Yes, but then you've missed the point. For Java 1.5, guess how much you're going to have to pay to upgrade your box running Win2k? Nothing. Will we have to pay $129 for 10.4 to run 1.5 on our Macs? If the past is any indication, quite possibly so.
In fact, if you bought OS X 10.0, you'll've possibly upgraded twice -- over $250 -- just to get a relatively stable 1.4.x implementation on the Mac. That's not cool. Buy a new Mac today and you might very well be upgrading again before you're beyond 1.4.2. That's a big disadvantage over having the JVM maker separate from the OS vendor, as you do on Windows and Linux (x86 specifically; as has been pointed out, Yellow Dog/Liunx for PPC doesn't have a JVM from Sun).
People say Apple has a real dedication to Java, "the best", even, but it's simply not quite so plainly obvious. Buggy VMs, developer specs that break backwards compatiblity (first with Jar Bundles and now even properties that pointed to your Preferences folder disappearing), and "buy or by" mentality -- combined with arguably slower GUI performance -- and you've got a good case Apple Java isn't where it should be.
Again, I love that you've got Java 2 anywhere you've got OS X, but Apple doesn't get a free pass on other fronts for that move. You could even argue the Aqua look & feel, though awfully neat, was a misuse of resources. Would I rather have GUI'd apps that look native, or a JVM that's less buggy? Hrm...
About once every month or so, this same question seems to come up on the Apple Java development list, sometimes to a chorus of near flames where one person will remark, "Eclipse doesn't run half as fast on twice as expensive a Mac as my Pentium" and others will remark, "Depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
Please, folk, yes, the Powerbook is now officially great for hacking Java. James Gosling has used one (as has been remarked) and apparently the JavaONE conference was full of 'em.
Here's all you need to know: 1.) Macs are slower in "anecdotal subjective tests" using Java on a "util of perceived quickness/dollar" ratio. 2.) Apple produces its own port of the JVM, so you're often an official release or two behind Sun's JDKs (so Linux on x86 or Windows). 3.) Java3D is apparently finally out on the Mac. Sheesh. (Another "post a month" topic on the list) 4.) The Apple JVM has historically not been as sharp as Sun's on Windows. Witness the 1.4.1 release on OS X 10.2 -- later unreleased through Software Update, with Swing that's buggy as heck. And I still haven't seen a J2EE specific release. 5.) Prepare to pay for the latest OS (10.3 required for 1.4.2) as well. That's a $129 surtax for Java 1.4.2 that you're not paying on Windows 2k, much less Linux.
And the all-important 6.) Yes, you will look and feel 733+ running your development on a Powerbook.
I use a 1 GHz iMac to hack and though Eclipse's speed is just above a 533 Celeron I run (and much less than my 2 GHz P4), it does just fine. Still, keep an x86 box around for some testing at some point. Write once, test everywhere.
Except that it still doesn't have autocomplete for Java (though it now does for Objective C). No wonder it's so fast, relatively speaking. It's not really doing much SubEthaEdit can't.
If you want a glorified text editor with access for running Ant scripts, may I suggest VIm, instead?
If you want a great Java IDE, go with Eclipse. If you want a text editor, use VIm (or BBEdit if you have to). If you want to code Objective C, use PB/Xcode.
For all you that think MS coders are idiots, no, they're not. Look, from a programming standpoint, wouldn't you rather be calling an API from a controller environment that you *know* works that hoping a third-party library works the way it's "supposed to"? You'd better. One might nearly rightly complain I'm showing some of the "ferocious Not Invented Here complex", but there's some reasoning behind the madness. If you want your program to work right, you use what is, in your opinion, the most reliable means to make that happen.
But before you rightfully flame me out of existence, what MS has to understand is that they're not in a position to "do things right" here. There are cultural reasons -- not programming/techincal ones -- that they have to keep in mind. They've been, with reason, found to have leveraged their vast dominance over the desktop OS market into the Internet browser market as well. That's unfair. MS *has* to open up their apps to allow a user's choice or they're, once again, arguably illegally abusing monopoly status.
The lesson here, and it's what most everyone not calling MS hackers a bunch of idiots (which they obviously aren't. I've never seen a better set of ideas come from one company -- at least before they're run though the MS Profit Maximization Machine, (c) 198x) is arguing, whether they know it or not: These cultural lessons aren't being taught to their programmers. Here, MS is culpable, and the people responsible should be held accountable.
If you want to have two completely anonymous, very large systems talk to each other, SOAP isn't a bad way to go. But how many of us are working for giant firms that require building hooks into our system for a completely anonymous client?
Do note that you can also substitute "anonymous client" with "corporation with a heck of a lot of red tape".
As another post in this thread has already well put, SOAP is the compromise product of a number of these giant corporations. It doesn't do nearly so well when you've got two reasonably-sized *partners* (much less something in-house) working on a very specific product.
Because so many practical implementations don't need all the overhead of SOAP, you see tons of much easier implementations, like XML-RPC, that don't get the same press. This lack of press (so lack of manager buy-in) combined with the one-shot nature taken by so many coding projects, with a bit of the "Not Invented Here complex" thrown in, and I think we begin to see why so many people are scratching the same itch.
Scaling and Model 2/MVC jive
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Tomcat 5.0 Released
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· Score: 5, Insightful
In that paper "Model 1" and "Model 2" set-ups are described in some detail. In short, Model 1 is what most of us web hackers have probably done for years --
1.) A [php/jsp/asp] page for user data entry (data entry GUI) which forwards you to... 2.) Another [php/jsp/asp] for business logic that inserts the jive into an RDBMS, which then forwards you to... 3.) Another page where you might review your data, with links to (1.) or... 4.) Another page to edit info which links to... 5.) Another page that edits/updates/deletes existing entries and sends you back to 3.)
You get the point. You've got php script or vbscript or Java slapped in between tags that dynamically create pages. That's Model 1.
Model 1 doesn't scale well. It is, however, a great way to get up quickly, and perfect for smaller sites. That's where PHP and dime store hackers find a home, and that ability comprises the "revolution" asp brought to the web.
Model 2 has a controller which tries to abstract as much as possible out of process described above. Check out this image from the Sun chapter mentioned above. See all the steps that go on from each POST from the client interface.
The point of it is that Java/JSP/J2EE allows -- and has the infrastructure as a langauge to support -- this sort of Model 2, MVC interface (As an aside, this is also one of the big advantages of.NET). You can quickly and easily usher these items around in a mature, object-oriented environment. Define an interface and a generic controller and you'll be able to swap around [in theory] fully-QA'd data delivery mechanisms in a modular fashion.
