When was the last time you met a Windows admin who was able to completely administrate a Windows server from the command line? I have met a few very competent Windows specialists who were deeply knowledgable of the Windows commandline interface, they do exist, but even these guys had tasks that they could only perform via some lame GUI even after installing a whole slew of Microsoft and third party add-on commandline utilities. The typical Windows admin is ususally lost without a GUI and some seem to be downright scared to death of the Windows commandline.
While I don't approve of this method of cutting corners on R&D the Chinese are doing nothing that the US hasn't done in the past and still is doing today, and not just to nations that could be a potential threat either. The USA also spies on it's own allies and that includes abusing base rights and surveillance assets, supposedly there to be used for the benefit of NATO defense, to conduct industrial espionage on other NATO nations. The US has even used these assets to commit occasional acts of economic sabotage, a famous example would be the Saudi Arab airliner deal that Boeing managed to snatch away from Airbus with Uncle Sam's help. Not that I'm complaning mind you, we Europeans are not exactly angels either and the whole Airbus mess did have two positive results. Firstly we now know that we can't even trust our friends in the USA as far as we can throw them (a lesson they are now slowly learning them selves, in reverse, so to speak) and secondly many corporations here now take communications security more seriously than the military. Judging from the way it has been chewing away at Boeing's market share Airbus certainly seems to have learned it's lesson.
The price of peace is eternal vigilance.... even your friend will stab you in the back to butter his own slice of bread.... learn the lesson, go on and get over it.
As a general rule, I always turn off the location settings on my phone.
That will help but it won't solve the problem even if you manage to turn out any kind of E911 related GPS system (I am assuming that is what you are talking about) that may be built into your mobile phone. The thing is that every time that you use the phone your service provider can still track your location since they know which GSM cell you are in and they can even roughly position you within the cell without ever retrieving any location data from your phone. This is done by using data retrieved from the GSM trancievers in each cell which allows your sevice provider or anybody they are cooperating with to approximately calculate your location. They can even trigger interactions with your phone to discover your location without you ever using it, of course this only works if you keep it switched on all the time. Then of course there are military systems used for tracking GSM phones (among other things) which are much more powerful.
Just like anything, the U.S. has the power to abuse it. But I feel, as with many others, that the U.S. is less likely to abuse it due to its economic reliance upon it. The U.S. would only resort to "cyberwarfar" as one of the last resorts, it would seem.
The road to debacle is littered with examples of politicians of all nationalities acting without thinking. In view of the fact that US politicians seem to have had a partickularly virulent spate of acting without thinking recently and doing so on a grander scale than politicians of most other nationalities have done during the same period I would not get my hopes up about US leaders resorting to Cyberwarfare only as a last resort. They might resort to it to resolve quite trivial disputes, you only have to take a look at some of the frightening bills that have been voted on (and sometimes passed) in the US national assembly over the years to realize this.
My biggest beef with OS X software ( aside from the Finder, which just needs a *complete* re-write ) is the recent lack of UI consistency. Try this : launch Safari, Mail, and iTunes ( most recent versions, in OS X 10.4 ). Check out the look of the windows... are any of them the same? Not really, they're all slightly different-looking... and iTunes looks like no other OS X app ever !
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization for those three Apple-authored applications having such different looks ? Who needs 4 different styles of window dressing on a single machine? They're making Windows look like the platform with UI consistency, WTF is going on at Apple with these differing looks for different apps ?
Believe it or not I use all those apps regularly and the inconsistency does not bother me all that much but then again I like the complete absence of an every-body-must-be-the-same, 'lemming mentality' this inconsistency brings with it. For all it's faults the OS.X graphical UI is still infinitely superior to Windows which it self is full of suboptimally implemented applications (Try looking at some of the sytem Administrative tools that ship with Windows 2003 Server just for example. I partickularly hate the 'IIS Manager' and the 'Computer Management' tools). The example on arstechnica where they cycled between the different looks for Finder was nice, they did have a point and it left me thoroughly confused when I tried it. However, how many users out there are flipping between Finder looks every 2 seconds? Or, more realistically, every two or three days? Pick a look and stick with it, having a choice is not necessarily a failing. I will however agree with the fact that Finder needs a rewrite simply because it has ergonimics shortcomings in all of its incarnations.
