people buy Macs for the whole package experience, not to install operating systems
Speak for yourself, Kemosabe.
People buy Macs for all kinds of reasons, but given how anemic the hardware is for the price ($600 for a $600 laptop without the most costly component in a laptop... the sceren? That's what you get with a Mac mini) it's not reasonable to blithely assert that the hardware is a significant part of the draw.
Apple won't lose hardware sales from these people because anyone who was going to make a hackintosh from these boxes is capable of buying the same parts for less money piecemeal. Not because they wouldn't lose hardware sales to someone who had a legitimate Mac clone.
That doesn't mean they couldn't make money off legitimate clones. Selling an "unlocked" version of OS X retail for $400-$500 would cover their profits nicely. They screwed up on the original clones by selling the OS for too little to pay for the lost sales.
Yes, Apple's imperfect, it shares the problems of any big software company (and they ARE a software company, they wouldn't be selling all those Macs if they were running Vista), but it's bent over backwards for the open source community... even when its openness made it a target, even when it's been attacked by extreme members of the community.
The iPhone is a nice phone, but that's all it is. A nice phone. It's not the next big platform (look to Android or maybe OpenMoko for that). It's not an open source development platform, but neither are most cellphones.
Ten points of hippie-cred, dudes, but this smells more of Altamont than Woodstock to me.
I wasn't trying to prove the i-RAM existed. That was information (here's how the i-RAM works), not argument. Wikipedia isn't authoritative, but it can be informative. I've been involved in a number of these kinds of discussions on Wikipedia... there have been splits and merges like the one that happened here as often as three or four times a week on occasion.
However it's REALLY amusing that the answers.com page you linked to contradicts you. It contains a cached copy of an earlier version of the same Wikipedia page that you pointed me to, that lists both usages of "RAM DISK":
A RAM-Disk or Ramdisk can be either:
* Another name for volatile types of solid state drives, a specialized piece of data storage hardware.
* A software abstraction that treats a segment of random access memory (RAM) as secondary storage, a role typically filled by hard drives.
[...]
Hardware RAM disks
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Solid state drive. (Discuss)
Hardware RAM disks are also known as ramdrives, and are a type of solid state drive. Newer models carry lithium-ion batteries as backup in case of a power outage or transfer to another computer.
Note the text hilighted. The split in the page to its current form happened after Answers.com took its snapshot. You can see bits of the discussion in the SSD talk page.
if microsoft ever releases something with open source...
But, Doctor Evil, that already happened. Microsoft has been shipping Interix, which uses GCC and includes the source to their mods, for years. They've also released several bits of very Windows specific code (like installers) under an even more open license than the LGPL.
Mister Bigglesworth is unhappy when Doctor Evil is lazy.
Basically the guy sees the writing on the wall and includes the password equivalent of a dead-man's switch.
Not according to insiders. He had *always* had the routers configured to clear when someone tried to guess the password, long before any of this started. Why he did this, I don't know... it seems extreme to me but for some networks it's probably appropriate... it IS a standard configuration in the routers. It sounds like someone or something convinced him that this was "best practices" for security, so that's what he did.
You have to buy a computer to program. You have to download a compiler from somewhere. In every thing people do, tools are required - certificates and cracks are just another kind of tool. You only refuse to accept them because it upsets your worldview.
No, because I've 20 years experience supporting users: internal users, external (commercial) users, and users of open source software, on more variants of UNIX than most people have ever heard of... including OS X.
Apple Haters [...]
I've been accused of being an "Apple Hater" before, and an "Apple Fanboi", and a "Communist" for supporting open source software, and a "Proprietary asshole" for supporting commercial software. When you start calling people names because they disagree with you, you need to ask yourself if you're really paying attention to what you're saying. Because you're not listening to yourself.
Have the common courtesy to read your own messages before you post, thanks. I responded ironically to that, in an aside that you keep trying to make into some kind of grand argument that I'm not actually involved in. I'm not sure why, I assume you like arguing, or you're trying to muddy the waters for some reason.
