I like the idea of having it dial 911 at start-up. It would be fairly simple to set up. My experience with 911 (second hand account, I was not there when this happened) has been that if you dial and then hang up, they do a trace and either call back or send someone out. If they call back your screwed but if they send someone to investigate, that might be better, espesialy if you tell the police that your script is running. Or how bout just have it call the police outright
Didn't you pay attention to the script. It was designed to delete all files except the System folder, which is where the Timbuktu locator resides, thus rendering the computer usable and traceable, without allowing acess to personal data.
Believe it or not, even if this isn't true, it is 100% possible. I have worked witht eh technologies that make this possible and they work just as described in the story.
Also, if the herd of mac users gathering at te board to help this poor soul recover his computer sounds far fetched, you obviously do not spend enough time arround mac users
I don't see how having OS 9 or X would make it impossible for Random J. Hacker to get the boot disks. Any mac with a floppy drive attached can be booted from a floppy (I have the boot disk) and both systems can be booted from the CD.
On the other hand, if these theives had any intelligence to them whatsoever, they would have a series of boot disks on hand.
I believe the programs nessesary to do this on the PC would be a version of VNC or if they have it, the PC version of Timbucktu. You would also need to have the program launch at startup and in order to do the tracking, you either need to do the work manualy while the computer is connected (not recomended uless it's left idle) or you need to find some sort of scripting language that can execute nicely in the background of windows.
Another place you might want to look for remote control software is your local highschool or college, sometimes the admins there use remote software to check on students and make sure their doing what they're supposed to be doing.
I'd love to get hypertalk back too. Espesialy with anew version of hypercard. Maybe we should start a petition to get hypercard back from the depths of Apple
these people have got to be kidding? do they honestly think by locking down the cyber cafes to minors, that this will solve gang violence? In all honesty I think it would be better to have the violence at the cyber cafes. At least then we would know where these kids are, because obviously their parents don't.
Sorry, if you want to stop this sort of thing the parent need to get involved, we've already seen that state enforced curfews don't work. And since when has the government been allowed to regulate how long a business stays open?
This sort of thing just gets out of hand. Instead of adressing the probelems of the gangs and what causes them, we simply eliminate the hang outs, so that they can do what? Find a new hangout to destroy. People need to start waking up and taking charge of their own lives. The more we let the government control our lives, the less freedom we'll have when we actualy want it.
Unless you are offering services to corporations, the internet is not a place to be trying to make money. We saw this in the thousands of.com startups that went belly up over the last two years. No one wants to pay for something they can get for free, and everyone wants free. We saw this in the service wars.
$20 a month providers lost businessw to $14 a month providers, followed by $10 a month and then free (with banner) companies. But everyone wants it cheaper, and even the banner sites started loosing business when people found hacks to remove the banners.
The internet is not a great place to try and make money. The whole idea of the internet was to bring everyone and everything together, and make it easy and cheap.
I can not see yahoo making much, if any money off of this. The only way to make money is to make a pay service that is worth more than the free services. That is why ebay works. There are plenty of free auctions sites all over. But ebay provides insurance, provides extra features to make things easier, that is why ebay turns profit. Yahoo had better have some reall person doing my searches for me manualy for $4 a search.
I dunno, there's something about letting Microsoft into my living room (whether it's via x-box ultimate TV or some other appliance) that leaves me feelin squeemish. I saw a really good article on just how close to Big Brother and 1984 we really are, and let me tell you, we're not too far off.
I'll admit the idea is a great one, and if just for the fac that I could say I had one, I would buy it, I can't see this becoming very popular. Not until it gets better hardware.
Currently, all you could really do with this is search the web (but with what? Unless you wanted to plug yourself into the wall, which sorta defeats the purpose. Yeah I know cell connections and satelite, but I know alot of people who don't want to pay for that.) Write text docs, do spreadsheets and listen to music.
Now, if we really wanted to see the popularity of theese things take off. Make it so that it can run Quake or UT and watch as the geeks congregate everywhere (study hall death match anyone?) and play away. Don't laugh, I've been witness to a Marathon LAN gam played in the middle of a park in San Antonio, Texas. I you want the details ask me, but let's just say after that, geeks using a wearable to play Quake in the middle of school wouldn't suprise me at all.
When it gets more power, I'll buy it, but it's too underpowered for now.