... the powers-that-be add insult to injury. A few years ago German police woke up to the fact that a large portion of their wiretapping operation had gone sour. Apparently they used some sort of a digital voice-message like scheme to implement the surveillance and somebody, presumably a beancounter at one of the telecoms, decided to bill the customers in question for this 'service'.
"Will air travel now require one to arrive at the airport 5 minutes earlier than usual, to provide a skin-swab sample before boarding the plane?"
I'd worry about other consequences of this technology. For example will it enable Insurance companies to more effectively bill you for every genetic disorder that you are N% more likely to get than the next guy? Yes it probably will, as soon as they refine it into a low cost, high volume, technology to test for various disease causing genes. Insurance companies are aching to use such cost effective genetic diagnostic technology to stick consumers in higher risk groups (which translates in being able to bill them more money) based on their likelyhood to get some genetically caused disease later on in life. There are already many people that are unensurable as a result of having some chronic disease and this technology will swell their numbers. People show no outward signs of a genetic predisposition to get some disease and seem perfectly healty today might become ill or even uninsurable in the future thanks to this technology.
But enough sarcasm. That article had some good quotes in it: ...the debacle shows just how reluctant the labels are to change their business model to reflect the distribution powers -- good and bad -- of the Internet.
This one should make good ammunitions for the Newsweeks cartoonist: ...They [the lables] insist on chasing this white whale...
And my favorite: Nobody will want to pull a 'Sony' now.
Having your business practices compared to one of Homer Simpsons most famous stunts most famous stunts has to burn the ego... badly.
... is a relative term I could compile a report like this demonstrating that Linux admins take 68% longer to perform a set of cherry picked tasks you can do alot faster on a Windows machine that has a nice easy to use GUI management tool specially designed to do those same tasks. I could also demonstrate to you that Windows admins take 68% longer to perform certain cherry picked tasks because those same Windows GUI management tools (Windows command line tools tend to suck ass) simply don't enable you to perform those tasks as efficiently as you can by doing them with shell/perl scripts on the Linux command line. Comparing Windows to Linux/Unix is to some extent akin to comparing cats and dogs. The design philosophies of Linux/Unix are fundamentally different from those of Windows. The former are meant to be more flexible and targeted at better educated operators while Windows seems to be geared firstly towards corporations who want something that a relatively low skilled person, preferably without a high level of education (and thus a lower salary), can easily administrate and secondly it is geared towards the mostly clueless average consumer. Then there is OS.X which does an admirable job of being just as easy, if not easyer to use than Windows, (while still being more secure) but it still has all the power of Linux/Unix making it a nice compromise.
... kindhearted soul please translate claim 20 from Lawyer to plain English for me?
20. A method comprising: receiving a system call, wherein the system call is formatted for requesting a service from a first operating system, wherein the system call is included in a first object code block, wherein the first object code block is a run-time translation of a second object code block; determining which system call services of a second operating system are needed for providing the service; determining whether system call services for servicing the system call have been disabled, wherein the determining is based on a tamper-resistance policy; servicing the system call, if the system call services for servicing the system call have not been disabled.
Of course they can't and don't expect to. Their goal is to make sure it does not effect profits. People will always hack and pirate and Apple can't stop them. Their goal is to make it hard enough that most people won't bother and so that 99.9% of users would rather use a Apple system than deal with hacking another system to sort of work. Heck people ran Mac OS in emulators on x86 hardware years and years ago. It just was never enough to make any difference in the marketplace. Do you think Apple cares if 500 hackers get OS X sort of running on commodity boxes? Hell no, these people would probably never have bought a legitimate copy anyway and even if they would have it is not worth the effort to lock the system down more just to sell 500 more copies. Anyone who thinks more than a tiny percentage of the market will be running a hacked version is quite mistaken.
I agree, I have seen OS.X for Intel installed and running on a random PC laptop (and that was an older OS.X version with less security) and the problem isn't just the effort involved in cracking OS.X and getting it to work. It is the fact that once you have it installed and working all sorts of hardware, from a simple USB key to the display card and the CD/DVD recorder, don't work 100%, some programs won't work and what does work is often unstable. All in all you have to pour more effort into installing a hacked OS.X and keeping it going on a random PC (and it's not a given that your random PC will work very well enough for OS.X to even boot) as you would getting Linux to work and keeping it working (and Linux at least is practically guaranteed to boot on your random PC and likely to work better). So why bother?
