The short answer is yes: OS X is a Unix variant - so you only need to recompile the software. In fact many tools of OS X are typical Unix programs, apache, perl, gcc, tcsh, etc...
The long answer is, it depends. While OS X is clearly Unix, there are some issues:
OS X is from the BDS Unix familly, so linux programs might need some tweaking.
OS X is structured differently from other Unixes, standart paths are different and configuration files are very different.
Most Unix system use the X11 standart for GUI. OS X does not use X11 but instead a protocol based on display PDF. While it is possible to install an X11 server (for instance Xfree), this is not the default installation.
Still many Unix programs have been ported to OS X in the rather short timeframe of it's existence(~six months).
In switzerland, this is also the case. When you change cantons (the subdivisions of switzerland) you have to notify the authorities. This means than moving from one city to the other implies a lot of annoying paperwork. Carrying you ID card is also mandatory.
Honnestly I don't feel that my privacy is so much threatened. The difference lies first in the policy of the state (here there are serious laws about privacy) and in what information is gathered, and how it could be used and the legal background (I have more obligations, but the are IMHO better laws to protect me).
A state needs to gather information, the problem is it should require some work. Face it, a lot can be learnt simply by watching what you do, but it requires a lot of resources (a guy trailing you). The problem is not what information can be found out (low tech surveillance can find a lot out), but how difficult it is - this is where the issue with technology lies. Having access to sensitive information a no cost is the problem.
Where you live, the state needs to know this simply for taxing. I would be asthonished that a modern states has no idea where it's citizen live.
Unique identifier, while it makes sense that the state assigns you one, this number should only be used by the state, and not other organisations.
Your religion, ethnic group, etc... I don't see why the state should know this, nor any other organisation. This was one the first bad things with the Jews, I think there was some code to mark jews in official documents - bad.
Who you are - this seems quite natural around here, also think that the information on the card is a problem only if the card is checked. This implies police-people, so it's work to collect acutal data. Having a security officer checking I am who I'm supposed to be while bording a aircraft makes sense.
I would be worried if there started to be bar-code scanner in certain places, say the entrances of restaurants, or subways. This would be very bad. For the moment, corporation seem to do much more intrusive stuff.
Your DNA, this is linked to your medical record and should be treated as such, nobody except you doctor should have access to this.
Also remember that laws are very important. What is the penalty for breaching privacy? Most european countries have a much stricter approach than the US. And it's pointless to make a distinction betweeen corporation and state, once the info is gathered, it's to late. Strong corporation will have access to state information, and the state will be able to access corporate information.
To convince yourself about the influence of Apple on USB devices, look at their look. Most USB devices can be recognised because of their iMac look. Those devices where not designed with a beige PC in mind.
I agree (mod the parent up please).
No one is sure that the internet was used for this attack. What is certain is that the constant kibbles between the different agencies did not help to solve the problem.
Before asking for free access to more information, what about a debate on how the agencies handled the data they had. I'm pretty sure that better coordination between the agencies and non US agencies can do a lot more against terrorism that reading people's emails...
One thing you should mention is also that Israel spends quite a large part of it's resources (both humans and monetary) to get this kind of security.
People have to do a lot of military service. I'm Swiss, it's already a pain to do the military service and the military budget is huge for the country but it's a joke compared to Israel. Somebody has to do the soldier and to pay for the weapons...
Diplomacy and economic measures will have a large impact in the crisis, in the form of what message will come out of it. The US can rush out, and maybe stomp out this terrorist group. There will be others.
The point is, fanatics do not appear spontanously. People with a nice live, food, a house, and a future don't want to blow things up. It takes time for those groups to dissolve, but they can appear quite fast.
Diplomacy will be a key part of this crisis - only diplomacy can prevent new sources of terrorists.
Take Pakistan, this situation is putting a lot of stress on the country. A lot of people from Afganistan are fleeing to Pakistan. The country has "accepted" to help the US (not that it had a lot of choice). This has generated a lot of tension both inside the country and with it's neighbours. If Pakistan collapses as a result of this crisis, there will be one more civil war, misery and despair. Guess who gets the bad karma?
