I agree. With Intel (and the fallback option of AMD), Apple is set for the long term - or at least until when (and if) Microsoft starts making its own CPUs to execute their CLI natively.
Saying a language used to program a computer causes security issues is like saying that cars kill people.
Like cars, programming languages will perform just like they are driven. PCs too, it they are driven carelessly then there will be security accidents.
And like cars, some programming languages / runtime environments have better security features than others.
You are correct in that any errors in my code are, at the core, my fault, and not the fault of my development environment. But so what? Back here in reality, any sufficiently complex project will inevitably contain errors. So if I can conveniently use a (mostly) type-safe, memory-managed environment like Java to help reduce the errors in my code and almost completely wipe out the chance of introducing a buffer overrun vulnerability, then that's a good thing.
Implying that tools to help programmers write safer and less error-prone code is a waste of time – that we should instead be able to rely on developers to write absolutely perfect code, no matter what their development environment is like – demonstrates a pretty tenuous grip on reality.
I would hope that the only wiring that was shared between critical and non-critical systems would be the +12V and GND.
And even that can be too much. A couple of years ago, my girlfriend's mother got stranded in her Chevy because the OnStar software had malfunctioned and completely drained her SUV's battery while the vehicle was turned off. Unfortunately, the place where she got stranded was in the pick-up lane at her son's middle school, and she ended up with traffic backed up behind her for a quarter of a mile before she could get her vehicle started again.
She later found out that GM had known about this bug for months in advance, but never bothered to notify her that her SUV needed an update – a failure that strikes a chord with those of us frustrated by Microsoft's tendency to leave critical flaws in Windows, and other software, unpatched for unreasonable amounts of time.
To Ford: You're supposed to be selling cars. Keep it simple, stupid. I'd never even consider buying a car with a Microsoft operating system on it unless there were a way that I could absolutely, positively disable it, while retaining all of the vehicle's core functionality.
Have you even tried OS X on modern hardware? I have one of those 1 GHz iBook G4s too. It's dog slow, but that's because its FSB only runs at 133 MHz. It has nothing to do with the operating system.
I also have a Core 2 iMac, and one of the first things I did when I got it was to try out Windows XP Pro on Boot Camp. I didn't take the time to perform any thorough tests or benchmarks before I deleted the partition, but my general impression was that OS X was notably more responsive than XP on the same hardware - especially when it came to disk operations, for whatever reason. In short, I think your blanket assertion that OS X is "slower" than Windows, based on an uninformed and incomplete comparison of two different and outdated computers, could benefit from a little more research.
I was about to post a very analogous, if more subjective, comment before I accidentally closed my browser window.
My girlfriend and I both just got new computers. Mine is a 2.0 GHz Core 2 iMac, and hers is a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Dell. Both have 2 GB of RAM. For what it's worth, the Dell (not including its monitor) cost slightly under twice the price of my new Mac. While I can't compare the two at any specific tasks as I've only used her computer for basic web browsing and such, my general impression has been that OS X on my iMac is (subjectively) even more responsive than Windows XP on her high-end gaming machine.
It's funny that the parent poster brought up his 1 GHz iBook G4, as I own one of those as well. It's a solid machine (and it's treated me exceptionally well, considering how much I beat it up on a daily basis), but keep in mind that those G4s were famously hobbled by an abysmal 133 MHz FSB. (No, a 1 GHz G4 with a 133 MHz FSB is emphatically not twice as fast as a 500 MHz P3, generally speaking). The parent poster cites the poor performance of OS X on his old iBook G4 as evidence of OS X's general "slowness", but I wonder whether, in reality, the poor performance of some of those PowerPC processors was what forced Apple to fine-tune OS X into the relatively quick system it is today.
Looking ahead, OS X 10.5 will include native support for 32-bit applications under the 64-bit operating system. OS X users can avoid the performance hit incurred by the WOW64 emulation layer, needed to run Win32 applications under 64-bit XP or Vista. Perhaps once people start to compare 64-bit Windows with 64-bit Leopard, this old myth about OS X's performance will finally be killed off.
If it was up to Apple, they would be still on slow powerpc chips but it was the competition in the PC world that finally made them see the light.
