IIRC, Apple does not own ALL of Quicktime. The Sorensen codec (the most important one, BTW), is a private, propietary codec that Apple LICENSES from the Sorenson people.
Sorenson is the codec that gives us the astounding quality of the recent Star Wars trailer.movs, and streaming Quicktime in real time.
Quicktime without Sorenson? May as well settle for realplayer... that'd be going back to Qutcktime version 2 or something.
We need to petition Sorenson to open the codec, *NOT* Apple! If Apple DID release the QT source, they'd either have to exclude Sorenson (a waste, really), OR they'd expose themselves to tremendous lawsuits (don't count on them being this stupid). This will not change until Sorenson changes the terms of THEIR license.
So, until Sorenson opens up.... don't count on Quicktime for Linux, Unix, or anything else.
BTW: All of the above applies ONLY to the QT MoviePlayer. Quicktime as a whole constitutes a LOT more than just the player. Read the developer guides sometime. It's really quite nifty.
I doubt, even if Sorenson DOES open their codec, that we'll EVER see ALL of Quicktime open sourced. In doing so, Apple would essentially be handing a tremendous amout of technology to gates and his cronies, free of charge. I doubt that'll ever happen.
So how much did the RIAA pay Salon to get that load of tripe published? Or for that matter, how much did the "artists" in question whore themselves out for to lie like that?
What about the artists who tell the truth?
What about the artists who are NOT luddites, and who are NOT afraid of technology?
What about the artists who ENCOURAGE distribution of their music MP3's?
What about the artists who have been SUED BY THEIR OWN LABELS for making their songs available in MP3 format?!?!?
Wanna see a good example of a major band that "gets it"? Go to:
www.lessthanjake.com
Under their "sounds" link, they host realaudio of many of their own songs. AND they provide links to other sites that host MP3s. For example, the "The Skankin' LTJ MP3 page" has MP3s from most of LTJ's major label releases. AND LTJ provides a board for fans to trade bootlegs and collectibles!!!
That "we don't make money on tours" line is pure BS, plain and simple. I have quite a few friend in local punk and ska bands, one of which TURNED DOWN an offer to sign with a label.
Once, I asked one of these guys about it, and he told me the economics of a CD break down in three ways:
1) Small band that sell their own CDs. CDs are produced in runs of 500-1000 @ about $2 per. Band sells said CDs at their own shows and sometimes on consignment at local indie stores for $8-10. Profit to the band == $6-8. CDs CAN provide a reasonable income in this instance.
2) Band signs with small label. CDs are produced in runs of 5000-10000 for about $1 per. CDs now sell in indie stores, at the shows, and at mall stores in the band's home town for $10-12 with the label taking about half the profit. Net gain to the band from a sale == $3-5 per. At this point the CD provides a smaller percentage of income and the band throws more out at the crowd free at their shows. (Anyone who's been following LTJ since their Asain Man days knows this trait well).
3) Band sells out to a major label. CDs are run in lots of 100K+ at a cost to the label of about $.10 per. CDs now sell in mall stores for $18. Of that $18, the band is *LUCKY* to see $.50 !!! (and that's if it's a BIG band with GREAT managemant). The rest of the $17.40 goes into the pockets of the record label, so that the CEO of Time Warner can buy an extra Porche for his daughter to use on weekends when that Land Cruiser is just too much car.
When a band signs to a major label, they get JACK SH*T from their CD sales!!! They are being raped. The only reason to sell CDs really, is to promote the tour. Bands then are MUCH more willing and able to throw out free CDs at their shows now (go to a Reel Big Fish show to see a good example of a hazardous number of free CDs being thrown at the audience).
Solution? I would not, and do not, distribute MP3s or CD-R copies of bands in situations 1 or 2 except under extraordinary circumstance (only recent time is when a friend lost his Operation Ivy CD. I KNEW for a FACT that he had boughtand paid for it, so I didn't feel bad about burning a CD-R copy)...
But in the case of instance 3? I have no sympathy for the record label whatsoever. They are absolutely RAPING the bands that sign with them. I feel no guilt whatsoever about depriving Sony records of an extra $17.40 (assuming it's a band that can GET a whole $.50 per CD).
Depriving the band of $.50? Mabye a touch of guilt at first. But that guilt goes away immediately when I go to the show and buy a T-shirt, providing the band with more profit than if I had bought their CD twenty times over.
Sick thing is tho, that, if it's a good band, I usually wind up buying CDs anyway. I travel a lot, and need CDs for my car stereo.
... that of automatically associating open source with Linux, and forgetting about the earlier efforts of GNU and the FSF. No wondcer RMS seems irritated whenever he writes anything about how it should really be called Gnu/Linux.
But, then again, a quick check of gnu.org shows a founding date of 1984 for both Gnu AND the FSF. This is STILL almost a whole decade *AFTER* Woz had started freely giving out the schematics for the Apple I at the homebrew club.
Apple "got it" from the very beginning. They just lost the way when the suits (john sculley and his cronies) wrested the company from its founders.
In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.
I still have all the documentation that came with the Apple ][+ that my dad brought home that day in 1981. Sadly, the Apple ][+ itself fell prey to a Florida thunderstorm some years ago.
That documentation includes:
A complete plan of the motherboard that my dad was later able to use to build his own Apple][ clone.
Commented assembly code for all the ROMs.
Documentation for the Apple Disk ][ 5.25" drive which consisted of a pair of books about 2" thick, including hardware plans for the drive and controller card as detailed as those for the computer itself. (*when was the last time you saw a 2" high stack of manuals for a COMPUTER? much less a 5.25" floppy?!?!??!?*)
Code (not source tho... mostly 6502 assembly)for damn near everything else as well.
The documentation that came with that computer is ASTOUNDING by today's standards. With the rise of Linux, we're only beginning to see the reemergence of such comprehensive docs.
And it is nice to see that Apple is returning to it's old ways.
I'm all for new ways for a busy geek to pick up an extra degree, but...
Is the college level where more money needs to be spent to produce Computer Science majors?
Now, I don't have the statistics myself, but every few months, one of the industry or regular news magazines has one of those "doom and gloom" stories about how enrollment in CompSci programs is going DOWN (more work for the rest of us tho). The existing programs can turn out some EXCELLENT graduates.... if they can attract the students.
But WHY can't they get students?
*I* think that question could be answered, at least in part, by looking at the current high school culture that encourages bit-brained jocks, and casts geeks as psychotic killers who must be kept down.
Perhaps the money could be better spent by endowing a series of private magnet schools at the high school level, and perhaps even at the middle school level as well. Disavow completely the failed education of the public schools and establish a strong pre-CompSci curriculum in these schools, and scholarships for intelligent students willing to excell, as opposed to allowing geeks to be tormented by the jocks, as is the norm in public schools.
Not long ago/. had a story about a good example of such a school, the Beacon School, IIRC. Granted that was the rare gem of a public school, but it could be a good paradigm for the type of schools I'm proposing. I know that when *I* become a billioniare, one of the charitable things I'd like to do is establish a private high school that *I* would have LIKED to attend.
Get enough geek bilioniares together, and you could establish a series of these magnet schools across the country. Even better, you could locate them near universities with whom you could establish dual-enrollment programs. And the better the computer science college, the better the location. Put one of these magnet schools in Palo Alto near Stanford, in Atlanta near GaTech, in Boston near MIT, Pasedena near CalTech, etc.