In light of recent terrorist activities, I can see something like this being misused by the government. Think about it. Every electronic device you buy has a small built in GPS unit (could be placed in cell phones which almost everyone has). Units each have a unique serial number that is registered to your name when you purchase the item.
Now everywhere you go that your electronic device has power (regardless of if it is on) a little digital marker is left behind at each individual GPS location.
I know this sounds far fetched, but I'm just laying out all possibilities.
The future started in 1998 when the iMacs were relesed with *gasp* no fans, Just a heatsink. Followed shortly thereafter by G4 towers with no fans (except a small one in the power supply). Besides, as someone here already said, the harddrive contributes noise, as well as the CD ROM.
'sides, I'm still not sure if having liquid running through my PC would be the best thing for it should it be ruptured.
Slip it in when the guy isn't looking? It's too much work when all he would really have to do is check the baggage at the curb. The people on the curb just wiegh it, tag it and send it inside to be processed, just like they do at the counter.
In the senario your just described, the system sees the bag as a legitamately checked bag that is ready to be processed. Having your back checked does not guarentee it gets on the plane (even if you're a law abiding citizen).
While the network may have been viewable is there really a practical application to this?
All baggage checked at curbside is simply registered witht eh flight recorder saying that this bag is here, this is how much it wieghs. The only possible thing I could think of doing with access to the wireless net is removing a bag from the list, but what does that do?
Since all bags are also scanned (espesialy since 9/11) after they've been checked, it seems to me that hacking the curbside checkin is completely useless. In order to be effective, a terrorist would have to physicaly have and item on the plane. And that would be possible regardless of whether it was done curbside or at the counter. Personaly I don't see a big issue here, but they should be using at least the basic encryption (I know the airport software as basic encryption, I would assume the oher stuff does)
Here's what you should be looking into for your equipment (keep in mind some you can buy later on).
Vehical: Mobile Home or a Bus would be your best bet as they provied ample size for people and equipment.
Computers: Try to stick with small stuff. Laptops would be nice but unfortunately are expensive, harder to maintain, and easy to steal. Try instead if possible, small (mid or mini tower) PCs (less expandability but your only trying to educate not sell them), and iMacs (I know, macintosh, but they are easier to learn and provide a nice system with LCD for a reasonable price).
OS: For PC's I would split 50/50 between Windows and *NIX based systems. If your trying to educate, you want to give them all options. For windows, I recomend 2k. For *Nix, I gues it depends of preference, but I would go with RedHat or SuSE. For macs, go with OS X.
Software: Show basic tools i.e. Microsoft Office (Mac and PC) and maybe a few games and graphic programs. Demonstrate music playback (iTunes for mac and WinAmp for PC).
Hardware: Stick to the basics, no really fancy graphics cards or sound cards, just enough to get what you need done. Get a camera that is cross compatable to demonstrate digital photography. Maybe get a portable MP3 player set up and a PDA setup, but otherwise stay away from too many periphrials.
Internet Connection: Untill you start getting some funding, your best bet will probobly be through wireless connections via Cell Phones. Once you have funding though, consider a satelite link. Other than that, just make sure it's comfortable.
If your looking for ideas on how to set up a mobile station, try contacting CSPAN as they have a mobile studio (cost them only 6 million, which is cheap considering what they had), maybe they can give you ideas.
This is what we call FUD. When someone takes an idea, runs with it and implies that it applies universaly. In this case I am reffering to internet file sharing.
Since day one, the trading of files and data that was not supposed to be traded on the internet was a concern. But no one believed it was going to dent anything. Then a few years back, along came MP3s. Even then, it wasn't a big deal, they lasted for quite a while without notice, but then napster came out and made it twice as easy to see.
All of a sudden, the music industry was out there waving reports about the XX BILLION (where XX is any thousand digit multiple of pi) of songs traded on napster, and how they've lost YY BILLION (where YY is any hundred thousand digit multiple of pi squared) dollars those songs were worth in record sales. What they neglected to tell you was that music sales were up from the previous two years.
This had the effect of making the internet suddenly seem like an evil moster where pirates cause whole corporations to go bankrupt over night. So what happens? Software manufacturers start beefing up copy protection, the RIAA begins to produce CDs that won't play in PCs, the MPAA begins regioning the DVDs and now the TV producers start flagging shows.