While we're arguing hypotheticals, I'll point out that if it were really up to Apple, IBM would have put the necessary resources into developing low-power and high-speed PowerPC chips, the lack of which being what drove Apple into the Intel transition. If there were no Microsoft, and as a result, the same level of R&D going into today's x86-derived processors were instead used to develop the PowerPC line powering Apple's presumed monopoly, then the Intel transition would not have been desirable.
You're right in that competition is a good thing; I'd be just as concerned by an Apple monopoly over the PC market as I am by the current Microsoft one. But I think the parent was saying (and I agree) that they are Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviors which earn that company such widespread disapproval.
According to one MacBU developer's blog, the Mac version of OS X will have support for basically the same object model used in Office for Windows, but will only lack support for the VBA language itself. In its place, developers can use AppleScript or other languages to script Mac Office.
So what are the chances that someone like Real Software will step in with a Mac Office plugin to allow it to handle VBA scripts?
It isn't too horrible these days. On my Core 2 iMac the delay between clicking on the app in the Dock and having a usable word processor window is typically six seconds. It's slow, but it isn't much slower to run NeoOffice than to start Rosetta-hosted MS Office 2004. Even on my old G4 iBook, NeoOffice is quite usable.
PFsense is a good way to get an easy PF-based firewall, but the OS isn't based on OpenBSD and so lacks the rest of OpenBSD's famous security features and code auditing track record. Which by no means is any reason not to use PFsense; my point is only that, no, PFsense isn't "for" an easy way to use OpenBSD instead of Linux on your home or small business router.
I pretty much agree with the way you sorted your chart of firewall uberness, but not everybody has the expertise to set up and use OpenBSD with PF. And as much as I wanted to run OpenBSD on my old PowerMac G4 router, the hardware support just wasn't there.
Linux might not make the most badass packet filter in the world or have OpenBSD's extreme security features, but as an all-around solution – taking into account ease of administration, hardware support, simplicity of installation, and performance – it (I'm particularly thinking of Debian here) compares very favorably to OpenBSD. PF is great, but in the real world not many people want to manually patch and recompile their kernels whenever a security vulnerability is announced. Especially not the kind of people that IPCop is targeting.
Come on now... as a long-time Mac user, I've probably already suffered a lethal exposure to the Steve Jobs reality distortion field(TM). Even so, I have to point out that there are some places where it just isn't practical to use a mouse with your laptop. Want to try your solution in an airplane seat?
I really don't get why Apple won't just come out with a real, honest-to-goodness two-button laptop. None of this gimmicky stuff meant to keep it looking like a one-button setup while ever-so-awkwardly implementing a secondary click feature. Lack of a real two-button touchpad is the only reason at least two of my friends haven't yet bought Mac laptops, and I can only chalk this kind of reality-defying failure to address the market to direct veto from Jobs himself.
Most of Microsoft's most commercially successful products "borrowed" heavily from other applications on the market, at least to start with. But I think that culture is starting to change. Microsoft PowerShell is the most impressive operating system shell that's been released in a long time, an innovative, object-oriented departure from the old Unix shell paradigm.
If you need absolute proof that innovation lives at Microsoft, take a look at their experimental operating system: Singularity.
If they do any amateur photography, a MacBook Pro is better, because of the separate graphics card.
What do you mean by a "separate" card? If you strictly mean a PCI Express card that is removable for the purpose of future upgrades, I agree. But I thought I should point out that, in case there is any confusion, only the lowest-priced iMac has integrated video; 17", 20", and 24" iMacs are available with ATI cards with either 128 or 256 MB of VRAM.
I just got a 17" Core 2 iMac with the Radeon card, and am extremely happy with it. More to the point of this discussion, its pricing compared very favorably with Dell's offerings and, for my needs, was significantly cheaper than anything I could find from HP with similar specs when taking into account the cost of the LCD monitor I would have had to buy to use the HP (all my previous computers have been laptops, so I don't own a good LCD). And the HP that I configured didn't have a camera, a remote control, WiFi, or Bluetooth. Or, well, OS X.
For what it's worth, I hereby affirm that I am not a granny.
True, but then one benefit of using Ubuntu would be Linux's greater ease of SSH remote administration over OS X. On Ubuntu you can trivially configure your firewall, install and uninstall applications, and do pretty much anything else from the command line. (Most of which can be done on OS X's command line as well, but as on Windows, on OS X the command line takes back seat to the GUI for system administration tasks.) So when your elders do need your help with a given administration task, you can just do it for them instead of trying to show them how. Unless they earnestly want to learn how to operate the computer on their own, of course.
