Probably worth mentioning...
on
Hacking Mac OS X
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· Score: 4, Informative
...that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking" in the traditional sense, not "cracking".
And for more on mach_inject, referred to in the summary, see Jonathan Rentzsch's website...and an interesting list of mach_inject and mach_override users.
As for the Finder, it may be true it was a "compromise" of sorts between the NeXT world and the Mac OS world. But it wasn't necessarily the social compromise between "personalities" within Apple it's pained to be; it was likely more of a technical one. It's not perfect, and it's woefully inadequate for some tasks that involve managing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. But it's still more than sufficient, and there's no reason to completely junk it: it can continue to evolve and be improved upon.
The "PEOPLE DIED" thing was a joke, referencing the tired "BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED" chants of endless droves of groupthink protesters.
And yes, it is completely accurate to say the TSA misled people. Your false delineation is self-serving and tries to say that not saying that the TSA "lied", specifically, is in itself lying. Sorry. Even the AP story saying that it "stopped short" of saying the "TSA lied" is IN ITSELF unneeded editorializing.
No one "DIED" because of the TSA's actions. Funnily enough, I thought to myself "Should I specifically say no one 'died' and that it was just a joke? Nah, slashdot will be smart enough to at least grasp that..."
The point is that the DHS's own internal investigative processes found that the TSA was inaccurately representing its claims and misleading the public and others about its claims about protecting passenger data, and then releases exactly that finding in a public report that it then makes available for all to see.
In other words, exactly how we'd hope the process of oversight to work, and probably the most desirable outcome, other than the TSA's missteps not happening in the first place.
But instead of examining the implications of the TSA's mistakes, whether intentional or no, and being at least marginally pleased that the DHS's own Inpsector General's Office was the entity that uncovered the impropriety and then published it in a standard public report, we'll focus on minutiae like the TSA not specifically saying that it "LIED", using that exact word, and then further focus on a blogger who, ostensibly heroically and self-righteously, will use the word "lied", because apparently, a blogger's interpretation of the appropriate semantics for a government report is more important than the report itself.
And then, on top of that, editorialization calling it "scary" when it's free available to every citizen of the United States as a public report. I suppose every mainstream news outlet should be screaming "TSA LIED, PEOPLE DIED" as its headline in order for people to be satisfied?
So, the DHS Office of the Inspector General says in its own report that the TSA "misled" people about protecting passenger data, which is essentially saying they lied, we'll lambast them for not specifically saying "lied" and rally around a blogger (I don't care who it is) just because they use the word "lied"?
On this subject, I recently answered a query raised during a Chronicle of Higher Education colloquy. I believe it touches on the major issues here.
Question from Lisa L. Spangenberg, UCLA:
Given that there are no viruses or Trojan horses for the current Macintosh system, OS X 10.3, and given that it is essentially UNIX, and given that the most common applications (Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe applications) work very well on OS X, why don't more institutions adopt Macs and encourage faculty to use them?
Gregory A. Jackson:
Well, first of all, there are viruses and Trojans that afflict MacOS, witness Apple's periodic release of security fixes to counteract them.
First, that isn't true, regarding viruses. To date, there are no known viruses that specifically target Mac OS X. Last week's "trojan" was nothing more than an application with a different icon and misleading name that displayed a dialog box (which was an example posted to a USENET Mac programming group to illustrate this fact that has been known and possible on Mac OS for over twenty years; an antivirus vendor apparently thought this an appropriate time to dress it up, incorrectly, as some new, terrible exploit easily adapted for malicious means, when in reality it's nothing more than an application).
If you're referring more broadly to security issues in general, almost all of the security and security-related updates for Mac OS X to date have been updates for primarily server-type services that ship with the OS, all of which are disabled by default, and the lion's share of which are never even enabled, much less touched, on the vast majority of systems. I'm not saying that they should be ignored, but Apple's comprehensive and swift response to the most minor security issues does not rise to the level of the staggeringly numerous, sometimes completely automated, remote exploits, worms, and so on for Windows. It is no longer possible to even get through a full installation Windows XP on a machine connected to a public network without it being exploited before you even have a chance to patch it.
It's definitely possible for Mac OS X to have viruses, worms, trojans, and other malware - Mac OS X is not invulnerable, and no sensible person would claim it to be. But the underlying philosophical design principles are fundamentally more secure than Windows, period. Since the major ingredient for the success of a worm or virus is some ability to spread, witness the fact that there is no way with anything built into Mac OS X to perform automated propagation of a virus, and no current known ways to exploit a machine remotely, not to mention that potentially exploitable network services are disabled to begin with anyway (and remain that way unless explicitly enabled), a stark contrast to Windows. Any hope for automatic propagation would require a comparatively high level of sophistication, and perhaps even its own mail server - not to mention some intrinsic vulnerability to exploit. On the other hand, there are still, to this moment, unfixed vulnerabilities in certain versions of Outlook that will spread certain virus variants simply by previewing a message, and nothing more. There is simply no equivalent to this on any other platform. Microsoft's track record and attitude on security (though admittedly much improved) versus other vendors speaks volumes on this topic.