This occurs for two reasons. (A) The companies actualy think people are planning on selling these shows (songs, movies) in mass production. This is bad because in the spirit of overcharging for dirt cheap materials, companies are unable to compete with user prices. (B) The companies have yet to figure out that if you produce a product worth buying, people will buy it. For example, the game Half Life had rudementry copy protection that was easily circumvented. Despite this, it still went on to becoem a best selling game. Macs are overpriced (comparativly speaking and only in some opinions) computers. Yet consumers still find them worth the price and pay for it. If the product is worth it, people will buy it. If it isn't they won't. Simple economics.
Ofcourse, we went through all this before when recordable audio cassettes came out. And again when recordable VHS debued. Well, the music industry and the MPAA is still alive and kicking (unfortunately for some) and I have a feeling that this wont change a thing. People found ways arround copy protection before (I have a little box that cancels copy protection on VHS tapes) and people always will. But since most people are law abiding citezens (I can build a cable descrambler, but it isn't worth it) I doubt there will be any problems in the end.
However, I agree with the one poster above, if the FBI comes knocking down my door for having MP3s and 3ivx on my computer, I will go join a radical extreamist group fighting the evil corporations and go back to old computer equipment (BBS on a C64 anyone?)
So this has accouplished what? The Nitrogen system is not a consumer viable option, nor does it look like it will be in the near future. What has succesfuly been accomplished here is we've kicked up only one part of the computer's actual speed.
I'll actualy be impressed when the bus speed is fast enough to make this new processor speed usable. And don't forget to bump up the drive speed, and improve the seek time. No, this doesn't seem like a very useful machine at the moment, at least not for consumers.
I do think it's fairly cool that this speed is reachable, but as the subject says, this is like putting a dragster engine in a VW Beetle. It can get nice speeds, but is it actualy useable anywhere?
The problem with the whole idea of computer elitism and the idead that only certain people should be able to try something on a computer is what always gets companies in trouble.
In the early days of computers, only elite people with technical knowledge bought, or indeed could afford a computer. Apple brought it to the average Joe and 'lo and behold computers took off.
Then Apple got elitist with it's GUI, providing only to apple users (I'm not bashing apple here, I am a mac fan). That was a mistake, soon realized when M$ released their GUI to the masses, and took the market by storm.
Now, here's a chance for the concept of creating custom kernels to come to the masses. I say give it to em, let's see what Uncle Fester can come up with.
Let's see, so the point of this program is what? To teach every one to write their code in a different manner than everyone else, so only they can read it and understand what's going on?
My entire CS class would have failed if this had been used. Why? Because we were taught to all use the same indentation system. And how do the semi-colons get put anywhere other than where they're supposed to be? We were all told to use the same basic setup and variable nameing scheme so that any one will be able to read your code and understand it. And I can't tell you how many times we borrowed functions from eachother. Or how many times each person in a group wrote one part of the function and it was all combined to a final program, that each person copied and turned in.
But ofcourse real programmers never trade ideas or code. And everyone does everything uniquely, so no one should have to worry about this at all.
Could you imagine running this on something like GNOME and KDE? We would discover that both were written by others.
Well, someone in marketing screwed up big time. Last I knew companies couldn't leagaly make such strong claims about a product, espesialy about a security product.
But I guess all this just shows that no matter what security (or anti-piracy if you're the RIAA) measures you put into place, someone will find a way arround it. Although, buffer overflows are not anything new, how did they miss that?
Think about Apple for a second, they have always marketed products and ideas that were different, ahead of their time and most certainly not popular. Even when the first mac came out, it was different and tech people didn't like it (at first).
Now years later, Apple has been through 47 million dollar losses and come back to still be a profit turning company. This time though, Apple isn't marketing to the masses. Why? They're dull, boring, orthadox, pattern forming, and conformists. They don't allow for new ideas. As the man said, they don't trust the computer industry (paraphrased).
These are not the people that Apple sells to anymore. Apple sells to photo buffs, movie buffs, music buffs, *NIX geeks, people into style, non tech savy people, people who want to have a part of the future today. While these are all niche markets, they are loyal niche markets.
Photo buffs, movie buffs and music buffs all have a favorite company they use. They like to get as much stuff as they can from that company. Never mind they can get a better price from someone else, or maybe even a step better, the fact of the matter is, they can get what they need for their product reliably from one place. This naturaly lends them to be loyal people and thus ideal customers for Apple.
