Nobody's suggesting that the media be "set to self destruct". The question here is, what should be the balance of the tradeoff between cost and resistance to natural wear and decay? If you use better materials and more exacting tolerances, the disks will last longer but also cost more. So which would you prefer- a $30 pack of 30 CDRs that last 30 years, or a $50 pack of 30 CDRs that last 50 years?
It's sad that this has to be said in every single Tiger thread, but Core Image/Video will not refuse to work on older Macs. It has an AltiVec fallback path that is slower than the GPU path but produces the same results.
The real importance of CI/V is not how cool it looks applying Photoshop filters to movie trailers; it's having an advanced image and video transformation infrastructure built into the OS and available to all developers. Apple is clearly planning for the future here, and the real benefits of CI/V will not be felt until months after Tiger ships and apps start appearing that were designed taking blur/distortion/etc for granted. That 10-20% is only going to grow in the future.
"If I don't want it, it's utterly worthless" is one of the most persistent and insidious memes on Slashdot. Please don't succumb to it.
Sneaking in through the IT department?
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This trend may finally give Apple an opening in the business world. A very common objection to using Macs in the workplace is "We only know how to support PCs." By "subverting" the techies themselves, they are influencing the people the decision-makers will consult for the next upgrade cycle. It may still be true that nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft/IBM/etc, but at least Apple will be considered a real possibility now.
Re:What's wrong with finder?
on
Hacking Mac OS X
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Going into terminal and killing the Finder would not help it recover from a fucked up network volume anyway. What's going on is that the Finder is halted and waiting for a response from the network file system driver in the kernel, and *that* is halted waiting for a response from a remote server that is probably never going to arrive. In order to keep everything in synch (I assume it's trying to avoid the driver returning data to internal process accounting structures that no longer exist, or trying to kill the driver within the kernel itself), NOTHING can kill the frozen Finder, up to and including kill -9.
The warning that an executable is being launched for the first time is standard on MacOS X for _any_ executable. The warning is initiated by the OS, not the executable itself. It thus applies to _every_ program indeed.
This thread has the wrong idea about how this feature works. The dialog does not appear the first time any app is launched. It only appears if you try to open a document or URL that results in the Finder having to launch an app that you have never launched before. There are very few legitimate situations where you would have to do this, so it's quite likely that some users have never seen the message before.
This dialog is meant to deter the following exploit:
User clicks malicious link.
Page uses scripting to automatically downloads a disk image.
If the user has "open safe files" enabled in Safari, the disk image will be automatically mounted in the Finder. This makes the Finder scan the disk image for applications and add them to the Launch Services database, which is how it knows that application X opens file type Y- and that application A is a helper app for URL scheme B.
The disk image contains an application whose metadata indicate it can handle URLs of type malware://. The Finder sees this and registers it.
The malicious web pages waits a few moments so the previous few steps can complete, then attempts to redirect to malware://blah.
The Finder helpfully launches the application on the disk image to handle the URL. Owned.
Apparently we misunderstand each other... What I meant to say was that the game's popularity was a very good indication that the expansion pack would sell well when it was released, and therefore it was very likely that future income derived from it would cover the development cost already spent.
Just to be pedantic, they're not "losses" until it's likely that they aren't going to recoup them at all. The game sold 7 million copies; I think it's safe to say the expansion will easily pay for itself.
Remember that most people who don't read Slashdot don't see hardware as an "investment". They see it as an appliance, and under that view throwing it out and buying a new one is a perfectly acceptable way of "fixing" it.
There was a program that did that in the previous article about this guy's hackery. It worked on individual windows, so they would seem to "dangle" from a pivot in the center of the title bar.
Unfortunately, judging from the demo movie, it wouldn't be *that* convincing- the window response lagged behind the motion by a fraction of a second, and the motion sensor can only handle angles less than 90 degrees.
A better game for the "ball/tilting" genre might be Marble Blast Gold, which is different from Neverball in that the image does *not* tilt in response to input. Considering that the Powerbook is being physically tilted already, it would look much more like real-world forces are acting on the marble.
