If you use an MS product, and your entire organization comes to depend on it, you are forced to upgrade. You are forced to use MS compliant technologies that can interoperate. (Notice how you must have IE installed, even if you use Netscape/Mozilla, thanks to the integration needs.) If you use MS Office 97, and the whole rest of the world uses 2000 or XP, you end up having to upgrade to interoperate. Why do you think MS keeps breaking the format for each version when there are no technological reasons to do so?
OSS does not lock you in. It lets you use competing technologies, because it isn't driven by profit, but instead by technological superiority. I don't write OSS for money, I write it because, for the projects I work on, there are no alternatives that are valuable enough to me for their costs (both financial and freedom costs).
They'll be forced into an upgrade cycle. They'll be forced to buy all the little extras it takes to bring MS systems up to level with other systems. And so on. A big donation looks nice and free to the clueless, but once you get into what else you need to actually get work done, the price of the OS and basic software (heck, even just Office) isn't even close to your total cost.
I wonder who lobbied for this. We all know politicians in general are not geeks, and don't care about stuff like this, or even understand any of it. (Again, as someone who deals with politicians day in and out.)
$500/spam... had to be someone important who just _really_ got sick of bestiality advertisements in their inbox or something. (Which, btw, some politicians tend to throw a fit about when they recieve it with inline HTML and pictures, and do things like force you to install half-functional anti-spam software so she doesn't see horse meat anymore.)
A lot of code "mergers" tend to be announced, but nothing ever comes of it. The idea of a merged feature set sounds promising, but it is often difficult to merge the underlying code, which can be severely different even for features present in both code bases.
Additionally, for open-source or largely community developed projects, it's easy for the leaders to announce a merger or roadplan, but a whole 'nother game when it comes to getting the volunteer coders to actually do it; switching codebases or doing the grunt work of merges isn't the kind of this most hackers find sexy or appealing.
Point being, how much of this merger is something that's actually going to happen, how much is just a transfer of resources (versus merging of code), and so on?
Again, as someone who works for the gov't, I can attest that those orange construction barrels are a significant part of our residency, and as they form a majority of voters, generally get their way around here.
Notice the poor condition of Michigan roads; these conditions are a result of the barrels voting down on proper roadway budgets, increasing the need for repeated cheap repairs, which the barrels enjoy for leisurely activities.
The second largest voting majority would be the telecom representatives, who tend to be more vocal than orange construction barrels, if not as useful.
The funniest bit is, I work for a gov't branch, and we're bitten rather hard but some of the Michigan state laws. Next thing I know the Township will start passing anti-intelligent-people laws or something. (Not that it would have much effect around here...)
I think there is a communication problem here. The article used "remote" to mean not-in-hardware; i.e., all software. It didn't mean just over the network.
An employee can get to the keys, but only by hacking the hardware. A possibility (as clearly explained in the articles), but not likely. It's also questionable when getting these keys would _do_; they only seem useful for the single machine itself. And I'd presume a good admin would clear/reset any keys if the machine is transfered to another employee.
Keep seeing posts about "in the future they still have this hole" or similiar items.
Remember, folks, the hack wasn't taking place in the future - it was in the Matrix. They weren't hacking the machines, they were hacking the "fake" computers in the power plant.
Think of it like hacking into an ancient copy of usermode linux.;-)
Sadly, that isn't true. You still have to write the whole backend. XUL uses GDK/GTK for example on UNIX. You _always_ need platform specific backends.
And then there's the problem of integration. I love the Mozilla Firebird UI a lot more than Galeon (which is just cracked out) or Epiphany (which has been way over-simplified to be useful), but Firebird doesn't in any way shape or form integrate nicely with my GNOME2 desktop. It looks and feels like a separate application. Things I've already configured in GNOME need to be reconfigured in Firebird. And so on.
Same goes for Mac OS X users, I'm sure - Firebird will not look or act like any other application. It'll act like a Windows app, mostly because that's what its design most closely mimics.
