purpose should be legislated against. A pretty sticky question if you ask me; but I think you have to agree that Napster's sticking two fingers up to the RIAA in this cleverly-designed system hardly makes it any less moral, at least on the grounds that the law sees.
I'm just trying (slightly clumsily) to show a point of view here, and make people think things through a little more, rather than state what I necessarily think. Go on, pick me apart.
While there are still places you can read magazines where you can't get web access, I think the printed page has a long future ahead of it. I also disagree with the corollary that all printed magazines have a duty to pander to their advertisers. Any kind of publication that relies on revenue from advertisers will be subject to the same problem (and I'm not convinced it is a problem given the number of adverts you get in Computer Shopper). It's just that reading an article on the web, with the ease one can jump to a similar review on another site, makes bias readily apparent and easily spottable. It's not so easy on a train, but then I like to think I'm not so stupid as to believe everything I read:-)
Admittedly I don't know the economics of it, but I reckon that top journalists get paid top rates, and if the people churning out their articles on dead trees are paying more, well, that's where the good journalists are going to go.
So Windows NT is a faster file server and marginally faster web-server on single-processor machines. I don't think anyone expected the results to be reversed for the second test. But look at it this way: NT's strength is (currently) in raw performance and that'll take a while for the Free Software community change. But what'll never change about NT is the price while Linux servers continue to improve their performance. Linux is currently able to take a substantial slice out of NT's customer-base, and it's a slice that's getting bigger as Linux-based software develops. What are MS going to do to win back Linux converts, then?
I'm curious as to whether anyone reading (okay, biased readership, but stil...) has actually decided Linux is not the solution for their business, and decided that, all in all, paying for NT is a more cost-effective solution, rather than deciding to go from NT to Linux.
I think college students (me included, at one point) tend to forget that the super-fast network access is a priviledge of being at college and not a friggin' right! If most universities have a `privacy policy', I don't think they're going to have any qualms about looking at files stored on their own hard drives to check there's nothing illegal there. Even looking at `public' files on students own boxes wouldn't surprise me; it's their network after all.
I'm lucky and can have my Linux box on-line 24/7 from the comfort of my bedroom; nobody demanded my root password as a condition of providing this service so I think I'm fairly lucky. But I do know damned well the Computer Services people run probes on the contents of anonymous FTP servers and regularly look for other network `weaknesses' on students' boxes.
So I hardly think this is an invasion of anybody's privacy, only a few stupid students who didn't hide their illegal activities a bit better; playing the invasion-of-privacy card just doesn't work here. In fact they've only been cut off for the rest of the semester; pretty lenient all in all.
According to an article I read in New Scientist, isn't 1GHz around the frequency one uses in domestic microwaves? So as well as yer average Pentium running hot enough to fry eggs, will it be that the inside of a computer is going to resemble a combination oven now...?
Problem with your analogy is that there is a precedent for the term cracker that predates computer technology. Figuring out a cipher is called cracking, and so is breaking into a safe (as in ``safe cracker''). So you can't object to the term cracker being applied to someone who breaks computer security on the grounds that the term already refers to a kind of food
I wasn't objecting to the term as such, only pointing out that its purpose in this context was to divide one group of `hackers' from another (okay my analysis of the word was less than complete). Its problem in this context is that it's an ugly word, and too close to the more familiar `hacker' for most people to bother to listen to, or care for the intended distinction between the terms.
When will people learn? The term "Hacker" was originated in the 1980s to describe the people at the MIT AI lab. These people conformed to the profile of a True Hacker, not the crackers you now see on TV calling themselves hackers.
Ah yes; nothing like a good bit of linguistic autocracy. Language is a slippery beast; it doesn't have a spec. document and changes every time somebody uses it (actually, I think all European languages except English have some kind of official governing body to decide on `correctness', but for whom are they keeping their language `correct'?). Did you know that `gay' used to be a word without any connotations of homosexuality? No? Well, you do now. Why not start using it in its original sense more often? Because you don't care, because it's been absorbed into common usage now, because heck the word sounds better than homosexual and less offensive than so many other terms...