...things have quite reached the point where Google has taken over from Microsoft as the source of all evil. It is much more that Google is now beginning to play the Anti-Christ to Microsoft's Lucifer in their quest to turn the internet and the entire computer using world in general into a cororate purgatory. Anybody who says anything nice about either of them will, of course, immediately be modded down to -1 flamebait and promoted to the exulted status of a 'false prophet'.
There are a few apps that are really great on OS X, but that is all I use it for. Linux is my primary OS. Just because all the pussy, wannabe users fled to OS X, doesn't mean that OS X is better. It's better than Windows, but that's about all that can be said for OS X.
Let me guess... you sat on a cactus this morning and now you are venting your pain in words?
You should do only that with a LGPL (or similar) software; GLP forbids it -and if GPL is not enforceable, then you have no license at all-.
Actually GPL reqires all 'derivative works' of GPL'ed software to be GPL'ed as well. So in effect everything depends on your local court systems definition of the term: 'derivative works'. In the US for example there has never been a court decision actually confirming that software which links to GPL'ed libraries is therefore by default derived from those GPL products as you seem to be stating, AFAIK most cases that have gone to court ended in a settlement so this issue has never been tested in that country. However, even if software linking to GPL'ed libraries was eventually found to be derived work by a US court, some other country's courts might rule differently because they define 'derivative works' less strictly. So in effect interpretations of GPL could and probably will end up being somewhat different from country to country.
Defending copyright infringement of any source code is ridiculous. You can't accidently copy a line from someone else's program to yours. Infringement is only deliberate.
That issue is not quite simple. Like the another poster pointed out you can end up with code that looks alot like an OSS implementation quite by chance simply because there is a very limited number of ways to solve a certain problem. Another way you could end up in trouble because of OSS could happen is if one of your developers decided to cut corners on a project and rips code from and Open Source project without telling you or if you merge with another company and find out that they have built Open Souce code into the application code that you acquired in the merger. If these developers strip off the comments and hide their tracks well it might not be obvious at all to you or your code reviewers that the code came form an OSS project. One other way you could get into troube over Opens Source software is if you produce a commercial application that links to Open Source libaries. From what I know it is not at all legally clear in some countries whether this quaifies your commercial application as a derivetive work. If somebody takes you to court over this and the judge rules an app that links to Open Source code is a derivative work you would be in trouble. In all of these cases (except perhaps the last one since it is still a legal gray area) it would be hard to accuse you of 100% evil and deliberate IP theft or infringement and I can see how an insurance that protects you during a resultant law suit and the subsequent repair work to get rid of the infringing code might come in handy if it isn't to expensive, especially for a startup company.
...Works perfect with Linux. All except the fingerprint scanner...
Now that is a pity, that fingerprint scanner is one really cool feature. I can't wait for something similar to turn up on the PowerBook, especially if it ties into the keychain. No more passwords....
Not exactly... the brick throwers don't bother wasting their time with the Apple sports car or the Linux dune buggy. They are vulnerable... no system is secure. The attack is designed to destroy the Windows grocery getter because thats most (~85%-90%) of what is on the road and there's money (big money when you talk about adware) in doing so. Basically they get more hack for their buck. If this were an Apple or Linux world, I would imagine they would suffer similar problems.
If that were true my non Windows systems should never get a hack attempt which is not the case. If I were to stop patching my non Windows systems today they would eventually get owned so its not as if they are bullet proof. My Linux web servers in partickular get regular probes by hackers (or is it crackers?) and so does my OS.X system. Admittedly many of these probes are Windows specific but there is still a significant number of serious Unix/Linux/OS.X specific attempts so it's not as if 99.5% of the effort is directed at Windows as you are claiming. The greater quantity of Windows specific hacks out there is not solely due to the smaller install base of non Windows systems, although that is a factor, but also due to the traditionally sucky native security setup on Windows systems (it has improved lately). Windows owes alot of it's market share to the fact that it was marketed as a system that could be administrated by semi skilled (and thus less expensive) personnel and in order achieve this, security was sacrificed. Efforts to harden Windows notwithstanding Microsoft is still dealing with the consequences of that legacy. It is certainly true that apart from hard-core crackers most of the vermin out there (which is mostly cracking computers for money and not for fun) don't bother with Linux/Unix/and OS.X machines because there is fewer of them but it also has to do with the fact that Windows machines are still simply that much more easy to crack.
If my car had millions of people throwing bricks I'd be amazed if it lasted 30 seconds.
