>Would an instant on computer not make computer >pogram stability a near-useless feature?
No, instant reboot would most likely only work if the computer is shutdown in a stable state. If it crashes then you will have to zap the content of the memory and reload everything from the HD.
In some ways it's not very different of putting your computer in sleep mode rather than shutting it down (for computers that can turn off everything but RAM while in sleep mode.)
>I am not sure but I would hazard a guess that the Apple Public License is NOT a certified (by OSI) Open Source (TM) licence. As an aside, anyone know why the didn't just use a BSD license?
If they released it under the BSD license, some other vendor could grab the source, improve on it, sell it and never release the source of the changes. If I remember well Apple's license prevent you to do that.
Actually it could be interesting. Apple might be building a "plan B" in case Motorola and IBM drop the ball with PowerPCs for the desktop. It seems lately those guys have been more interested by the embedded market for the PowerPC line of processor than for the desktop market. The G4 is still stalling at 500 MHz, that's more than 6 months after its introduction... meanwhile Intel and AMD are delivering over 1 GHz processors. Maybe Apple is considering switching to x86 processors as a back-up plans if things gets really bad with the PowerPC for the desktop.
For those who think that wouldn't work because People wouldn't buy Apple boxes anymore and just run MacOS X on whatevet cheap PC hardware is available... think again: a) nothing prevent them to adapt their OS pricing scheme to be profitable from mass OS sales b) they will still provide the best plug & play experience since they will make sure MacOS X works smoothly with all their hardware c) all the usual Apple stuff some of us love (Firewire, clean design, nice cases, inexpensive wireless, etc.) will probably keep the mac faithful to buy Apple hardware
Honnestly, those days, beside for the processor and motherboard, the parts are usually the same in a Mac and PC (IDE, USB, PCI, AGP, etc)... and the processor is on a daughtercard...
>Apparently, the majority of Apple's profits come from their mildly over-priced hardware.
How is it overpriced? Sure if you take the raw parts it's more expensive a cheapass PC of equivalent power. However your cheapass PC is just that. Apple's box are well built and with a nice design, I don't think they are over priced if you compare them with quality PCs.
Now, what could be regreted is the lack of competition and availability of really cheap (design as well as price) G4 boxes...
Re:Biggest question for older Mac owners...
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 1
I just installed OS X DP3 on my 8500. I think most PCI PowerMacs work with the unsupported install (i.e. Apple won't give support for pre G3/G4 systems at this point.)
My guess is that they are focusing their QA efforts on G3/G4 boxes right now. But as far as I can tell it works fine on my 8500.
If it's just about release dates, then why regio zone old movies that are being released in DVD?
I think the zoning is mostly to control distribution pipelines. (I'm in Quebec and I have to wait forever to get recent French movies as zone 1 DVDs, because we have to wait for someone in north america to think the movie is worth it to make the zone 1 version.)
Right. And what I wanted to point out is that it's not because the code is longer/more readable that it's less efficient (I was arguing that python code could be optimzed and that its human readability and good structure can actually help the compiler at doing a good job.)
Could it be because there is not enough demande for internal 1394 devices yet? so it's cheaper to ship an ATA drive. Also the external Firewire might just be ATA or SCSI drives in some box with some converters... any idea?
Not if you have a good compiler. If there are few ways to do a thing, then your compiler can focus on optimizing those and will be "less confused" than if there are 15 ways to actually do the same thing.
Less line of code != faster execution time. Good compilers will do dead code elimination, common subexpressions optimizations etc.. Also binaries of code optimized for speed tends to be bigger than bins of non-optimized code as you are doing inlining, etc.
Er... Mklinux was the first Linux implementation on Mac HW (on a Mach kernel) Darwin is BSD at top of Mach.
What else do you need to get the drivers/specs of the HW?
Be is just whining... the various Linux PPC projects doesn't seem to have too much troubles running on the latest Macs. My guess about be is that they got so much financial and engineering support from Intel that they switched side. I don't blame them. But they didn't whine in the past, and didn't have the specs either, yet BeOS runned on Mac HW.
>Might be better than nothing, but on the other hand proprietary standards isn't something very desirable in and of itself.
I don't think Quicktime is not a proprietary standard, the file format and the API are documented. (the file format is even the one used for MPEG-4 specs.)
http://www.zeroknowledge.com/ is working on a set of proxy client/server... some of youe packet gets encrypted and sent to a Freedom that decypher them, do whatever request/transaction you want... end return you the result encrypted. The freedom server supposedly doesn't keep any user info, so it's transparent. And work at the top of any ISP.
The two computers have to be directly linked by a fiber optic. The problem is that fiber has some length limit, so you need repeaters to regenerate the signal. And i think that screw the Quantum encryption. (Since the repeater 'observe' the data.)
