Nokia's already got an open source initiative, and it's quite possible that Google's phone will be using code released into the open source ecosystem by Nokia. From Nokia's web page:
Nokia has contributed to the Linux operating system kernel enhancements related to general OMAP support, OMAP/DSP gateway, Bluetooth, journaling flash file systems, power management, 2D graphics support of fbdev-subsystem on OMAP (omapfb), and USB (Universal Serial Bus).
Affix - A Bluetooth Protocol Stack for Linux developed by Nokia Research Center in Helsinki and released under GPL.
Mobile Tools for the Java(TM) Platform (MTJ) - MTJ is an open source project in the eclipse foundation. The purpose is to enhance the eclipse platform with mobile specific features.
S60WebKit - S60WebKit is the engine behind the Nokia Web Browser. I'm not sure what browser Google is planning to use, but a webkit-based one would have a number of advantages, including greater compatibility with iPhone applets.
Unless 3rd parties get to develop in any available language and it's just that the GUI is in Java, what's to differentiate this from what Danger (Sidekick) does? What differentiates them from billions of other handsets that run Java apps at slow speeds?
A product using many kinds of reciprocally licensed software (including the GPL and LGPL) can't be locked down into a "Walled Garden" like that. Linux is GPLed, so Google will have to release the code to their phone's kernel. If Google wanted to make a closed product like the iPhone they would have had to use a BSD core rather than a Linux one.
I wonder if they actually got IRB approval for use of human subjects.
Not according to the article:
The UCL team did not seek to clear the SL-bot project with its review panel, because the user interaction was so simple. Only if users had been asked for personal information would ethical approval have been needed, says Friedman.
And I entirely agree with you... the idea that it's OK to treat people differently through the intermediary of a computer network is disturbing.
This is a really crude technique, given that they could automate either the OpenSL client or the open source version of the SL client rather than using a scripted attachment.
But more than that, if they were doing this in RL... walking up to people and deliberately annoying them as part of an experiment, without getting consent... would they have been allowed to do it? Should it be any different in VR?
It's a little harder with a single camera, positioned at free-form positions in space; to make it easy, you'd need to figure out a way for an AI to automatically figure out what points correlated between two pictures. Not a trivial task.
I was thinking that Steve Mann had solved that, but on looking up his paper it seems that he's only addressed a couple of special cases.
More specifically, the article was about how Google keeps upgrading their algorithms for Ad-Sense to look good for Wall Street, but how these new algorithms are causing problems, and Google isn't taking any responsibility for an algorithm misbehaving.
The article was about how changes in Google's algorithms change the value people get from Google's advertising-related products. The allegation was that these changes are (a) new, and (b) due to Google trying to look good for Wall Street, but I didn't see anything in the article that actually supports that allegation. Google's always been changing their algorithms, and sometimes they work better, and sometimes they work worse. They can't stop changing them, because once "search optimization" companies figure them out you get more of the kinds of pages Cringe is complaining about moving up in the results. They can't publish them, because that would just speed up this process.
And people have always complained about these changes.
Without some actual evidence that they've changed their policies recently, I don't see what they should be expected to take responsibility for.
I'm not going to defend Google using negotiations for espionage: if that kind of thing is going on it's pretty slimy. But I'm not sure how that's related to the greater part of his article.
Google changes their algorithms all the time because they (and other search-engine companies) are in a continual fight with "search optimization" companies, and have been since before Google existed. They can't stick with any specific algorithm longer than it takes for the people trying to fake them out to figure out what works. It's not just the wild west out there, it's a wild west where the bandits can change the coach routes and schedule by pasting a new one over the old broadsheet... even if the coach has already left.
The list isn't about "cruelty" or unethical experiments, it's a list of experiments the author thought were particularly "wacky". If anything, it's got more in common with Proxmire's "Golden Fleece Awards", except that the article displays an undercurrent of admiration for the experimenters:
"They filled me with disbelief, astonishment, disgust and -- best of all - laughter. With hindsight, perhaps there is a deeper message. These experiments are not the work of cranks. All were performed by honest, hardworking scientists who were not prepared to accept common-sense explanations of how the world works.
"Sometimes such single-mindedness leads to brilliant discoveries. At other times it can end up closer to madness. Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing in advance where the journey will lead."
Poor Zachariah Heiden made some comment that included the partial sentence "unconventional metal hydrides can be used for a chemical process called oxygen reduction, which is an essential part of the process of making water", and all the context got thrown away.