That is a nice analogy, but the problem is that the grand parent still had a point. I have three cars, My shiny Apple sports car, my Linux dune buggy kit car, and my booring gray Windows station waggon. Amazingly enough my Apple sports car and the Linux dune buggy stand up to the millions of bricks that get thrown at them just fine. I mean, in view of the complete absence of broken windows, dents and scratched paint I'd say they hardly know the bricks exist. Now my Windows station waggon on the other hand really took a beating the first time I took it for a spin. In the end I had to fit it with solid steel armor, build up the chassis (due to the weight of the armor) and fit it with bullet proof glass to deal with all those bricks. I even planned to add a turret with a 20mm cannon but the police would not give me a license for it. All in all this indicates to me that the guys at Apple motors and Linux Kit Cars Inc. did something right that the guys at Windows automobile company screwed up woldn't you agree?
...your RFID passport or tamper with it in any other way. These passports contain an anti-terrorist self-distruct mechanism and any tampering with said mechanism could result in it being activated causing in severe injury to you and any other civilan personnel in the vicinity. Modifications and periodic maintenance of these passports should only be performed by qualified ordinance experts. Be sure to keep your new RFID passport in a cool place, out of the sun and do not wrap it in aluminium foil as this might interfere with the GPS sub system installed in your passport for your safety in order to allow the Department of Homeland Security to monitor your movements at all times.
1. Chronic Nerdyness. 2. Windows BSODS. 3. They think that just because something is free it also costs nothing, or next to nothing, to operate it. 4. They are developing an embedded system and want complete freedom to recode the OS. 5. They have sat down, done the math and found out it makes sound business sense to do so. ... the list goes on... N. Masochism?
Second, any code editor is a tool. In the end, they are a fancy way to create text files to compile into binary. There are people who use VS to write code without understanding what it's doing behind the scenes, just like there are people who drive without knowing how an internal combustion engine works.
Finally, there are people who hand-write all their code, waste alot of time, and still write bad code.
I have written several C# programs in Windows using nothing but the 'vi' editor, GNU tools and various freely available Microsoft development tools and their free compiler. I suppose you would argue that this is wasting time but I feel that I learned something from the experience. (never mind the endless amusement of VS monkeys reaction to the realization you can write complex applications in a Windows commandline window without paying a red cent for flashy development tools) What I gained from this waste of time is that I am now able to work my way through all sorts of code including the auto generated crud many VS monkeys avoid touching with almost religious reverance. Not all of us hand writing code monkeys write bad code and not everybody who drives a car and spends some time finding out how an internal combustion engine works is wasting their time either. You will discover the truth of that soon enough if you ever have your car break down on you in a remote place where you can not quickly summon somebody, with your mobile phone, who has wasted his/her time finding out what makes an internal combustion engine tick. You and I have an irreconcilable difference in philosophy. Perhaps one has to be a 24 carat nerd to be willing to waste ones time on understanding how the tools one is using actually work? From my point of view wasting my time on this pursuit makes me a better professional since it better prepares me to deal with the unexpected.
Something does need to change. It seems that it has become too easy for politicians to give away our rights in the name of fighting terrorism. However, I don't think those suggestions will help the situation.
If only because corporate bribery^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying efforts will always flow to the place where they can do the most good for the corporations. If you weaken the Senate and strenghten the House the corportations will simply refocus their lobbying efforts to the place with the most power. It would make more sense to emburden the Senate, the House and the President with strict anti corruption laws and I am sure that will happen.... some day.... perhaps even the same day that pigs fly?
No amount of artificial propping-up by local governments is going to keep it from happening. Get used to it.
I have gotten used to it. What bugs me about this brave new global economy is that the people who are telling me to smile and get used to the lower wages in our brave new global economy belong to the same coterie of blood sucking parasites that are also responsible for other wonderful aspects of our brave new global economy such as propping up artifical trade barriers to drive up the prices for various goods and services. Now if our brave new global economy would result in truly free trade in every way like, just for example.... free trade in food stuffs and an end to agricultural subsidies in the USA and EU which would result in a significant lowering of my grocery bill I would get even more used to our brave new global economy. Unfortunately that is not likely to happen since it would have a detrimental effect on the parasite population...
Slashdot Mirror
... of a windowing GUI on a server?