OS Baby Bill - what would prevent them to keep their monopoly or do a new Office-like suit that get bundled as part of the OS like IE is? Hell they probably could do a much nicer office suit if they started from scratch. And it would be forced down your throat with a Windows upgrade... and then why buy another office product? Back to square 1.
Office Baby Bill - what prevent them to make an Office platform? It could run apps written in VBA and integrate all kind of services (IE/OE/Exchange integrated/bundled if they are not already) They could port the whole Office platform to other OSes and once they have the monopoly of Office product on a given platform they can start the same kind of levrage they do on Apple (DO this or we bail Office out of your OS/hardware.) Hell they could do what Netscape planned to do with their stuff, take over the whole screen and serve as an interface to the unterlying system. We would still have a nasty monopoly.
Apple has a nice system they had with PowerMail ages ago and that they resurected with MacOS 9: keychains. Basically a keychain is an encrypted file that hold keys, like username/password pairs. If a keychain is open apps can query it on a per need basis (and yes the OS ask for confirmation that app X is allowed to use the keychain each time the app try to.) It's pretty neat.
Just add some password generator to that and you actually only need to know the password to the keychain (better not lose or compromise that one tho:)
I wish there was the same kind of system for Linux and PalmOS and that I could synchronize keychains between the various platforms. Would be handy for all the junks passwords.
|Also, just out of curiosity, how exactly ARE Canadian residents going to be punished for late payments if the server goes down.|
They won't be. When you send your paimenet it's timestamped. So even if the sever goes down after you send it, there is a proof you did. Now if the server is down when you are supposed to get a bill via EPO... well since it's down the bill won't be able to be sent that way, so you won't be late.
It's really not any different than if the PO is on strike (which happens now and then)... they can't fault you for being late if you don't receive the invoice.
The big difference is that I trust the post office and the canadian privacy laws over AOL any time. Also I expect the governement and universities to make all kind of forms fillable and sendable over the EPO
I hope there will be some bridge to SMTP once they have the public key and digital signature feature setup
(damn, my comment got cut in half, here is a complete repost) |You can't send or receive normal Internet email|
They mention some 'coming soon' features; one of them is digital signing and use of public keys... I expect that once they have that up & running they will make some bridge from/to SMTP only sending/accepting properly authetified/encrypted emails. (Granted that's speculation, but that would make sense.)
|If your penfriend from Canada is also signed up with EPO, they have the option of sending you the message using that instead. |
The subscription form is open to US residents too.
Additional features: * You can decide who can and can't send you mail. * When you receive mail from someone you know who that person is. That give you some guarantee the mail is not forged. (I guess you can always register through a fake name at some physical dropbox...)
Although not revolutionary at all, I think it's pretty neat.
Plus Canada has some laws about privacy, and the Privacy Act indeed guarantee the promises make about not doing datamining, etc.
>You can't send or receive normal Internet emailIf your penfriend from Canada is also signed up with EPO, they have the option of sending you the message using that instead.
The subscription form is open to US residents too.
Additional features: * You can decide who can and can't send you mail. * When you receive mail from someone you know who that person is. That give you some guarantee the mail is not forged. (I guess you can always register through a fake name at some physical dropbox...)
Although not revolutionary at all, I think it's pretty neat.
Plus Canada has some laws about privacy, and the Privacy Act indeed guarantee the promises make about not doing datamining, etc.
"Either OS lets anybody's mother -- no offense, Mom -- start using the computer as soon as it powers on. And that may be fine for some people. But not for me. I don't need to be insulted by my OS, and I like a learning experience."
"No matter which way you go, you'll start "thinking different" (adverb intentionally ommitted), because you'll actually have to start thinking once you start using. In contrast to the Mac, in which case no thinking -- different or otherwise -- is required at all. "
You know, most people like it that way, not having to think to use the computer, i.e. low learning curve. I don't see how that make MacOS bad.
Not everyone is inclined to spend a lot of time to learn how to get their computer to work.
Sure, we are. We love to tinker, fiddle, tweak, hack, etc. But we are not exactly the average computer user either.
So because MacOS doesn't do what YOU want doesn't mean it's bad. It just mean you should use something else; which you do.
That's why having a choice is important. The more choice, the better. One size doesn't fit all.
Slashdot Mirror
These are not the backdoors you are looking for.
>Would an instant on computer not make computer
>pogram stability a near-useless feature?
No, instant reboot would most likely only work if the computer is shutdown in a stable state. If it crashes then you will have to zap the content of the memory and reload everything from the HD.