So kind of like when you steal a candy bar from a store and the only punishment is to pay back the 55 cents for the candy bar?
It's not up to the RIAA to set, or to even be directly involved in, setting penalties for breaking the law. They're entitled to actual damages and court costs, and that's it.
If the RIAA had pressed charges against her or convinced a prosecutor to press charges against her in a criminal court, and she was found guilty of breaking the law in a criminal court, then she would have been subject to punishment. The fact that they wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting that isn't relevant... that is the only avenue they should be able to use to see that someone is punished for breaking the law.
In addition:
The way I see it is she paid $2,000 for the activity
If she had stolen those songs from a store, then it's unlikely the penalty would have been as high as $2000. The penalty for petty theft for a first offense is usually in the range of hundreds of dollars, not thousands.
It's hard to keep all these people and cases straight, but isn't this the woman who was very clearly absolutely guilty? [...] if I recall the case, she was the one who we all agreed was clearly completely guilty.
I don't recall agreeing to that. Who's this "we all" who agreed that?
So in what way is she the victim, again?
She's just as much a victim as the old lady who lost her house because she didn't pay some minor neighborhood association fees, or anyone else who's been hit by disproportionate judgments or sentences as a result of any civil or criminal court case.
Justice isn't something that only saints are entitled to.
Can Google make it so I can press my touch screen two or three times while tethered and be sharing a HSDPA link to my laptop via bluetooth or WiFi?
That depends on the contract, I'm sure. For example, if I had a Windows Mobile phone on my current contract I'd be in violation of my contract if I did that.
There's some pretty good software in Windows handheld package, though every new version I've seen has had more restrictions put on it... though now Palms self-destructed maybe they've quit trying to make their software as crippled as Palm's.
Speaking of which:
Can they even promise I'll be able to run two apps at once?
I think the only current handheld platform for which that would be a meaningful question would be PalmOS. It's certainly possible that they'll pick something really retarded for the underlying technology, but there's so many good cheap and free operating systems to start with that it's awful unlikely.
I used to have the cubicle next to Speakerphone Man. This guy not only used his speakerphone all the time, he took his voice mail on it, and *answered* his voice mail on it. If I didn't have good headphones and an MP3 player on my laptop, I wouldn't have survived. In fact when I had to reinstall my laptop one day I almost didn't survive... YOU try remembering your settings when Speakerphone Man is bawling in your ear. I'm still scarred from the experience.
The benefit to the end user of using a Red Hat clone rather than Red Hat is that it's a well supported ecosystem within the larger Linux ecosystem. The benefit to Red Hat of an end user using a Red Hat clone rather than another Linux distro is that it increases the size of the Red Hat ecosystem.
If someone buys Red Hat's supported linux product, they're buying it for the support. That's the product Red Hat is really selling. If someone uses CentOS or Fedora or White Box they're more likely to buy support from Red Hat if they need a supported Linux. If someone uses C/F/WB they're potential customers for other companies that serve the Red Hat ecosystem, which increases the number of companies it can support and makes Red Hat's supported Linux more attractive. And Red Hat don't even have to pay the bandwidth charges for all the extra downloads if someone chooses CentOS or White Box instead of Fedora.
I don't know who shot first, but Adobe and Apple have had a pretty dysfunctional relationship for years. I'm not sure a closer partnership would be a great idea.
First of all you are absolutely incorrect by saying there are no Mac OS X viruses out there.
There are no viruses for OS X propogating in the wild.
Secondly there are a lot of tools that get planted on ALL systems that Anti-Virus can detect.
You don't need anti-virus software to detect rootkit tools. If you are concerned about them, it is far safer to install a rootkit detector, which doesn't patch the system to override system and library calls (and we just had a vivid blue demonstration of how good an idea that is) and run continuously in the background chewing up CPU time.
Mac OS X is susceptible to attack and ignoring that isn't going to help your security posture.
You don't make a system secure by "testing in" security after the fact. You do it with secure design. The security hole involved here is an obvious bad design that I've been blogging about since June 2004. Luckily, unlike the same hole that exists in Windows, you can turn it off in OS X and it's now off by default.
Multiple layers of protection, yes, but make sure they're appropriate ones. It's as bad an idea to install antivirus to look for rootkits as to take antibiotics for the flu.