So please, developers - get rid of this silly "write once, sorta work everywhere, even tho we have to recode the backends" idea and realize that fully native UIs are so much better, especially for users. All that time Mozilla spent designing XUL could've been spent doing native UIs and had plenty of time left over.;-)
That's what hack _always_ meant. A hacker has always been another word for coder. The media started using "hacker" where they should have been using "cracker" or "computer vandal" or similar (mostly because, I'm guessing, in the beginning you had to be a hacker to break into a system) and now the negative version of the term has stuck.
I'm a hacker, proud of it, and may you people who keep thinking that means I break into computers all get beaten with wet noodles.;-)
My favorite is the idiot yelling about how much he hates newbies and corporate support in Linux, on a mailing list operated by Intel for Intel supplied Linux software. The "smart" people are such morons, sometimes.;-)
I don't think Sorenson has ever been an open standard. QuickTime is, I believe; but then, it's quite possible to encode a movie in QuickTime _without_ using Sorenson. Sorenson is just one of the many possible codecs usable in the QuickTime "wrapper" format. Same goes for AVI and several other formats; they just wrap the several sub-encodings together. So you can encode both audio and video using two wholly unrelated formats, or whatever. (not a multimedia format expert...)
They said it uses standard semi-conductor manufacturing processes.
While that's no real guarantee, it does imply it shouldn't be much more than what we currently spend on this stuff. Especially once they get to a big enough bulk the plants should be common and efficient. (initial implementations of facilities tend to be more expensive, from what I've gathered)
Like this self-built box states, you _can_ drop in your own hard-drives, AGP cards, and everything.
The only palces Apple breaks compatibility is where their tech is _better_. ADC is awesome, I wish PC manufacturer's would adopt - I have _way_ too many cables behind my computer desk. Some goes for their slick way of hooking the mouse into the keyboard (less cabling, again). You can get away with five cables from your tower (power, adc, keyboard, speakers, network), only one from your display (adc), a cable from mouse to keyboard and keyboard to tower, and the cables hooking speakers together and then from there to tower. Plus you have a spare USB port on your keyboard (tablet, portable drive, whatever) plus two more on the modern displays.
Compare that to the >10 cables on my machine, and then having to have the cables running back behind the machine versus having even simple things like USB literally at my fingertips...
The only other big non-compatibility thing is the CPU architecture, but who cares? The prevalence of Java (and soon perhaps.NET) alleviates a large amount of that, and virtual PC helps a lot for business apps.
I'm waiting for the PPC 970 myself, but I'm switching then; depending on how good Panther is, I might even dump Linux then. ~,^
If you're using OS8/9, that would explain it. Those systems were technological crap. Try OS X. Of course, that might not run on your hardware (just like WinXP isn't going to run on a ppro 200).
Heh. Of course, there's the whole issue where the high-end open source drivers don't perform nearly as well as the closed sourced ones.;-)
This is isn't a problem with open-source, simply the fact that the closed source drivers are better, currently.
Granted, a better kernel interface for this kind of stuff would elminate the whole problem; it shouldn't need porting of a _driver_ between different user-space systems.:(
(Sure I'll receive flak for this opinion on the AP list now.;-)
If anyone _can_ do this, I'm now officially scared.
The protocol had damn well better be done over something well encrypted; reverse engineering it would mean they'd have to be able to crack this, and there goes all security for those credit card transfers and such.:(
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This could make an excellent soap opera. All we need now is a love triangle in this SCO/Novell/Linux/UNIX/IBM mess!
If you use an MS product, and your entire organization comes to depend on it, you are forced to upgrade. You are forced to use MS compliant technologies that can interoperate. (Notice how you must have IE installed, even if you use Netscape/Mozilla, thanks to the integration needs.) If you use MS Office 97, and the whole rest of the world uses 2000 or XP, you end up having to upgrade to interoperate. Why do you think MS keeps breaking the format for each version when there are no technological reasons to do so?