I'm not sure what "software RAM disk" or "hardware RAM disk" are
A software RAM disk is a RAM-based disk implemented in software, such as a RAM disk driver that uses CPU RAM for storage.
A hardware RAM disk is a RAM-based disk implemented in hardware, such as the i-RAM.
Incidentally, WIkipedia is not an authoritative source for anything.:)
As I said before, the I-RAM is not a RAM Disk. Please do not continue to portray this as such.
The characteristics of interest here are the ones that cause the alleged problems with Windows Vista. A hardware RAM disk has all the same characteristics as a flash disk, EXCEPT the low write performance for small writes. This would make it an ideal platform to test whether that characteristic is the problem.
If a hardware RAM disk has the same problems as a Flash disk, then the problem is something else.
One of my problems with your argument is that it is based on pure conjecture.
Of course it is. There is a conjectured problem with Vista. I conjecture that if the problem is what people have conjectured it is, then this could be tested (that's what you're supposed to do with conjectures, test them) by using a hardware RAM disk, such as the i-RAM, to see if it has the same problems with Vista.
All my iTunes tracks are already on CD, and re-ripped. If I couldn't do that, or if there were limits on how I could burn a track, I would have maybe 1% of the iTMS tracks I do. For movies, I bought one season of one TV show. For eBooks, I have one DRMed eBook now... because it's a special edition with hypertext annotations by Vernor Vinge, and because the DRM isn't locked to a specific device. The rest were a set of free credits that came with a PDA with Microsoft Reader on it, and that program was so annoying to use I didn't bother.
DRM only works... in the sense of making a profit for the content owner... when it doesn't really matter.
The whole topic is about SSD flash disks. The question is... what characteristics of flash disks are problems for vista... the most likely one being uncombined small writes. The subthread was about using a RAM disk instead of a flash disk, since a RAM disk doesn't have the small write problem. You objected to the practicality of a ram disk. THIS sub-subthread is about the feasibility of using a hardware RAM disk since a software one is infeasible. Everything else is muddying the waters.
So if I don't have a TV tuner card can I uncheck that during the install and not have all that crap pulled in?
Yes.
So what's the real minimal footprint of Vista?
Do you actually know how much the minimum, typical or maximum vista install takes? No?
That's why I bloody asked, isn't it?
Then how can you compare it to a server you ran in '92?
Where do you keep pulling 1992 from? Your digestive tract?
You have never run this device on Vista, you don't know what kind of performance it would give you, you don't know if it would even work.
I'm pretty sure it would work, if you could cram Vista into it, since as far as the OS is concerned it's just an ordinary SATA hard drive. It requires no special drivers, uses no special APIs... all it takes from the PCI bus is power. The point is that the idea of running Vista from a RAM disk isn't automatically insane, which is what you were arguing about.
If you can't cram Vista into a 4 GB partition, then... OK, but that sure makes me want to upgrade to Vista. Not.
If you can, then this would be a useful way of testing the question of whether the problem with Vista on SSDs is the fact that Vista makes many small writes, which could cause problems for SSDs.
Friend, expecting people to buy a devkit or crack (and risk bricking) their phones to use open source software is not merely "misguided", it's "damnfoolishness".
If the guy who gets your software can't modify it, it's not "open source" in any meaningful sense of the word.
Let alone being an "open system".
Going back to my original message, "I'm not interested in jailbreaking an iPhone, or otherwise sneaking around behind Apple's back either. It's not a "smartphone" in the usual sense, it's just a really nice high end cellphone."
And for a lot of people, that's all they want. That's all they need. For the people who are buying iPhone, the vast majority of them, this whole issue of access to information about the development environment is irrelevant. It's not a "Pocket Mac" even as much as a Windows Mobile phone is a "Pocket PC". It's a nice cellphone from a company that does decent user interfaces, and trying to make it more than that is just a waste of time.