*NIX geeks love to be different, and love to be creative. They don't like things to be done the orthadox way, it's not interesting. New a different ways of doing things are what makes a *NIX geek tick. They love tweaking the code, and trying a different approach. Again, an ideal mac customer.
Non-tech savy people are looking for something easy, fast (to get going not processor speed) and all in one packaging. And since Apple provides all of this, they look good to new users. Since most new people like to stick with the original company for a while, they are at least temporarily loyal, and once again make an idea Apple customer.
Finaly the people who want a bit of the future today. Almost every product Apple has designed has been ahead of its time. Maybe not in sheer power, but in design and style, which has later been copied or imitated in the mass computers. Yes, no matter how you look at it, colorful PCs are the result of the iMac. And these people are also very willing to try something new. SCSI, USB, Firewire, PDAs, GUIs, OS X, all of these ideas and concepts, while they may have been developed elsewhere, where succesfuly pushed and marketed by Apple. They would not be where they are today without that push. And to try to market those ideas to the masses would result in failure. For example, USB, developed by intel, and used occasionaly, but not accepted because no one wanted to change. Along comes the iMac, a USB only machine, and suddenly USB springs up like wild fire.
Apple is succesful, not because they turn the best profit, but because they have loyal cutomers. They have lived through debt and profit, minimal sales and best sales, each time, comming out sucessful in their endevor. That isn't to say they haven't made mistakes, the 20th aniversary mac and the Cube didn't do good at all. But Apple can afford to make mistakes because they have customers willing to wait it out. Their success may not be based on profits, but then again, niether is the Chevy corvette's.
My apologies, I missed the mirroring part. I had assumed that since this thing has the power of one of their desktops, and had the vga out, it would have had dual display support.
On the other hand, to use the same question. If you really needed the color selection that a CRT provides over an LCD, why would you be buying a cheap consumer machine?
Slashdot Mirror
I like the idea of having it dial 911 at start-up. It would be fairly simple to set up. My experience with 911 (second hand account, I was not there when this happened) has been that if you dial and then hang up, they do a trace and either call back or send someone out. If they call back your screwed but if they send someone to investigate, that might be better, espesialy if you tell the police that your script is running. Or how bout just have it call the police outright
Didn't you pay attention to the script. It was designed to delete all files except the System folder, which is where the Timbuktu locator resides, thus rendering the computer usable and traceable, without allowing acess to personal data.
Believe it or not, even if this isn't true, it is 100% possible. I have worked witht eh technologies that make this possible and they work just as described in the story.
Also, if the herd of mac users gathering at te board to help this poor soul recover his computer sounds far fetched, you obviously do not spend enough time arround mac users
I don't see how having OS 9 or X would make it impossible for Random J. Hacker to get the boot disks. Any mac with a floppy drive attached can be booted from a floppy (I have the boot disk) and both systems can be booted from the CD.
On the other hand, if these theives had any intelligence to them whatsoever, they would have a series of boot disks on hand.
I believe the programs nessesary to do this on the PC would be a version of VNC or if they have it, the PC version of Timbucktu. You would also need to have the program launch at startup and in order to do the tracking, you either need to do the work manualy while the computer is connected (not recomended uless it's left idle) or you need to find some sort of scripting language that can execute nicely in the background of windows.
Another place you might want to look for remote control software is your local highschool or college, sometimes the admins there use remote software to check on students and make sure their doing what they're supposed to be doing.
I'd love to get hypertalk back too. Espesialy with anew version of hypercard. Maybe we should start a petition to get hypercard back from the depths of Apple
these people have got to be kidding? do they honestly think by locking down the cyber cafes to minors, that this will solve gang violence? In all honesty I think it would be better to have the violence at the cyber cafes. At least then we would know where these kids are, because obviously their parents don't.
Sorry, if you want to stop this sort of thing the parent need to get involved, we've already seen that state enforced curfews don't work. And since when has the government been allowed to regulate how long a business stays open?
This sort of thing just gets out of hand. Instead of adressing the probelems of the gangs and what causes them, we simply eliminate the hang outs, so that they can do what? Find a new hangout to destroy. People need to start waking up and taking charge of their own lives. The more we let the government control our lives, the less freedom we'll have when we actualy want it.