Digital devices are the exact opposite of chaotic- they are deterministic. The rest of your post is correct, but that's the real reason why a tiny error somewhere in the billions of RAM bits can be picked up, propagated, and use to corrupt the rest of the system.
Both of those issues are just derivatives of a more fundamental issue- How much control does a creator have over the audience's behavior regarding his work? Is there really that much of a difference between "you must copy this" and "you must not copy this"?
If I somehow modified BitTorrent so that it downloaded every part of Debian except any copies of the GPL within the package, would I still be bound by it?
Try pushing that button while the computer is in the middle of writing to the disk. Then, after reformatting the disk and checking if floppy drive still works, you may have some idea.
Sure, but the key point that you missed is that there can be more than 1 tracker. If someone took our the central server at Sharman, everyone's copy of Kazaa everywhere is useless forever. If (when) someone took out the Suprnova tracker, all the torrents based on it become useless- but all the Debian torrents still work, because they go through Debian's own tracker, and all of my torrents still work, because they go through my tracker, and so on.
Cohen did not "screw up" BT by designing it like this- he just made it a neutral utility that can be used for a variety of purposes. If you're unhappy that he didn't base all his decisions around facilitating your copyright infringement, go back to IRC.
There is no "the BitTorrent"- no single point of failure. If you have a copy of the tracker, you can torrent anything you want and only what you want. Set up a complete torrent infrastructure on your own site and use it to serve only your (legitimate) content. It's just another type of server that anyone can use independent of anyone else on the net. They may as well try to kill FTP.
The difference between violating copyright and not violating copyright is not a "digital divide"; it's the difference between people who choose to violate copyright and people who don't. There is no inalienable right to someone else's work, nor is there any fundamental right or freedom lost by not being able to get it.
It wouldn't even need an amendment- all that needs to happen is for Congress to not pass another law extending existing copyrights when the issue comes up again in 20 years.
No, it means that someone has taken the design that Apple put effort into developing and duplicated it at no cost to them. This is how they were able to shove in an FM radio and record feature without increasing the price. And this is why Apple's design is protected by law, because that's not a fair business practice and it should not be done.
Just think of it as a GPL violation. We all get up in arms about that, right?
There actually was a four-processor Mac once- The DayStar Genesis clone. It had 2-4 604e processors, and required a special asymmetric multiprocessing library and software written for it (this was back in the days of System 7.5).
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody's suggesting that the media be "set to self destruct". The question here is, what should be the balance of the tradeoff between cost and resistance to natural wear and decay? If you use better materials and more exacting tolerances, the disks will last longer but also cost more. So which would you prefer- a $30 pack of 30 CDRs that last 30 years, or a $50 pack of 30 CDRs that last 50 years?
Nobody needs to emulate Media Access Control. CherryOS and PearPC emulate Macs.
- It's sad that this has to be said in every single Tiger thread, but Core Image/Video will not refuse to work on older Macs. It has an AltiVec fallback path that is slower than the GPU path but produces the same results.
- The real importance of CI/V is not how cool it looks applying Photoshop filters to movie trailers; it's having an advanced image and video transformation infrastructure built into the OS and available to all developers. Apple is clearly planning for the future here, and the real benefits of CI/V will not be felt until months after Tiger ships and apps start appearing that were designed taking blur/distortion/etc for granted. That 10-20% is only going to grow in the future.
"If I don't want it, it's utterly worthless" is one of the most persistent and insidious memes on Slashdot. Please don't succumb to it.This trend may finally give Apple an opening in the business world. A very common objection to using Macs in the workplace is "We only know how to support PCs." By "subverting" the techies themselves, they are influencing the people the decision-makers will consult for the next upgrade cycle. It may still be true that nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft/IBM/etc, but at least Apple will be considered a real possibility now.
Going into terminal and killing the Finder would not help it recover from a fucked up network volume anyway. What's going on is that the Finder is halted and waiting for a response from the network file system driver in the kernel, and *that* is halted waiting for a response from a remote server that is probably never going to arrive. In order to keep everything in synch (I assume it's trying to avoid the driver returning data to internal process accounting structures that no longer exist, or trying to kill the driver within the kernel itself), NOTHING can kill the frozen Finder, up to and including kill -9.