It takes work and thought to do security, and do it right. Ease of use and security aren't mutually exclusive. The key is to make security easy to use, and Apple has so far been on the right road with Mac OS X.
But the small installed base of Macs makes them an unexciting, low-visibility target for the bad guys, and so the weaknesses don't get exploited much.
The marketshare argument only goes so far. This seems to be a version of the "Macs have no software" argument. It is indeed true that they are targeted less for this reason. But the argument that it's straight cause-and-effect is disingenuous
At the Professional Developers Conference 2003 in Los Angeles last year (see my exhaustive coverage of that show), Microsoft chairman Bill Gates touted the searching innovations that would go into Longhorn, the next generation Windows version that's now due in mid-2006. In a way, by detailing the new desktop search features Microsoft was working on so early, Gates had thrown down the gauntlet. In today's PC world, desktop search is a miserable, slow affair, and as Microsoft executives are fond of pointing out, it shouldn't take longer to find a file you know is on your hard drive than it takes to perform a Web search.
However, Gates was also giving his competitors a leg up on Microsoft. And since announcing its Longhorn desktop search intentions, Microsoft's worst fears were realized. Other companies began copying the Microsoft desktop search strategy, knowing that the never-ending Longhorn delays would help them get to market sooner and appear to be nimbler and even more innovative, though it's sort of astonishing how transparent that latter claim is. Chief among these competitors are Apple and Google.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced in June 2004 that the next version of Mac OS X, due sometime in 2005, will include a desktop search feature called Spotlight. The Spotlight feature set is a rough subset of the desktop search features Gates discussed in late 2003, but presented to the user with Apple's standard graphical excellence. Spotlight, according to Apple, is a "radically new and lightning fast way to find anything saved on your personal computer. Email messages, contacts and calendars, along with files and folders, all show up in Spotlight results." Spotlight's biggest claims to fame, presumably, are its near-instant search results and support for document meta data, both of which are, again, planned features of Longhorn. But no matter. While Apple has been busy copping Windows features since Jobs returned to Apple in late 1996 [!!!!!], the company's tiny market share ensures that very few people will benefit from Spotlight, despite Apple claims that it will deliver on desktop search a year before Microsoft ships Longhorn.
The gall astounds me. But hey, he actually believes it.
I don't have any advice in particular. It's unfortunate because this really amounts to censorship and stifling academic freedom. Who's to say that the content you're accessing with a network tool - say, even a web browser - is appropriate? Sure, you can say that downloading pirated software or movies is inappropriate, but, in my opinion, academic institutions should have as hands-off an approach as possible. Illegal content can be accessed via the web, or email. Most would say it's absurd to suggest blocking port 80, or port 25. Why? Why is that any more absurd than blocking something such as BitTorrent, especially as BitTorrent's legitimate applications are increasing?
During the heyday of Napster, the University of Wisconsin - Madison had a difficult decision. As it watched the traffic for Napster consume over 70% of total inbound bandwidth at its peak, we asked ourselves: do we start blocking Napster? After all, it's mostly used for stealing music. Right?
Fortunately, the answer was a resounding "No," but not because we condoned illegally downloading copyrighted material. It was because the university didn't want to become de facto censors of information, in any form it may come. We decided that things like Napster were part of the cost of doing business as a major public research university. The solution was to add bandwidth, and deal with the technical aspects of the problem separate from any social aspects that may exist.
Granted, some smaller institutions might not have been able to afford - economically or legally - to take this stance. But the University of Wisconsin felt it important enough to allow academic freedom and freedom of exchange of information to trump any other potential concerns, real or imagined.
The university does respond on an individual basis to people clearly running warez servers, owned machines used for warez, specific C&D orders or other notices from copyright holders, etc., but we don't take a proactive approach. In fact, ironically, a proactive approach could be more dangerous, because it may mean that safe harbor provisions of some elements of copyright law (e.g. DMCA) won't apply: an ISP can't be held responsible for things it doesn't know about.
- No DRM of any form is ever okay: I should be able to do anything with items I obtain, including sharing them with others;
- It's not right for content creators/originators/owners/licensors to expect to be able to protect their content; if their content needs protection, their business model is dying;
- All "information" and "ideas", which includes music, software, text, and other unique works, should be allowed to freely flow between people in an unlimited fashion without any encumbrances of ownership;
- DRM is fundamentally flawed and is only used as a tool of the rich and powerful to forcefeed commercial tripe to the masses;
- In the digital realm, ideas of "ownership" and "theft" are meaningless. The world has changed, and unlimited digital copies of all manner of content can be distributed nearly free and without any harm to or detraction from the original. Therefore, any old model based on physical manifestations (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.) is dead.
No. I do get it. I understand how public key encryption and PKI works.