It's all about messages, it can be "we try to make things better" or "we kill our enemies and put those who helped us in trouble". If you leave it with the military, the message might well be the second.
I also have the impression that war is not the adequate word. But then again, the US is already doing "a war" on drugs does not look like normal police activities.
Maybe if you call something a war for a long time, it becomes a war...
Sounds a lot like those transformer toys where you assemble many small robots to get one big robot.
It would be funny to have those small bots assemble to make car or trucks, or aircrafts.
Will Bandai or another of the compagnies that built those toys sue those guys? I suppose someone has already patented the idea of Robot changing into transportation mean.
Re:Rational governments?
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Yes, and it ultimately helped to achieve the goal of the time: Russia & the former Soviet states now have a rational, fledgeling democracies in place.
Hem, as far as I know, the soviet union collapsed and a new govermenent replaced it. While the US certainly had an influence, the Russian did the change and still do. Also Russia is indeed a rational democratic country that is just slightly killing people in Tchetchenia, agreed, they call it fighting terrorism...
Winning a war is not everything, yes the US helped rebuild germany and japan, but it implied more than just winning the war. There was the Marshal plan. Kennedy went to Berlin. It took presence, it took ressources, it took dedication, it took time.
It is a shame that many of the people that we turned to to fight the scourge of Communisim are now biting the hand that fed them. They ulitmately proved to be irrational also. It is now time to replace.
Indeed, the afghan should be thankfull. As we all know, once the russian left the country, the US thanked them by helping them to recover with a huge presence, massive credit funding and education campaign, like they did in Europe or in Japan. We all remember the poignant speech that Ronald Reagan gave in Kabul...
While there is probably less incentive to do it, as there are less Macintosh applications around, it will probably be an easier project than wine.
Carbon is probably a simpler API than win32, it was simplified to make the port to OS X possible.
Carbon is very similar to the classical macintosh API. There is already an open-source project to support this API: Mace
While the Carbon API is not well documented, it's ancestor classic was very well documented.
It must be noted that on Mac OS X, carbon calls are not mapped on cocoa calls. Both API access some private low-level API. There has been a lot of discussion about what API is more native, and it seems the answer is: none.
A few months ago, a demo of QT for OS X was released, I was very intersted, so I tried it out.
Honnestly the thing was rather dissapointing, at least for me.
The Aqua widgets are not mapped to native widgets, but simply QT widgets with a skin. The problem was that it was very visible, they acted wierd and where rather unresponsive (more than the native widgets, I have a relatively fast machine).
I think one thing that would be nice, would be to do the same trick than apple did for swing, use native piers, at least for the Aqua look.
It crashed quite a lot...
Inter-application support was very bad. Copy paste was shoddy: somtimes you would get garbage, text would get accents garbled, (I'm swiss/french, so this is very annoying), no possibility of copy/pasting images. Same for drag/drop. I don't remember if printing was working, but I think it was simply not there...
OpenGL and direct graphics (the asteroid game) where OK, but then again, Mac OS X has direct OpenGL support.
The toolkit did no seem to use OS standart mechanism. For instance, under OS X, preferences are not stored in an invisible file, but in some kind of centralized database using a reverse DNS notation (like java classes).
It reminded me of the times when MS pushed for Office application for the Mac based on a litteral port of the Win32 code (Word 6), it was slow, and looked and acted as a disguised windows application.
QT for Mac is not available freely (like it is for X11), just when Apple decided that they would give away all the devellopement tools for free.
Of course I'm aware that this was a beta, and many OS X APIs are not stable, but in it's current state, Qt did not look to me as a viable option for serious desktop applications.
I think that you are inferring that survival is a "right" as opposed to a "freedom" -- or at least in the way I use those terms. If I
am correct in my assumption of your meaning, then I must disagree. Survival is not a right. You have no right to live -- only
the right to be free from being harmed by others. If I push you in the water, then I am an attempted murderer and deserve to be
harshly punished. If I see you're in the water and I deign not to risk my life to save you, I may be unkind, but I am not infringing
your rights, either. Likewise, you have no right to have your brother or your government point a gun at me and force me to risk
my life to save you.