OSS does not lock you in. It lets you use competing technologies, because it isn't driven by profit, but instead by technological superiority. I don't write OSS for money, I write it because, for the projects I work on, there are no alternatives that are valuable enough to me for their costs (both financial and freedom costs).
They'll be forced into an upgrade cycle. They'll be forced to buy all the little extras it takes to bring MS systems up to level with other systems. And so on. A big donation looks nice and free to the clueless, but once you get into what else you need to actually get work done, the price of the OS and basic software (heck, even just Office) isn't even close to your total cost.
I wonder who lobbied for this. We all know politicians in general are not geeks, and don't care about stuff like this, or even understand any of it. (Again, as someone who deals with politicians day in and out.)
$500/spam... had to be someone important who just _really_ got sick of bestiality advertisements in their inbox or something. (Which, btw, some politicians tend to throw a fit about when they recieve it with inline HTML and pictures, and do things like force you to install half-functional anti-spam software so she doesn't see horse meat anymore.)
So who is registering openboyband.org, openrock.org, openjazz.org, etc?
;-)
Hopefully we'll also be lucky in that music will thrive or die like software; the craptastic open project like Open Boy Bands will die out.
A lot of code "mergers" tend to be announced, but nothing ever comes of it. The idea of a merged feature set sounds promising, but it is often difficult to merge the underlying code, which can be severely different even for features present in both code bases.
Additionally, for open-source or largely community developed projects, it's easy for the leaders to announce a merger or roadplan, but a whole 'nother game when it comes to getting the volunteer coders to actually do it; switching codebases or doing the grunt work of merges isn't the kind of this most hackers find sexy or appealing.
Point being, how much of this merger is something that's actually going to happen, how much is just a transfer of resources (versus merging of code), and so on?
Again, as someone who works for the gov't, I can attest that those orange construction barrels are a significant part of our residency, and as they form a majority of voters, generally get their way around here.
Notice the poor condition of Michigan roads; these conditions are a result of the barrels voting down on proper roadway budgets, increasing the need for repeated cheap repairs, which the barrels enjoy for leisurely activities.
The second largest voting majority would be the telecom representatives, who tend to be more vocal than orange construction barrels, if not as useful.
The funniest bit is, I work for a gov't branch, and we're bitten rather hard but some of the Michigan state laws. Next thing I know the Township will start passing anti-intelligent-people laws or something. (Not that it would have much effect around here...)
I wholly agree. Spammers only exist because there is a market for them. Or they have serious mental issues... ;)
I think there is a communication problem here. The article used "remote" to mean not-in-hardware; i.e., all software. It didn't mean just over the network.
An employee can get to the keys, but only by hacking the hardware. A possibility (as clearly explained in the articles), but not likely. It's also questionable when getting these keys would _do_; they only seem useful for the single machine itself. And I'd presume a good admin would clear/reset any keys if the machine is transfered to another employee.
heh. Think you missed my point... :P
Keep seeing posts about "in the future they still have this hole" or similiar items.
;-)
Remember, folks, the hack wasn't taking place in the future - it was in the Matrix. They weren't hacking the machines, they were hacking the "fake" computers in the power plant.
Think of it like hacking into an ancient copy of usermode linux.
"Native UI versus write once, compile anywhere."
;-)
Sadly, that isn't true. You still have to write the whole backend. XUL uses GDK/GTK for example on UNIX. You _always_ need platform specific backends.
And then there's the problem of integration. I love the Mozilla Firebird UI a lot more than Galeon (which is just cracked out) or Epiphany (which has been way over-simplified to be useful), but Firebird doesn't in any way shape or form integrate nicely with my GNOME2 desktop. It looks and feels like a separate application. Things I've already configured in GNOME need to be reconfigured in Firebird. And so on.