The point is that in DRM, it's not acceptable to say that DRM is completely worthless and invalid simply because the user has both keys. And your "attacker and recipient are the same person" assertion is wrong. If the person doesn't break or circumvent encryption outside of the guidelines established by the entity with rights to the content, they're most definitely not an "attacker". Also, this implies that it's okay to circumvent smart cards and CableCard just because you have the physical token/device with the key. It's not. They're granting you rights they CHOOSE to grant you. The ethical deliberation IS the debate. Your argument rests on the fact that if the person has the key, they can of course use it in any way they wish. This invalidates any license, contractual, or even good-faith agreements made on the part of the person holding the key. Sorry, but I don't buy that argument.
1. Apple doesn't have an illegitimately obtained monopoly.
2. The use of iTunes is intrinsic to the iTunes Music Store. It could be argued that the iTunes Music Store is, in fact, a part of iTunes. And yes, I'm completely aware of the mechanics and technical nature of how this is set up, and what PyMusique actually does. The fact that you can reverse engineer the purchase process and circumvent a license agreement to use another tool with the store is incidental.
Also, you made one mistake: iTunes is *free*; ergo, there is no "purchase". You might say it requires you to purchase a computer. But that's from no specific vendor. You could argue that it requires you to purchase an iPod. It does no such thing.
Does that mean that Mac OS X's license agreement, which specifies that it is to only be used on an Apple-branded computer (as opposed to emulators on other platforms) is also an "illegal tying" agreement?
Common sense and the right of vendors to do what they wish with their own products. Learn it. Live it. Love it.
(As an aside, I'm surprised that you're all over antitrust law here, even if inapplicably, when you likely wouldn't support other "law" that we have that supports a position of not being able to circumvent DRM that is intended to be applied to a product, violating license agreements, or in general protecting content through our imperfect framework of legal protections on content.)
No, what I just said - and what you could see if you even took a moment to look - is that the PowerPC 970 solution is actually cheaper and faster than the Opteron solution, and likely the main reason it still isn't used more widely is because of a lack of familiarity on administrators' part with Apple's offerings and benefit in this area, and the fact that many of the solutions may be built for Linux on x86/x86-64. But the 970 in a cluster setting actually has dramatically higher price/performance, which you'd see if you bothered or even cared to look. Instead, you said the exact opposite of what I stated.
Now this gets into the legalities of license agreements.
The iTunes Music Store license prohibits the use of anything but iTunes to make the purchase. If you think that licenses are invalid, no doubt you find this statement worthless.
Further, even if the music files were DRMed right as they came out of the store, at least admit that you'd still be on Jon's (or anyone else's) side, even if they were stripping DRM. The fact that Jon isn't technically stripping DRM just adds to the smugness of people who think it's their inalienable right to subvert any legitimate service they personally disagree with in any way they see fit.
Note I didn't say that DRM - neither the concept of it, nor the spirit of it - was perfect. All it is is a catch-all term for an imperfect mechanism to protect the rights of content owners. I'm also aware that things like DRM, copy protection in general, the Broadcast Flag, etc., only hinder and inconvenience legitimate, honest users, while only acting as a minor roadblock to pirates.
However, there is nothing about the digital realm that negates the rights that content and copyright owners have had all along. It does, of course change things: it makes things much easier to duplicate, ad infititum, perfectly, and distribute globally almost instantaneously. Things aren't necessarily represented by a physical manifestation. Does that reduce their value? Are you arguing their value in the "old" world was artificial? As a content owner, how can I be sure you've deleted the copy you owned when you "sell" it to your friend? YOU may, but if the digital world has proven anything, many people wouldn't. And indeed, many people would think it's perfectly okay. In fact, they wouldn't even be selling it. They'd just be downloading it for free in the first place, regurgitating something they read on slashdot about a "dying business model" justifying their behavior.
And in the case of iTunes Music Store, you can
- copy for personal backup, including burning to CD in an uncompressed, non-DRM format - "timeshift" the content (which is admittedly meaningless in this context) - however, iTunes Music Store's license (fuck the DMCA) prohibits reverse engineering
I guess what I'm getting at is: why patronize this store?
And we'll still have freeloaders and a modern, Internet version of Peter Pan who says it's all okay.
Okay, as embarrassing as it is, I somehow typed "Peter Pan" instead of "Robin Hood". Guess seeing this page once really did permanently affect my brain...
It's not hard to understand, when you compare Jon to Apple.
Would you support someone who wants your money over someone why gives you more flexbility?
All these questions...
Perhaps the most important question is:
Why would you patronize Apple and the iTunes Music Store in the first place if you so violently agree with the terms its music is sold under?
And indeed, your last question is telling:
Would you support someone who wants your money over someone why gives you more flexbility?
I don't really know how to answer that. It seems to imply that it's not okay for an entity to make a good product or service, and then charge for it, and also to sell it on its own terms. It's also really ironic, since that service that "wants your money" - you know, the thing that's so horrible - is the service that you're actually using (and subverting) to give you your "flexibility"?
