Re:What I would Actually like to see.
on
Aquarium Modcase
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Water that is neutral, that is that has an equal amount of hydronium and hydroxyl ions, has 1 x 10^-7 M of each ion. That means that for approximately every 10 million water molecules there is 1 hydronium ion and 1 hydroxyl ion.
The idea is that water breaks down into hydronium and hydroxyl at a certain rate. At 25 degrees Celsius this rate is that one in every 10 million water molecules is broken down at any one time. This number depends on temperature so that at higher temperatures the water is dissociating (breaking down) faster.
I'm asking about things that link to OSX libraries specifically (that is, OSX apps), not things written to run under an emulator. Does Apple make the source to those libraries openly available for porting to other platforms, or are they proprietary?
There are both proprietary parts of MacOS X and open source parts of it. Generally the proprietary parts relate to the GUI, such as the "native" window manager (Quartz and Quartz Extreme).
Like anything else if a programmer uses a proprietary library for MacOS X but wants to open source his program it is fairly easy to do so, just write a convenience class as an interface that accesses the proprietary bits and customize that for each build on a different platform. It does add a bit of code to the program but it's not really that bad and it actually tends to improve your program design.
So, no it is not a lock-in. Apple offers its libraries for you to use, but you don't have to. If you don't like their libraries then feel free to come up with your own or use some open source ones. The thing to remember with Apple is they don't hide libraries or make insane changes without letting you know in advance. This really helps out programmers since they can plan ahead for cross-platform compatibility.
Will I have a problem re-compiling my favorite OSX apps on a non-apple Linux or BSD system?
This is pretty much a trick question. The answer is that there is no problem porting an application, provided that the application uses libraries available both in MacOS X and the new platform you are porting to. Of course if the programmer decided to link against a library that is only available on MacOS X then the program will only compile on MacOS X. This can be gotten around by writing your own code to act as a bridge or to emulate the libraries only available on MacOS X.
This is not a situation unique to MasOS X however, it is true whether you are using MacOS X libraries, Windows libraries, or Joe Shmoe's libraries. If the library you are linking against is not available where you are porting the program to then the program needs to be modified to be compiled.
So if the MacOS X program you are porting uses the X11 and other open source libraries then you have a good shot of it being compiled on just about any platform out there.
Heh, hadn't heard of that one. Simply amazing though. I mean, residential telephone is like 60 volts? No problems there. Now how someone can just come along and steal high voltage power lines is beyond me. All I can think of is they are either very desperate and inventive or one of them used to work for some sort of power company and know how to properly handle high voltage.
It makes you wonder though, what kind of twisted mind goes straight for 3000 V power lines? There have got to be easier ways to make some cash than fool around with that sort of danger. I mean for that kind of work you might as well find a job!
A friend of mine was in a rural part of Ecuador years ago when a US (I believe) phone company was contracted to lay a phone network. He told me that one day the workers would be there laying the cables, and they next day the cables were dug up and gone.
This happens in the United States also. Basically crackheads will do just about anything for their next hit. One of the things they have been known to do is to use tree pruners or climb telephone poles in order to cut down telephone lines for copper. I've been in a few areas of inner city where it was almost an epidemic at times, lines would get cut down daily until the police caught the person who was doing it.
proclus: This thread is dead. pudge: No, it's in maintenance mode.
Lol, good one pudge.
This article is proclus's annual "we're still around, notice us!" message. It seems that Dr. Michael Love, aka proclus, has some sort of need to continue pestering the Macintosh community. I too have tried to make sense out of his claim that the PowerPC platform is unsupported by his GNUness, while still remaining supported somehow. Through all of his ranting and ravings I have come to a simple conclusion: ignore him.
Proclus, along with the other trolls who frequent Slashdot and MacSlash, has gotten himself such a bad reputation for FUD tactics that I don't know of a single person who takes what he says at face value. Proclus does his GNU ideals more harm than good by appearing to be so zealous and fostering the impression that open source advocates are the computer equivalent to suicide bombers, taking down "big corporate business" at all costs.
Honestly, most of us just want to use our computers as easily as possible. If it is a choice between something that works easily and something that waves a banner around then I will definitely go with the solution that is the easiest to work with. If open source really wants to make an impact on people then they would do more for the cause by making their products better rather than spending so much time on useless advocacy.