Or what about the word `album'; I mean, you only have to look here to see that rather than being anything to do with music it derives from the Latin word for white (at a guess because the tablets used for keeping Roman public records were white, which were engraved on, hence the word came to mean anything engraved upon, e.g. those funny vinyl discs on which the first `albums' were pressed).
So why not let the term `hacker' go rather than trying to `correct' the `ignorance' of the masses? You could say instead (with equal accuracy) that the term `cracker' was denoted nothing but a cheese-oriented biscuit until a computer programmer or two got tired of being associated with the wrong sort of people and agreed on a the clumsy term to denote them from The Other.
Try thinking about language as a tool of control and identification rather than communication next time you correct somebody else's use of it. You might end up noticing what you're really saying.
PS-- I sent a rant like this to Mr. Raymond after reading his definition of `hacker' in his jargon file. Got ignored, for one reason or another.
PPS-- Homework for next time: In light of the above, discuss the term `free software' (but not on Slashdot please:-) ).
Or we could mail Microsoft's press office and ask whether Bill would mind stripping naked and fighting a pack of rabid dogs with only a half-brick in a sock to defend himself. We might be more likely to get a response:-)
There was some Swedish show I read about (at least I think it was Swedish) called `Big Brother' where a group of random people had to survive in a house together on only £150 / day. The house was of course full of cameras and I think the idea was that everyone slowly went insane. Or something.
Last time I went to an Acorn show, there was one company showing off a prototype (called `Peanut') of their RISC OS laptop which ran on a StrongARM. I'm not sure what became of it since I've lost touch with Acorny stuff these days, but that fits the description.
Well, I think games companies will since the porting effort from their existing Windows titles will be minimal. Some points though:
* PC owners might get some games which don't rely on installing GBs of stuff to your drive;
* MS will have a hard time imposing development control over a Wintel-based games console in the same way that Sony and Nintendo do now (i.e. special licenses, compulsary %age of profits from all games etc.);
* Nintendo don't exactly have a sqeaky-clean track record towards consumers either...
No offence, but that's a really dim comment. I've got a 17" that can't display 1024x768 without getting a bit blurry at the edges, and I think many other people are stuck with even worse monitors. And most of us cannot afford to shell out for a posh Ilyama or something similar...
Anti-aliasing may not be the 'right' solution in the most anal sense but it makes life better for lots of people. e.g. back in 1991 Acorn introduced a fully scalable, anti-aliased font system on their machines and all I had was a 50Hz telly but it still looked pretty nice. Today Netscape does some 'orrible things to my fonts and I can't afford to buy a posher monitor, so I for one would really really like some more apps to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember a few years back, MacUser ran an April fool about an application called MacSniff. They'd mocked up a screenshot of an application which was apparently measuring smells using some sort of custom-built adaptor, and could also `play back' smells that you'd `recorded'.
:-)
I'm still a little suspicious of this one, frankly
Well I could have gone on. I know its shortcomings but it struck a very nice balance between being friendly towards developers and users alike. Indeed there's lots of stuff which smacks of terrible design, but for a few years it was a truly lovely OS to work with (e.g. the fine Zap programmers' editor-- incredibly fast (though impossible to maintain) because it was written entirely in assembler and the CorelDraw-mashing Artworks). It's certainly not faded into the realm of `nostalgia' for me, anyhow. Linux is just shit in different ways :-)
Read this if you know nothing about this RISC OS thing like finding out about old operating systems...
:-) ) and the OS has been taken over essentially by two enthusiastic hackers and lots of well-wishers trying to extract a salary out of it. Check this page out for the list of new and exciting features that you get for £120. There's also a somewhat suspect conflict of interest created by the fact that the people who have taken it over are those people who want to sell software for it.