I know EXACTLY what this does, thank you. I realize that the store is technically "selling" music without DRM, so this application is "stripping" nothing. But the license of the iTunes Music Store prohibits using any application other than iTunes to access it. As for burning to CD and re-ripping, yes, that's always been possible. But the record industry can swallow that as something they have to grant consumers to make a reasonable online service. They can't, however, justify letting a store operator, like Apple, sell music with no rights management protections whatsoever.
The point here isn't using iTMS on Linux, or playing the music you bought, or anything like that. The point is much, much simpler:
If you don't like the terms music purchased on the iTunes music store is sold under, don't buy it, don't use it, and don't subvert it.
Why is that such a difficult notion to grasp? Whatever happened to not patronizing companies/vendors/services you fundamentally disagreed with?
Look, I understand these arguments (and have for a long time). But I can't help but consider that your arguments invalidate something else which you no doubt support, which is encryption for your own personal privacy. Why is that "okay", and DRM isn't? And further, why is DRM not okay simply because you have a key embedded in software or a device for playback?
What about a smart card reader for accessing media content through some new video over IP content providers, or CableCard? Is that just "obfuscation", and since you have to have the key to view the content anyway, might as well just consider it worthless? That argument is disingenuous at best.
This isn't about a dying "business model" as much as you'd like it to be. This isn't tantamount to Congress legislating that every horseless carriage have a horse whip to save the horse whip maker.
Sure, it's going to have to change. But even in this brave new world you envision, we'll still have concepts like copyright and ownership. Some may choose to distribute their music freely and widely. Others may decide they'd like people to pay for it. What you're really saying is that you'd like the "business model" we call, you know, "paying for things people want you to pay for" is "dying", and you're muddying the waters with your own personal dislike from artists you consider too "commercial".
Has it ever occurred to you that if you consider the entire industry and its artists creatively bankrupt that you don't have to patronize it in any way, shape, or form? After all, it's the commercial tripe that's on the iTunes Music Store anyway, right? If it's so horrible, it seems that you shouldn't have any problems not using the iTunes Music Store, eh?
And how do content owners using DRM prevent you from patronizing and supporting your underground artists? What's that? They don't get the attention they deserve because the music industry is monopolized by people you view as money grubbing fat cats who don't care about quality? Hm. I don't quite see the problem there.
"The internet" hasn't rendered music labels and their functions obsolete. What it's done is made it infinitely easier to instantly violate content owners' rights, and then do the mental gymnastics to justify not paying for things that don't belong to you (or support subverting content owners' or distribution mechanisms' legitimate protections in the name of some righteous mission that some equate to the civil rights movement).
Does this mean there will be a paradigm shift and that the industry will have to respond? Sure. But when all is said and done we'll still have property, copyright, and rule of law.
And we'll still have freeloaders and a modern, Internet version of Peter Pan who says it's all okay.
- This has nothing to do with "Congress" saving a business model. The copyright owners own the content, period, and get to decide how it's used, by whom, and under what conditions, whether you like it or not.
- They don't have to encrypt the music. Apple is well within its rights to sell the music in the ways it sees fit on its own service. If you don't like it, don't patronize it. Additionally, this argument is worthless, because even if it was encrypted, you'd be on the side of arguing that it's ok to break the encryption.
- If you don't believe in copyright, licenses, or "trade secrets", then kiss work on open source or other original work by yourself, things the GNU General Public License, and your own privacy goodbye. Oh, I forgot, those things only apply to the things you want it to, not corporate interests.
Yes, yes, I'm sure it would be wonderful if Apple wanted or intended to sell music without DRM. But they, and the content owners - you know, those people who actually have LEGAL RIGHTS to the content - don't intend to do that. And it's their service and their content. Whether or not things "can" be technically done aside, does anyone realize that? Or is that just completely lost in the vacuum of "Information wants to be free"?
We're talking HUNDREDS of machines for a RENDERING farm, this is apples to oranges buddy, not desktop mac vs desktop amd machine.
Once the build is setup for the opteron machine and rolled out to each new one, there IS no fucking maintenence (unless they have things setup far differently from what one would expect for such a large operation)
Ok, even in this environment - essentially a large, uniform cluster - how, then, do you explain something like this?
The IBM PowerPC 970 family (and the forthcoming dual-core PowerPC 970MP) isn't a bunch of dogs - they stand up EXTREMELY well against, e.g., Opteron. The real issue is still Mac OS X Server and Xserve's relative immaturity when compared against, say, Intel/AMD solutions running Linux and a lack of solutions designed for Mac OS X Server and the PowerPC architecture as opposed to, say, Linux on x86-64. But there's no reason, given what we've seen with clusters so far, that an Apple solution can't be a real - or even better - contender.
Slashdot Mirror
...that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking" in the traditional sense, not "cracking".
And for more on mach_inject, referred to in the summary, see Jonathan Rentzsch's website...and an interesting list of mach_inject and mach_override users.
As for the Finder, it may be true it was a "compromise" of sorts between the NeXT world and the Mac OS world. But it wasn't necessarily the social compromise between "personalities" within Apple it's pained to be; it was likely more of a technical one. It's not perfect, and it's woefully inadequate for some tasks that involve managing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. But it's still more than sufficient, and there's no reason to completely junk it: it can continue to evolve and be improved upon.