Offer dual enrollment classes so you can get the busywork classes out of the way quickly. When your HS english class gives both HS and college english credit, that leaves more time for useful computer classes on college. The same applies for history, economics, (insert generic required-by-the-state bore of a class here), etc.
And by locating these magnet schools near the appropiate universities, you also locate them near a fairly good bit of the industry. Wouldn't you perfer your HS age kids to work their summers as interns at Hewlett Packard, rather than flipping burgers at McDonalds? I sure would.
Get 'em young, I say. Find the intelligent kids who would be worthwhile, productive citizens, and give them the chance to get out of the jocks-and-cheerleaders uber alles high school culture as early as you can. Nurture their talents, do not suppress them. I bet that with a nurturing pre-college environment, more people would major in college CompSci programs. And just imagine the quality of the geeks that would be produced by college graduation if you could get 'em at 6th grade!!!
If you do a careful comparison, I bet you'll find more fradulent science in M2M than in all the examples I listed (including Deep Impact) COMBINED!!! Hell, throw in Armegaddon, and I bet M2M would STILL be trying to pass off more fradulent science as the real thing!
:: [sic] FILM a significant protion [sic]
Gee, the best you can bitch about are typos and rushed grammar? Gee, so sorry that I don't compose my posts in a word processor with spell and grammar check and meticulously proofread every detatil before I post. Gosh darn, call the f-ing language police. Are you french?
Obviously you know nothing about angular momentum if you think that Mission to Mars' microgravity scenes were filmed in an actual microgravity environment. Such cluelessness is worthy of nothing but contempt. Try picking up a physics text book sometime.... or even just read the rest of the reviews, they may just use small enough words for you to comprehend.
: This film can be appreciated for its accuracy. : Some people just CHOSE not to
Uh yeah, if your idea of accuracy doesn't include Sir Issac Newton, sure.
Since you obviously didn't bother to read the earlier posts in this thread, I'll repeat. The problem is NOT that it was inaccurate. The entireity of the Star Wars/Trek sagas have laughable science.
The point is that M2M CLAIMS to be accurste (you DID read the cited quote from DePalma, yes? Well, obviously not, otherwise you'd have a clue), while passing off bas pseudoscience rubbish as the real thing.
: think it depends on the movie. Complaining about : scientific innacuracy in Star Trek: : Insurrection, or (god forbid) The Phantom : Menace, would be extremely geeky. (In the : negative sense.) But MtM was heavily promoted : for its realism.
Don't forget that is HAS been done right a number of times over the years.
Remember Apollo 13? The director actually went through the trouble of using NASA's "Vomit Comet" aircraft in order to determine how things REALLY behave in microgravity. As I recall, didn't they actulally FILM a significant protion of Apollo 13 IN the "Vomit Comet"???
Deep Impact, while more flawed than Apollo 13, did a pretty good job of realisticlly showing a near-future space expidition. (aside from the "synchronise the nukes" TOTALLY destroying the last comet (all that mass and energy STILL has to go SOMEWHERE (ie. into Earth's atmosphere, just not all on one place))).
2001 did an EXCELLENT job of a realistic near-future space expidition. Aside from overly optimistic predictions of our progress by the year 2001, that is. Oh, and the sentient computer turning on its masters as well. (Both of these flaws can be forgiven tho I think, as they were very common themes in 1960's SciFi.)
Even a low-budget affair like HBO's miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" did a vastly superior job than this "Mission to Mars" drek.
The point?
It CAN be done right. "Mission to Mars" just CHOOSE not to.
Coca Cola sucesfully sued, under the same "trade dress" laws Apple is using to go after Daewoo or eMachines or whoever, to protect the SHAPE of the Coca Cola bottle!
That's probably the precident Apple used in the case. That and the fact that the iMac knockoff artist company ADMITTED IN A PRESS RELEASE that they were going to try to ride the wave of the iMac to sucess.
The rip-off artists basically shot themselves in the foot by: a) not doing their research on trade dress law, and b) mouthing off to the press.
Also, did you know that UPS has a patent (or trademark, I forget which) on that brown color they use for everything from their trucks to their uniforms? Yup. No one else can legally use "UPS Puke Brown", without UPS's permission.
And, from the looks of some of the other posts, it appears that Slashdot has to be reminded again:
Under copyright/trademark law, if you do not aggressively defend your intellectual property, you LOSE the rights to that same property!
Apple has NO CHOISE but to go after those who would violate it's trademarks. Nor does anyone else who produces intellectual property. Not even Linus, remember when he had to put the smackdown of a couple of nare-do-wells who were going to auction off a bunch oh *linux*.* domain names for nefarious ends?
IANAL, but AFAIK, the ONLY IP that you do NOT have to aggesively defend in order to keep the rights, is a patent, which a) is a fscked up system to begin with, and b) expires much sooner than other IP anyway.
I don't know about the microdrones, but Mac OS X Server comes with Apache, and some nice GUI configuration tools. Tho you can still configure it the old fashioned way too.
: Perl?
I've got Perl on my Linux box and MacPerl on the Mac. MacPerl adds some MacOS specific functionality BC of the lack of a accessable CLI, but by the large, they're the same. Regular Perl will run on OS X client/server as well.
I don't KNOW what the collective has in the way of scripting languages, but I THINK that they have a port of Perl too.
: Extremely customizable desktops?
Have you read the latesr Ars Technica article about DP3 of OS X? It was featured on/. last week. Mac will have this when OS X is out this summer.
Tho, yeah, the minions of bill are getting left in the dust here.
Overall, I think that a GOOD product/feature WILL crossover eventually. And usually, only the crap gets left on a single platform (unless the developer collects his 30 peices of silver from gates to keep it propietary).
After all, no one *I* know in either the Linux OR Mac community has shed a single tear that Battlecruiser 3000AD never got ported from windoze.
And do we really want AOL assimilating Linux?
MS Word macro viruses spreading on our boxen?
Get the good stuff, who gives a fsck about the crap.
In particular, deleted but non-zeroed hard drive sectors. The latest version of PGP includes an extension which replaces "Empty Trash" with "Wipe Trash". Now, when I empty my trash, it takes a LOT longer, but PGP overwrites all the files three times, instead of just removing them from the filesystem. I back this up with a scripted weekly zeroing of ALL free space on my hard drive. No one'll be pilfering MY private email. And if they can reconstitute the data after that many overwrites, it's pretty hopeless anyway.
As for crypto keys, I thought it was determined in the Mitnik case that you could not be compelled to hand them over if you think the data might incriminate you. Fifth amendment to the constitution as I recall. You can't be forced to contribute to your own prosecution. So among your encrypted, but not yet wiped, data, just include a little line about how you were driving at 70MPH in a 65MPH zone the other day. Bingo... incriminating data protected by your PGP key, making the key protected under the fifth.
IANAL, but I'm almost SURE I can recall Mitnik's crypto keys being protected, but YMMV on the legal issues.
I DO know tho that PGP does a damn good job zeroing your freespace. I've checked my free sectors with Norton both before AND after a PGP wipe before. And it worksquite nicely, thank you very much. IF you remember to wipe your data.
And PGP is available for damn near every OS as well.
That the pentiun III in the Thinkpad is NOT the genuine article. It is the "mobile" pentium III, a version of the pIII that is intentionally crippled, so as to keep your laptop from melting down into a puddle off thinkpad flavoured goo.