In some ways it's not very different of putting your computer in sleep mode rather than shutting it down (for computers that can turn off everything but RAM while in sleep mode.)
Janus
>I am not sure but I would hazard a guess that the Apple Public License is NOT a certified (by OSI) Open Source (TM) licence. As an aside, anyone know why the didn't just use a BSD license?
If they released it under the BSD license, some other vendor could grab the source, improve on it, sell it and never release the source of the changes. If I remember well Apple's license prevent you to do that.
Yes, it runs on x86 and PowerPC hardware.
Read the press release.
Actually it could be interesting. Apple might be building a "plan B" in case Motorola and IBM drop the ball with PowerPCs for the desktop.
It seems lately those guys have been more interested by the embedded market for the PowerPC line of processor than for the desktop market.
The G4 is still stalling at 500 MHz, that's more than 6 months after its introduction... meanwhile Intel and AMD are delivering over 1 GHz processors.
Maybe Apple is considering switching to x86 processors as a back-up plans if things gets really bad with the PowerPC for the desktop.
For those who think that wouldn't work because People wouldn't buy Apple boxes anymore and just run MacOS X on whatevet cheap PC hardware is available... think again:
a) nothing prevent them to adapt their OS pricing scheme to be profitable from mass OS sales
b) they will still provide the best plug & play experience since they will make sure MacOS X works smoothly with all their hardware
c) all the usual Apple stuff some of us love (Firewire, clean design, nice cases, inexpensive wireless, etc.) will probably keep the mac faithful to buy Apple hardware
Honnestly, those days, beside for the processor and motherboard, the parts are usually the same in a Mac and PC (IDE, USB, PCI, AGP, etc)... and the processor is on a daughtercard...
Janus
>Apparently, the majority of Apple's profits come from their mildly over-priced hardware.
How is it overpriced? Sure if you take the raw parts it's more expensive a cheapass PC of equivalent power. However your cheapass PC is just that. Apple's box are well built and with a nice design, I don't think they are over priced if you compare them with quality PCs.
Now, what could be regreted is the lack of competition and availability of really cheap (design as well as price) G4 boxes...
I just installed OS X DP3 on my 8500. I think most PCI PowerMacs work with the unsupported install (i.e. Apple won't give support for pre G3/G4 systems at this point.)
My guess is that they are focusing their QA efforts on G3/G4 boxes right now. But as far as I can tell it works fine on my 8500.
If it's just about release dates, then why regio zone old movies that are being released in DVD?
I think the zoning is mostly to control distribution pipelines. (I'm in Quebec and I have to wait forever to get recent French movies as zone 1 DVDs, because we have to wait for someone in north america to think the movie is worth it to make the zone 1 version.)
Right. And what I wanted to point out is that it's not because the code is longer/more readable that it's less efficient (I was arguing that python code could be optimzed and that its human readability and good structure can actually help the compiler at doing a good job.)
Could it be because there is not enough demande for internal 1394 devices yet? so it's cheaper to ship an ATA drive.
Also the external Firewire might just be ATA or SCSI drives in some box with some converters... any idea?
> slower execution times
Not if you have a good compiler. If there are few ways to do a thing, then your compiler can focus on optimizing those and will be "less confused" than if there are 15 ways to actually do the same thing.
Less line of code != faster execution time. Good compilers will do dead code elimination, common subexpressions optimizations etc.. Also binaries of code optimized for speed tends to be bigger than bins of non-optimized code as you are doing inlining, etc.
Just my $0.02
Janus
Er... Mklinux was the first Linux implementation on Mac HW (on a Mach kernel)
Darwin is BSD at top of Mach.
What else do you need to get the drivers/specs of the HW?
Be is just whining... the various Linux PPC projects doesn't seem to have too much troubles running on the latest Macs. My guess about be is that they got so much financial and engineering support from Intel that they switched side. I don't blame them. But they didn't whine in the past, and didn't have the specs either, yet BeOS runned on Mac HW.
JUst my $.02
Janus
>Might be better than nothing, but on the other hand proprietary standards isn't something very desirable in and of itself.
I don't think Quicktime is not a proprietary standard, the file format and the API are documented. (the file format is even the one used for MPEG-4 specs.)
It's a proprietary implementation.
http://www.zeroknowledge.com/
is working on a set of proxy client/server... some of youe packet gets encrypted and sent to a Freedom that decypher them, do whatever request/transaction you want... end return you the result encrypted. The freedom server supposedly doesn't keep any user info, so it's transparent. And work at the top of any ISP.
The two computers have to be directly linked by a fiber optic. The problem is that fiber has some length limit, so you need repeaters to regenerate the signal. And i think that screw the Quantum encryption. (Since the repeater 'observe' the data.)