Unless you are offering services to corporations, the internet is not a place to be trying to make money. We saw this in the thousands of .com startups that went belly up over the last two years. No one wants to pay for something they can get for free, and everyone wants free. We saw this in the service wars.
$20 a month providers lost businessw to $14 a month providers, followed by $10 a month and then free (with banner) companies. But everyone wants it cheaper, and even the banner sites started loosing business when people found hacks to remove the banners.
The internet is not a great place to try and make money. The whole idea of the internet was to bring everyone and everything together, and make it easy and cheap.
I can not see yahoo making much, if any money off of this. The only way to make money is to make a pay service that is worth more than the free services. That is why ebay works. There are plenty of free auctions sites all over. But ebay provides insurance, provides extra features to make things easier, that is why ebay turns profit. Yahoo had better have some reall person doing my searches for me manualy for $4 a search.
I dunno, there's something about letting Microsoft into my living room (whether it's via x-box ultimate TV or some other appliance) that leaves me feelin squeemish. I saw a really good article on just how close to Big Brother and 1984 we really are, and let me tell you, we're not too far off.
I'll admit the idea is a great one, and if just for the fac that I could say I had one, I would buy it, I can't see this becoming very popular. Not until it gets better hardware.
Currently, all you could really do with this is search the web (but with what? Unless you wanted to plug yourself into the wall, which sorta defeats the purpose. Yeah I know cell connections and satelite, but I know alot of people who don't want to pay for that.) Write text docs, do spreadsheets and listen to music.
Now, if we really wanted to see the popularity of theese things take off. Make it so that it can run Quake or UT and watch as the geeks congregate everywhere (study hall death match anyone?) and play away. Don't laugh, I've been witness to a Marathon LAN gam played in the middle of a park in San Antonio, Texas. I you want the details ask me, but let's just say after that, geeks using a wearable to play Quake in the middle of school wouldn't suprise me at all.
When it gets more power, I'll buy it, but it's too underpowered for now.
In light of recent terrorist activities, I can see something like this being misused by the government. Think about it. Every electronic device you buy has a small built in GPS unit (could be placed in cell phones which almost everyone has). Units each have a unique serial number that is registered to your name when you purchase the item.
Now everywhere you go that your electronic device has power (regardless of if it is on) a little digital marker is left behind at each individual GPS location.
I know this sounds far fetched, but I'm just laying out all possibilities.
They must have changed it then, the original ones didn't have a fan. THat was one of their big selling points.
The future started in 1998 when the iMacs were relesed with *gasp* no fans, Just a heatsink. Followed shortly thereafter by G4 towers with no fans (except a small one in the power supply). Besides, as someone here already said, the harddrive contributes noise, as well as the CD ROM.
'sides, I'm still not sure if having liquid running through my PC would be the best thing for it should it be ruptured.
Slip it in when the guy isn't looking? It's too much work when all he would really have to do is check the baggage at the curb. The people on the curb just wiegh it, tag it and send it inside to be processed, just like they do at the counter.
In the senario your just described, the system sees the bag as a legitamately checked bag that is ready to be processed. Having your back checked does not guarentee it gets on the plane (even if you're a law abiding citizen).
if this bag gets through the end checkpoint, there's more serious problems than an unencrypted wireless
All of the airports arround here either hand seach or sniff every piece of cheked baggage
While the network may have been viewable is there really a practical application to this?
All baggage checked at curbside is simply registered witht eh flight recorder saying that this bag is here, this is how much it wieghs. The only possible thing I could think of doing with access to the wireless net is removing a bag from the list, but what does that do?
Since all bags are also scanned (espesialy since 9/11) after they've been checked, it seems to me that hacking the curbside checkin is completely useless. In order to be effective, a terrorist would have to physicaly have and item on the plane. And that would be possible regardless of whether it was done curbside or at the counter. Personaly I don't see a big issue here, but they should be using at least the basic encryption (I know the airport software as basic encryption, I would assume the oher stuff does)
-Tevis
Here's what you should be looking into for your equipment (keep in mind some you can buy later on).
Vehical: Mobile Home or a Bus would be your best bet as they provied ample size for people and equipment.