The guys at Apple are mostly to blame for this. Instead of Apple telling it's minions that yes in fact there is a threat to users of the Mac OS X system (as in every operating system) so you should add layers of security to protect yourself. I have to admit the Mac OS X system seems to be one of the more secure platforms and that is great. But Apple is setting it's users up for failure.
There is a threat, and it comes from Apple, but it's got nothing to do with adding layers of security or not adding layers of security. It has to do with Apple borrowing a bad security model from Windows... the idea that warning dialogs are an alternative to inherently secure design. I've been predicting that the vulnerability that this program used to launch the installer would be used in an attack on OS X since 2004. Instead of fixing the vulnerability (even in part, by eliminating 'Open "Safe" files after downloading') Apple has decided to add warning dialogs when the computer wants to do something that might have been requested as a result of this vulnerability.
What differentiates this social engineering attack from others (like the AIM worm) is that it's initiated without any explicit user action. The user is faced with a decision, and has been trained to make the wrong decision in this situation. This is the Windows model. The Mac model, traditionally, has been to do what the user requests when the user requests it, and if it seems like a dialog might be needed, look for a way to avoid it... for example, Macs don't ask before moving files to the trash, or before emptying the trash, because these operations are separate and both have to be performed before there is data loss. In this situation, the solution is to download the file to a standard location, but let the user request that it be opened as a separate operation.
In the browser I normally use on OSX, Camino, this is how it normally works... and the option to behave like Safari has a warning that this is dangerous.
Luckily, Apple seems to have decided to back away from the dangerous operation, making it off by default. The preference is apparently not universal... I've had Dashboard widgets installed even when it was off... and, unfortunately, all the stupid security dialogs they added while they were trying to avoid making that decision are still there. But it's a start.
Antivirus software is not useful in this situation. Antivirus software is not a useful tool at all until after there is a population of viruses for it to test for, and it's a bad idea to even consider deploying it before then because false positives and bugs in the antivirus are more likely to cause problems than accidentally getting a virus. I would recommend against using antivirus software on the Mac at the current time.
I am SOOOO sick of folks being so sure that Apple should bless MacOS X on generic PCs. [...] [It] might NOT be in their best interest?
They certainly have evidence that attempting to become a software company instead of a hardware company is a rocky road. Both Apple and NeXT tried that in the '90s, and it didn't work then... NeXT didn't have the user base to launch it as a software platform, and Apple was stuck with a product that required their licensees to build completely custom hardware that wouldn't run any other software, so they couldn't possibly charge enough for an OEM license to make up for the lost hardware sales.
I don't think either applies in this case, and I've seen figures that indicate that they'd be able to break even pretty quickly, and would probably do better over the long term. But I don't expect Apple to really believe that they can make the third time a charm, not without more incentive than that.
If you don't want to call "virtually everywhere in the country", why should you pay that kind of rate for local calls?
I don't mind signing a contract, I object to being put on the hook for a $200 cellphone I don't need or want when I do. Make the "fucking contract" reflect reality... if I already have a phone, or want a cheap bar with a monochrome display that's JUST a "fucking phone" why should I be on the hook for $200 for a contract that costs YOU about 50c of plastic and maybe a kilobyte of storage somewhere to set up.
When I got a landline phone 20 years ago I got hit with a $120 install charge for an install that involved me walking down to the phone store and picking up a phone, plugging it in, and someone storing a record in a database somewhere. That was annoying, but if I'd had to have them run half a mile of cable to my house it would have still been the same $120. It took the risk out of getting phone service. You had a known charge. That charge has gone down considerably over the years, but it STILL covers what it did 20 years ago... everything up to the demark.
Cellphone companies, who have no requirement to actually provide service (I had a cellphone quit working at all from my own house, presumably because some building in the area changed the reception... guess how much sympathy I got about that) charge $200 for the same 'changing a database record'. And then the phone I'm on the hook for $200 for (and which which lists for $150) has been crippled by the cellphone company: it's got support for syncing my address book over USB, but that's been disabled.
Hey, if it's *my* phone, whare the hell do YOU get off telling me what I'm allowed to run on it? If it's *not* my phone, where the hell do you get off charging me for it? Make up your mind.
The difference, at least in my mind, between an OS that is Unix or Unix-like, and one that is merely Unix compatible is that Unix-like OS's allow *all* code to run on any other Unix-like OS (with the usual Unix portability caveats)
Funny, that's my definition too.