Granted, this doesn't address (and in fact may be indicative of) Linux's user interface issues; it's just a purely pragmatic observation.
Most of the new features in Windows Vista that (I would argue) make it worth upgrading to, are not aimed at enterprise users, but at the average home PC user. Although most of the really interesting new stuff in the user interface was ripped straight out of OS X 10.4, these changes alone do mark a major improvement over XP. Quartz's ability to offload to the GPU much of the processing needed for window management was a major factor in my switch to the Mac a few years ago, and it's nice that Windows users will finally have something similar (albeit apparently more resource-hungry) on their machines.
While the new security features of Vista (especially the 64-bit version) are a good thing all-around, they're more of a factor for home users of the operating system than they are for large companies with corresponding IT departments to carefully secure and administer their computers. Microsoft's built-in malware scanner and improved firewall are a big step forward for Mr. PC Owner, but any decent enterprise deployment of Windows should already be behind a firewall and an anti-virus system. And in fact, insofar as most corporate Vista deployments will require a licensing server to keep Microsoft placated (bringing with it the looming possibility of a WGA malfunction), Vista is in some ways a step backward for enterprise users.
I think the general public reception of Vista will be positive - partially due to the "Oh, it's so shiny!" factor, and partially due to some real improvements under the hood - but I agree that enterprise adoption of the operating system will probably start slow.
Keep in mind that the primary motives for the creation of the patent system went beyond encouraging innovation. Prior to the advent of patents, inventors would often attempt to maintain an advantage over their competitors by keeping their inventions as trade secrets. Patents were created by the government as an incentive for inventors to give up their trade secrets to the public domain in exchange for a temporary monopoly on those ideas, so that other inventions and innovations could be built on top of them.
I agree that the United States patent system has gotten quite out of hand in recent years, especially with the proliferation of software and other "soft" patents. However, limiting your argument to the innovation facilitation rationale for patents does not do the debate justice.
I just found the aforementioned commentary material. Listen to Sgt. Aiken's commentary for further evidence of why this was the right thing for Officer McNevin to do:
Actually, if I remember correctly, that particular video in which the police officer Tasers said woman out of her car actually became part of a set of training videos intended to demonstrate appropriate behavior for new officers. And there's a good reason for that.
First of all, this part of the video only catches the tail end of this woman's interaction with the officers. She was originally pulled over by the first officer who, after talking with her for some time and finding her completely uncooperative, called for backup. In response, the woman in the SUV then got on her telephone and tried to summon an acquaintance to come join in on the altercation, a possibility that the officers were rightfully unwilling to allow to unfold.
So she was already being uncooperative (belligerent, in fact) and, on top of that, she was at the wheel of a (IIRC) still-running vehicle. There have been too many incidents in which a police officer, attempting to extract an uncooperative suspect from a vehicle, has been dragged to the ground and injured when the driver decided to hit the gas; according to the accompanying commentary from the training video, which I can't find at the moment, using the Taser was the best way to remove her from the car while avoiding undue injury to either the suspect or the officer. I agree.
In this particular case, that woman definitely got what she deserved.
Last month I purchased a six-year-old PowerMac G4 (500 MHz PowerPC 7400 processor with 256 MB of RAM and a 10 GB hard drive). $5 at a local school board sale. Before I installed Debian on it to give it a second life as a stylin' firewall/router, I gave OS X 10.4 a spin on the old hardware. The system ran surprisingly well - so much so that one of my friends went back to that sale to pick up another PowerMac, which he is now using to familiarize himself with OS X.
OS X may have some performance issues with its threading implementations and so on, but as a desktop or workstation operating system, it really makes Vista look like a resource hog.
What's to keep a sheepdog from turning into a wolf?
More of the sheep becoming sheepdogs themselves. The central thesis of this essay is that the world is still full of evil nations, organizations, and individuals, and in order to survive we need enough people who are willing to fight that we can keep these potential enemies at bay - or intimidate them from ever attacking in the first place.
To me, this seems like plain common sense. I wish that the world were a perfect, peaceful place. But until it is, we must be able to defend ourselves.