:-)
RISC OS is about the only OS to `get' this drag-and-drop thing. It didn't have a clipboard from day one or those ghastly save/open boxes which infest every other OS. You have a Filer (the RISC OS filesystem explorer) and when you want to save a file, you open the application's save dialogue, which is a small window with a filename and a document icon. You then drag the icon onto the Filer to save it, or onto the Printer icon to print it. I'm sure this could be grafted onto GTK somehow, if only someone would write a filer as functional as the RISC OS one.
The other thing RISC OS got really really right was its application encapsulation. That is, you have a directory which contains the main program binary, an initialisation script, any other program-specific resources, plus an icon for the Filer to display. This directory could then be zipped up and copied elsewhere which is why pretty much no RISC OS application ever had, or needed, any mucky or unreliable install wizards. This also meant that for many people the Filer served as your application launcher too-- a concept completely alien to most desktops these days.
Hmm... it sortof went wrong in the shared library department, though. The only `standard' way of doing shared libraries in RISC OS was through kernel modules providing extra system calls. Yup, in the ARM's supervisor mode and everything. So they have to be pretty perfect otherwise bugs crash the machine.
But its fate is pretty much sealed, sadly: last year Acorn cancelled its new hardware project, laid off half its staff and eventually disappeared. By this time nearly all the talent who had once programmed for the machine had left for greener pastures (with some exceptions who continue to amaze me
Bah; I could go on but ultimately I left because the thing was too slow for me to play games on, the SDK increasingly dated and the application support had long since dried up. I hope somebody someday gives it the shot in the arm it needs, but for now ROX is quite a good simulation
You might as well urge people to boycott Coke :-) I felt like responding since a few people have suggested a boycott would be a good way to `fight the cause'. I think the DVD people would want nothing more than for the very people most interested in having the DVD `secrets' to completely lay off any involvement in their industry. Then they can continue to impose their barmy controls over it.
They know and we know the market is not going to be threatened by having an open-source player; the technology is just too darned good for anybody (industry or users) to just junk, and it'll be a while before anybody has sufficient resources to keep an vast collection of pirate DVDs (and even so, how much did tapes hurt the music industry...?).
Their revenue is assured (from their vastly more numberous consumers) whether a few assorted geeks revert to VHS or not. But I'd say in general, geeks like technology their way. Here we've got an opportunity to have it our way, and we've got the means to get around whatever dim legal muzzles are imposed. CVS mirrors, encrypted PPP tunnels... whatever it takes. We've got the technology, we've got the brains. Let's not just roll over in some misguided `protest' when we can have it our way.
Two things: a) thanks for not expounding this post to several dull, smug paragraphs, then submitting it as a story to Slashdot (I think we understand each other ;-) ) and b) Pixar-- kewl, I just watched A Bug's Life! What did you help 'em with?
So yes, Napster went through the motions of covering their behinds and many posters here are of the opinion that `they've done nothing wrong'. Because they've done nothing illegal other than to create some `enabling' technology in order to let people trade music files. So for the purposes of argument let's take it as given that the copying of music which one has not in some way paid for is immoral. And we can deduce that the laws of many countries takes this view too, since the activity is also illegal.
From their website: Just download Napster now to start building your MP3 collection today--faster and easier than you ever dreamed possible!
But who here believes that Napster really intended to make money from people trading legal MP3s through their server? I'm not sure exactly what their business model is here but c'mon, these guys are completely aware of the illegal status of 99% of the files available through their servers. Maybe they're intending to sell advertising through their client software, or were planning on charging for use of the network. But they're hiring people, so they've got to make some money out of this. It's a business, and its product consists almost entirely of ripping off record companies. They can claim that this wasn't their intention, but given the ease of the technology they've provided, and the scant provision for encouraging legal (or discouraging illegal) distribution of MP3s, this case is pretty weak.