I guess the difference is that I've actually used and ported code to more than a couple of genuine AT&T-source-based UNIX systems over the past 25-30 years, and so I've got an appreciation of just how extreme "the usual UNIX portability caveats" really can get. Any code that will run on any system with a 6th Edition or later code base (I used some 5th Edition systems, but never wrote any code on them) will be trivial to port to any of the systems I've listed, but without Interix an awful lot of it won't run on Windows NT.
while an OS that is merely unix compatible means that Unix applications can run on it, but it's native applications cannot run on other Unix systems.
I think you would have a hard time porting *all* native applications from FreeBSD 6.2 to Microsoft Xenix-286, since a lot of them are there to deal with components that MS-Xenix doesn't have, like Berkeley sockets, jails, and kernel events. On the other hand, FreeBSD doesn't have OpenNET, redirections, and hard directory links.
So you need to limit yourself, I suppose, to a *subset* of native applications. But the UNIX shell, vi, and so on are native applications on BeOS, and QNX has a similar repertoire, but I really doubt that if you were to dig up the source to the remaining native Windows programs that cane in via the Lachman TCP port... like say telnet or ftp... they'd compile on any version of UNIX without more than "the usual UNIX portability caveats).
OS X is, in fact, Unix in the base OS... the other layers they put on top are NOT unix layers
So? Neither are the comparable layers on Solaris or Linux or System V. In fact, the closest thing to a UNIX GUI that ever existed is no longer in use anywhere... though the Plan 9 window system is definitely a descendent of it.
The third drive is largely useless considering that all most people want to do in that market segment is have a pair of mirrored drives.
Aha, now I get to abandon the devil's advocate side! Thanks for the opening, I really appreciate it.
This is how they got to tell me that I couldn't beat my Macbook Pro with a "comparable" thinkpad, by taking three or four features of the Macbook Pro that I don't actually care about (or that I would prefer not to have) and "discovering" that only the top of the line Thinkpad that costs almost as much as a Macbook Pro also has those features. If I come back and point out that it also has a mini-PCI internal slot so I can replace the Wifi with a second gigabit ethernet, and a Smartbay so that I can install a second hard drive, a floppy drive, or an additional battery (instead of the DVD-RW) I'm not allowed to count that as valuable.
If that kind of argument is "fair play" on the laptop side, then it's "fair play" on the server side. I don't get to say "I'd rather have a fatter laptop with a better keyboard" then you gotta accept the jet-engine nozzles and the extra drive bay as "requirements".
The fact is, Macs cost more for *genuinely* comparable generic hardware throughout the product range. There should be no mystery about that, or about why it is, or why people still buy them. Their servers are not particularly out of line with the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
On their project page the following projects may also be relevant:
Unless 3rd parties get to develop in any available language and it's just that the GUI is in Java, what's to differentiate this from what Danger (Sidekick) does? What differentiates them from billions of other handsets that run Java apps at slow speeds?
A product using many kinds of reciprocally licensed software (including the GPL and LGPL) can't be locked down into a "Walled Garden" like that. Linux is GPLed, so Google will have to release the code to their phone's kernel. If Google wanted to make a closed product like the iPhone they would have had to use a BSD core rather than a Linux one.
Not according to the article:
And I entirely agree with you... the idea that it's OK to treat people differently through the intermediary of a computer network is disturbing.
This is a really crude technique, given that they could automate either the OpenSL client or the open source version of the SL client rather than using a scripted attachment.
But more than that, if they were doing this in RL... walking up to people and deliberately annoying them as part of an experiment, without getting consent... would they have been allowed to do it? Should it be any different in VR?
Why would I want to double the size of my battery to achieve the same power output as a Li-ion?
To get a device that won't wear out and can be recharged in minutes (or even seconds, if you can pump enough power in) instead of hours?
Instead of swapping out your battery, plug it in for a few minutes.
It's a little harder with a single camera, positioned at free-form positions in space; to make it easy, you'd need to figure out a way for an AI to automatically figure out what points correlated between two pictures. Not a trivial task.
I was thinking that Steve Mann had solved that, but on looking up his paper it seems that he's only addressed a couple of special cases.
More specifically, the article was about how Google keeps upgrading their algorithms for Ad-Sense to look good for Wall Street, but how these new algorithms are causing problems, and Google isn't taking any responsibility for an algorithm misbehaving.