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I agree. With Intel (and the fallback option of AMD), Apple is set for the long term - or at least until when (and if) Microsoft starts making its own CPUs to execute their CLI natively.
And like cars, some programming languages / runtime environments have better security features than others.
You are correct in that any errors in my code are, at the core, my fault, and not the fault of my development environment. But so what? Back here in reality, any sufficiently complex project will inevitably contain errors. So if I can conveniently use a (mostly) type-safe, memory-managed environment like Java to help reduce the errors in my code and almost completely wipe out the chance of introducing a buffer overrun vulnerability, then that's a good thing.
Implying that tools to help programmers write safer and less error-prone code is a waste of time – that we should instead be able to rely on developers to write absolutely perfect code, no matter what their development environment is like – demonstrates a pretty tenuous grip on reality.
And even that can be too much. A couple of years ago, my girlfriend's mother got stranded in her Chevy because the OnStar software had malfunctioned and completely drained her SUV's battery while the vehicle was turned off. Unfortunately, the place where she got stranded was in the pick-up lane at her son's middle school, and she ended up with traffic backed up behind her for a quarter of a mile before she could get her vehicle started again.
She later found out that GM had known about this bug for months in advance, but never bothered to notify her that her SUV needed an update – a failure that strikes a chord with those of us frustrated by Microsoft's tendency to leave critical flaws in Windows, and other software, unpatched for unreasonable amounts of time.
To Ford: You're supposed to be selling cars. Keep it simple, stupid. I'd never even consider buying a car with a Microsoft operating system on it unless there were a way that I could absolutely, positively disable it, while retaining all of the vehicle's core functionality.
Well hey, at least it isn't Fox "Mark Foley is a Democrat" News. Anyway, why would you have any reason to doubt the veracity of this report?
Have you even tried OS X on modern hardware? I have one of those 1 GHz iBook G4s too. It's dog slow, but that's because its FSB only runs at 133 MHz. It has nothing to do with the operating system.
I also have a Core 2 iMac, and one of the first things I did when I got it was to try out Windows XP Pro on Boot Camp. I didn't take the time to perform any thorough tests or benchmarks before I deleted the partition, but my general impression was that OS X was notably more responsive than XP on the same hardware - especially when it came to disk operations, for whatever reason. In short, I think your blanket assertion that OS X is "slower" than Windows, based on an uninformed and incomplete comparison of two different and outdated computers, could benefit from a little more research.
I was about to post a very analogous, if more subjective, comment before I accidentally closed my browser window.
My girlfriend and I both just got new computers. Mine is a 2.0 GHz Core 2 iMac, and hers is a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Dell. Both have 2 GB of RAM. For what it's worth, the Dell (not including its monitor) cost slightly under twice the price of my new Mac. While I can't compare the two at any specific tasks as I've only used her computer for basic web browsing and such, my general impression has been that OS X on my iMac is (subjectively) even more responsive than Windows XP on her high-end gaming machine.
It's funny that the parent poster brought up his 1 GHz iBook G4, as I own one of those as well. It's a solid machine (and it's treated me exceptionally well, considering how much I beat it up on a daily basis), but keep in mind that those G4s were famously hobbled by an abysmal 133 MHz FSB. (No, a 1 GHz G4 with a 133 MHz FSB is emphatically not twice as fast as a 500 MHz P3, generally speaking). The parent poster cites the poor performance of OS X on his old iBook G4 as evidence of OS X's general "slowness", but I wonder whether, in reality, the poor performance of some of those PowerPC processors was what forced Apple to fine-tune OS X into the relatively quick system it is today.
Looking ahead, OS X 10.5 will include native support for 32-bit applications under the 64-bit operating system. OS X users can avoid the performance hit incurred by the WOW64 emulation layer, needed to run Win32 applications under 64-bit XP or Vista. Perhaps once people start to compare 64-bit Windows with 64-bit Leopard, this old myth about OS X's performance will finally be killed off.
While we're arguing hypotheticals, I'll point out that if it were really up to Apple, IBM would have put the necessary resources into developing low-power and high-speed PowerPC chips, the lack of which being what drove Apple into the Intel transition. If there were no Microsoft, and as a result, the same level of R&D going into today's x86-derived processors were instead used to develop the PowerPC line powering Apple's presumed monopoly, then the Intel transition would not have been desirable.