1. Thus it takes two flush cycles to fully commit an operation to the media, since a crash which occurs just after the first flush cycle returns cannot guarantee that the META buffers had all gotten to the media, and upon remounting the UNDO buffers will be run to undo those changes.
What does this mean for fsync() and databases?
2. As seems to be standard for new file systems, there seems to be no fsck.
"Hi there, I'm an Aptera, a wingless bird with hairy feathers!" "No wings, eh, that's pretty funny." "I don't know, I'm still laughing about the feathers."
"Hi there, I'm an Aptera, a wingless bird with hairy feathers!" "I'm a schlog of foam from the surf with no visible means of support." "Are you making fun of me?"
-- Apologies to Johnny Hart (and apologies to Slashdot for typos, this is from memory)
First of all, what you have there is not a RAM disk as we were talking about RAM disks.
We who? It's a disk that has no latency issues, no write combining issues, none of the asymmetrical access times that Vista is tuned to minimize and none of the asymmetrical write issues that the SSDs being discussed are allegedly having problems with. Which is the point.
If you have Vista [...]
Hang on a second, Kemosabe. My computer's three years old. Do you think it's got Vista on it? Where did I say it had Vista on it?
If you have Vista and 4gb of RAM you really don't need a page file.
Really? It will actually let you do that? It won't crash? Every version of NT I've used has required one. If it's not given one it'll make a small (20 MB, I think) pagefile anyway.
Vista install needs more disk space than your main development server because, it's not a server, and it's not 1992, it has a TV tuner in it along with big sample content, it has a bunch of pictures.
So if I don't have a TV tuner card can I uncheck that during the install and not have all that crap pulled in? If not, then why the hell not? If so, then that's not part of the minimal disk requirements for Vista.
I assume, and it's a big assumption, that if you have spent money to buy 4GB of RAM for your RAM drive, that you have already purchased at least that amount for your systems memory.
Yep, and I can use all of 3.6 GB of that... and I understand that's pretty good... many people can barely use 3GB of the potential 4GB of RAM in 32-bit Windows NT (don't give me a hard time about that, this is a three year old system). But even with that, I've never had the total VM (pagefile and physical memory) go over 2GB.
And of course a server should just have the server's OS and nothing else, no extra 'content' as vista has.
Um, no, that's not true. A server should have the server OS and the applications you require the server for... not just the OS. And a desktop should have the desktop OS and the applications you require the desktop for... not just the OS. And in neither case should you have to make provision for components you're not going to need. It doesn't matter whether it's Vista or Leopard. If you don't have a tuner card, you don't need the tuner software and sample movies. If you're not a musician, you don't need GarageBand. I can install OS X without GarageBand and its X gigabytes of instruments and sample tracks. Can I install Vista without its Y gigabytes of crap?
But more telling than anything is that 1992 occurred 16 years ago.
I don't know why you keep bringing 1992 up. I mean, yeh, my Amiga 3000 was cool, and it could boot to a GUI with networking and a web browser off a single 1.8 MB floppy disk, but even I don't expect that kind of tight OS any more.
He was obligated to hand over his passwords the minute a superior asked.
He was obligated to hand them over to his direct report, or someone in their chain of authority, not any manager at a higher pay scale.
The department was in the middle of a retrenchment and reorganization.
The city's story is that he changed the passwords when he discovered he was going to be fired and refused to give the new passwords up, and that they thought he had shared them with a confederate outside the city, and that he had created a boobytrap.
The insider's story is that he had not shared the passwords with anyone, and that the "boobytrap" was a normal router security setting, and it also seems that nobody had asked for them until AFTER he was already fired.
The error of judgement was in not providing for outside emergency access to the routers. That should be a career terminating move... I wouldn't want a network administrator who pulled something like that... but it's not criminal.
I'll bet good money that Childs knew exactly who those authorized superiors were - the people planning to FIRE HIM.
That's certainly possible, but it's not certain. Plans like that across chains of authority are hardly uncommon. It's not clear that anyone other than a police officer had asked him for the passwords.
unauthorized access of emails is computer trespass
We do not know that this happened, we only have allegations to that effect, and no evidence.