In PHP -- and even asp 3.0 -- this is a more difficult thing to pull off, as mentioned in the/. post I linked to above.
And this is where Tomcat shines -- as a key part of the infrastructure that allows more complex, scalable, generic objects and architectures. Most importantly, since J2EE is a language specification, saying Java scales well is accurate. It provides a true OO platform allowing you to implement Model 2's without jumping through hoops. PHP simply (in my experience) doesn't lend itself to this nearly so straighforwardly.
Now what Tomcat 5 does for me that 4 didn't to achieve this scalability (which many posts have well-documented) is what's most interesting about this story, to which I'll now return.;^)
Personally, I sometimes forget that I'm watching through Tivo and that I can skip the ads.
I believe that's the issue, however. You're conditioned to watching ads, and don't even notice that your TV show has been interupted by the commercial interests. If you grew up without a notion of ads -- or of ads as something you'd *always* skipped, I think you'd have a different result.
Don't believe me? When's the last time you listened to an NPR pledge drive or the like? That's a noticable change, isn't it? How about the last hour or so of movies on TV? Now that they've got you invested in the end, the commercials are both much more plentiful and noticable. What if you were watching The Matrix at an IMAX, Neo and Trinity dancing off walls throwing bullets, and *wham*, outta nowhere you've watching a giant advert for Coke? No matter how great the ad, you'd probably find you'd've preferred to buy the world a Coke *before* the movie started, as such.
But if any of the above were the norm and had been for years as you "grew up", do you think you'd notice? I doubt it. You'd've learned what to expect, and not noticed any different, like you do now. It's all about contrast
It may not happen overnight, but long-term I wonder if adverts are viable if TiVo-like jive gets widespread/cheap enough (most people using/able to afford it) and easy enough to use if adverts as we know them today aren't a thing of the past. Ad placement and "picture on top of picture" are going to get a lot more common, folks.
That said, I miss most adverts now by clicking around anyhow. Lots easier to "always watch something" with the scores of channels I've got today than the three I had "growing up". But in a scary bit of conditioning, I can usually feel about how long each break should take, and flip back to my original show the split second that it picks back up a statistically significant amount of the time.
Was that a lunch bell?
What's wrong with a 226ci V6 anyhow?
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"iPod's Dirty Secret"
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is as bad as the old V-8 Mustang-IIs that required the engine be dropped to replace the back two spark plugs. Even the game boy advance has a user replaceable battery (albeit behind a screw).
There some reason you feel you always need to hit on all cylinders? Or that you can't rip a couple of holes in the firewall?;^) There's nasty bolt in the top of my Jeep's Tremec T-150 tranny that's a real bear to get to, so I just busted a hole in the body big enough for a rachet wrench, and voila!
Which is the whole issue here, of course. I still haven't quite finished bolting my iBook up after upgrading the hard drive (and it's trivially worse for the wear). I wonder where the PRAM battery is on that monster; shoulda checked while I had the chance. And the PRAM on my Powerbook 1400 required flipping off the lid/screen and cracking the "body" in two. Nobody wants duct tape holding together their iBook body for easy hard drive access or 1400 for PRAM replacements.
I've often wondered if the way autos are put together isn't a result of some mechanics' union to get business "where it should be". It looks like Apple's doing the same thing [as my conspiracy theory] -- uncessarily difficult tasks which, to them, equal pure profit. Great analogy if Pony II's really had to have the engine dropped. That's madness.
That's a fairly reductionist view if taken too far. Not all researchers are tech whizzes (no pun intended), and I've seen a number of, in my case, professors of English Literature who run the same sort of, "Throw up ten pages with Under Construction signs, test publish a few papers, and let the site sit for years, one day to mysteriously disappear," web site lifespan that "Bob's World" might as well.
Perhaps even more interestingly, it doesn't always really matter if you've done great, repeatable research in the "soft science" fields or outright humanities. You don't have to be a literature expect to have a good insight on "Bartleby the Scrivener". A grad student's blog, as an example, might contain excellent contributions to the conversation.
Now that said, in the context of the article -- dealing with "a dermatologist with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver" -- I would tend to agree with you heartily. Hard science needs to pull, in my layman's view, from research that the article's author researched well enough to see that it wasn't a few 0's and 1's that might be pulled later, in general.
And heck, what's the harm in saving the pages on your drive and contacting the original author if they disppear? Hard drive space is cheap. If you take yourself seriously, you might want to grab a snap, even if it is technically illegal (not that I know that it is; Google seems to do it right often).
Words right out of my mouth. I've posted to usenet asking if anyone's tried a hack yet, and some of the iMac deconstruction sites seem to suggest the wires are relatively easy to get to.
But if you could find a way to hack it, you're essentially getting an awfully cool monitor stand plus a Superdrive equipped G4 for $900. That's *much* easier to stomach.
Take apart at xlr8yourmac.com (look at "rainbow colored" wires) Service manual
There was also a great Japanese site that showed the thing taken apart until the wires were dangling, but I always have the dangest time Googling in Japanese.
I realize there are a few applications that run on x86 Linux and not Linux for PPC for whatever complicated compilations reasons, but can anyone list me some of those applications? I've never heard anyone complain about Yellow Dog Linux (what you'd probably run on PPC hardware). The US Navy didn't seem to have any qualms about YDL.
While you're listing apps, make sure you tell me why you'd rather run them on PPC hardware inside of a $100+ x86 emulator instead of on $300 of true x86 hardware with performance (forgive me, Stevie) TO BURN!!;^)
This is a front page/. story about something that people are only worried about doing for the geek value, as far as I can tell. Which I didn't say was a bad reason, mind you. Just not a practical one.
I believe we might be overlooking what the phrase "at most" means. Apple's probably outlaid millions in R&D, hosting, advertising, etc to make -- at most -- $50 million annually. At the least, Apple might not even be making the dimes mentioned above. The return on investment is perhaps not the best as far as Apple's stockholders are concerned, as another post mentions -- if taken at face value.
That's why iPod sales are so important. When increased iPod sales, or even sustained iPod sales to Windows users in the face of new competition, and only then, is "WinTunes" a good idea and produces a better ROI than buying US Treasury bonds.
Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money.
In Jaguar, Preview shows every word of the Memory Hole version and blacked out lines galore in the original (using the link from the Memory Hole site), sometimes with yellow-highlighted periods at the end of sentences.
The yellow periods have spots that are yellow in nearly the same spot in the Memory Hole version, but are still readable.
I couldn't google the link up quickly, but I started giving Gates credit as a coder when I read how his BASIC interpreter worked. I've done just a touch of assembly programming as a hobby, and Gates apparently, to save space, was able to cleverly reuse bits of the interpreter when newly written portions of his code matched previously written portions closely.