This is intersting, and shows a different mind-set. In certain european coutries, not helping people who are at risk is considered a crime, in french is called "Non assistance à personne en danger". In the US you can get sued if you help somebody in a accident, in europe, you migth get sued if you dont' help the person (of course, if saving the person represented a risk for you, you will not be sued.
Anyway if we take the truck analogy further. I don't have the money - my survival depends on the truck. Why would you have the right to money - where do you find this? In the human right declaration? There is no such thing as a right for money - corporation would like this right to exist, but it simply does not. You can invent it, maybe your country defines such laws and rights, but mine do not. In the end it's simply your beliefs (or your countrie's) against mine.
Anyway, if I really risk my live, and will do whatever it takes to survive. This means stealing your truck, hurting you in the process. If you think about decisions, I am in a win-loose situation, you are in a loose/loose situation. The most reasonable solution is for you to lend me your truck (minise loses). In the case of pharma corporations, this means loosing money they would never have gotten - in fact they could have sold the cheap derivative themselves, and win some money.
I sure will! But again, I have no right to expect someone to help me. As I stated in another post, I do not have a right to something just because I need it. I need money to get my pickup truck fixed. Will you give it to me? I need my truck! I demand your money! I have a right to your money -- you don't need it as much as I do! Do you see how foolish that is?
So if we follow you logic, the jews had no right to ask to live. So refusing them access to a country (as switzerland did) on basis on money was right? If this is the case, this would end a lot of debate around here...
The problem is that you make no distinction between normal, civilised situations, and emergencies. Laws, justice, capitalism, all those nice words and principles only exist in a civilised context, in case of emercency, it all falls down.
Also you base all your reasoning on the idea that there is a large difference between doing things actively (me killing you) and passively (me doing nothing to prevent you from dying). This difference can be quite subtle. If I kill you by not stoping my car active? If I kill you by swerving a little bit? At the extreme, intent can often be blended with negligence or stupidity. Off course, stupidity cannot be a crime...
And yes, your last point is correct. I think everyone is responsible for their own actions. If I do something that kills me, then it
is nobody's fault but my own, now is it? If it is my lifestyle to jump out of the tops of trees, are you going to pay my medical bills
for me? Because I am hurt and have a right to your money?
The problem is not a fault problem, the problem is about access to proper care. In this case we have the choice of giving people access to the proper care, or pushing them to act against us. From a cilvized logic (we want to get along reasonably well) you get into a war logic (your survival implies fighting me). In this logic, not only the rules and your money are threatened, but also your survival.
Funny, we all talk about free as in speech, free as in beer, but never about the freedom to survive. This is not a freedom that is given, this is typically the freedom you take, and surprise - if you don't take it, you die.
The issue here is not whenether this is just or not, or even legal (which in this case is debatable). The issue is about dying or not. If you where in the same situation, you would take the same decision. Of course, you need to prentend that something justifies what happens to them, they did this or that wrong... Surprise, shit happens, and if you don't have enought money, you're fucked. So you either sit there and die, or do something...
The day you get cancer or another serious illness, and will not be able to pay the medication you will also don't care about the pharma's funding IP law, you will want to live.
The only thing you can be sure is that other people will find good excuses why you should die, you should have worn more sun-screen, you should not have eaten marshmallows, you should not have lived in the US, you should not have worked with a computer, of course with such a livestyle you had it comming, etc...
I just hope you won't need to understand this the hard way...
If dead people can send letters, they surely can vote. If Microsoft can get away with this, they will surely try something bigger. Given the state of the voting system in the US, the logical next step would be to try to get Bill Gates for president, he has the money, and with all dead of the country voting for him, he can win easily. They simply need a good wording for this, something like open voting. This would solve the Departement of Justice Problem.
Then again, this new technique would simply be a rehash of something done by other coutries around the world for a long time, so it's a perfect Microsoft inovation...
Do you seriously think Apple is going to freely license Quartz?
Quartz is a implementation of display pdf, whose spec is available freely from Adobe. Some say Apple choose this technology because they did not not want to pay a license to Adobe. In any cases, you don't need to license display pdf, you can implement it freely - the spec is open.
The point of using pdf is that there is a world outside the screen, using the same technology for screen display, printing and distributing documents is a nice feature.