Misappropriation/misuse of computer resources is larceny.
Whether or not that occurred is precisely what the "alleged" part is about.
If he caused any court cases to be delayed or ended [...]
There isn't even an allegation that this happened, and there are reports that there have been absolutely NO network problems as a result of his actions. You made that one up.
Childs is very likely to go to jail, lose a ton of money, or both.
Quite possibly, and if he did the things the city alleged he did, he should. But there have been more than enough cases where someone has done nothing malicious and still been railroaded into jail.
I think the iPhone has great potential, but until the development kit is as open as Palm's (the Palm OS SDK was based on GCC and included an open source emulator) or even Microsoft's I'm not interested. I'm not interested in jailbreaking an iPhone, or otherwise sneaking around behind Apple's back either. It's not a "smartphone" in the usual sense, it's just a really nice high end cellphone.
I'm also not that much interested in Android, since its only official API is Java based. It seems like you can run Java apps in half the phones out there these days, so it's not really offering a lot more than Nokia or Samsung.
So this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. There's nothing that really matters for open systems developers, because these aren't particularly open systems even without this kind of restriction.
Second, this man is in no way justified in what he did. Threatening the infrastructure of a city (especially one as large as SF) is inexcusable.
You're missing an important word here. It's not "this man is in no way justified in what he did", it's "this man would be in no way justified in what he is alleged to have done". There are two completely different stories being promulgated here. In one story, Childs set up boobytraps and backdoors in the system and threatened the infrastructure of the city. In the other story, Childs made an error in judgement in the configuration of the routers, and refused to give the password to people he was not sure were authorized to have it.
Where the truth is between these extremes, I don't know, but at this point he is only alleged to have threatened the infrastructure of the city... and after what happened in Intel vs. Randal Schwartz I think it's important to keep that word in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
people buy Macs for the whole package experience, not to install operating systems
Speak for yourself, Kemosabe.
People buy Macs for all kinds of reasons, but given how anemic the hardware is for the price ($600 for a $600 laptop without the most costly component in a laptop... the sceren? That's what you get with a Mac mini) it's not reasonable to blithely assert that the hardware is a significant part of the draw.
Apple won't lose hardware sales from these people because anyone who was going to make a hackintosh from these boxes is capable of buying the same parts for less money piecemeal. Not because they wouldn't lose hardware sales to someone who had a legitimate Mac clone.
That doesn't mean they couldn't make money off legitimate clones. Selling an "unlocked" version of OS X retail for $400-$500 would cover their profits nicely. They screwed up on the original clones by selling the OS for too little to pay for the lost sales.
An important point: a hardware make is specifically making hardware to fit Apple. When has that ever been the case?
1995 - 1997
Yes, Apple's imperfect, it shares the problems of any big software company (and they ARE a software company, they wouldn't be selling all those Macs if they were running Vista), but it's bent over backwards for the open source community... even when its openness made it a target, even when it's been attacked by extreme members of the community.
The iPhone is a nice phone, but that's all it is. A nice phone. It's not the next big platform (look to Android or maybe OpenMoko for that). It's not an open source development platform, but neither are most cellphones.
Ten points of hippie-cred, dudes, but this smells more of Altamont than Woodstock to me.
*snort*
I wasn't trying to prove the i-RAM existed. That was information (here's how the i-RAM works), not argument. Wikipedia isn't authoritative, but it can be informative. I've been involved in a number of these kinds of discussions on Wikipedia... there have been splits and merges like the one that happened here as often as three or four times a week on occasion.
However it's REALLY amusing that the answers.com page you linked to contradicts you. It contains a cached copy of an earlier version of the same Wikipedia page that you pointed me to, that lists both usages of "RAM DISK":
Note the text hilighted. The split in the page to its current form happened after Answers.com took its snapshot. You can see bits of the discussion in the SSD talk page.
if microsoft ever releases something with open source...