That is to say that he scoured the code he'd already written to see if there was any place he could JSR to reuse code -- essentially using functions in a language where there wasn't any such thing.
Sure, perhaps this was common practice then, but the point is that he got the concepts. And he, along with Allen, wrote something usable and sellable, and didn't shoot any blanks before becoming profitable. If you can't call Gates a programmer without stretching, people like John Carmack (afaict) are probably the only fellows that deserve the title around here. Which means not very many of us.
(Now this fact, of course, makes Microsoft's attitude towards security even less forgivable; it's not like they have some naive corporate exec running the ship. And, like I said, this makes Gates' comment about "perfect code" even worse. I don't think he's talking about "Code a la Plato's Forms". Rather, he seems to be justifying the security issues his reused, legacy code that didn't have networking in mind has when used in today's world! That's lazy and fairly irresponsible.)
As a coder, sure, there's no such thing as perfect code. But Gates is/was a coder too. When he says "perfect code" I think we can read in some educated context. Gates is still missing the point.
Microsoft is comparing their next generation OS's security to their previous generation where it's hard to compare unfavorably.
MS is not measuring against their competition (How many updates would a Linux server running Apache with J2SE and Tomcat have needed versus IIS with the.NET CLR on Win2k?) and it's certainly not shooting for a hard goal like, "Create a system so that every Windows server can hook up to the net and update before being open for attack."
Here's the quote:
ITB: What about all the reports about vulnerabilities in Microsoft product recently?
BG: We've seen an order of magnitude less vulnerability in the code that's been through the new tools, and we need about another order of magnitude. We've had 12 things in about an eight month period in Windows Server 2003 and with the equivalent level of attack in the previous generation we would have had over 100. We had 43, but adjusting for the level of intensity it's a factor of 10 difference. If we can get another factor of 10, which would get you down to 1.2, plus the improvements in the patching and updating, that's what people want. That should be doable, but that's the piece that doesn't happen overnight.
Tried installing Win2k freah and hitting Windows Update for your security fixes? Without a firewall, guess what? That's not quality. That's not attention to security for current customers. Getting the situation cut by 10 or 100 or 1000 doesn't shift the emphasis to where it should be.
It's not about whether the code's perfect, it's about whether it's created to do what it should. Or something like that.
I wonder how many people have run across this story now and fall into the following category:
1.) Panther is a bit steep right now at $129 and Jaguar is doing just great for now. 2.) They've never heard of LiteSwitchX until now. 3.) They've now downloaded LiteSwitchX and are considering shelling out $15 for it.
I'm not saying the fellow doesn't think his idea's been ripped and burned to the Panther CD, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't think about it being a great marketing ploy for free advertising before he wrote it as well.
If you have a good logical design that compartmentalizes each functional unit of your code (what I'll call "well-factored"), how long should it take to fix any one bug? For a typical app, even of pretty hefty size, you should, in theory, be able to run to the exact object, swap out what's broken, and *poof*, every place that functionality is needed is good to go. XP et al really do lose a lot of time in the overhead it takes to keep two people on any programming task, unit test, and the rest. You might be nearly guaranteed nice code, but what's your opportunity cost? In short, it's having two coders hacking about twice as much on what, if they're mature enough, should be well-documented, modular code!
Now we all know *poof* is not the case, and we all know that a well-factored system is about as hard to come by as nirvana (which means each fix requires ripping out a chunk of code), but the argument is still a valid one. Unless you have a huge system, where perhaps someone's "fixed" a bug by hack on top of hack ("Hrm, Bob's addFunction always returns a number one too low. Instead of bugging Bob, I'll just add one to the result in my function."), bugs today aren't like bugs in pre-object oriented days. If coders in the 80's had the debug tools and langauges we have today... Let's face it, it's much easier to create an Atari 2600 game today than it was when you had to burn to an EPROM to test on hardware each time and print out your code to review it.
The bottom line is whether it's more cost-effective to prevent 99.44% of bugs up front than it is to fix the extra 10% that slip through. I believe the original post is simply suggesting that the cost of fixing on the backside is dropping considerably, especially compared to what the same results would've required decades ago, and that is, honestly, a good point.
(Remember, this isn't upgrading code -- might be awfully tough to make code that's slapped together change backends from, say, flat files to an RDBMS; this is just bug fixing to make what you've got work *now*. But XP tells us not to program thinking that far down the road anyhow, so future scalibility is another topic altogether.)
And stop being so elitist. So what, you can't show off to your Windows brethren and boast about your superiority? Get over it.
I think you missed my point. Not trying to be elitist; far from it! I don't want to have something to show off -- I want a reason that people can understand quickly that shows why they would want to switch to a Mac.
I want more people to use Mac OS X. Heck, I want most PC users to use Mac OS. I want to be in a less elitist position. It's not of my choosing.
Why do I want more Mac users? Here are a few that spring to mind...
* More secure. * Built on top of an OS that had networking in mind from the start, not a kludged client OS. * iChat videoconferencing. * Apple hasn't yet proven they'd illegally maintain a monopoly were they to get one. * Less work for me troubleshooting relatives' computers!
But to get Switchers, you need a quick hook to sell them on. Whether it's awesome hardware (JavaOne was apparently flooded with Powerbooks) or applications that, as was well put, "Just Work" and do neat, everyday, consumer stuff, you need these exclusives to get people to Switch.
Now that iTunes isn't an exclusive, that's one less reason I have, one less piece of leverage Mac OS X has, to win over Switchers. At a previous job, we called it "the elevator speech". If you're caught with your CEO in the elevator and want to explain why your project is mission critical, you'd better have a good 15-20 speech that'll get him interested in what you've got to offer. Same thing when grabbing Switchers. Nobody [normal schmoe] is going to wait as you show them how to use ssh on a Mac and why scp is good, but they will watch you buy an exclusive track to iTunes online and start checking their bank account for Mac funds.
And the other reason take much longer to show. Nobody cares about security until they've lost their credit card numbers...;^)
Just grabbed iTunes for my work box (Win2k) and it's pretty good. The menu *in* the window still wigs me out a little, and the ID3 tag editor takes an incredibly long time periodically with longer songs, but so far a pretty good port. Haven't purchased online yet, but I did browse and it's every bit as neat as on my Mac at home.
Here's what worries me... I dig the iLife apps, but the only one I've been able to show off to friends and family and instantly get a "Wow, that's neat" was iTunes with the Music Store. People like it. It really made them wish they had a Mac. A few enjoy the iPhoto books, but everyone is impressed with iTunes, from ripping to burning to buying (and then burning and ripping and...)
