How do you distinguish between life and unusual chemical reactions?
Sure, if a gnarled humanoid pops up and waves a glowing finger at you, you've found life, but what happens if you just find a brown stain that seems to be producing oxygen? Is it alive or a permanganate salt?
I don't have an iPhone, but I had an iPod Mini (that I gave to my daughter because the whole 'click wheel' thing didn't work well and easily for me) and I have had Macs all the way back to the original Mac 128k, and Apple computers back to the Apple II, and Apple's been a very mixed experience for me.
I've been in and out of the Apple world. They go through stages where they're good, and where they're very much not good. They've been going through a "good" stage recently, but things like the new zero-button trackpad make me wonder.
need to connect to a cisco vpn in ubuntu? apt-get install vpnc. need the same on windows? hunt down the binary and install.
Need to do something that isn't interesting to geeks in Linux? Hunt down the source, hunt down the dependencies, maybe patch it or write code yourself, or fire up Wine.
For most software, "hunt down the binary and install" is an improvement.
You want to make Linux successful, so it really can be shipped with PCs, come up with a distro that keeps applications isolated from each other, with at most a link-farm in/usr/local, and has a stable kernel API and ABI.
Otherwise you're wasting your time trying to make it look like Windows. You need to make it *work* better than Windows, and outside a few specific markets it's a lot worse:
* Geeks. That's me, by the way, and Windows is dead to me. But I know I'm not typical. * Companies distributing locked down boxes with a stock software set. Point of Sale, Tivo, embedded systems. * People who just need a browser and email. * People who only need a couple of high-profile apps like Open Office or Gimp.
Otherwise, if your requirements include software that geeks are only likely to write for pay, you're out of luck.
That means the bulk of "not quite geeks", the power users, the ones who are not willing to understand programming but are willing to learn a few tricks, are going to be more likely to stick to Windows. And they're the majority of the influencers these days.
Flash likes to run with a lot more privileges than it needs
Even assuming that was the major issue (you don't need a privilege escalation exploit to make a local execution exploit deadly, even with Microsoft's leaky sandbox for IE), Flash runs with local user privileges. It doesn't run setuid on the systems I'm talking about, so it has no more privileges than anything else running under the browser. If it does anything more than that under Windows that's a Windows problem.
So you're saying that the CIL interpreter that Silverlight code runs under does not even implement an API that provides access to native Win32 calls, and the security model is implemented entirely outside CIL?
Flash isn't interpreted by an interpreter that includes mechanisms to provide full local application privileges to downloaded code.
Silverlight is based on.NET, which has support for full native applications and uses a security model based on "security zones" that has proven extremely unreliable.
No Silverlight, no Moonlight, it's bad enough that I've got to deal with Microsoft's broken security zones at work, I'm not going to start running son-of-ActiveX at home.
The iPhone's feature set is nowhere near that of a Palm or Windows Mobile phone. This really is all about people buying something for style... it's the cellular equivalent of $150 running shoes.
Congratulations, Apple, you finally created the iProduct.
Personally, I think cloud computing is going to turn out to be the next big thing that didn't go anywhere.
You're right, the cloud APIs presented so far are a total lock-in. There's no open systems cloud. You'd have to be crazy to depend on cloud services for your business. Microsoft getting into it just makes that so much more obvious.
However, independant vendors, and even personal businesses can HOST the platform on their own in house, or 3rd party servers and be locked to whatever freaking versions they want.
I see, so Microsoft's calling this Azure because it's a cloudless cloud.
That's kind of Zen.
A lot of this 'platform' is NOT EVEN tied to MS Windows Server technologies - geesh.
I disabled two finger tap and two finger scroll on my macbook pro, and went with Sidetrack to give me a much less annoying virtual second button that doesn't keep getting accidentally misinterpreted as unwanted mouse pointer movements.
Yes, I'm sure my fingers are defective, but it's a lot cheaper to replace a driver than my fingers.