Computers: Try to stick with small stuff. Laptops would be nice but unfortunately are expensive, harder to maintain, and easy to steal. Try instead if possible, small (mid or mini tower) PCs (less expandability but your only trying to educate not sell them), and iMacs (I know, macintosh, but they are easier to learn and provide a nice system with LCD for a reasonable price).
OS: For PC's I would split 50/50 between Windows and *NIX based systems. If your trying to educate, you want to give them all options. For windows, I recomend 2k. For *Nix, I gues it depends of preference, but I would go with RedHat or SuSE. For macs, go with OS X.
Software: Show basic tools i.e. Microsoft Office (Mac and PC) and maybe a few games and graphic programs. Demonstrate music playback (iTunes for mac and WinAmp for PC).
Hardware: Stick to the basics, no really fancy graphics cards or sound cards, just enough to get what you need done. Get a camera that is cross compatable to demonstrate digital photography. Maybe get a portable MP3 player set up and a PDA setup, but otherwise stay away from too many periphrials.
Internet Connection: Untill you start getting some funding, your best bet will probobly be through wireless connections via Cell Phones. Once you have funding though, consider a satelite link. Other than that, just make sure it's comfortable.
If your looking for ideas on how to set up a mobile station, try contacting CSPAN as they have a mobile studio (cost them only 6 million, which is cheap considering what they had), maybe they can give you ideas.
Good Luck
-Tevis
This is what we call FUD. When someone takes an idea, runs with it and implies that it applies universaly. In this case I am reffering to internet file sharing.
Since day one, the trading of files and data that was not supposed to be traded on the internet was a concern. But no one believed it was going to dent anything. Then a few years back, along came MP3s. Even then, it wasn't a big deal, they lasted for quite a while without notice, but then napster came out and made it twice as easy to see.
All of a sudden, the music industry was out there waving reports about the XX BILLION (where XX is any thousand digit multiple of pi) of songs traded on napster, and how they've lost YY BILLION (where YY is any hundred thousand digit multiple of pi squared) dollars those songs were worth in record sales. What they neglected to tell you was that music sales were up from the previous two years.
This had the effect of making the internet suddenly seem like an evil moster where pirates cause whole corporations to go bankrupt over night. So what happens? Software manufacturers start beefing up copy protection, the RIAA begins to produce CDs that won't play in PCs, the MPAA begins regioning the DVDs and now the TV producers start flagging shows.
This occurs for two reasons. (A) The companies actualy think people are planning on selling these shows (songs, movies) in mass production. This is bad because in the spirit of overcharging for dirt cheap materials, companies are unable to compete with user prices. (B) The companies have yet to figure out that if you produce a product worth buying, people will buy it. For example, the game Half Life had rudementry copy protection that was easily circumvented. Despite this, it still went on to becoem a best selling game. Macs are overpriced (comparativly speaking and only in some opinions) computers. Yet consumers still find them worth the price and pay for it. If the product is worth it, people will buy it. If it isn't they won't. Simple economics.
Ofcourse, we went through all this before when recordable audio cassettes came out. And again when recordable VHS debued. Well, the music industry and the MPAA is still alive and kicking (unfortunately for some) and I have a feeling that this wont change a thing. People found ways arround copy protection before (I have a little box that cancels copy protection on VHS tapes) and people always will. But since most people are law abiding citezens (I can build a cable descrambler, but it isn't worth it) I doubt there will be any problems in the end.
However, I agree with the one poster above, if the FBI comes knocking down my door for having MP3s and 3ivx on my computer, I will go join a radical extreamist group fighting the evil corporations and go back to old computer equipment (BBS on a C64 anyone?)
-T Money
So this has accouplished what? The Nitrogen system is not a consumer viable option, nor does it look like it will be in the near future. What has succesfuly been accomplished here is we've kicked up only one part of the computer's actual speed.
I'll actualy be impressed when the bus speed is fast enough to make this new processor speed usable. And don't forget to bump up the drive speed, and improve the seek time. No, this doesn't seem like a very useful machine at the moment, at least not for consumers.
I do think it's fairly cool that this speed is reachable, but as the subject says, this is like putting a dragster engine in a VW Beetle. It can get nice speeds, but is it actualy useable anywhere?
The problem with the whole idea of computer elitism and the idead that only certain people should be able to try something on a computer is what always gets companies in trouble.