The iPod is similar. Remember when it was Mac-only (it was, wasn't it? For a second or two? Almost surreal now)? That was another reason for Windows (even Linux!) users to covet my favorite OS and hardware.
Now my friends and fam are a download away from having a quarter of iLife, and the most desired of the group. Sales of iTMS tracks should skyrocket -- I've seen it said that Apple should expect to grab 20% of the legit online music market (AP article in local paper). As an Apple stockholder, I hope they get even more. And I'm glad iPods are the best selling mp3 players and my stock's happy iPods are the best selling mp3 players.
My two Macs running OS X are not. What good is all of this for OS X? What does this Windows capitulation say about OS X's future? Will Apple eventually become purely a software company, a la Sega leaving the console market? Will Mac hardware go away as Apple throws their support behind the monopoly (IANAL)? Probably a bit too alarmist, but it's clear that Apple is betting on Windows software and compatiblity for short to medium-term profitability, not a crazy come from behind win for Mac OS. Sure, that's probably smart (and yes, I can see Windows users being more comfortable switching once iTunes is one of their hard core favorites, but that's a reach at best), but it's still a little depressing to see these great Apple ideas leave the Mac and sell out.
All in all, this is great news for Apple but not such good news for Macintosh.
Not too long ago (though it was several years) I was MUDding over a telnet connection to my ISP using my Commodore 128 in 64 mode using Novaterm hooked up a 28.8 hanging out the back of my Turbo232 cartridge.
In a short break between waxing goblins, the fellows I was adverturing with started bragging about who had the nicest hardware. A few people had apparently recently purchased new x86 hardware, and were bragging about processors, RAM, and video cards. Oooooooh, were they about to catch it.
After waiting for everyone to finish with their brags, I broke out with, "I'm using a Commodore 64."
"No way!"
A few Novaterm and CMDweb (stock now with CMDRKEY.com) links later and I had them convinced.
Though it pains me to say just how geeky that is, to think of the C=128 hanging out online with the lastest Nvidia-equipped Pentiums is pretty humorous.
From the article: The plane, with its five-foot wingspan, weighs only 11 ounces and is constructed from balsa wood, carbon fiber tubing and is covered with Mylar film, a cellophane-like material.... The lightweight, low-speed plane was flown indoors at Marshall to prevent wind and weather from affecting the test flights.... Without the need for onboard fuel or batteries, such a plane could carry scientific or communication equipment, for instance, and stay in flight indefinitely.
Okay, they've gotten a plane they weighs less than my foot with a wingspan longer than most 12 year-olds are tall to fly where there's no wind.
Does this have any practical application where a helium blimp -- or a simple antannae -- wouldn't be a better choice? I mean, even if we had something decent sized, this thing's gotta keep moving and sucking energy or it'll come crashing to the ground. It doesn't even hover. And it's not like this has applications with passengers.
But then we find the answer, again from the linked article...
Laser power beaming is a promising technology for future development of aircraft design and operations. The concept supports NASA's mission-critical goals for the development of revolutionary aerospace technologies.
As an ex-on-site government contractor (not that that's required to have a clue here), I think I might see what's going on. NASA has grant money for "revolutionary aerospace tech" and this company is happy to create something impractical that'll soak up enough dough to pay them for a few years. Wish we'd quit looking for new stuff and just send another 1960s capsule to the moon and back.
I realize that's pretty cynical... But honestly, where's a good treatment (better than the article) of what this sort of thing is pratically good for?
As Apple Computer Inc. draws up its game plan for the CPUs that will power its future generations of Mac hardware, the company is holding an ace in the hole: a feature-complete version of Mac OS X running atop the x86 architecture.
There have been rumors of the move to x86 for a while. I'm not sure if I buy them -- that's a ton of QA overhead for a potential move down the line, and hopefully the G5 negates any reason for them to move. Not to mention if Apple swapped processors, all the AltiVec-optimized code would be worth creee-ap without having multiple processor *types* in each new, partially x86 powered Mac. And any way you cut it, Apple would still, I'd assume, stick some hardware dongle in there to do what Open Firmware does now: stop cheap generic hardware (or expensive hardware when you talk Pegasos) from running OS X easily. Apple is a hardware company too, you know. Solutions, not just software, etc.
But the point of the article stands, even if the author was overhyping. Anil (the author) really has two outs:
Due for launch within five years, the chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system... 1.)... providing Apple releases/creates its rumored-but-horribly-unlikely (imo) x86 build of OS X. 2.)... Darwin, which is an OS, just not a very popular one and not much of story. Though AbiWord does run fairly well there with X11 installed.:^)
Why wasn't this a big deal? Well, it appears that 3% of the market brings with it only 3% (if that) of the l33+ h4X0rZ, and even if a hacker wrote something, well, there aren't that many OS X boxes server-side with SSH turned on -- not nearly as many as there are Win2k boxes with MS SQL Server!
Rock solid software is nearly oxymoronic. After working for three different companies and even releasing my releasing my own trialware, I've yet to see anything past some well written versions of Hello, World! that fits that bill. And if you're not rock solid, well, by defn you're a little flaky. I've been impressed with OS X so far, but be careful not to give out your IP when you post that it's unhackable.
(As an aside, I've heard it said that Windows was initially written without a network in mind (makes sense... how often was your box online when you had 3.1 installed?) and the some security holes -- even more importantly, the whole "insecure mindset" people sometimes get from Windows -- are left over from legacy code that hasn't been refactored. Security is something of a mindset thing. OS X, and this is probably your point, took a server-side OS (*BSD) and rebuilt on top of that. It's by design a better network OS, though a previous poster's ref to Win98 "Lite" is a good counterexample of how "insecurity through incest" can be easy to fix.)
What Star Trek was it when they talk about Kirk getting stuck in some computer simulation (academy training) where he essentially had to pick between two evils? Something along the lines of "Lose your ship or lose a world or innocents," or something equally nefarious.
What does he do? Well, he cracks the simulation computer and cheats his way into doing neither. Iirc.
Just to say there's at least one campy cliche story that would agree that cheating != evil and is a legitimate part of the game when you're playing one. When you play god and make your own world, better be careful what laws your creations force people to follow and which you tell them to follow, b/c those are quite different things.
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Yes, but then you've missed the point. For Java 1.5, guess how much you're going to have to pay to upgrade your box running Win2k? Nothing. Will we have to pay $129 for 10.4 to run 1.5 on our Macs? If the past is any indication, quite possibly so.