When was the last time you met a Windows admin who was able to completely administrate a Windows server from the command line? I have met a few very competent Windows specialists who were deeply knowledgable of the Windows commandline interface, they do exist, but even these guys had tasks that they could only perform via some lame GUI even after installing a whole slew of Microsoft and third party add-on commandline utilities. The typical Windows admin is ususally lost without a GUI and some seem to be downright scared to death of the Windows commandline.
While I don't approve of this method of cutting corners on R&D the Chinese are doing nothing that the US hasn't done in the past and still is doing today, and not just to nations that could be a potential threat either. The USA also spies on it's own allies and that includes abusing base rights and surveillance assets, supposedly there to be used for the benefit of NATO defense, to conduct industrial espionage on other NATO nations. The US has even used these assets to commit occasional acts of economic sabotage, a famous example would be the Saudi Arab airliner deal that Boeing managed to snatch away from Airbus with Uncle Sam's help. Not that I'm complaning mind you, we Europeans are not exactly angels either and the whole Airbus mess did have two positive results. Firstly we now know that we can't even trust our friends in the USA as far as we can throw them (a lesson they are now slowly learning them selves, in reverse, so to speak) and secondly many corporations here now take communications security more seriously than the military. Judging from the way it has been chewing away at Boeing's market share Airbus certainly seems to have learned it's lesson.
The price of peace is eternal vigilance.... even your friend will stab you in the back to butter his own slice of bread.... learn the lesson, go on and get over it.
As a general rule, I always turn off the location settings on my phone.
That will help but it won't solve the problem even if you manage to turn out any kind of E911 related GPS system (I am assuming that is what you are talking about) that may be built into your mobile phone. The thing is that every time that you use the phone your service provider can still track your location since they know which GSM cell you are in and they can even roughly position you within the cell without ever retrieving any location data from your phone. This is done by using data retrieved from the GSM trancievers in each cell which allows your sevice provider or anybody they are cooperating with to approximately calculate your location. They can even trigger interactions with your phone to discover your location without you ever using it, of course this only works if you keep it switched on all the time. Then of course there are military systems used for tracking GSM phones (among other things) which are much more powerful.
Just like anything, the U.S. has the power to abuse it. But I feel, as with many others, that the U.S. is less likely to abuse it due to its economic reliance upon it. The U.S. would only resort to "cyberwarfar" as one of the last resorts, it would seem.
The road to debacle is littered with examples of politicians of all nationalities acting without thinking. In view of the fact that US politicians seem to have had a partickularly virulent spate of acting without thinking recently and doing so on a grander scale than politicians of most other nationalities have done during the same period I would not get my hopes up about US leaders resorting to Cyberwarfare only as a last resort. They might resort to it to resolve quite trivial disputes, you only have to take a look at some of the frightening bills that have been voted on (and sometimes passed) in the US national assembly over the years to realize this.
My biggest beef with OS X software ( aside from the Finder, which just needs a *complete* re-write ) is the recent lack of UI consistency. Try this : launch Safari, Mail, and iTunes ( most recent versions, in OS X 10.4 ). Check out the look of the windows... are any of them the same? Not really, they're all slightly different-looking... and iTunes looks like no other OS X app ever !
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization for those three Apple-authored applications having such different looks ? Who needs 4 different styles of window dressing on a single machine? They're making Windows look like the platform with UI consistency, WTF is going on at Apple with these differing looks for different apps ?
Believe it or not I use all those apps regularly and the inconsistency does not bother me all that much but then again I like the complete absence of an every-body-must-be-the-same, 'lemming mentality' this inconsistency brings with it. For all it's faults the OS.X graphical UI is still infinitely superior to Windows which it self is full of suboptimally implemented applications (Try looking at some of the sytem Administrative tools that ship with Windows 2003 Server just for example. I partickularly hate the 'IIS Manager' and the 'Computer Management' tools). The example on arstechnica where they cycled between the different looks for Finder was nice, they did have a point and it left me thoroughly confused when I tried it. However, how many users out there are flipping between Finder looks every 2 seconds? Or, more realistically, every two or three days? Pick a look and stick with it, having a choice is not necessarily a failing. I will however agree with the fact that Finder needs a rewrite simply because it has ergonimics shortcomings in all of its incarnations.
I agree, it's a stupid metaphor.
Dude! What did you expect from a member of Tony Blair's government? As far as I know that group contains no sentient life-forms.