How about working with Apple on their open source efforts? I know that some people think that Apple's open license isn't as "free" as it should be but they have made changes to open it up more and they are likely to do so again if the need is there. Apple has worked very closely with the open source community and there are many opportunities to show them that they are doing the right thing and to convince them to work even closer with open source.
it would only take 111 downloads of your band's songs to break-even.
I'm not sure about that, by my calculations it works out to 68 songs.
99 cents per track
Apple gets 34 and label gets 65 according to several articles I've read.
65 cents * 91% = 59.15 cents per track to the artist
$40 / $0.5915 per track = 67.6 tracks
Round off to 68
So it's even more amazing than you thought. As I pointed out earlier, if you have 12 tracks per album then after 6 albums you would see a profit. That's pretty damn good.
Apple gives the record label (or CDBaby, in this case) 65 cents per 99 cent track. CDBaby will then take a 9% cut of that 65 cents, leaving the artist with about 59 cents from each track sold.
Right, 65 cents is the figure that I've read in a few articles about the iTunes Music Store. So, going on 59 cents is the artists cut that means that if you can sell about 68 tracks you will break even. At 12 tracks per album that means that if you sell 6 albums then you can make a profit, that's way better than what you'd make selling the physical compact disks!
linux is making huge headway, but not many people seem all that excited about it
It's all a matter of who Linux is suited for and targeted at. Linux is a great operating system that kicks ass as a server platform and is great for many tasks but it is not really an operating system for the masses, no matter how great the strides have been in attempting to make it so. It is because of this that there aren't droves of non-technically inclined people rushing to it. This doesn't make Linux any less great, it just means that you won't see it pushing other operating systems off the desktop just yet.
As for MacOS, it is designed especially for the non-techs with the addition of a stable BSD and Mach core for the techs. It tries to give the best of both worlds to its users without sacrificing much of either and it succeeds fairly admirably. In addition Apple seems to be smart enough not to try to compete with any of the other minor platforms but instead tries to work with and even enhance them by giving back code and working on free (speech, beer...whatever) projects.
It isn't just stuff like cutting people up with axes. Tik-Tok has business and political ambitions. The hospitals and old folks homes were priceless or rather they were disturbingly pricey with a callous attitude towards deadbeats.....
One of my favorites were the automated recycling centers that would pay you for recycling just about everything including dead bodies from mob hits. That book was truly priceless in showing what misuses can be made of technology when it is put out into the real world.
Asimov's robot stories always took place in a world that was afraid of robots.
Actually Asimov's robots were in many different settings, some where they were feared and some where they were just another device to do your work for you. In "Robots of Dawn", "Caves of Steel", and other books set in that universe there were generally two sets of people, the Spacers who had tons of robots and totally accepted them as tools and the Earthers who barely tolerate robots and are in fact fairly afraid of them.
In fact, Asimov's famous "Three Laws of Robotics" were created so that robots would not be feared but would instead be able to be used merely as tools that could not harm a person. Prior to Asimov many science fiction novels were about the evils of technology and the "mad scientists" who created robotic monstrosities. According to Asimov,
"Back in 1939, I realized that robots were essentially lovable and were not clanking monsters. In less than 40 years, the world caught on, and we have robots such as those in Star Wars....My only knowledge of robots was what I had read (and rejected) in earlier science fiction stories. The three laws of robotics were, in their actual wording, John Campbell's, but he insisted he got them out of the first couple of robot stories." (from 1977 and 1976 letters in Yours, Isaac Asimov, 1995)
Its just another excuse to have a day off in the christmas period in the UK.
I know, I know. I was just taking the opportunity to be a bit "cheeky". It's the name "Boxing Day", it always makes me think of two guys duking it out over some leftover Christmas presents. But hey, I'm all for more days off from work!
The music for the film is recorded in a completely different set of recording sessions than the music for the soundtrack album. The acoustics of the studio are different, and the placement of microphones is changed to record for a two-channel mix versus a six-channel mix.