But, Doctor Evil, that already happened. Microsoft has been shipping Interix, which uses GCC and includes the source to their mods, for years. They've also released several bits of very Windows specific code (like installers) under an even more open license than the LGPL.
Mister Bigglesworth is unhappy when Doctor Evil is lazy.
No, no, it's Coulton they're after. Jonthan Coulton. They need a new theme song, and thought "Still Alive" is a great idea. Wouldn't you?
They mine chocolate in Africa? I thought that kind of thing only happened in Warcraft.
Basically the guy sees the writing on the wall and includes the password equivalent of a dead-man's switch.
Not according to insiders. He had *always* had the routers configured to clear when someone tried to guess the password, long before any of this started. Why he did this, I don't know... it seems extreme to me but for some networks it's probably appropriate... it IS a standard configuration in the routers. It sounds like someone or something convinced him that this was "best practices" for security, so that's what he did.
You have to buy a computer to program. You have to download a compiler from somewhere. In every thing people do, tools are required - certificates and cracks are just another kind of tool. You only refuse to accept them because it upsets your worldview.
No, because I've 20 years experience supporting users: internal users, external (commercial) users, and users of open source software, on more variants of UNIX than most people have ever heard of... including OS X.
Apple Haters [...]
I've been accused of being an "Apple Hater" before, and an "Apple Fanboi", and a "Communist" for supporting open source software, and a "Proprietary asshole" for supporting commercial software. When you start calling people names because they disagree with you, you need to ask yourself if you're really paying attention to what you're saying. Because you're not listening to yourself.
I didn't bring up 1992, you did:
Have the common courtesy to read your own messages before you post, thanks. I responded ironically to that, in an aside that you keep trying to make into some kind of grand argument that I'm not actually involved in. I'm not sure why, I assume you like arguing, or you're trying to muddy the waters for some reason.
I'm not sure what "software RAM disk" or "hardware RAM disk" are
A software RAM disk is a RAM-based disk implemented in software, such as a RAM disk driver that uses CPU RAM for storage.
A hardware RAM disk is a RAM-based disk implemented in hardware, such as the i-RAM.
Incidentally, WIkipedia is not an authoritative source for anything. :)
As I said before, the I-RAM is not a RAM Disk. Please do not continue to portray this as such.
The characteristics of interest here are the ones that cause the alleged problems with Windows Vista. A hardware RAM disk has all the same characteristics as a flash disk, EXCEPT the low write performance for small writes. This would make it an ideal platform to test whether that characteristic is the problem.
If a hardware RAM disk has the same problems as a Flash disk, then the problem is something else.
One of my problems with your argument is that it is based on pure conjecture.
Of course it is. There is a conjectured problem with Vista. I conjecture that if the problem is what people have conjectured it is, then this could be tested (that's what you're supposed to do with conjectures, test them) by using a hardware RAM disk, such as the i-RAM, to see if it has the same problems with Vista.
All my iTunes tracks are already on CD, and re-ripped. If I couldn't do that, or if there were limits on how I could burn a track, I would have maybe 1% of the iTMS tracks I do. For movies, I bought one season of one TV show. For eBooks, I have one DRMed eBook now... because it's a special edition with hypertext annotations by Vernor Vinge, and because the DRM isn't locked to a specific device. The rest were a set of free credits that came with a PDA with Microsoft Reader on it, and that program was so annoying to use I didn't bother.
DRM only works... in the sense of making a profit for the content owner... when it doesn't really matter.
The whole topic is about SSD flash disks. The question is... what characteristics of flash disks are problems for vista... the most likely one being uncombined small writes. The subthread was about using a RAM disk instead of a flash disk, since a RAM disk doesn't have the small write problem. You objected to the practicality of a ram disk. THIS sub-subthread is about the feasibility of using a hardware RAM disk since a software one is infeasible. Everything else is muddying the waters.
So what's the real minimal footprint of Vista?
That's why I bloody asked, isn't it?