... the powers-that-be add insult to injury. A few years ago German police woke up to the fact that a large portion of their wiretapping operation had gone sour. Apparently they used some sort of a digital voice-message like scheme to implement the surveillance and somebody, presumably a beancounter at one of the telecoms, decided to bill the customers in question for this 'service'.
"Will air travel now require one to arrive at the airport 5 minutes earlier than usual, to provide a skin-swab sample before boarding the plane?"
I'd worry about other consequences of this technology. For example will it enable Insurance companies to more effectively bill you for every genetic disorder that you are N% more likely to get than the next guy? Yes it probably will, as soon as they refine it into a low cost, high volume, technology to test for various disease causing genes. Insurance companies are aching to use such cost effective genetic diagnostic technology to stick consumers in higher risk groups (which translates in being able to bill them more money) based on their likelyhood to get some genetically caused disease later on in life. There are already many people that are unensurable as a result of having some chronic disease and this technology will swell their numbers. People show no outward signs of a genetic predisposition to get some disease and seem perfectly healty today might become ill or even uninsurable in the future thanks to this technology.
I for one have only this to say:
...the debacle shows just how reluctant the labels are to change their business model to reflect the distribution powers -- good and bad -- of the Internet.
...They [the lables] insist on chasing this white whale...
Thank you Sony!
But enough sarcasm. That article had some good quotes in it:
This one should make good ammunitions for the Newsweeks cartoonist:
And my favorite:
Nobody will want to pull a 'Sony' now.
Having your business practices compared to one of Homer Simpsons most famous stunts most famous stunts has to burn the ego... badly.
... is a relative term I could compile a report like this demonstrating that Linux admins take 68% longer to perform a set of cherry picked tasks you can do alot faster on a Windows machine that has a nice easy to use GUI management tool specially designed to do those same tasks. I could also demonstrate to you that Windows admins take 68% longer to perform certain cherry picked tasks because those same Windows GUI management tools (Windows command line tools tend to suck ass) simply don't enable you to perform those tasks as efficiently as you can by doing them with shell/perl scripts on the Linux command line. Comparing Windows to Linux/Unix is to some extent akin to comparing cats and dogs. The design philosophies of Linux/Unix are fundamentally different from those of Windows. The former are meant to be more flexible and targeted at better educated operators while Windows seems to be geared firstly towards corporations who want something that a relatively low skilled person, preferably without a high level of education (and thus a lower salary), can easily administrate and secondly it is geared towards the mostly clueless average consumer. Then there is OS.X which does an admirable job of being just as easy, if not easyer to use than Windows, (while still being more secure) but it still has all the power of Linux/Unix making it a nice compromise.
... kindhearted soul please translate claim 20 from Lawyer to plain English for me?
20. A method comprising: receiving a system call, wherein the system call is formatted for requesting a service from a first operating system, wherein the system call is included in a first object code block, wherein the first object code block is a run-time translation of a second object code block; determining which system call services of a second operating system are needed for providing the service; determining whether system call services for servicing the system call have been disabled, wherein the determining is based on a tamper-resistance policy; servicing the system call, if the system call services for servicing the system call have not been disabled.
Of course they can't and don't expect to. Their goal is to make sure it does not effect profits. People will always hack and pirate and Apple can't stop them. Their goal is to make it hard enough that most people won't bother and so that 99.9% of users would rather use a Apple system than deal with hacking another system to sort of work. Heck people ran Mac OS in emulators on x86 hardware years and years ago. It just was never enough to make any difference in the marketplace. Do you think Apple cares if 500 hackers get OS X sort of running on commodity boxes? Hell no, these people would probably never have bought a legitimate copy anyway and even if they would have it is not worth the effort to lock the system down more just to sell 500 more copies. Anyone who thinks more than a tiny percentage of the market will be running a hacked version is quite mistaken.
I agree, I have seen OS.X for Intel installed and running on a random PC laptop (and that was an older OS.X version with less security) and the problem isn't just the effort involved in cracking OS.X and getting it to work. It is the fact that once you have it installed and working all sorts of hardware, from a simple USB key to the display card and the CD/DVD recorder, don't work 100%, some programs won't work and what does work is often unstable. All in all you have to pour more effort into installing a hacked OS.X and keeping it going on a random PC (and it's not a given that your random PC will work very well enough for OS.X to even boot) as you would getting Linux to work and keeping it working (and Linux at least is practically guaranteed to boot on your random PC and likely to work better). So why bother?