Actually that raises an interesting issue. Since AAC can handle 5.1 channel surround sound (and more, take a look at this discussion on the 3ivx forums), it might be nice to have the soundtrack in the full 5.1 channel surround sound which was recorded for the movie. Then you could just hook your computer up to your stereo and get the full music experience.
In fact this could really add to a musicians "art", being able to provide people with not only the usual 2 channel versions but also 5.1 surround sound. Combine this with the fact that the latest PowerMac comes with built-in optical sound ports and you have a killer addition to any audiophile's collection.
Microsoft drops Mac IE development as Safari reaches 1.0
Of course, anyone who wants to develop Office-like business software or any kind of web browser for Windows faces the same uphill battle. When the OS manufacturer makes non-OS software, they enjoy unparalleled integration with the rest of the system and anyone else comes in four to six months behind the development curve.
This is not quite the same situation. First of all, Apple not only made its own web browser - Safari, it also released the entire rendering library for the browser - WebCore. There are no hidden API or system hooks, it's all out in the open for anyone to use. In fact the latest version of OmniWeb uses WebCore and makes a great browser which builds on Apple's efforts rather than trying to compete with them.
Yes, Final Cut is competition to Premiere and yes, Final Cut is programmed by Apple. However, the fact that Final Cut is made by Apple really doesn't matter. To my knowledge Apple does not hide any of the MacOS API from other companies in order to outdo other companies in providing software to the Mac platform. If you watch what libraries are getting called from an Apple-made program you will find that they are calling the same libraries that are publicly available. Not only that but the people who program the Mac operating system are different than the people who program the additional applications like Final Cut, so they don't have any additional experience in programming the MacOS than any other programming group that makes it a business to regularly program for MacOS. You can see this when you look at the products made for the MacOS by companies other than Apple. I already gave the example of The Omni Group but there is also Alsoft who make DiskWarrior, and even Microsoft who still make many good products for MacOS despite Apple's so-called programming advantage.
What it comes down to is that Final Cut is a better product than Premiere and Adobe does not want to spend the time and money necessary to compete with it. This would be true regardless of who programmed Final Cut. It's truly a shame since Final Cut has only gotten so good by competing with programs such as Premiere. I would like to have Premiere still directly in competition with Final Cut so that the two can continue to compete and innovate, keeping both products fresh.
Just like you, I'm running MacOS 10.2.6. On my first attempt to reproduce the screen saver crash I had the screen saver pause for a second, fade to black and then the login window came back up again. I tried it for a second time and this time it did crash and I was able to get to the desktop. This was repeatable several times.
I then logged out and tried the same trick with the user login window. This time the login window greyed out the buttons and it refused to let me enter any password or take any action. I had to reboot the machine externally. Once I did so and the system restarted I was presented with the login window again, even though I have the machine set to auto-log me on. I tried the trick again with the same results, had to reboot. This time I entered in my normal user password and had no problems logging in.
I tried the trick on several other programs without being able to use it to circumvent security. It looks to me like this is a problem with the screen saver only. That being said, you should NEVER use a screen saver as a way to protect sensitive data. If you are that worried about your data then log out from the account when you leave your desk, it only takes a few seconds to log back in. If you are really worried about security then keep your computer behind lock and door - no matter what the machine it is so easy to bypass any security measures once you have physical access to the machine.
you can get a can of Expanding Foam for $2.79 at Home Depot. Just stick the nozzle into the fan grille opening and fill 'er up till foam comes out the floppy drive slot and all 8 corners.
Microsoft in a previous article said that they had no intention of porting Office to Linux right now, but being that they have ported it to OS X most of the work has already been done.
Actually that's not quite true. Microsoft programmed Office for the Mac using the Carbon API and libraries which are part of MacOS. This is a set of APIs which are completely proprietary to MacOS and which bring a program no closer to Linux than a program which uses the Windows API program does.
The only way in which doing a MacOS port of a program brings it closer to doing a Linux port is most programmers doing a port tend to separate out the parts of the program which rely on a particular operating system from the parts that are platform-agnostic. Thus you will most likely end up with a large chunk of the code which can be re-used to add a front end for any particular system type. This is not a requirement for a port however, it is just smart programming. In fact, it is even smarter programming to do this in the first place. Microsoft may or may not have done this, but I'm doubting that they did. From what I understand they basically program the Mac versions of their programs from nearly the ground up.