The G3, OTOH, is the full speed desktop version, with NO scaling down to be put in a laptop. And it STILL runs cooler and with less power than even the "mobile" intel chips.
Such things are very important when you consider little nicities like battery life, and comfortable computing. You don't even want to IMAGINE how little battery life you'd get, or how hot your lap would get, if you used a desktop pIII in a notebook.
Cryptonomicon was so prophetic a book. We NEED a data haven and cryptographically secure electronic money to keep from being bled dry by taxation. This is getting ridiculous. I already pay taxes on the internet. We pay taxes on telecomunications of every kind. We pay taxes on our harsware. The Ecommerce sites pay taxes on their income. We pay taxes on our shipping fees.
Now they want to add another tax to Ecommerce. This is ridiculous.
Why should ordering from the internet be any different than any other mail order transaction? Because we use the phone lines (usually) to access the site? Oops, most of us already use the phone to order from the Sears of Penny's catalog. Mail order, for as long as I recall has never had an additional tax unless the company you are ordering from is based in the state of your residence? So why single out the all the Ecommerce startups? Taxing internet sales is just going to give preference to the big, established mail order companies like Sears and Penny's. The governemt would just be taxing a new class of commerce out of existence.
Or perhaps they plan to slam huge taxes on mail order too, and extract a king's ransom from Sears and Penny's? Wouldn't suprise me too much. But I thought that some mail order company had already taken this to the supreme court, which found such taxes unconstitutional.
Article 1 Section 9:
"No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one Sate, be obligated to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another."
Another poster mentioned this section of the constitution that deals with this. I'm SURE I've read SOMEWHERE that mail order companies had already taken the government to court on this, and won. So should the internet be handled different than mail order?
I'm not suprised at all, however. It's typical of the government to want to bleed a new industry dry in taxation whenever one emerges. Well, typical of the "tax 'em till they bleed" democrat party anyway.
Are not a couple of the republican candidates for president campaigning on the platform of aboloshing taxes on the internet forever? Sounds like a good reason to vote republican to me. Sure as hell, if the democrats keep a stranglehold on Washington for much longer, all the doomsday theories of net taxation will be coming true.
The republicans are not perfect, of course. But thay are at least a little less inclined to confiscate my income and redistribute it to parasites who have done nothing to earn it. If only they could get over their "holier than thou" attitude.
I guess it comes down to which is worse:
Republican: We're better than you. So you should be like us.
Democrat: Everyone else is better than you. So we're going to take most of what is yours and give it to them.
I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for an offshore data and Ecommerce haven with cryptographically secure electronic banking. Hmmm, perhaps I'll start one myself.... send the SEC a copy of Cryptonomicon for my business plan when I file to go public....
But since that's not likely to happen SOON, I'll be voting republican this november.
john
Stuff that matters? To who? And look out Ebert!!!
on
Review: On "The Beach"
·
· Score: 1
Shallow non-techie preteen girls who want their next leonardo the craprio fix?
Seriously tho... news for nerds this is not. Katz tries to justify writing this review by claiming that the movie is about an "escape from technology"? That's a specious jump at best. And that's ignoreing the fact that the majority of the/. readership actually LIKES technology. I can't speak for EVERYONE, but a large percentage of us appear to work in the tech industry. Why would we be in this field if we didn't like tech? Why cast away that from which we earn out livings?
And aside from bad premise of posting the review in the first place, the review is lacking in quality, and more importantly, integrity. Katz has finally ventured into the realm of journalistic dishonesty. Want to know what I'm talking about? Go to the Chicago Sun-Times web page and look up Roger Ebert's review of "The Beach"; which was published a couple of weeks ago. Notice the striking number of similarities between Katz' review and Eberts?
I've never understood why so many people bashed John Katz before. I do now. As far as I am concerned, Katz just lost ALL his credibility, and ANY respect I might EVER have mustered for him.
I shall be checking my preferences to see if I can exclude him from my view from now on. I certianly hope I can.
Apple was using "Carl Sagan" as an internal codename for a Macintosh under development.
Well, surely you know how anxious Apple fans are for news about the latest products. Sure enough, the news got outside the walls of Cupertino and into the Macintosh community.
Word eventually got to Carl Sagan that Apple was using his name for a codename, and he promptly sued Apple.
The engineering team obligingly changed the code name of the soon to be released Macintish. the new codename????
Butthead Astronomer
Incidently, the two other products under development at the time were codenamed "Cold Fusion" and "PDM" which was short for "PiltDown Man". Legend has it that Sagan (the astronomer) was offended at being included in the company of two of the more well-known scientific hoaxes of recent years, and THAT's why he sued.
It could also have been a good indigation of Apple's opinion of the man BEFORE the suit. "Butthead Astronomer" is a VERY good indication of their opinion of Sagan AFTER the suit.
As before, all of this can be found in more detail in Linzmeyers "The Mac Bathroom Reader" and it's sequel.
Once when they were first formed. McCartney and his merry little band of legal jackals attacked Apple when it was still Jobs and Woz working out of their garage, introducing Apple Computer to the wonderful world of litigation.
They tried to get Apple to change it's name to various other fruits, like Orange and Banana. Sonn enough tho, Jobs and co. hired competent legal council and found out that the beatles had no legal leg to stand on, so long as Apple was in the computer business, not the music business.
Not content with peaceful coexistence, misters "we're better than Jeasus" kept an eye on Apple from afar, waiting until they were a big company with lots of money they could extort, rather than two kids in a garage.
The beatles sued again when Apple released a Macintosh that had the POTENTIAL to used with MIDI. This was settled out of court for one of those infamous "undisclosed sums".
Incidently, that lawsuit was the origin of the "sosumi" beep in the Mac sound control panel. It was originally to be called "xylophone" (spelling?)... but Apple's legal dept thought that having a mucical insturment named in the OS woulod hurt Apple's case against mccartney and his minions. So the engineers renamed the beep "sosumi". They spelled it out over the phone to the approving lawyer, telling him it was a Jappanese word for "peace and harmony" or sone such. The legal dept agreed, and thus a beep was born.
Both cases (and the development of the "Sosumu" beep) can be read about in more detail in Owen Linzmeyers: "The Mac Bathroom Reader" or the sequel by the same author *title of the sequel escapes me tho).
Seems that a lot of people here do not realise what I think you meant to say, but didn't quite get out.
Since the Apple logo is a trademark...
Apple MUST agressively protect it, or they will LOSE the rights to said trademark. The same applies to ANY trademark.
Did't Linus have to shutdown an auction of *linux*.* domain names not too long ago? Well that's the same thing. The holder of a trademark, be it Apple or Linux or Sun or whoever, can NOT ignore ANY transgression. If they DO, they lose the rights to that mark.
Yeah, I know that's bass ackwards. Buy that's out wonderful intellectual property laws. Oppressively strict protection in some places, ridiculously loose in others. Seems that they are written only to provide income for lawyers, not protect the intrest of consumers OR producers.... (sigh).
: What killed the II line was Steve Jobs. The Apple : II series was still tremendously popular, and he : didn't want it competing with his Macs.
You've got your timeline screwed up. Steve Jobs was betreyed by sculley and forced out of Apple little more than a year after the introduction of the Macintosh.