...things have quite reached the point where Google has taken over from Microsoft as the source of all evil. It is much more that Google is now beginning to play the Anti-Christ to Microsoft's Lucifer in their quest to turn the internet and the entire computer using world in general into a cororate purgatory. Anybody who says anything nice about either of them will, of course, immediately be modded down to -1 flamebait and promoted to the exulted status of a 'false prophet'.
There are a few apps that are really great on OS X, but that is all I use it for. Linux is my primary OS. Just because all the pussy, wannabe users fled to OS X, doesn't mean that OS X is better. It's better than Windows, but that's about all that can be said for OS X.
Let me guess... you sat on a cactus this morning and now you are venting your pain in words?
You should do only that with a LGPL (or similar) software; GLP forbids it -and if GPL is not enforceable, then you have no license at all-.
Actually GPL reqires all 'derivative works' of GPL'ed software to be GPL'ed as well. So in effect everything depends on your local court systems definition of the term: 'derivative works'. In the US for example there has never been a court decision actually confirming that software which links to GPL'ed libraries is therefore by default derived from those GPL products as you seem to be stating, AFAIK most cases that have gone to court ended in a settlement so this issue has never been tested in that country. However, even if software linking to GPL'ed libraries was eventually found to be derived work by a US court, some other country's courts might rule differently because they define 'derivative works' less strictly. So in effect interpretations of GPL could and probably will end up being somewhat different from country to country.
Defending copyright infringement of any source code is ridiculous. You can't accidently copy a line from someone else's program to yours. Infringement is only deliberate.
That issue is not quite simple. Like the another poster pointed out you can end up with code that looks alot like an OSS implementation quite by chance simply because there is a very limited number of ways to solve a certain problem. Another way you could end up in trouble because of OSS could happen is if one of your developers decided to cut corners on a project and rips code from and Open Source project without telling you or if you merge with another company and find out that they have built Open Souce code into the application code that you acquired in the merger. If these developers strip off the comments and hide their tracks well it might not be obvious at all to you or your code reviewers that the code came form an OSS project. One other way you could get into troube over Opens Source software is if you produce a commercial application that links to Open Source libaries. From what I know it is not at all legally clear in some countries whether this quaifies your commercial application as a derivetive work. If somebody takes you to court over this and the judge rules an app that links to Open Source code is a derivative work you would be in trouble. In all of these cases (except perhaps the last one since it is still a legal gray area) it would be hard to accuse you of 100% evil and deliberate IP theft or infringement and I can see how an insurance that protects you during a resultant law suit and the subsequent repair work to get rid of the infringing code might come in handy if it isn't to expensive, especially for a startup company.
...Works perfect with Linux. All except the fingerprint scanner...
Now that is a pity, that fingerprint scanner is one really cool feature. I can't wait for something similar to turn up on the PowerBook, especially if it ties into the keychain. No more passwords....
Not exactly... the brick throwers don't bother wasting their time with the Apple sports car or the Linux dune buggy. They are vulnerable... no system is secure. The attack is designed to destroy the Windows grocery getter because thats most (~85%-90%) of what is on the road and there's money (big money when you talk about adware) in doing so. Basically they get more hack for their buck. If this were an Apple or Linux world, I would imagine they would suffer similar problems.
If that were true my non Windows systems should never get a hack attempt which is not the case. If I were to stop patching my non Windows systems today they would eventually get owned so its not as if they are bullet proof. My Linux web servers in partickular get regular probes by hackers (or is it crackers?) and so does my OS.X system. Admittedly many of these probes are Windows specific but there is still a significant number of serious Unix/Linux/OS.X specific attempts so it's not as if 99.5% of the effort is directed at Windows as you are claiming. The greater quantity of Windows specific hacks out there is not solely due to the smaller install base of non Windows systems, although that is a factor, but also due to the traditionally sucky native security setup on Windows systems (it has improved lately). Windows owes alot of it's market share to the fact that it was marketed as a system that could be administrated by semi skilled (and thus less expensive) personnel and in order achieve this, security was sacrificed. Efforts to harden Windows notwithstanding Microsoft is still dealing with the consequences of that legacy. It is certainly true that apart from hard-core crackers most of the vermin out there (which is mostly cracking computers for money and not for fun) don't bother with Linux/Unix/and OS.X machines because there is fewer of them but it also has to do with the fact that Windows machines are still simply that much more easy to crack.