In fact, if you bought OS X 10.0, you'll've possibly upgraded twice -- over $250 -- just to get a relatively stable 1.4.x implementation on the Mac. That's not cool. Buy a new Mac today and you might very well be upgrading again before you're beyond 1.4.2. That's a big disadvantage over having the JVM maker separate from the OS vendor, as you do on Windows and Linux (x86 specifically; as has been pointed out, Yellow Dog/Liunx for PPC doesn't have a JVM from Sun).
People say Apple has a real dedication to Java, "the best", even, but it's simply not quite so plainly obvious. Buggy VMs, developer specs that break backwards compatiblity (first with Jar Bundles and now even properties that pointed to your Preferences folder disappearing), and "buy or by" mentality -- combined with arguably slower GUI performance -- and you've got a good case Apple Java isn't where it should be.
Again, I love that you've got Java 2 anywhere you've got OS X, but Apple doesn't get a free pass on other fronts for that move. You could even argue the Aqua look & feel, though awfully neat, was a misuse of resources. Would I rather have GUI'd apps that look native, or a JVM that's less buggy? Hrm...
About once every month or so, this same question seems to come up on the Apple Java development list, sometimes to a chorus of near flames where one person will remark, "Eclipse doesn't run half as fast on twice as expensive a Mac as my Pentium" and others will remark, "Depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
Please, folk, yes, the Powerbook is now officially great for hacking Java. James Gosling has used one (as has been remarked) and apparently the JavaONE conference was full of 'em.
Here's all you need to know:
1.) Macs are slower in "anecdotal subjective tests" using Java on a "util of perceived quickness/dollar" ratio.
2.) Apple produces its own port of the JVM, so you're often an official release or two behind Sun's JDKs (so Linux on x86 or Windows).
3.) Java3D is apparently finally out on the Mac. Sheesh. (Another "post a month" topic on the list)
4.) The Apple JVM has historically not been as sharp as Sun's on Windows. Witness the 1.4.1 release on OS X 10.2 -- later unreleased through Software Update, with Swing that's buggy as heck. And I still haven't seen a J2EE specific release.
5.) Prepare to pay for the latest OS (10.3 required for 1.4.2) as well. That's a $129 surtax for Java 1.4.2 that you're not paying on Windows 2k, much less Linux.
And the all-important 6.) Yes, you will look and feel 733+ running your development on a Powerbook.
I use a 1 GHz iMac to hack and though Eclipse's speed is just above a 533 Celeron I run (and much less than my 2 GHz P4), it does just fine. Still, keep an x86 box around for some testing at some point. Write once, test everywhere.
Except that it still doesn't have autocomplete for Java (though it now does for Objective C). No wonder it's so fast, relatively speaking. It's not really doing much SubEthaEdit can't.
If you want a glorified text editor with access for running Ant scripts, may I suggest VIm, instead?
If you want a great Java IDE, go with Eclipse. If you want a text editor, use VIm (or BBEdit if you have to). If you want to code Objective C, use PB/Xcode.
For all you that think MS coders are idiots, no, they're not. Look, from a programming standpoint, wouldn't you rather be calling an API from a controller environment that you *know* works that hoping a third-party library works the way it's "supposed to"? You'd better. One might nearly rightly complain I'm showing some of the "ferocious Not Invented Here complex", but there's some reasoning behind the madness. If you want your program to work right, you use what is, in your opinion, the most reliable means to make that happen.
But before you rightfully flame me out of existence, what MS has to understand is that they're not in a position to "do things right" here. There are cultural reasons -- not programming/techincal ones -- that they have to keep in mind. They've been, with reason, found to have leveraged their vast dominance over the desktop OS market into the Internet browser market as well. That's unfair. MS *has* to open up their apps to allow a user's choice or they're, once again, arguably illegally abusing monopoly status.
The lesson here, and it's what most everyone not calling MS hackers a bunch of idiots (which they obviously aren't. I've never seen a better set of ideas come from one company -- at least before they're run though the MS Profit Maximization Machine, (c) 198x) is arguing, whether they know it or not: These cultural lessons aren't being taught to their programmers. Here, MS is culpable, and the people responsible should be held accountable.
If you want to have two completely anonymous, very large systems talk to each other, SOAP isn't a bad way to go. But how many of us are working for giant firms that require building hooks into our system for a completely anonymous client?
Do note that you can also substitute "anonymous client" with "corporation with a heck of a lot of red tape".
As another post in this thread has already well put, SOAP is the compromise product of a number of these giant corporations. It doesn't do nearly so well when you've got two reasonably-sized *partners* (much less something in-house) working on a very specific product.
Because so many practical implementations don't need all the overhead of SOAP, you see tons of much easier implementations, like XML-RPC, that don't get the same press. This lack of press (so lack of manager buy-in) combined with the one-shot nature taken by so many coding projects, with a bit of the "Not Invented Here complex" thrown in, and I think we begin to see why so many people are scratching the same itch.
Though the author of the post also defines scaling differently, I believe anyone talking Java scaling versus PHP, etc, should read this /. post in the context of this chapter of Designing Enterprise Applications with the J2EE(tm) Platform, Second Edition that deals with "Web-Tier Application Framework Design", particularly Model-View-Controller ("MVC") style frameworks.
...
.NET). You can quickly and easily usher these items around in a mature, object-oriented environment. Define an interface and a generic controller and you'll be able to swap around [in theory] fully-QA'd data delivery mechanisms in a modular fashion.
/. post I linked to above.
;^)
In that paper "Model 1" and "Model 2" set-ups are described in some detail. In short, Model 1 is what most of us web hackers have probably done for years --
1.) A [php/jsp/asp] page for user data entry (data entry GUI) which forwards you to...
2.) Another [php/jsp/asp] for business logic that inserts the jive into an RDBMS, which then forwards you to...
3.) Another page where you might review your data, with links to (1.) or
4.) Another page to edit info which links to...
5.) Another page that edits/updates/deletes existing entries and sends you back to 3.)
You get the point. You've got php script or vbscript or Java slapped in between tags that dynamically create pages. That's Model 1.
Model 1 doesn't scale well. It is, however, a great way to get up quickly, and perfect for smaller sites. That's where PHP and dime store hackers find a home, and that ability comprises the "revolution" asp brought to the web.
Model 2 has a controller which tries to abstract as much as possible out of process described above. Check out this image from the Sun chapter mentioned above. See all the steps that go on from each POST from the client interface.