No matter how many privacy "protections" there are, it won't stop people from volunteering their own personal information.
Now I know you're trolling.
The "PEOPLE DIED" thing was a joke, referencing the tired "BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED" chants of endless droves of groupthink protesters.
And yes, it is completely accurate to say the TSA misled people. Your false delineation is self-serving and tries to say that not saying that the TSA "lied", specifically, is in itself lying. Sorry. Even the AP story saying that it "stopped short" of saying the "TSA lied" is IN ITSELF unneeded editorializing.
No one "DIED" because of the TSA's actions. Funnily enough, I thought to myself "Should I specifically say no one 'died' and that it was just a joke? Nah, slashdot will be smart enough to at least grasp that..."
*Sigh*
The point is that the DHS's own internal investigative processes found that the TSA was inaccurately representing its claims and misleading the public and others about its claims about protecting passenger data, and then releases exactly that finding in a public report that it then makes available for all to see.
In other words, exactly how we'd hope the process of oversight to work, and probably the most desirable outcome, other than the TSA's missteps not happening in the first place.
But instead of examining the implications of the TSA's mistakes, whether intentional or no, and being at least marginally pleased that the DHS's own Inpsector General's Office was the entity that uncovered the impropriety and then published it in a standard public report, we'll focus on minutiae like the TSA not specifically saying that it "LIED", using that exact word, and then further focus on a blogger who, ostensibly heroically and self-righteously, will use the word "lied", because apparently, a blogger's interpretation of the appropriate semantics for a government report is more important than the report itself.
And then, on top of that, editorialization calling it "scary" when it's free available to every citizen of the United States as a public report. I suppose every mainstream news outlet should be screaming "TSA LIED, PEOPLE DIED" as its headline in order for people to be satisfied?
Does that make a point?
So, the DHS Office of the Inspector General says in its own report that the TSA "misled" people about protecting passenger data, which is essentially saying they lied, we'll lambast them for not specifically saying "lied" and rally around a blogger (I don't care who it is) just because they use the word "lied"?
I don't get it.
On this subject, I recently answered a query raised during a Chronicle of Higher Education colloquy. I believe it touches on the major issues here.
Question from Lisa L. Spangenberg, UCLA:
Given that there are no viruses or Trojan horses for the current Macintosh system, OS X 10.3, and given that it is essentially UNIX, and given that the most common applications (Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe applications) work very well on OS X, why don't more institutions adopt Macs and encourage faculty to use them?
Gregory A. Jackson:
Well, first of all, there are viruses and Trojans that afflict MacOS, witness Apple's periodic release of security fixes to counteract them.
First, that isn't true, regarding viruses. To date, there are no known viruses that specifically target Mac OS X. Last week's "trojan" was nothing more than an application with a different icon and misleading name that displayed a dialog box (which was an example posted to a USENET Mac programming group to illustrate this fact that has been known and possible on Mac OS for over twenty years; an antivirus vendor apparently thought this an appropriate time to dress it up, incorrectly, as some new, terrible exploit easily adapted for malicious means, when in reality it's nothing more than an application).
If you're referring more broadly to security issues in general, almost all of the security and security-related updates for Mac OS X to date have been updates for primarily server-type services that ship with the OS, all of which are disabled by default, and the lion's share of which are never even enabled, much less touched, on the vast majority of systems. I'm not saying that they should be ignored, but Apple's comprehensive and swift response to the most minor security issues does not rise to the level of the staggeringly numerous, sometimes completely automated, remote exploits, worms, and so on for Windows. It is no longer possible to even get through a full installation Windows XP on a machine connected to a public network without it being exploited before you even have a chance to patch it.
It's definitely possible for Mac OS X to have viruses, worms, trojans, and other malware - Mac OS X is not invulnerable, and no sensible person would claim it to be. But the underlying philosophical design principles are fundamentally more secure than Windows, period. Since the major ingredient for the success of a worm or virus is some ability to spread, witness the fact that there is no way with anything built into Mac OS X to perform automated propagation of a virus, and no current known ways to exploit a machine remotely, not to mention that potentially exploitable network services are disabled to begin with anyway (and remain that way unless explicitly enabled), a stark contrast to Windows. Any hope for automatic propagation would require a comparatively high level of sophistication, and perhaps even its own mail server - not to mention some intrinsic vulnerability to exploit. On the other hand, there are still, to this moment, unfixed vulnerabilities in certain versions of Outlook that will spread certain virus variants simply by previewing a message, and nothing more. There is simply no equivalent to this on any other platform. Microsoft's track record and attitude on security (though admittedly much improved) versus other vendors speaks volumes on this topic.
It takes work and thought to do security, and do it right. Ease of use and security aren't mutually exclusive. The key is to make security easy to use, and Apple has so far been on the right road with Mac OS X.
But the small installed base of Macs makes them an unexciting, low-visibility target for the bad guys, and so the weaknesses don't get exploited much.