If my car had millions of people throwing bricks I'd be amazed if it lasted 30 seconds.
That is a nice analogy, but the problem is that the grand parent still had a point. I have three cars, My shiny Apple sports car, my Linux dune buggy kit car, and my booring gray Windows station waggon. Amazingly enough my Apple sports car and the Linux dune buggy stand up to the millions of bricks that get thrown at them just fine. I mean, in view of the complete absence of broken windows, dents and scratched paint I'd say they hardly know the bricks exist. Now my Windows station waggon on the other hand really took a beating the first time I took it for a spin. In the end I had to fit it with solid steel armor, build up the chassis (due to the weight of the armor) and fit it with bullet proof glass to deal with all those bricks. I even planned to add a turret with a 20mm cannon but the police would not give me a license for it. All in all this indicates to me that the guys at Apple motors and Linux Kit Cars Inc. did something right that the guys at Windows automobile company screwed up woldn't you agree?
...your RFID passport or tamper with it in any other way. These passports contain an anti-terrorist self-distruct mechanism and any tampering with said mechanism could result in it being activated causing in severe injury to you and any other civilan personnel in the vicinity. Modifications and periodic maintenance of these passports should only be performed by qualified ordinance experts. Be sure to keep your new RFID passport in a cool place, out of the sun and do not wrap it in aluminium foil as this might interfere with the GPS sub system installed in your passport for your safety in order to allow the Department of Homeland Security to monitor your movements at all times.
Why do people switch to Linux?
... the list goes on ...
1. Chronic Nerdyness.
2. Windows BSODS.
3. They think that just because something is free it also costs nothing, or next to nothing, to operate it.
4. They are developing an embedded system and want complete freedom to recode the OS.
5. They have sat down, done the math and found out it makes sound business sense to do so.
N. Masochism?
Karma or not +5 funny is still the most satifying moderation.
Second, any code editor is a tool. In the end, they are a fancy way to create text files to compile into binary. There are people who use VS to write code without understanding what it's doing behind the scenes, just like there are people who drive without knowing how an internal combustion engine works.
Finally, there are people who hand-write all their code, waste alot of time, and still write bad code.
I have written several C# programs in Windows using nothing but the 'vi' editor, GNU tools and various freely available Microsoft development tools and their free compiler. I suppose you would argue that this is wasting time but I feel that I learned something from the experience. (never mind the endless amusement of VS monkeys reaction to the realization you can write complex applications in a Windows commandline window without paying a red cent for flashy development tools) What I gained from this waste of time is that I am now able to work my way through all sorts of code including the auto generated crud many VS monkeys avoid touching with almost religious reverance. Not all of us hand writing code monkeys write bad code and not everybody who drives a car and spends some time finding out how an internal combustion engine works is wasting their time either. You will discover the truth of that soon enough if you ever have your car break down on you in a remote place where you can not quickly summon somebody, with your mobile phone, who has wasted his/her time finding out what makes an internal combustion engine tick. You and I have an irreconcilable difference in philosophy. Perhaps one has to be a 24 carat nerd to be willing to waste ones time on understanding how the tools one is using actually work? From my point of view wasting my time on this pursuit makes me a better professional since it better prepares me to deal with the unexpected.
Something does need to change. It seems that it has become too easy for politicians to give away our rights in the name of fighting terrorism. However, I don't think those suggestions will help the situation.
If only because corporate bribery^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying efforts will always flow to the place where they can do the most good for the corporations. If you weaken the Senate and strenghten the House the corportations will simply refocus their lobbying efforts to the place with the most power. It would make more sense to emburden the Senate, the House and the President with strict anti corruption laws and I am sure that will happen.... some day.... perhaps even the same day that pigs fly?
No amount of artificial propping-up by local governments is going to keep it from happening. Get used to it.
I have gotten used to it. What bugs me about this brave new global economy is that the people who are telling me to smile and get used to the lower wages in our brave new global economy belong to the same coterie of blood sucking parasites that are also responsible for other wonderful aspects of our brave new global economy such as propping up artifical trade barriers to drive up the prices for various goods and services. Now if our brave new global economy would result in truly free trade in every way like, just for example.... free trade in food stuffs and an end to agricultural subsidies in the USA and EU which would result in a significant lowering of my grocery bill I would get even more used to our brave new global economy. Unfortunately that is not likely to happen since it would have a detrimental effect on the parasite population...