Hold on, this is what IBM has put in this lawsuit. This NEW lawsuit. This lawsuit started AFTER the whole Power PC transition was complete. I know what was rumored THREE YEARS AGO, but why is IBM referring to it NOW?
And what was the last company that thought designing their own chips was a good idea. NVidia right?
Um, nVidia has no option but to design their own chips, they're the top GPU designer in the world. A better question would be why Intel bothers designing their own GPUs instead of partnering with nVidia.
That ended in epic fail.
The failure wasn't in the chips, it was in the mounting.
But they're not using any now. You don't need *replace* chips you're not using anyway.
I think IBM's smart enough to be able to check the Apple store and notice the complete absence of any obviously Power PC based products, from iPod Shuffle up through the 8 core Xeon-based XServes. So who am I to doubt IBM's word that they're making and selling systems using Power PC? Clearly I'm doing a bad job in my search, and figured someone here could point me to the missing Powermac or Powerbook they're still shipping.
IBM also claims that Apple considered replacing the IBM Power chips used in some of its computers with chips made by P.A. Semi.
Apple isn't using Power chips in any of its current computers, is it? The iPod and iPhone are ARM, and they're not making or shipping anything but x86-based Macs.
Microsoft hasn't been sitting on their hands, no. Now they have a new server (Geneva) and client (CardSpace) built into IE to provide authentication services... so long as your webserver and browser are Windows!
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How do you know when you've found life?
How do you distinguish between life and unusual chemical reactions?
Sure, if a gnarled humanoid pops up and waves a glowing finger at you, you've found life, but what happens if you just find a brown stain that seems to be producing oxygen? Is it alive or a permanganate salt?
Oh wait, nevermind...
All that will mean is that botnets will be all the more valuable, as cutouts for anonymous traffic.
They could always use CONS over TP4 and CLNP over TP0 like those Eurocommies wanted to back in the '80s.
I knew my OpenNET/DECnet skillz would come in handy again. Just let me at them AUI connectors...
I don't have an iPhone, but I had an iPod Mini (that I gave to my daughter because the whole 'click wheel' thing didn't work well and easily for me) and I have had Macs all the way back to the original Mac 128k, and Apple computers back to the Apple II, and Apple's been a very mixed experience for me.
I've been in and out of the Apple world. They go through stages where they're good, and where they're very much not good. They've been going through a "good" stage recently, but things like the new zero-button trackpad make me wonder.
need to connect to a cisco vpn in ubuntu? apt-get install vpnc. need the same on windows? hunt down the binary and install.
Need to do something that isn't interesting to geeks in Linux? Hunt down the source, hunt down the dependencies, maybe patch it or write code yourself, or fire up Wine.
For most software, "hunt down the binary and install" is an improvement.
You want to make Linux successful, so it really can be shipped with PCs, come up with a distro that keeps applications isolated from each other, with at most a link-farm in /usr/local, and has a stable kernel API and ABI.
Otherwise you're wasting your time trying to make it look like Windows. You need to make it *work* better than Windows, and outside a few specific markets it's a lot worse:
* Geeks. That's me, by the way, and Windows is dead to me. But I know I'm not typical.
* Companies distributing locked down boxes with a stock software set. Point of Sale, Tivo, embedded systems.
* People who just need a browser and email.
* People who only need a couple of high-profile apps like Open Office or Gimp.
Otherwise, if your requirements include software that geeks are only likely to write for pay, you're out of luck.
That means the bulk of "not quite geeks", the power users, the ones who are not willing to understand programming but are willing to learn a few tricks, are going to be more likely to stick to Windows. And they're the majority of the influencers these days.
Flash likes to run with a lot more privileges than it needs
Even assuming that was the major issue (you don't need a privilege escalation exploit to make a local execution exploit deadly, even with Microsoft's leaky sandbox for IE), Flash runs with local user privileges. It doesn't run setuid on the systems I'm talking about, so it has no more privileges than anything else running under the browser. If it does anything more than that under Windows that's a Windows problem.