Where do you keep pulling 1992 from? Your digestive tract?
I'm pretty sure it would work, if you could cram Vista into it, since as far as the OS is concerned it's just an ordinary SATA hard drive. It requires no special drivers, uses no special APIs... all it takes from the PCI bus is power. The point is that the idea of running Vista from a RAM disk isn't automatically insane, which is what you were arguing about.
If you can't cram Vista into a 4 GB partition, then ... OK, but that sure makes me want to upgrade to Vista. Not.
If you can, then this would be a useful way of testing the question of whether the problem with Vista on SSDs is the fact that Vista makes many small writes, which could cause problems for SSDs.
Friend, expecting people to buy a devkit or crack (and risk bricking) their phones to use open source software is not merely "misguided", it's "damnfoolishness".
If the guy who gets your software can't modify it, it's not "open source" in any meaningful sense of the word.
Let alone being an "open system".
Going back to my original message, "I'm not interested in jailbreaking an iPhone, or otherwise sneaking around behind Apple's back either. It's not a "smartphone" in the usual sense, it's just a really nice high end cellphone."
And for a lot of people, that's all they want. That's all they need. For the people who are buying iPhone, the vast majority of them, this whole issue of access to information about the development environment is irrelevant. It's not a "Pocket Mac" even as much as a Windows Mobile phone is a "Pocket PC". It's a nice cellphone from a company that does decent user interfaces, and trying to make it more than that is just a waste of time.
I have been doing just that (installing software to the iPhone with the devkit) to test,
Not without paying Apple $99 for a key.
1. Thus it takes two flush cycles to fully commit an operation to the media, since a crash which occurs just after the first flush cycle returns cannot guarantee that the META buffers had all gotten to the media, and upon remounting the UNDO
buffers will be run to undo those changes.
What does this mean for fsync() and databases?
2. As seems to be standard for new file systems, there seems to be no fsck.
I mislike this.
You can't install iPhone software on your iPhone using the devkit. That's a crippling restriction.
As for Android, J2ME would be *more* open than a proprietary Java-based API.
What do you mean, it's gorgeous!
"Hi there, I'm an Aptera, a wingless bird with hairy feathers!"
"No wings, eh, that's pretty funny."
"I don't know, I'm still laughing about the feathers."
"Hi there, I'm an Aptera, a wingless bird with hairy feathers!"
"I'm a schlog of foam from the surf with no visible means of support."
"Are you making fun of me?"
-- Apologies to Johnny Hart (and apologies to Slashdot for typos, this is from memory)
Let's try that again with links:
Hiro Protagonist?
First of all, what you have there is not a RAM disk as we were talking about RAM disks.
We who? It's a disk that has no latency issues, no write combining issues, none of the asymmetrical access times that Vista is tuned to minimize and none of the asymmetrical write issues that the SSDs being discussed are allegedly having problems with. Which is the point.
If you have Vista [...]
Hang on a second, Kemosabe. My computer's three years old. Do you think it's got Vista on it? Where did I say it had Vista on it?
If you have Vista and 4gb of RAM you really don't need a page file.
Really? It will actually let you do that? It won't crash? Every version of NT I've used has required one. If it's not given one it'll make a small (20 MB, I think) pagefile anyway.
Vista install needs more disk space than your main development server because, it's not a server, and it's not 1992, it has a TV tuner in it along with big sample content, it has a bunch of pictures.
So if I don't have a TV tuner card can I uncheck that during the install and not have all that crap pulled in? If not, then why the hell not? If so, then that's not part of the minimal disk requirements for Vista.
I assume, and it's a big assumption, that if you have spent money to buy 4GB of RAM for your RAM drive, that you have already purchased at least that amount for your systems memory.
Yep, and I can use all of 3.6 GB of that... and I understand that's pretty good... many people can barely use 3GB of the potential 4GB of RAM in 32-bit Windows NT (don't give me a hard time about that, this is a three year old system). But even with that, I've never had the total VM (pagefile and physical memory) go over 2GB.