In programming the Myth series of games, it was often said by the developers at Bungie that the platform-agnostic parts of the games took up about 90% of the code, while each port took up 10% more. So for a 10% investment in additional coding you could sell the game to a another platform. This requires a bit of planning but it is a much better way to program than to do one version for one platform and then have to completely redo you work to get it to run on another. Finally, there is another great advantage to doing multi-platform programming. Often a bug which doesn't show on one platform will show up on another, allowing you to clean up any possible problems before they get you into trouble later on.
I'm not ruling out the possibility of rocks going from Earth to Mars, but isn't it a lot less likely than the other way around?
It is likely that meteors from Earth hit Mars less frequently than meteors from Mars hit Earth, that is true. Even still, on a geological time scale it is likely that a lot of Earth material has successfully traveled to Mars. There have been several impacts in Earth's past that would have imparted enough velocity to ejecta to reach Mars. One good thing about Mars not having much of an atmosphere is that a meteor will heat up less upon entry than it would if it happened on Earth and so it will have less of a tendency to cook the meteor and kill off the life forms inside it.
This idea has been discussed many times by both scientists and science fiction writers. It is even possible that life on Earth even came from debris of an extra-solar nature, carried on a comet or meteor from some distant solar system. There have been bacteria, yeasts, molds, viruses and other forms of life found which were still able to replicate after several thousands of years tucked away somewhere. It's no large leap to imagine these kinds of simple life being able to survive tens or even hundreds of thousands of years given the right combination of conditions.
Is mars far enough from earth that this would indicate life is probably "all over" the universe, or might that mars life have a common source with our own?
Mars and Earth exchange material all the time from impacts on their surfaces. There are several instances of rocks that came from Mars having been found on Earth and the reverse is most likely true also, that Earth rocks have traveled to Mars. So if there is life on Mars, there is a chance that it came from Earth - or maybe even life on Earth even originated on Mars.
Take a look at this NASA site for more information about Mars-Earth meteorites. Here's a space.com article that describes just how Earth is hit by a Mars meteor about once a month.
And why exactly is someone from/. *qualified* on this subject?
I hate to break it to you but many of the print reporters have very few qualifications to be covering the news but they are doing it anyways. Sure a Slashdot "professional" interview won't be extremely professional but I'm sure most people don't want it to be. I, for one, think I would enjoy a more "geek-on-the-street" kind of interview and I think that a Slashdot interview would provide that.
I may be wrong but it's at least worth a shot. It seems to have worked out pretty well in this story we are commenting on.
we do this sometimes, when it is appropriate. In this case, I have a PR contact at Apple who asked me last week if I wanted to talk to someone about WWDC
You know, I always thought that this would be a good idea for Slashdot. I mean, you guys must have some pretty interesting contacts by now, use some of them to do a "news" article or two on your own. I'd still keep the old Slashdot question/answer interview around because they are interesting and good for the people who don't have time to do a traditional interview.
Yellow Dog Linux has always been a great addition to the Macintosh platform. It's good to see that they are keeping up their excellent support of Apple. More choice is always good and the fact that people can buy systems directly from TerraSoft with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed is definitely a plus.
My hope is that both Apple and TerraSoft continue to work together and bring ideas back and forth between MacOS and Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Water that is neutral, that is that has an equal amount of hydronium and hydroxyl ions, has 1 x 10^-7 M of each ion. That means that for approximately every 10 million water molecules there is 1 hydronium ion and 1 hydroxyl ion.
The idea is that water breaks down into hydronium and hydroxyl at a certain rate. At 25 degrees Celsius this rate is that one in every 10 million water molecules is broken down at any one time. This number depends on temperature so that at higher temperatures the water is dissociating (breaking down) faster.
Take a look at this web site to learn more about pH.
There are both proprietary parts of MacOS X and open source parts of it. Generally the proprietary parts relate to the GUI, such as the "native" window manager (Quartz and Quartz Extreme).
Like anything else if a programmer uses a proprietary library for MacOS X but wants to open source his program it is fairly easy to do so, just write a convenience class as an interface that accesses the proprietary bits and customize that for each build on a different platform. It does add a bit of code to the program but it's not really that bad and it actually tends to improve your program design.