The point of it is that Java/JSP/J2EE allows -- and has the infrastructure as a langauge to support -- this sort of Model 2, MVC interface (As an aside, this is also one of the big advantages of
In PHP -- and even asp 3.0 -- this is a more difficult thing to pull off, as mentioned in the
And this is where Tomcat shines -- as a key part of the infrastructure that allows more complex, scalable, generic objects and architectures. Most importantly, since J2EE is a language specification, saying Java scales well is accurate. It provides a true OO platform allowing you to implement Model 2's without jumping through hoops. PHP simply (in my experience) doesn't lend itself to this nearly so straighforwardly.
Now what Tomcat 5 does for me that 4 didn't to achieve this scalability (which many posts have well-documented) is what's most interesting about this story, to which I'll now return.
Personally, I sometimes forget that I'm watching through Tivo and that I can skip the ads.
I believe that's the issue, however. You're conditioned to watching ads, and don't even notice that your TV show has been interupted by the commercial interests. If you grew up without a notion of ads -- or of ads as something you'd *always* skipped, I think you'd have a different result.
Don't believe me? When's the last time you listened to an NPR pledge drive or the like? That's a noticable change, isn't it? How about the last hour or so of movies on TV? Now that they've got you invested in the end, the commercials are both much more plentiful and noticable. What if you were watching The Matrix at an IMAX, Neo and Trinity dancing off walls throwing bullets, and *wham*, outta nowhere you've watching a giant advert for Coke? No matter how great the ad, you'd probably find you'd've preferred to buy the world a Coke *before* the movie started, as such.
But if any of the above were the norm and had been for years as you "grew up", do you think you'd notice? I doubt it. You'd've learned what to expect, and not noticed any different, like you do now. It's all about contrast
It may not happen overnight, but long-term I wonder if adverts are viable if TiVo-like jive gets widespread/cheap enough (most people using/able to afford it) and easy enough to use if adverts as we know them today aren't a thing of the past. Ad placement and "picture on top of picture" are going to get a lot more common, folks.
That said, I miss most adverts now by clicking around anyhow. Lots easier to "always watch something" with the scores of channels I've got today than the three I had "growing up". But in a scary bit of conditioning, I can usually feel about how long each break should take, and flip back to my original show the split second that it picks back up a statistically significant amount of the time.
Was that a lunch bell?
This is as bad as the old V-8 Mustang-IIs that required the engine be dropped to replace the back two spark plugs. Even the game boy advance has a user replaceable battery (albeit behind a screw).
;^) There's nasty bolt in the top of my Jeep's Tremec T-150 tranny that's a real bear to get to, so I just busted a hole in the body big enough for a rachet wrench, and voila!
There some reason you feel you always need to hit on all cylinders? Or that you can't rip a couple of holes in the firewall?
Which is the whole issue here, of course. I still haven't quite finished bolting my iBook up after upgrading the hard drive (and it's trivially worse for the wear). I wonder where the PRAM battery is on that monster; shoulda checked while I had the chance. And the PRAM on my Powerbook 1400 required flipping off the lid/screen and cracking the "body" in two. Nobody wants duct tape holding together their iBook body for easy hard drive access or 1400 for PRAM replacements.
I've often wondered if the way autos are put together isn't a result of some mechanics' union to get business "where it should be". It looks like Apple's doing the same thing [as my conspiracy theory] -- uncessarily difficult tasks which, to them, equal pure profit. Great analogy if Pony II's really had to have the engine dropped. That's madness.
That's a fairly reductionist view if taken too far. Not all researchers are tech whizzes (no pun intended), and I've seen a number of, in my case, professors of English Literature who run the same sort of, "Throw up ten pages with Under Construction signs, test publish a few papers, and let the site sit for years, one day to mysteriously disappear," web site lifespan that "Bob's World" might as well.
Perhaps even more interestingly, it doesn't always really matter if you've done great, repeatable research in the "soft science" fields or outright humanities. You don't have to be a literature expect to have a good insight on "Bartleby the Scrivener". A grad student's blog, as an example, might contain excellent contributions to the conversation.
Now that said, in the context of the article -- dealing with "a dermatologist with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver" -- I would tend to agree with you heartily. Hard science needs to pull, in my layman's view, from research that the article's author researched well enough to see that it wasn't a few 0's and 1's that might be pulled later, in general.
And heck, what's the harm in saving the pages on your drive and contacting the original author if they disppear? Hard drive space is cheap. If you take yourself seriously, you might want to grab a snap, even if it is technically illegal (not that I know that it is; Google seems to do it right often).
Words right out of my mouth. I've posted to usenet asking if anyone's tried a hack yet, and some of the iMac deconstruction sites seem to suggest the wires are relatively easy to get to.
But if you could find a way to hack it, you're essentially getting an awfully cool monitor stand plus a Superdrive equipped G4 for $900. That's *much* easier to stomach.
Take apart at xlr8yourmac.com (look at "rainbow colored" wires)
Service manual
There was also a great Japanese site that showed the thing taken apart until the wires were dangling, but I always have the dangest time Googling in Japanese.
I realize there are a few applications that run on x86 Linux and not Linux for PPC for whatever complicated compilations reasons, but can anyone list me some of those applications? I've never heard anyone complain about Yellow Dog Linux (what you'd probably run on PPC hardware). The US Navy didn't seem to have any qualms about YDL.
;^)
/. story about something that people are only worried about doing for the geek value, as far as I can tell. Which I didn't say was a bad reason, mind you. Just not a practical one.
While you're listing apps, make sure you tell me why you'd rather run them on PPC hardware inside of a $100+ x86 emulator instead of on $300 of true x86 hardware with performance (forgive me, Stevie) TO BURN!!
This is a front page
I believe we might be overlooking what the phrase "at most" means. Apple's probably outlaid millions in R&D, hosting, advertising, etc to make -- at most -- $50 million annually. At the least, Apple might not even be making the dimes mentioned above. The return on investment is perhaps not the best as far as Apple's stockholders are concerned, as another post mentions -- if taken at face value.
That's why iPod sales are so important. When increased iPod sales, or even sustained iPod sales to Windows users in the face of new competition, and only then, is "WinTunes" a good idea and produces a better ROI than buying US Treasury bonds.
Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money.
In Jaguar, Preview shows every word of the Memory Hole version and blacked out lines galore in the original (using the link from the Memory Hole site), sometimes with yellow-highlighted periods at the end of sentences.
The yellow periods have spots that are yellow in nearly the same spot in the Memory Hole version, but are still readable.
even calling gates a coder is a stretch
I couldn't google the link up quickly, but I started giving Gates credit as a coder when I read how his BASIC interpreter worked. I've done just a touch of assembly programming as a hobby, and Gates apparently, to save space, was able to cleverly reuse bits of the interpreter when newly written portions of his code matched previously written portions closely.