The marketshare argument only goes so far. This seems to be a version of the "Macs have no software" argument. It is indeed true that they are targeted less for this reason. But the argument that it's straight cause-and-effect is disingenuous
No surprise coming from Thurrott.
Check out this excerpt from a recent review of the MSN Toolbar Suite:
At the Professional Developers Conference 2003 in Los Angeles last year (see my exhaustive coverage of that show), Microsoft chairman Bill Gates touted the searching innovations that would go into Longhorn, the next generation Windows version that's now due in mid-2006. In a way, by detailing the new desktop search features Microsoft was working on so early, Gates had thrown down the gauntlet. In today's PC world, desktop search is a miserable, slow affair, and as Microsoft executives are fond of pointing out, it shouldn't take longer to find a file you know is on your hard drive than it takes to perform a Web search.
However, Gates was also giving his competitors a leg up on Microsoft. And since announcing its Longhorn desktop search intentions, Microsoft's worst fears were realized. Other companies began copying the Microsoft desktop search strategy, knowing that the never-ending Longhorn delays would help them get to market sooner and appear to be nimbler and even more innovative, though it's sort of astonishing how transparent that latter claim is. Chief among these competitors are Apple and Google.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced in June 2004 that the next version of Mac OS X, due sometime in 2005, will include a desktop search feature called Spotlight. The Spotlight feature set is a rough subset of the desktop search features Gates discussed in late 2003, but presented to the user with Apple's standard graphical excellence. Spotlight, according to Apple, is a "radically new and lightning fast way to find anything saved on your personal computer. Email messages, contacts and calendars, along with files and folders, all show up in Spotlight results." Spotlight's biggest claims to fame, presumably, are its near-instant search results and support for document meta data, both of which are, again, planned features of Longhorn. But no matter. While Apple has been busy copping Windows features since Jobs returned to Apple in late 1996 [!!!!!], the company's tiny market share ensures that very few people will benefit from Spotlight, despite Apple claims that it will deliver on desktop search a year before Microsoft ships Longhorn.
The gall astounds me. But hey, he actually believes it.
That's not really the point.
The point is: once you start blocking ports, where do you stop?
What would happen if Napster started to use port 80?
I don't have any advice in particular. It's unfortunate because this really amounts to censorship and stifling academic freedom. Who's to say that the content you're accessing with a network tool - say, even a web browser - is appropriate? Sure, you can say that downloading pirated software or movies is inappropriate, but, in my opinion, academic institutions should have as hands-off an approach as possible. Illegal content can be accessed via the web, or email. Most would say it's absurd to suggest blocking port 80, or port 25. Why? Why is that any more absurd than blocking something such as BitTorrent, especially as BitTorrent's legitimate applications are increasing?
During the heyday of Napster, the University of Wisconsin - Madison had a difficult decision. As it watched the traffic for Napster consume over 70% of total inbound bandwidth at its peak, we asked ourselves: do we start blocking Napster? After all, it's mostly used for stealing music. Right?
Fortunately, the answer was a resounding "No," but not because we condoned illegally downloading copyrighted material. It was because the university didn't want to become de facto censors of information, in any form it may come. We decided that things like Napster were part of the cost of doing business as a major public research university. The solution was to add bandwidth, and deal with the technical aspects of the problem separate from any social aspects that may exist.
Granted, some smaller institutions might not have been able to afford - economically or legally - to take this stance. But the University of Wisconsin felt it important enough to allow academic freedom and freedom of exchange of information to trump any other potential concerns, real or imagined.
The university does respond on an individual basis to people clearly running warez servers, owned machines used for warez, specific C&D orders or other notices from copyright holders, etc., but we don't take a proactive approach. In fact, ironically, a proactive approach could be more dangerous, because it may mean that safe harbor provisions of some elements of copyright law (e.g. DMCA) won't apply: an ISP can't be held responsible for things it doesn't know about.
This time they bought the rights to the internet from the creator, Al Gore.
And that would especially funny, considering Al Gore now sits on Apple's Board of Directors.
On the contrary, I'm quite a big fan of the GPL.
Note that I said I was "answering for slashdot", not myself.
You may be interested in some relevant, recent posts of mine: 1,2,3,4,5,6.
Not to mention my posts yesterday in the most recent "DVD Jon" article.
- No DRM of any form is ever okay: I should be able to do anything with items I obtain, including sharing them with others;
- It's not right for content creators/originators/owners/licensors to expect to be able to protect their content; if their content needs protection, their business model is dying;
- All "information" and "ideas", which includes music, software, text, and other unique works, should be allowed to freely flow between people in an unlimited fashion without any encumbrances of ownership;
- DRM is fundamentally flawed and is only used as a tool of the rich and powerful to forcefeed commercial tripe to the masses;
- In the digital realm, ideas of "ownership" and "theft" are meaningless. The world has changed, and unlimited digital copies of all manner of content can be distributed nearly free and without any harm to or detraction from the original. Therefore, any old model based on physical manifestations (books, CDs, DVDs, etc.) is dead.