OpenGL seems overkill to handle stuff in 2D, and misses some feature that are very usefull in 2D arena and document storage: color correction, advanced font handling, font inclusion, compression.
I see OpenGL and display PDF as two complimentary technologies with complimentary uses. I would not want to implement a 3D game using display pdf, and I would not want to implement a page layout program using OpenGL...
While it might rejoince some that everybody is jumping the alpha-blending anti-aliasing bandwagon behind Apple's OS X, what annoys me it that they do not copy the intelligent concept behind Aqua: display PDF.
What Apple has done is define an abstraction for graphical applications. What other copy is some of the nice uses of those abstractions: anti-aliasing and alpha-blending.
It's really a shame the only thing they understand is the surface...
Imagine the heroine blonde of course, who works for a small company, that does something very cute, design machine that help handicaped people.
One day, the open-source crowd takes her design/program, steals and does an open source clone. The small compagny is threatened to go out of buisness (scene with nice people very sad) and they hire a talented lawyer with a golden heart (cute, Keanu would be nice).
The open-source clone program is of course bad and will be used for nefarious objectives. First the cheap rip-off product, will be produced abroad (boo) by underpayed worker (boo) and will of course be defect, putting the live of handicaped people in danger (scene without sound but some sad music where the girl tries to convince some official that it's dangerous, and they nod her off saying that nothing can be done).
But of course the bad open-source product is a front for a terrible weapon, some mad dictator can use it to drive nuclear missiles than can go thru the defense shield (insert some patriotic music).
Of course the open-source programmers, all horribles geeks with an inferiority complex will do the standart hollywood bad guys mistakes and invite the heroine to a hacker conference to taunt her, the conference is of course is some uncivilised country, say Germany or Finland.
The open-source hackers are all ugly, have no identity and look like clones (this is theme of the movie, and we can rip off star wars) and off course try to have sex with the girl - of course she's in love with the cute lawyers and resists and out-programs those showinistic pigs and we have a happy end...
No, the plan is that US law is applied everywhere, not the other way round.
People from any country should be held by three laws, US law, international law, and national law. Of course people from the US are only subject to US law.
Where is the part that is difficult to understand? Quite simple, really it's called the new world order.
Well, well the notion that open-source people are some kind of criminal communists seems to go forward. Microsoft said it, it's un-american.
The american governement seems to be convinced, so now the next logical step in the agenda is Hollywood. It was always easy to tell who where america's baddies at a moment simply by looking a the bad guys in the movie.
So if the next hollywood movie tells about a sinister plot of open-sources hackers against civilisation/capitalism/christianity/whatever, you will know it's time to pack...
Yawn, nothing to write home about
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Mac Rants
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So what exacly is the problem? Apple gives out numbers that put their computer in the nice light?
My god, you mean marketing would actually tweak the facts?
As for the site comparing different computers, there again what is the problem? This review is biased, but then again what review is not. Giving points for a case that is easy to open and the box having handle is a choice, some people might even agree on it.
As for not mentionning Athlon, obviously all computer are supermarket type brands...
The end conclusion is that for brand computers, you get more or less the same for the same price. It's not a message that is exaclty controversial.
Why the hell does this need to be on slashdot? A link on a article with nearly no content linking to a biased comparison of computers. Stuff that matters alright...
The way things are hinted in the article, the patent is over some encyphering code. This of course makes things worse. So even if the encoding is stupid, finding prior art can be quite a challenge.
Also imagine MS lawyers hinting that somme Intellectual Property might be on the SMB server, and that the open-source project not only violates their patent, but was reverse ingeniering on some of their protection schemes, so they invoke the DCMA. It might not be very logical, but MS lawyers managed more bizzare things.
At the next linux conference, send the FBI guys. Voilà, open-source problem solved.
You need leaders if you want to lead the market...
I think the issue of leadership that rises with open source project is often the lack of focus. People code what they feel is missing, or what they feel like coding. This means the devellopement follow a more organic and darwinist path, not a strategic one.
I don't think that the organic way is worse than the strategic way. While things might be less focuses, they also are not so easily distracted by fads. Sure people will add new skins and UI gimicks to programs, but those who believe their software should do this or that will simply not change ways because this or that is the fad.