OS Baby Bill - what would prevent them to keep their monopoly or do a new Office-like suit that get bundled as part of the OS like IE is? Hell they probably could do a much nicer office suit if they started from scratch. And it would be forced down your throat with a Windows upgrade... and then why buy another office product?
Back to square 1.
Office Baby Bill - what prevent them to make an Office platform? It could run apps written in VBA and integrate all kind of services (IE/OE/Exchange integrated/bundled if they are not already) They could port the whole Office platform to other OSes and once they have the monopoly of Office product on a given platform they can start the same kind of levrage they do on Apple (DO this or we bail Office out of your OS/hardware.) Hell they could do what Netscape planned to do with their stuff, take over the whole screen and serve as an interface to the unterlying system. We would still have a nasty monopoly.
I am missing something?
I wonder if Crusoe will come in five fruity colors :-)
http://arcanum.apple.com/
:)
Apple has a nice system they had with PowerMail ages ago and that they resurected with MacOS 9: keychains.
Basically a keychain is an encrypted file that hold keys, like username/password pairs. If a keychain is open apps can query it on a per need basis (and yes the OS ask for confirmation that app X is allowed to use the keychain each time the app try to.)
It's pretty neat.
Just add some password generator to that and you actually only need to know the password to the keychain (better not lose or compromise that one tho
I wish there was the same kind of system for Linux and PalmOS and that I could synchronize keychains between the various platforms. Would be handy for all the junks passwords.
Just my $0.02
Janus
|Also, just out of curiosity, how exactly ARE Canadian residents going to be punished for late payments if the server goes down.|
They won't be. When you send your paimenet it's timestamped. So even if the sever goes down after you send it, there is a proof you did.
Now if the server is down when you are supposed to get a bill via EPO... well since it's down the bill won't be able to be sent that way, so you won't be late.
It's really not any different than if the PO is on strike (which happens now and then)... they can't fault you for being late if you don't receive the invoice.
The big difference is that I trust the post office and the canadian privacy laws over AOL any time. Also I expect the governement and universities to make all kind of forms fillable and sendable over the EPO
I hope there will be some bridge to SMTP once they have the public key and digital signature feature setup
(damn, my comment got cut in half, here is a complete repost)
|You can't send or receive normal Internet email|
They mention some 'coming soon' features; one of them is digital signing and use of public keys... I expect that once they have that up & running they will make some bridge from/to SMTP only sending/accepting properly authetified/encrypted emails. (Granted that's speculation, but that would make sense.)
|If your penfriend from Canada is also signed up with EPO, they have the option of sending you the message using that instead. |
The subscription form is open to US residents too.
Additional features:
* You can decide who can and can't send you mail.
* When you receive mail from someone you know who that person is. That give you some guarantee the mail is not forged.
(I guess you can always register through a fake name at some physical dropbox...)
Although not revolutionary at all, I think it's pretty neat.
Plus Canada has some laws about privacy, and the Privacy Act indeed guarantee the promises make about not doing datamining, etc.
Just my CAN$0.03
Janus
>You can't send or receive normal Internet emailIf your penfriend from Canada is also signed up with EPO, they have the option of sending you the message using that instead.
The subscription form is open to US residents too.
Additional features:
* You can decide who can and can't send you mail.
* When you receive mail from someone you know who that person is. That give you some guarantee the mail is not forged.
(I guess you can always register through a fake name at some physical dropbox...)
Although not revolutionary at all, I think it's pretty neat.
Plus Canada has some laws about privacy, and the Privacy Act indeed guarantee the promises make about not doing datamining, etc.
Just my CAN$0.03
Janus
Another reason they used BSD: NeXT was using BSD (with a mach kernel) and MacOS X is based on that.
"Either OS lets anybody's mother -- no offense, Mom -- start using the computer as soon as it powers on. And that may be fine for some people. But not for me. I don't need to be insulted by my OS, and I like a learning experience."
"No matter which way you go, you'll start "thinking different" (adverb intentionally ommitted), because you'll actually have to start thinking once you start using. In contrast to the Mac, in which case no thinking -- different or otherwise -- is required at all. "
You know, most people like it that way, not having to think to use the computer, i.e. low learning curve. I don't see how that make MacOS bad.
Not everyone is inclined to spend a lot of time to learn how to get their computer to work.
Sure, we are. We love to tinker, fiddle, tweak, hack, etc. But we are not exactly the average computer user either.
So because MacOS doesn't do what YOU want doesn't mean it's bad. It just mean you should use something else; which you do.
That's why having a choice is important. The more choice, the better. One size doesn't fit all.
I forgot the url to the roadmap:m ap.pdf
http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/overview/newroad