A few people have reasoned, quite rightly, that suing a company for producing a product merely with the capacity for assisting in criminal activity is absurd. Of course I'd agree. But there's a very convicing argument saying that Napster wrote their software for the express purpose of making money out of music piracy, and that their legal get-out is on a point of technicality: that their servers hold pointers to other people's pirated music files rather than the files themselves, and that the RIAA ought to attempt the impossible, and go after the people actually holding the files. But at the end of the day, since this technical difference makes little difference morally (given our above assertion), it is only an irrelevant technicality. I guess it raises the question as to whether any technology which has a clearly illegal purpose should be legislated against. A pretty sticky question if you ask me; but I think you have to agree that Napster's sticking two fingers up to the RIAA in this cleverly-designed system hardly makes it any less moral, at least on the grounds that the law sees.
I'm just trying (slightly clumsily) to show a point of view here, and make people think things through a little more, rather than state what I necessarily think. Go on, pick me apart.
While there are still places you can read magazines where you can't get web access, I think the printed page has a long future ahead of it. I also disagree with the corollary that all printed magazines have a duty to pander to their advertisers. Any kind of publication that relies on revenue from advertisers will be subject to the same problem (and I'm not convinced it is a problem given the number of adverts you get in Computer Shopper). It's just that reading an article on the web, with the ease one can jump to a similar review on another site, makes bias readily apparent and easily spottable. It's not so easy on a train, but then I like to think I'm not so stupid as to believe everything I read :-)
Admittedly I don't know the economics of it, but I reckon that top journalists get paid top rates, and if the people churning out their articles on dead trees are paying more, well, that's where the good journalists are going to go.
So Windows NT is a faster file server and marginally faster web-server on single-processor machines. I don't think anyone expected the results to be reversed for the second test. But look at it this way: NT's strength is (currently) in raw performance and that'll take a while for the Free Software community change. But what'll never change about NT is the price while Linux servers continue to improve their performance. Linux is currently able to take a substantial slice out of NT's customer-base, and it's a slice that's getting bigger as Linux-based software develops. What are MS going to do to win back Linux converts, then?
I'm curious as to whether anyone reading (okay, biased readership, but stil...) has actually decided Linux is not the solution for their business, and decided that, all in all, paying for NT is a more cost-effective solution, rather than deciding to go from NT to Linux.
I think college students (me included, at one point) tend to forget that the super-fast network access is a priviledge of being at college and not a friggin' right! If most universities have a `privacy policy', I don't think they're going to have any qualms about looking at files stored on their own hard drives to check there's nothing illegal there. Even looking at `public' files on students own boxes wouldn't surprise me; it's their network after all.
I'm lucky and can have my Linux box on-line 24/7 from the comfort of my bedroom; nobody demanded my root password as a condition of providing this service so I think I'm fairly lucky. But I do know damned well the Computer Services people run probes on the contents of anonymous FTP servers and regularly look for other network `weaknesses' on students' boxes.
So I hardly think this is an invasion of anybody's privacy, only a few stupid students who didn't hide their illegal activities a bit better; playing the invasion-of-privacy card just doesn't work here. In fact they've only been cut off for the rest of the semester; pretty lenient all in all.
According to an article I read in New Scientist, isn't 1GHz around the frequency one uses in domestic microwaves? So as well as yer average Pentium running hot enough to fry eggs, will it be that the inside of a computer is going to resemble a combination oven now...?
Problem with your analogy is that there is a precedent for the term cracker that predates computer technology. Figuring out a cipher is called cracking, and so is breaking into a safe (as in ``safe cracker''). So you can't object to the term cracker being applied to someone who breaks computer security on the grounds that the term already refers to a kind of food
I wasn't objecting to the term as such, only pointing out that its purpose in this context was to divide one group of `hackers' from another (okay my analysis of the word was less than complete). Its problem in this context is that it's an ugly word, and too close to the more familiar `hacker' for most people to bother to listen to, or care for the intended distinction between the terms.