I would say that the main issue nowadays with open source is simply political. Most people I know that program something open source do it because they feel it is missing, or they want to fiddle with the code or notion, or want a variant of this or that, or a doing research in universities.
They have only a vague political vision - they certainly don't do it to overthrow microsoft - it might be a nice side effect, but it's not the main motivation - they do things for themselves.
But of course this does not fit with the dominant capitalism credo. And this psychology is not liked by the media: can't do headlines with people doing things in their corner because they feel like it. Real geeks don't go to discuss with the media, they code in the basement...
What happens is simply the corporations noticing that open source does not behave they way a corporation does, big surprise. So of course they think that if open-sources wants to take strategic positions in the market it should have strategic leadership...
Of course this premise is broken, because open-source is a good approach do build sturdy systems which might not make economical sense (at least for MS), most killer apps where first closed source. Eventually, an open-source contender came, but generally the original app was closed source. I don't think this will change tomorow, but then again I don't think this is tragical.
It's easy to convince people to code to get their PC and their hardware do this or that - to support a card, or to crash less, or to build a clone of this cool game, or to have a window manager like this system. It's another game to convince them to build a framework whose goal is not so clear...
While the system could be broken by using counters, this could be countered by parsing only certain portion of the mail or counting the frequency of certain words. Would work very well on pure text spam, but not on attachement stuff.
What would be funny would be to see the false positives of such a system. Many mails I get from the administration all look the same, I wonder if they would be considered as spam - they are quite similar to spam: useless and to numerous...
Slashdot Mirror
The short answer is yes: OS X is a Unix variant - so you only need to recompile the software. In fact many tools of OS X are typical Unix programs, apache, perl, gcc, tcsh, etc...
The long answer is, it depends. While OS X is clearly Unix, there are some issues:
- OS X is from the BDS Unix familly, so linux programs might need some tweaking.
- OS X is structured differently from other Unixes, standart paths are different and configuration files are very different.
- Most Unix system use the X11 standart for GUI. OS X does not use X11 but instead a protocol based on display PDF. While it is possible to install an X11 server (for instance Xfree), this is not the default installation.
Still many Unix programs have been ported to OS X in the rather short timeframe of it's existence(~six months).In switzerland, this is also the case. When you change cantons (the subdivisions of switzerland) you have to notify the authorities. This means than moving from one city to the other implies a lot of annoying paperwork. Carrying you ID card is also mandatory.
Honnestly I don't feel that my privacy is so much threatened. The difference lies first in the policy of the state (here there are serious laws about privacy) and in what information is gathered, and how it could be used and the legal background (I have more obligations, but the are IMHO better laws to protect me).
A state needs to gather information, the problem is it should require some work. Face it, a lot can be learnt simply by watching what you do, but it requires a lot of resources (a guy trailing you). The problem is not what information can be found out (low tech surveillance can find a lot out), but how difficult it is - this is where the issue with technology lies. Having access to sensitive information a no cost is the problem.
- Where you live, the state needs to know this simply for taxing. I would be asthonished that a modern states has no idea where it's citizen live.
- Unique identifier, while it makes sense that the state assigns you one, this number should only be used by the state, and not other organisations.
- Your religion, ethnic group, etc... I don't see why the state should know this, nor any other organisation. This was one the first bad things with the Jews, I think there was some code to mark jews in official documents - bad.
- Who you are - this seems quite natural around here, also think that the information on the card is a problem only if the card is checked. This implies police-people, so it's work to collect acutal data. Having a security officer checking I am who I'm supposed to be while bording a aircraft makes sense.
I would be worried if there started to be bar-code scanner in certain places, say the entrances of restaurants, or subways. This would be very bad. For the moment, corporation seem to do much more intrusive stuff.
- Your DNA, this is linked to your medical record and should be treated as such, nobody except you doctor should have access to this.
Also remember that laws are very important. What is the penalty for breaching privacy? Most european countries have a much stricter approach than the US. And it's pointless to make a distinction betweeen corporation and state, once the info is gathered, it's to late. Strong corporation will have access to state information, and the state will be able to access corporate information.To convince yourself about the influence of Apple on USB devices, look at their look. Most USB devices can be recognised because of their iMac look. Those devices where not designed with a beige PC in mind.