And of course a server should just have the server's OS and nothing else, no extra 'content' as vista has.
Um, no, that's not true. A server should have the server OS and the applications you require the server for... not just the OS. And a desktop should have the desktop OS and the applications you require the desktop for... not just the OS. And in neither case should you have to make provision for components you're not going to need. It doesn't matter whether it's Vista or Leopard. If you don't have a tuner card, you don't need the tuner software and sample movies. If you're not a musician, you don't need GarageBand. I can install OS X without GarageBand and its X gigabytes of instruments and sample tracks. Can I install Vista without its Y gigabytes of crap?
But more telling than anything is that 1992 occurred 16 years ago.
I don't know why you keep bringing 1992 up. I mean, yeh, my Amiga 3000 was cool, and it could boot to a GUI with networking and a web browser off a single 1.8 MB floppy disk, but even I don't expect that kind of tight OS any more.
He was obligated to hand over his passwords the minute a superior asked.
He was obligated to hand them over to his direct report, or someone in their chain of authority, not any manager at a higher pay scale.
The department was in the middle of a retrenchment and reorganization.
The city's story is that he changed the passwords when he discovered he was going to be fired and refused to give the new passwords up, and that they thought he had shared them with a confederate outside the city, and that he had created a boobytrap.
The insider's story is that he had not shared the passwords with anyone, and that the "boobytrap" was a normal router security setting, and it also seems that nobody had asked for them until AFTER he was already fired.
The error of judgement was in not providing for outside emergency access to the routers. That should be a career terminating move... I wouldn't want a network administrator who pulled something like that... but it's not criminal.
I'll bet good money that Childs knew exactly who those authorized superiors were - the people planning to FIRE HIM.
That's certainly possible, but it's not certain. Plans like that across chains of authority are hardly uncommon. It's not clear that anyone other than a police officer had asked him for the passwords.
unauthorized access of emails is computer trespass
We do not know that this happened, we only have allegations to that effect, and no evidence.
Misappropriation/misuse of computer resources is larceny.
Whether or not that occurred is precisely what the "alleged" part is about.
If he caused any court cases to be delayed or ended [...]
There isn't even an allegation that this happened, and there are reports that there have been absolutely NO network problems as a result of his actions. You made that one up.
Childs is very likely to go to jail, lose a ton of money, or both.
Quite possibly, and if he did the things the city alleged he did, he should. But there have been more than enough cases where someone has done nothing malicious and still been railroaded into jail.
Which is presumably why they're taking it to the next level.
I think the iPhone has great potential, but until the development kit is as open as Palm's (the Palm OS SDK was based on GCC and included an open source emulator) or even Microsoft's I'm not interested. I'm not interested in jailbreaking an iPhone, or otherwise sneaking around behind Apple's back either. It's not a "smartphone" in the usual sense, it's just a really nice high end cellphone.
I'm also not that much interested in Android, since its only official API is Java based. It seems like you can run Java apps in half the phones out there these days, so it's not really offering a lot more than Nokia or Samsung.
So this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. There's nothing that really matters for open systems developers, because these aren't particularly open systems even without this kind of restriction.
I'm amazed the author of the article didn't have this obvious insight. :)
Or maybe the whole article is making a rhetorical point?
Second, this man is in no way justified in what he did. Threatening the infrastructure of a city (especially one as large as SF) is inexcusable.
You're missing an important word here. It's not "this man is in no way justified in what he did", it's "this man would be in no way justified in what he is alleged to have done". There are two completely different stories being promulgated here. In one story, Childs set up boobytraps and backdoors in the system and threatened the infrastructure of the city. In the other story, Childs made an error in judgement in the configuration of the routers, and refused to give the password to people he was not sure were authorized to have it.
Where the truth is between these extremes, I don't know, but at this point he is only alleged to have threatened the infrastructure of the city... and after what happened in Intel vs. Randal Schwartz I think it's important to keep that word in mind.