That is to say that he scoured the code he'd already written to see if there was any place he could JSR to reuse code -- essentially using functions in a language where there wasn't any such thing.
Sure, perhaps this was common practice then, but the point is that he got the concepts. And he, along with Allen, wrote something usable and sellable, and didn't shoot any blanks before becoming profitable. If you can't call Gates a programmer without stretching, people like John Carmack (afaict) are probably the only fellows that deserve the title around here. Which means not very many of us.
(Now this fact, of course, makes Microsoft's attitude towards security even less forgivable; it's not like they have some naive corporate exec running the ship. And, like I said, this makes Gates' comment about "perfect code" even worse. I don't think he's talking about "Code a la Plato's Forms". Rather, he seems to be justifying the security issues his reused, legacy code that didn't have networking in mind has when used in today's world! That's lazy and fairly irresponsible.)
As a coder, sure, there's no such thing as perfect code. But Gates is/was a coder too. When he says "perfect code" I think we can read in some educated context. Gates is still missing the point.
.NET CLR on Win2k?) and it's certainly not shooting for a hard goal like, "Create a system so that every Windows server can hook up to the net and update before being open for attack."
Microsoft is comparing their next generation OS's security to their previous generation where it's hard to compare unfavorably.
MS is not measuring against their competition (How many updates would a Linux server running Apache with J2SE and Tomcat have needed versus IIS with the
Here's the quote:
ITB: What about all the reports about vulnerabilities in Microsoft product recently?
BG: We've seen an order of magnitude less vulnerability in the code that's been through the new tools, and we need about another order of magnitude. We've had 12 things in about an eight month period in Windows Server 2003 and with the equivalent level of attack in the previous generation we would have had over 100. We had 43, but adjusting for the level of intensity it's a factor of 10 difference. If we can get another factor of 10, which would get you down to 1.2, plus the improvements in the patching and updating, that's what people want. That should be doable, but that's the piece that doesn't happen overnight.
Tried installing Win2k freah and hitting Windows Update for your security fixes? Without a firewall, guess what? That's not quality. That's not attention to security for current customers. Getting the situation cut by 10 or 100 or 1000 doesn't shift the emphasis to where it should be.
It's not about whether the code's perfect, it's about whether it's created to do what it should. Or something like that.
I wonder how many people have run across this story now and fall into the following category:
1.) Panther is a bit steep right now at $129 and Jaguar is doing just great for now.
2.) They've never heard of LiteSwitchX until now.
3.) They've now downloaded LiteSwitchX and are considering shelling out $15 for it.
I'm not saying the fellow doesn't think his idea's been ripped and burned to the Panther CD, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't think about it being a great marketing ploy for free advertising before he wrote it as well.
If you have a good logical design that compartmentalizes each functional unit of your code (what I'll call "well-factored"), how long should it take to fix any one bug? For a typical app, even of pretty hefty size, you should, in theory, be able to run to the exact object, swap out what's broken, and *poof*, every place that functionality is needed is good to go. XP et al really do lose a lot of time in the overhead it takes to keep two people on any programming task, unit test, and the rest. You might be nearly guaranteed nice code, but what's your opportunity cost? In short, it's having two coders hacking about twice as much on what, if they're mature enough, should be well-documented, modular code!
Now we all know *poof* is not the case, and we all know that a well-factored system is about as hard to come by as nirvana (which means each fix requires ripping out a chunk of code), but the argument is still a valid one. Unless you have a huge system, where perhaps someone's "fixed" a bug by hack on top of hack ("Hrm, Bob's addFunction always returns a number one too low. Instead of bugging Bob, I'll just add one to the result in my function."), bugs today aren't like bugs in pre-object oriented days. If coders in the 80's had the debug tools and langauges we have today... Let's face it, it's much easier to create an Atari 2600 game today than it was when you had to burn to an EPROM to test on hardware each time and print out your code to review it.
The bottom line is whether it's more cost-effective to prevent 99.44% of bugs up front than it is to fix the extra 10% that slip through. I believe the original post is simply suggesting that the cost of fixing on the backside is dropping considerably, especially compared to what the same results would've required decades ago, and that is, honestly, a good point.
(Remember, this isn't upgrading code -- might be awfully tough to make code that's slapped together change backends from, say, flat files to an RDBMS; this is just bug fixing to make what you've got work *now*. But XP tells us not to program thinking that far down the road anyhow, so future scalibility is another topic altogether.)
Yeah, that or the guy who submitted the story wrote it just a touch tongue in cheek. Not sure which. ;^)
(Americans love smilies like dogs love trucks.)
And stop being so elitist. So what, you can't show off to your Windows brethren and boast about your superiority? Get over it.
;^)
I think you missed my point. Not trying to be elitist; far from it! I don't want to have something to show off -- I want a reason that people can understand quickly that shows why they would want to switch to a Mac.
I want more people to use Mac OS X. Heck, I want most PC users to use Mac OS. I want to be in a less elitist position. It's not of my choosing.
Why do I want more Mac users? Here are a few that spring to mind...
* More secure.
* Built on top of an OS that had networking in mind from the start, not a kludged client OS.
* iChat videoconferencing.
* Apple hasn't yet proven they'd illegally maintain a monopoly were they to get one.
* Less work for me troubleshooting relatives' computers!
But to get Switchers, you need a quick hook to sell them on. Whether it's awesome hardware (JavaOne was apparently flooded with Powerbooks) or applications that, as was well put, "Just Work" and do neat, everyday, consumer stuff, you need these exclusives to get people to Switch.
Now that iTunes isn't an exclusive, that's one less reason I have, one less piece of leverage Mac OS X has, to win over Switchers. At a previous job, we called it "the elevator speech". If you're caught with your CEO in the elevator and want to explain why your project is mission critical, you'd better have a good 15-20 speech that'll get him interested in what you've got to offer. Same thing when grabbing Switchers. Nobody [normal schmoe] is going to wait as you show them how to use ssh on a Mac and why scp is good, but they will watch you buy an exclusive track to iTunes online and start checking their bank account for Mac funds.
And the other reason take much longer to show. Nobody cares about security until they've lost their credit card numbers...
Just grabbed iTunes for my work box (Win2k) and it's pretty good. The menu *in* the window still wigs me out a little, and the ID3 tag editor takes an incredibly long time periodically with longer songs, but so far a pretty good port. Haven't purchased online yet, but I did browse and it's every bit as neat as on my Mac at home.