The article was about how changes in Google's algorithms change the value people get from Google's advertising-related products. The allegation was that these changes are (a) new, and (b) due to Google trying to look good for Wall Street, but I didn't see anything in the article that actually supports that allegation. Google's always been changing their algorithms, and sometimes they work better, and sometimes they work worse. They can't stop changing them, because once "search optimization" companies figure them out you get more of the kinds of pages Cringe is complaining about moving up in the results. They can't publish them, because that would just speed up this process.
And people have always complained about these changes.
Without some actual evidence that they've changed their policies recently, I don't see what they should be expected to take responsibility for.
I'm not going to defend Google using negotiations for espionage: if that kind of thing is going on it's pretty slimy. But I'm not sure how that's related to the greater part of his article.
Google changes their algorithms all the time because they (and other search-engine companies) are in a continual fight with "search optimization" companies, and have been since before Google existed. They can't stick with any specific algorithm longer than it takes for the people trying to fake them out to figure out what works. It's not just the wild west out there, it's a wild west where the bandits can change the coach routes and schedule by pasting a new one over the old broadsheet... even if the coach has already left.
How does this compare to just burning alcohol inside internal combustion engine?
Well, for one thing, you're not going to want an internal combustion engine inside your laptop.
This is about "generating power in a fuel cell".
Poor Zachariah Heiden made some comment that included the partial sentence "unconventional metal hydrides can be used for a chemical process called oxygen reduction, which is an essential part of the process of making water", and all the context got thrown away.
The actual paper seems to be "Homogeneous Catalytic Reduction of Dioxygen Using Transfer
Hydrogenation Catalysts".
So kind of like when you steal a candy bar from a store and the only punishment is to pay back the 55 cents for the candy bar?
It's not up to the RIAA to set, or to even be directly involved in, setting penalties for breaking the law. They're entitled to actual damages and court costs, and that's it.
If the RIAA had pressed charges against her or convinced a prosecutor to press charges against her in a criminal court, and she was found guilty of breaking the law in a criminal court, then she would have been subject to punishment. The fact that they wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting that isn't relevant... that is the only avenue they should be able to use to see that someone is punished for breaking the law.
In addition:
The way I see it is she paid $2,000 for the activity
If she had stolen those songs from a store, then it's unlikely the penalty would have been as high as $2000. The penalty for petty theft for a first offense is usually in the range of hundreds of dollars, not thousands.
It's hard to keep all these people and cases straight, but isn't this the woman who was very clearly absolutely guilty? [...] if I recall the case, she was the one who we all agreed was clearly completely guilty.
I don't recall agreeing to that. Who's this "we all" who agreed that?
So in what way is she the victim, again?
She's just as much a victim as the old lady who lost her house because she didn't pay some minor neighborhood association fees, or anyone else who's been hit by disproportionate judgments or sentences as a result of any civil or criminal court case.
Justice isn't something that only saints are entitled to.
Can Google make it so I can press my touch screen two or three times while tethered and be sharing a HSDPA link to my laptop via bluetooth or WiFi?
That depends on the contract, I'm sure. For example, if I had a Windows Mobile phone on my current contract I'd be in violation of my contract if I did that.
There's some pretty good software in Windows handheld package, though every new version I've seen has had more restrictions put on it... though now Palms self-destructed maybe they've quit trying to make their software as crippled as Palm's.
Speaking of which:
Can they even promise I'll be able to run two apps at once?
I think the only current handheld platform for which that would be a meaningful question would be PalmOS. It's certainly possible that they'll pick something really retarded for the underlying technology, but there's so many good cheap and free operating systems to start with that it's awful unlikely.
I used to have the cubicle next to Speakerphone Man. This guy not only used his speakerphone all the time, he took his voice mail on it, and *answered* his voice mail on it. If I didn't have good headphones and an MP3 player on my laptop, I wouldn't have survived. In fact when I had to reinstall my laptop one day I almost didn't survive... YOU try remembering your settings when Speakerphone Man is bawling in your ear. I'm still scarred from the experience.
The benefit to the end user of using a Red Hat clone rather than Red Hat is that it's a well supported ecosystem within the larger Linux ecosystem. The benefit to Red Hat of an end user using a Red Hat clone rather than another Linux distro is that it increases the size of the Red Hat ecosystem.
If someone buys Red Hat's supported linux product, they're buying it for the support. That's the product Red Hat is really selling. If someone uses CentOS or Fedora or White Box they're more likely to buy support from Red Hat if they need a supported Linux. If someone uses C/F/WB they're potential customers for other companies that serve the Red Hat ecosystem, which increases the number of companies it can support and makes Red Hat's supported Linux more attractive. And Red Hat don't even have to pay the bandwidth charges for all the extra downloads if someone chooses CentOS or White Box instead of Fedora.