You're right in that competition is a good thing; I'd be just as concerned by an Apple monopoly over the PC market as I am by the current Microsoft one. But I think the parent was saying (and I agree) that they are Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviors which earn that company such widespread disapproval.
According to one MacBU developer's blog, the Mac version of OS X will have support for basically the same object model used in Office for Windows, but will only lack support for the VBA language itself. In its place, developers can use AppleScript or other languages to script Mac Office.
So what are the chances that someone like Real Software will step in with a Mac Office plugin to allow it to handle VBA scripts?
It isn't too horrible these days. On my Core 2 iMac the delay between clicking on the app in the Dock and having a usable word processor window is typically six seconds. It's slow, but it isn't much slower to run NeoOffice than to start Rosetta-hosted MS Office 2004. Even on my old G4 iBook, NeoOffice is quite usable.
PFsense is a good way to get an easy PF-based firewall, but the OS isn't based on OpenBSD and so lacks the rest of OpenBSD's famous security features and code auditing track record. Which by no means is any reason not to use PFsense; my point is only that, no, PFsense isn't "for" an easy way to use OpenBSD instead of Linux on your home or small business router.
I pretty much agree with the way you sorted your chart of firewall uberness, but not everybody has the expertise to set up and use OpenBSD with PF. And as much as I wanted to run OpenBSD on my old PowerMac G4 router, the hardware support just wasn't there.
Linux might not make the most badass packet filter in the world or have OpenBSD's extreme security features, but as an all-around solution – taking into account ease of administration, hardware support, simplicity of installation, and performance – it (I'm particularly thinking of Debian here) compares very favorably to OpenBSD. PF is great, but in the real world not many people want to manually patch and recompile their kernels whenever a security vulnerability is announced. Especially not the kind of people that IPCop is targeting.
Come on now... as a long-time Mac user, I've probably already suffered a lethal exposure to the Steve Jobs reality distortion field(TM). Even so, I have to point out that there are some places where it just isn't practical to use a mouse with your laptop. Want to try your solution in an airplane seat?
I really don't get why Apple won't just come out with a real, honest-to-goodness two-button laptop. None of this gimmicky stuff meant to keep it looking like a one-button setup while ever-so-awkwardly implementing a secondary click feature. Lack of a real two-button touchpad is the only reason at least two of my friends haven't yet bought Mac laptops, and I can only chalk this kind of reality-defying failure to address the market to direct veto from Jobs himself.
Most of Microsoft's most commercially successful products "borrowed" heavily from other applications on the market, at least to start with. But I think that culture is starting to change. Microsoft PowerShell is the most impressive operating system shell that's been released in a long time, an innovative, object-oriented departure from the old Unix shell paradigm.
If you need absolute proof that innovation lives at Microsoft, take a look at their experimental operating system: Singularity.
What do you mean by a "separate" card? If you strictly mean a PCI Express card that is removable for the purpose of future upgrades, I agree. But I thought I should point out that, in case there is any confusion, only the lowest-priced iMac has integrated video; 17", 20", and 24" iMacs are available with ATI cards with either 128 or 256 MB of VRAM.
I just got a 17" Core 2 iMac with the Radeon card, and am extremely happy with it. More to the point of this discussion, its pricing compared very favorably with Dell's offerings and, for my needs, was significantly cheaper than anything I could find from HP with similar specs when taking into account the cost of the LCD monitor I would have had to buy to use the HP (all my previous computers have been laptops, so I don't own a good LCD). And the HP that I configured didn't have a camera, a remote control, WiFi, or Bluetooth. Or, well, OS X.
For what it's worth, I hereby affirm that I am not a granny.
True, but then one benefit of using Ubuntu would be Linux's greater ease of SSH remote administration over OS X. On Ubuntu you can trivially configure your firewall, install and uninstall applications, and do pretty much anything else from the command line. (Most of which can be done on OS X's command line as well, but as on Windows, on OS X the command line takes back seat to the GUI for system administration tasks.) So when your elders do need your help with a given administration task, you can just do it for them instead of trying to show them how. Unless they earnestly want to learn how to operate the computer on their own, of course.
Granted, this doesn't address (and in fact may be indicative of) Linux's user interface issues; it's just a purely pragmatic observation.