So, no it is not a lock-in. Apple offers its libraries for you to use, but you don't have to. If you don't like their libraries then feel free to come up with your own or use some open source ones. The thing to remember with Apple is they don't hide libraries or make insane changes without letting you know in advance. This really helps out programmers since they can plan ahead for cross-platform compatibility.
This is pretty much a trick question. The answer is that there is no problem porting an application, provided that the application uses libraries available both in MacOS X and the new platform you are porting to. Of course if the programmer decided to link against a library that is only available on MacOS X then the program will only compile on MacOS X. This can be gotten around by writing your own code to act as a bridge or to emulate the libraries only available on MacOS X.
This is not a situation unique to MasOS X however, it is true whether you are using MacOS X libraries, Windows libraries, or Joe Shmoe's libraries. If the library you are linking against is not available where you are porting the program to then the program needs to be modified to be compiled.
So if the MacOS X program you are porting uses the X11 and other open source libraries then you have a good shot of it being compiled on just about any platform out there.
Heh, hadn't heard of that one. Simply amazing though. I mean, residential telephone is like 60 volts? No problems there. Now how someone can just come along and steal high voltage power lines is beyond me. All I can think of is they are either very desperate and inventive or one of them used to work for some sort of power company and know how to properly handle high voltage.
It makes you wonder though, what kind of twisted mind goes straight for 3000 V power lines? There have got to be easier ways to make some cash than fool around with that sort of danger. I mean for that kind of work you might as well find a job!
This happens in the United States also. Basically crackheads will do just about anything for their next hit. One of the things they have been known to do is to use tree pruners or climb telephone poles in order to cut down telephone lines for copper. I've been in a few areas of inner city where it was almost an epidemic at times, lines would get cut down daily until the police caught the person who was doing it.
Especially when Dr. Love, aka proclus, starts talking about Space Mormons, Mutant Radical Mormons, and his desire to form a Mormon-Wiccan cooperative.
Lol, good one pudge.
This article is proclus's annual "we're still around, notice us!" message. It seems that Dr. Michael Love, aka proclus, has some sort of need to continue pestering the Macintosh community. I too have tried to make sense out of his claim that the PowerPC platform is unsupported by his GNUness, while still remaining supported somehow. Through all of his ranting and ravings I have come to a simple conclusion: ignore him.
Proclus, along with the other trolls who frequent Slashdot and MacSlash, has gotten himself such a bad reputation for FUD tactics that I don't know of a single person who takes what he says at face value. Proclus does his GNU ideals more harm than good by appearing to be so zealous and fostering the impression that open source advocates are the computer equivalent to suicide bombers, taking down "big corporate business" at all costs.
Honestly, most of us just want to use our computers as easily as possible. If it is a choice between something that works easily and something that waves a banner around then I will definitely go with the solution that is the easiest to work with. If open source really wants to make an impact on people then they would do more for the cause by making their products better rather than spending so much time on useless advocacy.
How about working with Apple on their open source efforts? I know that some people think that Apple's open license isn't as "free" as it should be but they have made changes to open it up more and they are likely to do so again if the need is there. Apple has worked very closely with the open source community and there are many opportunities to show them that they are doing the right thing and to convince them to work even closer with open source.
I'm not sure about that, by my calculations it works out to 68 songs.
99 cents per track
Apple gets 34 and label gets 65 according to several articles I've read.
65 cents * 91% = 59.15 cents per track to the artist
$40 / $0.5915 per track = 67.6 tracks
Round off to 68
So it's even more amazing than you thought. As I pointed out earlier, if you have 12 tracks per album then after 6 albums you would see a profit. That's pretty damn good.
Right, 65 cents is the figure that I've read in a few articles about the iTunes Music Store. So, going on 59 cents is the artists cut that means that if you can sell about 68 tracks you will break even. At 12 tracks per album that means that if you sell 6 albums then you can make a profit, that's way better than what you'd make selling the physical compact disks!
It's all a matter of who Linux is suited for and targeted at. Linux is a great operating system that kicks ass as a server platform and is great for many tasks but it is not really an operating system for the masses, no matter how great the strides have been in attempting to make it so. It is because of this that there aren't droves of non-technically inclined people rushing to it. This doesn't make Linux any less great, it just means that you won't see it pushing other operating systems off the desktop just yet.