It's coopetition. One hand washes the other.
Glad you corrected the Linux client in the summary, but you need to do the same for OS X.
You're still implying that a Ciderized version of a Win32 application is "native" on OS X. It isn't, it's just another Wine-based port.
I don't know who shot first, but Adobe and Apple have had a pretty dysfunctional relationship for years. I'm not sure a closer partnership would be a great idea.
First of all you are absolutely incorrect by saying there are no Mac OS X viruses out there.
There are no viruses for OS X propogating in the wild.
Secondly there are a lot of tools that get planted on ALL systems that Anti-Virus can detect.
You don't need anti-virus software to detect rootkit tools. If you are concerned about them, it is far safer to install a rootkit detector, which doesn't patch the system to override system and library calls (and we just had a vivid blue demonstration of how good an idea that is) and run continuously in the background chewing up CPU time.
Mac OS X is susceptible to attack and ignoring that isn't going to help your security posture.
You don't make a system secure by "testing in" security after the fact. You do it with secure design. The security hole involved here is an obvious bad design that I've been blogging about since June 2004. Luckily, unlike the same hole that exists in Windows, you can turn it off in OS X and it's now off by default.
Multiple layers of protection, yes, but make sure they're appropriate ones. It's as bad an idea to install antivirus to look for rootkits as to take antibiotics for the flu.
The guys at Apple are mostly to blame for this. Instead of Apple telling it's minions that yes in fact there is a threat to users of the Mac OS X system (as in every operating system) so you should add layers of security to protect yourself. I have to admit the Mac OS X system seems to be one of the more secure platforms and that is great. But Apple is setting it's users up for failure.
There is a threat, and it comes from Apple, but it's got nothing to do with adding layers of security or not adding layers of security. It has to do with Apple borrowing a bad security model from Windows... the idea that warning dialogs are an alternative to inherently secure design. I've been predicting that the vulnerability that this program used to launch the installer would be used in an attack on OS X since 2004. Instead of fixing the vulnerability (even in part, by eliminating 'Open "Safe" files after downloading') Apple has decided to add warning dialogs when the computer wants to do something that might have been requested as a result of this vulnerability.
http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/io/osx-security.html and following articles.
What differentiates this social engineering attack from others (like the AIM worm) is that it's initiated without any explicit user action. The user is faced with a decision, and has been trained to make the wrong decision in this situation. This is the Windows model. The Mac model, traditionally, has been to do what the user requests when the user requests it, and if it seems like a dialog might be needed, look for a way to avoid it... for example, Macs don't ask before moving files to the trash, or before emptying the trash, because these operations are separate and both have to be performed before there is data loss. In this situation, the solution is to download the file to a standard location, but let the user request that it be opened as a separate operation.
In the browser I normally use on OSX, Camino, this is how it normally works... and the option to behave like Safari has a warning that this is dangerous.
Luckily, Apple seems to have decided to back away from the dangerous operation, making it off by default. The preference is apparently not universal... I've had Dashboard widgets installed even when it was off... and, unfortunately, all the stupid security dialogs they added while they were trying to avoid making that decision are still there. But it's a start.
Antivirus software is not useful in this situation. Antivirus software is not a useful tool at all until after there is a population of viruses for it to test for, and it's a bad idea to even consider deploying it before then because false positives and bugs in the antivirus are more likely to cause problems than accidentally getting a virus. I would recommend against using antivirus software on the Mac at the current time.
I am SOOOO sick of folks being so sure that Apple should bless MacOS X on generic PCs. [...] [It] might NOT be in their best interest?
They certainly have evidence that attempting to become a software company instead of a hardware company is a rocky road. Both Apple and NeXT tried that in the '90s, and it didn't work then... NeXT didn't have the user base to launch it as a software platform, and Apple was stuck with a product that required their licensees to build completely custom hardware that wouldn't run any other software, so they couldn't possibly charge enough for an OEM license to make up for the lost hardware sales.
I don't think either applies in this case, and I've seen figures that indicate that they'd be able to break even pretty quickly, and would probably do better over the long term. But I don't expect Apple to really believe that they can make the third time a charm, not without more incentive than that.
If you don't want to call "virtually everywhere in the country", why should you pay that kind of rate for local calls?