Here's what worries me... I dig the iLife apps, but the only one I've been able to show off to friends and family and instantly get a "Wow, that's neat" was iTunes with the Music Store. People like it. It really made them wish they had a Mac. A few enjoy the iPhoto books, but everyone is impressed with iTunes, from ripping to burning to buying (and then burning and ripping and...)
The iPod is similar. Remember when it was Mac-only (it was, wasn't it? For a second or two? Almost surreal now)? That was another reason for Windows (even Linux!) users to covet my favorite OS and hardware.
Now my friends and fam are a download away from having a quarter of iLife, and the most desired of the group. Sales of iTMS tracks should skyrocket -- I've seen it said that Apple should expect to grab 20% of the legit online music market (AP article in local paper). As an Apple stockholder, I hope they get even more. And I'm glad iPods are the best selling mp3 players and my stock's happy iPods are the best selling mp3 players.
My two Macs running OS X are not. What good is all of this for OS X? What does this Windows capitulation say about OS X's future? Will Apple eventually become purely a software company, a la Sega leaving the console market? Will Mac hardware go away as Apple throws their support behind the monopoly (IANAL)? Probably a bit too alarmist, but it's clear that Apple is betting on Windows software and compatiblity for short to medium-term profitability, not a crazy come from behind win for Mac OS. Sure, that's probably smart (and yes, I can see Windows users being more comfortable switching once iTunes is one of their hard core favorites, but that's a reach at best), but it's still a little depressing to see these great Apple ideas leave the Mac and sell out.
All in all, this is great news for Apple but not such good news for Macintosh.
Not too long ago (though it was several years) I was MUDding over a telnet connection to my ISP using my Commodore 128 in 64 mode using Novaterm hooked up a 28.8 hanging out the back of my Turbo232 cartridge.
In a short break between waxing goblins, the fellows I was adverturing with started bragging about who had the nicest hardware. A few people had apparently recently purchased new x86 hardware, and were bragging about processors, RAM, and video cards. Oooooooh, were they about to catch it.
After waiting for everyone to finish with their brags, I broke out with, "I'm using a Commodore 64."
"No way!"
A few Novaterm and CMDweb (stock now with CMDRKEY.com) links later and I had them convinced.
Though it pains me to say just how geeky that is, to think of the C=128 hanging out online with the lastest Nvidia-equipped Pentiums is pretty humorous.
From the article:
The plane, with its five-foot wingspan, weighs only 11 ounces and is constructed from balsa wood, carbon fiber tubing and is covered with Mylar film, a cellophane-like material.... The lightweight, low-speed plane was flown indoors at Marshall to prevent wind and weather from affecting the test flights.... Without the need for onboard fuel or batteries, such a plane could carry scientific or communication equipment, for instance, and stay in flight indefinitely.
Okay, they've gotten a plane they weighs less than my foot with a wingspan longer than most 12 year-olds are tall to fly where there's no wind.
Does this have any practical application where a helium blimp -- or a simple antannae -- wouldn't be a better choice? I mean, even if we had something decent sized, this thing's gotta keep moving and sucking energy or it'll come crashing to the ground. It doesn't even hover. And it's not like this has applications with passengers.
But then we find the answer, again from the linked article...
Laser power beaming is a promising technology for future development of aircraft design and operations. The concept supports NASA's mission-critical goals for the development of revolutionary aerospace technologies.
As an ex-on-site government contractor (not that that's required to have a clue here), I think I might see what's going on. NASA has grant money for "revolutionary aerospace tech" and this company is happy to create something impractical that'll soak up enough dough to pay them for a few years. Wish we'd quit looking for new stuff and just send another 1960s capsule to the moon and back.
I realize that's pretty cynical... But honestly, where's a good treatment (better than the article) of what this sort of thing is pratically good for?
Quickly googled up a link from eWeek:
... providing Apple releases/creates its rumored-but-horribly-unlikely (imo) x86 build of OS X. ... Darwin, which is an OS, just not a very popular one and not much of story. Though AbiWord does run fairly well there with X11 installed. :^)
As Apple Computer Inc. draws up its game plan for the CPUs that will power its future generations of Mac hardware, the company is holding an ace in the hole: a feature-complete version of Mac OS X running atop the x86 architecture.
There have been rumors of the move to x86 for a while. I'm not sure if I buy them -- that's a ton of QA overhead for a potential move down the line, and hopefully the G5 negates any reason for them to move. Not to mention if Apple swapped processors, all the AltiVec-optimized code would be worth creee-ap without having multiple processor *types* in each new, partially x86 powered Mac. And any way you cut it, Apple would still, I'd assume, stick some hardware dongle in there to do what Open Firmware does now: stop cheap generic hardware (or expensive hardware when you talk Pegasos) from running OS X easily. Apple is a hardware company too, you know. Solutions, not just software, etc.
But the point of the article stands, even if the author was overhyping. Anil (the author) really has two outs:
Due for launch within five years, the chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system...
1.)
2.)
I like OS X. I use it on my home PC every day.
But perhaps you missed the OpenSSH exploit that was "fixed" by the 10.2.8 update that was later pulled for various reasons.
Why wasn't this a big deal? Well, it appears that 3% of the market brings with it only 3% (if that) of the l33+ h4X0rZ, and even if a hacker wrote something, well, there aren't that many OS X boxes server-side with SSH turned on -- not nearly as many as there are Win2k boxes with MS SQL Server!
Rock solid software is nearly oxymoronic. After working for three different companies and even releasing my releasing my own trialware, I've yet to see anything past some well written versions of Hello, World! that fits that bill. And if you're not rock solid, well, by defn you're a little flaky. I've been impressed with OS X so far, but be careful not to give out your IP when you post that it's unhackable.
(As an aside, I've heard it said that Windows was initially written without a network in mind (makes sense... how often was your box online when you had 3.1 installed?) and the some security holes -- even more importantly, the whole "insecure mindset" people sometimes get from Windows -- are left over from legacy code that hasn't been refactored. Security is something of a mindset thing. OS X, and this is probably your point, took a server-side OS (*BSD) and rebuilt on top of that. It's by design a better network OS, though a previous poster's ref to Win98 "Lite" is a good counterexample of how "insecurity through incest" can be easy to fix.)
What Star Trek was it when they talk about Kirk getting stuck in some computer simulation (academy training) where he essentially had to pick between two evils? Something along the lines of "Lose your ship or lose a world or innocents," or something equally nefarious.
What does he do? Well, he cracks the simulation computer and cheats his way into doing neither. Iirc.
Just to say there's at least one campy cliche story that would agree that cheating != evil and is a legitimate part of the game when you're playing one. When you play god and make your own world, better be careful what laws your creations force people to follow and which you tell them to follow, b/c those are quite different things.