The Apple ][ series was continued for years following Jobs' expulsion, with the ][e and ][gs in production until mid-1993, MANY years after sculley' coup.
If you own legal MP3s, either those you downloaded that were in the public domain, or those you ripped from CDs you already own... raise your hand.
The RIAA is basically calling all of us pirates and theives... dounds like libel, slander, and defamation of character to me.
Oughta be easy enough, even if the chances are rather low of actually winning, to find a bloodthirsty lawyer looking to get 30% of whatever billions such a huge corperate conglomerate would be penalised.
Or how about attempted restriction of my right to make backup copies in any form I choose, of any media I legitimately own?
Or what about federal prosecution under RICO? Start writing to your congressmen! The RIAA sure seems like it's engaging in racketerring. And it is UNDOUBTEDLY corrupt!!!
Turnabout's fair play, let's give those SOBs some of their own medicine!!!
Oh, and all the same applies to the MPAA as well.
And on a slightly more likely to happen note... Is the EFF involved in this one as well??? Methinks it's about time to join.
If I wanted to pirate a DVD I could do it WITHOUT deCSS! I could do it before deCSS existed. I'll be able to do it if the MPAA somehow gets deCSS abolished from every computer in the world.
IF I wanted to pitate a DVD, I could just make a bit for bit copy onto blank media. And there's no encryption in the world that could stop me. But that's assuming I was willing to pay $50/per for blank media (that's 2x the price of a legitimate DVD!!!), and how many thousands it is for the DVD burner to wirte them.
What deCSS *IS* about is being able to WATCH DVDs WHICH YOU ALREADY OWN!!! That's all that it does! It doesn't make coping DVDs any easier. It just allows you to watch them under a non-microsoft OS. But the big corperate intrests are determined to kill Linux! They want you to buy DVDs. But thet DO NOT want you to be able to watch them under Linux.
Why? Who has a vested intrest in killing Linux as a viable OS?
These questions I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Sorry to the rest of slashdot about so many caps, but I just don't see how these people can be so damn ignorant.... unless they're just astroturfing for the MPAA/MS/RIAA/whoever.
You DO know the difference between having the plans and implementing them, yes?
Plans for nuclear weapons circulate the web quite regularly. And the physics textbooks you's need to suplament these are availiable at any (good) library. Except for obtaining the enriched uraniu or plutonium, a nuclear bomb could be built in just about any well equipped university!
And it's perfectly legal to tell people how. The actual implementation is the part that's illegal.
Or, take illegal drugs. The Anarchists Cookbook contains the recipe for making LSD. It sells in any well-stocked Barnes&Nobles. Certianly not illegal. I can buy the book, read the recipie, distribute if I want, and that's all protected by free speech. Only if I actually cooked up a batch of acid in a lab would I be in violation of the law.
Or pick locksmithing files, or phone phreaking howtos, or explosives howtos. All describe actions that would be illegal, but the description itself is protected free speech.
I can't see how the source code should be looked at any differently than the "how to make a nuke" or "how to make acid" files. These, and the source code, should all be protected. Only the actual nuclear bomb/LSD/compiled binary is an actual product that could potentially cause harm.
At least that's the only intrepetation that makes any sence to me.
Oh and Tom Clancy was never TOLD to change his books. You're probably thinking of two instances:
1) In the preface to The Sum of All Fears, Clancy mentions that he has modified the nuclear bomb production process to be inaccurate. He did this of his own volition to satisfy his own conscience. The DoD did not force him to.
2) After The Hunt for Red October was published, he was brought in to be debriefed by the navy. He had guessed so accurately in that book (on things like SOSUS and the operating patterns of fast attack subs chasing soviet boomers for example) that the DoD thought he might have had access to classified information. Clancy was able to demonstrate that he deduced his guesses from a wide variety of non-classified sources that had already been released to the public. Again, he did not edit his book to appease the DoD. In fact THFRO caught the DoD by suprise BIG TIME!
Walk into almost any arcade nowdays, excepting the ones that specialize in older games, and what do you see?
A half dozen Mortal Kombat wannabes, a mess of Lethal Enforcers clones with mabye a few Operation Wolf copies mixed in, and a mess of sit-down racing games which are, mostly, less fun than Pole position.
Would Pac Man even be made in todays market, if it weren't a classic?
I'm sure burgertime would never have been introduced.
Would any of the above even be introduced to arcades nowdays if ther were not considered "classics"? These were all treeibly fun games, most more fun than ant recent game, most of which defined their own genres.
But, bomehow, I doubt that any of them would see the light of day today if they were not already "Classics", because none of them is:
A) A fighting game B) A first peoson shooter or C) A racing game (with the arguable axception of Spy Hunter)
I think there is DEFINATELY a lack of originallity in today's cookie-cutter arcade game industry.
The art *IS* dead... the only art left in the arcades is that of creating a more bloody fatality when you defeat your opponent.
Even if a shell is not distributed initially, it certianly will be possible to add tcsh, bsh, or any particular shell you care for.
As we all know, OS X Server already had several shells included by default. No reason whatsoever that the same shells wouldn't work in OS X Consumer.
Now, what Apple MIGHT do, is not include them in the default installation, but perhaps have them available on the CD, or as a free download. Or perhaps make you enable them through a control panel.
Apple has done things like this before, they have a history of hiding advanced tools from the novice user. A perfect example of this is ResEdit. ResEdit is a very powerful tool for the advanced user who knows what he's doing, but a novice could seriously fsck his system if he did something wrong. ResEdit is, therefore, not included in the default installations of MacOS, but is available as a free ftp download, as are quite a few other advanced tools. Apple might treat tcsh, bash, or other UNIX shells the same way.
You might also consider that it's possile to write a CLI shell for ANY GUI OS. I've even seen CLI's for PalmOS. There have, in the past, been various CLI interfaces written for MacOS by third parties, some made to look like DOS, some to look like Unix. None, to my knowledge, ever caught on.
Oh, and one last thing many people don't know about the traditional Macintosh. It comes with TWO CLI's already. You just have to know what you're doing to access or use them.
With a push of the programmers switch, you can put a Mac into debugger mode. This freezes the GUI and opens a large text window. From here, you can directly access the system's memory, usually for debugging and programming purposes. You also use this to do firmware updates and the like.
And speaking of firmware.... If you reboot with command-option-o-f, you boot not into MacOS, but into openfirmware. Basically a FROTH intrepeter, this lets you add or delete devices, and (it's most common use, so far as I can tell) set the default boot partition (say, for booting into Linux PPC without using BootX).
The whole point of Macintosh is not to create a non-complex system. That's impossible with the nature of today's advances computers. The point is to hide that complexity from the AVERAGE, and NOVICE users. Advanced users can still access the full complexity(subject to the limitations of any closed-source OS that is) of the system though, if they want to.
Slashdot Mirror
...
.movs, and streaming Quicktime in real time.
IIRC, Apple does not own ALL of Quicktime. The Sorensen codec (the most important one, BTW), is a private, propietary codec that Apple LICENSES from the Sorenson people.
Sorenson is the codec that gives us the astounding quality of the recent Star Wars trailer
Quicktime without Sorenson? May as well settle for realplayer... that'd be going back to Qutcktime version 2 or something.
We need to petition Sorenson to open the codec, *NOT* Apple! If Apple DID release the QT source, they'd either have to exclude Sorenson (a waste, really), OR they'd expose themselves to tremendous lawsuits (don't count on them being this stupid). This will not change until Sorenson changes the terms of THEIR license.