So you're saying that the CIL interpreter that Silverlight code runs under does not even implement an API that provides access to native Win32 calls, and the security model is implemented entirely outside CIL?
Yeah it just runs as an ActiveX which can make Win32 calls directly (under local application privileges)
The interpreted language (actionscript) can't. It doesn't even have an API to do so.
and Silverlight is different from Flash how?
Flash isn't interpreted by an interpreter that includes mechanisms to provide full local application privileges to downloaded code.
Silverlight is based on .NET, which has support for full native applications and uses a security model based on "security zones" that has proven extremely unreliable.
No Silverlight, no Moonlight, it's bad enough that I've got to deal with Microsoft's broken security zones at work, I'm not going to start running son-of-ActiveX at home.
The iPhone's feature set is nowhere near that of a Palm or Windows Mobile phone. This really is all about people buying something for style... it's the cellular equivalent of $150 running shoes.
Congratulations, Apple, you finally created the iProduct.
If you use Jabber (XMPP) you don't care what the client is. You can use pidgin on Windows, Adium or ichat on Mac, etcetera.
Just stay the [deleted] away from Microsoft's stuff. Their only nonwndows support is a web applet.
Personally, I think cloud computing is going to turn out to be the next big thing that didn't go anywhere.
You're right, the cloud APIs presented so far are a total lock-in. There's no open systems cloud. You'd have to be crazy to depend on cloud services for your business. Microsoft getting into it just makes that so much more obvious.
However, independant vendors, and even personal businesses can HOST the platform on their own in house, or 3rd party servers and be locked to whatever freaking versions they want.
I see, so Microsoft's calling this Azure because it's a cloudless cloud.
That's kind of Zen.
A lot of this 'platform' is NOT EVEN tied to MS Windows Server technologies - geesh.
So I can run it on Red Hat?
So you're saying IBM claims they believe in a rumor that was proven false three years ago in a lawsuit filed today?
I disabled two finger tap and two finger scroll on my macbook pro, and went with Sidetrack to give me a much less annoying virtual second button that doesn't keep getting accidentally misinterpreted as unwanted mouse pointer movements.
Yes, I'm sure my fingers are defective, but it's a lot cheaper to replace a driver than my fingers.
Hold on, this is what IBM has put in this lawsuit. This NEW lawsuit. This lawsuit started AFTER the whole Power PC transition was complete. I know what was rumored THREE YEARS AGO, but why is IBM referring to it NOW?
And what was the last company that thought designing their own chips was a good idea. NVidia right?
Um, nVidia has no option but to design their own chips, they're the top GPU designer in the world. A better question would be why Intel bothers designing their own GPUs instead of partnering with nVidia.
That ended in epic fail.
The failure wasn't in the chips, it was in the mounting.
Steve's more like Henry Ford than Big Brother. Any color you want as long as you don't want page-up and page-down keys.
But they're not using any now. You don't need *replace* chips you're not using anyway.
I think IBM's smart enough to be able to check the Apple store and notice the complete absence of any obviously Power PC based products, from iPod Shuffle up through the 8 core Xeon-based XServes. So who am I to doubt IBM's word that they're making and selling systems using Power PC? Clearly I'm doing a bad job in my search, and figured someone here could point me to the missing Powermac or Powerbook they're still shipping.
Apple isn't using Power chips in any of its current computers, is it? The iPod and iPhone are ARM, and they're not making or shipping anything but x86-based Macs.
What am I missing?
Microsoft hasn't been sitting on their hands, no. Now they have a new server (Geneva) and client (CardSpace) built into IE to provide authentication services... so long as your webserver and browser are Windows!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/30/microsoft_generva_hailstorm/print.html
So I'll be {rice!neuro1!baylor,nuchat!sugar{,!bonkers},uunet!ficc}!peter again?
Hey, that's the address of the Elite Warez Network.