Most of the new features in Windows Vista that (I would argue) make it worth upgrading to, are not aimed at enterprise users, but at the average home PC user. Although most of the really interesting new stuff in the user interface was ripped straight out of OS X 10.4, these changes alone do mark a major improvement over XP. Quartz's ability to offload to the GPU much of the processing needed for window management was a major factor in my switch to the Mac a few years ago, and it's nice that Windows users will finally have something similar (albeit apparently more resource-hungry) on their machines.
While the new security features of Vista (especially the 64-bit version) are a good thing all-around, they're more of a factor for home users of the operating system than they are for large companies with corresponding IT departments to carefully secure and administer their computers. Microsoft's built-in malware scanner and improved firewall are a big step forward for Mr. PC Owner, but any decent enterprise deployment of Windows should already be behind a firewall and an anti-virus system. And in fact, insofar as most corporate Vista deployments will require a licensing server to keep Microsoft placated (bringing with it the looming possibility of a WGA malfunction), Vista is in some ways a step backward for enterprise users.
I think the general public reception of Vista will be positive - partially due to the "Oh, it's so shiny!" factor, and partially due to some real improvements under the hood - but I agree that enterprise adoption of the operating system will probably start slow.
Keep in mind that the primary motives for the creation of the patent system went beyond encouraging innovation. Prior to the advent of patents, inventors would often attempt to maintain an advantage over their competitors by keeping their inventions as trade secrets. Patents were created by the government as an incentive for inventors to give up their trade secrets to the public domain in exchange for a temporary monopoly on those ideas, so that other inventions and innovations could be built on top of them.
I agree that the United States patent system has gotten quite out of hand in recent years, especially with the proliferation of software and other "soft" patents. However, limiting your argument to the innovation facilitation rationale for patents does not do the debate justice.
I just found the aforementioned commentary material. Listen to Sgt. Aiken's commentary for further evidence of why this was the right thing for Officer McNevin to do:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/vid eo/taser_video3a.html
Actually, if I remember correctly, that particular video in which the police officer Tasers said woman out of her car actually became part of a set of training videos intended to demonstrate appropriate behavior for new officers. And there's a good reason for that.
First of all, this part of the video only catches the tail end of this woman's interaction with the officers. She was originally pulled over by the first officer who, after talking with her for some time and finding her completely uncooperative, called for backup. In response, the woman in the SUV then got on her telephone and tried to summon an acquaintance to come join in on the altercation, a possibility that the officers were rightfully unwilling to allow to unfold.
So she was already being uncooperative (belligerent, in fact) and, on top of that, she was at the wheel of a (IIRC) still-running vehicle. There have been too many incidents in which a police officer, attempting to extract an uncooperative suspect from a vehicle, has been dragged to the ground and injured when the driver decided to hit the gas; according to the accompanying commentary from the training video, which I can't find at the moment, using the Taser was the best way to remove her from the car while avoiding undue injury to either the suspect or the officer. I agree.
In this particular case, that woman definitely got what she deserved.
No, but it does imply relation, which was the parent's point.
Here's a copy of Jim Warren's article, for anyone interested.
Last month I purchased a six-year-old PowerMac G4 (500 MHz PowerPC 7400 processor with 256 MB of RAM and a 10 GB hard drive). $5 at a local school board sale. Before I installed Debian on it to give it a second life as a stylin' firewall/router, I gave OS X 10.4 a spin on the old hardware. The system ran surprisingly well - so much so that one of my friends went back to that sale to pick up another PowerMac, which he is now using to familiarize himself with OS X.
OS X may have some performance issues with its threading implementations and so on, but as a desktop or workstation operating system, it really makes Vista look like a resource hog.
More of the sheep becoming sheepdogs themselves. The central thesis of this essay is that the world is still full of evil nations, organizations, and individuals, and in order to survive we need enough people who are willing to fight that we can keep these potential enemies at bay - or intimidate them from ever attacking in the first place.
To me, this seems like plain common sense. I wish that the world were a perfect, peaceful place. But until it is, we must be able to defend ourselves.
If we're lucky, this might be the case to finally set a precedent against the old formula
If Blockbuster doesn't settle out of court, that is...
Let's just hope he does a better job in heaven than he did at ESPN...