In the early days of computers, only elite people with technical knowledge bought, or indeed could afford a computer. Apple brought it to the average Joe and 'lo and behold computers took off.
Then Apple got elitist with it's GUI, providing only to apple users (I'm not bashing apple here, I am a mac fan). That was a mistake, soon realized when M$ released their GUI to the masses, and took the market by storm.
Now, here's a chance for the concept of creating custom kernels to come to the masses. I say give it to em, let's see what Uncle Fester can come up with.
Let's see, so the point of this program is what? To teach every one to write their code in a different manner than everyone else, so only they can read it and understand what's going on?
My entire CS class would have failed if this had been used. Why? Because we were taught to all use the same indentation system. And how do the semi-colons get put anywhere other than where they're supposed to be? We were all told to use the same basic setup and variable nameing scheme so that any one will be able to read your code and understand it. And I can't tell you how many times we borrowed functions from eachother. Or how many times each person in a group wrote one part of the function and it was all combined to a final program, that each person copied and turned in.
But ofcourse real programmers never trade ideas or code. And everyone does everything uniquely, so no one should have to worry about this at all.
Could you imagine running this on something like GNOME and KDE? We would discover that both were written by others.
Well, someone in marketing screwed up big time. Last I knew companies couldn't leagaly make such strong claims about a product, espesialy about a security product.
But I guess all this just shows that no matter what security (or anti-piracy if you're the RIAA) measures you put into place, someone will find a way arround it. Although, buffer overflows are not anything new, how did they miss that?
Think about Apple for a second, they have always marketed products and ideas that were different, ahead of their time and most certainly not popular. Even when the first mac came out, it was different and tech people didn't like it (at first).
Now years later, Apple has been through 47 million dollar losses and come back to still be a profit turning company. This time though, Apple isn't marketing to the masses. Why? They're dull, boring, orthadox, pattern forming, and conformists. They don't allow for new ideas. As the man said, they don't trust the computer industry (paraphrased).
These are not the people that Apple sells to anymore. Apple sells to photo buffs, movie buffs, music buffs, *NIX geeks, people into style, non tech savy people, people who want to have a part of the future today. While these are all niche markets, they are loyal niche markets.
Photo buffs, movie buffs and music buffs all have a favorite company they use. They like to get as much stuff as they can from that company. Never mind they can get a better price from someone else, or maybe even a step better, the fact of the matter is, they can get what they need for their product reliably from one place. This naturaly lends them to be loyal people and thus ideal customers for Apple.
*NIX geeks love to be different, and love to be creative. They don't like things to be done the orthadox way, it's not interesting. New a different ways of doing things are what makes a *NIX geek tick. They love tweaking the code, and trying a different approach. Again, an ideal mac customer.
Non-tech savy people are looking for something easy, fast (to get going not processor speed) and all in one packaging. And since Apple provides all of this, they look good to new users. Since most new people like to stick with the original company for a while, they are at least temporarily loyal, and once again make an idea Apple customer.
Finaly the people who want a bit of the future today. Almost every product Apple has designed has been ahead of its time. Maybe not in sheer power, but in design and style, which has later been copied or imitated in the mass computers. Yes, no matter how you look at it, colorful PCs are the result of the iMac. And these people are also very willing to try something new. SCSI, USB, Firewire, PDAs, GUIs, OS X, all of these ideas and concepts, while they may have been developed elsewhere, where succesfuly pushed and marketed by Apple. They would not be where they are today without that push. And to try to market those ideas to the masses would result in failure. For example, USB, developed by intel, and used occasionaly, but not accepted because no one wanted to change. Along comes the iMac, a USB only machine, and suddenly USB springs up like wild fire.
Apple is succesful, not because they turn the best profit, but because they have loyal cutomers. They have lived through debt and profit, minimal sales and best sales, each time, comming out sucessful in their endevor. That isn't to say they haven't made mistakes, the 20th aniversary mac and the Cube didn't do good at all. But Apple can afford to make mistakes because they have customers willing to wait it out. Their success may not be based on profits, but then again, niether is the Chevy corvette's.
My apologies, I missed the mirroring part. I had assumed that since this thing has the power of one of their desktops, and had the vga out, it would have had dual display support.
On the other hand, to use the same question. If you really needed the color selection that a CRT provides over an LCD, why would you be buying a cheap consumer machine?