I agree (mod the parent up please). No one is sure that the internet was used for this attack. What is certain is that the constant kibbles between the different agencies did not help to solve the problem.
Before asking for free access to more information, what about a debate on how the agencies handled the data they had. I'm pretty sure that better coordination between the agencies and non US agencies can do a lot more against terrorism that reading people's emails...
One thing you should mention is also that Israel spends quite a large part of it's resources (both humans and monetary) to get this kind of security.
People have to do a lot of military service. I'm Swiss, it's already a pain to do the military service and the military budget is huge for the country but it's a joke compared to Israel. Somebody has to do the soldier and to pay for the weapons...
The point is, fanatics do not appear spontanously. People with a nice live, food, a house, and a future don't want to blow things up. It takes time for those groups to dissolve, but they can appear quite fast.
Diplomacy will be a key part of this crisis - only diplomacy can prevent new sources of terrorists. Take Pakistan, this situation is putting a lot of stress on the country. A lot of people from Afganistan are fleeing to Pakistan. The country has "accepted" to help the US (not that it had a lot of choice). This has generated a lot of tension both inside the country and with it's neighbours. If Pakistan collapses as a result of this crisis, there will be one more civil war, misery and despair. Guess who gets the bad karma?
It's all about messages, it can be "we try to make things better" or "we kill our enemies and put those who helped us in trouble". If you leave it with the military, the message might well be the second.
I also have the impression that war is not the adequate word. But then again, the US is already doing "a war" on drugs does not look like normal police activities.
Maybe if you call something a war for a long time, it becomes a war...
Sounds a lot like those transformer toys where you assemble many small robots to get one big robot. It would be funny to have those small bots assemble to make car or trucks, or aircrafts.
Will Bandai or another of the compagnies that built those toys sue those guys? I suppose someone has already patented the idea of Robot changing into transportation mean.
Hem, as far as I know, the soviet union collapsed and a new govermenent replaced it. While the US certainly had an influence, the Russian did the change and still do. Also Russia is indeed a rational democratic country that is just slightly killing people in Tchetchenia, agreed, they call it fighting terrorism...
Winning a war is not everything, yes the US helped rebuild germany and japan, but it implied more than just winning the war. There was the Marshal plan. Kennedy went to Berlin. It took presence, it took ressources, it took dedication, it took time.
Indeed, the afghan should be thankfull. As we all know, once the russian left the country, the US thanked them by helping them to recover with a huge presence, massive credit funding and education campaign, like they did in Europe or in Japan. We all remember the poignant speech that Ronald Reagan gave in Kabul...While there is probably less incentive to do it, as there are less Macintosh applications around, it will probably be an easier project than wine.
It must be noted that on Mac OS X, carbon calls are not mapped on cocoa calls. Both API access some private low-level API. There has been a lot of discussion about what API is more native, and it seems the answer is: none.
A few months ago, a demo of QT for OS X was released, I was very intersted, so I tried it out. Honnestly the thing was rather dissapointing, at least for me.
This is intersting, and shows a different mind-set. In certain european coutries, not helping people who are at risk is considered a crime, in french is called "Non assistance à personne en danger". In the US you can get sued if you help somebody in a accident, in europe, you migth get sued if you dont' help the person (of course, if saving the person represented a risk for you, you will not be sued.
Anyway if we take the truck analogy further. I don't have the money - my survival depends on the truck. Why would you have the right to money - where do you find this? In the human right declaration? There is no such thing as a right for money - corporation would like this right to exist, but it simply does not. You can invent it, maybe your country defines such laws and rights, but mine do not. In the end it's simply your beliefs (or your countrie's) against mine.
Anyway, if I really risk my live, and will do whatever it takes to survive. This means stealing your truck, hurting you in the process. If you think about decisions, I am in a win-loose situation, you are in a loose/loose situation. The most reasonable solution is for you to lend me your truck (minise loses). In the case of pharma corporations, this means loosing money they would never have gotten - in fact they could have sold the cheap derivative themselves, and win some money.