As for MacOS, it is designed especially for the non-techs with the addition of a stable BSD and Mach core for the techs. It tries to give the best of both worlds to its users without sacrificing much of either and it succeeds fairly admirably. In addition Apple seems to be smart enough not to try to compete with any of the other minor platforms but instead tries to work with and even enhance them by giving back code and working on free (speech, beer...whatever) projects.
One of my favorites were the automated recycling centers that would pay you for recycling just about everything including dead bodies from mob hits. That book was truly priceless in showing what misuses can be made of technology when it is put out into the real world.
Ahh so you're the one who keeps buying beans by the hundredweight. Remind me to bring along some scuba gear if I ever have to visit your sound studio!
:)
Actually Asimov's robots were in many different settings, some where they were feared and some where they were just another device to do your work for you. In "Robots of Dawn", "Caves of Steel", and other books set in that universe there were generally two sets of people, the Spacers who had tons of robots and totally accepted them as tools and the Earthers who barely tolerate robots and are in fact fairly afraid of them.
In fact, Asimov's famous "Three Laws of Robotics" were created so that robots would not be feared but would instead be able to be used merely as tools that could not harm a person. Prior to Asimov many science fiction novels were about the evils of technology and the "mad scientists" who created robotic monstrosities. According to Asimov,
I know, I know. I was just taking the opportunity to be a bit "cheeky". It's the name "Boxing Day", it always makes me think of two guys duking it out over some leftover Christmas presents. But hey, I'm all for more days off from work!
Boxing day? Was that the day of the Tyson-Holyfield fight? Oh wait, no that was on June 28th. So what boxing event was this on December 26th?
Actually that raises an interesting issue. Since AAC can handle 5.1 channel surround sound (and more, take a look at this discussion on the 3ivx forums), it might be nice to have the soundtrack in the full 5.1 channel surround sound which was recorded for the movie. Then you could just hook your computer up to your stereo and get the full music experience.
In fact this could really add to a musicians "art", being able to provide people with not only the usual 2 channel versions but also 5.1 surround sound. Combine this with the fact that the latest PowerMac comes with built-in optical sound ports and you have a killer addition to any audiophile's collection.
This is not quite the same situation. First of all, Apple not only made its own web browser - Safari, it also released the entire rendering library for the browser - WebCore. There are no hidden API or system hooks, it's all out in the open for anyone to use. In fact the latest version of OmniWeb uses WebCore and makes a great browser which builds on Apple's efforts rather than trying to compete with them.
Yes, Final Cut is competition to Premiere and yes, Final Cut is programmed by Apple. However, the fact that Final Cut is made by Apple really doesn't matter. To my knowledge Apple does not hide any of the MacOS API from other companies in order to outdo other companies in providing software to the Mac platform. If you watch what libraries are getting called from an Apple-made program you will find that they are calling the same libraries that are publicly available. Not only that but the people who program the Mac operating system are different than the people who program the additional applications like Final Cut, so they don't have any additional experience in programming the MacOS than any other programming group that makes it a business to regularly program for MacOS. You can see this when you look at the products made for the MacOS by companies other than Apple. I already gave the example of The Omni Group but there is also Alsoft who make DiskWarrior, and even Microsoft who still make many good products for MacOS despite Apple's so-called programming advantage.
What it comes down to is that Final Cut is a better product than Premiere and Adobe does not want to spend the time and money necessary to compete with it. This would be true regardless of who programmed Final Cut. It's truly a shame since Final Cut has only gotten so good by competing with programs such as Premiere. I would like to have Premiere still directly in competition with Final Cut so that the two can continue to compete and innovate, keeping both products fresh.
Just like you, I'm running MacOS 10.2.6. On my first attempt to reproduce the screen saver crash I had the screen saver pause for a second, fade to black and then the login window came back up again. I tried it for a second time and this time it did crash and I was able to get to the desktop. This was repeatable several times.