No. I do get it. I understand how public key encryption and PKI works. The point is that in DRM, it's not acceptable to say that DRM is completely worthless and invalid simply because the user has both keys. And your "attacker and recipient are the same person" assertion is wrong. If the person doesn't break or circumvent encryption outside of the guidelines established by the entity with rights to the content, they're most definitely not an "attacker". Also, this implies that it's okay to circumvent smart cards and CableCard just because you have the physical token/device with the key. It's not. They're granting you rights they CHOOSE to grant you. The ethical deliberation IS the debate. Your argument rests on the fact that if the person has the key, they can of course use it in any way they wish. This invalidates any license, contractual, or even good-faith agreements made on the part of the person holding the key. Sorry, but I don't buy that argument.
1. Apple doesn't have an illegitimately obtained monopoly.
2. The use of iTunes is intrinsic to the iTunes Music Store. It could be argued that the iTunes Music Store is, in fact, a part of iTunes. And yes, I'm completely aware of the mechanics and technical nature of how this is set up, and what PyMusique actually does. The fact that you can reverse engineer the purchase process and circumvent a license agreement to use another tool with the store is incidental.
Also, you made one mistake: iTunes is *free*; ergo, there is no "purchase". You might say it requires you to purchase a computer. But that's from no specific vendor. You could argue that it requires you to purchase an iPod. It does no such thing.
Does that mean that Mac OS X's license agreement, which specifies that it is to only be used on an Apple-branded computer (as opposed to emulators on other platforms) is also an "illegal tying" agreement?
Common sense and the right of vendors to do what they wish with their own products. Learn it. Live it. Love it.
(As an aside, I'm surprised that you're all over antitrust law here, even if inapplicably, when you likely wouldn't support other "law" that we have that supports a position of not being able to circumvent DRM that is intended to be applied to a product, violating license agreements, or in general protecting content through our imperfect framework of legal protections on content.)
But seriously, nice try, though.
No, what I just said - and what you could see if you even took a moment to look - is that the PowerPC 970 solution is actually cheaper and faster than the Opteron solution, and likely the main reason it still isn't used more widely is because of a lack of familiarity on administrators' part with Apple's offerings and benefit in this area, and the fact that many of the solutions may be built for Linux on x86/x86-64. But the 970 in a cluster setting actually has dramatically higher price/performance, which you'd see if you bothered or even cared to look. Instead, you said the exact opposite of what I stated.
Now this gets into the legalities of license agreements.
The iTunes Music Store license prohibits the use of anything but iTunes to make the purchase. If you think that licenses are invalid, no doubt you find this statement worthless.
Further, even if the music files were DRMed right as they came out of the store, at least admit that you'd still be on Jon's (or anyone else's) side, even if they were stripping DRM. The fact that Jon isn't technically stripping DRM just adds to the smugness of people who think it's their inalienable right to subvert any legitimate service they personally disagree with in any way they see fit.
Note I didn't say that DRM - neither the concept of it, nor the spirit of it - was perfect. All it is is a catch-all term for an imperfect mechanism to protect the rights of content owners. I'm also aware that things like DRM, copy protection in general, the Broadcast Flag, etc., only hinder and inconvenience legitimate, honest users, while only acting as a minor roadblock to pirates.
However, there is nothing about the digital realm that negates the rights that content and copyright owners have had all along. It does, of course change things: it makes things much easier to duplicate, ad infititum, perfectly, and distribute globally almost instantaneously. Things aren't necessarily represented by a physical manifestation. Does that reduce their value? Are you arguing their value in the "old" world was artificial? As a content owner, how can I be sure you've deleted the copy you owned when you "sell" it to your friend? YOU may, but if the digital world has proven anything, many people wouldn't. And indeed, many people would think it's perfectly okay. In fact, they wouldn't even be selling it. They'd just be downloading it for free in the first place, regurgitating something they read on slashdot about a "dying business model" justifying their behavior.
And in the case of iTunes Music Store, you can
- copy for personal backup, including burning to CD in an uncompressed, non-DRM format
- "timeshift" the content (which is admittedly meaningless in this context)
- however, iTunes Music Store's license (fuck the DMCA) prohibits reverse engineering
I guess what I'm getting at is: why patronize this store?
And we'll still have freeloaders and a modern, Internet version of Peter Pan who says it's all okay.
Okay, as embarrassing as it is, I somehow typed "Peter Pan" instead of "Robin Hood". Guess seeing this page once really did permanently affect my brain...
Why would people not like Jon?
It's not hard to understand, when you compare Jon to Apple.
Would you support someone who wants your money over someone why gives you more flexbility?
All these questions...
Perhaps the most important question is:
Why would you patronize Apple and the iTunes Music Store in the first place if you so violently agree with the terms its music is sold under?
And indeed, your last question is telling:
Would you support someone who wants your money over someone why gives you more flexbility?
I don't really know how to answer that. It seems to imply that it's not okay for an entity to make a good product or service, and then charge for it, and also to sell it on its own terms. It's also really ironic, since that service that "wants your money" - you know, the thing that's so horrible - is the service that you're actually using (and subverting) to give you your "flexibility"?