So, until Sorenson opens up.... don't count on Quicktime for Linux, Unix, or anything else.
BTW:
All of the above applies ONLY to the QT MoviePlayer. Quicktime as a whole constitutes a LOT more than just the player. Read the developer guides sometime. It's really quite nifty.
I doubt, even if Sorenson DOES open their codec, that we'll EVER see ALL of Quicktime open sourced. In doing so, Apple would essentially be handing a tremendous amout of technology to gates and his cronies, free of charge. I doubt that'll ever happen.
john
So how much did the RIAA pay Salon to get that load of tripe published? Or for that matter, how much did the "artists" in question whore themselves out for to lie like that?
What about the artists who tell the truth?
What about the artists who are NOT luddites, and who are NOT afraid of technology?
What about the artists who ENCOURAGE distribution of their music MP3's?
What about the artists who have been SUED BY THEIR OWN LABELS for making their songs available in MP3 format?!?!?
Wanna see a good example of a major band that "gets it"? Go to:
www.lessthanjake.com
Under their "sounds" link, they host realaudio of many of their own songs. AND they provide links to other sites that host MP3s. For example, the "The Skankin' LTJ MP3 page" has MP3s from most of LTJ's major label releases. AND LTJ provides a board for fans to trade bootlegs and collectibles!!!
That "we don't make money on tours" line is pure BS, plain and simple. I have quite a few friend in local punk and ska bands, one of which TURNED DOWN an offer to sign with a label.
Once, I asked one of these guys about it, and he told me the economics of a CD break down in three ways:
1)
Small band that sell their own CDs. CDs are produced in runs of 500-1000 @ about $2 per. Band sells said CDs at their own shows and sometimes on consignment at local indie stores for $8-10. Profit to the band == $6-8. CDs CAN provide a reasonable income in this instance.
2)
Band signs with small label. CDs are produced in runs of 5000-10000 for about $1 per. CDs now sell in indie stores, at the shows, and at mall stores in the band's home town for $10-12 with the label taking about half the profit. Net gain to the band from a sale == $3-5 per. At this point the CD provides a smaller percentage of income and the band throws more out at the crowd free at their shows. (Anyone who's been following LTJ since their Asain Man days knows this trait well).
3)
Band sells out to a major label. CDs are run in lots of 100K+ at a cost to the label of about $.10 per. CDs now sell in mall stores for $18. Of that $18, the band is *LUCKY* to see $.50 !!! (and that's if it's a BIG band with GREAT managemant). The rest of the $17.40 goes into the pockets of the record label, so that the CEO of Time Warner can buy an extra Porche for his daughter to use on weekends when that Land Cruiser is just too much car.
When a band signs to a major label, they get JACK SH*T from their CD sales!!! They are being raped. The only reason to sell CDs really, is to promote the tour. Bands then are MUCH more willing and able to throw out free CDs at their shows now (go to a Reel Big Fish show to see a good example of a hazardous number of free CDs being thrown at the audience).
Solution? I would not, and do not, distribute MP3s or CD-R copies of bands in situations 1 or 2 except under extraordinary circumstance (only recent time is when a friend lost his Operation Ivy CD. I KNEW for a FACT that he had boughtand paid for it, so I didn't feel bad about burning a CD-R copy)...
But in the case of instance 3? I have no sympathy for the record label whatsoever. They are absolutely RAPING the bands that sign with them. I feel no guilt whatsoever about depriving Sony records of an extra $17.40 (assuming it's a band that can GET a whole $.50 per CD).
Depriving the band of $.50? Mabye a touch of guilt at first. But that guilt goes away immediately when I go to the show and buy a T-shirt, providing the band with more profit than if I had bought their CD twenty times over.
Sick thing is tho, that, if it's a good band, I usually wind up buying CDs anyway. I travel a lot, and need CDs for my car stereo.
john
... that of automatically associating open source with Linux, and forgetting about the earlier efforts of GNU and the FSF. No wondcer RMS seems irritated whenever he writes anything about how it should really be called Gnu/Linux.
But, then again, a quick check of gnu.org shows a founding date of 1984 for both Gnu AND the FSF. This is STILL almost a whole decade *AFTER* Woz had started freely giving out the schematics for the Apple I at the homebrew club.
john
Apple "got it" from the very beginning. They just lost the way when the suits (john sculley and his cronies) wrested the company from its founders.
In the days of "Steve & Steve" Apple defined "Open Source" before the term was coined, and before anybody had heard of RMS, ESR, or Linus.
I still have all the documentation that came with the Apple ][+ that my dad brought home that day in 1981. Sadly, the Apple ][+ itself fell prey to a Florida thunderstorm some years ago.
That documentation includes:
A complete plan of the motherboard that my dad was later able to use to build his own Apple][ clone.
Commented assembly code for all the ROMs.
Documentation for the Apple Disk ][ 5.25" drive which consisted of a pair of books about 2" thick, including hardware plans for the drive and controller card as detailed as those for the computer itself. (*when was the last time you saw a 2" high stack of manuals for a COMPUTER? much less a 5.25" floppy?!?!??!?*)
Code (not source tho... mostly 6502 assembly)for damn near everything else as well.
The documentation that came with that computer is ASTOUNDING by today's standards. With the rise of Linux, we're only beginning to see the reemergence of such comprehensive docs.
And it is nice to see that Apple is returning to it's old ways.
john
I still have some of the *single* sided 5.25 floppies, that I MADE double sided!!!
You just use a regular hole punch to create a notch opposite the original write-protect notch.
Then flip away, for half the cost!!!
john
I'm all for new ways for a busy geek to pick up an extra degree, but...
/. had a story about a good example of such a school, the Beacon School, IIRC. Granted that was the rare gem of a public school, but it could be a good paradigm for the type of schools I'm proposing. I know that when *I* become a billioniare, one of the charitable things I'd like to do is establish a private high school that *I* would have LIKED to attend.
Is the college level where more money needs to be spent to produce Computer Science majors?
Now, I don't have the statistics myself, but every few months, one of the industry or regular news magazines has one of those "doom and gloom" stories about how enrollment in CompSci programs is going DOWN (more work for the rest of us tho). The existing programs can turn out some EXCELLENT graduates.... if they can attract the students.
But WHY can't they get students?
*I* think that question could be answered, at least in part, by looking at the current high school culture that encourages bit-brained jocks, and casts geeks as psychotic killers who must be kept down.
Perhaps the money could be better spent by endowing a series of private magnet schools at the high school level, and perhaps even at the middle school level as well. Disavow completely the failed education of the public schools and establish a strong pre-CompSci curriculum in these schools, and scholarships for intelligent students willing to excell, as opposed to allowing geeks to be tormented by the jocks, as is the norm in public schools.
Not long ago
Get enough geek bilioniares together, and you could establish a series of these magnet schools across the country. Even better, you could locate them near universities with whom you could establish dual-enrollment programs. And the better the computer science college, the better the location. Put one of these magnet schools in Palo Alto near Stanford, in Atlanta near GaTech, in Boston near MIT, Pasedena near CalTech, etc.
Offer dual enrollment classes so you can get the busywork classes out of the way quickly. When your HS english class gives both HS and college english credit, that leaves more time for useful computer classes on college. The same applies for history, economics, (insert generic required-by-the-state bore of a class here), etc.