I then logged out and tried the same trick with the user login window. This time the login window greyed out the buttons and it refused to let me enter any password or take any action. I had to reboot the machine externally. Once I did so and the system restarted I was presented with the login window again, even though I have the machine set to auto-log me on. I tried the trick again with the same results, had to reboot. This time I entered in my normal user password and had no problems logging in.
I tried the trick on several other programs without being able to use it to circumvent security. It looks to me like this is a problem with the screen saver only. That being said, you should NEVER use a screen saver as a way to protect sensitive data. If you are that worried about your data then log out from the account when you leave your desk, it only takes a few seconds to log back in. If you are really worried about security then keep your computer behind lock and door - no matter what the machine it is so easy to bypass any security measures once you have physical access to the machine.
You mean like this guy did?
Actually that's not quite true. Microsoft programmed Office for the Mac using the Carbon API and libraries which are part of MacOS. This is a set of APIs which are completely proprietary to MacOS and which bring a program no closer to Linux than a program which uses the Windows API program does.
The only way in which doing a MacOS port of a program brings it closer to doing a Linux port is most programmers doing a port tend to separate out the parts of the program which rely on a particular operating system from the parts that are platform-agnostic. Thus you will most likely end up with a large chunk of the code which can be re-used to add a front end for any particular system type. This is not a requirement for a port however, it is just smart programming. In fact, it is even smarter programming to do this in the first place. Microsoft may or may not have done this, but I'm doubting that they did. From what I understand they basically program the Mac versions of their programs from nearly the ground up.
In programming the Myth series of games, it was often said by the developers at Bungie that the platform-agnostic parts of the games took up about 90% of the code, while each port took up 10% more. So for a 10% investment in additional coding you could sell the game to a another platform. This requires a bit of planning but it is a much better way to program than to do one version for one platform and then have to completely redo you work to get it to run on another. Finally, there is another great advantage to doing multi-platform programming. Often a bug which doesn't show on one platform will show up on another, allowing you to clean up any possible problems before they get you into trouble later on.
It is likely that meteors from Earth hit Mars less frequently than meteors from Mars hit Earth, that is true. Even still, on a geological time scale it is likely that a lot of Earth material has successfully traveled to Mars. There have been several impacts in Earth's past that would have imparted enough velocity to ejecta to reach Mars. One good thing about Mars not having much of an atmosphere is that a meteor will heat up less upon entry than it would if it happened on Earth and so it will have less of a tendency to cook the meteor and kill off the life forms inside it.
This idea has been discussed many times by both scientists and science fiction writers. It is even possible that life on Earth even came from debris of an extra-solar nature, carried on a comet or meteor from some distant solar system. There have been bacteria, yeasts, molds, viruses and other forms of life found which were still able to replicate after several thousands of years tucked away somewhere. It's no large leap to imagine these kinds of simple life being able to survive tens or even hundreds of thousands of years given the right combination of conditions.
Mars and Earth exchange material all the time from impacts on their surfaces. There are several instances of rocks that came from Mars having been found on Earth and the reverse is most likely true also, that Earth rocks have traveled to Mars. So if there is life on Mars, there is a chance that it came from Earth - or maybe even life on Earth even originated on Mars.
Take a look at this NASA site for more information about Mars-Earth meteorites. Here's a space.com article that describes just how Earth is hit by a Mars meteor about once a month.
I hate to break it to you but many of the print reporters have very few qualifications to be covering the news but they are doing it anyways. Sure a Slashdot "professional" interview won't be extremely professional but I'm sure most people don't want it to be. I, for one, think I would enjoy a more "geek-on-the-street" kind of interview and I think that a Slashdot interview would provide that.
I may be wrong but it's at least worth a shot. It seems to have worked out pretty well in this story we are commenting on.
You know, I always thought that this would be a good idea for Slashdot. I mean, you guys must have some pretty interesting contacts by now, use some of them to do a "news" article or two on your own. I'd still keep the old Slashdot question/answer interview around because they are interesting and good for the people who don't have time to do a traditional interview.
Yellow Dog Linux has always been a great addition to the Macintosh platform. It's good to see that they are keeping up their excellent support of Apple. More choice is always good and the fact that people can buy systems directly from TerraSoft with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed is definitely a plus.
My hope is that both Apple and TerraSoft continue to work together and bring ideas back and forth between MacOS and Linux.