This thread has the wrong idea about how this feature works. The dialog does not appear the first time any app is launched. It only appears if you try to open a document or URL that results in the Finder having to launch an app that you have never launched before. There are very few legitimate situations where you would have to do this, so it's quite likely that some users have never seen the message before.
This dialog is meant to deter the following exploit:
Apparently we misunderstand each other... What I meant to say was that the game's popularity was a very good indication that the expansion pack would sell well when it was released, and therefore it was very likely that future income derived from it would cover the development cost already spent.
Just to be pedantic, they're not "losses" until it's likely that they aren't going to recoup them at all. The game sold 7 million copies; I think it's safe to say the expansion will easily pay for itself.
Thanks. Now I'll never look at Koosh balls the same way again.
Metroid.
Remember that most people who don't read Slashdot don't see hardware as an "investment". They see it as an appliance, and under that view throwing it out and buying a new one is a perfectly acceptable way of "fixing" it.
Then they'll look at the shiny console in the next window over, realize it doesn't matter, and buy the best of both worlds.
There was a program that did that in the previous article about this guy's hackery. It worked on individual windows, so they would seem to "dangle" from a pivot in the center of the title bar.
Unfortunately, judging from the demo movie, it wouldn't be *that* convincing- the window response lagged behind the motion by a fraction of a second, and the motion sensor can only handle angles less than 90 degrees.
A better game for the "ball/tilting" genre might be Marble Blast Gold, which is different from Neverball in that the image does *not* tilt in response to input. Considering that the Powerbook is being physically tilted already, it would look much more like real-world forces are acting on the marble.
Digital devices are the exact opposite of chaotic- they are deterministic. The rest of your post is correct, but that's the real reason why a tiny error somewhere in the billions of RAM bits can be picked up, propagated, and use to corrupt the rest of the system.
Both of those issues are just derivatives of a more fundamental issue- How much control does a creator have over the audience's behavior regarding his work? Is there really that much of a difference between "you must copy this" and "you must not copy this"?
If I somehow modified BitTorrent so that it downloaded every part of Debian except any copies of the GPL within the package, would I still be bound by it?
The theory presented in your link has been thoroughly and elegantly refuted.
Try pushing that button while the computer is in the middle of writing to the disk. Then, after reformatting the disk and checking if floppy drive still works, you may have some idea.
Sure, but the key point that you missed is that there can be more than 1 tracker. If someone took our the central server at Sharman, everyone's copy of Kazaa everywhere is useless forever. If (when) someone took out the Suprnova tracker, all the torrents based on it become useless- but all the Debian torrents still work, because they go through Debian's own tracker, and all of my torrents still work, because they go through my tracker, and so on.
Cohen did not "screw up" BT by designing it like this- he just made it a neutral utility that can be used for a variety of purposes. If you're unhappy that he didn't base all his decisions around facilitating your copyright infringement, go back to IRC.
There is no "the BitTorrent"- no single point of failure. If you have a copy of the tracker, you can torrent anything you want and only what you want. Set up a complete torrent infrastructure on your own site and use it to serve only your (legitimate) content. It's just another type of server that anyone can use independent of anyone else on the net. They may as well try to kill FTP.
The difference between violating copyright and not violating copyright is not a "digital divide"; it's the difference between people who choose to violate copyright and people who don't. There is no inalienable right to someone else's work, nor is there any fundamental right or freedom lost by not being able to get it.
It wouldn't even need an amendment- all that needs to happen is for Congress to not pass another law extending existing copyrights when the issue comes up again in 20 years.
No, it means that someone has taken the design that Apple put effort into developing and duplicated it at no cost to them. This is how they were able to shove in an FM radio and record feature without increasing the price. And this is why Apple's design is protected by law, because that's not a fair business practice and it should not be done.
Just think of it as a GPL violation. We all get up in arms about that, right?
I can't wait for the Slashdot effect jokes we get in that article.
Anyone seen Scanners?
There actually was a four-processor Mac once- The DayStar Genesis clone. It had 2-4 604e processors, and required a special asymmetric multiprocessing library and software written for it (this was back in the days of System 7.5).