Ah yes; nothing like a good bit of linguistic autocracy. Language is a slippery beast; it doesn't have a spec. document and changes every time somebody uses it (actually, I think all European languages except English have some kind of official governing body to decide on `correctness', but for whom are they keeping their language `correct'?). Did you know that `gay' used to be a word without any connotations of homosexuality? No? Well, you do now. Why not start using it in its original sense more often? Because you don't care, because it's been absorbed into common usage now, because heck the word sounds better than homosexual and less offensive than so many other terms...
:-) ).
Or what about the word `album'; I mean, you only have to look here to see that rather than being anything to do with music it derives from the Latin word for white (at a guess because the tablets used for keeping Roman public records were white, which were engraved on, hence the word came to mean anything engraved upon, e.g. those funny vinyl discs on which the first `albums' were pressed).
So why not let the term `hacker' go rather than trying to `correct' the `ignorance' of the masses? You could say instead (with equal accuracy) that the term `cracker' was denoted nothing but a cheese-oriented biscuit until a computer programmer or two got tired of being associated with the wrong sort of people and agreed on a the clumsy term to denote them from The Other.
Try thinking about language as a tool of control and identification rather than communication next time you correct somebody else's use of it. You might end up noticing what you're really saying.
PS-- I sent a rant like this to Mr. Raymond after reading his definition of `hacker' in his jargon file. Got ignored, for one reason or another.
PPS-- Homework for next time: In light of the above, discuss the term `free software' (but not on Slashdot please
This project is one to improve the Linux security model if reading that stuff about Capabilities made you feel inadequate :-)
Reminds me of the genetic engineer in South Park and his `advanced thawing techniques' :-)
This page tells you what happens when you tell a girl her password's not secure. Apparently :-)
Or we could mail Microsoft's press office and ask whether Bill would mind stripping naked and fighting a pack of rabid dogs with only a half-brick in a sock to defend himself. We might be more likely to get a response :-)
There was some Swedish show I read about (at least I think it was Swedish) called `Big Brother' where a group of random people had to survive in a house together on only £150 / day. The house was of course full of cameras and I think the idea was that everyone slowly went insane. Or something.
You sound like my college tutor; I think you managed at least three of his buzzwords in that post :-)
It beats beige, though.
--
Matthew
Last time I went to an Acorn show, there was one company showing off a prototype (called `Peanut') of their RISC OS laptop which ran on a StrongARM. I'm not sure what became of it since I've lost touch with Acorny stuff these days, but that fits the description.
You never owned an Acorn, then? :)
They really have a problem with sequential model numbering, don't they? :-)
Well, I think games companies will since the porting effort from their existing Windows titles will be minimal. Some points though:
* PC owners might get some games which don't rely on installing GBs of stuff to your drive;
* MS will have a hard time imposing development control over a Wintel-based games console in the same way that Sony and Nintendo do now (i.e. special licenses, compulsary %age of profits from all games etc.);
* Nintendo don't exactly have a sqeaky-clean track record towards consumers either...
One distribution? Well, yes, the same way Debian is the only Debian distribution around? :-)
--
Matthew
Yup, Lineo does sound too much like a certain durable, wipe-clean floor covering.
--
Matthew
No offence, but that's a really dim comment. I've got a 17" that can't display 1024x768 without getting a bit blurry at the edges, and I think many other people are stuck with even worse monitors. And most of us cannot afford to shell out for a posh Ilyama or something similar...
Anti-aliasing may not be the 'right' solution in the most anal sense but it makes life better for lots of people. e.g. back in 1991 Acorn introduced a fully scalable, anti-aliased font system on their machines and all I had was a 50Hz telly but it still looked pretty nice. Today Netscape does some 'orrible things to my fonts and I can't afford to buy a posher monitor, so I for one would really really like some more apps to use it.
Hey ho.