And by locating these magnet schools near the appropiate universities, you also locate them near a fairly good bit of the industry. Wouldn't you perfer your HS age kids to work their summers as interns at Hewlett Packard, rather than flipping burgers at McDonalds? I sure would.
Get 'em young, I say. Find the intelligent kids who would be worthwhile, productive citizens, and give them the chance to get out of the jocks-and-cheerleaders uber alles high school culture as early as you can. Nurture their talents, do not suppress them. I bet that with a nurturing pre-college environment, more people would major in college CompSci programs. And just imagine the quality of the geeks that would be produced by college graduation if you could get 'em at 6th grade!!!
john
: "Deep Impact"?
: I should just rest my case there, but:
If you do a careful comparison, I bet you'll find more fradulent science in M2M than in all the examples I listed (including Deep Impact) COMBINED!!! Hell, throw in Armegaddon, and I bet M2M would STILL be trying to pass off more fradulent science as the real thing!
:: [sic] FILM a significant protion [sic]
Gee, the best you can bitch about are typos and rushed grammar? Gee, so sorry that I don't compose my posts in a word processor with spell and grammar check and meticulously proofread every detatil before I post. Gosh darn, call the f-ing language police. Are you french?
Obviously you know nothing about angular momentum if you think that Mission to Mars' microgravity scenes were filmed in an actual microgravity environment. Such cluelessness is worthy of nothing but contempt. Try picking up a physics text book sometime.... or even just read the rest of the reviews, they may just use small enough words for you to comprehend.
: This film can be appreciated for its accuracy.
: Some people just CHOSE not to
Uh yeah, if your idea of accuracy doesn't include Sir Issac Newton, sure.
Since you obviously didn't bother to read the earlier posts in this thread, I'll repeat. The problem is NOT that it was inaccurate. The entireity of the Star Wars/Trek sagas have laughable science.
The point is that M2M CLAIMS to be accurste (you DID read the cited quote from DePalma, yes? Well, obviously not, otherwise you'd have a clue), while passing off bas pseudoscience rubbish as the real thing.
john
: think it depends on the movie. Complaining about
: scientific innacuracy in Star Trek:
: Insurrection, or (god forbid) The Phantom
: Menace, would be extremely geeky. (In the
: negative sense.) But MtM was heavily promoted
: for its realism.
Don't forget that is HAS been done right a number of times over the years.
Remember Apollo 13? The director actually went through the trouble of using NASA's "Vomit Comet" aircraft in order to determine how things REALLY behave in microgravity. As I recall, didn't they actulally FILM a significant protion of Apollo 13 IN the "Vomit Comet"???
Deep Impact, while more flawed than Apollo 13, did a pretty good job of realisticlly showing a near-future space expidition. (aside from the "synchronise the nukes" TOTALLY destroying the last comet (all that mass and energy STILL has to go SOMEWHERE (ie. into Earth's atmosphere, just not all on one place))).
2001 did an EXCELLENT job of a realistic near-future space expidition. Aside from overly optimistic predictions of our progress by the year 2001, that is. Oh, and the sentient computer turning on its masters as well. (Both of these flaws can be forgiven tho I think, as they were very common themes in 1960's SciFi.)
Even a low-budget affair like HBO's miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" did a vastly superior job than this "Mission to Mars" drek.
The point?
It CAN be done right. "Mission to Mars" just CHOOSE not to.
john
Replying in order to nullify my own bad moderation.
Meant to mod you up, but thanks to this stupid mouse wheel, scrolled the mod to 'offtopic'.
Sorry.
This reply should nullify the moderstion IIRC.
john
Coca Cola sucesfully sued, under the same "trade dress" laws Apple is using to go after Daewoo or eMachines or whoever, to protect the SHAPE of the Coca Cola bottle!
That's probably the precident Apple used in the case. That and the fact that the iMac knockoff artist company ADMITTED IN A PRESS RELEASE that they were going to try to ride the wave of the iMac to sucess.
The rip-off artists basically shot themselves in the foot by: a) not doing their research on trade dress law, and b) mouthing off to the press.
Also, did you know that UPS has a patent (or trademark, I forget which) on that brown color they use for everything from their trucks to their uniforms? Yup. No one else can legally use "UPS Puke Brown", without UPS's permission.
And, from the looks of some of the other posts, it appears that Slashdot has to be reminded again:
Under copyright/trademark law, if you do not aggressively defend your intellectual property, you LOSE the rights to that same property!
Apple has NO CHOISE but to go after those who would violate it's trademarks. Nor does anyone else who produces intellectual property. Not even Linus, remember when he had to put the smackdown of a couple of nare-do-wells who were going to auction off a bunch oh *linux*.* domain names for nefarious ends?
IANAL, but AFAIK, the ONLY IP that you do NOT have to aggesively defend in order to keep the rights, is a patent, which a) is a fscked up system to begin with, and b) expires much sooner than other IP anyway.
john
: Apache?
/. last week. Mac will have this when OS X is out this summer.
I don't know about the microdrones, but Mac OS X Server comes with Apache, and some nice GUI configuration tools. Tho you can still configure it the old fashioned way too.
: Perl?
I've got Perl on my Linux box and MacPerl on the Mac. MacPerl adds some MacOS specific functionality BC of the lack of a accessable CLI, but by the large, they're the same. Regular Perl will run on OS X client/server as well.
I don't KNOW what the collective has in the way of scripting languages, but I THINK that they have a port of Perl too.
: Extremely customizable desktops?
Have you read the latesr Ars Technica article about DP3 of OS X? It was featured on
Tho, yeah, the minions of bill are getting left in the dust here.
Overall, I think that a GOOD product/feature WILL crossover eventually. And usually, only the crap gets left on a single platform (unless the developer collects his 30 peices of silver from gates to keep it propietary).
After all, no one *I* know in either the Linux OR Mac community has shed a single tear that Battlecruiser 3000AD never got ported from windoze.
And do we really want AOL assimilating Linux?
MS Word macro viruses spreading on our boxen?
Get the good stuff, who gives a fsck about the crap.
john
In particular, deleted but non-zeroed hard drive sectors. The latest version of PGP includes an extension which replaces "Empty Trash" with "Wipe Trash". Now, when I empty my trash, it takes a LOT longer, but PGP overwrites all the files three times, instead of just removing them from the filesystem. I back this up with a scripted weekly zeroing of ALL free space on my hard drive. No one'll be pilfering MY private email. And if they can reconstitute the data after that many overwrites, it's pretty hopeless anyway.
As for crypto keys, I thought it was determined in the Mitnik case that you could not be compelled to hand them over if you think the data might incriminate you. Fifth amendment to the constitution as I recall. You can't be forced to contribute to your own prosecution. So among your encrypted, but not yet wiped, data, just include a little line about how you were driving at 70MPH in a 65MPH zone the other day. Bingo... incriminating data protected by your PGP key, making the key protected under the fifth.
IANAL, but I'm almost SURE I can recall Mitnik's crypto keys being protected, but YMMV on the legal issues.
I DO know tho that PGP does a damn good job zeroing your freespace. I've checked my free sectors with Norton both before AND after a PGP wipe before. And it worksquite nicely, thank you very much. IF you remember to wipe your data.