Same goes for Mac OS X users, I'm sure - Firebird will not look or act like any other application. It'll act like a Windows app, mostly because that's what its design most closely mimics.
So please, developers - get rid of this silly "write once, sorta work everywhere, even tho we have to recode the backends" idea and realize that fully native UIs are so much better, especially for users. All that time Mozilla spent designing XUL could've been spent doing native UIs and had plenty of time left over.
http://zombo.com/
That's what hack _always_ meant. A hacker has always been another word for coder. The media started using "hacker" where they should have been using "cracker" or "computer vandal" or similar (mostly because, I'm guessing, in the beginning you had to be a hacker to break into a system) and now the negative version of the term has stuck.
;-)
I'm a hacker, proud of it, and may you people who keep thinking that means I break into computers all get beaten with wet noodles.
Hell, I still run into this constantly today.
;-)
My favorite is the idiot yelling about how much he hates newbies and corporate support in Linux, on a mailing list operated by Intel for Intel supplied Linux software. The "smart" people are such morons, sometimes.
I don't think Sorenson has ever been an open standard. QuickTime is, I believe; but then, it's quite possible to encode a movie in QuickTime _without_ using Sorenson. Sorenson is just one of the many possible codecs usable in the QuickTime "wrapper" format. Same goes for AVI and several other formats; they just wrap the several sub-encodings together. So you can encode both audio and video using two wholly unrelated formats, or whatever. (not a multimedia format expert...)
They said it uses standard semi-conductor manufacturing processes.
While that's no real guarantee, it does imply it shouldn't be much more than what we currently spend on this stuff. Especially once they get to a big enough bulk the plants should be common and efficient. (initial implementations of facilities tend to be more expensive, from what I've gathered)
notebooks are cheating. ;-)
Like this self-built box states, you _can_ drop in your own hard-drives, AGP cards, and everything.
.NET) alleviates a large amount of that, and virtual PC helps a lot for business apps.
The only palces Apple breaks compatibility is where their tech is _better_. ADC is awesome, I wish PC manufacturer's would adopt - I have _way_ too many cables behind my computer desk. Some goes for their slick way of hooking the mouse into the keyboard (less cabling, again). You can get away with five cables from your tower (power, adc, keyboard, speakers, network), only one from your display (adc), a cable from mouse to keyboard and keyboard to tower, and the cables hooking speakers together and then from there to tower. Plus you have a spare USB port on your keyboard (tablet, portable drive, whatever) plus two more on the modern displays.
Compare that to the >10 cables on my machine, and then having to have the cables running back behind the machine versus having even simple things like USB literally at my fingertips...
The only other big non-compatibility thing is the CPU architecture, but who cares? The prevalence of Java (and soon perhaps
I'm waiting for the PPC 970 myself, but I'm switching then; depending on how good Panther is, I might even dump Linux then. ~,^
According to IBM's specs from IBM's site, there will be Altivec. It also specifically states that the technology is licensed from Motorola.
;-)
I'd give a link, but I don't have one off-hand, and you're as capable of using Google as I am.
If you're using OS8/9, that would explain it. Those systems were technological crap. Try OS X. Of course, that might not run on your hardware (just like WinXP isn't going to run on a ppro 200).
Heh. Of course, there's the whole issue where the high-end open source drivers don't perform nearly as well as the closed sourced ones. ;-)
:(
;-)
This is isn't a problem with open-source, simply the fact that the closed source drivers are better, currently.
Granted, a better kernel interface for this kind of stuff would elminate the whole problem; it shouldn't need porting of a _driver_ between different user-space systems.
(Sure I'll receive flak for this opinion on the AP list now.
I've read it. What does the gigahertz have to do with any of it? Obviously _you_ need to do some more reading. ;-)
If anyone _can_ do this, I'm now officially scared.
:(
The protocol had damn well better be done over something well encrypted; reverse engineering it would mean they'd have to be able to crack this, and there goes all security for those credit card transfers and such.