I know EXACTLY what this does, thank you. I realize that the store is technically "selling" music without DRM, so this application is "stripping" nothing. But the license of the iTunes Music Store prohibits using any application other than iTunes to access it. As for burning to CD and re-ripping, yes, that's always been possible. But the record industry can swallow that as something they have to grant consumers to make a reasonable online service. They can't, however, justify letting a store operator, like Apple, sell music with no rights management protections whatsoever.
The point here isn't using iTMS on Linux, or playing the music you bought, or anything like that. The point is much, much simpler:
If you don't like the terms music purchased on the iTunes music store is sold under, don't buy it, don't use it, and don't subvert it.
Why is that such a difficult notion to grasp? Whatever happened to not patronizing companies/vendors/services you fundamentally disagreed with?
Look, I understand these arguments (and have for a long time). But I can't help but consider that your arguments invalidate something else which you no doubt support, which is encryption for your own personal privacy. Why is that "okay", and DRM isn't? And further, why is DRM not okay simply because you have a key embedded in software or a device for playback?
What about a smart card reader for accessing media content through some new video over IP content providers, or CableCard? Is that just "obfuscation", and since you have to have the key to view the content anyway, might as well just consider it worthless? That argument is disingenuous at best.
This isn't about a dying "business model" as much as you'd like it to be. This isn't tantamount to Congress legislating that every horseless carriage have a horse whip to save the horse whip maker.
Sure, it's going to have to change. But even in this brave new world you envision, we'll still have concepts like copyright and ownership. Some may choose to distribute their music freely and widely. Others may decide they'd like people to pay for it. What you're really saying is that you'd like the "business model" we call, you know, "paying for things people want you to pay for" is "dying", and you're muddying the waters with your own personal dislike from artists you consider too "commercial".
Has it ever occurred to you that if you consider the entire industry and its artists creatively bankrupt that you don't have to patronize it in any way, shape, or form? After all, it's the commercial tripe that's on the iTunes Music Store anyway, right? If it's so horrible, it seems that you shouldn't have any problems not using the iTunes Music Store, eh?
And how do content owners using DRM prevent you from patronizing and supporting your underground artists? What's that? They don't get the attention they deserve because the music industry is monopolized by people you view as money grubbing fat cats who don't care about quality? Hm. I don't quite see the problem there.
"The internet" hasn't rendered music labels and their functions obsolete. What it's done is made it infinitely easier to instantly violate content owners' rights, and then do the mental gymnastics to justify not paying for things that don't belong to you (or support subverting content owners' or distribution mechanisms' legitimate protections in the name of some righteous mission that some equate to the civil rights movement).
Does this mean there will be a paradigm shift and that the industry will have to respond? Sure. But when all is said and done we'll still have property, copyright, and rule of law.
And we'll still have freeloaders and a modern, Internet version of Peter Pan who says it's all okay.
Their DRM infringe on my right to:
[irrelevant statements removed]
Then why, pray tell, would you ever patronize a store like that to begin with?
God I love all of these irrelevant arguments.
- This has nothing to do with "Congress" saving a business model. The copyright owners own the content, period, and get to decide how it's used, by whom, and under what conditions, whether you like it or not.
- They don't have to encrypt the music. Apple is well within its rights to sell the music in the ways it sees fit on its own service. If you don't like it, don't patronize it. Additionally, this argument is worthless, because even if it was encrypted, you'd be on the side of arguing that it's ok to break the encryption.
- If you don't believe in copyright, licenses, or "trade secrets", then kiss work on open source or other original work by yourself, things the GNU General Public License, and your own privacy goodbye. Oh, I forgot, those things only apply to the things you want it to, not corporate interests.
More power to you, Jon!
Why do people relish in this?
Yes, yes, I'm sure it would be wonderful if Apple wanted or intended to sell music without DRM. But they, and the content owners - you know, those people who actually have LEGAL RIGHTS to the content - don't intend to do that. And it's their service and their content. Whether or not things "can" be technically done aside, does anyone realize that? Or is that just completely lost in the vacuum of "Information wants to be free"?
We're talking HUNDREDS of machines for a RENDERING farm, this is apples to oranges buddy, not desktop mac vs desktop amd machine.
Once the build is setup for the opteron machine and rolled out to each new one, there IS no fucking maintenence (unless they have things setup far differently from what one would expect for such a large operation)
Ok, even in this environment - essentially a large, uniform cluster - how, then, do you explain something like this?
The IBM PowerPC 970 family (and the forthcoming dual-core PowerPC 970MP) isn't a bunch of dogs - they stand up EXTREMELY well against, e.g., Opteron. The real issue is still Mac OS X Server and Xserve's relative immaturity when compared against, say, Intel/AMD solutions running Linux and a lack of solutions designed for Mac OS X Server and the PowerPC architecture as opposed to, say, Linux on x86-64. But there's no reason, given what we've seen with clusters so far, that an Apple solution can't be a real - or even better - contender.