And PGP is available for damn near every OS as well.
john
That the pentiun III in the Thinkpad is NOT the genuine article. It is the "mobile" pentium III, a version of the pIII that is intentionally crippled, so as to keep your laptop from melting down into a puddle off thinkpad flavoured goo.
The G3, OTOH, is the full speed desktop version, with NO scaling down to be put in a laptop. And it STILL runs cooler and with less power than even the "mobile" intel chips.
Such things are very important when you consider little nicities like battery life, and comfortable computing. You don't even want to IMAGINE how little battery life you'd get, or how hot your lap would get, if you used a desktop pIII in a notebook.
john
Cryptonomicon was so prophetic a book. We NEED a data haven and cryptographically secure electronic money to keep from being bled dry by taxation. This is getting ridiculous. I already pay taxes on the internet. We pay taxes on telecomunications of every kind. We pay taxes on our harsware. The Ecommerce sites pay taxes on their income. We pay taxes on our shipping fees.
Now they want to add another tax to Ecommerce. This is ridiculous.
Why should ordering from the internet be any different than any other mail order transaction? Because we use the phone lines (usually) to access the site? Oops, most of us already use the phone to order from the Sears of Penny's catalog. Mail order, for as long as I recall has never had an additional tax unless the company you are ordering from is based in the state of your residence? So why single out the all the Ecommerce startups? Taxing internet sales is just going to give preference to the big, established mail order companies like Sears and Penny's. The governemt would just be taxing a new class of commerce out of existence.
Or perhaps they plan to slam huge taxes on mail order too, and extract a king's ransom from Sears and Penny's? Wouldn't suprise me too much. But I thought that some mail order company had already taken this to the supreme court, which found such taxes unconstitutional.
Article 1 Section 9:
"No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one Sate, be obligated to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another."
Another poster mentioned this section of the constitution that deals with this. I'm SURE I've read SOMEWHERE that mail order companies had already taken the government to court on this, and won. So should the internet be handled different than mail order?
I'm not suprised at all, however. It's typical of the government to want to bleed a new industry dry in taxation whenever one emerges. Well, typical of the "tax 'em till they bleed" democrat party anyway.
Are not a couple of the republican candidates for president campaigning on the platform of aboloshing taxes on the internet forever? Sounds like a good reason to vote republican to me. Sure as hell, if the democrats keep a stranglehold on Washington for much longer, all the doomsday theories of net taxation will be coming true.
The republicans are not perfect, of course. But thay are at least a little less inclined to confiscate my income and redistribute it to parasites who have done nothing to earn it. If only they could get over their "holier than thou" attitude.
I guess it comes down to which is worse:
Republican: We're better than you. So you should be like us.
Democrat: Everyone else is better than you. So we're going to take most of what is yours and give it to them.
I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for an offshore data and Ecommerce haven with cryptographically secure electronic banking. Hmmm, perhaps I'll start one myself.... send the SEC a copy of Cryptonomicon for my business plan when I file to go public....
But since that's not likely to happen SOON, I'll be voting republican this november.
john
Shallow non-techie preteen girls who want their next leonardo the craprio fix?
/. readership actually LIKES technology. I can't speak for EVERYONE, but a large percentage of us appear to work in the tech industry. Why would we be in this field if we didn't like tech? Why cast away that from which we earn out livings?
Seriously tho... news for nerds this is not. Katz tries to justify writing this review by claiming that the movie is about an "escape from technology"? That's a specious jump at best. And that's ignoreing the fact that the majority of the
And aside from bad premise of posting the review in the first place, the review is lacking in quality, and more importantly, integrity. Katz has finally ventured into the realm of journalistic dishonesty. Want to know what I'm talking about? Go to the Chicago Sun-Times web page and look up Roger Ebert's review of "The Beach"; which was published a couple of weeks ago. Notice the striking number of similarities between Katz' review and Eberts?
I've never understood why so many people bashed John Katz before. I do now. As far as I am concerned, Katz just lost ALL his credibility, and ANY respect I might EVER have mustered for him.
I shall be checking my preferences to see if I can exclude him from my view from now on. I certianly hope I can.
john
Apple was using "Carl Sagan" as an internal codename for a Macintosh under development.
Well, surely you know how anxious Apple fans are for news about the latest products. Sure enough, the news got outside the walls of Cupertino and into the Macintosh community.
Word eventually got to Carl Sagan that Apple was using his name for a codename, and he promptly sued Apple.
The engineering team obligingly changed the code name of the soon to be released Macintish. the new codename????
Butthead Astronomer
Incidently, the two other products under development at the time were codenamed "Cold Fusion" and "PDM" which was short for "PiltDown Man". Legend has it that Sagan (the astronomer) was offended at being included in the company of two of the more well-known scientific hoaxes of recent years, and THAT's why he sued.
It could also have been a good indigation of Apple's opinion of the man BEFORE the suit. "Butthead Astronomer" is a VERY good indication of their opinion of Sagan AFTER the suit.
As before, all of this can be found in more detail in Linzmeyers "The Mac Bathroom Reader" and it's sequel.
john
Twice.
Once when they were first formed. McCartney and his merry little band of legal jackals attacked Apple when it was still Jobs and Woz working out of their garage, introducing Apple Computer to the wonderful world of litigation.
They tried to get Apple to change it's name to various other fruits, like Orange and Banana. Sonn enough tho, Jobs and co. hired competent legal council and found out that the beatles had no legal leg to stand on, so long as Apple was in the computer business, not the music business.
Not content with peaceful coexistence, misters "we're better than Jeasus" kept an eye on Apple from afar, waiting until they were a big company with lots of money they could extort, rather than two kids in a garage.
The beatles sued again when Apple released a Macintosh that had the POTENTIAL to used with MIDI. This was settled out of court for one of those infamous "undisclosed sums".
Incidently, that lawsuit was the origin of the "sosumi" beep in the Mac sound control panel. It was originally to be called "xylophone" (spelling?)... but Apple's legal dept thought that having a mucical insturment named in the OS woulod hurt Apple's case against mccartney and his minions. So the engineers renamed the beep "sosumi". They spelled it out over the phone to the approving lawyer, telling him it was a Jappanese word for "peace and harmony" or sone such. The legal dept agreed, and thus a beep was born.
Both cases (and the development of the "Sosumu" beep) can be read about in more detail in Owen Linzmeyers: "The Mac Bathroom Reader" or the sequel by the same author *title of the sequel escapes me tho).
john
Seems that a lot of people here do not realise what I think you meant to say, but didn't quite get out.
Since the Apple logo is a trademark...
Apple MUST agressively protect it, or they will LOSE the rights to said trademark. The same applies to ANY trademark.
Did't Linus have to shutdown an auction of *linux*.* domain names not too long ago? Well that's the same thing. The holder of a trademark, be it Apple or Linux or Sun or whoever, can NOT ignore ANY transgression. If they DO, they lose the rights to that mark.
Yeah, I know that's bass ackwards. Buy that's out wonderful intellectual property laws. Oppressively strict protection in some places, ridiculously loose in others. Seems that they are written only to provide income for lawyers, not protect the intrest of consumers OR producers.... (sigh).
john
: What killed the II line was Steve Jobs. The Apple
: II series was still tremendously popular, and he
: didn't want it competing with his Macs.
You've got your timeline screwed up. Steve Jobs was betreyed by sculley and forced out of Apple little more than a year after the introduction of the Macintosh.