So if we follow you logic, the jews had no right to ask to live. So refusing them access to a country (as switzerland did) on basis on money was right? If this is the case, this would end a lot of debate around here...The problem is that you make no distinction between normal, civilised situations, and emergencies. Laws, justice, capitalism, all those nice words and principles only exist in a civilised context, in case of emercency, it all falls down.
Also you base all your reasoning on the idea that there is a large difference between doing things actively (me killing you) and passively (me doing nothing to prevent you from dying). This difference can be quite subtle. If I kill you by not stoping my car active? If I kill you by swerving a little bit? At the extreme, intent can often be blended with negligence or stupidity. Off course, stupidity cannot be a crime...
The problem is not a fault problem, the problem is about access to proper care. In this case we have the choice of giving people access to the proper care, or pushing them to act against us. From a cilvized logic (we want to get along reasonably well) you get into a war logic (your survival implies fighting me). In this logic, not only the rules and your money are threatened, but also your survival.Funny, we all talk about free as in speech, free as in beer, but never about the freedom to survive. This is not a freedom that is given, this is typically the freedom you take, and surprise - if you don't take it, you die.
The issue here is not whenether this is just or not, or even legal (which in this case is debatable). The issue is about dying or not. If you where in the same situation, you would take the same decision. Of course, you need to prentend that something justifies what happens to them, they did this or that wrong... Surprise, shit happens, and if you don't have enought money, you're fucked. So you either sit there and die, or do something...
The day you get cancer or another serious illness, and will not be able to pay the medication you will also don't care about the pharma's funding IP law, you will want to live.
The only thing you can be sure is that other people will find good excuses why you should die, you should have worn more sun-screen, you should not have eaten marshmallows, you should not have lived in the US, you should not have worked with a computer, of course with such a livestyle you had it comming, etc...
I just hope you won't need to understand this the hard way...
If dead people can send letters, they surely can vote. If Microsoft can get away with this, they will surely try something bigger. Given the state of the voting system in the US, the logical next step would be to try to get Bill Gates for president, he has the money, and with all dead of the country voting for him, he can win easily. They simply need a good wording for this, something like open voting. This would solve the Departement of Justice Problem.
Then again, this new technique would simply be a rehash of something done by other coutries around the world for a long time, so it's a perfect Microsoft inovation...
Quartz is a implementation of display pdf, whose spec is available freely from Adobe. Some say Apple choose this technology because they did not not want to pay a license to Adobe. In any cases, you don't need to license display pdf, you can implement it freely - the spec is open.
The point of using pdf is that there is a world outside the screen, using the same technology for screen display, printing and distributing documents is a nice feature.
OpenGL seems overkill to handle stuff in 2D, and misses some feature that are very usefull in 2D arena and document storage: color correction, advanced font handling, font inclusion, compression.
I see OpenGL and display PDF as two complimentary technologies with complimentary uses. I would not want to implement a 3D game using display pdf, and I would not want to implement a page layout program using OpenGL...
While it might rejoince some that everybody is jumping the alpha-blending anti-aliasing bandwagon behind Apple's OS X, what annoys me it that they do not copy the intelligent concept behind Aqua: display PDF.
What Apple has done is define an abstraction for graphical applications. What other copy is some of the nice uses of those abstractions: anti-aliasing and alpha-blending.
It's really a shame the only thing they understand is the surface...
You mean people on ./actually read the article first and post after?
My god, this should be in the headlines...
Imagine the heroine blonde of course, who works for a small company, that does something very cute, design machine that help handicaped people.
One day, the open-source crowd takes her design/program, steals and does an open source clone. The small compagny is threatened to go out of buisness (scene with nice people very sad) and they hire a talented lawyer with a golden heart (cute, Keanu would be nice).
The open-source clone program is of course bad and will be used for nefarious objectives. First the cheap rip-off product, will be produced abroad (boo) by underpayed worker (boo) and will of course be defect, putting the live of handicaped people in danger (scene without sound but some sad music where the girl tries to convince some official that it's dangerous, and they nod her off saying that nothing can be done).
But of course the bad open-source product is a front for a terrible weapon, some mad dictator can use it to drive nuclear missiles than can go thru the defense shield (insert some patriotic music).