I don't mind signing a contract, I object to being put on the hook for a $200 cellphone I don't need or want when I do. Make the "fucking contract" reflect reality... if I already have a phone, or want a cheap bar with a monochrome display that's JUST a "fucking phone" why should I be on the hook for $200 for a contract that costs YOU about 50c of plastic and maybe a kilobyte of storage somewhere to set up.
When I got a landline phone 20 years ago I got hit with a $120 install charge for an install that involved me walking down to the phone store and picking up a phone, plugging it in, and someone storing a record in a database somewhere. That was annoying, but if I'd had to have them run half a mile of cable to my house it would have still been the same $120. It took the risk out of getting phone service. You had a known charge. That charge has gone down considerably over the years, but it STILL covers what it did 20 years ago... everything up to the demark.
Cellphone companies, who have no requirement to actually provide service (I had a cellphone quit working at all from my own house, presumably because some building in the area changed the reception... guess how much sympathy I got about that) charge $200 for the same 'changing a database record'. And then the phone I'm on the hook for $200 for (and which which lists for $150) has been crippled by the cellphone company: it's got support for syncing my address book over USB, but that's been disabled.
Hey, if it's *my* phone, whare the hell do YOU get off telling me what I'm allowed to run on it? If it's *not* my phone, where the hell do you get off charging me for it? Make up your mind.
The difference, at least in my mind, between an OS that is Unix or Unix-like, and one that is merely Unix compatible is that Unix-like OS's allow *all* code to run on any other Unix-like OS (with the usual Unix portability caveats)
Funny, that's my definition too.
I guess the difference is that I've actually used and ported code to more than a couple of genuine AT&T-source-based UNIX systems over the past 25-30 years, and so I've got an appreciation of just how extreme "the usual UNIX portability caveats" really can get. Any code that will run on any system with a 6th Edition or later code base (I used some 5th Edition systems, but never wrote any code on them) will be trivial to port to any of the systems I've listed, but without Interix an awful lot of it won't run on Windows NT.
while an OS that is merely unix compatible means that Unix applications can run on it, but it's native applications cannot run on other Unix systems.
I think you would have a hard time porting *all* native applications from FreeBSD 6.2 to Microsoft Xenix-286, since a lot of them are there to deal with components that MS-Xenix doesn't have, like Berkeley sockets, jails, and kernel events. On the other hand, FreeBSD doesn't have OpenNET, redirections, and hard directory links.
So you need to limit yourself, I suppose, to a *subset* of native applications. But the UNIX shell, vi, and so on are native applications on BeOS, and QNX has a similar repertoire, but I really doubt that if you were to dig up the source to the remaining native Windows programs that cane in via the Lachman TCP port... like say telnet or ftp... they'd compile on any version of UNIX without more than "the usual UNIX portability caveats).
OS X is, in fact, Unix in the base OS... the other layers they put on top are NOT unix layers
So? Neither are the comparable layers on Solaris or Linux or System V. In fact, the closest thing to a UNIX GUI that ever existed is no longer in use anywhere... though the Plan 9 window system is definitely a descendent of it.
I miss my 3b1.
The third drive is largely useless considering that all most people want to do in that market segment is have a pair of mirrored drives.
Aha, now I get to abandon the devil's advocate side! Thanks for the opening, I really appreciate it.
This is how they got to tell me that I couldn't beat my Macbook Pro with a "comparable" thinkpad, by taking three or four features of the Macbook Pro that I don't actually care about (or that I would prefer not to have) and "discovering" that only the top of the line Thinkpad that costs almost as much as a Macbook Pro also has those features. If I come back and point out that it also has a mini-PCI internal slot so I can replace the Wifi with a second gigabit ethernet, and a Smartbay so that I can install a second hard drive, a floppy drive, or an additional battery (instead of the DVD-RW) I'm not allowed to count that as valuable.
If that kind of argument is "fair play" on the laptop side, then it's "fair play" on the server side. I don't get to say "I'd rather have a fatter laptop with a better keyboard" then you gotta accept the jet-engine nozzles and the extra drive bay as "requirements".
The fact is, Macs cost more for *genuinely* comparable generic hardware throughout the product range. There should be no mystery about that, or about why it is, or why people still buy them. Their servers are not particularly out of line with the rest.
[scenario]
If you're using Google Mail, then you fall under the "you're a customer" side of things.
Your only chance is that Google staff members also like midget porn.
Insert Google-vs-Second-Life joke here.