The Apple ][ series was continued for years following Jobs' expulsion, with the ][e and ][gs in production until mid-1993, MANY years after sculley' coup.
john
If you own legal MP3s, either those you downloaded that were in the public domain, or those you ripped from CDs you already own... raise your hand.
The RIAA is basically calling all of us pirates and theives... dounds like libel, slander, and defamation of character to me.
Oughta be easy enough, even if the chances are rather low of actually winning, to find a bloodthirsty lawyer looking to get 30% of whatever billions such a huge corperate conglomerate would be penalised.
Or how about attempted restriction of my right to make backup copies in any form I choose, of any media I legitimately own?
Or what about federal prosecution under RICO? Start writing to your congressmen! The RIAA sure seems like it's engaging in racketerring. And it is UNDOUBTEDLY corrupt!!!
Turnabout's fair play, let's give those SOBs some of their own medicine!!!
Oh, and all the same applies to the MPAA as well.
And on a slightly more likely to happen note... Is the EFF involved in this one as well??? Methinks it's about time to join.
john
DECSS IS NOT ABOUT PIRACY!!!
It never was! It Never will be!
If I wanted to pirate a DVD I could do it WITHOUT deCSS! I could do it before deCSS existed. I'll be able to do it if the MPAA somehow gets deCSS abolished from every computer in the world.
IF I wanted to pitate a DVD, I could just make a bit for bit copy onto blank media. And there's no encryption in the world that could stop me. But that's assuming I was willing to pay $50/per for blank media (that's 2x the price of a legitimate DVD!!!), and how many thousands it is for the DVD burner to wirte them.
What deCSS *IS* about is being able to WATCH DVDs WHICH YOU ALREADY OWN!!! That's all that it does! It doesn't make coping DVDs any easier. It just allows you to watch them under a non-microsoft OS. But the big corperate intrests are determined to kill Linux! They want you to buy DVDs. But thet DO NOT want you to be able to watch them under Linux.
Why?
Who has a vested intrest in killing Linux as a viable OS?
These questions I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Sorry to the rest of slashdot about so many caps, but I just don't see how these people can be so damn ignorant.... unless they're just astroturfing for the MPAA/MS/RIAA/whoever.
john
You DO know the difference between having the plans and implementing them, yes?
Plans for nuclear weapons circulate the web quite regularly. And the physics textbooks you's need to suplament these are availiable at any (good) library. Except for obtaining the enriched uraniu or plutonium, a nuclear bomb could be built in just about any well equipped university!
And it's perfectly legal to tell people how. The actual implementation is the part that's illegal.
Or, take illegal drugs. The Anarchists Cookbook contains the recipe for making LSD. It sells in any well-stocked Barnes&Nobles. Certianly not illegal. I can buy the book, read the recipie, distribute if I want, and that's all protected by free speech. Only if I actually cooked up a batch of acid in a lab would I be in violation of the law.
Or pick locksmithing files, or phone phreaking howtos, or explosives howtos. All describe actions that would be illegal, but the description itself is protected free speech.
I can't see how the source code should be looked at any differently than the "how to make a nuke" or "how to make acid" files. These, and the source code, should all be protected. Only the actual nuclear bomb/LSD/compiled binary is an actual product that could potentially cause harm.
At least that's the only intrepetation that makes any sence to me.
Oh and Tom Clancy was never TOLD to change his books. You're probably thinking of two instances:
1)
In the preface to The Sum of All Fears, Clancy mentions that he has modified the nuclear bomb production process to be inaccurate. He did this of his own volition to satisfy his own conscience. The DoD did not force him to.
2)
After The Hunt for Red October was published, he was brought in to be debriefed by the navy. He had guessed so accurately in that book (on things like SOSUS and the operating patterns of fast attack subs chasing soviet boomers for example) that the DoD thought he might have had access to classified information. Clancy was able to demonstrate that he deduced his guesses from a wide variety of non-classified sources that had already been released to the public. Again, he did not edit his book to appease the DoD. In fact THFRO caught the DoD by suprise BIG TIME!
john
Walk into almost any arcade nowdays, excepting the ones that specialize in older games, and what do you see?
A half dozen Mortal Kombat wannabes, a mess of Lethal Enforcers clones with mabye a few Operation Wolf copies mixed in, and a mess of sit-down racing games which are, mostly, less fun than
Pole position.
Would Pac Man even be made in todays market, if it weren't a classic?
I'm sure burgertime would never have been introduced.
Tron?
Joust?
Lunar Patrol?
Q-Bert?
Centipede?
Asteroids?
Defender?
Zaxxon?
Zookeeper?
Donkey Kong?
Spy Hunter?
Afterburner?
Asteroids?
Would any of the above even be introduced to arcades nowdays if ther were not considered "classics"? These were all treeibly fun games, most more fun than ant recent game, most of which defined their own genres.
But, bomehow, I doubt that any of them would see the light of day today if they were not already "Classics", because none of them is:
A) A fighting game
B) A first peoson shooter
or
C) A racing game (with the arguable axception of Spy Hunter)
I think there is DEFINATELY a lack of originallity in today's cookie-cutter arcade game industry.
The art *IS* dead... the only art left in the arcades is that of creating a more bloody fatality when you defeat your opponent.
john
I've never seen it available for download, but for $9.95 (plus shipping & handling) you can order the special edition at:
http://www.mwp.com/mwp/Hardwars.html
Excelent short flick.... definately worth it.
john
Even if a shell is not distributed initially, it certianly will be possible to add tcsh, bsh, or any particular shell you care for.
As we all know, OS X Server already had several shells included by default. No reason whatsoever that the same shells wouldn't work in OS X Consumer.
Now, what Apple MIGHT do, is not include them in the default installation, but perhaps have them available on the CD, or as a free download. Or perhaps make you enable them through a control panel.
Apple has done things like this before, they have a history of hiding advanced tools from the novice user. A perfect example of this is ResEdit. ResEdit is a very powerful tool for the advanced user who knows what he's doing, but a novice could seriously fsck his system if he did something wrong. ResEdit is, therefore, not included in the default installations of MacOS, but is available as a free ftp download, as are quite a few other advanced tools. Apple might treat tcsh, bash, or other UNIX shells the same way.
You might also consider that it's possile to write a CLI shell for ANY GUI OS. I've even seen CLI's for PalmOS. There have, in the past, been various CLI interfaces written for MacOS by third parties, some made to look like DOS, some to look like Unix. None, to my knowledge, ever caught on.
Oh, and one last thing many people don't know about the traditional Macintosh. It comes with TWO CLI's already. You just have to know what you're doing to access or use them.
With a push of the programmers switch, you can put a Mac into debugger mode. This freezes the GUI and opens a large text window. From here, you can directly access the system's memory, usually for debugging and programming purposes. You also use this to do firmware updates and the like.
And speaking of firmware.... If you reboot with command-option-o-f, you boot not into MacOS, but into openfirmware. Basically a FROTH intrepeter, this lets you add or delete devices, and (it's most common use, so far as I can tell) set the default boot partition (say, for booting into Linux PPC without using BootX).
The whole point of Macintosh is not to create a non-complex system. That's impossible with the nature of today's advances computers. The point is to hide that complexity from the AVERAGE, and NOVICE users. Advanced users can still access the full complexity(subject to the limitations of any closed-source OS that is) of the system though, if they want to.
john