Of course the open-source programmers, all horribles geeks with an inferiority complex will do the standart hollywood bad guys mistakes and invite the heroine to a hacker conference to taunt her, the conference is of course is some uncivilised country, say Germany or Finland.
The open-source hackers are all ugly, have no identity and look like clones (this is theme of the movie, and we can rip off star wars) and off course try to have sex with the girl - of course she's in love with the cute lawyers and resists and out-programs those showinistic pigs and we have a happy end...
No, the plan is that US law is applied everywhere, not the other way round.
People from any country should be held by three laws, US law, international law, and national law. Of course people from the US are only subject to US law.
Where is the part that is difficult to understand? Quite simple, really it's called the new world order.
Well, well the notion that open-source people are some kind of criminal communists seems to go forward. Microsoft said it, it's un-american.
The american governement seems to be convinced, so now the next logical step in the agenda is Hollywood. It was always easy to tell who where america's baddies at a moment simply by looking a the bad guys in the movie.
So if the next hollywood movie tells about a sinister plot of open-sources hackers against civilisation/capitalism/christianity/whatever, you will know it's time to pack...
So what exacly is the problem? Apple gives out numbers that put their computer in the nice light? My god, you mean marketing would actually tweak the facts?
As for the site comparing different computers, there again what is the problem? This review is biased, but then again what review is not. Giving points for a case that is easy to open and the box having handle is a choice, some people might even agree on it. As for not mentionning Athlon, obviously all computer are supermarket type brands...
The end conclusion is that for brand computers, you get more or less the same for the same price. It's not a message that is exaclty controversial.
Why the hell does this need to be on slashdot? A link on a article with nearly no content linking to a biased comparison of computers. Stuff that matters alright...
The way things are hinted in the article, the patent is over some encyphering code. This of course makes things worse. So even if the encoding is stupid, finding prior art can be quite a challenge.
Also imagine MS lawyers hinting that somme Intellectual Property might be on the SMB server, and that the open-source project not only violates their patent, but was reverse ingeniering on some of their protection schemes, so they invoke the DCMA. It might not be very logical, but MS lawyers managed more bizzare things.
At the next linux conference, send the FBI guys. Voilà, open-source problem solved.
You need leaders if you want to lead the market...
I think the issue of leadership that rises with open source project is often the lack of focus. People code what they feel is missing, or what they feel like coding. This means the devellopement follow a more organic and darwinist path, not a strategic one.
I don't think that the organic way is worse than the strategic way. While things might be less focuses, they also are not so easily distracted by fads. Sure people will add new skins and UI gimicks to programs, but those who believe their software should do this or that will simply not change ways because this or that is the fad.
I would say that the main issue nowadays with open source is simply political. Most people I know that program something open source do it because they feel it is missing, or they want to fiddle with the code or notion, or want a variant of this or that, or a doing research in universities. They have only a vague political vision - they certainly don't do it to overthrow microsoft - it might be a nice side effect, but it's not the main motivation - they do things for themselves.
But of course this does not fit with the dominant capitalism credo. And this psychology is not liked by the media: can't do headlines with people doing things in their corner because they feel like it. Real geeks don't go to discuss with the media, they code in the basement...
What happens is simply the corporations noticing that open source does not behave they way a corporation does, big surprise. So of course they think that if open-sources wants to take strategic positions in the market it should have strategic leadership...
Of course this premise is broken, because open-source is a good approach do build sturdy systems which might not make economical sense (at least for MS), most killer apps where first closed source. Eventually, an open-source contender came, but generally the original app was closed source. I don't think this will change tomorow, but then again I don't think this is tragical.
It's easy to convince people to code to get their PC and their hardware do this or that - to support a card, or to crash less, or to build a clone of this cool game, or to have a window manager like this system. It's another game to convince them to build a framework whose goal is not so clear...
While the system could be broken by using counters, this could be countered by parsing only certain portion of the mail or counting the frequency of certain words. Would work very well on pure text spam, but not on attachement stuff.
What would be funny would be to see the false positives of such a system. Many mails I get from the administration all look the same, I wonder if they would be considered as spam - they are quite similar to spam: useless and to numerous...